THE ENREGISTERMENT OF IN JAPANESE YOUTUBE COMMENTS: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts in

By

Gabriel R Rodriguez, B.A.

Washington, DC March 29, 2018

Copyright 2018 by Gabriel Rodriguez All Rights Reserved

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THE ENREGISTERMENT OF DIALECTS IN JAPANESE YOUTUBE COMMENTS: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

Gabriel Rodriguez, B.A.

Thesis Advisor: Anastasia Nylund, PhD.

ABSTRACT

This study attempts to contextualize the explosive valorization and commodification of in

Japan since the 1980s, the dialect boom, in terms of Japanese social and economic issues and the growing public interest within in Japan’s internal diversity. While the dialect boom has been widely studied in , little work has related the growing valorization of dialect to the growing valorization of diversity, and most recent work has focused primarily on the . To these ends, I conduct an analysis of the enregisterment of six , those of , Hakata, , ,

Okinawa, and Kōshū. I analyze a corpus of YouTube comments responding to videos of dialect usage, using stance theory (DuBois 2007) to break down the social acts that produce enregisterment (Agha

2003). I draw on the theories of sociolinguistic indexicality (Johnstone and Kiesling 2008, Eckert 2008) and the discourse analytic concept of dialect performance (Schilling-Estes 1998, Coupland 2007) as guides to interpreting the micro-social interactions I observe, connecting them to a macro-social context through the theories of Standard Language Ideology (Lippi-Green 1997), identity construction (Bucholtz

& Hall 2005), and folklorization (Fishman 1987).

I examine evaluations of dialect based on attractiveness, humorousness, intelligibility, folklorization, and country-ness, evaluate their relative prestige by investigating the willingness of speakers to debate dialect performances’ fidelity, and finally examine the political conflicts dialects are implicated in by looking at how they are related to questions of diversity and nationalism. The similarities between evaluations of the dialects of and Aomori, particularly in the category of folklorization, suggest that the dialects of Aomori have accrued certain affective traits of an Indigenous language despite

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being spoken by members of the . However, the conflicts that arise over the cases of

Okinawa and Osaka suggest that the use of dialect as a marker of regional identity is now being integrated into a nationalist Japanese self-image as a country with rich internal diversity. This provides a means by which Japan can engage with the discourses of liberal multiculturalism and diversity without seriously threatening the hegemony of Japanese ethno-nationalism, suggesting a need to reevaluate the past focus on nihonjinron in building critiques of Japanese nationalist ideology.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would first like to express my thanks to Anastasia Nylund, my thesis advisor and academic

advisor, for her advice and insight on developing this thesis. Her eager engagement with the

many data samples I brought her was a huge encouragement. I would also like to thank Natalie

Schilling for her support of my interest in studying the , which eventually led to

this thesis. I would also like to thank Cynthia Gordon for teaching me about the methods of and the use of data extracts in text. At the Department of Linguistics, I would like to thank the graduate program coordinator Erin Esch Pereira for her assistance in navigating the process of submission. At the University of , I would like to thank Marlyse Baptista

and Sarah Thomason for first fostering my interest in Japanese sociolinguistics and corpus

analysis. At the Smithsonian’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, I would like to thank

Mary Linn for her insight on the issues of folklorization and the social and political struggle of

speakers of endangered languages and dialects around the world. Finally, I would like to thank

Donald Topp, my parents, Sharon and Robert Rodriguez, and my grandmother, Carolyn

Reifinger.

Many thanks, Gabriel Rodriguez

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION ...... 1

1.1. Motivation ...... 1

2. LITERATURE REVIEW ...... 2

2.1. Japanese Sociopolitical Context ...... 2

2.2. History ...... 4

2.3. Present-Day Variation ...... 6

2.4. Language Attitudes and Social Beliefs ...... 14

2.5. Enregisterment, Indexicality, and Labeling ...... 18

2.6. Dialect Performance ...... 22

3. DATA AND METHODS ...... 23

3.1. Data Collection ...... 23

3.2. Coding Procedures ...... 25

4. ANALYSIS ...... 27

4.1. Cuteness and Ugliness ...... 28

4.2. Trivialization and Humor ...... 34

4.3. Intelligibility and Foreignness ...... 43

4.4. Sentimentality and Indigeneity ...... 52

4.5. vs Country ...... 58

4.6. Dialect Fidelity and Power ...... 64

4.7. Diversity and Nationalism ...... 75

4.8. Synthesis and Discussion ...... 84

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5. CONCLUSION ...... 87

APPENDIX A: TRANSLITERATION CONVENTIONS ...... 89

APPENDIX B: VIDEO TITLES AND URLS ...... 90

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 93

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. Map of Japan ...... 7

Figure 2. Map of ...... 8

Figure 3. Map of Kyūshū Region ...... 9

Figure 4. Map of Chūbu Region ...... 10

Figure 5. Map of Okinawa ...... 11

Figure 6. Map of Tōhoku Region ...... 12

Figure 7. Map of Chūbu Region ...... 14

Figure 8. Map of Chūbu Region ...... 33

Figure 9. Sanma Akashiya Laughing ...... 35

Figure 10. Screencaps From Late Nights From Monday: Hakata vs Kitakyūshū ...... 37

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 1. Geographic and Demographic Information ...... 7

Table 2. Video Information ...... 23

Table 3. Coding Schema ...... 27

Table 4. Dialect Attractiveness ...... 28

Table 5. Dialect Trivialization ...... 35

Table 6. Dialect Intelligibility ...... 44

Table 7. Language Comparisons ...... 45

Table 8. Dialect Sentimentality ...... 53

Table 9. City vs Country ...... 58

Table 10. Dialect Fidelity ...... 65

Table 11. Dialect and Diversity ...... 75

Table 12. Explicit Nationalist Stancetaking (Includes Comment Replies) ...... 76

Table 13. Stancetaking Overview ...... 84

Table 14. Video Data ...... 90

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1. Introduction

In this thesis, I conduct an analysis of the enregisterment of six Japanese dialects by analyzing a corpus of YouTube comments responding to videos of dialect usage, using stance theory (DuBois 2007) to break down the social acts that produce enregisterment (Agha 2003). I draw on the theories of sociolinguistic indexicality (Johnstone and Kiesling 2008, Eckert 2008) and the discourse analytic concept of dialect performance (Schilling-Estes 1998, Coupland 2007) as guides to interpreting the micro- social interactions I observe, connecting them to a macro-social context through the theories of Standard

Language Ideology (Lippi-Green 1997), identity construction (Bucholtz & Hall 2005), and folklorization

(Fishman 1987).

I conclude by arguing that the manner in which Japanese dialects are enregistered on social media suggests that dialect and regional identity have become a means by which Japan can engage with the discourses of liberal multiculturalism and diversity without seriously threatening the hegemony of

Japanese ethno-nationalism. In particular, the dialects of appear to have accrued certain affective traits of an Indigenous language despite being spoken by members of the ethnic majority.

1.1. Motivation

While English-language scholarship on Japanese social issues often correctly identifies the issues of racism and colonialist thought that persist in present-day Japan, they have a tendency to explain this through the Orientalist and ultimately racist idea of a homogenous Japan that is intolerant to difference.

More recent scholarship has begun to identify the actually existing diversity within Japan, but it still operates off the assumption that this is not widely known or engaged with inside of Japan itself.

My study of the Ainu language and the way “Ainu-ness” is commoditized and sold to the public suggested to me that this is no longer the case. A desire for diversity and multiculturalism seems to have entered Japanese public discourse; in fact, it has reached the ultimately harmful level of valorizing an

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idealized (“folklorized”) image of Ainu culture to sell souvenirs while avoiding addressing Ainu people’s disproportionate poverty in the present day.

I was interested to see if similar trends would appear in the discourse surrounding the explosive valorization and commodification of Japanese regional dialects, which are largely associated with the ethnic majority but can have similar associations with present-day poverty and a pre-modern idyllic rural past. This also serves my interest in studying the folklorization of languages and dialects around the world, particularly endangered ones, and the negative material consequences it can often have.

2. Literature Review

I begin this literature review by reviewing the sociopolitical and linguistic background of the

Japanese context. I review the literature on salient social issues in Japan and current sociolinguistic work on Japanese dialects. I continue by describing the theories of Standard Language Ideology and folklorization that I use to place the data in a macro-social context. Finally, I conclude by reviewing the literature on enregisterment and indexicality, as well as the discourse analytic theory of linguistic performance, which I use to help determine how specific linguistic features and performances become salient at the micro-social level.

2.1. Japanese Sociopolitical Context

In this section, I will describe the current scholarship on the status of race, diversity, and multiculturalism in Japan, which provides the social context for my analysis.

2.1.1. Imperial History

While an ideologically-grounded belief in a long imperial history is widespread within and outside Japan, the history of the country as a culturally and politically unified with a central government can only be traced back to the 1868 Restoration (Ramsey 2004, Shin 2010, Okamura

2016). I discuss the fragmented feudal pre-Meiji political structure in section 2.2. The rapid unification of

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the country and subsequent conquest of surrounding Southeast Asian was aided by the construction of an imperial ideology of unity. This led to a conflation of race, language, and and a valorization of national unity that persist to the present, albeit in significantly modified form.

2.1.2. Race, , and Diversity

Contemporary English-language scholarship on race and ethnic identity in Japan is conflicted. It is undeniable that Japan is relatively lacking in ethnic diversity, and the concept of foreignness itself carries substantial weight in defining what “Japaneseness” is. I will refer to the high salience of foreignness as a concept and a social category throughout my analysis.

Those without Japanese blood cannot become Japanese citizens, resulting in a substantial and largely invisible of illegal immigrants and so-called “foreign residents”. “Foreign residents” such as the Zainichi Koreans, who constitute about 1% of the country’s population, are treated as foreigners even by sympathetic anti-racists due to their lack of , even though many of their families have lived in Japan for over 100 years. Park (2017) explains how this allows racism to be problematically passed off as ‘xenophobia’, essentially placing racism (and racial diversity) firmly outside of the Japanese context.

The Japanese national census does not record ethnicity, making it difficult to estimate the exact demographic proportions, but I estimate that approximately 95% of the population belong to the Wajin ethnic majority. The total population of the country is about 127,000,000 (Statistics Bureau 2016); of those there are 1.5-2 million Ryūkyūans (Okinawans), 1 million Koreans, 700,000 Chinese, and about

500,000 foreign residents from other countries (Ministry of Justice 2017). The , the descendants of members of the untouchable caste of the feudal caste system, must also be considered, as they are technically Wajin but have been severely discriminated against for centuries. They number somewhere between 2 and 4 million people (Davis 2002: 18). Finally, there are about 500,000 Nikkei repatriates, people with Japanese blood who were repatriated from other Asian countries and

America and granted citizenship in the 1980s and 90s as part of a scheme to increase the pool of cheap

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domestic labor (Shin 2010). An estimate that includes burakumin and Nikkei as racialized minorities would yield numbers of about 6,500,000 to 9,000,000 non-Wajin, or about 5 to 7% of the country’s population.

Analysis of Japanese racial issues is further complicated by the academic trend called nihonjinron

‘theories of Japaneseness’, the tendency to promote extreme views of Japanese uniqueness and exceptionalism, which dominated most academic work on Japan between 1945 and 1990. Since Shepard’s

(1991) call to action, numerous scholars across many academic fields have mobilized against it (Kubota

1999, Lie 2001, Ishiwata 2011) by pointing out Japan’s great internal (non-ethnic, para-ethnic,

Indigenous) diversity and the ongoing issues with racism against its minorities.

This has preceded to the point where opposing nihonjinron in English-language academic literature has become a cliché. Burgess (2008) points out that nihonjinron has been thoroughly discredited in Japanese-language academia since the early 1990s and largely collapsed out of popular culture during the , the 1990s economic depression, noting that even right-wing Japanese politicians now make appeals to diversity as a positive Japanese trait. Iwabuchi & Takezawa (2015:1) further note that

‘multiculturalism’ entered Japanese public discourse as early as 1995, and Shin (2010: 328) and Shibuichi

(2015: 719) argue that the homogenous Japanese self-image that was dominant from around 1945-1990 was largely a reaction to the failure of Imperial Japan’s pan-Asian ideology.

It is my aim to examine the new post-nihonjinron understandings of Japanese diversity using sociolinguistic analysis of online commentary, which is currently a gap in the English-language literature.

2.2. Japanese Language History

The Japanese feudal period, which lasted from approximately 1592 to 1868 CE, was marked by the partitioning of Japan into approximately 200 feudal kingdoms. Due to the strict caste system only samurai were permitted to travel between kingdoms, and there is widespread agreement that this caused a major fracturing of the already diverse Japanese language into numerous mutually unintelligible dialects

(Maher & Yashiro 1995, Carroll 2001: 8, Ramsey 2004: 86, Lee 2010).

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After the unification of the country, central administrators largely set the language problem to the side until the linguist Kazutoshi Ueda, inspired by his study of and , proposed the creation of a kokugo ‘’ in 1894, to be based off the upper-class () dialect

(Ramsey 2004: 96).

Official policy from the early 1900s onwards aimed at the promotion of hyōjungo ‘standard language’, and the eradication of dialects through compulsory education. This succeeded in instilling a deep sense of shame in and severe discrimination against dialect users (Heinrich 2004, Carroll 2001). The school system was the primary instrument for accomplishing this, and there is widespread documentation of the “dialect tag”, where students caught using dialect were forced to wear a sign until they caught another student using dialect and could pass it off to them (Carroll 2001: 9, Heinrich 2004: 7, Ramsey

2004: 99). Physical abuse and expulsion from school are also documented as methods of coercion.

These policies largely failed at spreading proficiency in hyōjungo, and acquisition of standard

Japanese floundered until men drafted into the army during World War II were forced to use it as a lingua franca. However, dialects continued to be widely spoken across the country until economic migration in the 1950s postwar era forced migrants to suppress their dialects (Carroll 2001).

However, beginning around the 1980s, just at the point where most dialects were on the verge of dying out, interest in and appreciation for dialects surged. From 1989 onwards Japan’s national educational guidelines advised teaching children to respect dialects, learn where they differ from hyōjungo, and code-switch depending on the situation (Carroll 2001: 12).

The present day is now considered to be a “dialect boom” era where many dialects are highly valorized and commercialized. Certain dialects, such as the Kansai-ben1 spoken in the southwestern

Kansai region, are evaluated more positively on average than Tokyo-ben or hyōjungo. Certain Kansai-ben features have permeated the speech of young Japanese speakers across the country, a trend which

1 Japanese dialects are most commonly referred to in the format REGION-ben, with ben meaning ‘dialect’.

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Matsubara (2008) attributes to the use of Kansai-ben in the 1990s by popular celebrities. Stylistic usage of dialect features by Tokyo youth was documented as early as Inoue (1986).

2.3. Present-Day Variation

While it is no longer promoted with the same severity, Japan continues to use hyōjungo as its standard language. Since the postwar era the national government has tended to promote kyōtsūgo ’common language’ instead, which is supposed to refer to the ‘common vernacular’ rather than the idealized hyōjungo (Carroll 2001: 21). In practice there is little difference between the two, and hyōjungo is commenters’ preferred term in my data in most contexts.

While the dialect boom era has lead to an increase in the usage of local dialects across domains, including broadcast media, print, education, and the Internet, hyōjungo still dominates all of these by far.

Ramsey (2004: 103) estimates that 100% of Japan’s population can at least understand it in the present day, noting that as early as 1949 the dialectologist Takeshi Sibata could find only one person who required an interpreter to be interviewed in hyōjungo, an eighty-year old woman on the isolated island of

Hachijō.

In the following sections, I will give an overview of the descriptive and sociolinguistic literature on the six specific dialects I have selected and explain my rationale.

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Figure 1. Map of Japan

Table 1. Geographic and Demographic Information Type Location Region2 Population3 Income4 (metro or total) East Japan Tokyo 38 million 6.1 million yen Nagoya City Central Japan Aichi 2.2 million 5.2 million yen Osaka City West Japan Osaka 19 million 5.1 million yen

Hakata City ward Kyūshū 5.5 million 4.3 million yen

Aomori Prefecture North Japan Aomori 1.3 million 3.4 million yen

Okinawa Prefecture South of Okinawa 1.5 million 3.3 million yen mainland Kōshū City Central Japan Yamanashi 31,000 2.7 million yen

2 This refers to the prefecture the dialect is spoken in. Japan is divided into 47 , although is incorporated under a single municipal government. 3 Statistics Bureau of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (2016). 4 Average yearly income as reported by the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare of Japan (2014) for prefectures. Nagoya and Hakata are roughly the same as the prefectural average.

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My selection was based both in theory and on the actual frequency the dialects appeared with in my data.

2.3.1 Osaka-ben (Kansai-ben)

Kansai-ben is widely known as Japan’s

most popular dialect and is the primary focus

of nearly all recent English-language

sociolinguistic literature on Japanese (Nagata

1989, Wood 1997, Ball 2004,

2008, SturzStreetharan 2015, Okumura 2016).

Matsubara (2008) and SturtzStreetharan

(2015) both connect the dialect boom itself to

the popularity of Kansai-ben-speaking

comedians in the 1990s.

Figure 2. Map of Kansai Region The dialect is representative of typical

Western Japanese features such as the ya , as well as idiosyncratic traits like the -ya(hen) negative auxiliary and the -style pitch accent system, an older feature that has been replaced by other systems like the Tokyo-style system or unaccented systems in the rest of the country (Hasegawa 2014).

While more clearly marked features like akan ‘no good’ (hyōjungo dame) and the negative auxiliary -(ya)hen (hyōjungo -nai or -masen) remain largely restricted to regional usage, many extremely high-frequency slang terms used by Japanese youth across the nation, such as meccha ‘very, extremely’ or sore na ‘that’s right’ are in fact derived from Kansai-ben, and Osaka-ben in particular (Weblio 2018).

Osaka (Ōsaka-shi ‘Osaka City’) itself is the capital of and the base of the second largest metropolitan area in Japan, the Kyoto-Osaka- tri-city area, with 19 million inhabitants (Statistics Bureau 2016). It is located near the center of the Kansai region and is often considered the single largest beneficiary of the dialect boom.

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Osaka-ben is mentioned much more frequently in my data than Kyoto-ben or Kobe-ben and is often used interchangeably with Kansai-ben by commenters. Kyoto is infrequently mentioned and Kobe hardly appears at all. As Osaka is the largest city of the the three and the primary source of Kansai-ben words and slang that have entered general usage, it is not surprising that it would be more heavily enregistered. The subjects of all the Kansai-ben-related videos I analyzed were performing Osaka-ben, but it is often difficult to tell whether commenters are referring to Osaka or Kansai, so I will generally discuss Kansai in the aggregate.

2.3.2. Hakata-ben

Hakata is the commercial center of Fukuoka

(Fukuoka-shi ‘Fukuoka City’), which is the capital of

Fukuoka Prefecture and the eighth largest city in Japan,

with 1.4 million inhabitants; the Fukuoka metropolitan

area is the fifth largest with 5.5 million inhabitants

(Statistics Bureau 2016). itself is

located on the northernmost part of Japan’s

westernmost main island, Kyūshū, placing it in the

distinct Kyūshū dialect area. While Kyūshū is

Figure 3. Map of Kyūshū Region stereotyped as a rural area, north Kyūshū is heavily industrialized and relatively wealthy compared the rest of the region (Statistics Bureau 2016).

Hakata-ben and Fukuoka-ben are largely absent from the English-language sociolinguistics literature, although Fukuoka-ben and Kyūshū-ben have been studied extensively in dialectology. Perger's

(2017) matched-guise study of Tokyo University students found that Hakata-ben speakers were evaluated as less intelligent and even-tempered but more friendly, honest, and ‘sociably attractive’ than Tokyo-ben speakers (2017: 32).

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My analysis suggests that Hakata-ben is one of the most heavily enregistered varieties. It does appear as a reasonably salient variety in some perceptual surveys (Long 1999a), and Fumio (2012: 113) documents Hakata-ben-speaking toys being sold as souvenirs. Hakata-ben is regularly meta-linguistically evaluated in my data as the ‘cutest’ dialect in Japan, although few of its features appear to be particularly highly enregistered outside of the -teru5 -> -too transformation and its Kyūshū-style intonation. While

Matsubara (2008) is heavily focused on Kansai-ben, she does note a ‘north Kyūshū’ dialect word being used to index intense cuteness in the title of a book of ‘cute dialects’ (2008: 21).

2.3.3. Nagoya-ben

Nagoya is the capital of and the

third-largest city in Japan, with 2.28 million inhabitants,

making it highly socially and economically central

(Statistics Bureau 2016). Aichi-ben is rarely mentioned

and seems to be loosely enregistered at best, and

Nagoya-ben also does not appear to be highly

enregistered compared to the other four.

Nagoya-ben does not appear in the English-

language sociolinguistics literature. It has been included

Figure 4. Map of Chūbu Region for the sake of comparison with the other more highly

marked varieties.

2.3.4. Okinawan Dialect

The Okinawan dialect is the most linguistically distinct variety from hyōjungo, as it is still heavily influenced by the Indigenous , although the number of living native Okinawan speakers is very low and difficult to determine precisely (Heffernan 2006). Okinawa was a part of the

5 -teru is a contraction of -teiru (the -te gerundive conjugation and the present progressive iru) used in casual speech in hyōjungo.

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independent Ryūkyū Kingdom until it was annexed

by Imperial Japan in 1879, and Okinawans are

considered racially and culturally distinct from

mainland Japanese (Carroll 2001: 20). The

Okinawan language itself was written in the Ryūkyū

Kingdom since the late 13th century (Kodansha

1983), although in the present day there is no

standardized .

Figure 5. Map of Okinawa Prefecture is the poorest prefecture in

Japan, due to discrimination and the constraints on development imposed by the US military base located there, which occupies 20% of the island. Okinawa was captured and annexed by the in 1945 during the Battle of Okinawa and was not returned to Japan until 1972. Indiscriminate bombing and gunfire by the Japanese and during the battle and the mass suicides encouraged by the

Japanese military resulted in the deaths of up to 150,000 Okinawans, or more than a third of the island’s population at the time.

