Abstract
This paper examines the ways in which the indexical meanings that attach to enregistered speaking styles are debated and contested in interaction by younger Japanese adults. Contested meanings include discourses of so-called hyoojungo ‘Standard Japanese’ and the speaking styles that are collectively described as ‘Okinawan dialect’, which are associated with the islands of Okinawa Prefecture in Japan. This paper uses data from casual conversations between younger male adults who were all born and raised in Okinawa Prefecture but moved to the main island of Honshu for university. Discourse analysis of these conversations demonstrates how these younger adults negotiate the social meanings attached to Okinawan speaking styles, linking them to broader ideologies of so-called hyoojungo as well as gendered styles, and reproducing normative ideologies of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ speech. Homing in on moments in which these speech styles are negotiated, the results of this paper emphasize the persistence of normative linguistic ideologies even as the meaning and content of linguistic styles are being re-imagined.
Japanese Abstract
この論文は、enregistered (エンレジスターされた) 話し方に付随する指標的な意味が、いわゆる「標準語」と沖縄県の島々に関係する「沖縄方言」と呼ばれる話し方の文脈内で、どのように議論され争われてきたのかを検討するものである。 この論文では、沖縄県で生まれ育ち、大学進学のために本州に移住した若い成人男性の間で行われた、カジュアルな会話データを分析した。 談話分析の結果、沖縄での話し方に付随する社会的意味の交渉が明らかになった。 特に、いわゆる標準語やジェンダー別の話し方のイデオロギーがどのように結びつき、「良い」話し方と「悪い」話し方の規範的イデオロギーが再生産されているのかが見て取れる。 この論文は、これらのスピーチスタイルについて交渉の瞬間に焦点を当てたが、言語スタイルの意味と内容が再考されているにもかかわらず、規範的な言語イデオロギーが存続していることは強調する必要がある。
Funding source: Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
Award Identifier / Grant number: P17744
References
Agha, Asif. 2005. Voice, footing, enregisterment. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 15(1). 38–59. https://doi.org/10.1525/jlin.2005.15.1.38.Search in Google Scholar
Agha, Asif. 2006. Language and social relations. New York: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511618284Search in Google Scholar
Ball, Christopher. 2004. Repertoires of registers: Dialect in Japanese discourse. Language & Communication 24(4). 355–380. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2004.01.004.Search in Google Scholar
Beal, Joan C. 2009. Enregisterment, commodifiction, and historical context: “Geordie” versus “Sheffieldish”. American Speech 84(2). 138–156. https://doi.org/10.1215/00031283-2009-012.Search in Google Scholar
Campbell-Kibler, Kathryn. 2012. Contestation and enregisterment in Ohio’s imagined dialects. Journal of English Linguistics 40(3). 281–305. https://doi.org/10.1177/0075424211427911.Search in Google Scholar
Canut, Cécile. 2019. Tell me that I am not a Ciganin, damn your mother! The social and political consequences of enregisterment in Bulgaria. Signs and Society 7(3). 398–426. https://doi.org/10.1086/704985.Search in Google Scholar
Coupland, Nikolas. 2001. Dialect stylization in radio talk. Language in Society 30. 345–375. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0047404501003013.Search in Google Scholar
Dong, Jie. 2010. The enregisterment of Putonghua in practice. Language & Communication 30(4). 265–275. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2010.03.001.Search in Google Scholar
Du Bois, John W. 2007. The stance triangle. In Robert Englebretson (ed.), Stancetaking in discourse: Subjectivity, evaluation, interaction, 139–182. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.10.1075/pbns.164.07duSearch in Google Scholar
Frekko, Susan E. 2009. “Normal” in Catalonia: Standard language, enregisterment and the imagination of a national public. Language in Society 38(1). 71–93. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0047404508090040.Search in Google Scholar
Gal, Susan. 2005. Language ideologies compared. Language in Society 15(1). 23–37. https://doi.org/10.1525/jlin.2005.15.1.23.Search in Google Scholar
Hein, Ina. 2010. Constructing difference in Japan: Literary counter-images of the Okinawa boom. Contemporary Japan 22(1–2). 179–204. https://doi.org/10.1515/cj.2010.011.Search in Google Scholar
Heinrich, Patrick. 2004. Language planning and language ideology in the Ryūkyū Islands. Language Policy 3(2). 153–179. https://doi.org/10.1023/b:lpol.0000036192.53709.fc.10.1023/B:LPOL.0000036192.53709.fcSearch in Google Scholar
Heinrich, Patrick. 2012. The making of monolingual Japan: Language ideology and Japanese modernity. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.10.21832/9781847696588Search in Google Scholar
Heinrich, Patrick. 2018. Dialect cosplay: Language use by the young generation. In Patrick Heinrich & Christian Galan (eds.), Being young in super-aging Japan: Formative events and cultural reactions, 166–182. London: Taylor and Francis Group.10.4324/9781351025065-11Search in Google Scholar
Heinrich, Patrick, Shinsho Miyara & Michinori Shimoji. 2015. Handbook of the Ryukyuan languages: History, structure, and use. Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.10.1515/9781614511151Search in Google Scholar
Henry, Eric Steven. 2010. Interpretations of “Chinglish”: Native speakers, language learners and the enregisterment of a stigmatized code. Language in Society 39(5). 669–688. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0047404510000655.Search in Google Scholar
Inoue, Miyako. 2004. What does language remember?: Indexical inversion and the naturalized history of Japanese women. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 14(1). 39–56. https://doi.org/10.1525/jlin.2004.14.1.39.Search in Google Scholar
Inoue, Miyako. 2006. Vicarious language: Gender and linguistic modernity in Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press.Search in Google Scholar
