Discourses of Identity: Language Learning, Teaching, and Reclamation Perspectives in Japan [1 ed.] 9783031119873, 9783031119880

Table of contents :
Contents
Notes on Contributors
List of Figures
List of Tables
1: Introduction to Language Learning, Teaching, and Reclamation in Japan: Diversity, Inequalities, and Identities
Diversity in Japan
Power, Ideology, and Inequality within Diversity
Research on Identities in Language Learning, Teaching, and Reclamation
About This Book
References
Part I: English Language Learner Identity
2: English Language Learners’ Discursive Constructions of National and Global Identities in the Japanese University Context
Literature Review
National Identity, Nationalism, and the Nihonjinron Thesis in Japan
English Language Learners’ ‘Global’ Outlook in Japan
Methodology
Overview
Participants
Tatsuki
Daiki
Shion
Framework for Analysis
Data Analysis and Findings
Tatsuki
Daiki
Shion
Discussion
Conclusion
References
3: Becoming the Paths we Tread: Negotiating Identity through an Ideological Landscape of Practice
Literature Review
Eigo and Eikaiwa
Identity Across Landscapes of Practice
Identity Work Across Boundaries
Methodology
Setting
Participants and Data Collection
Data Analysis
Mei
Kaede
Discussion
References
4: The Intertwining of Native-Speakerism and Racism in the Construction of Linguistic Identity
Literature Review
Nativeness and Linguistic Identity
Critical Race Theory
Method
Participant Profile and Researcher Positionality
Findings
Nonbinary Linguistic Identity
Native-Speakerism and CRT Lens on Linguistic Identity
Conclusion
References
Part II: Indigenous Language Reclamation and Identity
5: Creation and Expansion of a Safe Place to Be Ainu: The Urespa Project
Brief Historical Background of Ainu and the Ainu Language Revitalization
Data
Urespa and Identities
A Safe Place to Be Ainu
Language and Cultural Understanding
Language and Perception
Discussion
Conclusion
References
6: In Search of Indigenous Identity through Re-Creation of Ainu Self-Sustaining Community: Praxis and Learning in Action
Historical Background and the Current State of the Ainu Language
About This Research
Parent-and-Child Study Sessions as a Safe Space
In Search of a Community
Language as a Tool for Self-Acceptance
Language as Empowerment and Tool for Communication with the Ancestors
Kamuynomi as a Space for Natural Revival of Ainu-ness
Exposure to Ancestral Language through Natural Practice
Conclusion
References
7: Hear our Voice: New Speakers of Ryukyuan Language—Negotiation, Construction, and Change of Identities
Positionality
Methodology and Research Questions
Results and Discussion
Change in Language Policies and Identities
Ideological Challenges in Indigenous Values, Languages, and Cultures
Creating a Space with New Speakers
Standardization, Resources, and Power
Personal Reflection: The Need for Decolonization
Conclusion and Outlook
References
8: Ryukyuan Language Reclamation: Individual Struggle and Social Change
Survey and Data
Individual Struggle and Change
Learning my Language to Become Myself
Unlearning and Being Rebellious
Emotional and Relational Change
Societal Struggle and Change
Speaking Ryukyuan Should be Normal
Decolonizing and Recentering the Ryukyus
Ryukyuan Studies and Language Reclamation Henceforth
Outlook
Appendix
Open Questions
Sentence Completion Task
References
Part III: Japanese Language Learner Identity
9: Conflicting and Shifting Professional Identities of Two Indonesian Nurses: L2 Japanese Socialization at Workplaces in Japan and after their Return to Indonesia
EPA Scheme and Experiences of EPA Nurses
Methods
Focused Participants
Research Context
Data Analysis
Results
Wani’s Case
Ambivalent Attitudes Toward her Position as a “Non-Native” Speaker of Japanese
Re-Defining Herself as a “Good” Bad Speaker of Japanese
Nini’s Case
Overcoming the Sense of Being “Useless” and Taking Ownership of the Work
Conflicting Self as a Cross-Cultural Mediator
Conclusion
References
10: “Your Class Is Like Karaoke”: Language Learning as a Shelter
Background of the Study
Current Study
Participants and Settings
Data Collection
Analysis
Role of the Researcher
Results and Discussion
Need to Learn Japanese
Elkin
Kanok
A Place to Express Who They Are
Elkin
Kanok
Summary and Conclusions
References
11: “No Need to Invest in the Japanese Language?”: The Identity Development of Chinese Students in the English-Medium Instruction (EMI) Program of a Japanese College
Background
English-Medium Instruction in Japanese Higher Education
Overseas EMI Students in Japanese Higher Education
Overseas Students’ Identity and Investment in the Local Language
The Development of Identities Within the Dialogical Self and Imagination
Data and Method
Method
Findings
Han’s Identity Development Along with Her Trajectory
The Development of Han’s I-Positions
Ko’s Identity Development Along with Her Trajectory
The Development of Ko’s I-Positions
Discussion
Conclusion
References
12: Who Speaks Yasashii Nihongo for Whom?: Reimagining the “Beneficiary” Identities of Plain/Easy Japanese
Background
Setting and Participants
Courses and Participants
COIL-Related Activities
Data and Method of Analysis
Findings
Awareness of Their Own Prejudice/Stereotypes
Not All L2 Speakers Would Benefit from Yasashii Nihongo or Foreigner Talk
Yasashii Nihongo and Foreigner Talk are for the Benefit of both Parties
What Matters Is Attitude, Rather than Language
Discussion
Conclusion
References
13: Discursive Construction of Heritage Desire: Nikkei Identity Discourse in a Layered Politics of Representation
Theory, Context, and Methodology
The Institutional Discourse: Policy Discourse and the Pre-Planned Lecture Series
Policy Discourse on Nikkei Populations: Nikkei Populations as “Foreign but Simultaneously Japanese”
Message Delivered at the Pre-Planned Lecture
Emigration, Heritage, and Emotion as a Key Conceptual Component
The Nikkei/Non-Nikkei Distinction as “Theirs”
An Informal Lecture on the Reality of the South American Nikkei Communities: Alternative Perspectives on “Heritage Desire”
A Sequence of Off-Topic Exchanges Between Naoko and Mr. Katayama
An Emigration Joke: “Codfish” Story
Discussion and Conclusion
References
Part IV: English Language Teacher Identity
14: “It Feels Like I’m Stuck in a Web Sometimes”: The Culturally Emergent Identity Experiences of a Queer Assistant Language Teacher in Small-Town Japan
The Many Masks of the ALT
Queer Teachers and Learners Looking for Spaces to Flourish
Language Teacher Identities as Emerging Experiences of the Social Ecology
Methodology
Analysis and Discussion
Conclusion
Appendix
References
15: Discursive Positioning of the Philippines and Filipino Teachers in the Online Eikaiwa Industry
Positionality of Eikaiwa Teachers
The Study
Epistemology
Data and Analytical Procedure
Legitimacy of the Philippines and Filipino Teachers
Providers’ Perspective: Speakers of American English
Excerpt 1
Excerpt 2
Learners’ Perspective: Speakers of Chantoshita Kireina Eigo3
Excerpt 3
Excerpt 4
Excerpt 5
Excerpt 6
Excerpt 7
Further Discussions and Conclusion
References
16: Framing, Ideology, and the Negotiation of Professional Identities Among Non-Japanese EFL Teachers in Japan
A Model for Critical Research
Frame Analysis and Ideology Critique
Ideology and Professional Identity
Master-Framing: The Japanese National Character, the Failures of Japanese Education, and the Role of ETI
The Influence of This Frame on Teachers’ Professional Identity
Strands of Ideology
Counter-Framing: Doubt and Resistance
Conclusion
References
17: Emotion and Identity: The Impact of English-Only Policies on Japanese English Teachers in Japan
Literature Review
English-Only Policies
Teacher Identity: Emotion and Teacher Agency
A Note on Reflexive Interviews
Data Collection and Participants
Data and Discussion
Theme 1: Pressure, Guilt and Failure
Analysis
Theme 2: Connecting with Students
Analysis
Theme 3: Personal Identity and the Presentation of Self in the Classroom
Analysis
Conclusion
References
18: Performing Motivating and Caring Identities: The Emotions of Non-Japanese University Teachers of English
Literature Review
Emotions, Emotional Labour and Emotion Regulation
Research on the Intersection Between Identity and Emotion
Research Questions
Data Collection and Analysis
Results and Discussion
RQ1: Language Teachers as Motivating and Caring
RQ2: Emotion Regulation in Performance of Motivating and Caring Classroom Identities
Response Modulation: Outpouring
Attention Deployment: Distraction and Concentration
Cognitive Change: Reappraisal
Conclusion
References
19: Moving Beyond the Monolingual Orientation to Investigate Language Teacher Identities: A Translingual Approach in the Japanese EFL Context
Literature Review
From Monolingual to Translingual Orientation in ELT
Teacher Identity and Translingualism in ELT
The Study
Participants and Positionality
Data Collection and Analysis
Findings
Theme 1: Teacher Identity and Pedagogical Belief in Relation to Translingual Practice
Theme 2: Socialization in the Workplace to Develop a Translingual Approach in Teaching
Theme 3: The Fluid and Diverse Understanding of the Boundaries of English
Discussion
Conclusion
References
Index

Citation preview

Discourses of Identity Language Learning, Teaching, and Reclamation Perspectives in Japan Edited by Martin Mielick Ryuko Kubota · Luke Lawrence

Discourses of Identity “This book is a welcome addition to the literature on linguistic diversity in Japan, putting a solid nail into the coffin of the surprisingly persistent stereotype of Japan as a monolingual nation. Its multi-faceted examination of identityrelated issues inherent in language learning, teaching and reclamation illuminates the true complexity of language issues in Japan today.” —Nanette Gottlieb, The University of Queensland, Australia, Emeritus Professor, School of Languages and Cultures, [email protected] “If, in 2022, anyone is still holding onto the myth of Japan as a homogeneous nation, this book will shatter that myth. But not only that, this book also illuminates the experiences of those who are trying to negotiate diverse identities and carve out a place for themselves in a nation that’s both rapidly changing and stubbornly resistant to change.” —Yasuko Kanno, Boston University, USA, Associate Professor of Language Education and Chair of the Department of Language and Literacy Education, [email protected] “Diversity and identity are concepts that are absolutely central to any understanding of language and its use. This wide-ranging volume explores the implications this has for language education in Japan, a country often portrayed as culturally and linguistically homogenous. In doing so, the book offers an insightful and engaging look at the experiences and challenges involved in real people’s often complex relationships with language education.” —Philip Seargeant, The Open University, UK, Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics, [email protected]

Martin Mielick  •  Ryuko Kubota Luke Lawrence Editors

Discourses of Identity Language Learning, Teaching, and Reclamation Perspectives in Japan

Editors Martin Mielick Canterbury Christ Church University Canterbury, UK

Ryuko Kubota University of British Columbia Vancouver, BC, Canada

Luke Lawrence Toyo University Tokyo, Japan

ISBN 978-3-031-11987-3    ISBN 978-3-031-11988-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11988-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and ­transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

1 Introduction  to Language Learning, Teaching, and Reclamation in Japan: Diversity, Inequalities, and Identities  1 Ryuko Kubota Part I English Language Learner Identity  15 2 English  Language Learners’ Discursive Constructions of National and Global Identities in the Japanese University Context 17 Martin Mielick 3 Becoming  the Paths we Tread: Negotiating Identity through an Ideological Landscape of Practice 39 Daniel Hooper 4 The  Intertwining of Native-Speakerism and Racism in the Construction of Linguistic Identity 59 Xinqi He

v

vi Contents

Part II Indigenous Language Reclamation and Identity  79 5 Creation  and Expansion of a Safe Place to Be Ainu: The Urespa Project 81 Yumiko Ohara and Yuki Okada 6 In  Search of Indigenous Identity through Re-Creation of Ainu Self-­Sustaining Community: Praxis and Learning in Action 97 Tatsiana Tsagelnik 7 Hear  our Voice: New Speakers of Ryukyuan Language— Negotiation, Construction, and Change of Identities117 Madoka Hammine 8 Ryukyuan  Language Reclamation: Individual Struggle and Social Change139 Patrick Heinrich and Giulia Valsecchi Part III Japanese Language Learner Identity 159 9 Conflicting  and Shifting Professional Identities of Two Indonesian Nurses: L2 Japanese Socialization at Workplaces in Japan and after their Return to Indonesia161 Chiharu Shima 10 “Your  Class Is Like Karaoke”: Language Learning as a Shelter179 Kazuhiro Yonemoto 11 “No  Need to Invest in the Japanese Language?”: The Identity Development of Chinese Students in the ­English-­ Medium Instruction (EMI) Program of a Japanese College197 Keiko Kitade

 Contents 

vii

12 W  ho Speaks Yasashii Nihongo for Whom?: Reimagining the “Beneficiary” Identities of Plain/Easy Japanese219 Noriko Iwasaki 13 Discursive  Construction of Heritage Desire: Nikkei Identity Discourse in a Layered Politics of Representation239 Kyoko Motobayashi Part IV English Language Teacher Identity 261 14 “It  Feels Like I’m Stuck in a Web Sometimes”: The Culturally Emergent Identity Experiences of a Queer Assistant Language Teacher in Small-­Town Japan263 Ashley R. Moore 15 Discursive  Positioning of the Philippines and Filipino Teachers in the Online Eikaiwa Industry283 Misako Tajima 16 Framing,  Ideology, and the Negotiation of Professional Identities Among Non-­Japanese EFL Teachers in Japan301 Robert J. Lowe 17 Emotion  and Identity: The Impact of English-Only Policies on Japanese English Teachers in Japan321 Luke Lawrence 18 Performing  Motivating and Caring Identities: The Emotions of Non-­Japanese University Teachers of English341 Sam Morris

viii Contents

19 Moving  Beyond the Monolingual Orientation to Investigate Language Teacher Identities: A Translingual Approach in the Japanese EFL Context359 Yuzuko Nagashima I ndex377

Notes on Contributors

Madoka Hammine  works as an associate professor in the Faculty of International Studies at Meio University, Japan. She holds a doctorate degree from the University of Lapland in Finland. Her research focuses on teacher education, language education, Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and Indigenous research methodologies. She has been learning the linguistic varieties of Ryukyuan. Xinqi He  is a lecturer at J. F. Oberlin University in Japan and holds a PhD from the University of Tokyo. She did her master’s thesis in the same university in the field of applied linguistics yet shifted her academic focus to the field of critical applied linguistics in her PhD program, especially on migrant’s language acquisition. Patrick Heinrich  is Professor of Sociolinguistics and Japanese Studies at the Department of Asian and Mediterranean African Studies at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Before joining Ca’ Foscari in 2014, he taught at universities in Germany (Duisburg-Essen University) and Japan (Dokkyo University) for many years. Daniel Hooper  is a lecturer in the Education Department at Hakuoh University. He has taught in Japan for 16 years, predominantly in higher education and English conversation schools. His research interests include learner and teacher identity, communities of practice, and the English conversation school industry. ix

x 

Notes on Contributors

Noriko Iwasaki  is Professor of Japanese Language Pedagogy and Second Language Acquisition at Nanzan University. Her research interests include study-abroad students’ development of pragmatic competence and changes in linguistic/cultural identities and L2 speakers’ use of Japanese mimetics. She co-edited a volume titled Ido to Kotoba (Mobility and Language) (2018). Keiko Kitade  is Professor of Japanese Language Teacher Education and Intercultural Communication in the Department of Letters and Graduate School of Language Education and Information Science, Ritsumeikan University, Japan. Her current interests are the narrative inquiry of study/ work-abroad experiences, curriculum development in border-­crossing learning, and language teacher development. Ryuko Kubota is a professor in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at University of British Columbia, Canada. She has taught Japanese and English as a foreign language. Her research focuses on antiracism, critical multiculturalism, and other critical issues in language teaching and learning. Luke Lawrence  is a lecturer at Toyo University. His research interests revolve around intersectional aspects of teacher identity. His work has been published in ELT Journal, Applied Linguistics Review and the Journal of Language, Identity and Education amongst others. He is also the co-­ editor of the book Duoethnography in English Language Teaching. Robert J. Lowe  is an associate professor at Ochanomizu University, Japan. His recent publications include the monograph Uncovering Ideology in English Language Teaching (2020), and papers in Language Teaching, Language, Culture and Curriculum, and ELT Journal. Martin Mielick  is a PhD candidate of Applied Linguistics at Canterbury Christ Church University in England. His research interests are focused upon discourse, identity, and concepts of nationalism related to identity. He has taught and researched in the UK, Poland, Kazakhstan and Japan. Ashley R. Moore  is Assistant Professor of TESOL in the Department of Language and Literacy Education, Boston University Wheelock College

  Notes on Contributors 

xi

of Education and Human Development. His research interests include queer issues in language education and linguistic dissociation. Sam Morris  is a lecturer in the Centre for Foreign Language Education and Research at Rikkyo University (Japan). He is interested broadly in the role that emotions play in second language teaching and acquisition. His principal focus is the contextually situated emotion regulation that teachers employ during their work. Kyoko Motobayashi is Associate Professor of Japanese Applied Linguistics at the Graduate School of Humanities and Sciences, Ochanomizu University, Tokyo, Japan. Her main research areas are sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, and language policy studies, focusing on bilingualism, language teaching and learning, and identity issues. Yuzuko Nagashima  teaches at Yokohama City University. Her research interests include teacher identity and intersectionality, translingualism, as well as critical/feminist pedagogy. Her recent publications can be found in the Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, Applied Linguistics Review, and ELT Journal. Yumiko Ohara  is an associate professor in the College of Hawaiian Language at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo which houses the only doctoral program in the United States focusing on revitalizing Indigenous languages. She has been involved in revitalization work on Ainu, Ryūkyūan, and the Hawaiian language since 2008. Yuki Okada  was in the first cohort group of the Urespa project at Sapporo University and has been working as the supervisor of the club since he graduated from the program. He is a doctoral student at Hokkaido University and his work focuses on Ainu perspectives concerning animal deities. Chiharu Shima  is Associate Professor of Graduate School of Global Communication and Language at Akita International University. Her research interests include the processes of second language socialization and intercultural communication in institutional settings, in particular, workplaces.

xii 

Notes on Contributors

Misako Tajima is an associate professor at the Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Ibaraki University. Her research interests include sociolinguistics and critical applied linguistics, and her articles have been published in international journals related to these fields, such as Journal of Sociolinguistics and Critical Inquiry in Language Studies. Tatsiana Tsagelnik  is a PhD student at Hokkaido University who has been involved in research related to Ainu people since 2013 and is conducting cultural anthropological research on Ainu language attitudes and Indigenous identity. Giulia Valsecchi  is a graduate student at the Department of Asian and Mediterranean African Studies at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. She is preparing her master’s thesis on conceptions of space on Yonaguni Island and participating as a research assistant in a project on language and wellbeing in the Ryukyus. Kazuhiro Yonemoto  is an assistant professor at the Institute of Global Affairs of Tokyo Medical and Dental University, where he coordinates the Japanese language program for international students. His research interests include educational sociolinguistics, education for language minority students, and affective dimensions of second language teaching and learning.