While Okinawan is almost unanimously considered a separate language from Japanese by linguists (Heinrich 2004: 154), it was heavily influenced by contact with Japanese, and Okinawan dialects are marked by the retention of ancient Japanese features such as labialized /gwa/. In popular consciousness the Okinawan language itself is often considered to be a dialect of Japanese.

I will refer to the Okinawan dialect as “the Okinawan dialect” rather than Okinawa-ben or

Okinawan. It is not clear from either a linguistic or popular perspective where the boundaries between the

Okinawan language and the Okinawan dialect lie, and it is variously referred to as Okinawa-ben,

Okinawa hōgen, Okinawa-go, and Uchinā-guchi, the native autonym for the language.

The English-language sociolinguistic literature on the Okinawan dialect focuses mainly on the effects and implications of language shift away from the Okinawan language and not evaluations of the

Okinawan dialect by non-Okinawans (Hara 2004, Heinrich 2004, Heffernan 2006). Heffernan (2006)

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describes how the treatment of Okinawan as a dialect that was equivalent to slang and obscene language has resulted in many Okinawans who are still embarrassed and ashamed by their language in the present day (643). Interestingly, he found that the Okinawans in the wealthier and more powerful areas of

Okinawa, such as , the capital, were more likely to use Okinawan features and have positive attitudes towards Okinawan, which he attributes to a lesser feeling of social insecurity compared to those in the Okinawan countryside (644). Complementing the negative attitudes towards Okinawan, it should be noted that many Okinawans still hold a firm belief in the unity of Japan and Okinawa, which Heinrich

(2004: 157) notes was already widespread by 1895.

However, there is some documentation of growing positive attitudes towards the Okinawan . Fumio (2012) uses linguistic landscape mapping of Okinawan dialect usage in signage to show how commodification of the dialect has drastically risen. Heffernan (2006) additionally suggests this commodification represents a shift towards more positive views of Okinawan by the younger generation, as he documents Okinawan words which once would have been considered slurs being used on T-shirts as a positive symbol of Okinawan identity (645).

2.3.5. Aomori Dialects (Tōhoku-ben)

Tōhoku-ben is less linguistically distinct from Standard

Japanese than the Okinawan dialect, but survey data suggests

that it is the most perceptually salient language variety in

Japan (Long 1999a). The primarily agricultural Tōhoku region

(consisting of the six prefectures , Iwate, Miyagi,

Yamagata, , and Aomori) is the poorest in the country

except for Okinawa, and while Tōhoku-ben usually does not

evoke hostile affective responses it is strongly associated with

carelessness, laziness, and low intelligence (Carroll 2001: 16). Figure 6. Map of Tōhoku Region

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Aomori is the northernmost of Tōhoku’s six prefectures and the second poorest prefecture in

Japan after Okinawa (Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare 2014). Linguistically, it is primarily associated with the dialects of two small on its western and eastern shores, Tsugaru and Nanbu.

Tsugaru-ben is a particular object of fascination due to its apparent great distance from hyōjungo. It exhibits all of the archetypical Tōhoku-ben features, such as intervocalic voicing of obstruents, the total absence of pitch accent, and mergers of /i/ and /u/ to /u/, /s/ and /ʃ/ to /s/, and /z/ and /ʒ/ to /z/ (Miyake

1995: 218). The combination of intervocalic voicing and sound mergers are what has lead to the derogatory zuzu-ben, since /ʃi/, /su/, /ʒi/, /ʒu/, and /zu/ can all be realized as /zu/ in certain positions.

Tōhoku-ben is likely one of the more studied dialects after Kansai-ben in contemporary sociolinguistics due to its reputation as the archetypical ‘deep country’ dialect, and it has been the subject of several recent sociolinguistic studies demonstrating that while it can be a source of local pride, it continues to be a source of shame and discrimination due to its association with ‘dirtiness’, poverty, incomprehensibility, and low intelligence (Miyake 1995, Kumagai 2011, Everhart 2013).

I will be referring to Tsugaru-ben, Nanbu-ben, and -ben collectively as the Aomori dialects, rather than Aomori-ben, because the concept of “Aomori-ben” does not appear to be highly enregistered in my data. Aomori residents consider Tsugaru-ben and Nanbu-ben, as well as potentially

Shimokita-ben, to be highly distinct, and some comments respond to the concept of “Aomori-ben” with great hostility.

2.3.6. Kōshū-ben

Kōshū is a small city of about 31,000 people in the northeast of the mountainous . It has experienced persistent population loss since 1995, and its population is skewed towards people ages 60-80 (Statistics Bureau 2016). Koshū is also relatively close to Tokyo, being only 65 miles from the Tokyo city center and about 30 miles from the border of Tokyo Prefecture.

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Yamanashi Prefecture is economically average,

but Kōshū itself comes in 18th out of Yamagata’s 27

municipalities. With an average annual income of ~2.7

million yen (~26,000 USD), Kōshū falls well below the

Japanese national median of ~43,000 USD (Ministry of

Health, Labor, and Welfare 2016), placing it in the 25th-

30th percentile nationwide.

Yamanashi and the rest of the Kōshin’etsu region in

central Honshū/south Chūbu appear to have received Figure 7. Map of Chūbu Region average affective evaluations on past sociolinguistic surveys, and it is not clear that it is strongly distinguished from the Kantō region (Long 1999b). Kōshū- ben itself has not been the focus of any studies that I have been able to find. It appears to have only recently become famous and widely enregistered as an “ugly” dialect due to its appearances on the popular TV show Getsuyō kara Yofukashi ‘Late Nights from Monday’, which has run several segments mocking it since 2014.

I have selected Kōshū-ben as representative of a dialect which receives little if any positive evaluation, unlike even Tōhoku-ben.

2.4. Language Attitudes and Social Beliefs

In the fourth section of my literature review, I move to the macro-social ideological factors that underpin the micro-level performance or avoidance of specific linguistic features. I begin by overviewing the literature on language attitudes and ideology to demonstrate the social functions served by the valorization and denigration of dialects; I then move on to the emerging theories of ‘folklorization’ that allow me to place the Japanese situation in a global sociopolitical and economic context.

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2.4.1. Language Attitudes and Ideology

I will begin by covering Standard Language Ideology. Present-day scholarship on language stigmatization and valorization is often heavily related to the modern nation-state and the notion of one nation, one language (Lippi-Green 1997: 3). While this is very much a Euro- notion, it applies in the Japanese context, as Japan is also a settler-colonial state and based its colonial language policy on

France and Germany (Heinrich 2012: 62).

Matsuda (1991: 1361) states “people in power are perceived as speaking normal, unaccented

English.” The hegemonic presupposition of the standard language as ‘normal’ and ‘unaccented’ applies more precisely to the American context he is discussing than the Japanese one, as there is comparatively high metalinguistic awareness in Japan of the existence of hyōjungo as a created code and its origin in

Edo or Tokyo-ben. That being said, there is certainly a normative assumption in my data that hyōjungo is

‘normal’.

One of the primary modes of linguistic evaluation in my data is linguistic stigmatization, the positioning of a language variety as inferior, shameful, and undesirable. In analyzing stigmatization, I primarily use Lippi-Green’s language subordination model (1997: 68), particularly trivialization and vilification, because they are based in Standard Language Ideology and clearly describe many of the phenomena in my data. Trivialization is the process by which the significance and desirability of languages and language varieties other than the standard are degraded by positioning them as ‘cute’,

‘funny’, ‘homey’, or other such ‘non-serious’ traits. This happens frequently in my data, particularly for the less powerful and popular dialects.

However, vilification also appears frequently in my data. Vilification operates primarily through the claim that users of non-standard language varieties are arrogant and inconsiderate (Lippi-Green 1997:

68). While there are various reasons this can occur, in my data it appears to happen mainly in response to the perceived arrogance of speakers of the relatively powerful Kansai-ben.

I also consider the opposite of linguistic stigmatization, valorization. This is also a key concept in my data, as it involves the attribution of positive qualities to language varieties that encourage rather than

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discourage their use. One of the main theories I draw on to analyze valorization is the idea of covert and overt prestige. Carroll (2001: 15) applies these concepts to the Japanese context, noting that across national borders the “standard” language is often associated with “education, culture, and authority”, or overt prestige, while non-standard language indexes solidarity and local identity and is seen as more emotional and genuine, which is covert prestige. She goes on to describe how the image of inaka ‘the countryside, the sticks’ as an idyllic rural paradise has been used to commoditize the covert prestige of rural Japan’s dialects, including Tōhoku-ben (17). I will return to the conception of the country as possessing emotionally genuine and calming traits in section 4.5, which analyzes the country vs city evaluative dimension.

2.4.2. Folklorization

The second macro-social theory I will employ is folklorization, which describes the way

Indigeneity is reinterpreted and commoditized in neoliberal post-colonial societies.

Folklorization as it is discussed in the language endangerment literature was first coined by

Fishman (1987: 8), who described it as the restriction of language to the “vernacular intimacy of hearth and home” and cautioned that it can lead to the language being rapidly abandoned.

Crystal (2007: 83) draws on Fishman’s theory to describe how the status and desirability of a language is eroded when its usage is restricted to the realms of popular culture, the arts, and folklore—in other words, the ‘cultural’ realm. He also notes that in empires across the world, traits such as stupidity, laziness, and barbarism are common features attributed to the colonized speakers of languages being targeted for eradication (2007: 84). While the English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and the United States were some of the innovators in modern imperial language extermination, their methods were studied by

Imperial Japan.

Tosco (2011) extends the breadth of folklorization theory to cover ‘dialects’ as well as languages, and suggests that folklorization makes diversity “politically and ideologically inoffensive”; he goes on to say that in some ways the embrace of a folklorized language (variety) can be considered “the nation-

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state’s final victory” (2011: 230). It is at the level of total folklorization that a language can be valorized as part of a nation’s cultural heritage while being politically and affectively unthreatening.

lewallen (2016) and Hudson’s (2014) work about the Japanese Ainu minority has also deeply informed my thinking on this topic. While they do not reference folklorization by , their work essentially applies the concept of folklorization to entire groups of people rather than languages, and explores the sociopolitical consequences. They discuss how many formerly colonialist societies are in fact still colonial in all but name, as they continue to depend on the dispossession, oppression, and ghettoization or exile of Indigenous people. This is coupled with a strong valorization of Indigenous culture, often by their erstwhile oppressors. lewallen points out that while this can be of social and economic benefit to Indigenous people, it is often catastrophic, as it risks all of the following: a descent into sentimentality and noble savage imagery, an effective condemnation to an idealized past, and an excuse for governments to sidestep continuing issues of political and economic colonization by contributing mediocre amounts of money to Indigenous cultural causes. This dovetails with Mufwene’s

(2004: 219) controversial argument that revitalization of endangered languages is only a second colonization that condemns Indigenous groups to economic backwardness by limiting their access to the occupations that require the language of the dominant majority.

These concerns are corroborated by the growing literature on the pitfalls of current approaches to language revitalization such as Dobrin & Schwartz (2016) and van Driem (2016), which observe how unselfconscious attempts at promoting an idealized vision of Indigenous culture can be self-serving for researchers and institutions and can lead to negative outcomes for the people they are supposed to benefit.

I draw on these authors in my analysis to link my comparison of the discourse on Japanese dialects to that on endangered languages and Indigenous people across the world.

2.4.3 Relation to Identity Construction

Identity, referring to both an individual’s sense of self and their “identification” with broader demographic categories, is often understood in the social sciences as being constructed in interaction

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rather than being fixed. Bucholtz and Hall (2005) attempt to unify the literature on identity construction with other theories in discourse analysis by developing a schema of identity theory. Of the five principles they lay out, the one most relevant to this work is relationality (2005: 598), which refers to the way identity emerges through one’s orientation to other people and groups. They complicate the traditional axis of similarity and difference by adding axes of genuineness-to-artifice and authority-to-delegitimacy.

Bucholtz and Hall refer to the mechanisms of managing the similarity axis as adequation and distinction, which respectively emphasize and de-emphasize inter-group and inter-individual differences.

The genuineness axis, on the other hand, which measures the way interactants demonstrate the legitimacy of their identity claims, is handled with authentication and denaturalization. I identify acts of adequation, distinction, and authentication as constituting part of many of the stances I analyze.

While ‘identity’ in the social scientific sense covers an enormous amount of ground, I use it mainly in the sense of self-identification with a larger demographic category, in this case regional identity

(as a resident of Kansai, Okinawa, etc.) and national identity (as Japanese). Micro-social acts of identity construction can be a powerful tool for understanding macro-social processes because of how they are linked to these broader categories. This is one of the reasons I have chosen to study online discourse in particular, as identity claims of this type are made openly and frequently.

2.5. Enregisterment, Indexicality, and Labeling

Having established the social and linguistic context for my analysis, I will now review the main theoretical tools I have used to understand how language itself is implicated in these macro-social processes. I begin with enregisterment and indexicality, two concepts for studying how dialects acquire social meaning.

2.5.1. Enregisterment and Indexicality

Agha (2003, 2007, 2011) conceptualizes enregisterment as the means by which a register of a language comes to take on certain social values at a particular point in history. For example, British

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Received Pronunciation (RP) commands the respect and prestige it does because it is enregistered as the characteristic speech pattern of the educated, refined upper class (2003: 242). This enregisterment is enacted through a complex socio-historical process that involves far more than the language actually spoken by the upper classes, such as the terms used to refer to it (‘Queen’s English’, ‘Public School

Pronunciation’, ‘BBC English’, ‘talking proper’) and the metadiscursive evaluation it receives in the public sphere as correct and proper but also potentially distant and arrogant (2003: 237, 239)

Enregisterment is a useful tool for studying dialect valorization and stigmatization because it takes the emphasis off of language as an object, reminding us that “accent” is usually itself an icon of a particular type of personhood, not an object of scrutiny in itself. An accent, then, is not a sound pattern per se but a set of personae “stereotypically” linked to certain sound patterns, i.e., enregistered.

Enregisterment is similar to the concept of sociolinguistic indexicality, which was developed by

Silverstein (2003a) and is used extensively in both interactional and variationist sociolinguistics. The language of semiotics (“indexicality”) is used to theoretically encode the notion that linguistic features have no direct or “objective” connection to certain social identities, but symbolize them through more or less arbitrary linkages. The process by which an indexical link is formed between a feature and a social identity is more or less analogous to enregisterment, as both of these theories are intended to counteract the popular conception that stereotypes are created as a result of objective linguistic features.

A key study in indexicality is Johnstone and Kiesling’s (2008) variationist study of /aw/ monophthongization in Pittsburg. Johnstone and Kiesling draw on their interpretation of Silverstein to lay out a schema of first, second, and third-order indexicality, which also serves as a basic model of language shift (2008: 6). At the first order, a given linguistic variable can be correlated with a speaker’s regional background, but it generally operates below the level of conscious awareness and is not manipulated for discursive functions. At the second order, the variable rises to the level of conscious awareness and becomes associated with a certain type of person, and hence a certain type of personhood (enregistered), although at this level the meaning of a variable is still very much in flux.

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Finally, at the third order, a linguistic variable has become fully codified and is available for metadiscourse about the variable itself. This is the level at which overt commodification of a variable can occur (T-shirts with dialect words or phrases, etc.), and allows speakers and non-speakers of a dialect to make complex or ironic performances. My analysis shows that many Japanese dialect features, particularly those of Kansai-ben and Tōhoku-ben, have undoubtedly reached third-order indexicality, as dialect-marking variables are regularly used in performances by speakers and non-speakers. I will discuss this throughout section 4.

However, it is worth noting that Johnstone and Kiesling’s major finding was that the speakers with the greatest meta-awareness of the ‘Pittsburghese’ /aw/-monophthong were the least likely to actually use it in their speech, demonstrating that uniform third-order awareness cannot be assumed across an entire population (2008: 27).

2.5.2. Indexical Fields and Social Polysemy

Eckert’s (2008) work on the polysemy of social meaning discusses the indexical field, drawing on the concept of indirect indexicality, the theory that linguistic features index types of stances, personal qualities, and attitudes, rather than directly indexing demographic categories, and become associated with those categories through stereotyping. She elaborates this by suggesting that features do not even directly index any one fixed meaning but rather exist in a ‘field’ of possible indices, some of which can become more prominent than others depending on the context.

These fields are fluid and can be changed by each ‘activation’ of the field. Furthermore, differing instantiations of a feature can have completely different meanings or interpretations because they access different parts of the indexical field. As with Agha’s social stereotypes, Eckert places a large amount of weight on the macro-social context of speech acts, claiming that the interpretation of a linguistic feature is overdetermined by beliefs about speaker’s region of origin. For example, the intervocalic voicing feature of Tōhoku-ben could have both ‘honesty’ and ‘low intelligence’ in its indexical field, but one could be activated more strongly depending on how a listener views the Tōhoku region.

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This concept is useful for this study because many of the features of the dialects I study clearly have polysemous indexicality—they simultaneously index multiple and sometimes contradictory social meanings, with the salience of any given meaning varying depending on the context.

Finally, Eckert draws a connection between indexical fields and Agha’s enregisterment, stating that the ‘styles’ composed of linguistic features are themselves given social meaning through the process of enregisterment (2008: 456).

2.5.3. Labeling

Preston mentions ‘labeling’ (1996: 43) in his discussion of how linguistic features become perceptually salient. He notes that while folk descriptions of features such as “nasal” may not be linguistically ‘accurate’, they are not meaningless; rather, they can index perceived undesirable social traits like whininess or snobbishness. This a useful supplement to enregisterment and indexicality because it provides an analytic context for interpreting ‘folk’ attributions of linguistic features, something which occurs frequently in my data, especially in reference to Tōhoku-ben.

2.5.4. Summary

All of these concepts are useful to this study because they show that the significance of dialect in the social world is often disconnected from the language as spoken; rather, idealized bundles of linguistic features become linked with the stereotypical traits and attitudes of the people believed to use them. This allows me to connect evaluations of language use to the macro-social ideology discussed above in section

2.4. Evaluations of Tōhoku-ben, for example, ultimately expose the beliefs of the evaluator about

Tōhoku-ben’s speakers, and are not necessarily driven by Tōhoku-ben’s features. In fact, the opposite can occur—its features may become enregistered as or indexical of ugliness because of beliefs about Tōhoku- ben speakers. This is why the interpretation of specific linguistic features can often be contradictory or polysemous.

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2.6. Dialect Performance

A remarkable number of the comments in my data contain instances of dialect features being performed to serve a discursive function. This can take the form of a commenter either assuming the

“voice” of a speaker of the dialect in question, often mockingly, or of simply speaking (writing) in their own voice with dialect features added.

Schilling-Estes’s (1998) study of /ay/-backing in Ocracoke, argues for the rehabilitation of performative (self-consciously modified) speech in variationist sociolinguistics, which had often shunned it in favor of “naturalistic”, unselfconscious speech. Schilling-Estes argues that the study of performative speech, particularly the exaggerated performance of dialect features, can in fact be valuable for what it tells us about what the speaker believes those variables mean. While Schilling-Estes doesn’t put it in such terms, it is clear that the self-conscious performance of dialect variables indicates that they have reached at least second-order indexicality and hence some degree of enregisterment.

Consequently, examining performance can be particularly useful since the social ends a speaker is manipulating a dialect variable for can provide information on how that variable is enregistered.

Coupland (2007)’s work on dialect articulates a theory of high performance, a particularly elevated format that is distinguished from everyday linguistic performance by its highly public nature, which he exemplifies with political speeches and drag performances. Of particular relevance is his description of how the Welsh politician Aneurin Bevan employed shifts between Received Pronunciation and vernacular South to denigrate his political opponents by linking their positions to the snobbishness and grandiosity indexed by RP while representing his own voice as working-class and trustworthy by performing a Welsh accent (2007: 161).

By integrating these theories of performance with the theory of identity construction, I am able to position individual instances of dialect performance as instances of enregisterment, and consequently place them in a larger social context.

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3. Data and Methods

3.1 Data Collection

All steps of data collection have been approved by the Institutional Review Board of Georgetown

University (IRB #2018-0074) as non-human subjects research. My primary method of gathering data was simply searching the Japanese word 弁 -ben ‘dialect’ on YouTube while in a Vivaldi (Chromium) private window to avoid influence from my past search history. This appeared to be the ideal method for returning dialect-related videos; the more formal 方言 hōgen ‘dialect’ drew fewer results and also caused many Chinese results to appear. While the ben morpheme is used in a wide variety of Japanese words, the vast majority of results were dialect-related. I also searched using the construction REGION-ben

‘REGION’s dialect’, i.e. 関西弁 Kansai-ben, but this yielded very few high-view count results not already covered by my -ben search. As explained above, I have chosen to focus on Kansai-ben, Nagoya-ben,

Hakata-ben, the Aomori dialects, and the Okinawan dialect.

