Team Members:

Gabrielle Sarao: Methodology 

Donovan Grahame: Materials, Analysis & Discussion

Jialing Hu: Materials

Maya Lorton: Analysis 

Methodology

The goal of this project was to compare the gender languages of two characters in a given Japanese anime, manga, or other form of pop culture. Both the characters had to be from the same show and the same gender. In order to gain prime results, we aimed to find characters that had very different personalities as far as masculinity or femininity. 

To pick the characters and anime we wanted to analyze, we decided to pick an anime that was popular and that the majority of members could understand. This anime is called Fullmetal Alchemist, and the characters chosen were the protagonists, Edward and Alphonse Elric. 

Fullmetal Alchemist is a Japanese Shonen manga and anime. It is set in a fictional universe where alchemy is an advanced natural technique revolving around scientific laws of equivalent exchange. The series follows the adventures of two brothers, Edward and Alphonse Elric, who are searching for a philosopher’s stone to restore their bodies after a failed attempt to bring their dead mother back to life using alchemy.

Edward and Alphonse seemed like ideal characters to analyze for this project, for not only are they the main characters, but they have extremely different personalities. The episodes we analyzed were episode 2 to have a solid introduction to the character’s personalities, and later episodes (49,51,52) to see how the character’s personalities and gendered language have changed.     

Edward Elric

Edward (Ed) is the older brother of the Elric brothers and is the main protagonist of the story. Ed has taken his younger brother Alphonse (Al) with him to search for the philosopher’s stone to restore their bodies after they tried to revive their mother using alchemy. However, due to the laws of equivalent exchange in Alchemy, Al lost his entire body and Ed lost an arm and leg.

Edward Analysis

Ed, similar to other Shonen manga protagonists, speaks in a masculine tone with aggressive mannerisms. However, Ed is known for being especially angry among other Shonen protagonists since he is consistently made fun of for being short and looking younger than he is. The most frequent use of masculine features is Ed’s sentence enders. Almost every sentenced Ed said in the episodes analyzed were ended by either ”ぞ”,”ぜ”,”な”. Ed also sometimes speaks in the Japanese command form when they are fighting in the story. He speaks this way to both his opponent and his allies. 

Ed didn’t always speak in a very masculine form. In the second episode of the show, they showed both Ed and Al before their mother’s death. Ed spoke in a neutral tone for the small amount that they showed but changed very quickly once their mother died. In one of the very few scenes that showed their mother alive, Ed said “落書きじゃないよ” which is not similar to the sentences that he would say only 5 minutes later in the episode. In episode 2, there was a scene of Ed and Al at their mother’s grave and Ed’s entire speech changed. Ed said “お母さんのお葬式にも帰って来なかたんだぞ” at that scene as well as “お母さんを元に戻せないかな” which shows how quickly his speech changed. This same speech style continues in the future in the story as Ed continues to be aggressive and speaks in a strong masculine style. In episode 49, at the climax of the story, Ed is fighting an opponent with a few of his allies. During this fight Ed turns to one of his allies who is talking to him and he says “うるせぇ！お前まだ腕が本調子じゃねえだろ.” Ed still has the same style of speaking even when he is talking to an ally, enemy, or superior, which is common for a Shonen protagonist to do.

Alphonse Elric

Alphonse (Al) is the younger brother of the Elric brothers. Al is being taken along with Ed as they try to find the philosopher’s stone in order to restore their bodies after trying to revive their mother. Al lost his body but his brother Ed was able to transfer his soul over to a suit of armor which was a substitute for his body. A cause of Ed’s aggression is that people tend to think that Al is the stronger older brother because of his body being a large suit of armor. Ed and Al have the same goal throughout the story but as the story unfolds, they split off from each other in order to stop an evil force from abusing the power of the philosopher’s stone.

Alphonse Analysis

Alphonse speaks very differently than his brother Ed. While Ed uses strong masculine speech and has an overall aggressive demeanor, Al is the complete opposite. Al speaks in neutral speech with rare uses of masculine speech and has a kinder personality than Ed. Before their mother’s death, Al spoke in a neutral tone and even after her death, he still spoke the same unlike Ed. In episodes 50-52, Al is fighting two of the antagonists of the story. Even during the fight, Al continues to speak in a neutral tone. During episode 52, Al speaks to one of the opponents during the fight. Some of the quotes from it are “囮だよ・それだとみんなを救えない・なんでにたくなの？” which shows that Al pretty much speaks in a neutral speech style the entire time. During episode 51, one of Al’s allies that was helping him fight was hurt which made Al use a little bit of masculine speech but was majorly neutral. At the end of that episode, Al says “一緒に戦う。” which seems strange since he is declaring a fight but continues to speak in a neutral style.

