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Paper short abstract:

The topic of my talk is the relationship between language and well-being, and I present and compare quantitative data from two case studies (Yomitan Village in Okinawa and Setouchi Town in Amami). The degree of Ryukyuan language knowledge is related to concepts of well-being.

Paper long abstract:

Japan is a country of comparatively low linguistic diversity, and this has in the past resulted in the imagination of Japan as a monolingual nation. The sociolinguistic situation is different from such imaginations, though. Several autochthon languages and allochthonous languages are spoken in Japan. Multilingualism has always existed in Japan, and it is expanding. The languages are mostly spoken in private domains but do occasionally appear in unexpected places. It has often been noted that multilingualism in Japan is poorly understood by policymakers, and official language policies do not reflect the multilingual makeup and repertoires we find in Japan. As a result, also the school curriculum or the official linguistic landscape does not reflect the linguistic composition of Japanese society. There are many diverse grassroots efforts to maintain and cultivate linguistic diversity, though. While the utility of languages other than Japanese and English in Japan is low, there are a great number of covert benefits of using other languages in daily life. This chapter zooms in on one such benefit, well-being. My paper presents and compares quantitative data from two case studies (Yomitan Village in Okinawa and Setouchi Town in Amami) where the degree of Ryukyuan language knowledge is related to different conceptualizations of well-being (Subjective Happiness Scale, Cantril’s Ladder, Satisfaction with Life Scale) while taking into account identity, social capital and the decolonization of the mind as moderator variables. The results allow for a discussion to which extent the maintenance of an endangered language provides comfort to speakers and relates to their well-being. The presentation seeks to answer the question of to what extent are those who maintain their endangered language able to resist the sociocultural displacement that accompanies language shift and loss.