Contemporary Japanese possesses three major types of words, (1) kango (Sino-Japanese words), (2) wago (Japanese native words), and (3) gairaigo (loanwords), and each word type is associated with three types of scripts, (1) kanji (Chinese characters), (2) hiragana, and (3) katakana. Kanji are a set of logographic/ideographic scripts, and both hiragana and katakana are phonetic syllabaries. Kanji are used for presenting kango and wago, while some wago are written only in hiragana. Katakana are used for presenting gairaigo. Moreover, katakana are unconventionally used to write kango and wago for the purposes of emphasis and so forth. This paper extensively examines katakana words including gairaigo as well as kango and wago written in katakana unconventionally. Many observers have commented that katakana words are increasing in Japanese writings. However, there is little empirical data to prove their increase in such writings. This dissertation pursues this question by hypothesizing that katakana words have been increasingly used in Japanese writings. Together with providing evidence of their increase, this dissertation captures differences in katakana word usage between different publication outlets, namely, magazines and newspapers as well as television commercials. In order to investigate these issues, a research project is conducted where vocabularies from the three types of media are collected on computer databases. The increase of katakana words in Japanese writings poses a problem to foreign learners of Japanese whose L1 is English. As reported in various research including Chikamatsu (1996), the learners generally experience difficulty in processing and comprehending katakana words. From the learners’ perspective, the increase of katakana words in Japanese writings means that the learners need to know more katakana words than ever before to read Japanese writings. Meanwhile, native readers of Japanese also express some difficulty with katakana words, as illustrated in the recent survey results by the National Institute for Japanese Language and the Japan Broadcasting Corporation. Both governmental agencies found that many Japanese had the experience of being unable to understand the meaning of some gairaigo. Their difficulty seems to partially be caused by the increase of gairaigo in Japanese writings. From the native readers’ perspective, the increase of gairaigo means that new gairaigo are continuously introduced in such writings, some of which are not deeply rooted in Japanese gairaigo inventory but have been introduced relatively recently, with the ensuing result that many people do not know the meaning of such words. Although it is clear that both foreign learners and native readers of Japanese have difficulty with katakana words due to the increase of such words, to date no linguistic analysis has been conducted to account for reasons of their difficulty. Thus, this dissertation examines such reasons, and then offers some suggestions as to how to make gairaigo more comprehensible from the point of view of script policy and pedagogical practice. And ultimately, some conclusions regarding the role of katakana in the Japanese orthographic system will be discussed in the light of the history of the Japanese language and its writing system.

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This study investigates the kanji learning strategies used by learners of Japanese from two non-logographic orthographic backgrounds within the Sinosphere (Korean and Vietnamese), and alphabetic-language-based backgrounds, and how the three groups compare to each other. The study utilised data analysis techniques on data collected from 40 Japanese language learners via an online survey, and semi-structured interviews with four learners from Korea and Vietnam. The study found that Korean and Vietnamese learners benefit from first language kanji knowledge when learning to recognise Japanese kanji (particularly among Korean learners), and that common and preferred kanji learning methods differ between groups, with learners of alphabet-language backgrounds preferring methods from the planning learning and evaluating learning metacognitive strategies categories; and Korean and Vietnamese learners preferring association cognitive and planning learning metacognitive methods.

Studien genomfördes för att undersöka om associationer mellan utformningen av typsnitt i latinska alfabetet och i japanska skriftsystem och icke-språkliga ljudstimuli. Ytterligare syfte var att undersöka om associationerna påverkas av modersmål och kultur hos respondenter. Teorin som denna studie byggs på inkluderar ljudsymbolismen och BoubaKiki-fenomenet som visar att vissa ljud associeras med vissa former, samt studier om typsnittets personlighet. Två online-enkäter skapades, en engelskspråkig och en japanskspråkig. Enkäterna innehöll samma ljud och samma frågor. 10 typsnitt valdes för latinska alfabetet och 10 för japanska skriftsystem. Ljuden skapades med ett datorprogram och innehöll huvudsakligen toner, rytmer och brus. Respondenterna ombads att lyssna på ett icke-språkligt ljud och sedan välja ett typsnitt från de befintliga svarsalternativen som de upplevde likna ljudet mest. Resultatet visade att det finns ett svagt mönster som kan tyda på att människor associerar snabbare rytm med tunnare typsnitt och långsammare rytm med tyngre typsnitt. Brunt brus associerades starkt med kantiga tunna typsnitt. Toner som förändrades i tonhöjd visade på en svag association med rundare typsnitt. Höga toner associerades med luftiga tunna typsnitt. Det verkar som att japanska och västerländska respondenter inte hade några större skillnader i korssensoriska associationsmönster. Mindre skillnader kunde dock ses, som kan bero på olika faktorer och kan delvis förklaras med sättet studien genomfördes på. / The aim of this study was to investigate associations between typeface design of the Latin alphabet and the Japanese writing system and nonspeech sound stimulus. Moreover, the goal was to study if the associations are influenced by the native language and the culture of a person. Theories that this study was based on included the sound symbolism and the BoubaKiki phenomenon, which shows that certain sounds are associated with certain shapes, and the theory on the typeface personality. Two onlinesurveys were created, one in English and one in Japanese. The surveys were distributed to two groups, the Latin alphabet native users and the Japanese native speakers.  The questions of the surveys were the same and were split in two parts depending on the language of typefaces. 10 typefaces were chosen for the Latin alphabet and 10 for the Japanese writing system. Sound files included tones, rhythms, and the Brownian noise. Respondents were asked to listen to a sound and then choose a typeface that felt “closest” to it. Result shows a somewhat weak pattern that people associate quicker rhythm with thinner typefaces and slower rhythm with heavier typefaces. Brownian noise was strongly associated with angular and thin typefaces. Tones that changed the pitch were somewhat weakly associated with rounder typefaces. High pitched tones were associated with thin and light typefaces. The differences in cross-sensory perception between the Japanese and the western respondents were not major. However, some minor differences could be noticed which might depend on the way the study was conducted or the other factors.