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Journal of World , 2016 Vol. 3, No. 3, 204–223, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21698252.2017.1308305

“Can you call it ?”: World delineations of an YouTube Peter . Petruccia* and Katsuyuki Miyahirab aSchool of Humanities, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand; bFaculty of Law and Letters, University of the Ryukyus, Nishihara, (Received 10 March 2016; Accepted 15 March 2017)

This 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, . 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 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 have been conceptualized by 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 are designated as endangered in UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger (Moseley 2010). Indigenous to the of 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 . Although precise speaker numbers are not available, Uchinaaguchi, spoken on the island of Okinawa and in transnational communities in Hawai’i and , 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 restoration of 1868 to the present day. In the case of the Ryukyuan languages, policy decisions out of , 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 ’s forcible annexation to Japan in 1879, this language 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 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 ’s reversion to Japan in 1972, many Okinawans labelled the use of local languages as fusei-go (bad language) and advocated standard Japanese as a way to resist the US presence, signal nationalist leanings towards Japan, and succeed in life (Heinrich 2012). “Language” and “dialect” labels and qualitative rankings like “good” versus “bad language” are symbolic constructions arising from the discursive acts of those in positions of power (Blommaert 1999; Bourdieu 1991; May2012). When terms of linguistic dis- approbation used by the dominant group gain currency in the discourse of the dominated, the “circle of collective misrecognition” (Bourdieu 1991, 153) is said to be complete. This continues to be the case in Okinawa (Heinrich 2012). For instance, in response to a renewed interest in the Ryukyuan languages and their place in Okinawan schools, a woman argued against the language label:

Although there have recently been voices calling to teach the dialects as languages to children, such a practice would be dreadful. What is the idea of teaching corrupt accents? If pupils are not taught to speak proper Japanese they will face humiliation when grown up . . . (Yamagusuku 2004, as cited in Heinrich 2005)

Here, the ascendancy of Japanese, together with the subordination of the Ryukyuan lan- guages, is clearly reflected with “proper Japanese” contrasting with “corrupt accents”,both Journal of World Languages 207 subjective descriptions that serve to construct and reinforce the very language ideologies that have legitimized Japanese in Okinawa since the Meiji era. The woman’s sentiment embodies the ideological position espoused by Tokyo’s language policymakers: to be a good citizen, one must speak standard Japanese and nothing else (Gottlieb 2007,198). It is important to that although we have considered how an ideologized monolingual Japan contributed to the decline of the Ryukyuan languages and shaped the public’s perception of Okinawa as a linguistic area, language revitalization efforts on the island over the past 20 years have not been entirely unproductive. In his discussion of reversing , Heinrich (2005, 2012) highlighted several language actions that, for Uchinaaguchi at least, show some promise for raising awareness. Short fiction and articles have begun to appear in the local press, a standard was agreed upon in 2003, and in 2005 Okinawa Prefecture declared 18 September to be celebrated as Shimakutuba no hi (“Indigenous Languages Day”). To some degree, these actions, respectively, satisfy the symbolic criteria of “writing, codification and institutionalization” identified by Jan Blommaert (1999, 431ff) as necessary for minority languages to attain “full languageness”, a perceived quality that legitimates the language label. Equally important to this legitimation, “expert voices” are increasingly being heard both in Okinawa and abroad. Scholars, activists and speakers of Uchinaaguchi are contributing to standardization efforts and, perhaps more significantly, voicing counter-discourses that con- struct Uchinaaguchi and the other Ryukyuan varieties as languages in their own right. But two other conditions underpinning Blommaert’s full languageness remain unrea- lized. The first is “singularility”, the idea that the meanings of a language and the people speaking that language are unambiguous (Blommaert 1999, 432). In the case of Uchinaaguchi, there are few if any monolingual speakers remaining, which in turn means that the language is no longer unfiltered but rather subject to inevitable contact with Japanese varieties (Heinrich 2012). On a related , and more importantly, is the lack of “ownership” (Blommaert 1999, 433). Because the intergenerational transmission of Uchinaaguchi stopped in the 1950s (Anderson 2009), the perceived quality of linguistic tradition that only a multigenerational speech community can bring to a minority language has been silenced. Singularity and ownership are unlikely to be met by any of the Ryukyuan languages in a traditional sense but as we address below the borderless of the web provides new avenues for raising awareness of the endangered languages of Okinawa.

3. Raising Okinawan language awareness online: Byron Fija’s Pirin-paran The four-part Pirin-paran series first appeared in March 2007 in a blog put out by Okinawan Internet news service okinawaBBtv. The catalyst for the series is Byron Fija. To borrow terminology used in anthropological treatments of Japanese quiz shows (.g. Martinez 1997), Fija acts as both sensei (“teacher”) and talento (“celebrity”). He repre- sents an all-knowing fluent speaker, someone who has dedicated his adult life to the study and maintenance of the ancestral language. Parallel to this, Fija’s popularity stems not only from his fluency in Uchinaaguchi and demonstrated desire to follow the traditional ways of Okinawa, but, equally significant, from his mixed heritage. Indeed, although his identity is anchored in Okinawa and he speaks little English, Fija recognizes that his Uchinaaguchi-speaking persona strikes Okinawans as odd. As he relates in the first lesson of Pirin-paran1:

Maa anu wan’nee kunu umarin sudachin uchinaa yaibiinu baatee sai. Waa ikiganu uya yaibiishiga Amerikaa yaibiinu baatee sai. Waa chira ‘njiinee gusuuyoo sugu nuunatoogaa di . . . 208 P. R. Petrucci and K. Miyahira

((I was born and raised in Okinawa. My father – he’s an . When you look at my face [and see me speak in Uchinaaguchi], you may be surprised . . .))

