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Non-Conventional Script Choice in Japan

Abstract

The complexity and variety of scripts and writing devices, such as auxiliary text or

“ruby”, used in non-conventional writing in Japan are outlined. The complexity of the

system overall is attributed to aspects of “indirect” language contact with languages

encountered predominantly in written form, especially Literary Chinese in the past

and English nowadays, and it parallels the concept of “total availability” that Miller

(1967) uses to characterise neologism in Japan. Specific choices of script are

described in terms of cultural stereotypes and Jakobson’s (1960) functions of

language. Advertising and manga are identified as the major sources of many non-

conventional practices that then spread into youth writing and even popular fiction.

1. Introduction

Chen’s (1999: 167-168) categorisation of the roles of schemes for the phonographic

writing of Chinese relative to Chinese character script can be profitably applied to

other languages that have more than one script: “alternative” (both scripts are used but

not in the same text), “superseding” (one is in the process of replacing the other),

“auxiliary” (one is a teaching, glossing or reference aid to the other), and

“supplementary” (both scripts are used and in the same text). The first two account for

most cases of multiple scripts. For example, the relationship between vertical script

and cyrillic in 1990s Mongolia referred to by Unseth (2005: 23) may be described as

originally superseding, but subsequently alternative. In Japan, however, the latter two

categories apply. Japanese writing is not a single script, but rather consists of three

basic script-sets: “kanji” or Chinese characters, and two phonographic scripts,

“hiragana” and “katakana” (collectively called “kana”). These are supplementary to

each other, co-occurring in the same text, so-called “mixed script” (majiribun)

(Hannas 1997: 26), together with other symbols, including the roman alphabet - which

can be treated as a fourth script-set - a rich array of punctuation, some other native

symbols that represent morphemes but are not treated as members of the three native

script-sets (e.g. the kanji repetition mark), international symbols (e.g. “+”, “=”), etc. It

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also includes the metalingual auxiliary device of “ruby text” (rubī, hereafter simply

“ruby”), where the same word can be written simultaneously in two scripts, one

glossing the other.

How many scripts does Japanese have? All three basic scripts have a common origin,

kanji: katakana are derived from parts of kanji (Seeley’s “isolating phonograms”) and

hiragana from the most cursive (“grass”) style of writing kanji (Seeley 1991: 62-70).

The kana principle derives from the Chinese practice of writing foreign words with

kanji for phonographic value, still used nowadays (Yip 2000: 333-335). However,

these are diachronic considerations; from a synchronic viewpoint, kanji, hiragana and

katakana are three separate but supplementary scripts. Kanji are generally non-

phonographic in function (with the exception of a few “ateji”: Seeley 1991: 188),

while kana scripts are syllabaries, and so constitute different “writing systems”.1

Moreover, though the roles of katakana and hiragana may be likened to those of italic

and non-italic styles in roman script (katakana is typically used for foreign words, or

emphatic/emotive forms), they cannot be considered merely styles of a single script:

they consist of completely different symbols (except those for he, identical in both)

and represent long vowels by different devices.

Modern Japanese writing displays great complexity on a range of levels. Firstly, the

number of kanji is theoretically open-ended, as evidenced by kanji dictionaries: e.g.

7,107 kanji in The New Nelson (Haig 1997), 14,924 in Ueda’s Daijiten (Ueda 1942).

Though the Japanese government in 1946 restricted the number of kanji that could be

used in official and school texts, and from 1947 in names, to 1,850 (the Tōyō kanji

list: Seeley 1991: 153-159; Gottlieb 1995: 135), the list was modified a number of

times, and in 1981 was changed from a prescribed to a recommended list (the Jōyō

kanji list, 1,945 kanji: Seeley 1991: 160-178). Nevertheless, most formal Japanese

writing conforms to the recommendations.

Secondly, the lack of one-to-one correspondence between word and kanji, a result of

mapping a system created for a different language onto Japanese, means that some

Japanese words can be written with two or more different kanji that, at least in strict

usage, differentiate different nuances, while many kanji can write two or more distinct

morphemes or words (Backhouse 1984: 219-220, 225; Sampson 1985: 188-189).

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Thirdly, the existence of three basic supplementary scripts results in a flexibility that

allows a word that has a kanji spelling also to be written in hiragana or katakana.

