Katakana Analysis

To serve as a point of reference and to provide some context, the following is a summary of the explanations taken from five Japanese textbooks describing the purpose and usage of katakana (from the sheet handed out in class) :

1. Foreign names
2. Loanwords (i.e. words of foreign origin)
   
3. Onomatopoeic words
4. Emphasis

Instead of picking two katakana from different sources, I found various interesting uses of katakana in the following music video:



It's the music video for Kanye West's song Stronger, which was released in 2007 and became extremely popular worldwide. Disregarding the fact that the video was filmed in Japan and references/features various aspects of Japanese pop culture, various words and phrases in katakana flash on the screen and, later in the video, subtitles in katakana appear as well. If you pay attention to when the katakana appears on screen, the words seem to correspond to the lyrics.

For example, ”ストロンガ”, which is a transliteration of the word "stronger", flashes on the screen concurrently with the lyrics. Although one could make the assumption that this is an example of a loanword, the word "strong" in Japanese is 強い (つよい).

About 17 seconds into the video, the phrase ”イマスグ” appears along with the lyrics "right now". ”イマスグ” corresponds to 今すぐ (いますぐ), which literally means right now, thus representing a different use of katakana from the previous example. In this case, one can assume that the implication is to emphasize "now" (since the sense of the word "right" as used in the lyrics seems to mean "correct"...).

Much later in the video (at about 2:24), ”オオオオ” appears as a nurse runs away panicked, which represents onomatopoeic usage of katakana.

Throughout the video, there are many more examples of katakana usage, ranging from single characters appearing on screen to subtitling entire conversations/exchanges. It is interesting to note that katakana is used exclusively throughout, even to represent words and sentences that would typically be written in hiragana/kanji. It is not obvious why the director chose to do this, but we can speculate a number of possible reasons:

• The video appears to have a futuristic theme. As such, the rigid lines and sharp edges of katakana seem to be an appropriate stylistic choice. Furthermore, it has been said that katakana is sometimes used to convey a robotic tone, which fits with the synthesized/auto-tuned vocals in the video.
  
• The video is action-packed and projects a rather obvious sense of machismo, as evidenced not only by the visuals, but by the lyrics as well. Katakana was known as the more "masculine" character set in the past. Therefore, the use of katakana in the video may serve to reflect the masculinity of the subject matter.
  
• As was previously mentioned, the video was filmed in Japan, but stars Kanye West, an American, and a number of other seemingly non-Japanese actors/actresses. The use of katakana could imply the foreign basis of the song/video
• The fast-paced nature of the video may be further augmented by the use of katakana to convey a sense of urgency and emphasis.
  

Obviously, most of the analysis above is just random conjecture, so it may all be baseless rambling on my part. However, to be fair, much of this post was "inspired" by this blog entry (which notes that much of the Japanese in the video are either misspelled or don't make any sense in context). So, there might be some sensible information above.

Anyway, what does everyone think about the video and its use (and misuse) of katakana? Any additional observations/comments?