WAKAMONO KOTOBA IN “TOKYO REVENGERS” BY KEN WAKUI: A STUDY OF MORPHOLOGY AND SEMANTICS

Abstract

Japanese slang or wakamono kotoba grows rapidly in Japanese and frequently found in Japanese media, such as in manga and anime. The differencebetween wakamono kotoba and standardized Japanese language forms and meanings becomes a problem in understanding the meanings of wakamono kotoba, especially for Japanese language learners. As an attempt to solve this problem, this study aims to analyze the forms and meaning of Japanese slang words or wakamono kotoba. The data were collected from Japanese comic titled Tokyo Revengers by Ken Wakui, and analyzed using the identity method and distribution techniques. The data of wakamono kotoba found then analyzed based on word formation theory by Tsujimura (1996),and to analyze the meaning of wakamono kotoba, contextual meaning theory by Pateda (2001) was used. The results showed that wakamono kotobacan be divided into five morphological forms including affixation, compound, reduplication, clipping, and borrowing. In terms of meaning, there arewakamono kotoba which still express the original meaning, while a certain number of wakamono kotoba have changed its’ meanings from their original meanings.

Keywords

• japanese language
• morphology
• semantics
• slang