Relevant factors in this flexibility include whether the writer wants to conform to the

Jōyō list, the assumed literacy level of the readership, and the feel associated with

different scripts. Even within “conventional” writing, there is a huge flexibility.

However, there is also a variety of unconventional writing practices in Japan, to some

extent attributable to this flexibility in conventional writing. It is these unconventional

practices that I shall explore in this paper.

2. Conventional writing

2.1. Ruby text and the roman alphabet

I shall not detail the full range of conventions and the flexibility of more standard

writing, as these are outlined elsewhere (e.g. Backhouse 1984; Sampson 1985);

instead, I shall concentrate on two features of conventional writing (ruby text and the

roman alphabet) that are relevant also to non-conventional practices; and I shall

introduce two factors in the development of the system, language contact and the

system’s open-endedness, that are also factors in the development of non-

conventional writing. I use the term “conventions” rather than “orthography” here, as

there is an inherent flexibility of choice in the system which is at odds with the usual

understanding of the concept of “orthography”. I treat as conventional those practices

found either in formal writing or across a range of genres.

Briefly, native Japanese or Chinese-derived content words are written in kanji;

grammatical forms or kanji-less native words are written in hiragana; and katakana is

(a.) reserved for Western loanwords, onomatopoeia, and animal and plant names

when discussed as species, or (b.) optional for phonaesthesia, interjections, slang or

taboo vocabulary. The use of katakana for the latter set tends to increase in less high-

brow writing, and extensive use could be considered non-conventional, but unlike the

practices described below it has a long history. For example, in Ikku’s (1802-1822)

Tōkaidō-chū Hizakurige katakana is normal for interjections (nanni “what?!”, iya

“no!; eugh!”) and colloquialisms (korya for kore wa ‘this’). Other factors come into

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play in the choices, e.g. availability of a kanji, readership literacy level, and the feel

associated with different scripts. Smith and Schmidt (1996) studied the choice across

a variety of genres of fiction, and found genre and readership age to be significant.

There are two features of conventional script choice that it would be useful to

consider in more detail, as they are relevant to non-conventional script choice.

Firstly, “ruby”, auxiliary text written to the right of the main text in vertical script and

above it in horizontal script, is common (Backhouse 1984: 220). Conventionally ruby

takes the form of “furigana” (= ruby hiragana), which indicate of the kanji that they

accompany. The amount of ruby depends on genre and assumed literacy level of the

readership. Newspapers and scientific writing use it rarely, while there is a higher

proportion in low-brow fiction, sometimes even including standard readings for Jōyō

kanji. The younger the reader, the more frequent the device is: the opening paragraph

of Matsuoka (1999) contains 19 words written in kanji, of which 15 and part of

another are accompanied by ruby. Texts aimed at even younger readers use few kanji,

but even apply hiragana ruby to katakana (Backhouse 1984: 220).

Secondly, the roman alphabet is avoided, except for writing international symbols (e.g.

H2O, CO2, cm) or acronyms (e.g. PKO). These acronyms are usually the abbreviation

of a corresponding English expression (PKO = “peace keeping operation”), and are

handy as they are shorter to write than the full Japanese term (PKO = the six-kanji

heiwa iji katsudō). They are read out as acronyms (PKO = pīkēō), though most

Japanese may be unaware of the English source form. Newspapers tend to introduce

such forms in full Japanese version first, with the acronym in parentheses, and then

use the acronym through the rest of the piece. Exceptions to the otherwise general

avoidance of the roman alphabet are the optional representation in academic writing

of a Western scholar’s name in its original spelling rather than katakana; and the

impact of modern computing. The latter covers the exclusive use of roman script in

programming languages, e-mail addresses and URLs; modern wordprocessing also

includes the option to input either by means of kana or roman keyboards, and Unger

(1996a: 125) notes that the latter is preferred, constituting a “partial digraphia” (Unger

1996b: 149).

