Katakana Analysis Draft

One of the remnants of my childhood in Japan is my collection of まんが. My favorite series is called イマドキ！by ゆうわたせ. In it there are some unusual uses of katakana: 「ゴメンなさい　ひと　いるとおもわなくてー」and 「あなたもココのせいと？」and 「マズイよね」. These are all instances where words normally written in hiragana are for some reason in katakana. In order to understand why they are written differently, I think it is important to consider the context of these words. The first sentence roughly translates into "I'm sorry, I didn't think there was a person here," and is said after a girl called やまざきたんぽぽ nearly crashes into a boy named くぎょうこうき while on her bike. Then こうき asks "You're a pupil here?", which is the second sentence, when he finds out unexpectedly that たんぽぽ is a new student at his school. Finally, the last phrase means "It's bad, isn't it" and たんぽぽ says it after she has had a terrible day. In all of these cases, the katakana is used to emphasize the word, almost like using capital letters. For example, instead of "sorry" たんぽぽ says "SORRY" because she nearly hit こうき. Another similar interpretation is that katakana is used much like bold and italics, according to a book called "Mangajin's Basic Japanese through Comics." So the second sentence can be read as "You go to school here?" and the third sentence "It's bad, isn't it." I think because katakana is more angular than hiragana it is better suited for emphasizing certain words, and whenever we look at a word that isn't written in the conventional way we pay extra attention to it. Furthermore, after talking with my parents and family friends who have lived in Japan for a number of years, I've discovered that katakana can be a sort of slang. Especially in manga, which is generally geared toward young people, writing regular words in katakana can be regarded as somewhat rebellious of conventions. Most Japanese textbooks will say that katakana is used mainly for borrowed words from foreign languages, but as we can see here, it can also be used for Japanese words as well. By looking at popular culture, like manga, we can see that Japanese people have developed another use for katakana so that it places emphasis on certain words and that it might be a form of slang for young people.