List of Figures

Fig. 7.1 Fig. 7.2 Fig. 11.1 Fig. 11.2 Fig. 11.3 Fig. 11.4

Map of the Ryukyus in relation to Japan Mainland Ryukyuan languages (Adopted from Heinrich & Ishihara, 2019, p. 166) The diagram illustrating the development of I-positions. (Adopted from Hermans & Hermans-Jansen, 2003, Fig. 23-1, p. 544) The diagram illustrating the development of I-positions with promotor and meta positions The I-positions in the later stage of Han’s trajectory Ko’s I-positions emerged in the last stage

118 119 205 206 209 213

xiii

List of Tables

Table 8.1 Interviews Table 11.1 The summary of interview data Table 11.2 The initial and revised goals (The equifinality points) of Han and Ko Table 11.3 The stages and BFPs of Han’s trajectory Table 11.4 The stages and BFPs of Ko’s trajectory Table 17.1 List of participants for interviews

142 204 207 208 211 326

xv

1 Introduction to Language Learning, Teaching, and Reclamation in Japan: Diversity, Inequalities, and Identities Ryuko Kubota

Japan is a country typically described as racially, culturally, and linguistically homogenous. Yet, homogeneity must be understood in relative terms. Indeed, some nation states are more homogenous than others, but absolute homogeneity rarely exists anywhere in the world due to historical and contemporary realities of human mobility. Transnational and transregional human mobility throughout history have created contact zones (Pratt, 2008), in which people learn to use others’ language(s) by necessity, by choice, through colonial impositions, or under educational policies. This indicates that there is a significant amount of diversity among languages learned as well as language users, learners, and teachers in Japan. There are also multiple purposes, reasons, motivations, and desires for engaging in linguistic development for ourselves and others, all of which contribute to shaping identities. Yet, such diversity does not imply that all the elements—language, gender, race, ethnicity, experience, intentionality—that comprise the

R. Kubota (*) University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Mielick et al. (eds.), Discourses of Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11988-0_1

1

2 

R. Kubota

multiplicity of identities have an equal status in society. Moreover, when diversity is understood as a constellation of diverse groups separated by identity categories (e.g., women, men, Ainu, and Ryukyuan), an urge to characterize each group in a single unified term leads to a problem of understanding diversity as a collection of groups, each of which is defined in an essentialist way. As an introduction to our book, I will lay out contextual information about diversity relevant to identities in language learning, teaching, and reclamation in Japan; examine power, ideologies, and inequalities that are intertwined with diversity; and provide a brief discussion on identities in language education. I write as a Japanese woman and a critical scholar in applied linguistics who grew up in Japan and moved to North America in my late 20s. My 40  years of professional activities, including teaching English and Japanese as foreign languages and conducting research on language education, inform my perspectives.

Diversity in Japan Diversity observed in the social, cultural, linguistic, and demographic domains in Japan has been pointed out by a number of authors in sociology, education, and language studies (e.g., Befu, 2001; Gottlieb, 2005; Okano, 2021; Sugimoto, 2014). Ethnolinguistic diversity is especially relevant to the topics addressed in this volume. Although the Japanese language is predominantly used in Japan, many variations exist according to geography, gender, register, genre, modality, and so on. In thinking about the linguistic diversity of Japanese, however, we should be cautious of essentialism. For instance, there is a common belief that the Japanese language is characterized by gendered linguistic expressions as well as different registers for politeness. These ideas tend to lead to the belief that there is a diametrical difference in linguistic identity between women and men or between people with different social statuses that are hierarchically ordered. However, sociolinguistic investigations of actual language use of Japanese speakers revealed more nuanced use of different registers and variants. In fact, the indexicality of gender and politeness is manifested in dynamic and fluid ways according to

1  Introduction to Language Learning, Teaching… 

3

different dialects, social contexts, social statuses, and positionalities as well as a combination of these elements (Okamoto & Shibamoto-Smith, 2016). There is no inherent connection, for instance, between being a woman and using feminine speech. It is important to beware of the lure of essentialism when understanding language and identity (Bucholtz & Hall, 2004). One significant component of diversity in Japan is comprised by Indigenous populations. Indigenous peoples—Ainu and Ryukyuans— together with their languages and cultures constitute minoritized segments in Japan. As Part II of this book presents (Chap. 5 by Ohara & Okuda, Chap. 6 by Tsagelnik, Chap. 7 by Hammine, and Chap. 8 by Heinrich & Valsecchi), varieties of Ainu and Ryukyuan languages, cultures, and identities have been severely suppressed by the modern Japanese government. Yet, they have been revitalized and reclaimed through the efforts made by Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples (see also Heinrich, 2012; Heinrich & Ohara, 2019). Furthermore, although Indigenous identities have been severely suppressed and erased, they can be playfully appropriated, performing “coolness” in postmodern society (Maher, 2005). Linguistic, ethnic, and cultural diversity in Japan is also observed among residents other than the prototypical Japanese (Otomo, 2019). They include: oldcomer ethnic groups who settled in Japan during the era of Imperial Japan (e.g., zainichi Koreans); newcomers, including Chinese returnees (repatriates of Japanese war orphans and remaining women in China—Kubota, 2013) and technical trainees (ginō jisshūsei), or semi-­ skilled workers who have come since the 1990s; Nikkeijin (people of Japanese descent) as workers and their families mainly from South America; healthcare trainees under Economic Partnership Agreements (see Chap. 9 by Shima); international students (see Chap. 4 by He; Chap. 10 by Yonemoto; Chap. 11 by Kitade); and skilled foreign workers, who include native English-speaking teachers. Thus, even in rural communities, multiple languages, including English, Mandarin, Portuguese, Spanish, Tagalog, Thai, and Vietnamese, are spoken by diverse racialized and ethnic groups (Kubota & McKay, 2009). The racial, ethnic, cultural, and linguistic diversity in Japan creates multiple contact zones involving diverse learners, teachers, and other

4 

R. Kubota

participants who strive to develop their linguistics skills. To take foreign language learning for example, though the dominant language to learn is English, other languages, including Mandarin, Korean, French, Spanish, and German, are also taught and learned. The contexts in which these foreign languages are learned vary from formal education (e.g., primary, secondary, and tertiary education) and nonformal education, including juku or private cram school, private language institutes providing in-­ person or online lessons of eikaiwa or English conversation (Hooper & Hashimoto, 2020), community classes, workplaces, and so on (Kubota, 2020). The contextual multiplicity signals the diversity of learners, teachers, as well as desires and purposes of learning, which are either institutionally required or individually initiated. As the chapters of this volume illustrate, much of foreign language learning in Japan takes place among Japanese students learning English (Chap. 2 by Mielick and Chap. 3 by Hooper). English language instruction is provided by Japanese teachers of English or native English-speaking teachers (NESTs) (Chap. 14 by Moore; Chap. 16 by Lowe; Chap. 17 by Lawrence; Chap. 19 by Nagashima). However, English language learning is also engaged by other diverse learners. For example, the popularity of English-medium instruction (EMI) has created a space where plurilingual international students construct and reconstruct their linguacultural identity in English and Japanese as additional languages, while providing communicative opportunities in other languages as well (Tsukada, 2013; Hashimoto, 2013; see also Chap. 11 by Kitade). Even outside of EMI programs, English is learned by not only Japanese students but also non-Japanese students in Japan (see an example of a White Russian student learning English in Chap. 4 by He). In addition, not all non-Japanese teachers of English are NESTs. Learning English from Filipino/a teachers online has become an attractive option among Japanese students (Tajima, 2018; see also Chap. 15 by Tajima). Furthermore, many of the NESTs working in Japan are learners of Japanese, navigating multilayered contact zones for identity negotiation (Chap. 14 by Moore). Indeed, Japanese language teaching and learning in Japan involves multiple contact zones. Just as in English language education in Japan, Japanese language teaching and learning involves a range of contexts and participants. For instance, instruction takes place in primary and

1  Introduction to Language Learning, Teaching… 

5

secondary schools in many pockets of Japanese society mainly for children with overseas roots (e.g., children of Nikkei workers and foreign professionals), whereas many universities offer Japanese courses for international students seeking their degree (Chap. 10 by Yonemoto) or studying under short-term exchange programs. There are also healthcare and technical trainees learning Japanese in the form of on-the-job training (Chap. 9 by Shima). Some of them also learn Japanese in community settings from Japanese volunteer tutors (Chap. 14 by Moore). Furthermore, not only teachers but also prospective teachers or teacher trainees and their prospective teaching contexts are diverse (Chap. 12 by Iwasaki; Chap. 13 by Motobayashi). One prominent yet often forgotten facet of language teaching and learning involves Indigenous languages and cultures. Although the two major language groups—Ainu and Ryukyuan—represent Indigenous languages in Japan, they are not monoliths. There are many varieties of these languages used in traditional communities. It is important to note that the familiar concept of modern language teaching and learning does not fit how Indigenous people try to gain their knowledge and skills in the language that they have lost for generations. The long-term oppression and assimilation along with the resultant erasure of Indigenous languages and cultures compel Indigenous people to regain their lost linguistic and cultural identity. As such, learning an Indigenous language is not for increasing socioeconomic opportunities or appreciating a foreign culture; rather, it is about reclaiming the Indigenous identity or rediscovering and regaining oneself as a bearer of Indigenous heritage. Its benefits include strengthening intergenerational connections and wellbeing of the family and community, revaluing cultural identity, and developing a sense of self-determination (McCarty, 2020). This indicates, as Part II of this volume demonstrate, that learning Indigenous languages does not share the same purpose, process, benefit, and symbolic meaning with learning English, Japanese, or other modern languages.

6 

R. Kubota

 ower, Ideology, and Inequality P within Diversity The above overview of diversity in Japan certainly demystifies the common image of Japan as a homogeneous nation. However, it is important to recognize that the diverse groups of people or languages are not positioned with equal amounts of power in institutions and larger society. Of all varieties of Japanese language, standardized Japanese based on a Tokyo dialect is the dominant language in contemporary Japan. Its dominance was established as part of the modernist project of building a linguistically and culturally unified nation, which involved the creation of kokugo, a written form of standardized language, and the imposition of the national language, kokugo, onto the users of Indigenous languages and regional dialects, as well as people in the colonized and occupied territories during the era of Imperial Japan (Gottlieb, 2005; Heinrich, 2012). This nation-building process was driven by the modernist ideology underlying the creation of a unified nation as an imagined community, which involves the establishment of standardized print language (Anderson, 2006). However, there is resistance. As seen in the chapters of Part II on Indigenous language reclamation in this volume, Indigenous people have begun to push back the state ideology that has long suppressed their languages to carve out space for legitimating their lost identities. The hegemony of standardized Japanese creates a power hierarchy not only among diverse varieties of Japanese or Indigenous languages but also between native speakers of Japanese and nonnative speakers of Japanese or between heritage learners of Japanese and nonheritage learners of Japanese. For instance, the image of Nikkei Japanese language learners in South America is constructed closer to Japaneseness than that of non-­ Nikkei Japanese learners (see Chap. 13 by Motobayashi). This certainly involves an undertone of racial distinctions in language learning, resonating with raciolinguistic ideology, whereby one’s perceived racial background affects listeners’ reaction to linguistic performance (Flores & Rosa, 2015). I will discuss this more later.

1  Introduction to Language Learning, Teaching… 

7

With regard to foreign language education in Japan, the most popular language to learn is English, reflecting its global status (Kubota, 2019; Seargeant, 2011). However, not all Englishes or English speakers are equal (Tupas, 2015); there are power disparities between the standardized forms of English and other varieties and between native speakers and nonnative speakers. Teachers of English—native speakers or nonnative speakers—navigate these power differentials (Chap. 19 by Nagashima). The same belief about the superiority of native speakers predominates the teaching and learning of Japanese as a second language in Japan as well. Recently, there is a social movement to narrow the power differential between native and nonnative speakers of Japanese in local communities by using yasashii nihongo [simplified Japanese] especially during natural disasters or other emergency situations (Hashimoto, 2018). Despite its good intention of leveling linguistic power relations, using the modified version of Japanese does not work to disrupt the hegemony of the standardized Japanese in any fundamental way, and instead it can even accentuate the foreignness of nonnative speakers, causing their alienation (see Chap. 12 by Iwasaki). Unequal relations of power between diverse language users are not only caused by linguistic difference; speakers’ racial backgrounds intersect with their linguistic profiles and reproduce raciolinguistic ideologies (Flores & Rosa, 2015). In the case of English, speakers who are viewed as competent and thus superior are White people, whereas in the case of Japanese, those who are viewed as competent speakers of Japanese typically display the stereotypical phenotype of the Japanese. People who deviate from these bodily images are made linguistically illegitimate and marginalized, whereas those who are aligned with the raciolinguistic stereotype are privileged (Kang & Rubin, 2009; Rivers & Ross, 2013; see also Chap. 4 by He; Chap. 15 by Tajima). Moreover, other identity categories, including gender, class, and sexuality, intersect with each other and form a complex web of power for diverse language users (see Chap. 14 by Moore).

8 

R. Kubota

 esearch on Identities in Language Learning, R Teaching, and Reclamation Research on identity in language education has been conducted in many contexts in various geographical locations (e.g., Anya, 2017; Appleby, 2014; Barkhuizen, 2017; Higgins, 2011; Kamada, 2010; Kanno, 2003, 2008; Nagamoto, 2016; Nakane et al., 2015; Norton, 2013; Park, 2017; Simon-Maeda, 2011; Stanley, 2013; Tajima, 2018). These investigations have revealed that constructions of identity are not only bound up with common identity markers, such as race, gender, and class, but they are also intrinsically connected with language and are contextually manifested (Norton & De Costa, 2018). In the field of language studies, the identity of language learners and teachers in general has largely been investigated through a postmodern/ poststructuralist lens, underscoring its multiple, fluid, hybrid, and discursively constructed nature (Weedon, 1997). This lens provides scholars with anti-essentialist understanding of language, culture, and identity, serving as a critical tool for analyzing, interpreting, and reporting the nature of identity. In Japan, the essentialist conceptualization of Japaneseness or nihonjinron, as an ideology that emphasizes the uniqueness of Japanese language, culture, and people, may influence how learners or teachers construct identities of the Self and the Other (Befu, 2001; Chap. 2 by Mielick; Chap. 19 by Nagashima). Moreover, its essentialist ideology functions as an assimilation force against Indigenous peoples, compelling them to devalue their ancestral language and culture as inferior to Japaneseness (see Part II: Chap. 5 by Ohara & Okuda, Chap. 6 by Tsagelnik, Chap. 7 by Hammine, and Chap. 8 by Heinrich & Valsecchi). The essentialist understanding of language and culture is incompatible with the increased diversity as seen in linguistic forms and practices, which informs how learner or teacher identity is shaped within multilingual and plurilingual conditions and consciousness (Rubdy & Alsagoff, 2013; Kramsch, 2009). Yet, the scholarly trend toward illuminating the multi/plural turn is at odds with the neoliberal emphasis on learning English only and measuring linguistic ability via standardized tests, posing a tension between fluidity and fixity (Jaspers & Madsen, 2019;

1  Introduction to Language Learning, Teaching… 

9

Kubota, 2016). Thus, more recently, increased scholarly attention has been paid to the role of the political economy, neoliberal ideologies, and social class in language teaching, learning, and use (Block, 2014; Block et al., 2012). Under the neoliberal ideology that emphasizes the importance of developing marketable skills with self-effort, acquiring English language competence is deemed essential for socioeconomic mobility, constructing the identity of the neoliberal self. Paradoxically, neoliberalism also capitalizes on the notion of diversity which is supposed to enhance economic profit in the free market economy, creating tensions for identity management. For example, in a study on Korean workers in multinational corporations in Singapore, Park (2020) demonstrated a contradiction of the neoliberal discourse of diversity management that values the workers’ unique linguacultural identity on the one hand, and imposes a monolingual English-dominant identity of being assertive on the other. Park’s study as well as others raise questions of how identity is shaped and reshaped by the interface between language policies, ideologies, economy, and material conditions (see Chap. 15 by Tajima). While the neoliberal ideology drives the nation to enhance English language teaching and learning for economic success, not all language learners are oriented toward the instrumental purpose for learning English. Learning a language in fact shapes nonpragmatic identities that involve various kinds of personal desires and aspirations (Kubota, 2011; see Chap. 10 by Yonemoto). This also indicates how emotions are involved in the shaping of identity in language education. Teachers’ emotional encounters and management, for instance, are embedded in social, contextual, and relational specificities and linked to their professional wellbeing and identities (Benesch, 2012; Gkonou et al., 2020; see Chap. 17 by Lawrence, Chap. 18 by Morris). In contrast to these individual experiences of desires and emotions, reclaiming collective identity is foregrounded in reclaiming Indigenous languages from decolonizing perspectives. It necessitates community mobilization, healing, and transformation, as discussed earlier (Smith, 2021; Wyman et al., 2014). In this context, language learning is a part of a larger community endeavor to recover the lost Indigenous identity which integrates collective linguistic identity with land, history, and culture (see Part II: Chap. 5 by Ohara & Okuda, Chap. 6 by Tsagelnik, Chap. 7 by Hammine, and Chap. 8 by Heinrich & Valsecchi).

10 

R. Kubota

Issues of identity in language teaching and learning in Japan can be investigated against these backdrops. Reflecting globalization, English is the predominant language to learn, offering many contact zones in which the identity of teachers and learners are often negotiated with native/nonnative speakerness and cultural identity. Japanese educational initiatives in globalization have both solidified and obscured national, ethnic, cultural, and linguistic borders and identities (Doerr, 2020). Yet, participants in language education are positioned in unequal relations of power that require identity negotiation. Furthermore, the contexts of teaching and learning are multiple, providing multiple sites for identity (re)formation and negotiation.

About This Book Focusing on language learning, teaching, and reclaiming in Japan, this book presents studies that offer multiple manifestations, workings, and negotiations of identity observed in diverse contexts involving diverse people. It focuses on multiple dimensions of identity in Japan as they intersect, collide, or are reshaped, illuminating linguistic, cultural, and human diversity and complexity as manifested in language education. The book brings together Japanese and non-Japanese scholars to investigate a diverse range of contemporary issues related to identities constructed within this context. While some identities are performed by human actors, such as teachers, learners, and reclaimers, other identities are discursively (re)constructed and signify teachers and learners as the Other. The identities of the authors too, presented as researcher positionalities in each chapter, are woven into their data analysis, providing nuanced understandings of identities. Languages addressed in this book range from English learned and taught by diverse participants in various settings, to Japanese learned as a second, foreign, or heritage language by speakers of other languages, and to Indigenous languages reclaimed by community members. By presenting such diverse contexts, languages, actors, and purposes, issues of identity in Japan shed light on multiple facets of linguistic practices, beliefs, ideologies, and tensions in a distinct way.

1  Introduction to Language Learning, Teaching… 

11

The book is divided into four parts: English language learner identity, Indigenous language reclamation and identity, Japanese language learner identity, and English language teacher identity. Chapters present original qualitative research and expand our understandings of facets of identities as evident in language education in the Japanese context and likely in other contexts as well. By questioning assumptions and investigating the heretofore under-researched, this volume adds nuance and complexity to what is often seen as a homogenous society and gives greater insight and understandings for students and scholars both in Japan and around the world.

References Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. Verso. Anya, U. (2017). Racialized identities in second language learning: Speaking blackness in Brazil. Routledge. Appleby, R. (2014). Men and masculinities in global English language teaching. Palgrave Macmillan. Barkhuizen, G. (Ed.). (2017). Reflections on language teacher identity research. Routledge. Befu, H. (2001). Hegemony of homogeneity: An anthropological analysis of “Nihonjinron”. Trans Pacific Press. Benesch, S. (2012). Considering emotions in critical English language teaching: Theories and praxis. Routledge. Block, D. (2014). Social class and applied linguistics. Routledge. Block, D., Gray, J., & Holborrow, M. (2012). Neoliberalism and applied linguistics. Routledge. Bucholtz, M., & Hall, K. (2004). Language and identity. In A. Duranti (Ed.), A companion to linguistic anthropology (pp. 369–394). Blackwell. Doerr, N. M. (Ed.). (2020). The global education effect and Japan: Constructing new borders and identification practices. Routledge. Flores, N., & Rosa, J. (2015). Undoing appropriateness: Raciolinguistic ideologies and language diversity in education. Harvard Educational Review, 85(2), 149–171. https://doi.org/10.17763/0017-­8055.85.2.149

12 

R. Kubota

Gkonou, C., Dewaele, J.-M., & King, J. (Eds.). (2020). The emotional rollercoaster of language teaching. Multilingual Matters. Gottlieb, N. (2005). Language and society in Japan. Cambridge University Press. Hashimoto, K. (2013). ‘English-only’, but not a medium-of-instruction policy: The Japanese way of internationalising education for both domestic and overseas students. Current Issues in Language Planning, 14(1), 16–33. https://doi. org/10.1080/14664208.2013.789956 Hashimoto, K. (2018). Japanese language teachers’ views on native speakers and “easy Japanese”. In S. A. Houghton, D. J. Rivers, & K. Hashimoto (Eds.), Beyond native-speakerism: Current exploration and future visions (pp. 132–146). Routledge. Heinrich, P. (2012). The making of monolingual Japan: Language ideology and Japanese modernity. Multilingual Matters. Heinrich, P., & Ohara, Y. (Eds.). (2019). Routledge handbook of Japanese sociolinguistics. Routledge. Higgins, C. (Ed.). (2011). Identity formation in global contexts: Language learning in the new millennium. Mouton de Gruyter. Hooper, D., & Hashimoto, N. (2020). Teacher narratives from the eikaiwa classroom: Moving beyond “McEnglish.” Candlin & Mynard ePublishing. Jaspers, J., & Madsen, L. M. (Eds.). (2019). Critical perspectives on linguistic fixity and fluidity: Languagised lives. Routledge. Kamada, L. (2010). Hybrid identities and adolescent girls: Being "half" in Japan. Multilingual Matters. Kang, O., & Rubin, D. L. (2009). Reverse linguistic stereotyping: Measuring the effect of listener expectations on speech evaluation. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 28(4), 441–456. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 0261927X09341950 Kanno, Y. (2003). Negotiating bilingual and bicultural identities: Japanese returnees betwixt two worlds. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Kanno, Y. (2008). Language and education in Japan: Unequal access to bilingualism. Palgrave Macmillan. Kramsch, C. (2009). The multilingual subject. Oxford University Press. Kubota, R. (2011). Learning a foreign language as leisure and consumption: Enjoyment, desire, and the business of eikaiwa. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 14(4), 473–488. https://doi.org/1 0.1080/13670050.2011.573069

1  Introduction to Language Learning, Teaching… 

13

Kubota, R. (2013). Language and education for returnees. In C.  Chapelle (Ed.), Encyclopedia of applied linguistics. Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/ 9781405198431.wbeal0652 Kubota, R. (2016). The multi/plural turn, postcolonial theory, and neoliberal multiculturalism: Complicities and implications for applied linguistics. Applied Linguistics, 37(4), 474–494. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amu045 Kubota, R. (2019). English in Japan. In P.  Heinrich & Y.  Ohara (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of Japanese sociolinguistics (pp. 110–126). Routledge. Kubota, R. (2020). Foreign language education in Japan. In W.  Pink (Ed.), Oxford research encyclopedia of education. Oxford University Press. https:// doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.835 Kubota, R., & McKay, S. (2009). Globalization and language learning in rural Japan: The role of English in the local linguistic ecology. TESOL Quarterly, 43(4), 593–619. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1545-­7249.2009.tb00188.x Maher, J.  C. (2005). Metroethnicity, language, and the principle of cool. International Journal of Sociology of Language, 175–176, 83–102. https://doi. org/10.1515/ijsl.2005.2005.175-­176.83 McCarty, T. L. (2020). The holistic benefits of education for indigenous language revitalisation and reclamation (ELR2). Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2020.1827647. Advance Online Publication. Nagamoto, D.  H. (2016). Identity, gender and teaching English in Japan. Multilingual Matters. Nakane, I., Otsuji, E., & Armour, W. (Eds.). (2015). Languages and identities in a transitional Japan: From internationalization to globalization. Routledge. Norton, B. (2013). Identity and language learning: Extending the conversation (2nd ed.). Multilingual Matters. Norton, B., & De Costa, P. I. (2018). Research tasks on identity in language learning and teaching. Language Teaching, 51(1), 90–112. https://doi. org/10.1017/S0261444817000325 Okamoto, S., & Shibamoto-Smith, J. (2016). The social life of the Japanese language: Cultural discourses and situated practice. Cambridge University Press. Okano, K. (2021). Education and social justice in Japan. Routledge. Otomo, R. (2019). Language and migration in Japan. In P. Heinrich & Y. Ohara (Eds.), Routledge handbook of Japanese sociolinguistics (pp. 91–109). Routledge. Park, G. (2017). Narratives of east Asian women teachers of English: Where privilege meets marginalization. Multilingual Matters.

14 

R. Kubota

Park, J.  S.-Y. (2020). Translating culture in the global workplace: Language, communication, and diversity management. Applied Linguistics, 41(1), 109–128. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amz019 Pratt, M. L. (2008). Imperial eyes: Travel writing and transculturation (2nd ed.). Routledge. Rivers, D. J., & Ross, A. S. (2013). Uncovering stereotypes: Intersections of race and English native-speakerhood. In S.  A. Houghton, Y.  Furumura, M. Lebedko, & S. Li (Eds.), Critical cultural awareness: Managing stereotypes through intercultural (language) education (pp. 42–61). Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Rubdy, R., & Alsagoff, L. (Eds.). (2013). The global-local interface and hybridity: Exploring language and identity. Multilingual Matters. Seargeant, P. (Ed.). (2011). English in Japan in the era of globalization. Palgrave Macmillan. Simon-Maeda, A. (2011). Being and becoming a speaker of Japanese: An autoethnographic account. Multilingual Matters. Smith, L. T. (2021). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples (3rd ed.). Zed Books. Stanley, P. (2013). A critical ethnography of “westerns” teaching English in China: Shanghaied in Shanghai. Routledge. Sugimoto, Y. (2014). Japanese society: Inside out and outside in. International Sociology, 29(3), 191–208. https://doi.org/10.1177/0268580914530416 Tajima, M. (2018). Gendered constructions of Filipina teachers in Japan’s skype English conversation industry. Journal of SocioLinguistics, 22(1), 100–117. https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12272 Tsukada, H. (2013). The internationalization of higher education as a site of self-­ positioning: Intersecting imaginations of Chinese international students and universities in Japan [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University of British Columbia. Tupas, R. (Ed.). (2015). Unequal Englishes: The politics of Englishes today. Palgrave. Weedon, C. (1997). Feminist practice and poststructuralist theory. Blackwell Publishing. Wyman, L.  T., McCarty, T.  L., & Nicholas, S.  E. (Eds.). (2014). Indigenous youth and multilingualism: Language identity, ideology, and practice in dynamic cultural worlds. Routledge.

Part I English Language Learner Identity

2 English Language Learners’ Discursive Constructions of National and Global Identities in the Japanese University Context Martin Mielick

National identity in Japan has been a strong foundation for its culture and traditional underpinnings at first glance (Gottlieb, 2005), yet concepts of national identity often ignore the diversity of identity and plurilingual conditions that can be found in modern Japanese society (Befu, 2001). In particular, one major influence to consider is the role of globalization in English language teaching in Japan and how this may be affecting language learners’ identities and ideological perceptions of ‘Otherness’ (Said, 1978). According to Kubota (2017, p. 288), “the neoliberal promotion of English is complemented by neoconservative emphasis on national identity,” which in turn emboldens nihonjinron thesis claims, a discourse that emphasizes Japanese ‘uniqueness.’ But how is this phenomenon externally represented in English language learners’ discourses in Japanese universities and what role does learning English play in shaping students’ identities?

M. Mielick (*) Canterbury Christ Church University, Canterbury, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Mielick et al. (eds.), Discourses of Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11988-0_2

17

18 

M. Mielick

This chapter examines the differing discursive constructions of identity made by three Japanese university students at a foreign-languages university through semi-structured interviews using a multiple case study approach. The approach also used a question guide which specifically focused on investigating national and global identities. The discussion of national identity focuses on Japan, of course, but there are also references to countries including the US and India, native-speaker identity and non-Japanese identity. The discussion of global identity is framed within the ideological bracket of using English as a global language and, in turn, what it means to be global.

Literature Review  ational Identity, Nationalism, and the Nihonjinron N Thesis in Japan National identity may be defined as the primordial source of belonging to a nation (Geertz, 1963) acting as a “system of cultural representations” (Wodak et al., 1999, p. 22) and/or an imagined community (Anderson, 1983) for its people, although a postmodern view conceptualizes national identity as discursively constructed. The national ‘spirit’ has a long history of importance and relevance to the Japanese people, and this topic forms the basis of discussion for much of this chapter. The discursive construction of national identity has been investigated rigorously by Wodak et al. (1999), and they provide categorization of the ways that discourses can be constructed through discursive strategies, albeit predominantly based upon research in the Austrian and wider European contexts. This topic is also explored in detail by Anderson (1983), Billig (1995), Hall (1996), Calhoun (1997), and Smith (2001), and each of them discusses how the importance of nationhood interacts with the notions of identity. Looking specifically at the Japanese context, Gottlieb (2005, 2007) also discusses aspects of Japanese national identity, mostly in connection to how a combination of language and identity acts as a basis for social identification. There may be ample reason for this in

2  English Language Learners’ Discursive Constructions… 

19

Japan considering examples provided by Doi (1973) as cited in Kawai (2007, p. 41), whereby the Japanese language “comprises [of ] everything which is intrinsic to the ‘soul’ of a nation,” a concept which may also be referred to as kotodama, “the ‘spirit’ of the Japanese language” (Gottlieb, 2007, p. 192). Dale’s (1986) somewhat controversial The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness could be regarded as a “strategy of demontage or dismantling” (Wodak et al., 1999, p. 42) of the self-identity stereotypes that exist in Japan. Dale heavily criticizes the self-perceived uniqueness of the Japanese, building on Miller’s (1982) Japan’s Modern Myth: The Language and Beyond, which highlighted different essentialisms in Japan. However, there are some credible contextual interpretations of the many features of the nihonjinron thesis made by Dale which may still be applicable even now. For example, arguments like “the nihonjinron’s endless discussion of differences between Japan and the West” (Dale, 1986, p. 39) still seem poignant, and elements of this are evident in mainstream Japanese media, especially TV programs. Kubota (1999) also explored this concept in relation to pedagogy and research in Japan and its implications for how Japanese culture is discursively constructed. Adding to this, there is still a vast array of popular modern literature which reflects the nihonjinron thesis, proclaiming that the Japanese are uniquely different within the world, which ironically could be considered a unique discourse in itself. In considering the relationship between this sociocultural phenomenon and everyday teaching at universities in Japan, there may be a wide range of discourses that practitioners have experienced through students’ written and spoken text. For example, do students write or say certain things which seem to reflect the nihonjinron thesis or a similar ideology? If so, to what extent can this discourse be considered otherizing, ethnocentric, or xenophobic, or simply seen as a representation of Japanese culture? Befu (2001) argues that the appreciation of the actual diversity that exists in Japan is rather lacking, and there is a growing trend for this to be made more apparent in institutional and educational discourse as we see ‘newcomer’ identities form communities in Japanese society. Investigation into this issue has been made by Rear (2017), who discusses alternatives to this nationalist hegemonic discourse, and thus there is ongoing research being done on how such discourse is manifest. Nevertheless, research is

20 

M. Mielick

not particularly prevalent in educational institutions where it may be sorely needed. One exception is Bouchard’s (2015) analysis of nihonjinron discourse in Japanese junior high school English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms where it was found to be rather commonplace, most likely dictated by revisionist government-instructed curriculum reform (Kolmaš, 2020). The Japanese historical context is the backdrop for much of what may be claimed by nationalist Japanese arguments in the nihonjinron thesis, and it is explored comprehensively by McVeigh (2004). His arguments are rather broad but most relevant to an evaluation of modern Japanese society may be his discussion of “postimperial ethnos nationalism: homogeneity, uniqueness, and peace” (McVeigh, 2004, p. 203), which highlights the importance of national unity, cultural integrity, and peace after defeat in the Second World War. It is claimed by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT, 2002), politicians, and mainstream media that Japan has moved on and this current era is Japan’s internationalization (kokusaika), whereby one of the main goals is to increase English language proficiency as a tool to express Japanese beliefs and identity on a global platform (Hashimoto, 2009). However, is this truly in effect at ground level? Morita (2013) explored how this concept is affecting Japanese university students’ attitudes toward globalization and English, yet found those attitudes to be mixed in nature.

English Language Learners’ ‘Global’ Outlook in Japan Having a global identity and being a ‘global citizen’ is a rather complex sociological and psychological issue, so within this section discussion is limited to how learning English may be a global, international act and/or how it forms part of non-Japanese identity. Of course, to learn and speak English does not simply make one globally minded either, and this should not be presupposed (Polyzou, 2015). A sense of purpose and self-direction in modern societies is important for university students as we deal with global “transformations [which] are so messy and unpredictable that we can only understand globalization

2  English Language Learners’ Discursive Constructions… 

21

as a complex of processes” (Rubdy & Alsagoff, 2014, p.  1). It is these ‘processes’ which also may be evident in Japan, such as learning a/the ‘global’ language of English. Phillipson’s (1992, 2009) cynicism of the term ‘global’ English and his critique of the global power of the English language seems questionable when there is such “a desire for English” (Seargeant, 2009, p. 106) in Japan and the stark reality that “the language operates as an influential cultural force within Japanese society” (Seargeant, 2009, p. 43). Kubota’s (2002, 2017) discussion of the impact of globalization on language teaching in Japan is also testament to the huge role English plays in modern language education. For example, it is assumed that “learning English leads to international and intercultural understanding,” which Kubota (2002, p. 22) strongly critiques. However, it seems that this is driven in Japan by educational reform and continues to be a dominant kokusaika discourse. Another question to ponder is whether globalization is simply a term for ‘Westernization’ and the breaking down of cultural boundaries, which is an argument Phillipson also implies. Thus, we must consider the effect that “the other side of globalization is increased nationalism” (Kubota, 2002, p. 13), with major influences such as reforms to English language education (MEXT, 2011) and the ‘McDonaldization’ of English in eikaiwas (private English conversation schools) in Japan (Hooper & Hashimoto, 2020) contributing to this complex situation. I argue that processes which affect language learning, like the above, are evidence that Japan is trying or struggling to deal with “the general tension between nation-state and globalization” (Wodak et al., 1999, p. 5). Kawai’s (2007) discussion of Japanese nationalism and the global spread of English is also a prime evaluation of the social reality occurring in Japan with regards to the views on the power of global English and its effects on Japanese cultural identity. Grounding this more in an educational context, if learners of English are ‘happy’ or at least satisfied to co-exist with their learner-self, appreciate national tradition, and globalize through learning English at the same time, then surely this is admirable and/or a phenomenon which needs further investigation. In contrast though is the possibility, through continued internationalization (in Japan), that English language learners’ discursive constructions of the self and others confound stereotypes further. As an example, Kubota (2017,

22 

M. Mielick

p. 292), states that the following conceptual linkages are commonplace in Japan: “foreign language = standard (American) English = being global/ international = spoken by native speakers = white people,” and such essentialism is a danger that needs action through further education to counteract such beliefs. Consideration of how “individuals may be ‘more or less’ members of ideological groups” (van Dijk, 2006, p. 119) could be a differentiating factor to how commonplace views like the above are in Japan though. For example, discourse in the interviews conducted in this study could also be interpreted just at the individual level and people have their own agency to react to different discourses in society. This chapter therefore investigates how Japanese learners of English conceptualize national and global identity, and these were my two main research questions: (a) How do Japanese university EFL students’ discursively construct their national and global self-identities? (b) How are Japanese, ‘Western’ or non-Japanese identity and discourses about Others discursively constructed? While the focus of this study is students’ national and global self-­ identities, it is important to note that other identity features, including gender, sexuality, social, multilingual, and online, contribute to the formation of their self-identities.

Methodology Overview This chapter reports on a study with three interviewees who were Japanese university students. Interviews were performed in English, and this inevitably had an impact upon the students’ range of language available. The rationale behind this was twofold: I am not a fluent Japanese speaker and it is precisely how such discourse is communicated when using English that I wished to investigate. Employing a qualitative multiple case study approach, informal semi-structured interviews were held within a large

2  English Language Learners’ Discursive Constructions… 

23

self-access learning centre (SALC) at a Japanese foreign languages university in the Kanto region. Interviews were between 20 and 30  minutes long, and I tried to remain as casual, interactive, and conversational as possible in this SALC environment, which promotes independent learning and autonomous choices in study and use of English. However, my researcher positionality may have been an influential factor in the interviews. My role as a white British male teacher within the university may have inevitably affected the power domains which were in place. Nevertheless, I had never taught these students before and I was unfamiliar with their background until the interviews were conducted. The main aims while collecting data were to focus on “managing subjectivity” and “to delve deep into the subjective qualities that govern behaviour” (Holliday, 2016, p. 6), being led by student discourse while appreciating “the importance of listening” (Mann, 2016, p. 116). However, in ‘managing subjectivity,’ issues such as being from a different culture to the students, my age, my stereotypically native speaker background and appearance, having different beliefs about Japan, and my role as a teacher interviewing students were all elements which may have affected the interviews and the interpretations I have made later on. The following questions are examples which guided the semi-­structured interviews: • • • • • •

What is ‘being global’? Do you think English is a global language? Why/Why not? Do you think you are a global person? Why/Why not? What parts of your identity are important to you? How important is your Japanese identity to you? Why? If you met someone who didn’t know anything about Japan, what would you tell them about Japan and Japanese people?

The aim of asking these questions was to see “how people create, sustain, change, and pass on their shared values, beliefs and behaviour” (Heigham & Sakui, 2009, p. 93).

24 

M. Mielick

Participants Interviewees were recruited by informally approaching them in the SALC. They were asked whether they would like to chat about the role of English in Japan and how it may affect their Japanese identity. No appointments were made per se, and these interviews were therefore spontaneous. Typically, students have four years of English language education at this university, they have had study and/or travelling abroad experience, and they get regular opportunities to communicate with exchange students and non-Japanese ‘native-speaker’ teachers predominantly from the US and the UK.

Tatsuki Tatsuki was two months into his first semester of his second year at the time of interview. He was majoring in International Business Communication. Tatsuki was a local student to this university in the Kanto region.