Irvine, Judith T. 1989. When talk isn’t cheap: Language and political economy. American Ethnologist 16(2). 248–267. https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.1989.16.2.02a00040.Search in Google Scholar
Johnstone, Barbara. 2009. Pittsburghese shirts: Commodification and the enregisterment of an urban dialect. American Speech 84(2). 157–175. https://doi.org/10.1215/00031283-2009-013.Search in Google Scholar
Johnstone, Barbara. 2014. Ideology and discourse in the enregisterment of regional variation. In Peter Auer, Martin Hilpert, Anya Stukenbrock & Benedikt Szmrecsanyi (eds.), Space in language and linguistics, 107–127. Boston: De Gruyter.10.1515/9783110312027.107Search in Google Scholar
Johnstone, Barbara. 2016. Enregisterment: How linguistic items become linked with ways of speaking. Language and Linguistics Compass 10(11). 632–643. https://doi.org/10.1111/lnc3.12210.Search in Google Scholar
Johnstone, Barbara, Jennifer Andrus & Andrew E. Danielson. 2006. Mobility, indexicality, and the enregisterment of “Pittsburghese”. Journal of English Linguistics 34(2). 77–104. https://doi.org/10.1177/0075424206290692.Search in Google Scholar
Kroo, Judit. 2022a. Negotiating identities: First person pronominal use between Japanese university students. Pragmatics and Society 31(1). 22–44. https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.18061.kro.Search in Google Scholar
Kroo, Judit. 2022b. The cultural logic of the ordinary: Interactional semiosis and the (re)-framing of daily life among Japanese younger adults. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 32(2). 386–407. https://doi.org/10.1111/jola.12366.Search in Google Scholar
Kroo, Judit. 2023. Remaking futsuu ‘ordinary’ in the discourse of younger Japanese adults. Language and Communication 88(1). 129–140. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2022.11.007.Search in Google Scholar
Kroo, Judit & Yoshiko Matsumoto. 2018. The case of Japanese otona ‘adult’: Mediatized gender as a marketing device. Discourse and Communication 12(4). 401–423. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750481318757776.Search in Google Scholar
Lee, Yeounsuk. 2010. The ideology of kokugo: Nationalizing language in modern Japan (English-language ed.). Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.10.21313/hawaii/9780824833053.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Nakamura, Momoko. 2014. Gender, language and ideology: A geneology of Japanese women’s language. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Search in Google Scholar
Occhi, Debra J., Cindi L. SturtzSreetharan & Janet S. Shibamoto-Smith. 2010. Finding Mr Right: New looks at gendered modernity in Japanese televised romances. Japanese Studies 30(3). 413–429. https://doi.org/10.1080/10371397.2010.518605.Search in Google Scholar
Pharao, Nicolai, Marie Maegaard, Janus Spindler Møller & Tore Kristiansen. 2014. Indexical meanings of [s+] among Copenhagen youth: Social perception of a phonetic variant in different prosodic contexts. Language in Society 43. 1–31. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0047404513000857.Search in Google Scholar
Remlinger, Kathryn. 2009. Everyone up here: Enregisterment and identity in Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula. American Speech 84(2). 118–137. https://doi.org/10.1215/00031283-2009-011.Search in Google Scholar
Shibamoto Smith, Janet S. & Debra Occhi. 2009. The green leaves of love: Japanese romantic heroines, authentic femininity, and dialect. Journal of Sociolinguistics 3(4). 524–546. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9841.2009.00422.x.Search in Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 2003. Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language & Communication 23(3–4). 193–229. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0271-5309(03)00013-2.Search in Google Scholar
Slotta, James. 2012. Dialect, trope, and enregisterment in a Melanesian speech community. Language & Communication 32(1). 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2011.11.003.Search in Google Scholar
SturtzSreetharan, Cindi. 2017. Language and masculinity: The role of Osaka dialect in contemporary ideals of fatherhood. Gender and Language 11(4). 552–574. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.31609.Search in Google Scholar
© 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- The economics of Japanese: investigating the demand for Japanese language skills in the Pearl River Delta labor market
- Keeping the pitch on track: spatiotemporal challenges in ambulant vending on a Buenos Aires trainline
- The slowness of language, the speed of capital: conflicting temporalities of the “green transition” in the Swedish north
- Deaf migrants in Sweden: exploring linguistic and bureaucratic challenges through the lens of Crip Theory and Crip Linguistics
- What is a dialect? What is a standard?: shifting indexicality and persistent ideological norms
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- The economics of Japanese: investigating the demand for Japanese language skills in the Pearl River Delta labor market
- Keeping the pitch on track: spatiotemporal challenges in ambulant vending on a Buenos Aires trainline
- The slowness of language, the speed of capital: conflicting temporalities of the “green transition” in the Swedish north
- Deaf migrants in Sweden: exploring linguistic and bureaucratic challenges through the lens of Crip Theory and Crip Linguistics
- What is a dialect? What is a standard?: shifting indexicality and persistent ideological norms