Group members:

Aining Zhang: analysis of Yuno

Andrew Dalcher: transcription, data, backstories

Alex Gao: analysis of Minene

Zack Zheng: transcription, data

Our team analysed the gender language of two characters from the anime Mirai Nikki by Sakae Esuno. The basic premise of this anime is that twelve people who frequently kept diaries were chosen by the god of space and time, Deus Ex Machina, to be holders of a future diary. These diaries told the future of the user’s day in a similar fashion to their old diaries. This, however, is a battle royale game between the users. The winner is to become the new god of the world. The story follows the first user, Yukiteru Amano, and the second user, Yuno Gasai.

Yuno Gasai

Yuno Gasai, often referred to as Second, is the second user of a future diary. Yuno is a maniacal, psychopathic stalker of Yukiteru. Her diary details everything Yukiteru does within 10 minutes. Yuno loves Yukiteru and is willing to do anything, even killing everyone, for him. Yuno’s personality switches from sweet and feminine with Yukiteru to maniacal and cold blooded toward her enemies.

Yuno is the adopted daughter of the Gasai family. Over the years, her adoptive mother’s mental state increasingly deteriorated. Her mother would punish Yuno by sticking her in a cage for making mistakes such as coming home late. Yuno finally snapped, drugged her parents, and stuck them in the same cage. She claims she just wanted them to feel what she felt, but before she realised it they had died.

Yuno meets Yukiteru in her class. Both students had trouble filling out a class assignment on what they most want in the future. Yukiteru’s parents recently divorced, and so he finally decided to write that he wants his family to see the stars like they planned. Yuno saw this, had a conversation with Yukiteru, and decided that her goal would to be to marry him. This was after she has accidentally killed her parents. This began her obsession with Yukiteru.

Minene Uryuu

Minene is the ninth user and commonly called Ninth. She is an international terrorist wanted by the police. She grew up in the middle east, stranded there without speaking the local language after her parents died in a car accident. She later became a terrorist and came to Japan.

Minene debuts by bombing Yukiteru’s school to kill him. She fails, but does not get killed herself. This starts the strange relationship she has with Yukiteru, wherein she sometimes tries to kill him and sometimes helps him.

Data

We analysed episode 25 and 26 of Mirai Nikki and transcribed the dialogue of Yuno and Minene. We first took every expression in the lines and classified them as being either masculine or feminine. From there, we produced four categories of expressions: imperatives, referring expressions, gendered words, and end of sentence particles. Imperatives are command forms of verbs or expressions. Referring expressions are words or phrases that are used to refer to someone. This includes pronouns, such as omae, but also words like baka. The gendered words category is for words that are not parts of speech but still index a gender. Finally, end of sentence particles are the particles found at the end of sentences usually used to add additional information or emotion.

Yuno

２週目世界のユッキとの関係は終わったこと… これは、今の私の気持ちじゃないわ (Ep. 25, 2:25)

でもよかったわね。お前はもう苦しまなくていい。(Ep. 26, ~2:41)

嘘だ、苦しかったでしょう、あなたにつらかったでしょう (Ep. 26, ~2:41)

どうして気付かなかったのかしら。あたしもだよ。この日記は、あたしの気持ち… (Ep. 26, 10:10)

うそ、幸せな夢の世界より、私を選んだこと (Ep. 26, 14:21)

Minene

バカなこと言ってんじゃねぇ！そんなこと、できるわけじゃねぇだろう！(Ep. 25, 3:49)

このアホが。いいか、ゆきてる、一番（まるこ?）さめるのは、セカンドを殺すのだ！(Ep. 25, 3:49)

おい、バカに付き合うのはここまでだ (Ep. 25, 3:49)

ちっ、もう一度言う、ゆきてる。全部救うのは無理だ。目的を絞れ。(Ep. 25, 3:49)

バカヤローが、勝手にしろ！(Ep. 25, 3:49)

いいな？医者にしろ！(Ep. 25, 3:49)

うん、うん、頑張るね、３週目のあたし! (Ep. 26, 17:13)

頑張って、もう一度あたしを捕まえ来てね! (Ep. 26, 17:13)

Analysis

Comparing Chart 1 to Chart 2, it is clear that Yuno by and large uses female language whereas Minene uses male language. The fact that Yuno uses both male, neutral, and female language is due to her manipulative nature. Conversely, Minene’s gendered language is a reflection of her perception of her gender and her view of gendered language.

