Nation-specific festivals such as the Brazilian Festival, Cambodian Festival, and Taiwan Festival in Tokyo manifest various attempts to bring a nation or its culture to another location. At these festivals, which are mostly... [ view full abstract ]
Nation-specific festivals such as the Brazilian Festival, Cambodian Festival, and Taiwan Festival in Tokyo manifest various attempts to bring a nation or its culture to another location. At these festivals, which are mostly held in public parks, agricultural and artificial products of the country of focus are delivered to the festival venue. Not only the products are delivered, but also the discourses of introduction and promotion are generated and presented alongside the products. These discourses are presented in different modes and formats. Oral presentation includes shop staff repeatedly calling out short phrases, providing detailed explanations, and extending invitations to test the products. Written presentation includes advertising phrases on billboards, leaflets or pamphlets with detailed explanations, and lengthier information on the Internet. These practices are done in multiple languages.
This paper explores the discourse practices and strategies when people deliver products from a different country. Data were collected through ethnographic fieldwork at more than 20 nation-specific festivals in Tokyo. The festival sphere is so complex and dynamic that various things happen simultaneously. As the author studied the stage speeches and performances elsewhere, this paper focuses on the ways in which physical products were introduced. The data were analyzed in the framework of geosemiotics (Scollon & Scollon 2003), which includes visual semiotics (Kress and van Leeuwen 2001). Interestingly, people sometimes use similar strategies when delivering different things from different places. This commonality may reflect a people’s way of perceiving nations, at least in Japan or more generally.
References:
Scollon, R. & Scollon, S. W. (2003) Discourses in place: Language in the material world. London: Routeledge.
Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T. (2001) Multimodal discourse: The modes and media of contemporary communication.. London: Bloomsbury Academic