Thus, physiognomy apparently contributes, at least partially, to Fija’s talento status in much the same way that some foreigners in Japan have garnered repute from their proficiency in Japanese and/or intimate knowledge of particular aspects of Japanese culture (Doerr and Kumagai 2014; Miller 1995). The online language lessons use quirky production features to catch the viewer’s attention, such as multi-sized coloured , images and background sounds that include chords from the , a three-stringed Okinawan instrument that Fija plays. Also, appearing on the program with Fija is Sugiko Moromizato, a Japanese- speaking Okinawan woman who, with passive ability in Uchinaaguchi, typifies the younger population that Pirin-paran appears to be targeting. Although on the surface the original videos are meant to teach the “correct” pronun- ciation and wording of everyday Uchinaaguchi expressions, Fija and Moromizato’s catchy bilingual presentation of the material carefully situates the language as distinct from and, in the videos at least, dominant to Japanese. In the version made for Japanese speakers, Fija’s utterances are all in Uchinaaguchi and subtitled into Japanese, whereas Moromizato speaks in Standard Japanese and occasionally switches to Uchinaaguchi when practicing the material with her sensei (“teacher”). In the English-language version, subtitles pre- serve Fija’s Uchinaaguchi but a dubbed English voice all but erases Moromizato’s use of Japanese. Thus, in either version of the lessons, the overall result is that Uchinaaguchi is highlighted and Japanese downplayed. In both versions, subtitles subtly provide further metalinguistic comments that index a counter-discourse to the monolingual language ideology discussed previously. Uchinaaguchi is legitimated by a colourful and enlarged subtitle when Fija mentions the language by name. Figure 1, for instance, presents screen shots from Lesson 1, the first time Fija identifies Uchinaaguchi as a language indigenous to Okinawa. In the Uchinaaguchi–English version, an English subtitle identifies Uchinaaguchi as “Okinawan language” in a clear-cut fashion. In the Uchinaaguchi–Japanese version, a Japanese subtitle accomplishes this as well. However, within the subtitle, it is interesting to consider the composition of the parenthesized characters that follow うちなぁぐち (“Uchinaaguchi”). Rather than the more technical okinawa go (沖縄語, “Okinawan lan- guage”), the producers of the video selected okinawa kotoba (沖縄言葉, “Okinawan language”). This choice juxtaposes nicely with yamato kotoba (大和言葉, “”), a common term with positive connotations of Japanese in its “purest ” form, prior to contact with other languages and cultures (Burns 2003, 69). The selection of okinawa kotoba in the Uchinaaguchi–Japanese version, then, has similar emotive connota- tions of Uchinaaguchi as not only a complete language but, like Japanese, also one with an idealized original form that delineates the identity of its speakers. There is also a subtext to the subtitles that appear when the presenter introduces himself for the first time. These subtitles are shown in Figure 2. In the English subtitle an American first name and Okinawan family name are clearly suggestive of a mixed heritage. But, when we turn to the Uchinaaguchi–Japanese version, we see that the subtitle makes a subtle ideological statement about Fija’s linguistic identity. “Byron” is neither written in romaji nor , which would suggest the name’s non-Okinawan origin. Instead, the first name is written with kanji characters in an ad hoc manner. In this case, the sequence光龍, which loosely translates as “beam of the dragon”, is arbitrarily matched with “Byron”. Turning to the surname, there is a normative Journal of World Languages 209

Figure 1. Subtitles for Byron Fija’s first mention of Uchinaaguchi from Lesson 1. Uchinaaguchi-Japanese version Source: .com/watch?v = lOTK3IecqPs; Uchinaaguchi- English version Source: youtube.com/watch?v = 6EfwfexTB9 g

Figure 2. Subtitles for Byron Fija’s introduction. Uchinaaguchi-Japanese version Source: youtube.com/watch?v = lOTK3IecqPs; Uchinaaguchi- English version Source: youtube.com/watch?v = 6EfwfexTB9 g

expectation that the enlarged characters for the common Okinawan family name 比 嘉should be read as “Higa”, a Japanese that dates from 1879, the year the Japanese Government established Okinawa Prefecture. However, located just above比嘉 in the subtitle are the symbols ふぃじゃ, which signal that the kanji should be pronounced as “Fija”, the Uchinaaguchi reading of the surname. As Fija explained in a 2007 interview, “Higa is Japanese and that is not my identity. I am Fija, an Uchinanchu [Okinawan], and I speak Uchinaguchi (sic.)” (Fija and Heinrich 2007). Associating an Uchinaaguchi name to kanji is more than just signalling a personal preference. The furigana above the characters also serve to contest tacit Japanese-language ideologies that view kanji as an ideographic somehow married to Standard Japanese (Petrucci and Miyahira 2015).

4. Weakening the message: initial recontextualizations of Pirin-paran OkinawaBBTv took two steps to disseminate Pirin-paran to a wider non-Japanese-speak- ing audience. First, and as discussed, they prepared an English-language version of each lesson to parallel the Uchinaaguchi–Japanese original. Later, the four-part series was uploaded to YouTube. 210 P. R. Petrucci and K. Miyahira

Any recontextualization of a multimodal text like Pirin-paran results in a “new” text with the potential to reach a different audience. Whether reposted, translated or evaluated in a written or video comment, recontextualized discourse on Web 2.0 is necessarily dialogic and thus allows for the articulation of other ideologies. In the remainder of this article, we draw on the notion of stance in order to understand tensions between other social identities and conflicting ideologies that have arisen out of the recontextualization of Pirin-paran. Although different research traditions may characterize stance in slightly different ways, we agree with and adopt Bucholtz and Hall’s(2005) observation that researchers all view stance as a notion that affords “an analytic on the linguistic marking of a speaker’s orientation to ongoing talk” (p. 595). The first recontextualizations of Pirin-paran brought about an unintentional weaken- ing of Fija’s ideological message that Uchinaaguchi be treated as a language in its own right. Turning to the Uchinaaguchi–English version of the first lesson, we see this weakening in a crucial mistranslation in the English-language voice-over of Sugiko Moromizato (SM; emphasis added):

(1) SM:Sā, Bairon-san, kyō kara “Pirin-paran” sutāto shimashita keredo, dōitta bangumi ni narun desu ka ((Well, Byron, today we are starting “Pirin-paran”. What kind of show will it be?)) (2) SM:Well, Byron, this is the first lesson of our “Let’s chat in Okinawan dialect”. What is this programme going to be like?

