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Paper short abstract:

This research analyses language as a trigger for emotional bonds of early and late bilinguals providing evidence that for a deep emotional connection, not only age of acquisition but number/depth of emotionally meaningful experiences a speaker has made in connection with these languages is crucial.

Paper long abstract:

The first few years in life are still seen as crucial in language acquisition. This research analyses early and late bilinguals assuming that bilingualism and identity (self-image, self-assessment, etc.) are strongly interrelated, reflected by emotional bonds in the sense of an affective connection and identification with a specific language. For such a connection to arise it is argued, the age of acquisition is less important than emotionally significant experiences with a given language. Data collection was carried out with a qualitative guideline interview and evaluated by content analysis. German–Japanese bilinguals were divided into three groups (early and late bilinguals, while some of the late bilinguals have German as L1 and others Japanese), which allowed comparing their emotional bonds with the two languages. Following the data collection, audio recordings were transcribed and analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The results suggest that for a deep emotional connection and identification with a language, not only the age of acquisition is important, but rather, or to a large extent, the number and depth of emotionally meaningful experiences a speaker has made in connection with these languages. Further, as such confirmation has never been pursued in linguistic research, the result can prove valid for languages in general. The results will have an impact on future research into other bilingual combinations (Japanese–Asian/non-Asian languages) and contribute to a better understanding of the overall situation of bilinguals in Japan. The results will bear upon future language acquisition research as well as linguistic research concerning emotion and language.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper examines stylistic variation in the speeches by a mayor of Nagoya, Mr. Takashi Kawamura and discusses how he constructs his identity through the use of one phonological feature (monophthongnization of /ai/ and /ae/ into /æ/) in Nagoya dialect.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines stylistic variation in the speeches by a mayor of Nagoya, Japan, Mr. Takashi Kawamura and discusses how he constructs his identity through the use of one phonological feature in Nagoya dialect. Mr. Kawamura was first elected to be a member of the Japanese Diet from 1992 when he appeared in a public domain. Although at the beginning of his career, he did not use his home dialect features, he gradually employed his Nagoya dialect features in his speeches and discussion at the committee meetings. By the time he became a mayor of Nagoya in 2009, he was a well-known figure who command a large degree of his Nagoya dialect features at national level.

This paper pays a close attention to one variable, monophthongnization of /ai/ and /ae/ into /æ/. This is one of the most distinctive features in Nagoya dialect. I have collected Mr. Kawamura’s speech in a number of occasions such as his speech at the general meetings of the Nagoya local Assembly as well as other occasions such as his speech at National Diet when he was one of the members in 1990s, Also, he has shown at TV shows and his speech in various part of Nagoya city as well. The total amount of data sums up to 5.5 hours. I conducted transcriptions, and made quantitative analyses.

The result clearly supports my assumption. He came to use /æ/ in his discourse in accordance with his career. This trend is emphasized when he became a mayor of Nagoya in 2009 although other members of Nagoya city council rarely use this phonological feature. This paper will point out on the basis of the result, that he uses his strategy to perform his character as a major, and he intentionally increase his use of /æ/ in his discourse. At the same time, this is one of the cases of ‘performance register’ (Schilling-Estes 1998).

Reference:

Schilling-Estes, Natalie. 1998. Investigating ‘self-conscious’ speech: The performance register in Ocracoke English. Language in Society 27.1: 53-83.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper aims at the analysis of the evolution of the phonological and grammatical features of the traditional Tokyo dialect. The results of an online survey have shown that it is possible to claim a certain continuity between the traditional Tokyo dialect and the present-day Tokyo speech.

Paper long abstract:

There is a widespread opinion about the absence of dialectal features in the speech of Tokyoites, often shared by the inhabitants of the Japanese capital themselves. However, as the analysis of written sources has shown, it is possible to claim the existence of the Tokyo dialect (Tokyo hogen), at least until the second half of the 20th century. The main goal of this paper is to analyze to which point traditional phonological and grammatical dialectal features are conserved in modern Tokyo.

Firstly, we carried out a linguistic analysis of written evidence (the scripts of interviews conducted by Akinaga Kazue in the 1970s in Tokyo) and established a list of traditional Tokyo dialectal features to be further examined in present-day speech of the younger generation of Tokyoites.

Secondly, we designed a dialectal questionnaire and conducted an online survey whose participants were 20-35-year old Tokyoites. As the survey was conducted in 2021 during the period of pandemic when it was quite complicated to enter the country. That is why the field data was collected online by means of Google forms. The number of participants, who met the conditions of the survey, was 70. As the lexical and pragmatical features of Tokyo speech has been already investigated by other researches, we decided to focus the questionnaire on phonological and grammar features.

According to the responses of the participants, all the dialectal features have been distributed in 4 categories: highly stable, stable, unstable, highly unstable. The results have shown that despite a high instability or complete loss of the majority of traditional dialectal features, there are still several highly stable ones. Also, some new dialectal features have been detected. Therefore, it can be said that even at the present moment the dialectal character of Tokyo speech can be justified, and moreover a certain continuity between the present-day Tokyo speech and the traditional Tokyo dialect can be established.