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Affect and letter-writing: Unconventional conventions in casual writing by young Japanese women

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2009

Kuniyoshi Kataoka
Kuniyoshi Kataoka
Affiliation:
Second Language Acquisition and Teaching, Department of English, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85719, kkataoka@ccit.arizona.edu
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Abstract

With special attention to the use of unconventional practices and pictorial signs in casual letter writing, this article shows how young Japanese women effectively exploit affect-laden shape, form, and function in order to establish intimate and solidary relationships. They rely on both conventional and unconventional aspects of Japanese orthography, encoding affect specific to the given context and merging spoken with written modes of self-representation. In so doing, they seem to draw on diverse “frames” of written language, and to manipulate symbolic means of association and integration for achieving reciprocity. These features not only provide the basis for reciprocity, but may also suggest a new mode of literacy caused by social change. (Writing, literacy, affect, Japanese, pictorial signs, letter-writing)

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , March 1997 , pp. 103 - 136
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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