English in Japan in the Era of Globalization

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English in Japan in the Era of Globalization

Also by Philip Seargeant

THE IDEA OF ENGLISH IN JAPAN: Ideology and the Evolution of a Global Language

English in Japan in the Era of Globalization Edited by

Philip Seargeant The Open University, UK

Selection and editorial matter © Philip Seargeant 2011 Chapters © their individual authors 2011 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978–0–230–23766–7

hardback

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data English in Japan in the era of globalization / edited by Philip Seargeant. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–230–23766–7 (alk. paper) 1. English language—Study and teaching—Japanese speakers. 2. English philology—Study and teaching—Japan. 3. English language— Japan. 4. English language—Globalization. I. Seargeant, Philip. II. Title. PE1068.J3E64 2011 428.00952—dc22 2011006610 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

Contents List of Figures and Tables

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Notes on the Contributors

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Introduction: English in Japan in the Era of Globalization Philip Seargeant

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Part I English in the Education System 1 Elite Discourses of Globalization in Japan: the Role of English Mai Yamagami and James W. Tollefson

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2 ‘Not Everyone Can Be a Star’: Students’ and Teachers’ Beliefs about English Teaching in Japan Aya Matsuda

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3 Parallel Universes: Globalization and Identity in English Language Teaching at a Japanese University Alison Stewart and Masuko Miyahara

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4 The Native Speaker English Teacher and the Politics of Globalization in Japan Yvonne Breckenridge and Elizabeth J. Erling

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5 Immigration, Diversity and Language Education in Japan: toward a Glocal Approach to Teaching English Ryuko Kubota

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Part II English in Society and Culture 6 English as an International Language and ‘Japanese English’ Yasukata Yano 7 The Position of English for a New Sector of ‘Japanese’ Youths: Mixed-Ethnic Girls’ Constructions of Linguistic and Ethnic Identities Laurel Kamada 8 The Ideal Speaker of Japanese English as Portrayed in ‘Language Entertainment’ Television Andrew Moody and Yuko Matsumoto v

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143

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9 The Symbolic Meaning of Visual English in the Social Landscape of Japan Philip Seargeant

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Index

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List of Figures and Tables Figure 0.1 ‘Yes We Kan’ slogan T-shirt

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Tables 4.1 Participants in the study 9.1

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List of participants

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Notes on the Contributors Yvonne Breckenridge is an English for Academic Purposes instructor at the University of Alberta, Canada. She has taught EAP in Japan and South Korea, and has been involved in teacher education projects in Canada and Japan. Her research interests focus on identity and discourse and how these manifest themselves in interactions between students, teachers and the curriculum. She is currently working on a research project involving literacy development and technology. Elizabeth J. Erling is a Lecturer in English Language Teaching at the Open University, UK. Her interests are in ELT professional development, English for academic purposes, world Englishes and language policy. She is editing with Philip Seargeant a forthcoming collection on English and international development, and has published papers in journals such as World Englishes, Language Policy and Innovations in Language Learning and Teaching. Laurel Kamada is a Senior Lecturer at Tohoku University, Japan, and has publications in: bilingualism and multiculturalism in Japan; gender/ethnic studies; marginalized (hybrid and gendered) identities in Japan; masculinity; and theoretical and methodological discourse analytic approaches. She serves on the editorial board of the Japan Journal of Multilingualism and Multiculturalism and is on the Advisory Council of the International Gender and Language Association. Her most recent book is Hybrid identities and adolescent girls: being ‘half’ in Japan (2010). Ryuko Kubota is a Professor in the Department of Language and Literacy Education in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Her areas of specialization include second/ foreign language teacher education and critical applied linguistics. She is an editor of Race, culture, and identities in second language: exploring critically engaged practice (2009) and has published a number of articles and book chapters. Aya Matsuda is Assistant Professor of English at Arizona State University, USA. Her research interests include the use of English as an international language, and the linguistic and pedagogical implications of the global spread of English. Her work has appeared in various books and journals including English Today, TESOL Quarterly and World Englishes. viii

Notes on the Contributors ix

Yuko Matsumoto is a Lecturer of Business Communication at the University of Macau, China. She has published in Human Communication Research and Asian Englishes. In addition to research on English in Japanese popular culture, she is also conducting a study of the heritage Japanese expatriate community in Macau, exploring issues of acculturation, language and cultural maintenance and loss within the community. Masuko Miyahara teaches in the College of Liberal Arts at the International Christian University (ICU) in Tokyo, Japan. Her interests are in the area of reading in second language learning, autonomy and language education, and identity and its co-relation with language development. She has published a number of articles on these subjects. Andrew Moody is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Macau, China, where he teaches sociolinguistics. His research interests include varieties of world Englishes and the role of English in popular culture, with articles in American Speech, World Englishes, Asian Englishes and English Today. Currently he is co-editing a collection of essays entitled English and Asian pop culture. Philip Seargeant is Lecturer in Applied Linguistics in the Centre for Language and Communication, The Open University, UK. He is author of The idea of English in Japan: ideology and the evolution of a global language (2009). He has also published several papers in journals such as Language Policy, World Englishes, Language Sciences and Language & Communication. Alison Stewart teaches at Gakushuin University, Japan. She has published articles on communities of practice in writing instruction and teacher development, mediating authentic texts, and multicultural practice in Japanese university classrooms. James W. Tollefson is Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington and Professor in the Department of Media, Communication and Culture, the Graduate School of Public Policy and Social Research, and the Institute for Educational Research and Service at the International Christian University in Tokyo, Japan. He has published 9 books and more than 70 articles on language policy, language education and the politics of language. Mai Yamagami is a doctoral student in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, USA. Her research on discourse, language policy and political communication appears in Japan Studies, the Language Research Bulletin, the Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics and elsewhere.

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Notes on the Contributors

Yasukata Yano is Professor Emeritus of Applied Linguistics at Waseda University, Japan. He received an MA in TEFL from the University of Hawaii and a PhD in linguistics from the University of Wisconsin. His research interests include language teaching, sociolinguistics and English as an international language. He has taught at Columbia University, the University of Chicago and Waseda University; has been a Visiting Fellow at the University of London and a Visiting Colleague at the University of Hawaii; and has authored and edited around 40 linguistics and ELT-related papers and books.

Introduction: English in Japan in the Era of Globalization Philip Seargeant

English in a global context The subject of this book is the role played by the English language in contemporary Japan. The nine chapters of the book examine this role from various perspectives and in various domains, and taken together they represent a wide-ranging survey of the linguistic, social and cultural issues that arise from the use of English in Japan. A major focus for many of the chapters is the education system, where the teaching and learning of English, as well as policies and planning about English, operate as a primary means of mediation between the language and society. With English traditionally having the status of a predominantly ‘foreign’ language in Japan, the majority of the population have their first and most sustained encounter with it via formal education, and thus the practices and debates that are current in pedagogical circles have a significant influence on the state and status of the language in wider society. Other chapters examine the role of English in broadcast and print media, and in the public space of rural and urban Japan. In each case, a central concern is the way in which the language and the particular context under examination converge, as well as the social and cultural significance that results from this convergence. There is a further context for all these examinations of the subject, however, and this is the overarching concept of globalization. Although for each perspective and in each domain, the immediate context is Japan itself (as a society, a culture, and a political entity), there is also always this further context which exerts a pressure on the way that English exists within the country. In the case of each scenario examined in the various chapters, the debates about English are played out in the shadow of English’s status as a global language. In each case, 1

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the relationship between English and Japan also involves implicit or explicit consideration of the relationships that the English language and the Japanese nation have towards current social and political developments that are motivated by the forces of globalization. All nine chapters therefore examine language practices in the country as they occur at the intersection of three fundamental concepts: (1) the Japanese nation state and/or Japanese cultural identity; (2) the English language as it exists as both form and idea; and (3) the processes and promises of globalization. Over the past few decades the study of English has increasingly had to adopt an approach which takes account of the broadening global identity that the language has developed. On various levels, and in various different ways, the English language today exhibits the trace of globalization in the forms it takes, the functions it is put to, and the attitudes that people hold towards it. Be it at the lexicogrammatical or pragmatic level – where contact with other languages resulting from global migration flows or transnational communication networks produces new varieties, new communicative strategies and new style repertoires – or at the policy level – where governmental attitudes towards English contribute to development agendas and international relations programmes – the language as it exists around the world is a product of the way the social world exists today. English today is not only a means of communication for communities that operate across national borders or are brought together by the possibilities of new communication technology; it is also the result of these new and changing patterns of social organization. The changes in the status of the language – and especially the shift from what was predominantly a national language (with a limited number of dominant standards) to one which is now distinctly global (and manifestly multiplex) have led to the need for a reconceptualization of the language. These changes have resulted in the need for several aspects of the study of the language to be re-evaluated, and several more to be newly taken into account; and the shifts and developments in the discipline of English language studies over the past few decades bear witness to the various stages in this reconceptualization (see Bolton, 2006 for a summary of the recent history of the evolving concerns of the discipline). What is becoming increasingly apparent from research around the language is that, although influential models such as Kachru’s Three Circles of English (1992) offer a way of theorizing the English language and its global spread in toto, the diversity in form, function and attitude to world English is such that it needs now to be

Philip Seargeant 3

analysed as situated social practice – i.e. by means of a type of almost ethnographic analysis that goes beyond a priori categories such as EFL, ESL and EIL, and instead investigates the variegated roles played by the language in any one specific context. It is within this refining of the concerns of the discipline of world Englishes that Japan presents a particularly compelling case study for the examination of the actuality of English as an international language. As is often noted by commentators, both individuals and institutions within Japan exhibit an intense fascination towards English (McVeigh, 2002), and yet despite the strong visual and conceptual presence the language occupies in society (Seargeant, 2009), it has no official status, nor, in relative terms, do the majority of citizens require any particular fluency in it for their everyday lives (Yano, this volume). English in some form or at some symbolic level has, however, become a significant part of everyday life in Japan, and the aim of this book is to offer insights into the ways in which this occurs, and to look also at the consequences this is having for Japanese society and culture.

English in Japan: history and contact The chapters in the book look predominantly at the state and status of English in present-day Japan. Yet present-day Japan is a product of its history, and the nature and functions that English has in the country are in part determined (or at least influenced) by this history. This history has produced a specific linguistic profile for the country in terms of both the attitude taken by Japanese institutions and people towards English and other foreign languages, and the position that the Japanese language occupies in the national psyche. As such, an understanding of this history acts as an important context for any study of English in Japan today. Unlike many of its Asian neighbours, Japan does not have a history of colonial rule by a Western power, and though it did undergo a period of US occupation after the Second World War, English was never introduced into the infrastructure of the country in the way it was in places such as Singapore, Hong Kong, or the countries of the Indian subcontinent. The history of English in Japan is mostly condensed into the century and a half since the Meiji Restoration of 1868. There were a few, mostly isolated, incidents of contact prior to this, beginning with what is the first recorded encounter between the Japanese and the English language in 1600, when the English sailor William Adams was washed up on the shores of Kyushu and ended up settling in the country and

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becoming a chief advisor to the Tokugawa shogunate (Ike, 1995). It was only a few decades after this, however, that the Tokugawa government instigated what would become two and a half centuries of self-imposed isolation (the sakoku period), during which contact with the wider world became severely regulated. During this period, when the only authorized contact with European nations was conducted via the traders of the Dutch community who inhabited the small artificial island of Dejima on the coastline of Nagasaki, scholars of European languages in Japan concentrated predominantly on Dutch. It was not until 1853, and Commodore Perry’s arrival in Japan as part of a mission to gain trading concessions for the United States, that significant international relations were resumed. The signing of the Kanagawa Treaty in the year after Perry’s arrival marked the ‘opening up’ of Japan, and this in turn was followed shortly by the programme of modernization that the new government embarked on in the wake of the Meiji Restoration. The latter years of the nineteenth century thus saw a radical shift in Japan’s relationship with the international community, and this had notable implications for the status of foreign languages in the country. Ike (1995) identifies this post-restoration era as one of the three major transitional periods for the teaching of English in Japan in the modern history of the country. A prime reason for this is that part of the modernization programme involved an influx of Western teachers, many of whom were English speakers. It was this period that first led, in Yano’s opinion (this volume), to the general fascination with English that persists to this day in the country. An indication of the importance accorded to the language during that period can be seen in a proposal made in 1872 by the statesman and educational reformer Arinori Mori to replace Japanese with English as the national language (Swale, 2000). Among the reasons that motivated this proposal were Mori’s beliefs that English had the status of an international language while Japanese did not, and that written Japanese was a legacy of Chinese imperialism. However, as with later proposals to adopt English as an official language in Japan, nothing came of it, and by the end of the nineteenth century a backlash against the English language had begun. Key incidents here include the decision by the Ministry of Education to install Japanese rather than English as the medium of instruction at the newly established Tokyo University, and Mori’s assassination at the hands of an ultranationalist. The second of the major transitional periods for English in Japan was the American occupation after the Second World War. During the war itself, the learning of English had been discouraged, and the Ministry of

Philip Seargeant 5

Education greatly reduced English language provision in the curriculum (Koike and Tanaka, 1995). But with the seven years of American occupation, and the reforms to the education system that were introduced with the new constitution in 1947, English again became an important school subject – and though it was in name still only an elective class, in practice it was all but obligatory. The decades since the war have seen further developments in the prominence given to the teaching of English. The 1970s saw the formation of several regional English Language Education Associations established to improve teaching within the country (Hoshiyama, 1978; Omura, 1978). This was followed in the 1980s by the third major transitional period for English language teaching which comprised the reforms to the education system proposed during Yasuhiro Nakasone’s premiership (1982–87), and linked, by both government and business, to the programme of kokusaika, or internationalization, which defined that particular era. These reforms were introduced over the following two decades, most noticeably in the Course of Study documents (the equivalent of a national curriculum) which lay out the syllabus for primary and secondary education as prescribed by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). Course of Study documents have been issued at intervals of about a decade since they were first introduced in 1947 with the new education system. In terms of the history of English language education, it is the Reform Acts of 1989 and 2002 which are considered to contain the most notable innovations, and in which a specifically communicative approach to ELT was instigated. It is in these last few decades, therefore, that a shift has occurred in educational approaches to the language, as the traditional grammar–translation method of teaching that was adopted in the Meiji period as a means of importing and processing information from foreign cultures, has been challenged by the privileging of communicative approaches which are so prevalent in contemporary TESOL orthodoxy in the West. The significance and implications of this approach, and the consequences of the continued foregrounding of English in both the curriculum (most recently with the plans to introduce compulsory English classes for elementary school students) and more generally in public life, are all topics which are addressed in the substantive chapters of the book.

National boundaries and globalized perspectives A condensed historical summary of this sort relies upon a variety of presuppositions, not least those that concern the country whose

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history is being summarized. Just as the term ‘English’ refers to multiple and diverse linguistic behaviours, so the name ‘Japan’ has a plurality of possible referents. Throughout the book, nationhood is the allencompassing point of identification, yet in many cases nationhood is also a subject for analysis. Each chapter takes as its context the country and culture of Japan – but in each chapter this broad context is approached by means of something more specific. A primary focus in many of the chapters is patterns of beliefs or behaviours relating to the language, but the samples of people whose beliefs or behaviours are surveyed are necessarily limited, and thus can only be indicative of trends within society. To say that English plays a particular role in Japan is, more accurately, to say that for a certain section of the population living within Japan – or of the population who identify themselves as Japanese citizens – English is perceived or used in a particular way. In other words, the property of generalization that language naturally makes use of should not be mistaken for the totalizing fallacy which uncritically deals in nations and cultures as if they were stable categories. Indeed, one theme which emerges from many of the studies in the book is the way in which the category of the nation and the concept of national culture are constructed by means of a discourse in which debates over the status of English play a significant part. In examining the role of English in Japan, therefore, the book offers critical analysis both of what is understood by the term ‘English’ in this context, but also of how the concept of Japan and of Japanese culture is constructed in contemporary debates about the English language. Just as the concepts ‘English’ and ‘Japan’ can be problematic, so too can the third element of the triad. Globalization has been a much used – and possibly overused – term across a range of disciplines in the last two decades. Indeed, the motivation for using the concept as a framing device for the book is precisely this popularity: in Japan, as elsewhere, a high-profile discourse of globalization exists both in political debate and in the popular imagination. And as Yamagami and Tollefson (this volume) illustrate with their survey of promotional campaigns for higher education institutions, it appears that the concept of globalization has taken over from the previously ubiquitous ‘internationalization’ (kokusaika) in certain domains. The studies in the book therefore approach the term as one which is established as a significant concept in the contexts the book focuses upon, and part of their investigation is to examine why it is that educational institutions, political organizations and the media use the concept in the way they do. To talk of the globalized era in Japan, therefore, is in part to talk about the

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period defined by a discourse which promotes ideas of the global as of great importance. Yet the term also has analytic value as a theoretical concept. Of particular interest for the discussion here is linguistic globalization – that is, the ways in which the forces of globalization are influenced by issues related to language, and the ways in which language is affected by the forces of globalization. Linguistic globalization can be characterized as the ways in which language practices are tied up with the social changes which occur as a result of the technologies which have brought about a collapse in traditional orientations to time and space. There are a range of different domains in which social changes can occur, from economics to travel to labour to culture. In each of these domains, new social structures develop to allow for the rapid flow of information, finance and people across the globe; and these social structures are both enabled by, and have an effect upon, the use of language. In different contexts, the products of globalization are likely to vary greatly, so in talking of the concept in general terms it is worth thinking of it primarily as a complex of processes rather than the products that result from these processes. An initial premise about linguistic globalization is that the social determines the representational. That is to say, language use and linguistic forms are a result, and therefore reflective, of changes occurring in society. As studies in language variation show, language use within communities develops in such a way that broad systematic sociolinguistic patterns emerge which come to be identified with the communities which use them. There is, then, both a structural and ideological aspect to sociolinguistic variation, and changes in the dynamics in society will affect both these aspects. A prime example of this is the status of the nation state and national languages today. One of the effects of globalization has been to enable communities to develop and maintain themselves with great ease across national borders, and thus the privileged position of the nation state in cultural identity politics is not as clear-cut as it once was. The English language is particularly implicated in these shifts in social organization. Its spread around the globe means that it can act both as an international lingua franca enabling transnational communication, but also as a marker of cultural identity for national or regional communities. It is at once the symbolic face of globalization – a language which has spread because of globalizing technologies and recent geopolitical history; a language which is promoted as a way of taking advantage of the economic possibilities of globalization – but it is also a language which exhibits far greater variety and diversity precisely because of its uptake around

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the globe; its prevalence is not accompanied by a static and singular standard, but is manifest in its multiplicity. An example of some of the ways in which processes of globalization produce a use of language which is a product both of local cultural meanings and influences from a broader transnational or global culture can be seen in Figure 0.1. This is a T-shirt design that was produced and sold in Japan in June 2010 when Naoto Kan replaced Yukio Hatoyama as leader of the Democratic Party of Japan and thus as Prime Minister. A first, straightforward point of note is that the T-shirt is emblazoned with a slogan which is written in English, but that is likely aimed specifically at a domestic Japanese population. It is, in other words, a product of the global spread of English, and an example of the language being used not for lingua franca purposes but as part of a localized semiotic repertoire. The slogan includes a bilingual pun exploiting the homophonic possibilities of the new Prime Minister’s family name ( is transliterated into the Roman alphabet as ‘Kan’), and the intertextual associations this sets up with a campaign slogan from the 2008 US elections (the ubiquitous chant of ‘Yes we can’). Although a seemingly simple piece of word play, this pun does in fact exploit complex linguistic and cultural associations: its interpretation relies on cultural knowledge which is both specifically local to Japan (Kan’s succession to the Japanese premiership), and to events which received extensive international coverage and thus could qualify as a sort of ‘global’ culture (Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign). The use of English in this context is at once a reflection of the original slogan, an index of the ‘international’ nature of the intertextual cultural reference (in so far as English often operates as a symbol of internationalism in Japan), and also, of course, the linguistic form which makes possible the word play. What is of further note is that the producers of the T-shirt would appear to assume in their target market a level of proficiency that allows for an appreciation both of the cultural references and of the English language pun which exploits these references. In other words, they assume in their target market a certain level of both English and global cultural literacy. An interpretation of the three-word English phrase without this rich contextual knowledge would be close to meaningless, and thus a purely linguistic analysis of the utterance could not capture any of the references or allusions which transform what is a simple phrase of rhetorical assertion into something that has specific cultural meaning. An example of this sort, therefore, indicates ways in which linguistic globalization results not merely in the adoption of a particular language as a means of international communication, nor solely in the development of new

Philip Seargeant 9

Figure 0.1 ‘Yes We Kan’ slogan T-shirt

varieties of a language through contact with other languages, but also in the adoption, appropriation and recasting of English language forms for use in semiotic practices which draw together a mixture of local and global resources in the construction of context-specific meanings. In conclusion, therefore, and as was noted above, the processes which are referred to under the term ‘globalization’ do not result in uniform situations the world over, and for this reason dedicated studies of individual contexts and communities are vitally important. Processes of linguistic globalization and English language contact in Japan result in issues, scenarios and linguistic patterns which are unique to the Japanese situation, yet at the same time share a similar architecture and pose similar challenges to the influence of English elsewhere across the globe. And it is this blend of specificity and generality which the studies in this book address in their analysis of the Japanese context.

The structure of the book The book consists of nine differently authored chapters arranged in two parts: ‘English in the Education System’ and ‘English in Society and

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Culture’. The section on ‘English in the Education System’ focuses on the relationship between the English language and educational policy and practice. Chapters look at the positioning of English within the curriculum, debates over language pedagogy and different educational strategies, and the attitudes and expectations of students and education professionals who have an investment in the language. A key focus for many of these chapters is language education policy and its relationship to questions of national and cultural identity, of international relations, and of the tension between global and local concerns in early twenty-first-century society. As was seen in the brief overview of the history of English in Japan, the majority of key incidents that have helped shape the relationship of Japanese society and English are related to education policy, and thus the education system has provided the arena in which many of the major debates about the language have been played out. The second section of the book, ‘English in Society and Culture’, then examines the uses and meanings English has in popular culture and the public sphere (especially the ‘linguistic landscape’), the way culture constructs particular concepts of English and draws associations between the language and other cultural factors, and the relationship the language has to cultural and ethnic identity. The division between the two sections is not entirely clear-cut, however, and educational themes persist in Part II, just as social and cultural issues have already been touched upon in Part I. While I do not wish to prejudice the chapters which follow this introduction, the overall picture that emerges is of a society which still maintains an ambivalent attitude to the English language, but one in which the language operates as an important touchstone for a range of modern social, cultural and political issues. A number of the chapters draw out a dichotomous picture of English language related issues. Yamagami and Tollefson (Chapter 1), for example, contrast different types of globalization existing within the public discourse – a concept of ‘globalization-as-opportunity’ and of ‘globalization-as-threat’ – and their research suggests that these two opposing views coexist. Both Matsuda (Chapter 2) and Kubota (Chapter 5) illustrate ways in which popular discourses of English as an international language can be in conflict with the sociolinguistic realities of the role that English, and other foreign languages, play within society. In part this is doubtless a result of the broad conceptual area which ‘globalization’ occupies. As a word with zeitgeist credentials it is used extensively, and often without great discrimination. On the other hand, the changes that are

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occurring in this society bring with them a mixture of anticipation and anxiety, and, as illustrated in the chapters by Stewart and Miyahara (Chapter 3) and Breckenridge and Erling (Chapter 4), this is reflected in people’s attitudes and in general discourse. As Moody and Matsumoto (Chapter 8) show, however, such discourses are not confined to the education sector and debates about appropriate pedagogy, but are produced and reproduced in mainstream popular culture as well. And, as Kamada discusses in her investigation of the attitudes towards English of mixedethnic children (Chapter 7), the relationship between language, culture and identity is always a complex one which rests on a mixture of both personal and sociopolitical history. The issue of the future of English in Japan is one that is also linked to the somewhat ambivalent role the language plays within society. Yano (Chapter 6) suggests that, while it appears extremely unlikely that anything that would qualify as a ‘Japanese English’ will emerge – at least in the present circumstances of the education system and general Japanese attitude to the language – English continues to have a great influence on Japanese culture and on the Japanese language. In one respect, therefore, the imprint of English on Japanese society and culture is already considerable, even if it is the case that a Japanese English will not emerge along the lines of an Indian or Singaporean English. As is seen in much of the work contained in the book, the importance of English in the world today is not restricted to its role as an international lingua franca, or the emergence of institutionalized varieties, but in the debates it initiates, the aspirations it acts as a vehicle for, and the resources it provides for negotiating one’s cultural identity in the age of globalization.

References Bolton, K. (2006) ‘World Englishes today’ in B. B. Kachru, Y. Kachru and C. L. Nelson (eds) The handbook of world Englishes (Oxford: Blackwell). Hoshiyama, S. (1978) ‘A general survey of TEFL in postwar Japan’ in I. Koike (ed.) The teaching of English in Japan (Tokyo: Eichosha). Ike, M. (1995) ‘A historical review of English in Japan (1600–1880)’, World Englishes, 14, 3–11. Kachru, B. B. (1992) ‘Teaching world Englishes’ in Braj B. Kachru (ed.) The other tongue: English across cultures, 2nd edn (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press). Koike, I., and Tanaka, H. (1995) ‘English in foreign language education policy in Japan: toward the twenty-first century’, World Englishes, 14, 13–25.

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McVeigh, B. (2002) Japanese higher education as myth (New York: M. E. Sharpe). Omura, K. (1978) ‘From the Phaeton Incident up to the Pacific War’ in I. Koike (ed.) The teaching of English in Japan (Tokyo: Eichosha). Seargeant, P. (2009) The idea of English in Japan: ideology and the evolution of a global language (Bristol: Multilingual Matters). Swale, A. (2000) The political thought of Mori Arinori: a study in Meiji conservatism (Richmond: Curzon Press).

Part I English in the Education System

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1 Elite Discourses of Globalization in Japan: the Role of English Mai Yamagami and James W. Tollefson

This chapter focuses on the social position of English in Japan. Specifically, we examine the representation of globalization, particular languages, and users of languages in specific forms of public discourse, and we explore the role that these discursive representations play in English-promotion policies. Thus we examine the development and dissemination of assumptions, images and beliefs about English, Japanese and other languages, as well as their links with important public policy issues.

The spread of English in Japan Perhaps the most important development concerning English in Japan in the past 20 years is the gradual spread of English teaching and the use of English as a medium of instruction in schools – both public and private – throughout the educational system. Although Japan has no colonial heritage involving English, nor is the Japanese language inadequate for science, technology and business, state support for English teaching and for English-medium education has intensified since the 1990s. Accordingly, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) has adopted a series of policies applicable to elementary, secondary and tertiary education, and worked to implement these policies through its regulation of the school system and through a public relations campaign to build support for its policies and programmes (Hashimoto, 2007). As in many countries around the world, in Japan a common rationale for this development is that English is the most important international language of science, technology and economic competitiveness, and therefore English language ability is essential for individual participation 15

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in these areas of ‘globalized’ human activity and for the economic wellbeing of the society. In this sense, the discourse of English promotion in Japan resembles that of many other countries, where English is viewed as essential for participation in the global economy (Crystal, 1997). Yet a closer look at English promotion in Japan reveals a rather more complicated relationship between language and globalization. First, the promotion of English is often linked directly with reinvigorated programmes supporting the national language (Japanese). For example, in the MEXT document ‘Developing a Strategic Plan to Cultivate “Japanese with English Abilities”’ (MEXT, 2002), the promotion of English is linked with improvements in Japanese language education: ‘[T]he English-speaking abilities of a large percentage of the population are inadequate . . . However, it is not possible to state that Japanese people have sufficient ability to express their opinions on a firm grasp of their own language’ (Hashimoto, 2009, p. 28). That is, the complaint that Japanese citizens generally do not speak English well is articulated alongside the less common view that Japanese also do not speak Japanese well. As we will see, MEXT made this rather odd suggestion that Japanese citizens speak neither English nor Japanese adequately as part of a discursive programme that promotes English within strict social limits as well as a reinvigorated programme of Japanese national cultural identity. As in many countries, such as Singapore and South Korea, government documents in Japan generally represent learning English (and technical skills) as the key to reaping the benefits of globalization, but in Japan globalization is also often represented in government documents as a threat to the country’s unity, its values and its security. Thus the promotion of English in Japan is mediated by official uncertainty and hesitation about globalization itself. Indeed, government policies and the wider public debate offer competing representations of globalization: as a challenge with great opportunity and as a profound threat to Japan’s future. Central to these ambivalent discourses of globalization is that language policies in Japan are discursively linked with debates about immigration policies (as well as the ageing of the Japanese citizenry and other important public policy issues). Like the United States, the United Kingdom and much of Europe, public discourse about immigration in Japan often includes dramatic and disturbing representations of immigrants, and language policies are often debated in conjunction with these representations. Accordingly, analysis of English promotion in Japan reveals tensions in the discourse of language and globalization. Two competing

Mai Yamagami and James W. Tollefson 17

representations of globalization can be identified: globalization as opportunity, and globalization as threat. While English is represented as an essential skill bringing significant economic benefits, it is also linked discursively with processes such as immigration that are represented as threats to the national culture and national security. These multiple representations of globalization are often interwoven, thereby presenting complex and contradictory public discourses of language. In this chapter, we examine two specific forms of public discourse: (1) selected speeches and testimony in the Japanese Diet (parliament); and (2) publicity materials for tertiary educational institutions using English as a medium of instruction. Within these important texts, language and language policy are implicated in political and ideological debates about globalization, national security and Japanese national identity.

Methodology: elite discourse, social representation and legitimization Our analysis of these texts falls within the general framework of critical discourse analysis (CDA). The Diet database offers an important form of political discourse, which entails symbolic struggle among agents seeking to form and transform the society’s vision of the social world (Bourdieu, 1991). Language plays a central role in this struggle, because it is through discourse that agents influence other people’s view of the social world in which they live. Chilton (2004) argues that ‘the use of language in political discourse can be seen as a form of competition among political actors wishing to promote, to have accepted, their own particular “world”’ (p. 50). Analysis of speeches in the Japanese Diet can reveal the visions of the social world that political discourse conveys, as well as the social agendas that are linked with these articulated visions of society. A second important form of public discourse is advertising, which (like political discourse) also may seek to shape the audience’s social relations, values, beliefs and attitudes. We examine here a particular form of advertising: university websites in Japan promoting programmes in which English is used as a medium of instruction. We are especially interested in the representation of the link between English and globalization implicit in these texts. Our framework for analysing these forms of public discourse draws partly on van Dijk’s interdisciplinary framework that integrates the social and the cognitive, an approach that emphasizes the relationship between individual and social (or collective) cognition. This approach to CDA explores the relationship between individual memory and

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societal ‘knowledge’ about the world, particularly involving class, race and gender. Social cognition includes shared representations and strategies to utilize the representations in various social tasks, such as interpretation and categorization (van Dijk, 1993a, b, 1990). Social cognition forms what people must know ‘in order to function as competent members of a group or culture’ (van Dijk, 1993b, p. 37). Social representations, such as those of ‘English’ and ‘globalization’, are related to each other and may be organized in complex and hierarchical relationships. In contrast, individual knowledge, opinions and representations of personal experiences are stored in personal (or episodic) memory. What is important is the relationship between individual and social representations: social representations influence the formation of specific representations stored in personal memory. Individuals understand an event (e.g. witnessing a mother and a child speaking Chinese while walking in a park in Tokyo) according to the social ‘knowledge’ they have (e.g. ‘Chinese do not assimilate to Japanese culture’). Social representations are acquired and spread through society through many forms of discourse, including peer talk, parent–child interaction and verbal interaction in schools. The role of social elites is especially important. Social elites are ‘groups in society that have special power resources [such as] property, income, decision control, knowledge, expertise, position, rank, as well as social and ideological resources such as status, prestige, fame, influence, respect, and similar resources ascribed to them by groups, institutions, or society at large’ (van Dijk, 1993b, p. 44). While elites can directly influence the actions of other people (for example, by making important political decisions), they also have ‘special symbolic resources’ in the sense that they have ‘significant control over the means of production of public opinion’ (1993b, p. 44). Forms of elite discourse vary considerably: formal political debates, newspaper editorials, public speeches and press releases are a few examples of the enormous range of texts. We examine here speeches in the Japanese Diet and university websites promoting programmes using English as a medium of instruction, both of which are important texts for understanding the social representation of language in Japan. Political discourse, as a type of elite discourse, plays a particularly influential role in the (re)production of social representations, which are a major factor in forming ideological systems (sometimes termed ‘public opinion’ [Blommaert, 2005]). Political leaders appear frequently in the mass media, where they routinely present and define issues for others to consider and discuss. Although political leaders often claim that they merely articulate issues that are the concerns of average people


(and indeed the relationship between political and non-elite discourses may be reciprocal to some extent), the relationship between elites and the public is nonetheless quite asymmetrical in power. What influential political actors say has a powerful influence in shaping social agendas. Thus it is important to pay special attention to political discourse, if we wish to understand representations of linguistic groups and languages.1 Similarly, advertising – particularly forms of advertising aimed at an elite audience such as university students and their families – implicitly articulates social representations. For this reason, university websites promoting university programmes offer a rich source of data on social representation. Moreover, because universities are institutions that have social prestige, their promotional materials are forms of elite discourse. Unlike some commercial advertising, which may or may not have a long-term impact on the world view of the public, promotional materials of universities are linked to national agendas concerning education, employment and the economy, among others. Although the primary goal of these materials is to “sell” educational programmes, the social prestige of universities lends authority to the content of the materials, making them also a part of larger public discourses of language, globalization and national cultural identity. Political discourse: legitimization and representation Given the significant power of political discourse to form and transform social cognition – in other words, the way we understand the world – it is important to examine how political discourse works. Two central concepts are legitimization and delegitimization. Chilton (2004), who views politics as primarily a linguistic activity, argues that political actors often cannot act by physical force alone, and therefore in order to gain and exercise power, they must provide rationales for being obeyed. Such rationales often include visions of a national culture that political actors articulate. As Hall (1996) points out: ‘A national culture is a discourse – a way of constructing meaning which influences and organizes both our actions and our conceptions of ourselves’ (p. 613). Such discourses ‘have to be communicated linguistically, whether by overt statement or by implication’ (Chilton, 2004, p. 46). The process of doing so may be termed ‘legitimization’, which is a crucial function of political discourse. ‘Delegitimization’, on the other hand, is the counterpart of legitimization, involving negative representation of others (such as political opponents, ‘foreigners’ and other political actors), its techniques including ‘the use of ideas of difference and boundaries, and speech acts of blaming, accusing, insulting, etc.’ (p. 46). Central to political discourse,

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therefore, is the process of constructing and sustaining various identities: ‘National cultures construct identities by producing meanings about “the nation” with which [members] can identify; these are contained in the stories which are told about it, memories which connect its present with its past, images which are constructed of it’ (Hall, 1996, p. 613). Legitimization and delegitimization, therefore, are closely connected with representation. As Chilton (2004) points out, ‘delegitimization can manifest itself in acts of negative other-[re]presentation’, while legitimization may involve ‘positive self-[re]presentation’ (p. 47). Our analysis of Diet discourse and university websites examines legitimization and delegitimization by focusing on the representation of languages and their speakers. The discourse of language and globalization in other countries In many contexts, the spread and use of English is linked with a history of colonialism. In the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong, for example, British and American colonialism partly explains the ongoing official status of English; when combined with more recent beliefs about the economic value of English in globalization, the pressure for learning and using English can be formidable, with policymakers having little choice but to promote English in education.2 Although a colonial heritage and beliefs about the instrumental value of English are common rationales for the use of English in many settings, it is important also to acknowledge important differences in the discourse of language in different countries. For example, Malaysia, which adopted Bahasa Malaysia as the medium of instruction shortly after independence in 1957, more recently has shifted back to English (Gill, 2004). Yet the nationalist discourse of Bahasa Malaysia promotion policies remains politically influential, and so government officials have promoted English within this nationalist discourse: ‘Bahasa Malaysia has been given pride of place as the national language. The time has come to give English significant priority. It will be in the national interest to do so. In fact, the national interest demands it’ (Singh, 1993, cited in Gill, 2004, p. 144). Indeed, former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed, a fervent advocate of Bahasa Malaysia as a symbol of nationalism, has advocated the learning and use of English as an act of Malay nationalism: ‘True nationalism means doing everything possible for the country, even if it means learning the English language’ (Mahathir Mohamed, The Sun, 1999, cited in Gill, 2002). In Singapore, a similar rationale for English promotion policies is that English will help the country become a leader in the global


economy, able to successfully compete economically and ensure a continued rise in the standard of living (Pakir, 2004). In South Korea, English is promoted within a discourse of globalization and economic competition; English is often represented as one of the two key ‘global skills’ (along with technology) that individuals and countries must develop (Tsui and Tollefson, 2007). Yet English promotion policies are not solely about economic competitiveness. They are also about national values, aspirations and cultures. In Singapore, English is delinked from ethno-nationalist identities, which are carried instead by Tamil, Chinese and Malay, as well as ‘Singlish’ and other language varieties. In South Korea, government-approved English language textbooks do not focus on life in the US or UK, but instead depict positive images of Korean culture, society and identity. That is, in South Korea, English teaching is used for a nationalist agenda (Yim, 2007). In Pakistan, Rahman (2007) examines the role of English in democratic political movements, as well as in global communication networks that support Islamic fundamentalism. English is implicated, in other words, with competing political movements and values. In Bangladesh, English is linked with a class system in which a tiny urban upper class maintains its privileged position in part through its monopoly on access to English and to schools using English as a medium of instruction. With the most desirable educational and employment opportunities requiring English, the discursive representation of English as the language of opportunity in Bangladesh is central to an elite discourse that ignores the carefully rationed access to English that is fundamental to social inequality in the country (Hossain and Tollefson, 2007). Thus, although ‘global English’ is rationalized in many countries within a broad discourse of globalization, there is important variation in the representations of globalization, English, other languages, and different ethnolinguistic and ethnonational groups. Although most of the scholarly work on language policy in Japan focuses on the programmes outlined in policy statements, a few studies have examined the discourses of language implicit in policy documents and public discussion of policy (Hashimoto, 2000; Akisada et al., 1997; Katsuno, 1991). Most importantly, Hashimoto (2000, 2007, 2009) examines the distinction between ‘globalization’ and ‘internationalization’ in government policy discourse. She points out that the term ‘globalization’ (gurobaruka, ) is rarely used in MEXT policy documents. Instead, ‘internationalization’ (kokusaika, ) is the preferred term, though more recently there seems to be a shift towards ‘globalization’, especially in non-governmental discourse. The government’s

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commitment to internationalization conveys what Hashimoto describes as the ‘Japanisation’ of Japanese learners of English, ‘in reality only a different form of promotion’ of Japanese identity, designed to resist the formation of an integrated ‘global’ culture (2000, p. 49). The process of ‘internationalization’ ‘can be interpreted as one of deconstructing English’ so that Japan can continue to be ‘successful in maintaining cultural independence by removing English, the most powerful language in the world, from the core identity of Japan without excluding the English language from Japanese society’ (p. 49). It is within this context that the ‘failure’ of English education in Japan can be understood: although English is introduced in elementary schools, no serious effort to teach elementary students to speak English well has been undertaken, and explicit learning goals for elementary English education have yet to be articulated. Thus, despite the attention to English in government educational policy, it remains questionable whether widespread English language learning is a serious goal. To many in Japan, more important is the continued development of Japanese language abilities among elementary school students. We have more to say about this issue later in this chapter.

Two representations of globalization With this background, we examine two visions of globalization in Japan: globalization-as-opportunity and globalization-as-threat. Then we explore the potential for individual and national benefits from the spread of English in Japan. This analysis reveals that learning English in Japan offers only limited economic value for a relatively small elite, in contrast to other contexts (e.g. the Philippines and India) in which more broadly based advantages of English are possible. Globalization-as-opportunity The discourse of globalization-as-opportunity is linked with English in a wide range of texts in Japan, including advertising for English language schools, popular culture such as video, film and music, and international relations. We focus here on a specific form of elite discourse: online university promotional materials, which almost exclusively use a discourse of globalization-as-opportunity. In the past ten years, universities throughout Japan have been quite aggressive in forming and promoting new programmes using English as a medium of instruction. These programmes may be conducted in English only, or in both English and Japanese. In both models, the


use of English is a central feature in advertising campaigns for the programmes. The major reason for the expansion of such programmes is that university officials believe they will attract students, which is crucial for institutional survival, due to the intense competition for students created by the rapidly declining rate of university enrolment in Japan. With one of the lowest birth rates in the world, Japan’s current population (approximately 126 million) is rapidly ageing. The current birth rate (approximately 1.28 children per woman, expected to fall to 1.16 by 2020) is not sufficient to maintain a stable population. With the current birth rate and with the current low level of immigration, the Japan Ageing Research Centre (2006) estimates that the population will be approximately 100 million in 2040 and only 88 million in 2050. As a result of this rapid decline in the population, the number of high school students applying to universities is also in rapid decline. In response, universities have built new dormitories, lowered admission standards, delayed tuition increases, cut the cost of application, and permitted greater flexibility in declaring majors and meeting programme requirements. Perhaps the most visible effort has been the rapid growth of innovative programmes to attract students; among the most common of these new programmes are those using English as a medium of instruction. Our analysis of the promotional campaigns for these programmes reveals that they routinely feature a discourse of globalization-asopportunity. For example, Tama University’s Faculty of Global Studies refers to global changes in society in its online publicity, and emphasizes the value of its English-medium educational programme for preparing students for these changes. The university draws attention not only to English-medium classes, but to the employment of foreign faculty and to the use of English in offices, announcements and everyday administration: Today’s world demands people who think clearly, seek adequate information, communicate effectively and adapt to change . . . The students [in the Faculty] will be those interested in the common cultural, social and economic connections and interrelationships that exist among the various peoples of the world . . . On our new campus, where the Faculty of Global Studies will be located, not only the classes but all announcements and paperwork will be in English . . . more than 60% [of the Faculty] will be non-Japanese native speakers [of English]. All [non-teaching] staff members will be bilingual. (Tama University, 2006)

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The Tama University materials also highlight employment opportunities for its graduates by claiming to prepare students for leadership roles in ‘global enterprises, international NGOs, or the Department of Foreign Affairs’. Sophia University’s well-known Faculty of Liberal Arts, which uses English as a medium of instruction, places its programme within the context of the globalization of the problems facing humanity (‘the challenges of our globalizing society and economy’) (Sophia University, 2006). The goal of the Faculty of Liberal Arts is to ‘prepare students to learn how to take appropriate action on the global stage when confronted with issues of the environment, regional conflicts, refugees, etc.’ Overall, the promotional materials for the programme present a dramatic vision of a globalized world, with the Faculty of Liberal Arts preparing students for an active role in it. Particularly important is a liberal education, rather than rigid specialization, which may soon be outdated: Universities in Japan, like those around the world, are in the midst of major reforms to meet the challenges of our globalizing society and economy. As a result of changes which have been brought about by rapid technological innovation, the information technology revolution, and the expansion of the global trading system, we face a future in which individuals are likely to experience several careers during their working years. For many those careers will involve working for international companies or companies with international business dealings, where postings away from the home country and interaction with colleagues of different nationalities will be daily occurrences. The university must prepare its students to live in this globalized world. (Sophia University, 2006) The Sophia University material is particularly interesting because it includes an implicit definition of globalization: ‘rapid technological innovation, the information technology revolution, and the expansion of the global trading system’. Similarly, the material explicitly lists the major effects of globalization on today’s students: they will work for international companies, they will travel and work outside of Japan, and they will interact with individuals who are not Japanese. As globalization advances, these changes are seen as irreversible: ‘The university must prepare its students’ for these fundamental social changes. At the large, well-known Waseda University, online promotional materials state that the main goal of the liberal arts programme is to


prepare ‘global leaders in the 21st century’ (Disseminating liberal arts education in Japan, 2006). At Waseda, classes in the liberal arts programme are in English and about a third of the students are not Japanese (hence expanding the concept of ‘globalization’ to include the composition of the student body). Graduates of the Waseda programme are prepared to help solve ‘worldwide problems’, implying that their careers will be more international than regular university graduates. Similarly, at Akita International University in 2004, a liberal arts programme was established that focuses on ‘global studies and global business’ (Disseminating liberal arts education in Japan, 2006). But ‘global’ programmes are not solely identified with liberal studies. The Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, a postgraduate institution focusing on interdisciplinary research in the natural sciences, also emphasizes the importance of publishing scientific research in international English-medium journals (OIST Promotion Corporation, 2005). Promotional materials for the institute highlight the use of English among researchers and in everyday interaction at the institute. At Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, the programme is promoted as bilingual, although English-speaking students may enter without Japanese language ability. The goal of Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University is ‘to promote international diversity and to develop leading standards of education’. The university particularly emphasizes the value of its linguistically diverse students: ‘Imagine yourself a part of one of the most culturally diverse student bodies in Asia, where you are challenged to reconsider your own cultural values on a daily basis. Imagine studying under inspirational, global-minded professors who push you to succeed at every opportunity’ (Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, 2009). The university has received special MEXT funding under the government’s Global Human Resources Development Project, to train university graduates to work in international institutions. The details of such English-medium programmes differ, with some offered only in English and others bilingually, and with some employing primarily Japanese faculty and others employing non-Japanese from abroad, but the discourse of globalization in the promotion of these programmes is remarkably similar. The programmes are described as ‘global’, ‘broad’, ‘innovative’, ‘flexible’ and ‘multicultural’, in contrast to traditional Japanese-medium education at other institutions, which is implicitly represented as narrow, rigid and isolating. Such discourse clearly represents globalization in educational contexts as a positive force, offering opportunity for creative, forward-thinking individuals. While challenges are mentioned, such as adjusting to life outside Japan,

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they are depicted as fascinating opportunities for the students fortunate enough to participate in these programmes. The connection between English and globalization-as-opportunity discourse is widely viewed as so commonsensical that it does not require justification. Moreover, this connection has long been promoted by the Japanese government in its English promotion policies. For example, its ‘Action Plan to Cultivate “Japanese with English Abilities”’ includes the following: ‘Globalization extends to various activities of individuals as well as to the business world. Each individual has increasing opportunities to come in contact with the global market and services, and participate in international activities. It has become possible for anyone to become active on a world level’ (MEXT, 2003). To gain access to the ‘world level’, MEXT specifies the goal for English education at tertiary level as follows: ‘On graduating from university, graduates can use English in their work’ (MEXT, 2003). More recently, promotion of English-medium tertiary education by the government has added another element: offering English-medium programmes to attract more students from abroad. For example, in a speech before the Diet on 28 January 2008, Prime Minister Fukuda discussed this option: One of the issues is whether it is really necessary to conduct everything in Japanese. When it comes to the very best students, . . . there is a world-wide competition for attracting them. Top quality students are not in abundance, so countries in Europe, America, Asia, and Japan are competing to get [those students] as a scarce resource. Since this is the case, it is said that, in order to get them, [we] have to think about [making it] possible to obtain a degree all in English, depending on the circumstances. Moreover, the discourse of globalization-as-opportunity that places English at the centre is not limited to education. For example, ‘international broadcasting’ means broadcasting in English, along with greater media visibility in other countries and competition with other channels in Asia. Globalization-as-threat The equation of English with positive representations of globalization, long promoted by the government, is not the only discourse of language and globalization. Globalization has changed Japan’s social landscape and created serious social and political debate. Rather than


English assuming a greater role in the society, opening up Japan has increased linguistic, ethnic and cultural diversity, where English is not necessarily a viable tool of communication. For example, the government has promoted ‘Inbound Tourism’ as part of economic and structural reform since 2003, with a goal of attracting 10 million foreign tourists to visit Japan by the year 2010 (Secretariat Visit Japan Campaign Headquarters, 2008). In 2007, the number of overseas tourists visiting Japan reached 5 million, an increase of almost 3 million since 2003 (Immigration Bureau, 2008). A great majority of these tourists are from East Asia, including Koreans and Chinese (from Taiwan, Hong Kong and China), accounting for more than 70 per cent of the total (Immigration Bureau, 2008). In response, government and business in Japan have made the Korean and Chinese languages more visible on the street level, such as in train stations that now display signs in Korean and Chinese as well as in Japanese and English. Increased immigration has also led many municipalities to issue civic information, such as refuse recycling instructions, in Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, Korean and other languages, in addition to Japanese and English. Even the effort to attract students from abroad by offering Englishmedium tertiary education has been complicated by globalization involving languages other than English. In 1983, then Prime Minister Nakasone called to increase foreign students to 100,000 (close to the number of foreign students in France at that time), a goal that was attained in 2003. The government is now aiming to further increase the number to 300,000 by 2020 (MEXT, 2008). Here too, however, the overwhelming majority of students come from Asian countries, with Chinese and Koreans accounting for 64.9 and 13.5 per cent respectively of registered college students in 2007 (Immigration Bureau, 2008). Although this development does not necessarily mean that Englishmedium university programmes are ineffective in attracting students from abroad, the demographic composition of students from abroad suggests that the globalization of education in the Japanese context is not simply a matter of promoting the use of English. Another aspect of language and globalization in Japan concerns the importation of labour. Particularly important is the dramatic increase in the number of immigrants of Japanese descent (‘Nikkei’) from Brazil and Peru, where their ancestors migrated to work on coffee plantations in the early twentieth century. Beginning in 1990, Japan issued special ‘Nikkei’ visas to encourage Japanese-Brazilian and Japanese-Peruvian workers to move to Japan for low-paid jobs that Japanese citizens were unwilling to fill. Since then, more than 350,000 emigrants have moved