I primarily restricted my selections to videos with more than 100,000 views, using this as a rough index of popularity, although I made exceptions for particularly interesting-looking videos. After selecting a video, I scraped all comments from the original YouTube page and stored them in JSON format. The list of videos is in Table 2 below:

Table 2. Video Information Title Dialect Summary Blast of understanding: 7 ways Kansai-ben Youtuber explains a set of tell-tale signs someone is to identify fake Kansai-ben not a real Kansai-ben speaker For the First Time in Forever Osaka-ben Cover of the Frozen song “For the First Time in Reprise: Osaka-ben ver Frozen Forever (Reprise)” in Osaka-ben Mamiruton teaches genuine Kansai-ben Two Kansai Youtubers play with a mobile app that Kansai-ben! claims to teach Kansai-ben and find it lacking [Kansai-ben] Osaka-ben to piss Osaka-ben Youtuber teaches Osaka-ben words and phrases she off people from Kantō claims people from Kantō will find irritating Masaki Suda and Sosuke Kansai-ben Two young male celebrities talk to each other in Ikematsu’s hyper-surreal Kansai-ben; only one is really from Kansai Kansai-ben conversation hits the bull’s-eye! Monday Late Nights: Hakata- Hakata-ben Two young women say phrases in Hakata-ben and ben VS Kitakyūshū-ben Kōshū-ben Kitakyūshū-ben; another young woman speaking Kōshū-ben is spliced in for comedic effect

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Table 2. (cont.) Title Dialect Summary Cute Hakata-ben girl Hakata-ben Cell phone video of a girl speaking Hakata-ben outside Hakata Station [Hakata-ben] Proper usage of Hakata-ben Youtuber explains how to use certain Hakata-ben tottooto? words and phrases For the First Time in Forever Hakata-ben Cover of the Frozen song “For the First Time in Reprise in Hakata: Hakata-ben Forever (Reprise)” in Hakata-ben ver Frozen Contractor tries false invoice Hakata-ben Audio skit where a Kansai-ben speaker attempts to call: Hakata-ben vs Kansai-ben Kansai-ben scam a Hakata-ben speaker over the phone but fails due to linguistic misunderstandings [Dialect] Everyone, [Dialect] Nagoya-ben Youtuber teaches Nagoya-ben words and phrases Everyone, do you know Nagoya-ben!?!? Ebifuryaa? Nagoya-ben class! Nagoya-ben Youtuber explains different Nagoya-ben phrases [First part] If Luffy spoke Nagoya-ben Nagoya-ben Clips of the One Piece with the character Luffy dubbed over with Nagoya-ben dialogue For the First Time in Forever Kōshū-ben Cover of the Frozen song “For the First Time in (Reprise) Yamanashi-ben Forever (Reprise)” in Kōshū-ben (Kōshū-ben) ver. Late Nights from Monday: Kōshū-ben Skit depicting a date between a hyōjungo-speaking Kōshū-ben ugly dialect man and a Kōshū-ben speaking woman lololololol Elderly women chatting in Aomori Documentary-style video of two elderly women Tsugaru-ben dialects speaking in Tsugaru-ben for several minutes Nanbu vs Tsugaru: War Aomori Clip from Late Nights from Monday variety show dialects pitting Nanbu-ben and Tsugaru-ben speakers against each other [Aomori, Hachinohe] For the Aomori Cover of the Frozen song “For the First Time in First Time in Forever (Reprise) dialects Forever (Reprise)” in Hachinohe-ben Hachinohe-ben ver [Frozen] Aomori-ben’s star performer Aomori Documentary-style video of an old woman speaking dialects Nanbu-ben on the phone Hearing French in a Tsugaru- Aomori Skit of two Youtubers speaking in Tsugaru-ben that ben conversation dialects is purported to sound like French; French-style music plays in the background Shun Nishime and Ruka Okinawan Promotional video for a Kamen Rider film including Matsuda talk in Okinawa dialect a segment where the two Okinawa-born cast dialect, which is almost a members speak in Okinawan dialect to the foreign language. bemusement of the rest of the cast Subtitled: Arin Kurin Uchinā- Okinawan Comedian Sanma Akashiya listens to guests sing in guchi (Okinawa dialect) version dialect Okinawan and attempts to learn the song before Rassun gorerai: Sanma Gōten breaking down in laughter Okinawa’s dialect Mono mane Okinawan Group of Youtubers play a game where they pick a quiz! Guest is [Mahoto x dialect random Okinawan word then try to guess its Saguwa] meaning as the one Okinawan speaker among them pantomimes the answer

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Table 2. (cont.) Title Dialect Summary [Okinawa dialect] For the First Okinawan Cover of the Frozen song “For the First Time in Time in Forever Reprise dialect Forever (Reprise)” in Okinawan dialect [Frozen] Soon after tears/Uchinā-guchi Okinawan Folk song sung partially in Japanese and partially in dialect Okinawan

From an initial corpus of 132 videos, I selected six videos per dialect, and three each for Nagoya and Kōshū, while attempting to maximize the variety of video genres for each dialect, yielding a final corpus of 26 videos and a total of 780 comments. I restricted my coding to the 30 most-liked top-level comments; particularly interesting lower-rated comments and replies that I have not coded are not counted but may still be included in my analysis.

I then added JSON elements and arrays6 to each comment object for storing the features I wanted to code.

3.2 Coding Procedures

3.2.1 Stance

I draw on Du Bois’s (2007) stance triangle as a means of breaking down, comparing, and organizing the social acts performed by the comments that make up my data. Stance is employed in discourse analysis to analyze interactants’ orientation towards external objects, other interactants, and to their own self-presentation.

The literature identifies three primary types of stancetaking. The first, evaluation, is the expression of an affective position or value judgment towards an object by a speaker (“that’s horrible”,

“that’s ideal.”) It is likely the most-well studied and was explored as early as Labov’s (1967) work on narrative. The second form, positioning, is a speaker’s direct expression of their own affective or epistemic state (“I’m glad, “I know.”) These two forms are sometimes studied as two different stance

6 A JSON object is essentially a list of categories that text strings can be stored in. An element can hold one string; an array can hold a list of strings.

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types, though Du Bois (2007: 143) links them together in order to relate them to the literature on positioning (Davies & Harré 1990, Bamberg 1997, Bamberg & Georgakopoulou 2008, De Fina 2013).

Finally, the third form, alignment, is a speaker’s expression of degrees of agreement or disagreement with another participant (“I agree,” “I disagree.”) This can be closely linked with Bucholtz and Hall’s (2005) work on identity to also apply to identity-based alignment.

Du Bois (2007) synthesizes all three types of stance with his theory of the stance triangle. He argues that as all types of stance must be socially contextualized to be meaningful (something must be horrible, someone must be agreed with, and so on.) Consequently, any articulation of “intersubjectivity”, where meaning is created between two or more speakers, is based off of common stances towards a common “stance object.”

He builds off this analysis to argue that all three types of stance (evaluation, positioning, and alignment) are in fact mutually dependent facets of a single action, the “stance act,” which he explains using the metaphor of the stance triangle, which is composed of two (or more) interactants and a single shared object. Any stance act, in short, any expression of subjective belief, performs all three acts simultaneously, and crucially, while all three are rarely made explicit simultaneously, the unstated sides of the stance triangle can always be recovered by the subject’s interlocutors.

3.2.2. Coding Process

DuBois’s (2007) stance triangle, as described above, was used as a model. I considered enregisterment as resulting from stance acts that take a dialect or the speaker of a dialect as their object; stance was used as the analytic framework because it is a convenient way to break down content for comparative analysis. The values I coded each comment for are described in Table 3:

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Table 3. Coding Schema JSON Element

Stance Object Evaluation or Affect Kansai / Hakata-ben / self Cool / cute / is a Tsugaru-ben speaker

Dialect Performance Which dialect Features performed Kansai-ben ya copula, akan

If a comment performed multiple stance acts, multiple stance entries were recorded.

For the qualitative/discourse analysis section of my analysis, I selected particularly relevant comments and applied the discourse analysis theory described above to more carefully demonstrate which discursive features are used to enregister the given dialects and what stances are taken towards them by commenters. I paid particularly close attention to similarity and dissimilarity in discursive type across dialectal lines, and my analysis is informed by the quantitative results.

4. Analysis

In the first part of this analysis, I analyze five types of evaluative stance taken on dialect. I begin with evaluation of the dialects themselves along three dimensions: attractiveness, humorousness, and intelligibility. I then examine two forms of social and ideological affective evaluation that can help explain how a dialect and its speakers are perceived: sentiment/folklorization and city versus country.

In the second part, I begin by examining the relative power and desirability of dialects through analyzing how dialect norms are enforced. I then examine how dialects are implicated in sociopolitical conflict by examining their relationship to diversity and nationalism.

Finally, I conclude by synthesizing my findings for each dialect and placing them in their social context.

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4.1. Cuteness and Ugliness

The first dimension I would like to examine is that of cuteness and ugliness. This is one of the most salient types of evaluation and is closely linked to trivialization, which I will cover in more detail in section 4.2. Furthermore, numerous researchers have identified dialect cuteness as a key factor in the dialect boom (Wood 1997, Jinnouchi 2007, Matsubara 2008, Fumio 2012).

The evaluation of a dialect as cute is closely associated with a speaker who is cute or attractive. A young woman is perhaps the archetypical form of this, which is explicitly discussed by some commenters and videos referring to the hōgen kanojo ‘dialect girl’ phenomenon; however, it can also apply to attractive young men or ‘cute’ elderly people. This has lead to a very large number of videos that showcase cute or attractive people using dialect.

Table 4. Dialect Attractiveness Total Cuteness Dialect Cuteness Dialect Ugliness Nagoya 2 1 3

Kōshū 3 2 6

Okinawa 7 2 0

Aomori 7 4 2

Kansai 12 2 0

Hakata 46 13 0

In Table 4 above I have listed the total number of stance acts in my corpus in which a commenter evaluates a dialect or dialect speaker as cute. To be counted as dialect evaluation, a comment must explicitly refer to the dialect or to a dialect feature.

In the following sections, I will examine all dialects which were salient in the dimensions of cuteness and ugliness.

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4.1.1. Hakata

Hakata-ben is not only evaluated but metalinguistically enregistered as the signature cutest dialect of Japan. Hakata-ben videos are dominated by genres involving cuteness, and many comments take meta- evaluative stances on its status as the cutest dialect, occasionally even when the video has nothing to do with Hakata-ben, and 46 out of the 150 top-level comments I coded for involve some evaluation of cuteness. Furthermore, comments evaluating Hakata-ben’s cuteness regularly take superlative stances, such as in this comment on [Hakata-ben] Proper usage of tottooto?:

MOCHIDZUKIAYA: Fukuoka-ben is way too cute I might die (20 likes) Fukuoka-ben kawai-sugite shinde-mau

This level of emphasis does not occur with other dialects.

There is a clear association between Hakata-ben’s cuteness and femininity. This is not expressed in the text of the comments per se, but rather in the fact that the subjects of the most-viewed Hakata-ben videos are overwhelmingly composed of attractive young women. Survey and interview information would be necessary to more precisely determine what about Hakata-ben makes it so cute, but I will offer further interpretation in the discussion in section 4.8.

4.1.2. Aomori

On the other hand, the Aomori dialects appear to be more aesthetically polysemous, as they are evaluated as indexing both cuteness and ugliness, with some comments identifying them as kitsui ‘dirty’ or dasai ‘uncool’. This ambivalence is captured well in the following chain of comments from Nanbu vs

Tsugaru: War. The video is a clip from Monday Late Nights that pits Aomori’s signature dialects,

Tsugaru-ben and Nanbu-ben, against each other, only to conclude that the battle doesn’t matter because they’re both just country talk. FUJII YAMA’s initial comment is presumably responding to this:

FUJII YAMA: Tōhoku people’s dialect is garbage. Tōhokujin-no hōgen wa gehin da na

ODACCHi: Being told that always makes me sad... That the words I always speak are garbage…

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Sonna koto iwareru to, futsū-ni kanashii… Itsumo hanashiteru kotoba-wo gehin da nante…

KAI-CHAN: I wouldn't say garbage; rather, there are a lot of voiced consonants, right? Despite that, it's still reasonably high in the ranking of cute dialects. Gehin toiuka dakuon-ga ooi de [sic] yo ne. Kore demo hōgen rankingu de kekkō jōi-ni iru-n desu yo.

MENTAI TARATARA: Fujii Yama7 So what if it’s garbage? You picking a fight with Tōhoku people, huh? Fujii Yama Gehin da kara nanda? Omae wa Tōhokujin-ni kenka-wo utta zo?

ELISHA ERIISHA: TaraTara mentai I'll coat your face in shit, alright? Because you're garbage, get it? Gyahahaha lololololol Taratara mentai Omae-no atama-ni unko nuritakutte yaru. N? Gehin da kara nanda? Gyahahahaha wwwww

Note that KAI-CHAN’s comment explicitly enregisters dakuon ‘voiced consonants’ and suggests them as an explanatory factor for Tōhoku-ben’s perceived ugliness. Intervocalic voicing of obstruents that are unvoiced in hyōjungo is one of the defining traits of Tōhoku-ben, and is commonly identified in the literature as a contributor to the perception of Tōhoku-ben as “slow”, “dark”, “grinding”, “dismal”, etc.

(Miyake 1995, Kumagai 2011)

While dakuon are not frequently identified at quite this level of meta-linguistic awareness, they are undoubtedly one of the defining features of the Aomori dialects and feature prominently in dialect performances. Furthermore, KAI-CHAN’S mention of a kawaii hōgen rankingu ‘cute dialect ranking’ clearly indicates that for at least some speakers the relative cuteness of Tōhoku-ben is at the third order of indexicality.

4.1.3. Kōshū

Unlike the other dialects I examined, Kōshū-ben is evaluated as ugly more frequently than it is cute or attractive. Obviously hostile or mocking responses are usually relegated to lower in the comment

7 Commenters often ‘sign’ their comments to each other by placing a space between the username of the addressee and the comment body, which is easily read since Japanese orthography usually doesn’t use spaces. I simulate this by adding three spaces in the format “USERNAME COMMENT BODY”

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thread for other dialects, but openly hostile responses to Kōshū-ben can receive large numbers of likes and enter a video’s top comments. Similar to how Hakata-ben is explicitly identified as a “cute” dialect,

Kōshū-ben can be identified as busaiku ‘ugly, homely’, as in this comment from For the First Time in

Forever (Reprise) Yamanashi-ben (Kōshū-ben) ver.:

NAKAMURA YUMI: Don’t you feel sorry for people with hometowns with ugly dialects lol (3 likes) Busaiku hōgen toka soko-no shusshin-no hito kaiwaisō jan w

Kōshū-ben’s enregisterment as the signature ‘ugly’ dialect is also demonstrated in the few comments it receives evaluating it as cute. Rather than taking a clear evaluative stance, commenters express affective uncertainty, as in the following (unrelated) comments from Late Nights from Monday:

Hakata-ben vs Kitakyūshū-ben and Late Nights from Monday: Kōshū-ben ugly dialect wwwww:

SHIRASU: I often think Kōshū-ben is cute; is it just me…? Futsū-ni Kōshū-ben-ga kawaii to omou-no wa ore dake darō ka…?

JEAM JIIMU: It’s kinda cute Nanka kawaii

In other words, practically every evaluation of Kōshū-ben as cute requires some at least implicit reference to its presupposed ugliness.

Furthermore, Kōshū-ben is the only dialect I examined where commenters evaluate it as decreasing the cuteness of its speakers. Consider this comment chain from Late Nights from Monday:

Hakata-ben vs Kitakyūshū-ben:

BANGAADO BURAKKU: Basically, if her face is cute, she sounds cute. (64 likes) Somosomo kao-ga kawaii kara kawaiku kikoeru.

GONZARESU: [Bangaado Burakku] That’s right Though if it gives the image of an old hag talking It’s kind of disgusting ( ˙-˙ ) Even if a cute person speaks Kōshū-ben, it’s out of the question (2 likes) [Bangaado Burakku] Sore wa aru Babaa-ga iiyoru to sōzō shitara zotto suru ( ˙-˙ ) Kōshū-ben wa kawaii hito-ga itte mo rongai ya kedo

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The metalinguistic awareness and high levels of enregisterment demonstrated here are quite remarkable.

It is also interesting that GONZARESU uses a token of the the West Japanese (and particularly Kansai) copula ya when they dismiss the possibility of cute Kōshū-ben; this would not be a Yamanashi or Kōshū- ben feature. Rather than voicing dialect features to index a type of personhood, as described in Coupland

(2007), or specific regional identity, as in Schilling-Estes (1998), it is possible that GONZARESU’s usage is rather intended to index their identity as a “dialect user” in general, hence authenticating their criticism of a dialect by showing that they are not ‘just’ a hyōjungo speaker.

Finally, further corroborating the enregisterment of Kōshū-ben as ugly, in the comments on For the First Time in Forever (Reprise) Yamanashi-ben (Kōshū-ben) ver., a commenter actually requests the song be redone in hyōjungo:

SIRIUS CHANNERU: Somebody please change it to hyōjungo (0 likes) Dare ka hyōjungo-ni henkan shite kudasai

Requesting hyōjungo instead of dialect would be inconceivable for most other dialect cover Frozen videos, since it goes against the purpose of the entire genre.

4.1.4. Nagoya

Nagoya-ben does not appear to be enregistered as cute except insofar as any dialect usage is cute, but a small number of comments evaluate Nagoya-ben as ‘nasty’ or ‘dirty’. It is possible that this is related to its relative closeness to Yamanashi; they are both part of the mountainous Chūbu region, and

Aichi is only separated from Yamanashi by prefecture.

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Figure 8. Map of Chūbu Region

The following comments from across all three videos I analyzed show the surprisingly severe evaluations Nagoya-ben can receive:

From If Luffy spoke Nagoya-ben: ITOUYOUICHI: Today’s Nagoyans don’t speak such dirty Nagoya-ben… Ima wa Nagoyajin wa koko made kitsui Nagoya-ben wa shabettenai…

From [Dialect] Everyone, do you know Nagoya-ben!?: SUKI KAWAII: I totally got it all lolololol. Nagoya-ben is way too uncool, I don’t wanna use it LOL. If it was a cute dialect like Fukuoka I’d want to � Meccha wakaru wwww. Nagoya-ben wa dasa-sugite tsukaitakunai wara. Fukuoka toka kawaii hōgen tsukaitai kedo �

From Ebifuryaa? Nagoya-ben class! [First part]: : I lived in Nagoya but This [dialect] is freakin’ garbage lol Nagoya-ni sundeta kedo Nanka gehin da yo ne w

There are even comments as remarkable as this one from Ebifuryaa? Nagoya-ben class! [First part], which explicitly links dialect stereotypes to stereotypes of its speakers:

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YUU&KYOU CHANNERU: I’m from Nagoya, and it really pisses me off [when] the TV is calling Nagoya people the ugly bitch of the Big Three. They’re all just ugly bitches, shut the fuck up ��� Well, that’s what I had to say. (11 likes) Watashi Nagoya kenmin da kedo, terebi toka de nanka, Nagoyajin wa sandai busu toka iwaretoru kedo, honto mukatsukuwa~ Busu bakka shika inai toka meccha uzee��� Nan nanda yotte hanashi

I will analyze this further in the discussion in section 4.9, but YUU&KYOU CHANNERU’s comment appears to be alluding to Nagoya’s uncomfortable status as the third-largest city in Japan after Tokyo and Osaka.

Survey and interview data would be necessary to explore this connection further, although the past literature does not indicate overall negative evaluations of Aichi, let alone Nagoya (Long 1999b).

4.1.5. Summary

Hakata-ben is evaluated as the cutest of the dialects I have examined, while the Aomori dialects are more polysemous, with varying evaluation as cute or ugly. Kōshū-ben is unambiguously very ugly, and Nagoya-ben is in a strange position where it does not appear to be enregistered as cute or ugly but is occasionally evaluated as ugly on a level nearing that of Kōshū-ben.

Attractiveness is the primary mode of evaluation for Hakata-ben and a major one for Kōshū-ben.

It also plays a major role in how these dialects are trivialized. In the following section, I turn to look more closely at trivialization.

4.2: Trivialization and Humor

The second dimension of evaluation I will analyze is that of triviality.

Lippi-Green (1997: 68) identifies ‘trivialization’ as one of the key elements of Standard

Language Ideology. The fundamental form of trivialization is the treatment of non-standard language varieties as less serious and deserving of respect in comparison to the standard. Common manifestations include evaluation of non-standard varieties as funny or cute. Cuteness is, of course, so dominant in evaluations of Japanese dialects that I granted it its own section, but evaluations of dialect usage as

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humorous in itself are also extremely common. This is far from limited to online commentary—see for example the video Sanma Gōten Okinawa, where the (Kansai-ben speaking) comedian and host Sanma

Akashiya is left literally lying on the floor laughing after hearing his guests sing in the Okinawan dialect.

Figure 9. Sanma Akashiya Laughing

I have tabulated all stance acts that evaluate the dialect itself or a dialect quote or feature as humorous, as well as all stance acts that evaluate the intelligibility of a dialect as funny. The total count includes all comments which could be responding to the dialect use but do not have a clear referent. Evaluations with an explicit referent that does not trivialize the dialect or its speakers are excluded.

Table 5. Dialect Trivialization Dialect as funny Intelligibility as funny Total funny Kansai 4 0 5

Nagoya 5 0 5

Hakata 3 0 13

Aomori 3 11 17

Okinawa 9 14 28

Kōshū 35 0 39

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4.2.1. Kōshū-ben

The numbers in Table 5 make it clear that Kōshū-ben is trivialized to a far greater extent than the other five dialects. 35 of the 90 Kōshū-ben-related comments analyzed blatantly mock Kōshū-ben quotations or speakers in a far crasser and more direct manner than the previous dialects. A textbook example is this comment from Late Nights from Mondays: Hakata-ben vs Kitakyūshū-ben:

OTSU DŌGA: Kōshū-ben —> x (甲州弁→×) Kōshū-ben —> O (口臭弁→○)

Both of the pairs of above are read kōshū, but 甲州 is the actual place name, while 口臭 means ‘bad breath’. This is not even a unique pun, but is repeated another time in the same video’s comments.

A primary source of humor appears to be manipulating the dialect to yield hyōjungo vulgarities.

In the video Late Nights from Monday: Ugly Dialect Kōshū-ben lololololol, a clip from one of the most popular variety shows in Japan, a young woman is shown speaking the Kōshū-ben phrase kōshi ‘hey you, come over here’, which is equivalent to omae kocchi koi in hyōjungo. However, the subtitles slip an n onto kochi, allowing the phrase to be parsed as omanko chinko ushi, which would mean

‘pussy dick cow’ in hyōjungo.

In addition to Late Nights from Monday: Ugly Dialect Kōshū-ben lololololol, the video Late

Nights from Mondays: Hakata-ben vs Kitakyūshū-ben, which is cut from the same television show, appears to have been partially responsible for the evaluation of Kōshū-ben as an ugly dialect. In the video, clips of two young women saying phrases in Hakata-ben and Kitakyūshū-ben are interspersed with clips of another young woman saying the same things in Kōshū-ben. Everything about the video, including the unprofessional plain background the woman speaking Kōshū-ben is standing in front of, the bold subtitles for her speech, and the laugh track that plays when she speaks, makes it obvious that the humor is meant to be at Kōshū-ben’s expense.

