Katakana Uses

In Japanese 101, we learn that katakana is used to indicate three elements in the Japanese language: 1) loan words, 2) emphasis, and 3) onomatopoeia. I find that katakana also has three other uses:

 A. Marking Slang and Newly Created Words
 B. Eliciting Trendiness
 C. Alleviating Seriousness or Harshness

Erica Hashiba comments that there are traditional uses of katakana in terms of how it's used as loan words, onomatopoeia, and emphasis. I use her ideas and language to describe some of the interesting examples of when katakana uses go beyond loan words, emphasis, and onomatopoeia.

Excerpts from Hashiba:

Widespread Loan Words in Katakana
First, katakana seems to mark “foreignness” and to reserve hiragana and kanji for “true Japanese." Indeed, even names of Japanese-Americans, although they may be Japanese (or at least the last name, as in “Mary Tanaka,”) are often written in katakana because they are not Japanese nationals. It is like using a different font in order to distinguish foreign from native, and for this reason, it may seem as though the use of katakana is not so much vital as it is ethnocentric. However, Japan has undergone extensive westernization especially after the second world war, and have since then made major technological, cultural, and linguistic imports. The Japanese language is now fully integrated with hundreds of “loan words” that are virtually unavoidable in everyday language, and this has given way to a phenomenally widespread use of katakana in modern Japanese discourse.

 Onomatopoeia
Katakana is also conventionally used to write native Japanese words like various kinds of onomatopoeia, and words used in a scientific or technical context. A manga reader is well-accustomed to the “sounds” of anything from hurried footsteps to trembling anger that confetti the page in katakana. The native Japanese names for roaches, squirrels or wisteria might appear in katakana in a biology book or a science related text, but would otherwise usually be written in hiragana or kanji.

 Emphasis
The following is the title of an article in a women’s magazine and contains two katakana words: 
            Meibirin-ga kirei no himitsu.
            Maybelline is the secret to beauty.
 Beauty is obviously an interest for many women, making the word kirei (“beautiful”) one of the most overused words in many magazines, including this one. What some women love even more, of course, are himitsu—secrets. Here, both words are written in katakana to mark emphasis to these words so as to get the attention of the secret-hungry reader.

 Marking Slang and Newly Created Words 
Another usage of katakana is for writing slang and newly created words. Newly created words sometimes consist of loan words, but many of these words originate from already-existing Japanese words. For example, maji (“seriously;” “for real”), mukatsuku (“irritated;” “pissed off”), and motokano/motokare (“ex-girlfriend”/“ex-boyfriend”). Motokano and motokare are abbreviated words (from motokanojo and motokareshi) so usually moto (“ex”) remains in kanji and only the shortened kano and kare portions are written in katakana since they were modified from the original word to create the new term. Unlike the katakana use for marking focus which is highly dependent on the context, slang words are very consistently written in katakana. Since slang words are newly created words that have a sense of “non-nativeness.” They are very much like loan words which have been incorporated into the language to supplement the already-existing language.

 Eliciting Trendiness 
When a word that should be written in the hiragana/kanji form is arbitrarily written in katakana, it suddenly gives the word some pizazz, eliciting trendiness to an otherwise neutral word. Fashion magazines often use “ore” over “boku,” and when they do, often write them in katakana rather than in kanji. This seems to make the “ore” (and who it refers to) even more cool and trendy than if it were to be written in the proper, heavy-looking kanji. Another example of the “trendy” use of katakana is when celebrities and entertainers write their name in katakana. Some people will appear with their full name written in kanji, but many others will change their name, slightly or completely, to give it more pizzazz as a “professional” name. When doing so, many choose to write their new names in katakana, like Tamori, a popular TV show host who simply goes by his last name (which is actually “Morita” scrambled), and writes it in katakana. Countless manzai (Japanese comedy) duos come up with team names written in katakana, such as “Cream Stew”. There are both instances of celebs writing their Japanese names in katakana, as well as those who completely do away with their Japanese name and give themselves a western name which is also, of course, written in katakana (although some get really clever and adopt a western name and write it in hiragana or kanji.) While some students of Japanese may wish to ascribe self-picked kanji to represent their originally katakana names, many Japanese do just the opposite—and write their kanji names in katakana so as to emulate the trendiness of a western name.

 Alleviating Seriousness or Harshness 
The kanji script is typically much more complex than the katakana script, so when a word that should conventionally be written in kanji is reduced to the simple katakana script, it literally does away with the serious, burdening look of the original word—interestingly enough, this visual difference has the same effect on its meaning as well. The blog of a 20 year old female college student contains the following text under the headline “My college life”: Kyoo-wa gakkou-ga ohiru made deshita. “Today school was until lunchtime.” For a 20 year old girl who probably spends the better half of her day making an elaborate blog site intricately bordered with dancing Hello Kitty icons, school is probably not the most interesting place to be. Thus, by writing a mundane word like “school” in katakana, she does away with the serious, scholarly connotations of school and makes it appear to be a more playful and lighthearted ordeal. Because of such visual effects of words written in katakana, many adversarial words are written in katakana for the same reasons.

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I think Hashiba identifies nuances of using katakana that indicate that as newer phraseology and words come into play in the 21st century, the way that katakana becomes incorporated into the Japanese language will become manifold beyond the three usages that we learn in Japanese 101. Perhaps, like Korean, we will see the use of kanji phase out and the Japanese people revert to language types of hiragana and katakana to express themselves. Of course, the element that we miss out on when this happens is the meanings of homonyms. This might be derived purely from context.

As I learn more Japanese, I would like to see if the contextual cues are strong enough in the Japanese language to obviate the need for kanji. I believe that the uses of katakana will grow ever stronger and the use of older Chinese-based kanji sets will become less important to the study of Japanese.