“Pseudo-dialect” or “role language”? Speech varieties in three Japanese translations of Gone with the Wind

Abstract This study considers the use of dialectal and distinctive language features in three Japanese translations of the 1936 novel Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, published in 1938, 2015, and 2015–2016. Previous studies have noted that these translations adopt various linguistic features originating in dialects from Japan’s Tōhoku region when rendering the African American Vernacular English–influenced eye dialect spoken by Black enslaved characters, and suggest that this translation strategy draws on and reinforces negative social perceptions of real-life Tōhoku-dialect speakers. Conversely, through a dual approach involving both a comparative textual analysis and a quantitative perceptual survey, this study argues that these speech styles should be viewed rather as an enregistered form of “role language”: a speech variety unique to fictional contexts serving to identify a character archetype that in the eyes of a majority of readers is disassociated from any historical origin.