Cosmopolitan English, traditional Japanese
Reading language desire into the signage of Tokyo’s gay district
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.
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
-
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Zhao, Fengzhi & Jackie Jia Lou
2023.
Localising cosmopolitanism in place talk: Semiotic landscape as stance object.
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