Metroethnicity, naming and mocknolect: new horizons in Japanese sociolinguistics

Intro -- Metroethnicity, Naming and Mocknolect -- Editorial page -- Title page -- Copyright page -- Epigraph -- Table of contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: Portable language and the jouissance of identities -- The structure of this book -- Chapter 1. Metroethnicity and cool: A theory of lifestyle identities -- The lightness of being ethnic: The creative 'acquirement' of multiple meanings -- Cool: A swerving trajectory -- Post-ethnic languages -- The texture of language: Slang du jour -- Empires of cool: Bilingualism and language learning -- Ethnic reconstruction: Hybridities -- Italian Ainu -- The problems of ethnic romance -- Metroethnicity: Decentering ethnicity -- The principle of Cool -- Chapter 2. Mocknolect: Language and identity imitation -- Mocknolect -- "Je n'ai plus osé ouvrir la bouche" (I no longer dare open my mouth) -- Japanese mocknolect -- Mocknolect in the media -- Yellow English and Asian English -- Japanese mocknolect in war and peace -- Japanese mocknolect in film: Karate Kid -- The delicate aesthetic and the psycho absurd -- The polyvalency of Japanese mocknolect -- Chapter 3. The linguistic identity of place: Where things are, where we are -- A sense of place -- Linguistic signatures -- Place-names and continuity -- Place names and the person: Our interior world -- Utamakura: Poetic place-names -- Signs of identity: Where things are, where we are -- Demonyms: Identifying people of a place -- Metonymy. No more Hiroshimas!! -- Chapter 4. Married names: Continuous identities and social conflict -- The semiotics of continuous identity -- Power, hierarchy and expediency -- "This must be some import from Chicago" -- Rationale for name retention -- Diglossic naming -- Fūfu Bessei vs Fūfu Dōsei ('separate' vs 'same' married names) -- History of the Fūfu Bessei movement -- Rationale for name change.

Language is a social space, an aesthetic, a form of play and communication, a geographical reference, a jouissance, a producer of numerous social and personal identities. This book takes up salient issues of sociolinguistics with a specific focus on Japan: language and gender (the married name controversy), language and the 'portable' identities being fashioned around traditional, essentialist notions of ethnicity (metroethnicity) endangerment, slang, taboo and discriminatory language in Japanese especially regarding minorities, place-names from indigenous languages, the fellowship and parody of children's songs, and the diversity of nicknames among children and young people. This books gives radical and new perspectives on the sociolinguistics of Japanese.

"Language is a social space, an aesthetic, a form of play and communication, a geographical reference, a jouissance, a producer of numerous social and personal identities. This book takes up salient issues of sociolinguistics with a specific focus on Japan: language and gender (the married name controversy), language and the 'portable' identities being fashioned around traditional, essentialist notions of ethnicity (metroethnicity) endangerment, slang, taboo and discriminatory language in Japanese especially regarding minorities, place-names from indigenous languages, the fellowship and parody of children's songs, and the diversity of nicknames among children and young people. This books gives radical and new perspectives on the sociolinguistics of Japanese"--