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2.2. Language contact with China

The primary factor for the conventional system’s complexity is language contact: the

basic Japanese scripts were borrowed and adapted from Chinese script, the only script

that the Japanese are likely to have been in contact with when Chinese civilisation

reached Japan. Having no indigenous writing system, the Japanese borrowed Chinese

characters, and - though the Chinese spoken language never had much presence in

Japan - Literary Chinese itself (Tranter 2001: 180). The dividing line between

Japanese and Literary Chinese was fuzzy, thanks to a tradition of reading Chinese

texts out loud in Japanese (kundoku). Substantial differences in word/morpheme order

meant that this was a process of interpretation from one language to another. Even

now, Chinese poetry is appreciated by interpretation into Classical Japanese.

Although rhyming characters are marked in modern Japanese introductions to

Classical Chinese poetry with a dot in the margin, generally this is all: there is no

further discussion of actual Chinese pronunciation, e.g. Matsuura’s (1997) collection

of Li Bai’s poems, or NHK’s Chinese poetry course (Ishikawa 1994). As a result,

native Japanese texts were also often encoded as Literary Chinese, and accompanied

by devices that allowed the reader to decode them back into Japanese (for detailed

discussion of kundoku and its devices, see Twine 1991: 34-48, 261-263; Seeley 1991:

25ff).

Writing in Japan, therefore, derived from Chinese writing. Consequently, hiragana,

katakana and ruby all have continental origins, and so are also cases of borrowing and

then adaptation. In terms of form, hiragana already existed in the “grass” style of

writing, which was quicker to write than the other styles. Many hiragana symbols (e.g.

fu or a) are still identical to how their source kanji are written in grass style by

Chinese calligraphers. In terms of function, the purely phonographic use of kanji also

already existed in China when writing foreign names or foreign words (Habein 1984:

9) and still does. Since Japanese, from a Chinese perspective, by nature consists of

foreign words, the phonographic use of kanji was barely a Japanese innovation.

Katakana began life as marginal glosses, and even the shorthand principle of writing

only a few strokes of a character used in a marginal gloss is not unique to Japan, as

we find examples of a similar system, kugyŏl, in Korea (Buzo 1980).

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Conventional Japanese writing, therefore, is the result of language contact with

Chinese and developed despite little direct contact with spoken Chinese, and a similar

situation characterises the borrowing of English and the roman script in modern Japan.

This revisited in 4.2 where parallels between the borrowing of Chinese and English

morphemes and scripts are discussed.

2.3. Open-endedness

Backhouse (1984: 221) refers to “the highly open-ended nature of the Japanese

writing system” diachronically. There is no finite limit on the number of symbols

available, and historically a broad range of devices have been used to encode the

language in the three main scripts (see Twine 1991: 33-73, 261-273). This open-

endedness and flexibility allow texts to be tailored to readers’ abilities and make the

system manageable, offsetting the pressure for reform (Hannas 1997: 46); they also

facilitate both creation of new forms and borrowing of (elements of) other scripts.

An example of creation is the “quasi-characters” described by Chamberlain (1887) as

shop identifiers. These are generally single forms made up of two or more symbols

which customers with low literacy could “read”: kana, simpler kanji, stylised pictures,

and geometric symbols. For example, the simple character pronounced dai (“big”)

inside a circle (maru) gives Daimaru, a major department store. At Chamberlain’s

time, these were widespread, though limited to shop names; now, they function like

logos.

An example of borrowing is punctuation. Most Japanese punctuation has been

borrowed from the West (Twine 1984), but a few traditional marks have been

maintained and their use redefined through influence from the West (Fujii 1984). This

results in a rich system, exploited to maximum effect perhaps in gossip magazine

headlines, where both Western and Japanese quotation marks are found.

3. Non-conventional writing

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Alongside the complex situation outlined in 2.1 is a range of non-conventional writing

practices, many of which have been facilitated by the open-endedness and flexibility

described above.

(1.) Writers of fiction have always enjoyed using alternative kanji, and still do. This

ranges from Nobel-prize winners like Mishima Yukio to low-brow writers. The

device can reflect subtle semantic nuances; it can also just be for variety. Whereas an

English writer might prefer not to repeat “frightened” twice in close succession, but to

use a synonym instead, Japanese writers may write osore(ru) “(to) fear” in different

ways. In Ōoka Shōhei’s (1952 [1981]) Nobi, for example, osore(ru) is written four

different ways, one hiragana-only. Variation may be genre-specific, e.g. the frequent

use of an unconventional kanji for nomu “to drink” in low-brow fiction. The more

unusual the spelling, the less familiar the average reader will be with it, so increases

in the proportion of ruby may accompany unconventional kanji use.