Looking at the referring expressions in Chart 1, Yuno interestingly uses male and female referring expressions, in this case pronouns. She uses the polite and sometimes neutral anata seven times and the casual atashi three times. She also uses omae once and koitsu twice. The switch between anata and omae happens in one conversation with her past self:

ええ　私はあなたの未来がどうなってるか知ってるの。聞いて、我妻由乃。… あなたにますます当たるようになる、苦しくてたまらないママの折檻。… なのに、でもよかったわね。お前はもう苦しまなくていい。

The choice of her words, using anata and wane, index an older woman, almost like a mother. Indeed, this makes her superficially seem compassionate and empathetic towards the situation. This is a purposeful ploy. Juxtaposing this seeming compassion with the dark topic of child abuse creates an eerie, creepy tone. Instead of being motherly, the words actually create a patronising, clinical attitude. The whole tone shifts by switching to omae, which is the shift between her sweet persona to her psychopathic persona. The use of the masculine pronoun omae is to bring draw the conversant closer like grabbing someone’s collar. The effect is the same: at this point, Yuno is being aggressive. Many of Yuno’s uses of pronouns in general follow this pattern of tone setting.

Yuno also uses feminine words to sound feminine, but often around Yukiteru. When speaking to Yukiteru, ends verbs with koto to add indirectness and often uses wa, ne, and no along with their combinations. This is in an effort to appear cute and attractive to Yukiteru so he might accept her feelings. This appears to work, since Yukiteru mentions that Yuno seems cute when they went on a date, a total opposite to the day before where she seemed scary.

Opposite to Yuno, Minene often uses male language, using female language only after she gets married at the end of the story. Minene had a rough life and grew up on her own. As such, she was never taught to be ladylike. This has two effects on Minene’s language: one, she is more direct and coarse with people and two, she doesn’t feel the need to be indirect and effeminate.

The coarseness is observed in Minene’s dialogue with Yukiteru. Yukiteru is by all accounts idealistic, naive, and cowardly. To Minene, a strong character, Yukiteru is weak and annoying. This influences her choice of referring expressions. She calls Yukiteru bakayarou and aho instead of the perhaps less confrontational kimi or omae. Her choice of words is to insult Yukiteru’s character. As such, the usage of the typically masculine words bakayarou and aho index the rough and confrontational manner Yukiteru cannot handle.

On top of coarse speech, Minene will also use the imperative and coalesces /ai/ to /ee/. The point of this is to show that she is not feminine. As stated, Minene was not taught to be a lady, so she clearly shows in her speech that she has no interest in acting like one. There is no point in saying janee over janai or na over ne other than deliberate opposition towards what is expected of her. By using male language, Minene doesn’t show that she identifies as a male, but that she rejects being portrayed as feminine.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we have shown that these two strongly gendered characters choose gendered language purposefully. Yuno switches between masculine and feminine language to set the tone of her confrontations and feminine language to woo Yukiteru. Minene sticks to masculine expressions to be purposefully rough, show her wild side, and reject an image of femininity.. She then changes when she gets married, showing how she becomes tame. Thus, these characters show that gendered language is an important dramatic element in how we understand media.

Gendered Speech

Team Members:

Shohei S Etzel, Rongjin Zhu, Shaojie Deng, Yikuan Zhang, Andie M Favret

Introduction:

In this project, our main focus is to make an analysis about the use of gendered speech in Japanese by comparing two same gender person in Japanese fiction. In the first meeting, the team members gathered and brainstorm all characters that we can find speaking distinguishable Japanese with gendered features. In the end, we picked two characters “Jotaro Kujo” and “Yoshikage Kira” form the second season of “JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure” animation. Both characters are very unique and there are lots of noticeable gendered features in their speech. Also, it is easy to find subtitle of both Japanese and English for this animation. After setting the target, we assigned a week of time for two team members who never watched this anime before and we also assigned the job for each member on the second meeting. Finally, we finish this report on a Google doc together.

