Details of the Researcher

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Dahlberg Dodd Hannah Elizabeth
Section
Organization for International Initiatives
Job title
Assistant Professor

Research History 3

  • 2022/08 - 2025/09
    The University of Tokyo　Tokyo College, Institutes for Advanced Study　Project Assistant Professor

  • 2021/04 - 2022/08
    The University of Tokyo　Tokyo College, Institutes of Advanced Study　Project Researcher

  • 2025/12 -
    Tohoku University　Center for Integrated Japanese Studies　Distinguished Assistant Professor

Education 4

  • The Ohio State University　Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures

    2016/08 - 2019/12

  • The Ohio State University　Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures

    2013/08 - 2016/05

  • Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies

    2014/09 - 2015/06

  • University of Georgia　Department of Linguistics

    2008/08 - 2013/05

Research Interests 8

  • role language

  • persona

  • character language

  • phonetics

  • semiotics

  • media studies

  • Pop culture

  • Sociolinguistics

Research Areas 4

  • Humanities & social sciences / Cultural anthropology and folklore /

  • Humanities & social sciences / Linguistics /

  • Humanities & social sciences / Gender studies /

  • Humanities & social sciences / Japanese linguistics /

Papers 10

  1. Aging beyond older adults: Transdisciplinary perspectives on demographic change in Japan Peer-reviewed

    Marcin Pawel Jarzebski, Maria Telegina, Hannah Dahlberg-Dodd, Rosita Samsudin, Naoko Hosokawa, Dada Docot

    Social Sciences & Humanities Open　14　103505-103505　2026/12

    Publisher: Elsevier BV

    DOI： 10.1016/j.ssaho.2026.103505 　

    ISSN： 2590-2911

  2. Mock foreigner speech and the reification of mediatized (white) foreignness in Japanese media Peer-reviewed

    Hannah E. Dahlberg-Dodd

    Language & Communication　101　58-69　2025/03

    Publisher: Elsevier BV

    DOI： 10.1016/j.langcom.2025.01.001 　

    ISSN： 0271-5309

  3. Commodifying adolescence for performance and profit: Language and gender in Japanese idol music Peer-reviewed

    Hannah E. Dahlberg-Dodd

    East Asian Journal of Popular Culture　2023/02/21

    Publisher: Intellect

    DOI： 10.1386/eapc_00099_1 　

    ISSN： 2051-7084

    eISSN： 2051-7092

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    Japanese pop idols occupy an ambiguous position in the broader popular music landscape, straddling a line between fiction and non-fiction, simultaneously characterological yet physically instantiated. As idealized representations of the girl or boy next door, idols serve as both ‘image characters’ who can be used to sell a variety of products, as well as ‘quasi companions’ meant to provide fans with a manufactured sense of intimacy. Using a joint quantitative and qualitative approach, this article analyses the lyrics of female idol groups. Specifically, I demonstrate how the combination of first- and second-person pronouns and sentence-final expressions are utilized to construct both female-coded and male-coded gendered personae, revealing that idol lyrics engage in the process of cross-gender performance. As a result, through their performance of these personae, female idol groups explicitly reinforce a binary imagination of normative gender expressions, allowing such idol groups to capitalize on idealized heterosexual adolescence through affective resonance and nostalgia.

  4. Katakana and the Mediatized Other: Script Variation in Fantastical Narratives Peer-reviewed

    Hannah E. Dahlberg-Dodd

    Japanese Studies　42　(1)　61-79　2022/03/03

    Publisher: Informa UK Limited

    DOI： 10.1080/10371397.2022.2027749 　

    ISSN： 1037-1397

    eISSN： 1469-9338

  5. O-jōsama kotoba and a Stylistics of Same-sex Desire in Japanese Yuri Narratives Peer-reviewed

    Hannah E. Dahlberg-Dodd

    Mechademia: Second Arc　13　(1)　6-23　2020

    Publisher: University of Minnesota Press

    DOI： 10.5749/mech.13.1.0006 　

    ISSN： 1934-2489

  6. Script variation as audience design: Imagining readership and community in Japanese yuri comics Peer-reviewed

    Hannah E. Dahlberg-Dodd

    Language in Society　49　(3)　357-378　2020

    Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)

    DOI： 10.1017/s0047404519000794 　

    ISSN： 0047-4045

    eISSN： 1469-8013

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    <title>Abstract</title>Building on recent work supporting a sociolinguistic approach to orthographic choice, this study engages with paratextual language use in <italic>yuri</italic>, a subgenre of Japanese <italic>shōjo manga</italic> ‘girls’ comics’ that centers on same-sex romantic and/or erotic relationships between female characters. The comic magazine <italic>Comic Yuri Hime</italic> has been the dominant, if not only, <italic>yuri</italic>-oriented published magazine in Japan since its inception in 2005. Though both written and consumed by a primarily female audience, the magazine has undergone numerous attempts to rebrand and refocus the target audience as a means to broaden the magazine's readership. This change in target demographic is reflected in the stylistic representation of paratextual occurrences of the second-person pronoun <italic>anata</italic>, indicating the role of the textual landscape in reflecting, and reifying, an imagined target audience. (Script variation, manga, popular media, Japan, <italic>yuri</italic> manga)

