2012-05-18, 04:22 | Link #61 | |||||
Romanticist
Join Date: Aug 2009
Age: 33
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I don't pay attention to statements as to "how language ought to be used". I don't believe in a metaphysical standard as to how language should be. I don't believe that language should be stagnant. And most of all, I don't believe in imposing your own language game onto anyone else's. The development of language, for me, can be likened to natural selection, as outdated and obsolete words and meanings are discarded in favor of more appropriate ones relative to the given context. Quote:
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I can name at least one currently used language that adopts words from English, Spanish, Japanese, and Chinese while indigenizing the meanings for the culture's context. Quote:
One of the main assumptions I made in my arguments is that the use of the term, "shounen", as a genre is widely practiced within the English-speaking anime community. If you can indeed confirm that such is not the case, then I don't mind folding. Or maybe you're saying the opposing opinions expressed so far are somehow representative of the entire English-speaking anime community?
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Last edited by Qilin; 2012-05-18 at 04:35. |
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2012-05-18, 05:24 | Link #62 | |
Me at work
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Of course there are others like myanimelist and baka-updates that do list shonen (and any other demographics as well) as genres,I won't deny that but to me there is no consensus yet.
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2012-05-18, 05:47 | Link #63 | |
Romanticist
Join Date: Aug 2009
Age: 33
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Remember that language and the words that comprise it are merely mediums for the purpose of communication. From a pragmatic point of view, it is more efficient to make use of terms with meanings that are shared by more people within the group in which it will be used. Again, this all hinges on the assumption that the ones who refer to "shounen" as a genre comprise the majority (or at least a significant portion) of the English-speaking anime community.
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2012-05-18, 06:01 | Link #64 | |
Knight Errant
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Dublin, Ireland
Age: 35
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For instance, in English, Sombrero means a festive mexican wide brimmed hat, in Spanish it's just a generic hat. Entrée in English means a main course, in French, it's the course preceding the main course (IE appetizer). Baguette in English means a long french style bread, in French it also refers to any long thin object, for instance a magic wand is a "baguette magique". In english Portmanteau means two words being joined together. In French it's a type of coathanger. En English mousse is a type of foamy desert, in French, it's any type of foam. It's not unusual for loanwords to differ from their original, or to refer to a specific subset when the original refered to a generic category. |
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2012-05-18, 08:17 | Link #65 |
Obey the Darkly Cute ...
Author
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: On the whole, I'd rather be in Kyoto ...
Age: 66
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Well, at one endpoint we have "words mean what I want them to mean" blergle minber phit. At the other end we have "its a dead language and we kill anyone who changes a single bit in using it". So we're pushing back and forth on where the line is I suppose.
However, we have a word here that is well-defined within the primary community and misused by another community and there *is* considerable overlap between the two communities thanks to globalization and the internet, not to mention the number of people who speak/read both languages. Being on the same page is a better idea than letting the misuse get out of hand (which frankly, it only seems to be a problem with that subset of the outer community who are fans of the *subset* of what shounen publishers offer). So, basically, when someone asserts "what happened to shounen, it has all these other things in it" they're in some respect trying to remove something that was there in the first place - its essentially like wondering who all these "non red haired non green eyed" people who are claiming to be Irish.
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2012-05-18, 08:26 | Link #66 | |
reading #hikaributts
Join Date: Feb 2009
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As for your examples, there are some flaws. Sombrero might be a originally based off a spanish word but the hat that we are talking about originates from Mexico. So it doesn't matter if it's just any hat in Spain, the hat that we associate with somebrero is based off the version from Mexico. Baguette simply means stick. The bread is called like that because of it's shape, so it's just a name and i would not call it a different meaning. It's the same for croissant though, because that bread has also it's name originated from it's shape. The dessert mousse is simply a name based of the original french word because of it's shape and texture. Those food examples are in my opinion just names rather than words that are misused from their original meaning. edit: Define the majority. I don't think there is enough proof at this moment to call the people who think Shounen is a genre a majority Last edited by hyl; 2012-05-18 at 08:47. |
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2012-05-18, 09:07 | Link #67 | |||
Romanticist
Join Date: Aug 2009
Age: 33
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As a side note, I found this really good article on the descriptivist and prescriptivist paradigms in looking at language. It's a really nice read for anyone interested in the analysis of language.
