yakuwari-go - ResearchGate

On the use of stereotypical speech patterns
and yakuwari-go (role-language) in
Japanese popular manga
Giancarla Unser-Schutz
Rissho University
giancarlaunserschutz@ris.ac.jp
giancarlaunserschutz@ris.ac.jp
1
Overview
 Stereotypes in media often thought of as physical appearance/
roles
 How should certain people look?
 What should certain people do?
 But can also play an important part in characters speech patterns
Mama’s in the kitchen
cooking rice. . .
 How should certain people speak?
 Recently given new attention under the concept yakuwari-go, or role language
 Here: Examine frequency of yakuwari-go in manga, considering in
particular
 Its relationship with genre
 (ow it might affect readers relationships with characters
giancarlaunserschutz@ris.ac.jp
2
What is yakuwari-go?
 First defined by Kinsui (2003:205):
あ特定言葉遣い語彙語法言い回
イ
ネ
ョ等を
聞
特定人物像
齢性別階層時代容姿風貌性格等を
思い浮べこ
あいあ特定人物像を
提示さ
人物い
使用
う言葉遣いを思い浮べ
こ
言葉遣いを役割語
呼ぶ
When one can recall a particular image of a person (age, sex, class, era, appearance/looks, personality)
upon hearing a particular style of speech (lexical items/grammar, phrases, intonation, etc.), or when
given an image of a particular person one can recall a style of speech that it would seem they would
very likely use, that speech style is called yakuwari-go.
[Translation by presenter]
 Plainly→Stereotyped speech patterns that can be manipulated to create
or reinforce characters
giancarlaunserschutz@ris.ac.jp
3
Examples
Hyper masculine (pirates)
→/ai/ to [ei] shift
→Command form (oriro)
→Particle ze
(OnePiece, 1:111)
Kansai person
→Copula ya, particle nen
→Homma instead of hontō
→Sen instead of shinai
(Nana, 3:115)
Feminine okama
→Particle no-yo
→Particle yo after a
plain noun
(Nodame Cantabile,
2:24)
(Gintama, 1:111)
Chinese Foreigner
→Shortened adjective (yoroshi vs. yoroshii)
→Use of katakana
giancarlaunserschutz@ris.ac.jp
4
A not so new phenomenon?
Me name's
Long John,
how be you?
 Caveat: Phenomenon not unique to Japanese or previously unnoticed
 Can be found in all languages—Korean (Jung 2005), Spanish (Fukushima 2012)
 Soper (2010) on the use of dialects in a US comic; Rahman (1990) on nonstandard English in Pakistani fiction; Li (2004) on stereotyped pidgin in a
Chinese American novel
 Importantly: Gave name/focus to research on a common phenomenon
 Reconnects with research on folk linguistics; linguistic attitudes; language and
media; stylistics and narrative studies; psychology and stereotypes
 Offers opportunity to reorganize related research questions




Translation to Pirate Speak
courtesy of
http://www.talklikeapirate.com/
How do people recognize such characters—even when they don t really exist as such?
What kinds of media are prone to using yakuwari-go, if any?
How do the stereotyped patterns of yakuwari-go affect our perceptions of characters?
What influence might they have in reproducing/reinforcing stereotypes in media?
giancarlaunserschutz@ris.ac.jp
5
Impact on research
 Has since become a popular topic, leading to a flurry of research
 Aside from Kinsui (2003), two collected volumes have appeared (Kinsui 2007a,
2011)
 Influential on aspect of books like Sadanobu s (2011) kyara, Tanaka s
hōgen kosupure

articles with yakuwari-go in the title on CiNii since 2002 (~3.5/year)
 Has been examined in varied media such as novels (Vanbaelen 2001,
Watanabe
to children s songs Nakamura
, but manga in
particular have been given great attention
 Takahashi
a,
b on women s language in Life
 Kurosaki (2011) on the development of washi as yakuwari-go
 Liu (2014) on the Chinese translation of Meitantei Konan
giancarlaunserschutz@ris.ac.jp
6
Why manga?