  7. Social Meaning in Virtual Space: Sentence-final expressions in the Japanese popular mediascape International-journal

    Hannah E. Dahlberg-Dodd

    2019

  8. The author in the postinternet age: Fan works, authorial function, and the archive Peer-reviewed

    Hannah E. Dahlberg-Dodd

    Transformative Works and Cultures　30　2019

    Publisher: Transformative Works and Cultures

    DOI： 10.3983/twc.2019.1408 　

    ISSN： 1941-2258

  9. Talking like a Shōnen Hero: Masculinity in Post-Bubble Era Japan through the Lens of Boku and Ore

    Hannah Dahlberg-Dodd

    Buckeye East Asian Linguistics 3　31-42　2018/10

  10. Voices of the hero: dominant masculine ideologies through the speech of Japanese shōnen protagonists Peer-reviewed

    Hannah E. Dahlberg-Dodd

    Gender and Language　12　(3)　346-371　2018

    Publisher: Equinox Publishing

    DOI： 10.1558/genl.32536 　

    ISSN： 1747-6321

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Presentations 24

  1. Characterological engagement and fan practice: Perspectives from a Vtuber livechat

    Hannah E. Dahlberg-Dodd

    Asian Studies Conference Japan　2026/07/05

  2. Voice and the villainess: Language, gender, and the “second chance” life

    Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting 2025

  3. O-jōsama kotoba and online collective play through character language

    Hannah Dahlberg-Dodd

    Anthropology of Japan in Japan Fall Meeting 2024

  4. Who counts as “foreign”?: Metalinguistic discourses on Mock Foreigner speech in Japanese media

    Hannah Dahlberg-Dodd

    2024 AAS-in-Asia Annual Meeting

  5. "Let’s be o-jōsama together!”: Destabilizing gender norms in Vtuber fandom interaction

    Hannah Dahlberg-Dodd

    Queer and Feminist Perspectives on Japanese Popular Media Symposium

  6. “O-jōsama-bu desu wa!”: “Young lady speech” and gender-inclusive liberation from the mundane

    Hannah Dahlberg-Dodd

    12th International Gender and Language Association Conference

  7. Figures of Desire, Figures Desired: A Cross-Genre Analysis of O-jōsama

    Hannah Dahlberg-Dodd

    Kyarachters: The Other Side of Narrative Workshop

  8. The Language of Virtual Cosplay: Characterological figures and community through social media

    Hannah Dahlberg-Dodd

    New Ways of Analyzing Variation – Asia Pacific 7

  9. Indexing the Linguistic Other in Japanese: A historical look at the functional development of katakana

    Hannah Dahlberg-Dodd

    2022 Society for Linguistic Anthropology Annual Meeting

  10. Constructing Gendered Personae in Japanese Pop Music: Idol Culture and Artistic Agency

    Hannah Dahlberg-Dodd

    11th International Gender and Language Association Conference

  11. Who are we creating for?: Fan works and the imagined audience

    Hannah Dahlberg-Dodd, Lindsey Stirek

    20th Fan Studies Network North America Conference

  12. O-jōsama kotoba and same-sex desire in Japanese yuri narratives

    Hannah Dahlberg-Dodd

    Mechademia 2019

  13. Gendered meta-commentary on sentence-final expression usage: A historical perspective

    Hannah Dahlberg-Dodd

    American Association of Teachers of Japanese Spring Conference　2019/03/21

  14. Sentence-final expressions in popular media: The interaction of character role and audience design in Japanese manga

    Hannah Dahlberg-Dodd

    Edward F. Hayes Graduate Research Forum　2019/03/01

  15. Stylistic variation and mediatized otaku personae: 'Steins;Gate' and the Akihabara chronotope

    Hannah Dahlberg-Dodd

    Buckeye East Asian Linguistics Forum 3　2018/10/22

  16. Orthographic variation and "you": Imagining the readership of Japanese yuri comics

    Hannah Dahlberg-Dodd

    25th Lavender Languages and Linguistics Conference

  17. Chronotopic Protagonists: An Examination of Dominant Gender Ideologies through Japanese Shōnen Anime

    Hannah Dahlberg-Dodd

    2018 Popular Culture Association National Meeting

  18. Anything for o-neesama: ‘Young Ladies’-speak’ as a tool of same-sex desire in Japanese yuri narratives

    2018 Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting

  19. Constructing the "Lily Princess": An initial study into the dialogue of Japanese yuri comics

    24th Lavender Languages and Linguistics Conference

  20. "Welcome to the Sorority": Second-person pronouns and the diverse readership of Comic Yuri Hime

    Hannah Dahlberg-Dodd

    4th Annual UC Berkeley Japan Studies Graduate Student Conference

  21. Talking like a shōnen hero: A diachronic analysis of Japanese first-person pronouns in anime

    Hannah Dahlberg-Dodd

    Buckeye East Asian Linguistics Forum 2　2016/10/21

  22. What Makes a Hero?: A diachronic look at the speech qualities of shōnen anime protagonists

    Hannah Dahlberg-Dodd

    9th International Gender and Language Association Conference

  23. Identity Navigation by Female Japanese Speakers in Today's Pop Music

    Hannah Dahlberg-Dodd

    Role Language and Character Language Research International Workshop

  24. Japanese Pronoun Navigation: Gender-inclusive boku in a pop culture context

    Hannah Dahlberg-Dodd

    1st OSU Workshop on East Asian Studies　2014/04/12

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Research Projects 1

  1. Language, sociality, and Japanese popular media in the 21st century

    Offer Organization: Japan Society for the Promotion of Science

    System: Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists

    Category: Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists

    Institution: The University of Tokyo

    2022/04 - 2025/03

Teaching Experience 2

  1. Advanced Japanese 1　Temple University Japan Campus

  2. Japanese Elements 2　Temple University Japan Campus