194 Midori Yonezawa Morris
2.3 Perception of dialects and attitudes toward them
Labov (1972) discusses the bene¿ ts of sociolinguistic investigation derived
from isolating a signi¿ cant linguistic variant that may serve as an index of
social identity, and there are many studies of dialect perception within this
general framework. Kerswill (1985) shows that respondents judge those who
speak a mixture of dialects along a continuum in Norwegian accurately, but
they cannot describe the differences they based their judgments on. Preston
(1996) shows that people can identify the regions from which different speech
samples came based on the degree of distinctiveness of dialects, but with no
focus on speci¿ c features. Purnell, Idsardi, and Baugh (1999) show that peo-
ple can discriminate the ethnicity of the speakers of three different varieties
of English with minimal phonetic clues. Strand (1999) shows that people draw
boundaries between minimal pairs in accordance with a gender difference in
pronunciation while looking at “typical” or “nontypical” faces. Niedzielski
(1999) shows that people identify phonetic details based on stereotypes about
the regions where speakers are from rather than on accurate acoustic facts.
- Assumptions
It seems quite reasonable then to collect quantitative data from Tokyo and
Kinki people to examine how they use variation in devoicing in making judg-
ments of a speaker’s region. In this study, my assumptions are the following:
- People may be able to identify someone’s dialect region based on forms
they are not aware of and cannot describe accurately. - Such judgments may be affected by social information or stereotype,
as well as linguistic information.
Japanese speakers tend to believe that devoicing is a standard norm and
that it does not occur in non-Tokyo areas, including perhaps especially Kinki,
Table 7.2 Devoicing Variation in Different Positions (Tokyo Subjects)
Unaccented Accented
Devoiced Nondevoiced Devoiced Nondevoiced
Yoshioka (1981) 76.8% 23.2% 16.1% 83.9%
Fujimoto (2004) 78.5% 21.5% 71.0% 29.0%
Morris 80.6% 19.4% N/A N/A