カタカナ analysis

Today we looked for katakana words and tried to typefy them. We came across onomatopoeia (in manga) like ドーン。　Another major category was japanese company names like トヨタ　and ミツワ. These are not foreign words, so we supposed that this might be a kind of emphasis, trying to make the company name stand out or seem racy. The rest of the words we came across were mostly loan words. For instance, when I looked up an abstract of a paper by たかはしさん et al. some of the words, like ステロイド　were in katakana. Some foreign words, like Gemcitabine Hydrochloride, the author didn't even try to translate into Japanese, however. That said, I was suprised that the abstract didn't include more katakana than it did. I had asumed that there would not be native japanese words and especially not kanji for the highly technical language of an abstract. I have always felt that each field of science has it's own language. The abstract was mostly in kanji, however, so rather than relying on katakana loan words, it seems that the japanese scientific comunity is using ancient kanji to express new concepts. I suppose I shouldn't be all that suprised since western scientific jargon is heavily based on Latin, which is not only ancient but dead.

As for the question of why certain text books differ in thier explanations of katakana, my guess is that the author makes a descision on what he or she wants to spend time discussing based on the target audience. Foreign names and loan words, included in all the definitions, is both simple to apply and very likely to be useful whether the reader is learning japanese for buisness, social reasons, or just curiosity. Conversely, understanding the use of katakana for emphasis or onomatopoeia might not be essential for the reader's purposes. Katakana usage for emphasis and onomatopoeia is also not as cut and dried as katakana usage for foriegn words. I have seen the same onomatopoeia written in either katakana or hiragana depending on the situation. The mangaka of xxxHolic, for instance, seems to prefer hiragana. Emphasis, of course, also depends on the author and the situation. Therefore, the authors of some books might have judged it simpler just to steer clear of those subjects entirely.