In the Uchinaaguchi–Japanese original in (1), Sugiko Moromizato uses Pirin-paran – an echoic form that translates as “with fluency” (Sakihara 2006) – as the shortened Uchinaaguchi title for the series. In (2) the Uchinaaguchi–English version makes no mention of Pirin-paran. Instead, the English-language voice-over of Moromizato offers a literal translation of the second part of the full title, [Pirin-paran] katayabira or “let’s chat”. However, in order to specify the title further, the voice-over includes in Okinawan dialect,a“stance ” (Du Bois 2007) that directly challenges the ideological framing of Uchinaaguchi as a full language in the source text. Once Pirin-paran was uploaded to the discursive space of YouTube, another challenge to Fija’s carefully crafted message appeared. To see this, details of the lessons’ YouTube trajectory are given in Table 1. The number of views, comments and commenters are as of 1 November 2015. OkinawaBBtv uploaded both versions of the first two lessons without modification a year after their first appearance on the news agency’s blog. Two months later, a YouTube subscriber named okinawa8man independently uploaded the English-language version of the entire series under the new title, “Okinawa Language Lesson”. Although the identity of okinawa8man is not entirely clear, his (or her) decision to make the title change was successful because the renamed videos have generated considerably more views and comments than the earlier videos uploaded by okinawaBBtv. Ironically, however, even though okinawa8man’s uploaded videos identify Uchinaaguchi in English as an “Okinawan language”, the inclusion of the bracketed Japanese translation immediately following this, namely, 沖縄方言講座 Okinawa-hōgen kōza (“Okinawan dialect course”), contradicts the valued language label. This suggests that the “language” versus “dialect” label can be sensitive to the language in which a particular label is being used. That is, okinawa8man’s Japanese designation of Uchinaaguchi as hōgen may represent an Journal of World Languages 211

Table 1. History of Pirin-paran videos on YouTube.

Title of video Uploaded by Date Views Comments Commenters

比嘉 光龍のピリンパラン okinawaBBtv January 2008 10,607 9 8 語やびら 第一回 Byron Fija’s “Pirin-paran okinawaBBtv January 2008 5069 4 4 Katayabira” 1st story 比嘉 光龍のピリンパラン okinawaBBtv January 2008 8449 2 2 語やびら 第二回 Byron Fija’s “Pirin-paran okinawaBBtv January 2008 5457 3 3 Katayabira” 2nd story Okinawan Language Lesson okinawa8man March 2008 149,354 225 145 1[沖縄方言講座1] Okinawan Language Lesson okinawa8man March 2008 32,957 26 18 2[沖縄方言講座2] Okinawan Language Lesson okinawa8man March 2008 21,815 3 2 3[沖縄方言講座3] Okinawan Language Lesson okinawa8man March 2008 32,133 43 23 4[沖縄方言講座4]

“implicit behavioural reflex” (Blommaert and Rampton 2012, 22), situated, in this case, in the social and political context of an ideologized monolingual Japan. Some 6 years after the series had been recontextualized under this inconsistent bilingual title, Fija posted a written comment to the YouTube video Okinawan Language Lesson 1 [沖縄 方言講座1]. Using primarily Japanese with some English, Fija first identifies himself and thanks okinawa8man for uploading the video. He then strongly objects to the designation of Uchinaaguchi as a dialect2:

(3) Shikashi, shikashi desu yo eigo dewa [Okinawan Language Lesson] to arimasu. Kono nihongo yaku [Okinawago kōza] desu. Sore nano ni, wazawaza [Okinawa hōgen kōza]to kaite arimasu. Kore wa watashi ni totte, iya, uchinaanchu ni totte mo, hokori o kizu tsukeru koto ni narimasu. Uchinaaguchi wa yunesuko 2009 nen nigatsu ni kiki gengo dato happyō shimashita. Tsumari, uchinaaguchi wa [gengo] nano desu. [hōgen] dewa arimasen. Uchinaaguchi is language.not dialect. please erase [hōgen (dialect)] it. thank you. ((But really, you know, in English you have written [Okinawan Language Lesson]. The Japanese translation for this is [Okinawan Language Lesson]. However, you have deliberately written [Okinawan Dialect Lesson]. For me, no, for all Uchinaanchu, this damages our pride. In February 2009 Uchinaaguchi was proclaimed an endangered language by UNESCO. Therefore, Uchinaaguchi is surely a language. It is not a dialect. Uchinaaguchi is language.not dialect.please erase [hōgen (dialect)] it. thank you.))

