Introduction

The group members for this project are Madi Collins, Kathryn Tucker, Kieran Hanks, and Seiji Furukawa.

We chose to analyze two distinctly different characters from the anime Little Witch Academia (リトルウィッチアカデミア). This project examines the usage of gendered features by these two: Amanda (アマンダ; pictured below, left) and Akko (アッコ; pictured below, right).

Methodology

We focused on and transcribed in their entirety Episodes 5 and 12, which center on both those characters respectively. We analyzed Episode 5 for gender usage by Amanda, and we analyzed Episode 12 for gender usage by Akko. We divided the work evenly, so each group member transcribed one half of an episode. Potential gendered features were identified and highlighted, and then compiled into a spreadsheet. The distribution of features were visualized in pie charts, to show what parts of speech gendered features seem to be primarily realized.

Initially, we suspected that Amanda would use many masculine language features, as she comes off as more of a tomboy. We decided that Akko would provide a good baseline of comparison, as she is the anime’s main character, and would give us a lot of data to work with. She also seemed to be more neutral of a character. Both of these assumptions were correct, and the data that we collected allowed us to analyze the characters and their language more deeply.

In Episode 5, Akko and Amanda get detention for misbehaving in class. The episode follows the development of an emergency at the academy when the source of magic is removed by an angry dragon. Akko and her friends depart on a quest to get it back, while also abandoning their detention cleaning duties.

In the other episode we transcribed, Episode 12, the students are preparing for the Samhain Festival, and Akko describes how badly she wants to win the title of “Moonlight Witch” at the festival. As preparations are being made, Akko accidentally changes her appearance into that of her rival, Diana, and has to go about parts of her day masquerading as Diana. As the requests for the talented Diana pile up, Akko finds herself unable to handle them, and is eventually found out by Diana herself.

Analysis and Discussion – AMANDA アマンダ

In both episodes, we saw heavy usage of masculine language from Amanda, also evidenced in the above  pie chart. Among her group of friends she used extremely masculine language features, such as changing endings from 「ない」to 「ねえ」. These features demonstrate that she portrays herself as an assertive, confrontational person, and we can start to see these portrayed language traits as being part of her personality in the beginning of episode 5. In the episode, Amanda and Akko have a fight, where they quickly alternate saying much of the same thing. However, the nouns and particles used differ drastically, with Akko sticking to 「あんたーよ」 (notice the lack of だ) and Amanda using the hyper-degrading おまえ, but realizing it as 「おめえーだよ」. Amanda’s use of command form (ex: 「隠れろ」、「みろ」) is also very striking as no other character in this episode uses command form quite the same way; it comes off as excessively direct. From this context and the language that Amanda uses throughout each of these episodes, it becomes clear that Amanda asserts herself both linguistically and personality-wise through the usage of masculine language features. It is interesting to note how Amanda’s usage of hyper-casual male speech expresses a degree of psychological distance between her and her peers, as casual speech usually expresses less psychological distance when used within the peer group. This psychological distance effect  is usually achieved through using more polite language, and Amanda employing hyper-casual male speech results in an additional level of abrasiveness. From this, one can see that Amanda both asserts and creates a distanced and masculine construction of herself through the usage of more aggressive language. In doing this, she sets herself apart from all of the other girls at the academy and creates a more individualized, masculine personality.

Below are the spreadsheets of all times that gendered language was used by Amanda in Episode 5:

Analysis and Discussion – AKKO アッコ

The above pie chart shows that Akko used mostly gendered nouns, and expressions. She mainly used nouns such as 「あたし」and 「あんた」when referring to herself and others. These types of expressions show how Akko feminizes herself and her friends. As Akko goes to an all-girls school, this feminization makes sense as she is constantly among female peers, and it also may help Akko to fit in among the other witches. We also saw a large amount of gendered expressions, as Akko used 「でしょ」or 「でしょう」quite frequently. While these may be considered neutral expressions in some contexts, Akko uses them quite frequently, and to express uncertainty that is similar to the unassertiveness of Japanese feminine language. These expressions further displayed Akko’s usage of feminine speech and her characterization of a more feminine girl. Akko’s gender expression is explored more deeply below, and we are able to see how relationships and context impact Akko’s gender expression. 

