Written code-switching in Japanese men’s- & women's fashion magazines

Abstract

Written code-switching is under-researched, and even more so in multilingual, multimodal texts. For this reason, the aim of this thesis is to investigate written language alternation/ code-switching between English and Japanese in a Japanese mass media context, and more specifically in a corpus consisting of Japanese men’s- and women’s fashion magazines. For this purpose, a macro- and micro analytical approach is employed, in order to relate the social, historical and ideological context of Japanese to the written CS data from the corpus of Japanese fashion magazines. Gender theory is also an important aspect in accounting for the CS data findings in this thesis. The written CS data from the corpus is categorised according to switch-type (inter- and intra-sentential CS). The inter-sentential CS is further categorised in terms of whether or not it is ‘free’ from, or ‘embedded’ in, the text. In light of the multimodal approach employed for the visual aspect of the Japanese fashion magazines and its connection with the linguistic CS material, the written CS data is categorised in terms of their ‘conspicuous’ position on the page (heading, insertion/ caption or final). The written CS data is further categorised in terms of their ‘possible socio-pragmatic functions’. Next, the CS data is categorised in terms of genre (article, review, advertisement, interview/ survey). Finally, four written CS examples from the men’s- and women’s fashion magazines are analysed employing a multimodal approach, with the main categories being ‘units of analysis’, ‘language-spatial relationships’, ‘language content relationships’ and ‘language mixing type’. Categories for typography and colour are also included in this approach. In conclusion, this thesis argues that the written CS data findings are unexpected in terms of gender theory. This thesis also argues that (Japanese) language ideology may account for at least some of the findings in this thesis. It is concluded that the use of English in the Japanese media texts is extensively superficial and employed primarily as a stylistic function or tool. Also, this paper argues that a multimodal approach is indispensable for research of the kind conducted in this case study. It is hoped that this thesis will inspire future research and further improvements of the framework set forth for the analysis of multilingual, multimodal texts in this paper.