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to Japan, with many children attending Japanese schools. Among nonJapanese in public primary and secondary schools during the 2007 school year, 40.2 per cent spoke Portuguese, 19.9 per cent Chinese, 13.7 per cent Spanish and 11.4 per cent Filipino (MEXT, 2007). This situation elicits serious discussion in the Diet. For example, in testimony in a House of Councillors’ discussion about the declining birth rate and the ageing society, Kazuaki Tezuka, professor of law at Aoyama Gakuin University, raised concerns about the language education of both Japanese and immigrants, particularly from Brazil (16 April 2008). The recession in 2008–9 put many of the workers with Nikkei visas out of jobs. In response, the government adopted a policy of encouraging them to return to their homes in South America. The policy pays workers $3000 to leave, plus $2000 for each dependant. Workers who accept the offer would not be permitted to apply for a visa to return to work in Japan at a later date, essentially requiring workers to make a decision to permanently leave Japan. In meetings with workers to discuss the policy in 2009, Mr Jiro Kawasaki, former labour minister and a senior member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party at that time, expressed his opposition to immigration: ‘We should stop letting unskilled labourers into Japan. We should make sure that even the three-K jobs [kitsui, kitanai and kiken: hard, dirty and dangerous] are paid well, and that they are filled by Japanese. I do not think that Japan should ever become a multiethnic society’ (Tabuchi, 2009). Such aspects of globalization clearly do not fit the discourse of globalization-as-opportunity linked with English. The alternative discourse of globalization-as-threat is tied to groups speaking languages other than English or Japanese. This discourse is quite complex, with Diet members linking globalization to a variety of themes and public policy issues. The central idea of the globalization-as-threat discourse is that globalization is a deep and troubling danger to fundamental aspects of the narrative of Japanese national identity, particularly the (alleged) homogeneity of Japan (shared beliefs, values and attitudes) and sense of personal safety and security. The theme of the homogeneity of Japan’s people appears in many speeches and debates in the Diet, often within a discourse of globalization as a threat. For example, in discussions in 2008 about the impact of immigration on Japanese national identity, Yoichi Masuzoe, at that time Minister of Health and Welfare, described the ‘foreign labour problems’ of Europe, particularly ‘problems about one’s identity’ linked with Turkish immigration to Germany (testimony to House of Councillors, 20 May 2008). Speakers in the Diet are often concerned about the otherness of


immigrants. For example, in January 2003, the Chair of Public Safety referred to cultural differences among immigrants: ‘There is a problem of language, and I think there is also – how can I say? – a culture that never admits confession, which makes [police] investigation harder.’ Similarly, a member of the Democratic Party of Japan, in February 2003, complained that internationalization brings to Japan new cultural values: Also, there is a problem coupled with internationalization, which cannot be dealt with by previous Japanese’s senses, like many foreigners are coming in and all. And finally, related to all these things, [there is] deterioration of rule-awareness. Problems such as deterioration of rule-awareness, for example the lack of understanding as to why it is wrong to kill, seem to be the causes [of crime]. No issue more explicitly expresses a discourse of globalization-asthreat than the concern for security and safety, which is particularly focused on the role of foreigners in crime. The concern with gaikokujin hanzai (‘foreign crime’) was particularly evident in 2002–4; more recently, somewhat less media attention is given to this issue. In Diet discourse, foreign crime is not merely a matter of crime rates or personal safety. Instead, what is at stake is a vision of Japan itself. One component of this vision is anzen-shinwa, the ‘security myth’ that is linked with Japan’s alleged homogeneity. Widespread concern is expressed by members of all the major political parties that the vision of Japan as safe and secure is collapsing. In the early 2000s, the Prime Minister, cabinet ministers, and the Chair of the National Public Safety Commission (NPSC) repeatedly expressed this concern. For example, a member of the Democratic Party of Japan argued: ‘At the moment, the myth that Japan is the safest country in the world is collapsing . . . our everyday safety is wavering, and . . . the days when [we] didn’t need to worry at all, whether at home or on the streets, is becoming a story of the past’ (2 February 2003). A leader of the New Conservative Party (Mr Kumaya) echoed this view: ‘This country, once called the safest country in the world, is now becoming the most unsafe country in the world’ (4 February 2003). Such hyperbole conveys the deep feelings of personal insecurity that have spread throughout the country since the 1990s. In Diet discussions, agreement is widespread that foreigners in Japan are the main cause of the loss of security. At times, the problem is defined as a technical one due to language differences: ‘The other day, there was an incident in my home district, in which [a police officer] was shot [by a foreign suspect] with a pistol – bang-bang – while trying

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to communicate [with the suspect]. As this case shows, if [officers] cannot speak the [foreign] language, they cannot even communicate with [the suspects]’ (19 May 2005). But more often, foreigners are represented as violent, untrustworthy, and different from Japanese: ‘Also, foreigners are entering Japan chaotically, and – I don’t know if it is because [the victims] are Japanese strangers or not – they commit hideous crimes’ (9 October 2003). Indeed, some Diet speeches are nearly incoherent in their desperate commentary on foreign crime: There are so many foreign criminals, which we could not imagine in the past. As this is the case, the problems of foreign students in Japan, of visiting foreign nationals and the like [are there] as a part of internationalisation, and really, thinking about crime and internationalisation, and again about drugs flowing in from the world and the like, challenging problems are coming more and more indeed. (1 March 2003) The representation of foreigners as the source of problems with Japan’s security leads to the discussion of measures to eliminate them. ‘Prevention at the water’s edge’ is a frequently used expression in the discussion of immigration control and combating crime.3 For example: [In response to a question about immigration control] As the committeeman just pointed out, [I] think it is obviously important to eliminate at the water’s edge the foreigners who attempt to enter our country for the purpose of committing crimes or working illegally. The Immigration Bureau is always trying hard to undertake flawless entry examinations of course, and by reinforcing cooperation with the other institutions concerned such as the National Police Agency, [we] are preparing the entry-examination list – so called ‘black list’ – and making an effort to unerringly eliminate foreigners at the water’s edge. (9 May 2003) The same wave metaphor and the effort to stop intruders at the water’s edge was also used to describe the government’s effort to stop the H1N1 (swine flu) virus from entering Japan in the spring of 2009. That is, undesirable foreigners and a potentially deadly virus were metaphorically linked through the use of identical descriptive language. In sum, in discussions of crime and security in Japan, the outcomes of globalization are all negative: ‘When we see the reality in which proceeding globalization brings conflicts between different cultures and


life styles, and also the sharp-rise of crimes by foreigners, how do we manage that?’ (4 February 2003). The Chair of the NPSC explicitly called for a rediscovery of Japanese security, and by implication, the revival of the vision of a homogeneous Japanese cultural identity: ‘Nevertheless, however various kinds of waves surge over, we, as individuals who know Japan in the good old days, need to always remember that it was not [like this] before, and, never saying never, must try to recover our hearts towards such good days once again’ (1 March 2004). In the Diet, English is indirectly linked with aspects of globalization-asthreat in discussions of the national educational curriculum. A commonly expressed concern is that the focus on English takes time away from Japanese language study and citizenship education. For example, in discussions in the MEXT committee on 31 March 2008, Liberal Democratic Party Councillor Shouji Nishida expressed concern that national unity and Japanese national identity are being undermined by a focus on English and other subjects of secondary importance. Although our analysis of Diet records focuses on the discourse of globalization-as-threat, the discourse of globalization-as-opportunity occurs as well. Many instances in which globalization is represented as an opportunity emphasize that both individuals and the nation must develop new skills (especially in technology and English) in order to meet the challenges of globalization. Doing so also requires changes in language attitudes and practices. For example, in January 2008, Prime Minister Fukuda argued that Japan must be better prepared for foreign students arriving in Japan: ‘The number of Japanese students will decrease, and so there will be space [in universities]. In order to accept foreign students, we must be prepared. We must welcome other people warmly and we must not make foreign students feel puzzled by the Japanese language’ (speech before the House Budget Committee, 28 January 2008). Indeed, the need to attract foreign university students is often the focus of Diet discourse of globalization-as-opportunity (e.g. hearings before the House of Councillors, 14 May 2008). In the following section, we explore the question of which Japanese citizens are most likely to gain economic advantage from English language ability. Opportunities for English language users With the widespread linking of English with globalization-as-opportunity, the question arises whether learners in fact gain significant employment advantages from English. A comparison of workers in Japan and other countries can be illuminating. For example, according to recent reports (Watson, 2009), approximately 34,000 Filipinos are employed

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in medical transcription jobs in the Philippines. These employees transcribe paper medical files from the United States, entering them into electronic databases for more efficient storage and use. The workers also provide immediate transcripts of medical emergency conversations for receiving doctors in hospital emergency rooms. Medical transcription is a dramatic example of the economic value of English to Filipinos with a high level of English proficiency. Medical transcription in the Philippines was a $476 million industry in 2008, and is expected to reach $1.7 billion by the beginning of 2011 (Watson, 2009). Similarly, employment in call centres in India and elsewhere is crucial not only to individuals who benefit from their English ability, but also to the nation’s economic participation in the global economy. Call centres in India currently generate approximately $2.7 billion in annual revenue, with the expectation that the industry will grow to $9 billion by 2012 (Metrics 2.0, 2009). Such growth in industries that draw on workers’ English language ability is centred in developing countries, where wages are much lower than in the United States, Europe and Japan. The median income of medical transcribers in the Philippines, for example, is approximately one-fifth the income of transcribers in the United States (Watson, 2009). Indeed, it is the wage differential that is crucial to the economic advantages that accrue to English speakers in India, the Philippines, Pakistan, Central America and other regions. With its high level of wages, Japan cannot compete with low-wage countries, and so this form of economic advantage of English is unavailable to most Japanese. Instead, the major beneficiaries of English language ability in Japan are a relatively small number of middle- and upper-middle class individuals: employees in international companies, international organizations such as the United Nations, and some non-governmental organizations, and students who attend universities outside of Japan. Thus the benefits of ‘global English’ in Japan are largely limited to a relatively small elite, in contrast to the much larger and rapidly increasing employment of English speakers in low-wage countries. Moreover, despite the promise of economic benefits for learning English, other social factors such as gender, class, and university of graduation may have greater effect on employment than English language ability (Kobayashi, 2007). This analysis of the advantages of English in Japan suggests that comparisons of English language learning in Japan with China, Taiwan, India and other relatively low-wage countries are misleading. The low median TOEFL scores in Japan compared to elsewhere in East Asia, for example, are understandable, given that few Japanese can benefit from advanced


English proficiency. Indeed, there is little reason for masses of Japanese to successfully acquire the language. Some opponents of the government’s policy of introducing English in elementary schools have argued precisely this point. Keio University Professor Yukio Otsu points out that ‘introducing English education at the primary school level won’t produce positive results, no matter how many resources we secure for it. It’s a knee-jerk reaction to push for this just because our neighbouring countries are already doing so’ (Nakanishi, 2006). Otsu also argues that supporters of English promotion policies do not really expect widespread bilingualism: ‘[W]e can foster children’s awareness of language. I believe that advocates of making English a regular class subject at the primary school level have only this as their ultimate goal . . . What often happens . . . is that [students] cannot talk beyond set phrases like “Hello. I live in Tokyo. I like apples.”’ Whereas university websites, which are aimed at an elite audience that has a realistic chance to benefit from English-medium education, link globalization with opportunities for economic advantage, Diet discourse is aimed at a different and much larger audience, not limited to elite university students, and it includes a wider range of aims and forms of discourse: politicians seeking votes, political parties seeking advantage in the next election, and demagogues exploiting and manipulating citizens’ fears and prejudices for political gain. Participants in such discourse often find it useful to emphasize the risks of globalization, which disproportionately affect (and are the concerns of) middle-class, working-class and poor Japanese.

Conclusion Scholarly analysis of language and globalization has been carried out within policy studies (Hashimoto, 2007), the changing relationship of education and work (Gee et al., 1996), national security studies (Spring, 2006) and the dominance of global capitalism (Phillipson, 1992). A particularly important insight from this growing body of literature is that political and ideological agendas often conflict with (and take precedence over) educational goals (Tsui and Tollefson, 2007). Accordingly, to fully understand the promotion of English, we must place language within the broader framework of policy, politics and ideology. Many university websites in Japan praise the spread of English language learning and English-medium education and emphasize the employment advantages for students enrolled in such programmes. By studying English, it is claimed, students gain significant competitive advantage in the global economy over students enrolled in traditional Japanese-medium programmes. Moreover, websites claim that Japan’s

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international competitiveness in the globalized economy depends on English-speaking citizens. These websites articulate a vision of globalization for elites. Indeed, Japanese with English-speaking ability and technical skills increasingly look outside Japan for employment, and there is growing concern about the ‘talent drain’ that is evident among the English-speaking elite (Matsumoto, 2009; also see Inoue, 2000). Diet discourse articulates the threats that globalization presents for Japan: violent crime, reduced personal and national security, and a sense of loss and uncertainty about the future. This vision of globalization-asthreat articulated in Diet discourse is directed at a non-elite audience; it expresses the profound sense of dread and insecurity that has pervaded Japanese society since the economic collapse in the 1990s (Hashimoto, 2007). In Chilton’s terms (2004), the university websites legitimize globalization by representing it as an opportunity for individual economic advantage, whereas Diet discourse delegitimizes selected social manifestations of globalization (immigrants, particularly Chinese, and languages other than Japanese) as well as the process of globalization itself, which brings these articulated threats to Japan’s shores. Understanding this profound ambivalence towards globalization in Japan requires a combination of policy analysis and discourse analysis. Additional empirical research is needed on the economic benefits accruing to different groups in the society, while a multi-level analysis of the discourses of globalization should focus on major agents, their social and political agendas, and their effectiveness in shaping policy and in linking language to other public policy issues. Such work has been carried out in some contexts by a few researchers (e.g. Hashimoto, 2009; Johnson, 2007), but much more research is required if we are to fully understand the role of English in elite discourses of globalization in Japan and elsewhere.

Acknowledgements The translations of speeches and testimony from the Japanese Diet transcripts were completed by Mai Yamagami and Yasuyo Soyama. The authors wish to thank Philip Seargeant, the editor of this volume, for his helpful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.

Notes 1. The social status of politicians, and the influence of their public discourse, vary significantly from one context to another and among different audiences. In some settings, such as the UK for example, political leaders may constantly be forced to respond to powerful critiques of their policies and actions

Mai Yamagami and James W. Tollefson 35 in the mass media, and thus the discourse of political leaders may have less influence over social agendas than settings such as Japan, where the views and interests of politicians and the media are relatively closely aligned. 2. For a discussion of the continued support for English as a medium of instruction in Hong Kong, see Tsui (2007); in Malaysia, see David and Govindasamy (2007). 3. The metaphor of stopping criminals and other foreigners ‘at the water’s edge’ depends on the image of Japan as a fortress island nation, capable of blocking access to the country of ‘waves’ of approaching, undesirable outsiders.

References Akisada, Y., Adachi, I., Inoue, M., Kawashima, M., Teraki, N. and Watanabe, T. (1997) Jinken no Rekishi (Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppansha). Blommaert, J. (2005) Discourse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Bourdieu, P. (1991) Language and symbolic power (Cambridge: Polity Press). Chilton, P. (2004) Analyzing political discourse: theory and practice (London: Routledge). Crystal, D. (1997) English as a global language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). David, M. K. and Govindasamy, S. (2007) ‘The construction of national identity and globalization in multilingual Malaysia’ in A. B. M. Tsui and J. W. Tollefson (eds) Language policy, culture and identity in Asian contexts (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates). Disseminating liberal arts education in Japan (2006) The ICU 17, pp. 16–17. Gill, S. K. (2002) ‘Language policy and English language standards in Malaysia: nationalism versus pragmatism’, Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 12, 95–116. Gill, S. K. (2004) ‘Medium-of-instruction policy in higher education in Malaysia: nationalism versus internationalization’ in J. W. Tollefson and A. B. M. Tsui (eds) Medium of instruction policies: which agenda? Whose agenda? (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum). Gee, J., Hull, G. and Lankshear, C. (1996) The new work order: behind the language of the new capitalism (Boulder: Westview Press). Hall, S. (1996) ‘The question of cultural identity’, in S. Hall, D. Held, D. Hubert and K. Thompson (eds) Modernity: an introduction to modern societies (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell). Hashimoto, K. (2000) ‘“Internationalisation” is “Japanisation”: Japan’s foreign language education and national identity’, Journal of Intercultural Studies, 21, 39–51. Hashimoto, K. (2007) ‘Japan’s language policy and the “Lost Decade”’, in A. B. M. Tsui and J. W. Tollefson (eds) Language policy, culture and identity in Asian contexts (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum). Hashimoto, K. (2009) ‘Cultivating “Japanese who can use English”: problems and contradictions in government policy’, Asian Studies Review, 33, 21–42. Hossain, T. and Tollefson, J. W. (2007) ‘Language policy in Bangladesh’ in A. B. M. Tsui and J. W. Tollefson (eds) Language policy, culture and identity in Asian contexts (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum).

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Immigration Bureau (2008) 2008 Immigration control (Tokyo: Immigration Bureau, Ministry of Justice, Japan). Inoue, F. (2000) ‘Kôyôgo-ka no hitsuyô keihi’, Gengo, 29, 30–7. Japan Ageing Research Centre (2006) Japanese population project. Retrieved 29 April 2009, from http://jarc.net/aging/06feb/060203JARC_Population_En.pdf Johnson, D. C. (2007) ‘The language policy within and without the School District of Philadelphia’. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. Katsuno, N. (1991) Kyouiku Kihon Housei to Kyoukasho Mondai (Kyoto: Houritsu Bunkasha). Kobayashi, Y. (2007) ‘Japanese working women and English study abroad’, World Englishes, 26, 62–71. Matsumoto, A. (2009, 30 April) ‘World’s top colleges no longer seem remote to young’, The Daily Yomiuri ( Japan), p. 18. Metrics 2.0 (2009) ‘Indian call center industry to cross $9 billion’, retrieved 29 April 2009, from http://www.metrics2.com/blog/2006/08/22/indian_call_ center_ industry_revenue_to_cross_9_bil.html MEXT (2002) ‘Developing a strategic plan to cultivate “Japanese with English abilities”’, http://www.mext.go.jp/english/news/2002/07/020901.htm, accessed 30 April 2009. MEXT (2003) ‘Regarding the establishment of an action plan to cultivate “Japanese with English abilities”’, retrieved 10 October 2005, from http://www. mext.go.jp/english/index/htm MEXT (2007) ‘Nihongo no shidou ga hitsuyou na gaikokujin jidou seito no ukeirejyoukyou tou ni kansuru chousa [Survey on the status of acceptance of foreign children who require Japanese language tuition]’, retrieved 20 May 2009 from http:www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/houdou/20/08/08073011/001/001.htm MEXT (2008) ‘“Ryuugakusei 30 man nin Keikaku” kossi no sakutei ni tsuite [On the formulation of an outline of the “300,000 Foreign Student Plan”]’ (press release), retrieved 1 June 2009 from http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/houdou/ 20/07/0808109.htm Nakanishi, S. (2006, 25 May) ‘Primary school English: an opponent responds’, The Daily Yomiuri (edition A), p. 12. OIST Promotion Corporation (2005) ‘Program description’, retrieved 20 March 2006, from www.oist.jp/doc/medium-termplan.pdf Pakir, A. (2004) ‘Medium-of-instruction policy in Singapore’ in J. W. Tollefson and A. B. M. Tsui (eds) Medium of instruction policies: which agenda? Whose agenda? (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum). Phillipson, R. (1992) Linguistic imperialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Rahman, T. (2007) ‘The role of English in Pakistan with special reference to tolerance and militancy’ in A. B. M. Tsui and J. W. Tollefson (eds) Language policy, culture and identity in Asian contexts (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum). Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (2009) ‘Just imagine’, retrieved 1 May 2009, from http://www.apu.ac.jp/home/modules/keytopics/index.php?id=205 Secretariat Visit Japan Headquarters (2008) ‘About the Visit Japan Campaign’, retrieved 5 June 2009, from http://www.visitjapan.jp/about.html Singh, K. (1993, 29 December) ‘Report on decision on using English lauded’, New Straits Times, p. 3. Sophia University (2006) ‘Message from the Dean’, retrieved 21 March 2006, from http://www.fcc.sophia.ac.jp/about/dean.html

Mai Yamagami and James W. Tollefson 37 Spring, J. (2006) Pedagogies of globalization: the rise of the educational security state (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum). Tabuchi, H. (2009, 23 April) ‘Japan pays foreign workers to go home’, The New York Times, online edition. Tama University (2006) ‘Faculty of Global Studies’, retrieved 21 March 2006, from http://www.tama.ac.jp/english/undergraduate.html Tsui, A. B. M. (2007) ‘Language policy and the social construction of identity: the case of Hong Kong’ in A. B. M. Tsui and J. W. Tollefson (eds) Language policy, culture and identity in Asian contexts (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum). Tsui, A. B. M. and Tollefson, J. W. (2007) ‘The centrality of medium-of-instruction policy in sociopolitical processes’ in A. B. M. Tsui and J. W. Tollefson (eds) Language policy, culture and identity in Asian contexts (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum). van Dijk, T. (1990) ‘Social cognition and discourse’ in G. Giles and R. P. Robinson (eds) Handbook of social psychology and language (Chichester, Sussex: Wiley). van Dijk, T. (1993a) ‘Discourse and cognition in society’ in D. Crowley and D. Mitchell (eds) Communication theory today (Oxford: Pergamon Press). van Dijk, T. (1993b) Elite discourse and racism (London: Sage). Watson, P. (2009, 27 April) ‘Asia’s key role in U.S. health system’, Los Angeles Times World, The Daily Yomiuri ( Japan), pp. 9–10. Yim, S. (2007) ‘Globalization and language policy in South Korea’ in A. B. M. Tsui and J. W. Tollefson (eds) Language policy, culture and identity in Asian contexts (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum).

2 ‘Not Everyone Can Be a Star’: Students’ and Teachers’ Beliefs about English Teaching in Japan Aya Matsuda

Introduction The discourse of English as an international language (EIL) has a strong presence in formal policies and discussion related to English teaching in Japan. For example, the press release entitled ‘Developing a strategic plan to cultivate “Japanese with English abilities”’ put forward by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in 2002 began with the following opening paragraph: With the progress of globalization in the economy and in society, it is essential that our children acquire communication skills in English, which has become a common international language, in order for living in the 21st century. This has become an extremely important issue both in terms of the future of our children and the further development of Japan as a nation. (MEXT, 2002) In 2003, Ms Atsuko Toyama, the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology at that time, also stated: English has played a central role as the common international language in linking people who have different mother tongues. For children living in the 21st century, it is essential for them to acquire communication abilities in English as a common international language. In addition, English abilities are important in terms of linking our country with the rest of the world, obtaining the world’s understanding and trust, enhancing our international presence and further developing our nation. (MEXT, 2003) 38

Aya Matsuda 39

The interest in learning and teaching EIL – which acknowledges the language’s role as an international lingua franca and aims to prepare users for the use of English for international communication – is, of course, not unique to the context of Japan; teaching EIL in general has been a focus of recent scholarly discussion in the field of English language teaching. My previous work (Matsuda, 2006), for example, critiqued certain current practices in English language teaching (ELT) which tend to privilege the US and UK, both linguistically and culturally, and argued that such ‘traditional’ approaches may not adequately prepare future EIL users who will encounter English users from other countries. McKay (2002) also argued that ‘the teaching and learning of an international language must be based on an entirely different set of assumptions than the teaching and learning of any other second or foreign language’ (p. 1), and problematized the possible ‘West-bias’ in popular methods such as communicative language teaching. One voice that is under-represented in the discussion of EIL teaching is that of teachers and students, including their perceptions and beliefs about EIL and the kind of English that should be taught. The limited literature on the topic has typically looked at their attitudes toward different varieties of English and has shown feelings of ambivalence and a general preference toward Inner Circle varieties of English over others. For instance, English teachers from both Germany (Decke-Cornill, 2003) and Switzerland (Murray, 2003) showed some openness to such ‘non-native’ varieties as Euro-English (Jenkins et al., 2001), but they also still ‘share[d] some of the doubts about standards and models of language competence to guide their teaching’ (Decke-Cornill, 2003, p. 59). Jenkins’s (2007) survey of 326 teachers from 12 countries also confirmed a preference for Inner Circle varieties over others and also suggested that there was a shared perception of a hierarchy among non-Inner Circle varieties. In the interviews she conducted, 17 participants from 9 countries all showed some ambivalence toward their own varieties of English and stated that ‘an NS [native-speaking] English accent is “good” and an NNS [non-native-speaking] “bad”’ (p. 217). Investigation of students’ attitudes collectively revealed a similarly conflicted view, in which they perceived English as an international language but regarded native speakers as the owners of the language and preferred to acquire an Inner Circle variety of English (e.g. Friedrich, 2000; Matsuda, 2003). The current study adds to this body of literature by presenting the perspective of high school English teachers and students in Japan. Rather than focusing on their attitudes and preferences for certain varieties of English, the present examination focuses on the function

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of English as an international language and the implications of this for ELT. Particularly, I focus on the areas where teachers and students showed striking discrepancies in their views. These areas include the role of English as an international lingua franca, the importance of English for Japanese high school students, the goals that students and teachers have for their English courses, and the assessments made by students and teachers of their respective contribution toward students’ learning in the classroom. By illuminating the gaps between the perceptions of teachers and students, I illustrate the complexity and heterogeneity of people’s language ideologies and explore ways to turn differences in their beliefs into teaching opportunities.

Methodology Context and participants Data presented in this chapter come from a larger study on Japanese attitudes toward English (Matsuda, 2000, 2003), which was conducted at a moderately selective, private senior high school in Tokyo. The school enrolled approximately 1200 students from grades 10 to 12, almost all of whom planned to continue their education at 2- or 4-year colleges or universities. The English department was the largest of all the departments, with 15 teachers, and its course offerings included one required course for each grade (‘General English’ for tenth and eleventh grades and ‘Reading’ for twelfth grade) and various elective courses including ‘Oral Communication’, ‘Writing’ and a preparatory course for the college entrance exam. The participants for this study included 33 students (20 female and 13 male) from the twelfth grade and 4 of their English teachers. Of the 31 students who completed the questionnaire,1 the majority (24) were 17 years old while the rest (7) were 18 years old. All of them, except for one, were born in Japan, and they all spoke Japanese as their first language. The students had been studying English for between 6 and 13 years (the average was 7.9 years), with the greatest number of students having studied it for 6 years. At the time of the study, all the students were enrolled in the required ‘English Reading’ class and 17 were taking an additional English elective class. The majority of the students (26) had been abroad, and 4 of them had lived abroad for more than a year because of their father’s business relocation. Ten students were further selected for student interviews using maximum variation sampling, which was accomplished by identifying diverse characteristics and selecting participants who represented each characteristic.

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Among the 6 English teachers who were teaching the twelfth grade students, I selected 4 who taught the 10 students who participated in the interviews. Three of them were Japanese teachers who taught ‘English Reading’ and other electives, while the fourth was an American teacher teaching ‘Oral Communication’. One of the Japanese teachers held a BA in English, two of the Japanese teachers held MAs in English linguistics and education, and the American teacher had a graduate degree in marketing. They had been teaching at the research site for between 9 and 18 years. Data collection To ensure triangulation, data were collected from several data sources using multiple data collection methods. The questionnaire, which included 2 open-ended questions, 44 Likert-scale items and several demographic questions, was used to investigate the general attitudes of the participating students toward the English language, English speakers and English learning. Ten students were interviewed for about 45–60 minutes individually or in pairs in order to get a more in-depth understanding of their views on English. In addition, I observed the participating students in their English classes (36 hours), other classes, and during breaks and outside school, and collected written documents such as handouts, exams and quizzes, a school handbook, school brochures, copies of the school newspaper and printouts of the school website. As for the teachers, I observed their classes for 3 months, and interviewed them for 60–90 minutes individually about their beliefs about English education in Japan, the role of English in the world and in Japan, English speakers and speaking cultures, and high school students’ attitudes toward English. The questionnaire and all interviews except the one with the American teacher were conducted in Japanese.

Findings The role of English as an international language While teachers’ and students’ beliefs and perceptions differed in various ways, they did agree that English has become an/the international lingua franca in today’s world. Eighty-seven per cent of the students believed that a good command of English is important for understanding foreigners and their cultures, and many of them agreed or strongly agreed that they would use English to talk to Americans (70 per cent) or people from other Asian countries (49 per cent). Students also stated that they studied English because, as it is the language with the largest

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number of speakers in the world, it would allow them to communicate with people from various parts of the world and access a wider range of information. Takeshi,2 a star on the baseball team, observed that the language had taken up a role as a lingua franca in his domain of interest, major league baseball in the US: Well, how can I say . . . For example, in baseball, even in the Major League, there aren’t too many Americans anymore. People are from different places. So, when I look at a situation like that, I think that, yeah, maybe English is becoming a common language. Mr Ukai, an English teacher with 15 years’ experience, also stated that opportunities for international communication through English are in fact increasing for students: I don’t think it [the communicative ability in English] is absolutely necessary but, well, now there are other means of communication besides speaking – like ‘chatting’ with people abroad using the Internet – so in that sense . . . the ability to communicate [in English] using such telecommunication equipment will also become necessary. However, while both groups shared the view that English is now the dominant language of international communication, how they felt about this seemed to differ. Students tended to say that having a global lingua franca is a good thing and it was not a problem that English has that role. Shinji, in the following quote, acknowledges the economic advantages of having a lingua franca: I think the best thing would be for languages not to be divided. It’s not chaotic like India. It’s better to have one language . . . why? Because, well, you can cut down on time. . . . Time used for interpretation, or something like that. So I think it’s better to have a common language. Sumi, one of the best students in English classes, also elaborated on the convenience of having a single global lingua franca: I think it would be very convenient if I could speak it [English] because it’s the language studied all over the world. Misunderstandings do sometimes occur but it’s really good in the sense that it’s possible to communicate at some level.

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A few students did comment critically on the dominance of English. As the captain of the kendo team, Hiroshi was often asked to give demonstrations in English to international visitors to the school, and he thought: When we go abroad, we speak the language of that country, right? So when foreigners come to Japan, I feel I want them to have learned at least some Japanese beforehand. However, such a critical perspective on the spread of English was quite rare among the students, who were more interested in the economic benefits and the convenience of having a common world language. Teachers, on the other hand, were quite critical of the current dominance of English. Both during the interviews and in their classes, three Japanese teachers in particular repeatedly commented on how they felt that English was over-privileged. Mr Fujita, for instance, complained in class that English speakers were privileged because their first language happened to be used as an international language: Also there’s something called English imperialism. A student came back from a year abroad yesterday and I [as a programme coordinator] wrote an e-mail to [the partner school in] Boston, and then the reply comes back right away, while I had to spend a long time drafting the message . . . I’m not sure if it’s really fair. (Observation note, 15 June 1999) In most responses to questions regarding the use of EIL, students and teachers simply stated that they believed that English had already attained that role and they accepted the status quo. However, their differing attitudes toward the current spread of English seem to have led to contrasting views on English language learning in Japan. The importance of learning English The role of EIL in today’s world seemed to have a different significance for teachers and students when it came to their opinions about the importance of learning English. While its role as an international language clearly made English an important language to learn in students’ minds, teachers did not share this view. For students, the most common reason given for why they believed English was important was that English is an international language and is crucial for understanding foreign people and cultures. When

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Hiroshi was asked what he thought of English, he answered: The question is so broad that I don’t know what to say, but whether you like it or not, in this era of internationalization, the Japanese definitely have to learn it. . . . Well, I’d say it will eventually become the standard language of the world. Students were not necessarily attracted (merely) to the symbolic value of English as an international language but rather (or also) to its practical value: it brings them more opportunity to meet people and access information that would not be available to them otherwise. Sumi, explaining why it was important for her to learn English, explained: You know, to do whatever I become interested, I might look at materials not only Japan but from abroad as well . . . I can use English to learn more about things I decide to do, like studying abroad. . . . Many books are written in English or translated into English. So if I know English, I can study what I want to do more, and because English is so spread that if I don’t know it, it’s like I’m confined to this small space. In addition to the role of English as an international lingua franca, students also mentioned the significant role it plays in gaining entrance to university and for succeeding in their future careers. A majority (55 per cent) of students disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement ‘English is not necessary in order to enter a good university’ and elaborated on this point in an open question in the questionnaire and during the interviews. As one student put it, learning English was important for them because ‘English is absolutely necessary to get into college as well as to get a job’. A female student also wrote in the questionnaire: I am a singer, and I need English in order to sing songs that are in English. Also if there’s an opportunity for me to go abroad to study singing, I’ll have a hard time if I don’t know English. Others did not know exactly what they would do in the future, but believed that English would be necessary for whatever they eventually do decide to do. Norie, one of five students who had never been outside Japan, believed that knowledge of English would broaden her job

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opportunities for the future: Aya Is it important for you two to learn English? Norie I think it’s important to actively choose to study English and then do it. Aya For what? Norie For myself. And since I don’t know what I will be doing in future . . . Kaori In a sense that it’ll give us more options. Norie Lots of different paths . . . if I know English, I think that would create some completely different paths and I can broaden those paths . . . In sum, most of the students who participated in this study agreed that learning English was important and necessary for them, though the reason for believing so varied somewhat. Teachers, on the other hand, did not seem to think English was so important. While they acknowledged that it was necessary for the university entrance exams, all four teachers agreed that not everyone needed to be able to communicate in English. Mr Miller, a native of California and the only non-Japanese teacher at the school, responded in the following way: Aya

Do you feel it’s important for students to learn English? Students in Japan to learn English? Mr Miller . . . Nope. Aya No? Why not? Mr Miller Depends on . . . not everyone can be a star. I think that’s one of fallacies of that . . . it’s assumed that everyone has to be a star. Students are going to use English at a different level, OK, if you wanna be an interpreter, yes, OK. If you’re going on a tour abroad and you might want to function in English, yes, it’s an international language and it’s useful. Also a lot of people will just use English for travelling. . . . But to say every student has to be a fluent speaker of English, I don’t think that’s true at all. Mr Fujita also gave a similar response: Aya

From your perspective, how important is it for students to learn English?

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Mr Fujita

Well, I can’t really quantify it, but . . . for example, we offer PE classes, but it’s not that we want to make all students enrolled in the class into Olympic athletes. It’s just that there are certain basic exercises and skills that may be useful in the future, well, uh, that it may be better for the future. And the same for English. We do basic things to some extent but it is impossible that every student will need English in the future.

Mr Yamada, responding to the same question, said: In terms of their life from now on . . . I actually don’t think it is that important. Internationalization . . . parents often talk about it, but . . . if it’s really necessary, they’ll relearn it, the company may pay for it as well. Or if their life or promotion depends on it [their English ability] they’ll study without anyone telling them to, just as they study all night before the exam. So, in reality . . . I think most kids will do just fine without English. While English is required for all students at the school, teachers, at least from their interview responses, did not seem to believe that these students – or certainly not all of them – needed to acquire much English. Goals of the required English course Another difference of opinion that emerged from the data was about the goal of the required English course. While students expected a focus on the ability to communicate in English, teachers focused more on the development of metalinguistic knowledge than on communicative skills. The only required English course for twelfth graders was ‘English Reading’, but its course objective was not stated anywhere in writing. There was a course catalogue, but it only detailed the goals of the elective courses because it was primarily meant to assist students with their course selection, i.e. the assumption was that required courses did not need descriptions because students had to take them anyway. And both informally and sometimes formally (e.g. in the list of offerings in the course catalogue) the course was listed as ‘English’ rather than ‘English Reading’. As a result, many students believed it was an advanced version of the ‘General English’ course they took in the two previous years, which addressed all four skills, rather than a course specifically on reading.

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For instance, when asked if the English class she was taking (‘Reading’) should be a required course or not, Tamako answered that it should be because she ‘want[s] to be able to speak English’ (interview). Similar comments from her and other students suggested that this course was perceived more as a general English course and that students expected the course to help them develop oral communication skills. Whether they recognized it as a reading class or not, students who were interviewed were all frustrated that an oral aspect was absent from the class. Takeshi, in the following quotes and on several other occasions during the interview, expressed a strong preference for learning to speak English (which he claimed was ‘easier’) than for reading: Aya

‘Reading’ is required now – do you think it should be a required or elective class? Takeshi I think an elective class. If it were elective, no one would ever take it. But everyone wants to learn to speak English, you know. So, how can I say it, Reading is fine, but an easier, more basic class might be better. Aya You mean, with a focus on speaking? Takeshi Right. Speaking is kind of better, isn’t it? And we don’t need tests. Some students did mention less practical goals for learning English in their survey responses. Sumi, for instance, stated that English broadens her perspectives: One reason is that if I can speak or read English, I can communicate in most countries in the world and read more books. That will broaden and add depth to my perspective in various areas. But even these students, when asked to elaborate during interviews, placed the acquisition of practical communication skills as the top priority. Overall, while students realized that their immediate goal was to pass the college entrance exam, which is not very communicationbased, they believed the real goal of their English courses should be about practical communication skills. This is understandable because the main reason they thought they should learn English in the first place was that it allowed them to communicate with the world. Teachers, however, tended to give more ‘philosophical’ goals when discussing their required reading class as well as other English courses.

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Mr Fujita, for instance, believed that the most important thing for his students to learn was that ability to look at things from a different perspective. Learning a foreign language, well, involves seeing different phenomena in the world through that language. So I tell my students that English is not only a tool of communication, but . . . see, for example, those exchange students [from abroad to this school] are looking at the world through the language they speak . . . so in that sense, I wish my students would notice those differences. Differences in ways of looking at things. Mr Ukai believed that knowledge about language is more important than ability to use it: Classes at our school, and other regular high schools, mainly focus on reading comprehension and hardly have a communicative component . . . I try to teach students knowledge they can remember rather than skills. Even Mr Miller, who described his courses as focusing on ‘functional English’ and ‘conversation’, did not list communication ability in English as the course objective: . . . basically, my main goal is to get students to participate in the learning process using English . . . So what I really try to do is to get them to come out of the shell, to express themselves, not only . . . well, of course in English, but like a cultural shell. Ideas expressed in these quotes were apparent in their teaching as well. In addition to going over the translation of a text and explaining grammar points, new sentence structures and vocabulary, Mr Ukai made a point of introducing a proverb or idiom related to the assigned text in almost every class, and Mr Fujita often made comments criticizing US dominance in world politics. These quotes and pedagogical practices suggest that teachers were more interested in broadening students’ perspectives in general through the acquisition of meta-knowledge about the language, while the students themselves were more concerned about acquiring communicative proficiency in English and practical benefits this would bring.

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Misinterpreting each other: students’ interests and teachers’ effectiveness Having different beliefs about what the courses should be doing, while at the same time not being aware of these differences, led both groups to be critical of the other party’s contribution to the class. Teachers felt that students were unmotivated and indifferent, while students felt their teachers were neither effective nor willing to help them learn English. Throughout my data collection period, English teachers made comments in various contexts about how students were passive and unmotivated about learning English: Seniors, the seniors I’m teaching right now, dislike English. For about two-thirds of them, just coming to class is painful. The rest of them are studying hard, but are they really interested in English? I don’t think so. I think that they study hard because English is important for getting into college. (Mr Fujita, interview) The students’ responses in the questionnaire did indeed support the teachers’ assessment to a certain extent. Their responses to the statement ‘I do not like learning English’ were almost equally spread out, and only eight students said they study hard in the English class. These results do not portray a picture of positive, enthusiastic students. I also made note of behaviours which I thought indicated the lack of interest and motivation among students from the first day: The seriousness and level of engagement seem to vary quite significantly. Even when the teacher told them to write a sentence, some students didn’t do anything, as if they have given up already. (Observation notes, 17 May 1999, Mr Yamada’s elective ‘English Writing’) However, during the interviews and in other conversations outside of classrooms, students said they were interested in learning English. Ken, who had lived in Canada for seven and a half years and in Indonesia for three, was fluent in English, but rarely participated in English classes. To my surprise, he expressed his passion for English during the interview: English . . . I like English, I want to use it more. I want to go to the US or somewhere and talk to foreigners a lot. I guess it could be in Japan, too.

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Some students are interested in English but, as I discussed in the previous section, frustrated with the classes and teachers because the oral communication skills which they think should be addressed are not addressed in class: Norie

I feel like being taught [in class]. . . . It’s not authentic. If I go abroad, it’s probably authentic, but here, everything is for exams. I’m not doing it because I like it. I do like English, and if I really like it I should be able to do lots of different things on my own, but I feel like I’ve been caught in the system. Kaori I used to really like English, up to junior high school or so. When my father was almost transferred to London, I went to a cram school – well, is it called cram school? It was a class run by a foreigner and we always played games, but we spoke only English and as I tried hard to understand what was being said I was gradually able to speak it. I really liked that, but now we’re doing so much grammar and fill-in-the-blank exercises in class and that’s painful. Aya So, the English you like and the English you learn at school are different? Kaori Well, I understand that what we learn in school probably will become useful but . . . Norie But they are different. Kaori I think they are different. What students’ comments suggested was that they were not as unmotivated as the teachers believed. They often did not appear enthusiastic in class because they did not feel their needs were being met, but the majority of them were still interested in English. What seemed to have happened was that the teachers failed to see the students’ interest and motivation because they did not realize that the students expected different things from their courses. The same ‘misunderstanding’ happened with regard to what the teachers did and how the students interpreted it. As discussed earlier, all four teachers believed that metalinguistic knowledge of English was as important as (or possibly more important than) acquisition of communicative English. Teachers did not believe students needed to be able to use English, except for those who would major in English in college or would use English in their jobs. English, however, was important for gaining international understanding and a broader perspective on the

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world, and the Japanese teachers in particular used classroom time to encourage development in these areas. Students, however, did not realize that this was the intention of their teachers and interpreted such meta-discussion as a digression and irrelevance, or a way of avoiding doing what they should be doing. In one class, Mr Yamada spent a significant amount of time comparing and contrasting various sentences that had the structure of ‘X is Y’, following one of the sentences from the textbook. Yuki reflected on the lesson during the interview by saying: I mean, [the teacher] takes a simple sentence, like There is a pen, really, There is a pen, it’s like the elementary or middle school level, right? And then he explains it for an hour, and it made no sense. None. You [the researcher] were there, too, right? Didn’t you think it was boring, too? Another student talked about Mr Fujita’s comments about linguistic imperialism in one lesson: Mr Fujita basically . . . digresses a lot. You [the researcher] saw it, too, right? If it’s part of the lesson, like different kinds of English expressions, like phrases . . . if it’s something like ‘you can also use this word this way’, then it’s fine. Then I can learn from it. But then, his digressions are real digressions. They have nothing to do with our learning. (Kaori interview) When asked if they could think of reasons why the teachers digressed, students often mentioned a lack of competence in the teachers, including in their class management skills. During the interview, Norie and Kaori stated that their teacher is ‘being overtaken by some students’ who were not interested in learning and encouraged their teachers to move away from academic topics. Yuki perceived her teacher’s going off track as a way to reclaim the students’ attention, which ‘he wouldn’t have lost in the first place if he was doing what he should be doing’. Shinji and Daisuke said their teachers ‘don’t know English’ and thus digress when they run out of important things to say. While further investigation is needed to make any definitive claims, these gaps in perception and opinion may explain the frustration students and teachers felt toward each other, which I often heard from both sides while at the research site. On one hand, students perceived that English was very important, especially given that it was one of few

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required courses for seniors, and they assumed that teachers also believed that all students should do well in the English reading class. They also had certain ideas about what kind of English they were supposed to be learning. Thus when students felt that they were not successfully learning the kind of English they were supposed to be learning or were not learning it to the extent that they should be, and when the teachers did not seem very concerned about this, the students interpreted it as the teachers not caring much about the well-being of their students or not being committed to the teaching process. On the other hand, teachers tried hard to provide the instruction they believed was most useful to the students, and became discouraged by the lack of positive responses from the students. They concluded that the students were not generally interested in English, without exploring the possibility that their own intention was not being understood.