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Figure 10. Screencaps From Late Nights From Monday: Hakata vs Kitakyūshū Kitakyūshū-ben: “Anta kocchi kii” Kōshū-ben: “Oman kocchin kōshi”

I have included selections from a thread of comments from Late Nights from Monday: Hakata vs

Kitakyūshū below. This is one of the few times a commenter attempts to defend Kōshū-ben in a top-level comment, and the variety of responses they receive is clearly indicative of how Kōshū-ben is trivialized.

HACCHI KUJOU: I think this shitty program is making too much fun of Kōshū-ben. Mocking the language [of] where people were born and grew up like this and making these changes to get some ill-willed laughs is too rude. (101 likes) Kōshū-ben-wo -ni shi-sugi daro kono kuso bangumi Sono hito-ga umare sochitta kotoba-wo kō yatte baka-ni shitari akui-no aru warai-ni kaeru no tte shitsurei sugi

AAAAA: Hacchi Kujou Pussy dick lmao (41 likes) Hacchi Kujou Oman kocchin ko wa kusa

[…1 comment omitted…]

2 PAC: It has nothing to do with Kōshū-ben but I’m from Kōshū city Even if ‘hande metameta goccho de goisu” was hyōjungo it would still be gross Japanese. But anyways, thank you to Late Nights [from Monday] for making Yamanashi prefecture a little famous (32 likes) Kōshū-ben wa kankei nai kedo Kōshū-shi-no mono desu Hande metameta goccho de goisu wa hyōjungo-ni shite mo kimochi warui nihongo desu. Demo Yofukashi-san, Yamanashi-ken sukoshi demo yūmei-ni shite kurete arigato

SAI: Hacchi Kujou Don’t think it’s particularly ill-willed (8 likes) Hacchi Kujou Betsu-ni akui wa nee daro

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TOJO31615SHIRIKO: There’s also ‘Ugly dialect clash Kōshū-ben vs Ecchū-ben8 and such, so I apologize for making it into a laughing topic, but until now no one seemed to mind, so it doesn’t seem that bad. Since Kōshū-ben has been picked up over and over by this series and has gotten famous, isn’t it actually good? (10 likes) Busaiku hōgen taiketsu de Kōshu-ben vs Ecchū-ben toka atta shi, shitsurei de wa aru kedo waraeru shi wadai-ni naru shi soko made komaru hito inai kara waruku wa nai to omou. Kōshū-ben jitai kono shiriizu de saisan toriagerarete yūmei-ni natta shi, betsu-ni ii-n de nai?

TAKENOSHITA YŪKI: SAI No, this program is ill-will embodied lol (12 likes) SAI Iya, kono bangumi wa akui-no katamari da w

[…1 comment omitted]

ZKWCIEBTOMN: But the truth is isn’t Kōshū-ben the least appealing? [Though] I thought it was somewhat cute. (7 likes) Demo jitsu wa Kōshū-ben-ga ichiban oishikunai ka? Nanka kawaii tte omotta

BAIERUNMYUNHEN: Hacchi Kujou It’s funny so it’s fine (15 likes) Hacchi Kujou Omoroi kara ee yan

[…3 comments omitted…]

ROBBEN ARIEN: Hacchi Kujou It’s because of assholes like you that television is getting so boring (7 likes) Hacchi Kujou Omae mitai-na yatsu-ga iru kara terebi-ga tsumaranaku naru nda yo naa

JINBEIZAME CHURA UMI: Hacchi Kujou No, no, you can laugh. Don’t you laugh if something’s funny? I think you do. The real problem is funny, so it’s okay to laugh. I don’t know why u so mad, bro. Are you okay? (4 likes) Hacchi Kujou Iya iya, waraeru jan. Kimi wa omoshiroi koto wa waranai no kai? Warau daro. Jissai mondai omoshiroi kara, waratte mo ii desho. Nani-wo kireteru-no ka wakaran ne. Daijōbu kai?

ALL STAR: Do you enjoy life? (3 likes) Jinsei tanoshii?

FUWAFUWA MARUSERO: Seems like you just don’t enjoy anything (2 likes) Nani-ni mo tanoshimenee nda na kitto omae wa

MΘN 1 0 0: “Goccho de goisu” (0 likes)

8 A pre-Meiji roughly corresponding to present-day Prefecture. Part of northern Chūbu, adjacent to Nagano.

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Goccho de goisu

[…2 comments omitted…]

HO PE: Hacchi Kujou Truth is it’s shit language so it doesn’t matter (0 likes) Hacchi Kujou Jissai kuso gengo da kara dō demo ii

[…1 comment omitted…]

SHINASN’S: I understand OP’s feelings (0 likes) Ore mo wakaru wa, kome-shu-no kimochi

Out of the 22 responses Hacchi Kujou receives, only one of them is sympathetic, the last one in the thread. Three respond by simply quoting the video’s mock Kōshū-ben back at them, ten accuse them of overreacting or lacking a sense of humor, and eight attempt to rationalize the video’s content in some way, either by suggesting that the video has actually benefited Kōshū and Yamanashi by making them famous or that Kōshū-ben’s inherent deficiency makes it deserving of mockery. Even the sarcastic interchange between SAI and TAKENOSHITA YŪKI indicates that the attempted valorization of Kōshū-ben is not in any way being taken seriously.

This hostile response is beyond what occurs for any other dialect, and the explicit identification of humorousness and inferiority with Kōshū-ben itself seems to encode the dialect’s triviality itself at the third-order of indexicality.

The oman kocchin kōshi mislabeling is apparently so funny that it is endlessly recycled and repeated throughout the video’s comments and is quoted with or without context on other Kōshū-ben videos. A context-free oman kocchin kōshi quotation even received many likes on the video Cute Hakata- ben girl, which has nothing to with Kōshū-ben whatsoever other than also featuring a “country” dialect.

On the video For the First Time in Forever (Reprise) Yamanashi-ben (Kōshū-ben) ver., the top comment is a reference to the Late Nights from Monday video, which outside of the dialect type is entirely unrelated to the Frozen video’s content:

TŌYA TŌYA: Everybody who came from the Late Nights Kōshū-ben video ✋ Oman kocchin kōshi~ (145 likes) Yofukashi-no Kōshū-ben-no dōga kara kita hito ✋ Oman kocchin kōshi~

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Other comments, such as this one from Late Nights from Hakata-ben vs Kitakyūshū-ben, literally identify

Kōshū-ben with the phrase oman kocchin kōshi itself:

RIC z: Oman kocchin kōshi ↑ Kōshū-ben lololololol (18 likes) Oman kocchin kōshi ↑ Kōshū-ben wwwwww

For these reasons, I will suggest that Kōshū-ben is maximally trivialized out of the dialects I analyzed.

4.2.2. Okinawa

The Okinawan dialect is frequently trivialized, although it does not appear to reach the same level as Aomori or Kōshū. Similar to Kōshū-ben, commenters find amusement in dialect features that are phonologically equivalent to vulgar words in hyōjungo. This can be seen in the frequent performance of and puns on the Okinawan word kūga ‘testicles’. Many commenters joke about the similarity to the famous early 2000s TV show Kamen Rider Kūga, where Kūga is used as a proper noun with no connection to Okinawa. The following comment is representative of the apparent fascination of non-

Okinawan speakers with the word:

YŪREI CHINPANJI: I’m going to Okinawa in December so I’ll remember this. Kūga! Kūga! Kūga! Jūnigatsu Okinawa iku kara oboetoko. Kūga! Kūga! Kūga!

This phenomenon recurs in this selection from Shun Nishime and Ruka Matsuda talk in Okinawa dialect, which is almost a foreign language!?, a promotional video for the film Kamen Rider Generations where the actors Ruka Matsuda and Shun Nishime exchange a few lines in Okinawan dialect after the host mentions they are both from Okinawa. 000BIRTH begins by linking their positive evaluation of

Okinawa-ben to the attractiveness of Matsuda (in character as “Poppy”):

000BIRTH: This is the first time I got a good feeling off Okinawa-ben. Poppy’s cuteness is great. (131 likes) Hajimete Okinawa-ben-ga yoi to kanjita. Poppii-no kawai-sa wa idai.

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PIEERO: 000birth What part was cute? Tell me? 000birth Doko-ga kawaii-no? Oshiete?

RYOKUYA TOKAGEMARU: +Pieero Oh fuck off +Pieero Shine shine

SHISERU UMI-NO SACHI: In Okinawa they call balls kūga y’know Okinawa de wa kintama-no koto kūga tte iu zo

SHINSEKAI-NO TEIŌ KAMI: Shiseru umi-no sachi I lol’d lol Shiseru umi-no sachi Warota w

JIYAJOO: Shiseru umi-no sachi So you’re telling me Kamen Rider Kūga would be Kamen Rider Balls? What the heck, no way Shiseru umi-no sachi Kamen Raidaa Kūga wa Kamen Raidaa Kintama tte naru-no? Nanka yada naa

NATSU AME: Shiseru umi-no sachi It’s not kūga, it’s kuugaa. And for Okinawa the intonation is completely different. So Mr. Kamen Rider Kūga wouldn’t become Mr. Balls. Though even if I say it you [probably] won’t understand… Shiseru umi-no sachi Kūga janai yo, kuugaa da yo intoneeshon mo Okinawa da to zenzzen chigau kara Kamen Raidaa Kūga-san wa kintama-san-ni wa naranai yo, tte itte mo wakaranai yo ne…

PIEERO’s hostility receives an equally hostile refutation from RYOKUYA TOKAGEMARU, suggesting that outright hostility towards Okinawan is not acceptable. However, there is minimal sequential or contextual rationale for SHISERU UMI-NO SACHI to raise the the topic of Okinawan vulgarities—000BIRTH’S initial comment has virtually no connection to the topic of kūga. Apparently the combination of any mention of

Kamen Rider with the presence of Okinawan dialect is sufficient context for entirely changing the topic. It is also suggestive that SHINSEKAI-NO TEIŌ KAMI and JIYAJOO take up the topic without objection.

Furthermore, like the Aomori dialects, the Okinawan dialect can be trivialized through humor playing on its perceived incomprehensibility, although it is less unambiguously mocking than the Aomori case. The fifth highest comment on [Okinawa dialect] For the First Time in Forever Reprise [Frozen] is indicative of this:

NAN: I’m from Okinawa but this is hard lol (107) Okinawa kenmin da kedo muzukashii w

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It is not always clear whether the source of humor is the dialect’s incomprehensibility itself or more a kind of nervous laughter at the commenter’s own expense. In any case, the ambiguity and genuine surprise seems to suggest that humorous impenetrability is not as enregistered in the case of Okinawa as it is with Aomori. I will cover this in more detail in section 4.3.

4.2.3. Aomori

The Aomori dialects are frequently trivialized in a way that is similar to the Okinawan dialect, where their supposed incomprehensibility is used as a source of humor, but they also play on the stereotype of Tōhoku-ben speakers as dull and unintelligent. This can incorporate mock performance, as in the use of the phrase waganne w ‘don’t get it lol’ in responding to videos of Tsugaru-ben, but the most cutting responses tend to occur in comment threads rather than top-level comments:

TTC KISI: There is a limit, right… I’m from Nanbu and when I was in Tokyo, I got really embarrassed when I ordered shakkoi kooshii [‘iced coffee’ in Tōhoku-ben] at Starbucks. Gendo-ga aru na…… Nanbu-no ore, Tōkyō itta toki shakkoi kooshii tte Sutaba de tanonde sekimen shita nda zo

MOSU.: Sorry couldn’t understand you lol Suman wakaran w

INDI: Aisu koohii [‘Iced coffee’ in hyōjungo] lololol Aisu koohii www

FUCK ‘EM ALL: Since you made me write it out: “Shakkoi kooshii → hiyakkoi koohii → aisu koohii”, see, you can translate it. Though if it’s said [to you] directly, maybe you won’t understand lol Moji-ni okosareta kara “shakkoi kooshii —> hiyakkoi kooshii —> aisu koohii” tte henkan dekiru kedo, chokusetsu iwaretara tabun wakaran w

This is consistent with the literature identifying Tōhoku-ben varieties with low intelligence and unintelligibility (Miyake 1995). Open mockery in top-level comments is not fully ratified, but exposing oneself to vulnerability as TCC KISI does by relating a somewhat embarrassing personal anecdote opens the floor for condescension playing off the Tōhoku stereotypes of unintelligibility and low intelligence.

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Fuck ‘em all’s condescending “translation” into hyōjungo is particularly interesting for how it actively enregisters the word shakkoi.

Shakkoi is apparently related to hiyakkoi, an adjective which is used in the northern Chūbu region adjacent to southwest Tōhoku. Regardless of the actual historical connection between the words, sha can easily be interpreted as a merger of hi and ya; various studies of Tōhoku-ben suggest this type of merger strongly indexes the sloppiness and low intelligence associated with Tōhoku residents (Miyake 1995, see

‘zuzu-ben’). Furthermore, hiyakkoi has been replaced by the more modern-sounding English loanword aisu ‘ice’ in hyōjungo, essentially burying this Tōhoku-ben word under multiple layers of perceived archaicness. Hence, this particular interaction serves as an example of how Tōhoku-ben is enregistered as the sloppy dialect of unintelligent people.

4.2.4. Summary

Kōshū-ben is by far the most explictly trivialized of the dialects I examined, with the language itself being treated as a source of humor and contempt. The Aomori and Okinawan dialects’ supposed impenetrability is a source of humor, but evaluation of Okinawa skews closer to Kōshū with its frequent laughter at naughty words, while Aomori trivialization plays on the more highly enregistered stereotypes of its speakers.

In the following section, I will examine the intelligibility connection between Aomori and

Okinawa more closely.

4.3. Intelligibility and Foreignness

The third dimension of evaluation I examine is that of intelligibility and its relationship with foreignness. My data suggests that dialects that are not easily intelligible for hyōjungo speakers are perceived as somehow less Japanese and more ‘foreign’. The perception of a dialect as incomprehensible is obviously conditioned by its relative distance from the commenter’s own dialect, and the Aomori and

Okinawan dialects are the only ones to be evaluated as unintelligible with any frequency. This is

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consistent with the fact that they are linguistically the most distinct from hyōjungo of the dialects I studied.

Table 6 shows the number of comprehension-related stances taken in the data below:

Table 6. Dialect Intelligibility Can’t understand Can understand Not Specific Total Japanese language comparison

Prefecture Not Prefecture Not resident specified resident specified

Nagoya 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Kansai 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Hakata 1 0 0 0 0 1 1

Kōshū 1 0 1 0 1 0 3

Okinawa 8 8 2 0 17 1 37

Aomori 7 10 7 3 9 25 62

4.3.1. Aomori

Evaluation related to intelligibility is the single most dominant type of stance-taking done in response to videos of the Aomori dialects, particularly Tsugaru-ben, the dialect spoken in the small city of

Tsugaru on Aomori Prefecture’s western shore. Particularly dominant are comparisons to foreign languages. These stances clearly align Aomori with foreignness and serve to enregister Aomori’s dialects as ‘foreign-sounding.’ This is an instance of distinction in Bucholtz and Hall’s (2005) sense, where emphasis on the difference between the stance-taker and the stance object emphasizes the distance between the identity categories they are members of (in this case, “Japanese” and “foreign”). Consider for example these responses to Elderly women chatting in Tsugaru-ben:

EAST TOMAX: These cool grannies can speak a foreign language! (6 likes) Gaikokugo hanaseru baa-chan-tachi kekkō ii naa

AKI YASIRO: This is harder than English lmao (17 likes) Kore eigo yori muzui yaro wara

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FUKKU KANCHOU: Seems like Chinese or Korean lololol (11 likes) Chūgokugo ka Kankokugo mitai www

ASAKUSAWALKER: If the title was ‘Elder women of a Central Asian minority people’ I would’ve believed it just as much. People from Tsugaru must be bilingual; I’m jealous! (10 likes) Taitoru-ga “Chūō Ajia-no shōsū minzoku-no rōjo-tachi” ni shite atte mo tabun sono mama shinjita to omou. Tsugarujin wa bairingaru de urayamashii.

These responses are emblematic of the types of response typically made to Tsugaru-ben—generic comparisons to a foreign language (usually simply gaikokugo ‘foreign language’), superlative descriptions of Tsugaru-ben’s difficulty, comparisons to a specific foreign language, and even moderate racialization of Tsugaru-ben speakers as “indigenous”, “minority people,” or even “Central Asian.”9 I have listed the seven most frequently mentioned languages in the comments made on Tōhoku-ben videos in Table 7 below (comments drawn from a larger corpus):

Table 7. Language Comparisons Count Almost all comments mentioning Japanese do so

Japanese 55 to emphasize how different it is from Tōhoku-

Korean 53 ben. (Note that the distinction drawn here is

French 51 against nihongo ‘Japanese’ and not hyōjungo.) Russian 26 Korean and French are by far the most popular English 11 foreign languages; interestingly, the comparisons Chinese 10 to French appear to be made at least partially in Mongolian 7 earnest despite the typological absurdity of the comparison. 100% of the mentions of English are comparisons of their relative difficulty, not their linguistic similarity.

9 While I considered drawing on theories of racialization more extensively, it did not occur explicitly with enough frequency for a thorough analysis.

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This can be described in terms of Preston’s (1997) labelling theory as well as sociolinguistic indexicality. The comparison to French is prima facie absurd, but ‘French’, as well as ‘Korean’, presumably serves as a label for or indexes a general sense of foreignness. Consequently, comparisons of

Tōhoku-ben varieties to foreign languages enregisters Tōhoku-ben as not quite Japanese. This is corroborated by the less frequent but highly elaborate historical and racial theories some commenters produce to “explain” the origins of Tōhoku and Tsugaru-ben; these are complimentary forms of distinction that are not necessarily linguistically based but compliment the linguistic enregisterment.

That being said, there are clear limitations on the enregisterment of Tōhoku-ben as foreign that serve to keep it firmly within the boundaries of the Japanese polity. Many of the stances taken on the dialect’s non-Japanese-ness are ironic or playful, and a number of comments push back against the foreignness trope by asserting that Tōhoku-ben does sound like Japanese to them. It appears that while the

Aomori dialects are available for language play playing on their foreignness, they are not seriously treated as non-Japanese.

Certain commenters openly evaluate this tendency as play. The comments on the video Hearing

French in a Tsugaru-ben conversation are entirely dominated by intelligibility-related comments (18 out of the 30 top comments compare Tsugaru-ben to a foreign language.) Consider then the following thread from the video, where commenters debate the validity of comparing Tsugaru-ben to Korean:

AOKI : Sounds a bit like Korean to me. Sukoshi Kankokugo-no you-ni kikoeru ne.

N MIURA: Aoki Kenji: There’s no way. (I’m Korean.) Aoki Kenji: Sonna koto nai desu (watashi Kankokujin da kara)

JUSTIS: N Miura: I think it sounds like Korean to someone who doesn’t understand Korean. I’m American by the way. N Miura: Kankokugo-ga wakaranai hito-ni wa kankokugo-ni kikoeru to omoimasu. Chinami-ni Amerikajin desu.

VESTAOSTO: I’m Japanese, but for some reason the intonation sounds a little like Korean to me. N Miura: Nihonjin desu ga, nantonaku oto-no yokuyou-ga kankoku-poku kikoemasu.

MIN-CHAN: I’m also Korean, but to me the intonation seems like Korean’s Gyeongsang dialect.

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Watashi mo kankokujin nan desu ga, intoneeshon wa kankokugo-no gyeongsang-ben-ni niteru to omoimasu

KOTORI AKI OSHI RAIBAA: I’m also pure Japanese, but to me the intonation seems like Côte d’Ivoire-ese. Watashi mo kisshui-no nihonjin nano desu ga, intoneeshon-ga nantonaku Kootojibowaaru-go-ni nitemasu ne.

코리코스: Korean person: Is that so Kankokujin: sō desu ne

WHITE MORNING KAWAMACHI#: Kotori Aki Oshi Raibaa Sympathetic people picking that choice are anyone but people from Côte d’Ivoire lol Kotori Aki Oshi Raibaa Sono choisu-wo kyoukan dekiru hito wa Kootojibowaaru hito kurai shika oran w

The use of the fictional “Côte d’Ivoire-ish” indexes the playfulness involved, and KOTORI AKI OSHI

RAIBAA’s exaggerated repetition of the “I am DEMONYM” structure frames their comment as ironic. This is further corroborated by this stand-alone comment from the same video that pokes fun at the entire idea:

HORII ATSUSHI: French, Russian, Ukrainian, Korean, Mongolian, etc… I see, Tsugaru-ben must be the language of the world! (30 likes) Futsugo, Roshia-go, Ukuraina-go, kankokugo, Mongoru-go, etc… Naruhodo, Tsugaru-ben wa “sekai-go” datta no ka!

The persistent playfulness and irony in this stancetaking on Tsugaru and Tōhoku’s foreignness can be considered as the complement to Bucholtz and Hall’s distinction, adequation, which emphasizes similarity and minimizes difference. Playfully mocking, and hence downplaying, the differentness of

Tsugaru-ben in the very act of calling attention to that difference is a polysemous stance act that serves to enregister it as located firmly on the border between Japanese and foreign languages, just as Aomori, and particularly Tsugaru, is often considered to be on the border between Japan and the rest of the world. The

Aomori dialects are enregistered as foreign-like but not too foreign; they have a type of foreignness that is amusing and fascinating but ultimately unthreatening.