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Oh sure, there are lots of sentiments that muddle up the whole issue. The whole thing about the ones from whom the term originated from, "respect" for the term's original usage, and such... But really. Words aren't sacred. Asserting that a word means whatever I want it to mean is different from asserting that a word means whatever a group (or at least a large portion of it) intends it to mean when they communicate with one another. If you're talking about nationalities now, there are many different ways of defining someone's "nationality" depending on context. First, there's always taking a genetic perspective (lineage). Then, there's also looking into mannerisms and culture. Then, there's also birth place. Quote:
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Of course, please understand that I hold a very functional view of language in that as long as it serves its purpose (which is to communicate) then there's nothing wrong with using it.
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2012-05-18, 09:15 | Link #68 | ||
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Well, I'm certainly not seeing any consensus here. And given the lack of such consensus, it makes sense to use a term by its most widely accepted original meaning. And here we go back to shounen = a demographic.
If people mean something more specific than that, then simply describe it with a few words or phrases that gets the core idea across. Tempester's "battle manga", "competitive manga", and "shounen battle manga" may not be common phrases, but they're all pretty clear in their meaning. I'm sure we all get what he's referring to with these phrases. There's not much potential for confusion arising from these phrases... unlike using "Shounen" primarily as a genre label. Genre labels are notoriously hard to pin down with specific meanings as it is, so turning a demographic label into a genre label is just asking for problems, imo. We've had lengthy debates on this site over what counts as "Slice of Life" anime, and what counts as "Magical Girl" anime, and both of those tend to have more precise understandings than "Shounen". (By the way, those lengthy debates are precisely why I'm very leery of your preferred approach to language. Your preferred approach to language causes all sorts of practical problems in discussion; problems that likely would be avoided if more people followed Coldlight's preferred approach to language. I tend to lean towards Coldight's preferred approach to language not due to any abstract "metaphysical" reason, but for purely pragmatic and concrete ones.) Quote:
And obviously I'm speaking for myself. I'm expressing my opinion, no different than what you're doing. Quote:
1. It's impossible to prove a negative. This is why the onus of proof is typically on people asserting something in "the positive". 2. Anime News Network isn't exactly small potatoes in the English-speaking anime community. Quite the contrary, in fact. If they're uncomfortable with "Shounen" being used as a genre label, then I think that points to how there's no consensus support for "Shounen" being used that way. Edit: And I see from your most recent posts that you're now moving your goalposts (from "majority" and "consensus" to something less than that). That's simply poor form in a debate, and it certainly doesn't help the credibility of your overall argument.
