Current English Linguistics In Japan

The 1970s and 1980s saw a revolution in Japanese literary criticism. A new generation of scholars and critics, many of them veterans of 1960s political activism, arose in revolt against the largely positivistic methodologies that had hitherto dominated postwar literary studies. Creatively refashioning approaches taken from the field of linguistics, the new scholarship challenged orthodox interpretations, often introducing new methodologies in the process: structuralism, semiotics, and phenomenological linguistics, among others. The radical changes introduced then continue to reverberate today, shaping the way Japanese literature is studied both at home and abroad. The Linguistic Turn in Contemporary Japanese Literary Studies is the first critical study of this revolution to appear in English. It includes translations of landmark essays published in the 1970s and 1980s by such influential figures as Noguchi Takehiko, Kamei Hideo, Mitani Kuniaki, and Hirata Yumi. It also collects nine new essays that reflect critically on the emergence of linguistics-based literary criticism and theory in Japan, exploring both the novel possibilities such theory created and the shortcomings that could not be overcome. Scholars from a variety of disciplines and fields probe the political and intellectual implications of this transformation and explore the exciting new pathways it opened up for the study of modern Japanese literature.

The existence of corpus-based linguistic research in Japan has until now mainly been hidden from the view of overseas researchers - partly by the language barrier, and partly by the continuing dominance of generative grammar in Japan. At last, this volume lifts the veil to reveal the current condition of corpus-based research in Japan. English Corpus Linguistics in Japan contains a collection of twenty papers written by Japanese linguists, reflecting the state of art in English corpus linguistics in Japan. The volume covers an impressively wide range, showcasing the diversity and creativity of corpus-based research in this country, from studies drawing on the ‘old faithful’ Brown and LOB Corpora as well as the more recent Frown, FLOB, the Bank of English and the British National Corpus to studies based on more specific historical, literary, spoken, and learner corpora; from investigations of major levels of language description, including prosody, lexis, morphology, syntax, and semantics to investigations of language variation; from explorations of single variables to those of multivariant dimensions; and from pedagogical applications to software applications. The papers are grouped into four sections: 1) Corpus-based studies of contemporary English, 2) Historical and diachronic studies of English, 3) English corpora and English language teaching, 4) Software for analyzing corpora. This volume will inspire still further corpus explorations in the future both in Japan and abroad.

The Role of English Teaching in Modern Japan examines the complex nature of Japan’s promotion of English as a Foreign Language (EFL). In globalized societies where people with different native languages communicate through English, multicultural and multilinguistic interactions are widely created. This book takes the opportunity to look at Japan and examines how these multiple realities have affected its English language teaching within the domestic context. The myth of Japan’s racial and ethnic homogeneity may hinder many Japanese in recognizing realities of its own minority groups such as Ainu, Zainichi Koreans, and Brazilian Japanese, who are in the same EFL classrooms. Acknowledging a variety of English uses and users in Japan, this book emphasizes the influence of Japan’s recent domestic diversity on its EFL curriculum and urges that such changes should be addressed. It suggests new directions for incorporating multicultural perspectives in order to develop English language education in Japan and other Asian contexts where English is often taught as a foreign language. Chapters include: Social, cultural, and political background of Japan’s EFL education Race, ethnicity, and multiculturalism Representations of diversity in Japanese EFL Textbooks Perceptions of English learning and diversity in Japan The role of EFL education in multicultural Japan

Leading scholars in the field examine the role played by the English language in contemporary Japanese society. Their various chapters cover the nature, status, and function of English in Japan, focusing on the ways in which globalization is influencing language practices in the country.

This book examines the ways in which English is conceptualised as a global language in Japan, and considers how the resultant language ideologies – drawn in part from universal discourses; in part from context-specific trends in social history – inform the relationships that people in Japan have towards the language. The book analyses the specific nature of the language’s symbolic meaning in Japan, and how this meaning is expressed and negotiated in society. It also discusses how the ideologies of English that exist in Japan might have implications for the more general concept of ‘English as a global language’. To this end it considers the question of what constitutes a ‘global’ language, and how, if at all, a balance can be struck between the universal and the historically-contingent when it comes to formulating a theory of English within the world.

Patricia Wetzel offers in this volume a comprehensive examination of a frequently discussed yet much misunderstood aspect of the Japanese language. Keigo, or “polite language,” is often viewed as a quaint accessory to Japanese grammar and a relic of Japan’s feudal past. Nothing, Wetzel contends, could be further from the truth. It is true that Japan has a long history of differentiating linguistic form on the basis of social status, psychological detachment, emotional reserve, and a host of other context-dependent factors. But, as is made clear in this unique and broadly framed study, modern keigo consciousness and keigo grammar emerged out of Japan’s encounter with Western intellectual trends in the mid- to late nineteenth century. Keigo in Modern Japan presents a finely nuanced linguistic and political review of keigo available nowhere else in English. The first chapter outlines the ways in which keigo has been problematized in Western linguistics through the application of structuralist analysis and its offshoots. But keigo’s presence in the English-language literature does not begin to compare with the place it occupies in the Japanese linguistic canon. Wetzel describes the historical roots and growth of keigo and the popularity of how-to manuals, which, she contends, are less about overt instruction than reinforcing what people already believe.

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2009 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1.0, University of Siegen (Fachbereich 3 - Sprach-, Literatur- und Medienwissenschaften), language: English, abstract: Looking for the origin of the innumerable loanwords in the Japanese language, this thesis gives an overview on how English influenced Japanese language and culture throughout history and today. Beginning with a historical overview starting from early language contact, the role of English and other languages in the Japanese culture is observed: in pre-WWII times as well as during and after the war, until today. An analysis of the current status of English in Japan follows, covering the fields ESL, business and the media. The last part focuses on the loanwords themselves, how they function, and what reasons for using loans excessively the Japanese might have, making a connection to wa-sei eigo, the so-called English-made-in-Japan.