Book Launch “Loanwords and Japanese Identity: Inundating or Absorbed?”

Zoom Webinar (Register here)

Is our language inundated by loanwords? Or is it being enriched by absorbing foreign vocabulary? We often hear such discussions in contemporary Japan. But why does this topic attract so much public interest? By criticising or praising the use of loanwords, what values are promoted by participants in this discussion? Grappling with these questions, Loanwords and Japanese Identity: Inundating or Absorbed? provides an in-depth analysis of metalinguistic discourse on lexical borrowing in the Japanese language. In order to explore the relationship between language and identity, it focuses particularly on recurrent wordings in the debates, such as verbs, adjectives, metaphors, and contrasts as well as example loanwords. Examining the evolution of language used to talk about loanwords, the book argues that the debates over the use of loanwords reveal what is valued in the Japanese society as a reflection of the on-going (re-)negotiation of Japanese identity.

Lecture:

HOSOKAWA Naoko（Postdoctoral Fellow, Tokyo College, The University of Tokyo）

Comments:

MURAMOTO Yukiko (Professor, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, The University of Tokyo)

Blai GUARNÉ (Associate Professor, East Asian Studies, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)

Moderator:

HANEDA Masashi（Director, Tokyo College, The University of Tokyo）

Q&A