(2.) With the development of wordprocessing that can easily add ruby, the types of

ruby have become more varied. It is now possible not only to write hiragana ruby on

kanji to gloss pronunciation, but also to write kanji ruby on katakana to gloss their

meanings. This device existed in the nineteenth century as a way of indicating the

meaning of new and therefore unfamiliar Western loanwords, usually with the

glossing kanji in parentheses rather than as typographic ruby (Seeley 1991: 137), but

largely vanished during the twentieth century. It is back. The return began with manga,

where loanwords often sounded more authentic or just chic, but were also not so

familiar to readers. Consequently, two different words could be written

simultaneously: one was the word that a character uttered, the other was what it

actually meant, what Backhouse (1984: 221) describes as “a kind of amalgam, in the

written medium, of two distinct linguistic items”. The loanword is written in katakana

and accompanied by a gloss in kanji script. A common complication of this in manga

is that - presumably because ruby is smaller and kanji are complicated - it is the

loanword that is intended to be read that is written as ruby and the glossing kanji are

written in the main text. Consider the following from Kawaguchi (1989: 7).

タンクを排水ブ ロ ー

できないようです

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“We don’t seem to be able to blow the tanks”

The ruby writes in katakana the loanword burō (< “blow”) above the main-text kanji-

written word haisui “discharge water”. The reading expected is burō, but haisui helps

readers unfamiliar with burō.

The device has spread into mainstream fiction, especially translations of popular

fiction from English, glossing words that may not be familiar to Japanese. In this

function, it has become almost a replacement for foot- or endnotes. Page 74 of the

Japanese version (Aihara 1996) of Cause of Death (Cornwell 1996: 52) has four

examples, including:

(a.) (b.)

海軍のシールズ特殊部隊

徹甲ＡＰ

弾

kaigun no shīruzu tekkōdan

“Navy SEALs” “armor-piercing ammo”

In (a.) the ruby glosses the meaning of the not necessarily familiar American term

shīruzu (< “SEALs”) with tokushu butai (“special unit”), while the first two kanji in a

kanji-script term in (b.) are glossed with a roman-script acronym. A further extension

is seen in Kawaguchi (1989: 24).

海江田や つ

Umieda

“Umieda [the idiot]!”

The main text writes the man’s name Umieda in kanji, while the ruby writes in

hiragana the pejorative word yatsu. Both are native Japanese, but the ruby expresses

the speaker’s attitude to the referent, and is a graphic way of reproducing tone of

voice.

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(3.) Manga, due to their pictorial nature, make use of various deliberately visual

devices for emphasis, including:

(a.) Style variations such as larger writing for loudness or jagged writing for rage.

(b.) Use of pictures to express emotion, e.g. ♥ (love), sweat droplets (worry), tears

(sadness) or puffs of smoke (rage). These are common semiotic devices drawn around

the characters’ heads in the illustrations, especially varied in girls’ comics (Gravett

2004: 79). They are also used, however, within speech bubbles, especially when the

character’s head is not in frame, for which we can borrow Kataoka’s (1997: 121) term

“quasi-discourse analysis”, which she uses for the same practice in youth writing.

(c.) Use of various symbols to indicate phonetic variations in vowel length other than

the phonemic two-way short-long distinction: the dash used in katakana to indicate

vowel length is extended to hiragana or replaced with a tilde-like symbol, repeated or

elongated to indicate further prolongation; the conventional kana indicator of

gemination indicates abruptness when written utterance-finally; and a small vowel

kana indicates only slight lengthening.

(d.) Extensive use of “!” and “?”, often combined together: “!?” may indicate an

urgent or surprised question, while a speech bubble may contain no more than “!!” to

express surprise.