As we see in (3), after providing a more accurate Japanese translation of Okinawan Language Lesson, Fija accuses okinawa8man of “deliberately” classifying Uchinaaguchi as a dialect. He disaligns himself from this insensitive classification by evaluating the faulty Japanese title as one whose impact on Okinawans’ self-esteem is damaging. The comment then invokes UNESCO as an outside and well-respected entity that officially recognizes Uchinaaguchi as an endangered language. Fija’s becomes more confident, 212 P. R. Petrucci and K. Miyahira didactic even, when he states that “Uchinaaguchi is surely a language. It is not a dialect”. The comment then switches to English to reiterate that Uchinaaguchi deserves the language label and, interestingly, to entreat okinawa8man to correct the title of the uploaded video. Neither of the mistranslations mentioned in this section had been changed at the time of writing this article. Assuming that okinawa8man and the person who provided the English- language voice-over are both Okinawan or people with close ties to Okinawans, these translational stance predicates are reflective of an ambivalent use of the language and dialect labels when speaking about Uchinaaguchi or one of the other Ryukyuan languages. This labelling inconsistency among Okinawans has been reported elsewhere (Heinrich 2012)and because of it, the ideologized myth of a monolingual Japan stubbornly remains.

5. “How much can a Japanese understand this?”: viewer responses to Pirin-paran If we are to appreciate the full import of the consumption and circulation of Fija’s message in the transnational space of YouTube, it is essential to point out that, although “language” and “dialect” are no longer treated by most sociolinguists as neatly bounded and structured (Blommaert and Rampton 2012), these notions tend to remain clearly delineated in folk linguistic accounts of language and linguistic diversity. This section illustrates this by analysing metalinguistic viewer commentary that, prompted from the Pirin-paran series, revolves around Uchinaaguchi and its status as language or dialect. The analysis is based on 315 written comments posted by approximately 200 viewers as of 1 November 2015 (see YouTube trajectory in Table 1). We do not have access to precise geographical statistics but the textual data suggest that commenters represent a range of locations, including Okinawa, “Mainland” Japan, the , , , , Finland, and the . Three languages are primarily used for the comments, sometimes in combination: English, Japanese and Uchinaaguchi. The most commonly used languages in the body of data are English and Japanese, respectively, accounting for about 70% and 20% of the commentary.3 Many comments do not directly engage in a language-versus-dialect nomenclature debate. Nonetheless, they are significant for their subtle positioning of Uchinaaguchi and its speakers. For instance, several comments focus not on the language being taught in the videos but on the language skills of the presenter of the lessons.

(4) This is awesome!! So cool to see a young person who can speak uchinaaguchi really well! (5) Amazing!!! Nan da, gwaijin ga uchinaaguchi abiton dee umuta shiga, uchinaanchu ru yashee!!! ((Wow, I first thought a foreigner was speaking Uchinaaguchi, but he is indeed Okinawan!!!)) (6) Sugē. Okinawaben ga shaberareru ((Wow [this guy] can speak Okinawan dialect)) (7) Wow that’s cool. He looks like he knows english but he doesn’t, only japanese.

These extracts represent generally positive assessments of Fija. However, because each comment includes an expression of surprise, it is fairly apparent that the Okinawan language activist is being viewed through an essentialist lens. Uchinaaguchi is mapped onto Fija and because he is young and/or of mixed ancestry, the mapping seems strange. As such, the presenter’s status as a legitimate speaker Journal of World Languages 213

(Bourdieu 1991) of Uchinaaguchi – and, ironically, as a legitimate non-speaker of English – comes into question. Similar expressions of wonder have been documented for proficiency in Japanese seemingly incompatible with the appearance of a particular speaker (Doerr and Kumagai 2014). But, whereas, there is an implied association drawn between Uchinaaguchi and the typical speaker, more overt language ideologies emerge in the way commenters choose to designate Uchinaaguchi. Comments (4) and (5) make no value judgements and straightforwardly identify the variety by name. The other comments, by contrast, erase Uchinaaguchi and recontextualize the variety as something else. Specifically, in (6) Uchinaaguchi is assigned the status of “Okinawan dialect”,andFija’s abilities are tellingly described with the potential shaberareru, a hypercorrection of the colloquial expression shabereru, which means “can speak” or, more negatively, “can chatter”. In Comment (7), “only japanese” represents an even harsher stance predicate and suggests that Fija’s underlying message has gone unheard. Comments (6) and (7), therefore, are ideologically coherent in their evaluation of Uchinaaguchi as something less than language, precisely the negative assessment that Fija hopes to correct with Pirin-paran. Apart from those viewers addressing the linguistic proficiency of the series’ presenter, metalinguistic commentary attempts to delineate and position Uchinaaguchi. On a few occasions, demarcations are uncertain or ambiguous:

(8) I’m glad to find this video. I wanted to hear how this language/dialect sounds like. (9) Thank you for taking interest in the Okinawan language. My grandmother, who emigrated from Okinawa . . ., died a few years ago. We continue to celebrate her life but it is difficult to find anyone who speaks this dialect . . .

The reference to Uchinaaguchi as “language/dialect” in (8) represents a careful detachment from the language-versus-dialect question. The commenter is apparently mindful of the effect that one label, as opposed to another, might have among members of the YouTube community. Whereas Example (8) represents a conscious lexical choice to remain neutral, (9) identifies Uchinaaguchi first as “the Okinawan language” and then later as “this dialect”. The comment mentions an ancestral link to Okinawa and we see that, though perhaps not spoken by her, Uchinaaguchi undeniably contributes to the author’s own familial linguistic identity. It is important therefore to note that the com- menter’s wavering use of “language” and “dialect” is characteristic of the ambivalence many Okinawans feel towards Uchinaaguchi and its relationship to Japanese (Heinrich 2012). Comments from viewers whose first exposure to the Okinawan language is apparently through the YouTube videos tend to situate the variety within a language ecology over- shadowed by Japanese and its speakers. This hierarchical positioning is particularly evident in two English-language comments posed as questions:

(10) how much can a japanese understand this? (11) can you call it okinawan japanese, or is it even for an own language?

