Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 956

Part of Session 161: Commercialism and language use (Other abstracts in this session)

Nasality as a professional identity marker in urban Japanese

Authors: Ikuta, Shoko
Submitted by: Ikuta, Shoko (Meiji Gakuin University, Japan)

Based on the insights from sociocultural and sociophonetic perspectives, this study explores the formation of a new-type urban dialect and its social indexicality. In particular, it focuses the phenomenal use of nasal voice quality, especially with polite formulaic expressions such as:

1. < irasshaimase > (lit. “welcome (to our shop)”)

2. < doozo goran kudasaimase > (lit. “please take a look”).

The use of nasal voice quality is currently spreading among the language use by urban young sales clerks working in “fashionable” Tokyo shops targeting younger generation. This type of nasalization is clearly different from a segmental velar nasal (bidakuon) as a phonologically controlled allophone, which is nearly extinct in contemporary Tokyo dialect. The use of voice quality with nasalization, on the other hand, is widely observed among young shop clerks in Tokyo. It is a suprasegmental practice of nasalization over a whole sentence/speech act (indicated by <> in the above examples), and seems to have emerged within the last decade.

Analyzing data collected by recording their calls at the shops and interaction with customers, the study discusses how such distinctive voice quality can be associated with urban commercialism. One factor motivating the use of such nasalization is the users’ projection of self identity as a worker engaged in an ultrafashionable (but not classy in a traditional sense) industry, and the other the need to draw customers attention to their shops in densely clustered competitive shopping district. The brisk commercial activity is no doubt accelerating such a characteristic language (voice quality) use by those who regularly serve and interact with customers.

Also focusing an intrapersonal aspect of variation, the study discusses the style shifting between the use and non-use of such nasalization, and explicates how speakers project and manage different social identities in interaction.

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Yuasa, I.P. 2008. Culture and gender of voice pitch: A sociophonetic comparison of the Japanese and Americans. London: Equinox.

Sociolinguistics Symposium 19

Programme: accepted abstracts

Nasality as a professional identity marker in urban Japanese