All these devices express linguistic (phonetic) or paralinguistic information conveyed

in spoken language, but not represented in conventional writing. Those that can be

easily typed, e.g. vowel length markers and unconventional use of punctuation, are

found to varying extents in the pulpier end of popular fiction. All manga devices are

found in informal youth handwriting, and female youth handwriting is extremely

adventurous. Pictures of sweat droplets or tears, ♥, or the kanji meaning “laugh” in

brackets punctuate such female writing, analysed by Kataoka (1997; 2003) from a

cognitive linguistics angle. They are transparent adoptions of manga conventions, and

illustrate the influence of manga over young Japanese.

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(4.) Youth innovations that appear not to derive from manga include Japanese

emoticons (kaomoji, e.g. >_< ‘ouch!’, Miller 2004: 229) and gyarumoji “gal

characters”. The latter developed among kogals (kōgyaru), high-school girls with a

reputation for fashion, innovations and sexual behaviour. Kogals differ from previous

generations or other social groups in that they have the leisure time, the income and

the social networks to indulge in their fashions (Suzuki and Best 2003: 75). They

were the first, therefore, to make wide use of new affordable technology, such as

pagers and then cell-phones (Suzuki and Best 2003: 63-64), and therefore the first to

explore and exploit the script possibilities offered by the technology. The gyarumoji

principle is to substitute for one symbol in a Japanese text one or more symbols that

visually resemble it (or its kana/roman transcription) from any script available, be it

Japanese, roman, Greek, cyrillic, punctuation, or mathematical (Miller 2004: 229-231).

There are even online “translation” services, e.g. http://www.glne.jp/, which provides

a gyarumoji translation of one of its headings (transcription and English are mine):

ギャル文字変換メールってなぁに？

≠〃ゃゐм○Ｕ〃χ→儿ﾂ τ ﾅょ→レ⊇？

gyarumoji henkan mēru tte nani?

“What is ‘Gyarumoji-Converted Mail’?”

Kogals are trendsetters (Suzuki and Best 2003), and many of their innovations -

adoption of fashions, technology, language or script - have been adopted by other

girls. This seems to be the case with gyarumoji, elements of which have spread to

girls and young women other than the kogal tribes. Kogals’ SMS messages aimed to

write entire sentences in gyarumoji, but it is now found throughout the internet in

blogs and chatrooms, where often it replaces only the hiragana component of

conventional mixed writing. A Google search for the gyarumoji spelling of na in the

above example results in about 114,000 Japanese pages (February 2007). Some

writers on the internet, however, seem to use it sporadically, for an aesthetic effect

while ensuring the text is readable to all. For example, one blogger

(http://www.dechaugirls.jp/special/blog/index.php?date=2007-01-04) writes

好きナょ食べモノ

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suki na tabemon

“My favourite foods”

where only the na is strictly gyarumoji.

(5.) Roman and other non-Japanese scripts occur frequently in the commercial sphere.

Advertising, in trying to communicate a message to a public that may not be

interested in the message or may be bombarded with so much other advertising

already, must stand out, it must catch the eye, and the roman alphabet achieves that.

At one extreme is the use of the roman alphabet to write entirely Japanese text, e.g.

the following, a catchphrase on Tarepanda products (a brand similar to Hello Kitty):

sawaruto yawarakaku igaito sittori siteiru

At the other are texts written entirely in English, e.g. the following from a bag for

University Co-op stores.

THE ROLE OF UNIVERSITY CO-OPERATIVES IN THE TIMES OF

CHANGE

Support Study, Education, and Research Activities at a University and

Contribute to the Overall Improvement of the University Community

Nurture the Spirit of Co-operation, and Strive to Improve the Life and Culture

through the Co-operative Power

Link the Life with Society, and Expand the Circle of Co-operation

Although arguably an example of language choice rather than script choice, there is a

blurring of script and language, even reflected in scholarly treatments of the subject,

such as Inoue (2005), whose treatment of the economic aspects of written English

includes examples of roman-written Japanese. I would argue that the English here is

chosen not to communicate but for aesthetic purposes; few people bother reading the

actual text. As examples between these two extremes are the following, the three of

the 26 headlines in the latest issue of the gossip magazine Flash (13 March) that

include entire words (other than names) in English. The underlined words were in the

roman alphabet, the rest in the basic three Japanese scripts.

