Field Methods of Japanese Dialects

ABE, Shin

1. Aim

This report reviews the current of the study of Japanese dialects, and introduces the field methods of Japanese dialects which have been improved according to the extension of the dialect study in Japan. The future of the field methods in Japan will also be briefly referred to.

2. Review of the current of the dialect study in Japan

2.1 What to study in linguistics

Regarding a dialect as a variety of a language, following fields of study can be classified as in Table 1 (Inoue 1997).

Table 1 Fields of Linguistic Study

	Simplex (structure-centered)	Complex (variation-centered)
Competence (langue)	(1)Structure of a language	(2)Structure of a variety of a language
Performance (parole)	(3)Performance of a language	(4)Performance of a variety of a language

The fields of study will be classified as the study of “structure” and “a variety of a structure” from a point view of “structure”. They will be classified as the study of “competence” and “performance” from a point view of “human activity”.

And the fields of study will be classified as four categories shown in Table 1 from two view points mentioned above. The subject of the study are as follows; 1) the language governed by the culture (phonology, grammar and lexicon), the culture governed by the language (language activity and consciousness); 2) the differences between languages, dialects, persons and varieties of a person; 3) language activities, discourse structure; 4) politeness theory, code switching, accommodation theory, etc.

The order 1) to 4) above corresponds to the direction of the development of the dialect study in Japan. It will be discussed in the next section.

2.2 The development of the study – from the focus on region to the focus on social difference -

In the early days of the study, (1) the structure of a language had been described. It was first done in the Edo era either by foreign missionaries or by Japanese. Both described the patois or the accent of a regional dialect (Miyaji 1991).

Next, (2) the structure of a variety of a language was described from the beginning the Meiji era. The attentions had been paid on the differences between regional dialects in Japan till 1960’s. Tojo (1962) points out that there are three peaks in the Japanese dialectology in this period. The first one is in the period from 1900’s to 1910’s. The dialects all over Japan were investigated by the national committee to figure out the difference of the dialects of eastern and western Japan. The result contributed to the establishment of the standard Japanese. The second one is in the period from 1920’s to 1930’s, when the society of dialectology was inaugurated and a new magazine of the society started. In this period, the methods of European linguistics were introduced to Japanese dialectology. Linguistic geography was applied to Japanese dialects and the diffusion of the dialect in Japan was studied. Comparative linguistics was applied to the study of accent of Japanese dialects to clarify the genealogy of Japanese regional dialects. And the third one was the foundation of the National Language Research Institute after World War II. In 1950’s, American Structural linguistics influenced Japanese descriptive dialectology. In 1960’s, geographical study uniquely developed in Japan against the background of Linguistic geography. In these periods, the study focused on the regional variations in Japan, and contributed to the resolution of the mechanisms of the lexical change and diffusion (Sanada 1999).

Moreover, the study of (3) performance of a language developed since 1970’s, paralleling the development of the sociological study of language influenced by Western sociolinguistics. It was followed by Mathematical study supported by the prevalence of computer in 1980’s (Sanada 1999).

And at last, the study of (4) performance of a variety of a language seems to develop with the study of (3) from 1990’s. The mainstream of the study of (4) in the 1990’s is regarded as functional study (Sanada 1997), psychological study on the conscience concerned with the performance of dialect (Sanada 1999), or phonetic study of discourse (Inoue 2000). The study of (4) in the 2000’s is regarded as psychological study (Sanada 1997, 1999).

The discussion above is now summarized in the following Table 2.

Table 2 The Current of Japanese Dialectology

	Period	The mainstream of Study	Keywords
(1)	Edo	Sporadic descriptions
(2)	Meiji	Fundamental studies for the establishment of standard language	A national committee
	Taisho		Abolition of the committee Kanto big earthquake
	1930’s	Collective studies	Linguistic geography Comparative linguistics
	1940’s	Study of dialect divisions	Misao Tojo
	1950’s	Descriptive study	accent and grammar
	1960’s	Geographical study	“Linguistic Atlas of Japan”
(3)	1970’s	Sociological study	Decrease of the regional differences and Increase of the social differences
	1980’s	Mathematical study	Prevalence of computer
(4)	1990’s	Discourse analysis	Decline of the regional dialect and the expansion of the analysis unit to discourse
	2000’s	Psychological or text studies

Table 2 makes us figure out that the change of the subject of the study, according to the descendant of the period. At first, in the period of (1), regional variations themselves had been studied. In (2), the investigation of wide area had been contributed to the analyses of the difference between regional variations. In (3), the decrease of the regional differences led to the change of the subject of the study to the differences in region, namely social differences. In (4), the regional differences declined much more, and it led to the development of the study of the differences between persons in the same society. It is now understood from the discussion above that the narrower the subject of the study are becoming, the more the quantity of the linguistic events increases.

