THEGOVERNORS ANDTHE GOVERNMENT. A lexical analysis of national and local manifestos in Japan

Abstract

The aim of this study was to examine whether the linguistic characteristics in the local policy statements （知事の所信表明 chijinoshoshinhyoumei）reflect those of national manifesto（綱 領 kouryou）characteristics. The basic theory behind the present thesis is lexical analysis and text mining such as proposed by Hanks (2013), and vocabulary and script analysis in reference to Yamaguchi (2007). The corpus consisted of three national parties’ manifestos and three governors’ policy statements. Analysis was made using the internet-based software User local and Reading Tutor (Chuuta). The results showed a clear linguistic model for political language in Japanese. Though the content of the manifestos was indeed more concrete in the local ones, there were many similarities between the national and local manifestos, especially between the local manifestos and LDP. Okinawa who was supported by JCP in the election, also showed undeniable similarities in format.