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure (ジョジョの奇妙な冒険):

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure originally written by Hirohiko Araki (荒木飛呂彦). It tells the story of the Joestar family who all have special abilities that they use to take down supernatural enemies. Yoshikage Kira is an antagonist in the series. He pretends that he is a salesman when he is a serial killer. He lived with no one knowing that he was a serial killer until the ghost of his first victim went the Joestar family for help. He is smart, arrogant, overconfident and calm. Jotaro Kujo was a young student when the series started who became a marine biologist after he graduated. He is a relative of the Joestar family and started fighting the supernatural after his mother became ill because of a guy named Dio Brando (ディオ・ブランド).

Jotaro Kujo (空条承太郎):

Jotaro Kujo is the main character of the third story arc Stardust Crusaders of the Japanese manga series JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. Jotaro Kujo is a 不良( a delinquent high school student ) not like a character in a other comic. Therefore, plenty of Jotaro’s speech is rude which is a speech feature of 不良. Meanwhile, speeches of 不良 are mostly男っぽい(manly)as well. Hence, there is a lot of masculine words in Jotaro’s speech (such as だぜ,ぜ and ぞ).

•  オレ（俺）

Compared with僕（ぼく） or 私 (わたし） which are polite form in casual conversation for indicating oneself, 俺 (おれ) is relatively rude and unacceptable and it is usually used as casual speech form by young male people, the elderly and  delinquent protagonist (日本の中学や高校の不良). Jotaro Kujo is set as a Bad youth when he was a high school student, so he behaved tough in the jail after he has been arrested for hospitalizing four men.

• オラオラオラオラ

Oraoraoraora is a one of the most famous speeches of Jotaro. Oraoraoraora is a pet phrase which is originally used by 不良 when they fight with others and it has no meaning for itself. Jotaro used it when he does a fast attack on enemies with punch (stand’s punch). It might be thought as a method to improve momentum while fighting with an enemy.

• おい

A word used by men to greet someone who has close relationship or low status. (Such as ahoy, hey in English).

• やがる

The Edo-period Kansai dialect after ​ early modern period. A rough speech form used by men. It often expresses the meaning of the opponent’s action with the feelings such as contempt and hatred.

• 貴様（きさま）

One of meaning of this word is 　used in modern time by men for calling close relationship or people with low status in a rude way. It’s also used between enemies and is usually said by Japanese males when angry. Another meaning is used in long ago while showing respect to a superior opponent.

• だぜ

It is a masculine word using in the end of sentence. In here Jotaro looks impatient and disappointed. やれやれhas already expresses his feeling, but the だぜ makes it sounds more assertive.

• ヤツ（やつ　奴）

It’s a word meaning “guy” in masculinity speaking style. It sounds slangy and mannish. In this situation Jotaro looks very angry so he uses やつ to express his anger.

• このアマ！

アマ is a words origin from Buddhism, means “nun”. It also is a rude word to indicate women. In this case, Jotaro using このアマ to show his role is a delinquents male.

• てめー（手前）

It also indicate “you” in masculinity speaking style. Kind of same as おまえ, but this is likely meant to be rude, and shows the disdain from the speaker.

• ブチのめす

This is a word that Jotaro usually use. The meaning is same as 倒す but it sounds more manly and powerful.

Yoshikage Kira (吉良吉影):

Yoshikage Kira is the last boss of the season. In the story, he worked daily as a polite salaryman; however, deep down that he is a cold blood killer. To give the reader the image of a salaryman; few feminine words and many neutral words are used by Kira. Such as 「ね」and 「かな」 ending phrase, which considered more eneutral polite ending.