Shared by both viewers here is the sentiment that despite the conspicuous and clever efforts to erase Japanese from the English-language translation of Pirin-paran as discussed above, there remains an ostensible desire to equate Uchinaaguchi to Japanese and to speakers of Japanese. In this regard, the questions are directed to Japanese 214 P. R. Petrucci and K. Miyahira speakers or at the very least to anyone who knows how they might view Uchinaaguchi. Although the question in (10) is framed around Japanese speakers’ ability to under- stand Uchinaaguchi, it is not altogether clear if the same holds for (11). Rather, the excerpt “is it even for Japanese people an own language?” may be constructed around intelligibility or around some other criterion for measuring the distinctiveness of a linguistic variety. Seargeant (2009) argues that when linguists and laypeople talk about and conceptualize language, they often rely on discursive means to establish a - prietorial relationship holding between speakers and a language. Because “japanese people” possibly “call” Uchinaaguchi “okinawan japanese” or classify it as “an own language”, the proprietorial relationship in (11) is one that essentially excludes Okinawans. The agency granted to Japanese speakers in (10) and (11) represents a textual privileging of Japanese over Uchinaaguchi, which, returning to Seargeant (2009), likewise allows speakers of Japanese to treat Okinawan varieties as a reified object of . Although not posted directly in response to the question posed in (10), a number of metalinguistic comments bring up the matter of comprehension. As demonstrated by the Japanese- and English-language examples below, the typical observation is that Uchinaaguchi is unintelligible to speakers of standard Japanese.

(12) honto ni nante itteru ka wakaran ((I really don’t understand what he is saying)) (13) im japanese but i had to read english subtitle to understand what he said. (14) Wow! I’m Japanese but I’ve caught the meaning by reading English subtitles, even he speaks a kind of Japanese.

What is of interest to us here is that, not unlike the language used in (4–7) above, Comments (12–14) represent statements of surprise. And like the earlier discussion about Fija’s proficiency in Uchinaaguchi, comments about intelligibility are essentialist in nature. The implication here is that, because they are Japanese, the commenters should be able to understand the language spoken in Okinawa, but instead they must rely on English subtitles, as if they are watching a foreign-language film. This reaction to the existence and use of other autochthonous languages within the Japanese polity reflects an ideological stance that positions Japanese as not only the language spoken by all Japanese but also as the only language of Japan (Heinrich 2012). Indeed, even after mentioning the need for the English-language subtitles, the commenter in (14) returns to a monolingual orientation by identifying Uchinaaguchi as a “kind of Japanese”, a hyponymous regimen- tation that, as will become apparent below, is reinforced by interpretations of written Japanese. A further way that viewers frame Uchinaaguchi is by referencing the variety’s perceived linguistic distance from or closeness to Japanese or other languages. Comments of comparison occur in both Japanese and English and to some extent serve as answers to the questions addressed in (10) and (11) above. The comments are all subjective in nature and offer no real linguistic evidence for the comparison being made.

(15) hē okinawago wa hontō ni tottemo chigaimasu ne. ((wow the Okinawan language is really completely different [from Japanese], isn’t it?)) (16) yōku ki o tsukete kiite ireba hitostu hitotsu no tango mo (hyōjungo dewa amari tsukawarenai tango mo fukumarete itari suru kedo) chanto nihongo nanda ne. Journal of World Languages 215

((If you listen very closely, individual (there may be some words that are rarely used in standard Japanese) are distinctly Japanese.)) (17) Okinawan sounds korean (18) Okinawan is much similar to Korean than Japanese (19) tashikani hondo no nihongo yorimo kankokugo ni chikai hibiki ni kikitoreru!!! ((It certainly sounds more like Korean than Mainland Japanese!!!)) (20) gobi ga manshūgo toka torukogo to niteiru kanji. ((The endings sound like the Manchu [Tungussic] language or Turkish.))

The only discussion of Uchinaaguchi on its own terms is Comment (15). Writing in Japanese and alluding to the notion of , the commenter refers to the Okinawan language as tottemo chigaimasu (“completely different”), a stance predicate that delineates the language as something other than Japanese. In the other comments of comparison, Uchinaaguchi is either like Japanese (Comment 16) or like some other language (Comments 17–20). For instance, although (16) refers to rather than the language as a whole, the stance predicate chanto nihongo (“distinctly Japanese”) represents a certainty that Uchinaaguchi can be linked to Japanese. What is more, because the comment describes some words in the language lesson as hyōjungo de wa amari tsukawarenai (“rarely used in standard Japanese”), the Okinawan language is characterized as archaic, a common folk observation attributed to dialects not languages (Niedzielski and Preston 2000). Korean is another language to which Uchinaaguchi is compared (Comments 17–19), apparently as a means by which commenters legitimate the Okinawan language as something other than Japanese. In other words, the linguistic difference holding between the two languages is recognized but the full languageness of Uchinaaguchi is mitigated in a sense by viewer claims that it sounds like Korean, or in the case of (20), Turkish or Manchu. Written in the form of an equivalence relation, the Chinese-language comment below is based on a different type of comparison:

(21) 污錢奶古錢 = 沖城語言 ((dirty-money-milk-ancient-money = Okinawa-language))