Within both of these episodes, one can see that Akko uses more feminine or gender-neutral language. We see Akko using more feminine language among her peers, and she tends to use more neutral language (sometimes masculine) with her professors. This may be due to the fact that her relationship with her friends is more casual, and doesn’t mind as coming across as unassertive or more feminine to her friends. However, she may want her teachers to view her as stronger, or more capable so she tends to use more direct and assertive language with them. In episode 12, we saw Akko using the masculine sentence ender 「な」in the presence of one of her teachers, and this may have been done to appear more confident in her abilities. Akko has large goals for herself, and she may want to be taken more seriously in their eyes so she might use more neutral language to convey this message to them. 

During the second half of episode 12 of Little Witch Academia, Akko spends a good portion of it appearing as her classmate, Diana, caused by an enchantment cast on her by a magic mirror. As such, many of Akko’s classmates mistake her for Diana, and so Akko must pretend to be Diana to prevent suspicion. Akko adopts what she believes to be Diana’s speech habits, and speaks in a formal (but highly-feminine) manner, utilizing the 「わ」 and 「わね」 particles at the ends of her sentences and using a mix of casual and formal speech (for example, using 「でしょう」 instead of 「だろう」). In the previous episode our group analyzed (episode 5), it was also interesting to discover that Akko uses 「でしょう」 multiple times in that episode, but in episode 12, she mostly used it when she was under the appearance of Diana. In fact, there was a scene towards the end of the episode where, after Akko had returned to her normal self, she actually used the informal, more masculine-sounding 「だろう」 a couple of times. However she did not use it in the presence of her peers, but when she was speaking with a professor. This is further evidence of our theory that Akko tends to use less formal, more neutral/masculine speech in order to create a more confident/direct persona around her professors, but uses more relaxed, feminine language around her peers. It was also interesting to note that there was a particular scene in this episode where it seemed that Akko forgot that she had the Diana spell cast on her. In this scene, Akko accidentally says 「あたくし」, rather than the proper 「わたくし」, which is a formal gender-neutral pronoun. As we all know, 「あたし」 is a highly-feminine pronoun used mostly by Japanese females in casual situations, achieved by dropping the “w” sound in 「わ」.  Throughout the anime, Akko uses this pronoun most often when referring to herself. But what Akko did in this scene, under the illusion of Diana, is accidentally combine the formal speech pattern that Diana uses with the feminine speech habits that Akko herself uses to create 「あたくし」, a pronoun that you would never use because it combines both formal and informal elements. We thought that this was an interesting, yet odd, mashup. Akko messing up her speech is evidence of her struggle to convincingly act like Diana so that her classmates do not suspect her.

Below are the spreadsheets of all times that gendered language was used by Akko in Episode 12:

Conclusion

Overall, both Akko and Amanda used gendered language more when with their peers than anywhere else. In many of Amanda’s utterances, she used extremely masculine language around her peers to set herself apart from the other girls at the academy, while Akko tended to use more feminine language to seemingly fit in with the other witches. In this context, they are on opposite ends of the spectrum, as one is trying to fit in while the other is trying to stand out. Akko is a character who has big goals and dreams for herself as a witch, and in this way, she tries to fit in with the other witches to excel. She also uses more neutral language around her professors, in order to seem more serious, confident, and professional. Appearing this way to professors would also help her to excel as a witch, as they are more likely to take her seriously and provide her with new challenges. Unfortunately, we do not get to see many interactions with Amanda and her professors, and can only analyze her language based off of peer interactions. In short, Akko used mostly feminine and neutral language to characterize herself, while Amanda used masculine language to do so; this in turn created personalities that allowed Akko to fit in and be perceived as more teachable, while Amanda’s allowed her to stand out as different from the other witches.

Introduction

The group members for this project are Matthew Terry, Kathryn Tucker, Allegra Wesson, Jared Krzysko, and Liam Sherry.

Our project was built around exploring how the various strains of language, employed within Japanese, are utilized in major clothing outlets. Since most business is globalized and American businesses have cut into the market in Japan, we were curious to see how foreign conglomerates and local businesses would employ these various words. Thus, we decided to use GAP’s (American) Japanese website and SOU・SOU’s (Japanese) website. Based on our earlier discussions with Matthias Kramer, we hypothesized that both websites would rely heavily on loan words to offer customers a “cool and fashionable” impression when purchasing clothes. However, since GAP needs to convert English words that might not exist in Japanese we expected their website to consist mostly of loan words.

