Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Redefining Shōjo and Shōnen Manga Through Language Patterns

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Shōjo Across Media

Part of the book series: East Asian Popular Culture ((EAPC))

Abstract

Although genre in manga has traditionally been divided by the gender of their readerships, the distinctions between the central genres of shōjo and shōnen manga have become less clear as more individuals read outside of their presumed gendered genres. This has led to a need to reconsider what defines manga genre, and this chapter seeks to show how analyzing linguistic patterns can serve that purpose. Data analysis of a corpus of popular manga titles shows that there are distinct differences in language use in shōjo and shōnen manga, particularly in the kinds of text, scripts and lexical items used, as well as characters’ speech patterns. Close analysis suggests that these differences reflect shōjo manga’s emphasis on emotional connection, whereas shōnen manga emphasizes plot or action.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 109.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Bibliography

  • Allen, Kate, and John Ingulsrud. “Reading Manga: Patterns of Personal Literacies Among Adolescents.” Language and Education, 19, no. 4 (2005): 265–280.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Altman, Rick. “A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre.” Cinema Journal, 23, no. 3 (1984): 6–18.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bauman, Richard. “Contextualization, Tradition, and the Dialogue of Genres’ Icelandic Legends of the Kraftaskáld.” In Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon, edited by Alessandro Duranti and Charles Goodwin, 125–145. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

    Google Scholar 

  • Biber, Douglas. Variation Across Speech and Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bowker, Lynne, and Jennifer Pearson. Working With Specialized Language: A Practical Guide to Using Corpora. London: Routledge, 2002.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Bryce, Mio, and Jason Davis. “An Overview of Manga Genre.” In Manga: An Anthology of Global and Cultural Perspectives, edited by Toni Johnson-Woods, 34–61. New York: Continuum, 2010.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fujimoto, Yukari. Watashi no ibasho wa doko ni aru no? [Where Do I Belong? The Shape of the Heart Reflected in Shōjo Manga]. Tokyo: Asahi Shinbun Shuppan, 2008.

    Google Scholar 

  • Groensteen, Thierry. The System of Comics. Translated by Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2007.

    Google Scholar 

  • Henry, Alex, and Robert L. Roseberry. “A Narrow-Angled Corpus Analysis of Moves and Strategies of the Genre: ‘Letter of Application’.” English for Specific Purposes, 20, no. 2 (2001): 153–167.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Iio, Makiko. “Tandaisei no hanashi kotoba ni miru danwa hyōshiki ‘nanka’ no ikkōsatsu” [A Study of the Discourse Marker Nanka in Junior College Students’ Daily Language]. Tōyō joshi tanki daigaku kiyō [The Toyo Review], 38 (2006): 67–77.

    Google Scholar 

  • Itō, Gō. Tezuka izzu deddo: Hirakareta manga-hyōgenron e [Tezuka Is Dead: Postmodernist and Modernist Approaches to Japanese Manga]. Tokyo, Japan: NTT Shuppan, 2005.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kai, Mutsurō. “Manga no kotoba: Mondai teiki” [Language in Manga: Identification of Problems]. Nihongo-gaku [Japanese Studies], 8, no. 9 (1989): 33–38.

    Google Scholar 

  • Keen, Suzanne. “A Theory of Narrative Empathy.” Narrative, 14, no. 3 (2006): 207–236.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kessler, Brett, Geoffrey Numberg, and Hinrich Schütze. “Automatic Detection of Text Genre.” In Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics and Eighth Conference of the European Chapter of the Association, edited by Christian Boitet and Pete Whitelock, 32–38. Madrid: Morgan Kaufmann, 1997.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kinsui, Satoshi. Vācharu nihongo: Yakuwari-go no nazo [Virtual Japanese: The Mystery of Yakuwari-go]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2003.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kishimoto, Chiaki. “Webu-nikki ni mirareru hanashi-kotoba-teki buntai” [Spoken-Speech Styles Seen in Blogs]. Nihongo-gaku [Japanese Studies], 27, no. 5 (2008): 168–176.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kobayashi, Mieko. “Sedai to joseigo: Wakai sedai no kotoba no ‘chūseika’ ni tsuite” [Generations and Women’s Language: On the ‘Neutralization’ of Language Amongst the Young Generation]. Nihongo-gaku [Japanese studies], 12, no. 5 (1993): 181–192.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kudō, Taku. “MeCab no kaihatsu keii” [The Development Process of MeCab], February 7, 2016. Last accessed March 16, 2017. http://taku910.github.io/mecab/feature.html.

