Katakana Analysis Revised

The first Katakana word I chose to bring in was メモパッド(memopad),which was on a Sanrio character memopad. The second Katakana word was ソフト(soft)from the package of a cookie. Both of these Katakana words were mainly used as loanwords and also as emphasis. By expressing these words in Katakana rather than in their Japanese equivalents in Hiragana or Kanji, they were emphasized among the other Hiragana or Kanji characters. Moreover, similar to Korean culture in which using loanwords is often considered modern, the use of Katakana for loanwords gave it a more global sense to it. In fact, conveying a more modern and global feel may have been the exact purpose for such usage because they were afterall customer goods targeted for the young people. From this, one can see that Katakana can have great usage as a marketing vector. It not only captures the trendy effect of using loanwords, but it also demonstrates the growing western culture element in Japan. In fact, Katakana for loanword indeed shows that Japan is open towards other cultures.

Although I chose loanword and emphasis Katakana words, Katakana is also used as onomatopoeia. For example, ドカン is the sound of an explosion in a manga. Yet, onomatopoeia can be viewed as a specific type of emphasis of the on-going situation. It is a more poetic way of emphasizing and describing what is going on. Hence, Katakana's role as emphasis may have evolved to using it for onomatopoeia as well.

As Katakana usage reasons differ from situation to situation, textbooks have different explanations for Katakana as well. This is not surprising because there are no set rules in using Katakana. Katakana usage is very complex because it is mostly by choice of the writer. Moreover, setting rules for the vast possibility of Katakana usage (infinite number of loan words and onomatopoeia and emphasis by choice of user) is more hard to accept. Also, Katakana usage will continuously change, develop, and evolve as time passes and hence, textbooks will not be able to explain these numerous changes every time.