Academic Archives of Yamaguchi Prefectural University Volume 17 Issue 第１部
published_at 2024-03-31
When writing Japanese characters, there is often a debate over the choice of characters among the three types: kanji, hiragana, and katakana. Particularly, for formal nouns with a vague substantive meaning, writing them in hiragana is recommended. However, in recent years, there has been a noticeable increase in instances where formal nouns are expressed in kanji. The purpose of this paper is to use the Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese (BCCWJ) to examine scenarios in which kanji characters are chosen for the representation of "koto"(thing), contrary to the recommended hiragana usage in the case of formal nouns. The study also delves into the biased character choices observed in various fields when "formal nouns" are written in kanji.