Daiki Daiki was a third-year student who had just spent a year studying abroad in the US at a community college. He studied in the English Department for his major. He was from Tokyo, and his family owned a restaurant in the tourist hotspot area of Asakusa in Tokyo.

Shion Shion was a fourth-year student also from the English Department. At the time of interviewing, she was in her final few weeks of her time at university almost ready to graduate. Shion was from a rural part of Yamanashi prefecture.

2  English Language Learners’ Discursive Constructions… 

25

Framework for Analysis The analysis applied elements of the framework of the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) (Reisigl & Wodak, 2016). When analyzing discourse using this framework, important categorization can be applied in order to better analyze particular discourses and, in turn, potentially unravel the discursive strategies that have been employed. Reisigl and Wodak (2016, pp.  42–44) categorize these discursive strategies which can be summarized as follows and are those which I used to analyze each data extract: 1. Nomination—focusing on agency, social actors, and the way that persons, objects, phenomena, events, and processes are referred to linguistically. 2. Predication—focusing on what characteristics, qualities, and features are attributed to the above nominations. 3. Argumentation—focusing on arguments employed within the specific discourses and the qualification of views, beliefs, and ideologies that have been espoused. 4. Perspectivization—focusing on what positionality or perspectives these nominations, attributions, and arguments are made from. 5. Mitigation and intensification—focusing on whether utterances are articulated explicitly, intensified, or mitigated.

Data Analysis and Findings The following four data samples are examples which were of particular interest in light of the literature review. Discursive strategies were employed and are identified following each excerpt.

26 

M. Mielick

Tatsuki In this section of the interview, we were discussing the role that learning English plays in affecting identity and how there may have been a separation or hybridity between national and global markedness: T: So when I use English in Japan, I am Japanese and English is just tool to communicate but when, for example, in this summer when I went to India, I used English to communicate with Indian people. Of course, their mother tongue is Hindi, or some other language, but they also used English, so in this case I felt like I’m Japanese and I’m global, kind of global person.

1. In this excerpt, we see forms of nomination such as ‘I’m Japanese and I’m global’. He references India and the Hindi language, and he constructs language ideologies about English. 2. Predication is made by implying that a global person is someone who speaks English with a non-Japanese person. In this case, it is probably not a native speaker, in his belief, as he implies that Hindi, “of course,” is their first language, not English. 3. Argumentation is qualified by the reductionist assessment of the power of English when used in Japan, as it is “just tool,” but when used abroad, elements of his identity open up to become more fluid and global, in his view. This may have been qualified as a language belief at school (date unknown) because he later mentions why English works as an important international communicative tool: T: Learning English is interesting for me because to get a new knowledge I think is good, when I communicate with foreign people I can use English and we can communicate, communicate very enjoyable. M: Right okay, so why did you choose English and not another language? T: (3  seconds) Why? Why? Because my teacher told me “you should learn English not Chinese or any other language” and then I asked him “why we have to learn English?” He said “because the English nowadays a lot of countries using English as a second language” or something like this so “if you can use English, you can communicate or talk with them” he said.

2  English Language Learners’ Discursive Constructions… 

27

1. Tatsuki’s positionality is to acknowledge his national identity, even when abroad using English, so he still maintains the core element of national identity while traveling. This is mentioned twice but being global to him seems in tandem with his Japaneseness. 2. Intensification is manifest in sentence stress highlighted in italics. He somewhat mitigates having global identity through using English as being a “kind of global person” at the end.

Daiki At the start of the interview, I had very openly asked him which aspects of his identity were most important to him. He then reflected upon his time studying abroad and the importance of the Japanese language to his identity: M: Okay, so do you feel that’s an important part of your identity to use Japanese to talk about things personally? D: Yeah…true, true, because Japanese language is my identity so I wanna speak Japanese for some reason because when I speak Japanese I feel most like I’m Japanese. That comes from my experience, you know, like at first I didn’t wanna speak Japanese with my friend in the US, that wasn’t the reason, I wanted to improve my English so I don’t wanna speak Japanese and I just ignore my friend but I, three months passed, and I realised I feel like I’m alone because I stopped speaking Japanese. For some reason, I feel like I wanna speak Japanese so I started Japanese and I realised it’s like one of my identity so… M: When did you start feeling anxious or you felt like you wanted to speak Japanese more? D: It’s like a situation because I ignore my friend, Japanese friend, and then I was isolated and I feel like my identity was not sure because I’m Japanese actually, I cannot ignore that right? But like I don’t have any opportunity to feel like I’m Japanese as a Japanese.

1. Nomination of the word ‘Japanese’ is made 13 times in reference to his national identity, Japanese language , and his Japanese friend.

28 

M. Mielick

2. Predication is constructed rather directly in examples such as “Japanese language is my identity” and through the claim that when he speaks Japanese, he feels ‘most’ Japanese. 3. Argumentation is given in a primordial sense such as “I’m Japanese actually” and through the claim that “I feel like I’m alone because I stopped speaking Japanese.” The importance of the connection between language and identity is most prominent throughout. 4. Daiki’s perspectivization comes from studying abroad in the ‘Western,’ American, native speaker context. By studying abroad and reflecting upon his experiences, he constructs how his national identity was eroded through the lack of use of his first language. 5. There are examples of where Daiki mitigates the reasoning for feeling the need to speak Japanese such as “for some reason, I feel like I wanna speak Japanese”. Yet later he is explicit with his references by saying he felt “alone.” He also uses a rhetorical question to garner support for his logical reasoning in the example, “I’m Japanese actually, I cannot ignore that right?”

Shion Earlier in the interview, we were discussing the issues of global English and native-speakerism and, later, how speaking English with a Japanese accent marked her identity. This led her to construct ideas about her national identity quite explicitly: M: Yeah, so your Japanese accent when you speak English, do you feel that’s part of your identity then also? S: Yes… M: And how important is that to you? S: Hhmm…(4 seconds)…I’m..still..Japanese…and I’m proud of being Japanese but as a person who speaks English so I was born and grew up in Japan and learn another language so I don’t want to, how do you say, abandon or give up the Japanese… M: Yeah, you don’t want to lose those parts? S: Yeah, yeah.

2  English Language Learners’ Discursive Constructions… 

29

M: So what are the important parts of your Japanese identity then that like you said, you don’t want to lose? S: I still love this country and this, don’t like some parts, haha, but I like this country and the people and the cultures and if I try to be different person like English native speaker, I wouldn’t be able to see Japanese beautiful things like cultures and how we interact with people is different from different countries so…I still want to cherish my experience but my heart beats Japanese people. As a Japanese, we are different people so…(3 seconds). M: It’s still very important to you I can see.

1. Nomination in this excerpt is complex. She makes reference to being Japanese numerous times but also with the caveat as a “person who speaks English.” She references Japanese “people,” “country,” “different countries,” “cultures,” her “heart” or kokoro (see Rear, 2017, p.9), and English native-speakerism. 2. Predication of her Japanese identity is constructed as prideful, and as a person who speaks English in tandem. However, there is clearly some conflict as she states she doesn’t want to “abandon or give up” her Japanese traits. The reference to an “English native-speaker” seems essentialist as she claims that if she were a native speaker, she “wouldn’t be able to see Japanese beautiful things like cultures.” She also claims that “as a Japanese, we are different people” and that Japanese people interact differently to people in other countries, much of which is in line with the nihonjinron thesis discussion in the literature review, and this is indicative of a “discursive construction of difference” (Wodak et al., 1999, p.174; also see Dale, 1986, p.38). 3. Significantly, there is little argumentation or supporting evidence for her claims. This is probably because they are based on n ­ ihonjinron-­based myth. She claims, “I still love this country,” which may act as a basis for the rationale of such claims. 4. Shion’s perspective comes after four years of university education, study and traveling abroad experience, and communication with exchange students and non-Japanese teachers, yet she still adopts a somewhat essentialist tone, particularly about English native speakers. 5. Most answers are direct and claims about Japaneseness are made explicitly. She intensifies her claims through using the word ‘different’

30 

M. Mielick

three times in the above excerpt. Notably, she also used the word ‘different’ a further six times in another part of the interview: M: Okay, so why do you like communicating with exchange students? Y: I think a good point of that is to be able to see from different perspectives. We learn some about other countries, maybe the history of America or different places…but because I…I could talk to the people from different place and grew up different cultures, they see Japan differently, they see the same things differently so the cultures and ideas and that kind of thing.

Discussion Tatsuki’s claims about being global and using English in a country where it is an official language shows practicality, but national identity is still maintained as the core element of identity and indeed English is “just tool to communicate” (also see Kubota, 2013). This language ideology may be widespread in Japan, and it may be a marker of the importance of what university students think the purpose of their learning of English is or indeed whether English language education in universities in Japan is particularly practical or useful for some students, especially for those graduates who go on to never use English in their daily life ever again. In Tatsuki’s second excerpt, there is some evidence to suggest that his beliefs about English and what it may mean to be global was affected by his educational institution. As mentioned above, he says that “my teacher told me ‘you should learn English not Chinese or any other language,’” and this may be a direct reflection of kokusaika discourse and educational messaging through curriculum reform. For example, the exclusion of other languages’ importance (Chinese) to communicate internationally is stressed, even though Japan’s biggest trading partner is China and most inbound visitors are from Asian countries where their first language is not English. Tatsuki’s experience with his teacher may also be a reason why English is now part of his identity as he chose to study it for four years and has used it in an international setting in India as a global language.

2  English Language Learners’ Discursive Constructions… 

31

In regards to Daiki’s interview, credibility should still be given to research, which has investigated the relationship between language and identity in Japan (Gottlieb, 2007). There is still clearly an important link between the two for some Japanese students learning English based on the data I collected. For example, here are three examples of what Daiki said: 1. …when I speak Japanese I feel most like I’m Japanese. 2. …Japanese language is my identity 3. …three months passed, and I realised I feel like I’m alone because I stopped speaking Japanese.

The above examples may be evidence of how national self-identity is discursively constructed, one of the key aims in answering the research questions for this study. Daiki, having studied abroad in the US, presumably wanting to be more global, actually felt a loss of identity. Therefore, it may be questionable whether being global by studying abroad has had any long-lasting effect on his sense of global identity or in fact, what this concept truly means at all for many students who do study abroad. I suggest that further research be done to uncover the deeper ideological aspects of the relationship between learning English and identity change which in this case points to the feeling of becoming ‘more global’ (as a nation) or acting as an erosion of national identity (as an individual). This would help determine how language learning influences students’ identity so that we can better understand the interrelationship between the two. Evidence of the nihonjinron thesis may be found in Shion’s interview if we take her claim at face value. For example, she says, “if I try to be different person like English native speaker, I wouldn’t be able to see Japanese beautiful things like cultures.” At first, my assumption was to consider this highly essentialist, otherizing, and a solidification of stereotypical views of those with non-Japanese identity because my interpretation considered that Shion was saying that only those with Japanese national identity can “see” elements of Japanese culture. On the one hand, this kind of discourse could be considered exclusionary to a non-Japanese person with non-Japanese positionality, but, on the other hand, this could be

32 

M. Mielick

interpreted just as a declaration of her own positionality (as Japanese) and patriotism for her country. It could also be a signifier of her awareness of her Japanese accent and her rejection of English in changing her core Japanese identity. For example, if she tried to practice English to sound like a native speaker of English, perhaps she thinks she wouldn’t be able to embrace “Japanese beautiful things” because she would be assimilated. Nevertheless, Shion had studied for four years at an internationally focused institution, yet she has discursively constructed Japanese identity and Others in terms of difference, which could serve a useful purpose for her ability to understand other cultures, but could also be considered an essentialist basis for gaining international understanding. For example, in Shion’s second excerpt, we see the reason why she likes communicating with exchange students is to notice ‘difference.’ Why? We must ask ourselves as educators, what good a focus on understanding and intensifying difference does. In what Miller (1982) termed as “reverse-orientalism,” have views about Others in Japan not changed in 40 years? Research by Hogg and Abrams (1998, p. 22) suggests that there is “a tendency to positively evaluate all stereotypic properties of the ‘ingroup’ (the phenomenon of ethnocentrism).” Shion’s discourse may be a reflection of a positive self-identity evaluation by highlighting her ability to appreciate Japanese cultural beauty. However, is she also implying, therefore, that non-­ Japanese do not have this innate ability? If the latter interpretation is made, the above discourse may reflect some of the claims about Japanese ethnocentrism, found largely in the nihonjinron thesis, thus perpetuating the perceived homogeniszd Japanese national identity and its uniqueness. In all three interviews, there is some evidence to suggest that national identity is an important marker in terms of the respondents’ “hierarchy of identities” (Omoniyi, 2006): 1 . Tatsuki—“I am Japanese and English is just tool to communicate”. 2. Daiki—“I’m Japanese actually, I cannot ignore that right?” and “Japanese language is my identity”. 3. Shion—“I’m..still..Japanese” and “I still love this country”. The above data may be useful to understand how torn, how confused, or, in contrast, how confident students may feel in terms of their identity

2  English Language Learners’ Discursive Constructions… 

33

in times of Japan’s ongoing internationalization. The study may also assist educators in understanding the importance of Japanese national identity that may exist in Japanese university EFL classrooms. For example, it must not be presupposed that those learning English have any particular interest in being global or using English for global purposes. Non-­ Japanese educators may be surprised to find that some students’ views on their national identity and Others are somewhat fixed or stereotypical, and therefore teaching international communication may be very challenging if essentialist ideologies form the backdrop of sharing and discussing culture. That is not to say that there are not students who fully embrace the experiences of international communication, cultural learnings, and changes in their identity while at university, and this study is not a call to abandon the ongoing education of internationalization or the teaching of (global) English in Japan.

Conclusion Based on the above interviews and my ongoing research, I argue that Japanese university students learning English may be prone to espousing discourse which could be interpreted as essentialist due to the focus on cultural comparison of difference with Japaneseness. Furthermore, discourse which reflects essentialist features of Japanese identity as a starting point and basis of comparison often highlights nihonjinron features within such discourse. I also argue that these three university students believe these comparisons are “innocent discourses” (Holliday, 2013, p. 127). This is because they may have fallen victim to a strategy of “singularisation” with a “presupposition of/emphasis on national (positive) uniqueness” (Wodak et al., 1999, p. 38) since an early age through educational reform that has focused on kokusaika principles, (the expression of Japanese points of view to the world), and the promotion of “love [of ] the country” (Kubota, 2017, p. 292). Discourse in education, Japanese media (TV in particular), and political discourses have been strongly influenced by the nihonjinron thesis, and they may have also played a part in shaping the discursive constructions of what it means to be Japanese, to learn English, and ‘to be global’ for university EFL students.

34 

M. Mielick

Considering the above data and my view that some students may think their discourse is ‘innocent’, argumentation schemes which employ a “topos of difference” (Wodak et al., 1999, p. 42) in comparison to non-­ Japanese identities could be perceived as “culturist” (Holliday, 2013, p.  127) if the “thought or act which reduces people to something less than they are” (Holliday, 2005, p. 17) forms the basis of discursive constructions about non-Japanese. Therefore, non-Japanese educators should not underestimate the power of local nationalized discourse and how it can shape the perception of themselves as educators and the curriculum they teach, thus affecting classroom discourse and overall TESOL pedagogy in Japan. I suggest this study could also aid educational institutions in the design of their curriculum by, avoiding essentialist comparisons based on national grounds. The study may also act as a warning for educators who conduct classroom practice with the expectation of students espousing globalized views or nonlocalized ideologies. This in turn may make it easier for all educators in Japan to identify and advise students on how they could discursively construct other nations, languages, and cultures more neutrally and to avoid essentialism. Kubota’s (2017, p. 287) theory that “the teaching of communication skills in English [is] in order to disseminate Japanese unique perspectives to the world” may be in flux, and therefore MEXT and Japanese society in general should be aware that essentialism in modernity and cultural prejudice or ‘culturism’ could be considered “a form of neo-racism” (Holliday, 2013, p. 126)—an undesirable tag to say the least.

References Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. Verso. Befu, H. (2001). Hegemony of homogeneity: An anthropological analysis of “Nihonjinron.”. Trans Pacific Press. Billig, M. (1995). Banal nationalism. Sage. Bouchard, J. (2015). Interrogating the presence and importance of the Nihonjinron discourse in Japanese junior high school EFL classrooms. [Doctoral dissertation,

2  English Language Learners’ Discursive Constructions… 

35

University of Birmingham]. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/6633/1/Bouchard16 PhD.pdf Calhoun, C. (1997). Nationalism. University of Minnesota Press. Dale, P. N. (1986). The myth of Japanese uniqueness. Routledge. Doi, T. (1973). The anatomy of dependence. Kodansha International. Geertz, C. (1963). The integrative revolution: Primordial sentiments and civil politics in the new states. In C. Geertz (Ed.), Old societies and new states: The quest for modernity in Asia and Africa (pp.  105–157). The Free Press of Glencoe. Gottlieb, N. (2005). Language and society in Japan. Cambridge University Press. Gottlieb, N. (2007). Japan. In A. Simpson (Ed.), Language and national identity in Asia (pp. 186–199). Oxford University Press. Hall, S. (1996). The question of cultural identity. In S. Hall, D. Held, D. Hubert, & K.  Thompson (Eds.), Modernity: An introduction to modern societies (pp. 596–632). Polity Press. Hashimoto, K. (2009). Cultivating “Japanese who can use English”: Problems and contradictions in government policy. Asian Studies Review, 33(1), 21–42. https://doi.org/10.1080/10357820802716166 Heigham, J., & Sakui, K. (2009). Ethnography. Qualitative research in applied linguistics: A practical introduction. In J.  Heigham & R.  Croker (Eds.), Qualitative research in applied linguistics: A practical introduction (pp. 91–111). Palgrave Macmillan. Hogg, M. A., & Abrams, D. (1998). Social identifications: A social psychology of intergroup relations and group processes. Routledge. Holliday, A. R. (2005). The struggle to teach English as an international language. Oxford University Press. Holliday, A. R. (2013). Understanding intercultural communication: Negotiating a grammar of culture. Routledge. Holliday, A. R. (2016). Doing and writing qualitative research. Sage. Hooper, D., & Hashimoto, N. (2020). Teacher narratives from the eikaiwa classroom: Moving beyond “McEnglish.”. Candlin & Mynard ePublishing. Kawai, Y. (2007). Japanese nationalism and the global spread of English: An analysis of Japanese governmental and public discourses on English. Language and Intercultural Communication, 7(1), 37–55. https://doi.org/10.2167/ laic174.0 Kolmaš, M. (2020). Identity change and societal pressures in Japan: The constraints on Abe Shinzo’s educational and constitutional reform. The Pacific Review, 33(2), 185–215. https://doi.org/10.1080/09512748.2018.1540497