 Yakuwari-go have been said to be an essential part of manga (Kinsui
2007b:98):
 役割語無
成立
い言
いい
 In-tune with the general impression that manga features stereotyped speech
(e.g., Chinami 2010)
 May be especially useful in media like manga because of certain
advantages and disadvantages as a visual medium
 Reinforces the stereotypes associated with the images used
 Help disambiguate speakers when text-character connection is not fully
established
giancarlaunserschutz@ris.ac.jp
7
Reinforcement
Strong looking men
⇅
Strongly masculine speech
patterns
Non-Japanese
looking girl
⇅
Non-native Japanese
Effeminate looking man
⇅
Strongly feminine
speech patterns
…?
May not
always
correlate with a
clear physical
identity—but
often does
giancarlaunserschutz@ris.ac.jp
8
Disambiguation
 Ambiguity occurs when utterer is not clear from
textual clues
 All free direct speech—no ~said ~ (see Leech & Short 2007)
 Clues=Turns, context, tails/location of speech bubble
 Ex. Nodame Cantabile (1:26): Only speech bubble 2 -1
has tail; frames 1, 4 lack faces
 The speaker somewhat ambiguous, especially 4-1
 Yakuwari-go give most reliable clues
 Feminine usage pattern in -1 strongly suggests speaker
is Saiko, e.g., yo after the noun issho
 Similar stereotyped patterns in subtitles (Tada 2011,
Nakamura 2013 ) may be related?
giancarlaunserschutz@ris.ac.jp
9
The reality of language in manga
 It is not entirely clear how common yakuwari-go is in comics
 May be inaccurate to make categorical claims about manga given the variety
of genres
 Peripheral characters predicted to use yakuwari-go more (Kinsui 2003) = Different predictions
expected by how characters used → Differs by genre (Unser-Schutz, forthcoming)
 However: Most research has been qualitative
 Lack of quantitative research related to difficulty determining what
qualifies/functions as yakuwari-go?
 In theory, no aspect of language is completely neutral
 The social aspects of language mean anything can be potential yakuwari-go
 However: Elements more strongly marked with a particular social
association may be more likely to function as yakuwari-go?
giancarlaunserschutz@ris.ac.jp
10
What can be yakuwari-go?
 Example: Gendered speech
Further out = Less
restricted by gender
 Strong social associations with certain patterns as male
or female—but strong forms not commonly used now
(Okamoto 1995; Ozaki 1999; Philips 2001; Kobayashi 1993; Sturtz
Sreetharan 2004)
 Neutral forms = Either in certain circumstances
 Ex: watashi not usual 1st person pronoun choice by men
 But is used actively in formal situations→Neutral?
 As yakuwari-go, may result in character ambiguity
Further in= Usage generally
 Strong association of gendered forms offers saliency
limited by gender
 Real-life young women many not really say issho-yo
 But clearer marker than issho da-yo/desu-yo
giancarlaunserschutz@ris.ac.jp
11
The reality of language in manga
 A proposal: Use corpus compiled by author to examine the frequency of
strongly gendered speech patterns in manga
 More likely to function as yakuwari-go
 Focus = Sentence final particles [SFPs] and related sentence-final elements
 Common yakuwari-go elements listed by Kinsui (2003)
 Goal 1: See how frequently elements potentially functioning as yakuwarigo are used
 Goal 2: See if there are differences in the two major genres, shōjo-manga and
shōnen-manga
 Larger cast of characters in shōnen-manga suggests more likely to use
yakuwari-go (Unser-Schutz, forthcoming)
giancarlaunserschutz@ris.ac.jp
12
The project
 Created corpus of first 3 volumes of 10 popular series
 Organized all text into one of 8 categories→Lines, Thoughts, Narration,
Onomatopoeia, Background Text, Background Lines/Thought, Comments, Titles
(see Unser-Schutz 2011)
 Resulted in 688,342 characters of text (ji)
 Morpheme analysis (word frequency) of Lines with ChaMame/UniDic/MeCab
 Lines = Conversational dialogue between characters
 Form the majority of text→72.63%
 Resulted in 260,906 words
 Targeted all SFPs, exempting ones in quotations
 Graded for gender following McGloin (2005), Okamoto (1995), Ueno (2006) and
Sturtz Sreetharan (2004)
 Included other sentence final expressions (the copula, etc.)
