180 Terumi Imai
of consonant—that is, if it is a stop, a fricative, or an affricate (Han 1962;
Kawakami 1977; Maekawa 1983; Nagano-Madsen 1995; Kondo 1997; Yuen
1997). Previous studies also report that the devoicing of accented vowels is
avoided (Sakuma 1929; Han 1962; Sakurai 1985; Maekawa 1988; Kondo 1993;
Sugito and Hirose 1988; Nagano-Madsen 1995), that consecutive devoicing is
avoided (Sakuma 1929; Martin 1952; Han 1962; Kawakami 1977; Maekawa
1988; Tsuchida 1997), and that devoicing is avoided at some morpheme
boundaries (Sakurai 1985; Vance 1987, 1992; Kondo 1997; Tsuchida 1997).
I will not report on the linguistic factors here; they are reported along with
social factors highlighted here in Imai (2004).
Social factors used in this study include age, sex, and speech style. There
have not been many sociolinguistic studies done on Japanese vowel devoic-
ing, and there is only one study that I know of that included sex and speech
style. Yuen (1997) found that as degree of formality increases, speech rate
decreases, vowel length increases, and, therefore, devoicing decreases. This
correlation of voicing (or non-devoicing), speech rates, and vowel length was
signi¿ cant (p<0.05). He also found that the vowel length of males is indeed
shorter than that of females, that males have faster speech rates than females,
that males devoice more than females, and that women devoiced much less in
the most formal style than men did.
Age differences in vowel devoicing have been assumed, particularly in
association with accent; older generations are said not to devoice accented
vowels while younger generations do (NHK 1985; Sakurai 1985; Tsuchida
1997), but no sources are cited in those statements, and there is no system-
atic and extensive study that focuses on age differences. There has been no
study investigating age differences in vowel devoicing among Tokyo dialect
speakers.
The results of Yuen’s study seem to suggest that Japanese vowel devoic-
ing is a nonstandard feature because it is known that nonstandard features are
more likely to occur in more casual styles, and women are reported, in many
sociolinguistic studies, to use more standard features than men, and to use
more prestigious, or standard forms, in more formal styles than men. Vowel
devoicing, however, is considered a standard feature of the Tokyo dialect,
itself considered to be a standard dialect, according to the general percep-
tion of Japanese speakers and to prescriptive authority, such as dictionaries.
We of t en ¿ nd comments by Japanese linguists linking the “crispness” and
“briskness” of Tokyo (standard) dialect to vowel devoicing and the “softness”
and “mildness” of Kansai dialect to a lack of vowel devoicing. In order to
understand this apparent contradiction between the perceived standard vari-
ety (Tokyo) and the use of one feature of it (devoicing) by atypical speakers