• すまないが、遠慮するよ

In this quote, both「すまない」and 「遠慮」are often used in polite situations, even though the phrase is not in police-form. The use of よ is also friendly, making the whole phrase come across as fairly gentle.

• それでは

It is often used as polite way to say good-bye.

• こんなすばらしい街は他にあるかな？

「すばらしい」could be thought as a typically more feminine phrase. Males can sometimes use it to reduce their masculine characteristics.

• やはり気になる

「やはり」is commonly known as the written form, while 「やっぱり」is known as the spoken form. The fact that he uses written form language points to the fact that he may be more traditional.

• たまげたな

This is a word that is no longer used in modern spoken Japanese. Similar to the above point, it supports his image as a more “traditional” person

• 立ち去らねばならない

Again, since this is a fancy (old) way of saying “I must leave”, it reflects his character as more traditional.

• とこにつく

This is another fancy way of saying something, with this phrase meaning “going to bed”.

• また私のところに戻ってきたね

While a male can use a number of words to talk about himself,「私」is often used in more polite situations, as well as less masculine situations. This is somewhat uncommon in anime, as male characters are usually hyper-masculine.

• 私に話しているのかね、ボーヤ

The use of  「ぼーや」is typically used by older women, so using it here can be one way to introduce more femininity and reduce masculinity.

• 同じパワーを持っているのかね

Kira repeatedly uses 「ね」 and 「のかね」at the end of his sentences, and also says them in soft tone of voice. In this case, the language itself is not feminine per say, but when paired with the tone of voice, it definitely does not reflect hyper-masculinity as most male anime characters do.

Final Analysis:

During the comparing of these two characters, we learned that there are noticeable difference between two characters. On one hand, Jotaro Kujo frequently use male speech even bad languages to show his power which gives the reader a great impression of his nature. On the other hand, Yoshikage Kira tend to use more neutral words or female words which shows the politeness of him to the reader. By comparing these two characters, we also learned that in Japanese, speech style doesn’t affected by biological gender. Masculine words in Japanese speech express the outward or wildness of a person to others; while, feminine words shows more inward or politeness of personality. In a word, the gendered language used by author is not for the purpose of simply showing gender in this case. It is more like to giving both characters characterization and make easy for readers to touch with the nature of characters.

Group 1: Our team for this project consisted of David Dorr, Kevin Hun, Isabel Sabadell, Ted Sither, and Dylan Williams.

Introduction

Our group performed a linguistic and qualitative analysis of gendered language in the Japanese anime Pop Team Epic. Pop Team Epic is a quasi-plotless anime that revolves around two female characters: Popuko and Pipimi. Jokingly, the show presents itself as a “hoshiiro girldrop” anime, but in reality it is surreal, absurdist, and very nearly crudish collection of short skit-like scenes since the show originated from four panel comics. Pop Team Epic makes fun of many different elements of popular culture in a medium that is, in itself, completely ridiculous. Pipimi, a calm and well-mannered schoolgirl, and Popuku, a short-tempered and rash schoolgirl, use their language to take dialogue (and the plot) from one extreme to the other in a matter of seconds. Pipimi and Popuko are a satirical, and an objectively awesome tag team of the absurd. The show uses contrast frequently and without hesitation. This contrast is done by moving from slow, predictable scenes to hectic, fast-paced scenes. The show also contrasts Pipimi and Popuko, for generally Pipimi uses polite-feminine speech whilst Popuko will use aggressive masculine speech.
However, there is another element to this show that makes it even more preposterous. The show will play the entire episode over again, but uses male voice actors to voice Pipimi and Popuko. Our group compared the use of different features by the female and male voice actors within each episode to see which gender features where retained or modified.

Gender Features by Frequency and Type

All things considered, there were plenty of gendered language features to draw conclusions as to how often, when, and why these features were used. The masculine features showed a split between the most frequently used features. These were ぞ、お前、な、and だ. Within these features, おまえ is the only non-sentence final particle that is used substantially. It turns out, that within the entire data, sentence final particles comprised 76% of the instances of gendered language. Second person pronouns were used 16% of the time while first person pronouns were used 8% of the time. In regards to the feminine features, わ was used most frequently by far. Every other examined feature was only used half as frequently.
Some major takeaways are that masculine features ぞ、お前、な、and だ were all used significantly more than any feminine features. And of the feminine features, わ occurred noticeably more frequently than any other feature.

