Public Signs as Narrative in Japan

Abstract

Public signs (both advertising and informational) are analyzed here as narrative. This allows us to see the parallels between abbreviated texts in public spaces and extended discourse that has a long history of analysis. It also reveals parallels between literary and linguistic treatment of discourse. Included in the analysis is a description of how reference and indexicality function in the discourse we see all around us on what might be called ‘the linguistic landscape’, as well as how point of view operations, focalization, and voice are manipulated to authors' specific ends.

Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2008 Association of Asian Studies conference in Atlanta. I am indebted to colleagues at that meeting for their input. I am also grateful to Fulbright and Waseda University for making it possible for me to pursue this research topic during research visits in 2005 and 2006. Assistance from Satomi Hayashi at Portland State was invaluable in setting up the illustrations.

Notes

¹Backhaus has commented extensively on the variety of scripts in Tokyo signs (and the use of English in particular) in terms of ‘layering’– the numbers of languages (and scripts) represented, their proportions, as well as the kind of information that is conveyed; see Backhaus, Linguistic Landscapes, and Backhaus, ‘Signs of Multilingualism’. His focus is the mix of language on the Japanese horizon, and he cites Coulmas, ‘Changing Language Regimes’, in concluding that ‘[t]he total of Tokyo's linguistic landscape can be read as reflecting ongoing changes in the Japanese language regime’ (146).

²See papers in Herman, Narrative Theory.

³Barthes, ‘An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative’, 237.

⁴Berkenkotter and Huckin, Genre Knowledge in Disciplinary Communication, 4.

⁵Bakhtin, Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, 63.

⁶Cook, The Discourse of Advertising, 171.

⁷Ibid., 180–181.

⁸This is mentioned by scholars as varied as Beasley and Danesi, Persuasive Signs; Goddard, The Language of Advertising; Goffman, Gender Advertisements; Myers, Words in Ads; and Williamson, Decoding Advertisements.

⁹Turner, The Anthropology of Performance, 27.

¹⁰Gundel, Hedberg and Zacharski, ‘Cognitive Status’, 274.

¹¹Lyons, Semantics, 636.

¹²Wetzel, ‘Uti and Soto’, ‘A Movable Self’, and ‘Japanese Social Deixis’.

¹³Wetzel, ‘A Movable Self’, 76. Maynard calls this Other ‘thou’ and goes into some detail on the distinction between Japanese and Western (Cartesian) subjectivity; see Maynard, Discourse Modality, 16–17. The difference hinges on autonomy: the Western self is defined in terms of autonomy while the Japanese self is defined in terms of its relation to Other(s).

¹⁴Myers, Words in Ads, 83.

¹⁵Cook, The Discourse of Advertising, 158–159.

¹⁶Myers, Words in Ads, 80.

¹⁷Levenston and Sonnenschein, ‘The Translation of Point-of-view’, 50.

¹⁸Brown and Levinson, Politeness, 118.

¹⁹See Genette, Narrative Discourse.

²⁰Bakhtin, Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, 177.

²¹Genette, Fiction and Diction and Narrative Discourse.

²²Derrida, Of Grammatology.

²³Briggs and Bautnan, ‘Genre, Intertextuality, and Social Power’, 567.

²⁴Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice.

²⁵Hanks, Language and Communicative Practices, 246.