Project 2 : Gender & Language in Dragon Ball Z

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.