How Gender-Related Features Connect with Character Identity and Emotion

Starting from the Meiji period gendered language has been a staple in how individuals try to express themselves and their identity. This is especially apparent within works of fiction, although it is present in real-life conversation to a lesser extent (mainly casual talk amongst friends). For male-gendered language, it is more geared towards making one’s identity sound more aggressive, dominating, giving the vibe that they have power, etc. The use of female-gendered language is more along the lines of sounding polite, or even creating a delicate vibe towards the listener. However, just because they are labeled as male and female gendered language does not necessarily mean people can only use the gendered language in relation to their biological sex. In fact, many women tend to use male-gendered features in casual conversation.
In the case of Pop Team Epic, the use of gendered language is used to portray character identity based on the scenario. When one of the characters needs to sound more aggressive or intimidating, they use language such as お前, or end their sentences with ぜ. Furthermore, when the characters refer to themselves they use 私, which is gender neutral, but when they want to have a more masculine persona, they use 俺. Even more use of male-gendered features are used when a character is upset, showing that these male-gendered words portray aggressiveness or dominance in a sense. Throughout the show the use of male-gendered features is more apparent than female, though some female-gendered features are used when trying to sound polite and giving off a passive tone of voice. Nonetheless, the use of gendered features in works of fiction occurs frequently, and that is because they help portray a character’s identity or emotions, despite what their actual gender is.

Final Question Answer

When looking at whether gender features in Japanese index gender or general affective stances, variation can be seen throughout all the episodes and how/why the features changed in the second half of the episode, if they did. Particularly in episodes 6 – 8, and 10, we can see a contrast between male and female gender features.

Episode 6, 05:38 「あと一人だな 」
In this scene, Popuko is facing off between chess competitors in an intense showdown-style manner. The sequence is loud and uses dark and highly contrasting colors to set an edge to the tone. Popuko and Pipimi use deep, gruff voices and male features, including the sentence ender -な. While Popuko isn’t a man, in this case she is using male features to establish an affective stance of dominance, and aggression.

08:21 「彼ピピとか言う女ないわ」
In this scene, Popuko is casually relaxing on her couch and commenting on TV. It’s bright and quiet, and she use the female features, including the sentence ender -わ. This choice was kept in the second half of the episode as well, when the voices were masculine, which implies that this feature was important to retain. The female features index affective stances such as delicacy, non-assertiveness, and indirectness. It’s used as a tool in this case to expression opinions without coming off too strong. We see Popuko switch between male and female features throughout the episode, which suggests there’s a fluidity there that is more variable than the characters own gender.

Ep. 7, 00:21　「さてはアンチだなお前」This is repeated again in episodes 7, 8 and 10. In Episode 7, Popuko uses male features such as again the ending -な and the pronoun お前 as well. These features, while gendered male, convey a strong directness that Popuko uses as a tool to establish dominance.

Ep. 8, ~02:30 「お前さ面白いやちゃな。」In episode 8 we see this happen similarly with Pipimi as well, where male gender features are used to convey a tone of dominance and assertion.

Ep. 10 「私はギンザ受け入れた。そしてギンザ私を受け入れてくれたのね。」
Here Pipimi reflects on an old friend (Ginza). She fondly recollects on past memories and experiences at Ginza, and adopts a feminine persona to accurately reflect her own tender, emotional experience.

Based on what we have observed through out the twelve episodes of Pop Team Epic, it can be seen that gender features in Japanese are used for more general affective stances rather than to index their own personal gender.