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4.3.2. Okinawa

The Okinawan dialect is undoubtedly more linguistically distinct from hyōjungo than any variety of mainland Japanese, including the Aomori dialects, and like Aomori numerous commenters take stances on the Okinawan dialect’s distinctness from Japanese and liken it to a foreign language. Many commenters, such as this one on the Okinawa dialect Mono mane quiz! Guest is [Mahoto x Saguwa] video, appear to be fascinated with the idea of a language spoken in Japan not being comprehensible to hyōjungo speakers:

RUNA: G man I see! Even though we live in the same Japan we can’t understand each other’s language! My deepest apologies! (4 likes) G man Naruhodo! Onaji nihon-ni sunderu-no ni kotoba-ga wakaranai nante! Mōshiwake nee desu!

Furthermore, much like Aomori, commenters’ evaluations of the Okinawan dialect’s incomprehensibility are often quite playful, performing the same distinction-adequation balancing act to position the

Okinawan dialect at the boundary between “foreign” and “not foreign.” This can be seen in this selection of some of the highest-rated top-level comments on the video [Okinawa dialect] For the First Time in

Forever Reprise [Frozen]:

SAMUTATSU CHANNEL: For the first time in forever, I don’t understand (82 likes) Umarete hajimete shika wakaranee

MORDEKO: I’m from Okinawa but I only understand a little…I don’t know whether to call this a dialect or what lol (64 likes) Okinawa shusshin da kedo sukoshi shika imi-ga wakaranakatta…Subete hōgen-ni suru to nante itteru-no ka wakaran w

KANO: This doesn’t seem like the same Japan, don’t get it at all lolololol (45 likes) Onaji nihon to omoenai hodo wakaranai wwww

ZI ZHI: Japanese, OK lolololol by Okinawa resident (23 likes) Nihongo de oK wwwww by Okinawa kenmin

MEDAKA: This feels like a foreign language already lololol (19 likes) Mohaya gaikokugo-ni kanjiru www

The stance-taking structures exhibited here are not dissimilar to the Aomori dialects. Appending w ‘lol’ to an evaluation of Okinawa’s distinctiveness clearly adds a playful affective dimension, and the tag “by [in

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English] + DEMONYM” is used elsewhere by commenters to attribute dialogue to the residents of a certain place, often in a mocking fashion.

However, as Table 4.3 shows, in drastic contrast to the Aomori dialects, while 18 of the 150 comments on the Okinawan dialect contain a stance act that contrasts it with Japanese, only one of them actually references a specific language, Chinese. This appears to be a result of the much greater political tension surrounding the Okinawan case. Tōhoku, and by extension Aomori, does not have a history of political independence from Japan and is not connected to any ongoing political struggles, so Tōhoku-ben varieties can be jokingly compared to languages spoken in other countries without constituting a threat to

Japanese nationalism. Okinawa, on the other hand, is a site of political struggle, a former colony, appears to be torn between a Chinese, Japanese, and Okinawan cultural (and even racial) identity, and has a history marked by tragedy and genocide. Tōhoku offers a “safe” psuedo-foreignness, but Okinawa offers nothing of the sort.

Consequently, the debate over whether Okinawan should be considered an independent language or a dialect of Japanese appears to be legitimately contentious, rather than somewhat playful. References to Okinawan independence can result in extreme hostility, especially if the commenter does not identify as Japanese. Take for example this thread from the video Soon after tears / Uchinā-guchi:

LLTNT: Independent Ryūkyū! Ryūkyū dokuritsu!

IWAI TASSEI: You assholes who aren’t even Japanese should shut up and get the hell out of Okinawa! You’re trying to make Okinawa a hell for the Japanese, and it’d be nice if you all died. Nihonjin janai yatsu wa damatte Okinawa kara deteke! Nihonjin de Okinawa-wo jigoku- ni kaeyou to shiteiru yatsu wa shinde ii zo

The clear presupposition in IWAI TASSEI’s comment is that the Okinawan people are and must be unambiguously Japanese; unlike the Aomori case, borderline foreigness is emphatically negated. This is confirmed in another comment they make later on in response to being criticized by another commenter who self-identifies as Okinawan and assumes IWAI TASSEI is Okinawan as well:

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IWAI TASSEI: I’m putting it here so there’s no mistake. I am a mainlander. That said, Okinawans are culturally and genetically Japanese, and we compatriots need to band together as if we were facing an invasion. […] Machigai shiteru you da kara itte oku ga. Ore wa hondo-no ningen da. Okinawa-no hito wa bunkateki-ni mo idenshiteki-ni mo nihonjin de aru. Shinryaku saseru you-na koto ga areba ooku-no douhou-ga hasesanjiru darou. […]

This is a forceful act of adequation that emphasizes the similarity between Okinawans and Japanese on not just the linguistic or cultural but even the biological level. Similarly aggressive acts do not occur for

Tōhoku, presumably because its fundamental Japaneseness is never genuinely in question and hence does not need to be defended.

Furthermore, carelessly taking stances that distinguish Okinawa from Japan can apparently be taken as offensive by Okinawans themselves. Consider this comment thread from Shun Nishime and Ruka

Matsuda talk in Okinawa dialect, which is almost a foreign language!?:

GENJI IRIE: Well, Okinawa was originally a foreign country. Salted sushi lol (53 likes) Maa, Okinawa wa motomoto gaikoku desu. Shio sushi w

SEKIRYŌ HŌSHOKU: Irie What the hell are you talking about, dickcheese!? (3 likes) Genji Irie Nani itteru nda? Chinkasu!

GENJI IRIE: Sekiryō Hōshoku It means that in ancient times [Okinawa] flourished as the Ryūkyū Kingdom.(^^) I get the feeling that using dirty words like 'dickcheese' will make it hard to have a good conversation, so avoiding them would be wise. (28 likes) Sekiyō Hōshoku Ryūkyu Ōkoku to shite sakaeteita jidai ga atta to iu imi desu (^^) Chinkasu nante kitanai kotoba-wo tsukau to aite-ga iya-na omoi-wo shite shimau node, tsukawanai hō-ga kenmei desu yo

SEKIRYŌ HŌSHOKU: So that's what you mean. I apologize m(_ _)m. I was sure your comment was mocking Okinawa, so please forgive my rude remark. (19 likes) Soyū imi datta ndesu ne, shitsurei shimashita m(_ _)m Tekkiri Okinawa-wo baka-ni shita kome da to omotte shimimashita, fuyukai-na hatsugen, go-yurushi kudasai.

GENJI IRIE: Sekiryō Hōshoku No, no, it was my mistake making an unclear comment. My deepest apologies m(_ _)m (13 likes) Sekiryō Hōshoku Ie ie, watashi mo setsumei fumei-no komento de machigai sasete shimaimashita. Mōshiwake nai desu m(_ _)m

SEKIRYŌ HŌSHOKU: Thank you for your understanding(^ω^) (6 likes) Go-rikai arigatō gozaimasu (^ω^)

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Probably the most remarkable part of this exchange is how easily GENJI IRIE and SEKIRYŌ HŌSHOKU make up after SEKIRYŌ HŌSHOKU’s outraged initial response, something which is remarked on by many of the thread’s subsequent commenters. Although SEKIRYŌ HŌSHOKU does not explicitly identify themselves as Okinawan, it is possible that what they have responded to so negatively is the implicit distinction of Okinawa from Japan as a whole in GENJI IRIE’s initial comment. Okinawans were placed under enormous pressure to assimilate after the annexation of the Ryūkyū Kingdom by Japan and many took great pride in their apparent success; to this day many Okinawans reject the Okinawan independence and language revitalization movements because they consider themselves fully Japanese (Heinrich 2004).

When GENJI IRIE clarifies that they are discussing Okinawa’s past history and not drawing a distinction between present-day Okinawans and Japanese, the conflict is easily defused. This shows the very real macro-level social consequences even small micro-level acts of adequation and distinction can have.

Another highly-rated comment from [Okinawa dialect] For the First Time in Forever Reprise

[Frozen] shows active fear of causing such offense, but rather than a potentially in-group response it appears to represent the fear of a non-Okinawan:

USAGI: Uh, umm…this doesn’t sound like Japanese…No, I’m not making fun of Okinawa at all!! Okinawa has this kind of language, this is also history! … I’m sorry…(இoஇ; ) (155 likes) E, etto…Nihongo-ni kikoenai… Iya, Okinawa-wo baka-ni shiteru wake janai ssu!! Okinawa wa kōiu kotoba da kara sore mo rekishi da kara! …Sumimasen…(இoஇ; )

Rather than explicitly engaging with the question of assimilation and cultural identity, it seems more likely that the commenter is afraid that they will be viewed as mocking Okinawa by questioning its

Japaneseness—something which does occasionally happen with the heavily trivialized Kōshū-ben. The difference, similar to Aomori, is that Kōshū is available for such mockery via distinction because its cultural identity is not truly in question.

4.3.3. Summary

Fascination with the apparent unintelligibility of the Aomori and Okinawan dialects is one of the primary ways they are evaluated, and the consistent comparisons made between the two dialects and

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foreign languages suggest they are perceived in some ways as not quite Japanese. However, it is much less likely for the Okinawan dialect to be compared to specific foreign languages, likely due to the great political tension surrounding the question of Okinawa’s Japaneseness. In comparison, Aomori appears to occupy a safe pseudo-foreign or para-foreign position where it can have some of the ‘exoticness’ of a foreign language without really being non-Japanese.

Having established the difference between the foreignness of Okinawa and Aomori, I now move to examine how this plays out on a more affectively laden dimension, that of sentimental stancetaking.

This connects the question of foreignness to that of Indigeneity, and what unique evaluative resources are available for the two dialects that are not quite Japanese.

4.4. Sentimentality and Indigeneity

In this section I analyze the relationship between sentimentality, folklorization, and the discursive construction of Indigeneity, and show how, as with intelligibility, Aomori can be evaluated as a charming and sentimentalized ‘para-Indigenous’ dialect, while evaluations of Okinawa are burdened by its history.

To do so, I examine three kinds of stances.

The first type of stance I examine is the affective stance of nostalgia and longing, which occurs quite frequently in response to certain dialects. Longing for a more innocent, idealized past is a key tenet of folklorization, and it is distinctive enough to be worth its own category.

The second type of stance is intense sentimentality, particularly extreme sadness. Numerous commenters claim to have broken into tears upon watching certain videos; this is an example of sentiment.

Finally, the final type of stance consists of explicit instances of what I am describing as

“folklorization.” As I described before, this is essentially any kind of act that acts to constrain the domains of language use to a marked “cultural” realm (Crystal 2007: 84). For the purposes of coding, I identify the following as folklorization: the discourse of language death and the association of a language

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variety with an (idealized) past, discussion of the value of dialect as cultural heritage, and stance acts expressing hope that the dialect will be preserved and that the younger generation will carry the burden.

I have tabulated all relevant stance acts in these categories in Table 8 below:

Table 8. Dialect Sentimentality Nostalgia Sentiment Folklorization Total Kansai 0 0 0 0

Nagoya 0 0 0 0

Hakata 0 0 0 0

Kōshū 0 0 0 0

Aomori 3 7 9 16

Okinawa 7 9 9 24

There is a stark contrast between the three “modern” dialects and the “ugly” Kōshū-ben, and the more folklorized Aomori and Okinawa dialects. Commenters do not evaluate Kansai-ben, Nagoya-ben,

Hakata-ben, or Kōshū-ben sentimentally or nostalgically at all. The closest they come are mentions of commenters’ grandparents speaking similar dialect, but I consider this to be categorically different from full folklorization.

In contrast, sentimentality and nostalgia occur frequently in comments on Okinawan videos, and they are one of the dominant modes of evaluation for Aomori videos’ comments. Aomori and Okinawa are in fact explicitly linked to each other a number of times as sharing a certain affinity and spiritual warmth as well as perceived incomprehensibility. This is exemplified by the following comment from

Hearing French in a Tsugaru-ben conversation:

NIKKI MIRACLE: I can’t believe Okinawa and Tōhoku are the same Japanese [people [as us]] But both are gentle and somehow soothing Hakata-ben and -ben are cute [In] my own place The dani~ and zura~ parts seem like an anime character Okinawa to Tōhoku wa onaji nihonjin wa omoenai shaberikata Demo dochira mo ottori shitete nanka ochitsuku Hakata-ben ka Kumamoto-ben-ga kawaii

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Uchi-no tokoro wa Dani~ da-no zura~ da-no doko zo no anime kyara

This comment also enregisters Okinawa and Aomori as “gentle” and “soothing”; in addition to being examples of “genuine” and “emotional” covert prestige (Carroll 2001: 15), they are also traits sometimes associated with folklorization.

4.4.1 Okinawa

The Okinawan dialect has the most overall folklorization-related evaluations, particularly sentimentality. However, I would consider it to be roughly equal to Aomori, as Aomori’s 16 stances are distributed roughly evenly across all 5 of its videos, whereas 12 of Okinawa’s 24 are from a single video,

Soon After Tears/Uchinā-guchi, a folk song sung partially in Japanese and partially in Okinawan.

That said, Okinawa does appear to be dominant in expressions of nostalgia. The following comment from [Okinawa dialect] For the First Time in Forever Reprise [Frozen] is an archetypical example of the way nostalgic enregisterment works:

ZOE: It’s a dialect with the feel of the dear olden days! (Grandma’s conversation-level!!) It sounds like Kumiodori10, how pleasant!!! (44 likes) Mukashi natsukashii-no hōgen desu ne! (Obaa-tachi-no kaiwa reberu!!) Kumiodori-wo kiiteru mitai de tanoshii desu!!!

Mukashi ‘long ago, the olden days’ is a direct reference to the idealized past of folklorization, not to mention the additional evaluation of the dialect as “Grandma-level”. Furthermore, while it is ambiguous in ZOE’s comment, others make it clear that one does not need personal ties to Okinawa to evaluate it as natsukashii ‘nostalgic, dear, missed’.

Sadness-based sentimentality occurs only in response to Soon After Tears/Uchinā-guchi.

However, it offers clear and representative instances of this stance type that are more emotionally intense than the responses to the Aomori dialects:

PURIN PURIN: It’s somehow so moving! Deeply moving! How, I wonder? (4 likes) Nanda ka nakeru! Tonikaku nakeru! Nan darō?

10 Another island in the Ryūkyū island chain

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DAKE LIU: I cried (2 likes) Naita

The context of the video alone is sufficient for commenters to claim they were moved to tears; notably the phrase used by PURIN PURIN, nakeru, is literally the potential conjugation of naku ‘to cry’; a more literal translation would be along the lines of ‘criable.’

Furthermore, folklorization and sentiment intersect on the top comment on the same video:

YANTYAKUN: [When I] listen to the words/language of Okinawa, the tragedy of the Okinawan people from 70 years ago is repeated once again (19 likes) Okinawa-no kotoba de kiku to nanajū-nen mae-no Okinawa-no hito-tachi-no higeki to kasanete shimau.

This comment is referring to the Battle of Okinawa during World War II, as described in section 2.3.4, where the indiscriminate fighting of the Japanese and American armies and mass suicides of Okinawans to avoid capture resulted in the deaths of up to 150,000 Okinawans, or more than a third of the island’s population. This is a particularly unfortunate type of folklorization, where the past that a language is trapped in is not ideal but tragic; it is possible that the Battle of Okinawa here symbolizes the ‘end’ or

‘death’ of Okinawa itself.

4.4.2 Aomori

Aomori comments contain a reasonable amount of nostalgia, but they appear to mostly be in reference to the actual experience of the commenters, as in this one on [Aomori, Hachinohe] For The

First Time in Forever (Reprise): Hachinohe-ben version [Frozen]:

JILLDAISY: [This] dialect feels so cute and nostalgic! My father’s from Yamagata’s Shōnai, so it’s quite fitting(о´ω`о) There’s also a Yamagata version, but this one [feels] more familiar? […] (4 likes) Hōgen-ga kawaikute natsukashii kanji! Watashi-no chichi-ga Yamagata-no Shōnai chihō-na node sukoshi niteru-no desu(о´ω`о) Yamagata baajon mo detemasu-ga kocchi-no hō-ga najimibukai ka na? […]

JILLDAISY explicitly associates feelings of nostalgia with their father’s actual hometown, rather than the more generalized ‘nostalgic’ feeling expressed in response to Okinawa.

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The following selection from Elderly women chat in Tsugaru-ben is a demonstration of sentimentality that does not involve extreme sadness:

ARISHI ANIKI: My grandma from Aomori speaks the same way. After I lived with her awhile I got used to it and was brainwashed into using awful dialect. When I went to Tokyo I could only listen on the street and not be understood, and I also had trouble at my job. I’ve been in Tokyo 10 years now but it still immediately gets around that I’m from Aomori. Even when I’m speaking hyōjungo I’m constantly aware of my tone of voice. My complex about my Aomori accent is going to stay coiled around me for the rest of my life, I guess. (5 likes) Aomori-ni iru uchi-no obā-chan to onaji kotoba da Shibaraku issho-ni iru to narete-kuru ga jibun mo sennō sarete hidoi namari kotoba-ni natte-kuru. Jōkyō shitate wa michi-wo kiku dake demo tsūjinai shi, shigoto de mo kurō. Tōkyō-ni ite jūnen tatta ima demo sugu Aomorijin da tobareru. Hyōjungo de shaberō to tsune-ni ishiki shite-kita kedo seichō wa itsu made mo Aomori namari Isshō matsuwari tsuku konpurekkusu desu yo

MYNANASISAN: Please value your hometown dialect. Those of us in Kantō have no individuality; be it Osaka-ben, Hakata-ben, or Tōhoku-ben, we’re jealous. (5 likes) Kokyō-no kotoba-wo daiji-ni shite kudasai. Kosei-no nai Kantōmin wa Ōsaka-ben mo Hakata-ben mo Tōhoku-ben urayamashii desu.

RIRAN_: I yearn for a dialect! (0 likes) Hōgen akogareru!

In this selection, ARISHI ANIKI tells a serious and revealing story about their experiences with Tōhoku- ben, and the replies they receive are somewhat platitudinous. This type of sentimentality is interactively- based; it appears that even when faced with a story of dialect-based discrimination the discursive resources that are available to certain commenters are a generalized longing for ‘dialect’ as an object that confers advantages such as ‘individuality.’

Sentimentality taking a more similar form to that found on Soon After Tears does occur in some responses, such as this comment from JU POM on [Aomori, Hachinohe] For The First Time in Forever

(Reprise): Hachinohe-ben version [Frozen]:

JU POM: Joono Haruko-san, your voice and Hachinohe-ben are magnificently moving.

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I wasn’t particularly interested in “Frozen”, but now I want to go watch the whole thing (´ ▽ `). Thank you very much. (6 likes) Joono Haruko-san-no koe to Hachinohe-ben-ga, subarashikute nakemasu “Ana to Yuki-no Jo’ō” wa, betsu-ni miru kia wa nakatta ndesu kedo Honpen zentai mo mitaku narimashita(´ ▽ `). Arigatō gozaimashita.

JU POM uses the same nakeru (here nakemasu) used by commenters on Okinawan. While the depth of the emotion expressed appears to be less intense, it is notable that this occurs in response to the pop music

Frozen cover rather than a folk song as in the Okinawan case.

There is also more overt deep sadness expressed in response to Aomori, as in this comment on

Elderly women chat in Tsugaru-ben:

H M: It’s tragic losing such beautiful dialects. As long as these grandmothers are alive, we should take many more videos. (62 likes) Konna kirei-na hōgen-ga ushinawareru-no wa kanashii na. Sobo-ga ikiteru uchi-ni ippai bideo tottokeba yokkata.

However, this appears to be oriented more towards the loss of the language itself and not the ‘people’, which makes sense considering the significant differences in the history of Aomori and Okinawa—while

Aomori has a history of deprivation and exploitation, it does not have one of mass murder and genocide.

This strengthens my argument that Tōhoku is a ‘safer’ para-Indigeneity, since it does not force people to reckon with Japan’s imperial history to nearly the same extent as Okinawa.

The Aomori dialects can occasionally even result in evaluations that exhibit stronger folklorization than Okinawa, such as the top comment on Aomori-ben’s star performer:

YŪGAYA: I don’t want Aomori-ben to be written. If Aomori-ben is written, won’t Tsugaru-ben and Nanbu-ben become the same? (50 likes) Aomori-ben tte kakanai de hoshii. Aomori-ben tte kaitara, Tsugaru-ben mo Nanbu-ben mo Issho-ni sarechau janai desu ka?

Arguing that a language cannot or should not be written can be considered a particularly powerful form of folklorization; it would be difficult to do this for the Okinawan language since it has been written for approximately 700 years (Kodansha 1983).

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4.4.3. Summary

The disproportionate similarities between the evaluations of the Okinawan and Aomori dialects suggests to me that there is a certain degree of occurring in the enregisterment of Aomori dialects. However, sentimental evaluations of the Aomori dialects are less emotionally intense and taxing due to Aomori’s less violent history, contributing to its enregisterment as a safer pseudo-Indigenous dialect.

In the following section, I move on to a similar dimension of affective and ideological idealization that can affect other, less ‘exotic’ dialects, that of the contrast between country and city.

4.5. City vs Country

The next theme I will analyze is one I believe is underlying almost all dialect evaluation in my data, a fundamental opposition between city and country. The three main values I coded for were actual references to the countryside, a soothing or relaxing quality, and a friendly quality, as based on Carroll’s discussion of the covert prestige of Japanese country dialects (2001: 15). The results are in Table 9 below:

Table 9. City vs Country Overt Soothing Friendly quality Ugly Total references quality

Okinawa 0 0 0 0 0

Nagoya 1 0 0 3 4

Hakata 2 1 0 0 3

Kansai 2 0 2 0 4

Kōshū 0 0 0 6 6

Aomori 5 0 1 2 8

4.5.1. Aomori

As the internal “frontier” of Japan, the Aomori dialects are maximally country. They are frequently explicitly evaluated as country, as the top comment on Nanbu vs Tsugaru: War makes clear:

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FUUGETSU KACHOU: “They’re both just from the sticks!”, and that’s that! (245 likes) “Ryōhō inaka nanda yo!” de kecchaku!

This is entirely in line with the literature discussing Tōhoku-ben’s enregisterment as the archetypical country dialect of Japan (Miyake 1995, Kumagai 2011, Carroll 2001).

