Cover not available
Part of
Pragmatics of Accents
Edited by Gaëlle Planchenault and Livia Poljak
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 327] 2021
► pp. 63–84

Encountering accented others – and selves – in provincial Japan

| University of Pittsburgh School of Education, United States

Who has a regional accent in Japan? Now over a century into the project of language standardization, this question remains pressing but difficult to answer conclusively. This chapter addresses distinctive characteristics of the metalinguistics of accent in the Touhoku (northern Honshu) region through local categories, and drawing on participant observation, it also offers a close reading of moments of indeterminacy in which language users negotiate the encounter with accent in themselves and in others. Three cases illuminate how the presence or absence of regional accent is subject to the interactional work of language users, and the identification of accent can be thwarted by a strategy of non-participation. The chapter concludes by reviewing the impact of accent in language users’ lives.

Keywords: Japanese accents, regional accents, perceiving subject, agency, situated practices of local languages, accent as an emblem, strategies of non-participation, linguistic discrimination
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Touhoku language and standardized Japanese
  • 3.Recent conditions
  • 4.Linguistic features
  • 5.Differentiating types of language
  • 6.Kumagai’s numbers
  • 7.Namattenee
  • 8.Zukku
  • 9.Performance, perception, and co-operation
  • 10.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Acknowledgments
  • References
Published online: 11 October 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.327.03eve
References
Agha, Asif
2005 “Voice, Footing, Enregisterment.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 15(1): 38–59. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2007 Language and Social Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bailey, Jackson H.
1991 Ordinary people, extraordinary lives: political and economic change in a Tohoku village. University of Hawaii Press.Google Scholar
Bucholtz, Mary
2003 “Sociolinguistic Nostalgia and the Authentication of Identity.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 7(3): 398–416. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2010 White Kids: Language, Race, and Styles of Youth Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carroll, Tessa
2001 Language planning and language change in Japan. Richmond: Curzon. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Evans, Bronwen G., and Paul Iverson
2007 “Plasticity in Vowel Perception and Production: A Study of Accent Change in Young Adults.” The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 121(6): 3814–3826. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fasold, Ralph
1984 The Sociolinguistics of Society. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Gass, Susan, and Evangeline Marlos Varonis
1984 “The Effect of Familiarity on the Comprehensibility of Nonnative Speech.” Language Learning 34(1): 65–87. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goffman, Erving
1963 Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Charles
2018 Co-Operative Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gottlieb, Nanette
2008 “Japan: Language Policy and Planning in Transition.” Current Issues in Language Planning 9(1): 1–68. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hane, Mikiso
1982 Peasants, Rebels, & Outcastes: The Underside of Modern Japan. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Harootunian, Harry D.
1988 Things Seen and Unseen: Discourse and Ideology in Tokugawa Nativism. Chicago: University of Chicago PressGoogle Scholar
Hay, Jennifer, and Katie Drager
2010 “Stuffed Toys and Speech Perception.” Linguistics 48(4): 865–892. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hill, Jane
2008 The Everyday Language of White Racism. Malden, MA: Wiley. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hillewaert, Sarah
2015 Writing with an accent: Orthographic practice, emblems, and traces on Facebook. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 25(2): 195-214. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hondou Hirosi
ed 2011 Iwateben karuta 2011. Morioka: IBC.Google Scholar
Inoue Fumio
2008 Syakai hougengaku ronkou: sin-hougen no kiban (Papers in Social Dialectology: Foundations of New Dialect). Tokyo: Meizi syoin.Google Scholar
Inoue, Miyako
2003 “The Listening Subject of Japanese Modernity and His Auditory Double: Citing, Sighting, and Siting the Modern Japanese Woman.” Cultural Anthropology 18(2): 156–193. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2006 Vicarious Language: Gender and Linguistic Modernity in Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jeszenszkya, P., Hikosakab, Y., and Yanoa, K
2019 Lexical variation in Japanese dialects revisited: Geostatistic and dialectometric analysis. Abstracts of the ICA, 1.Google Scholar
Johnstone, Barabara
2006 “Mobility, Indexicality, and the Enregisterment of “Pittsburghese.”” Journal of English Linguistics 34(2):77–104. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kroskrity, Paul V.
2000 “Regimenting Languages: Language Ideological Perspectives.” In Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Polities, and Identities, 1–34. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press.Google Scholar
Kurosawa Tutomu
2001 Morioka kotoba nyuumon (An introduction to Morioka speech). Morioka: Sinsansya.Google Scholar
Léglise, I. and B. Migge
2006 “Language-Naming Practices, Ideologies, and Linguistic Practices: Toward a Comprehensive Description of Language Varieties.” Language in Society 35(3): 313–339. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lippi-Green, Rosina
2012 English with an Accent. New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nakamura, Momoko
2013 Hon’yaku ga tukuru nihongo (Japanese language as created by translation). Tokyo: Hakutaku.Google Scholar
Nakaya Sin’ya
2010 Morioka kotoba ziten (Morioka speech dictionary). Morioka: Toyrou Insatu.Google Scholar
Preston, Dennis
1996 “Whaddayaknow?: the Modes of Folk Linguistic Awareness.” Language Awareness 5(1): 40–74. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rampton, Ben
1999 Styling the Other: Introduction. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 3(4), 421–427. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rosa, Jonathan and Nelson Flores
2017 “Unsettling Race and Language: Toward a Raciolinguistic Perspective.” Language in Society 46(5): 621–647. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Roth-Gordon, Jennifer
2011 “Discipline and Disorder in the Whiteness of Mock Spanish.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 21(2): 210–228. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sanada Sinzi
1987 Hyouzyungo no seiritu zizyou (Standard language establishment policy). Tokyo: PHP.Google Scholar
Sibata, Takesi
1999 Sociolinguistics in Japanese Contexts. Kunihiro T., Inoue F., and D. Long, eds. New York: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Takeda Kōko
2011 Tōhoku hōgen onomatope yōrei-shū (Usage examples of mimetic vocabulary in Tōhoku dialects). Tokyo: National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics.Google Scholar
Terai Yosihiro
1986 Aomori kennan Iwate kenpoku Hatinohe tihou hougen ziten (Dialect dictionary for southern Aomori, northern Iwate, and the Hatinohe area). Hatinohe: Nasyonaru puresu.Google Scholar
Twine, Nanette
2001 Language and the Modern State: the Reform of Written Japanese. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Weinreich, Max
1945 Der YIVO un di problemen fun undzer tsayt. YIVO Bleter 25(1–3): 3–18.Google Scholar
Yamada, Tadao ed
1997 Shin Meikai Kokugo Jiten [New Meikai Japanese Dictionary], Sanseido.Google Scholar
Yamaura Harutsugu
1985 Kesengo nyuumon (Introduction to Kesen Language). Oofunato: Kyouwa insatu kikaku sentaa.Google Scholar
Yosi, Ikuzou
1984 Ora Toukyou sa egu da (I'm going to Tokyo). Tokuma Japan Communications Co., Ltd.Google Scholar