Personal Pronouns and Gendered Speech in Popular Manga (Japanese Comics) Giancarla Unser-Schutz, Hitotsubashi University, giancarlaunserschutz@yahoo.co.jp Manga—Japanese comics—are often noted popularly as one location of linguistic change amongst young Japanese. Attention has been paid particularly to the role that manga play in changing gendered speech, and manga are often noted as an influential factor in young women choosing to use the masculine first personal pronouns ore and boku (e.g., Endo 2001, Nakamura 2007). Research hitherto has, however, focused on conscious surveys and interviews amongst young people on their personal pronoun usage and on why they chose their personal pronouns, and not on their actual use in manga. Before one can evaluate the role that manga may play, it is crucial that one have a clearer grasp of how personal pronouns are actually used. Here I attempt to help the situation by examining the distribution of personal pronouns in a corpus of popular manga titles. The difference between male and female speech has often been given as one of the major characteristics of Japanese. These differences are non-obligatory, and mainly phonological, morphological or lexical (Shibamoto 1987). Such differences are realized in a variety of different forms and environments, but some of the more commonly noted points are intonation, emphatic sentence final particles, and personal pronouns. In recent years, however, there has been a marked decrease in the differences in speech patterns between male and female speakers. These changes can be seen in many different locations; however, one particularly prominent example is that of the emphatic sentence final particles. Sentence final particles give emphasis or show the relationship between speakers, with some being female (wa, kashira), others male (ze, zo) forms, and some neutral (ne). While they have been given as a typical example of gender-differentiated speech, reports in recent years show that the female-specific forms are essentially out of use amongst young women (Philips 2001, Ozaki 1999). Personal pronouns, however, appear to be holdouts in gendered speech differences, showing comparatively little change. Japanese features many forms of first and second personal pronouns, and their choice depends on gender, but also on formality, the speaker's relationship with the listener, and their own preferences. Following Shibamoto (2005), for first pronouns, women tend to use atashi or watashi, whereas men tend to use ore or boku. For second person pronouns, women tend to avoid them altogether, and men tend to use omae or kimi. There are no exclusively female forms, but some examples of male ones are kimi, omae, and temee. Even with all these varieties, however, both Ozaki (3/2002) and Hishikari (2007) report that there are no common first person pronouns used amongst male and female young adults in Tokyo of junior-high-school to college-age. This may not, however, be that clear cut, and some reports also point towards young women using the masculine first person pronouns boku and ore at at least some point in their lives. In a survey of a 136 female students, Endo (2001) found that 23 students have used at some point boku and ore, and 72 students reported seeing other girls use them, too. Miyazaki (2004) also describes some junior high schools girls using ore, and it appears that some girls are now choosing to use masculine pronouns, if only a minority. Such changes are attributed to many different factors, but mass media, and in particular, manga are a popular explanation. Endo (2001) also found that some respondents attributed their use and their acquaintances' use of ore and boku to manga. Such explanations are commonly found in popular discourse. Looking at Yahoo Chiebukuro (Yahoo Answers), it is not uncommon to find posts on the role of manga in girls' use of boku and ore. To answer a question as to why men use ore and women use watashi, one user wrote “I know girls who use boku because of manga's influence (Anonymous 9/26/2005).” Out of four responses to another user's post asking if any girls around them used boku or ore, two said girls who read manga around them did (Taruruda 6/25/2007). To another user self-described as a female high school senior asking for opinions' on girls' ore and boku and who herself attests it to manga, two out of nine people replied that manga was influential (Misamisa091v 2/10/2009).