Semantics Research Group (Tokyo/Hybrid) 2026/8/28

[jrta...@gmail.com]

意味論研究会のお知らせ

意味論研究会の会合をお知らせします。対面の場所・ズームのアクセス情報は下記の通りです。どなたでも参加できますので，多くの方の参加をお待ちしています。また、会合終了後に食事会を予定しております。ご参加希望の方はご指名と所属をご記入の上、その旨を8月7日（金）までにChris Tancrediにご連絡くださいますようお願い致します。(Chris Tancredi, cdtan...@gmail.com)

The Semantics Research Group will be having a talk as detailed below. There will also be a dinner after the talk. If you would like to participate in the dinner, please RSVP with Chris Tancredi by Friday, August 7th. Make sure to include your name and affiliation. (Chris Tancredi,  cdtan...@gmail.com)

 Date: August 28 

Time: 5:00 pm 

Place: Keio University, Mita campus, South Annex building, 7th floor conference room https://www.keio.ac.jp/en/maps/mita.html 

Online option: https://keio-univ.zoom.us/j/82972175560?pwd=YlRuaGt0NUFWWmI1ajhrNm1vQ3ZVZz09 

Speaker: Yurie Hara 

Title: From Social Personae to Fictional Characters: A Signaling-Game Analysis of Japanese Yakuwarigo 

Abstract: 

Japanese manga and anime make systematic use of yakuwarigo ‘role language’, including first-person pronouns, copulas, aspectual forms, and sentence-final particles that allow audiences to identify fictional character types rapidly. Such expressions often differ substantially from the speech of actual demographic groups: for example, the elderly-male forms washi and ja are historically associated with western Japanese varieties rather than with the contemporary speech of elderly men in general. Building on game-theoretic approaches to social meaning, I argue that yakuwarigo arises when linguistic variants that index gradient social personae in ordinary interaction are recruited, amplified, and conventionalized as signals of stable fictional personae. I combine the notion of representativeness with a signaling-game model in which authors select linguistic features that are maximally representative of an intended character type, while audiences infer the most representative persona from the observed features. The analysis explains both why role language may be socially inaccurate yet readily interpretable and why it is particularly efficient for introducing minor characters with specialized narrative functions. I conclude by briefly outlining planned corpus, human-judgment, and large-language-model studies designed to test the predicted mappings between linguistic forms and fictional personae.