Katakana Analysis Final

I still feel too unfamiliar with Japanese to provide a thorough analysis of カタカナuse, but I will do my best here to outline my current understanding of the use of カタカナand its implications. I will separate カタカナuse into three categories: loanwords, onomatopoeia, and emphasis.

Loanwords

The transcription of loanwords seems to be the most common use of カタカナ. Although I have only a very limited Japanese vocabulary, I have already learned loanwords from many different realms of Japanese life. Here are some examples (taken from English):

トイレ  toilet                   ビール   beer                    タクシー  taxi                 ブログ blog

Loanwords serve a very practical purpose in that they provide an expanded vocabulary for many everyday activities. But I think that they can also have a connotation of foreignness and even modernity/sophistication that could be appealing in certain contexts. In this sense, using カタカナloanwords might be an effective advertising or branding strategy. The カタカナ may insinuate that the products are hip and chic, or that they are approved by the people from other countries. A common example of this use of カタカナseems to be fashion magazine covers:

[1]

Onomatopoeia

Onomatopoeia is another use of カタカナ, and it seems a little bit more puzzling to me. I do not have a good sense of why カタカナare used rather than ひらがな. My best guess is that the カタカナconvey the simplicity of the onomatopoetic words, which are really just sounds, and add a certain amount of emphasis (umph!) to their reading. After all, in the case of onomatopoeia, the primary meaning of the word is its sound, so a more emphatic reading becomes a more meaningful reading. This kind of onomatopoeia is called 擬声語（ぎせいご）, and I think it is very interesting! Here are some examples of it:

ニャーニャー     a cat's meow                                ドカン     a bang or boom

メラメラ     the sound of a flame            ソヨソヨ     the sound of a gentle breeze

[2]

Emphasis?

Finally, there is the use of カタカナfor emphasis. At least, “emphasis” seems like the easiest umbrella term to apply to what is a wide variety of different uses. Although the contexts and words change, I think that in each of these cases the カタカナenhance the meaning of the word in an important way. It would not be possible to cover every part of this category, so I want to look at just a couple of examples.

                                                                                                                                                         

1)     オレ

So far in class, we have learned only a couple of pronouns – 私（わたし）and僕（ぼく）, for instance – but there are many, many more. Given that they are an integral part of the Japanese language, I would expect pronouns to be written exclusively in ひらがな and かんじ. But I found several examples of the pronoun 俺（おれ）written in カタカナ. One such example is below:

[3]

This is a page from the まんが Hunter x Hunter, in which the main character Gon calls himself オレ.  I originally thought that the use of カタカナwas tied to Gon’s emotions. In this scene, he has just overcome several tragedies and is racked with grief and guilt. I thought that perhaps オレ conveyed a certain amount of raw emotion, like anger or disgust, that おれ could not.

After doing more research and reading the comments on my draft, though, I discovered that the pronoun オレ is frequently written in カタカナ(not just in emotional まんがscenes).  This confused me even more! I did stumble onto a very interesting website while trying to find an explanation:

http://cjvlang.com/Writing/writjpn.html

This site even has a section on カタカナand more specifically pronouns in カタカナ. From the website, it seems that some pronouns are very often written with カタカナ, while others are almost always written with かんじ or ひらがな. I can only guess,  but maybe the manner in which a pronoun is written relates to its meaning and usage. For example, a pronoun such as 私, which is used by both genders and many ages and is relatively polite, may be better suited to the complex, historical nature of a かんじ; on the other hand, a pronoun like おれ, which is apparently rough and masculine, might match well with the angular, bare カタカナscript.

In the case of pronouns, then, I think that カタカナ can be used not only to communicate the emotion of the speaker but also to convey the characteristics of the pronoun itself (politeness, gender, etc.).

2)     カワイイとあにまる

[4]

The above is from a blog of some kind called Woman.excite. It shows かわいい written in カタカナ and アニマルwritten in ひらがな.

This site has clearly taken liberty in its usage of the different scripts (even using 「to」instead of 「と」), but I think it is very interesting to see a native Japanese word written in the script used for loanwords, while a loanword is written in the script used for native words.

Concerning カワイイ, I think that the use of カタカナenhances the meaning of the word in two ways. I think that the first is that it yields a more emphatic reading (exclamation!) than ひらがな or かんじ would, which suits the tone of the blog. And I think the second is that the カタカナ provides a flashy, stylish feel (just from the shape of the characters) to the title, which also seems to fit with the material in the blog.

あにまる is interestingly not written in カタカナ. My guess as to why is that the ひらがな , which have round and loopy strokes, provide a warmer and more lively feel to the word than カタカナ would. This is a neat way to add some emphasis to the word for animal, which denotes living, breathing creatures.

Textbooks

As for the treatment of カタカナin textbooks, I think it is probably a matter of priorities. In an introductory Japanese course, it makes sense to introduce カタカナsimply as the script used for loanwords because loanwords are sure to be an important part of the vocabulary. Trying to communicate more subtle uses of カタカナto students who are not familiar with Japanese would be rather difficult. Onomatopoeia is relatively simple, though, and it seems to be mentioned frequently in introductory explanations of カタカナ.  I wonder if more advanced texts present カタカナuse more thoroughly?

Conclusion

カタカナ are often introduced in a straightforward manner,  but they have a much larger role in the Japanese language than one might initially think. I am glad I got to work through this project. It was tough but taught me about something that I have been taking for granted in my study of Japanese. I will definitely pay more attention to カタカナ from here on!


Sources
[1] http://tkj.jp/mini/2012Apr/read/ActiBook.swf
[2] http://www.dai-go.co.jp/yyy_top/2007_06/j-kikaku.html
[3] Hunter x Hunter manga
[4] http://woman.excite.co.jp/


*Edit (3/12): I just discovered that I made a mistake in the onomatopoeia section.
ぎせいご refers to the sounds made by living things. The word for onomatopoeia from inanimate objects' sounds is ぎおんご.
すみません！