giancarlaunserschutz@ris.ac.jp
13
Corpus sample
Genre
Shōjo-manga
Japanese title
English title
Author
Bokura ga Ita
We Were There Obata, Yuki
Kimi ni Todoke
From Me To You Shī a, Karuho
Nana
Nana
Yazawa, Ai
Nodame Cantabile Nodame Cantabile Ninomiya, Tomoko
Love Com
Nakahara, Aya
Rabu★Kon
Shō e -manga
Death Note
Death Note
GinTama
Gin Tama
Meitantei Konan
Case Closed
Naruto
Naruto
One Piece
One Piece
Ohba, Tsugumi;
Obata, Takeshi
Sorachi,
Hideaki
Aoyama,
Gōshō
Kishimoto,
Masashi
Magazine
BetsuKomi
Bessatsu Margaret
Cookie
Kiss
Bessatsu Margaret
Publisher
Start
Shogakukan 10/2002
Shueisha
9/2005
Shueisha
10/1999
Kodansha
7/2001
Shueisha
9/2001
Finish
2/2012
―
―
10/2009
12/2006
Shōnen Jump
Shueisha
12/2003
5/2006
Shōnen Jump
Shueisha
12/2003
―
1/1994
―
11/1999
―
Shōnen Sunday Shogakukan
Shōnen Jump
Oda, Ei'i hi ō Shōnen Jump
Shueisha
giancarlaunserschutz@ris.ac.jp
Shueisha
8/1997
14
―
Target words/Sentence final particles
Strongly Feminine (SF)
A/V/+no+yo/ne/yo-ne
kashira
N/masu-no±yo/ne/yo-ne
N-yo(ne)
wa↑(±ne/yo/yo-ne)
Moderately Feminine (MF)
A/V-no
deshou
mon(o)(ne)(yo)
N-ne
yon
N=Nou , A=Adje tive, V=Ve , K=Ka sai fo
Neutral (N)
Moderately Masculine (MM)
Strongly Masculine (SM)
(nen)de K
(da/ka/wa)i
(yan)ke K
A/V plain form
(da/ka/wa/yo)nou
/ai/ - [ei]
A/V/masu(nen/yan/yo)na K
ya
ka-yo
A/V/masu/other+ne
na
V-com.(yo)(na)
aru(ka/yo) F
A/V/da/other+yo
V-na(yo) (neg. com.)
datte
be
wa↓na
jan
da(rou/tta)(yo/ne/yo-ne)
ze
ka-na/nya:
ga-ne
zo
kke(na/ne)
ka
masu form
ka-ne
masu-ka/yo
sa
nen K
noni
Q-no
raa
tteba
V-te (req.)
wa↓na K
ya K
yan K
giancarlaunserschutz@ris.ac.jp 15
, o .= o
a d fo , eg.= egative fo , e .= e uest, ↓=falli g i to atio , ↑= ising intonation
Results/Female characters
Genre
Series
Bokura
Shōjo-manga
Kimi ni Todoke
Nana
Nodame
Cantabile
Shōnen-manga
RabuKon
Total
DeathNote
GinTama
Detective Conan
Naruto
OnePiece
Total
SF
MF
15 1.41% 92 8.65%
51 3.65% 101 7.22%
58 3.04% 108 5.67%
35
105
264
8
35
186
43
119
391
N
MM
SM
643 60.43% 292 27.44% 22 2.07%
751 53.72% 452 32.33% 43 3.08%
993 52.13% 680 35.70% 66 3.46%
Total % words
1,064 10.99%
1,398 9.76%
1,905 10.96%
0.85% 710 10.29%
4.93% 36 5.07% 511 71.97% 122 17.18% 6
7.37% 58 4.07% 1102 77.39% 122 8.57% 37 2.60% 1,424 11.26%
4.06% 395 6.08% 4,000 61.53% 1,668 25.66% 174 2.68% 6,501 10.67%
0.41% 246 7.97%
3.25% 13 5.28% 195 79.27% 29 11.79% 1
6.24% 29 5.17% 234 41.71% 186 33.16% 77 13.73% 561 11.08%
0.86% 699 7.54%
26.61% 65 9.30% 312 44.64% 130 18.60% 6
85 48.85% 30 17.24% 2
1.15% 174 8.70%
24.71% 14 8.05%
26.44% 45 10.00% 186 41.33% 86 19.11% 14 3.11% 450 9.94%
18.36% 166 7.79% 1,012 47.51% 461 21.64% 100 4.69% 2,130 8.90%
Bold is the largest group; underscore the second largest
group; and italics the third.