Discussion and implications The students and teachers portrayed in this chapter more or less agreed that English is an international lingua franca today and plays a significant role in international communication. Yet their evaluation of the importance of the language for the students’ future, and of the method of learning English, as well as of the best way for English courses to serve students, clearly differed. While the perspectives presented here were drawn from a rather limited data set – 33 students and 4 teachers at one high school – they show the wide range of beliefs and expectations that one can have about the learning of EIL in today’s global society. In this section, I revisit the gaps in perception that were outlined above and examine their implications in three different contexts: classroom pedagogical practices, second language acquisition (SLA) research and world Englishes scholarship. The attitudinal gap as problematic: from the perspective of classroom practice From the perspective of classroom practices, the gap between students’ and teachers’ attitudes to EIL may be perceived as a problem. The differences in expectations and the judgements about the importance of English for the students’ future have resulted in misunderstandings, disappointments and frustration for both students and teachers. What seems to be needed here is an open, two-way process of communication between teachers and students, which would not only allow both parties to understand each other’s beliefs, expectations and assumptions

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better, but would also possibly lead to a shared understanding of the needs and goals of the curriculum. There are several ways to promote better communication between teachers and students about course expectations. At the school where the study was carried out, English teachers conducted a written survey of newly matriculated students (tenth graders) in order to understand their expectations about the English courses. One surprising finding for the teachers was the students’ interest in oral communication, but it was left to each teacher how to address it. Some teachers reassured students that at least a fifth of the class time was spent on oral communication because the 5-credit ‘General English’ course for tenth graders is technically a combination of a 4-credit general English class and a 1-credit oral English class, as these are defined by the national curriculum. Other teachers explicitly highlighted the oral component of their courses, or even slightly increased the amount of time they spend on it, in order to satisfy students. Yet other teachers reminded students that oral communication courses were available in the eleventh and twelfth grades if they should be interested in pursuing that direction. Understanding where students stand in respect of this issue allowed teachers to explain their teaching to students and in some cases even make certain changes to the class in order to incorporate their interests. Another way for teachers to clarify their goals and expectations is to explicitly communicate them to students at the beginning of the course, if not earlier. In the case of the research site, for example, the course catalogue that included the description of elective courses could include a description of the required courses as well. Students could then use the catalogue not only to select courses but also to gain an understanding of what can be expected from each course (and what is expected from them for each course). Alternatively, if appropriate for the particular context, students could be presented with a syllabus or policy statement which clearly states the course objectives. Involving students in the process of negotiating, and possibly even redefining, the direction of a course is, in fact, an empowering way to help them become responsible and autonomous learners. One example of such negotiation is to make options available when possible. Teachers could ask for students’ input toward the design of the format of some of the projects or of a section of an exam. That way, teachers can maintain the overall goal of the course while allowing some flexibility in terms of addressing what students feel they need or want to work on. And even if negotiation is not possible, simply knowing that students and teachers bring different expectations to the learning process is better than not

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knowing that there is such a gap. This way, even if they do not agree with each other about the learning process, they can at least know where the other party is coming from. The attitudinal gap as interesting: from the perspective of language teaching research One area of SLA and language teaching research that may be enriched by the insights from the study in this chapter is that of the issue of motivation and language attitudes research. When we think of motivation in a foreign language classroom, a typical scenario that comes to mind is that of a foreign language teacher who believes in the importance of learning a foreign language and tries hard to sell the idea to uninterested students who are taking the class only because it is required. There are a number of studies that have pointed out the lack of motivation among students. For instance, Dodick’s (1996) study of the attitudes and motivation of high school students learning foreign languages found that students regarded the state foreign language requirement negatively and considered their hours in classroom as unproductive ‘seat time’. Mantle-Bromley (1995) described a concerning situation where ‘the majority of students enrol in FL (foreign language) classes not because they are motivated to learn another language, but because two years of FL study are recommended or required for college entrance. Such a requirement does not provide sufficient motivation to continue language study’ (p. 373). Berwick and Ross (1989) found a similar situation in the university English classes in Japan and called it a ‘motivational wasteland’. For most students, the sole motivation in English learning was to pass the university entrance exam, and now that they have achieved the goal, students had no academic purpose or interest in learning English further. And teachers and researchers work hard to understand how students can become motivated (e.g. Sugita and Takeuchi, 2009; Dörnyei, 1994), or how to convince students and the general public of the importance of foreign language classes (e.g. Crawford-Lange, 1985). The comments of teachers and students from this study complicate the picture of student motivation in FL classrooms. In one way, as discussed earlier, students believed more strongly than teachers in the importance of learning English, which is the opposite of what may be expected in a common foreign language classroom, where students are there only to fulfil the requirement or to pass the entrance exams (although they had a powerful presence in the way students think and talk about English). And furthermore, teachers still perceived students

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as apathetic, uninterested and unmotivated because of the way students responded to what teachers tried to do in class, while students expressed an interest in engaging in different kinds of activity. This reiterates the importance of understanding the difference between motivation for an individual task versus motivation for overall goals, and shows that motivation needs to be perceived (both by teachers and researchers) as a dynamic and multifaceted phenomenon that needs to be investigated in context. The attitudinal gap as real: from the perspective of world Englishes research3 From a ‘world Englishes’ (WE) research perspective, too, the attitudinal gap between teachers and students is intriguing because it is real. That is to say, it is real in the sense that the different perspectives on the role of EIL and on the importance of English do in fact represent not only the range of feelings toward the language that are found among users, but also the multiple – and potentially contradictory – roles the English language plays in the power dynamics of languages and their users today. In other words, the attitudinal gap revealed in this research matches reports about the contradictory nature of the role of English in global society that has been documented in the WE literature. One of the contradictory forces governing English in the world today is the way English can be used both as an international lingua franca and as a local or national language. The former leads to users’ desire to maintain mutual intelligibility across different varieties of English and may even lead to an effort to create a universal standard for ‘international English’ (see Friedrich and Matsuda, 2010, for a more detailed discussion and critique of such efforts). Local use, on the other hand, often results in linguistic nativization, making each variety of English distinct. These two forces are often in conflict with each other, yet they also feed into and end up supporting each other. That is, one of the reasons for the extensive use of English in international scenarios is because it is already used as a local language in many countries; and one of the reasons why countries – particularly former British colonies – maintain English as their national language is its usefulness as an international language. In other words, although these two roles are often presented as a dichotomy, they are interdependent and the reality of English today encompasses both. Much the same can be said about the question of whether and how English empowers people. When a speaker of another language learns English, the acquisition of a new language brings them a new

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set of opportunities and resources that would not be available to them otherwise. When we look at the individual, group or even national level, it is possible to say that English empowers those who learn it by increasing the opportunities and resources they can access. However, when we look at it at a global level, a system that requires English for access to opportunity naturally privileges native English speakers and disadvantages non-native English speakers (NNES) because the latter group is required to achieve an extra step – and rather a difficult one – before gaining access to the resources. Also, among NNESs, the system creates a language divide, privileging those who have access to the resources to learn English over those who do not. It seems contradictory to say that NNESs who learn English are being both advantaged and disadvantaged by the same system, but such a contradiction is part of the reality of global English. English in today’s global world is very contradictory, and it is interesting that the teachers and students’ varying opinions reflect this contradiction. In one respect, English is a very important language to learn, as the students suggested; but at the same time, it is also true that, at least in the case of Japan, it is possible to have a perfectly successful life without being fluent in English, as the teachers stated. And while the function of an international language can bring certain benefits and a certain convenience, as the students pointed out, this role for the language should be examined critically, especially in relation to other languages and in terms of the unfairness it may create between speakers of different languages, as some of the teachers commented upon. Pulling it all together: an opportunity for critical EIL pedagogy When I revisit the attitudinal gaps between students and teachers with all these three perspectives (classroom practice; language teaching research; world English research) in mind and put them in the context of the teaching of EIL, what I see is a great possibility and opportunity to get students involved in the critical discussion of the role and power of English in today’s world. For instance, ‘the importance of English’ can be an actual topic of discussion in class. As the class engages in the discussion of the language’s global use and benefits of knowing an international lingua franca, teachers can complement the discussion by providing a critique of the potential threats English poses to other languages, cultures and people, and in this way allowing English to be situated in relation to other languages. Teachers and students can reflect on the use of English in Japan, examine the short- and long-term goals of learning English, and negotiate the objectives of the course they are

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studying. Again, teachers and students may not agree on the objectives of the course, but having a discussion at least puts teachers and students on the same page. It also provides a context for all the ‘digressions’ that take place in class, because both teachers and students have a map to locate such discussion on. Such discussion is likely to take place over time, rather than on day 1, and thus takes some patience to carry out. However, it is encouraging that the ingredients for bringing critical perspectives into the EFL classroom appear already to be in place.

Conclusion The purpose of the chapter has been to explore English teachers’ and students’ perceptions of English’s role as an international language, and what the language means to them in terms of their expectations and beliefs toward their current English classes. By focusing on four areas where their discourses of the language differed strikingly – the role of English as an international lingua franca, the importance of learning English, the goals of the required English class, and their assessment of each other’s contribution toward learning – I have illustrated how the gaps in perception, and the lack of the sort of communication that would close these gaps, may have contributed to the frustration and disappointment of both parties. I also examined the gaps from three related, but different, perspectives – classroom pedagogy, SLA research and WE research – and explored how these gaps can be made to enrich teaching, especially in terms of bringing in a critical perspective. While Japan is one of the most cited examples of an Expanding Circle country, people’s beliefs and ideologies about English in Japan are still very much underinvestigated. If the current investigation, which has a rather limited scope, has demonstrated such wide variation within students’ and teachers’ beliefs, investigations of other cohorts of the population are likely to reveal even more diversity. Any view, however rare it may be, is a legitimate and ‘real’ view – and must be part of our collective understanding of what EIL means to Japanese people; and any pedagogical or other language-related policy decisions must recognize this diversity.

Notes 1. The complete questionnaire is available from the author upon request. 2. All names are pseudonyms. 3. The term ‘world Englishes’ here refers to the paradigm first proposed by Braj Kachru, and further developed by others, which captures the dynamic

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English in Japan in the Era of Globalization nature of the worldwide spread of English and ‘argue[s] for the importance of inclusivity and pluricentricity in approaches to the linguistics of English worldwide’ (Bolton, 2006, p. 204). Thus, ‘world Englishes studies’ is not limited to the description and analysis of different varieties of English found in today’s world, but broadly includes study of the global spread of English and its linguistic, social, cultural, political and economic implications. The study of EIL uses is positioned within the field of world Englishes studies here, and not as a paradigm that competes with the world Englishes paradigm as suggested by some scholars such as Jenkins (2007).

References Berwick, R. and Ross, S. (1989) ‘Motivation after matriculation: are Japanese learners of English still alive after exam hell?’, JALT Journal, 11, 193–210. Bolton, K. (2006) ‘World Englishes today’ in B. B. Kachru, Y. Kachru and C. L. Nelson (eds) The handbook of world Englishes (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell). Crawford-Lange, L. (1985) ‘Foreign language enrollment: why are they declining? What can be done?’, NAASP Bulletin, 69, 14–21. Decke-Cornill, H. (2003) ‘“We would have to invent the language we are supposed to teach”: the issue of English as a lingua franca in language education in Germany’ in M. Byram and P. Grundy (eds) Context and culture in language teaching (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters). Dodick, D. J. (1996) ‘A study of the attitudes and motivation of high school foreign language students’, Canadian Modern Language Review, 52, 577–95. Dörnyei, Z. (1994) ‘Motivation and motivating in the foreign language classroom’, The Modern Language Journal, 78, 273–84. Friedrich, P. (2000) ‘English in Brazil: functions and attitudes’, World Englishes, 22(2), 215–23. Friedrich, P. and Matsuda, A. (2010) ‘When five words are not enough: a conceptual and terminological discussion of English as a Lingua Franca’, International Multilingual Research Journal, 44, 20–30. Jenkins, J. (2007) English as a lingua franca: attitude and identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Jenkins, J., Modiano, M. and Seidlehofer, B. (2001) ‘Euro-English’, English Today, 17, 13–19. McKay, S. (2002) Teaching English as an international language (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Mantle-Bromley, C. (1995) ‘Positive attitudes and realistic beliefs: links to proficiency’, Modern Language Journal, 79, 372–86. Matsuda, A. (2000) ‘Japanese attitudes toward English: a case study of high school students’. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Purdue University. Matsuda, A. (2003) ‘The ownership of English in Japanese secondary schools’, World Englishes, 22, 483–96. Matsuda, A. (2006) ‘Negotiating ELT assumptions in EIL classrooms’ in J. Edge (ed.) (Re)locating TESOL in an age of empire (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). MEXT (12 July 2002) ‘Developing a strategic plan to cultivate “Japanese with English Abilities”’. Available at http://www.mext.go.jp/english/ news/2002/07/020901.htm

Aya Matsuda 59 MEXT (31 March 2003) ‘Regarding the establishment of an action plan to cultivate “Japanese with English Abilities”’. Available at http://www.mext.go.jp/ english/topics/03072801.htm Murray, H. (2003) ‘Swiss English teachers and Euro-English: attitudes to a nonnative variety’, Bulletin Suisse de linguistique appliquée, 77, 147–65. Sugita, M. and Takeuchi, O. (2009) ‘What can teachers do to motivate their students? A classroom research on motivational strategy use in the Japanese EFL context’, Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching, 4, 21–35.

3 Parallel Universes: Globalization and Identity in English Language Teaching at a Japanese University Alison Stewart and Masuko Miyahara

Introduction The sociologist Anthony Giddens has written that the era of late modernity in which we live is characterized by a focus on and anxiety about identity. ‘What to do? How to act? Who to be? These are focal questions for everyone living in circumstances of late modernity – and ones which, on some level or another, all of us answer, either discursively or through day-to-day social behaviour’ (Giddens, 1991, p. 70). Our aim in this chapter is to explore this notion in the Japanese context by examining concepts of identity that are expressed by curriculum planners, teachers and students concerning the role of English language teaching in the processes of globalization at a Japanese university. As has often been commented upon (see e.g. Yamagami and Tollefson, this volume), the prevailing official rhetoric suggests that globalization should be a primary goal in many areas of life in Japan, and the field of higher education is no exception. In a recent White Paper, the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) sets forth as one of the main aims of Japanese higher education, ‘cultivating Japanese people who are educated to live in the international community’ (MEXT, 2006). This chapter draws on three key notions of identity, interpellation, positioning and performativity, to illustrate some of the complex and conflicting stances regarding the meaning of globalization and ‘living in the international community’, and to argue that the deep change that is implied by these concepts continues to be avoided in the upper echelons of Japanese higher education.

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Globalization and language education in higher education in Japan From a broad historical perspective, Japanese higher education has fluctuated in its attitude toward the outside world. Originally founded to enable rapid assimilation of Western ideas and technologies in the Meiji era (1868–1912), the higher education system subsequently turned its attention inwards and devoted its energy to filling the demand for white-collar workers, particularly as Japan came to prominence in the post-war global economy (Rohlen and LeTendre, 1996; Nakane, 1998). The role and purpose of foreign language teaching have changed accordingly. During the Meiji period, foreign specialists were invited to lecture on their areas of expertise, and the students of the elite institutions to which they came had no alternative but to learn the languages (chiefly English) in which they taught and wrote. By the beginning of the twentieth century, a conservative backlash and an accelerating militarization in Japan put a stop to the enthusiasm for foreign experts (Fujimoto-Adamson, 2006). At the same time, the teaching of foreign languages came to be characterized by a focus on translation of the written word, for the purposes of keeping abreast of technological developments, but also in order to recast for Japanese sensibilities the high culture of the leading industrialized nations in the world. Language departments at universities were staffed primarily by translators of literature, and the main activity in language classes was translating literary texts into Japanese. This emphasis on translation can still be seen throughout the education system. After the Second World War, English became a compulsory subject from junior high school in the newly remodelled education system (Beauchamp and Vardaman, 1994). Taught by Japanese who, inevitably, would have had little or no communicative contact with English, and geared toward university entrance examinations which tested knowledge of discrete grammatical points, vocabulary and translation ability, English was taught largely by means of grammar-translation, known as yakudoku (Gorsuch, 1998). From the 1990s, however, official attitudes toward language education changed. The ‘lost decade’ (Hashimoto, 2007) saw Japanese national pride dented by the end of the period of rapid economic growth and the onset of a long decline, as well as worsening performance in international rankings of academic achievement, including standardized English test scores. A special advisory commission established by Education Minister Hirofumi Nakasone warned that the preoccupation with university entrance examinations prevented children from developing communicative language

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skills in schools (Lamie, 2005). It also highlighted the fact that English was becoming more important due to the growth of the Internet and suggested that English be considered an official language in Japan. The recommendations of this commission were reiterated in a subsequent ‘Prime Minister’s commission on Japan’s goals in the twenty-first century’ which was published in 2000 (Hashimoto, 2007). The main thrust of these policies and proposals – prioritizing English in the name of globalization, the shift to more communicative language teaching reflected in school teaching and testing – has been reflected in cuts in provision of other languages at the higher education level and the creation of new courses and departments which appear to focus on communication and culture. From another angle, Japan has sought to internationalize the higher education sector by attracting more foreign students. A target of 100,000 students was set in 1983, which was met largely through the enrolment of students from neighbouring Asian countries on short-term study courses. In 2008, this target was raised to 300,000 in a policy initiative known as Global 30. The ministry’s aim was to focus attention and funds on an elite group of research universities deemed to have the capacity to compete with topranked universities worldwide. The scheme was launched in 2009 with a budget of 3.2 billion yen and an initial 13 universities were selected. However, since then no other universities have been able to meet the Ministry of Education’s stringent criteria (McNeil, 2010), and in November 2010 it was announced that the government’s Budget Review Committee had resolved to abolish and ‘restructure’ the scheme (Chronicle of Higher Education, 2010). The discourses surrounding globalization and internationalization and the reforms that have been conducted as a consequence have come under some critical scrutiny. Writing about Japanese educational policy in the late 1990s, Kubota (1999, 2002) detects an ideology of nihonjinron ( Japanese uniqueness) in government documents through their failure to acknowledge the growing multiculturalism of Japan, and for positioning the English language as the preserve of English-speaking countries, rather than as an international language or lingua franca. Fujita-Round and Maher (2008), too, write that ‘the logic of internationalization in the Japanese context might mean educating Japanese people to be Japanese, and merely equipping them with the linguistic armour to compete outside of Japan’ (2007, p. 15). Byram (2008) makes the observation that the official line regarding the necessity for communicative English in Japan is concerned with ‘globalization’ in that it is focused on economic and social interests, but not with ‘internationalization’, since it ignores the domain of private attributes of tolerance and open-mindedness.


In policy documents of other countries, most notably in Scandinavia, ‘internationalization policies spring [. . .] not from economic analysis but from analysis of the relationship of one country with others, of the ideal of mutual understanding, and of the social responsibility of rich countries toward poor countries’ (Byram, 2008, p. 29). This emphasis on globalization rather than on internationalization (as Byram conceptualizes the distinction) has been shown to impact on the opinions of people in the education system. For example, a study conducted by Yoneoka (2000) into students’ conceptions of an international person (kokusaijin) showed that ‘foreign language ability’ (particularly English) and ‘knowledge of foreign countries’ were seen as the key attributes. By comparison, students in other countries, including Germany and the United States, focused on attributes such as ‘broadmindedness’ or ‘sociability’ (Yoneoka, 2000, p. 6). What we find particularly intriguing about Yoneoka’s study is the implication that official attitudes directly influence the attitudes of individuals. Intuitively, we feel that people’s beliefs and actions are motivated by a more complex array of influences, not least, as Giddens points out, by a concern with their self-identity, how they represent themselves to, and are represented by, others. We believe that a deeper understanding can be gained by researching people’s lived experiences, with a focus on the subjective meanings and emotions that these entail (Kalaya et al., 2008). Consequently, we were interested in using a narrative approach to explore how people in higher education talk about language learning, as planners, teachers and students, and to consider the ways they represent what they do with English that relates to globalization and/or internationalization as these are defined by Byram.

Identity and narrative inquiry Our interest in identity stems from our ongoing research on English language education in Japan. We believe that sociocultural theories about identity can help us understand more about why and how people learn foreign languages, and this has led us to study learners’ changing sense of identity over time (Miyahara, forthcoming), and teachers’ self-positioning with regard to their professional and language identity (Stewart, 2005, 2006). Our theoretical interest as researchers, as well as our practical experience as teachers of English in Japanese higher education, has led us increasingly to widen our focus of inquiry from the individual learners to learners-in-context. In seeking to find out whether the official emphasis on internationalization is indeed changing identity,

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we need to look beyond the individual learner to the learning situation: the teachers, the curriculum planners, and indeed to the institution as a whole. Narrative is both the object and method of this study. In common with many social researchers, we claim that narrative is the means by which we understand social life and the part we play in it (MacIntyre, 1981; Bruner, 1991; Polkinghorne, 1988; Antaki and Widdicombe, 1998; Clandinin and Connelly, 2000; Gee, 2008). Narrative has been defined narrowly, in the sense of discrete stories which follow typical storylines (Wengraf, 2001), and more widely as a means of imposing meaning on experience. In this latter sense, narrative can be seen as part of a ‘circular teleology’ (Czarniawska, 1997), where stories are told as a way of understanding experience, and this understanding then informs future social action. In the words of the moral philosopher, Alasdair MacIntyre (1981), social life is best conceived as an ‘enacted narrative’. In narrative research, identity is seen as something that emerges out of what is said; it does not exist independently or essentially as a quality or characteristic of a person or any social group (Antaki and Widdicombe, 1998). There are three important corollaries of this idea, as follows. 1. Identity is ‘interpellated’ Identity is established by the fact that people are ‘interpellated’ or ‘hailed’ by others (Althusser, 1971), and they in turn accept (willing or grudgingly) that recognition. People (and groups of people) discursively construct or negotiate (adopt and/or contest) recognizable positions for themselves and for others, and these discursive positions have repercussions on what they do and how other people respond. This is an ideologically charged view of identity in that challenging the way one is interpellated means questioning the status quo, thus potentially undermining the authority of those who have most power in that social context. People who try to change the way others see them cannot usually do so without a struggle. 2. Identity is strategic self-positioning Identity consists of ‘fluid positionings, not fixed roles’ (van Langenhove and Harré, 1999, p. 17). Speakers can position themselves or be positioned in relation to others, for example as powerful or powerless, confident or apologetic, authoritative or tentative, and so on, and what they say will be interpreted in the light of recognized positions and will result in either action or restraint. Hall (2000) contends that this positioning is strategic or agentive. People choose to speak and act in their own best


interests (or what they perceive at the time to be their best interests), if not always materially, then at least morally. Thus, if people find themselves positioned in a way that does not suit their best interests, they can choose to accept this or leave the situation (if it is possible to find a better one), or struggle against it until others change their position. 3. Identity is performative Identities are enactments of ways of being that are recognizable to (or hailed by) others. The notion of performativity is developed particularly by Butler (1999), but is also seen in the work of social theorists, such as Elias’s (2000) notion of identity as dance, or Goffman’s (1959) metaphor of a drama (see also Czarniawska, 1997). What is particularly salient here is the point that performed identities are intended to be seen; the visibility of the display is part of the point. Goffman relates an anecdote that provides a succinct illustration: while conducting a study of the social life of Scottish crofters, he observed one farmer approaching the home of another. As he walked up to the croft, Goffman noticed that the man’s expression of preoccupation suddenly changed to an affable demeanour more in keeping with the context and the man’s purpose. The implications of this visible performativity are twofold, however. One implication, as Butler contends, is that our identities emerge in the ongoing performance of acts that are largely ‘pre-scribed’. Our capacity to choose one form of identity or another occurs within ‘a highly rigid regulatory frame’ (Butler, 1999, p. 33) and freedom of action or expression is thus extremely limited. Another implication that relies more heavily on the visibility of the enactment is that an identity may be ‘put on’ at will, and that it may mask some other, perhaps more authentic, identity. This line of thinking echoes Baudrillard’s (1994) notions of simulacrum and simulation, where symbols and signs come to be accepted in place of reality from which they become increasingly remote. In the context of higher education in Japan, McVeigh (2002) has drawn on this notion of simulacrum to argue that Japanese universities merely appear to be institutions of education, whereas in reality, he argues, there is little evidence of true education occurring within them.

These notions of interpellation, strategic positioning and performativity provide us with an analytic frame for examining statements made by individuals about themselves or about the social group (the category of teacher/student, department, institution) to which they belong.

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In the following section, we draw on these concepts in our description of an English language teaching programme at a Japanese university and the people who work and study in it, and in our interpretation of the accounts they offer of themselves.

English teaching at an elite university K University is a large, private university in Tokyo, which is considered one of the foremost in Japan for its Faculty of Law. Although Law, serving 7000 students, is the largest and most prestigious faculty, the university houses 5 additional faculties and 26 departments catering to a total of over 25,000 students. In addition, it has several affiliated junior high and high schools in various regions throughout Japan. Well known in Japan as the alma mater of a number of politicians, business leaders, entertainers and athletes, K University prides itself, as is reflected in its promotional publications and websites, on not only preserving its tradition, but also on its sensitivity in responding to the trends of the time. The Law Faculty originally consisted of two divisions, Law and Politics, but a third, smaller division, International Business and Law, was incorporated some 16 years ago in response to a perceived need to offer a more international dimension. The three divisions are served by four language departments: English, Chinese, French and German, of which English is by far the largest with 18 full-time professors and over 60 part-time teachers. The English department offers a wide range of language classes to students in all three divisions of the Law Faculty. The majority of classes (two-thirds) are reading classes, taught by Japanese teachers in Japanese. One-third of the classes belong to a Taught-inEnglish programme. This is a coordinated programme of courses focusing on academic literacy practices, such as discussion, presentation and writing, that has been developed over the past six or seven years by the three tenured non-Japanese members of the English department. One of them, Martin, is an acquaintance of ours through mutual involvement in a professional development group. Through Martin, we were introduced to his colleague, Sam, as well as to two part-time teachers in the programme, Monika and Sara, and two students, Shota and Kanako.1 We met with Martin and Sam first, in a tape-recorded session of 90 minutes, when we discussed the aims of the study, and they described to us the role of the Taught-in-English programme within both the English department and the Law Faculty as a whole. Subsequently, we conducted long unstructured interviews with Martin, Sam, Monika, Sara, Shota (in English) and Kanako (in Japanese), asking them to talk


about themselves and about their experiences and feelings about the English department at K University. The transcripts of these interviews, together with promotional information, teaching resources and teacher guides on the university website, provide the database for our analysis of identity in their narratives, namely interpellation, strategic positioning, and performativity, relating to globalization and internationalization. Our analysis is arranged in three sections: curriculum, teacher identity and student identity. Curriculum identity The separation of the Taught-in-English programme from the reading classes is perhaps the most striking feature of the English department curriculum. Indeed, the very name of the English programme is an explicit positioning in contrast with the reading courses, which, it is taken for granted, are generally taught in Japanese. Certainly, it is not uncommon for English language teaching to be divided into skills in Japanese universities, nor that reading tends to be taught in Japanese; from the perspective of identity, however, the way the curriculum has been divided into two in this way is surprisingly marked. In our initial interview with Sam and Martin, they stated that there was virtually no coordination and little if any communication between the two sides of the curriculum. Later, in an individual interview, Sam told his story of the evolution of the Taught-in-English programme. He himself was hired 16 years ago, one of two teachers who were the first to be taken on in tenured positions in order to include foreigners in the new International and Business Law division. As a lawyer and specialist in environmental policy, Sam taught and developed his courses in legal and business English, while the other foreign teacher taught classes in English literature and language. However, when the other foreign teacher left the job to return to the UK, Sam was keen to see someone hired with specialist experience and knowledge of Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL). Martin, in fact, did not come from a TEFL background, and was against any notion of teaching English conversation, an approach that he describes as ‘really really naff’. With previous experience outside Japan in a printing cooperative in the UK Midlands, where he helped people to print materials that they needed, and in a computer support workshop at an adult education college, Martin was firmly committed to developing a strongly learner-centred curriculum. A few years later, a third teacher was hired who shared these principles, and the Taught-in-English programme has developed largely through the joint efforts of these three tenured teachers.

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In creating a learner-centred curriculum, a strong emphasis has been placed on coordination, in that teachers are expected to share certain key principles in teaching. A teachers’ pack and dedicated website clarify these objectives and give teachers and students access to resources that they may find useful for language learning and research. Workshops for teacher and curriculum development, called ‘Retreats’, are held once a year, so that part-time teachers, who teach the majority of the more than 80 classes in the programme, are supported in their learner-centred teaching and can contribute ideas and practices that facilitate it. In addition, Sam and Martin meet with the teachers individually twice during the year in order to discuss their work and any problems, as well as being on hand throughout the week to offer their assistance and support. The classes in the programme are all geared toward using research to develop students’ listening, speaking, reading and writing abilities. Textbooks are strongly discouraged, as students choose their own subjects of interest, which they research in cycles of three or four weeks. There is a strong emphasis on pair-work to enable all students to discuss and explain their research, and on self-reflection to enable them to take stock of their learning progress and plan or adjust their goals for the future. Sam and Martin are aware that their approach is different, not only from the practices of the Japanese-taught reading classes in the Law Faculty, but also from most other universities, and that this may be difficult for part-time teachers with limited time and flexibility regarding new teaching approaches. Some of the teachers, particularly those who worked for K University for many years before the new programme was brought in, have been unwilling to change, and so they have been accommodated in elective courses outside the core curriculum. However, the part-time teachers that we talked to, Monika and Sara, were impressed with the coordination and support provided by the programme, and both claimed to enjoy and be stimulated by their work at K University in contrast with the teaching that they did at other universities in Japan. Although the Taught-in-English courses are open to students from all three divisions of the Law Faculty, it is the International Business and Law students, who are required to take more language classes, that are most likely to attend during their first three years of undergraduate study. Often, students take a Taught-in-English class in their first year, but then opt for Japanese-taught classes, ‘the default mode’ as Martin explains it, in their second and third years. The majority of students from the Law and Politics divisions do not take any Taught-in-English classes at all, as Kanako explains, because the Japanese-taught classes are regarded as the safer option.


Both Martin and Sam are ambivalent about the split between Japanese-taught and English-taught classes in the English department curriculum. On the one hand, it has given them a lot of freedom to develop the programme in the way they want; but on the other, they regret the lack of involvement and interest shown by the rest of the department. As Martin says, ‘the English department as a whole doesn’t show a great deal of commitment to the Taught-in-English part of the programme. They may think it’s a good idea or not. But most of them are not involved or not knowledgeable.’ Martin, for his part, is quite sceptical about the way in which the Law Faculty has responded to the demand for internationalization: What happened when the International Division was set up, the internationalization of the English language programme was done by bringing in foreign teachers. The people who teach here [in the reading classes], they pretty much teach the same thing as they did before, so there’s no engagement with a particular notion of globalization. One way of explaining the Law Faculty’s hiring of foreigners is to see it as performativity. In other words, faced with a need to be seen to do something, the faculty created new classes and brought in new teachers, thus ‘adding a new layer’ (Sam) rather than instituting change throughout. Indeed, the foreign teachers may inadvertently have contributed to this stratification, since it was Sam who offered to take over the task of hiring new foreign teachers, relieving the Japanese faculty of a difficult and frequently occurring chore. Thus, ironically, the effectiveness of the foreign teachers has met a need by the faculty to be seen to adapt to new circumstances, leaving them to continue to arrange their classes and teaching practice as before. Viewed in this way, the English faculty as an institutional entity may be regarded as somewhat duplicitous, fobbing off the university administration with a token gesture of change, which nevertheless allows the majority to continue their practice of translating English texts into Japanese undeterred. Sam and Martin, however, do not view the faculty’s resistance to change as insidious, but rather as unaware of the need for them to change. In fact, as Martin comments, although the practice of yakudoku may still predominate, many teachers of the reading classes have shifted away from literary texts to focus more on legal texts and texts dealing with current affairs. Nevertheless, a shift to teaching in English appears to be regarded as unnecessary, since ‘native’ teachers have been brought in to fill this communicative requirement.

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For Martin, the difference between the Japanese and foreign members of the faculty is that the Japanese have much less interest in pedagogy: ‘There’s little talk about teaching. There’s talk about whether students are good or bad. There’s little talk about how you teach.’ Sam agrees: We would say that we talk much more about teaching, they would disagree on the reading side and say, no, we talk about teaching all the time. But I think our understanding of what talking about teaching means is different. What they are more likely to be doing when they are talking about teaching is talking about what students can and can’t do, what levels and what kinds of difficulties they have, and how that’s changing over time. Our sense is much more how to get the students to engage more, to absorb and to acquire English through the speaking and listening classes they have. So they might say they talk about teaching much more, but our perception of what talking about teaching means is very different. The real problem with this difference for the foreign teachers in charge of the Taught-in-English programme is the fact that their efforts are simply not regarded as serious academic work by much of the rest of the English programme. An Althusserian concept of interpellation would normally entail being hailed as something. Martin, however, objects to feeling as if the Taught-in-English programme were not a bona fide academic curriculum, indeed as if it scarcely even existed sometimes: ‘It’s this invisibility, it’s starting to make me angry.’ The view of identity as performativity is, perhaps, more revealing, however, for the importance it ascribes to being seen. Identities that occur outside the ‘regulatory framework’ (Butler, 1990) of this society are disempowered simply by being regarded as irrelevant, and thus not worthy of attention. This incommensurability of educational cultures thus contains a striking political dimension: comprising a small minority in the English department, who are relative newcomers and not Japanese, the Taught-inEnglish programme managers feel that they are not merely marginalized, but at times discounted altogether. Martin tells a revealing story about how an outside expert was brought in to run a special workshop for the faculty on teaching discussion, with no realization that this is an area that the Taught-in-English programme has been developing over many years. Teacher identity As we have shown, the split in the curriculum between Taught-inEnglish courses and Japanese-taught reading courses is also, to a large


extent, a split between non-Japanese and Japanese teachers. This split is not absolute: Martin pointed out that the Taught-in-English programme has hired Japanese teachers, as well as other non-native English speakers, and in fact, Monika is a Yugoslavian who came to Japan many years previously, and ended up staying and working as a translator and teacher of English. Similarly, some non-Japanese teachers are now being hired to teach courses outside the Taught-in-English programme. This shift is illustrated in Sam’s narrative of how he came to be hired at K University. Sam had been in Japan for a couple of years after completing Law School in the United States when he applied for a tenured post at K University. At that stage, K University was also considering hiring an older British man, who was a specialist in English literature. Unable to reach a decision, the English department hired both candidates. Sam describes himself at that time as ‘a hybrid’, both a lawyer and a language teacher, and therefore, a choice that some members of the department regarded as ‘looking to the future’. The other candidate was a more orthodox choice, a specialist in literature, in common with the majority of the department. In a later interview, Sam elaborated on his interpretation of the faculty’s motives. Instead of seeing the candidates only as experts of one kind or another, another key factor in their decision-making was the fact that the candidates were seen as stereotypical representatives of their nationality. Sam was ‘a classic, outgoing American’, while the other candidate was ‘a typical English gent, tweed jackets and all’. This kind of crude interpellation of Sam and his British colleague as native speakers, whether American or British, points to a sense of ‘othering’ (Butler, 1990; Said, 1979), an exaggeration of difference in order to explain or legitimize marginalization or denial of access to power. In fact, however, in Sam’s narrative, the interpellation has a dramatic function, designed to contrast with a shift in the university’s attitude toward foreigners. Four years ago, Sam was accepted as a teacher in the graduate Law School, ‘an admission that I’m a lawyer as much as I am an English teacher or anything else’. Still, in the English department, he is regarded as a teacher rather than a lawyer. Nevertheless, in the university as a whole there seems to be a growing acceptance of non-Japanese in various roles: ‘It used to be that foreigners were language teachers and now they’re seeing foreigners as specialists’ (Sam). A foreigner or native-speaker interpellation, whether by the institution or in the classroom, is one that Sam and Martin are both anxious to resist. Both of them are scathing about the kind of language classrooms in which teachers are regarded and position themselves as representatives

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of a particular culture. ‘You know’, Sam remarks sardonically, ‘the blond haired, blue-eyed person, talking about their high school, what Thanksgiving means to them. I think still a lot of schools think that’s important.’ But this is an attitude that the Taught-in-English programme strongly eschews. A teacher’s experience of her own culture is of little relevance to students, they believe, and of little pedagogical value either. Of more value, in Sam’s view in particular, is the teacher’s expertise and professional identity. Sam explicitly positions himself for his students as a lawyer, but one who has chosen not to practise the law: ‘There’s a unique role I can play both in providing a professional aura to the English class but also helping them escape from the constrains of legal study.’ Sam explains that for many students who see no alternative but a career in law, he can present a model of someone who has a satisfying career doing something else. He also recounts how he makes sure to tell his students about former graduates with whom he has kept in contact and who have left the law to pursue a career elsewhere. In positioning himself as an outsider within the university despite his 16 years of tenure, Sam is representing the institution and the values it imparts as rigid and inflexible. Once in the Law Faculty, students are expected to follow a career in the law. Sam sees his role, then, as countering this rigid view of students’ prospects and opening up possibilities of different paths. As we can see from the identity positions that Sam adopts, the way in which he represents the institution, and the way he feels he is represented by others, reflect a complex reality. Both Sam and Martin represent the Law Faculty as extremely conservative and resistant to change, particularly with regard to adopting a more international outlook. But paradoxically, this is not how they view the individual faculty members. As Martin comments: Most of the individuals are not (conservative). They’re quite radical and open-minded. Their view of the Law curriculum might be quite domestically focused. But they often are fluent in German or Italian through their legal interests (. . .) and they have contacts abroad and so on. So they’re actually very international or globalised in terms of their own identity (. . .) but their view of the curriculum may not reflect that. Student identity As K University is one of the most prestigious in Japan, the students who succeed in passing the competitive entrance examination are generally bright and motivated. The part-time teachers, Sara and Monika, both


comment on the calibre of the students in their classes, comparing them favourably with those at other universities where they teach. The students we talked to both see English as important in their future careers. Kanako, a second-year student, does not envisage a career in law, but would like to work abroad. Her experience of the Taught-in-English programme has impressed her, as unlike other courses, it is ‘not taught like a subject’, an answer which possibly highlights the difference between the orthodox style of teacher-led classes elsewhere in the curriculum. She is keen to continue taking these courses, which she thinks are ‘cool’, and is critical of students who opt instead for Japanese-taught reading classes, which can be less time-consuming but less rewarding. Shota, for his part, decided recently that he would like to embark on postgraduate study of contract law, an undertaking for which he realizes that his current level of English is not sufficient. Accordingly, he has set himself a stringent programme of self-study, before coming to classes every day. Shota also elected to do this interview in English, although he had the option of speaking in Japanese. Like Kanako, Shota is also critical of students who are not serious about learning, or who sleep through university courses, intent only on the cram schools they attend in the evening to prepare for the entrance examination to the graduate Law School. Students position themselves strategically through their actions to advance along a career path that they can only at this stage imagine. The Law Faculty has a powerful status in Japanese society. Sam mentions that some of the students have fathers or grandfathers who are graduates of this university. Moreover, a degree in law, and particularly from the prestigious graduate Law School, can enhance the likelihood of success in later life. This is not only the case in Japan, of course. Sam too went to Law School in the United States for the sake of ‘reputability’, even though he chose not to practise law after graduation. Martin guesses that in the past, and for the older generation of professors in the present, the purpose of teaching English was to give students an appreciation of English literature, something that should form part of the cultural make-up of the people who filled the top professions. It was not seen as necessary as a medium of communication, and therefore, not worth the time and effort involved in acquiring the language to this form of proficiency. However, many students envisage a future either for themselves, or for Japan as a whole, where English is important as a means of communication. Martin cites an example of some students involved in an international organization of students studying law. When students from various Asian countries meet to discuss legal issues, their common

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language is English. Moreover, reports and protocols for these meetings are drawn up in English, for which students will sometimes ask the fulltime teachers for assistance. It would seem that their interest in communities beyond Japan focuses mainly on neighbouring Asian countries. Sam mentions another example of a group of students who went to Germany to meet fellow law students, but felt that their hosts were not particularly welcoming compared with their counterparts in the Asian countries they visited. These students are positioning themselves strategically for international careers, but these careers are seen as most likely taking place in the Asian arena. According to Sam, English is a crucial skill that they will need as a lingua franca in their future. Martin predicts, however, that the importance of teaching English may even diminish at the university, as internationalism comes to entail proficiency in other languages, such as Chinese or Korean, while knowledge of English is taken for granted. English thus becomes a medium, rather than the object of study.

Discussion Our account of the Taught-in-English programme, based on the interviews with curriculum planners, teachers and students, is intended to bring out salient identity positions in relation to internationalization and globalization. In this section, we summarize some of our main findings under two headings, ‘identity and difference’ and ‘identity and change’. Identity and difference One of the main effects of focusing on identity positions, as social identity theorists have noted, is that differences between social groups are highlighted or exaggerated. While it may be objected that this highlighting or exaggeration thereby distorts reality, we would contend that it can also illuminate the subjective experience of social life, and that this dimension can lend insight into the nature and causes of conflict and dissent in and among complex social groups. As we have shown, the Taught-in-English programme – at least for the teachers who have introduced and developed it and the students in the Law Faculty – is strikingly different from the traditional English courses that still comprise the majority of the curriculum. The obvious difference is that, as the name of the programme states, English is the means of communication in these classes, whereas Japanese remains (with only one exception that Martin and Sam could think of )


the medium of instruction in the traditional classes. As we have also mentioned, the difference between the two parts of the curriculum is not merely one of language use. Rather, it suggests a radically different view of the nature and purpose of education. An interesting comparison can be drawn with Holliday’s (1994) research of language teaching in the Egyptian university context. Drawing on Bernstein’s typology of education ‘codes’ (Bernstein, 1974, cited in Holliday, 1994, pp. 69–80), Holliday contends that state educational institutions, such as the Egyptian university where he conducted his research, tend to exhibit a ‘collectionist code’ in that disciplinary subjects are drawn from a ‘common knowledge universe, with strong boundaries and high traditional status’ (p. 72). The professional–academic culture of foreign teachers, however, is characterized by an ‘integrationist code’ in which subject boundaries tend to be blurred and teachers collaborate on shared overall objectives. The disparity between the two codes leads to what Holliday calls ‘professional–academic schizophrenia’ (p. 73) when teachers seek to apply ‘integrationist’ methodologies directly to classes that are situated in a strongly ‘collectionist’ environment. Unlike Holliday’s Egyptian example, where foreign teachers were granted considerable power in the university to change practices in language teaching, in the case of K University, foreign teachers have never been accorded this kind of power over the institution. Instead, they have been allowed to set up a parallel curriculum, or as Sam calls it, a ‘parallel universe’. Within this universe, Sam and Martin and their colleagues have succeeded through extraordinary efforts in creating a relatively strong and stable ‘integrationist’ environment where teachers are encouraged to share their vision of learner-centred teaching and where they are supported in their efforts to realize this in the classroom. Monika and Sara both mention that, although this is a teaching approach that they prefer, they are unable to practise it at other places where they work. Indeed, Monika teaches classes at another faculty at K University, but without the support that she gets at the Law Faculty, and without the accompanying cooperation of students, she is unable to apply the learner-centred principles to the same extent or with the same success. Bernstein’s ‘collectionist’ and ‘integrationist’ codes highlight the administrative difference between the two cultures, but do not, however, shed much light on the ideological difference between the two. As we have shown, the reading classes at K University have not changed significantly from a pattern that was established over a century ago, at a time when Japan was re-establishing firmer boundaries with the rest of the world after its initial opening at the beginning of the Meiji era.

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Viewing translation as the purpose of language education is one way to keep difference alive and prominent, a view that colours the language teaching policy and practice not only at K University, but throughout the Japanese education system (Kubota, 2002). Kubota and others (Kubota, 1999, 2002; Stewart, 2005) have pointed to an element of nihonjinron or nationalist ideology in language teaching policy and practice. However, another explanation is that the persistence of a strongly teacher-led, translation-focused approach to language teaching is simply a form of conservatism. We end this section with an extract from Sam’s narrative, which serves to illustrate this point: We often talk about the idea of how valuable it would be to start again and build the curriculum back up. But we never could without a whole new faculty because everyone has such a commitment to the status quo. In many cases people who are the professors were graduate students of professors who were the graduate students of their professors. So you have these long lines of ways of thinking. The graduate students who are successful think exactly like their professors. Almost as though it has become genetic, it’s not academic anymore. So you don’t have any ability to really start over and say, what’s the purpose of the curriculum? What sort of students do we want to graduate, how do we do that? What’s next, what’s next? We’re working amongst all these iron rods that cannot be changed, so you spin them, you can twist them, but these rods are all going to remain the same. That’s the architectural imperative. (Sam)

Identity and change So what are the prospects for change at K University? The president’s message on the university’s website claims that it is responsive to changing times. The pressure to change is not a new development. The reforms that have been implemented over the course of the past 15 years – establishing the International Business and Law division, giving tenure to foreign teachers, expanding the communicative English language programme – have indeed come about as a result of increased competition for students as well as pressure from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. We suggested earlier that internationalization at K University may be merely token or performative gestures that are intended to assuage Ministry and student demands. There may be some truth in this, but it also seems plausible that the institution sees a continued advantage in positioning


itself, as it has done throughout its history, as an elite university. This is an institution that appears to be looking inwards at its past and present status (and that of its past and present members), rather than outwards and ahead to an imagined better and more globalized future. Change does come, but at a glacial pace. McVeigh’s (2002) charge that Japanese universities are mere simulacra is not entirely justified: a more apt metaphor is Foucault’s (2002) image of geological strata, as one episteme (or in this case one ideological mindset that influences institutional practice) is replaced, often suddenly and rapidly, by another. Sam’s metaphors of an ‘architectural imperative’, or of professorial influence as ‘iron rods’ are bleaker, but he and Martin also mention various signs of change in the institution. The English department no longer hires new Japanese faculty exclusively from Japan’s top university; at least one of the new generation of Japanese teachers conducts classes entirely in English; the English department is now hiring younger faculty members who perhaps have different values and teaching approaches; the administration shares many similar objectives to those of the Taught-in-English programme and may gradually push these changes through in the curriculum as a whole. Whilst at present, the Taught-in-English programme and the Japanese taught courses represent parallel universes, there is hope, at least, that this will not always be the case.

Conclusion This chapter has sought to provide insight into people’s experiences of globalization and internationalization at a Japanese university by examining the identity positions that are deployed in their narratives about English teaching and learning. The university that we have had the privilege of writing about cannot be described as ‘typical’ of Japanese education. Indeed, perhaps no university would want to describe itself as such. Our hope is that this account will resonate with readers, particularly those who are familiar with the Japanese higher education context, and that the findings and meanings that we have outlined here will at least seem plausible. We have suggested that the very fact that K University is an elite institution is one key factor why globalization, and indeed any form of administrative and ideological change, has met with such resistance. But despite the conservatism embodied in the curriculum taught by the majority of the faculty, the English department has granted its relatively new foreign teachers freedom and space to introduce and develop a comprehensive communicative, academic literacy-based English curriculum. The principled learner-centred approach that this programme advocates

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allows students to find and explore their own research interests. In doing so, they have the opportunity to develop the ability and confidence to position themselves strategically in a changing world.

Notes 1. We have tried to preserve the anonymity of the institution and of the people who participated in this study. We have changed the name of the institution and our participants, but are aware that our description and analysis of them include details that may be recognizable to anyone who knows them.

References Althusser, L. (1971) Lenin and philosophy and other essays (London: New Left Books). Antaki, C. and Widdicombe, S. (eds) (1998) Identities in talk (London: Sage). Baudrillard, J. (1994) Simulacra and simulation, trans. S. Glaser (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press). Beauchamp, E. and Vardaman, J. (eds) (1994) Japanese education since 1945: a documentary study (Armonk, NY: Sharpe). Bruner, J. (1991) ‘The narrative construction of reality’, Critical Inquiry, 18, 1–21. Butler, J. (1990) Gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity (London: Routledge). Byram, M. (2008) From foreign language education to education for intercultural citizenship: essays and reflections (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters). Chronicle of Higher Education (2010) ‘Japan opts to “restructure” key university internationalization project’, 19 November. http://chronicle.com/blogs/global/ japan-opts-to-restructure-key-university-internationalization-project/28091 Clandinin, D. J. and Connelly, F. M. (2000) Narrative inquiry: experience and story in qualitative research (San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass). Czarniawska, B. (1997) Narrating the organization: dramas of institutional identity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Elias, N. (2000) ‘Homo clauses and the civilizing process’ in P. Du Gay, J. Evans and P. Redman (eds) Identity: a reader (London: Sage). Foucault, M. (2002) The archaeology of knowledge, trans. A. Sheridan Smith (London: Routledge). Fujimoto-Adamson, N. (2006) ‘Globalization and history of English education in Japan’, Asian EFL Journal, 8, 18–35. Fujita-Round, S. and Maher, J. (2008) ‘Language education policy in Japan’ in S. May and N. Hornberger (eds) Encyclopedia of language and education, 2nd edn, Vol. 1: Language policy and political issues in education (New York: Springer Science and Business Media LLC). Gee, J. P. (2008) Social linguistics and literacies: ideology in discourses (London: Routledge). Giddens, A. (1991) Modernity and self-identity (Cambridge: Polity). Goffman, E. (1959) The presentation of self in everyday life (London: Penguin).

Alison Stewart and Masuko Miyahara 79 Gorsuch, G. (1998) ‘Yakudoku EFL instruction in two Japanese high school classrooms: an exploratory study’, JALT Journal, 20, 6–32. Hall, S. (2000) ‘Who needs identity?’ in P. Du Gay, J. Evans and P. Redman (eds) Identity: a reader (London: Sage). Hashimoto, K. (2007) ‘Japan’s language policy and the “lost decade”’ in J. W. Tollefson and A. Tsui (eds) Language policy, culture and identity in Asian context (Mahwah: NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates). Holliday, A. (1994) Appropriate methodology and social context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Kalaya, P., Menezes, V. and Barcelos, A. (2008) Narratives of learning and teaching EFL (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Kubota, R. (1999) ‘Japanese culture constructed by discourses: implications for Applied Linguistics research and English language teaching’, TESOL Quarterly, 35, 9–39. Kubota, R. (2002) ‘The impact of globalization on language teaching in Japan’ in D. Block and D. Cameron (eds) Globalisation and language teaching (London: Routledge). Lamie, J. (2005) Evaluating change in English language teaching (New York: Palgrave Macmillan). MacIntyre, A. (1981) After virtue (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press). McNeil, D. (2010) ‘Japan’s globalization project stalls as some criticize focus on elite universities’, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 8 September. http:// chronicle.com/article/A-Slow-Start-for-Japans/124346/ McVeigh, B. (2002) Japanese higher education as myth (Armonk, NY: Sharpe). Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (2006) http:// www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/hakusho/html/hpac200601/001/001.htm Miyahara, M. (forthcoming) ‘Shifting self-identities of second language learners in Japanese Higher Education’. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of London. Nakane, C. (1998) Japanese society (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press). Polkinghorne, D.E. (1988) Narrative knowing and the human sciences (Albany, NY: State University of New York). Rohlen, T. and LeTendre, E. (1996) Teaching and learning in Japan (New York: Cambridge University Press). Said, E. (1979) Orientalism (New York: Vintage). Stewart, A. (2005) ‘Teaching positions: a study of identity in English language teachers in Japanese higher education’. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of London. Stewart, A. (2006) ‘An inquiry into the social aspects of language teacher expertise’ in A. Yoshitomi, T. Umino and M. Negishi (eds) Readings in second language pedagogy and second language acquisition (Amsterdam: John Benjamins). Van Langenhove, L. and Harre, R. (1999) ‘Introducing positioning theory’ in R. Harre and L. van Langenhove (eds) Positioning Theory (Oxford: Blackwell). Wengraf, T. (2001) Qualitative research (London: Sage). Yoneoka, J. (2000) ‘What is Kokusaijin?: a 10-year study’, The Language Teacher, 24, 7–13.

