A Critical Linguistic Analysis of Japanese Children''s Manga

The focus of this book is on the issue of power and gender in the language of Japanese comics (manga). They are aimed at specific audiences and the argument presented here is that the language of manga helps to reinforce certain social stereotypes - particularly the inferiority of women and the dominance of males.The language of children''s manga is analyzed using the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), which is concerned with the relation between ideology and power in discourse. The analysis is at various levels including lexico-semantic, pragmatic, textual and ideological. The analyzed texts are from Japanese manga in the original Japanese language with English translations. Manga aimed at the specific audiences of young boys and girls, are analyzed to determine the presence of male-dominant ideology in the text.