The Decentralization of Standard Japanese in Proletarian Literature

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Other Title
  • 言語の錯乱
  • ゲンゴ ノ サクラン

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<p>The inexpensive editions of literary works called “enpon” books started to be published in 1926. While they made literature more accessible to the public, they contributed much to the standardization of the Japanese language as an ideological tool of the linguistic centralization of power. In the name of “correct” Japanese the languages used by workers, farmers, women, and other minority groups were condemned as “wrong” and “deteriorated.” But proletarian writers resisted such a linguistic discipline through the faithful descriptions of the social minority's words. In this sense proletarian literature was a movement against standard Japanese and even against literature itself.</p>

Journal

  • Japanese Literature

    Japanese Literature 63 (11), 23-33, 2014-11-10

    Japanese Literature Association

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