4 The Native Speaker English Teacher and the Politics of Globalization in Japan Yvonne Breckenridge and Elizabeth J. Erling

Introduction In light of the global spread of English and the concomitant growth of the English language teaching industry, there has been much discussion about the ‘ownership of English’ (Widdowson, 1994) and the status of speakers and varieties of the language in its various global contexts. The field of World Englishes has traced the pluralization, change and spread of English and advocated the legitimacy of the different varieties of English that have developed around the globe (Kachru, 1992). While initially undertaken primarily in postcolonial contexts, such studies have now been extended to most national contexts where English is learned as a foreign language, and include an extensive amount of work on the role of English in Japan (e.g. Kubota, 1998; Matsuda, 2003; Moody, 2006; Seargeant, 2009; Stanlaw, 2004, 1992). As the plurality of English in its various contexts has increasingly been recognized, questions have repeatedly been raised about issues such as codification, standardization, categorizations of ‘deviation’ or ‘error’, the validity of the native speaker teacher and the choice of a teaching model (e.g. in Strevens, 1980; Quirk and Widdowson, 1985). While ‘native speakers’ were traditionally touted as ideal language teachers because of assumptions that they inherently possess a superior command of the language and intimate knowledge of English-speaking cultures, the World Englishes paradigm has forced a reconsideration of the role of the native speaker English teacher in contexts such as Japan where the learning of English plays an important role in the school curriculum. But while much recent applied linguistics research has questioned the need for the use of native speaker teachers as language models, native speakers are still persistently used in English language teaching 80

Yvonne Breckenridge and Elizabeth J. Erling 81

programmes in Japan, both in private institutes and in government schools. An example of this can be found in the Japan Exchange and Teaching ( JET) Programme, which recruits young people from Englishspeaking countries to assist English language teachers in Japanese public schools. These assistant teachers are not necessarily there to provide a linguistic model for Japanese learners of English, nor to provide educational expertise, as they are not required to have teaching experience or qualifications. They are there, Kubota (2002, p. 24) argues, to promote kokusaika (international understanding) in Japanese schools by providing students with opportunities for intercultural communication and understanding. While the reductionist equation made between learning English and intercultural understanding has been challenged and the JET Programme has been criticized for reinforcing Japanese nationalism and cultural stereotypes (Kubota, 2002; McConnell, 2000), there has been little work that has accounted for the effects of participating in these programmes on the native speaker English teachers involved in the exchange. An investigation of these assistant teachers adds to this critique, and brings to applied linguistics research further insight into the complex, and sometimes contradictory, mix of effects of the globalization of English. This chapter examines the lived experience of five English language teachers from English-speaking countries who were working as assistant language teachers (ALTs) in Japan during 2003–5. Extracts from interviews conducted with these teachers demonstrate how they both resist and perpetuate ideals of the native speaker English teacher that they encounter in Japan. The study highlights the implications of being the idealized native speaker English teacher for these teachers’ personal growth and professional development. It shows that the growth of the global English language teaching industry not only has consequences for the societies in which English is taught, but also for native speaker English teachers who are often utilized as emblems of the global language as part of language education policies.

The globalization of English and the native speaker ideal Within the context of the global spread of English, much applied linguistics discourse has been dedicated to challenging idealized notions of ‘native speakers’ that have shaped traditional theories and methods of English language teaching (ELT) (e.g. Cook, 1999; Davies, 2003; Paikeday, 1985). This debate is not restricted to theoretical discussion and can have a real-life impact on non-native speakers of English in

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the job market, teaching or otherwise. There has also been a marked increase in research that focuses on legitimizing the contribution of non-native speaker English teachers and illuminating their struggles to be recognized as language teaching professionals who are on a par with their native English-speaking peers. For example, Medgyes (1999) conducted three seminal studies where native and non-native speaker English teachers respectively evaluated the differences between their practices in terms of using English and teaching English, as well as their attitudes towards teaching and students.1 Other studies examined students’ perceptions about the differences between native and non-native speaker English teachers (e.g. Barratt and Kontra, 2000; Brutt-Griffler and Samimy, 1999; Llurda, 2005).2 Despite the different contexts in which the studies were carried out, the data revealed similar conclusions. Native speaker English teachers were considered to be more confident in their use of English and their language use was deemed to be more authentic (Barratt and Kontra, 2000; Lasagabaster and Sierra, 2002; Medgyes, 1999). Regarding their teaching abilities, native speaker English teachers were seen to lack preparation in terms of pedagogy and contextual awareness (Barratt and Kontra, 2000; Medgyes, 1999; Brutt-Griffler and Samimy, 1999). Native speaker English teachers were perceived to be more outgoing and talkative (Benke and Medgyes, 2005) and their attitudes more flexible and innovative (Medgyes, 1999). At the same time, however, they were found to be less empathetic, more casual, less committed, and to have ‘far-fetched expectations’ (Medgyes, 1999, p. 55; Brutt-Griffler and Samimy, 1999). Nonnative speaker English teachers, on the other hand, were found to take a more guided approach, to be more cautious, more empathetic, stricter, more committed, and to have more realistic expectations (Medgyes, 1999). Lasagabaster and Sierra (2002) found that students had a clear preference for a native speaker as a teacher. The implication from all this is that the pervasiveness of the native speaker ideal takes precedence over the negative experiences that students have with native speaker English teachers, and the positive experiences they have with non-native speaker English teachers. Other research has explored how non-native speaker English teachers have traditionally been marginalized in applied linguistic research and theory. Narratives of non-native speaking teachers of English have been instrumental in illuminating the personal and professional implications of discriminatory hiring practices and policies whose foundation rests on ideologies of the superiority of native speakers (e.g. Braine, 1999). This body of research has successfully highlighted the concerns of


non-native speaker English teachers in the face of the global spread of English and called for recognition of their struggle to be accepted as professionals and of their contribution to the field. Other studies have presented evidence against a clear-cut division between so-called native speaker and non-native speaker English teachers. Along with the wave of research recognizing the multitude of identities and motivations that students bring with them to the classroom (e.g. Norton, 2000), there has been a strong focus on the need not to essentialize the nonnative speaker English teacher (e.g. Holliday, 2005; Liu, 1999). Indeed, Liu (1999, p. 121) suggests that we need to think of non-native speaker English teachers in terms of ‘a multidimensional and multilayered continuum’. Despite this plea to end dichotomization and essentialization, however, the voices of native speaker English teachers and evidence of how they are affected by their idealization in the global English teaching industry are seldom heard. Moreover, little mention is made of the ‘multidimensional and multilayered’ identities and experiences of native speaker English teachers. This is unfortunate, as native speaker teachers continue to play a significant role in the global teaching of English, and the way they are perceived in English language teaching materials, classrooms and theories has an effect on their own motivation, selfperception and future career decisions, as well as on their students. Some research that has attempted to empower non-native speaker English teachers and promote resistance to the global hegemony of English has had the adverse effect of promoting essentialized notions of the native speaker English teacher. Indeed, Verschueren (1989, p. 52) notes that some view English as ‘the universal villain promoted for the sake of western or, more precisely, Anglo-American cultural – if not political – imperialism’. Such attitudes can be found in Holliday’s (2005) challenge to ‘native-speakerism’ in applied linguistics. Ironically, while such research is eager to recognize the multifaceted identities of non-native speaker students and teachers, it does not accord the same value to the identities of native speaker English teachers. In fact, Holliday essentializes and villainizes native speaker English teachers as a professional group which, in order to find a status which it cannot find at home, propels itself into the professional domains of other education systems in other countries, while maintaining distance from them; and sees itself as liberally humanist even when it blatantly reduces foreign colleagues and students to a problematic generalized Other. (2005, p. 29; see Erling, 2006 for a critique of this)

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Other work has been directly disdainful of native speaker English teachers, using various pejorative terms such as the ‘professional egotis[t]’ (Barratt and Kontra, 2000, p. 21) and the ‘native non-teacher’ (de Almeida Mattos, 1997, p. 38) to describe them. This discourse tends to lump together all native speaker English teachers, regardless of the cultural, ethnic, linguistic and professional diversity that can be found among the populations in primarily English-speaking countries (Edwards, 2004). It also ignores the different levels of professionalism that native speaker English teachers may have. Such stereotypes reinstate – rather than challenge – ideals of the native speaker that educators have fought to resist in the production of ELT materials (e.g. Matsuda, 2003). For this reason it is unsurprising that Amin (1999, p. 94) found that adult ESL students in Canada assume that ‘. . . only white people can be native speakers of English . . . and only native speakers know “real”, “proper”, “Canadian” English’. This ‘white bias’ has also been found to exist in the JET Programme, where non-white participants reported experiencing racial prejudice (Kubota, 2002, p. 22; McConnell, 2000, p. 80). Such views are inevitably transferred onto the native speaker English teacher and can affect their professional ambitions and development. Given the way the notions of native and non-native speakers have been extensively problematized, it is necessary to explain briefly why we persist with the use of such terms when some have recommended they be discontinued due to their vagueness and scientific unfoundedness (e.g. Amin, 1999), or because a distinction based around the use of the prefix ‘non-’ signifies a deficit (Holliday, 2005, p. 4). In continuing to use them, we in no way wish to detract from the continuing struggles of non-native speaker English teachers. Nor do we wish to question who is the better teacher, an issue that has been thoroughly discussed by both Medgyes (1999) and Seidlhofer (1999), who both come to the conclusion that, whether native or non-native speaker language teachers, well-trained professionals with a sensitivity towards students can be effective, with both offering a variety of positive qualities. Like Davies (2003, p. 7), we consider the term ‘native speaker’ to be ‘a useful piece of shorthand’. By using it we feel we can best capture the stereotyped ideals of English that adhere to the language as it spreads and is ‘marketed’ to global users, and show the effects of this on native speaker English teachers. Furthermore, just as Kubota uses the term ‘non-native speaker’ as a means of (re-)constructing positive identities for it (cited in Holliday, 2005, p. 7), in using ‘native speaker English teacher’ we hope to emphasize the limitations of this categorization by highlighting


the differences among individuals who might traditionally be labelled as such. Ideals of the native speaker in Japan While essentialized ideals of the native speaker are common to most contexts in which English is taught, in Japan, as elsewhere, they can also be used to promote successful language learning and are used as a ‘key selling point’ in language teaching programmes (Seargeant, 2009, p. 96). In official policy documents, native speakers of English are framed as an important symbol in language education programmes geared towards the promotion of kokusaika (international understanding), which frames the learning of English as a means of promoting the ideas and opinions of Japanese people (Kubota, 2002; Liddicoat, 2007). According to national policies, the aim of internationalization is to increase other countries’ knowledge of Japan. This objective is supported by nihonjinron, the notion of the unique nature of the language and culture of Japan. Kubota (2002) and Liddicoat (2007) have noted that the deliberate national strategy of essentializing Japanese culture paves the way for essentializing other cultures and hence perpetuating the native speaker ideal in language education. What has not yet received enough attention is how individuals participating in ‘intercultural’ schemes become cogs in the mechanism of such policies.

JET: the ALT experience As part of the policy of kokusaika, the Japan Exchange and Teaching ( JET) Programme was set up in 1987 to promote foreign language education as a means of developing international exchange and understanding between Japan and other countries ( JET, 2009). While the programme aims to improve foreign language education in general, Kubota (2002, p. 20) notes that 98 per cent of people involved in it are from English-speaking countries, most of whom (90 per cent) are hired as assistant language teachers (ALTs). ALTs are placed mainly in local education boards or publicly run primary, junior high and senior high schools and are engaged in language instruction under the guidance of Japanese teachers of foreign languages. This is done in the hope that the language experience of the ALTs coupled with the professional competence of the Japanese teachers of English ( JTEs) will benefit the development of Japanese students’ English as well as give them exposure to an authentic speaker of the language, therefore enhancing their international understanding.

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Those who apply to be ALTs do not necessarily have to have a background in teaching or a TEFL qualification, although it can be helpful for their application. Among the requirements for applicants are that they (1) hold a bachelor’s degree in any subject, (2) have excellent skills in English, and (3) have a keen interest in the country and culture of Japan ( JET, 2009). Once accepted into the programme, the guidelines state that participants are provided with pre- and post-orientation to the programme as well as training and counselling throughout the year. While participants are required to have an interest in Japan, only since 1999 have they been given the opportunity to take Japanese language courses. In 2002, reforms in the Japanese education system were implemented to ‘cultivate Japanese with English abilities’ (MEXT, 2002), and thus the amount of English language teaching was increased in Japanese schools. As the demand for English increased, so did the need for ALTs. The target was not only to increase the number of ALTs working in Japan, but also the number of school visits each ALT made, in the hope of improving the experience of the students. A further objective was to increase the amount of professional development for Japanese English teachers, who were to receive four weeks of local professional development, with a few selected to participate in short- and long-term overseas professional development programmes (MEXT, 2002). As a result, several North American universities competed for contracts to provide teacher education programmes in Japan. It was at one such pedagogical workshop that the data for this study were collected. Description of the study The study was conducted during the summer of 2005 at a Japanese educational research institute for local teachers. Three one-week workshops for Japanese English teachers provided the context for qualitative data collection. While local teachers attended pedagogical seminars, ALTs were used to prepare materials and create a pseudo-immersion setting by conversing only in English throughout the workshops and during meals. It was made clear to the ALTs that this workshop was funded by MEXT to provide professional development for the Japanese teachers and that the role of the ALTs was to provide English language support. Therefore, the ALTs were not allowed to attend the pedagogical lectures and were only allowed into the workshops when an activity required them to model English for the Japanese teachers or provide English language assistance. Data collection included a one-hour, open-ended interview conducted with five ALTs by one of the authors of this chapter. Informed


consent was provided by all participants and their identities concealed. In the interviews the participants were asked questions about: (1) their reasons for going to Japan; (2) their perceptions about Japan and the teaching of English in Japan before they came to the country; (3) their perceptions about Japan and teaching English in Japan once they arrived; and (4) their perceptions about Japan and teaching English in Japan after one year of being there. They were also asked questions about their relationships in different communities, and their reasons for deciding whether or not to renew their contract with the JET Programme. The interview procedure relied heavily on Clandinin and Connelly’s (2000) framework for narrative inquiry. As they note: ‘We take for granted that people, at any point in time, are in a process of personal change and that from an educational point of view, it is important to be able to narrate the person in terms of the process’ (Clandinin and Connelly, 2000, p. 30). Accordingly, the interviews explored how the teachers saw themselves as developing into professionals over time through their relationships and understandings of themselves, and from context to context. Narrative inquiry also reveals the challenge of negotiating who we want to be in light of who we are expected to be for our students, colleagues and administrators. According to Simon-Maeda (2004) it provides a form of research which reveals the dialogically constructed nature of identity that has to be considered in discussions about teacher education and professional practices. As such, it provides an ideal methodology for exploring the role and status of the native speaker English teacher in Japan. The interviews were recorded and then transcribed and analysed to examine how membership of the ALT community influenced the participants’ individual identities as teachers, as well as the possible experiences and opportunities that ALTs had which affected their sense of self and their relationship to the local community. Table 4.1 provides a brief description of the five participants in the study, whose narratives will be discussed in the following section.

Discussion of the findings The findings from this study challenge some of the common perceptions of native speaker English teachers and show how they can experience adverse effects of the global spread of English when commodified as English language resources in national policy schemes. The findings also show that – perhaps because of the limitation of stereotypes and the label ‘native speaker’ – the vision of the JET Programme to provide

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Table 4.1 Participants in the study Name

Age

Country of origin

Ethnicity

Reason for joining JET

Charlie

30

United States

White

Wanted a change from the ‘language factory’ feel of NOVA,3 where he had been working for 2 years

Elle

22

United States

Chinese

Wanted to experience living and working abroad

Holly

24

United States

White

Significant ties to Japan

Maria

26

Canada

White

Wanted to become an English teacher

Scott

26

United Kingdom

White

Japanese major at university

‘mutual understanding’ between ALTs and members of the school community has not in practice fully become a reality. Learning about Japanese language and culture through the JET Programme As mentioned above, Medgyes (1999) and others have noted that native speaker English teachers have often been found to lack knowledge of the local language, to be insensitive to the local context and to be unaware of the effort required in learning English as a foreign language because they have not experienced the process themselves. McConnell (2000), in his study of JET Programme participants, also found that Japanese school administrators and JTEs often found ALTs to be culturally insensitive. This is hardly surprising, as most ALTs only stay in Japan for a year or two and are not required to have knowledge of the country or experience of teaching upon entry. However, the current study shows that most ALTs joined the JET Programme precisely because of the opportunities it presented for learning about the Japanese language and culture. They were therefore presumably open and willing to become more sensitive to Japanese culture, if given the opportunity. Scott, for example, was a Japanese major at university and joined the JET Programme to continue studying Japanese: In my year there were 12 people in my programme . . . and 6 of us came to Japan on the JET Programme. It seemed to all of us the obvious thing to do . . . The easiest way to come to Japan and the first thing most of us wanted to do was to study more Japanese in Japan, speak Japanese on a daily basis.


Charlie also mentioned the appeal of accessing Japanese culture through the JET Programme and compared it to practices in private language institutes, where native speaker English teachers were discouraged from learning or using Japanese: [ JET]’s not like NOVA where you’re just in a language factory, and a troll just speaking, speaking. They really introduce you to the culture on the JET Programme. In the NOVA programme they are totally against it because they want you to remain as English or American or Canadian as possible. The reason that private language institutes like NOVA discourage their English teachers from learning the local language is presumably because to do so would be to defy one of the common assumptions about native speakers of English: they speak only one language (Cook, 1999, p. 187). In fact, Paikeday (1985) includes monolingualism in his extended definition of the native speaker. But even though Charlie preferred working for the JET Programme to working in a private language institute because of the opportunities to engage with the local community, Kubota has criticized the programme for providing ALTs with too few opportunities to learn Japanese or to develop their own intercultural understanding. She relates this to ‘a complex desire of the Japanese to preserve these native English speakers’ pure Anglophone identity, which the Japanese worship’ (Kubota, 2002, p. 24, citing Nakamura, 1989; Tsuda, 1990; Oishi, 1990, 1993). In fact, recent research has shown that the efforts of native speakers of English to learn about the local language and culture of Japan can be met with disdain. For example, Mackie (2003) recounts how she tried to learn Japanese and behave the way that she thought Japanese females would behave, but instead of being praised for her efforts, was rebuked for lacking appropriate linguistic and cultural knowledge. Moreover, the Japanese participants in Piller and Takahashi’s (2006, p. 75) study admit that they did not regard male native speakers of English who spoke Japanese positively for trying to access the local culture, but instead considered them ‘sleazy’. The narratives of the ALTs in this study give further evidence of native speaker English teachers’ struggle to find their identity between two languages in a field that disregards multilingualism in favour of the monolingual native speaker ideal (Liu, 1999). The development of knowledge and understanding of Japanese language and culture can often contribute to teachers’ professional development and lead to the kind of intercultural understanding that the JET Programme seeks to promote. Holly’s narrative shows that, over time,

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teachers on the programme do develop Japanese cultural sensitivity and appreciation if given the opportunity: I’m inclined to say that I’m a very culturally sensitive person, but the longer I live in Japan the more I learn that that’s not true. I’m not as culturally sensitive as I thought I was. The more I understand the culture, the more I see how I wasn’t sensitive to it before. So I think that cultural sensitivity means, if something happens that you don’t understand you try to understand why it happened, how it happened, rather than imposing your own judgment on it, rather than interpreting it in your own cultural context. If you don’t understand something, if it seems rude or totally inappropriate, you don’t go ‘that was totally inappropriate’ you go ‘Whoa, that was weird, why on earth did they do that, that seems rude, surely they weren’t being rude on purpose what could be going on, you know’ and that’s the way I try to approach it . . . But Holly’s development of intercultural understanding was developed primarily through networks that she sought out away from the school environment, as will be discussed below. Forever the foreigner Despite these teachers’ desire to learn the language and culture, the interviews showed that many of them felt that they were not integrated into the school system and were continually treated as outsiders due to their status as foreigners and native speakers of English. This had an effect not only on their own language learning and professional development but also on the experience of the students in classrooms where ALTs were assisting the lessons. The feeling of being an outsider in the schools in which they work is apparent in extracts from both Maria’s and Holly’s narratives: Maria: I’m constantly meeting these teachers for the first time, every time, because I’m not there long enough so I’m always having to sort of do pleasantries and I don’t actually get to know anything about them or talk to them for any length of time. So that’s the reason they don’t think that anything I do will work and that’s the reason that they treat me sort of guesty. Holly: . . . so it’s that you’re an outsider, you’re a guest, you’ve been working at our school for 2 years, longer than half the teachers in the room, but you’re a guest still.


Their sense of being outsiders stems in part from the structure of the JET Programme, where many of the teachers work as ‘one-shot’ teachers. One-shot ALTs travel to 15–20 schools in a district, which means that they may see each group of students one to three times a year. Of the five participants in this study, four of them were working as ‘one-shot’ ALTs, while only one of them, Elle, was working as what is called a ‘base-school ALT’, someone who works in one school only. As the only participant who was not required to travel to other schools, Elle was able to develop a rapport with the students and teachers at her school: I really like the consistency of having one school. A lot of people have ten or fifteen schools and they rotate and they see the schools every two to three weeks or a month. But I go to the same school every week. I can have real relationships with the teachers; I can get to know the students. And I’m just really, really lucky because the teachers at my school are . . . really open to the idea of team teaching so they’re down for whatever I suggest and all my lessons, they get excited about it. And they make an effort to have me be part of the school and learn about Japanese culture. Elle’s enthusiasm can be contrasted with Holly’s frustration. Holly worked as a ‘one-shot’ ALT and recognized that this was not ideal for forming relationships with people, relationships which in turn could perhaps support ALTs’ professional development: [O]ne-shot ALTs maybe only visit a school once a week, at the most, so they don’t feel, there isn’t a sense of loyalty. I think a lot of teachers enjoy not having a sense of loyalty to their schools. They enjoy the freedom of that. Umm. But at the same time we want to feel some sort of relationship with the places that we are going to live and work. It is interesting that Holly noted that some one-shot ALTs use the lack of a sense of belonging to their advantage, as it relieves them of any sense of responsibility to the students or teachers in their schools. But it seems as if this benefit was only embraced because there was no possibility of getting involved, which was what the teachers would perhaps have preferred, and which would have enhanced their professional development, and perhaps also the quality of education in the schools where they were working. This sense of ‘giving up’ any professional

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responsibility was also present in Maria’s narrative: Well, it’s not my school. I have nothing to do with this school. So they told me not to do anything. So I won’t do anything. While one could criticize Maria for her lack of engagement in the school – and she might in fact be perceived as ‘a lazy foreigner’ or an incompetent teacher – her choice not to engage in her school environment seems to stem from her perception of not being considered as a valid participant in the educational context, both because she is not Japanese and because she was an infrequent guest at the school. ALTs also noted that at times they felt they were used to reinforce rather than break down stereotypes about Westerners, as was also found by McConnell (2000). In fact, Maria felt that there was almost no pedagogical value of her being in the classroom, and that she was there simply to represent ‘the Other’: So, I’m sort of – look at the white girl – that’s my role. Maria’s narrative reflects Seargeant’s (2009, p. 96) notion that the ‘exoticized native’ provides students with motivation and interest in learning. However, this is not necessarily because of the native speaker’s expert language usage but because of social and cultural connotations of the person’s foreignness or whiteness. He notes that in this ethnocentric approach to foreign language learning, the language becomes not so much a tool for international communication, but a living artifact belonging to a foreign culture. Likewise, native speaker teachers become specimens of that foreign culture, their role as instructors of specialized knowledge overshadowed by their status as foreign nationals, so that it is the emblematic presence of a foreign culture in the classroom that is the defining factor in their appointment in schools. (Seargeant, 2009, p. 56) Indeed, Maria noticed that her presence was ‘emblematic’ as the students were expected to observe her more than to interact with her. In this excerpt, she recounts what one of the JTEs said to her about her role in the classroom: (Quoting a JTE): ‘My students’ level of English is very, very low. But we like to have a foreigner in the class, just so we can see you and


hear you speak. But don’t expect my students to speak to you because they can’t possibly do that.’ Scott also mentioned that he saw his only role in the classroom was to ‘make English look appealing to the kids’: [T]hey’re supposed to want to talk to me in English because I’m a foreigner. I’m supposed to be there to give them that opportunity, but many teachers feel that that interferes with working through the curriculum, working through the textbook, so I’ll just be there being used as a substitute for a recording on a CD, or I can be used to demonstrate dialogue with some of the teachers. Holly describes how her sense of not belonging in Japan was created not only through interactions at school, but also outside of it. As she mentioned, many English teachers felt that they could never ‘feel at home’ in Japan because they were constantly otherized due to the fact that they do not look Japanese: I know foreigners who . . . have lived [here] for a long time; they speak Japanese pretty darn well. They don’t act out of place, they don’t dress out of place and they get pretty tired of walking down the street and having people stare at them. They’re like, I have lived here for eight years, don’t look at me! It can be pretty exasperating. You want to feel like you’re home, but it doesn’t feel like home when you walk into a store and everybody turns around. Holly mentioned that she also was subject to stereotyping that affected how she was perceived both at work and socially. She admitted that sometimes she lived up to stereotypes of ‘the Westerner’ as being disrespectful, something which she was not necessarily proud of. While she seemed to accept that because she acted differently than most Japanese people, both at work and socially, she would continue to be treated as different, at times she resented the dehumanizing effects this had. In this excerpt it is interesting to note that, perhaps because of this, Holly self-identified as a gaijin, a word that literally means ‘outside person’ and can be translated as ‘foreigner’ or ‘non-Japanese person’: People think that all gaijin lie all the time. She lies. She doesn’t take her work seriously. She doesn’t work hard. She, you know, maybe just doesn’t treat people with respect. . . . They’re so delicate with

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each other and we’re not. We’re confrontational. We’re direct. And I think that often times when they see me, my behaviour is all of those things . . . Running down the streets screaming to my friends, wearing some totally inappropriate clothing (laughter) and just like throwing my weight around. But other times, you’re like, could I please get some credit for just being a human being? It is interesting that Elle, the only visible minority among the ALTs, did not share the same sense of being exoticized that the white participants did. This may in part be because she was the only ALT who was in a base school and she therefore had privileges that the other ALTs in the study did not. Alternatively it may be because she is ethnically Asian and therefore would sometimes be mistaken as Japanese and so drew less attention in public. Regardless of whether it was either or both of these reasons, Elle seemed to have a sense of belonging in Japan: [T]he fact that I do come from an Asian culture and it’s similar to Japanese culture. Like I’m Chinese American, so there are some similarities between being Chinese and being Japanese. I’m not sure if it makes me culturally sensitive just because I’m used to it or because I can understand what they’re thinking. Maybe my parents – because I come from a background where they think, maybe the same thing. But even Elle had the sense that she was asked to carry out activities in the classroom that she could not see the value of, beyond providing a token native speaker, or foreigner, in the classroom: I don’t remember what [the activities] were, but it was a lot of like reading, getting them accustomed to listening, to look at a native speaker was the purpose, I think. Professional development – access denied A common theme running through the narratives of the ALTs was that because of the fact that they had limited interaction with local teachers and students and because of their status as ‘exoticized natives’ or ‘artifacts of a foreign culture’, they did not have many opportunities for professional development. This was especially the case for the ‘one-shot’ ALTs. Because of their transient status in the school, many ALTs felt that they did not have the time or the resources to build relationships with JTEs that would foster mentorship (cf. Kachi and


Lee, 2001; Crooks, 2000). When the ALTs’ native speaker status is seen as their primary function in the classroom, this allows them limited opportunities to develop within the JET Programme. As a result, ALTs’ classroom presence is often seen as a disruption, not an enhancement (cf. McConnell, 2000). Because the ALTs in this study did not have a consistent presence in the classroom and could not develop a relationship with the students, they learned to develop a repertoire of classroom activities that had little or no connection to previous learning, and which they could carry out with little or no collaboration with the JTEs. In the quote below Scott recounts how he developed strategies for developing ‘selfcontained’ lessons that did not rely on knowing the students’ levels or what they had already covered in the curriculum: So I don’t need to rely on knowing that they know anything . . . I never assume that they know anything. Because, yeah, that was something that happened a lot at the beginning, I would go in with stuff that I thought was really simple and the teacher would be like, no, I don’t think that the kids know this . . . Part of this is what Scott called learning how to be ‘a game machine that comes up with fun activities’. As he recounted: [Y]ou’re supposed to constantly come up with new activities and games appropriate for that class . . . They think every ALT from the get-go is capable of doing this. Here Scott’s challenge was not to do with coming to terms with English grammar or thinking of how to teach English pronunciation, which are often seen as challenges for native speaker English teachers. The expectation of his role was to develop games that would fill his time with the students. As he further noted, his role as ‘game machine’ did not result in him being incorporated into the classroom. He perceived himself to be an interruption, rather than an asset, as the teachers he worked with could not think of ways to usefully integrate him into classroom activities. Scott’s experience corroborates McConnell’s findings that the majority of JTEs thought the ALTs wasted valuable class because ‘conversational activities and games’ had ‘little relevance to entrance exams’ (2000, p. 191). Part of this may result from the fact that JTEs are given little guidance on how to best make use of their classroom assistants, as

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Scott suggested: I think that one problem at the moment is that JTEs receive no training, as far as I’m aware, as to how to work with ALTs . . . They can’t think of ways to use me in their normal lesson, as in working their way through the curriculum. The onus of fitting into the classroom lies on the ALTs, who have little power or ability to shift their role.

Implications and conclusion The narratives of these ALTs working in Japan represent the difficulties faced by native speakers of English entering the field of ELT. Critics of hiring native English speakers as language teachers in foreign contexts argue that they are often hired almost solely because of their native speaker status. Indeed, these ALTs were hired in part because of the essentialized notions they represent. In line with much of the literature on native speaker English teachers, one can imagine that these ALTs might be criticized for not being culturally sensitive, not engaging with the local community, not teaching pedagogically valuable lessons and for a lack of pedagogical or linguistic expertise. While this criticism may be justified, their narratives give insight into why this may be the case. The ALTs are confined by local attitudes and national ideologies that work to perpetuate ideals of the native speaker of English. The participants’ narratives demonstrate how the structure and ideology of the JET Programme result in systemic ‘utilization’ of ALTs, who are presented as the exoticized Other, unessential to the classroom, interchangeable and foreign – regardless of these individuals’ personalities, ethnic backgrounds and levels of motivation or experience. While the ALTs in this study might be critiqued for their lack of pedagogical expertise, it must be remembered that they have not been hired as teachers, but as teaching assistants. Experience of English language teaching was not a requirement for obtaining their positions and they were offered limited opportunities for training and development. While the JTEs are given official opportunities for professional development, the ALTs, despite being seen as a disruption, are not encouraged to change, grow or develop. This has negative effects on the ALTs’ sense of professionalism and desire to renew their contracts with the JET Programme and/or continue with a career in ELT. Maria was the only one who became an ALT as the first step toward a career in ELT, but her


experience with the JET Programme made her decide not to renew her contract and never to teach again. Interestingly, the ALTs in this study report that because they did not feel a sense of belonging in the professional context, they sought connections to other local communities. Within these communities, the ALTs felt the potential to create shared histories; turn their Japanese experiences into cultural competence; and imagine future interactions. But as their sense of belonging in their Japanese in-group increased, the ALTs started to distance themselves from what they sensed was an unsuccessful teacher role. Despite this, many of those who were starting to feel integrated in their out-of-school communities decided to renew their contract with the JET Programme and stay on longer in Japan because they saw the potential to build those relationships. These participants did not, however, necessarily see themselves continuing a career in ELT. So if the goal of the JET Programme is to provide nonJapanese with insight into Japan, then the programme could be deemed a success. But if the goal of the programme is to develop ELT specialists through mentorship, then the programme could be seen to be failing. This study shows that there is a potential for the JET Programme both to challenge the native speaker ideal through intercultural exchange and to allow ALTs to develop professionally. The responses from ALTs reported here revealed that community, consistency and collaboration were commonalties when discussing what support they felt they needed in order to develop a positive identity as an ALT. This would mean designing opportunities for ALTs to participate through: (1) building community through mentoring of ALTs by JTEs; (2) fostering collaboration with JTEs that would result in opportunities for team teaching; and (3) providing consistency where ALTs are able to see the results of their experience. Accordingly, the local context would be perceived as a legitimate space for ALTs to engage in professional development, and become more than an inconvenient add-on to the local context. This in turn would hopefully have the positive effect of improving the quality of English lessons in Japanese schools, and in making classroom interaction more communicative. The study also indicates that, in reframing the native speaker ideal, researchers who criticize the reliance on essentialized ideals of native speakers of English in applied linguistics should also consider local and/or national ideologies such as nihonjinron which work to perpetuate essentialized identities. A thorough consideration of the effects of such essentialization on native speaker English teachers and recognition of their ‘multidimensional and multilayered’ identities is also necessary

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for the teachers’ own personal or professional development. Instead of being villianized in applied linguistic discourses and otherized in their teaching contexts, people such as the ALTs in this study who have gained experience of international ELT and learning about other languages and cultures should be welcomed into the field and provided opportunities to develop into critical ELT professionals. In an era of globalization, exchanges like the JET Programme have the potential to generate meaningful intercultural experiences for the teachers, students and communities involved. As we have seen in this study, such exchange is happening, but not within the confines of the programme. When national educational initiatives rely on essentialized notions of national and ethnic identities of both the ‘home’ and ‘foreign language’ culture, very little professional development and exchange between the parties involved seems to take place. Instead, native speaker English teachers are commodified as English language resources in order to promote national objectives focused on advancement in a global economy.

Acknowledgements This chapter is based on a conference paper given by Yvonne Ellis (now Breckenridge) ‘Communities of practice: the ALT experience’ at the Conference of the International Society for Language Studies, Montreal, Canada in 2005. We would like to thank the participants who volunteered to share their narratives for this research.

Notes 1. Medgyes’ first study involved 28 US American teachers (25 of whom were native English speakers and 3 of whom were bilingual teachers). The second included an international survey of English teachers (18 native speakers of English and 198 non-native speakers in Hungary, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Israel, Brazil, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Russia, Sweden and Mexico). The third involved 81 non-native speaker English teachers in Hungary. 2. Brutt-Griffler and Samimy’s study involved graduate students in the US, Lasagabaster and Sierra’s undergraduate students in Spain, and Barratt and Kontra’s ESL students in Hungary and China. 3. NOVA is a well-known conversation school, or eikaiwa, which was the largest in Japan until its collapse in 2007.

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Yvonne Breckenridge and Elizabeth J. Erling 99 Barratt, L. and Kontra, E. (2000) ‘Native-English-speaking teachers in cultures other than their own’, TESOL Journal, 9(3), 19–23. Benke, E., and Medgyes, P. (2005) ‘Difference in teaching behaviour between native and non-native speaker English teachers: as seen by the learners’ in E. Llurda (ed.) Non-native language teachers: perceptions, challenges, and contributions to the profession (New York: Springer), pp. 195–215. Braine, G. (ed.) (1999) Non-native educators in English language teaching (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates). Brutt-Griffler, J. and Samimy, K. (1999). ‘To be a native or non-native speaker: perceptions of “non-native’ students in a graduate TESOL program’ in G. Braine (ed.) Non-native educators in English language teaching (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates), pp. 127–44. Clandinin, D. J. and Connelly, F. M. (2000) Narrative inquiry: experience and story in qualitative research (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers). Cook, V. (1999) ‘Going beyond the native speaker in language teaching’, TESOL Quarterly, 33(2), 185–209. Crooks, A. (2000) ‘Professional development and the JET Programme: insights and solutions based on the Sendai city programme’, JALT Journal, 23, 35–50. Davies, A. (2003) The native speaker in applied linguistics, 2nd edn (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). de Almeida Mattos, A. M. (1997). ‘Native and non-native teacher: a matter to think over’, English Teaching Forum, 35(1), 38. Edwards, V. (2004) Multilingualism in the English-speaking world (Oxford: Blackwell). Erling, E. J. (2006) ‘Review of A. Holliday’s The Struggle to Teach English as an International Language’, BAAL News, 83, 29–32. Holliday, A. (2005) The struggle to teach English as an international language (Oxford: Oxford University Press). JET Programme (2009) Official website, available at http://www.jetprogramme. org/e/introduction/history.html Kachi, R. and Lee, C.H. (2001) ‘A tandem of native and non-native teachers: voices from Japanese and American teachers in the EFL classroom in Japan’. Paper presented at the Second International Language Teacher Educators’ Conference, Minneapolis, Minn. Kachru, B. (ed.) (1992) The other tongue: English across cultures (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press). Kubota, R. (1998) ‘Ideologies of English in Japan’, World Englishes, 17(3), 295–306. Kubota, R. (2002) ‘The impact of globalization on language teaching in Japan’ in D. Block and D. Cameron (eds) Globalization and language teaching (London: Routledge), pp. 13–28. Lasagabaster, D. and Sierra, J. M (2002) ‘University students’ perceptions of native and non-native speaker English teachers of English’, Language Awareness, 11, 132–42. Liddicoat, A. J. (2007) ‘Internationalising Japan: Nihonjinron and the intercultural in Japanese language-in-education policy’, Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 2(1), 32–46. Liu, J. (1999) ‘From their own perspectives: the impact of non-native ESL professionals on their students’ in G. Braine (ed.) Non-native educators in English language teaching (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates), pp. 159–76.

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Llurda, E. (ed.) (2005) Non-native language teachers: perceptions, challenges, and contributions to the profession (New York: Springer). McConnell, D. L. (2000) Importing diversity: inside Japan’s JET Programme (Los Angeles, Calif.: University of California Press). Mackie, A. (2003) ‘Race and desire: towards critical literacies for ESL’, TESL Canada Journal, 20(2), 23–37. Matsuda, A. (2003) ‘The ownership of English in Japanese secondary schools’, World Englishes, 22(4), 483–96. Medgyes, P. (1999) The non-native teacher (London: Macmillan). MEXT (2002) ‘Developing a strategic plan to cultivate “Japanese with English Abilities”’ http://www.mext.go.jp/english/news/2002/07/020901.htm Moody, A. (2006) ‘English in Japanese popular culture and J-Pop music’, World Englishes, 25 (2), 209–22. Norton, B. (2000) Identity and language learning: gender, ethnicity and educational change (London: Pearson). Paikeday, T. M. (1985) The native speaker is dead! (Toronto: Paikeday Publishing). Piller, I. and Takahashi, K. (2006) ‘A passion for English: desire and the language market’ in A. Pavlenko (ed.) Languages and emotions of multilingual speakers (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters), pp. 59–83. Quirk, R. and Widdowson, H. (eds) (1985) English in the world: teaching and learning the language and literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Seargeant, P. (2009) The idea of English in Japan: ideology and the evolution of a global language (Bristol: Multilingual Matters). Seidlhofer, B. (1999) ‘Double standards: teacher education in the Expanding Circle’, World Englishes, 18(2), 233–45. Simon-Maeda, A. (2004) ‘The complex construction of professional identities: female EFL educators in Japan speak out’, TESOL Quarterly, 38, 405–36. Stanlaw, J. (1992) ‘English in Japanese communicative strategies’ in B. Kachru (ed.) The other tongue: English across cultures (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press), pp. 178–208. Stanlaw, J. (2004) Japanese English: language and culture contact (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press). Strevens, P. (1980) Teaching English as an international language (Oxford: Pergamon Press). Thomas, J. (1999) ‘Voices from the periphery: non-native teachers and issues of credibility’ in G. Braine (ed.) Non-native educators in English language teaching (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates), pp. 5–13. Verschueren, J. (1989) ‘English as object and medium of (mis)understanding’ in O. García and R. Otheguy (eds) English across cultures, cultures across English: a reader in cross-cultural communication (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter), pp. 31–54. Widdowson, H. (1994) ‘The ownership of English’, TESOL Quarterly, 28, 377–89.

5 Immigration, Diversity and Language Education in Japan: toward a Glocal Approach to Teaching English Ryuko Kubota

Around 9:30 on a chilly Thursday night in 2007, I was sitting at a booth in Denny’s Restaurant in Hasu (pseudonym), a mid-sized city in rural Japan with a growing migrant population mainly from Brazil, China and Peru. Across the table were two participants of my research – Saori, a woman in her twenties and Kazuo, a man in his thirties.1 They had come right after their eikaiwa [English conversation] class. This was the second time I interviewed Saori and Kazuo at Denny’s. As they were sharing with me their experiences of learning English, a middle-aged visibly non-Asian man walked toward our booth and said, ‘Maureen-san’. He was looking for Maureen, a long-time American resident in Japan, a native speaker of English, a minister of a local Christian church, and the English teacher of the eikaiwa class that Saori and Kazuo take. The three of us at the table understood that the man was waiting for Maureen that evening – in fact, we had seen him in front of Denny’s as we walked in. I had seen this man at the same restaurant a few weeks before when I was interviewing Kazuo; the man was talking with Maureen across the room. Unfortunately, Maureen was unavailable that evening. The English class was taught by a substitute teacher. The man, Alfredo, had been waiting for Maureen there for an hour and a half, without knowing that she would not show up. The next thing he said was ‘ichijikan sanjuppun! [one hour and thirty minutes!]’. Obviously, his Japanese was limited. He continued, ‘Nichiyôbi, watashi kekkonnshiki, seisho nai-ne [Sunday, I wedding ceremony, no Bible]’, which I interpreted to mean that he would be conducting a wedding ceremony on Sunday but had no Bible – perhaps only a script written in Romanized Japanese. 101

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When we told him that Maureen was unavailable for him, he said ‘kyô nai? . . . samui ima shinpai, . . . shinpai-ne (né?), preocupação [Today, no? . . . cold now worry, worry]’. We soon learned from him that the last word he uttered was Portuguese. We also discovered that he loved talking. For the next hour, Alfredo communicated with us – using mostly nouns and some qualifiers in Japanese, some Portuguese words, as well as drawing on a piece of paper – about the arrival of Portuguese people in Brazil in 1500, Indios murdered by the settlers, and the primitive ways Indios lived. Saori, Kazuo and I struggled to understand what he was trying to say, but I was surprised by how much communication took place despite limited linguistic resources. Judging from the fact that Alfredo and Maureen were acquaintances, I had assumed that he was involved in the church and spoke English. The former speculation turned out to be true – Alfredo tried to tell us the location of his church (and a few weeks later, Maureen confirmed that he was an ordained pastor with a bible degree from Brazil). However, the latter assumption was totally wrong – Alfredo was not an English speaker. I wanted to know in which language Alfredo and Maureen talked with each other. To my question, Alfredo said, ‘Watashi hanashi supeingo dake. Sukoshi Maureen dekiru [I speech Spanish only. Maureen can a little]’. Maureen confirmed with me later that Alfredo did not speak English at all: she used a mixture of Spanish and Japanese to communicate with him.

I present this narrative to show the linguistic, cultural and ethnic diversity that one can find in a small city in Japan – a country that used to be regarded as a homogeneous nation. This narrative also challenges the assumption that English is a link language that enables people from different linguistic backgrounds to communicate with each other. This assumption underlies people’s consciousness, academic discourse and current educational policies, legitimating the perceived value of learning English in Japan as well as other Expanding Circle countries. This chapter critically examines this assumption as a discourse, rather than a reflection of reality. I draw on my qualitative research in the city of Hasu in 2007, in which I investigated the perspectives and experiences of Japanese adults learning English outside of educational institutions. I propose a glocal approach to teaching English as a foreign language that promotes border-crossing communication in English and beyond with critically engaged awareness, attitudes and skills.

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The discourse of English as a global lingua franca There is no doubt that English is a language used on a global scale. It is an international medium of commerce, education, technology, media, entertainment, transportation and more (Crystal, 1997). In scholarly inquiry, the role of English in the world is discussed in various terms: English as an international language, English as a lingua franca, English as a global language and English as a world language (Seidlhofer, 2004). These terms evoke the image of English used by many people in every corner of the world, constructing a particular knowledge about the status of English. This discourse of English in the world is observed in scholarly discussions and educational policies. Scholarly discourse of English in the world The spread of English has been discussed from different scholarly perspectives. One approach is to describe it as natural, neutral and beneficial, as represented by the work of Crystal (1997) (see Pennycook, 1994, 2007a). Another is to focus on world Englishes and describe diverse geographical varieties of English used around the world (Kachru, 1986; Jenkins, 2003). A more recent approach is English as a lingua franca – a focus on mutual intelligibility for communication among non-native speakers of English using lingua franca core phonological features and lexicogrammatical regularities that are different from the native speaker norm ( Jenkins, 2000; Seidlhofer, 2004). An alternative stance is to critique the present spread of English from a perspective of linguistic imperialism, suggesting that it perpetuates inequality between English and other languages as well as between groups of speakers of different languages (Phillipson, 1992, 2009). Another stance that critiques the spread of English (and other languages of power) is found in the discussions of language endangerment and related topics such as language ecology and minority language rights (Mühlhäusler, 1996, 2000; Nettle and Romaine, 2000; Skutnabb-Kangas, 2000). These inquiries that problematize the spread of English are further critiqued as deterministic, essentialist or universalist (Brutt-Griffler, 2002; Pennycook, 1994, 2001, 2007b). Alternatively, English can be viewed not as a coherent closed system but as a dynamic organism that can express diverse meanings and identities through performative acts and hybrid forms (Canagarajah, 2007; Pennycook, 2007b). These active debates contribute to the advancement of our scholarly knowledge about English in the world. Yet at present, discussions focused on English involve limited attention to the shifting multilingual reality of the local and global communities that involves communication in

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languages other than English. The overwhelming focus on English in scholarly discussion seems to be related to the prevalence of the idea that English is a shared language, despite many contexts where it is not. This does not imply that research on other languages does not exist (see, for example, Mantel and Leeman, 2009 on Spanish; the 2006 volume of Annual Review of Applied Linguistics on lingua franca languages), nor does it indicate that English is the only major language taught globally. Nonetheless, I argue that the perceived ubiquity of English is linked to the proliferation of research on the role of English in the world and English language teaching, which further legitimates the discourse of English as a global lingua franca. The discourse of English language teaching policy in Japan The idea that English is a global lingua franca is presupposed in policy discourse in Japan which places a greater emphasis on teaching English. This emphasis is driven by a perceived need to raise economic competitiveness as a nation. For instance, the Japanese government issued several recommendations in the early 2000s on English language teaching, which culminated in a policy document issued by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), ‘Action plan to cultivate “Japanese with English abilities”‘ (MEXT, 2003). The document states: English has played a central role as the common international language in linking people who have different mother tongues. . . . it is essential for [children] to acquire communication abilities in English as a common international language. This document rationalizes the importance of teaching English by mentioning increased international interdependence, global economic competition, environmental challenges and participation in the global community. Of these rationales, the economic one reflects corporate demands for English language teaching. The business sector has long influenced educational initiatives, but its recommendations increased in the 1980s (Saito, 2004). With respect to English language teaching, Keidanren ( Japan Federation of Economic Organizations – one of the predecessors of the current Japan Business Federation or Nippon Keidanren) issued its recommendation in 2000 on fostering competencies for workers in the age of globalization, urging a greater emphasis on developing communicative skills in English (Keidanren, 2000).2 Concrete recommendations included introducing the instruction of English conversation in the elementary school,

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increasing the number of native teachers of English, using TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) and TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication) in hiring Japanese teachers of English, and requiring a listening test in English for university entrance exams. These recommendations mirrored what was laid out in the MEXT document mentioned above (Mizuno, 2008). The document also labels English as a global language. It states: Along with the advancement of globalization and the Internet, English has become an international lingua franca at international conferences and in business. Communicative competence, including conversation skills, is especially required. [Translated by author] Another business organization called the Japan Association of Corporate Executives (Keizai Dôyûkai) issued a set of national policy recommendations in 1999 and recommended that English language instruction be introduced at the elementary school so that high school graduates could engage in daily conversation in English.3 In the document, English is described as a global communication tool. Similar to the academic discourse, these policy documents mobilize the idea that English is a global lingua franca and use it as a rationale for a greater emphasis on English language teaching, which has indeed been implemented at various levels, including officially requiring English in the secondary school curriculum and introducing English at the elementary school (see Butler, 2007; Gottlieb, 2008). In higher education, MEXT reports a recent increase in institutions offering courses taught in English (27 per cent of undergraduate and 30 per cent of graduate programmes in 2007 compared to 26 and 27 per cent, respectively, in 2006).4 As Mizuno (2008) argues, the recent policy for teaching English has been shaped by corporate demands for hiring graduates with practical competence in English defined as communicative skills in listening and speaking. However, no evidence supports the exclusive need for conversational English skills in the workplace or the need for English competence for work in general. My research in Hasu indicated that the need for English in the workplace might be overestimated. I interviewed executives of four manufacturing companies that have overseas factories and/or offices. They all stated that the main use of English is reading and writing email and that, according to their intuitive estimate, the percentage of employees who regularly use English on the job ranges from 1.5 to 20 per cent with an average of 9.5 per cent. These companies have more global connection than other businesses.

