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The Use Of Gendered Language In Anime And Pop Culture

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Introduction
Anime, as a type of animation originated from Japan and expanded to the whole world, offers audience ranging from elementary students to adults with high quality pictures, detailed plots, complicated worldview settings and complete character designs. Unlike cartoon that is often related to colorful animals, simple plots and low frame rates, anime is not exclusively for children. It contains as many genres as movie has, and some of the anime are produced with the help of 3D computer graphics to express highly accurate and realistic movements. The estimate market size of anime hit 1.825 trillion yen (16.7 billion USD) in 2016, according to The Association of Japanese Animations (AJA). It is such an influential type of online entertainment with new technology and relatively younger audience that it would be a perfect media to gaze into how language used in anime interacts with traditional Japanese culture and how it reflects current gender relationships and gender stereotypes in pop culture during modern days. This article will examine the use of tentative language (hedges, intensifiers, tag questions) in same-gender anime and mixed-gender anime to determine the influence of gender group on tentative speech and possible patterns for how male and female characters are portrayed in anime during interactions based on different gender settings.
No research so far has been conducted on gendered language use in Japanese anime, but the difference between male and
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