Abstract:
However, the use of English is not restricted to music. Magazines and fashion brands
which promote this movement use English as well, in order to get the attention of
young Japanese readers.
Why does a band from a non-English-speaking country choose this language in this
movement? Japan is a monolingual country, and even though English is taught in
middle and high school, it is not used in daily life, as in other countries such as India,
Singapore, Malawi, among others. As a result, English becomes an advertising
strategy for several products and media; therefore Visual Kei bands could also think
their music will be heard by more Japanese people because of the use of this “exotic”
language.
The use of English in this movement has interesting features. Nevertheless, these have
never been described nor analyzed before; there are no published studies about this
topic. It is very important to ask ourselves why there are no analyses concerning the
use of English in the Visual Kei Movement. And, why use English? English is a
global language and because of different historical and political...
