Introduction

Our group members consist of Joanna, Eva, Jinfei, and Dezi.
In this project, our main goal is to compare and contrast two website segments of a similar topic but in different tones and word usage. We evidently chose an informational travel website on the history of Odawara Castle and an introduction to Australian travel and sightseeing.

Odawara Castle Informational Website:

www.shirofan.com/shiro/kantou/odawara/tour.html

Australian Travel Website:

www.australia.com/ja-jp/facts-and-planning/getting-around/first-timers-guide-to-australia.html

The context and tone of the two web pages selected by our group are opposite. The first article is an introduction to the history of Odawara Castle. The use of Japanese content in the article is very formal. The second article is about the content of Australian tourism introduction. The style of the second passage is relatively relaxed and involves many foreign words. The team mainly focuses on SJ, NJ, and loan words.

Odawara Castle

Most of the vocabulary in the first article about the history of Odawara Castle used native-Japanese. Since The audience for this site is people who want to learn about the history of Odawara Castle, this article describes the history of Odawara Castle, the tone is more formal and serious. In this article, the history of Odawara Castle in Japan does not involve the influence of a large number of foreign words, so most of the words are from sino-Japanese such as “創建”, “世紀” and native-Japanese such as “神奈川県”, “東海道” (represents the location in Japan). In addition, the presentation is more technical due to its informational nature. In addition, since this is about the history of Japan’s own country and does not involve the influence of foreign events, no English vocabulary is used about Odawara Castle. The webpage design of the first article is mainly text, supplemented by pictures to introduce the history of Odawara Castle, and according to the relevant links and directories provided on the webpage, this article uses a lot of Native-Japanese nouns such as “小田原城, 北駿地域, 静岡県” and other words that indicate the geographic location of the country, it can be further determined that the tone of the article is serious.

Australia Travel Guide

The second webpage, a travel guide to Australia, contains a much larger amount of loan words, and even includes words written in English. The use of these words works to emphasize a sense of foreign exoticism in its description of Australia’s locations and activities. These loan words include basic locations, such as “オーストラリア” and “ヨーロッパ”, as well as words describing subjects of tourism, such as “フラットホワイト” and “スターター・キット”. The loan words also work hand in hand with the websites generally slick and trendy aesthetic to create an impression of modernism. This is further emphasized by the occasional English words that follow loan words, such as with “ウルル（Uluṟu）”. Being a travel guide, this is especially relevant because it falls in line with the site’s main objective of influencing an audience to take a trip, in this case, to Australia. This audience is likely meant to be a wide one, based on the site’s large usage of Native-Japanese words. About 54% of the site’s writing is composed of these Native-Japanese words. This majority allows the site’s contents to reach a large general audience through its accessibility.

Conclusion

The intended target audience for both websites is adults and young adults. This is because of the overwhelming amount of Native Japanese and Sino Japanese compared to the amount of English and loan words used. The goal behind both these websites is to inform the reader on Odawara Castle and Australia, and through this information they hope to attract tourists to these locations. The text for the Odawara Castle article has a serious tone and gets its point across, while the Australia article does seem to have a serious tone, it is overall more relaxed in comparison to the Odawara Castle article. A big difference found in each article is the use of loan words. The article on Odawara Castle uses none, while the one on Australia does use loan words. Although they have similar target audiences, the Australia article seems to use more loan words when talking about areas or attraction in Australia. They use words such as コーヒー、ウルル、オーストラリア、フラットホワイト、and more. The Odawara Castle is a tourist attraction in Japan in the Kanagawa Prefecture. This site uses no English or loan words, most likely because of its tone and target audience. The site focuses on describing the area surrounding the castle as well as it’s history in Japan.