Japanese English Language Analysis

The Convention of Kanagawa of 1854, the Ansei Commercial Treaties of 1858, and Meiji Restoration of 1868 marked the beginning of a prolonged and intensive language contact between Japanese and English, which ebbed briefly in the 1930s but was resumed with a new vigour after the World War II. Despite the attempts of the Japanese government “to cultivate ‘Japanese with English abilities’”, Japan is consistently relegated to the Expanding Circle of English along with China and Korea. In the typology of “three Concentric Circles of English” proposed by Braj B. Kachru, the Expanding Circle includes those countries where English operates as a medium of international communication and has no official status. For the overwhelming majority of the

The term code-switching is used here to denote the alternation of two or more codes (e.g. languages, varieties, dialects, styles) within a single communicative event. While not to disregard the hegemonic power of English and the copious debates about the threats of English language imperialism, picturing the Japanese language merely as a victim or a passive recipient of an external influence means stripping its speakers of their agency. The use of English in young women’s magazines is highly functional and creative; the language is consciously appropriated and re-contextualized. Initially, during the earlier stages of Japanese-English language contact, increased presence of the English language ushered in a heavy influx of lexical contact-induced innovations as well as grammatical and pragmatic changes; most lexical borrowings served to fill the existing linguistic gaps in scientific and technological domains. Further on, the functions of English in the Japanese language grew more sophisticated. At the current stage, the English is used not only in its communicative function, but also as a multivalent, semiotically dense symbol. English code-switched items and the English script hold close ties to the two major Inner Circle centres – the US and the UK – and trigger ethnocultural stereotypes and the mobilization

English in such magazines is aimed first and foremost at Japanese-speaking women. And as such, it is part of their social style and plays a role in fashioning their hybridized identity. The thesis investigates how the current Japanese young women’s magazines use the linguistic and graphic resources provided by the English language and what purpose these linguistic choices