36 

M. Mielick

Kubota, R. (1999). Japanese culture constructed by discourses: Implications for applied linguistic research and English language teaching. TESOL Quarterly, 33(1), 9–35. https://doi.org/10.2307/3588189 Kubota, R. (2002). The impact of globalization on language teaching in Japan. In D.  Block & D.  Cameron (Eds.), Globalization and language teaching (pp. 13–28). Routledge. Kubota, R. (2013). “Language is only a tool’”: Japanese expatriates working in China and implications for language teaching. Multilingual Education, 3(4), 1. https://doi.org/10.1186/2191-­5059-­3-­4 Kubota, R. (2017). Globalization and language education in Japan. In N. Van Deusen-Scholl & S.  May (Eds.), Second and foreign language education: Encyclopaedia of language and education (pp. 287–299). Springer. https://doi. org/10.1007/978-­3-­319-­02246-­8_24 Mann, S. (2016). The research interview: Reflective practice and reflexivity in research processes. Palgrave Macmillan. McVeigh, B. J. (2004). Nationalisms of Japan: Managing and mystifying identity. Rowman and Littlefield. MEXT. (2002). Towards advancement of “academic ability”: Increased efforts for the secure improvement of “academic ability”: Efforts by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. http://www.mext.go. jp/b_menu/hakusho/html/hpac200201/hpac200201_2_015.html MEXT (2011). Five proposals and specific measures for developing proficiency in English for international communication. http://www.mext.go. jp/component/b_menu/shingi/toushin/__icsFiles/afieldfile/2011/ 07/13/1308401_1.pdf Miller, R. (1982). Japan’s modern myth: The language and beyond. Weatherhill. Morita, L. (2013). Japanese university students’ attitudes towards globalisation, intercultural contexts and English. World Journal of English Language, 3(4), 31–41. https://doi.org/10.5430/wjel.v3n4p31 Omoniyi, T. (2006). Hierarchy of identities. In T. Omoniyi & G. White (Eds.), The sociolinguistics of identity (pp. 11–33). Bloomsbury. Phillipson, R. (1992). Linguistic imperialism. Oxford University Press. Phillipson, R. (2009). Linguistic imperialism continued. Routledge. Polyzou, A. (2015). Presupposition in discourse: Theoretical and methodological issues. Critical Discourse Studies, 12(2), 123–138. https://doi.org/10.108 0/17405904.2014.991796

2  English Language Learners’ Discursive Constructions… 

37

Rear, D. (2017). A critical analysis of Japanese identity discourse: Alternatives to the hegemony of nihonjinron. Journal of Critical Perspectives on Asia, 53(2), 1–27. Reisigl, M., & Wodak, R. (2016). The discourse-historical approach (DHA). In R.  Wodak & M.  Meyer (Eds.), Methods for critical discourse analysis (pp. 23–61). Sage. Rubdy, R., & Alsagoff, L. (Eds.). (2014). The global-local interface and hybridity: Exploring language and identity. Multilingual Matters. Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. Routledge. Seargeant, P. (2009). The idea of English in Japan: Ideology and the evolution of a global language. Multilingual Matters. Smith, A. D. (2001). Nationalism. Polity Press. van Dijk, T.  A. (2006). Ideology and discourse analysis. Journal of Political Ideologies, 11(2), 115–140. https://doi.org/10.1080/13569310600687908 Wodak, R., de Cillia, R., Reisigl, M., Liebhart, K., & (Eds.). (1999). The discursive construction of national identity. Edinburgh University Press.

3 Becoming the Paths we Tread: Negotiating Identity through an Ideological Landscape of Practice Daniel Hooper

The field of English language teaching (ELT) in Japan, it has been argued by numerous scholars, exists as a binary of two ideologically distinct perspectives (Hiramoto, 2013; Hosoki, 2011; Nagatomo, 2016). The first is eigo (translated as “English”), focusing predominantly on test preparation by teaching discrete grammatical forms, often through the use of yakudoku (a Japanese derivative of the grammar translation approach). The other is eikaiwa (translated as “English conversation”), which aims to develop spoken communicative ability in English and tends to be more aligned with “Western” perspectives on language learning. This alignment is also reflected in the favoring of “English-only” policies and “Western” pedagogical methodologies such as communicative language teaching. By analyzing the experiences of two users of the English Lounge, a social learning space within a university self-access learning center, I foreground the agency—“the socioculturally mediated capacity to act” (Ahearn, 2001, p. 112)—of individual learners embracing, rejecting, or

D. Hooper (*) Hakuoh University, Tochigi, Japan © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Mielick et al. (eds.), Discourses of Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11988-0_3

39

40 

D. Hooper

reconciling various ideologically marked views on English learning as they embark on their trajectories across the landscape of Japanese ELT. In addition, utilizing Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner’s (2015) landscapes of practice framework, I explore the interplay between developing knowledgeability (learning) and developing identity (becoming). This is based on the communities of practice (Wenger, 1998) throughout their historical learning trajectories that learners identify with, feel accountable to, and those they do not.

Literature Review Eigo and Eikaiwa The disjuncture between one pedagogical approach designed to develop knowledge about the language (eigo) and another aiming to promote communication in the language (eikaiwa) has existed in some form or another since the Meiji period (1868–1912) (Shimizu, 2010). These two “trajectories” within Japanese ELT have endured until the present day (Hosoki, 2011), with the roles of Japanese and non-Japanese educators being arguably still determined by which side of the eigo/eikaiwa divide they are positioned (Nagatomo, 2016). This can be observed in the performative roles ascribed to JTEs and ALTs in the secondary education system (Sakui, 2004; Miyazato, 2009), Japanese and non-Japanese university teachers (Whitsed & Wright, 2011), and differences between the juku (cram school) and eikaiwa gakkō (English conversation school) markets in the private sector (Nagatomo, 2016). Aside from the clearly problematic nature of defining teachers’ professional roles along national lines (Japanese teach eigo/non-Japanese teach eikaiwa), both sides of the eigo/eikaiwa divide and, indeed the very existence of the divide itself, have attracted substantial criticism. An eigodominant instructional style in secondary education due to teacher beliefs and various contextual constraints (see Burke & Hooper, 2020 for a summary of extant literature) has been frequently admonished by Japanese society at large, resulting in major reforms by the Ministry of Education

3  Becoming the Paths we Tread: Negotiating Identity… 

41

over the last 20 years (Saito, 2019). Furthermore, numerous foreign educators in Japan regard classes focusing on eigo as antiquated and ineffective (Lowe, 2020). Conversely, eikaiwa has been criticized for being tied to “native speaker”-centric models of teaching (Mizuta, 2009) where “Western” ideals are surreptitiously promoted and with terms such as “authenticity” being used as a Trojan horse for furthering assertions commensurate with the “native speaker fallacy” (Phillipson, 1992) such as “English only” policies (Lowe & Pinner, 2016). Moreover, there have also been cases where Japanese teachers have framed eikaiwa in a derogatory and reductionist manner, equating a focus on communicative English as a “hobby” (Nagatomo, 2014), “playing games” (Nagatomo, 2016), or a mere “sideshow” to preparation for entrance examinations (Sakui, 2004). Nagatomo (2014) has problematized the very existence of the eigo/eikaiwa ideological divide, stating that it serves to confuse or demotivate students who have to negotiate two intensely contradictory approaches to learning one language. She asserts that eigo/eikaiwa should instead be merged, meaning that grammatical knowledge should not be divorced from communicative competence and that developing spoken English does not mean treating it as “an exotic pet.” Perhaps the most relevant existing research to this study is a qualitative investigation conducted by Miyahara (2015) in which several students exhibiting a strong desire or akogare (longing) to enter an international “imagined community” (Norton & Kanno, 2003) of English users generally tended to frame their examination-oriented secondary school classes as “rigid” or “dull” (p. 94) or as something creating a “nigate ishiki” (sense of inability) (p.  93) toward English. Miyahara’s study highlights the importance of the interplay between learners’ pasts, presents, and futures, subsequently influencing their perceptions of certain ideologically marked (e.g. eigo or eikaiwa) communities of practice across an educational landscape.

Identity Across Landscapes of Practice The social learning theory of landscapes of practice (LoP) (Wenger, 1998, 2010; Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2015) represents a significant

42 

D. Hooper

conceptual evolution from Lave and Wenger’s (1991) original communities of practice (CoP) model. Rather than focusing primarily on internal dynamics of individual communities and how competence is constructed and defined within them, the more recent iteration of the theory adopts more of a macro lens. Namely, its analytical focus broadens from investigating local intra-community relations to considering intercommunity relations across “complex, overlapping landscapes and constellations of interconnected practices” (Omidvar & Kislov, 2013, p. 267). This shift also places greater emphasis on the individual than in CoP theory, describing how each learner constructs knowledgeability via a trajectory of participation across multiple communities in the landscape (Wenger-­ Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2015). LoP, perhaps responding to previous criticism of the CoP model (Hodkinson & Hodkinson, 2004; Hughes et al., 2007), also features a more explicit recognition of the role of power between and within communities in the landscape. One key area of criticism directed at the earlier manifestations of the CoP model is the relatively cursory consideration of power. Handley et al. (2006) argue that addressing the reproduction of structural power through theories such as Bourdieu’s (1977) field, habitus, and capital could enhance CoP’s more “compartmentalis[t]” (p.  7) view. In fact, Wenger-Trayner himself has stated that due to his theory being more concerned with learning than power per se, a “plug and play” approach in which other theories of power can be integrated with CoP could provide a more well-rounded picture (Wenger-Trayner, 2013). Consequently, Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-­ Trayner (2015) clearly state that an LoP is “political” (p. 15) and features “competing voices and competing claims to knowledge, including voices that are silenced by the claim to knowledge of others” (p. 16). From the perspective of LoP, learners are active agents more or less able to make decisions regarding which practices matter to them, what unique blend of knowledgeability they wish to develop, and which communities they therefore feel accountable to. At the same time, however, the LoP theory recognizes that gaining entry to and legitimacy within a particular community within the landscape is a negotiation between the individual and the social (or structure and agency)—some communities may accept us, whereas we may be rejected by or feel marginalized within others (Wenger, 2010).

3  Becoming the Paths we Tread: Negotiating Identity… 

43

So, where does that leave us in terms of identity? The inseparability of learning and identity construction has consistently represented one of the fundamental pillars of the theory of CoP (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998) through the assumption that “learning as increasing participation in communities of practice concerns the whole person acting in the world” (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p.49). In Wenger’s (1998, 2010) later work, he uses the “modes of belonging/identification” framework to illustrate how identity is constructed through their engagement with community practices, imagination of their place in the world, and alignment with community and wider social/institutional norms. This framework forms the analytical structure of this chapter. Wenger-Trayner and WengerTrayner (2015) extended these theoretical foundations to the LoP model, stating that rather than identity being solely constructed within a single community’s practice, it is formed through a trajectory across the landscape. As a trajectory through a social landscape, learning is not merely the acquisition of knowledge. It is the becoming of a person who inhabits the landscape with an identity whose dynamic construction reflects our trajectory through that landscape. (p. 19)

LoP retains the “modes of identification” model (engagement, imagination, and alignment) of identity construction but applies it to participation in multiple CoPs across a learning landscape. I will draw upon this framework in this chapter to illustrate how English Lounge users’ identities are shaped both by their participation in the community itself and by the relevance of that community in their individual learning trajectories across a landscape of practice. This perspective is also congruent with more recent conceptualizations of the role of self-access centers. Rather than seeing them in dichotomous terms—as an alternative to classroom learning—Benson (2017) adopts a more ecological perspective, asserting that self-access centers represent one site within a broader language learning environment. A learner’s identity development occurs through a historic sequence as they make contact with different communities or learning sites over the course of their lives. However, one person may also simultaneously identify (or dis-identify) with multiple communities at

44 

D. Hooper

one particular time due to “multimembership” (Wenger, 1998) in various CoPs or due to the interaction of past and present experiences or future desires. From an LoP perspective, the dynamic and multifaceted nature of identity is emphasized as learners internalize multiple sources of identification “at once and in one body – whether they merely coexist, complement, enhance, or conflict with each other” (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2015, p. 22).

Identity Work Across Boundaries As a landscape of practice is composed of multiple local CoPs, each with their own discrete practice, it stands that boundaries will exist that one will have to negotiate throughout their learning trajectory. The local and unique development of learning within each CoP naturally results in the formation of “epistemic boundaries” (Pyrko et al., 2019) between different CoPs across a landscape. A central analytic focus of LoP, therefore, is “the importance of boundaries [between CoPs], and with problematizing identification and knowledgeability across these boundaries” (Wenger-­ Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2015, p. 27). Most relevant to this particular study is the construction (or negotiation) of learner identities as they face boundary encounters (Wenger, 1998) between two distinct CoPs and the feelings of uncertainty or “rupture” (Zittoun, 2006) that may occur when transitioning between worlds. Fenton-O’Creevy et al. (2015) provide examples of the strong emotions that can accompany the “identity work” involved in boundary crossing between CoPs. Identity work refers to the ways in which people strive to maintain, strengthen, or repair identity coherence in the face of tensions stemming from certain events such as transitions or boundary encounters (Alvesson & Wilmott, 2002). One of the key “social resources” (Zittoun, 2004) that have been shown to be effective in identity work during boundary crossing is that of near-peers and peer mentoring (Falkner & Dahlberg Larsson, 2020; Fenton-O’Creevy et al., 2015). This is one positive way in which social “identity regulation” (Alvesson & Wilmott, 2002)—how social or institutional forces impact an individual’s identity—interacts with individuals’ “identity work,” leading to

3  Becoming the Paths we Tread: Negotiating Identity… 

45

identity renegotiation. From previous research into self-access social learning spaces (Mynard et al., 2020; Murray & Fujishima, 2016), nearpeer role modeling appears to be a salient phenomenon that drives student participation and identity development in these learning sites. It is conceivable, therefore, that near-peers may play a mediational role as learners cross the boundary into the English Lounge CoP. As the literature outlined above suggests, Japanese ELT can be viewed as a landscape of practice comprising certain distinct and ideologically marked communities of practice. Depending on their individual trajectories across this landscape, learners may have to engage in identity work as they negotiate their past, present, and future selves and epistemic boundaries between CoPs. Based on previous studies, this negotiation of knowledgeability and identity may also be tied to significant emotional labor. With these points in mind, this study seeks to explore the following question: How do English Lounge members’ construct learner identities and knowledgeability across the LoP of Japanese English education in Japan?

Methodology Setting This study is based on data collected from a two-year ethnographic research project (Mynard et  al., 2020) conducted within a self-access learning center (SALC) in a mid-sized private university in central Japan. The university is primarily oriented toward language learning and the SALC reflects this focus, offering a range of services for language learners including trained learning advisors, a wide selection of multimedia study materials, and social learning spaces (SLS). The particular focus of this study is an informal SLS called the English Lounge. The English Lounge is an English-only space where learners can voluntarily join at any time to practice English conversation with other students, exchange students, or a number of foreign teachers that are on duty there. SALC social learning spaces, and to a certain extent SALCs in general, are primarily congruent

46 

D. Hooper

with an eikaiwa approach to language learning, as one of their aims is creating opportunities for learners to develop English speaking skills (Mynard, 2019). However, a number of studies on self-access in Japan have found that many students find it challenging to transition to and engage in SLS use for a number of reasons including language anxiety, social pressure, and a lack of experience in communicative language practice (Hooper, 2020; Murray & Fujishima, 2016; Mynard et al., 2020).

Participants and Data Collection The participants for this study are two Spanish-major students, Kaede and Mei (pseudonyms). At the time of data collection, both of them were in their first two years of study at the university and had been using the English Lounge for the majority of that period. Although the ethnographic study included 15 participants, I chose to focus solely on Kaede and Mei for this study due to my familiarity with their cases and due to the fact that, despite their similar academic situation, their experiences, beliefs, and identities across the Japanese ELT LoP differed significantly. For more detailed information about the data collection process, please see Mynard et al. (2020). I interviewed both participants in our original project because Kaede and Mei requested bilingual interviews and I was one of the few members in our team with conversational Japanese. Each participant was interviewed once per year over a two-year period. All interviews were conducted and subsequently transcribed bilingually (with a Japanese SALC staff member later assisting with translation). In addition, between the first and second interviews each participant provided a language learning history (LLH) in which participants wrote about their past learning experiences. The LLHs provided greater insights into participants’ historical learning trajectories and helped me to situate their experiences in the English Lounge within a wider landscape of practice. All included data excerpts appear in the original language they were given.

3  Becoming the Paths we Tread: Negotiating Identity… 

47

Data Analysis Transcribed interview data was analyzed initially (during the main ethnographic study) via conventional (inductive) qualitative content analysis, where categories were identified from the research team immersing themselves in the data. For this particular study, this initial inductive analysis was supported by directed (deductive) analysis (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005) utilizing the landscapes of practice (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2015) theoretical framework. Key elements of LoP such as modes of identification, epistemic boundary encounters, identity negotiation, and knowledgeability were considered during this deductive phase. Just as in the larger ethnographic study that this chapter builds upon (Mynard et al., 2020), this study recognizes the claim by Mann (2016) and Kvale and Brinkmann (2009) that interview data is co-constructed by interviewer and interviewee. Furthermore, my analysis of this data is inevitably shaped by my personal history and positionality as a researcher, language teacher, and white, male, English “native speaker” in Japan. Due to prevalent native-speakerist (Lowe, 2020) and self-orientalizing (Iwabuchi, 1994) narratives in Japanese society and particularly within Japanese ELT, it is conceivable that my participants may have been influenced by a power imbalance within our interviews. Therefore, it is important to emphasize that this is likely to have an impact on both their responses and, indeed, my analysis of them. With these issues in mind, I have decided to “story” Kaede and Mei’s learning trajectories in line with Bruner’s (2006, cited in Barkhuizen, 2013) concept of narrative cognition. This way of thinking involves organizing different salient data extracts into one coherent narrative (Barkhuizen, 2013) which the reader may then reinterpret. To recreate a sense of Mei and Kaede’s journeying across a landscape of distinct practices, I elected to “story” their data, presenting them as short narrative case studies examined through an LoP lens.

