Authors:
Kyoko Koma Published on: 2012
This book "Fashion and intercultural stereotypes. The case of the articles on Japanese couturiers in Le Figaro and Libération" presents how French newspapers represent Japanese fashion designers who create “Japanese phenomenon” in Prêt-a-porter of Paris in 1980s and their works, through the discourse analysis of French School. The author analyses how two French representative national newspapers Le Figaro and Libération, which are oppositely politicized, represent the Japanese fashion creators and their works, by means of stereotypes on Japan classified by French linguist Jean-Paul Honoré into 8 points: puissance, order, mystery, refinement, rigueur, pragmatism, past and modernity.
The author researches the abundant usage of stereotype of the violence in the corpus and sets up a hypothesis that this usage would be provoked by the then French social context of 1980s: then Japanese companies strongly make inroads into occidental markets. In French society as in other societies “Japan passing” was strong. What’s more, she researches how these French newspapers try to persuade their readers to believe what they wrote about “Japanese phenomenon”, on basing herself on 3 argumentative functions the stereotypes possess, that is, logos, ethos and pathos, showed in Rhetoric by Aristotle. The author develops closely a persuasive argument on existing images of Japan reproduced and reinforced by mean of stereotypes in her corpus, regardless of political thought each newspaper possesses.