What Is a Dialect? What Is a Standard?: Shifting Indexicality and Persistent Ideological Norms

This paper examines the ways in which the indexical meanings that attach to enregistered speaking styles are debated and contested in interaction by younger Japanese adults. Contested meanings include discourses of so-called "hyoojungo" 'Standard Japanese' and the speaking styles that are collectively described as 'Okinawan dialect', which are associated with the islands of Okinawa Prefecture in Japan. This paper uses data from casual conversations between younger male adults who were all born and raised in Okinawa Prefecture but moved to the main island of Honshu for university. Discourse analysis of these conversations demonstrates how these younger adults negotiate the social meanings attached to Okinawan speaking styles, linking them to broader ideologies of so-called "hyoojungo" as well as gendered styles, and reproducing normative ideologies of 'good' and 'bad' speech. Homing in on moments in which these speech styles are negotiated, the results of this paper emphasize the persistence of normative linguistic ideologies even as the meaning and content of linguistic styles are being re-imagined.