Ryan Abrew

Emily Silveira Andrade

Haochen Huang

Miko Suzuki

Hayes Smith

Gender and Language in Nisekoi: False Love

Preface

In order to better understand the usage of gendered features in fictional Japanese literature and entertainment, we decided to study how these features are utilized by two characters in the animated show Nisekoi: False Love. Specifically, we transcribed dialogue uttered by the two characters Seishirou Tsugumi and Marika Tachibana. We choose the characters based on the tropes they exhibited and then looked towards the gendered expressions used by the authors to indicate the character’s identity. After transcribing and finding all the examples of gendered language used, we put this data into graphs and selected specific examples that give more insight into how gendered language can be indexed to exhibit identity and personality. Moreover, we discuss how these characters use gendered expressions to show their affective stances towards those they interact with. This data will be fully discussed in the following report.

 Introduction

 Raku Ichijou, a first-year student at Bonyari High School, is the sole heir to an intimidating yakuza family. Ten years ago, Raku made a promise to his childhood friend. Now, all he has to go on is a pendant with a lock, which can only be unlocked with a key which the girl took with her when they parted. Now, years later, Raku has grown into a typical teenager, and all he wants is to remain as uninvolved in his yakuza background as possible while spending his school days alongside his middle school crush Kosaki Onodera. However, when the American Bee Hive Gang invades his family’s turf, Raku’s idyllic romantic dreams are sent for a toss as he is dragged into a frustrating conflict: Raku is to pretend that he is in a romantic relationship with Chitoge Kirisaki, the beautiful daughter of the Bee Hive’s chief, so as to reduce the friction between the two groups. Unfortunately, reality could not farther from this whopping lie – Raku and Chitoge fall in hate at first sight, as the girl is convinced he is a pathetic pushover, and in Raku’s eyes, Chitoge is about as attractive as a savage gorilla.

Tachibana Marika: Marika transfers to Raku’s class and is introduced as Raku’s fiancee; she bears a key that she thinks will unlock Raku’s pendant, and is most vocal about expressing her love for Raku. She is the daughter of the police chief and has been in love with Raku for the past ten years. She does not get along with Chitoge; she states she hates girls with long hair despite the fact that she also has long hair. She has a frail constitution; ten years prior, she was frequently visited by a young Raku, who brought her gifts and sparked a friendship with her. She used to speak in a rather vulgar manner but has attempted to correct her language after Raku had told her he likes girly girls with long hair. However, when flustered, she reverts to her old speaking habits.

Seishiro Tsugumi: Tsugumi is a hitwoman who was raised and trained by Claude of the Bee Hive Gangsters. Tsugumi is originally introduced as a guy who transfers to Chitoge’s class and has orders to protect her from Raku, whom she thinks forced Chitoge into the relationship. She and Chitoge are childhood friends; she tries to keep a ten-year-old promise of becoming strong to protect Chitoge. However, after Raku treats her nicely, she begins to develop some feelings for him, even though she is too stubborn and embarrassed to admit to it. In America, her assassin code name is “Black Tiger,” who had a rivalry with “White Fang.” She does well academically, having ranked next to Chitoge on a yearly exam.

Data

 Table 1

Tsugumi’s Gendered Features

Figure 1.1. Tsugumi’s gendered features as used during a fight scene.

Figure 1.2. Tsugumi’s total gender features used.

Table 2

Tachibana’s Gendered Features

Figure 1. Tachibana’s gendered features when speaking to Raku vs. Kirisaki. Raku is a boy she’s in love with while Kirisaki is a girl she views as a rival.

Analysis

In order to truly address the question of if expressions are used to portray assertiveness rather than gender qualities, one must understand that Japan is undoubtedly a highly gender-segregated country. Ranging from job opportunities to human rights, Japan has always integrated gender as their prime aspect in forming their beliefs and identities. Nisekoi is a Japanese T.V show that exemplifies how masculinity and femininity are defined in modern Japan (as the show is fairly new), through the character’s usage of gendered expressions and the connotation that accompanies it.

