From «Obstacle» to «Opportunity»? Trends in the Nomination of People with Disabilities in the Japanese Language

Abstract

The article discusses the issue of referring to people with disabilities in the contemporary Japanese language. There has been little research on the problems of labelling vulnerable population groups, in particular, concerning about people with disabilities in the Japanese language in the national and Western scientific literature. However, since Japan’s state policy is aimed at the adaptation and inclusion of people with disabilities in public life, the language policy of Japan in this field could be useful for other countries. The main data for the study was taken from the BCCWJ (Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese) corpus of National Institute of Japanese Language and Linguistics and the official websites of the organisations dealing with the problems of people with disabilities. The author examines language models of nomination formation, analyses different interpretations and uses of the most frequently used word «sho:gaisha». The author concludes that there is a certain influence of political correctness in the contemporary Japanese language. However, the model of nomination in which disability acts as a marker of the identity is prevailing.

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