SOU・SOU: https://www.sousou.co.jp/?mode=cate&cbid=482404&csid=0&no=0

GAP: https://www.gap.co.jp/

(^Above images were taken from SOU・SOU)

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(^An incident of Japanized-English from the GAP Japan website)

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Methodology

After taking paragraphs that we thought useful to our work, Sino-Japanese, Native-Japanese and loan words were color-coded and sorted to compare types and level of usage between both websites. This was a group effort that, once finished, was compiled into charts and catalogued so that we could provide a clear provision of results.

With this completed we started building our blog by distributing roles so that we could spread the workload in a fair manner.

The pie charts below outline our results after analyzing both websites:

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The images that we got the GAP data from (+ a product description):

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Some of the various images that we got the SOU・SOU data from:

^This image in particular was interesting to us, because it shows Japanese written in the traditional right-to-left style, rather than being written left-to-right like how it is on the majority of the website.

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Analysis – GAP

In our analysis, the Japanese GAP website had an abundance of western loan words, which accounted for nearly 35 percent of the words we analyzed. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, as GAP is an American-founded company, trying to appeal to a Japanese audience. This would account for the large percentage of loan words, as GAP is actively using their American roots to build their brand in order to appeal to a younger, more western, target audience. Loan words are often interpreted as “new” and even “cool” by younger demographics who embrace western styles and ideas, while they are met with distaste from an older, more traditional, and nationalistic audience. 

One thing that originally surprised us about the use of these loan words is that they were being used for headers as simple as Men’s (メンズ) and Women’s (ウィメンズ). This seemed almost uncharacteristic of any Japanese website as you would assume they would use Native Japanese words for the headers but they stylistically chose not to. This is a strong example of the marketing choices made by GAP and the younger demographics they are trying hard to appeal to. 

And, while the western sentiment on the GAP website is almost overwhelming, it’s also important to recognize the choices the gap team made in terms of including Native- and Sino-Japanese vocabulary as well. Both forms were used around the same amount of times with Native-Japanese having a small edge over its Sino counterpart. What’s more important than usage frequency is the manner in which they were used, in contrast to the way GAP employed “メンズ and “ウィメンズ, for example. Loan words were most frequently used for nouns to give products a more distinct American style but in contrast Native- and Sino-Japanese words were more frequently verbs, adverbs, or adjectives rather than nouns. These vocabulary types were more frequent in descriptions of products and helping the customer understand the values and benefits of GAP products in a deeper sense. Loan words were used as a flashy appeal to draw in younger demographics while the use of the two more traditional vocabulary forms ensures that these demographics still understand the values and benefits of GAP and their products. Words like “ 滑らかな” (smooth) and “軽量” (lightweight) help with distinct imagery that isn’t as easily reproduced in English or loan words. Overall, GAP’s usage of loan words in conjunction with Sino- and Native-Japanese verbs and adjectives creates a great balance between stylization and comprehension for their target demographic.

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Analysis – SOU・SOU

The SOU・SOU website is a stark contrast from the GAP website, as it only features loan words 13 percent of the time, compared to GAP’s 35 percent. SOU・SOU is very different from GAP branding wise as it sells traditional Japanese clothing like kimonos and split-toe tabi shoes. Because of this more traditional branding SOU・SOU sports 46% Native-Japanese words and 35% Sino-Japanese words. This is immediately apparent by the organization of the page as well as the vocabulary throughout the page. Nouns like “洋服” (clothes) are used frequently which denote a more traditional connotation because of Sino Japanese vocabulary choice. This choice is intentional and strays away from the newly popular loan word style to give a more authentic Japanese feeling to the site. This choice matches the branding and values of SOU・SOU and points to SOU・SOU’s demographic being older Japanese people and families shopping for a more orthodox look.

And when you analyze the loan words used throughout it is apparent that the curators of SOU・SOU’s page only use them when absolutely necessary. Words like “サイクリング and “フランス” can only be conveyed through a loan word. These nouns and proper nouns that were communicated through loan words don’t represent any stylistic trend by SOU・SOU but rather an adherence to modern Japanese. SOU・SOU’s page is simple yet effective at communicating exactly what they sell and giving precise imagery to accompany their traditional Japanese style. 