48 

D. Hooper

Mei Even from around kindergarten-age, Mei had been interested in international things, and this was encouraged by her mother who shared this interest. By the time she had become a junior high school student, Mei had a serious desire to live overseas to experience what she perceived to be an atmosphere of freedom/escapism or “release.” This impression of life in other countries, stemming in part from her experience on school trips to Canada and the US, stood in stark contrast to Mei’s notably negative view of life in Japan. Mei related on a number of occasions that she was hoping to get away from “stressful” Japan as soon as possible and live overseas long term. On some occasions, she hinted that she viewed the world outside Japan in a kind of fantasy-sense in which she wanted to experience the attractive “release” of a foreign atmosphere rather than the mundane “genjitsu” (reality) of her life in Japan. Her relationship with foreign countries and culture, and her related antipathy toward Japan, potentially stands as an example of akogare (longing) (Nonaka, 2018) toward foreign people, culture, or things. Mei’s akogare for the world outside Japan acted as a form of identification through imagination. Desire to belong to an international imagined community of English speakers became a lens through which she determined the value of different types of knowledge developed in different communities of practice she encountered throughout her learning career. Mei’s eventual participation in the English Lounge CoP was partially shaped by her experiences in the eigo-oriented English classes from her secondary education. Around the same time she developed a serious desire to live overseas (in a general sense), the English instruction she received in junior high and high school was based on a regime of competence (Wenger, 1998)—what knowledge is defined as legitimate in a CoP—that was incongruent with her personal goals. Mei negatively framed her secondary school English classes as deficient due to a lack of “jitsuyousei” (practicality) and learner autonomy. She claimed to have learned little in her six years of secondary English education and criticized rote memorization and vocabulary study as “a waste of time.” These beliefs even continued into her university studies where she dropped out

3  Becoming the Paths we Tread: Negotiating Identity… 

49

of a TOEIC class because she believed that test preparation would not help her improve as a language user. Mei’s criticism of the knowledge cultivated in her secondary English education and indeed her notions of what was “practical” seemed to be tied to an eikaiwa perspective on English learning and her desired future as a member of a wider international community living and working outside of Japan. Eh… because if I travel abroad, uh, it’s important to speak with people, but I think it’s, uh, it’s not necessary to reading, writing in there. (Interview 2 (June 2018))

Mei participated in her junior high and high school classes just enough to pass her entrance exams and gain access to the more internationally oriented communities that she believed that her chosen university would provide. This is an example of unengaged alignment—an “uncommitted hovering over the landscape” where one may be participating in practice on a superficial level but “holding back on identification” (Kubiak et al., 2015, p. 72). The English Lounge arguably represents eikaiwa in its purest form (an English-only and internationally themed area staffed by largely “native speaker” teachers), and Mei experienced significant rupture as she initially attempted border crossing into this CoP. She stated that she was surprised by the number of the students who could speak English fluently and remarked on how different this was from her secondary education. This created a great deal of pressure for her, and when she first tried to participate in the English Lounge with a friend, she almost panicked and left. In fact, for the entire first year, Mei stated that she would still never consider going to the Lounge without her friends there for moral support. Participation in the English Lounge appeared to be regarded by Mei as a surrogate for life overseas that provided her opportunities to interact with both Japanese and non-Japanese English speakers in a pseudo-foreign setting. Some of the Japanese students at the English Lounge seemed to influence and motivate Mei considerably. These near-­ peer role models at the Lounge acted as tangible and plausible future selves that helped maintain a sense of identity coherence for Mei as she transitioned the boundaries between eigo- and eikaiwa-dominant

50 

D. Hooper

communities in her journey across the landscape. Over time, Mei felt more comfortable in the Lounge and started attending by herself in her second year. She also stated the intention to act just as her senpai (seniors) had done and help future students transition into active participation in the English Lounge CoP.

Kaede Kaede’s experiences learning English in junior high and high school were painful ones, and the ripples created from them were still visible even in her sophomore year in university. She related the struggles that she had with the grammar-heavy and test-oriented classes she participated in. This struggle with eigo was something that seemed to gnaw away at Kaede and was one central point of negotiation in her construction of a coherent identity as an English user. Kaede felt that even though she came to like English in high school and wanted to speak English in the future with people either in Japan or overseas, she was incapable of success in eigo. She came to believe that maybe her way of studying was odd or that she was fundamentally unable to grasp English grammar. In turn, this lack of self-efficacy within eigo’s regime of competence was reinforced by her low test scores. Within her high school, she stated that she was informally labeled an “eigo ga dekinai hito” (person who can’t do English) due to the low-tier class she was streamed into. Especially as a freshman at university, she had possibly internalized this identity and frequently made self-deprecatory comments about her English proficiency and grammatical accuracy. Just like Mei, she relied on her friends to accompany her to the English Lounge for “anshinkan” (a sense of security), and this allowed her to participate, but she initially “just worried about grammar” when she was there. After having attended the English Lounge for several months, Kaede began to make moves to negotiate her identity as an English user in the eikaiwa-focused regime of competence of her new CoP. There were signs from Kaede of resistance to the eigo approach that she felt disempowered by and a marked shift toward a sense of competence based on communicative goals rather than on discrete grammatical knowledge.

3  Becoming the Paths we Tread: Negotiating Identity… 

51

Uh…. I thought grammar is more important, almost important but recently I think, um….. a little, ah, um…. (laughs)... Tsuwareba ii kana to… (Maybe if I can just express myself…). (Interview 1 (July 2017))

She also related the stark difference in her identity in class—“Eigo dekinaiyo!” (I can’t do English!) and the increased self-efficacy she felt at the English Lounge—“Eigo ga shabereru Kaede” (Kaede that can speak English). At the end of our first interview, Kaede asked me (perhaps viewing a “native speaker” teacher as a representative of eikaiwa), “Bunpō mushi shite, shabecchatte mo daijōbu na no?” (Is it okay if I ignore grammar and just speak?). This question encapsulated how Kaede’s crossing of the epistemic boundary between eigo- and eikaiwa-oriented communities featured not only rupture and uncertainty but also a hope for a potential future as someone able to “do English.” This brings us to the main area where Kaede and Mei’s learning trajectories came to diverge. In their sophomore year, while Mei roundly rejected the regime of competence from her eigo-oriented secondary English classes and appeared to exhibit little accountability to or identification with these communities, Kaede’s beliefs still seemed to be aligned to a certain extent with them. Both Mei and Kaede viewed the English Lounge as an international space and a temporary substitute for study abroad. However, Mei regarded it as a “release” from both Japan and eigo, whereas Kaede still showed signs that grammar study and declarative knowledge she was taught in high school were a thorn in her side and continued to frame her English speaker identity in deficit terms as a result. Concurrently, despite being motivated by her “high level” senpai, she often felt overwhelmed by the English-only environment at the Lounge and still relied on teachers on duty to take care of her and involve her in conversations. In a sense, while Mei was firmly laying roots in the eikaiwa CoP she had longed for, Kaede found herself in a liminal or “in-­ between” space (Beech, 2010) in relation to the spheres of eigo and eikaiwa where she felt she did not fully belong in either. The event that arguably stimulated Kaede’s identity work and helped her to reconcile her position of liminality was a study abroad experience in Spain. During this trip, she was required to study Spanish grammar in the morning (using

52 

D. Hooper

grammar-translation methods) and was then given opportunities to communicate with her host family in the afternoon. Kaede found this mixed approach to be effective for her and stated that she could see clear improvements in her Spanish ability. When I asked her about her views about grammar following this experience, she told me that she now saw grammar as “important for me.” Following this change in perspective, she admitted that her lack of competence in high school was probably due to the method of study not suiting her rather than an inherent lack of ability on her part. She came to view the English Lounge as a useful place to practice the grammar she learned in more eigo-focused classes rather than an escape from her past as an “eigo ga dekinai hito.” to iu no ga yokatta kara, watashi wa, [bunpō] ooboete, [English Lounge] de tsukattara, kondo oboerareru to omotta. (That suited me. So I thought if I learn some [grammar] first, and then use them at the [English Lounge], I will learn English well that way.) (Interview 2 (June 2018))

Discussion Due to many students regarding the English Lounge and the SALC as a whole as a “foreign” space (Mynard et al., 2020)—a liminal environment located between the local and exotic—the area often acted as a “space of possibilities” (Murray, 2018) where learners could experiment with imagined international identities. However, also within the Lounge CoP new attendees such as Mei and Kaede may inhabit liminal or hybridized identities as they negotiate epistemic boundaries such as those of eigo and eikaiwa. Along with the gaps they experience in terms of varying regimes of competence, these new participants may also be engaging in identity work as they are renegotiating a coherent sense of self in the interaction between agentic action and their new learning environment. Furthermore, this renegotiation is not based on a mere snapshot of their present circumstances but rather an intermeshing of past and present experiences and future goals/expectations. Through their journey across a landscape

3  Becoming the Paths we Tread: Negotiating Identity… 

53

of practice, they not only take on new identities but also accumulate past selves—becoming a “textile person” (Kubiak et al., 2015, p. 77). As we can see from both of the learners’ stories in this chapter, boundary crossing may be a stressful and deeply emotional endeavor. Even in Mei’s case, where she seemed to wholly embrace the eikaiwa-oriented competence of the English Lounge in contrast to the marked disdain she exhibited toward her experiences of eigo, boundary crossing came with substantial self-doubt and anxiety. She had to draw on social resources such as friends, near-peer role models (Murphey, 1998), and teachers to scaffold her entry to the Lounge until she was able to develop an identity of active engagement in the CoP’s practice and alignment with its norms. In Kaede’s case, encountering the Lounge (and indeed eikaiwa) represented a “triggering event” (Beech, 2010) and a means of repairing the divide she experienced between her international posture and the rejection of her identity as a competent English learner in high school. At the same time, however, she frequently felt isolated and lacking agency within the “high-level” English-only environment of the Lounge and seemed to be hovering in a liminal state. This continued until she experienced a key event (her study abroad experience in Spain) that stimulated identity reconstruction, enhanced self-efficacy, and her development of knowledgeability by reconciling eigo and eikaiwa. In terms of implications for ELT in Japan, this short study highlights the considerable rupture that learners experience in developing coherent identities and knowledgeability across a landscape characterized by deep ideological division. Having examined Mei and Kaede’s stories, I feel this study lends weight to Nagatomo’s (2014) case for eigo and eikaiwa to be increasingly reconciled within Japanese English education. The need to negotiate and satisfy two opposing regimes of competence along their learning trajectories can place significant pressure on learners and can even challenge their sense of self-efficacy. Conversely, I argue this study highlighted the potential value of providing autonomous spaces to engage in identity work and the positive impact of near-peer role models for learners who find themselves in “in-between” spaces. That being said, there is also evidence to suggest—in Mei’s exocitiziation of “foreignness” and Kaede’s deficit view of her own language ability—that broader structural forces such as prevalent native-speakerist (Lowe, 2020) or

54 

D. Hooper

self-orientalizing (Iwabuchi, 1994) narratives within Japan may also be impacting their identity construction. In line with Wenger-Trayner’s suggestions, future “plug and play” research combining CoP/LoP with theories of power such as habitus (Bourdieu, 1977) or positioning theory (Harré & Van Langenhove, 1998) may provide fuller insights into learner trajectories. Many students wish to attend spaces like the English Lounge but do not feel they are competent enough to enter or belong at all (Murray & Fujishima, 2016; Mynard et al., 2020). I believe it is these “structurally invisible” (Turner, 1967, cited in Beech, 2010) learners that we need to provide social and emotional support for so that new and fulfilling paths may be cleared for them on their learning journeys.

References Ahearn, L. (2001). Language and agency. Annual Review of Anthropology, 30, 109–137. https://doi.org/10.1075/hop.14.age1 Alvesson, M., & Wilmott, H. (2002). Identity regulation as organizational control: Producing the appropriate individual. Journal of Management Studies, 39(5), 619–644. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-­6486.00305 Barkhuizen, G. (2013). Narrative research in applied linguistics. Cambridge University Press. Beech, N. (2010). Liminality and the practices of identity reconstruction. Human Relations, 64(2), 285–302. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726710371235 Benson, P. (2017). Language learning beyond the classroom: Access all areas. Studies in Self-Access Learning Journal, 8(2), 135–146. https://doi. org/10.37237/080206 Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge University Press. Bruner, J. S. (2006). In search of pedagogy volume II: The selected works of Jerome S. Bruner. Routledge. Burke, M., & Hooper, D. (2020). The Japanese educational context. In J.  Mynard, M.  Burke, D.  Hooper, B.  Kushida, P.  Lyon, R.  Sampson, & P. Taw (Eds.), Dynamics of a social language learning community: Beliefs, membership and identity (pp. 29–36). Multilingual Matters. Falkner, K., & Dahlberg Larsson, J. (2020). Professional formation of Swedish special education teachers in the tension between formal education at univer-

3  Becoming the Paths we Tread: Negotiating Identity… 

55

sity and informal learning in practice. Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy, 6(1), 79–87. https://doi.org/10.1080/20020317.2020.1736870 Fenton-O’Creevy, M., Dimitriadis, Y., & Scobie, G. (2015). Failure and resilience at boundaries: The emotional process of identity work. In E. Wenger-­ Trayner, M.  Fenton-O’Creevy, S.  Hutchinson, C.  Kubiak, & B. Wenger-Trayner (Eds.), Learning in landscapes of practice: Boundaries, identity, and knowledgeability in practice-based learning (pp. 33–42). Routledge. Handley, K., Sturdy, A., Fincham, R., & Clark, T. A. R. (2006). Within and beyond communities of practice: Making sense of learning through participation, identity and practice. Journal of Management Studies, 43(3), 641–653. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-­6486.2006.00605.x Harré, R., & Van Langenhove, L. (Eds.). (1998). Positioning theory: Moral contexts of international action. Wiley-Blackwell. Hiramoto, M. (2013). English vs English conversation: Language teaching in modern Japan. In L. Wee, R. B. H. Goh, & L. Lim (Eds.), The politics of English: South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Asia Pacific (pp. 228–248). John Benjamins. Hodkinson, P., & Hodkinson, H. (2004). A constructive critique of communities of practice: Moving beyond Lave and Wenger. OVAL Research Working Paper, 4(2), 1–15. Hooper, D. (2020). Modes of identification within a language learner-led community of practice. Studies in Self-Access Learning Journal, 11(4), 301–327. https://doi.org/10.37237/110402 Hosoki, Y. (2011). English language education in Japan: Transitions and challenges (I). Kokusai Kankeigaku Bulletin, 6(1), 199–215. Hsieh, H. F., & Shannon, S. E. (2005). Three approaches to qualitative content analysis. Qualitative Health Research, 15(9), 1277–1288. https://doi. org/10.1177/1049732305276687 Hughes, J., Jewson, N., & Unwin, L. (2007). Conclusion: Further developments and unresolved issues. In J. Hughes, N. Jewson, & L. Unwin (Eds.), Communities of practice: Critical perspectives (pp. 171–177). Routledge. Iwabuchi, K. (1994). Complicit exoticism: Japan and its other. Continuum, 8(2), 49–82. https://doi.org/10.1080/10304319409365669 Kubiak, C., Cameron, S., Conole, G., Fenton-O’Creevy, M., Mylrea, P., Rees, E., & Shreeve, A. (2015). Multimembership and identification. In E. Wenger-­ Trayner, M.  Fenton-O’Creevy, S.  Hutchinson, C.  Kubiak, & B.  Wenger-­ Trayner (Eds.), Learning in landscapes of practice: Boundaries, identity, and knowledgeability in practice-based learning (pp. 64–80). Routledge.

56 

D. Hooper

Kvale, S., & Brinkmann, S. (2009). Interviews: Learning the craft of qualitative research interviewing. Sage. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press. Lowe, R. J. (2020). Uncovering ideology in English language teaching: Identifying the ‘native speaker’ frame. Springer Nature. Lowe, R.  J., & Pinner, R. (2016). Finding the connections between native-­ speakerism and authenticity. Applied Linguistics Review, 7(1), 27–52. https:// doi.org/10.1515/applirev-­2016-­0002 Mann, S. (2016). The research interview: Reflective practice and reflexivity in research processes. Palgrave Macmillan. Miyahara, M. (2015). Emerging self-identities and emotions in foreign language learning: A narrative oriented approach. Multilingual Matters. Miyazato, K. (2009). Power-sharing between NS and NNS teachers: Linguistically powerful AETs vs. culturally powerful JTEs. JALT journal, 31(1), 35–62. https://doi.org/10.37546/JALTJJ31.1-­2 Mizuta, A. (2009). The unchanged images of English in changing Japan: From modernization to globalization. Intercultural Communication Studies, 18(2), 38. Murphey, T. (1998). Motivating with near-peer role models. In B.  Visgatis (Ed.), On JALT97: Trends & transitions (pp.  201–205). JALT. https://jalt-­ publications.org/sites/default/files/pdf-­article/jalt97_0.pdf Murray, G. (2018). Self-access environments as self-enriching complex dynamic ecosocial systems. Studies in Self-Access Learning Journal, 9(2), 102–115. https://doi.org/10.37237/090204 Murray, G., & Fujishima, N. (2016). Social spaces for language learning: Stories from the L-café. Palgrave Macmillan. Mynard, J. (2019). Self-access learning and advising: Promoting language learner autonomy beyond the classroom. In H.  Reinders, S.  Ryan, & S. Nakamura (Eds.), Innovation in language teaching and learning: The case of Japan (pp. 185–209). Palgrave Macmillan. Mynard, J., Burke, M., Hooper, D., Kushida, B., Lyon, P., Sampson, R., & Taw, P. (2020). Dynamics of a social language learning community: Beliefs, membership and identity. Multilingual Matters. Nagatomo, D. H. (2014). Language learning in the 21st century: Approaches, needs, and contexts: Merging the competing ideologies of eigo and eikaiwa. Plenary address at the NEAR Conference at University of Niigata Prefecture, Niigata, Japan.

3  Becoming the Paths we Tread: Negotiating Identity… 

57

Nagatomo, D.  H. (2016). Identity, gender and teaching English in Japan. Multilingual Matters. Nonaka, C. (2018). Transcending self and other through akogare [Desire]: The English language and the internationalization of higher education in Japan. Multilingual Matters. Norton, B., & Kanno, Y. (2003). Imagined communities and educational possibilities: Introduction. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, 2(4), 241–249. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327701JLIE0204_1 Omidvar, O., & Kislov, R. (2013). The evolution of the communities of practice approach: Toward knowledgeability in a landscape of practice – An interview with Etienne Wenger-Trayner. Journal of Management Inquiry, 23(3), 266–275. https://doi.org/10.1177/1056492613505908 Phillipson, R. (1992). Linguistic imperialism. Routledge. Pyrko, I., Dörfler, V., & Eden, C. (2019). Communities of practice in landscapes of practice. Management Learning, 50(4), 482–499. https://doi. org/10.1177/1350507619860854 Saito, Y. (2019). English language teaching and learning in Japan: History and prospect. In Y. Kitamura, T. Omomo, & M. Katsuno (Eds.), Education in Japan: A comprehensive analysis of education reforms and practices (pp. 211–220). Springer. Sakui, K. (2004). Wearing two pairs of shoes: Language teaching in Japan. ELT Journal, 58(2), 155–163. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/58.2.155 Shimizu, M. (2010). Japanese English education and learning: A history of adapting foreign cultures. Educational Perspectives, 43, 5–11. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ912110.pdf Turner, V. (1967). Betwixt and between: The liminal period in rites de passage. In V. Turner (Ed.), The forest of symbols: Aspects of Ndembu ritual (pp. 234–243). Cornell University Press. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge University Press. Wenger, E. (2010). Communities of practice and social learning systems: The career of a concept. In C. Blackmore (Ed.), Social learning systems and communities of practice (pp. 179–198). Springer. Wenger-Trayner, E. (2013). The practice of theory: Confessions of a social learning theorist. In V. Farnsworth & Y. Solomon (Eds.), Reframing educational research: Resisting the ‘what works’ agenda (pp. 105–118). Routledge. Wenger-Trayner, E., & Wenger-Trayner, B. (2015). Learning in a landscape of practice: A framework. In E.  Wenger-Trayner, M.  Fenton-O’Creevy,

58 

D. Hooper

S. Hutchinson, C. Kubiak, & B. Wenger-Trayner (Eds.), Learning in landscapes of practice: Boundaries, identity, and knowledgeability in practice-based learning (pp. 13–29). Routledge. Wenger-Trayner, E., Fenton O’Creevy, M., Hutchinson, S., Kubiak, C., & Wenger-Trayner, B. (2015). Learning in landscapes of practice: Boundaries, identity and knowledgeability in practice-based learning. Routledge. Whitsed, C., & Wright, P. (2011). Perspectives from within: Adjunct, foreign, English-language teachers in the internationalization of Japanese universities. Journal of Research in International Education, 10(1), 28–45. https://doi. org/10.1177/1475240910396332 Zittoun, T. (2004). Symbolic competencies for developmental transitions: The case of the choice of first names. Culture and Psychology, 10(2), 131–161. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354067X04040926 Zittoun, T. (2006). Transitions: Development through symbolic resources. Information Age Publishing.

