Sawayaka, Tasty, I Feel Coke!: Using the Graphic and Pictorial Image to Explore Japan‘s “Empire of Signs”

Abstract

This paper examines the extensive use of English borrowings and graphic images that dominate the visual world of Japan. It argues that these English signs (both visual and linguistic) are not mere imitations of the West, nor are they a kind of language pollution. Instead, they represent a highly creative use of visible language, both as a linguistic and artistic form of communication. English and English orthography has become incorporated into the Japanese symbolic vocabulary, just as Chinese writing was brought in over a thousand years ago. English represents one more semiotic resource available to Japanese people, and the high degree of visual literacy and sophistication of the average Japanese is due no doubt, in large part, to this blending of several languages and orthographies.