Fluid Orality in the Discourse of Japanese Popular Culture

Pragmatics & Beyond New Series #263

by Senko K. Maynard

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.

356 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 31, 2016

About the author

Senko K. Maynard is professor of Japanese language and linguistics at Rutgers University. She received her bachelor's degree from Tokyo University of Foreign Studies and her doctorate in linguistics from Northwestern University. She has published extensively in the field of Japanese linguistics, especially in the area of discourse analysis and conversation analysis. Among her books are Japanese Conversation: Self-contextualization through Structure and International Management (1989), An Introduction to Japanese Grammar and Communication Strategies (1990), and Discourse Modality: Subjectivity, Emotion and Voice in the Japanese Language (1993). Author of numerous articles in Japanese, U.S., and international scholarly journals, Professor Maynard is the founding and current editor of Japanese Discourse: An International Journal for the Study of Japanese Text and Talk.