Wesley C Robertson
Biographic Data
| ID | 744425 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Wesley C Robertson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Wesley C |
| FAMILY NAME | Robertson |
| SIGNATURE | ROBERTSON W C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Macquarie University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3136-3985 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 31 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Something’s Got to Go: Contrasting Ideologies of Masculinity in Discourse around Men’s Intimate Hair Removal in Japan
The current study examines the mobilisation of social ideologies surrounding men’s gendered behaviour within discourse around men’s intimate hair removal in Japan (known as VIO datsumō ), contrasting the language of advertisements promoting a new concept of kaigo datsumō (hair removal for assisting late-in-life caregivers) to men against online discussions of men’s VIO datsumō on the popular Japanese forum Girls Channel. While both data sets show…
Yokomoji arerugī: Katakana and katakana-go as loci for linguistic ideologies and conflict in contemporary Japan
The beginning of despair: Aggressive Retsuko and the Sanrioization of women’s ‘transgressive rage
In 2016, Sanrio debuted a series of shorts featuring Retsuko, a cute lesser panda with a penchant for bursts of death-metal infused violent rage.The shorts, eventually transformed into a full show on Netflix, were a comedic look at Retsuko's anger at unfair treatment in the Japanese workplace, casting a critical eye on issues of sexism, harassment, and overwork.But while Retsuko has been explicitly positioned as counter cultural, what does it mea…
Kvetching abovt kvlt: Conflicting social uses of the index ‘kvlt’ in online metal spaces
The word ‘kvlt’, generally pronounced as ‘cult’, is a well-recognized linguistic feature of (black) metal discourse. To date, over a dozen academic studies have included reference to the term, and all are united in sharing a broad consensus that ‘kvlt’ serves as a marker of ‘black-metal-ness’ or black metal aesthetics. The common recognition of ‘kvlt’ in both metal scenes and academic studies belies a lack of actual investigation of how the word …
An annotated interview with Beastwars: Language, identity and place in New Zealand metal
In 2021, we interviewed Matt Hyde of Wellington’s Beastwars for our ethnographic podcast Lingua Brutallica as part of a project exploring language in metal scenes outside of America and Europe. In this annotated interview, we edit, discuss and frame the content of the interview in relation to how Hyde’s comments shed light on important conflicts between personal, local and global understandings of what makes ‘metal’ lyrics and music. The intervie…
‘Chinese ideographs belong to a childhood age […] but Japan has now become a man’: Graphic ideologies and language reform in The Japan Times
This study is a diachronic investigation into how coverage of writing reform in The Japan Times used, manipulated, and discarded graphic language ideologies between 1897 and 1981. Through this novel data set and analytical focus, the study expands on extant understandings of Japanese debates over the script, utilizing a newspaper known for hosting voices and concerns absent in many other Japanese presses to evidence how ideologies about language …
Introduction to Special Issue on Writing-Restricted Variation in Japanese
Ojisan gokko shiyo! [Let’s pretend to be old men!]’: Contested Graphic Ideologies in Japanese Online Language Play
This article examines how social beliefs about language use and users influence writing-restricted variation in contemporary Japan by analyzing ojisan gokko (‘impersonating middle-aged men’), a practice where young Japanese women playfully message each other as though they were lecherous men. While the production of a stylized ojisan voice during ojisan gokko involves many traditional Japanese indexes (markers) of ‘male’ language, it also relies …
Register phenomena as international news: Risk, register, and translation in Japanese coverage of quotes from the 2020 US presidential debate
As the boundaries between national and international news continue to blur, news translation has become an important site for examining how issues of language, culture, and risk influence how events are framed as they cross sociocultural and linguistic barriers. The current study contributes to the growing research in this area via showing how attention to sociolinguistic features like registers, indexes, and other markers of social meaning can f…
Superdiversity and translocal brutality in Asian extreme metal lyrics
Why can’t I speak in kanji: Indexing social identities through marked script use in Japanese manga
Unspeakable puns: Kanji-dependent wordplay as a localization strategy in Japanese