Located to the left of the equal sign is a five-character sequence of hanzi whose phonetic realization in [wu tɕʰiɛnnaɪ ku tɕʰiɛn] ostensibly sounds something like “Uchinaaguchi”. Following the analytical framework proposed in Kim (2012), the sequence used to sound out “Uchinaaguchi” represents a “pure phonetic loan” in which the meanings of used to transcribe the sounds of a foreign word or name do not play any role in the form itself. As Kim (2012) observes, however, because they are in fact not easily separated from their meaning, characters selected for pure phonetic loans can convey an attitudinal stance. Returning to (21), the composite meaning of the five-character sequence is far from flattering: “dirty-money- milk-ancient-money”. This is perhaps best understood in the context of non-linguistic commentary that preceded it. Specifically, several viewers of Pirin-paran had engaged in a heated and sometimes distasteful discussion about the sovereignty of the Diaoyu/, a group of five small islands in the East Sea coveted by China, Japan and Taiwan. Framed within this controversy, the seemingly nonsensical translation for “Uchinaaguchi” in (21) suggests that the author has reflected meaningfully on ideographic options available to him and chosen a sequence that essentially mocks Fija’s carefully constructed presentation of Okinawan. Indeed, the 216 P. R. Petrucci and K. Miyahira characters to the right of the equal sign continue the subtle dismantling of the videos’ message. In Chinese hanzi “Okinawa” is written with the two-character sequence沖繩, which, phonetically realized as [tʂʰoŋ ʂeŋ], very nearly matches沖縄, the Japanese kanji for the same place name. In the example above, however, the commenter selected a different sequence for Okinawa: 沖城 [tʂʰoŋ tʂʰeŋ]. The exact motivation for this is unclear. Perhaps the commenter did not know the hanzi used to denote “Okinawa” or perhaps the unusual sequence was deliberately selected. In either case, by using沖城 rather than the standard form 沖繩, the viewer constructs a stance predicate that locates Okinawa and Uchinaaguchi within a Chinese sphere of influence, analogous with the pro-China position expressed by some commenters towards the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands. The selection of specific characters in (21) reveals that Chinese hanzi provide imaginative ways by which a discourse can be socially situated to signal issues of identity and power. As we will see later on, the symbolic possibilities of ideographic writing systems are not limited to Chinese but evident in Japanese as well. In the data set, commenters commonly call on one or both of two overt folk beliefs about language differentiation in order to justify their designation of Uchinaaguchi as dialect of Japanese or as distinct language. First, is the belief that a variety can only be considered an independent language if it is inextricably linked to a polity. This essentialist stance is indicative of the perceived significance that the state –“a formal system of institutions” (Blommaert 2006, 239) – holds on the construction and validation of what people recognize as a language. Second, once a language has been ascribed to a polity, it is an easy step to begin to view the polity as monolingual in that particular language (Clyne 2005). Significantly, as the comments below demonstrate, there is a chronological and, at times, ethnic dimension to the monolingual politicization of the language-versus- dialect debate.

(22) okinawa wa nihon nan da yo. dakara Okinawaben ga tadashii no. Okinawago toka itteru yatsu wa dōse shinajin da ro. wakatterun da yo. ((Okinawa is [a part of] Japan! Therefore, Okinawan dialect is the correct [term]. After all those who call it Okinawan language are just Chinamen, no? I know that.)) (23) he keeps claiming Okinawan is a separate language and how its his culture and he’s so proud of it. It just a fucked up dialect of broken Japanese. This is comparable to an illegal Mexican immigrant’s offspring being a representation of American culture. Not an American, and not an Okinawan, he’s a reject. Genin ((commoner)) (24) Okinawan is a separate language. It’s not a fucked up dialect, it was the of the Ryukyu Kingdom. (25) Uchinaaguchi to iu kotoba wa edojidai izen kara atta. Sono tōji kara ima made “Uchinaaguchi” wa “Okinawa hontō no hōgen ” to iu imi da. ((The word, Uchinaaguchi, did exist before the Period. Ever since then Uchinaaguchi means a dialect of mainland Okinawa.)) (26) Shitsurei kamo shirenai ga mohaya okinawa no hōgen wa gaikokugo to ninshiki shite shimau. Motomoto ryūkyū no kotoba dakara atarazu tomo tōkarazu kamo shirenai ga ((Although it may sound disrespectful, Okinawan variety can be better acknowl- edged as a . Because the dialect is originally that of the Ryukyus, it may not be correct but not too far from the truth.)) Journal of World Languages 217

The comments in (22) and (23) draw on discourses from Japan’s traditional hegemonic past to denigrate both Uchinaaguchi and its speakers. In (22), the statement okinawa wa nihon nan da yo (“Okinawa is [a part of] Japan!”) represents an appeal to the nation state to validate a stance predicate that designates Uchinaaguchi simply as ben (“a phonetically distinctive dialect”). The commenter further disaligns himself from the videos’ message by asserting that anyone who claims Uchinaaguchi to be a distinct language is shinajin (“Chinaman”), an offensive term for the Asian Other from Japan’s bellicose past (Tanaka 1993). The comment in (23) is of a similarly abusive nature, only this time the name- calling is more clearly directed at Byron Fija. Here, the commenter first labels Uchinaaguchi as “just a fucked up dialect of Japanese” and then compares the Okinawan language activist to “an illegal Mexican immigrant’s offspring”. Perhaps most injurious is the use of derogatory genin (下人), a Japanese caste term from the Tokugawa Period meaning “landless servant” ( 1959). Taken together, the intention of Comments (22) and (23) is to call into question the legitimacy of the Okinawan language and its speakers, thus confirming Heinrich’s(2012) observation that the care- fully constructed ideology of Japan as a homogenous and monolingual polity remains salient for some. Within the participatory space of YouTube, negative statements like those in (22) and (23) do not go unchallenged but can instead prompt other comments expressing disagree- ment. Comment (24), for instance, serves as an act of disalignment from the abusive stance towards Uchinaaguchi articulated in (23). Specifically, Okinawan is identified as a “separate language” that was spoken within the Ryukyu Kingdom, a tributary state that dates from 1429 to 1879. This link to an imperial past allows the commenter not only to align with Fija’s stance but also to enhance the endangered language’s status further by claiming that Okinawan was once an “official language”. By mapping a language to a polity in (24), albeit from the past, the commenter draws on a strategy similar to that used by the commenters in (22) and (23). The three comments, then, all invoke the notion of the polity as a key benchmark for determining whether a variety is or is not a full language. In the Japanese-language comments in (25) and (26), we can notice that assumptions about the status of Uchinaaguchi may change depending upon the polity onto which it is mapped. Comment (25) spells out this chronological dimension clearly: “Uchinaaguchi, did exist before the [i.e., when the Ryukyu Kingdom was still in existence]. Ever since then, Uchinaaguchi means a dialect of mainland Okinawa”. In other words, as has been documented in studies of fluctuating language designations in the Balkans and elsewhere, the commenter’s stance in (25) is dependent upon the ruling polity at the time. As for (26), the stance is not altogether clear. Uchinaaguchi “can be better acknowledged as a foreign language”, yet, interestingly, this designation “may not be correct but not too far from the truth”. What are we to make of this ambivalence? Apparently, the commen- ter’s wavering designation stems from the fact that “the dialect is originally that of the Ryukyus”, a geographical region that has not always been governed by Japan. Like (25), this seems to suggest that Uchinaaguchi may be viewed as a language, but only during the time of the Ryukyu Kingdom. Consequently, for (25) and (26), once Okinawa became a Japanese prefecture in 1879, Uchnaaguchi ceased to exist as a language because it could no longer be mapped onto a distinct political entity. Up to this point, stances towards Uchinaaguchi as language or dialect have relied on evidence that is subjective and nonlinguistic in nature. However, after BA observes how greatly Okinawan differs from Japanese in (27) below, there follows a thread of five comments that attempt to bring the notion of language family into the discussion. 218 P. R. Petrucci and K. Miyahira

