EVENT FULL: MAR 1 – Workshop: ‘Learning Japanese from Manga’ with Kyoko Masuda, Georgia Tech

Students with any Japanese background (including no Japanese language background at all), are welcome at this workshop on manga language. Japanese manga are well known for their expressive illustrations, but less apparent to language learners is how the Japanese language contributes to the vividness of character development via yakuwariko ‘role language’ (Kinsui 2003) and hatsuwa kyara ‘speech character types’ (Sadanobu 2006), and mimetic expressions. This workshop considers how readers interpret the language of manga, both in Japanese and in English translation, and use what they read to understand the nature of manga characters. Participants will be provided with manga examples to interpret, in English, to explore their impressions of characters from three manga, Horimiya, Love is Hard for Otaku, and Demon Slayer. Then, I will share research results  (Masuda & Yamamoto, under review), from our survey and interviews with intermediate Japanese language students and Japanese native speakers.