However, it is clear from the comments that just as Aomori’s aesthetic indexicality is polysemous, being both cute and ugly, the “country” qualities of Aomori can be a source of stigmatization as well as covert prestige, and are likely a source of active real-life discrimination more frequently than most other dialects. The following comment from [Aomori, Hachinohe] For The First Time in Forever

(Reprise): Hachinohe-ben version [Frozen] is an example:

MIYUKURARI: I’m glad to have been born in Hachinohe. Truly, thank you. [We are] called ‘country’, ‘unsophisticated’, and other such things but we do not lose spirit (2 likes) Hachinohe-ni umarete yokatta to omoemasita. Hontō-ni arigatō. Inaka toka, dasai toka, dzura-no koto made iwareteta kedo detazu

This clearly indicates that a “country” stereotype is active at the third-order level for Hachinohe-ben, and presumably the other Aomori dialects as well, if not Tōhoku-ben in general.

Further evidence for the enregisterment of the Aomori dialects as “country” comes from Hearing

French in a Tsugaru-ben conversation:

MIN-CHAN: I’m also Korean, but to me the intonation seems like Korean’s Gyeongsang dialect. Watashi mo kankokujin nan desu ga, intoneeshon wa kankokugo-no Gyeongsang-ben-ni niteru to omoimasu

MIN-CHAN’s statement is of course an example of Preston’s labeling—it is likely that the reason they have compared Tsugaru to Gyeongsang is because Gyeongsang is South ’s sociopolitical equivalent to Aomori, an underdeveloped, impoverished agricultural region (Jeon 2013). “Intonation” here most likely serves as an index/label for their shared social attributes, not linguistic similarity.

Unlike the other dialects, there is minimal ambiguity or confusion as to whether Aomori should be considered country; for this reason I consider it to be maximally country.

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4.5.2. Hakata

Hakata-ben is overtly evaluated as country significantly more often than Osaka-ben or Nagoya- ben, with some commenters referring to it as do-inaka ‘super country’. Hakata-ben is usually showered with positive evaluation, but its country status can be used as an insult, as in this comment:

TAKEDA HISASHI: Just a fucking country dialect, lol (14 likes) Do-inaka kussee hōgen, w

This would seem to indicate that, unlike Aomori, here applying the quality of country-ness can be more easily applied as an insulting evaluation. The broad variety of the first four responses Takeda Hisashi receives demonstrates the complex status of this evaluation:

KAIBA SETO: Takeda Hisashi Are you dissing Kyūshū? (31 likes) Takeda Hisashi Kyūshū dis tte-n-no?

.SHIRASU: Takeda Hisashi yeah ikr (0 likes) Takeda Hisashi Kore da kara (ry

MAKEMASHITA: Takeda Hisashi Geez, looks like somebody doesn't have a girlfriend… (22 likes) Takeda Hisashi Jibun-ni kanojo-ga inai kara tte, , mattaku

KAHA: Takeda Hisashi Isn’t the country good? (3 likes) Takeda Hisashi Inaka ii janai ka

If likes on a comment are taken as a crude measure of the level of uptake on the stances it contains, then it appears that comments that display aggressive disalignment with and personal attacks against TAKEDA

HISASHI are by far the best received, and that identification of ‘country’ status with affective negativity is basically unproblematic. .SHIRASU’s alignment with TAKEDA HISASHI receives 0 likes, and KAHA’s slightly qualified suggestion that ‘country’ is not a negative attribute gets only 3.

The following comments come from later in the same thread, and display a great deal of confusion over just what the status of Fukuoka and the country is:

SHIBAYUU-NO HŌKEI CHINKO: Takeda Hisashi: If Fukuoka is the country Tottori11 must be some kind of prison Takeda Hisashi: Fukuoka inaka dattara nanka rōya da na

11 A rural prefecture on the northern shore of western Honshū (Chūgoku); notably one of the poorest prefectures in the country outside of Okinawa or Tōhoku

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SANTAWASHI: Hey, come on, are you pickin’ a fight. The country sucks…not…come on…come onnnn Oi kora kenka utton-no ka kora. Inaka kusaku…nai zo kora… koraaa

CHIBA JUNIA: If you just watched the video you’d see it’s nothing but buildings LOL Dōga miru kagiri de wa biru bakkari da zo wara

12 HUN GRY: Shibayuu-no hōkei chinko: Yeah if you go by that what the heck is …… Shibayuu-no hōkei chinko: Sore yattara Miyazaki-no hou wa dou naru-n ya……

FUJIMOTO CHIWATO: Junia: This is Hakata Station. Makes me feel like Fukuoka has a harsh divide between country and city. Fujimoto Chiwato: Chiba Junia: Koko, Hakata eki da kara, Fukuoka wa inaka to tokai- no sa-ga hageshii-to omoimasu.

TOKUMEI: Takeda Hisashi: There are so many people around me mocking the country but I don’t understand what’s so bad about it. The city is good as the city and the country is good as the country, so why compare them? It’s because of this that we can’t discard Japan’s prejudices. Takeda Hisashi: Ore-no mawari-ni mo sa inaka baka-ni suru yatsu-ra iru kedo inaka de nani-ga warui-no ka wakaranai. Tokai wa tokai nari-no yo-sa, inaka-ni wa inaka nari-no yo-sa-ga aru-no-ni dōshite kuraberu-n darō. Kore da kara nihon-no henken tte nakunaranai-n da yo ne

The ambivalent comments made by SHIBAYUU-NO HŌKEI CHINKO, CHIBA JUNIA, and HUN GRY show that

Fukuoka and Hakata clearly cannot be unambiguously placed in a ‘country’ category, while FUJIMOTO

CHIWATO’s comment accepts the fundamental association of Fukuoka with the country but explicitly evaluates its status as somewhat indeterminate. TOKUMEI, on the other hand, does actually dispute the idea that being ‘country’ is a bad thing.

4.5.3. Osaka (Kansai)

Despite its basis in the powerful, heavily urban Osaka, Osaka-ben does in fact accrue many of the traits of a ‘country dialect’. It is a heavily enregistered stereotype that its speakers are friendly and fun but loose and sloppy, which is clearly in line with the ‘emotional’ and ‘genuine’ elements of the covert

12 A significantly less industrialized prefecture in southern Kyūshū

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prestige ‘country’ dialects frequently receive. This is clearly demonstrated in this comment from Osaka- ben to piss off people from Kantō, which attributes these traits directly to Kansai people:

RABERU HAGASHI NIKUI. KURISTARU GAIZAA-NO: Kansai people’s good points: bright and clear, carefree, fun. Bad points: some of them have bad manners, overly friendly from Kantō’s point of view. Kantō people’s good points: they act calmly, have proper manners, careful and deliberate. Bad points: frigid from Kansai's point of view, many think the world revolves around them. There’s good and bad on both sides; nothing is accomplished with this dissing. (431 likes) Kansaijin Ii ten Akarui Kigaru Tanoshii Warui ten Tama-ni manaa-no warui hito-ga iru Kantōjin kara shitara narenareshii dake

Kantō Ii ten Ochitsuiteiru Manaa-no tadashii hito-ga ooi Shinchō Warui ten Kansaijin kara miru to tsumetai Kantō-ga chūshin da to omotteiru hito-ga ooi

Dochira-ni mo ii tokoro warui tokoro wa aru nda kara soko-wo dis ri atte mo nani mo okoranai.

However, the dialect itself is also clearly enregistered as such, as can be seen in this reply-level comment from Mamiruton teaches genuine Kansai-ben!:

K YUKICHI: I like it [Kansai-ben] because it’s not stiff and formal. Feels like it shortens the distance between people✩ Katakurushi shikunai-no-ga suki. Hito to-no kyori-ga chijimaru kibun-ni naru✩

While it is not common, Osaka-ben speakers can even be explicitly derided as inakajin ‘country dwellers’; this is, again, fairly remarkable considering that Osaka is one of the largest cities in the world and the second major cultural and economic hub of Japan after Tokyo. The following comment from

Masaki Suda and Sosuke Ikematsu’s hyper-surreal Kansai-ben conversation hits the bull’s-eye! clearly draws upon the idea of the country to belittle Osakans:

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TORA TORA: Seems to me that Osakans feel they're the mysterious chosen people. Oh well, they're just cute little country folk, so I don't mind. Ōsaka-no hito tte mayo-no senmin ishiki motteru-rashii ne. Maa, kawaii inakajin aruaru da kara yurushite yari

However, even this comment makes reference to the perceived arrogance of Osakans, and it is worth noting that inakajin (or any similar collocation like inaka-no hito) is not frequently used in reference to

Kansai-ben. Furthermore, as with Hakata-ben it is subject to challenge, as in this comment from Blast of understanding: 7 ways to identify fake Kansai-ben, in response to another comment that disparagingly called Osaka inaka:

E KI SE N TO RI KKO A: Kagurazaka Namidahime Osaka is the country? I can’t even laugh. If Osaka is country then almost everything but Tokyo must be country. (0 likes) Kagurazaka Namidahime Ōsaka-ga inaka? Warawasen-na. Ōsaka-ga inaka nara Tōkyō igai hotondo inaka-ni narimasu ne.

It seems that evaluation of Kansai as country generally takes place at a more implicit level. That said, the fact that even Kansai and Osaka can be considered ‘country’ suggests that any dialect that is distinguished from hyōjungo becomes enregistered as in some way ‘country’, no matter where it is spoken. In my data, at least, there is no such thing as a dialect outside of Tokyo-ben or hyōjungo that is fully identified with urbanity.

4.5.4. Kōshū

Kōshū-ben is never referred to as ‘country’ as such, but it accrues the negative “country” traits of ugliness and roughness, and accrues none of the positive traits such as friendliness or genuineness. It appears that it is in the unfortunate position of being non-standard but being unable to receive the covert prestige of being country. My analysis of the Aomori dialects showed that being country is polysemous, containing both nostalgic charm and ugliness and stupidity in its indexical field. Unlike Aomori, however,

Kōshū was little-known prior to its appearances on Late Nights from Monday and is close to Tokyo—it likely lacks the distance and mystery necessary to become nostalgic and folklorized. Its place in the indexical field of country dialects emphasizes mainly its ugliness and lack of sophistication.

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Given that Kōshū is somewhat geographically isolated, appears to access the more negative parts of countryness’s indexical field, and is set in contrast to the highly country Kyūshū dialects in the video

Late Nights from Monday: Hakata vs Kitakyūshū, I would suggest that Kōshū-ben is at the very least enregistered with many of the negative traits of a country dialect, even if it is not explicitly evaluated as such.

4.5.5. Overview

Any dialect that is not hyōjungo seems to be in some way “country”, although Nagoya and

Okinawa are less clearly so. The polysemy of countryness means that dialects similarly evaluated as country can have widely varying social interpretations. Countryness can make a dialect seem less threatening by enhancing positive affective traits like friendliness and gentleness, but at the same time can make it seem ugly and unappealing, leaving dialects like the Aomori dialects hanging in a delicate balancing act.

In the following section I will move on from evaluations of dialects themselves to examine how the power and desirability of dialects are expressed through evaluations of dialect performances’ fidelity.

4.6. Dialect Fidelity and Power

In this section, I examine the way that dialect users attempt to enforce norms on their own dialects and take meta-evaluative stances on the fidelity of the dialect use depicted in videos. This usually takes the form of making a (potentially implicit) claim to an identity as a resident of the dialect region, as well as stating that their own speech and the speech they are familiar with is not the same as the dialect depicted in the video, or that it is only spoken by elderly people. The commenter may additionally claim that only hyōjungo is spoken in their region.

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Table 10. Dialect Fidelity Identity claim Only elderly Young speak Angry Total speak like video hyōjungo

Okinawa 1 4 0 0 5

Aomori 5 1 1 1 5

Nagoya 5 2 2 1 14

Hakata 11 1 0 0 12

Kōshū 14 3 1 0 15

Kansai 26 0 0 4 42

4.6.1. Osaka (Kansai)

Kansai-ben, which was largely absent from the more trivializing and demeaning evaluations of the first three sections, is now dominant. Evaluations of what counts as ‘real’ Kansai-ben is very different from the other dialects because it towards ‘normal’ and ‘correct’ Kansai-ben as the ideal norm, not towards hyōjungo. This is clearly consistent with the well-documented advantage Kansai-ben has in terms of social capital compared to other dialects (SturtzStreetharan 2015).

The top-rated comment from Osaka-ben to piss off people from Kanto is representative of Kansai- ben’s special status:

KAO-WO KAKUSU SHA ON: Weird Kansai-ben really pisses me off � (1014 likes) Hen-na Kansai-ben tsukawareru to honma mukatsuku �

KAO-WO KAKUSU SHA ON uses the adverb honma ‘really, extremely’, a Kansai-ben word, to authenticate their identity as a Kansai-ben speaker, but because honma has permeated vernacular usage across the country it is highly transparent and can easily be understood even by non-Kansai-ben speakers.

Furthermore, the concept of fake Kansai-ben appears to be enregistered in itself, with the name ese

Kansai-ben ‘fake Kansai-ben’ and enregistered features such as overuse of akan and -(ya)hen.

While there are complaints of hen ‘weird’ and ese ‘fake’ dialect for other regions, they do not approach nearly the same level as Kansai. The disputes over Kansai are debating the accuracy of a

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perceived imitation, not whether or not the dialect is or should be used at all. The comments of videos such as For the First Time in Forever: Reprise: Osaka-ben version can become entirely dominated by comments complaining about the inaccuracy of the dialect usage, such as this one:

A I: In the conversation part the Osaka-ben’s intonation is off (LOL) Feels like a hyōjungo speaker trying to fake it (46 likes) Kaiwa-no toko-no Ōsaka-ben-no intoneeshon-ga hen (wara) Fudan hyōjungo-no hito-ga ese de shabatte mita kan aru wa

It should further be noted that Kansai is by far the dominant dialect for commenters taking meta- evaluative stances condemning fake Kansai-ben in general, rather than in response to the content of the video, as in this comment on Blast of understanding: 7 ways to identify fake Kansai-ben:

TAMA SHUKŌ: People who aren’t Osakans who speak Osaka-ben are shiiiiiiiiiiit. Fuck off. (40 likes) Osakajin demo nai hito-ga Osaka-ben shabattara kusssssssssso uzai.

Note that, again, TAMA SHUKŌ uses the Kansai-ben word uzai (lit. ‘noisy’, idiomatically ‘shut [the fuck] up’) to authenticate their identity or at least indicate solidarity when taking this stance. Even non-Kansai- ben speakers will occasionally self-identify their region of origin when taking stances against fake

Kansai-ben usage, as in this comment from Osaka-ben to piss off people from Kantō:

MOMOKO HARA: I’m from Kantō, but it pisses me off when my Kantō friends speak bad Kansai-ben (47 likes) Watashi Kantō da kedo Kantō-no tomodachi-ga heta-na Kansai-ben shabettetara mukatsuku

For other dialects fake dialect usage is usually treated as a type of mockery, and this certainly occurs with

Kansai-ben, but here it can also be seen as stealing a type of hard-won social capital that is not the imitator’s right. This does occur for other dialects, most notably Hakata-ben, but as the numbers in Table

10 make clear it is by far the most dominant for Kansai-ben—42 of the 150 Kansai-ben-related comments, or nearly a third of the entire corpus, were disputing the accuracy of the Kansai-ben used in the video.

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4.6.2. Hakata

Unlike Kansai-ben, criticism of Hakata-ben performances’ fidelity tends to be related to ‘distance from hyōjungo’ rather than ‘verity of imitation.’ Consider the following comment from this thread from

Late Nights from Mondays: Hakata vs Kitakyūshū:

WISE PENNY: I was born and raised in Fukuoka City, but there’s not a single young woman in my hometown who speaks crude dialect like in this video. Again, speaking this way is vulgar. Not even old people are at this level [of dialect]. Fukuoka’s dialect is fundamentally nothing more than changing the endings of words. They talk about dialect girls, but the ideal and the reality are greatly divergent. (121 likes) Fukuoka-shi nai de umare sochitte kimashita. Shikashi, jimoto-ni wa dōga-no you-na rokotsu-na hōgen-wo hanasu wakai onna wa kaimu desu. Mata, kotoba dzukai nado mo gehin desu. Rōjin demo sa hodo imasen. Fukuoka-no hōgen wa kihonteki-ni higo-ga henka suru teido desu. Hōgen joshi nado to iimasu ga, genjitsu-no risō wa daibu kairi shite imasu yo.

Wise Penny’s critical stance is based in the positioning of normative Fukuoka-ben as closer to hyōjungo

(“nothing more than changing the endings of words”), rather than failure to meet the idiosyncratic norms of the dialect itself.

Now consider the thread of responses:

APRILGREENSK8: Yep, that’s right (´・ω・`) Un, sore na (´・ω・`)

_JP DREAM: [Wise Penny]: That’s true LOL [Wise Penny]: Hontō sore wara

[2 comments omitted]

TOMODACHI-NO ONIGIRI: shono I know right?! Truth is I use nothing but “~cchan” and “~yaken ne” lol I’ve almost never used anything like “bai” lol shono Desu yo ne! Jissai “~cchan” toka “~yaken ne” toka shika tsukawan mon ne w “~bai” toka tsukatta koto hotondo nai w

MIYU: Tomodachi-no onigiri That’s right! Suitō for things you like got famous on TV, but I’ve never used it (LOL) Tomodachi-no onigiri Sō yo ne! Suki-no koto suitō toka terebi de wa yūmei ya kedo tsuktta koto nai (wara)

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SHIMAZOU Z: My teacher from Tokyo said Fukuoka kids were almost better than they were at hyōjungo. No intonation or accent, they said. Well, a lot of families keep moving into Fukuoka, so there’s few people [now] who shoot dialect everywhere. Tōkyō kara kita sensei-ni Fukuoka-no ko wa hotondo meue-ni hyōjungo da ne. tte iwareta. Intoneeshon mo namari-ga nai tte. Maa, Fukuoka tenkin zoku ooi shi, hōgen baribari-na hito wa sukunai yo ne

[1 comment omitted]

HIROTO SUZAKI: [Wise Penny] For real?! Even though I planned to live in Fukuoka in the future… My dream… [Wise Penny] Maji ka Shōrai Fukuoka-ni sumō to omotteita-no-ni… Ore-no yume ga…

ACECOMBATSIX: This level of accented Fukuoka-ben is almost unrecognizable, isn’t it. Tashika-ni konna-ni namattetara Hakata-ben te kidzukanai reberu da yo ne

SENDAN DENYA-NO : [Wise Penny] I use word-endings like “bai”. [Wise Penny] “Bai” tte iu gobi wa tsukau.

MAKKU POOKU/MC PORK: [Wise Penny] There are girls who use Nan suitooto?, you know. [Wise Penny] Nan suittooto? wa tsukau ko oru ne

ACECOMBATSIX: People use “bai” but they aren’t young “Nan~” is often used. As in “Nan shiyoo to?” “Bai” tsukau hito iru kedo wakamono-ni wa inai “Nan~” wa yoku tsukau “Nan shiyooto?” toka

NTORANTE: [Wise Penny] It’s TV so they’re exaggerating, definitely. [Wise Penny] Terebi da kara oogesa-ni yatte nda yo. Kitto.

NIKECR7: [Wise Penny] About using ~yaken, ~bai, and ~to?. As an introduction, it’s the granny generation’s way of speaking [Wise Penny] Tsukau-no tte ~yaken, ~bai, ~to? gurai-no mon. Shōkai shiteru-no wa obaa-chan seidai-no kotobadzurai

TSUKIYUME: I use it often enough…

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The people around me have the same way of speaking, so it seems to fit the place… (´･ ･`) Watashi wa kekkou tsukaimasu.. Mawari-no hito-tachi mo onaji yō-na kotoba dzukai-na no de, basho-ni mo yoru ka to…(´･ ･`)

13 14 BAKA: Seems this is used around Yame , so what to say… ( ’s perspective) Yame-no hō toka tsukattesō ya kedo dō nanda.. (Kurume-no hō)

MAI: There’s more of an accent than this in the Fukuoka countryside LOL Fukuoka-no inaka ya kedo kore ijō kurai namattoo yo wara

YAMADA TARŌ: [Mai] That’s the case anywhere. In Osaka a company president, a celebrity, or a politician could talk like Dengana Mangana15 [Mai] Doko demo sō da yo Osaka de Dengan Mangana de hanasu-no wa shachō ka geinin ka seiji-ke kurai yo

MAAKAA: [Mai] There’s an awful accent around Itoshima [Mai] Itoshima rahen wa hōgen yabai yo

Out of the 20 responses, 12 are made in alignment with WISE PENNY, who asserted that the Fukuoka-ben used by the girl in the video is not realistic, while 7 disagree on some level—some cite specific features that they claim to use themselves; others suggest that the dialect in the video may be a Fukuoka-ben variety from deeper in the countryside. Several posters use ya, as well as oru and -too, to index a Fukuoka identity of some kind and hence authenticate their claims; it is mainly in the context of supporting dialect usage that such performance is displayed in this thread. Also note that MAKKUPOKKU, BAKA, and MAI, the only commenters who use dialect performance, all make their assertions with confidence, while the more timid TSUKIYUME sticks to hyōjungo.

However, though -too may not be, ya and oru are relatively “safe” dialect performances because of their huge geographic distribution across most of West Japan, which may give posters plausible deniability rather than clearly indexing a Fukuoka identity. It also isn’t clear to me if ya automatically calls to mind Kansai or if it is associated with all of East Japan.

13 A small city in southern Fukuoka prefecture. 14 A moderately sized city in southern Fukuoka prefecture. Adjacent to Yame. 15 Appears to be referring to a segment on a Kansai-based children’s television show.

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This comment from Cute Hakata-ben girl shows that there may be a third-order stereotype of fake Hakata-ben, similar to fake Kansai-ben:

KIKIYAN: Odango-chan- The Hakata-ben everyone thinks of is nothing but “Nani shiyoo to”, so it’s fine (45 likes) Odango-chan- Minna-ga omotteru Hakata-ben, “Nani shiyoo to” gurai shika shiranai kara daijōbu

However, unlike Kansai-ben, it appears that these stereotypes of ‘bad’ Hakata-ben are primarily accessible to Hakata-ben speakers, or at least Fukuoka residents who have the proximity to Fukuoka City and Hakata to authenticate some type of identity claim.