3. The Change of the Methods of the Investigation

The data for the dialect study can be collected by several ways of methods. In case you are a native speaker of the dialect concerned, you can collect the data by introspection. Otherwise, you will be able to use the data from the written materials, or the data collected by other researcher’s field work. However, in case you are neither a native speaker, nor can find any data collected before, you have to do the field work. The method of the field work you will apply depends on where, whom and what you are going to investigate.

3.1 The Change of the Subject of the Investigation and the Method

The expansion of the subject of study from the regional (inter-dialectal) differences to the social (inter-personal) differences has changed the place, informants, content and method of the investigation. To grasp the regional differences, native old men who speaks and understands a typical regional dialect had often been investigated in every region in Japan. But according to analyze the social differences, informants from various generations, or male and female informants had been investigated in field work planned for a small group of people or several people. In the field work in urban metropolitan containing complex members, even non-native speakers are investigated.

3.2 The Change of the Methods to Collect the Data in the Field Work

There are two kinds of methods in field work, namely observation and question (Tahara 1991). Their merit and demerit are shown in following Table 3.

Table 3　The Method of Investigation

		Procedure	Merit	Demerit
① Observation	Natural Observation	To listen secretly to the informant’s talk with anyone else.	The most natural dialect can be collected.	The informant does not necessarily speak what is wanted.
② Question	Interview	To ask to the informant’s face what you speak.	It is efficient because you can elicit what you want to know from a small number of informants.	You cannot judge the correctness of the answer. You can get the information not on the form the informant usually use, but on the sense on “what you speak.”
	Questionnaire	To ask the informants to fill in the questionnaire.	It is efficient because you can elicit what you want to know from a large number of informants.

The method of the field work you will apply depends on where, whom and what you are going to investigate. And the methods of the field work have changed as the place and the subject of the investigation have changed.

In dialect investigation in early days, interview had been held to clarify the linguistic situation on the typical regional dialects. In these days, since the number of informant was small, and the method of observation is very inefficient to get the data, interview had been done. When the subject of the investigation expanded to younger generation and the non-native speakers, the method changed to the questionnaire to get the data from larger number of informants. In the recent investigations against the small group and a person, observation is adopted to get the data for discourse analysis. The development of the method of investigation had also been influenced by the development of the devices used in the investigation. Moreover, compromised method which compensates the demerits of both observation and question method is also developed. Experimental interview is planned so that an informant does not notice the content of the question. In the observation method, the investigator offers a examined topic in order to pick up what you want to know.

3.3. Question Investigation

As mentioned above, the method used in many investigations in Japanese dialects is Question method. The kinds and the procedure of Question method, and the way of analysis are briefly introduced as follows.

3.3.1 How to ask

In order to pick up what you want in a limited time, a list of question is prepared in Question method. A list is composed of two parts, “face sheet” and “content”. Information about the informant (name, age, sex, address of residence, occupation, brief history of residence and background information of a spouse, parents and grandparents, etc.) is filled in the face sheet.

The kinds and the procedure of Question method, the subject of the question are briefly introduced in Table 4 below. (The number ①～⑥ in the rightmost column in Table 4 corresponds to the number of Figures 1-6 below.)

Table 4　Procedures of Question in Question Method

Investigation Method	How to ask	Object of Question	Example of question
Interview (Telephone interview)	Riddle	lexicon	“What do you call the animal which calls bow-wow? We often keep it.”	①
		phone, prosody	“What do you call the organ which digests what you eat?”	②
	Translation	grammar	“How do you say the expression ‘do not run’ in a dialect around here?”	③
		lexicon	“How do you say ‘a snail’ in a dialect around here?”
	Reading out	phone, prosody	(A list of lexicon is handed out to the informant, and ask her/him to read it.)	④
Questionnaire	Multiple choice	dialect consciousness	“What is your feeling about mother tongue as a spoken language?” 1. You like it very much, 2. You like it somewhat, 3. Neutral, 4. You dislike it somewhat, 5. You dislike it very much.	⑤
		consciousness about dialect usage	“Do you use the following expression?” 1. I use it. 2. I do not use it, but have heard it used by others before. 3. I have not heard it before.	⑥

3.3.2 Analysis with map

The result of the investigation with interview method is analyzed using maps. In this section, such maps will be introduced.