Seishiro Tsugumi is a masculine character. The audience is able to identify as such because she has a job based on violence (hitwoman), strong, and displays dominant characteristics. Men are viewed as stronger and more dominant than women in Japan, hence why these traits are associated with male characteristics. Furthermore, Tsugumi is shown to use more masculine expressions when she is acting aggressive or is in a full-on battle with someone: “いつでも銃口け 向けるぞ。覚悟してお嬢に尽くせ。”. The association cannot be more clear as her usage of masculine words have a positive linear correlation with her doing masculine actions.

Take, for example, if Tsugumi was simply being assertive in her language, and didn’t use だな or しろ and other traditional masculine words in her expressions. She still will be associated with masculinity, due to the cultural connotation that assertiveness parallels with masculinity anyways. Thus to say that gender is less relevant than affective stances is to state that Japan is a gender-blind country, which is far from the truth.

After watching this show, we also realized that the female characters would use masculine features, especially during/after fights to show the dominance over the other characters. That is common for females are seen as the less dominant gender in Japan, and by using male expressions it gives them power and displays their aggressive side. This is shown in Graph 1.2  by the character Tsugumi. The character is portrayed as a tomboy, frequently confused with a boy due to her androgynous looks. She has no problem being misunderstood as a boy, and as a hitwoman, she frequently uses masculine expressions to portray her strength as well as her identity as a masculine woman.

Now on the opposite side of the spectrum is a character named Tachibana Marika. Her usage of classic feminine expressions such as わたくし and ですわ is adjacent to her characterization as an elegant and physically weak character. She is in love with a male character in the show and wants to impress him by showing her gentlewomanly side. According to the graph, she exerts her femininity more around her love interest and much less around her rival (who is a female). Marika is a symbolic gender stereotype that is common in Japan. The stereotype being that femininity that resembles elegance and weakness is thought to be more desirable according to both men and women. However, she shows assertive qualities in her speech: “私の要領の悪さを甘く見ないでほしいですわ。”. But her assertiveness alines with the perception of female aggression in Japan, which is passive aggressiveness. Furthermore, she uses the same particle in an utterance directed at Raku (the boy she likes): “私ちょっと分かった  気がしますわ。”. It seems to not index any passive aggression but instead her feminine identity.

In conclusion, in Nisekoi there is clear usage of gendered features that exemplify stereotypes in Japan that surround masculinity and femininity. After analyzing the gendered features the characters used, it can be seen that Tsugumi is clearly characterized as masculine, and Tachibana as feminine.

Introduction

Our team for this project included Amber Walker, CYW, Hana Nguyen, Minjin Li and Sergio Lagunas Gracias alphabetically.

For the current project, our team decided to choose two characters from the Japanese anime series “Steins Gate”, from 2009. The reason is that even though females are able to use masculine features in Japanese, males are seldom seen to express their feminine sides, which was relatively a challenge for finding two male characters with one containing feminine features. Two characters will be specifically analysed within this series, there will be the classic masculine male character 「岡部 倫太郎」（Okabe Rintarou）, and relatively neutral-feminine male character 「漆原 るか」（Urushibara Ruka）.

Official Website: http://steinsgate.jp/

Continue reading

Zombieland Saga Episode 2 – I <3 HIP HOP SAGA

Group 2: Samuel Roberts, Jin Yu Li, Daniel Grigsby, Tianqi Lin, Jason Tseng

Our team looked at the second episode of the anime Zombieland Saga, titled “I <3 HIP HOP SAGA”, and took out a number of phrases used in conversation by two characters: Minamoto Sakura: the aspiring idol, and Saki Nikaido: the young delinquent, and analyse the ways in which their various choices in vocabulary imply masculinity, femininity, and the indexed features involved with each. Continue reading

Group 3 : Casey, Pablo, Simon, Megan, Courtney

Goku vs. Master Roshi

Introduction:

The goal of this project was to compare the use of gendered features in speech between two fictional characters of the same gender. This was to identify how Japanese fiction uses speech to portray character personality. Our group met a total of 3 times to work on this project. In the first meeting, the group discussed which Japanese manga and anime we knew to see which characters we could compare. After a bit of discussion, the group decided on Goku and Master Roshi from Dragon Ball. We chose a few manga scenes and gave ourselves a few days to look over our pictures before we met up again. We also started our Google Doc. In our second meeting, we divided up the project and looked through our chosen manga scenes to identify various speech markers from the two characters. We created two charts, one for each character, to describe each example of their speech. In our final meeting, we finalized what we had and transcribed our Google Doc into our blog post.