4.6.3. Nagoya

Nagoya-ben, as stated previously, is the least enregistered of the dialects I investigated.

Performances of the dialect frequently attract comments stating that it is simply hyōjungo and not a legitimate dialect, or expressing surprise or confusion that variables claimed as Nagoya-ben are not hyōjungo. This is exemplified by the top comment, with 363 likes, posted on the video Ebifuryaa?

Nagoya-ben class! [First part]:

KAONASHI: I thought Nagoya-ben was hyōjungo. I didn’t realize. Is this [dialect] normal for Nagoya people? (363 likes) Nagoya-ben-ga hyōjungo da to omotteru. Jikaku shitenai. Kore, Nagoyajin aruaru janai??

Furthermore, other comments on [Dialect] Everyone, do you know Nagoya-ben!? indicate that the enregisterment of certain features is clearly in flux:

AYAPON: Hōka is dialect!? (26 likes) I had no idea… Hōka tte hōgen nano!? Shiranakatta, , ,

SACKT: Ayapon I don’t think it’s dialect (0 likes) Ayapon Hōgen de wa nai daro

RENA RENA: SACKT It’s dialect! Around Aichi prefecture [we] generally say hōka. Other regions generally say yasumi jikan in the same place. (2 likes) SACKT Hōgen desu yo! Aichi-ken toka wa hobo hōka tte ittemasu. Hoka-no chiiki wa “yasumi jikan” nado tsukatteru tokoro ga hobo desu

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M N: (´ー｀*) Yeah, yeah, it’s dialect (1 like) (´ー｀*) Un un hōgen da nee

The metalinguistic discourse available to RENA RENA indicates that hōka is available as a second-order index, i.e. a conscious marker of regional identity as defined by Johnstone and Kiesling (2008: 8), for at least some speakers, as it is active as ‘[Aichi] dialect’ at the level of conscious awareness. However,

SACKT and M N’s responses make it clear that this is contested. It likely does not help that while the use of hōka to mean ‘[school] recess’ rather than ‘end of class’ may be a regional usage, the related and semantically similar word hōkago ‘after school’ is commonplace hyōjungo.

In any case, while the accuracy of Nagoya-ben performance is disputed fairly frequently, it is usually in orientation towards the question of its status as a ‘real’ dialect, not any power it could potentially convey to its speakers. What distinguishes it from the previous two is that commenters appear genuinely incredulous about the concept of Nagoya-ben rather than frustrated with a “fake” version as in the case of Kansai and Hakata.

4.6.4. Kōshū

In contrast to the previous three dialects and as is characteristic of the more heavily stigmatized dialects, commenters on Kōshū-ben videos who identify with Kōshū or Yamanashi tend to deny using dialect altogether, rather than disputing the video’s accuracy or the level of dialect use a dialect’s speakers partake in. This can be observed in the following thread of comments from For the First Time in Forever

(Reprise) Yamanashi-ben (Kōshū-ben) ver.:

NIWATORI SOBORO A: I’m from Yamanashi, but I definitely don’t use dialect lolololololol But if you’re up for “I ♥ Yamanashi” smash that like button Yamanashi kenmin da kedo, mattaku hōgen tsukawanai wa ʬʬʬ Demo, I ♥ Yamanashi tte iu hito �botan

FURENCHI ENZERU: [Niwatori SOBORO A]: Just a little lmao [Niwatori SOBORO A]: Sukunakute kusa

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*TAMA*: [Niwatori SOBORO A]: When a cute girl speaks Yamanashi-ben, it’s seriously cute lol [Niwatori SOBORO A]: Kawaii onna-no ko-ga Yamanashi-ben hanashiteru nda kedo maji de kawaii yo w

CHANNERU] [KARMA: *tama*: People from Kōfu16 don’t use [dialect] lol. The reason is it seems dirty and a little manly *tama*: Kōfu-shi-no hito wa tsukawanai kedo ne w Riyū wa kitanai kara rashii shi, otoko ppoi rashii

NIWATORI SOBORO A is eager to dissociate Yamanashi identity from dialect usage; they perform distinction from supposed Kōshū-ben speakers by emphasizing the ridiculousness of the proposition of even using dialect at all with their exaggerated ‘lolololololol’. CHANNERU] [KARMA alludes to a likely intra-Yamanashi distinction with their implicit self-identification as a Kōfu resident; as Kōfu is heavily urbanized and by far the largest city in Yamanashi prefecture it is entirely possible that its dialect is quite distinct from the tiny Kōshū.

Similarly, in this selection from Late Nights from Mondays: Hakata-ben vs Kitakyūshū-ben, rather than attempt to valorize the dialect depicted Yamanashi residents argue that it is not representative of them and is intended to mock them:

KOOYA: I’m from Yamanashi but I don’t use [dialect like] that lolol Older people say kocchi kooshi and so on, but I’ve never heard “hande metameta goccho de goisu” and such even once. They’re mocking [us] too much � Yamanashi kenmin da kedo -no tsukawanai kara ww Otoshiyori-ni hito wa kocchi kooshi toka iu kedo “hande metameta goccho de goisu” toka soko-ra hen wa kiita koto sura nai. Baka-ni shi-sugi �

II YO-NO NAKA-NI SHIYOU ZE: Kooya That’s right Kooya Sore na

KOOYA: Ii yo-no naka-ni shiyō ze I know, right?! � Ii yo-no naka-ni shiyō ze Desu yo ne �

16 The capital of Yamanashi prefecture, accounting for about 25% of its population

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It appears that commenters who identify themselves with Yamanashi or Kōshū are eager to distance themselves from dialect entirely, rather than more openly debating the degree to which usage occurs as in the case of Hakata.

4.6.5. Other Dialects

Aomori and Okinawa are similar in being by far the least commonly disputed dialects, to the extent that there is little to analyze for them in this category. A comment on Nanbu vs Tsugaru: War does complain that the Tōhoku-ben used is overdone:

17 KAI-CHAN: I’m from Nanbu, living in Tsugaru, but I don’t have an accent or hostility like them. Getting made fun of like that kinda pisses me off; I think it’s exaggerated. (47 likes) Shusshin wa Nanbu de ima wa Tsugaru-ni iru kedo ryōhō tomo konna-ni namatte nai shi, tekitai mo shiteinai. Sorya baka-ni saretara okoru kedo, ōgesa da to omou.

This is typical of the distinction from dialect speakers demonstrated by the other lower-prestige dialects.

A number of commenters also complain about the label “Aomori-ben”.

The most obvious reason for the similarity between Aomori and Okinawa is that both sets of dialects have far fewer speakers and are not transparent enough for their fidelity to easily be criticized, even by residents of the regions in question.

4.6.6. The Boundaries of Hyōjungo

I will also examine the debate over the boundaries of hyōjungo itself, something which occurs only in response to Kansai-ben and appears to be indicative of its greater prestige. I begin with this comment by NAOHIRO .H on the video Mamiruton teaches genuine Kansai-ben!:

NAOHIRO .H: Why is Tokyo's dialect 'hyōjungo'? I think that in Osaka, Osaka-ben is 'hyōjungo'. That is to say, isn't 'kyōtsūgo' good enough for ? Well, that's what my homeroom teacher said lol Naze, Tōkyō-no hougen ga ‘hyōjungo’-ni naru no ka? Ōsaka de wa Ōsaka-ben-ga ‘hyōjungo’ darō. Tsumari, Tokyo-no hougen wa ‘kyoutsuugo’ de ii-n janai no ka? \n\n\n tte tannin-no sensei-ga itteta wa w

17 Referring to the Nanbu-Tsugaru rivalry the sketch is based off.

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NAOHIRO .H attributes to their homeroom teacher the somewhat unusual stance of claiming that Osaka- ben itself is hyōjungo, while Tokyo’s dialect is merely kyōtsūgo ‘everyday speech’. The suggestion that hyōjungo is anything but Tokyo dialect is treated as self-evidently ridiculous, as NAOHIRO .H is quick to disaffiliate themselves from the statement by attributing it to their teacher and adding in a token of w.

Furthermore, their usage of wa as an SFP serves to index them as a Kansai-ben, and presumably Osaka- ben, speaker. It is clear from comments such as this and from the general lack of non-ironic conflation of

Osaka-ben and hyōjungo that Osaka-ben is sufficiently enregistered as non-normal, i.e. non-Tokyo, that claiming it as such is open to challenge.

The ambiguity of this is made by another highly rated comment that does suggest that Kansai-ben can be claimed as hyōjungo:

——— ———: On the other hand, from Kansaiers’ point of view, Kantoites’ way of speaking is unpleasant. Moreover, as far as Kantoites are concerned, we insist our speech is hyōjungo, but the truth is it’s not quite the same…(519 likes) Gyaku-ni Kansaijin kara shitara, Kantōjin wa hanashikata-ga kimochi warui desu kedo ne… Ato, Kantōjin-ni totte wa, jibun-tachi-no kotoba-ga hyōjungo da to iiharu kedo jitsu wa chotto chigau-no ni ne…

In any case, the upshot of this is that while hyōjungo is strongly associated with Tokyo-ben, in at least some contexts it can serve as a broader index of a ‘normal’ or prestige status for a dialect, to the point that it can be claimed as applying as a label even to dialects that are clearly linguistically distinct from Tokyo- ben.

4.6.7. Summary

The relative degree of prestige and social capital a dialect has can be seen in how its speakers to the concept of normativity. Kansai-ben demonstrates by far the greatest level of prestige with the aggressive policing of its boundaries. While other dialects also experience boundary policing, it instead tends towards minimizing the distance between the dialect and hyōjungo rather than defending the dialect’s own norms. Kansai-ben speakers can occasionally use their heightened prestige to attempt to

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grant Kansai-ben itself “hyōjungo” as a normative label of rather than simply identifying it with the

Tokyo-based hyōjungo language variety. However, the greater prestige of Kansai-ben can lead to very aggressive pushback, which I will examine more closely in the next section.

In the next section, I will examine how the relative disparities in power seen here and the political conflicts the dialects are involved in affect how they are evaluated in terms of diversity and nationalism.

4.7. Diversity and Nationalism

In this final section, I examine the way the intersections between valorizations of dialect that mention diversity and or have nationalistic affect are related to the way different dialects are implicated in political conflict. For diversity, I coded for overt mentions of diversity as a concept or meta-pragmatic discussions of dialect usage. I then recorded whether these stances were in favor of diversity or dialect, or against it. Finally, I recorded whether these stances contained overt nationalism. The results are in Table

11 below:

Table 11. Dialect and Diversity Diversity Pro Anti Total

Nationalist Overt Not Overt Not

Nagoya 0 0 0 0 0

Kōshū 0 1 0 0 1

Hakata 0 3 0 1 4

Okinawa 3 1 0 1 6

Kansai 0 3 0 4 7

Aomori 2 7 0 2 13

I also analyze explicitly nationalist stance-taking, examining two types of stance. The first is a conciliatory false equivalency that paints conflict between dialect users and hyōjungo speakers as detrimental to Japan. The second is aggressive overt nationalism, sometimes in response to dialect,

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sometimes in response to explicitly political issues. The results are in Table 12 below. I have listed them separately from Table 11 because the comments used in Table 12 included replies as well as top-level comments, since this was where the majority of explicitly nationalist stance-taking took place. As a result, the numbers are inflated compared to the other stance-taking tables.

Table 12. Explicit Nationalist Stancetaking (Includes Comment Replies) Conciliatory Aggressive Total Pro-Dialect Anti-Dialect Politics Nagoya 0 0 0 0 0

Kōshū 0 0 0 0 0

Hakata 0 0 0 0 0

Aomori 0 1 3 0 4

Okinawa 1 2 1 11 15

Kansai 8 6 4 5 22

4.7.1. Aomori

As the ‘safe’ dialect without contentious political connections, Aomori is by far the most receptive to actual diversity claims. Furthermore, the positive stances taken on Aomori dialect as representing diversity tend to be implicitly nationalistic, but are much less likely to be explicitly or aggressively nationalistic. An example would be this comment from Nanbu vs Tsugaru: War:

BURAKKU BOORU: More than 10 years ago when I was in Aomori for work, I overheard two old ladies’ conversation in the supermarket food court, and I laughed because I understood almost nothing. Japan is wide. Jūnen ijō mae-ni Aomori-ni shigoto de itta toki, suupaa-no fuudo kooto de tonari-ni ita ba-san futari-no kaiwa-wo nani ge-ni kaiteita ga hotondo imi fumei de waratta. Nihon wa hiroi.

BURAKKU BOORU’s reaction to seeing elderly women in Aomori talking in an incomprehensible dialect is to be impressed with Japan’s breadth, which is representative of most of the comments I’ve labeled as implicitly but not overtly nationalistic in the Aomori data. Another fairly clear example which more explicitly shows this comes from Elderly women chat in Tsugaru-ben:

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IMPERIALSO: Losing the diversity of Japanese is sad (14 likes) Nihongo-no tayōsei-ga ushinawareru-no wa kanashii na

This shows that the discussion of diversity tends to fall within an implicit Japanese nationalist framework, even when the dialect in question is not deeply implicated in political conflict. However, there are examples of dialect usage itself being valorized without any trace of nationalist sentiment, as in this example, also from Elderly women chat in Tsugaru-ben:

YAHLEN7: Pardon my rudeness, but it seems to me that many people from Tōhoku who go to Tokyo end up discarding their dialect, but dialect is the culture and tradition of [one’s] hometown. By all means, I hope they follow the example of Osakans and don’t discard their dialect. (33 likes) Shitsurei nagara Tōhoku-no hito wa jōkyō suru to hōgen-wo sutete shimau hito-ga ooi yō-na ki-ga shimasu ga hōgen koso kyōdo-no de ari dentō. Zehi tomo Ōsakajin-wo minaratte hōgen-wo sutenai de hoshii mono desu.

Finally, a number of comments on the Aomori dialects argue against the necessity and usefulness of dialect, which can occasionally result in fairly high levels of hostility. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these are the places where the most overt nationalist sentiment flares up. Consider the following comment thread made in response to Elderly women chat in Tsugaru-ben:

H M: It’s really sad that these beautiful dialects are being lost. As long as these grandmothers are still alive, we should take many more videos. (62 likes) Konna kirei-na hōgen-ga ushinawareru-no wa kanashii na. Soba-ga ikiteru uchi- ni ippai bideo tottokeba yokkata.

GORAIASU GORAIASU: HM No, no, these dialects make it hard to communicate between regions, so what’s the point of keeping them around? (2 likes) H M Iya iya, kore ja hoka chiiki-no hito-no komyunikeeshon torenee kara hōgen nante iranai nda yo

CHIKI CHIKI: Dialects are beautiful language. They’re a treasure, and it’s very sad to lose tradition. (19 likes) Zettai kunshu[[???]] Hōgen wa utsukushii kotoba desu. Takaramono-no yō-na mono desu. Dentō-ga nakunaru-no wa kanashii.

SEN’ETSU NAGARA, MŌSHIAGERU: Dialects are shit. If you won’t unify the language shut the hell up. The point of language is to communicate your intention; consequently, the more people whose intentions a language can convey, the more valuable it is. It just makes sense to throw out the dialects and fucking speak hyōjungo. (1 like) Hōgen wa gomi. Gengo tōitsu shinai to o-hanashi-ni naran. Gengo-no mokuteki wa ishi- no sotsū da. Sono ten kara ieba yori ooki-na to ishi-wo tsutaeru koto-ga dekiru

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gengo hodo kachi-ga aru. Tada betsu-ni hōgen-wo nakuse to itteiru wake de wa naku, hyōjungo wa shaberu yō-ni shiro to iu hanashi.

WATANABE YUKA: Sen’etsu nagara, mōshiageru What the heck are you talking about man ^ ^; If we follow your logic, the Japanese of up to 120 million people is shit. Fuck off and go speak Chinese or English. (5 likes) Sen’etsu nagara, mōshiageru Nani itte nda koitsu ^ ^ ; Omae-no riron de ittara washa kazu takadaka ichi oku ni senban-no nihongo mo gomi da yo. Chūgokugo ka eigo de mo shabettero

GORAIASU GORAIASU and SEN’ETSU NAGARA, MŌSHIAGERU both use the discourse of the need for language standardization, a common argument of Standard Language Ideology, which in the Japanese context has its roots in the original project to construct hyōjungo and unify the language for imperialist purposes. However, these more traditional anti-dialect stances receive much lower uptake than pro- diversity stances. While H M’s original comment and CHIKI CHIKI’s response in support of dialect tend more towards standard folklorization, WATANABE YUKA takes an emphatically nationalistic pro-dialect stance which goes to great lengths to normalize dialect use as a part of Japaneseness in itself. This seems to represent a maturation of pro-diversity ideology—the dialect use is itself framed as nationalistic and pro-Japanese, even being used to take a stab at and the United States.

4.7.2. Okinawa

It appears to be more difficult to valorize the Okinawan dialect in terms of diversity, as there are fewer of this stance type than in the case of Aomori. Furthermore, the majority of the stances that valorize

Okinawa as a part of Japanese diversity are much more explicitly nationalistic than the responses to

Aomori. An excellent example was made in response to Soon After Tears/Uchinā-guchi:

KAMADAA1: I am naichā and can partially understand dialect words, but Uchinā-guchi is hard for me. Dialect should be treasured as part of Japanese culture. Next month, I’ll be covering the Senkaku Islands fishing rally. The video will be posted on sencaku38. I’d be honored if you also watched the videos at kamadaa1 as well. Naichā-no watashi wa, bubunteki-na hōgen tango wa, wakarimasu ga uchinā- guchi wa, muzukashii desu. Hōgen wa, nihon-no bunka de yoi mono node taisetsu-ni shitai desu. Raigetsu, Senkaku shotō-no tsuri daikai-no shuzai-ni sanka shimasu. Tōkō dōga wa, sencaku38 de UP shimasu. kamadaa1-no tōkō dōga-wo goran itadaki arigatō gozaimasu.

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Considering the possible cultural affinity between Okinawa and China, bringing up the Senkaku Islands in this context is extremely nationalistic. The Senkaku Islands, known as the Diaoyu islands in China and the Diaoyutai Islands in , are the subject of a three-way conflict between China, Taiwan, and

Japan over which country the islands belong to. While a ‘fishing rally’ may sound innocuous, deployment of commercial fishing fleets to Senkaku is a method the Japanese and Chinese governments are currently using to antagonize each other and test their willingness to project military force. Consequently, the sequentiality of this comment makes it appear that Okinawa is being used as a geopolitical tool, and demonstrates the close relationship between valorization of Okinawa and anti-Chinese nationalistic sentiment.

I would suggest that the reason for this is that it is more difficult to discuss the idea of diversity in the Okinawan context without risking causing offense. The battle over Okinawa’s identity goes both ways; valorizing Okinawan diversity from a Japanese perspective likely comes off as implicitly nationalistic and imperialistic, something that not all commenters are willing to do.

This can be seen in the implications of KAMADAA1 identifying themselves as naichā, the

Okinawan word for ‘mainlander’; considering Schilling-Estes (1998) and Bucholtz and Hall (2005) this is clearly an attempt at expressing solidarity with Okinawans through linguistic performance and adequation, and would be fairly innocuous for most of the other dialects. However, given the clear political motivation it may come off as appropriative at best, and at worst is a rather imperialist act of manipulating the Okinawan language for Japanese political gain. There is simply no grounding for similar issues to arise in response to the Aomori dialects.

The more delicate situation of the Okinawan dialect can be seen in the few responses it receives arguing that dialect is unnecessary. Consider this reply to a thread started in response to [Okinawa dialect] For the First Time in Forever Reprise [Frozen]:

ARTHER TOKUBŌ: d oaas Please forgive my indiscretion, but. I think pushing hyōjungo is a good thing. If everyone [stubbornly] insisted on using dialect, even in the same country we couldn’t understand each other, and a huge problem would be born….. (0 likes)

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d oaas Hontō-ni mōshiwake gozaimasen-ga. Hyōjungo yori wa yoi koto da to omoimasu. Minna-ga hōgen-wo koshitsu suru to kokunai demo ishi sotsū-ga dekinaku nari taihen mondai-wo umidashimasu-no de…..

While commenters on the Aomori dialects had no compunctions about virulently condemning Tōhoku- ben, ARTHER TOKUBŌ is cautious and tentative, and they do in fact receive an angry response from D

OAAS, the commenter they were addressing.

Finally, while Okinawa does attract extremely aggressive and explicit nationalist stances, they are usually in response to those claiming that Okinawan isn’t Japanese, the implications of which I discussed in section 4.3. These comments take a much more explicitly political tone than the disagreements over

Aomori, as in this one from Subtitled: Arin Kurin Uchinā-guchi (Okinawa dialect) version Rassun gorerai: Sanma Gōten:

ZERO: +mina Kobayasi What’s a foreign country, dumbass? Study up [before you] open your mouth (1 like) +mina Kobayasi Nani-ga gaikoku furimun ya Benkyō shite mono ie yo

Here, ZERO uses furimun ‘idiot, dumbass’, an Okinawan word, to index an Okinawan identity while also taking the nationalistic stance of denying that Okinawa should be considered an independent country.

This shows, again, that any kind of comment on Okinawa’s diversity and cultural identity, even jokingly, is complicated by the ongoing political conflict around the island. While Okinawa may be the “true”

Indigenous dialect of Japan, it is far less safe to discuss than the para-Indigenous Aomori.