Interview is held in the face-to-face situation, or through telephone conversation. In order to get the data, investigators use riddles, ask the informants to translate the expression in standard Japanese to dialectal forms, or ask them to read out the list of lexicon.

The result of the riddle method is shown in Fig. 1 and 2. Fig. 1 is the linguistic atlas of the dialectal forms of “pumpkin”. Fig. 2 is that of the distribution of the dialectal phone of the phoneme /ka/. (both maps from Tokugawa and Grootaers eds. 1976)

　

Fig. 1　 The result of the Riddle method(1)

Fig. 2　 The result of the Riddle method (2)

The result of the translation method is shown in Fig. 3. This is the linguistic atlas of the grammatical item “postposition ‘ni’ (at)” in the expression like “(arrive) at Tokyo”. (from Oonishi 1999)

Fig. 3　 The result of the Translation method

The result of the reading-out method is shown in Fig. 4. This is the linguistic atlas of the accent system of Japanese by Teruo Hirayama. (from Tokugawa and Grootaers eds. 1976)

Fig. 4　 The result of the Reading-out method

Questionnaire is the method to gain the large quantity of data suitable for the efficient processing with computer. These characteristics enable us to draw several sheets of map, and comparative, contrastive analysis of data. Psychological aspects of the native speakers, such as dialect images, the consciousness of the differences of dialects, and the consciousness of the usage of dialect can be investigated with this method.

The result of the questionnaire is shown in Fig. 5 and 6. The upper map in Fig. 5 shows the area where the informants assume that the standard Japanese is spoken. The informants are from Kansai area. And the bottom one in Fig. 5 shows the extent of the assumption of Kansai informants about the standard Japanese spoken area, compared to the assumptions by the informants from other area in Japan. (Long 1995, from Sanada and Long eds. 1997)

Fig. 5　 The result of the Questionnaire (1)

Two maps in Fig. 6 show the percentage of usage of the expression “kireru” (the clothes is keeping its quality or size for wearing). This form is the variational form of “kirareru”. The upper map is the answers by the junior high school students ,and the bottom one is that of a parent of the students. (Inoue 1998)

Fig. 6　The result of the Questionnaire(2)

3.3.3 Analysis with other kinds of figures

The maps are suitable for the analyses of the regional differences. In order to analyze the influences on language by other social parameters, other kinds of figures have been developed.

Fig. 7 and 8 are the figures called “glottogram”. A glottogram crosses the age of informants with their geographical location in order to visual the spatial spread of a linguistic feature (Sanada and Long eds. 1997).

Fig. 7 shows the usage of the expression “Jan (ka)” or “yan (ka)” which are used in the sentence final position. The age of informants is plotted horizontally, and the location on JR Tokaido line is plotted vertically. (Inoue 1998)

Fig. 7　Glottogram

Fig. 8 is called “percentage glottogram”. The informant’s age is plotted on the vertical axis, and the location is plotted on the horizontal axis. The circles on the graph show the percentage of the usage of new accent pattern. Much information can be shown in the graph like this. (Sanada 1979, Sanada and Long eds. 1997)

Fig. 8　Percentage Glottogram

Fig. 9 looks like a result of a league match. It shows the choice of the expression used toward each member of a village by the each member of a village, when asking “where are you going?” All the information such as age, sex, and class of each member in the village, and it is used to analyze the factors determining language use. (Sanada 1993, Sanada and Long eds. 1997）

Fig. 9　A league match

3.3.4 Conclusion on Question Method

In the studies of regional differences, the result was often analyzed with a sheet of map. Then, as the focus of the analysis expanded to the age difference and gender difference, the result tended to be analyzed with several sheets of map. And, new ways of analyses such as glottogram and a league match graph was developed.

4. Conclusion

This report briefly viewed the current of the dialect study in Japan, and introduced the field methods of Japanese dialect correspondent with the change of the dialect study. Paralleling with the decrease of the regional differences in Japanese society, the dialect study in Japan also changed to study social and interpersonal differences. Such changes of viewpoint of the study influenced the place of the investigation, informants, and the way of analysis. Investigation methods have also changed.

Investigation methods in the dialect study will be developing in the future. Though interviews and questionnaires have limited the quantity of the data gained from each informant, observation method will increase the quantity of the data because the length of the time for each informant will be longer to pick up the exact linguistic feature from discourse. Such large quantity of personal linguistic data will lead to discovery of the new sociolinguistic and dialectological knowledge.

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