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“kasumikko kurabu” ga eranda “tonde mo SEX saiban” “tochō shokiin 100nin “ishihara tochiji 3sen YES or No” “ame ni utaeba “zubu-nure gasshōdan” in tōkyō marason”

The last is interesting because it uses an English preposition (in tōkyō marason “in the

Tokyo Marathon”) instead of a native postposition. It should be noted that it is not just

English that is used this way. A text entirely in Chinese may be written on an oolong

tea packet; and, thanks to awareness of the International Phonetic Alphabet in

textbooks, it too is used commercially. The chains Infini (Anfini), EXis (Ekushīzu)

and Kōhīkan have all made (technically incorrect) use of the IPA in logos in the past.

4. Discussion

4.1. Language Contact and “Total Availability”

Borrowing of script displays parallels with lexical borrowing, and shares peculiarities

with it in Japan. Contrary to the standard model of lexical borrowing, where a

loanword is phonological, borrowed directly from one language to another through

borrowers hearing source language speakers uttering them, lexical borrowing in Japan

is predominantly indirect. Whereas scholars working on loanword phonology at best

argue that “some words came in primarily through the oral medium […] while others

were introduced through the written medium” (Quackenbush 1977: 150) or appeal to

the “eye route” (Lovins 1975: 5, 53) to explain forms that defy a phonological model,

language-contact scholars recognise indirectness as central. Loveday (1996: 154)

likens Japanese-English contact with pidginisation, which “can refer to second-

language learning in formal institutional settings”, and identifies a number of

similarities between the two situations, the first being “A lack of direct access to, or

contact with, an input model (the typical model is a Japanese teacher, often with a

limited command of the language).” Haarmann (1986: 112), for example, adapts

Kloss’s (1969) concept of “impersonal bilingualism” to describe this situation, where

people are monolingual but are expected to process other languages.

English words already exist in Japan by virtue of the fact that students receive

approximately 3,120 hours of English at school (Honna 1995: 59). A word can

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therefore be found in an English-language written source, whether a dictionary, a

school textbook, or other publication. Consequently, English words are: (a.) borrowed

as “graphic” loans, not phonological loans, so that the phonological shape imposed

upon them is based on artificial reading rules (Tranter 2008); (b.) available to be

combined with each other or native Japanese forms as a means of neologism. The fact

that both can happen, without the user even hearing the word spoken by a source-

language speaker, has been characterised by R. A. Miller (1967: 249) as “total

availability” of the source language: the entire language exists in Japan as a resource

to be exploited. “Total availability” characterises the Chinese language in Japan

(Miller 1967: 244), in that “any Chinese character, no matter how obscure, could have

a Sino-Japanese […] pronunciation, and that any Chinese morpheme or word existed

latently [in Japanese] and was thus available to be used” (Tranter 2008), and from

1945 English acquired a similar status. Laura Miller (2004: 235), for example,

observes that “the type of English-derived language material [kogals] use is not the

result of a normal contact situation. Kogals are not using English because of a lexical

gap or for social prestige. Instead they are exploiting the linguistic resources at hand

for their own aesthetic, humorous, visual, and affective projects.” The implications of

total availability of written Chinese and English forms regarding lexical borrowing

are explored in detail in Tranter (2008).

The same concept applies to scripts, not least because the division between written

language and writing is blurred in Japan. Foreign alphabets and languages

(particularly roman and English) are everywhere in Japan (Haarmann 1986: 107;

Backhaus 2005: 103). Combined with the open-endedness of Japanese writing, this

familiarity is reinforced by modern technology, with the total availability of scripts

that machines are capable of producing and the nature of inputting methods in Japan.

Whereas users of alphabetic script generally just type using the keypad, Japanese type

in roman script or kana, and at regular intervals convert what has been typed into

mixed script, and the high degree of homophony in Japanese means that they are used

to being presented with lists of correct, incorrect or obscure possibilities to choose

from. Wordprocessors can reproduce any symbol anyone might need to write. On the

one hand this has led to an increase in non-Jōyō kanji use (Gottlieb 2000: 85-88); on

the other hand, the adventurous have at their finger-tips other scripts and symbols to

exploit for any purpose. This is script “total availability”, and these scripts are not

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necessarily borrowed from seeing them used. They can be exploited as a resource

without knowledge of what they mean, as in the case of gyarumoji.

