Representation of masculine speech in the Japanese dub of the American series Never Have I Ever (2020): fictional idiolects or linguistic experimentation?

Abstract

This case study analyzes male language in the Japanese-language version of the American series Never Have I Ever (2020),1 produced and dubbed by Netflix. Building upon audiovisual translation and recent Japanese sociolinguistic studies, this article intends to highlight the gap that has grown over the years between the non-native actors’ language and the real speech of Japanese speakers, as well as the hypermasculinization of fictional speech aimed at indexicalizing an informal, funny and cool male model, through the phenomenon of transduction. In the Japanese audiovisual context, it is possible to trace a sort of linguistic essentialism in both male and female speech, which heavily leans on the so-called body of otherness and which risks reinforcing stereotypes of gender, race and social class. Will this also be the case for this new series?