Fluid Orality in the Discourse of Japanese Popular Culture

Author

Senko K. Maynard | Rutgers University

Hardbound – Available

ISBN 9789027256683 | EUR 95.00 | USD 143.00

e-Book –

ISBN 9789027267139 | EUR 95.00 | USD 143.00

This volume invites the reader into the world of pragmatic and discourse studies in Japanese popular culture. Through “character-speak”, the book analyzes quoted speech in light (graphic) novels, the effeminate onee kotoba in talk shows, narrative character in keetai (mobile phone) novels, floating whispers in manga, and fictionalized dialects in television drama series. Explorations into conversational interaction, internal monologue, rhetorical figures, intertextuality, and the semiotic mediation between verbal and visual signs reveal how speakers manipulate language in performing playful “characters” and “characteristics”. Most prominent in the discourse of Japanese popular culture is its “fluid orality”. We find the essential oral nature in and across genres of Japanese popular culture, and observe seamless transitions among styles and speech variations. This fluidity is understood as a feature of polyphonic speech initiated not by the so-called ideal singular speaker, but by a multiple and often shifting interplay of one’s speaking selves performing as various characters. Challenging traditional (Western) linguistic theories founded on the concept of the autonomous speaker, this study ventures into open and embracing pragmatic and discourse studies that inquire into the very nature of our speaking selves.

[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 263] 2016. xi, 344 pp.

Publishing status: Available

https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.263

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements | pp. ix–x

Chapter 1. Introduction | pp. 1–18

Chapter 2. Fluid orality | pp. 19–40

Chapter 3. Character and character-speak | pp. 41–80

Chapter 4. Light novels: Character-speak and variation in quoted speech | pp. 81–114

Chapter 5. Talk shows: Fluid orality in gender-evoking variation | pp. 115–154

Chapter 6. Keetai novels: Narrator’s character-speak in conversational narration | pp. 155–192

Chapter 7. Manga: Fluidity of multilayered speech in floating whispers | pp. 193–236

Chapter 8. Drama: Fluid orality in place-evoking fictionalized variations | pp. 237–278

Chapter 9. Reflections and aspirations | pp. 279–288

Appendix: Presentation of data in Japanese orthography | pp. 289–318

Author index | pp. 337–340

Subject index | pp. 341–344

Cited by

Cited by 6 other publications

Order by:

Inoue, Miyako

2023. “As if I were otherwise” metapragmatics of ego-splitting and virtualization, nanchatte!. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2023:284 ► pp. 59 ff.

Kroo, Judit

2023. Gendering desire. East Asian Pragmatics 8:2 ► pp. 167 ff.

Kathryn Roulston

2019. Interactional Studies of Qualitative Research Interviews,

Saito, Junko

2021. “We’re family”: Japanese Characters’ Categorizations of a Gay Man in a TV Drama. In Linguistic Tactics and Strategies of Marginalization in Japanese, ► pp. 143 ff.

Yagi, Junichi

2021. Enactingburikko. Applied Pragmatics 3:2 ► pp. 195 ff.

[no author supplied]

2021. The Mysterious Address Termanata'you' in Japanese [Topics in Address Research, 4],

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 21 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Subjects