However, as said before, there are some times that Al speaks in a masculine speech style. Al spoke a little in masculine form while his friend was injured in episode 51 with one of his quotes being “僕がたすけるな.” Al said both “僕” and ended his sentence with “な” which is very rare for Al. The other instances of Al speaking in a masculine form that were analyzed were when Al was speaking to either Pride, who is younger than him, and Winry who is a woman. We think that the reason why Al spoke in a masculine form to both of them is to try and sound “macho.” The instance we got of Al speaking to Winry in a masculine form was at the end of episode 2 when Al said “兄さん、試験大丈夫かな” with his sentence ender being ”な.” The quotes that were said to Pride was during the fights of episodes 50-52. Al had quotes like “どうかな？” and “離せ” which show the usage of a masculine sentence ender and the command form. An interesting observation that we found during these episodes is that Al would speak to Pride in a masculine form since Pride is both younger than Al and was his opponent for the fight. However, Al spoke to Kimblee, the other opponent of the fight, in neutral form without any masculine sentence enders. We think that the only reason why Al spoke to Pride in a masculine tone was because he was younger, not because he was an opponent. 

Data 

Episode 2

Episode 49

Episode 51

Episode 52

Conclusion

Even though both Alphonse and Edward are brothers and have the same goal, they act very differently from each other. The language between the two is very different since Ed uses a lot of masculine sentence enders (な、ぜ、ぞ), masculine pronouns (僕、俺、お前) and command form while Al uses very neutral speech with a few exceptions of using a masculine sentence ender. The demeanor of these characters are also a complete contrast. Alphonse is either calm normally or nervous during fights while Edward has a short fuse so he is always aggressive in fights and sometimes is aggressive even in normal situations. The characters are greatly written since they are a duo for most of the story and are complete contrasts of each other but they end up working well together. Ed is someone who uses his aggression in fights and wants to become stronger while Al didn’t want to fight a lot unless it was absolutely necessary. Ed is the cliché Shonen protagonist who is aggressive but Al fits the counterpart that is needed in every story in order to balance out the characters’ personalities. Both characters changed throughout the story. Ed changed at the start of the story when his mother died since his speech became masculine. Al’s speech didn’t change throughout the story but his mannerisms did. At the start of the story, Al was very passive but he grew as a character and became stronger by the end. Al didn’t become aggressive like Ed but he became more mature. However, he still didn’t speak in a masculine form like the majority of the characters in the story. 

Our group (group 3), consisting of Donovan Grahame, Maya Lorton and Jia Suwatanapornchai analyzed two different restaurant websites. We analyzed a traditional Japanese sushi restaurant and an authentic Italian pizza restaurant. We believe that the difference in cuisine will provide useful information to see how the different types of words in the Japanese language are used. 

Both pages are from the “about section” of the website, but there is a difference in the types of words used on each page. For this project, our group decided to focus on the three types of words in Japanese: NJ-Words, SJ-Words and loan words (Gairaigo). The first page that was analyzed was the “about section” from the Sukiyabashi Jiro website.

Example 1: Sushi restaurant, Sukiyabashi Jiro

NJ (67.1%): 鮨, 握った, 煮切り醤油, 煮詰め, 引いて, 客の前, 置いていました, 手で素早く, 茶を飲み, のれん, 拭いて, 後, おしゃべりしたり, お酒, すきやばし次郎, 江戸前, 守って, 出来たて, にぎり, 美味しく召し上がって, 訪れる, 遅れない, 時間, ご飯, 炊き上げ, 酢めし, 楽しん, お店, 合う, 仕入れて, おつまみ, 食べる, おまかせ, お品書き, 仕入れ, 決められた, 目, なるべく早く, 特別, 設けて, ほとんど, 客様, 来店く, 襟なし, 断りする, 方, 控えめ, 願いし, 預け, 背

SJ (22.7%): 気軽, 発達, 鮨職人, 屋台, 具合, 雰囲気, 用意, 時間, 存分, 築地, 魚介, 当日, 順番, 黒板, 一番, 着用, 入店, 場合, 香水

Gairaigo (8.0%): カウンター, ドレスコード, ジャケット, シャツ, ズボン, サンダル, バッグ

Hybrid (2.3%): は江戸時代, 予約時間

Sukiyabashi Jiro is a sushi restaurant in Tokyo, Japan. The upper class restaurant gives customers an amazing experience with dinners that can cost hundreds of dollars. The website’s text has been color coded to show Native Japanese words in green, Sino Japanese words in blue, loan words in yellow, and the two examples of hybrids in dark pink. Analyzing the Japanese restaurant’s page was interesting, since the majority of the words used were Native Japanese words. Most of the Native Japanese words that were used had 漢字 in it, but there were some cases where they only used ひらがな. For example, in the section 「おまかせ」を食べる, お任せ has 漢字 in it but in the case of this website, it was only written in ひらがな. There are two interesting cases of hybrid words in this text. One example is under the section 店を訪れる, the word for reservation time, 予約時間 is a hybrid word. 予約 is a Native Japanese word but 時間 is a Sino Japanese word. 