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As for general employment, I checked some job placement websites of the Employment Security Bureau (Hello Work) in October 2007. They show extremely low percentages of job advertisements that require English skills (0.6 per cent in Hasu and 1.4 per cent in Tokyo). Of course these numbers may not reflect the actual use of English on the job. Nonetheless, they indicate a gap between the discourse that elevates English as an essential language and the actual demands. Truth effects of the discourse of English as a global lingua franca As observed above, the idea that English is a global lingua franca is normalized in academic and policy discussions. This does not imply that participants in the discourse, especially academics, believe that English is the only lingua franca or that English is not widely used; rather, the idea seems to overstate the functional role of English and overlook actual multilingual contexts and demands, such as those in the opening narrative in which English does not function as a lingua franca. The discourse of English as a global lingua franca essentializes the knowledge of how international communication is conducted and what communicative needs exist. Here, what matters is not so much whether the idea that English is a global lingua franca is true or false as how the idea exerts truth effects in the academic and policy discourse about the role of English in the world. In discussing English as an international language as non-reality, Pennycook (2007a) presents two concepts: construction and myth. First, English, as well as different varieties of English including standard English, is a social, historical and political construction, rather than a pre-existing object. Second, the construction of English has produced a metalanguage – a discourse about English. Thus, by ‘constantly talking about things, by constantly assuming the existence of things’, a myth is constructed (p. 97). English as a global lingua franca can be viewed as a myth, whereby repeated reference to it legitimates its existence. In this sense, the academic and policy discourse on English as a global lingua franca produces truth effects about the status of English. In Foucault’s term, the idea of English as a globally shared language constitutes ‘régime of truth: . . . the type of discourse which [each society] accepts and makes function as true’ (Foucault, 1980, p. 131). The discourse of English as a global lingua franca has rationalized various educational initiatives. Here, relevant research or social realities are conveniently ignored within the regime of truth. For instance, the effectiveness of the early learning of English as a foreign language is not supported by research. Muñoz (2008) argues that while younger learners do seem to be favoured by implicit learning, language acquisition in a foreign

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language context occurs slowly and requires massive amounts of exposure. There is no evidence that an early start in language learning, compared to a later start, leads to higher proficiency after the same amount of instructional time; indeed, ‘even younger starters with more instructional time have often failed to show a particularly substantial advantage in terms of long-term proficiency benefits’ (Muñoz, 2008, p. 586). Likewise, the frequently mentioned needs for English skills for employment are unsupported by the evidence discussed earlier. Given the fact that there are few opportunities to actually use the language in daily life, early learning of English or learning English for work may simply function as a signature of middle-class status, a gatekeeper for career advancement, or a language accessory that may not linked to actual communicative needs. The nexus between English and social status leads us to examine issues of power. Indeed the regime of truth produces and is produced in hierarchical relations of power, benefiting certain groups of people while disadvantaging others. It is thus important to examine how the discourse of English as a global lingua franca may overlook not only the contexts where English is not shared but also the structural inequalities that exist between those who can afford to acquire English and those who cannot. English-speaking individuals, particularly those in the Outer Circle and Expanding Circle countries, are largely global cosmopolitan elites who have the cultural, economic and social capital to acquire competency in the language of power and maintain their privileged socio-economic status (Bruthiaux, 2002; Lin and Martin, 2005; Phillipson, 2003; Ramanathan, 2005). As Phillipson (2009) states, ‘Choice as to whether people should learn English is a luxury that the world’s have-nots do not enjoy, unlike postcolonial elites’ (p. 337). Without more equitable economic and educational systems in place, global English continues to create a divide between haves and have-nots. The nexus of English and privilege is further examined below. English competence as a privilege The discourse of English as a global lingua franca evokes an image in which all people in the world are connected by this fantastic tongue. However, as Graddol (2006) states, over 5 billion people in the world do not speak English as either their first or second language, indicating that more than three-quarters of the world population are non-English-speaking. Pointing out the fact that the majority of the people in the world have no proficiency in English, Phillipson (2003) also states that even in English-speaking countries in Africa, such as Nigeria or Kenya, fluent English speakers constitute less than 10 per cent of the population.

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Who, then, is included in this minority population with English language proficiency? In Outer and Expanding Circle countries, English users are likely to be the culturally and socio-economically privileged. Although the discourse of English as a global lingua franca has produced various educational initiatives for English language teaching, learning opportunities are not equally distributed to everyone in capitalist societies like Japan. This means that the discourse of English as a global lingua franca may fuel socio-economic inequality. Socio-economic inequality in contemporary Japan has been exacerbated under the neo-liberal structural reforms enacted since the late 1990s, creating unequal educational opportunities in general. According to a recent study conducted by the Centre for Research on University Management and Policy at the University of Tokyo, 62.8 per cent of the students from higher-income families (12 million yen per year or higher) entered four-year universities, compared to only 28.2 per cent of those from lower-income families (earning less than 2 million yen per year) (Asahi Shinbun, 31 July 2009). This indicates a significant disparity in the amount of English language instruction that college-aged Japanese people receive. This gap exists not only in higher education but also in early learning of English, which has gained popularity in recent years. A magazine called Kodomo eigo katarogu [The catalogue of English for children] reported that the number of ‘preschools’ – institutions that use English as a medium of institution for several hours a day on at least one day a week – increased from 18 in 2001 to 293 in 2008. Because about 70 per cent of preschools charge 600,000 yen or more annually for tuition and fees, most lowincome parents cannot afford such extra education for their young children. These socio-economic gaps thus create an English divide or a system of sorting those with competency in English from those without (Yamada, 2006). English competency measured by commercial tests such as TOEIC is already used as a means of screening for employment and promotion in some corporations. However, such a policy does not necessarily reflect actual linguistic demands in the workplace, as discussed above. In the meantime, the global spread of English benefits the English language teaching and testing industry (Bruthiaux, 2002).

Diversity in Japan The discourse of English as a global lingua franca constructs the idea of how linguistically diverse people do and should engage in communication not only internationally but also domestically. A study conducted

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by Matsuda (2002) demonstrates this point. She conducted a content analysis of seven junior high school English textbooks approved by the Ministry of Education in Japan and found that the fictional settings of English use in five of these textbooks were predominantly Japan. She also found that the textbooks contained more instances of the native speaker/non-native speaker dyad than the non-native/non-native dyad. Given the wide circulation of these textbooks, these findings seem to have a significant truth effect – construction of the idea that when a Japanese student encounters a foreigner in Japan, the foreigner is a native speaker of English and the medium of communication should be English (see Tsuda, 1990). However, the actual linguistic ecology of Japan is far from the image that these textbooks evoke. National trends It is commonly assumed that Japan is a monolingual, monoethnic and monocultural nation. However, ethnic and linguistic diversity has always existed in Japan and is steadily rising. Gottlieb (2008) provides a comprehensive account of this topic. There are two indigenous language groups, Ainu and Okinawan (Ryukyuan), which include a number of dialects. Speakers of these languages have been largely assimilated to standard Japanese, but revitalization efforts have been made to some limited extent. Diversity is also brought about by migration. Gottlieb (2008) estimates that at least 25 languages other than Japanese are spoken among the migrant population. According to government statistics, the number of registered foreigners in Japan has been increasing in the past three decades, accounting for 1.74 per cent of the total population of Japan in 2008. The country of origin of the largest group is China (29.6 per cent), followed by South/North Korea (26.6 per cent), Brazil (14.1 per cent), the Philippines (9.5 per cent), Peru (2.7 per cent), the US (2.4 per cent) and others (15.2 per cent). Although a large proportion of the Korean population consists of old-comer immigrants (as opposed to newcomers – see below) who have been in Japan for four or five generations and have linguistically integrated into the mainstream society, Korean heritage speakers do exist, including those who have taken Japanese citizenship. Many of the Chinese people are also old-comers, although the growing number of newcomers, mainly from the People’s Republic of China, made the Chinese the largest group of foreign residents for the first time in 2007.5 The newcomer population from South America has increased since the 1990 enactment of the revised Immigration Control Law, which allowed nikkeijin, or foreigners of Japanese descent, and their families

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down to the third generation to legally live and work in Japan. Japanese emigration to South America, especially Brazil and Peru, began around the turn of the twentieth century when there was a high demand for farm labour in these countries. Almost a century later, labour demands in Japan brought a large number of nikkei families to Japan. The increase of people from China and other Asian countries is influenced by the 1993 implementation of the Industrial Training and Technical Internship Programme, which allowed industrial trainees to stay and engage in training in Japan for up to three years. There are also Japanese war orphans and their family members who returned from China and Sakhalin. Many of the newcomers work for manufacturing industries. Although the global economic crisis in 2008 displaced many of these newcomers, new government initiatives would increase foreign residents. For instance, the government recently launched a programme that brings in nurses and carers from Indonesia and the Philippines under the bilateral Economic Partnership Agreements, and through this 205 Indonesian and 280 Filipino professionals entered Japan in 2008 and in 2009 respectively. The nurses are expected to pass the national nursing exam in the Japanese language in order to continue to work after three years. Another initiative announced by the government in 2008 is to increase the number of international students to 300,000 by 2020.6 The previous goal set in 1983 aimed at increasing the number to 100,000 by 2001, and this was achieved in 2003. Reflecting the recommendation of Nippon Keidanren [ Japan Business Federation], this initiative includes support for these students’ employment in Japan after graduation. While the initiative also recommends that universities increase the number of courses conducted with English as the medium of instruction, the business community overwhelmingly expects to hire international graduates with fluency in Japanese.7 These initiatives indicate that integration of foreign individuals into Japanese society would increase the interaction between them and local residents. Diversity in Hasu The city of Hasu, where the opening communicative event took place, reflects the demographic trend observed in Japanese cities with a strong presence of manufacturing industry. A brief demographic account provides a sense of the diversity experienced by the local community. Hasu has a population of a little over 160,000. In 1990, the number of registered foreign residents was approximately 700; by 2007, it had grown to more than 6000, constituting 3.7 per cent of the population. Of this population, approximately 50 per cent came from Brazil, followed by

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groups from China (17 per cent), Peru (8 per cent), Korea (6 per cent) and Thailand (4 per cent).8 In my interactions with them, most had little or no command of English. Native speakers of English in Hasu are mostly English language teachers. Hasu also has two Japanese language institutes for adult learners, mostly from China and South East Asia preparing to enter undergraduate degree programmes, as well as two universities with a sizable body of international undergraduate and graduate students mainly from China, Korea and developing countries in Asia. Foreign residents tend to live in geographical pockets throughout Japan where a strong manufacturing industry exists. Hasu is a member of a league of 26 cities and towns (as of 2008) with high percentages of foreign residents, ranging from 2 to 16 per cent with an average of 5.5 per cent. The league has held an annual conference since 2001 to discuss issues of health care, education, community support and law enforcement. The migrant population includes children and youths, introducing an unprecedented kind of diversity to their Japanese peers at schools (see Tsuneyoshi, 2004; Kubota and McKay, 2009). For newcomer adults, obtaining access to public services and participating in daily life in local communities become a major issue. Here, communication is an important aspect of community participation and social inclusion. Many of the newcomers are like Alfredo; non-English speakers. In the city of Hasu, bilingual staff members at the city hall assist residents, bilingual individuals are dispatched to local schools when needs arise, and some public documents and announcements are translated into Portuguese, Chinese, Spanish and English. For Japanese residents, this diversity exists side by side with a discourse of English as a global lingua franca that does not correspond to the local linguistic demands. In the next section, I compare two examples of linguistic demands: my own experience of living in Hasu as a researcher and some experiences of travelling abroad which were shared by Saori, a female participant in my study.

Linguistic demands: personal experiences in Hasu and abroad Experience as a researcher In January 2007, I moved to Hasu from the United States to conduct a one-year qualitative study on the experiences of Japanese adults learning English outside traditional educational institutions (e.g. in eikaiwa institutes and community centres). During my stay in Hasu as a researcher and a university professor, my daily contact language shifted completely into Japanese, whereas my use of English was limited

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to sending and receiving email. During 2007, my opportunities to use English in face-to-face situations were restricted to professional activities such as giving five academic presentations, occasionally conversing with native English teachers for my research, teaching English conversation to a group of women, and making four overnight trips with English-speaking friends visiting from abroad, all of which took place because of my years of experience of living abroad. During my stay in Hasu, I was involved in volunteer activities to support the local foreign/migrant population. It was necessary for me to understand the role and significance of learning English in an ethnically and linguistically diverse local community. The community activities I participated in included: 1. Group tutoring Japanese as a second language ( JSL) on Sunday mornings organized by a volunteer organization. 2. Privately tutoring JSL to an older Peruvian couple and three young Peruvian individuals. 3. Supporting education for linguistically minority children (e.g. volunteer tutoring JSL at elementary and junior high schools; helping a Peruvian boy enrol in a local junior high school; participating in an orientation meeting for parents and children preparing to attend high school). 4. Supporting adult individuals (e.g. a Chinese undergraduate student applying for a graduate school in Japan; interpretation support for a graduate student from Egypt). 5. Attending international events (e.g. joining a Brazilian group at a Hasu summer dance festival; serving as a judge for a children’s poster contest for the Brazilian community; preparing food for a large Brazilian festival; attending international Christmas parties). Of these activities, English was required only in a couple of instances. In the second example above, a Japanese-Peruvian young woman, Camila, was a college student in Peru and took a leave of absence to work in Japan. Camila, her friend and her cousin were attending the JSL tutorial on Sundays (the first example above) and requested that I privately tutor them. Camila spoke English because she had learned it in Peru. Since her Japanese and my Spanish were quite limited, we sometimes used English to communicate. In the fourth example above, I was asked to serve as an interpreter for a male international graduate student from Egypt at an informational session on childbirth held at a local hospital. This turned out to be a convoluted task, because his

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pregnant wife who also attended the session was a speaker of Arabic but not English. I interpreted the information given by a nurse into English, which he further interpreted into Arabic for his wife. However, I wondered how helpful my support was – the husband obviously understood some Japanese and what was really needed was an Arabic–Japanese interpreter. All other activities were conducted in Japanese or in the native languages of the speakers. When Portuguese and Spanish speakers interacted, there was a great amount of linguistic accommodation on the part of Spanish speakers, because of the larger size of the Portuguesespeaking community. In almost all cross-cultural community situations that I encountered, English was not used as a lingua franca. An English learner’s experiences abroad: Saori’s case The opening communicative event involved Saori and Kazuo. I conducted three unstructured interviews with them after their evening eikaiwa lesson. Whereas Kazuo was a 37-year-old single man working for a manufacturing company in Hasu, Saori was a cheerful 32-yearold woman getting ready for her upcoming wedding. She was working full-time as a speech-language-hearing therapist at a medical clinic in Hasu. Saori’s experiences abroad offer an interesting comparison with my experience in Hasu. Saori is learning English for a very practical reason – to facilitate her dream of ‘conquering the world’. She travels abroad several times a year and has visited more than 25 countries so far. During her trips, she has experienced a great deal of trouble – lost bags, flight cancellations and route alterations. This made her realize that she needs to develop mainly listening skills for troubleshooting. Saori’s earlier motivation to learn English was influenced by her older brother who studied in New Zealand as a high school student, but her desire to travel is not restricted to the English-speaking world; in fact, all the countries she has visited are non-English-speaking countries, mostly in Asia. She recognizes the usefulness of English in general but she is also aware of the need to understand different accents. She has been to many South East Asian countries where she had difficulty comprehending different varieties of English. Furthermore, she realizes that English is not universally useful. During college, she joined a one-month study tour in India for volunteer work in the slums and a rural village. Living conditions were primitive and many of her peers dropped out, but she survived. At the beginning of the trip, she stayed with a middle-class family for a short time. She observed that at least one member of such

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families could speak English, but the lower the social class got, the more difficult English communication became. She took a brief Tamil language lesson before being dispatched to the slums, but people there spoke Telugu instead. She used gestures to communicate and was quite successful. Other places where she was unable to communicate in English include China, Korea, Taiwan and Brazil. In those countries, she used different communicative strategies. In Taiwan and China, she wrote Chinese characters when her interlocutors did not know English. In Taiwan, some people she spoke to in English replied in Japanese, so she used Japanese with them. Her home-stay experience in Mongolia was a challenge because no one spoke English. People were speaking to her in their own language, so Saori thought that she could communicate better by expressing herself in Japanese rather than in her limited English. Of the adult learners of English I interviewed, Saori was one of the few who expressed respect for diversity and self-esteem as a Japanese. Saori felt annoyed by her fellow Japanese travellers especially during her trip in Mongolia. They complained about the lack of water, baths and rice. They lacked flexibility or strategies to enjoy themselves. Her approach is different – for instance, at a dinner table, she looks for food that she can eat, enjoys it, and eats only a small amount of what does not suit her taste. She commented, ‘The yardstick the Japanese people have is too small. . . . they would enjoy themselves more with a variety of yardsticks’ [translated by author]. While Saori is critical about narrow-minded Japanese tourists, she is likewise critical about European and American tourists who assume that English is the international language and use it aggressively. She likes a more humble Japanese way of not relying on English but using body language to communicate. Here, Saori affirms what she considered to be Japanese ways of communicating. Saori is also open to learning other languages. She tries to learn some expressions in the local language from a travel guidebook. When she was stranded in Bhutan for a day, she spent some time learning the local language from a stranger. Saori is a world traveller and has a cosmopolitan outlook. She is aware of different varieties of English, limitations of English use, and the usefulness of non-verbal communicative strategies. She is willing to learn the language of the local people. Moreover, she has a cosmopolitan attitude toward difference. Saori is also aware that many English speakers and world travellers are socio-economically privileged, as demonstrated in her comment that Korean travellers abroad have good

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command of English but they are probably privileged economically. The awareness, attitudes and skills that Saori embraces are aligned with a glocal approach to teaching and learning English, which I want to propose.

Toward a glocal approach to English language teaching Globalization is a familiar term, whereas glocalization is not heard very often. In undertaking a new approach to English language education in contemporary Japan and similar nations, exploring globalization, glocalization and a rather unusual concept grobalization (Ritzer, 2004) would be a useful first step. Globalization has multiple facets as cultural, economic and political processes. It can be defined as ‘the worldwide diffusion of practices, expansion of relations across continents, organization of social life on a global scale, and growth of a shared global consciousness’ (Ritzer, 2004, p. 72). Globalization is characterized by a worldwide trend toward homogeneity and is often contrasted with the notion of glocalization, which features heterogeneity and hybridity. Specifically, glocalization is defined as ‘the interpenetration of the global and the local resulting in unique outcomes in different geographic areas’ (Ritzer, 2004, p. 73). It is a process sensitive to differences within and between geographical areas, identifies individuals as creative agents, and provokes reactions to globalization, ‘ranging from nationalist entrenchment to cosmopolitan embrace’ (Ritzer, 2004, p. 77). Ritzer observes that as a concept globalization is too broad and encompassing and that scholars tend to pay greater attention to glocalization. In order to generate more balanced discussion, he proposes ‘grobalization’, a concept that ‘focuses on the imperialistic ambitions of nations, corporations, organizations, and the link and their desire, indeed need, to impose themselves on various geographic areas’ (Ritzer, 2004, p. 73). Grobalization involves three major processes: capitalism, Americanization and McDonaldization.9 Seen in this way, glocalization and grobalization are sharply contrasted – the former highlights heterogeneous and hybrid innovations at the local level including creolization, in which a combination of different languages creates a new form, whereas the latter is characterized by homogenization, uniformity and purification, as seen in the desire to preserve and enforce the standard language. Glocalization and grobalization can be applied to the ways in which we conceptualize the role of English and an approach to English language teaching in Japan and beyond. The spread of English as viewed

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as a grobalization process has been critiqued as linguistic imperialism (Phillipson, 1992, 2003, 2009). English language teachers need to be critically aware that their professional activities as well as those of the eikaiwa and testing industries can perpetuate the perceived superiority of not only English but also of Anglo culture, whiteness, standard English and native speakers of English. Conversely, the glocal paradigm parallels the scholarly focus in the field of TESOL on postcolonial resistance and hybridity. But beyond that, a glocal approach raises students’ critical language awareness and develops border-crossing communicative skills that enable them to actively and critically engage in diverse cultural, ethnic, racial and linguistic contact zones. A glocal approach The paradigm of postcolonial resistance has been discussed by critical scholars in second language education (Canagarajah, 1999; Lin and Martin, 2005; Lin et al., 2002). In resisting the hegemony of English and Anglo culture, this paradigm encourages students to reclaim their subjugated identity, knowledge and everyday practices, and to appropriate English in order to express their own identity and world view, rather than being enslaved by the Inner Circle standard English and the Anglo cultural norm. It requires deconstructing the dominant knowledge of the West (including language), reimagining local knowledge (just like Saori affirms Japanese travellers’ non-aggressive approach to communication), appropriating the dominant knowledge for one’s own purposes, and reconstructing relations of power. The engagement with local knowledge should extend to an understanding of marginalized knowledge traditions from other communities (Canagarajah, 2002). In this perspective, hybridity, rather than fixed essentialized social practices and products, becomes a pedagogical focus and goal. Just as local forms of cultural artefacts, such as food, music and art, interact with each other on a global scale and produce hybrid forms, language and culture are no longer fixed homogeneous categories – rather, they exhibit hybrid, fluid and creative forms. Combining postcolonial resistance and hybridity, a glocal approach to teaching English affirms linguistic diversity by paying greater pedagogical attention to different varieties of English, including world Englishes and multiplicity within a national variety. It also explores a creative use of language and inventive cultural expressions that are not constrained by fixed pre-existing forms. At the same time, affirmation of local knowledge should not lead to an exclusionary form of essentialization

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or romanticization of local culture and language. We should be cautious about the possibility that reclamation of the local could slide into reactionary nationalism, creating a new form of imperialism (Amin and Kubota, 2004). Also, a glocal approach does not completely replace the instruction of the dominant form of a language with creative innovations. Rigorous learning of established linguistic conventions contributes to one’s social mobility as well as dissemination of alternative views in the dominant society (Delpit, 1995). In other contexts where intelligibility is the goal, the means of communication does not have to follow a native speaker norm; it can incorporate lingua franca core features ( Jenkins, 2000). A glocal approach is not confined to a geographic focus on one’s local context. It transcends national boundaries and applies the heterogeneous and cosmopolitan principle to global communication. Thus, a glocal approach should go beyond the resistance and hybridity framework and promote border-crossing communicative competence. By this I mean fostering linguistic and cultural awareness, skills and attitudes that transcend hybrid communication in English, as demonstrated in Saori’s example, and promote multilingual engagement with critical awareness and praxis. As the opening narrative and the experiences presented in this chapter suggest, not every border-crossing communication requires English. When people encounter such situations, they might either walk away to avoid interaction or try to engage in communication without using English. A glocal approach promotes the latter. This indicates that teaching English as a foreign language needs to change its assumptions drastically and implement innovative pedagogy for border-crossing communication beyond teaching language. Here I use the term ‘bordercrossing communication’ to refer to the communication among people from different social, cultural and linguistic backgrounds in not only international but also local communities. Border-crossing communication requires the awareness that English may not serve as a lingua franca and that there are other means to establish interpersonal connection. It calls for open attitudes, including willingness to interact in a respectful manner with people who do not share the same language and to learn their languages. In this sense, a glocal approach to language education values multilingualism. Border-crossing communicative competence in a glocal approach also requires skills to negotiate and adjust linguistic conventions according to a particular situation, purpose and interlocutors from diverse linguistic backgrounds (Canagarajah, 2007; Seidlhofer, 2004). Within a Japanese context, interlocutors from linguistic backgrounds other than

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Japanese might have a range of proficiency in Japanese as a second language, while contexts outside of Japan might involve people with no shared language. Communication strategies and accommodation skills in these contexts include: using extralinguistic cues such as gestures and drawings, gauging interlocutor’s linguistic repertoires, supportive listening with attentiveness and eye contact, and adjusting to the interlocutor’s linguistic skills through simplifying, paraphrasing and slowing down. These strategies are suggested by Seidlhofer (2004) in her discussion of the importance of intercultural communication that supports the concept of English as a lingua franca. A glocal communicative approach goes even beyond communication in English as a lingua franca and aims to develop border-crossing communicative skills across languages. Furthermore, pedagogy for glocal border-crossing communication must be supported by a critical awareness of power as well as praxis – critical reflection and action (Freire, 1998). In glocal communication, the interlocutors are often individuals from racial, ethnic, linguistic, cultural or socio-economic backgrounds that are unfamiliar to the learner. These individuals are often positioned differently in a power hierarchy constructed by discourses. For instance, ‘being bilingual’ in Japan evokes the image of competence in Japanese and English and that of coolness and sophistication, while bilingualism in Japanese and Korean or another unfamiliar language rarely attracts envy or attention. This disparity demonstrates the unequal status given to languages. Willingness to engage in border-crossing communication requires such critical awareness of inequalities that exist in everyday experiences and willingness to work against the dominant discourses that perpetuate unequal power relations. At the same time, such awareness needs to be integrated in active engagement through praxis which transforms taken-for-granted social practices that perpetuate unequal relations of power. Praxis requires us to constantly reflect critically on our own thoughts and actions. For instance, the statement above that unfamiliar languages rarely attract attention is yet another discourse that fixes the linguistic relations of power. We need to pay attention to the social practices that disrupt existing ideas about linguistic and ethnic relations, as seen in the present popularity of Korean language learning in Japan and the coolness attached to Ainu aboriginality as part of a postethnic multicultural identity (Maher, 2005). Thus, language professionals must engage in ‘movable praxis’, seeking new ways of understanding and politicizing language, culture, ethnicity and other social categories (Pennycook, 2001, p. 173).

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Conclusion The communicative event among Alfredo, Saori, Kazuo and me and the interaction between Alfredo and Maureen may not match what the majority of people in Japan encounter in their everyday experience. Likewise, interaction with an English speaker in English occurs quite rarely for many people in Japan. The current emphasis on English language teaching in Japan and other countries overlooks translinguistic contact zones and propagates the discourse of English as a global lingua franca, which is likely to benefit those who are already privileged. As local diversity grows and global/local communicative demands become increasingly multilingual, English language education must problematize the traditional norm of Inner Circle standard English and white native speakers of English. Furthermore, a glocal approach to language teaching in Japan acknowledges the utility of English for wider communication and aims for rigorous teaching of English for intelligibility. At the same time, it requires not only postcolonial resistance and a hybridity framework for English use but also awareness, attitudes and skills for border-crossing communication that goes beyond English. A glocal approach aims to enable learners to recognize, affirm and engage in diversity of language, culture and people. A glocal approach further requires us to critically understand diversity in the sense that diverse categories or groups are not positioned equally in power hierarchies, and that unequal relations of power are never fixed. A first step to a glocal approach may be paying closer attention to local linguistic diversity involving Korean, Chinese, Portuguese, Ainu, Ryukuan and local dialects, or even individual differences that students bring with them to the classroom, and promote active engagement with the diversity.

Notes 1. All names are pseudonyms. 2. Other areas of recommendations included technology, creativity, introducing a competitive model in higher education, and maintaining and developing basic skills. 3. See www.doyukai.or.jp/database/teigen/990630.htm 4. See www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/houdou/21/03/1259150.htm 5. See www.moj.go.jp/PRESS/090710-1/090710-3.pdf 6. See www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/houdou/20/07/08080109.htm 7. See a survey report compiled by the Association for Overseas Technical Scholarship in 2007 at www.aots.or.jp/asia/r_info/index.html 8. Recent data in September 2009 show that, due to the global financial crisis in 2008, the population dropped to 4322, constituting 2.9 per cent of the

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population. The largest group was from Brazil (37.4 per cent), followed by China (23.4 per cent), Peru (8.6 per cent), Korea (7.2 per cent), Indonesia (5.2 per cent), Thailand (5.0 per cent), Bolivia (2.7 per cent) and the Philippines (2.0 per cent). 9. McDonaldization, which was also proposed by Ritzer, is characterized by efficiency, calculability, predictability, control and standardization, as seen in fast-food businesses, shopping malls, call centres, and so on, and has dominated how social structures and institutions are run (Ritzer, 2004). See also Block (2002) for the application of the notion to second language acquisition research and Seargeant (2009) for commercialization of English language teaching in Japan.

References Amin, N. and Kubota, R. (2004) ‘Native speaker discourses: power and resistance in postcolonial teaching of English to speakers of other languages’ in P. Ninnes and S. Mehta (eds) Re-imagining comparative education: postfoundational ideas and applications for critical times (New York: Routledge Falmer). Block, D. (2002) ‘“McCommunication”: a problem in the frame for SLA’ in D. Block and D. Cameron (eds) Globalization and language teaching (London: Routledge). Bruthiaux, P. (2002) ‘Hold your courses: language education, language choice, and economic development’, TESOL Quarterly, 36, 275–96. Brutt-Griffler, J. (2002) World English: a study of its development (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters). Butler, Y. G. (2007) ‘Foreign language education at elementary schools in Japan: searching for solutions amidst growing diversification’, Current Issues in Language Planning, 8, 129–47. Canagarajah, S. (1999) Resisting linguistic imperialism in English teaching (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Canagarajah, S. (2002) ‘Reconstructing local knowledge’, Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, 1, 243–59. Canagarajah, S. (2007) ‘Lingua franca English, multilingual communities, and language acquisition’, The Modern Language Journal, 91, 923–39. Crystal, D. (1997) English as a global language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Delpit, L. (1995) Other people’s children: cultural conflict in the classroom (New York: The New York Press). Foucault, M. (1980) Power/knowledge: selected interviews and other writings 1972–1977 (New York: Pantheon). Freire, P. (1998) Pedagogy of the oppressed (New York: Continuum). Gottlieb, N. (2008) ‘Japan: language policy and planning in transition’, Current Issues in Language Planning, 9, 1–68. Graddol, D. (2006) English next: why global English may mean the end of ‘English as a Foreign Language’ (London: British Council). Jenkins, J. (2000) The phonology of English as an international language (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Jenkins, J. (2003) World Englishes: a resource book for students (London: Routledge).

Ryuko Kubota 121 Kachru, B. B. (1986) The alchemy of English: the spread, functions, and models of non-native Englishes (Oxford: Pergamon). Keidanren (2000) Gurôbaruka jidai no jinzai ikusei ni tsuite [On developing human resources in the era of globalization]. Retrieved 23 September 2009 from http:// www.keidanren.or.jp/japanese/policy/2000/013/index.html Kubota, R. and McKay, S. (2009) ‘Globalization and language learning in rural Japan: the role of English in the local linguistic ecology’, TESOL Quarterly, 43, 593–619. Lin, A. M. Y. and Martin, P. (2005) ‘From a critical deconstruction paradigm to a critical construction paradigm: an introduction to decolonization, globalization and language-in-education policy and practice’ in A. M. Y. Lin and P. Martin (eds) Decolonisation, globalization and language in-education policy and practice (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters). Lin, A., Wang, W., Akatatsu, N. and Riazi, A. M. (2002) ‘Appropriating English, expanding identities, and re-visioning the field: from TESOL to teaching English for glocalized communication (TEGCOM)’, Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, 1, 295–316. Maher, J. C. (2005) ‘Metroethnicity, language, and the principle of cool’, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 175/176, 83–102. Mantel, L. and Leeman, J. (eds) (2009) Español en Estados Unidos y otros contextos de contact: Sociolinguística, ideología y pedagogía [Spanish in the United States and other contact environments: Sociolinguistics, ideology and pedagogy] (Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Vervuert). Matsuda, A. (2002) ‘Representation of users and uses of English in beginning Japanese EFL textbooks’, JALT Journal, 24, 182–200. MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) (2003) ‘Action plan to cultivate “Japanese with English abilities”’. Retrieved 23 September 2009 from http://www.mext.go.jp/english/topics/03072801.htm Mizuno, Y. (2008) ‘Keidanren to “eigo ga tsukaeru” nihonjin [Keidanren and the Japanese who can use English]’ Eigo Kôiku [The English Teachers’ Magazine], 57, 65–7. Mühlhäusler, P. (1996) Linguistic ecology: language change and linguistic imperialism in the Pacific region (London: Routledge). Mühlhäusler, P. (2000) ‘Language planning and language ecology’, Current Issues in Language Planning, 1, 306–67. Muñoz, C. (2008) ‘Symmetries and asymmetries of age effects in naturalistic and instructed learning’, Applied Linguistics, 29, 578–96. Nettle, D. and Romaine, S. (2000) Vanishing voices: the extinction of the world’s languages (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Pennycook, A. (1994) The cultural politics of English as an international language (London: Longman). Pennycook, A. (2001) Critical applied linguistics: a critical introduction (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates). Pennycook, A. (2007a) ‘The myth of English as an international language’ in S. Makoni and A. Pennycook (eds) Disinventing and reconstituting languages (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters). Pennycook, A. (2007b) Global Englishes and transcultural flows (Abingdon: Routledge). Phillipson, R. (1992) Linguistic imperialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

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Phillipson, R. (2003) English-only Europe?: challenging language policy (London: Routledge). Phillipson, R. (2009) ‘English in globalization, a lingua franca or a lingua frankensteinia?’, TESOL Quarterly, 43, 335–7. Ramanathan, V. (2005) The English-vernacular divide: postcolonial language practice and politics (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters). Ritzer, G. (2004) The globalization of nothing (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Pine Forge Press). Saito, T. (2004) Kikai fubyôdô [Equality of opportunities] (Tokyo: Bungeishunjû). Seargeant, P. (2009) The idea of English in Japan: ideology and the evolution of a global language (Bristol: Multilingual Matters). Seidlhofer, B. (2004) ‘Research perspectives on teaching English as a lingua franca’, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 24, 209–39. Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (2000) Linguistic genocide in education – or worldwide diversity and human rights? (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates). Tsuda, Y. (1990) Eigo shihai no kozo [Structures of English domination] (Tokyo: Daisan Shokan). Tsuneyoshi, R. (2004) ‘The “new” foreigners and the social reconstruction of difference: the cultural diversification of Japanese education’, Comparative Education, 40, 55–81. Yamada, Y. (2006) ‘Keikaku teki gengo kyôiku no jidai [The era of planned language education]’ in Y. Otsu (ed.) Nihon no eigo kyôiku ni hituyôna koto [What is necessary for English language education in Japan] (Tokyo: Keiôgijuku daigaku shuppankai).

Part II English in Society and Culture

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6 English as an International Language and ‘Japanese English’ Yasukata Yano

Language expresses, embodies and symbolizes cultural reality We are a social animal. We grow up by socialization and in the process we acquire beliefs, worldviews, values, attitudes and other social norms and cultural traditions which are shared by members of the society, and which are reinforced through the family, the school, the workplace and others. These are reflected in the way we use language – what we choose to say or not to say, and how we say it. Sharing social conventions and norms of social appropriateness leads us to build our identity as members of the society, despite the fact that each of us is heterogeneous and constantly changing. What we communicate is communicable because it refers to a stock of knowledge about the world that we share with other people. Looking at a black and white picture of a young Caucasian woman with whitish hair in the newspaper, you would say the colour of her hair is blonde, not white, while the photo is made up of nothing but numerous small black dots on the white sheet of paper. How can we see the colour blonde out of just black and white? Because we share the knowledge of the world and conventions about how to speak about this world. Ask French children what colour the sun is and they would say yellow. Ask the same question to Japanese children and they would reply red. Actually the sun at high noon is too bright to see any colour in it, but the children are taught that way in their respective cultures. As Kramsch (1998, p. 3) puts it, language expresses cultural reality. When the Japanese meet in the morning, they greet each other with ‘Ohayô’, literally meaning ‘Early’. It is the traditional ethics of the agrarian society that getting up early and working longer is blessed and 125

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brings you wealth. That’s why even if you meet someone at eleventhirty, you still say ‘Ohayô’. Not only do we express experience, but we create experience through language, we create meanings that are understandable to the people with whom we share our culture. As Kramsch (1998) explains, language embodies cultural reality. A red cross on a white background is the sign of an internationally recognized organization which offers protection and help to people suffering as a result of wars, natural disasters, etc. In Islamic countries, however, a red crescent is used instead for the same organization. Language is a system of signs through which we identify ourselves, our society and our culture. As Kramsch (1998) describes it: language symbolizes cultural reality. Culture, as against nature, refers to what has been grown and groomed. We resort to symbols that our society imposes upon us. Language and what it signifies are essentially arbitrary, but once our society has codified them they are no longer arbitrary and instead develop into a regularized system. Once roses are conventionalized as a way of expressing love, we cannot do so with chrysanthemums, which in some societies are reserved for the dead. Etiquette, polite expressions, social dos and don’ts are the norms of interaction and interpretation imposed on language users by the cultural conventions of a society.

From English to Englishes As far as a particular language is used intranationally as a mother tongue, the above observations hold. However, when a language begins to be used internationally by the speakers of various national and cultural backgrounds, as is the case with English, Spanish, Arabic, French, Chinese, Swahili and so on, we need to think of the language– culture issues from a different perspective. Let us look at the case of the English language which is the most widely used and therefore most widely learned in the world today. In its 1500 years of history since it was brought to the British Isles in the fifth century, the English language stayed within the British Isles with speakers of a few million for approximately 1000 years. Then English began to spread to the world through emigration to North America and Australia, colonial operations in Asia and Africa, the Industrial Revolution, wars and the emergence of a super-economic power – the United States in the twentieth century (Yano, 2007, pp. 28–30). As Widdowson (2003, pp. 45–6) observes, language is transformed when it is transmitted because it is adaptable unlike a disease such as

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swine flu or avian flu which does not alter according to circumstances (the virus is invariable). Even among English-as-a-mother-tongue countries, we can illustrate Widdowson’s observation that different words are used for the same things with the following example: (1)

British English lift underground crisps chips flat lorry trousers sheep stone pavement

American English elevator subway chips French fries apartment truck pants

sidewalk

Australian English

jumbuck gibber footpath

The spelling is also different between British English and American English: (2)

British English centre honour programme realise

American English center honor program realize

Likewise the pronunciation in standard British and American English is not the same either, as in such words as schedule and often. In terms of syntax, the special use of ‘have’ in British English does not exist in American English and the differences can occur in patterns such as the following (although this use of ‘have’ might be a little dated today): (3)

British English Have you any valuables in your car? Yes, I have. Have I the honour of speaking to Mr Erskine? American English Do you have any valuables in your car? Yes, I do. May I speak to Mr Erskine?

In addition, language reflects culture. The original moral of the British saying, A rolling stone gathers no moss, is that if you frequently change

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your job or place of living you will not attain success; but the moral of the saying is completely reversed in an American context where social mobility is a national motto. Thus the English language takes in local languages, local ways of thinking and behaving, and local societal and cultural climate and adapts itself in order to be able to communicate and express them. This process is called ‘indigenization’, ‘localization’, ‘acculturation’ (Kachru and Nelson, 2006, p. 13). Many former British colonies in Asia and Africa have continued to use English as an official language for governance, education and business even after their independence, partly because it functions as a means of national unity in multiethnic countries. Kachru and Nelson (2006, pp. 157–8) refer to South Asian varieties such as Indian English, Pakistani English and Sri Lankan English. They give examples of borrowed and hybridized vocabulary such as chit for ‘a note or letter’ and batch-mate for a ‘fellow student’. Local idioms and metaphors are imported into the language, as for example ‘In olden times, a woman just worked like a bullock’ and ‘We are but small radishes [not small potatoes] from an unknown garden.’ The invariant tag isn’t it is used, as in ‘You’re happy, isn’t it?’ and ‘They’re coming today, isn’t it?’ In South East Asia, there are several unique local expressions in English such as: (4)

Don’t tease her. She is an onion-skinned (sensitive) girl. Durian is heaty (makes your body hot), so don’t eat too much. Where does she put up (live)? This is my cousin sister, Julie. My paper is done earlier. Let’s prepone (move up) our dinner to Thursday.

Perhaps the expression onion-skinned began to be used since the skin of onion is thin. The same meaning of ‘being sensitive’ is ‘thin-skinned’ in English (Seargeant, personal communication, 8 September 2009). However, heaty follows the English word formation rule for changing a noun into an adjective by suffixing -y, as bloody, bony, foggy, greedy and so on, although native speakers would say heaty is not English. Since the word cousin alone does not indicate gender, there is good reason to bring in the he/she distinction, just as in words such as he-goat and she-panda in standard British or American English. The creation of prepone in connection with postpone seems to be reasonable since we already have a pair such as prewar and postwar, as well as prepose and postpose in the technical vocabulary of linguistics.

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Kachru and Nelson (2006, pp. 199–202) also refer to the sub-Saharan African varieties and point out features such as the omission of articles (strong team, going to cinema); the treating of mass nouns as countable (advices, furnitures, informations); and semantic extension such as some amount meaning ‘cash’ and minerals meaning ‘soft drinks’. As all these varieties have been used intra-nationally for a long time now, they have become established and institutionalized as American English, Indian English, Nigerian English, Singaporean English and so forth with their own endonormative standards of form and usage. The English-as-a-second-language users in these regions are changing from norm-dependent to norm-developing. They add new meanings to words and create new expressions to meet the demand of the local society and culture. Will these varieties develop into mutually unintelligible separate languages such as the American language, Nigerian language, Singaporean language, as Latin once did? I do not think they will. In the age of globalization, people have constant and extensive contact with each other physically (thanks to advanced air transportation systems) and through the Internet (thanks to the unprecedented development of computerassisted communication systems). As our interaction increases in frequency and in quantity, English, in its role as a lingua franca, is required to have high international intelligibility, which leads the language to share commonality among varieties and later to be standardized from the pedagogic perspective, for the purposes of wider communication. In English-as-a-foreign-language regions such as China, Japan, Brazil and Russia, people are still norm-dependent and follow the norms which English native speakers set (i.e. often standard British or American English varieties). Yet their English is not exactly the same as the English language used by the British in the British Isles. In China, for example, where the Confucian concept of mien zu or ‘face’ is very important, people use lots of face collocations (lose one’s face, stand one’s face, show some amount of face). In Islamic countries, greetings include the praise of Allah. For example, the Foreword written by the Director General of Education in Malaysia in the English textbook for primary-school children, goes: All Praise for ALLAH the Almighty, with HIS blessings, the textbook packages for primary schools are ready for publication to be used by pupils in all primary schools. (Aziz and Mustafa, 2006, p. iv) We have seen that English has developed into varieties for intranational use in many different cultural contexts and therefore that it

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no longer expresses, embodies and symbolizes Anglo-American cultures alone. In its use as a global lingua franca, however, English has been required to share linguistic and pragmatic features among its varieties for higher international and cross-cultural intelligibility.

English as an international language Today, English is used in politics, diplomacy, science and technology, the mass media, sea and air communications, mail services, academia, sports, entertainment and almost all fields in international communications. David Crystal (2003, p. 61) claims that more than 25 per cent of the world population speak English one way or another, while Jennifer Jenkins (2007, p. 28) observes that 80 per cent of communication in English is done between non-native speakers. When the majority of English users become non-native speakers, it is predictable that a process of de-Anglo-Americanization will follow and that at the same time varieties such as Indian English, Nigerian English, Singaporean English and so on will converge for the purposes of higher mutual intelligibility. Actually, it is likely that the populations of these countries will be bilectal in their varieties of English – an acrolectal variety for international communication and a less formal one for intra-national interaction. Due to the need, intensity and frequency of interaction within (not across) wider regions such as Europe and Asia, there will be some converging force working toward varieties such as Euro-English, Asian English and so on (Yano, 2001, p. 126). Yet this does not mean that we will move toward establishing one single, international standard English (Yano, 2009, p. 211). The members of ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) use English as their official language in their meetings and correspondence. Malaysian members of the association use English which reflects Malaysian societal and cultural traditions and Thai members use English with a Thai background. But by using accommodation skills, they gradually create mutual intelligibility, which may be foreign to those who use English in the Anglo-American cultural traditions. English as an international language is therefore an amalgamation of varieties such as American English, Indian English and Nigerian English with high mutual intelligibility. It can be compared to a mathematical fraction, in which American, Indian, Nigerian, etc. with their respective levels of uniqueness is the numerator and English is the common denominator which all those English varieties share – the basic phonological, morphological, syntactic and pragmatic features of English.

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Recently the idea of ELF (English as a lingua franca) has begun to spread and is gaining growing recognition among applied linguists in Europe (Jenkins, 2007; Mauranen, 2003; Seidlhofer, forthcoming). These researchers do not exclude native speaker English, but their main focus is non-native speaker English. In 2009, Seidlhofer’s long-time project, VOICE (Vienna–Oxford International Corpus of English) was made available to researchers. This is a corpus of more than a million examples of non-native speaker English and is full of suggestions on what the English language is likely to look like in the future – as it will be standardized, regularized, and will increasingly share more linguistic and pragmatic features with other languages.

The native speaker syndrome When we learn a foreign language, we naturally want to understand, speak, read and write like a native speaker. Japanese thus have long learned English as the language of British or Americans, along with the Anglo-American societal and cultural traditions. As a result, Japan remains a typical ‘English as a foreign language’ country, where people faithfully follow the norms of form and usage provided by native speakers, while elsewhere English has developed from local and ethnic languages as British English and American English into an international language on the global scale. From Japanese Ministry of Education officials, through English learners to ELT professionals, the majority of Japanese think that only native speaker English is real, natural and authentic, and thus worthy of learning. They pursue the impossible dream of attaining ‘native-like’ or ‘near-native’ proficiency in English. It is not uncommon to encounter newspaper and magazine articles saying that since an overwhelming majority of teachers of English are Japanese Japan needs to hire more native speaker English teachers so that the learners can have access to genuine English. This idea implies that non-native speaker English is neither genuine, real, natural nor authentic. How many native speakers, however, can use the same sort of highly proficient English in terms of writing, size of vocabulary, range of styles, and cross-cultural communication abilities as Sadako Ogata of Japan, Mahathir bin Monhamad of Malaysia, Kofi Annan of Ghana and Angela Merkel of Germany? Obviously not many. This native speaker-oriented mentality that many Japanese have is what Braj Kachru (2005, p. 90) calls the ‘native speaker’ syndrome. This mentality in Japan can be traced back to the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate (1603–1867). Towards the end of the Shogunate (1862),

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a party of young leaders were dispatched to Europe and Russia to observe the state of advanced Western civilization. They were shocked at the advanced nature of Western civilization. Among the delegates was Yukichi Fukuzawa, a great leader-to-be of the enlightenment movement. Fukuzawa, who had been in America two years before, realized that the only way for Japan not to be victimized by the Western powers like China had been was to learn from the West, take on board Western civilization and assimilate Japan into the community of Western powers. In 16 March 1885, he wrote Datsua-ron ‘On Leaving Asia’ as an editorial in Jijishinpoh, the newspaper he started and his main theme was Datsua, Nyuu-oh (Leave Asia and enter the West). The adoration for and the deep inferiority complex toward Westerners that those young intellectuals felt was further strengthened when later a number of Westerners were hired to modernize Japan as teachers in subjects such as politics, law, science and technology, architecture, medicine, military affairs and many other fields, and were given pay that was higher than that for the prime minister. After its defeat in the Second World War, Japan was under the control of the American-led GHQ (General Headquarters of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers) from 1945 to 1952, during which time massive Americanization was imposed on the society. Through these two epoch-making events, Japanese adoration for and its inferiority complex toward Westerners and especially Americans, deepened and the situation continues today when Japan has become the world’s second largest economic power. Blonde, blue-eyed Caucasians frequently appear on TV and in newspapers and magazines, to advertise Japanese products and services that are meant exclusively for the Japanese. Japanese characters, speaking Japanese, in animated programmes on TV and in comic books are often portrayed as blonde and blue-eyed (New York Times, 19 November 2005). More than 300 Japanese couples go to Europe and America every year to be wed in a church (International Herald Tribune, 1 August 2007) although they are not Christians, never normally attend church services and never read the Bible. In Japan, 70 per cent of the weddings that took place in 2006 were held in ‘churches’ which have been built specially for weddings; in 2006 those pseudochurches numbered about 600 (Asahi Newspaper, 30 December 2007). All these types of behaviour seem to come from the desire for Japanese to assimilate the traits of Westerners. As Japanese people’s contact with foreign people increases due to globalization, however, the Japanese and especially young Japanese in cities, seem to get used to Western ways of thinking, behaving and

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living, which make them worship Westerners and desire to imitate them much less than the older generations did. When this generation comes to play a central role in society, perhaps they will interact with foreign people on an equal footing and will not adore Westerners just for being Westerners and look down upon Asians and Africans.

