In the readings I've looked over, each of the different sources address Katakana in a different manner. Many of the sources seem to take a very formal approach only citing their use as conveyors of foreign words. Several of the sources also noted their use to emphasize native Japanese words and describe natural sounds. Few of the sources speak to their growing use to express sophistication though. As this is a movement mostly adopted by younger generations that have taken an interest in foreign fads, the conservative sources don't address this us of Katakana as often.
For my Katakana analysis I chose to look at a few words that were written in Katakana because of their onomatopoetic meanings. They come from an online manga and are used in a scene were the protagonist is waking up during a rainy night in the woods. ゴクッゴク is one of the first sounds expressed and is similar to the English word, gulp, which is itself an onomatopoetic word. It's unclear whether the word in katakana comes from the English word or simply represents a sound made by people of all languages. In the scene the samurai is drinking, or gulping, rain water. It is interesting that it is in katakana while the sound preceding it, written as うっ, is in hiragana. うっ represents the sound "ugh" or "oof." It could be written in hiragana for one of two reasons. Either it is a word that is native to Japanese or the author didn't want to emphasize the main character's discomfort. Because the text in the scene is also very small, if not both I would guess the author does not want the reader to focus on the sound but still wants to express it. ポシポシポシ is another sound written in katakana in this scene. Representing the sound of rain water this word is unambiguously written in katakana to describe a sound. These onomatopoeia's appear throughout the comic though the words discussed here indicate that even these aren't all straightforward.
From the usage of katakana vs. hiragana to represent onomatopoeia in the comic that you describe, it seems to me that perhaps katakana ironically and interestingly represent more natural results. For example, rain falling being written as ポシポシポシ expresses rain falling and the sound as a natural consequence of the occurrence of rain falling. Even someone drinking ゴクッゴク is a natural result of an action. On the other hand, the main character's うっ is itself an action or a thought of the character rather than natural consequence.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting in this case that hiragana was used to represent what nominally counts as dialogue while the katakana are all natural sounds. The うっ may not be a word, but it's still a voluntary sound produced with the vocal cords, while the ゴクッゴク sound is the natural gulping sound of swallowing water and ポツポツ is similarly the natural sound of splashing raindrops.
ReplyDeleteI think you made some interesting observation regarding the usage of katakana and hiragana. As Sabine mentioned in her comment, I think うっ is in hiragana because it comes from the action of a human compared to the other two words. I've rarely seen Japanese people write うっ in katakana...wonder why.
ReplyDelete