4.7.3. Osaka (Kansai)

The comments on Kansai-ben do not contain any stance-taking discussing the importance of diversity in itself, which makes sense considering that it is no way endangered and does not evoke the sentiment and folklorization that characterize Aomori and Okinawa. However, despite this, and unlike the other three non-sentimentalized dialects, there are occasional valorizations of Kansai-ben or Kansai in

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general, as in this comment from Masaki Suda and Sosuke Ikematsu’s hyper-surreal Kansai-ben conversation hits the bull’s-eye!:

SBYTHEWAY: I think that Ikematsu-san’s Kansai-ben is a little uncomfortable since he’s not from Kansai; I’m a Kansaier though. Of course there are people who are overreacting, but plenty of people saying “Kansaiers are boiling up” or “total overreaction” have come out against them. If someone is told their way of speaking is wrong, they stop wanting to speak it. I treasure my own dialect, so I wish those pushing hyōjungo wouldn’t speak so lightly. Well, I’m sorry for the long post. Those two’s back-and-forth made me laugh. (15 likes) Kansai shusshin janai Ikematsu-san-no Kansai-ben-ga iwakan aru to omotte shimau-no ga Kansaijin. Tashika-ni gajō-ni henkō-ni suru hito datte oru kedo, sore ni taishite “Kansaijin-ga waiteru” toka “ichiichi henkō shi-sugi” toka iu hito-ga kekkō iru nato. Dare datte jibun-no tsukaetteru hōgen-wo machigaetta hanashikata saretari shitara, iitakunaru shi, sore dake jibun-no hōgen-wo daiji-ni shiteiru node, hyōjungo yori-no hito toka wa sonna fū-ni karuku iwanai-de hoshii to tsunedzune omou. Chōbun shitsurei shimashita. Futari-no yaritori warawasete itadakimashita.

SBYTHEWAY’s comment clearly alludes to the reason for this—Kansai-ben comment sections tend to be filled with conflict between Kansaiers upset over Kansai-ben being misrepresented and others accusing them of overreaction or arrogance. Even though the Kansai conflict is not political per se in the same way as Okinawa, as it pits the massive Kantō and Kansai regions against each other, it has a far more immediate impact on the majority of commenters. This is likely the reason for the somewhat surprising dominance of Kansai in terms of nationalistic stance acts, since explicit discussion of political conflict and the value of dialect tends to take place within a nationalistic framework.

It appears that the most popular type of nationalist response to the Kansai problem is a kind of

‘both sides’ conciliation that argues everyone is at fault and is harming Japan. A key example of this comes from Mamuriton teaches genuine Kansai-ben!:

COMFORT 700: Those who say “hyōjungo is gross” or “Kansai-ben is gross” are the lowest of the low…(And arguments that [saying] the lowest dimension is too much can only go so far.) (These bastards aren’t qualified to be members of society.) (They make light of all Japanese.) If we follow their example (as always), Japan will steadily decline… “Hyōjungo kimoi” “Kansai-ben kimoi” to itteru yatsu tte, teijigen ika da na… (Teijigen sugiru iiarasoi-ni mo teido-ga aru…). (Sonna yatsu wa, shakaijin toshite-no shikaku wa zero da na…) (Dōji-ni, nihonjin mo namereba ii) Konna teijigen ika-na koto-wo (itsu made mo) kurikaeshite-tara, nihon wa dandan suitai shite-iku ka mo na…

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While COMFORT700 valorizes Kansai-ben, they construct a false equivalency that places hyōjungo on the same level as being equally maligned, as if hyōjungo were not unambiguously the prestige dialect of

Japanese. They also frame the entire argument as being at the expense of Japan as a whole.

This is interestingly a form of adequation in itself. While it is very different from that seen in the cases of Okinawa and Aomori, it attempts to level the differences between Kansai-ben speakers and hyōjungo speakers by equalizing their grievances and appealing to their shared Japaneseness. That

Kansai-ben is actually accorded equal status to hyōjungo is a testament to its massive prestige and power, but it also indicates that that power itself allows Kansai to be implicated in much more serious conflict.

This is the flip side of the nationalist promotion of diversity seen with Aomori and Okinawa—powerless dialects can be enthusiastically promoted as symbols of specifically Japanese diversity, but the power of

Kansai-ben, which threatens the hegemony of hyōjungo, must be tempered with appeals to the welfare of the nation.

The opposite of this conciliatory stancetaking comes in the form of anti-Kansai stances, which include explicitly racialized distinction that can only be made against Kansai, and Osaka in particular.

This can be seen in this excerpt from a comment thread on Blast of understanding: 7 ways to identify fake

Kansai-ben:

S&I: The way they look after their own and have too much pride is gross LOL To me Kansaiers and Chinese have exactly the same personality (7 likes) Maji nakama ishiki to puraido taka-sugite kimoi wa wara Ore-n naka de Kansaijin to Chūgokujin-no kekkō wa mataku onaji

YŪKI RAIKI: >>S&I Tokyoites need to stop thinking that Kansaiers = Osaka There are various other prefectures in Kansai This is my expression of independence. by refined Kyotoite (2 likes) >>S&I Tōkyō-no hito wa, sorosoro Kansaijin=Ōsaka de imeeji suru mikata yame yo ya Kansai tte hoka-ni mo iron-na ken-ga aru-n ya kara Tandoku hyōgen de yoroshiku. by jōjin-na Kyōto-min yori

S&I: [Yūki Raita] I know I’m not talking about refined Kyotoites, only Osakans seem Chinese to me (0 likes) [Yūki Raita] Wakattooyo yaken jōhin-na Kyōto-min de wa naku Ōsakajin dake ga Chūgoku ppoi tte omotta-no

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Explicitly taking the stance that Okinawans, for example, are not Japanese, and doing so in a blatantly insulting and degrading manner, would be unthinkable, but here the outright predication of Chineseness to Osakans goes without censure and receives fairly high uptake, with 7 likes despite being buried deep in a lengthy comment thread.

There are two different interpretations that can be made here. The first emphasizes the relative stability of Osaka’s prestige and power. Because Osaka is so self-evidently Japanese compared to

Okinawa or even Aomori, it can afford to be attacked even in such starkly racialized terms. However, it could also be said that Kansai’s outsize power requires outsized vilification. Simple insinuation is not enough to degrade Kansai-ben; it is only here that distinction can and must be made in extremely nationalistic and outright racist terms.

While the discourse on Kansai-ben is qualitatively different from that on Aomori and Okinawa, it again shows how debate over the value of dialect is often conducted in nationalistic terms that relate to the ideas of national identity and unity on both sides of the debate. This in itself shows how deeply the valorization of dialect, and hence diversity, has been tied into Japanese nationalism.

4.7.4. Summary

Kansai-ben, surprisingly, comes out in the lead in nationalistic stance-taking, largely due to the tendency of Kansai-related discussions to set Kansai and Kantō at odds. Okinawa follows, clearly due to the ongoing conflict over its place in Japan. Finally, while Aomori dialects occasionally result in nationalistic stance-taking, it is usually lower-key and tends to be oriented more towards the promotion of dialect and diversity, supporting my ultimate argument that the Aomori dialects, with their high covert prestige and low controversy, are the ideal staging ground for for safe, largely inoffensive valorizations of diversity and dialect.

In the following and final section, I conclude by synthesizing my findings to place each dialect in its social context.

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4.8: Synthesis and Discussion

In this final section, I will synthesize the different parts of the analysis with each other and with the sociopolitical and economic background information to speculate on why the six dialects I examined are evaluated and enregistered the way that they are. A summary of the previous seven sections is in

Table 13 below:

Table 13: Stancetaking Overview Attractive Funny Foreign Folklorized Prestige Country Conflict

Kansai Cute Low Low Low Highest Moderate Highest

Hakata Cutest Moderate Low Low Moderate High Low

Nagoya Unclear Low Low Low Unclear Low Low

Kōshū Ugliest Highest Low Low Lowest High Low

Okinawa Cute High High High Low Unclear Highest

Aomori Mixed High High Highest Low Highest Moderate

4.8.1. Hakata and Fukuoka

Hakata-ben is like a toy dialect. It is cute and safe compared to the others, as it achieves a balance of country affect and city prestige. It is clear from the confusion over its relative country-ness that

Fukuoka’s wealth and its status as a major city makes it more difficult to stereotype and demean Hakata- ben speakers as unintelligent rubes.

I would suggest that Hakata-ben occupies a sweet spot between country and city. It is a center of urbanity on the border of Kyūshū, which is remote (from Tokyo) and stereotypically ‘country’. Because of Fukuoka’s relative wealth and power, Hakata-ben is shielded from the social problems and poverty of

‘deep’ country dialects, but can still earn the covert prestige of country charm.

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4.8.2 Osaka and Kansai

Kansai-ben shows an unparalleled amount of prestige and social capital for a dialect, allowing it to largely avoid overt trivialization. However, it still can be mocked and degraded, and many commenters still ultimately orient towards an ideal of ‘being normal’, which is symbolized by ‘being’ hyōjungo.

The fact that Kansai-ben usage appears to attract and generate conflict regarding the deservingness of its special place among Japanese dialects appears to indicate that it has legitimately gained a certain degree of prestige, and this threat to the hegemony of hyōjungo can result in intense hostility.

4.8.3. Kōshū and Yamanashi

It is possible that speakers of Kōshū-ben have no “excuse”. Kōshū’s residents are economically below average but not desperately poor; similarly, Kōshū-ben is noticeably quite different from hyōjungo but lacks the extreme distinctness of the Aomori or Okinawan dialects, and geographically it is only an hour-and-a-half drive from the Tokyo city center rather than located at the geographical extremes of

Okinawa and Aomori.

In short, Kōshū is in a position to receive all of the negatives of being “country” and none of the benefits. It is quite a bit below average in income and somewhat remote, but not poor enough and not geographically or linguistically distant enough to be romanticized in the way Aomori and Okinawa are.

When Kōshū residents are seen as speaking ‘course’ and ‘unsophisticated’ language they receive the full brunt of the mockery that Aomori and Okinawa are sometimes spared due to the folklorizing processes they have undergone.

4.8.4. Nagoya and Aichi

Nagoya’s status is the most perplexing. While it is clearly the least strongly enregistered of the dialects I have analyzed, I am not sure why the occasional hostility it invokes is more similar to Kōshū than to Osaka or Hakata. Furthermore, a few comments do imply that the city itself is stereotyped as ugly.

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It is possible that Nagoya’s close association with development and industrial progress and its status as an unfortunate cultural third wheel to Tokyo and Osaka make the attribution of a ‘country’ dialect particularly insulting. Furthermore, the city’s relatively close geographic proximity to the apparently unappealing mountain dialects might make any attribution of ‘country’ status hit too close to home.

In any case, as expected, the loosely enregistered dialect of a major city is not likely to invoke feelings of sentimentality, nationalism, or valorization of diversity.

4.8.5. Aomori and Tōhoku

The dialects of Aomori in many ways possess a marginal status. Thanks to their firm enregisterment as ‘deep country’, they are torn between ugliness and cuteness; while their speakers can be derided and mocked, they can also be a source of enormous sentimentality, particularly when they fit the profile of folklorization.

I would suggest that the Aomori dialects, and possibly Tōhoku-ben in general, are ‘safe’ dialects that, to a certain extent, are being reconstructed as affectively ‘Indigenous’ through folklorization so that people can cry over and long for them without posing a threat to a unified Japan. They have no serious political or cultural power, unlike Osaka, and are not the subjects of ongoing geopolitical conflicts like

Okinawa. Hence, they are the ideal dialects to serve as a vessel of implicitly nationalistic valorization of dialect and diversity.

4.8.6. Okinawa

In contrast to Aomori, Okinawa is the more ‘dangerous’ (true) Indigenous dialect that lies directly at the fault lines of Japanese identity. While it appears occasionally for other dialects, it is in the

Okinawan case that diversity qua diversity as a source of nationalistic pride becomes most salient.

While the sentimental veil of folklorization and its fascinating ‘exoticness’ is able to shield the

Okinawan dialect from the derisive mockery Kōshū-ben receives, seriously asking the question of

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whether Okinawan is ‘really’ Japanese can result in intense hostility. However, some people are willing to ask, and it seems to be an easy question to stumble upon, which I think indicates its contested status.

Despite the extreme sentimentality it is sometimes evaluated with, because the valorization of diversity is so often implicitly nationalistic, it is much riskier to do so with Okinawa than with Aomori.

5. Conclusion

In this study, I found that the status and enregisterment of dialects is being openly debated and contested. Commenters show clear awareness of the enregistered stereotypes of many dialects and discuss and debate them on an explicit, metalinguistic level.

I have also found that evaluations of a dialect are closely tied to the social, political, economic, and cultural power of its users. Kansai-ben is by far the least trivialized dialect and tends to be spoken by the most powerful people, while the dialects that are more openly trivialized, Kōshū-ben and the Aomori and Okinawan dialects, are spoken by some of the poorest and least powerful people in Japan. This is not at all a surprising result when considering the Standard Language Ideology literature (Lippi-Green 1997), which emphasizes the very same, but it is useful to be able to connect it to empirical data here.

I also found that any attempt to actually cross the gap between hyōjungo and dialect can result in extreme hostility. It is Kansai-ben that is targeted by the most aggressive distinction from anti-dialect commenters. This, again, is in line with the theories of Standard Language Ideology, which show that assertive users of non-standard language varieties are often vilified as arrogant and inconsiderate.

Furthermore, there is a large amount of discourse dedicated to valorizing dialect and diversity, but the terms of “diversity” are often predicated on idea of that diversity as innately Japanese. As seen in the

Okinawan case, legitimate challenge to the hegemony and unity of Japanese nationalism can result in extremely hostile responses. The fact that “diversity” is now integrated into the discourse of Japanese nationalism suggests a need to reevaluate the past focus on nihonjinron in building critiques of Japanese nationalist ideology.

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This is closely related to the concept of folklorization. It is a powerful force that can serve to shield a dialect from negative evaluations, and as seen in the literature, it is most likely to accrue to the least powerful people. This is seen clearly in the cases of Okinawa and Aomori. However, it ultimately serves the social function of justifying continued oppression, allowing the nation-state to overlook contemporary inequities and recoup its marginal inhabitants for nationalistic purposes. The sentimental positivity directed at Okinawa and Aomori ultimately rests on the idealized image of their past and is indifferent to the material suffering of the present.

All of this is hardly unique to the Japanese context. It is part of the same trends of folklorization that manipulate the valorization of cultural diversity to subtly exploit many of the 300 million Indigenous people around the world, as well as other non-Indigenous minority groups. My findings on the folklorization of Tōhoku-ben seem to suggest that groups who are socioeconomically disadvantaged but unambiguously members of the ethnic majority can be a particularly convenient site of folklorization, something that I believe is worth conducting further research on.

I would also like to suggest that more research be conducted on other Japanese dialect areas to continue to explore these issues, particularly other isolated, remote, or marginal regions. Even if the dialects are mostly extinct or not frequently used, dialect attitudes clearly still remain. In particular, it would be valuable when studying stigmatized dialects to closely investigate just how they are valorized instead of solely how they are denigrated.

Unfortunately, it does not appear that the dialect boom will be of much use to Japan’s most disadvantaged. Tōhoku-ben and the Okinawan dialect are still mocked and degraded, and their valorization is full of sentimentality and self-serving nationalism. The dialect boom has provided the actual residents of Tōhoku and Okinawa with little material benefit.

If there is any hope, it is in the fact that there are many commenters who stand up for dialects out of simple empathy, who recognize that laughing at Kōshū-ben is cruel and not harmless. Even if they are still in the minority, I believe that it shows that attitudes in Japan are changing, however slowly.

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Appendix A: Transliteration Conventions

I am using modified Hepburn romanization. All standards regarding consonants are followed, but the あ

あ aa, ええ ee, おう ou and うう uu digraphs are written ā, ē ō, and ū. いい ii, おお oo, and えい ei are simply rendered ii, oo, and ei.

However, long vowels marked by a dash in the original text (あー, おー, etc.) are instead written with repetition, i.e. aa, ee, oo, etc. Finally, well-known place are written without long vowels in the main text to improve readability (Tokyo rather than Tōkyō, Osaka rather than Ōsaka).

Hyphens are used to connect case markers, nominalizers, suffixes, and honorifics to the phrase they modify.

Text in (parentheses) was parenthesized in the original text. Translation notes and clarification are placed in [brackets]. Double quotation marks are equivalent to the Japanese quotation marks 「 and 」.

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Appendix B: Video Titles and URLs

Table 14. Video Data Japanese Title Translated Title Dialect URL [Hōgen] Minna Nagoya- [Dialect] Everyone, Nagoya https://www.youtube.com/w ben tte shitteru!? [Dialect] Everyone, do atch?v=0oZXhmg3RXU you know Nagoya-ben!?!? Ebifuryaa? Nagoya-ben Ebifuryaa? Nagoya-ben Nagoya https://www.youtube.com/w kouza! [Zenpen] class! [First part] atch?v=XQczWFUm1a8

Moshi Rufi-ga Nagoya-ben If Luffy spoke Nagoya- Nagoya https://www.youtube.com/w dattara ben atch?v=HeTKVqSMLjs

Tsugaru-ben zatsudan Old ladies chatting in Aomori https://www.youtube.com/w naka-no oba-sama. Tsugaru-ben atch?v=bmKOW46LaGo

Nanbu vs Tsugaru: Sensou Nanbu vs Tsugaru: War Aomori https://www.youtube.com/w atch?v=FbCRWl1w5- o&t=25s

[Aomori, Hachinohe] [Aomori, Hachinohe] For Aomori https://www.youtube.com/w Umarete hajimete The First Time in Forever atch?v=KjujqNxTZpM (ripuraizu) Hachinohe-ben (Reprise): Hachinohe-ben ver [Ana to Yuki-no Jo'ou] version [Frozen]

Aomori-ben-no shinuchi Aomori-ben's star Aomori https://www.youtube.com/w performer atch?v=w3GgI0QeYvs

Furansu-go-ni kikoeru Hearing French in a Aomori https://www.youtube.com/w Tsugaru-ben kaiwa Tsugaru-ben conversation atch?v=dDVFRg3R0AI

Ippatsu de wakaru ese Blast of understanding: 7 Kansai https://www.youtube.com/w Kansai-ben-no miwakekata ways to identify fake atch?v=XvryvqpfKx4 nanatsu Kansai-ben Umarete hajimete ripuraizu For the First Time in Kansai https://www.youtube.com/w Ōsaka-ben ver Ana to yuki- Forever: Reprise: Osaka- atch?v=9L_M5B8lYKg no jo'ō ben ver Frozen

Mamiruton-ga honma mon- Mamiruton teaches Kansai https://www.youtube.com/w no Kansai-ben-wo genuine Kansai-ben! atch?v=9L_M5B8lYKg oshietaru wa!

[Kansai-ben] Kantojin-ga [Kansai-ben] Osaka-ben to Kansai https://www.youtube.com/w ira tto suru Ōsaka-ben piss off people from Kanto atch?v=9L_M5B8lYKg

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Japanese Title Translated Title Dialect URL Suda Masaki to Ikematsu Masaki Suda and Sosuke Kansai https://www.youtube.com/w Sosuke-no, Kansai-ben de Ikematsu’s hyper-surreal atch?v=soqI3ICGogQ chō shuuru kaiwa-ga tsubo- Kansai-ben conversation ni hamaru! hits the bull’s-eye!

Umarete hajimete For the First Time in Kōshū https://www.youtube.com/w (ripuraizu) Yamanashi-ben Forever (Reprise) atch?v=XLVLuUrORvc (Kōshū-ben) ver. Yamanashi-ben (Kōshū- ben) ver.

Getsuyō kara yofukashi: Late Nights from Monday: Kōshū https://www.youtube.com/w Kōshū-ben busaiku hōgen Kōshū-ben ugly dialect atch?v=Jqe7GUhOYNE wwwww wwwww

Getsuyō kara yofukashi: Late Nights from Kōshū https://www.youtube.com/w Hakata-ben VS Kitakyūshū- Mondays: Hakata-ben vs Hakata atch?v=hJUsfuuRKCQ ben Kitakyūshū-ben

Hakata-ben-no kawaii Cute Hakata-ben girl Hakata https://www.youtube.com/w onna-no ko atch?v=pcjaVIhfRJ4

[Hakata-ben] Tottooto? -no [Hakata-ben] Proper usage Hakata https://www.youtube.com/w tadashii tsukaikata of tottooto? atch?v=t9sFb3YNu5c

Umarete hajimete ripuraizu For the First Time in Hakata https://www.youtube.com/w in Hakata Hakata-ben ver Forever Reprise in atch?v=dhbwi861fBo Ana to Yuki-no Jo'ō Hakata: Hakata-ben ver Kanzen-han Frozen Kaku'useikyū gyōsha-ni Contractor tries false Hakata https://www.youtube.com/w densha totsu shite-mita: invoice call: Hakata-ben atch?v=h9DhflusB0A Hakata-ben vs Kansai-ben vs Kansai-ben

Nishime Shun to Matsuda Shun Nishime and Ruka Okinawa https://www.youtube.com/w Ruka-no Okinawa-ben Matsuda talk in Okinawa atch?v=SvHPt-HOmGI tooku-ga hotondo dialect, which is almost a gaikokugo!? foreign language. Jimakutsuki: Arin Kurin Subtitled: Arin Kurin Okinawa https://www.youtube.com/w Uchinā-guchi (Okinawa Uchinā-guchi (Okinawa atch?v=C8wfEyLQKmQ hōgen) han Rassun dialect) version Rassun Goreirai Sanma Gōten gorerai: Sanma Gōten

Okinawa-no hōgen Okinawa’s dialect Mono Okinawa https://www.youtube.com/w Monomane Kuizu! Gesuto mane quiz! Guest is atch?v=UXc9RcQ2mMo wa [Mahoto x Saguwa] [Mahoto x Saguwa]

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Japanese Title Translated Title Dialect URL [Okinawa hōgen] Umarete [Okinawa dialect] For the Okinawa https://www.youtube.com/w hajimete ripuraizu [Ana First Time in Forever atch?v=lWyED8-c6f0 Yuki] Reprise [Frozen]

Namida sōsō / Uchinā- Soon After Tears/Uchinā- Okinawa https://www.youtube.com/w guchi guchi atch?v=FfREmk4H38Y

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