This study examines the multifaceted use of kanji-play in the Japanese localization of the online card game Hearthstone. The kanji script's ability to represent sound and meaning has resulted in a long history of language play within Japan, but its use as a method of localizing humor into Japanese has seen little attention. As kanji-play is inherently absent in English, its use in localization tempts description as a way of compensating for untra…
He's more katakana than kanji: Indexing identity and self‐presentation through script selection in Japanese manga (comics)
This paper examines the role of script selection in indexing identities and styles of self‐presentation within a Japanese manga (comic). By cataloguing where the kanji, hiragana, and katakana scripts are used to represent first person pronouns, I establish the contexts where each script/pronoun combination serves as a locally normative representation. These norms are compared against non‐normative representations to gain insight into the local me…
Orthography, Foreigners, and Fluency: Indexicality and Script Selection in Japanese Manga
Although writing conventions in Japanese influence the choice of script on most occasions, non-standard selections of orthography have been noted throughout the history of the written language. Despite this, empirical study has only provided perfunctory explanations of this phenomenon. What little inquiry exists often ignores context, and has focused almost entirely on the use of katakana. This study attempts to fix some of these issues and furth…
He's more katakana than kanji: Indexing identity and self‐presentation through script selection in Japanese manga (comics)
This paper examines the role of script selection in indexing identities and styles of self‐presentation within a Japanese manga (comic). By cataloguing where the kanji, hiragana, and katakana scripts are used to represent first person pronouns, I establish the contexts where each script/pronoun combination serves as a locally normative representation. These norms are compared against non‐normative representations to gain insight into the local me…
Orthography, Foreigners, and Fluency: Indexicality and Script Selection in Japanese Manga
Although writing conventions in Japanese influence the choice of script on most occasions, non-standard selections of orthography have been noted throughout the history of the written language. Despite this, empirical study has only provided perfunctory explanations of this phenomenon. What little inquiry exists often ignores context, and has focused almost entirely on the use of katakana. This study attempts to fix some of these issues and furth…
Superdiversity and translocal brutality in Asian extreme metal lyrics
Ojisan gokko shiyo! [Let’s pretend to be old men!]’: Contested Graphic Ideologies in Japanese Online Language Play
This article examines how social beliefs about language use and users influence writing-restricted variation in contemporary Japan by analyzing ojisan gokko (‘impersonating middle-aged men’), a practice where young Japanese women playfully message each other as though they were lecherous men. While the production of a stylized ojisan voice during ojisan gokko involves many traditional Japanese indexes (markers) of ‘male’ language, it also relies …
Unspeakable puns: Kanji-dependent wordplay as a localization strategy in Japanese
This study examines the multifaceted use of kanji-play in the Japanese localization of the online card game Hearthstone. The kanji script's ability to represent sound and meaning has resulted in a long history of language play within Japan, but its use as a method of localizing humor into Japanese has seen little attention. As kanji-play is inherently absent in English, its use in localization tempts description as a way of compensating for untra…
Orthography, Foreigners, and Fluency: Indexicality and Script Selection in Japanese Manga
Although writing conventions in Japanese influence the choice of script on most occasions, non-standard selections of orthography have been noted throughout the history of the written language. Despite this, empirical study has only provided perfunctory explanations of this phenomenon. What little inquiry exists often ignores context, and has focused almost entirely on the use of katakana. This study attempts to fix some of these issues and furth…
He's more katakana than kanji: Indexing identity and self‐presentation through script selection in Japanese manga (comics)
This paper examines the role of script selection in indexing identities and styles of self‐presentation within a Japanese manga (comic). By cataloguing where the kanji, hiragana, and katakana scripts are used to represent first person pronouns, I establish the contexts where each script/pronoun combination serves as a locally normative representation. These norms are compared against non‐normative representations to gain insight into the local me…
Unspeakable puns: Kanji-dependent wordplay as a localization strategy in Japanese