(27) BA (1 year ago): Okinawan is completely different from Japanese (28) KF (5 months ago): ±BA nope. both are (29) BA (4 months ago): ±KF yes. i should know. i speak japanese. the fact that they are from the same language family is irrelevant though (30) CN (4 weeks ago): ±KF That’s like saying Italian is same as German because they are Indo-European languages. No to you. (31) KF (4 weeks ago): german is one of germanic language family. italian is one of romanic language family. okinawan and japanese are same japonic language family. learn more before posting ignorant comment (32) CN (2 weeks ago): ±KF I will explain some basic truths: Germanic languages and belong in the same FUCKING family called Indo-European language family and Japonic languages are so fuckin’ distant from each other like fuckin“ Albanian is in front of German.

KF is the first to draw on genetic relationships among languages in (28). Her position appears to be that, because Okinawan and Japanese are both Japonic, BA’s description of Okinawan in (27) as “completely different” is invalidated. The remaining comments in the thread demonstrate a heated disagreement about the precise delineation and interpretation of languages within a language family. Without some reference to specific cognate forms in (28–32), appeals families in evaluations of sameness or difference and the delineation of Uchinaaguchi are inconclusive and, like earlier commentary, subjective. Nonetheless, we believe the stance taken by KF in (28) and (31) merits further discussion. Explicitly, why is it that, although she recognizes Okinawan and Japanese as separate languages, she also appears to suggest that there cannot be a great linguistic distance between them? Judging from her YouTube channel and her other posts to YouTube, KF seems to be a speaker of Japanese highly proficient in written Japanese. A question we might ask, then, is whether KF’s reading of “Japonic language family” has been influenced by her knowledge of Japanese. In other words, can notions of language relationships differ across languages? The recognized linguistic equivalent for “Japonic language family” in Japanese is nihongozoku (Hokama 2000). However, a careful examination of日本語族, the kanji used to express this term, reveals two possible : 日本 (nihon (“Japan”)) + 語族 (gozoku (“language family”)) or日本語 (nihongo (“Japanese language”)) + 族 (zoku (“family”)). As shown by the genetic tree structures in Figure 3, these variant readings conceptualize the hierarchical relationship between Japanese and Uchinaaguchi differently: In Reading (a), which is the interpretation offered by most historical linguists today (Bentley 2015), Japanese and Uchinaaguchi are sister languages within a language family that is named after its location. In Reading (b), the sister language designation remains

(a) + (b) + (Japan + language family) (Japanese language + family)

Japanese Uchinaaguchi Japanese Uchinaaguchi

Figure 3. Possible readings of日本語族. Journal of World Languages 219 unchanged, but Japanese and Uchinaaguchi are oddly subsumed under a specific lan- guage, Japanese. With the Japanese language appearing at two levels in Reading (b), the conceptualization of Uchinaaguchi as a type of Japanese is a fairly straightforward matter and indeed this is how earlier historical linguists treated the languages of Okinawa (Bentley 2015). We cannot say with certainty that KF had the structure in Reading (b) in mind when she contested the stances taken by others in the thread in (27–32). However, the Japanese- language comment in (33), posted by another viewer of the Pirin-paran videos, indicates that such an interpretation of 日本語族is possible:

(33) Mōra, shokihō,on’in wa issho nanode akirakani goha to shite wa nihongozoku ni hairu mono no koko made kuru to betsugengo desu ne ((Because the , orthography and are the same, the branch classi- fication certainly belongs to the Japanese language family, but having departed so far apart, it is a separate language.))

Here, the stance taken towards Uchinaaguchi seems at once ambiguous and revelatory. On the one hand, linguistic features like mora and the writing system are recognized as “the same” and because of this, the Okinawan variety “certainly belongs” in the same language family as Japanese. However, the comment goes on to observe that Uchinaaguchi has “departed so far apart, [that] it is a separate language”. The clearest way to explain the seeming contradiction is to propose that for the commenter 日本語族 (nihongozoku) along with its narrower concept, 語派 (goha (“branch”)), correspond to the structure in Reading (b) and should therefore be interpreted as “Japanese language family”. But once the commenter experiences the language via the Pirin-paran series, there seems to be an emerging awareness that the structure of the language family is more like that in Reading (a). Thus, the comment demonstrates how language-specific discursive constructions of a language family can have an ideological effect on perceptions of the hierarchical relation- ships within that family.