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Last edited by Triple_R; 2012-05-18 at 09:31. |
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2012-05-18, 09:56 | Link #69 | |||||
Romanticist
Join Date: Aug 2009
Age: 33
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If the above words mean nothing to you, then we have nothing more to talk about. Quote:
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But even if there isn't a consensus, you can't deny that it's still widely used in that manner. Why should there be any reason to stifle its usage in that manner? Can't the two usages coexist with one another? Quote:
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Last edited by Qilin; 2012-05-18 at 10:09. |
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2012-05-18, 10:00 | Link #70 | ||
Knight Errant
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Dublin, Ireland
Age: 35
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In english, there's no point in using shonen in it's original meaning, because we already have a word for that (boy). We don't have a word for the specific japanese genre, however. In fact, the word "anime itself" is just such an example. In Japan, Anime applies to all animation, Japanese or otherwise (EG The Little Mermaid is considered Anime, by the Japanese). In English, the word has taken on a more specific meaning, it's not used to refer to animation in general, but only to Japanese animation in particular. In fact, in Japan, when they want to refer to Japanese animation, they often use words like "Japanimation" I'm not coming down on either side of this terminology debate, but that the Japanese use the word one way is not particularly relevant, because most if not all loan words end out being used in a manner very different from the original language. If you flip it around, the Japanese often use English words in circumstances that would not be correct in English. For instance a lot of these. Examples: Daburu, a type of jacket, from english Double (a double breasted jacket). The etymology makes sense, but in English we mean multiply by 2. Very confusing. Fashonherruse (fashion health), a type of brothel. Furonto (Front): Reception Desk (IE "front desk") Jusu (juice): Soda or Energy Drinks (regardless of if it contains any actual juice) Manshon (Mansion): A modern concrete apartment/condo , NOT a very very large house. Rodosho (roadshow): Premiere, particularly of Films. Vaikingu (Viking): A Buffet. Compared to some of those, appropriating Shonen to use as a word for a genre of manga/anime is quite mild. |
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2012-05-18, 10:30 | Link #71 | ||||||
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Equality for the sexes and personally, if it goes down to that, I'd rather watch five cute girls being silly, rather than a bunch of macho dudes sillier
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1992 -> 1998 -> 2004 -> 2011 Personally I don't think the newest ones have more revealing outfits, nor that the shows have become worse... unless one makes ecchi-hating reviews his new bible/koran/kapital/kaempf/etc. Quote:
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Also hentai does not refer to a demographic, like R-18, 18+, otona, etc. To get the demographic tag you need to graphically depict coital intercourse and reproductive organs while censoring them, which for some mystifying reason is considered perverted, therefore it usually gets the hentai tag, but fundamentally they refer to different things. Of course you can still show sex, gore, humiliation, torture, and all these nice stuff, and evade the dreaded R-18 tag by hiding (not censoring) reproductive organs, aka tastefulness Quote:
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2012-05-18, 10:36 | Link #72 | |
Sayaka★Magica
Join Date: Sep 2010
Location: Under the piercing blue sky
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Spoiler for proof:
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2012-05-18, 15:12 | Link #74 | |
reading #hikaributts
Join Date: Feb 2009
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And the problem with that is? A story about a relation about 2 females targeted for young adult males doesn't seem odd to me. |
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2012-05-18, 16:02 | Link #75 | ||
Sekiroad-Idols Sing Twice
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I do admit that I find this problem rather silly considering it could be avoided if people didn't use Shōnen as a genre in the first place but at this point the damage might already be done. For every person I've seen point out Shōnen being a demographic there must have been at least two other people who referred to the term as a genre. This leads us back to Qilins' point of semantic shift which I'm having trouble disagreeing with, no matter how stupid I found the process itself, because of what has happened to the word Shōnen over the years.
