Ethnic Hate Speech and the Hate Speech Act of 2016: A Linguistic and Legal Analysis

Abstract

This paper is based on the paper “Law and Language of Hate Speech” delivered at the 40th biannual meeting of the Japan Association of Sociolinguistic Sciences. It discusses ethnic hate speech and the law to eliminate hate speech enacted in May 2016. Firstly, it elucidates the linguistic characteristics of the law in dealing with discrimination. Secondly, it describes the recent spread of hate speech, especially by right wing groups in social media against Korean residents in Japan. Thirdly, it explains how law makers introduced this new legislation to moderately control discriminatory outrageous speech and writing which threatens minorities. The author stresses that the phenomena of hate speech arose from the unfair political and social treatment of Korean residents within the recent history of Japan, and analyzes this legislation dealing with the elimination of ethnic hate speech in detail from a linguistic and legal viewpoint.