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Download Article (PDF) Journal of World Languages, 2016 Vol. 3, No. 3, 204–223, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21698252.2017.1308305 “Can you call it Okinawan Japanese?”: World language delineations of an endangered language on YouTube Peter R. Petruccia* and Katsuyuki Miyahirab aSchool of Humanities, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand; bFaculty of Law and Letters, University of the Ryukyus, Nishihara, Japan (Received 10 March 2016; Accepted 15 March 2017) This article addresses a language-versus-dialect discussion that arose out of a series of language lessons on YouTube. Designed to teach Uchinaaguchi, an endangered Ryukyuan language, the video lessons come in two versions, one for Japanese speakers and the other for English speakers. In either version, the video turns to an adroit combination of semiotic modes in an attempt to delineate Uchinaaguchi as a language distinct from Japanese. However, as we demonstrate here, when an endangered language appears on Internet platforms like YouTube, it tends to be framed in one or more world languages, a situation that problematizes the “singularity” of the endan- gered language (Blommaert, J. 1999. “The Debate Is Closed.” In Language Ideological Debates, edited by J. Blommaert, 425–438. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter). In the case of the Uchinaaguchi lessons, this is especially apparent in viewer commentary written primarily in English and/or Japanese. The analysis of this commentary reveals the ideological effects that world languages can bring into the discussion and delineation of endangered languages online. Keywords: language ideology; YouTube; language attitudes; endangered languages 1. Introduction It is in some ways ironic that minority language activists must turn to world languages to promote their cause. The homepage for UNESCO’s Endangered Languages Programme website, for instance, is accessible in Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish, all languages that have had a profound effect on the thousands of endangered languages the site is meant to defend. Once delineated through the metadiscourse of a language like English or Chinese, the discursive means by which minority language speakers wish to frame their variety may be accepted, questioned or denied. Often the language ideologies that accompany mediating languages used in discourses of endangerment, together with folk linguistic approaches to linguistic diversity itself (Niedzielski and Preston 2000), engender conceptualizations of endangered languages not as distinct linguistic entities but as varieties that can only be viewed against well-established languages. It is against this background that the present article investigates the ideological effects that Japanese and English bring to the staging and discussion of a set of YouTube videos about Uchinaaguchi, an endangered Ryukyuan language. Produced and presented by Okinawan language rights activist Byron Fija, Pirin-paran katayabira (“Let’s chat with fluency”; henceforth, Pirin-paran) comprises four short introductory language lessons. *Corresponding author. Email: [email protected] © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group Journal of World Languages 205 The series is available in two versions. An Uchinaaguchi–Japanese bilingual version targets younger people in Okinawa, whereas an Uchinaaguchi–English version, a transla- tion of the former, targets non-Japanese speakers who might be interested in the language. Most recent studies on the use of endangered languages in the new media have focused on the affordances that digital technologies allow for documentation, voicing the language and networking (see, for instance, Coronel-Molina 2013; Cunliffe and aƿ Dyfrig 2013;Dołowy-Rybińska 2013;Ka’ai et al., 2012). This is also the case for the online Okinawan language lessons. However, the aim of this article is to examine not language learning affordances as such but how Pirin-paran makes the claim that Uchinaaguchi is a distinct language rather than a regional dialect of Japanese. Frustratingly for Fija and other local language activists, the Japanese Government desig- nates Uchinaaguchi as hōgen (“dialect”) and not gengo (“language”), an ideologically based status recognized not only by the majority of Japanese and Okinawans but by many Japanese linguists and educators as well (Heinrich 2004, 154). As Fija warns in an interview, “As long as we keep labelling Uchinaguchi (sic) as a dialect or an inferior form of language, we are treating ourselves like second-class citizens” (Mie 2012). As we demonstrate below, early on in both bilingual versions of Pirin-paran, Fija draws on a clever combination of semiotic modes to ensure that Uchinaaguchi is designated as a language. Fija’s innovative online language