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Summary & Conclusion

For our project, we wanted to compare the amount of Native, Sino-Japanese and foreign loan words found on two clothing websites: GAP Japan and SOU・SOU, a seller of traditional Japanese clothing. Off the bat, we initially assumed that the GAP website would contain more loan words because of its roots in originally being an American company. Likewise, we initially assumed that SOU・SOU would contain little to no loan words on its site because it is a Japanese company and its target audience are Japanese people. Based on the data we procured from both websites and our analyses, we were able to successfully conclude that the Japanese GAP website contains far more foreign loan words than the traditional Japanese clothing website SOU・SOU. In addition, SOU・SOU far outnumbered the GAP website in terms of the amount of Native-Japanese and Sino-Japanese words that it contained. However, from our analyzed sections, SOU・SOU actually used more English than GAP (not to be confused with western loan words, but actual English), but this could be attributed to the fact that SOU・SOU has built-in language selection/automatic translation options on their site, so their use of English is to be informal and reach a broader audience, rather than to be used for stylistic purposes like GAP. Both sites do make it obvious who their intended audiences are though, and the stark difference in the use of foreign loan words is what made that obvious to us.

Thank you for reading!

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単語リスト：

SOU・SOU

Native: 日本, 入って, くるま, 着物, 着る, ある, 又, 着付け,遠, 楽しい, 履物, 言える, 浴びて, モノ, 江戸, 年, 続くる, 布, 撚り, 弱い糸, する, 洗っていくうち, 糸, わた, 戻ろう, 成っていく, 持って, 作れない, 湯, 昔, 今, 認める, 日本人, 少し遠, 難しい、こと, 変わる, 合わせた, 楽しみ, 最も, 古く, 楽しく, 作る, おすすめ, お気に入り, 選び, 繰り返し, できる, 優れた, 高島縮

Sino: 洋服, 意味, 明治以降, 登場, 日常, 着衣, 自由, 新, 和装, 提案, 最高傑作, 地下足袋, 今世界中, 賞賛, 世界, 国産地下足袋, 足袋, ご覧, 時代, 以上, 伝統, 伊勢木綿, 使用, 生地, 特徴, 現在, 臼井織布一軒, 貴重, 千, 利休, 大成, 茶, 代表, 伝統文化, 戦国武将, 熱狂, 文化, 美意識, 真骨頂, 現代人, 日常, 事実, 在釜, 一切, 茶席, 毎月, 和菓子, 一緒, 一服, 抹茶, 世界最古, 新作, 第, 弾, 仕様紹介,一枚, 吸湿性, 速乾性

Loan: ジャンル, クリエーター, ブランド, カラフル, ポップ, テキスタイル, オリジナル, ロードレース, ツール・ド・フランス, サポート, ルコックスポルティフ, コラボレーション, サイクリング, カジュアル, サイクリングウェア, レビュー, モスリン, コーディネート, テキスタイル, マスク

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GAP

Native: する、これ、誰、受け入れる、できる、こと、縁取り, これら, すべて、目指す, 寒い, 日, 着心, 良さ, 保つ, 織り, 施され, 見た目, 着心, 暖かさ, 代わる, 滑らかな, 長袖, 付き, 襟, やわらか, 胸, お手入れ, 洗う, いつ, 場合, 先, かかわらず, 他, 首元, 楽しめる, 遊び, 柄, あり

Sino: 軽量, 1本, 以上, 上手, 再利用, 中、表地, 裏地, 素材, 今後, 地, 高性能, 断熱, 素材, 使用, 耐水, 加工, 素材, 全要素, 実現, 綿, 混紡, 中央, 素材, 洗濯機, 輸入品, 円, 以上, 注文, 送料無料, 合計金額, 未満, 国内, 発送, 送料, 発生, 商品, 返品, 交換, ご覧, 上部, 総柄, 毎日, 人気, 特別, 気分, 開閉, 半袖

Loan: アップ, サイクル, パファー, ジャケット, プラスチック, ボトル、アプローチ, ポリエステル, ボタン, ファスナー, リサイクル, サスティナブル, ナイロン, ダウン, プリマ, ロフト, バンド, フード, フロント, スラント, ポケット, レビュー, ベストセラー, メンバーシップ, ウィメン,メンズ, ガールズ, ボーイズ, ベビーガールズ, ベビーボーイズ, セール, ミックス, マッチ, サステナビリティ, プライバシーポリシー, ニット, クルーネック, ウエスト, ドローコード, パッチポケット, コットン, オンライン, カスタマー, サービス, ストレッチ, フェイクファー, バッファロー, プラッド, ドレスアップ,  ワンピース, ハロウィーン, コスチューム, キャラクター, アッパー, バック, キーホール, バンド, カフス, スカート, チュール, バリエーション