Japanese English? Japan, a small island nation with scarce natural resources, depends heavily for its survival and prosperity on foreign trade, which makes it vital for the Japanese to be able to use English, a means of international communication. Accordingly the Japanese spend vast amounts of money, time and energy on learning English, but hardly gain enough English proficiency to successfully conduct business negotiations, academic presentations and discussions. There are a number of reasons for this. Do the majority of learners really need to be proficient in English? No, they do not if they remain in Japan, except for those who use English in their work. Fortunately or unfortunately for Japanese people, the Japanese language is a highly sophisticated language, which can translate anything from the latest technical terms in space engineering and medical science to literary works and matters in subculture. The Japanese can deal with almost anything in Japanese and the majority of people do not feel the need to learn English. Do they have opportunities to use what they have learned? No. English is never used among the Japanese, while a language must be used if it is to be effectively learned. Do they learn English for long enough and intensively enough to internalize the basics of the language? Again, no. They say they have studied English for 6 years from grades 7 to 12 but their contact hours are 3–5 hours a week for 40 weeks a year and for 6 years, which amounts to only 720–1200 hours in total, while a child is constantly exposed to its mother tongue (supposing it sleeps for 10 hours a day) for about 30,000 hours during its first six years and in addition it has a real need to communicate. As mentioned above, the most serious reason, however, is the commonly held idea, which is implanted deep in their minds, that only native speaker English is genuine and thus the model to learn. They faithfully follow the norms set by native speakers and denigrate nonnative varieties as imperfect and incomplete. They aim at the impossible dream of acquiring ‘native-like’ or ‘near-native’ proficiency and when they feel they have not reached this goal, they feel inhibited from using English for communication purposes, especially to native speakers.

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The Japanese must free themselves from this ‘native speaker syndrome’. They need to realize that they learn English not to communicate with native speakers of English alone but with people in Europe, South America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa. They must realize that if they have to use English in the future, the interlocutors will most likely be non-native speakers. They also need to realize that they learn English to express themselves, their society and their culture, which are at times foreign to the Judeo-Christian cultural tradition which dominates in native speaking countries. Based on the hard facts of the situation which are that the Japanese do not learn English long enough and intensively enough to internalize the language and they do not need to use English intra-nationally, it is not likely that Japan will develop a variety recognizable as Japanese English with its own endonormative standards like those that occur in Indian English and Singaporean English.

An English presence in the Japanese language It was observed above that the Japanese are very unlikely to use English to such an extent that they will establish a distinct Japanese English variety. However, by constantly and in great numbers incorporating English lexical items into the Japanese language as loanwords, the Japanese language will itself become internationalized in terms of its lexicon. Words such as airport, bus, taxi, train, boat, hotel, restaurant, credit card, salad, beefsteak, chicken, hamburger and numerous other English words are used daily by the ordinary Japanese as loanwords, and borrowing of this sort is on the increase. Many of these lexical items are shared by people, native speakers or not, all over the world. As such, these types of words can work as English as an international language. Of course, some modifications must be made for international use in order to correct the phonological deformation caused by the lack of segmental phonemes in the Japanese language and the difference in distribution rules, syllable structure, rhythm and so on. With these English-originated lexemes and with the basic knowledge of English grammar which the Japanese learn from the seventh grade onwards (from 2011, English is being taught from the fifth grade on in public schools), the Japanese should be able to communicate to some extent, when the need arises for English language communication. A further consequence of the above-mentioned native speaker syndrome is that it has made the Japanese feel it is fashionable to use foreign words embedded in their Japanese. This tendency can be witnessed in

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advertisements for products such as cosmetics, clothes and food. As a random sample, let us examine a selection of advertisements and articles from a newspaper. In the phrases below the loanwords are italicized: (5) Accessory advertisement: Nôburuna otona no miryoku wo dâkutôn no in’ei de hyôgen noble adults of charm dark tone of shade by express sonzaikan no aru rongu nekkuresu to shitemo shôto nekkuresu ando buresuretto presence of exist long necklace as short necklace and bracelet to shitemo yosôeru furekishiburuna dezain ni chûmoku. Shîkuna nakanimo can-wear flexible design notice Chic within tsuyayakasa wo himeta ameshisuto no shikisai ni kisetsu-kan wo utsusite. Glossy hide amethyst colour season-sense reflect

‘Express the charm of noble adults by the shade of dark tone Notice the flexible design which can be worn as a long necklace making its presence felt or worn as a short necklace and bracelet. Amethyst includes glossiness within its (modest) elegance and we let its colour reflect the sense of the season.’ (Newspaper insert, Asahi Shinbun, evening edition, 27 July 2009. Translated by the author.) In (5) there are 13 loanwords in the short 111-word advertisement (11.72 per cent). Now let us take up a report on Ai Miyazato’s winning the LPGA Tour’s Evian Masters tournament: (6) Sports article: Gorufu, Ebian • Masutâzu: Ai, Yume kanau Hatsu-shôri golf Evian Masters dream realize first-win 26-nichi ni Furansu-nantôbu day on France-southeast

de kaisaisareta joshi-gorufu no at held woman-golf of

Ebian • Mastâzu-saishû-raunndo de, Miyazato Ai (24) ga higan no Evian Masters-final-round at long-cherished bei-tsuaa-hatsushôri wo nashitogeta. Purêofu no 1 hôru- me de baadî wo ubai, US tour-first win achieved Playoff hole -th at birdie take

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178-senchi no tobashiya, Gusutafuson (Suêden) wo kudashita. centimetre Ms Driver, Gustafson (Sweden) defeated

‘Evian Masters Golf: Ai realizes her dream by her first win Miyazato Ai (24) realized her long-cherished dream by winning the US tour for the first time at the women’s Evian Masters held on the 26th in the southeast of France. She got a birdie on the first hole and won in the playoff against Gustafson, the Ms Driver.’ (Asahi Shinbun, evening edition, 27 July 2009. Translated by the author.) In this report of 137 words (the first half of the report), there are 15 loanwords (10.94 per cent). In a more serious article as on manufacturers in the business section, the percentage of loanwords decreased: (7) Business article: Hitachi-gurûpu jôjô 5-sha kanzen kogaisha-ka hôshin group listed co. complete subsidiary-ize policy Hitachi-seisakusho ga, Tôkyô-shôken-torihikijo ni jôjôshiteiru manufacturer stock exchange listed-being guruupu-kigyô 16-sha no uchi Hitachi Makuseru nado 5-sha wo, group company among Maxell so on company kabushiki-kôkai-kaitsuke (TOB) de kanzen-kogaisha-ka suru hôshin stock-open-purchase by complete-subsidiary-ize do policy de aru koto ga, 17-nichi wakatta. Taishô-kigyô wa, is that day was known target-company

richiumuion-denchi • lithium ion-battery

hikari-disuku nado no Hitachi Maxell, Kankyô- setsubi ya kûchôsetsubi optical-disk so on environment equipment air-conditioning units nado no Hitachi puranto tekunorojî, jôhô shisutemu kaihatsu nado no so on plant technology information-system development so on Hitachi jôhô shisutemuzu, Hitachi sofutouea enjiniaringu, Hitachi information systems software engineering shisutemu ando sâbisu no 5-sha. system service of co.

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‘Hitachi Manufacturer plans to completely subsidiarize five of its group companies which are listed in the Tokyo Stock Exchange It was revealed on July 27th that Hitachi Manufacturer plans to completely subsidiarize five companies including Hitachi Maxell out of 16 Hitachi group companies which are listed in the Tokyo Stock Exchange by takeover bid (TOB). The targeted companies are five companies – Hitachi Maxell which makes lithium ion batteries, optical disks and the like, Hitachi Plant Technology which manufactures environmental equipment and air-conditioning units, Hitachi Information Systems, Hitachi Software Engineering and Hitachi System and Services which develop information systems.’ (Asahi Shinbun, evening edition, 27 July 2009. Translated by the author.) In this article on business, loanwords are 17 in the 209-word article (8.13 per cent), less than those in (5) and (6). The average ratio of loanwords in the above three short examples is 9.85 per cent. Incidentally the editorial, Saibâ Kôgeki (Cyber Attack) of Asahi Shinbun (26 July 2009) had a ratio as low as 3.76 per cent (39 out of 1036 words). Thus the ratio varies according to the fields, topics, genres and level of formality, but it seems that the more formal and serious the topic is the less loanwords are included in the writing. However, loanwords are on constant increase in contemporary Japanese and they have begun to have an effect on Japanese linguistic and pragmatic structures.

The influence of English on Japanese The Japanese phonological system requires that alveolar stops and fricatives (/t/ /d/ /s/ /z/) be palatalized before high vowels and semivowels such as /i/ /u/ and /y/. Therefore, /t/ /d/ /s/ /z/ in such words as team, tree, diesel, deuce, seat and zip used to be pronounced something like cheam, tsree, jeezel, juice, sheet and jip when imported into Japanese speech. Gradually, however, non-palatalized sounds have begun to be used as they are so that loanwords sound closer to the original. On the other hand, Japanese /s/ is not palatalized before /e/, but such words as shaver and shape up are imported and palatalized /s/ has begun to be used in Japanese. Also, Japanese does not have the labiodental fricatives /f/ and /v/, but film, fan, font and the like are now borrowed from English and are slowly replacing the traditional bilabial fricatives with labiodental ones. Bringing English words into Japanese without deforming their original pronunciation too much helps Japanese people when they must use English in English-speaking contexts. At times, the mispronunciation

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of the original words is adopted and firmly fixed as loanwords. For example, the /s/ of words such as loose-leaf and close-up is somehow voiced, thus changing adjectives, loose [lu:s] and close [klous] into verbs, lose [lu:z] and close [klouz], and if they are used in the English context, they may be interpreted as lose leaf (telling someone to throw away a leaf) and close up (stopping doing something like closing shop). Another example is career, whose first syllable is pronounced [kæ] by mistake and fixed as a loanword. Now we cannot distinguish career from carrier in their Japanese pronunciation and to our dismay, some English teachers have begun to say, ‘I’m proud of my 20 years of teaching “carrier” at this university’. On the lexical level, whatever parts of speech the word belongs to in the original English, all are treated as nouns in Japanese. When those loanwords are used as adjectives in Japanese, the adjective-making suffix -na is attached, as seen in nôburu-na (noble), furekishiburu-na (flexible) and shîku-na (chic) in example (5) above, although all three of these are originally adjectives in English anyway. When used as an adverb, the adverb-making suffix -ni is attached, as for example in furuni (fully). When used as a verb, the verb-making suffix -suru is attached, as in doraibu-suru’ (to drive). Recently, these borrowing rules, in which loanwords are used in the framework of the Japanese structural system, are gradually shifting to become a type of code-switching. The lyrics of some pop songs, for example, are written in both Japanese and English, where English clauses (rather than lexical items) coexist with Japanese in the sentence. For example, the theme song for a popular animated TV programme goes: (8)

Aijô koso ga shôdô, Go for it, go for it. ‘Love itself is impulse’

Yumi Matsutoya, a well-known singer-songwriter, is known to disperse English sentences in her lyrics. Let us quote several lines of one of her songs (loanwords are in italics): (9)

Yakusoku tsuburete burû ni natteru promise broken blue feeling Yowakina maindo ga anata wo anata wo oikaketeru weak mind you you chase-ing Where is love? Suki demo love even

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I can’t wait for you, any more ........... Woo Where is love? Sayonara Goodbye I can’t wait for you, any more As the Japanese are exposed to more English, so English begins to be used more frequently in Japanese, first as borrowed lexical items, then as phrases and clauses and finally as complete sentences. Those who incorporate English phrases and clauses into their Japanese are still small in number, but they are increasing and this process is bringing about various changes in the Japanese language. Recently, a generalization or broadening of use has occurred for certain constructions in the Japanese language. For example, at one stage the plural suffix -tachi used to be used only for God and noblemen, as illustrated in Manyôshû [Poem Anthology] (eighth century) and the Tale of Genji (tenth century). Time passed and it began to be used for common people, such as oya-tachi ‘parents’, or even for the minors such as kodomo-tachi ‘children’. Today it has begun to be used for inanimate objects such as koishi-tachi ‘pebbles’ and supûn-tachi ‘spoons’. There are some examples where this plural suffix is used even for abstract concepts in Japanese (not necessarily in English) such as hours, art and English. The title of the 2002 US movie, The Hours, directed by Stephen Daldry, was translated as Meguriau Jikan-tachi (The hours coming across). There is a phrase, Bijutsukan kara tobidashita art-tachi ‘Arts which come out of the museum’ (Tentômushi, 12 October 2005). It is obvious that what is meant is works of art. The plural form of English, Englishes, is well known among English language teaching professionals, especially those who are concerned with English as an international language. Lately, Englishes has been translated as eigo-tachi as a countable concept. It might not be too far-fetched to suppose this sort of expanded usage of the -tachi suffix is influenced by English grammar, which has the basic singular/plural distinction. It is generally a welcome phenomenon that the use of -tachi has become free of constraints, although using it for abstract concepts seems to be taking it a bit too far.

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This generalization process might be a universal trend. In African Englishes, uncountable nouns are pluralized as, for example, advices, furnitures, informations and so on (Kachru and Nelson, 2006, pp. 199–202) and a recent newspaper report suggests that some American teenagers have also begun to use advices, furnitures, informations (New York Times, 21 September 2002). The report suggests that 60 per cent of the online population under 17 years of age use so-called ‘conversational writing’ as an online lingua franca in mobile phone texting, Web logs and e-mails, and this kind of informal writing creeps into such formal writing as term papers, essays and reports, much to the dismay of high school teachers. Recently we also often hear expressions such as ‘two coffees’ and ‘three beers’ and the like in native speaker English, which is the same phenomenon with art-tachi in Japanese. Globalization has slowly but steadily pushed Japanese society into a multiethnic, multicultural and therefore multilingual one with the rapid inflow of foreign people to compensate for shortages in the labour force due to the declining birth rate in this country. Most of these people are not native speakers of English and the Japanese involved with them engage in non-native–non-native communication in English. In these situations they do not hesitate to speak up and they do not shrink as they do when they interact with native English speakers. This non-native– non-native interaction among people of diverse ethnicities and cultures is the future of international communication in English, which is already in practice in Europe (Euro-English) and in Asia (Asian English). It is for this reason the Japanese need to aim at acquiring English as an international language rather than English as a native language.

Conclusion We use English not only to understand other peoples and cultures but also to express ourselves, our societies and our cultural traditions. The English we use therefore reflects our mother tongue and mother culture even when we learn English as a second or foreign language. Suppose someone compliments a Japanese-looking boy with, ‘You speak good English. Where did you learn English?’ in an international gathering. If the boy replies, ‘Thank you for your compliment’, perhaps he is a returnee who grew up in America. If the boy says, ‘Oh, no no. I’m not good at English at all’, he might be a Japanese brought up in Japan. The different reactions are based on the different value given to personal compliments in both cultures. We do not have to deny those values with which we have been brought up. We do not have to use English as the British and Americans do

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just because we are using ‘their’ language. It would be nice, however, if the boy says, ‘Thank you for your compliment, but I have lots more to learn’, thus combining the Western way of interaction with Japanese modesty. By being exposed to and interacting with people from different cultures, we can expand and enrich ourselves to be bilingual and bicultural. It is inevitable that conceptual transfer as well as linguistic transfer from the speaker’s mother tongue to a target language takes place. The Japanese expression me wo hosomeru, for example, expresses pleasure while the English counterpart, narrow one’s eyes expresses anger or suspicion. Its literal translation, ‘Grandpa narrowed his eyes at the sight of his baby granddaughter’ must be expressed with a different concept as, ‘Grandpa smiled at . . .’ The Japanese way of using English will always have to accommodate differences of cultural literacy between English and Japanese. The Japanese tend to use nominalization and passivization, reflecting the Japanese way of thinking, which gives the impression of hiding the agent of an action. For instance, ‘Our factory is polluting the air with hydrogen sulphide’ tends to be ‘Air pollution with hydrogen sulphide is going on’. Or ‘We decided to close down the factory’ is expressed as ‘It was decided to close down the factory’. We can use English in such a way, as long as we get our communicative intention across and good relations are not spoiled. Language and culture are inseparable. Naturally, many think that English is inseparable from Anglo-American culture. Having spread to many parts of the world, however, English has come to be an integral part of many other cultures as well. It has already become a means of communication among people of various languages and cultures. It has become an expression of various ethnicities, cultures and societies, not Anglo-American ones alone. And by learning other cultures and by interacting with users of other languages, we can extend and enrich our conceptual systems, namely, the way we view and interpret events, the way we cut up reality or the way we categorize our experience. The Japanese positively take in foreign languages as loanwords and expressions and they internationalize themselves through this process although they still stay monolingual. Yet we should not be pessimistic about the future because they have a good potentiality to be speakers of English as an international language.

References Aziz, N. S. and Mustafa, M. J. (eds) (2006) English year 5: Sekolah Kebangsaan textbook (Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka).

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Crystal, D. (2003) English as a global language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Jenkins, J. (2007) English as a lingua franca: attitude and identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Kachru, B. B. (2005) Asian Englishes beyond the canon (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press). Kachru, Y. and Nelson, C. L. (2006) World Englishes in Asian contexts (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press). Kramsch, C. (1998) Language and culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Mauranen, A. (2003) ‘The corpus of English as a Lingua Franca in academic settings’, TESOL Quarterly, 37, 513–27. Seidlhofer, B. (forthcoming) Understanding English as a lingua franca (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Widdowson, H. G. (2003) Defining issues in English language teaching (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Yano, Y. (2001) ‘World Englishes in 2000 and beyond’, World Englishes, 20, 119–31. Yano, Y. (2007) ‘English as an international language: its past, present and future’ in M. Nakano (ed.) On-demand course book: world Englishes and miscommunications (Tokyo: Waseda University International). Yano, Y. (2009) ‘The future of English: beyond the Kachruvian Three Circle model?’ in K. Murata and J. Jenkins (eds) Global Englishes in Asian contexts: current and future debates (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).

7 The Position of English for a New Sector of ‘Japanese’ Youths: MixedEthnic Girls’ Constructions of Linguistic and Ethnic Identities Laurel Kamada

This chapter examines the position of English in Japan through the lens of a growing sector of Japanese youths who can lay claim to another ‘foreign’ ethnicity – along with their Japanese heritage, Japanese language, Japanese nationality, Japanese education and Japanese culture. Specifically, this study looks at the spoken data of a friendship group of six girls of Japanese and ‘white-foreign’ mixed parentage. Such people are referred to as ‘half’ or hâfu in Japanese, a so-called ‘neutral’ term, but nevertheless marked as different and subtractive, and as not fully (pure) Japanese. This study highlights how the issue of mixed ethnicity – explored through the participants’ access to English and other forms of cultural capital – significantly contributes to our understanding of the globalizing role of English in Japan today.

The position of English in Japan Positioning is an analytical concept within discourse theory (e.g. Davis and Harré, 2001) in which people take up ‘ways of being’ or subject positions which are unfixed (or only very temporarily fixed), constantly shifting identities that they assume in their linguistic and discursive interactions with others. The positions of English that the participants of this study create for themselves, and for others around them, may be those that are historically available or they may be newly created in their talk. The position of English in Japan, including how learner identity is constructed, has been examined from the viewpoint of Japanese discourses of homogeneity and Japanese cultural identity (e.g. Kubota, 1999, 2002). Recently, the notion of English in Japan as an ideology rather than simply a means of communication or a school subject has been 143

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theorized, and also examined in terms of its use as a cultural symbol of globalization (Seargeant, 2009). These emerging ways of looking at English learning/usage in Japan as ‘acts of identity’ (Pennycook, 2007) and as ‘discursively constructed realms’ (Ramanathan, 2005) open up new theoretical and methodological ways to understand the changing role of English in Japan based on both global and local influences (see Higgins, 2009 for a discussion of English as a ‘local language’). In their examination of the use of English in traditionally non-English regions, Makoni and Pennycook (2007) argue for the need to imagine and rethink the role of languages and their historical ‘invention’ and then to ‘disinvent’ or deconstruct (Derrida, 1976, 1978) them and later reconstruct them. While the position of English in Japan from these global perspectives has been conceptualized from the viewpoint of ‘typical’ Japanese learners/ users of English, a new growing sector of ‘untypical’ Japanese nationals who also stake a claim to another ethnicity has not yet been well researched. This chapter examines the construction and deconstruction of English through the narrated voices of adolescent mixed-ethnic Japanese nationals and analyses how they contest and celebrate their linguistic and ethnic identities.

The study The data analysed in this chapter were collected as part of a larger study on hybrid identities of early adolescent girls of mixed ethnicity in the context of Japan from March 2001 to May 2003 (see Kamada, 2010). This investigation follows these girls out of their final year of elementary school and through the three years of middle school, from ages 12 to 15 (see ‘The Participants’ section below). I used semistructured group interviews along with ethnographic fieldwork in the site of this community within western Honshu (the Kansai District). Here I examine how English is performed or ‘discursively done’ in Japan from the standpoint of this growing community who have access to another world language, along with their home language, Japanese. These girls did not have to wait until the age of 12, upon entering middle school, to begin learning English as most students in Japan do. For many of the participants, English is one of their first languages; and for all of them it is a language to which they have access through one of their foreign-raised parents in ways that their Japanese peers do not. In order to address the position of English in Japan for them, I pose

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two research questions: 1. How do these girls perform, resist or alter the position of English in the process of constructing their multi-linguistic and mixed-ethnic identities? 2. How do the participants create and celebrate global linguistic and cultural capital for themselves?

Theoretical and methodological framework The study is framed within a poststructuralist discourse analysis (PDA) framework which draws on the social constructionist notion that any view of the world is possible (Billig, 2001; Gergen, 1999). Constructionism allows for the questioning and reconceptualization of any so-called ‘truth’, as all ideological perspectives can be challenged and changed. Drawing on Derrida’s (1976, 1978) notion of deconstructionism, any idea can be pulled apart and the so-called commonsense structures can then be reconstructed. Deconstructionism is the basis for this form of discourse analysis, which examines and reveals how political perspectives or power fluctuations are constructed. PDA looks at how people use language to position themselves and others within various existing ideologies, referred to as (social) discourses (Fairclough, 1995, 2001; Foucault, 1972). When two or more of these discourses (or ideological perspectives) come into conflict with each other, these are thought of as ‘competing discourses’ (Baxter, 2003, 2008). Often there is a power hegemony where one of the ideologies is more dominant, while others are more marginal, such as in racial/ethnic or gender power struggles (Edley and Wetherell, 2008; Kamada, 2008; Wetherell, 1998). PDA looks at how these struggles play out in people’s linguistic interactions and positionings, as well as in speech acts. People are constantly constructing and negotiating their unfixed, multiple identities according to the context in which they interact. Within this framework, an individual’s identity is conceptualized as a construction of diverse subject positions which is determined by the various language practices in which they engage in any particular situation. Within the site of western Japan and from the spoken data of this community of mixed-ethnic girls, I was able to identify several dominant and alternative discourses of language and ethnicity affecting them (Kamada, 2010). The most dominant of all ethnic discourses that appeared throughout the data was a discourse of homogeneity which basically denies ethnic diversity in Japan by conflating ‘Japaneseness’

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with nationality, race, ethnicity and language. A commonly heard statement, drawing on this discourse, is ‘We Japanese consist of a single race of people who all speak Japanese.’ Conflicting with this is a discourse of diversity which recognizes and allows for the positive constitution of difference as empowering and valuable. This view sees Japan as a society/ country becoming heterogeneous, multi-ethnic and multilingual. Another dominant discourse in Japan is a discourse of conformity which promotes the disagreeableness of standing out as different. People must work hard to perform or appear to exist within norms, or expect to be ‘hammered down’ into conformity according to the Japanese proverb: ‘The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.’ Conflicting with this is a discourse of globalization (or interculturalism) which promotes global savvy as a form of cultural capital. This notion draws on Bourdieu’s (1977) theory of cultural capital in which various forms of linguistic (language proficiency), symbolic (legitimation), social (friendships, networks), economic (monetary) and cultural (goods, services, education) capital are thought to be accumulative, exchangeable and exercisable, as well as convertible into other forms. This theory of cultural capital is helpful in explaining how, within a discourse of globalization, the girls of this study construct and celebrate their linguistic and cultural capital of multilinguality and mixed ethnicity within the context of Japan. A discourse of gaijin (or foreigner) ‘otherness’ is another dominant discourse which conflicts with the notion of foreigners as unmarked. People with non-Japanese-like features are categorized simply as foreigners who are unable to understand the Japanese language, customs or proper behaviour. Such people are thought to speak English and are not thought of as Japanese citizens. The Japanese word for foreigner, gaijin, is an abbreviation and a rougher form of the more courteous, formal term gaikokujin (foreign person). However, as Darling-Wolf has pointed out, even though gaikokujin is the more polite form, ‘few Japanese, use it, even to a foreigner’s face’ (2003, p. 169). Finally, a dominant discourse of halfness constitutes Japanese and nonJapanese people of mixed ethnicity in a subtractive, deficit nuance as incomplete Japanese. The Japanese lexeme hâfu (‘half’) is generally used for mixed-ethnic people whose features reveal their dual ethnicity (e.g. Japanese/Caucasian mixes), rather than mixed-ethnic people whose features are indistinguishable from ‘pure’ Japanese (e.g. Japanese and Chinese or Korean mixed parentage). Most Japanese people will say that they do not use the word ‘half’ in a pejorative way and it is generally not thought of as politically loaded or derogatory. Nevertheless, within

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the foreign community, a grass-roots challenge to this discourse created by parents of mixed-ethnic children has resulted in a reconstruction of this discourse into an alternative discourse of doubleness, allowing their children access to a more empowering discourse of ethnicity. The use of this discourse, and of the term ‘double’ instead of ‘half’ to refer to these children, has, for the most part, remained outside of mainstream Japanese society and is limited to use within the foreign community in large cities.

The participants The girls who participated in the study were all born and raised in Japan, have spent nearly all of their lives in the country except for short trips abroad, have attended Japanese schools (as opposed to international or immersion schools), speak Japanese as their first language (or one of their first languages), hold Japanese nationality (along with another nationality) and have one Japanese parent (along with other Japanese relatives). They also each have an English-speaking parent who was born and raised overseas in the USA, UK or Australia (three of whom are fathers; three are mothers) giving them access to the English language (although not all of them are comfortable using English). They all speak Japanese in the Kansai dialect of the locale where they were born and raised. Their English proficiencies range from balanced bilinguality and biliteracy to monolingual Japanese with passive English (the ability to understand some spoken English, but with a tendency to respond in Japanese, especially with a parent). The girls are connected through a friendship network which was established by their foreign parent since infancy. The girls all attend different schools across a large geographic area. As they grow into early adolescence, they maintain their chances to meet together, beyond their foreign parents’ social circles, through their own means. I was able to get these active adolescent girls to assemble together over long distances on their busy weekends over several years by addressing their agenda: that is, getting together and having fun. While all the girls come from middle-class families and live in a community where several international schools exist and are within their financial means, all of the families elected to send their children to Japanese accredited schools. Four of the girls attended regular public/ state schools and two attended Japanese-accredited private schools. Aside from the six early adolescent girls of this study, I often appear in the data myself as the seventh participant. I have reflected upon the

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fact that I am of these girls’ parents’ generation and that I am of a different ethnicity from them, as a long-term white foreigner residing in Japan with my own mixed-ethnic multilingual child close to their age. Throughout, I have tried to account for my personal positioning and the historical background I have brought to the study and to reflexively analyse my own input as part of the co-construction of the discourse along with these girls, taking into consideration my role as moderator. (For a comparison with ethnic and gender identities of mixed-ethnic adolescent boys in Japan, see Kamada, 2009.)

Data and analysis In an attempt to answer the research questions posed above, this section examines the spoken data of the participants and presents analysis based on the discourse theory of PDA. Situated language practices as globalizing This and the next few subsections take up the first research question, which examines how these girls perform, resist or alter the position of English in the process of constructing their multilinguistic and mixedethnic identities. For these participants who all have knowledge of, or access to, more than one language in the home, identity struggles related to which of their two languages’ lexes to use in particular settings sometimes became problematic for them, as the following extract illustrates. One aspect of the way they negotiate their identities is via the use of intertextual voices. Fairclough (1995, 2001) has conceptualized how people’s identities can sometimes be expressed through the referencing of other, historically earlier, voices, texts or genres in their own speech or writing through the process of intertexuality. In the girls’ speech examined below, occasionally the intertextual voices of other people, of themselves at an earlier time, and of hypothetical speech can all be seen to appear in the data, and I will comment on this in the analysis. In all extracts, I have used bold print to transcribe their Japanese speech. This is followed by a translation into English in italic print enclosed in parentheses. When they speak English, I have transcribed their speech using regular print (full transcription conventions are given at the end of the chapter). The following interaction took place with myself [L] and just three of the girls: Rina [R] and Naomi [N] (both highly proficient English speakers), and Sara [S] (not highly proficient who preferred to use Japanese); they were all aged 13 at the time. This

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conversation began with my asking them if they disliked the word hâfu (= half, mixed-ethnic[ity]). Extract 1A: ‘Half or double’ (13 years old): 131 L:

hâfu? hâfu, hâfu toiu kotoba wa iya desuka? (half? half, half do you dislike the word half?) 132 R: mmm, mae wa (um, before), well, 133 mae wa zenzen daijôbu dattakedo (before it was completely okay, but) 134 my mom said that ‘half’ is more discrimination, 135 so use ‘double’ 136 N: yeah, my mom said that too 137 R: yeah, she said that hâfu (half ) means you’re only half a 138 person, you’re not half, you’re ‘daburu’ tte iwahatte (‘you’re double’, she said), 139 I mean actually it’s, um, ‘hâfu-ando-hâfu’ no ryaku (an abbreviation of ‘half-and-half’) 140 L: uh-huh 141 S: ahhh 142 R: dakara (therefore) and anyway she said use ‘double’ so 143 I started using ‘double,’ but then when I start using the 144 term ‘double,’ every, no one knows what I mean 145 N: yeah [. . .] 177 S: ‘daburuzu’ ga ichiban (‘doubles’ is best) 178 R: mijikai shi (and it’s short) 179 all: (laugh) 180 L: demo tsujinai ne (but it doesn’t communicate) 181 R: nn, tsujinai kara nihongo no tomodachi de (yeah, it doesn’t communicate, so with my Japanese-language friends) 182 S: nihongo no tomodachi no aida (between my Japanese-language friends) 183 R: hâfu (half ) 184 S: mô shikata ga nai kara (it just can’t be helped) 185 R: but when, when we’re together, they get, um, 186 I try to use ‘doubles,’ but 187 yapa nihongo no tomodachi no toki dato (but with Japanese language friends)

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188

I just hate using hâfu, sugoi ii zurakute (I hate using half, It is really hard to use)

[. . .] Rina was the first to respond by saying that she had previously had no problem with the word ‘half’ until her mother brought up the subject at home (lines 132–4). In broaching the subject, her (British) mother had brought to Rina’s attention the notion of the subtractive nuance in the word ‘half’ and introduced to her an alternative anti-discriminatory discourse of ‘doubleness’ (lines 137–8). Naomi’s co-construction (line 136) that her (American) mother also said the same thing, is indicative of the prevalence within the western Japan foreign community of the construction of this alternative discourse of doubleness. Not shown here, Sara also later made a similar statement about her American mother. Rina began responding in Japanese to my (Japanese) question (lines 132–3), but then switched into English (line 134) in describing the words of her mother, who always uses English with her. Then, using an intertextual Japanese voice, she again switched languages to provide the actual Japanese lexemes under discussion: hâfu (line 137), daburu (line 138), hâfu-ando-hâfu (line 139). While she put forth her mother’s anti-discriminatory argument for using the term ‘double’ within a discourse of doubleness, Rina also drew on a discourse of halfness with her explanation (and perhaps support) of the use of hâfu as an abbreviation of ‘half-and-half’ (line 139). She was implying that hâfu actually refers to two halves which make up a whole. Sara subtly expressed her sudden realization of the meaning of hâfu as provided by Rina (line 141). Sara’s ‘aha moment’ is perhaps indicative of the term hâfu not being commonly thought of as an abbreviation (if it actually is). Rina went on to say that after she started using the term ‘doubles’ as suggested by her mother, she found that outside of the foreign community it was not understood at all by Japanese people (lines 142–4), with which Naomi then expressed agreement (line 145). However, several lines later, again drawing on a discourse of doubleness, Sara joined in to say that ‘doubles’ is the best (line 177), to which Rina now co-constructed with ‘and it’s short’. At this point I then reintroduced their earlier construction (lines 143–4) that the meaning of ‘doubles’ does not communicate to Japanese people (line 180). To this, over the next several turns (lines 181–7), Rina and Sara alternate in their co-construction of the notion that, in order to make sense in the company of their Japanese-language friends, they have to use the word hâfu, and not daburu. However, in line 185–6, Rina

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explained how when the mixed-ethnic girls are all together, she tries to use the term ‘doubles’. Even though Rina cannot use the word daburu with her Japanese-speaking friends due to its incomprehensibility, in her contestation of a marginalizing positioning within a discourse of halfness, she was emphatic in saying that even using the word hâfu in speaking with her Japanese peers is extremely difficult (line 188). This extract thus reveals the unfixed multi-identities and multimemberships that these girls assume according to the context in which they interact. Drawing on both a discourse of halfness and a discourse of doubleness, these girls work hard to position themselves in an empowering manner, while rejecting marginalizing discourses of deficit or difference. The following extract is a continuation of the above, but the topic began to shift to how they discursively ‘do English’ through their choices and negotiations of which of their two languages to use in different contexts. ‘Doing English’ by choosing when and how to speak English Extract 1B below continues to explore the first research question, focusing on how the participants ‘do English’ in the construction of their mixed-ethnic identities within the context of their Japanese cultural identities. Along with myself, the participants appearing in this extract are Rina, Naomi and Sara. Extract 1B: ‘To use English or to use Japanese’ (13 years old): [. . .] 252 R: 253 254 255 256 257

258 259 S: 260 R: 261 S:

so, sore wa, nnn, yokusuru (yeah, that, umm, I often) yeah, there’s some words that you can only describe in English, some words that you can only describe in Japanese, demo hotondo wa, ano, nihongo shabete, iizura-, ano, na, nanka, tocchû de (but most of it is, um, when I am speaking Japanese, it’s difficult to say, um well, in the middle) if there’s something that you can’t actually say in a, nihongo ni hyôgen shinikui (uh, if it’s difficult to express in Japanese) nihongo ni hyôgen shinikui no wa, eigo de iu (yeah, if it’s difficult to say in Japanese, I’ll say it in English) un, un (yeah, yeah)

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262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278

N: so you, a lot of the things I learned from my mom and stuff, or if, if I talk some, stuff I talk about with my mom, I use English words for that, L: uh-huh, sometimes you talk with your mom in Japanese? N: no, not, not much, even if I talk in English to her, she’ll reply in English R: huh? N: even though I talk Japanese to her, she’ll reply in Japanese R: huh? N: English (laughs) R: well, what I find interesting is, um, Mari has an American mom that when she tells me what her mother says, she says it and when she says it in Japanese, I kind of know that um, Mari’s mom will be speaking English, but she says it in Japanese so I think why ichi ichi (all the time, she has to) change, change it, translate her

In Extract 1A, the girls spoke of which words to call themselves. Following a short ellipsis they continued in this extract to talk about the use of language, but the topic shifted to how some words are easier to describe in English than in Japanese. Rina continued to alternate between English and Japanese in making her point that sometimes it is difficult to express herself well in Japanese. It is interesting that Sara, who is not a very proficient English speaker, helped to co-construct Rina’s point that some things are difficult to express in Japanese, implying that occasionally she, like Rina, prefers to select English (most likely with a parent or with other mixed-ethnic friends) in order to express herself better (line 259). Naomi entered the discussion (from line 262) and began to explain about her use of English with her mother. After I addressed Naomi (line 265) in English, asking if she talks in Japanese with her mother, an interesting and subtle exchange occurred for several turns between Naomi and Rina (lines 266–71). Naomi, in referring to her American mother, mistakenly said, “even if I talk in English to her, she’ll reply in English” (lines 266–7). Rina knew that Naomi meant to say that even if she talks in Japanese to her mother, her mother will reply in English. In line 268, Rina subtly responded with ‘huh?’, to which Naomi responded with another error while trying to repair the previous one (line 269). Again (line 270)

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Rina subtly nudged Naomi, who finally made the intended repair after her third attempt in line 271, but in a very abbreviated manner with ‘English’ and then laughed. Rina was delicately and subtly overseeing Naomi’s use of English in her ‘doing English’. Being careful so as not to cause Naomi loss of face, Rina was taking on the role of monitoring Naomi’s language, something that goes on in both of their families on a daily basis. This was seen to occur several times throughout the data set between Naomi and Rina, who are best friends. Finally, Rina began telling another narrative about her mixed-ethnic school friend, Mari, whose mother is American (lines 272–8). Rina expressed her annoyance that when Mari talked to her about something which Mari’s mother had said to her, Mari translated that conversation into Japanese rather than expressing those words directly in English. The girls had told me that generally when they get together the medium of communication is Japanese; I thus assumed that the language used between Mari and Rina was also Japanese. I also assumed that if Mari had been speaking with any of her other ‘Japanese’ friends, it would be only natural to translate her mother’s English words into Japanese in order to make them comprehensible. But among fellow mixed-ethnic friends, Mari’s and Rina’s speaking manners seem to differ. As we have seen in both the above extracts, Rina uses frequent alternations between her two languages as a communicative tool and also as an expression of solidarity among her mixed-ethnic friends (who are in various stages of bilingual development) in the co-construction of their shared multiple identities. Rina then felt annoyed because Mari apparently does not co-construct this shared multilingual, mixed-ethnic identity in the same way, but continues to use a Japanese-to-Japanese-person identity when speaking together with Rina. Multilinguistic identities and Japanese cultural identities The following two-part extract continues to explore the first research question by examining how these girls perform, resist or alter the position of English in the process of constructing their multilinguistic and mixed-ethnic identities. In order to put the following extract in context, I begin with a brief explanation of English education in Japan. With over 93 per cent of Japanese citizens graduating from high school (OECD, 2008), including the three years of mandatory English in middle school and another three years in high school, it can be said that most Japanese youth are exposed to at least six years of English language instruction in the school system. Also, as of the 2011 school

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year, mandatory English instruction in the curriculum officially commenced for fifth and sixth graders of elementary school. (Across most of Japan, this programme had actually already been put into practice several years prior to 2011.) This does not mean, however, that everyone emerges from the educational system with the ability to use English in actual practice. While the educational system prepares students in terms of high-level and detailed test-taking skills in grammar and translation, very few high school graduates would be able to successfully perform simple communicative tasks such as calling a taxi or ordering a pizza in English, if tested in such practical skills. English is rarely used in their everyday lives in Japan. Nevertheless, on very rare occasions when they may cross paths with a tourist or foreigner, most young Japanese people try very hard to accommodate to the language needs (which they expect to be English) of such foreigners. I should also mention here that there are many Japanese people who work in the service industry who do not feel comfortable in having to accommodate to the language needs of non-Japanese speakers. As we shall see below, sometimes such people resort to other non-linguistic means of communication with foreigners. While non-Japanese-speaking foreigners may well appreciate attempts by Japanese people to try to speak English with them, the situation is very different for the mixed-ethnic ‘Japanese’ girls of this study who are often mistaken as ‘foreigners’. For them, being addressed by Japanese people (often peers) in broken English rather than in Japanese, positions them as foreign outsiders in their own country and acts to ‘gaijinize’ (Iino, 1996) them. Such local acts of ‘Englishing’ ( Joseph, 2004) serve to negatively position them within a discourse of homogeneity and a discourse of otherness which denies the existence of non-Japanese-looking Japanese citizens and racially stereotypes them as outsiders on the basis of their appearance. In response, these girls deconstruct the position of English by ‘doing English’ differently than that of the shop clerk; their discursive acts of ‘Englishing’ place them in more empowering positions as mixed-ethnic girls as they reject the use of English, as can be seen in the discussion in the following extract. Extract 2A: ‘I hate people speaking English’ (13 years old): 1 N: 2 3

I really hate people asking me (?) English, ‘nihongo pera pera, eigo mo pera pera,’ nanya tte, meccha mukatsukahen? sonna koto iware tara (they say, ‘you’re fluent in Japanese and you’re also fluent in English’, isn’t it totally sickening when people say that to you?)

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[. . .] 20 N: mae, Nina (before, Nina) 21 she had, she bought, she bought something that was like 22 400 yen, with the 500 yen toshoken (pre-paid book ticket) 23 and um, the register, the, the, the people at the register 24 was trying to say um ‘otsuri ga moraemasen yo’ (you won’t get any change back [from this 500 yen book ticket]) 25 L: uh-huh, uh-huh 26 R: and so, um, nanka (somehow) you know she said, ‘eto, nô 27 chenji’ (‘ah, no change’) and Nina said, ‘ha?’ (‘huh?’) 28 L: (laugh) 29 R: and the register person said, ‘nô chenji’ (‘no change’) and 30 ‘a, chanto nihongo shaberimasun de’ tte ittara, 31 ‘a, shaberarerun da, gomen ne, otsuri denaino’ tte (laughs) (‘uh, I can speak Japanese just fine’, she said, and [the clerk said] ‘oh, you speak [Japanese], sorry, there is no change given [with book-tickets].’ ) (laughs) 32?s: (laugh) [. . .]

Although Naomi started off in English (line 1), she switched into the Japanese intertextual voice of people around her who annoy her by always giving her unwanted ‘compliments’ and over-praising her fluency in her two languages (lines 2–3). For Naomi, the use of her two languages is simply something to be taken for granted and does not need to be marked as different. In line 20, Naomi began to relate the narrative of an incident involving another (not-present) mixed-ethnic friend (Nina) which took place in a service encounter situation while shopping (lines 20–4). Naomi explained how Nina produced a 500-yen valued book-ticket to pay for a 400-yen purchase. The Japanese clerk wanted to express to her that she would not receive any change if she used the ticket, implying that she would forfeit 100 yen. In line 20, Naomi started off in Japanese, but quickly shifted to English until she came to a Japanese lexical item toshôken (book-ticket) (line 22), which was either unknown to her in English or simply easier for her to express in Japanese. She embedded this Japanese lexeme in the English sentence as an intra-sentential switch. In line 24, she again switched into Japanese in order to express the intertextual Japanese voice of

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the actor (the clerk) of the story, translated as: ‘You won’t get any change back.’ In line 26, Rina joined in to help co-construct this narrative, revealing her familiarity with the events, probably because she was also present at the time or had previously discussed the story with Naomi. Rina used the intertextual voice of the cashier, who instead of using Japanese with Nina, attempted to use an abbreviated and poorly pronounced Japanized-English version of ‘no change’ (nô chenji). This construction worked to place this mixed-ethnic girl in a denigrating position as outside of the category of Japanese, i.e. as ‘foreign outsider’, within a discourse of homogeneity. It is also interesting to note here that in concluding her narrative concerning an interaction between the clerk and Nina (lines 29–31), Rina quoted Nina in an intertextual voice spoken in a polite register, while she used a more colloquial, somewhat rude intertextual register for the clerk. As mentioned above, it is not rare for Japanese to try to accommodate to the English language needs of foreigners unable to speak Japanese. But these actions often serve to put these ‘Japanese’ mixed-ethnic girls in a condescending position; they have to constantly remind their fellow countrymen and women that they indeed speak Japanese and that they also claim the Japanese language for themselves. The next extract continues from the above after a short ellipsis. Here Rina and Naomi present further examples of how they and other members of their family are linguistically positioned in their daily encounters. Extract 2B: ‘He just grunts’ (13 years old): 40 N: 41 R: 42 L: 43 N: 44 [. . .] 53 N: 54 55 ?: 56 N: 57 L:

my mom hates it they underestimate you? your mom hates it? yeah, because ah, usually in Kyoto and stuff, they’ll use hand gestures for every single thing she asks but one person just, I, I was really pissed off by them but, um, he just grunts, because (laugh) I can speak Japanese yeah

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58 R: 59 60 61 62 63 N: 64 R: 65 N:

66 R: 67

68 69 70 71 72 73 74

L: N: R: all:

but if, if, if your parents are with, I mean, if you’re with your parents then they assume that, you know, she, she has a Japanese husband, so you know she must speak a little Japanese, so, yeah, they, they don’t really do that, yeah iya, demo, otôsan shaberarehen jya (yeah, but, my father can’t speak [English]) so, so, so okâsan (yeah, yeah, yeah, my mother) zettai otôsan ni shika shaberahen (people completely only speak [Japanese directly] to my father [and not to me]) moshi, moshi, moshi, futari, futari de ikahattara, sorede otôsan shaberaharukedo (if, if, if, us two, there is [just] the two of us going somewhere, then my father does the speaking though) if it’s just me and my mum, then they assume that she can speak a little Japanese, so ummm really? ahh, well, at least I’ve never had any experience like, I haven’t seemed to had any experience like grunting (laugh)

In this extract, the girls continued to give other examples of how they or their family members had been positioned as outsiders on the basis of their assumed language abilities. In lines 40–4, Naomi and Rina co-constructed the disagreeableness of such scenarios, not only for themselves as Japanese citizens, but also from the position of their non-Japanese parent. While having lived for several decades in Japan, their foreign mothers were still ‘underestimated’ (line 41) in their ability to speak Japanese and often treated as incomplete or ‘challenged’ adults. In lines 43–4, Naomi’s comment that ‘they’ll use hand gestures for every single thing she asks’, suggests that Naomi feels her mother is positioned as being outside of the category of fully functioning adult in such interactions. What the girls did not mention, as we all already knew (but which was unknown to the Japanese interlocutors in the narrative), is that Naomi’s American mother is totally fluent in Japanese.

