The Creation of New Values in Japanese Texts through the Use of Multimodal Communication
In: Exploring Visual Literacy Inside, Outside and Through the FrameSearch for other papers by Kaori Okuizumi in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Search for other papers by Noriko Okamoto in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Purchase instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
This chapter examines how new values and identities can be designed in Japanese newspaper advertisements from the perspective of CDA, focusing on the interaction between Japanese characters and photographs and the interaction between the change in the Japanese four writing systems as visual designs by the approach of multimodal communication. Japanese words can be written in 4 characters: kanji, hiragana, katakana and romaji. Each of them has a distinctive history and with it, particular connotations and implications for expressing and comprehending meaning. Hiragana, katakana and romaji are phonograms and kanji is an ideogram. Since hiragana and katakana are phonograms, they obtain an ideographical meaning when they are shifted. Except for romaji, it is considerably established as social customs to use katakana for gairaigo (loanwords), kanji for kango (words of Chinese origin) and either hiragana or certain types of kanji for wago (Japanese native words). However, there are no established orthographical rules for writing words. We shall be discussing specifically the change in the characters of the word ‘OMOTENASHI’ as a key concept of the product, a car. This word means treating someone politely or giving someone a meal or a cup of tea; an act of hospitality, as designs to visually understand the meaning of the words and photographs that are written and represented. Through these analyses, we can find an active designing process of new values and identities, which not only imitate Western values, such as efficiency or speed, but also absorb them and re-design them into globalised values which Japanese corporations try to express.