Speaker Typology Based on a Nationwide Web Survey of Dialect Consciousness among 10,000 People in Japan

Abstract

Using data from the 2015 nationwide web survey on dialect consciousness, which was conducted in 2015 and received responses from approximately 10,000 males and females aged 20 and older nationwide, we extracted speaker types using latent class analysis (LCA) and attempted to describe and interpret the characteristics of each type. The seven speaker types extracted by the LCA, in descending order of class size, are: (1) ‘moderate code switchers (between common language (CL) and dialect)’, (2) ‘active dialect speakers’, (3) ‘active code switchers’, (4) ‘CL speakers who grew up in dialect environment’, (5) ‘CL speakers’, (6) ‘indecisive respondent type1’, and (7) ‘indecisive respondent type2’. In terms of the average membership probability, clear regional and age group effects are found among the five major types with large class sizes. The regional effects are interpreted to indicate the regional differences in the consciousness of dialect and CL in contemporary Japanese society, and the age group effects are interpreted to reflect the transition in the consciousness of speakers in postwar Japanese society from ‘CL speakers who grew up in dialect environment’ to ‘CL speakers’ and ‘active dialect speakers’.