A Sociolinguistic Study of Expanding Digital Communication in Japanese: In View of Ageing

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24520479
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Linguistics
• Research Institution: Toyo Gakuen University
• Principal Investigator: NISHIMURA Yukiko 東洋学園大学, グローバルコミュニケーション学部, 教授 (70198513)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: デジタルコミュニケーション / 高齢化 / ブログ / 絵文字 / 年代差 / 性差 / かわいい / ユーモア

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study explores how Japanese older men and women express themselves in blogging, when aging population is sharply on the rise in Japan. This study specifically examines understudied senior users’ blog posts from a sociolinguistic perspective. The study suggests: (1) standard methodology for sociolinguistic variation by the variables of age and gender can be employed for analyzing language use online; (2) discourse specific features, emoticons, indicate variation more clearly than grammatical features. (3) emojis can embody users’ identity and ideology of “cuteness” and are by far the most frequent type of emoticons. (4) Seniors users’ humor can be characterized as self-depreciating, which invite sympathy, and that can be rooted from Japanese cultural values of harmony. This study with conventional methodology will open up new possibilities for online research, as the number of people communicating online continues to increase.

Free Research Field

社会言語学