activism, however, must be tempered with an understanding that some of the dimensions that delineate YouTube pose certain challenges for raising awareness of the need to save a distinct linguistic heritage. Promisingly, YouTube serves as an integral social media site through which vernacular forms freely, and often collaboratively, flow (Androutsopoulos 2010). But, at the same time, the import of Web 2.0’s multidimensionality and concomitant unfettered conversationality is that language activism and the ideologies upon which it is based may be recontextualized and entextualize other meanings in turn (Bauman and Briggs 1990). Our second motivation for this article, then, is to demonstrate how Fija’s attempt to designate Uchinaaguchi as a full-fledged language is received by his YouTube audience. We will argue that viewer comments in Japanese, English and, on one occasion, Chinese represent not only a reshaping of the language-versus-dialect debate but also the influence that world lan- guages can bring to discourses of language awareness and endangerment. The remainder of this article is organized into five sections. In order to contextualize Fija’s concern for nomenclature and identity, the first section reviews how Uchinaaguchi and the other Ryukyuan languages have been conceptualized by national language policies that view Japan as a monolingual nation. The next section introduces the multi- modal strategies that the producers of Pirin-paran used to promote Uchinaaguchi as a language distinct from Japanese. The third section points out how Fija’s message was immediately weakened once it had been uploaded to YouTube. The fourth section presents an analysis of viewer comments and argues that the language choice of English and/or Japanese help ideologize the language-versus-dialect debate. The final section offers a concluding discussion. 2. Situating the Ryukyuan languages in an ideologized monolingual Japan All six languages on the Ryukyuan Branch of the Japonic language family are designated as endangered in UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger (Moseley 2010). Indigenous to the Ryukyu Islands of Kagoshima and Okinawa Prefectures and mutually unintelligible with Japanese, these languages are, from north-east to south-west, Amami, 206 P. R. Petrucci and K. Miyahira Kunigami, Uchinaaguchi, Miyako, Yaeyama and Yonaguni. Although precise speaker numbers are not available, Uchinaaguchi, spoken on the island of Okinawa and in transnational communities in Hawai’i and South America, has by far the most speakers of the six languages (Karimata 2015). Recognition of the Ryukyuan languages as distinct from Japanese is a first and challenging step for any revitalization effort. However, as Patrick Heinrich (2012) demonstrates in his in-depth examination of Japanese-language policy, Japan has been painstakingly constructed as a monolingual polity from the Meiji restoration of 1868 to the present day. In the case of the Ryukyuan languages, policy decisions out of Tokyo, together with more local acts in Okinawa, had the concurrent effect of bolstering the kokugo (“national language”) status of standard Japanese and relegating the Ryukyuan languages to regional Japanese hōgen. This invented hierarchical distinction allowed government officials, educators and language planners to arrange the Ryukyuan varieties under the umbrella of Japanese and thus maintain the imagined linguistic and cultural homogeneity of the nation. From there it was a relatively simple step for proponents of kokugo to regard the local languages as non-standard forms of Japanese in need of correction. One method of “correcting” regional varieties is reflected by the punitive act of hōgen fuda, a dialect tag forcibly worn by students who spoke a Ryukyuan language in the classroom. Dating from about 20 years after the Ryukyu Kingdom’s forcible annexation to Japan in 1879, this language assimilation measure was initially observed in private and community domains and then, despite a few voices of dissent, spread to the schools (Itani 2006). Significantly, by that time, language assimilation was no longer a forced policy but a result of Okinawans’ self-motivated longing to become Japanese. The hōgen fuda movement strengthened further up to 1940 when a debate over Ryukyuan language maintenance between Japanese folklorists and an Okinawan board of education engulfed the entire nation. The debate stopped short of resolving the controversy, and dialect tags continued to exert their influence until the late 1950s (Hokama 2000;Itani2006). Consequently, the spread of Japanese throughout the Ryukyuan Archipelago was equally driven from within, especially after the close of the Pacific War in 1945. Living under US military occupation until Okinawa Prefecture’s reversion to Japan in 1972, many Okinawans
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