Language and Script Life in Japan

One characteristic of Japanese linguistics is its pronounced focus on empirical data. Of special interest in this respect has been research on the so-called language life (gengo seikatsu), language as it is used in everyday life. This strand of research has been developed particularly by the National Institute for Japanese Language (Kokuritsu kokugo kenkyūjo), which since its foundation in 1948 has done a variety of large-scale empirical surveys about the Japanese language life. In most of these cases, however, spoken language was in the centre of interest. The workshop, which was organized in cooperation with the National Institute for Japanese Language, dealt with methods for the empirical investigation of written language in everyday usage. The presentations were given in Japanese.