Still Women’s Language! How Foreigners Sustain Language Ideologies in Japanese Television

This study analyzes women’s language as represented in the television segment Shirabete Mitara, aired by Japanese broadcaster Fuji TV. Drawing on audiovisual translation research and recent developments in Japanese sociolinguistics and media studies, the article examines the interindexical relationships that emerge between the Japanese voice-over and interlingual subtitles used to render the speech of foreign female speakers, together with the ideological portrayals of femininity associated with them. The analysis of the interview segments highlights not only the discrepancy between the speech style of non-native female speakers and that adopted by Japanese voice actresses, but also a process of hyperfeminization aimed at indexing a set of metapragmatic stereotypes around which the so-called Japanese Women’s Language (joseigo) has crystallized. In particular, the study underscores how the iconic bodies of the speakers are instrumentalized as semiotic resources to convey specific ideologies of femininity in Japan, which converge in an adaptation strategy that reinforces gender-based discrimination - a phenomenon still deeply embedded in contemporary Japanese society.