  • Mealing, Stuart. “Value-Added Text: Where Graphic Design Meets Paralinguistics.” Visible Language, 1 (2003): 45–58.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nakamura, Momoko. “Homosōsharu fantajī: Supōtsu shinbun no sekai” [Homosocial Fantasy: Japanese Sport Tabloid Papers]. Shizen-ningen-shakai [Nature-People-Society: Science and the Humanities], 45 (2008): 1–23.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nakamura, Tadashi. “Dare no mono demo nai kotoba: 1970–1980 no manga no gengo sōi ni tsuite” [Nobody’s Words: On the Aspects of Language in Japanese Comics in the 1970s–1980s]. Yamagata daigaku jinbun gakubu kenkyū nenpō [Yamagata University Faculty of Literature and Social Sciences Annual Research Report], 3 (2006): 29–44.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nakano, Haruyuki. Manga shinkaron: Kontentsu bijunesu wa manga kara umareru! [Manga Evolution: Contents Business Begins with Manga!]. Tokyo: Blues Interactions, 2009.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nanba, Kōji. “‘Shōjo’ to iu dokusha” [‘Shōjo’ as Readers]. In Manga no shakaigaku [A Sociology of Manga], edited by Kōjirō Miyahara and Masahiro Ogino, 188–220. Kyoto: Sekai Shisōsha, 2001.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nihongo Kōpasu. “UniDic no kaiseki seido” [The Analytic Accuracy of UniDic], 2004. Last accessed November 30, 2012. http://www.tokuteicorpus.jp/dist/modules/system/modules/menu/main.php?page_id=3463&op=change_page.

  • Ogino, Masahiro. “Manga o shakaigaku suru” [Doing Sociological Research on Manga]. In Manga no shakaigaku [A Sociology of Manga], edited by Kōjirō Miyahara and Masahiro Ogino, 134–156. Kyoto: Sekai Shisōsha, 2001.

    Google Scholar 

  • Okamoto, Shigeko. “‘Tasteless’ Japanese: Less ‘Feminine’ Speech Among Young Japanese Women.” In Gender Articulated: Language and the Socially Constructed Self, edited by Kira Hall and Mary Bucholtz, 297–325. New York: Routledge, 1995.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ōtsuka, Eiji. Sengo manga no hyōgen kūkan: Kigōteki shintai no jubaku [The Expressive Space of Postwar Manga: The Spell of Symbolic Bodies]. Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1994.

    Google Scholar 

  • Paltridge, Brian. “Genre, Text Type, and the Language Learning Classroom.” In ELT Journal, 50, no. 3 (1996): 237–243.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Philips, Mieko. “Are Japanese Women Less Feminine Now? A Study of Sentence-Final Forms in Japanese Women’s Conversation.” In Language Change in East Asia, edited by Thomas. E. McAuley, 47–69. Richmond: Curzon, 2001.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schwartz, Adam, and Eliane Rubinstein-Ávila. “Understanding the Manga Hype: Uncovering the Multimodality of Comic-Book Literacies.” Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 50, no. 1 (2006): 40–49.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shamoon, Deborah. Passionate Friendship: The Aesthetics of Girls’ Culture in Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2012.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stamatatos, Efstathios, Nikos D. Fakotakis, and George K. Kokkinakis. “Text Genre Detection Using Common Word Frequencies.” In COLING ‘00 Proceedings of the 18th Conference on Computational Linguistics, 808–814. Saarbrücken: Morgan Kaufmann, 2000.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sturtz Sreetharan, Cindi. “Students, Sarariiman (pl.), and Seniors: Japanese Men’s Use of ‘Manly’ Speech Register.” Language in Society, 33 (2004): 81–107.

    Google Scholar 

  • Swales, John M. Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

    Google Scholar 

  • Takeuchi, Osamu. Manga hyōgengaku nyūmon [Introduction to Representation in Manga]. Tokyo: Chikuma Shoten, 2005.

    Google Scholar 

  • Unser-Schutz, Giancarla. “Language as the Visual: Exploring the Intersection of Linguistic and Visual Language in Manga.” Image & Narrative, 12, no. 1 (2011a): 167–188.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. “Developing a Text-Based Corpus of the Language of Japanese Comics (Manga).” In Corpus-Based Studies in Language Documentation, Use, and Learning Corpus-Based Studies in Language Documents, edited by Sally Rice, Harald Baayen, and John Newman, 213, 238. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011b.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. “The Role of Language in Manga: From the Point of View of Structure, Vocabulary and Characters.” Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, 2013.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. “What Text Can Tell Us About Male and Female Characters in Shōjo- and Shōnen-Manga.” Journal of East Asian Popular Culture, 1, 1 (2015a): 133–153.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. “Influential or Influenced? The Relationship Between Genre, Gender and Language in Manga.” Gender and Language, 9, no. 2 (2015b): 223–254.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wastholm, Peter, Annette Kusma, and Beáta B. Megyesi. “Using Linguistic Data for Genre Classification.” Proceedings of the Swedish Artificial Intelligence and Learning Systems Event (2005): 173–176.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Rissho University, Tokyo, Japan

    Giancarla Unser-Schutz

Authors
  1. Giancarla Unser-Schutz
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Giancarla Unser-Schutz .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Asian, Middle Eastern and Turkish Studies, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Stockholm County, Sweden

    Jaqueline Berndt

  2. Oita University, Oita, Japan

    Kazumi Nagaike

  3. Chikushi Jogakuen University, Dazaifu, Fukuoka, Japan

    Fusami Ogi

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Unser-Schutz, G. (2019). Redefining Shōjo and Shōnen Manga Through Language Patterns. In: Berndt, J., Nagaike, K., Ogi, F. (eds) Shōjo Across Media. East Asian Popular Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01485-8_3

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation