In 2016, the first anti-hate speech law in Japan was introduced against the backdrop of verbal attacks on ethnic Koreans who were targeted with particular force by radical right organizations in the early 21st century. We argue that while the role of social media in the proliferation of hate speech in Japan has received considerable attention, the coverage of hate speech and related issues in mainstream news media has not been sufficiently studied. This article offers an interdisciplinary analysis, grounded in media studies and in linguistics, of the positions of five national newspapers in public discourse about hate speech, discussed as a current issue in Japan from 2016 until mid-2018. We combine agenda-setting theory with discourse analysis of factual reporting in order to evaluate the Japanese media landscape, which, when scrutinized through the lens of the hate speech issue, reveals ideological polarization.

The present paper discusses the problem of deriving quotational expressions (QEs) – a relatively unexplored field in the generative tradition – in the context of phase theory (PT). QEs are taken to be built within Narrow Syntax. While this fact is empirically well-motivated, it turns out to be conceptually problematic for cyclic derivations driven by feature makeup. Empirical data show that QEs represent a unique mixture of conflicting properties. On the one hand, they must be interpretable as both atomic and not. This extends to two readings of the embedding of enquotation, which are argued to follow from recursive and purely iterative, non-recursive interpretation. On the other hand, having no limits in length and scope, QEs are more challenging for PT than other non-compositional chunks. I argue that these effects unearth an important conceptual contrast. While they pose certain problems for the Minimalist approach, they naturally follow from the account of Narrow Syntax proposed by Jan-Wouter Zwart. In this regard the gap in applicability of each account to the discussed phenomenon sheds new light on the role of features in PT.

The aim of this article is to propose a formal semantic account of scare quotation (SQ). I present data showing that SQ, though flexible, is subject to regular and so far largely unnoticed limitations following from the infelicitous use of irony as well as the division between at-issue and not-at-issue content parts. While these effects can hardly be accounted for by assuming that the ironic aspect of SQ involves negation, they are in harmony with basic properties of deontic modality. I formulate a deontic modal account of SQ which not only predicts the complex behaviour of SQ, but also sheds much new light on the formal nature of irony.

AbstractThe paper, assuming the general framework of Chomsky’s (2013a, 2015b) current version of the Minimalist syntax, investigates the syntax of quotation in light of ellipsis. I show that certain unexpected effects arising for quotational ellipsis are problematic for the standard feature valuation system and, especially, for the theory of phases. I discuss some effects of two possible interpretations of such ellipsis, as well as a constraint following from deviant antecedents, to show that the standard view on the internal syntax of quotational expressions should be reconsidered. The paper offers a new view on feature valuation, as well as the connection between the Narrow Syntax and the C-I interface, defined in terms of recursive typing taking place at the interface.

The paper discusses Tarski's approach to quotation. It starts from showing that it is vulnerable to semantic inconsistencies connected with what is known as Reach's puzzle, formulated in 1938 by a Czech logician Karel Reach. This fact gives rise to serious problems concerning the relation between the metalanguage and an object language. Moreover, the paper touches upon a historic aspect, pointing out that the problem at hand is discussed in the only paper signed up as Al. Tajtelbaum, i.e. Alfred Tarski's original name. It argues that the puzzle reveals the importance of reopening the discussion on the understanding and limitations of deriving the metalanguage from an object language.