北海道に住んでいる人にとっては、アイヌ民族という存在は当たり前のものであるということがとても印象的だった。私は山口県で生まれ育ち、小学校か中学校の授業でアイヌと呼ばれる民族が今の日本にいるということを習ったときに、具体的なイメージが持てず、すごく衝撃的だったことを今でも覚えている。住んでいる地域によって、あるものの存在を当たり前に思うか、そうでないのかという状況が生まれているのは、教育格差と強く関連するものだと感じた。
What I’m interested in learning about is traditions and diversity. When I was in high school, there was a school rule that girls had to wear shoes designated by the school, but boys could wear whatever shoes they wanted. I wanted to change that school rule, and when I told my teacher about it, she told me that it was tradition and that I had no choice. That made me frustrated, I was like “Tradition is as excuse.” I strongly believe that there are two types of traditions. One is the traditions to be preserved, and the other is the traditions that get better with change. Based on these considerations, I’d like to focus on educational institutions such as school regulations, uniforms, how physical and health education classes are conducted.
それらが国や地域によってどのように異なるのか、また、伝統に根付いてしまったアイデンティティーをどのように保護していくか、校則に縛られている学生たちがどう感じているのかを調べていきたい。
東京レインボープライドパレードに参加して、一番強く感じたことは、みんな堂々としていて自信を持っていて生き生きしている、エネルギーに溢れた場所であったこと。初めてLGBTQIA+のコミュニティを生で見て、彼・彼女たちが持つ、何にも言い換えることが出来ない強いパワーにただ圧倒されるばかりだった。One of the stickers that tinder gave me was also inspiring me. It said “#RIGHT TO LOVE “, which seemed like a natural thing for humans at the first glance, but there are a lot of people out there who are voicing up, which means that it’s not a natural thing for them.
It’s kind of eye-opening that Japan is a country where people do not have access to the rights they take for granted.
They just want to have normal rights as human beings. I was just like “Why can’t we have same-sex marriage?”. Of course I know that it doesn’t always mean that marriage is a goal, but it’s one of the rights that we have as human beings…
I had so many struggles with my research topic because the more I researched about language issues in Japan, the more I found it difficult to find articles with the information I wanted; I didn't know what to look for and wasn’t sure of my goal at the end of this research. However, I realized that what is important thing for this research is to know the voices of 当事者 from their experiences, and what 当事者 think or feel about it from the discussion with other students. Thus, I need to research about the voices of dialect speakers and their experiences such as communication barriers and effects of dialects.
I also want to look at these kinds of information.
(方言が抱える以下のような課題の詳細？どんなものがあるのか)
・日本語教育との連携可能性
・地域社会の活性化への寄与
・次世代への継承と教育
DeepL: Details of the following challenges faced by dialects? What are they?)
∙ Possibility of cooperation with Japanese language education
Contribution to the revitalisation of local communities
Inheritance and education of the next generation.
I looked at where the differences of dialects come from in the first place, the historical roots of dialects, examples of actual experiences that dialect speakers had with non-dialect speakers in the Great East Japan Earthquake, and the positive aspects of speaking a dialect in Research Note3. What I learned from my research is dialects are words that were originally spoken in the capital, but were transmitted with different sounds when they were transmitted to the regions.
方言には、その方言を話す人のアイデンティティーがある。しかし、メディアでは主に方言を話さない人の視点で方言が取り扱われている。方言に対するパブリックイメージがポジティブなものなのか、又は、ネガティブなものなのかはメディアの報道の仕方によって変わる。方言話者は、方言は自分達らしさの象徴であって誇りであると感じているのか、または、田舎者感が出てしまうためはずかしいものと感じているのか気になった。
・DeepL translation
Dialects have an identity of their own for the people who speak them. However, the media mainly report dialects from the viewpoint of non-dialect speakers. Whether the public image of a dialect is positive or negative depends on how the media report it. We wondered whether dialect speakers feel that dialects are a symbol of their identity and pride, or whether they feel that dialects are embarrassing because they make them feel provincial.
