• Naoko Hosokawa Postdoctoral Fellow, Tokyo College, The University of Tokyo

Is the Japanese language inundated by loanwords? Or is it enriching itself by absorbing foreign vocabulary? We often hear such discussions in contemporary Japan. But why does this topic attract so much interest? This presentation is about her examination of public discussions on lexical borrowing. Through an analysis of recurrent wordings in the debates, she will shed light on an implicit contrast between ‘national’ and ‘foreign’ hidden in the metalinguistic discourse.

Naoko Hosokawa is a postdoctoral fellow at Tokyo College, the University of Tokyo. She holds a D.Phil degree in Oriental Studies from the University of Oxford. Her fields of research include sociolinguistics and media textual analysis. She is interested in the question of language and identity with a particular focus on loanwords, metaphors, and language education.