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Naomi continued the co-constructed narrative (line 53) by relating another incident, which also greatly angered her, when a stranger in a service encounter, instead of using standard linguistic resources (which includes gestures), simply ‘grunted’ – a term of reference usually used to denote the non-human sound that pigs make. In line 56, Naomi, using a sarcastic tone, proclaimed, ‘I can speak Japanese’, as if putting herself intertextually in the situation and speaking directly to the store clerk. From line 58 onwards, the girls began to talk about the different types of reactions they often received in public, depending on whether they were with their Japanese parent (in this case, their father) or their non-Japanese parent (in this case, their mother), or both together. In lines 58–62, Rina explained how in the accompaniment of her Japanese father together with her mother, the positioning by Japanese people differed; when it became apparent that Rina’s British mother was the wife of a Japanese man, people assumed she would know some Japanese. The girls’ use of language alternation is interesting in this extract in that they tended to speak English when talking about English speakers, but code-switched into Japanese when speaking about Japanese speakers. This extract began with the girls speaking in English. Later, when Naomi began to speak about her Japanese father (line 63), she switched into Japanese, to which Rina also responded in Japanese (line 64). Then, mid-turn, when Rina began to talk about her mother (with whom she always communicates in English), she switched into English (line 68), as did Naomi (line 71). In line 63, Naomi appeared to stray from the point by saying that her father could not speak English. To this, Rina, while acknowledging Naomi’s reference to her father, subtly mentioned that she had been referring to the case of her (British) mother (line 64). In line 65, Naomi, bringing the subject back to her father, further explained that when she was with her father in the presence of Japanese strangers, they would only speak to him (in Japanese) and not to her, implicitly positioning her as foreign outsider, unable to handle Japanese. In lines 66–7, Rina co-constructed Naomi’s point by relating a similar scenario in which, when she is together with her father in public, he does the speaking for them (in Japanese). This contrasts with Rina’s account of how people positioned her mother when the two of them were together (as being able to speak a bit of Japanese) (line 68). Rina was perhaps implying that she had often been taken as a foreigner on certain occasions (such as in the presence of her father), but also as Japanese on other occasions (such as when in the company of her mother). Finally, Rina brought the co-constructed narrative to a conclusion by returning to Naomi’s notion

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of ‘grunting’ by stating that she had never had such an experience like this, generating laughter from everyone (lines 72–4). In the above two extracts (2A and 2B), incidents of people having expectations of who they were and what languages they were capable or incapable of speaking – while usually unintentional – occur quite often for these ‘Japanese’ girls in the context of Japanese society, and often serve to negatively position them within a discourse of gaijin otherness. However, these extracts also show how the girls come to contest and deconstruct this marginalization through their talk with each other and their families, allowing them to then reconstruct a discourse of homogeneity into a more empowering discourse of diversity. The girls also come to reconstruct a discourse of conformity into a more globalizing discourse of interculturalism – which promotes the value of intercultural savvy as cultural capital (see Kamada, 2010). This leads into a discussion in the next section, focusing on the second research question, which examines how the participants create and celebrate linguistic capital for themselves in the context of Japan. The position of English as global linguistic and cultural capital Even though Rina’s school, Minami (a pseudonym), is a Japanese accredited institution, art, music and PE are conducted in English, and there is also an English language class. Adjacent to Minami is an international school, LIS (a pseudonym), and exchanges between the two schools sometimes occur. Minami is at the forefront of private high schools in Japan that can offer Japanese students something extra in terms not only of language, but also a ‘global’ view of the world within the context of Japan and the Japanese school system. In both the Kansai and Kanto regions and other densely populated areas of Japan, these kinds of Japanese-medium school environments with a strong English focus are beginning to be seen more and more. However, for the most part they are limited to costly private schools which often involve much travelling for many of the students. It is a 90-minute commute on an efficient train system from Rina’s home to her school each way, requiring that she gets up every weekday by 5:45 am. In the following extract, Rina was talking about the use of languages at her school (Minami) and at the adjacent international school (LIS). Extract 3: ‘Rina’s School’ (13 years old): 1 R:

OK, I was saying that um, there are some bicultural kids in LIS

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2 3 4 5 [. . .] 17 R: 18 19 20 L: 21 22 R: 23 24 25 L: 26 R: 27 28

I know that don’t speak a word of Japanese and there are some kind of, there are some bicultural kids in Minami who don’t speak a word of English, which I think is quite interesting so by, if you, if you can’t speak a word of English by um, the beginning of junior high then by the end of high school, you’ll be fluent, well almost fluent so um, what do the students speak mostly to each other on your side? um, mainly Japanese because on our side if you speak English, they, everyone else who can’t speak English thinks you’re showing off, mmm so everyone tries to avoid speaking English and they try to speak Japanese, and where, whereas if you’re in LIS, I think speaking Japanese is, seems to be cool, I don’t know

In lines 1–5, Rina described the phenomenon of ‘monolinguality’ among some of the students at the two adjacent schools. In line 5, it seems that Rina used the term ‘interesting’ in a euphemistic manner to refer to these monolingual children, where she might have nuanced the meaning of shameful or pitiful. As Rina herself is bilingual, she was referring to the ‘interesting’ situation of English-speaking young people attending an international school in Japan (LIS), but who had not acquired the use the local language, Japanese. Rina’s use of the word ‘bicultural’ referred to mixed-ethnic people, like herself, who were raised in Japan in multi-ethnic families with one foreign parent. It was very ‘interesting’ to Rina, that such children would remain monolingual ( Japanese only) speakers. Rina was implicitly expressing how it would be a shame for such mixed-ethnic children to have missed the opportunity to become bilingual. In expressing this, Rina was at the same time creating and celebrating her own linguistic and cultural capital of bilinguality. Even though Rina’s school (Minami) is an accredited Japanese institution and most of the students are ordinary Japanese children with no outside-of-Japan experiences, she stated that in the six years of junior and senior high school, pupils will become almost fluent in English (lines 17–19). This is a phenomenon that would rarely occur after six years of English instruction in a regular Japanese public school.

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When I asked Rina (line 20) what languages the students spoke at her school, she clarified that they almost exclusively used Japanese because revealing one’s ability to use English would be perceived as showing off – something that would not be socially acceptable among Japanese peers who would not want to be ‘the nail that stands up’. However, in the international school, where English is the medium of instruction, use of the minority language, Japanese, is ‘cool’ according to Rina. Yet while it is ‘cool’ to be able to speak the unofficial language in either school, the Japanese pupils in Rina’s school have to be careful so as not to be seen as showing off. The point is that in both schools many pupils themselves work to create their own linguistic/cultural capital of bilinguality by their ability to use the minority language of their communities. Before starting Minami, while still at the end of elementary school at age 12, based on her ability to understand English that had been acquired entirely in the home at that stage, Rina celebrated her future linguistic/cultural capital by stating the following: R:

I feel that I have many choices for my future and bilingualism kind of, um, expands my future, I think

Each of the girls in the study celebrated their cultural capital of mixed ethnicity and as having privileged access to English (or multilinguality) in ways that their Japanese peers could not. One of the girls, Hanna, in celebration of her multi-ethnicity at age 14, stated the following: H:

you definitely have a lot more opportunity, I think it’s advantageous, in that sense (English translation)

As a 13-year-old, Anna, in an act to increase her linguistic capital, said of her father who is Australian and fluent in Japanese: A:

up until now it [our home language] was totally Japanese, but recently I have requested [of him] ‘use English [with me]’ [. . .] I thought it would be bad if I couldn’t speak [English] my whole life (English translation)

Likewise, Maya, at age 14, drawing on a discourse of diversity, constructed and celebrated her cultural, symbolic and social capital of

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having ‘both’ worlds, based on the context of her interactions: M: my thinking is both American and Japanese, I have both; depending on the place, my feeling is different (English translation) Many Japanese upper- and middle-class families with financial means choose to send their children to private schools, such as Minami, which can offer rich English environments alongside the regular Japanese curriculum, over international schools which generally do not abide by the Japanese curriculum standards and often do not nurture Japanese (peerlevel) literacy, making Japanese university entrance and employment in Japan difficult. Also, for the average Japanese child, a few ‘experimental’ public schools have been set aside by the government (usually attached to former national universities), which provide rich English environments incorporated into the standard Japanese curriculum. These schools are extremely attractive to ordinary families whose children try their luck in highly competitive lottery-system contests to decide entry. The linguistic and cultural capital afforded pupils who can attain English proficiency to a level where they can actually use it as a communicative resource (such as these mixed-ethnic girls), potentially opens many doors of future opportunity for such ‘Japanese’ pupils. Nevertheless, within a context of public sentiment of what constitutes the ‘best education’ in Japan, the debate continues in the public school sector as to whether time allocated for English instruction is justified, in that it undermines time away from other subjects, considered by some to be more basic/important, such as Japanese or mathematics.

Conclusion This study has shown how a certain growing sector of ‘Japanese’ mixedethnic adolescents discursively construct the position of English in unfixed and multiple ways, often drawing on alternative, rather than dominant, discourses of ethnicity in Japan. Not only do the girls of this study contest, resist and deconstruct various marginalizing discourses of ethnicity, they also, at other times and in other contexts, construct and celebrate alternative, more empowering globalizing discourses of ethnicity. These girls are sometimes seen celebrating their linguistic capital of English proficiency, while at other times, in other contexts, are also seen rejecting the position of ‘English speaker’ within marginalizing discourses of homogeneity and conformity.

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Commonly they confront various disempowering ethnic discourses of homogeneity, ‘halfness’ and ‘otherness’ in their community and in their schools in which people often stereotypically position them into linguistic, racial/ethnic and national categories. Over time as they mature, they learn how to access more empowering alternative discourses of ethnic and linguistic diversity within a discourse of globalization. They also come to construct and celebrate intercultural, transcultural and linguistic, symbolic, social and cultural capital in order to empower themselves through their identity work as mixed-ethnic and multilingual.

Transcription conventions ? (?) (laugh) , bold print

regular print (explanation) “quotation marks”

[. . .] (italic print, in parentheses) ([italics, parentheses, brackets]) ? (in transcript speaker column) ?s (in transcript speaker column)

(in text) rising intonation, question (in text) undecipherable speech laugh (comma) continuing intonation (utterance not completed) Japanese transcribed into Romanization (the actual speech) (Hepburn System of Romanization) the actual speech in English (not a translation) explanation or implied speech in parentheses (not the actual speech) words enclosed in quotation marks indicate quoted speech, emphasized lexis, voice of someone else or self at an earlier time ellipsis: omission of one or more lines of the excerpt the English translation of the Japanese English translation of implied nuance, not actually stated unclear which one of the girls was speaking unclear simultaneous speakers

Pseudonyms are used for all participants. The names are abbreviated as follows: A = Anna, H = Hanna, M = Maya, N = Naomi, R = Rina, S = Sara, L = researcher (Laurel).

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References Baxter, J. (2003) Positioning gender in discourse: a feminist methodology (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Baxter, J. (2008) ‘Feminist post-structuralist discourse analysis: a new theoretical and methodological approach?’ in K. Harrington, L. Litosseliti, H. Sauntson and J. Sunderland (eds) Language and gender research methodologies (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Billig, M. (2001) ‘Discursive, rhetorical and ideological messages’ in M. Wetherell, S. Taylor and S. Yates (eds) Discourse theory and practice: a reader (London: Sage). Bourdieu, P. (1977) Outline of a theory of practice, translated by R. Nice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Darling-Wolf, F. (2003) ‘Media, class, and western influence in Japanese women’s conceptions of attractiveness’, Feminist Media Studies, 3, 153–72. Davis, B. and Harré, R. (2001) ‘Positioning: the discursive production of selves’ in M. Wetherell, S. Taylor and S. Yates (eds) Discourse theory and practice: a reader (London: Sage). Derrida, J. (1976) Of grammatology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press). Derrida, J. (1978) Writing and difference (London: RKP). Edley, N. and Wetherell, M. (2008) ‘Discursive psychology and the study of gender: a contested space’ in K. Harrington, L. Litosseliti, H. Sauntso, and J. Sunderland (eds) Language and gender research methodologies (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Fairclough, N. (1995) Critical discourse analysis (London: Longman). Fairclough, N. (2001) ‘The discourse of new labour: critical discourse analysis’ in M. Wetherell, S. Taylor and S.J. Yates (eds) Discourse as data: a guide for analysis (London: Sage). Foucault, M. (1972) The archaeology of knowledge and the discourse on language (London: Routledge). Gergen, K. (1999) An invitation to social construction (London: Sage). Higgins, C. (2009). English as a local language: post-colonial identities and multilingual practices (Bristol: Multilingual Matters). Iino, M. (1996) ‘“Excellent foreigner!”: gaijinization of Japanese language and culture in conflict situations – an ethnographic study of dinner table conversations between Japanese host families and American students’. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Pennsylvania. Joseph, J. (2004) ‘Is language a verb? Conceptual change in linguistics and language teaching’ in H. Trappes-Lomax and G. Ferguson (eds) Language in language teacher education (Amsterdam: John Benjamins). Kamada, L. (2008) ‘Discursive “embodied” identities of “half” girls in Japan: a multiperspective approach’ in K. Harrington, L. Litosseliti, H. Sauntson and J. Sunderland (eds) Language and gender research methodologies (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Kamada, L. (2009) ‘Mixed-ethnic girls and boys as similarly powerless and powerful: embodiment of attractiveness and grotesqueness’, Discourse Studies, 11, 329–52. Kamada, L. (2010) Hybrid identities and adolescent girls: being ‘half’ in Japan (Bristol: Multilingual Matters).

Laurel Kamada 165 Kubota, R. (1999) ‘Japanese culture constructed by discourses: implications for applied linguistics research and ELT’, TESOL Quarterly, 33, 9–35. Kubota, R. (2002) ‘Japanese identities in written communication: politics and discourses’ in R. T. Donahue (ed.) Exploring Japaneseness: on Japanese enactments of culture and consciousness (Westport, Conn.: Ablex Publishing). Makoni, S. and Pennycook, A. (2007) ‘Disinventing and reconstituting languages’ in S. Makoni and A. Pennycook (eds) Disinventing and reconstructing languages (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters). OECD website (accessed October 2010) 2008 data. http://www.oecd.org/ dataoecd/ Pennycook, A. (2007) ‘The myth of English as an international language’ in S. Makoni and A. Pennycook (eds) Disinventing and reconstructing languages (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters). Ramanathan, V. (2005) The English-vernacular divide (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters). Seargeant, P. (2009). The idea of English in Japan: ideology and the evolution of a global language (Bristol: Multilingual Matters). Wetherell, M. (1998) ‘Positioning and interpretive repertoires: conversation analysis and post-structuralism in dialogue’, Discourse and Society, 9, 387–412.

8 The Ideal Speaker of Japanese English as Portrayed in ‘Language Entertainment’ Television Andrew Moody and Yuko Matsumoto

It is somewhat difficult to have a unified response to the presence of English within Japanese popular culture. English is frequently used decoratively, as it is in J-Pop music, to suggest that songs are more internationalized than the audience they are written for. English loanwords might pepper the speech of comedians and celebrities as a joke about a particular style of cosmopolitan Japanese. But nowhere in Japanese popular culture is English more prevalent than within the television genre of ‘language entertainment’ programmes. Presented to viewers as a type of amusement, these programmes portray several characteristics – competence, yuuki ‘courage’, jigyaku ‘self-effacement’ and genki ‘enthusiasm’ – that together may be taken as the characteristics of an ideal speaker of Japanese English. This examination of Japanese television will illustrate and examine how each of these four characteristics of an ideal speaker are actively modelled within Japanese popular culture. In response to the professional and popular view that Japanese speakers are overly anxious about speaking English, the ‘language entertainment’ genre of Japanese television presents alternative images of Japanese speakers who are both highly trained in their professions and highly proficient speakers of English. At the same time, the genre also models yuuki, jigyaku and genki as personality traits that favour the successful use of English.

The ‘language entertainment’ genre on television From among the large number of ‘language education’ programmes on Japanese television, Moody (2006) describes the development of an innovative sub-genre, ‘language entertainment’. ‘Language education’ programmes primarily focus on the study of foreign languages – predominantly 166

Andrew Moody and Yuko Matsumoto 167

English, although there are also programmes teaching French, Korean and Chinese; the ‘language entertainment’ genre instead strives primarily to entertain by using a foreign language. Whereas ‘language education’ programmes tend to offer formal descriptions of language forms and functions, ‘language entertainment’ programmes are usually humorous and typically feature individuals who are J-Pop music artists, comedians or other celebrities. The language that is portrayed within the genre is often authentic in the sense that it does not attempt to edit errors or teach formal linguistic features; consequently, most of the interactions in foreign languages on ‘language entertainment’ television are accompanied by a spoken or subtitled translation so that it is not necessary for the audience to understand the language used. Finally, because ‘language education’ television strives to portray language as a communicative activity rather than as a set lexis and grammatical rules, or a set of fixed conversational exchanges that need to be memorized, the genre portrays good and bad communication styles and models the characteristics of ideal speakers of the second language. The earliest description of ‘language entertainment’ as an emerging genre on Japanese television can be found in Moody (2006), where programmes are discussed within two broadly defined categories: children’s programmes and adult programmes. This simple bifurcation of the genre is useful for understanding how it developed, but also threatens to oversimplify characterizations of the genre to the point that research may overlook many of the interesting manifestations that have developed as featured segments within variety programmes that are not ‘language entertainment’ programmes. Short segments that feature the use of English are sometimes embedded as featured segments within another programme. The programme containing these segments cannot be considered part of the ‘language entertainment’ genre, but the featured segments have the same generic features as other language entertainment programmes.1 Typically these featured segments are written for an audience of young adults and they usually feature interactions with young talento ‘celebrities’ from J-Pop music groups and ensembles. These segments are designed to portray, usually with comic effect, many of the typical problems that Japanese speakers of English face when communicating in English. Together with the types of programmes discussed in Moody (2006) – programmes like Eigo-de Asobo ‘Let’s Play In English’ or Eigo-de Shabera Naito: Can You Speak English – the genre portrays a number of strategies that successful learners employ to overcome the difficulties of speaking English.

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The portrayal of the typical problems encountered when speaking English along with the solution to those problems together constitute the ‘language entertainment’ genre’s description of the ideal speaker of English. The speakers themselves are not exceptional speakers of English – they are usually not, for example, mixed race children of ‘international marriages’ or ‘returnees’ who went to school in an English-speaking country (Moody, 2009) – and the challenges of using English communicatively are also not exceptional. But solutions portrayed within the genre are not usually linguistic solutions; the genre does not, generally speaking, attempt to correct, or even model, standard English pronunciation, grammar or discourse (either US or UK) as long as the English speaker successfully engages in communication. Instead, the programmes seek to portray the personality traits and psychological characteristics of successful Japanese speakers of English, and this is an important difference between how the ‘language entertainment’ genre of television programmes differs from traditional language education programmes, which instead portray linguistic models of speech to be emulated. By treating communication difficulties as psychological characteristics, the ‘ideal speaker’ of English is one that has several easily identifiable personality characteristics: ‘ideal speakers’ are seen to have competence – that is, competence and accomplishment within their chosen profession, not linguistic competence in English – and speakers can improve their English by adopting yuuki ‘courage’, jigyaku ‘self-effacement’ and genki ‘enthusiasm’. The examination of the ‘language entertainment’ genre of television programmes in this chapter will attempt to include some of the more remote influences on its development as insights into the portrayal of the ideal English speaker in the Japanese media. Although the genre is clearly related to language education programmes that were aimed at younger children and designed to entertain, there is also a strong influence within the genre from J-Pop music as well as the influence that English music had on the early development of J-Pop. Indeed, one of the examples of the language education genre cited in Moody (2006) is a television show that has been developed around and features the J-Pop band SMAP. There is a clear relationship between J-Pop music and the development of the language entertainment genre, and J-Pop continues to have an influence on the way that the genre has developed. These remote influences on the ‘language entertainment’ genre allow for a more sophisticated characterization of the ideal speaker of English in ways that early influences of the genre did not. The early influence of children’s language education programmes as part of the


overall development of the genre can be seen in three of the language entertainment programmes discussed in Moody (2006): Eigo-de Asobo ‘Let’s Play in English’, Eigorian ‘English [A]lien’ and Suupaa Eigorian ‘Super English [A]lien’. Each of these programmes portray English speakers – sometimes portrayed as Westerners, as ‘monsters’ in fuzzy costumes or, in the case of Eigorian and Suupaa Eigorian, as alien species – as non-Japanese, and the Japanese who interact with English speakers rarely have trouble doing so. The portrayal of high proficiency non-Japanese English speakers certainly has implications for the way that Japanese learners, and especially young learners, of English are likely to perceive the uses of English. English is primarily portrayed as a language of wider or global – even extraterrestrial – communication. While the influence of children’s language education programmes is clearly identifiable within the genre of ‘language entertainment’ television, children’s programmes do little to develop an understanding of an ideal speaker of Japanese English. Instead, the characteristics of ideal speakers are more richly developed within the young adult and adult programmes described below, and these programmes respond to a psychological state of anxiety that produced communicative apprehension within many Japanese speakers of English.

The psychology of Japanese English speakers In his description of the typical way that Japanese high school students perceive the use of English, Honna (2008) argues that the characteristic trait of communicative anxiety stems from an unrealistic perception of English as an American language. Using a metaphor of students as manufactured ‘products’ of the Japanese education system, he outlines the ‘sociolinguistic presuppositions’ of this understanding of English as: (1) English is the American language. (2) To speak English is to behave American. (3) If products are not American English speakers, they are inferior, wrong products. We should increase our quality control efforts. Perhaps the best way to do so is to start teaching English earlier and invite more native English speakers as teachers or teacher aids. (p. 147) One of the results of these language attitudes, Honna argues, is that ‘students develop a feeling of failure, inferiority, and even guilt and shame’ (p. 147). Consequently, ‘Japanese students tend to hesitate to

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interact with English speakers “until,” as they often are heard to say, they develop complete proficiency in the language. Fears of making mistakes often prevent them even from using the phrases and expressions they are learning at school’ (p. 147; emphasis added). The primary psychological state or emotion that Honna identifies with young Japanese speakers of English, therefore, is ‘fear’ – an acute expression of anxiety around speaking the language. This characterization of Japanese learners is not unprecedented. Takahashi (1989) was one of the earliest to identify this personality characteristic, although he instead chose to emphasize that the fear derived from a potential ‘loss of face’ from making errors. The conclusion that this fear drives learners to actively avoid communication, however, is what Honna also argues about Japanese learners. Communication avoidance as a response to anxiety is widely attested in descriptions of Japanese learners (see Brown et al., 2001; Matsuda and Gobel, 2004; Matsuoka, 2007; McCroskey et al., 1985; Miyanaga, 2007; Pryor et al., 2005). The nature of communicative apprehension among Japanese learners of English, therefore, is generally understood as a sufficient explanation of communication avoidance within much of the scholarly literature on language learning in Japan. Within Japanese popular culture, anxiety is frequently associated with communicative avoidance as one of the ‘reasons’ why Japanese speakers are perceived as rarely able to use English communicatively. For example, Moody and Matsumoto (in press) discuss the important message that Lou Oshiba – a comedian talento ‘celebrity’ who has popularized a way of mixing Japanese and English (Oshiba, 2007) – sends to young learners of English about the adverse effects of fear. In an online interview, Oshiba (2008) observes that ‘many Japanese say that they can’t speak English. But I think they can speak because they have studied the foundation [of English]. They just don’t [try to] speak it.’ But Oshiba does not posit that there is a refusal to use English, as is implied in the quote above. Instead, he argues that the ‘foundation’ of formal English instruction is sufficient and that the ‘ability’ that most Japanese say that they do not have, is, in fact, an inaccurate belief that their English is insufficient for communication. What makes Oshiba’s message and exhortation to use ‘Lu-go’ – an English-enriched form of Japanese – important here is that he does not focus on proficiency as the shortcoming of Japanese English speakers. Instead, he specifically argues that proficiency is not the problem. Instead, problems result from speakers’ mistaken belief that their English is not good enough for communicative purposes. Oshiba (2007) demonstrates that, by


overcoming the fear and anxiety associated with speaking English, a Japanese speaker of English can improve their ability to communicate and succeed where others have not.

Characteristics of an ideal speaker of Japanese English The ‘language entertainment’ genre of television offers a direct response to the perception that Japanese users of English suffer from anxiety and apprehension. While there is a broad range of proficiencies portrayed within the genre, the personality characteristics of English speakers are somewhat less diverse. In many ways, the genre makes a clearer statement about how Japanese speakers of English should interact when using English, than it makes about specifying standard forms of English to be modelled. The four characteristics to be examined here are that speakers are portrayed within the genre as possessing: (1) competence, (2) yuuki ‘courage’, (3) jigyaku ‘selfeffacement’ and (4) genki ‘enthusiasm’. We will discuss each in turn. Competence The NHK (Nippon Housou Kyoukai, Japan Broadcasting Corporation) programme Eigo-de Shabera-Naito is described in Moody (2006) as an example of the language entertainment genre of television. The focus of the programme is not upon explicit language instruction, although there are affiliated books and Internet sources of explanation available for learners who want to know in more detail what is expressed in the programme. Instead, the programme strives to portray Japanese speakers who use English fluently and naturally as part of their jobs or private lives. This certainly includes interviews with Japanese talento ‘celebrities’ who live in English-speaking countries, but Eigo-de Shabera-Naito, unlike other language entertainment programmes, attempts to show more than celebrity speakers of English; it also attempts to show highly accomplished Japanese leaders or business people using English as part of their daily interactions. As is demonstrated in the transcribed excerpt below, the Japanese English speakers who appear on the show are often recognizably competent in their professions and English serves as an index of their professional accomplishments and cosmopolitan status. The excerpt from the programme (Aso, 2008) transcribed in (1) below is with Taro Aso who was, at the time of the broadcast in January 2008, serving as a Member of Parliament and actively seeking to lead the Liberal Democratic Party in a bid to become Prime Minister. Aso was elected as leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, and thereby to the Prime Ministership, in September 2008 and served in that position until

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September 2009. In addition to Mr Aso, all three of the hosts of Eigo-de Shabera-Naito – Patrick Harlan, Yumiko Shaku and Kazuya Matsumoto – interact in the interview in both English and Japanese. Because the programme was originally broadcast during the New Year’s season in January 2008, all three of the hosts are dressed in traditional kimonos. The spoken text is primarily in English, but occasional Japanese words are transcribed in italicized text with a conventional translation (by the authors) in single quotes directly below the Japanese words. (Transcription conventions are given at the end of the chapter.) (1) Announcer:

Patrick: Aso: Kazuya: Yumiko: Kazuya: Patrick: Aso: Patrick: Aso: Patrick: Aso: Patrick: Aso: Yumiko: Aso: Patrick: Aso: Yumiko: Aso: Kazuya:

Now, as Pakkun plays a fictional Prime Minister, Aso presents his seasoned diplomatic skills. I’m the ambassador [from Moeshaku-land. ‘Sweet Shaku-land’2 [Ambassador uh hmm Moeshakurando? ‘Moeshakuland’? @ Moeshakurando, hai. ‘Yes, Moesaku-land’. And, uh, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Nice to, nice to meet you. And I was wondering, how can, we can improve our countries’ relations. Do you have ah so-called natural resources? Yes, we have (.) gold and (.) mercury (.) and iron and [what [You have natural resources, we Japan don’t have any natural [resources. [ahht But we have technology and we have, uh so-called management, and also we can [finance. [mmm So for your future benefit, [I think [oo you better, grasp hand with [ Japan, [@ might be (.) the way [to get [ grasp hand ((while making handshake motion))


Aso: Patrick: Aso: Patrick:

Yumiko: Aso: Yumiko: Patrick: Yumiko: Aso: Yumiko: Aso: All: Patrick: Kazuya: Patrick: Kazuya: Patrick: Yukiko: Kazuya: Yukiko:

a more [prosperity [mm-mhm of the future of your nation. This is a propo-- first of all. Wow. Uh, I’m especially interested in the technology. Do you think you could arrange for me to get one of those (.) toilet seats with the water [and the heat. [@ I think is, it’s a, it’s easy. But most important thing is the quality of water. Ah The [quality of water [@ [If, if that water is not clean, then you’ll get a (.) strange disease [from (.) [@ not from here ((points downward toward mouth)), but from the other way around ((point upward from seat)). @@@ Sate konohen-no hanashi-mo, sekaiteki-ni ukemasuyonee. ‘Well, people in the world will love this kind of story’. Iidesuyonee. Omoshiroi. ‘That is good. Interesting’. Machigainai desuyone. ‘I’m sure’. Iya ima-no joo- [iidesuyonee. ‘That is a really good joke’. [Kuitsukimasuyone ‘People will love it’. Kanarazu, koneta toiuka joke-wo . . . ‘You always include small joke or humour . . .’ KONETA? ‘SMALL JOKE’? Aso-san, gomennasai. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Aso’.

The Eigo-de Shabera-Naito interview is an important demonstration of Mr Aso’s ability to use English in a comfortable and light-hearted manner, and it may be intended to reflect his competence as a potential Prime Minister. The interview carries with it an implied examination of Mr Aso’s ‘seasoned diplomatic skills’ as a potential Prime Minister. Hence, the image of English as a language of international

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communication is reinforced within this demonstration of a Japanese politician’s ability to use English. While this may be something that many individuals expect that Japanese leaders are able to do, it is not something that most Japanese have the chance to see. Indeed, the linguistic aspect of a leader’s ‘seasoned diplomatic skills’ is usually assumed to reside within the professional translators who work in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and there would, in fact, be little need for Mr Aso to interact on the diplomatic stage in English. Instead, the value of seeing Mr Aso interact in English is an important component of his bid for leadership of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and can be used politically to claim that he would make a competent leader, and this claim would have relevance in both his past role as the Minister of Foreign Affairs (October 2005–August 2007) and in his bid for the Prime Ministership. The interview also reflects broadly on the experience of two other Prime Ministers in English. Junichiro Koizumi, who was Prime Minister from August 2001 to September 2006, enjoyed a largely positive approval rating during his term as Prime Minister. One of the enduring images of his term within Japanese popular and political culture was when Mr Koizumi joined then US President George W. Bush at Graceland, the Memphis home of Elvis Presley, and sang ‘Love Me Tender’ for the news media. Although it may be difficult to judge either Mr Koizumi’s or Mr Aso’s leadership skills from their basic English proficiency, Mr Aso’s presentation of his ‘seasoned diplomatic skills’ in English may have been a good way to associate himself with the strength of the previous Koizumi administration. Although Prime Ministers are not judged by their proficiency in English, more general perceptions of their competence may be damaged if proficiency in English is not high. This effect can be seen in the case of the previous administration of Yoshiro Mori (April 2000– April 2001). Mr Mori’s administration was unpopular for a number of reasons, but his competence as Prime Minister was frequently called into question, one example of which is a story that illustrated his lack of proficiency in English. Although it is not entirely clear whether the story is true, the story of Mori confusing who for how is often repeated – as in this excerpt below from the London Evening Standard – as an example of his lack of competence as Prime Minister: Mr Bush speaks no Japanese, and Mr Mori will be well advised not to rely on his high school memories of English. “Who are you?” he asked Bill Clinton, welcoming him to the Okinawa economic summit last year.


‘I’m Hillary’s husband,’ replied an unstumped Mr Clinton. ‘Me too!’ beamed Mr Mori, sticking with his painfully rehearsed script. Mr Clinton assumed the look that says ‘We’ve got a right one here,’ and, predictably, the Okinawa talks were just that: much talk, all at cross-purposes. (Sayle, 2001) Although Mr Aso would not be judged as an effective or ineffective Prime Minister solely on his English abilities, the lack of proficiency in English came to symbolize the ineffectiveness of the Mori administration. Therefore, proficiency in English suggests a level of competence in a job that does not necessarily require English. Although it is not a characteristic that Japanese speakers may easily develop when they speak in English, competence is one of the consequential characteristics for those speakers who can communicate in English. Yuuki ‘courage’ Whereas Japanese speakers who can perform well in English may tend to appear to be competent in ways that are not related to the use of English, the other issues we have chosen to discuss in this chapter are modelled characteristics that are available for Japanese speakers to adopt when speaking English. In this sense, the other three characteristics respond to the perceptions that Japanese are overly anxious and apprehensive about speaking English, and the programmes suggest three characteristics that might be used to overcome communicative anxiety. The first of these, courage, is typically demonstrated in programmes where talento are more or less seriously learning and using English. Eigo-de ShaberaNaito is one such programme, but another example is Shikatte Burondo Sensei (‘Scold Me! Blond Teacher!’). In this show, guest celebrities are told to use English in various situations which are then recorded. Later in the programme, three ‘blond teachers’ (i.e. native speakers of English or native Japanese/English bilinguals who wear ‘blond’ wigs) respond to and correct the guests’ use of English. While this is all clear to the guests when they are interacting on the sound stage with the teachers, the show will also fabricate situations where a tarento – who will later be a guest on the programme – is faced with a situation in English. Then, when the celebrity is a guest on the show, the ‘blond teachers’ review and respond to a tape of the English interaction. The excerpt transcribed below (Ninomiya, 2007) in (2) is an example of a fabricated interaction that was devised in order to force Kazunari Ninomiya, a member of the J-Pop vocal group Arashi, into speaking English at what was presented

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as a meeting of the Federation of Japanese Foreign Press: (2)

MC:

Press 1:

I think everyone here knows about, uh Mr Ninomiya. He’s a member of the top idol group Arashi and also an accomplished actor and singer. So we want to ask him a few questions tonight. So let’s get started, and uh, I’d like to open the floor to any questions. Hello, it’s a pleasure, Mr Ninomiya. Uh, your acting in Clint Eastwood’s Letters from Iwo Jima was wonderful. But looking back at it, I was wondering if you had any opinions about this film?

Ninomiya (watching the video): Konohito-ga tsuyaku dato omotteta.

Ninomiya: Press 1: Ninomiya: MC: Press 2: Ninomiya: Press 2:

Ninomiya: Press 2: Ninomiya:

Press 2: Ninomiya: Press 2: Ninomiya: MC: Press 3: Ninomiya:

‘I thought that person was a translator’. (9.1) Yes, uh, (4.9) I’m so happy uh (.) to have shooting ·shhh with a great director. I see, thank you. Thank you. ((Press claps.)) Another question please? Yes. Mr Ninomiya. Yes. It’s an honour. Uh, we’re really looking forward to your next project. Uh, what kind of work will you be doing? Uh, can you let us know about that? (2.1) next? Yes, your next [project. [project. (.) Okay. (.) Um, (2.7) My next project is ah (2.5) Japanese drama. Uh::, we are already starting shooting. Wonderful. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. ((Press and Ninomiya clap.)) OK, another question? Yes, thank you. Mr Ninomiya, Japaning Magazine, Durant. Can you tell us more details about your drama, please? Uh, yes, uh. (1.8) The, the title is (.) Yamada Taro Monogatari. Uh, it’s a comedy drama. Ah, I play Taro. Uh::, he is very (.) intelligence, uh, kind


Press 3: Ninomiya: Press 4: Ninomiya:

Press 4: Ninomiya: Press 4: Ninomiya: Press 4: Press 5: Ninomiya: Ninomiaya: Press 5: Ninomiya: Press 5: Ninomiya:

Press 5: Press 6:

Ninomiya: Press 6: Ninomiya:

Press: Ninomiya:

and uh, (7.9) also loves his family. Uh, uh, but (.) they are very poor. Yes. Thank you very much. Very nice. Thank you. Mr Ninomiya, could you please give us some more details? (3.5) Uh, okay. Uh, (.) in this drama, I am acting with Sho Sakurai. Uh:: ·shhh (.) when we are:: shooting, uh::, when we are shooting (2.7) uh, everybody (.) are so kind. Uh. Uh, okay. Okay. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Phil Schmidtzenburg, Ottawa Times. Can I perhaps hear more details about this new drama? @ Okay (.) chotto matte= ‘Wait a moment.’ =uh. Okay, uh (.) this original story is from a comic, uh like ah A Japanese comic, isn’t it? Yes A Japanese uh:: comic -Yeah (.) like comic story, uh, it’s a wonderful drama. I hope um (1.8) I hope (.) everyone (.) will watch (.) this drama. Okay. I’m from Pacific News. And, um, Mr Ninomiya, how did you learn how to speak English? Because it’s said in Japan that many, um, Japanese people have a difficult time learning English. How did you learn? Learn? I uh. (2.0) I (.) didn’t (.) learn (.) English. Uh, I just (.) using the words I know. Oh. Did you have a teacher? @ Zehi onegai shimasu, nandaro. = ‘Please, [teach me] what?’ = Could you, like, teach me? Oh, okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. (all clap)

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After watching the segment of Ninomiya speaking to the foreign press, the members of the show Shikatte Burondo Sensei congratulate him for using English in a very difficult setting. One of the ‘blond teachers’ (a Western woman) points out to Ninomiya that he should have said ‘everyone was’ instead of ‘everyone are’ and that it would have been better for Ninomiya to have said that he didn’t ‘study English’ instead of that he didn’t ‘learn English’. It is interesting that, at the end of his experience of communicating in English, Ninomiya seems to suggest that by ‘just using the words that I know’ he is not actually using English. Certainly the questions that are presented to Ninomiya are not authentically spoken English sentences; his interlocutors typically use overly clear and slow enunciation and also readily use hand gestures to signify concepts like ‘next’ or ‘more details’ for Ninomiya. Furthermore, the applause from the room of reporters at the end of each of Ninomiya’s questions is inauthentic and he does not seem to know how to respond to it after the first time, except by joining the group in clapping. Otherwise, though, the communication does appear to be spontaneous and authentic, and Ninomiya effectively expresses himself in English. The characteristic of yuuki is illustrated by Ninomiya’s willingness to go through with the press conference without a translator. During the playback of the interview on Shikatte Burondo Sensei, Ninomiya mentions that at the start of the interview he had thought that the first reporter, who is racially Asian, would be his translator. Despite the anxiety that was caused by not having a translator present for the interview, however, Ninomiya models the trait of ‘courage’ by continuing the interview using ‘the words that I know’. Jigyaku ‘self-effacement’ Given the fact that Japanese culture places a great emphasis on the maintenance of positive face – broadly defined here as a public selfimage that presents one in a positive light – making errors when using English might be seen as a potentially face-threatening act. While yuuki ‘courage’ is one cultural strategy that is typically presented as part of the character of the successful language learner, jigyaku ‘selfeffacement’ in humour is also sometimes promoted as a strategy for anxiety reduction that results from the face-threatening act of speaking English. Perhaps it is appropriate that, in a culture that places so much importance on the positive presentation of face, there is also a comedic tradition of jigyaku neta ‘self-effacing humour’. While jigyaku neta is found in several comedy programmes, it has also been used in the context of English-related programmes, both as a simple comedic


device, and as a strategy for successful language learning. An example of the former may be found in the television show Dauntaun-no Gakino Tsukaiya Arahende! [Downtown’s ‘I’m Not Your Gofer’]3 on Nittele (Nippon Television Network Corporation). In this programme there is a featured segment in which comedians gather together to play a game called Zettai-ni Waratte-wa Ikenai Koukou ‘High School Forbids Laughter’. The comedians, who are dressed in typical Japanese high school uniforms and sit in a classroom setting, are asked to watch a video that is presented to them as an ‘English language learning video’. In fact, the video is a recording of another comedian, Jimmy Onishi, attempting to read a passage about Marco Polo in English (Onishi, 2008). Jimmy Onishi is well known for his practice of jigyaku neta, and the object of his self-effacement in the episode described below is his inability to speak English. Jimmy stumbles over the passage in a fashion that is somewhat typical of a Japanese learner of English and, as he does so, any of the comedians who laugh are called from their seats to receive a punishment: a swat to the backside from a leather belt. The climax of the game is Jimmy attempting to count from one to 30 in English. His pronunciation is heavily influenced by Japanese phonology, and as he begins ‘wan, tsuu, surii . . .’ /wɐn tsɯ sɯɾi/ the comedians begin to snicker at his nativized pronunciation of English. But it is Jimmy’s strategy for producing an English word for ‘twenty’ that causes all the comedians to finally break down in laughter. As he counts past ‘eitiin, naintiin’ /εtin nɐintin/, he hesitates and then says ‘ten ten’ /tεn tεn/. Jimmy looks confused, but continues counting ‘ten ten wan, ten ten tsuu’ /tεn tεn wɐn tεn tεn tsɯ/. While the strategy of producing ‘twenty’ is communicatively effective, it is not borrowed from Japanese, which instead expresses numbers like twenty or thirty as nijuu or sanjuu (literally ‘two ten’ and ‘three ten’). While this kind of a strategy to produce ‘twenty’ would have been humorous, it is all the more so in that it is one that is not influenced by Japanese. Although this example of jigyaku neta does not present a viable strategy for learning English, it does suggest that most Japanese learners would be able to find more appropriate strategies for producing ‘twenty’ and that there is little need to feel anxious about forgetting an individual lexical item such as this one. Park (2009) has discussed the discourse of self-effacement regarding the use of English as a subject in Korean popular culture, and there seems to be some similarity to the way that Japanese popular culture also models the use of English. Although Jimmy Onishi is not an ideal speaker of English in terms of his proficiency or professional competence, he nevertheless models a personality characteristic that can be an effective

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part of learning and using English: the ability to laugh at oneself and to display your inability to use English. In a culture that places so much emphasis on the potential loss of face from making mistakes, the strategy of jigyaku neta may reduce anxiety about using English poorly. When an English speaker is willing to efface their English usage, what listeners perceive as errors – whether real or performed – can instead be interpreted as self-effacement without loss of face. Genki ‘enthusiasm’ We have chosen to translate the word genki as ‘enthusiasm’, but it can also be used as an adjective to describe a lively, energetic or even healthy state of body or mind. As a cultural keyword in Japan, genki is considered an important characteristic by most individuals. Genki is especially characteristic of young people and, as these are the adult learners almost exclusively portrayed in the ‘language entertainment’ genre of television, it is also a fitting characteristic of an ideal Japanese speaker of English. Indeed, it would be difficult to find any sample from the ‘language entertainment’ genre of television that does not model genki Japanese speakers of English, and each of the transcripts we have looked at illustrate a degree of enthusiasm for using English. The enthusiasm for using English illustrated in the next example is, however, especially salient within the context of the participant’s relative inability to speak the language. The segment transcribed below is from a featured segment called Ayaka-no Totsugeki Eikaiwa ‘Ayaka’s Surprise English Lesson’ (Tsuji, 2001) which is a regular part of the TV show Bishô Kyouiku ‘Education for Beautiful Girls’. The show features members of the Haroo! Purojekuto (‘Hello! Project’) J-Pop syndication. The syndicate looks for members of various J-Pop song and dance groups, all of whom are under the age of 20. Once a member turns 20, they ‘graduate’ to become ‘alumni’ of the project. Although members of the groups formed under the umbrella of the Hello! Project are all professional singers or dancers, it is popularly felt that they are chosen because they look like ‘neighbourhood girls’ and are without any extraordinary characteristics. During ‘Ayaka’s Surprise English Lesson’, Ayaka Kimura – a member of Kokonattsu Musume (‘Coconuts Girls’) – meets with a member of one of the various Hello! Project groups and together they participate in a task using English. Once the task has been successfully completed, Ayaka presents the participant with a plate of cream-filled choux pastries or cake as a reward for performing in English. Ayaka is not a ‘typical’ Japanese speaker of English as she is a ‘returnee’ – someone who has attended school outside Japan for a prolonged time (see Kimura et al.,


2002) – who was brought up in Hawaii. In the excerpt transcribed below Ayaka approaches Nozomi Tsuji, a member of Mooningu Musume (‘Morning Daughters’), to ask her the question ‘what is your birthday?’ (3)

Ayaka: Nozomi: Ayaka: Nozomi: Ayaka: Nozomi: Ayaka: Nozomi: Ayaka: Nozomi: Ayaka: Ayaka: Nozomi: Ayaka: Nozomi: Ayaka: Nozomi: Ayaka: Nozomi: Ayaka:

Nozomi: Ayaka: Nozomi: Ayaka: Nozomi:

O-kay [ki]. Are you ready [ridi] to learn English? Yes. Yes? [Okay. [Yes. I will ask you a question [kɯεs tʃεn], so please answer me in English, o-kay? What is your birthday? (3.7) Huh? In English, o-kay. Okay. Um-huh. [Okay. [Okay? What is your birth-day? ((Nozomi punches Ayaka in the arm.)) Na-na-nande tatakaren-no? ‘W-w-why was I being hit’? ‘Watashi-wo butte,’-te yutta mon. ‘You said “hit me”’. @Yuttena—i@. @Yuttenai.@ ‘I didn’t say that. I didn’t’. Yutte. Moikkai yutte. ‘That is what you said. Say it one more time’. Okay. [What is your birthday? [Watashi-wo butte.@@@ ‘Hit me’. Yuttenai. I was speaking English yo. ‘I didn’t say that. I was speaking English, you know’. Uh. Mo, guchagucha-ni nacchatta-janai-no. Eigo-to nihongo guchagucha-ni nacchatta watashi, mo. I have to speak English. ‘Argh, it got mixed up. My English and Japanese mixed together, argh.’ Yes. Okay? Okay. Answer me in Englsih, too /tsu/. Too ((high-falling intonation)). Yes.

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Ayaka: Ayaka: Nozomi: Ayaka: Nozomi: Ayaka: Nozomi: Ayaka: Ayaka: Nozomi: Ayaka:

Nozomi: Ayaka:

@Too@. What is your birthday? ((Nozomi punches Ayaka in the arm)). Chigautte, dakara, mo. ‘Still wrong, argh’. Wakannai-yo ???. ‘I don’t understand’. Birthday. [Happy birthday to you — ((sings))] Oh. What is your birthday? Juu-yon . . . sai. Juu-yon sai. ‘Fourteen . . . years. Fourteen years old’. That’s, that’s year. How old are you? Oh, I’m fourteen years old. . . Aaah. Okay, okay. One more time. One last chance, okay? What is your birthday? Birthday. Happy birthday, wooo. Nani? ‘What’? Owari. Okay. I’m not going to give you keeki nashi-ne kyou. ‘Finished’. . . .’no cake for you today’. Huh? O-kay.

In this segment, Nozomi responds to Ayaka’s question ‘what is your birthday?’ – a question that is slightly divergent from the more naturally sounding ‘when is your birthday?’ – with a joke that derives from a type of punning that Moody and Matsumoto (2003) call ‘code ambiguation’ when it appears in pop music. In the context of pop music, it is sometimes either difficult or indeed impossible to determine whether a word or a phrase is English or Japanese. The exploitation of ambiguity – an ambiguity that simultaneously produces different messages in two languages – is the primary form of punning that ‘code ambiguation’ represents. Nozomi’s response, which is to punch Ayaka, is used to illustrate the similarity between the two phrases: ‘What is your birthday?’ and Watashi-wo butte ‘Punch me’. It is difficult, however, to believe that Nozomi’s response is spontaneous; first because Ayaka uses ‘what’ instead of ‘when’ precisely in order to allow for the code ambiguation, and second because Nozomi’s response too closely parallels a ‘punch’ that Nozomi gives Ayaka when she first opens the segment and interrupts Nozomi’s dancing practice. In this way, however, Nozomi’s enthusiasm for dancing is set up as a point of comparison with her enthusiasm


for speaking English. Ayaka, similarly, tries to express enthusiasm for conducting the ‘Surprise English Lesson’ by using a number of high tones when talking to Nozomi, especially when she says ‘o-kay’. It is also interesting to note that Ayaka uses nativized Japanese English pronunciation when she produces ‘question’ [kɯεs tʃεn] or ‘two’ [tsɯ]. Here, proficient English pronunciation is de-emphasized in favour of heightening the enthusiasm for English, and, in the end, Nozomi is not awarded any cake for correctly answering Ayaka’s question. Interestingly, though, Nozomi begins to mock Ayaka’s exaggerated and overly enthusiastic pronunciation of English: (4)

Ayaka: Nozomi: Ayaka:

Answer me in English, too /tsu/. Too ((high-falling intonation)). Yes. @Too@. What is your birthday?

Ayaka’s laughter and repetition of the word ‘too’ suggest that she is aware that Nozomi is mocking her overly enthusiastic pronunciation. What message, then, about the speaking of English is the segment attempting to make when Nozomi is unable to communicate in English and win the cake? Nozomi is a member of a pop group and an ability to speak English proficiently would not necessarily make her a better performer. But she does clearly display enthusiasm for performing in English, and this is what makes Nozomi’s performance a ‘model’ for how Japanese speakers should approach English. To those speakers who do not feel that they are proficient enough to answer a question like ‘what is your birthday’, the segment demonstrates that language proficiency can be less important than enthusiasm for speaking English. And in this way, enthusiasm is a counter to the apprehension that many Japanese speakers have for fear of losing face. Anxiety and apprehension, despite Nozomi’s lack of proficiency, are not modelled within this segment.

Conclusion As described above, the ‘language entertainment’ genre of Japanese television can be seen to contribute much to the development of Japanese speakers of English, but in very different ways from how ‘language education’ programmes do. Whereas ‘language education’ programmes focus on the development of language proficiency, ‘language entertainment’ programmes focus instead on the psychological characteristics of good language learners. Both scholarly research and popular discussion

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of language learning in Japan point to anxiety and communicative apprehension as two of the primary reasons why Japanese speakers do not perform well in English. The three characteristics of Japanese English speakers that have been discussed here – yuuki ‘courage’, jigyaku ‘selfeffacement’ and genki ‘enthusiasm’ – are promoted as ways to overcome the anxiety, the fear of losing face and the apprehension typically felt by many Japanese about speaking English. In addition, competence is a characteristic that is typically ascribed to those Japanese speakers of English who are able to perform in English on ‘language entertainment’ programmes. Although few fans of Japanese popular culture would note that there is a consistently promoted character type as a Japanese English speaker, these four characteristics are actively promoted, in part, as ways to improve individuals’ speaking of English.

Notes 1. The use of language entertainment segments within larger variety programmes is discussed briefly in Moody (2006) with reference to the ‘BeraBera Station’ [Fluency Station] segment in the programme Sma Station. The programme features a number of different segments about the J-Pop group SMAP, and the ‘Bera-Bera Station’ segment features Shingo Katori, one of the members of the group, attempting to communicate in English. 2. The name of the country that Patrick pretends to represent, Moeshaku-land, is a joke using the family name of his co-host, Yumiko Shaku. The name derives from adding the word moe ‘sweet’ in front of shaku, followed by rando ‘land’. The derivation is similar to the derivation of, say, Disneyland, which also combines ‘-land’ with a family name. 3. Dauntaun ‘Downtown’ is the name of the comedy duo of Hitoshi Matsumoto and Masatoshi Hamada. The programme is a series of short impromptu comedic sketches that feature the two comedians and their guests. The title, ‘I’m Not Your Gofer’, is our own translation from Japanese.

