I wiru rokku yuu in Japanese : A study of language mixing in J-pop lyrics

Författare

Josefine Kettner

Summary, in English

This thesis deals with language mixing phenomena in J-pop lyrics. While previous research within this field has provided different angles on the motivation behind the use of English in J-pop, a uniform way of categorizing the type of language mixing has not yet been established. Some sociolinguistic research suggests that code-switching is used. However, since there is a view of Japan as a monolingual country and code-switching is a phenomenon occurring in bilingual speech or writing, this thesis will take these contradictive views into account while providing the reader with definitions of monolingualism, bilingualism, multilingualism together with different types of language contact such as loanwords, code-switching and its closely related phenomena. Since J-pop has been argued having a strong influence on the Japanese youth culture and English has had the greatest impact amongst foreign languages in Japan during the past century, this topic is becoming more significant within the field of linguistics as well as sociolinguistics; this is why the author has chosen to focus the case study of J-pop lyrics on this particular subject. Since little research on viewing J-pop lyrics from a grammatical perspective has been carried out, this thesis will attempt to contribute to current and future research within this field.
Keywords: Japanese language, code-switching, J-pop, English, language mixing, multilingualism, bilingualism, monolingualism

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