Scripting Japan

Orthography, Variation, and the Creation of Meaning in Written Japanese

Wesley C. Robertson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9780367516659
  9780367353728
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000088588
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Sociolinguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Imagine this book was written in Comic Sans. Would this choice impact your image of me as an author, despite causing no literal change to the content within? Generally, discussions of how language variants influence interpretation of language acts/users have focused on variation in speech. But it is important to remember that specific ways of representing a language are also often perceived as linked to specific social actors. Nowhere is this fact more relevant than in written Japanese, where a complex history has created a situation where authors can represent any sentence element in three distinct scripts. This monograph provides the first investigation into the ways Japanese authors and their readers engage with this potential for script variation as a social language practice, looking at how purely script-based language choices reflect social ideologies, become linked to language users, and influence the total meaning created by language acts. Throughout the text, analysis of data from multiple studies examines how Japanese language users' experiences with the script variation all around them influence how they engage with, produce, and understand both orthographic variation and major social divides, ultimately evidencing that even the avoidance of variation can become a socially significant act in Japan.

1 Scripting Japan

Scripting Japan is an investigation into the importance of script in how social meanings are produced and negotiated via written Japanese; that is, how changes in the way Japanese words and sentences are represented can reflect and create understandings of language users and language use throughout Japan. On a fundamental level, this basic idea that script selection can be socially and linguistically meaningful may seem odd to some readers. The concept most obviously contrasts with traditional prescriptivist or functionalist explanations of how language functions. After all, the belief that we create meaning primarily through “rule-governed knowledge of morphemes and syntactic patterns of sentences” (Blommaert, 2016, p. 9) leaves little room for consideration of graphic change as part of the equation. But even within more sociolinguistic discussions of how different ways of “saying the same thing” (Silverstein, 2003, p. 212) become carriers of social meaning, script selection has seen only limited attention to date (Kenzhekhanuly, 2015; Sebba, 2012).

However, any idea that graphic language variation is irrelevant to how language users create or interpret meaning represents a major potential oversight. In many contexts around the world, the question of how to best represent language is far from settled. Contrasting styles of representing a language regularly serve as sources of political debate, local language play, assertions of group identity, and socially important linguistic acts (Robertson, 2017; Spitzmüller, 2015; Unseth, 2005). This potential social importance of script use is especially relevant when discussing representations of written Japanese, though, as the standard form of the written language involves the concurrent use of up to four distinct scripts. I should stress early on that the writing system is far from chaotic. National guidelines do exist regarding the “proper” or “normative” use of each script. Nevertheless, the ability to represent any sentence element in multiple ways provides writers with a potential for variation “inconceivable in the case of more familiar [to Western readers] writing systems” (Backhouse, 1984, p. 220). The question of how to “best” represent a given Japanese word in a given context is, consequently, always a potential source of consideration and debate (Konno, 2013a).

Scripting Japan is therefore obviously far from the first work to show an interest in why Japanese writers vary their uses of script or depart from the language’s overarching orthographic norms. Research in this vein dates back to the 1950s, at the latest, and intentional orthographic play and manipulation can be traced to the earliest days of writing in Japan (Konno, 2013a; Saiga, 1955; Sansom, 1928). However, to date this research has generally failed to consider that the constant divides in how individuals have used script throughout Japan – regardless of the reasons for them – ultimately cause script selection itself to become an inherently social practice. At most, discussion so far has been limited to recognition that social divides allow orthographic changes to “project a stereotypical atmosphere or image” (Miyake, 2007, p. 58) in a static, preestablished manner akin to how certain fonts are described as “cute,” “cool,” or “futuristic” in English. This is not to say this prior research has not produced valuable findings or that sociolinguistic perspectives alone can explain the totality of Japanese orthographic practices. Rather, it is a recognition that script selection still demands attention as a potential site where Japanese users actively create, ratify, negotiate, and even potentially resist ideologies about language use and users. In short, the study of Japanese script variation so far has fallen into common traps of treating script as something without “sociolinguistic relevance” (Spitzmüller, 2012, p. 255) and language variation as “existing apart from history, social inequality, politics, and gender” (Bauman & Briggs, 2000, p. 141), leaving important gaps in our understanding of how script use produces meaning throughout Japan.

Consequently, my specific goal in Scripting Japan is to expand our understanding of Japanese script selection through bringing prior research of the phenomenon into dialogue with broader contemporary sociolinguistic perspectives of how meaning is created through variation in language use. Most significantly, this means examining Japanese orthographic practices via holistic and emergent analytical methodologies that (1) do not utilize a pre-assumed (a priori) understanding of what marked use of a given script means and (2) proceed “from the social, cultural and historical to the linguistic” (Blommaert, 2016, p. 11) rather than the other way around. In tackling Japanese script variation from these new angles, I intend to move us to a more thorough understanding of how the phenomenon can create, reflect, and challenge social ideologies about language use and users throughout Japan. As a secondary goal, though, I also hope that this text can contribute to the same global discussions of language variation that it draws from. In raising Japanese writing as a particularly vibrant locus for observing socially meaningful orthographic change, I endeavor to provide insights that are also relevant to our appreciation of similar writing-restricted social practices around the world.

Before any of this can begin, however, it is first necessary for me to establish the basics of what we already know about script use in Japan. For the rest of the current chapter, my goal is therefore to provide an overview of what Japanese script variation is, what we know about its causes, and the reasons why new perspectives are necessary despite decades of prior research. I will begin in the following section with a general introduction to the contemporary Japanese writing system. This section includes basic explanations of how Japanese utilizes multiple scripts as part of standard writing practice, with the goal of assisting readers without a Japanese background in accessing the rest of this text. In the second and third sections, I then respectively cover the fundamentals of how Japanese script variation works and its established causes in contemporary Japan. In the fourth section, I will more explicitly detail the limitations of prior research on Japanese script use, identifying the specific areas of oversight that the studies throughout Scripting Japan are designed to address. Finally, I will close the current chapter with a brief discussion of the terminology and romanization norms I use throughout Scripting Japan and an outline of the remaining chapters.

An introduction to written Japanese

Before diving into the social importance of non-standard script use in written Japanese, it is important to establish the fundamental “norms” of the language through which variation tends to be defined and understood (Sebba, 2012). As I mentioned, the Japanese writing system differs from all other contemporary writing systems in requiring an interplay of multiple scripts as part of standard writing. Three scripts known as kanji, hiragana, and katakana are found across almost all Japanese writing. Any standard sentence will require the use of kanji and hiragana, and katakana is certain to appear in any writing of length. The Roman alphabet also exists as a sort of supplementary script, although not one that will receive further attention in Scripting Japan. The script is still highly familiar to most users of Japanese, though, as it is required for a handful of specialized uses like writing certain company names, major acronyms like NHK (Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai, the Japanese Broadcasting Corporation), or variables in math equations (Reiman, 2001).

To illustrate how written Japanese uses an interplay of these four scripts in standard writing, Table 1.1 presents an excerpt from a headline of the Asahi Shimbun newspaper.¹ In the excerpt and its romanization, boxes surround elements written in kanji, and underlines mark elements written in katakana. Uses of hiragana and Roman letters are left unmarked.²

Table 1.1 An example of a Japanese sentence using four scripts....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Scripting Japan
• 2 Graphic play as a social act: indexicality and orthographic variation
• 3 Scripted speech and scripted speakers: katakana and non-native Japanese
• 4 Scripted voices: contrasted identities and contrasting standards
• 5 Script choice and pronoun choice: indexical fields in interaction
• 6 Using katakana like an oyaji: script variation and authorial identity
• 7 The social lives of Japanese scripts
• Index