The Creation and Comprehension of English Loanwords in the Japanese Media

要旨

Nearly all Western loanwords in Japanese are first introduced to the public by a small number of individuals with most Japanese people having never heard or read the word before, and having no role to play in their borrowing. Because of this presumptuous use of foreign words by, for example, academics, government bodies, and the media, the meanings of many of the words used are little understood. In this paper, I examine how well understood the most commonly appearing loanwords are. After a literature survey, I examine corpus and frequency data based on the 2001 issues of the Mainichi newspapers. Nearly a quarter of the sampled items tested were found to be not understood by young, Japanese adults. However, it would appear that the confusion caused by the flood of Western loanwords is but a developmental condition, and as various borrowings compete for survival, they are propelling the lexical expansion of the Japanese lexicon.

主題