4.2. Jakobsonian functions and their sociolinguistics

The functions of writing may be compared with the functions of language on various

levels. Jakobson’s (1960) functions of language may be particularly usefully applied

to characterise the choice of non-conventional script in Japan. These are summarised

in Table 1, and form a basis for discussing their sociolinguistic aspects. Kanji

variation (1.) and unconventional ruby (2.) perform poetic and metalingual functions

respectfully, the latter focused on the “code” (Jakobson 1960: 356) in that it glosses

the meaning of a word. One is simply an aesthetic choice, the other a practical choice.

I shall concentrate on the other three categories of unconventional writing.

Firstly, manga are characterised by a broad range of devices (3.) that have emotive or

poetic function. They can be classified as either paralinguistic, being the equivalent of

facial expressions, laughter etc., or phonetic, carrying across non-phonemic features

of spoken language such as loudness, tone of voice, vowel length or abruptness. They

are emotive, in that they express emotion or “the speaker’s attitude towards what he is

speaking about” (Jakobson 1960: 354).

These devices have been adopted and adapted in youth writing, most fully in female

writing. Kataoka (1997: 120) observes that the use of pictorial signs in young female

writing derives from magazines and comic books; I would argue that most of her

“shape-based” strategies (script size, representation of intonation contours, and some

cases of script style) and “proposition-based” strategies (pictorial signs, “punctuation

merging”), and those of her “clause-based” strategies that relate to writing rather than

language (“unpronounceable expressions”, “replacement by picture”, speech

balloons), are adapted from manga. Her “quasi-discourse analysis” forms are clearly

taken from manga conventions when a character’s head is not in frame. These devices

all express the emotive function, but, as Kataoka (2003: 13-15) has illustrated, they

also serve to mark topic boundaries. As she (1997: 104; 2003: 24) observes, they are

also used for poetic effect, focusing on the script for its own sake. The devices are a

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means of group identification with other girls, but also represent the role of manga,

“the most empowering forum for female communication” (Gravett 2004: 74).

The above relates to handwriting. With computer or SMS inputting, there are

limitations and new opportunities. On the one hand, SMS allows few possibilities for

varying script size, and although ♥ is possible other handwritten pictorial devices are

not. Nevertheless, creativity and the desire to exploit what is available has given rise

to emoticons and gyarumoji. The former clearly express paralinguistic features, are

emotive, and mark topic boundaries, and so are the typed equivalent to Kataoka’s

“quasi-discourse analysis”.

Gyarumoji, on the other hand, do not express paralinguistic features or emotion, but

are an exploitation of the technology to focus on the writing (the graphic equivalent of

Jakobson’s “message”) for its own sake. We can compare gyarumoji with kogal

speech, which Carroll (2001: 103-104) says “combines foreign (overwhelmingly

English) and Japanese words and morphemes to produce a style intentionally

impenetratable to adults”. Miller (2004: 231-236) considers their speech habits in

more detail, but disagrees with the purpose, stating that “they do not care who

understands them” (Miller 2004: 236). Rather, “the obscuring function of slang seems

less important to them than the playful display and creation of novel expressions”

(Miller 2004: 236). The poetic function, therefore, is central to kogal writing and

speech. As with other kogal fashions, gyarumoji marked group identification; at first

gyarumoji were exclusive to kogals, but spread and became diluted as they becomes

more a fashionable trend adopted generally by young women.

Finally, there is the use of non-East Asian scripts (e.g. roman, IPA) or languages (e.g.

English, French) in the realms of commerce (5.). They are associated with brand- and

shop-names, advertising, and magazines. We must distinguish two types of such

script/language use.

Firstly, there is code-mixing, where a foreign word or short phrase, in whatever script,

is used in Japanese-language text. As the language is partially Japanese, these are

meant to be understood, and the choice of foreign word tends to be one that is familiar

to the consumer that the text is aimed at. As English is taught in Japanese schools and

16

is everywhere in the modern urban “linguistic landscape” (Backhaus 2005; Inoue

2005), the range of familiar English words is quite large, but certain words tend to

predominate. “Sex”, for example, is common in gossip magazine headlines. Such

code-mixing, Haarmann’s (1986: 116-117) “bilingual texting”, is found in other

media, such as youth writing, Kataoka’s (1997: 117-118) “self-conscious lexical

borrowing”, and graffiti (e.g. Loveday 1996: 105). When less familiar languages are

used, such as French, the number of words available for code-mixing is highly limited.