giancarlaunserschutz@ris.ac.jp 16
Results/Male characters
Genre
Series
Bokura
Shōjo-manga
Kimi ni Todoke
Nana
Nodame
Cantabile
Shōnen-manga
RabuKon
Total
DeathNote
GinTama
Detective Conan
Naruto
OnePiece
Total
SF
MF
1 0.11% 24 2.71% 419
2 0.28% 20 2.76% 295
5 0.43% 21 1.79% 481
31
6
45
1
17
2
3
1
24
Total
N
MM
SM
47.29% 317 35.78% 125 14.11% 886
40.69% 316 43.59% 92 12.69% 725
41.11% 566 48.38% 97 8.29% 1,170
% words
12.23%
12.74%
11.25%
2.20% 27 1.91% 656 46.52% 546 38.72% 150 10.64% 1,410 11.27%
0.47% 56 4.40% 935 73.39% 99
7.77% 178 13.97% 1,274 11.59%
0.82% 148 2.71% 2,786 50.98% 1,844 33.74% 642 11.75% 5,465 11.67%
0.04% 15 0.62% 1510 62.47% 742 30.70% 149 6.16% 2,417 7.55%
0.58% 51 1.75% 869 29.83% 1258 43.19% 718 24.65% 2,913 12.32%
0.10% 35 1.78% 898 45.68% 782 39.78% 249 12.67% 1,966 7.34%
0.18% 20 1.23% 692 42.61% 706 43.47% 203 12.50% 1,624 8.83%
0.03% 11 0.37% 902 30.14% 1317 44.00% 762 25.46% 2,993 11.49%
0.20% 132 1.11% 4,871 40.89% 4,805 40.33% 2,081 17.47% 11,913 9.39%
Bold is the largest group; underscore the second largest
group; and italics the third.
giancarlaunserschutz@ris.ac.jp 17
Analysis
 Both genders in both genres use all types
 But shōnen-manga→More strong forms
 Shōnen-manga female chars.= SF
SPFs more common than natural speech
 1.83% (Philips 2001) ~4.00% (Okamoto 1995)
 Male characters also use more SMs than
reported in real life
F/SN 18.36%
F/SJ
M/SN
4.06%
0.20%
4.69%
SF
2.68%
MF
17.47%
N
MM
M/SJ
0.82%
11.75%
SM
0%
50%
100%
SJ=Shōjo-manga, SN=Shōnen-manga, F=Female, M=Male
 Less data available, but Sturtz Sreetharan (2004) reports that they are not particularly frequent
 Use of stronger forms in shōnen-manga→At least some are likely acting as yakuwari-go?
 Consistent with expectations for more yakuwari-go patterns based upon character #s
 Suggests usage is not universal across all manga
giancarlaunserschutz@ris.ac.jp
18
Spreading stereotypes?
 Does this mean that shōnen-manga (are likely to) propagate stereotypes—
especially linguistically-hegemonic language attitudes/patterns?
 … maybe?
 Media s influence on language change not very well supported (Aitchison
1998, 2007; Chambers 1993, 1998)
 But, use/depiction of characters may reinforce people s stereotypes of
what people should do
 However: May be more effective to think about the different reading
experiences they produce
giancarlaunserschutz@ris.ac.jp
19
Effects on readers
 Yakuwari-go may influence how readers interact with characters/text
Control readers evaluations of characters
 Stereotypes forth evaluations of speakers based upon linguistic attitudes
(e.g., Niedzielski & Preston 1999 on folk linguistics)
Limit characters emphatic engagement
 Lack of the reality necessary for emphatic engagement (Keen 2006)
 Not necessarily a bad thing
 Emphatic engagement requires a lot of readers
 Less pressure to do so offers instead a space of entertainment and escape, like
Nakamura s
sports tabloids
 Difference in characterization in shōjo-manga and shōnenmanga→Signals differences in engagement and reading experiences?
giancarlaunserschutz@ris.ac.jp
20
Conclusions
 Yakuwari-go are clearly useful in manga
 But may not be universal, as measured by the use of strongly gendered forms
 Genre differences may be important factor in their usage
 Things to think about . . .
 How does the use of yakuwari-go alter narratives?
 How consistently are they used, and how do people evaluate characters that use
them?
giancarlaunserschutz@ris.ac.jp
21
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Thank you! giancarlaunserschutz@ris.ac.jp
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