Transcription conventions The following conventional symbols are used in the transcription of the excerpts from television programmes: [ =

(7.1) (.) :: --

A single left square bracket indicates a point of overlap. Equal signs, one at the end of one line and one at the beginning of another line, indicates that there is no ‘gap’ between the two lines. A number in parentheses indicates silence or pause (of seven seconds and one tenth of a second in this example). A dot in parentheses indicates a short gap between utterances. Two colons indicate prolongation of sound. Two dashes indicate a truncated or abandoned intonation unit.


. , ? WORD . shhh (( )) @ @@@

A full stop indicates a final intonation contour (usually a low falling pitch). A comma indicates continuing intonation contour (level, or slight rise in pitch). A question mark indicates an appeal intonation contour (sharp rise in pitch). Arrows indicate a shift into a higher or a lower pitch in the utterance immediately following the arrow. Upper-case letters indicate especially loud sounds relative to the surrounding talk. A dot plus an ‘s’ and a row of ‘h’s indicate a sibilant in-breath through the teeth. Double parentheses contain transcribers’ description of material in additional to transcription. Indicates one pulse of laughter. Indicates sustained laughter.

References Aso, T. (2008) Aso-to Shabera-Naito 04 Nihon-no Poppu Karuchaa [Shabera-Naito with Aso 04 Japan’s Pop Culture], Eigo-de Shabera Naito: Can You Speak English?, broadcast on 2 January 2008, accessed on 3 December 2008, . Brown, J.D., Robson, G. and Rosenkjar, P.R. (2001) ‘Personality, motivation, anxiety, strategies, and language proficiency of Japanese students’ in Z. Dörnyei and R. Schmidt (eds) Motivation and second language acquisition (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press), pp. 361–98. Honna, N. (2008) English as a multicultural language in Asian contexts: issues and ideas (Tokyo: Kurosio). Kimura, A., Todd, M. and Matsuoka, M. (2002) Kokonattsu Musume-no tanoshii Hawai ryuugaku [Coconuts Musume’s Fun Foreign Study in Hawaii] (Tokyo: Kabushikigaisha Wani Books). McCroskey, J.C., Gudykunst, W.B. and Nishida, T. (1985) ‘Communication apprehension among Japanese students in native and second language’, Communication Research Report, 2(1), 11–15. Matsuda, S. and Gobel, P. (2004) ‘Anxiety and predictors of performance in the foreign language classroom’, System, 32(1), 21–36. Matsuoka, R. (2007) ‘Japanese college students’ willingness to communicate in English’. PhD dissertation, Temple University. Miyanaga, C. (2007) ‘Anxiety, strategies, motivation, and reading proficiency in Japanese university EFL learners’. PhD dissertation, Temple University. Moody, A. (2006) ‘English in Japanese popular culture and J-Pop music’, World Englishes, 25(2), 209–22. Moody, A. (2009) ‘Englishization in Japanese popular culture: representation of ethnicity’ in K. Tam (ed.) Englishization in Asia: language and cultural issues (Hong Kong: Open University of Hong Kong Press), pp. 183–206. Moody, A. and Matsumoto, Y. (2003) ‘“Don’t touch my moustache”: language blending and code ambiguation by two J-pop artists’, Asian Englishes, 6(1): 4–33.

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Moody, A. and Matsumoto, Y. (in press) ‘Lu-go and the role of English loanwords in Japanese: the making of a “pop pidgin”‘ in J.S. Lee and A. Moody (eds) English in Asian popular culture (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press). Ninomiya, K. (2007) ‘Shikatte burondo sensei @pandoratv: the world’s best high definition, 4HD, Pandora TV’ [Scold (me) blonde teacher], Pandora TV, broadcast on 29 June 2007, accessed on 12 February 2010, . Onishi, J. (2008) Zettai-ni waratte-wa ikenai koukou [High School Forbids Laughter], Dauntaun-no Gaki-no Tsukaiya Arahende! [Downtown’s ‘I’m Not Your Gofer’], broadcast on 4 October 2005, accessed on 3 December 2008, . Oshiba, L. (2007) Ruu-go dai henkan [Change it into Lu-go] (Tokyo: Fusosha Press). Oshiba, L. (2008) ‘Ruu Ooshiba intabyuu: “Haji kake, ase kake, namida shiro”, keiken-to deai-wo taisetsu-ni, nebaagibuappu’ [Lou Oshiba interview: ‘Humiliate yourself, sweat, and shed tears’, treasure experiences and encounters, never give up], Vii Sukuuru [Vee School], accessed on 16 January 2009, . Park, J. S-Y. (2009) The local construction of a global language: ideologies of English in South Korea (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter). Pryor, B., Butler, J. and Boehringer, K. (2005) ‘Communication apprehension and cultural context: a comparison of communication apprehension in Japanese and American students’, North American Journal of Psychology, 7(2), 247–52. Sayle, M. (2001) ‘Bush tries his double Dutch on Japanese’, The Evening Standard, 19 March 2001, accessed on 19 February 2010, . Takahashi, T. (1989) ‘The influence of the listener on L2 speech’ in S. Gass, C. Madden, D. Preston and L. Selinker (eds) Variation in second language acquisition, Vol. 1: Discourse and pragmatics (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters), pp. 245–79. Tsuji, N. (2001) ‘Ayaka-no totsugeki Eikaiwa’ [Ayaka’s Surprise English Lesson], Bishôjo Kyouiku [Education for Beautiful Girls], broadcast 31 July 2001, accessed 15 December 2009, www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Y7sA8IAuSs

9 The Symbolic Meaning of Visual English in the Social Landscape of Japan Philip Seargeant

Introduction: visual display The visual display of language across the social landscape is one of the most noticeable aspects of the existence of English in modern Japan. The contemporary Japanese cityscape, with its numerous neon signs and animated billboards, is, from a purely formal perspective, strikingly bilingual: the different Japanese writing scripts are everywhere interwoven with words and phrases in the Roman alphabet, and from public information signs, through advertising hoardings, to commercial shop signs and clothing design, there is a high density of recognizably ‘English’ forms on display. The significance of this can be interpreted in various ways. Certain studies (e.g. Backhaus, 2007) have examined the phenomenon in terms of the index it provides of a developing multilingualism in the country. The ever-increasing presence of English text alongside Japanese is taken as a reflection of the way that English is beginning to be positioned more as an international rather than a foreign language; and while English may have no official status within Japan, the suggestion is that it can, now, be seen to operate as a de facto working language for certain functions in particular social contexts. Other studies (e.g. Hyde, 2002; Seargeant, 2009) look more to the emblematic significance of this display of English, and examine the way the language is mobilized within Japanese culture as a symbol of modernity and for the promotion of an international sensibility. This chapter aims to extend investigation into the analysis of the visual display of English in the Japanese social landscape by surveying attitudes towards such language display, and by considering how it is that citizens whose lives are led within this social environment perceive the widespread use of English in the public sphere. To this end, the 187

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chapter explores interpretations of the status and function of visual and public English use by canvassing the language attitudes of a sample of Japanese residents, and recording their perceptions and rationalizations of the existence of English language text within the social landscape. Using a combined folk linguistics and language ideologies approach, the chapter aims to show that such language use is not solely a means of relaying ideational meaning to a non-Japanese speaking sector of the public, but that it also has a localized symbolic value which draws upon the conceptual status and implications of English as a global language. As such, the visual display of English in Japan can be seen to point not only to an emergent (albeit relatively restricted) multilingualism, but also to the increased use of English-related forms as part of a wider semiotic repertoire tailored specifically to local communicative purposes.

Signs and their reception The point of departure for this investigation is a perceived paradox about the existence of English in Japan. It is an issue often commented upon that, despite the intense interest in learning the language – what McVeigh (2002, p. 150) calls a ‘national obsession’ with English language learning – levels of English competence across the Japanese population are relatively low (Honna, 1995; Aspinall, 2006). This evaluation is found in the discourse both of language education specialists and government policy. Honna (1995, p. 57), for example, comments that despite the overhaul of the curriculum in the late 1980s that was designed to improve English language ability, ‘[ Japanese] people have not developed proficiency in English as a language for international communication’. A few years later a government policy proposal expresses an almost identical attitude, asserting that ‘[t]oday’s Japanese are lacking . . . basic skills. Their English-language abilities as measured by their TOEFL [Test of English as a Foreign Language] scores in 1998 were the lowest in Asia. The Japanese themselves are painfully aware of the inadequacy of their communication skills’ (CJGTC, 2000, p. 4). If these contentions reflect the general truth of the situation, then there does indeed appear to be a paradox in the way that the amount of publicly displayed English is out of proportion to the numbers of people who may be able to competently read and act upon it. To this it should be added that Japan’s population is far less multicultural than many societies, and that even a major metropolis such as Tokyo has a relatively small percentage of permanent residents listed as non-Japanese nationals (approximately 3.1 per cent1) when compared to national

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capitals such as London or Paris. As such, the linguistic profile of the country is, so far as statistical data reveal, extremely Japanese-dominant, and this is reflected in the prevailing ideology among Japanese citizens of linguistic homogeneity in the country (Maher and Yashiro, 1995). To reconcile this evaluation of English language competence among the population with the prevalence of English language signs2 in society is not, therefore, a straightforward matter. To put it concisely, if people who have a working knowledge of English are in a marked minority, why then is there so much use of English in the public sphere? Based on this apparent discrepancy, one could hypothesize that English for ideational purposes (i.e. as a medium for the communication of information) is unlikely to account entirely for this extensive display of the language. In which case, the question to be addressed is what role (or roles) does the language play in contemporary Japanese society, and how is this role constructed both by those who use English to produce communicative utterances (speakers/writers), and those who receive and interpret such utterances (listeners/readers). There are a number of possible ways of addressing this question. One is to investigate the intentions of those who produce the signs. For example, Backhaus (2009) has examined local government language policies in Tokyo which articulate the rationale behind the use of bilingual signs in certain civic domains. An analysis of these regulations can reveal the beliefs held at an official level about the local language ecology of the capital and the changing needs of an evolving demographic. A further approach is the ‘discourses of place’ perspective (Scollon and Scollon, 2003), whereby the researcher can infer, based on a mixture of inductive analysis and the ethnographic surveying of contextual data, the rationale behind, and intended significance of, these signs. These two approaches in effect take as their primary foci different aspects of the communicative act. The former focuses on the agents or sign-makers and their stated communicative objectives; while the latter concentrates more on the signs themselves, analysing their structure, composition and contextual positioning. In this chapter I will be focusing on the third major aspect of the communicative act: the audience or reader. As Bakhtin (1986, p. 95) has pointed out, every utterance has what he terms ‘addressivity’, that is to say, it is addressed to a particular person or people, and the design of the utterance will thus be structured with this specific audience in mind. As he explains, ‘[b]oth the composition and, particularly, the style of the utterance depend on those to whom the utterance is addressed, how the speaker (or writer) senses and imagines his addressees, and the force

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of their effect on the utterance’ (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 95). This will be the case even if the audience is not someone with whom the speaker is personally familiar, but is instead their imaginary construct, formed from their expectations of the type of audience they wish to reach. Addressivity is likewise no less important in the case of written signs, even though writer and reader may have no relationship beyond the mediation of the sign itself. In designing a sign, its creator will have a particular purpose in mind, and to fulfil this purpose will tailor the message to align it with the linguistic and stylistic predispositions of a projected readership. How people actually interpret these signs, however, may well be significantly different from the way envisaged by their creators. And it is these acts of interpretation which this chapter investigates.

Globalized linguistic landscapes Before moving to the study itself it is worth briefly expanding upon some of the theoretical issues that are of particular salience for a discussion of the use of English in the public sphere in Japan. An investigation of this sort takes place at the intersection of two areas of study which are attracting much attention of late: linguistic globalization and the semiosis of written language use in the public arena. In recent years, the study of what is known as ‘linguistic landscapes’ has emerged as a distinct field of investigation in sociolinguistics and in language policy and planning scholarship (e.g. Gorter, 2006; Shohamy and Gorter, 2009; Shohamy et al., 2010). The term ‘linguistic landscape’ was first coined by Landry and Bourhis (1997) in a study of the perceptions that Francophone high school students in Canada had of public signs in the multilingual environment in which they lived. Subsequent studies have sought to research and theorize the ways in which the organization of visually displayed language in public places can be an indication of social patterns of language use, especially in multilingual contexts. To this end, topics of research include the regulation of public signage by language policies, the impact such regulation has on ethnolinguistic identity politics, the interplay between institutionally authored signs and those created by individuals or at a local, grass-roots level, and what this interplay reveals about layered linguistic ideologies. It is in this interaction between institutionally sanctioned signs and the local context that the effects of linguistic globalization are most apparent. Signs in the public sphere can range from the mass-produced billboard to the scribbled note pinned to the front door. With respect to the former, Scollon and Scollon (2003) coin the term ‘decontexualized


semiotics’, by which they mean texts, pictures and signs which appear in predominantly the same form in a multitude of different settings. Under this heading falls much of the brand paraphernalia of multinational corporations. Here, a basic invariance of form across diverse national contexts means that the language (and the wider semiotic resources of which it is a part) are operating at a global level. The existence of such a trend is itself the result of globalized commerce practices, and standardized meaning across varied contexts is the intention. Signs such as these are, therefore, an exemplar of a process of economic globalization, while also being illustrative of linguistic globalization in terms of the language choices exercised as part of their design. Yet the influences of globalization can also be felt at the most local level, and semiotic resources that operate at a global level can be appropriated (and adapted) for use by local communities. Here we can introduce a key theoretical precept for the study of English in diverse world settings, which stresses the importance of the process of interpretation for the examination of signs within globalized contexts. As Scollon and Scollon (2003, p. 160) note, ‘the understanding of the visual semiotic systems at play in any particular instance relies crucially on an ethnographic understanding of the meanings of these systems within specific communities of practice’. This contention is very similar to Hymes’s notion of ‘second language relativity’ (1966), which observes that while the form of an utterance might travel well across speech community boundaries, the function need not. For example, the use by a Japanese company of an English slogan which exhibits a cluster of odd syntax and spelling choices according to the norms governing standard British English may well be viewed within the local (i.e. Japanese) speech community not as an incompetent attempt at ‘correct’ English, but as a persuasive index of an ‘international’ orientation. The reason for this is that localized linguistic ideologies which govern meaning in one community are likely to be significantly different from those in another (Blommaert, 2003). In other words, pragmatic conventions that act as the matrix for the interpretation of utterances along with the value accorded to particular linguistic resources will vary from speech community to speech community. Given the extent to which English language forms now travel the globe, this precept is of pivotal import for the analysis of English linguistic globalization. And it is for this reason that canvassing reactions to, and interpretations of, signs becomes a key issue, as these can offer insight into what actually happens to English language forms as they traverse the globe, and to how they are used in diverse settings. Simply recording the existence of an abundance of

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English language text inscribed within the Japanese social landscape cannot reveal a great deal about the influence of linguistic globalization on the language ecology of Japan; what is required is an explication of the status, purpose and complexion of this English. A further point of note relates again to the issue of addressivity. Given that the supposition in this theory is that a sign will always be addressed to a particular audience, the choice of code for the sign would appear to be a salient element of the design in this respect, steering the message towards one literacy community rather than another. An initial a priori assumption, therefore, might be that signs written in English are addressed to an English-reading community; and that in the context of Japan, this would mean to those residents who do not read Japanese. This certainly appears to be the logic at play in the language regulation documents for public signage issued by bodies such as the Tokyo metropolitan government, where an explicit part of the rationale for bilingual signs is that they are intended for nonJapanese-reading residents (Backhaus, 2009). However, were this to be advanced as a general rule about the significance of language choice in the public arena, it would lead to a rather narrowly conceived formula, as it fails to take into account the symbolic or emblematic value that different languages may have in different contexts. As studies such as Kelly-Holmes’s (2000) investigation of advertising practices in Europe show, there are domains and circumstances where it is not ideational meaning which is paramount in the linguistic design of a slogan, but instead the connotations that specific codes have. For example, according to Kelly-Holmes (2000, p. 71), ‘[i]n intercultural advertising . . . language now seems to be used primarily for its symbolic value, while the communicative or utility value of the particular words has come to be obscured or mystified through the process of fetishization to the point where it becomes irrelevant’. As was suggested above however, such symbolic meaning is the result of local linguistic ideologies, and thus determining the function played by language choice in a given context is not a question for a priori speculation but for empirical investigation. What I wish to consider in this study, therefore, is how actual addressees view the use of English in Japan in various contexts, and what meaning they take from it. Finally, it is worth adding that, while much work on linguistic landscapes concentrates entirely on the visual display of language in the public arena, the investigation reported in this chapter has a slightly wider compass of interest, and does not draw firm distinctions between public and private space where passive encounters with the


language are concerned. As the focus of the study is on the ways in which the language permeates people’s everyday lives, to concentrate solely on the public space (i.e. the world beyond the home) would in many ways be restrictive and artificial, as the boundaries between public and private are often fluid. For example, an identical advert can be shown either in a magazine or on a three metre high hoarding, television today can be viewed on a giant screen outside Shinjuku station as well as in the home, and radio broadcasts can be piped into the street via loudspeakers. As such, the linguistic landscape of a society will often penetrate into the domestic sphere, and yet the basic principles behind choice of code and design of message will be of much the same complexion as those that would appertain were this language display to remain entirely in explicitly public arenas. Also, the uses I am interested in are still ‘public’ in the sense that they are not private communications conducted between individuals, but are, broadly speaking, communications in which the exact audience is unknown, and instead the message is intended for a general (i.e. public) readership. The purpose of focusing on this type of communication is that it is likely to be more illustrative of generic trends about English language use in Japan than private communiqués would be, which are more likely to reflect the language behaviour patterns of individuals. This wider definition of the linguistic landscape also embraces certain other aspects of language use. Although public displays of language are mostly visual, there are also oral announcements for both information and advertising purposes, and these function in much the same fashion as their visual equivalents, being addressed to a general public and being inescapably part of the environment through which people move. Due to the fact that responses from the participants included several such examples, these have been incorporated into the data for analysis. In addition, there is language used on products and on the Internet. In so far as these categories serve as passive encounters with English in the habitual routine of everyday life, they also can be considered part of the linguistic landscape.

The scope of the study For the purposes of gauging responses to the proliferation of English in the social landscape, and exploring the rationalizations made about the role played by the language in Japan, nine informants were chosen who, while all currently resident in Japan, have differing engagements with the English language by virtue of their background, social circle,

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English in Japan in the Era of Globalization Table 9.1 List of participants Name

Occupation

Location

Age

Eiko Miho Naoko Jane Naomi Makoto Junko Asami Kaori

Office worker Juku [cram-school] teacher Unemployed University lecturer NGO staff member English teacher Housewife University lecturer Office worker

Small city Small town Large city Large city Small city Large city Small town Small town Large city

30s 20s 50s 30s 30s 60s 60s 30s 20s

and professional or educational attachments. The participants were also selected to reflect diversity of geographical location (urban and rural), age and gender, so that it might be possible to discern whether any patterns and regularities emerged in the responses despite the heterogeneous profile of the group. The majority of the participants were Japanese nationals, though one (Jane) was a British national living and working in Japan. The inclusion of Jane was to provide a point of contrast for the others, rather than to furnish any in-depth findings about ‘native speaker’ attitudes to English in Japan. Table 9.1 lists the participants according to their professions, location, and age group.3 The research aimed to collect data firstly about the amount and type of English language display that participants were conscious of encountering in their everyday life, and then about their opinions and rationalizations of the import and meaning of this use of the language in the social landscape. A mixture of questionnaires and interviews was used for this purpose, with the intention being to elicit reflective responses to prompts about the nature of this language display. The analysis of the responses from the participants was approached from a method drawn from folk linguistics and language ideology theory. In essence, the aim was to use the articulation of rationalizations about encounters with and opinions about English language use in the public sphere as a means of piecing together a picture of entrenched beliefs about the English language that are prevalent in contemporary Japanese society. In other words, the aim was to draw on folk linguistic rationalizations to construct a mapping of certain current ideologies of language in Japan. Following Niedzielski and Preston (2000, p. 323), the term ‘folk’ refers to those people who are not trained linguistics professionals; as they remark: ‘[e]verybody is a folk, and the nonspecialist views on topics which touch the lives of all citizens are worth knowing for their bearing


on public life in general’. In other words, folk linguistics can provide an ethnographic perspective on issues that shape the cultural environment in which the participants live, and in this respect they can contribute attested insights about the process of interpretation. In canvassing such opinion, however, one issue that needs to be taken into consideration is the extent to which the participants have the conceptual vocabulary or metalinguistic knowledge to reflect on the language phenomena they find around them, and how such discursive limitations are likely to affect their responses. An important point in response to this concern is that the research is not intending to determine the actual extent or nature of English in Japan, but rather how people interpret the extent and nature of the language in society, and what this interpretation indicates about the status of the language. As such, vernacular judgements are likely to be revealing, and the manner in which responses are articulated becomes itself a focus for analysis. Beyond simply canvassing opinions about the language, the further desire is to use these opinions to build a picture of the organizing principles behind such beliefs. It is with this aim that a language ideologies approach can help. In a foundational statement on this approach, Silverstein (1979, p. 193) writes that ‘ideologies about language . . . are any sets of beliefs about language articulated by users as a rationalization or justification of perceived language structure or use’. In other words, language ideologies are the entrenched patterns of belief that members of a community share about language and language use which structure the way in which language functions as part of social practice within that community. Such beliefs can be articulated as explicit conceptualizations of language and its properties, but they can also implicitly structure patterns of linguistic usage by means of what Silverstein terms a ‘metapragmatics’. Of primary interest for the current study is the former of these two types of articulation, that is, predicate statements about the English language and the particular associations that are made between the language and other social practices or concepts. In so far as they function as ideologies within a community, entrenched beliefs will be habitual and systematic (Verschueren, 1995), and the analysis is therefore looking for underlying premises upon which arguments are based, or for associations between the language and other social concepts which may well not be expressed in explicit terms as they are considered to be self-evident. In other words, these ideologies are the ‘common sense’ knowledge which constitutes received wisdom about English in Japan, and are thus likely to show through as patterns of opinion in the discourse of the respondents.

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Domains of English in everyday routines The English encountered by the respondents occurred most frequently as part of the following categories or domains: (1) brands and advertising; (2) fashion – most noticeably slogans on t-shirts; (3) information signs – predominantly either civic or institutional, and including oral announcements over public announcement systems at transport locations, tourist sites and shopping centres; (4) media and entertainment-related usage, such as that on news broadcasts or variety shows; and (5) usage related to the Internet and information technology hardware and software. The particular configuration for individual participants was biased according to the particular nature of their routine; so, for example, Junko, who, as a housewife, spends much of the day around the home, recorded many instances of English on the radio and television (category 4), whereas those who commute to work had a high proportion of responses in category 3. Overall, however, each category was well represented in the responses, and encounters with English occurred consistently for all participants whatever their routine or geographical location. Examples of category 1 included billboards and shop signs for companies such as Coach and Jill Stuart (Miho, 11 Jan.),4 which have a strong international presence within the domain of high-end fashion brands, and thus function as instances of the sort of decontextualized semiotics to which Scollon and Scollon (2003) refer. These are, therefore, examples of linguistic globalization operating at its most universal level, where invariance of linguistic form is often linked to invariance of typographical form, and the same English language configurations (which are often proper names) are reproduced as almost exact replicas whatever the cultural context. One can suggest that this trend is most directly the result of patterns of corporate globalization, and that the linguistic aspect is, in many ways, little more than an epiphenomenon of broader commercial dynamics. The pervasiveness of a limited number of invariant forms, however, makes this an almost prototypical image of the global spread of English. Yet category 1 also provided instances of English appearing on local products, where both form and function also exhibit distinct features of nativization. An example of this is the cover of a men’s magazine advertising what it called a ‘series value up seminar’ (Junko, 10 Jan.), which was written in English in what was an otherwise Japanese-dominant text environment. This phrase exhibits properties of a characteristically ‘Japanese English’ in its syntax, in the use of ‘up’ as a sort of augmentative suffix, which occurs in constructions such as ‘level up’ ( ). Standard British English would probably render this meaning as ‘a series of value-enhancing


seminars’, and thus this case is a good example of recognizably English language forms being divorced from their conventional (i.e. British or American language community) functions. In terms of category 2, t-shirt slogans were often noted, but rarely was the substance of the message recorded by the participants. According to Naomi this is because ‘[e]ven though they have English words printed on them, people seem not to care what it means’. More note was taken of the details of category 3, information signs, which is possibly because these seem to be interpreted as being ideationally meaningful, whereas the fashion examples do not. English text on information signs was mostly noted in transport and tourism-related domains, and could be both visual and aural. It included notices in stations giving directions, announcements on the train about where to transfer, and explanatory captions at tourist sites. In all such cases, the language was being used as part of a bilingual (or occasionally multilingual) strategy for conveying key information. Due to this, the majority of signs recorded were straight bilingual translations, though some did exhibit specific ‘Japanese English’ traits as, for example, the existence on station platforms of ‘Drink corners’ – areas containing a collection of vending machines selling drinks (Kaori, 16 Jan.). This phrase is a form of wasei-eigo (literally: ‘made-in-Japan English’), in that it uses English-derived lexical resources to create a neological compound which refers to something which is culturally specific to Japan. Another key domain for English language information signs is in shopping environments, though here the purpose is not always quite as clear-cut as in tourist and transport contexts. In some cases, it is safe to assume that the intention is straightforward communication to nonJapanese speakers, as, for example, in the case of signs for the duty-free counter in a department store (Eiko, 11 Jan.). On the other hand, examples such as the use of stencil transfers advertising ‘bargain’, ‘clearance’ and ‘off’ on the window of the Keio department store (Naoko, 7 Jan.) are less obvious in terms of their target audience. The last item in this list (‘off’) is again an adapted loanword, in that it can operate in the Japanese context as a symbol for a sale, though is not used independently for this purpose in Inner Circle varieties of English. It appears, therefore, that these uses are, in fact, loanwords which retain the Roman script, but are addressed to a local rather than international audience. The overall pattern that emerges, then, is of bilingual signs conveying information in transport and tourist contexts where a transient multilingual population is likely to congregate, while beyond this, the language is used in more sporadic constructions (single or multi-word units) for primarily

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symbolic purposes, and often exhibits traits of localization in form, usage or reference. Examples of category 4 – media and entertainment-related usage – include a mixture of local and imported radio and television programmes. English use in local programmes is often part of a code-mixing repertoire, and appears rarely to exist entirely independently. Examples here included a DJ code-switching for the occasional sentence into English during a radio broadcast ( Junko, 10 Jan.), and television programmes such as Eigo de shabera naito (‘Speak in English night’; ), an NHK talk show of the ‘language education’ genre (Moody, 2006; this volume), the majority of which is conducted in Japanese, but which has periodic forays into English for interviews with English-speaking stars and for quiz sections about the language. A further functional role played by the language in this category was reported by Junko (16 Jan.), who recorded hearing English spoken by many different foreigners living in Japan in an NHK television programme directed by a German. The foreigners were from South America, Italy, the UK, Croatia, Finland, and the Philippines. The programme looked at why they live in Japan, what they do here, and how they get involved with Japanese culture and its people. In this example, English has been designated as a lingua franca for the non-Japanese guests on the programme, despite their varied linguistic backgrounds. The final category, 5, includes an array of vocabulary commonly used in ICT contexts. So, for example, Asami (16 Jan.) recorded coming across words such as ‘Yahoo Japan’, ‘YouTube’, ‘MSN Messenger’ and ‘Hotmail’, all while surfing the Internet, and Kaori (16 and 18 Jan.) produced a similar list that included ‘Intel’, ‘Microsoft’, ‘spam’, ‘cc’, ‘bcc’. Many of these are proprietary names, while the others could be categorized as being on their way to becoming loanwords (though mainly retaining a Romanized form). In both cases, they are evidence of the absorption of English forms into the Japanese lexis, rather than of an emergent bilingualism based around domain loss for the Japanese language in contexts such as ICT.

Defining the boundary between English and Japanese Issues of particular interest in the types of language use that were recorded by the participants include the way in which, for certain


informants, any language use in the Roman alphabet is accorded the status of English. So, for example, Naomi (7 Jan.) recorded ‘brands written in English such as “Bvlgari” and “Chanel”‘, while Asami (16 Jan.) and Naoko (14 Jan.) listed ‘Chanel’, ‘Cartier’ and ‘Dior’ in their responses. In each case, a brand of international renown with a name written in the Roman alphabet was identified as an instance of ‘English’ usage, despite the fact that these products are originally of French – or, in the case of Bvlgari, Italian – origin, and arguably still carry these connotations for the native English speaker. A similar process of categorization occurred with the transliteration of place names, where the informants often included Japanese names that had been transliterated into the Roman alphabet in their inventory of encounters with the English language. So, for example, Junko (7 Jan.) recorded seeing ‘a sign for “Uno” at the gate to port’. In the cases of both the international brand names and the transliterating of Japanese proper names, the process is a form of metonymy whereby the regular association the Roman alphabet has with the English language results in the script being interpreted as indexical of the language, whether or not this is in fact the case. A similarly ambiguous case related to the materiality of the sign was the identification of words written in katakana (the syllabary used for foreign imports) as being ‘English’. Among the respondents only Makoto (18 Jan.) made this designation, when he recorded as part of one of his daily encounters with English seeing the following words written in katakana in the newspaper: ‘owner’, ‘bank’, ‘charity’, ‘site’, ‘festival’, ‘donator’, ‘donation’. While these are all of English origin, many are well-established loanwords that have made their way into the Japanese lexicon, and are to be found in Japanese dictionaries. The Gakken Personal Katakana Dictionary, for example, includes entries for (ônâ), (banku), (charitî), (saito) and (fesutibaru). What is apparent from the trend in these responses is that, from a folk linguistic perspective, the boundary between ‘English’ and ‘Japanese’ is nebulous, and the diverse semiotic repertoires produced by the language contact situations that are generated by globalization result in a variety of beliefs about what constitutes ‘English’. The designation of imports as either English or Japanese can also have implications for beliefs about communication in the respective languages though. For example, Miho identifies a process of nativization in the incorporation of some English-derived borrowings into the Japanese lexicon, and feels that this can produce a problem for bilingual communication, as the nativized words are likely to still be considered English

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by those who have English as an additional language (with Japanese as their mother tongue), and such speakers may then use them inappropriately when conversing with native English speakers. As she explains: I think [loanwords] are mostly useful, but sometimes confusing. If a loanword sounds similar to the original word (for example, karê for curry or pasokon for personal computer), it is easier to remember and use. However, if a loanword sounds completely different from the original (for example, kameraman for photographer or ôdâmêdo for custom-made) it is quite confusing. We often use loanwords to English speakers without noticing that they are different from the original words. This nativization process is an example of second language relativity, in that English forms are used for a meaning specific to the local linguistic community. However, from Miho’s perspective, if a word is perceived by its user as being ‘English’, it will then be employed in situations which call for English language communication. In effect, what she is drawing attention to here are the limitations of a metalinguistic vocabulary which fails to differentiate between the subtleties in the English-related semiotic repertoires that linguistic globalization has given rise to. At present, the prevailing language ideology deals only in broad categories such as English and Japanese, where in actual practice the boundary between the two is constantly blurred.

Rationalizing the role of English in Japan The issue of addressivity reveals a perceived twofold role for English in Japan whereby the language is both absorbed into localized communicative behaviours and also used for international lingua franca purposes. Miho, for example, considers that the issue of who the majority of English is aimed at ‘depends on the situation. As for the English on store signs, fashion and adverts, it is for Japanese people, I think. However, traffic signs or company names in English are for nonJapanese people.’ The distinction she makes would appear to divide English textual display between the more symbolic uses targeted at an indigenous local audience, and an ideational use for the benefit of nonJapanese speakers. This analysis is broadly repeated by other informants, irrespective of their background and geographical location. Naomi’s opinion is that ‘English company signs are just for an image, at least for the domestic customers. The street signs are for foreigners’, while Asami


feels that ‘[t]he majority [of English] is aimed at Japanese. For example, brand names or words are for Japanese. English signs and guidance which can be seen at tourist attractions and stations are for people from other countries.’ Jane, the native speaker, offers a rather trenchant commentary on the issue, suggesting that the majority of English in Japan is aimed at ‘Japanese consumers. It’s a marketing gimmick.’ In all these responses though, the symbolic role that English plays for the local population is recognized as being an important aspect of the social landscape, and one which is a staple of the semiotic resources employed in a public arena dominated by consumerist establishments. This dual-purpose role of international lingua franca and high-value local symbol is repeated in the explanations given for the high density of English in the Japanese linguistic landscape. Asami, for example, attributes the prevalence of the language to the fact that ‘English is the international language and spread all over the world. It is natural that we should see or use English in our daily life. Furthermore, some people are eager to use English since they believe that it looks cool if they can use English.’ While the issue of addressivity produces a strong consensus throughout the cohort, it is a far more contentious issue as to whether the roles ascribed to English imply that it can therefore be considered part of Japanese culture. Responses to this suggestion are polarized between those that stress the associations English has with countries where it is a native language, and those which foreground its status as an international lingua franca. In the former category are the responses from Miho, Asami and Kaori. Miho responds that she feels ‘the English language belongs to the countries where English is the first language, like the UK, the USA, and Australia. This is because English is the mother tongue for people in such countries. For me, it is just like the Japanese language seems to belong to Japanese people.’ Asami likewise says: I feel that it belongs to the USA, the UK, Canada and Australia. I learned American English and went to the UK to get a degree. I have enjoyed Hollywood movies and received various information about the USA, the UK, Canada and Australia through movies, TV, radio, magazines and the internet. This makes me feel that English equals the USA, the UK, Canada and Australia. Both Miho and Asami work in English language teaching (the former as a cram-school teacher, the latter a university lecturer), and, based on these responses, for them English is still very much perceived as a foreign

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language, which finds part of its appeal in the cultural associations it has with the core Inner Circle communities. Kaori similarly shares this opinion, and specifically talks of English as a ‘national’ rather than ‘official’ language: ‘I think English belongs to English speaking countries. I have an image that English is a national language which is used as a national word [i.e. tongue], not an official language.’ In these responses an ideology that closely links language to cultural identity results in a concept of English that is firmly anchored in its heritage. The alternative perspective is voiced by Eiko and Naomi. Eiko’s response is that ‘[n]owadays, I think English belongs to the world. We can see English all around and the number of English-speakers and even non-native-English-speakers is increasing. On TV and radio, English is more common.’ For Naomi, who works in an NGO and engages in international communication on a regular basis, English likewise ‘belongs to anyone who understands or uses the language. English is a very diversified language, and it differs among various groups even within the US or the UK.’ For these two, it is function rather than heritage that determines the way the language is conceptualized, and the traditional EFL ideology is replaced by an attitude which has much in common with a ‘world Englishes’ approach.

Conclusion: ideas of English and their implications These opposing views of the language appertain both to concrete issues such as the public display of English, and more abstract notions about the relationship between language and culture for the context of contemporary Japan. For Eiko, the use of English in the linguistic landscape is now an intrinsic part of the Japanese cultural environment: We think of [English language] signs as a part of Japan. Because many foreigners live in Japan, if there were no English language signs, they would be confused. So the signs are helpful! Also, some people, especially the younger generation, regard those signs as stylish and more fashioned. So these signs attract the younger generation. She suggests, in fact, that were English to become an official language, as has occasionally been proposed (CJGTC, 2000), this would be no bad thing, as ‘Japanese identity will be more flexible to be international’. Such an attitude is in sharp contrast to that of Miho, however, who is strongly opposed to the idea of English becoming an official language because she believes this would result in social upheaval: ‘If it


did [become an official language], people would have to learn English much harder and people who speak English could adapt to the new Japanese society, but people who do not use English could not adapt. This would cause large changes in Japanese society.’ As can be seen in both the above comments, the interpretation of language choice for individual signs in the public arena plays into a far larger discourse about the place and influence of English within Japanese society, and ultimately about the direction to be taken by Japanese society in the era of globalization. In summary, therefore, the prevalence of English within the social landscape is interpreted as being the result of multiple roles that the language plays, which function at both a local and international level. The precise bounds of the language – of what exactly is interpreted as ‘English’ – are far from fixed, and rely on the cultural associations the language accrues, mostly as a symbol of internationalism. Despite a prevailing ideology of monolingualism for the nation, English often exists as part of a native style repertoire, and frequent influence from English is perceived in various aspects of the modern Japanese language. In addition, the significance of the existence of English in the Japanese social landscape can be interpreted through the prism of broader discourses about cultural and political identity, and about the ways in which life within a globalized society is altering traditional social structures. In this respect, English can act as a touchstone for the process of globalization, being at once both a symbol to be embraced and an innovation to be negotiated.

Notes 1. According to official statistics recorded by Backhaus (2009, p. 161), 3.1 per cent of Tokyo’s inhabitants are non-Japanese nationals, while the national average is just 1.7 per cent. Over 80 per cent of Tokyo’s foreign nationals are from Asian countries. 2. I am using the word ‘sign’ in this chapter to refer to any instance of visual semiotic display. 3. The research was carried out over several months at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009. The purpose and output procedures were explained to all participants, and informed consent was received. Names have been changed to ensure anonymity. Answers were given in English or Japanese, and some of the English has been tidied up in order to clarify its meaning. I am very grateful to Ai Matsubayashi for assistance with collecting the data, and for translation of answers originally given in Japanese. 4. Dates in parentheses indicate the day on which the data were recorded by the participant.

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References Aspinall, R. (2006) ‘Using the paradigm of “small cultures” to explain policy failure in the case of foreign language education in Japan’, Japan Forum, 18, 255–74. Backhaus, P. (2007) Linguistic landscapes: a comparative study of urban multilingualism in Tokyo (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters). Backhaus, P. (2009) ‘Rules and regulations in linguistic landscaping: a comparative perspective’ in E. Shohamy and D. Gorter (eds) Linguistic landscape: expanding the scenery (New York: Routledge). Bakhtin, M. (1986) Speech genres and other late essays, trans. V. W. McGee (Austin: University of Texas Press). Blommaert, J. (2003) ‘Commentary: a sociolinguistics of globalization’, Journal of Sociolinguistics, 7, 607–23. CJGTC [Prime Minister’s Commission on Japan’s Goals in the Twenty-First Century] (2000) The frontier within: individual empowerment and better governance in the new millennium – Chapter 1 Overview. Gorter, D. (ed.) (2006) Linguistic landscape: a new approach to multilingualism (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters). Honna, N. (1995) ‘English in Japanese society: language within language’, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 16, 45–62. Hyde, B. (2002) ‘Japan’s emblematic English’, English Today, 18, 12–16. Hymes, D. (1966) ‘Two types of linguistic relativity (with examples from Amerindian ethnography)’ in W. Bright (ed.) Sociolinguistics: proceedings of the UCLA sociolinguistics conference, 1964 (The Hague: Mouton). Kelly-Holmes, H. (2000) ‘Bier, parfum, kaas: language fetish in European advertising’, European Journal of Cultural Studies, 3, 67–82. Landry, R. and Bourhis, R. (1997) ‘Linguistic landscape and ethnolinguistic vitality’, Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 16, 23–49. McVeigh, B. (2002) Japanese higher education as myth (New York: M. E. Sharpe). Maher, J. C. and Yashiro, K. (eds) (1995) Multilingual Japan: an introduction. (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters). Moody, A. (2006) ‘English in Japanese popular culture and J-Pop music’, World Englishes, 25, 209–22. Niedzielski, N. and Preston, D. (2000) Folk linguistics (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter). Scollon, R. and Scollon, S. W. (2003) Discourses in place: language in the material world (London: Routledge). Seargeant, P. (2009) The idea of English in Japan: ideology and the evolution of a global language (Bristol: Multilingual Matters). Shohamy, E. and Gorter, D. (eds) (2009) Linguistic landscape: expanding the scenery (New York: Routledge). Shohamy, E., Ben-Rafael, E. and Barni, Monica (eds) (2010) Linguistic landscape in the city (Bristol: Multilingual Matters). Silverstein, M. (1979) ‘Language structure and linguistic ideology’ in P. Clyne, W. Hanks and C. Hofbauer (eds) The elements of a parasession on linguistic units and levels (Chicago: Chicago University Press). Verschueren, J. (1995) ‘The pragmatic return to meaning: notes on the dynamics of communication, conceptual accessibility and communicative transparency’, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 5, 127–56.

Index Action plan to cultivate ‘Japanese with English abilities’ 26, 104 Adams, William 3 addressivity 189–90, 192, 200, 201 Akita International University 25 American English 127, 131, 169, 201 Anzen-shinwa 29 Aoyama Gakuin University 28 Arabic 113 Arashi 175–6 ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) 130 Aso, Taro 171–5 assistant language teachers (ALTs) 81, 85–92, 94–8 Australian English 127 Ayaka-no Totsugeki Eikaiwa (Ayaka’s Surprise English Lesson) 180–3 Backhaus, Peter 189 Bahasa Malaysia 20 Bakhtin, Mikhail 189 Bangladesh 21 Baudrillard, Jean 65 Bernstein, Basil 75 Bourhis, Richard 190 British English 127, 191, 196 Butler, Judith 65 Chilton, Paul 17, 19, 20, 34 Coconuts Musume 180 communicative language teaching (CLT) 39, 62 Course of Study 5 critical discourse analysis (CDA) 17 cultural capital 143, 145, 146, 159–63 Dauntaun-no Gaki-no Tsukaiya Arahende! (Downtown’s ‘I’m Not Your Gofer’) 179, 184 deconstructionism 145

delegitimization 19–20 Derrida, Jacques 145 Developing a strategic plan to cultivate ‘Japanese with English abilities’ 86 ‘double’/daburu 149–51 Eigo-de Asobo (Let’s Play In English) 167, 169 Eigo-de Shabera Naito (Can You Speak English?) 167, 171–3 eikaiwa 98, 101, 111, 113, 116 elite discourse 17–19, 21, 22, 34 English as a foreign language (EFL) 3, 57, 88, 131, 202 English as a lingua franca (ELF) 7, 39, 103–8, 111, 117, 118, 119, 129, 130, 131, 198, 201 English as a second language (ESL) 107, 129 English as an international language (EIL) 3, 10, 38–9, 41, 43, 56, 103, 104, 114, 130–1, 201 English language teaching (ELT) 5, 39, 60, 66, 67, 80, 81, 83, 86, 96, 104–5, 108, 115, 119, 201 examinations, university entrance 61 Expanding Circle 57, 102, 107, 108 folk linguistics 188, 194–5 foreign residents 109–11 Foucault, Michel 77, 106 Fukuda, Yasuo 26, 31 Fukuzawa, Yukichi 132 gaijin 93, 146, 154, 159 gaikokujin hanzai 29 genki/enthusiasm 166, 168, 171, 180–3 Giddens, Anthony 60, 63 ‘Global 30’ universities 62 global English 21, 32, 56, 107 205

206

Index

globalization 6–9, 10–11, 16–17, 21–2, 38, 60, 62–3, 115, 140, 146, 191, 203 globalization-as-opportunity 10, 22, 26, 28, 31 globalization-as-threat 10, 22, 26, 28, 31 glocalization 115 Goffman, Erving 65 grobalization 115–16 ‘half’/hâfu 140–51 Hall, Stuart 19, 64 Harlan, Patrick 172 Haroo! Purojekuto (‘Hello! Project’) 180 Hashimoto, Kayoko 21, 22 Hatoyama, Yukio 8 high school 23, 39, 52, 54, 61, 72, 85, 109, 153, 169 Holliday, Adrian 75, 83 homogeneity 28, 29, 115, 143, 145, 156 Honna, Nobuyuki 169, 170, 188 Hymes, Dell 191 identity 2, 7, 10, 19, 22, 28, 31, 60, 63–5, 67, 70, 74, 76, 89, 116, 143–5, 153, 190, 202 immigration 16, 17, 23, 27, 28, 30, 109 indigenization 128 Inner Circle 39, 116, 119, 197, 202 international communication 8, 39, 42, 52, 92, 106, 130, 140, 188, 202 international marriages 168 internationalization see kokusaika interpellation 60, 65, 70, 71 intertextuality 148 J–Pop 166, 167, 168, 175, 180 Japan Ageing Research Centre 23 Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme 81, 84, 85, 87–9, 91, 95–8 Japanese as a second language (JSL) 112, 118 Japanese Diet 17, 18

Japanese teachers of English (JTEs) 85, 88, 92, 94–7, 105 jigyaku/self-effacement 166, 168, 171, 178–80 Kachru, Braj, B. 2, 57, 131 Kan, Naoto 8–9 katakana 199 Keidanren (Japan Federation of Economic Organizations) 104, 110 Kelly-Holmes, Helen 192 Kimura, Ayaka 180–3 Koizumi, Junichiro 174 kokusaijin 63 kokusaika (internationalization) 5, 6, 21, 22, 29, 44, 46, 62–3, 67, 69, 74, 76, 77, 81, 85 Kramsch, Claire 125–6 Kubota, Ryuko 62, 76, 81, 84, 85, 89 Landry, Rodrigue 190 language ecology 103, 109, 189, 192 ‘language entertainment’ television 166–9 language ideology 194, 200 legitimization 17, 19–20 Liberal Democratic Party 28, 31, 171, 174 linguistic globalization 7–9, 190–2, 196 linguistic imperialism 51, 103, 116 linguistic landscape 10, 190, 192, 193, 201, 202 loanword 134–8, 141, 166, 197–200 MacIntyre, Alasdair 64 Malaysia 20, 129 Matsuda, Aya 109 Matsumoto, Kazuya 172 McConnell, David 88, 92, 95 McDonaldization 115, 120 McKay, Sandra 39 medium of instruction 4, 15, 17, 18, 20–4, 75, 110, 161 Meiji era 5, 61, 75 Meiji Restoration 3, 4 metapragmatics 195

Index 207 MEXT see Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) 5, 15, 16, 21, 25, 26, 31, 60, 86, 104, 105 minority language rights 103 Mori, Arinori 4 Mori, Yoshiro 174–5 Morning Musume 181 multilingualism 89, 117, 187, 188 Nakasone, Hirofumi 61 Nakasone, Yasuhiro 5, 27 narrative inquiry 63, 87 national curriculum 5, 53 national language 2, 4, 16, 20, 55, 202 nationalism 20, 81, 117 native speaker (NS) 23, 39, 71, 81–5, 96–8, 128, 131, 133–4, 194 ‘native-speakerism’ 83 ‘native speaker syndrome’ 131, 134 non-native speaker (NNS) 39, 56, 71, 81–4, 103, 130, 131, 140 nativization 55, 196, 199, 200 New Conservative Party 29 NHK (Nippon Housou Kyoukai) 171, 198 Niedzielski, Nancy 194 nihonjinron 62, 76, 85, 97 nikkei 27–8, 109–10 Ninomiya, Kazunari 175–8 NOVA 88, 89, 98 Obama, Barack 8 Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology 25 Onishi, Jimmy 179 Oshiba, Lou 170 Otsu, Yukio 33 Outer Circle 107 ‘ownership of English’ 80 Pakistan 21, 32 Pennycook, Alastair 106, 144 performativity 60, 65 Perry, Commodore 4

Philippines 20, 22, 32, 110 political discourse 17–20 Portuguese 27, 102, 113 positioning 60, 64, 65, 67, 143, 145 poststructuralist discourse analysis (PDA) 145, 148 praxis 117, 118 Preston, Dennis 194 Prime Minister’s commission on Japan’s goals in the twenty-first century 62 Reform Acts 5 returnees 168 Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University 25 Ritzer, George 115, 120 Roman script 8, 101, 187, 197, 198, 199 sakoku period 4 Scollon, Ron 190, 191, 196 Scollon, Suzanne Wong 190, 191, 196 second language acquisition (SLA) 52 second language relativity 191, 200 Second World War 3, 4, 61, 312 Seidlhofer, Barbara 84, 118 Shaku, Yumiko 172, 184 Shikatte Burondo Sensei (Scold Me! Blond Teacher!) 175, 178 Silverstein, Michael 195 Singapore 3, 11, 16, 20, 21, 129, 130, 134 SMAP 168, 184 sociolinguistic variation 7 Sophia University 24 South Korea 16, 21 swine flu 30, 127 Tama University 23, 24 Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) 67, 86 Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) 5, 116 Three Circles of English 2 three-K jobs 28

208

Index

TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) 32, 105, 188 TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication) 105, 108 Tokugawa shogunate 4, 131 Toyama, Atsuko 38 Tsuji, Nozomi 181–3 US occupation 3, 4, 5

van Dijk, Teun 17 Waseda University 24–5 Widdowson, Henry 126–7 world Englishes 3, 52, 55, 57–8, 80, 103, 116, 202 yakudoku 61, 69 yuuki/courage 166, 168, 171, 175–8

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