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2012-05-18, 17:18 | Link #76 | ||
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If we stubbornly insist on using "Shonen" as a genre label instead of a demographic indicator it'll just cause more problems like the one that totoum ran into (shounen titles mistakenly getting classified under shoujo). It also runs the risk of creating added confusion/division within the worldwide anime fan community, which is a problem in the modern age with the increasingly global community that you can find on the internet. There is no good reason why people can't simply stop using "Shonen" as a genre label and accept the term as the Japanese do - As a demographic label. That would be the best outcome here, imo. Quote:
I've seen too many popular anime fan-terms become almost unusable due to an overabundance of term drift. "Slice of Life" is one such term, where it's now almost impossible for most anime fans to agree on if a show is "Slice of Life" or not. "Moe" is another term where confusion often abounds when many anime fans talk about it together. Moe fans and moe critics aren't even using the same basic definition for the word, making it very hard for the those two sides to have a serious, productive discussion over moe, which in turn exacerbates already existing divisions within the anime fan community. With this in mind, I'm very much inclined to agree with Coldlight's preferred approach to language, as it would serve to prevent counterproductive term drift. Now it's fine if word meanings change overtime if it's done in an organic and pragmatic way. In other words, if it happens due to how an older word/definition really is becoming obsolete/out-of-date (due to being overly vague, say) and hence it's good for that word to be re-defined to be of greater practical use in the modern era. A good example of this is the word "Fantasy". At one time, it meant basically everything that wasn't firmly grounded in realism. At one time, that was fine, because there had yet to be a huge explosion in Sci-Fi works and Tolkien-style Fantasy works. But after that explosion, the original meaning for "Fantasy" was too broad to be of practical classification value any more, so most people today now use "Fantasy" to denote Tolkien-style Fantasy works. And simply use Sci-Fi for "Sci-Fi" (almost nobody today would list Star Trek under the Fantasy genre). So here's a case where a word evolved into a more practical and precise meaning, and I'm supportive of that. But there's nothing wrong or imprecise with "shounen" being used as a demographic indicator. Indeed, without "shounen" being used that way, what becomes of "seinen" and "josei"? Are we going to turn them into genres too? Also, a lot of the term drift I see in the anime fandom is the exact opposite of what happened with the term "Fantasy". With a lot of anime fandom terms, a popular term starts off nice and practical and precise, and then for whatever reason, some people want to read new and different meanings into it, causing it to drift to something overly broad and nebulous. Until, in some cases, you get to the point where "Slice of Life" is now at. This sort of thing really is getting out of hand, imo. At some point, the online anime fandom needs to take a deep breath, stand back, and ask itself "Do we want the anime fan-term lexicon to be practical and useful, or don't we? If we want it to be practical and useful, then sometimes we simply can't go along with term drift that can only add unwanted confusion and make words increasingly impractical/vague". So instead of taking shounen, and creating a genre out of it, just use a term like "Battle Manga/Shounen". In other words, add a basic qualifier to "Shounen". That's a much neater and tidier approach than having Japanese anime fans recognize "Shounen" as one thing, and non-Japanese anime fans recognizing it as something else, imo.
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Last edited by Triple_R; 2012-05-19 at 00:00. |
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2012-05-18, 18:54 | Link #77 |
Romanticist
Join Date: Aug 2009
Age: 33
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The problem with accepting that language changes over time while asserting that some changes are good and others are bad is that it usually devolves into an arbitrary mess.
For example, what constitutes an inorganic change in language? Perhaps it comes as a result of "misusing" a particular term? But then, we would be able to label any deviation from a word's original meaning as a "misuse" of the term by that standard. Hence, it comes down to judging which types of "misuse" are more tolerable than others. After that, it all falls down to subjective standards to determine "correct" from "incorrect". After that, there's the whole "precision of meaning" vs. "frequency of usage" debate concerning which would be a better way of determining words to be used. It could go one way or the other, but it mostly depends on which paradigm you fall into in the great language debate.
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2012-05-18, 19:07 | Link #78 |
Banned
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Confusing, misunderstanding and misusing a term is not evolving a languages in any way, and should be corrected. Some terms are practically impossible to define out of context... e.g. yuri, shounen ai as demographics make perfect sense, when one understands that they are referring to magazines' demographics. Same problem exists in localizations (not limited of course to anime) which many times corrupt the original work in order to appeal to a wider audience too unlearned and lazy that is practicing confusion, misunderstanding and misuse (e.g. hentai -> H -> ecchi that Totoum already brought up for an japanese contribution to the corruption of their own language).
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2012-05-18, 19:10 | Link #79 | |
Romanticist
Join Date: Aug 2009
Age: 33
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2012-05-18, 19:24 | Link #80 |
reading #hikaributts
Join Date: Feb 2009
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Ok, what has the evolution of language to do with this subject? Are you really implying that the misusage of the original usage of "shounen" is related to the cultural evolution in linguistics? You even have said it yourself that the "majority" that you were referring was just an assumption.
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