On the theory of language acquisition and change with the influence of media

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24652082
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Linguistics
• Research Institution: Kagoshima University
• Principal Investigator: OTA Ichiro 鹿児島大学, 法文学部, 教授 (60203783)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): UTSUGI Akira 名古屋大学, 大学院国際文化研究科, 准教授 (60548999)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: 社会言語学 / 言語変異 / メディアとことば / 方言 / 音調 / 言語変化 / 言語習得

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The mass media broadcasting is often regarded as an influential cause of language change. This comes from the fact that people have observed a huge scale of nationwide de-dialectization or dialect levelling since the 1960’s after the advent of TV. However, sociolinguists have been skeptical about its effect, because there are few studies which successfully demonstrate the influence of media on language with a scientifically persuasive manner. This study attempted to provide some evidence in terms of variation theory, indicating that the media contents seem to be relevant to the tonal changes observed in Kagoshima Japanese, and to suggest a tentative view of language acquisition and language change under the influence of media.

Free Research Field

社会言語学