East Asian Linguistics Workshop: "Researching Vulgarity in Japan(ese)—Temee, kitanee kotobazukai o kenkyū shiyagatte" by Dr. Wes Robertson
East Asian Linguistics Workshop (EALW)—Dr. Wes Robertson (Senior Lecturer in Japanese Studies, Macquarie University, Australia)"Researching Vulgarity in Japan(ese): Temee, kitanee kotobazukai o kenkyū shiyagatte"
We would like to warmly invite you to join us for an upcoming talk by Wes Robertson (Chair of the Discipline of Global Cultures & Languages; Senior Lecturer in Japanese Studies, Macquarie University, Australia) entitled "Researching Vulgarity in Japan(ese): Temee, kitanee kotobazukai o kenkyū shiyagatte" as part of the East Asian Linguistics Workshop series sponsored by the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures. The event will be held on Tuesday, February 17, 4:30-6:00PM (Pacific, USA) on Zoom.
If you are interested in this talk, please complete this Google Form, or email me at harumi56 [at] stanford.edu (harumi56[at]stanford[dot]edu), to sign up by 11:59pm (Pacific) on Monday, February 16. Registered participants will receive a Zoom link on the morning of the talk.
Below, please find more details of Dr. Robertson's talk, including the abstract and his bio. Further, please also mark your calendars for our next event, Student Talks and Data-Sharing Workshop #2, on Wednesday, March 4, 4:30-6pm in Knight Building Room 102!
Abstract
Researching Vulgarity in Japan(ese): Temee, kitanee kotobazukai o kenkyū shiyagatte
Research on vulgarity in non-Western contexts has long been limited by both global academic hesitancy to study “bad language” and discourse positioning Asian cultures as unfalteringly polite. This issue affects not just comparative analysis, but also global understanding of what fundamentally makes language vulgar or offensive. To help address this issue, this presentation places four studies on Japanese vulgarity in dialogue – ranging from work on vulgarity transition to reception and metalinguistic discourse – examining not only what language features are considered vulgar, but also why, and what the Japanese context can tell us about vulgarity itself.
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Dr. Wes Robertson is a Japanese sociolinguist, and Chair of Global Cultures & Languages at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. His research focuses on Japanese sociolinguistics, with a particular focus on language use in media, writing-restricted forms of variation like script play, and the language patterns of translocal subcultures. His first book Scripting Japan, was published by Routledge in 2020, and his second, Peripheral Linguistic Brutality, was published by University of Hawai'i Press in 2025. He also regularly analyzes Japanese language play on his blog, YouTube, and TikTok, all under the handle @ScriptingJapan.
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The East Asian Linguistics Workshop is sponsored by the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures. The workshop's purpose is to promote intra- and inter-departmental communication among faculty, graduate students, and visiting scholars who share research and teaching interest in East Asia in the Stanford Community. The EAL Workshop provides a forum for all who are interested in studies of language and linguistics relevant to the languages of East Asia and their users. It welcomes intellectual contributions from researchers, professionals and students (graduate and undergraduate) in the form of research presentations and general discussions during the workshop. There are invited speakers, external and internal to the Stanford/EALC community. In addition, the members of the EALC/EAS/LC communities are strongly encouraged to volunteer to present their completed or in-progress work as part of a collaborative effort to broaden and deepen our knowledge about multifaceted aspects of East Asian languages. This workshop is coordinated by graduate students and supervised by a faculty member. These workshops take place once a month; upcoming workshops can be found on our Events page, beginning with "East Asian Linguistics Workshop: ..." If you might not be able to attend this session but have suggestions you would like to make for future workshop activities, please feel free to email your ideas to our 2025-26 faculty sponsor, Prof. Chao Fen Sun (cfsun [at] stanford.edu (cfsun[at]stanford[dot]edu)), and our graduate student coordinators, Harumi Maeda (harumi56 [at] stanford.edu (harumi56[at]stanford[dot]edu)) and Taiga Ikedo (ikedot [at] stanford.edu (ikedot[at]stanford[dot]edu)).
For those interested, you may also request to join our mailing list so that you are aware of any upcoming events. Link to mailing list for upcoming events.