Here are the research questions what I have for now.
・What kind of images to 方言 speakers?
・How do the media show them in TV?
・方言をビジネスシーンで使うことはマナー違反なのか？⇦What do the people who originally speak 方言 think?
What I was the most interested in is that there was a drastically change of thoughts for marriage between 18th century to 20th century. In 18th century, marriage is considered to be a family issue, but it turned out to be more considered as a love than family issues for 2 years. It made me realize that we could see the difference of thought to one thing from historical backgrounds.
It was also really interesting to me when hearing Yuka’s presentation. I learned that we can take one thing from various points of view. It reminds me of the importance of diverse ways of looking at/ thinking of something.
I noticed that there were the connections between my research and Yuika’s presentation that lots of fields such as education, government, and media have an influence on the issue. I also learned that we need to research it from various aspects to see things in a diverse way from different presentations.
医療現場における、方言の使用に関して、東日本大震災の時に、被災地に支援者としてきた方言を話さない医者が方言話者である患者と一対一になった途端に、方言が理解できず患者が何を言っているかわからないため困ったという事例があった。また、法廷での方言使用に関する事例において、本来の法解釈上であれば、原告はそのまま方言の使用が可能であったにも関わらず、標準語をしようするようにと原告に注意した裁判官の発言は、方言は日本語ではないとも読み取れるものであった。これらは、言葉の違いによって起こったものである。必要なのはlanguage diversityなのかlanguage unificationなのか、その問題の答えを導く際にある当事者の声が大きな役割を果たした。患者である方言話者の地域住民は、医療現場において「医師に無理にその土地の方言を話してもらいたいとは思わない。」「症状について理解してもらい、苦しんでいる自分を理解して受け止めてもらいたい」と話した。この発言によって、改めて、彼らは方言に対して何か特別な扱いを必要としているのではなく、ただ、状況を状況として受け止めてもらいたいのだということに気づかされた。また、方言に関するリサーチを通して、方言は単なる言葉ではなくて、気持ちを表現したり、主張したりする、アイデンティティー（意思）行為であるということを学んだ。このことから、そもそも、方言（言葉）の消滅は問題であるのかという疑問が自分の中で生まれた。方言（言葉）に対する捉え方は人それぞれであるから、どのような意見をもってその質問に賛成/反対なのか知りたいと思った。また、アイデンティティーを表現するものという観点における方言（言葉）は、LGBTの声を上げるときにも同じことが言えるという意見がとても強く印象に残っている。
What I found the most interesting in the presentations was 当事者’s voice towards Okinawan in Tom’s presentation.
「しまくとぅばでしか伝えられない言葉があるので残してほしい」という当事者の声があった。That exactly related to the discussion topic in my research of what you think about the disappearance of dialects/languages. I personally think it depends on the way of thinking. I would say, for people who think it doesn’t matter, they think language is just communication tool, on the other hand, it is not only communication tool, but it would be their identity.
It also can be seen that there is a large gap in the level of understanding of "しまくとぅば" between those in their teens and those in their 70s and older from 平成28年度しまくとぅば県民意識調査. I thought it was mainly caused by the lack of educational system, but I believed that there might be something to do with social attitudes towards the image of しまくとぅば from historical backgrounds. Even though Ryukyuan used to be strictly regulated, with students being given 「方言札」if they used the language in school, but there have been much social concern about the decline of Ryukyuan.
There were a lot of connections between Tom’s and my research. In my presentation about coexistence with 方言, I focused on the voices from specific scenes such as 医療現場 and 法廷での方言使用例. Her research was different from my comprehensive dialect research in that it focused on the Ryukyuan language, but it was the same in that she found out what dialect speakers needed from the voices of 当事者.So, it made me realize the importance of analyzing 当事者’s voice, which will lead to knowing what they really want/need.(250words & 95語)