| Summary/Abstract |
This article analyzes courtship between secondary characters Toshio and Hana in the televised NHK drama Massan. When viewed through the lens of sociolinguistics, their romance is fraught with linguistic and pragmatic problems. Toshio and Hana speak different non-prestigious dialects, and also spend much of their interaction arguing. However, they eventually marry. Their path to marriage and the contents of their speech are also interesting from the perspective of cultural linguistics because they reflect competing cultural models for successful (happī endo) romances derived from the analysis of romance fiction. One type of romance reflects Japanese ideals of social contextualization, while the other is based on translations from English, reflecting cultural importation.
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