Kumagai’s research shows that the strong stereotyping of the Tohoku dialect is perpetuated by the concentration of the media industry in the Japanese capital. Indeed, the world over, the media has an enormous impact on perceptions of accents. Media is typically clustered in a territory’s seat of power, whose accent is generally held up as standard. For example, the preponderance of UK broadcasters in London likely contributed to the marginalisation of Murphy’s Welsh accent.