6. Conclusion It has been well established that world languages like English, French and Chinese have a far greater presence on the Internet than do other languages (Kelly-Holmes 2013; Leppännen and Peuronen 2013; Paolillo 2007). One outcome of this preponderance is that, even though platforms like YouTube offer considerable affordances for lesser and endangered languages to be freely used, presented and showcased to the world (Wright 2014, 95), minority languages generally do not appear in isolation but rather are adjacent to, combined with or framed by other more powerful languages. Once these world languages enter the picture, stances towards the endangered language may be underpinned by language ideologies from outside the language that potentially encroach upon its well- being. This article reported on one example of this interplay by exploring the ideological stance-taking apparent in Pirin-paran, a series of Uchinaaguchi language lessons on YouTube that targeted Japanese- or English-speaking viewers. The article specifically addressed two research questions. First, examining the videos, how do the producers of Pirin-paran use online multimodal resources in an attempt to convince the audience that Uchinaaguchi is an independent language rather than a regional dialect of Japanese? Second, referring primarily to multiple uploads to YouTube and to viewer commentary, 220 P. R. Petrucci and K. Miyahira in what ways is the language ideological message in Pirin-paran recontextualized to entextualize other ideological stances towards the endangered language? The article demonstrated that Okinawan language activist Byron Fija was well aware of the majority language effect when he made his Pirin-paran series originally accessible on okinawaBBtv. In addition to presenting basic language lessons online, Fija made a special effort in both the Japanese- and English-language versions of the series to down- play the Japanese language and hence make his viewers aware that, as recognized by UNESCO, Uchinaaguchi is a full-fledged language. However, once the Pirin-paran series was uploaded to YouTube by a third party, Fija’s message about his native language was out of his control and subject to recontextualization. The YouTube videos spawned a discussion about whether Uchinaaguchi should be considered a distinct language or a dialect of Japanese. Very few of the comments treated the Okinawan variety as a language unto itself. Instead, whether viewed as a language or dialect, Uchinaaguchi, and its speakers, tended to be assessed against some other major language, most frequently Japanese but occasionally Korean or Chinese. Stances taken in the language-versus- dialect debate called on evidence that for the most part was nonlinguistic. Some stances drew from subjective evaluations of mutual intelligibility and/or language difficulty, whereas others relied on an essentialized relationship drawn up between a language and polity. The only linguistic concept mentioned in a few comments was “language family” but, as we have argued above, use of this notion as evidence in the nomenclature debate was for the most part subjective. Our analysis of language-versus-dialect debate in multiple languages also enabled us to show some inner workings of the “one nation, one language” ideology that has long been gripping Japan. Because of the linguistic and geopolitical connections that Japanese and Uchinaaguchi have shared for centuries, some of the Japanese-language comments did draw from, whether subtly or otherwise, language ideologies that have disempowered Okinawan languages and their speakers. To take one intriguing example, when Pirin- paran was uploaded to YouTube by someone named okinawa8man, the series was renamed with a bilingual title that identified Uchinaaguchi as “language” in English but hōgen (“dialect”) in Japanese. The use of the hōgen label for Uchinaaguchi appears to be deeply ingrained for this and other Japanese-speaking YouTubers and it resonates with the language policies coming out of Tokyo that have carefully positioned the Ryukyuan languages as dialects of Japanese (e.g. Gottlieb 2007; Heinrich 2012). On a related note, we suggested that the folk reading of the Japanese kanji characters used to delineate the Japonic language family may themselves be laden with an ideological meaning that essentializes Japan as a monolingual polity. To conclude, web platforms like YouTube represent a veritable stage upon which endangered languages can be brought to life for a countless number of viewers. However, as this study has shown, when endangered languages are showcased in this manner, mainstream language ideologies may come into play, for in most cases world languages are being used to frame the endangered language discourse. It is our hope that this study will encourage further research on this complex relationship in order to understand the benefits and the pitfalls that social media offer endangered languages and the activists promoting their recognition and revitalization.

Acknowledgements We would like to acknowledge Byron Fija for giving us permission to include images from his video in this article. We truly admire the valuable efforts Byron is making to safeguard Uchinaaguchi. We Journal of World Languages 221 also would like to acknowledge that this research was partially funded by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C) (23520466), sponsored by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. Finally, we thank Toshiaki Yamauchi and Michael Li for their thoughts regarding some of the data. We take responsibility for any shortcomings or errors in the data or analysis to follow.

Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding We would like to acknowledge that this research was partially funded by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C) (23520466), sponsored by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.

Notes 1. In this text and the numbered YouTube posts to follow, italicized texts within double parenth- eses serve as glosses for Japanese or Uchinaaguchi. All translations are our own. 2. Italics in the romanized transcription and non-italicized text in the English gloss mark Fija’s use of English in the original 2014 post. 3. In the data that follow, Japanese or Uchinaaguchi comments are romanized with Uchinaaguchi underlined. Some posts have been abridged and original line breaks are not retained. Approximately 40 comments have been excluded from the analysis because they make no reference to language, language use or users of language. All comments have been anonymized.

Notes on contributors Peter R. Petrucci is senior lecturer in Linguistics at Massey University in New Zealand. He teaches into the Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Communication degrees. His recent research and publications concern the sociolinguistics of translation and language and identity among transna- tional Okinawans. Katsuyuki Miyahira is Professor of communication studies at the University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa, Japan. He specializes in ethnography and discourse analysis of cultural and intercultural communication. His recent publications include articles on discourse organizations and communica- tion strategies of Okinawan heritage language speakers in Okinawa and diaspora communities. He teaches courses in sociolinguistics, language and culture, and qualitative communication research methods.

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