Cover not available
Article published In:
Gender, Sexuality & Linguistic Landscapes
Edited by Tommaso M. Milani
[Linguistic Landscape 4:3] 2018
► pp. 238–256

Cosmopolitan English, traditional Japanese

Reading language desire into the signage of Tokyo’s gay district

| Macquarie University,
The Linguistic Landscape of Tokyo’s premier gay district, Shinjuku Ni-chōme, contains much English-language signage. Previously described in touristic literature as marking out spaces for foreign gay men, this article draws upon an ethnographic study of how signage produces queer space in Japan to argue that English instead constructs a sense of cosmopolitan worldliness. The ethnography also reveals that participants within Ni-chōme’s gay bar sub-culture contrast this cosmopolitan identity with a “traditional” identity indexed by Japanese-language signage. In exploring how Japanese men navigate Ni-chōme’s signage, this article deploys Piller and Takahashi’s (2006) notion of “language desire” to investigate the role of LL in influencing individual queer men’s sense(s) of self. This article thus broadens the focus of LL research to account for how engagement with an LL may impact identity construction, with an emphasis placed on how learning to “read” an LL influences the formation of sexual identities.
Keywords: cosmopolitanism, tradition, gay identity, Japan, language desire, identity construction, reading practices
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Previous LL research in the Japanese context
  • 3.Methodology
  • 4.Instances of English and Japanese across Ni-chōme’s LL
  • 5.Reading English and Japanese in Ni-chōme as indexes for gay identity
  • 6.Language desire and the formation of gay identity through engaging with an LL
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 26 November 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ll.18004.bau
References (20)
References
Agha, A. (2007). Language and Social Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Barni, M. & Bagna, C. (2015). The critical turn in LL: New methodologies and new items in LL. Linguistic Landscape, 1(1–2), 6–18. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Backhaus, P. (2007). Linguistic Landscapes: A Comparative Study of Urban Multilingualism in Tokyo. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Baudinette, T. (2017). The spatialisation of desire in a Japanese gay district through queer semiotics. ACME: An International Journal of for Critical Geographies, 16(3), 500–527. [URL]
Befu, H. (2001). Hegemony of Homogeneity. Rosanna, VIC: TransPacific Press.Google Scholar
Blommaert, J. (2013). Ethnography, Superdiversity and Linguistic Landscapes. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blommaert, J. & Maly, I. (2014). Ethnographic linguistic landscape analysis and social change: A case study. Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies, (100).Google Scholar
Dacanay, N. (2011). Encounters in the sauna: Exploring gay identity and power structures in gay places in Bangkok. In P. A. Jackson (Ed.), Queer Bangkok: 21st Century Markets, Media, and Rights (pp. 99–117). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Garvin, R. T. (2010). Responses to the linguistic landscape in Memphis, Tennessee: An urban space in transition. In E. Shohamy, E. Ben-Rafael & M. Barni (Eds), Linguistic Landscape in the City (pp. 254–275). Buffalo: Multilingual Matters. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haarmann, H. (1989). Symbolic Values of Foreign Language Use: From the Japanese Case to a General Sociolinguistic Perspective. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kelsky, K. (2001). Women on the Verge: Japanese Women, Western Dreams. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Landry, R. & Bourhis, R. Y. (1997). Linguistic landscape and ethnolinguistic vitality: An empirical study. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 16(1), 24–49. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mackintosh, J. (2010). Homosexuality and Manliness in Postwar Japan. London & New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Moriyama, N. (2012). “Gei Komyuniti” no Shakaigaku (Sociology of the “Gay Community”). Tokyo: Keisō Shobō.Google Scholar
Piller, I. & Takahashi, K. (2006). A passion for English: Desire and the language market. In A. Pavlenko (Ed.), Bilingual Minds: Emotional Experience, Expression and Representation (pp. 59–83). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Robertson, W. (2015). Orthography, foreigners, and fluency: Indexicality and script selection in Japanese manga. Japanese Studies, 35(2), 205–222. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shohamy, E. & Gorter, D. (Eds.). (2009). Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery. London & New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Stroud, C. & Jegels, D. (2014). Semiotic landscapes and mobile narratives of place: Performing the local. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2014(228), 179–199. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Szabó, T. P. & Troyer, R. A. (2017). Inclusive ethnographies: Beyond the binaries of observer and observed in linguistic landscape studies. Linguistic Landscape, 3(3), 306–326. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Takahashi, K. (2013). Language Learning, Gender and Desire: Japanese Women on the Move. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Motschenbacher, Heiko
2023. Affective regimes on Wilton Drive: a multimodal analysis. Social Semiotics 33:1 ► pp. 168 ff. DOI logo
Zhao, Fengzhi & Jackie Jia Lou
2023. Localising cosmopolitanism in place talk: Semiotic landscape as stance object. Language in Society ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 11 august 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.