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Gendered language use in Japanese video games and its development: A case study using Pokémon Sapphire (2002) and Pokémon Alpha Sapphire (2014)
Dalarna University, School of Language, Literatures and Learning.
2021 (English)Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor), 10 credits / 15 HE creditsStudent thesis
Abstract [en]

The study researches Japanese gendered language in video games and its development as main objective, which is an important topic as new theories are emerging in the field, such as the one of “character language”, and they need to be further researched.This objective is accomplished through the study of two research questions that investigate how the different characters of the video games speak, as well as if changes have happened regarding gendered language from the original texts of Pokémon Sapphire (2002) to the ones of Pokémon Alpha Sapphire (2014), which form a self-compiled corpus that is analyzed in this work.The corpus is analyzed by using the quantitative and qualitative data analysis software MAXQDA together with a plethora of tags that were created for this study. The tags are based on previous research on the topic of Japanese gendered language made by different authors. The corpus contains all the texts of the video games in Japanese and thus how the main characters of the games speak can be analyzed.The reason for choosing these video games is that the second one is a remake of the first one, so by using them it is possible to hypothesize about gendered language’s development in video games. They are also well known and suitable for all audiences. Finally, these games also include many female and male characters with similar roles that allow to study gendered language in profundity, which makes these games a good option for studying this topic.The results, which showed an unbalanced distribution of gendered language inside the video games studied and how gendered language evolved from the first version of the video games into the latest one (with an evolution towards fabricated language instead than towards real language, as happens in the case of some novels or manga), can be of use for both video game localizers and researchers on Japanese gendered language and linguistics as well as the ground for future research.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2021.
Keywords [en]
Gendered language, Japanese, video games, yakuwarigo, linguistics, video game localization.
National Category
Languages and Literature
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:du-38030OAI: oai:DiVA.org:du-38030DiVA, id: diva2:1592165
Subject / course
Japanese
Available from: 2021-09-08 Created: 2021-09-08

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CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • chicago-author-date
  • chicago-note-bibliography
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf