Abstract
AbstractPrevious work on the Osaka dialect (OD) collectively suggests that this western regional variant of Japanese is associated with informality, masculinity, and affective fatherhood—social meanings that can be recruited in the construction of audio-visual media personas. This study examines the use of OD by one protagonist in the film Soshite chichi ni naru/Like father, like son, as well as the social meanings that listeners attribute to this variety of Japanese. Specifically, we ask two questions: (i) to what extent is the production of OD in the film recognizable to native speakers of Japanese, and (ii) what qualities do Japanese language users attribute to OD? A dialect recognition experiment found low recognizability of OD but high recognizability of a general ‘nonstandard Japanese’ language variety. Qualitative data revealed that Japanese language users perceived OD to index various characteristics including that of a masculine, affective father. (Perception, dialect, fatherhood, Osaka dialect, indexicality)*
Highlights
IntroductionMEDIATIZATION, PERCEPTUAL STUDIES, AND JAPANESE LANG UAG E VARI ETI ES
MEDIATIZATION, PERCEPTUAL STUDIES, AND JAPANESE LANG UAG E VARI ETI ESThis article investigates the perception of a mediatized Japanese language variety, Osaka dialect, as it is spoken by the male protagonist in the popular film Soshite chichi ni naru=Like father, like son, released in 2013 (Kore’eda 2013)
We investigated the perceptions of a mediatized variety of Japanese, Osaka dialect (OD), when used by an OD-speaking male protagonist in the film Like father, like son
Summary
MEDIATIZATION, PERCEPTUAL STUDIES, AND JAPANESE LANG UAG E VARI ETI ES. This article investigates the perception of a mediatized Japanese language variety, Osaka dialect, as it is spoken by the male protagonist in the popular film Soshite chichi ni naru=Like father, like son, released in 2013 (Kore’eda 2013). Particular attention is given to the frequency with which the protagonist is judged as using the Osaka dialect or some other variety of Japanese including Standard Japanese. We are motivated by Agha’s framework of mediatization (Agha 2007, 2011) as well as by Campbell-Kibler’s (2007, 2010) perceptual work on sociolinguistic variants as carriers of social meaning. We report our findings from a perceptual sociolinguistic experiment of a mediatized variety of the Japanese language. IP address: 52.87.161.73, on 02 Nov 2021 at 13:54:43, subject to the Cambridge
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