Code-mixing is apparently on the level of language rather than script in the

commercial sphere, though mixing where a Japanese word is written in roman script

is also found, e.g. Kataoka’s (1997: 115-116) “(sub)code switching” in youth writing.

I emphasise apparently, because the foreign words that occur in such mixing mostly

already exist as integrated loanwords in Japanese, and would conventionally be

written in katakana; even the more extreme examples are found in speech in the

Japanese of commercials or the spoken headlines of TV gossip programmes, e.g. yesu

ō nō “yes or no” or in “in” of the Flash examples earlier. Choosing to write “sex” in

roman script rather than in its usual katakana, then, is largely at the level of script

rather than language.

Secondly there is Haarmann’s (1986) “monolingual texting”, in which only the

foreign language or script is used. I shall leave aside proper names, i.e. the use of a

single word or phrase as a brand name, where “ISETAN” intends the same

cosmopolitan or fashionable response as “GUCCI” does (see Inoue 2005: 166).

Unlike bilingual texting, monolingual texting in advertising or in movie titles is more

a case of language choice rather than script choice. However, it is often the case that

the content of the message is irrelevant, particularly in texts that constitute sentences.

Haarmann (1986: 109) observes that when foreign languages are written they are “not

even intended to act as a means of verbal communication, but rather to provide the

Japanese readership with a certain language requisite to appeal to people’s emotions”,

the latter being “cool” or cosmopolitan values. He also makes a significant

observation in his comparison of English and French usage that he does not explain:

whereas English monolingual texts are written in either katakana or the roman

alphabet, “French monolingual texts are never presented in katakana” (Haarmann

1986: 116). I would argue that English sentences written in katakana are intended to

17

be understood, and indeed they tend to be short and include simple syntax and words

that are mostly familiar; longer texts, such as the Co-op example above, are never

written in katakana. I would therefore argue that the lack of French monolingual

texting in katakana is because few Japanese know much French.

The choice of script, regardless of language choice, is determined by whether the text

primarily communicates (katakana) or decorates or draws the eye (roman). Texts

using the roman script are used for their cosmopolitan or fashionable value

(Haarmann 1986: 110-111; Inoue 2005: 166), but whether the language represented is

English, French or Japanese, the consumer is not necessarily expected to understand

them, as Inoue (2005: 166) observes: “the literal meaning of the expression is

unimportant”. They deliberately draw the consumer’s eye to the accompanying

product or text, and function, therefore, not only to add a cosmopolitan or cool

impression (the poetic function), but also to establish contact with the consumer or

reader, i.e. a phatic function of script.

In conclusion, non-conventional script choice in Japan may be attributed overall to the

total availability of script through indirect language contact, and the flexibility

allowed by the traditional open-endedness of Japanese writing. The specific types of

script choice are influenced by the desire for decorative effect or visual impact, best

described in terms of poetic or phatic function; the cultural stereotypes associated

with foreign scripts in commercial advertising; and group identification in girls’

writing. Crucial is the role of advertising and manga, the latter representing 27% of

the publishing industry output in 1980 (Schodt 1983: 12) and 38.1% by 2004 (Gravett

2004: 13). Being so dominant, manga have had a direct influence on youth writing,

and, at least in ruby usage, other types of popular fiction.

Note

1. I follow Unseth’s (2005) distinction of “style”, “script” and “writing system”. To

avoid ambiguity, I refer to writing in Japan simply as “Japanese writing”, not “the

Japanese writing system”, and its Chinese-character component as “kanji”, not as

“characters”.

18

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22

Tables

Device Genre Function

(1.) kanji variation fiction poetic

(2.) unconventional ruby manga; fiction metalingual

(3.) paralinguistic/phonetic devices manga; youth writing (hand-) emotive/poetic

(4.) emoticons youth writing (not hand-) emotive/poetic

gyarumoji youth writing (not hand-) poetic

(5.) foreign language/script: short: commercial; youth writing poetic

long: commercial phatic/phatic

Table 1: Functions associated with unconventional devices