‘Ojisan gokko shiyo! [Let’s pretend to be old men!]’: Contested Graphic Ideologies in Japanese Online Language Play

ABSTRACT

This article examines how social beliefs about language use and users influence writing-restricted variation in contemporary Japan by analyzing ojisan gokko (‘impersonating middle-aged men’), a practice where young Japanese women playfully message each other as though they were lecherous men. While the production of a stylized ojisan voice during ojisan gokko involves many traditional Japanese indexes (markers) of ‘male’ language, it also relies prominently on particular uses of script, emoji, kaomoji, and punctuation, ultimately creating a form of mocking which is bound to the written mode. Using indexicality as a framework, the article analyses 195 screenshots of ojisan gokko acts shared on Twitter to establish which writing-restrict forms are key to the practice, and examines the multiple social motives and origins behind these forms. Ultimately, ojisan gokko is noted to involve a complex interplay of variants traditionally linked to distinct social groups, with this combined use traced to a series of Japanese social actors observing, imitating, discussing, or parodying how others write. Consequently, ojisan gokko shows that writing-restricted variation can be highly motivated by social concerns, ideologies, and conflicts, including the desire to establish, contest, and modify which identities and forms of language use are appropriate or ‘cool’.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ After the completion of this paper, the term ojisan kōbun (middle-aged man syntax) grew in popularity as a replacement term, and as of 2021 seems to be as – if not more – popular than ojisan gokko.

² All translations of Japanese are by the author.

³ https://twitter.com/_smitter2/status/848109554894118913

⁴ https://twitter.com/SEGA_OFFICIAL/status/867600972469620736

⁵ https://twitter.com/TANITAofficial/status/867598667707854849

⁶ The term (that is, non-hashtag) ojisan gokko retrieves tweets dating back to May of 2010, but these all refer to other practices, such as a brief fad of women pulling their hair across their upper lip to make a moustache and thereby ‘pretending to be a middle-aged man’.

⁷ https://twitter.com/kayoyon213/status/865354591101112320

⁸ From the first letter of warau (to laugh).

⁹ Playful variant of waratta (laughed).