4 The Intertwining of Native-Speakerism and Racism in the Construction of Linguistic Identity Xinqi He

The identity formation of migrants has been examined from sociocultural aspects including gender, nationality and class (Fong et  al., 2016). As migrants carry their linguistic resources across borders, where different values are attached to their linguistic repertoire (Blommaert, 2005), they undergo a complex process of negotiating their linguistic repertoire with their surrounding community. This chapter thus focuses on the linguistic aspect of migrant identity, especially aiming at understanding the complexity of (non)nativeness identity and the dynamic between this identity and the ideology of native-speakerism. As nativeness identity of ‘native speaker (NS)’ and ‘non-native speaker (NNS)’ is argued to be better understood as a continuum rather than a binary category (Aneja, 2018), this chapter aims at presenting the complexity of this identity by investigating a migrant student learning English in Japan. This chapter first presents the contextualized formation of linguistic identity and its role in deconstructing the NS/NNS dichotomy. It then examines the factors that influence this identity construction with native-speakerism and

X. He (*) J. F. Oberlin University, Machida, Japan © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Mielick et al. (eds.), Discourses of Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11988-0_4

59

60 

X. He

critical race theory (CRT) frameworks. Through interviews with the migrant student, this chapter reveals how linguistic identity is constructed through native-speakerism intertwining with racism, which leads to difficulty for individuals to challenge its influence on their identity construction.

Literature Review Nativeness and Linguistic Identity In this chapter, linguistic identity refers to an individual’s “sense of belonging to a language community” (Blommaert, 2005, p. 214). This concept is established in sociolinguistic research as NS, that is, a person who is regarded as a legitimate and ideal member of that language community (Blommaert, 2005). Partially inspired by early research in the field of second language acquisition such as the theory of critical period, the concept of NS is established on a psycholinguistic assumption that the language acquired at an early age is qualitatively different from that acquired later in life and that it is nearly impossible for the latter to achieve the level of the former. This presumption thus guarantees the authenticity and thus superiority of NS language (Canagarajah & Said, 2011). Yet, the concept of NS is an ideal, as it assumes a homogeneous stable community without any mobility among the population such that community members inside acquire the language at a remarkably different level than those entering into the community from outside. This assumption of a homogeneous and stable community also guarantees that the community member will unconsciously acquire a set of cultural knowledge and values markedly different from those who attempt to acquire them later in life (Seargeant, 2013). Aligned with psycholinguistic and cultural assumptions, an ideology of native-speakerism attaches superiority to NS in conjunction with the language, culture and race they represent, devaluing those of their NNS counterparts (Holliday, 2015). While regarding ideology as “widespread systems of knowledge and belief ” which takes root deeply in a society and is relatively intangible,

4  The Intertwining of Native-Speakerism and Racism… 

61

this chapter regards discourses as “ways of speaking which contain those systems of belief or knowledge” (Lowe, 2020, p. 58). In this sense, discourses are regarded as tangible and can be framed by individuals in the society. With this understanding, this chapter focuses on native-speakerist discourses which are presented as follows: (1) NNS1 language being described as not enough; (2) NS language being regarded as superior; (3) NNS ownership of the language being rejected; (4) NS being regarded as having absolute authority over the language; (5) Fixed stereotypes attached to NS/NNS status. With the increase of mobile populations who magnify the diversity of and within languages, the assumption of native-speakerism has been challenged by academic works such as the concept of metrolingualism (Pennycook & Otsuji, 2015), which argues for a boundaryless understanding rather than a fixed understanding toward languages. Yet, how nativeness as an individual’s linguistic identity is constructed under native-speakerist discourses in a globalized society requires further investigation (Doerr, 2009). Despite the fact that native-speakerism research aims at dismantling the superiority attached to the identity category of native-speakerness, and to empower those that are marginalized under native-speakerism ideology, criticism has been raised toward native-speakerism research suggesting that it strengthens the NS/NNS dichotomy through (re-)iterating the term rather than deconstructing it (Aneja, 2018). Some researchers have, however, attempted to disentangle the NS/NNS dichotomy. For example, Faez (2011) suggests six categories of English language speaker based on interview research with 25 teachers to reconceptualize the NS/ NNS label. Yet, as Faez (2011) admitted in the study, promoting six new typological categories illustrated no better the fluidity of (non)nativeness identity than the NS/NNS dichotomy in the sense that it still categorizes linguistic identity as fixed categories. Moreover, the evaluation method in the study ignores the contextual aspect of linguistic identity and fails to take other social factors such as race into consideration. A more fluid presentation of linguistic identity would be Manara (2018), who explored her own negotiation with nativeness as a category of identity through an autobiographical reflection on her own learning and teaching trajectory. Yet, these studies tend to focus either on one single language (English) or one single setting (the language teaching field). This study thus focuses

62 

X. He

on the intertwining of two native-speakerisms, which is closer to the linguistic reality in multilingual contexts and how that influences the construction of nativeness as linguistic identity. Given that a large amount of native-speakerism research has taken place in Anglophone-dominant contexts where English is the dominant language of society, this study examines a non-English-dominated context to complement the understanding toward native-speakerism. Through a case study of a white2 Russian-born migrant who was learning English in Japan, this study unveils the complexity of nativeness as a category of identity within a single individual and investigates this complexity in relation to native-­ speakerism ideology.

Critical Race Theory For the purpose of fully understanding the complexity in linguistic identity of mobile populations, this chapter applies an intersectional stance where “people’s lives and the organization of power in a given society are better understood as being shaped not by a single axis of social division, be it race or gender or class, but by many axes that work together and influence each other” (Collins & Bilge, 2016, p.  2). Taking this perspective, this chapter takes a multi-axis lens on the construction of linguistic identity and especially focuses on the issue of race as it is highlighted in multiple (non)nativeness research (Ramjattan, 2019). The intersectionality among (non)nativeness and other social markers, especially gender and race, is accentuated in Houghton and Rivers’ (2013) definition toward native-speakerism which focuses on the stereotypes and the subsequent discriminations against those who are perceived as being either NS or NNS.  This stereotype is based on the assumption of native-­speakerism ideology where a homogeneous stable community is assumed to exist which ties language ownership to certain ethnic features (Blommaert, 2005), namely race. Research on NS status in the English teaching field (ELT) has shown how English NS status tends to be associated with whiteness, which is preferred in ELT regardless of their teaching qualifications and experience (Ramjattan, 2019). On

4  The Intertwining of Native-Speakerism and Racism… 

63

the contrary, nonwhiteness leads to deprivation of NS identity and thus denying linguistic ownership (Kubota & Fujimoto, 2013). Following this logic, this chapter applies the framework of CRT, an approach which was first taken up to examine the legal system in the United States, which appears to be fair yet turns out to be race-biased (Kubota & Lin, 2009). Given the fact that there is no biological support for the concept of race, race is understood as a socially constructed categorization process where meaning and values are attributed to certain biological features in individuals who reproduce them through social interaction (Miles & Brown, 2003). Based on the tenets of CRT proposed by Delgado and Stefancic (2001), this framework emphasizes the embedded and prevalent nature of racism, as well as the clear goal of challenging racial construction. Among all the basic tenets, this chapter focuses especially on the fluid understanding toward racialization or racial discrimination and the significance attached to the voice of individual’s experience through storytelling which is regarded as an effective tool to expose and challenge the deeply rooted racial agenda (Kubota & Lin, 2009). The significance of storytelling has been gradually acknowledged within qualitative research as a type of narrative methodology, especially in the language learning field (Pavlenko & Blackledge, 2004). While counter-story is often applied to the storytelling by underrepresented groups (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002), this chapter would still name the method as storytelling for the purpose of presenting the non-binary nature of NS/NNS categories as well as “victim/perpetrator logic” (Enns, 2012, p. 27) under racism.

Method As a tool for storytelling, interviews were conducted six times with a white Russian-born migrant who has studied both Japanese and English at language learning institutions in Japan. Interviews ranged from 40 minutes to 2 hours and were conducted at two-month intervals. Three of the interviews were conducted online due to the COVID-19 pandemic situation. Interviews were semi-structured in format, as this provides the interviewee with sufficient freedom to choose when and how they express

64 

X. He

their opinions, and it allows researchers to play a larger part in co-­ constructing the interview process with the interviewee (Denzin & Lincoln, 2018). The participant was allowed to choose the language he wished to use in the interviews, and he chose English for all six interviews, which sometimes mixed with a few Japanese sentences. Interview focuses consisted of the following aspects: general life trajectory, language learning experience, language investment, community of practice and self-understanding on linguistic identity. To understand the participant’s linguistic identity, the participant was asked to rate the degree3 to which he regarded his language usage as native when recalling the situations discussed in the former interviews. After that, the participant was asked to explain the reasons for his specific rating across these different situations in the last interviews. All the interview data were recorded and fully transcribed. The transcriptions were then put into the qualitative data analysis program Nvivo where I attached codes to all the interview data. Themes were generated based on the codes and interrelation among them, and I reviewed my interview data repeatedly during the process.

Participant Profile and Researcher Positionality The participant of this study, Dimitri,4 was initially identified through a snowballing method where my previous student in my English class provided an introduction. Dimitri was born in Russia and made his first visit to Japan after he finished his undergraduate degree and then served two years in the army in Russia. He originally decided to come to Japan for the purpose of learning Japanese, which he thought would give him additional value on the Russian job market. Yet, after spending one and a half years in a Japanese language school, he decided to change his goal from studying Japanese language to studying English, claiming that “You can live in Japan without problems don’t know, not knowing, not knowing Japanese” (1st interview). His attempt to apply to a two-year language institution famous for foreign language teaching failed the first time, but he was eventually accepted as an English major after his second try two years later. He has experienced difficulty in job hunting after graduation due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and, yet, was successfully recruited to

4  The Intertwining of Native-Speakerism and Racism… 

65

a multinational company where over half of the employees are NNS of Japanese and where English is used as a common language. He aims at becoming a permanent resident in Japan and to have the opportunity to visit other countries after that. Although Dimitri was introduced to me by a former student, Dimitri is not a student of the author and there is no conflict of interest stemming from a student-teacher relationship. Dimitri has also signed a consent form that guarantees the right to quit at any time during the research and details how his data will be protected and disseminated. Being a China-­ born migrant who is an Asian female, I have been living in Japan for seven years doing my PhD program while teaching English in postsecondary educational institutions. This study regards the interviews as a co-construction between Dimitri and me who share the same status of migrant and NNS of both English and Japanese.

Findings Nonbinary Linguistic Identity Through his self-evaluation of linguistic identity, Dimitri’s linguistic identity can be understood as dynamic in nature and varying in different contexts, rather than fixed. His self-assessment also challenges the binary narrative of NS/NNS identity and highlights a more continuum-based understanding instead. Dimitri recalled approximately ten different contexts in which he uses Japanese or English individually or together. While Dimitri was reminded during the interview that he could put himself on the same level of nativeness across all situations if he chose to, Dimitri still characterized himself as having different degrees of nativeness depending on the context. In terms of his English nativeness, Dimitri ranked his travel to Vietnam and South Korea as 100% in nativeness, followed by those contexts where Dimitri uses English with Japanese NS or where Dimitri is under a high demand of Japanese language use. Dimitri placed himself at around 70% to 80% in these contexts. Following these are those contexts where

66 

X. He

Dimitri uses English language with English NS.  Here, he ranks his English nativeness at around 65%. In the case of Japanese language, Dimitri ranked himself at around 90% in the context of travel to Vietnam and South Korea, which is the highest among all of his Japanese language contexts. Dimitri’s second highest ranked Japanese language context is when he is under the influence of alcohol. Here, he placed himself at 50%, as he claims to be less shy about speaking Japanese. These are followed by contexts where Dimitri uses Japanese with Japanese NNS and where the conversation requires a low level of Japanese. Dimitri places himself at a nativeness of 40% in these contexts. In those situations where the demand of Japanese language use is high or where Dimitri only needs to use English (and is comfortable doing so), Dimitri ranks his nativeness at around 30%. The context where Dimitri feels the lowest degree of nativeness is where he is surrounded by a large number of Japanese NS. In the case of Russian, Dimitri claimed that his Russian identity remains 100% in all situations. Yet, when he recalled going back to Russia for a vacation, he recalled that he felt uncomfortable speaking with other Russian natives, ranking himself at around 85% in that context. Dimitri’s self-assessments demonstrate how a fluid understanding can better serve as a tool for understanding the shifting reality of linguistic identity, rather than viewing it as a fixed category.

Native-Speakerism and CRT Lens on Linguistic Identity In addition to linguistic proficiency, nonlinguistic factors that play significant roles in linguistic identity construction were illustrated under native-sepakerism and CRT lenses. To start, native-speakerism, where a racial stereotype is attached to English NS and Japanese NS, influenced how Dimitri was positioned by people in his surrounding environment. In addition, while Dimitri positioned English NS as superior to English NNS, he also positioned himself as superior to other nonwhite (see excerpt 4) English NNS under the internalization toward native-­ speakerist discourse which associates English NS to whiteness and vice versa. It is also shown that Dimitri’s linguistic identity was constructed through the intertwining of native-speakerism and racism, which leads to

4  The Intertwining of Native-Speakerism and Racism… 

67

his reinforcement toward native-speakerism that denied his Japanese speakerhood. First of all, “linguistic proficiency” is thematized as a basic factor that exerts an impact on how Dimitri understands his Japanese language nativeness. For example, Dimitri observed that he feels more like a Japanese speaker when engaging in daily conversation with Japanese people as opposed to doing so in a professional setting. It can be said that when Dimitri’s linguistic proficiency meets the demand of the context, he positions himself as possessing a higher degree of nativeness compared to contexts where his linguistic proficiency does not meet the demand. Yet, applying the native-speakerist and CRT lens, it is shown in the interview data that Dimitri’s linguistic identity, namely his interpretation toward (non)nativeness, extended beyond pure linguistic elements and was also influenced by the ideology of native-speakerism and race. One reason for his nativeness evaluation of Japanese language is a “foreign status”, which is tightly linked with his race as well as English language. While Dimitri came to Japan for the purpose of learning Japanese, he changed his goal from learning Japanese to learning English after his arrival. When Dimitri was asked why he decided to learn English, he responded, “If I really want to do work in Japan…as a foreigner, I MUST know, I must speak English very well” (1st interview). This illustrates that Dimitri associates the English language with his foreign status in Japan. Dimitri explained that the reason for this association has to do with Japanese people continuing to talk to him in English even when they become aware of his Japanese language proficiency. This is thematized as ‘Othering from Japanese speaker community’: (Excerpt 1, 3rd interview) D5: Maybe it’s my problem but usually when I come to Narita Airport and ask them in Japanese some information which they tried to explain me in English and I understand, canʼt completely understand what they are talking about. And I asked them repeat it again in Japanese, please 㗌ᮏㄒ࡛姧ࡗ࡚ࡃࡔࡉ࠸… Because I’m like a stupid foreigner who can only speak in English.

68 

X. He

This interview excerpt illustrates that while Dimitri tries to claim his right of being a proficient Japanese speaker, he is excluded from the Japanese speaking community and thus being deprived of an identity as a speaker of Japanese. From other interview data, it can be seen that Dimitri’s level of Japanese proficiency meets the demands of casual conversation in everyday life. Yet, his Japanese language ability is denied as Japanese staff shift to using English, even though the level of which does not meet the demand of the conversation. Dimitri pointed out with frustration that this denial of his Japanese language ability stems from his appearance, namely his race, which was categorized as “a foreigner”. This is an experience that Dimitri also reported to have in other Asian countries. (Excerpt 2, 6th interview) R: OK, then the other thing is, for example, when you visit Vietnam or Korea. D: Yeah, I felt myself like I’m a hundred percent American or European who speak English very well because …even everybody I mean, all people were around me also consider…myself as some American or British or whatever. And I also thought like like, oh, yeah, OK. You wanna Iʼm gonna to be Americans. OK, no problem. I will. No problem. Interesting experience.

As a Caucasian, Dimitri feels that he is positioned by others as American or British, and by extension an English NS. In Japan, this association denies Dimitri’s Japanese language proficiency, as he is associated with Japanese NNS at the same time. Since Dimitri had described similar experiences multiple times throughout the interviews, it can be said that Dimitri was exposed to native-speakerist discourses where his Japanese speakerhood was denied for the reason that he was categorized as a Japanese NNS and an English NS under the discourse that attached certain physical features to English and Japanese NS status. The discourses Dimitri was exposed to include English native-speakerism, which attached whiteness to English NS status, and Japanese native-speakerism, which excludes whiteness from Japanese NS status. Thus, it is not difficult to understand how this persistent othering experience pushed

4  The Intertwining of Native-Speakerism and Racism… 

69

Dimitri away from an identity of being a Japanese language speaker and moved him closer to that of being an English language speaker. Under a CRT lens, these interview excerpts demonstrate that race serves as a factor that contributes to an individual being defined as not having membership in a certain community, which can thus lead to being denied a right to claim ownership of a given language. This English native-speakerism ideology is criticized in most research in ELT as it attaches the superiority associated with white English NS teachers and the inferiority associated with a racialized NNS teacher (Kubota & Lin, 2009). However, some scholars also point out that there are disadvantages inherent in English NS, for example when NS teachers are frequently objectified for advertisement purposes and thus deprived of their professional identity as a teacher (Rivers & Zotzmann, 2017). Dimitri’s experience adds a further layer to the disadvantages associated with NSs in that they could also be labeled as NNS of other languages and may be deprived of their right of owning that language under the same native-­ speakerism logic. The distrust toward the language of Japanese NNS is reported to exist in the Japanese language teaching field (Heinrich, 2005), workplaces (Kusunoki, 2018), media (Kusunoki, 2018) and everyday experience (Kubota, 2020). Dimitri’s experiences of being othered from the Japanese speaker community are, quite simply, a result of experiencing native-speakerism in combination with raciolinguistic stereotypes. In conclusion, the assumption of native-speakerism ideology in Dimitri’s living environment, which associates race with language ownership, positions him as an English NS, but prevents him from claiming the label of being a Japanese speaker. Moreover, native-speakerism also assigns inferiority to Dimitri’s Japanese linguistic proficiency, which contributes to him having a low level of esteem regarding his Japanese linguistic identity more generally. While Dimitri expressed his frustration toward being denied his Japanese speakerhood (see excerpt 1) under native-speakerism, he demonstrated an internalization toward this ideology as he not only positions himself but also engages in his own positioning in relation toward others, which leads to ‘reinforcing native-speakerism’. Dimitri’s internalizing of native-speakerism is evident in that he has a tendency to regard the language of NS as superior and devalues the

70 

X. He

language of NNS. The superiority of NS is clear when Dimitri described his self-positioning of English nativeness when talking to an English NS. Although Dimitri found no difficulty in the communication with NS, he still claimed his English as “very far from native English, from very …beautiful natural English” (6th interview). For Dimitri, there is a huge gap between NS and NNS language, with the NS language being placed in a superior position compared to its NNS counterpart. This value attachment of language is also demonstrated in how Dimitri values the role of NNS and NS for language acquisition. Dimitri exhibited a strong resistance against English classes taught by English NNS teachers and attributed this to them not being English NS. (Excerpt 3, 1st interview) R: I see, I got it. Do you have any connection with Japanese teachers here? D: Almost not, just I’m here, likeこんにちは. R: But they are teaching English, right? So you can still ask questions about English. D: Not Japanese teachers. R: Why not? D: Because they are Japanese…if, if… for example, you’re my teacher, but I don’t mean to be rude, but you’re Chinese, if I have questions about English, I asked not you…I can ask you about Chinese culture, Chinese tradition, Chinese something. But I don’t, well, ask you about English. If I will have a question, maybe I’m here consult you for me, about English, from you, I will ask after, not you, I will ask another American, a person who from, for whose English is native language.