This study examines the multifaceted use of kanji-play in the Japanese localization of the online card game Hearthstone. The kanji script's ability to represent sound and meaning has resulted in a long history of language play within Japan, but its use as a method of localizing humor into Japanese has seen little attention. As kanji-play is inherently absent in English, its use in localization tempts description as a way of compensating for untra…
Why can’t I speak in kanji: Indexing social identities through marked script use in Japanese manga
Register phenomena as international news: Risk, register, and translation in Japanese coverage of quotes from the 2020 US presidential debate
As the boundaries between national and international news continue to blur, news translation has become an important site for examining how issues of language, culture, and risk influence how events are framed as they cross sociocultural and linguistic barriers. The current study contributes to the growing research in this area via showing how attention to sociolinguistic features like registers, indexes, and other markers of social meaning can f…
Superdiversity and translocal brutality in Asian extreme metal lyrics
‘Chinese ideographs belong to a childhood age […] but Japan has now become a man’: Graphic ideologies and language reform in The Japan Times
This study is a diachronic investigation into how coverage of writing reform in The Japan Times used, manipulated, and discarded graphic language ideologies between 1897 and 1981. Through this novel data set and analytical focus, the study expands on extant understandings of Japanese debates over the script, utilizing a newspaper known for hosting voices and concerns absent in many other Japanese presses to evidence how ideologies about language …
Introduction to Special Issue on Writing-Restricted Variation in Japanese
Ojisan gokko shiyo! [Let’s pretend to be old men!]’: Contested Graphic Ideologies in Japanese Online Language Play
This article examines how social beliefs about language use and users influence writing-restricted variation in contemporary Japan by analyzing ojisan gokko (‘impersonating middle-aged men’), a practice where young Japanese women playfully message each other as though they were lecherous men. While the production of a stylized ojisan voice during ojisan gokko involves many traditional Japanese indexes (markers) of ‘male’ language, it also relies …
Kvetching abovt kvlt: Conflicting social uses of the index ‘kvlt’ in online metal spaces
The word ‘kvlt’, generally pronounced as ‘cult’, is a well-recognized linguistic feature of (black) metal discourse. To date, over a dozen academic studies have included reference to the term, and all are united in sharing a broad consensus that ‘kvlt’ serves as a marker of ‘black-metal-ness’ or black metal aesthetics. The common recognition of ‘kvlt’ in both metal scenes and academic studies belies a lack of actual investigation of how the word …
An annotated interview with Beastwars: Language, identity and place in New Zealand metal
In 2021, we interviewed Matt Hyde of Wellington’s Beastwars for our ethnographic podcast Lingua Brutallica as part of a project exploring language in metal scenes outside of America and Europe. In this annotated interview, we edit, discuss and frame the content of the interview in relation to how Hyde’s comments shed light on important conflicts between personal, local and global understandings of what makes ‘metal’ lyrics and music. The intervie…
The beginning of despair: Aggressive Retsuko and the Sanrioization of women’s ‘transgressive rage
In 2016, Sanrio debuted a series of shorts featuring Retsuko, a cute lesser panda with a penchant for bursts of death-metal infused violent rage.The shorts, eventually transformed into a full show on Netflix, were a comedic look at Retsuko's anger at unfair treatment in the Japanese workplace, casting a critical eye on issues of sexism, harassment, and overwork.But while Retsuko has been explicitly positioned as counter cultural, what does it mea…
Something’s Got to Go: Contrasting Ideologies of Masculinity in Discourse around Men’s Intimate Hair Removal in Japan
The current study examines the mobilisation of social ideologies surrounding men’s gendered behaviour within discourse around men’s intimate hair removal in Japan (known as VIO datsumō ), contrasting the language of advertisements promoting a new concept of kaigo datsumō (hair removal for assisting late-in-life caregivers) to men against online discussions of men’s VIO datsumō on the popular Japanese forum Girls Channel. While both data sets show…
Yokomoji arerugī: Katakana and katakana-go as loci for linguistic ideologies and conflict in contemporary Japan
Linguistics (11 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies (7 works) · Multilingual Education and Policy (7 works) · Gender Studies in Language (6 works) · History (6 works) · Art (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works)