著者

Jana Sedlackova

出版者

学習院女子大学

雑誌

The Gakushuin Journal of International Studies (ISSN:21884927)

巻号頁・発行日

no.9, pp.13-26, 2023-03

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The period of “reinvention of the Japanese dialect” began toward the end of the 1970s; however, the changing attitude of the Japanese society toward dialects and its speakers became more visible in pop culture in the twenty-first century. I analyzed mangas where the characters use the Kumamoto dialect, and sought to answer three questions: what is the typical role of the dialect-speaking character?; how is the dialect used?; and how does it appear? I identified that the typical dialect-user is a school-age character who is young, with traits such as friendliness, eagerness, and the culture/tradition promoting function. Moreover, dialect is mostly used—publicly and privately—with hierarchically lower or equal classes. Finally, as the dialect is represented the most by grammatical and phonetic expressions, it is simplified for intelligibility.