English in Japanese popular culture and J-Pop music

: This study of the role of English within Japanese popular culture, and especially within Japanese popular music, suggests that attitudes toward the Japanese language may be changing. Numerous scholars maintain that the Japanese conflation of race with language establishes patterns of racial discrimination in which Japanese prefer not to use the Japanese language for inter‐ethnic communication. Likewise, the Japanese language is rarely treated as a language of broader communication (i.e., global communication) by the Japanese. However, the recent development of the “language entertainment” genre of broadcast television actively challenges these stereotypes of Japanese ethnolinguistic identity. Furthermore, language mixing within Japanese popular music, especially mixing that results in “code ambiguation,” attempts to redefine ethnic identity by obscuring what language is used in pop music. These phenomena are interpreted according to possible ongoing changes of Japanese ethnolinguistic identity.