Paper short abstract:

This presentation addresses the potentials of "digital" linguistic ethnography, based on the author's making a documentary film on Miyako Island. The outcome appeared 1) to raise awareness of the speakers and 2) may well provide the platform of new "interactional sociolinguistics".

Paper long abstract:

In 2003, UNESCO announced that there are eight "endangered languages" in Japan, namely, Ainu, Hachijo, Amami, Kunigami, Okinawan, Miyakoan, Yaeyaman and Dunan (Yonaguni). The Myaakufutsu, Miyakoan language, is one of them.

During the modernization dating back to the Meiji period, Japanese language was widely spread through school education, teaching 'national language (kokugo)' and using hyojungo as medium of instruction, due to the Meiji central government's language policy of 'a standard language (hyojungo)' (Fujita-Round & Maher, 2008; Heinrich, 2015; Yasuda, 2006). As a result of these language education policies, some languages on Japan's periphery came to be endangered languages (Fujita-Round 2016).

In the author's fieldwork from 2012 to grasp the endangerment of Myaakufutsu in Miyako Island City, the author conducted questionnaire and follow-up interviews at Junior High School and extended the interviews to the selected pupils' parents and grandparents. In the community base fieldwork, the author has embarked on documenting interviews by video camera from 2015 collaborating with a video artist. Together with the scenes of islanders' effort of language revitalisation, we edited and finalized a documentary film in 2019 as a result of the research.

The digital technologies encouraged to articulate new directions of ethnography; such as virtual ethnography, internet ethnography and digital ethnography. In addition, a new sub-discipline of anthropology such as digital anthropology emerged (Varis & Hou, 2019: 229). However, author's documentary film is sprung from linguistic ethnography as a discipline within sociolinguistics, the "digital" ethnography approach supplemented the audio interview data more holistic, i.e. the speakers' native pronunciation, intonation and choice of words with their facial expression and also local features/contexts of background. Beyond our assumption, the documentary film was well received by the interviewees, particularly appreciated by those who are "passive" bilingual speakers. For the question to revitalize those languages framed as endangered, the digital approach may have future potentials to raise the awareness of the speakers in the endangered Ryukyuans.

Also, the digital linguistic ethnography may well demonstrate and provide the platform of new "interactional sociolinguistics". It was developed by John Gumperz, "a foundational figure in contemporary sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology (Rampton, 2019)".