This paper analyses the use of the term kawaii as foreign word. The new aspects that it adds to the images of Japan will be analysed in three representative national French newspapers: Le Figaro, Libération and Le Monde published from 1999 to 2009. Kawaii is considered to be a key word that represents the Japanese popular culture. This term started to appear in French media in the 1990s, when France and other foreign countries began to import Japanese popular culture. Specifically, kawaii is a foreign word for the French media. Foreign words are used in three stages: as xenisms, as peregrinisms and as loan words. According to Dictionnaire de Linguistique (Dictionary of Linguistics), a xenism is a “foreign word mentioned with reference to a linguistic code of origin and to foreign realities.” A peregrinism “reflects encore foreign realities, but its meaning is understood by the interlocutor” without reference. A loan word is “versed to French vocabulary, and could for example enter in some process of derivation and of composition.” In this corpus, the term kawaii is used not only as a xenism mentioned with reference, but also as a peregrinism, without reference. It is even used as a loan word to designate a non- Japanese object. The further purpose of the paper is to progress towards the understanding how Japanese words, as foreign words that are used in French newspapers, participate in constructing the stereotypical image of Japan in the French society.

What characterizes journalistic representations of researchers and research in Norway? This article presents a quantitative analysis and a discourse analysis of how journalism that covers and uses scientific research has been practiced in major Norwegian newspapers in 1966, 1986 and 2006. The quantitative analysis suggests that this coverage in some respects has not changed significantly (e.g. the amount of sources used, the genres used for presentation). On the other hand, a comparative discourse analysis of articles covering emergent science in the three periods indicates how representations of scientific research are changing from resembling science’s own discourses to a more distinct adaption of the research, adjusting it to journalistic requirements of angles and storylines. However, the study presented here does not suggest that science journalism in Norway has developed an independent position from which it can throw a light upon scientific developments in a critical manner.