Plot Description:

The story of Dragon Ball is about a young boy Son Goku who came to Earth as a baby from the planet Vegeta. Vegeta is a pun on vegetables. Goku is actually a member of an alien warrior race called Saiyans. Saiyan is a play on words for the Japanese word for vegetables, 野菜＝Yasai.  Goku is unaware that he is from another planet but he likes to fight like a true Saiyan. He meets his master, the Turtle Hermit at a young age and begins to train with hi in martial arts. The Turtle Hermit is also known as Kame Sennin or Muten Roshi/Master Roshi. Goku grew up in the countryside until he was about 11 years, so he speaks with a rough country accent. Master Roshi is a lecherous old man who drank a potion of immortality, so he is around 300 years old when he meets Goku. although the Turtle Hermit is a pervert, he has a wealth of martial arts knowledge.

Gendered features and Expressions:

Master Roshi

Master Roshi serves as a mentor to the main protagonist, Goku. Being over 300 years old, Roshi exhibits different patterns of speech than the other characters in the story. As with most males, Roshi never uses any kind of feminine patterns of speech. What Roshi does use is more archaic expressions generally attributed to the old man archetype. These patterns of speech attributed to these archetypes are alled 役割語 (lit. role language). There are many roles within this role language but Master Roshi specifically falls under 老人語 (elderly people language). First is his choice of personal pronoun “わし”. Very commonly used as the “old man’s” choice of pronoun in casual situations. As well as his usage of -じゃ in place of the more modern day -だ in his speech. We see this with じゃろ instead of だろ, and なんじゃい in place of なんだ. The former being a phrase used to elicit a response from the hearer and the latter simply meaning “what?”. In addition to his general “old man” way of speaking, Roshi also uses a lot of  generally masculine and informal speech patterns like おまえ and the verb imperative negation; both of which aren’t as used by women (in real life and fiction) as much. Master Roshi also demonstrates his overall position amongst the group by using て-verb+やる, the much more casual form of

て-verb+あげる, which means he is giving someone who is of “lower” status than him a benefit of something or an actual thing. This verb choice itself shows Master Roshi’s assumed “ranking” and role amongst the other characters. Lastly, we noticed his use in ぞ at the end of some of his sentences which is also a predominantly male only sentence ending particle.

Goku

Son Goku is the main character in the Dragon Ball series. He is found and raised by an old man in the woods. Since he grows up in the woods as a male he uses particular language. For example, words that would usually be spoken as ない are changed to ねえ which shows some masculinity. He uses rough language when referring to others, for example おめえ which is a variation of . He also refers to himself as オラ which is a variation of the word 俺 used in male speech.

Numerical Analysis:

We had 10 samples taken from the Dragon Ball manga. All of the samples for Goku and Master Roshi showed that they only used male speech. They used masculine forms when referring to others and themselves and also used masculine sentence ending particles. Both of their speech patterns were consistent with their characters.

Final Analysis:

From comparing these two characters, it was noticed that Goku more frequently used powerful male speech markers than Master Roshi. Master Roshi did not use many feminine speech markers, however, as it is more typical for women to use male speech than it is for men to use female speech. The nature of each character’s speech reflected a lot in their personalities as well. Since Goku’s character is seen as more of a powerful, masculine young man, he uses many speech markers that make him seem rough and tough, such as referring to himself as “オラ.” As for Master Roshi, many of the speech makers he used reflected his elderly age, such as referring to himself as “わし.” Goku also refers to others as “おめえ”, while Master Roshi refers to others as “おまえ” which are both forms of the same word. Both are used in male speech and are pretty rough. It’s not a polite way to refer to others. This shows their personalities and how they carry themselves. They both have strong male personalities.