Sociolinguistic Artifacts

This is a Japanese commercial of Nissin cup noodles. In this commercial, a CEO of a Japanese company made an announcement that they are going to made ENGLISH as an official language of his company although his employee were not fluent in English. This situation is represented as a historical war, probably in 1850s. Languages and fluency is presented as weapon and their strength: Japanese weapon was too weak same as their English language ability. This commercial represents the centrality of English, globally. It is funny because it is written ironically: the “Japanish” has strong Japanese accents and they can only say typical sentences which Japanese people learn in junior high schools. It also express irony toward globalization which is oriented in English. This commercial is focused on Japanese, but this form of globalization on happens everywhere.