Another interesting find on this website was the usage of Gairaigo throughout the page. The Gairaigo on this page only made up 8% of the words used and was written in カタカナ. All of the loan words used on this page were for foreign ideas or items. The ドレスコード section contained a lot of Gairaigo like ジャケット,サンダル, and シャツ which are all from western languages. One thing that stood out on this page was the word バッグ to mean somebody’s bag instead of the Japanese word for it, かばん (鞄). 

The choice of words and phrases throughout this text represents traditional Japanese. The writing style is very polite. For example, いただいています and しておりません are used in a polite way which represents the restaurant for it being a traditional Japanese restaurant. The usage of hiragana and Native Japanese words fit the style of the restaurant. 　

Example 2: Il Tamburello Pizzeria 

NJ (53%):働きました, 売っていた, 言葉, 自分, 店, 貧しい南, 幸せな, 美味しい, 安くお腹いっぱい, 食べる, 組んだ, 生地, 焼く, 変わらない, 日本, 幸せ, 感じています, 匂い, 笑い声, 揚げ, 屋台, 香り, 朝, 食材, 出来る限り, 物, 使って, 質も良く安い, たくさん手, 入る世, 中, 街, 人

Gairaigo (25%): ミレニアム, イタリア, カンパーニ, ナポリ, ピッツァ, アドルフォ, マルレッタ, ピッツェリア, スパゲッタータ, コンセプト, レンガ, ポンペイ, プリミティブ, グルメ, ガス, ナポレターニ, バジリコ, メルカート, 、コルネット, エスプレッソ, ソウルフード

SJ (22%): 職人, 7歳, 街中, 駅, 師, 薪, 酵母, 長時間発酵, 時代, 行為, 現代, 提供, 為, 窯, 市場, 喧噪, 排気, 怒声, 国産, 道端

Il Tamburello is an Italian pizza restaurant in Tokyo, Japan. This cozy restaurant provides customers with authentic Italian cuisine, while also staying affordable with meals only costing around $10/person. The second page analyzed was also an “about section” from the Italian restaurant, Il Tamburello Pizzeria’s website. The color coding for this section was Native Japanese in blue, Gairaigo in yellow and Sino Japanese words in green. This website had a more even distribution of the three types of words than Sukiyabashi Jiro. Even though the majority of the page used Native Japanese words, there were much more Gairaigo than there was on Sukiyabashi Jiro’s website. Gairaigo was the second most used word type at 25% of the text while Sino Japanese had the least at 22% of the text. 

The Gairaigo used in this text are mostly used for foreign locations. カタカナ is used to represent these words as well as the names of people with foreign names. Other appearances of Gairaigo are words that came from other languages. Instead of using the Japanese word for concept（概念）they wrote it as コンセプト. An interesting find in this text was the change in the spelling of the word ピザ. In Japanese, pizza is usually spelled as ピザ but this text changes the spelling of the word to be ピッツァ. When it is spelled like this, the word sounds closer to the Italian pronunciation, rather than the American pronunciation of the word. Most of the words for foods in the text were Gairaigo words and were written in カタカナ. However, there was one instance where the word for yeast was written as 酵母 which is Sino Japanese. 

There was an increase in Gairaigo used in this text compared to Sukiyabashi Jiro. The cuisine of this restaurant differed from the other, since it was a foreign cuisine, which led to an increase in the usage of Gairaigo. However, the different uses of text were fairly evenly distributed. The audience of this restaurant are looking for a more authentic Italian cuisine which is why there were usage of Gairaigo, but still kept it good for all audiences since the majority of words were Native Japanese. 

Summary

The majority of words from both of these texts are Native Japanese, but they differ in the amount of Sino Japanese and Gairaigo they use. The difference in cuisine from each restaurant shows a difference in word choice, but the main difference was the audience of each restaurant. Il Tamburello Pizzeria has an audience of people who want to enjoy authentic Italian cuisine while Sukiyabashi Jiro is for special occasions and overall an upper class restaurant. One of the most shocking things we found in our analysis was how Native Japanese was used as the majority of the words and how little Sino Japanese was used. In both pieces of text, Native Japanese was over half the words used, and Sino Japanese was under 25%. With their difference in audience, it is understandable to see their reasoning in word choice.