Hello, everyone!
As part of this week's Katakana project, Japanese students are supposed to write a little bit about how katakana is used in different sorts of situations. So, for my analysis draft, I found two instances of katakana usage that really caught my eyes.
The first is from a McDonald's campaign.
Humbly borrowed from tofugu.com at:
http://www.tofugu.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/01_imlovinit.jpg.
Disturbing image of Ronald McDonald aside, the well-known English slogan for McDonald's, which is "I'm Loving It," is written in katakana on the right. These are clearly loanwords that come directly from another language, and the purpose of subscribing these particular words in katakana was so that Japanese speakers would be able to understand.
But I cannot help but wonder - do they actually understand? These three words, when spoken, are actually still just English words. Even if they are in katakana, would a Japanese speaker who knows no English and does not recognize the slogan be able to understand what he or she has read? In such a case, the katakana would have no more meaning to the readers than if someone had written "I'm Loving It" in English from the start.
I also found this amusing sample of Japanese onomatopoeia.
Humbly borrowed from bushtalk.blogspot.com at:
http://www.tjf.or.jp/eng/content/japaneseculture/images/tb_no13/t13_28.gif
Onomatopoeia are used to, basically, portray 'sound effects.' So to write onomatopoeias in katakana is doubly effective, because the reader then sounds out the katakana and can hear or feel the sound that the onomatopoeia is intended to represent.
Both anime and manga tend to use katakana-written onomatopoeias very liberally, and I've noticed that the way the katakana are presented can help with conveying the onomatopoeia's intended sound. For instance, pikapika for 'shine' or 'brightness' may be written in small, bubbly letters, while nyanya for a cat may be written in a long, curling line. The extra aesthetics help get the point across.
The above examples are just two instances in which katakana are used in the Japanese writing system, but there are, of course, far more. The different applications, and methods of application, are so wide, and so varied, that even native Japanese speakers seem to have trouble capturing the essence of katakana usage easily in a simple one-sentence definition.
Textbooks have tried to do so, but their answers seem to be vague, and each textbook may place more importance on one function of katakana than another. But, typically, the textbooks divide katakana usage into three categories: for loanwords, for onomatopoeia, and for emphasis. This categorization covers a very large range of possible usage of katakana in the simplest way; no doubt, that is why the textbooks classify them so.
As textbooks, perhaps that is the best that they can do in describing katakana, by speaking of them in such a vague, simple way. But, from my analysis, it seems that katakana has far more meaning as a complex part of Japanese culture - something that textbooks would no doubt have trouble to truly explain.