Fumio Inoue

Subjective dialect division in Great Britain

LA. examine la representation mentale quont les etudiants anglais de la repartition geographique des dialectes en Grande-Bretagne. Il semble que cette representation soit largement influencee par la division geographique Ecosse, Pays de Galles, Irelande du Nord, Angleterre. Letude permet une meilleure comprehension de la structure dialectale de langlais en Grande-Bretagne et permet de tester la validite dune methodologie deja utilisee par lA. a propos de la representation dialectale au Japon

The Significance of New Dialects

Fast and steady standardization of language is in progress in Japan today. Dialects are often considered to be something despised or shameful in Japan (Inoue 1991). Standard Japanese is thought to be the only form appropriate for decent people. People tend to hide their dialectal features when speaking with a fieldworker. But in this paper Japanese dialects will be shown to be still vigorous and to still have the power to create new forms — new dialects. It is necessary for researchers on new dialects to behave differently from other researchers. The ordinary, or classic, dialectologists paid attention to the daily speech of old people in remote areas. But we have begun studying also the speech of young people of more urbanized areas and have paid attention to their formal speech, too. The meaning of significance in the title of this paper is twofold. One is meaning and the other is importance. First, the meaning or definition of this term will be discussed. Second, examples of new dialects will be given and the theoretical importance of new dialects in the field of sociolinguistics will be discussed. There are two usages of the term new dialect. a) In Japan it has been used to mean individual changes in dialects. The phenomena studied are sporadic. They are not systematic phenomena (Inoue 1983a, 1983b). b) Recently the same term has been used to mean the creation of a new system of dialect especially in long-term contact situations as a result of pidginization (Trudgill 1986), as in Hawaiian Japanese. The terms neodialect or neo-diatectalization seem to be more appropriate to distinguish these two situations.

Sociopsychological characteristics of users of ‘new dialect forms’

Abstract In this paper, a characterization of users of new dialect forms among pupils in metropolitan Tokyo has been attempted. Some statistical methods including two multivariate analyses were used. Application of computational techniques to massive data of sociolinguistic research proved to be quite useful. It was found that ‘new dialect forms’ are mainly used by active pupils, whereas standard Japanese forms are used by pupils with leadership. Unserious pupils are inclined to use older, ‘incorrect’ words. The new dialect forms are further interpreted as a form of language change from below. Thus, the new dialect forms are found to have universal value in a sociolinguistic study of language change.

Year of first attestation of Standard Japanese Forms and Gravity Centre by Railway Distance

Abstract In this paper two simplification techniques are used in order to represent geographical distribution patterns of standard Japanese. The first technique is a representation of two-dimensional geographical distribution patterns in one dimension. The second is the plotting of geographical locations making use of railway distances from cultural centres. By simplifying the two-dimensional geographical distribution into one by railway distance, another dimension on a sheet of paper can show one other characteristic of standard Japanese forms. In order to see the patterns of distribution of Japanese standard forms, numerical data based on the Linguistic Atlas of Japan are utilized. Gravity centres of railway distance are calculated for each standard Japanese form, and correspondence with the degree of nationwide usage and the year of first attestation in historical documents is considered. Two-dimensional graphs (scattergrams) of the three factors are considered.