Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

This paper examines how female use of Osaka and Tōhoku dialects in contemporary Japanese fiction interacts with gender norms, comparing their speech with standard Japanese onna kotoba and exploring how authors negotiate femininity in six novels.

Paper long abstract

In fiction, gendered language appears frequently, reproducing traditional associations of femininity, despite not reflecting actual language use (Ohara 2019). Most prior studies focus on works in standard Japanese. An important exception is provided by King et al. (2022), who examine how the Osaka dialect in Kore-eda’s film Soshite, chichi ni naru functions as a resource for constructing an alternative model of masculinity. By contrast, this paper focuses on the representation of female speakers of Osaka and Tōhoku dialects. Survey-based studies have found that both dialects are perceived as masculine (Tanaka 2011: 72), making it particularly interesting to examine how the authors negotiate between gender norms and regional identity.

The material comprises six novels: Kirikirijin (1981), Ubatokimeki (1987), Naniwa shōnen tanteidan (1988), Prinsesu Toyotomi (2009), Itomichi (2011), and Ora ora de hitori igu mo (2017). First, the frequency of dialectal markers in dialogues of comparable length between female and male characters is counted to determine whether female characters avoid dialect use due to its masculine associations. Next, female utterances are examined for features associated with onna kotoba—self-reference, address terms, sentence-final particles, honorifics, and interjections (Okamoto 1995: 301)—and compared with their use in standard Japanese. Finally, the constructions of female characters are analysed in the broader context of each work, particularly in relation to traditional and new models of femininity.

Results show female characters use dialects as frequently as male ones, but the stylization differs from representations in standard Japanese. Aware of potential associations with masculinity, writers feminize the characters through narration, drawing on various models ranging from the cute country girl to the rebellious tomboy.

King, Sara, Yi Ren, Kaori Idemaru, Cindi Sturtzsreetharan. 2022. “Sounding Like a Father: The Influence of Regional Dialect on Perceptions of Masculinity and Fatherhood.” Language in Society 51(2): 285–308.

Ohara, Yumiko. 2019. “Gendered Speech.” In Routledge Handbook of Japanese Sociolinguistics, 279–295. Routledge.

Okamoto, Shigeko. 1995. “Tasteless Japanese: Less Feminine Speech Among Young Japanese Women.” In Women and Language: Gender Articulate; Language and the Socially Constructed Self, 297–328. Routledge.

Tanaka, Yukari. 2011. “Hōgen kosupure”-no jidai. Nise Kansai-ben-kara ryūma-go-made. Iwanami Shoten.