THE ROLE AND DANGER OF VULGAR VOCABULARY IN THE LANGUAGE OF JAPANESE MASS CULTURE

Abstract

Formulating the problem. Recently, there has been a tendency to expand the sphere of use of obscene vocabulary and to include it in the public sphere by involving it in the language of mass culture, which cannot but affect the language consciousness of the consumers of this culture, and therefore causes some concern. In addition, the problem lies in the lack of consensus among linguists regarding the scope and demarcation of the concepts of «invective vocabulary» and «vulgarism». Analysis of the latest research. Namely, in the study of H. Vusyk and S. Glazova, vulgarism is a hyponym of invective vocabulary, but according to Yu. Masel’s definition, it turns out that not all vulgarisms can be included in invective vocabulary. The purpose of the paper is to try to clarify the correlation between the concepts of invective vocabulary and vulgarism, as well as to analyze the role of such vocabulary in the language of Japanese mass culture and to assess the possible consequences of its use in public speech. Presentation of the main material. Having analyzed various approaches to determining the scope and correlation of the concepts of invective vocabulary and vulgarism, we offer to consider vulgarism as the «lowest level» of invective vocabulary, that is, the most obscene variety of it, which was traditionally avoided in public speech. However, on the material of a number of genres of modern Japanese mass culture (manga, anime, popular songs), we demonstrated that such obscene vocabulary began to function actively in them, and if at first it was inherent only in the speech of negative manga characters, then recently it has significantly expanded the scope of its functioning. Conclusions. In our opinion, such exploitation of vulgar words in the language of mass culture aims to make it «simpler» and closer to the consumer, as well as to attract attention at the expense of outrage. At the same time, however, since the consumers of mass culture are mostly speakers of the younger generation with an unformed speech culture, the use of obscene vocabulary in the language of mass culture has a negative effect on the cultural level of its consumers.