THE PROBLEM OF CLASSIFICATION OF JAPANESE MASS CULTURE GENRES IN THE CONTEXT OF LINGUISTIC RESEARCH

Abstract

The purpose of the paper is to outline the boundaries of mass cultural material, on the basis of which it is expedient to carry out linguistic research and describe the language of mass culture as a phenomenon that is opposed to the literary language. For this purpose, the classifications of mass culture genres proposed by Ukrainian and Japanese researchers were considered, and it was noted that they often avoid specifying a complete list of mass culture genres, citing only some of the most typical ones, which does not contribute to a full description of the phenomenon of mass culture and its varieties. In individual works, there are attempts to present the broadest and most comprehensive classification of mass culture genres, which, however, does not add clarity to this problem, since the genres of mass culture sometimes include phenomena that are quite difficult to interpret as mass cultural ones (for example, crime or death). In such comprehensive, but ambiguous classifications, the influence of the Frankfurt school of mass culture research is clearly visible, within which a criticism of culture industries was developed and the main directions of these were defined, and the concept of mass culture was correlated with the leisure industry. According to the logic of the Frankfurt School, which is supported by both Ukrainian and Japanese researchers, the genres of mass culture also include school and science, which from the point of view of the study of the language of mass culture also appears to be a wrong approach, since both school and science use literary language, unlike from such obvious mass culture genres as entertainment TV shows or fashion magazines. On the basis of a critical analysis of a number of classifications of mass culture genres, a list of mass cultural genres of Japan that has a linguistic expression, and therefore can serve as sufficient representative material for future Japanese linguistic research, is selected as follows: movies, television series, anime, popular songs, advertising, manga, fashion magazines, computer and video games, entertainment TV shows, linguistic landscape of the city.