The above two interview excerpts show that Dimitri devalues the ability of NNS to teach a language that he does not see as their own. By extension, Dimitri attaches a high value to the ability of NS who aid him in language acquisition. When discussing the factors that he believes led him to improve his English, Dimitri claimed, “My current English skill just because of daily school, conversation with the Americans and Canadians, native speakers…I really, thankful for them” (1st interview). While positioning English NNS teachers as inferior to their NS counterparts, Dimitri also evaluated his English nativeness as high in the context

4  The Intertwining of Native-Speakerism and Racism… 

71

when talking to English NNS in Asian countries. This positioning is best illustrated by the negative attitude Dimitri held toward a Vietnamese female friend who planned to come to Japan for her career as a biochemist. (Excerpt 4, 3rd interview) D: I’m not sure that this place is really good for her. Because there… she can to be a respectful person and everyone will think about her like she’s professor or she’s a doctor or she’s something. But here she is just Vietnamese. R: Iʼm just curious about things you said before that… You seems kind of positive about the job or things you can do here in Japan, right? But when you mentioned about the Vietnamese girls… D: Of course, it depends on the people, but you know in Vietnam they don’t speak English…Even if they speak very good in Japanese… I donʼt know who is among Vietnamese, who has a really good job here. R: Do you think it’s the problem of English or do you think it is a problem of nationality? D: I donʼt know. Language, of course, to, but I think it’s something about nationality. R: I see, so if they can speak English, even if they … D: Even they can speak English, I think it’s all about nationality… R: I see. But do you think nationality is a problem for you? If you want to find a job in Japan? D: No. No. Because I’m white (laughter). Okay, I see. I’m not a racist. Maybe, maybe, maybe a little bit (laughter). I’m not a racist. But If you look at the world, you can easily find that most of really good jobs do only white people. R: So it’s not a problem about Japanese society, but the whole world… D: Of course, it is not 100 percent. But most of them, if you look at the most richest man in the world or top managers of companies …and most of them are white., most of them are men, not women…Itʼs not only Japanese problem of course. But in Japan, itʼs more and more clearly…

In the above excerpt, Dimitri reproduced native-speakerist discourse here by implying that the English language of the Vietnamese woman was not valuable in the Japanese labor market since Vietnamese do not speak English as NS, and even if they were able to reach a high proficiency in English language, their English language would not guarantee

72 

X. He

them a satisfying economic income. While Dimitri reinforced native-­ speakerist discourse as he denied the NS language of Vietnamese, it is worth noticing that Dimitri changed his learning goal from Japanese language to English language for the purpose of finding a good job in the Japanese labor market himself, who was also an English NNS. Dimitri added that the reason for this difference was nationality, which he elaborated as racial and gender differences. Thus, it can be said that Dimitri framed the native-speakrist, racist and sexist discourses he was exposed to and provided different interpretations toward the value of different English NNS and their languages. As such, there is a contradiction presented in discourses Dimitri produced. On the one hand, he expressed his frustration toward his right of speaking Japanese being denied (excerpt 1). On the other hand, he welcomed this linguistic identity as an English NS (excerpt 2), where he ended up positioning his own English NNS status as superior to other Asian NNS (excerpt 4) yet attached absolute superiority to English NS over NNS (excerpt 3). A CRT lens provides a possible explanation for this seemingly contradictory framing to reinforce native-speakerism ideology which excludes him. The following excerpt illustrated a racial exclusion experience Dimitri had in Russia. (Excerpt 5, 5th interview) R: Right. And I’m just… well… before, you’re talking about how you feel different from other Russian people… D: …Well, they were thinking I’m not, not Russians, some some of them. I mean, you know… It’s because, because, for example, my skin not 100 percent white. I mean, it’s not as white as a white of other white people. I mean, for you it’s white. And for other Asian, it’s white. And even for me, it’s white. But it’s a little bit …brownie and I donʼt know… just a little bit. But itʼs also….also… important. Like, like my… my hair. It’s also a little bit black…So for some people, it is it’s matter, and they thought you’re from Israel. You like, you are, you are. You’re Jewish. No, I’m not. I’m not Jewish, Iʼm Russian. Or you know or you are, you’re Armenian. I’m not Armenian and I’m Russian. So even, even Armenian people thought I’m Armenian. Even Jewish people thought I’m Jewish and Russian people thought I am something someone, somebody else, but not Russian. Even though I’m Russian.

4  The Intertwining of Native-Speakerism and Racism… 

73

Dimitri expressed a strong frustration toward not being acknowledged as Russian regardless of his self-identified Russian identity due to the discourses that associated certain whiteness to Russian identity. Thus, it can be said that by embracing native-speakerism ideology in Japan, which categorizes him as an English NS, Dimitri’s degree of whiteness increased so that he could be acknowledged in the white category he desired. In other words, Dimitri chose to reinforce native-speakerism in Japan by accepting the identification as a superior white English NS in order to avert possible racial exclusion. As such, Dimitri’s linguistic identity of his English and Japanese nativeness was influenced by native-speakerism that intertwines with racism, which is beyond purely linguistic proficiency. In conclusion, Dimitri’s experiences demonstrate that in addition to linguistic proficiency, native-speakerism and racism also contribute to Dimitri’s linguistic identity, as it influences how he is being positioned and how he has positioned himself. This result questions the reconceptualization attempt on NS/NNS that creates new labels purely based on linguistic proficiency (e.g. Faez, 2011). Similar to the color-blind attempt on racial issues, defining linguistic identity using purely linguist elements embeds the danger of denying the racial influence on how individuals are linguistically positioned and on self-position. In addition, this study also demonstrates that although native-speakerism results in Dimitri being denied his ownership of the Japanese language, he reproduced native-­ speakerist discourse in that he devalues the language of other English NNS due to the acknowledgment of his whiteness, which was regarded as not white enough in Russia. The result then magnifies the complexity of stereotypes of NS being uniform with privilege and NNS being uniform with a lack of privilege. Since NS/NNS linguistic identity shows a fluid tendency, an individual could have agency as privileged, while strengthening an ideology that oppresses himself/herself in other contexts. In other words, it breaks the fixed “self/other opposition” or victim/ perpetrator logic’ (Enns, 2012, p. 27) and echoes Enns’ (2012) argument that this logic is reproduced by both sides. Applying both a native-­ speakerim and a CRT lens at the same time, Dimitri’s case also casts a question on the understanding toward NNS as being unconscious toward their own oppression (Kumaravadivelu, 2016). Instead, this study presents a possible explanation that oppressed individuals may choose to

74 

X. He

reinforce native-speakerism ideology for the reason of avoiding the exclusion under racism—another ideology that native-speakerism intertwines with.

Conclusion This chapter has explored the linguistic identity of a Russian migrant in Japan. Six interviews were conducted with him to explore the degree of nativeness that he felt in different language usage contexts. His evaluation of linguistic identity highlighted the fluid and nonbinary nature of NS/ NNS categories. Interview data were also used to examine factors that influence his evaluation of linguistic identity with a particular lens of native-speakerism and CRT framework. In addition to factors such as linguistic ability, this chapter illustrates how native-speakerism and racism could influence the construction on linguistic identity, which demonstrates that linguistic identification was constructed beyond pure linguistic elements. First, the participant’s surrounding environment ascribed him to English NS and Japanese NNS due to association of being Caucasian-looking and having English language ability. Second, Dimitri reinforced native-speakerist discourses in the way that he denied the value of English NNS language and English NNS teachers. He also framed the discourse in positioning himself as superior to other English NNS, which represents a form of racial discrimination. This reinforcement of an oppressive ideology challenges the fixed victim/perpetrator logic attached to NNS/NS. In this way, although more cases in different contexts are necessary for further understanding, this chapter contributes to a more nuanced understanding of linguistic identity. In addition, while Dimitri’s racial exclusion experience in Russian explained the possibility that he reinforced native-speakerism, which denied his Japanese speakerhood, in order to avoid being excluded from the category of white, this study challenges the understanding toward NNS as the unconscious oppressed. This chapter thus calls for the attention to how native-speakerism embeds with other ideologies to strengthen its domination and the overall cost that individuals have to pay in challenging native-speakerism. Thus, this chapter calls for a focus on tackling

4  The Intertwining of Native-Speakerism and Racism… 

75

the awareness among privileged individuals or institutions under these ideologies instead of urging those already oppressed who also have to face alienation under other ideologies that native-speakerism intertwine with.

Notes 1. I am aware of the potential problem that using the terms NS/NNS could reinforce them. Yet, I use these terms deliberately, not as neutral ones, but as the concepts that my participant used to perceive others and be perceived, which cannot be reduced into seemingly neutral linguistic terms. It should also be noted that my participant was the first to use the term NS during our first interview. 2. This labeling follows the participant’s self-positioning (see excerpt 4) without any intention from me to label him in a fixed category. The reader should be aware that how he was positioned by himself and other people around him changes constantly. 3. Although the participant was asked to rate his own nativeness with a concrete number, the number itself does not function as an objective figure to evaluate the actual nativeness of the participant. Instead, it functions at (1) helping the participant to reflect on his nativeness in different contexts and (2) comparing the degree in terms of relatively high and low across different contexts. 4. All the names of participants or schools that appear in this chapter are pseudonyms. 5. In the interview excerpts, ‘D’ refers to Dimitri and ‘R’ refers to the researcher.

References Aneja, G.  A. (2018). Doing and undoing (non)Nativeness. In B.  Yazan & N. Rudolph (Eds.), Criticality, teacher identity, and (in)equity in English language teaching: Issues and implications (pp. 257–273). Springer International Publishing. Blommaert, J. (2005). Discourse: A critical introduction. Cambridge University Press.

76 

X. He

Canagarajah, A. S., & Said, S. B. (2011). Linguistic imperialism. In J. Simpson (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of applied linguistics (pp. 388–400). Routledge. Collins, P. H., & Bilge, S. (2016). Intersectionality. Polity Press. Delgado, R., & Stefancic, J. (2001). Critical race theory: An introduction. New York University Press. Denzin, N.  K., & Lincoln, Y.  S. (2018). The SAGE handbook of qualitative research. Sage. Doerr, N. M. (Ed.). (2009). The native speaker concept: Ethnographic investigations of “native speaker effects.” Mouton de Gruyter. Enns, D. (2012). The violence of victimhood. The Pennsylvania State University Press. Faez, F. (2011). Reconceptualizing the native/nonnative speaker dichotomy. Journal of Language, Identity & Education, 10(4), 231–249. https://doi.org/1 0.1080/15348458.2011.598127 Fong, E., Verkuyten, M., & Choi, S.  Y. P. (2016). Migration and identity: Perspectives from Asia, Europe, and North America. American Behavioral Scientist, 60(5–6), 559–564. Heinrich, P. (2005). Language ideology in JFL textbooks. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 175–176, 213–232. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijs l.2005.2005.175-­176.213 Holliday, A. (2015). Native-speakerism. In A. Swan, P. Aboshiha, & A. Holliday (Eds.), (En)countering native-speakerism (pp. 11–23). Palgrave Macmillan. Houghton, S.  A., & Rivers, D.  J. (2013). Native-speakerism in Japan. Multilingual Matters. Kubota, R. (2020). Fostering antiracist engagement in Japanese language teaching. Japanese Language and Literature, 54(2), 347–357. https://doi. org/10.5195/jll.2020.133 Kubota, R., & Fujimoto, D. (2013). Racialized native speakers. In S. A. Houghton & D.  J. Rivers (Eds.), Native-speakerism in Japan (pp.  196–206). Multilingual Matters. Kubota, R., & Lin, A. M. (Eds.). (2009). Race, culture, and identities in second language education: Exploring critically engaged practice. Routledge. Kumaravadivelu, B. (2016). The decolonial option in English teaching: Can the subaltern act? TESOL Quarterly, 50(1), 66–85. https://doi. org/10.1002/tesq.202 Kusunoki, R. (2018). Japanese native speakers’ perceptions of non-native speakers. In S. A. Houghton & K. Hashimoto (Eds.), Towards post-native-­ speakerism (pp. 113–127). Springer.

4  The Intertwining of Native-Speakerism and Racism… 

77

Lowe, R. J. (2020). Uncovering ideology in English language teaching: Identifying the ‘native speaker’ frame. Springer. Manara, C. (2018). What should I call myself? Does it matter? Questioning the “labeling” practice in ELT profession. In B.  Yazan & N.  Rudolph (Eds.), Criticality, teacher identity, and (in)equity in English language teaching (pp. 125–140). Springer International Publishing. Miles, R., & Brown, M. (2003). Racism (2nd ed.). Routledge. Pavlenko, A., & Blackledge, A. (Eds.). (2004). Negotiation of identities in multilingual settings. Multilingual Matters. Pennycook, A., & Otsuji, E. (2015). Metrolingualism: Language in the city. Routledge. Ramjattan, V. A. (2019). Racist nativist microaggressions and the professional resistance of racialized English language teachers in Toronto. Race Ethnicity and Education, 22(3), 374–390. https://doi.org/10.1080/1361332 4.2017.1377171 Rivers, D. J., & Zotzmann, K. (2017). Isms in language education. De Gruyter. Seargeant, P. (2013). Ideologies of nativism and linguistic globalization. In S.  A. Houghton & D.  J. Rivers (Eds.), Native-speakerism in Japan (pp. 231–242). Multilingual Matters. Solórzano, D. G., & Yosso, T. J. (2002). Critical race methodology: Counter-­ story telling as an analytical framework for education research. Qualitative Inquiry, 8(1), 23–44. https://doi.org/10.1177/107780040200800103

Part II Indigenous Language Reclamation and Identity

5 Creation and Expansion of a Safe Place to Be Ainu: The Urespa Project Yumiko Ohara and Yuki Okada

Pirka, kamuy, rera, and kiroroan are among numerous Ainu words used for names of products, restaurants, shops, and buildings, and so on. They are increasingly conspicuous, especially in Hokkaido, but they are actually seen throughout Japan. This type of Ainu language usage seems to be on the rise, which can be interpreted as a manifestation of a shift concerning Ainu language ideologies among people in Japan. Although it is often claimed for decades that there are only a few speakers left and that Ainu is not spoken as the main language in everyday life (e.g., Fukazawa, 2019), the number of learners is increasing and there are now a few hundred people learning the language (Nakagawa, 2013). Kitahara (n.d.) states, concerning growing interest in Ainu culture and language, that

Y. Ohara (*) University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo, Hilo, HI, USA e-mail: [email protected] Y. Okada Sapporo University, Sapporo, Japan © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Mielick et al. (eds.), Discourses of Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11988-0_5

81

82 

Y. Ohara and Y. Okada

“from 30 years ago or so, there has been an increasing number of people who attempt to regain the customs, performing arts, and language of the past. This has a lot to do with the idea of regaining the right to live happily as a person, ‘human rights’, rather than just nostalgia for the past.” Among the various endeavors aiming to regain Ainu language, culture, and identity, this chapter focuses specifically on a program with strong potential to change the situation of the Ainu people, the Urespa [mutual nurturing]1 project. It was conceived and spearheaded by Professor Yuko Honda at Sapporo University in Hokkaido for Ainu and wajin [non-­ Ainu Japanese]2 students to collaborate in their learning of the Ainu language and culture. With keen awareness of language ideologies such as “the monolingual myth” (Gottlieb, 2008) and the belief that language education and globalization in Japan is practically synonymous with English education (Kubota, 2019), Honda (2013) asserts about the project that it “is a historic challenge that Sapporo University takes to Japan to embark on a truly multicultural society.” In the project, the first cohort of students entered in 2010, and there have been 24 students who graduated as of 2022. There are three main components of the project: (1) Urespa scholarship system for Ainu students to study the language and culture, (2) Urespa company system in which various enterprises donate money and time to interact with the students and also to possibly hire them after graduation, and (3) the participation by not only the Ainu scholarship recipients but also wajin students in Urespa club activities including weekly study sessions, dance and musical instrument learning, and study trips (cf. Uzawa, 2019; Maeda & Okano, 2013). In describing the Urespa project, this study draws from the increasing amount of indigenous community-driven work that employs indigenous methodologies to be critical of Western perspectives on language endangerment that ignore or minimize reclamation and revitalization efforts (Davis, 2017), the diverse nature of language shift and reclamation (Wyman et al., 2014), and heterogeneity among Indigenous populations (Lee & López, 2013). In particular, this chapter takes inspiration from research aiming to advance the situation of indigenous youth (Lee, 2009; Nicholas, 2019; Wyman, 2012). Young people are one of the most influential groups that determine the future of their languages; this chapter, thus, responds to a call for strengthening research on the role played by

5  Creation and Expansion of a Safe Place to Be Ainu… 

83

the youth in language reclamation and revitalization efforts (e.g., Wyman et  al., 2014). Adopting a critical ethnographic lens (McCarty et  al., 2011), this chapter explores how Urespa participants themselves describe their experience of reclaiming the Ainu language and Ainu identities and how they situate themselves in the revitalization of Ainu language and culture. Before moving to a description of the historical background of Ainu and Ainu language in the next section, a brief introduction of the authors including our relationship to the Urespa project is in order. Yuki Okada is Ainu and was in the first cohort group of the Urespa project. In order to continue to support the students and also to grow together to become future leaders of Ainu, he has been working as the supervisor of the Urespa club since he graduated from the program. He is currently a doctoral student at Hokkaido University, and his work focuses on Ainu perspectives concerning animal deities. The other author, Yumiko Ohara, is wajin and is an associate professor at Ka Haka ‘Ula o Keʻelikōlani [College of Hawaiian Language] at University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo, which houses the only doctoral program in the United States that focusing on revitalizing Indigenous languages. She has been involved in the revitalization of Indigenous languages in the college since 2008 and has been working with the Urespa project officially since 2016.

 rief Historical Background of Ainu B and the Ainu Language Revitalization The history of Hokkaido is different from that of mainland Japan. Instead of the Yayoi period following the Jomon period, Hokkaido’s history consists of the Zoku-Jomon period, the Satsumon period, and the Ainu culture period.3 The land was called Ezochi by the Japanese until it was named Hokkaido in 1869 and forcibly incorporated into Japan. The Ainu people, who were indigenous to these areas, have lived in the northern part of the Japanese archipelago in yaunmosir [present-day Hokkaido] and have cultivated Ainu culture including the Ainu language. However, since the latter half of the Ainu culture period, the land was gradually dominated by Japanese people, and, after the Meiji period with its strong

84 

Y. Ohara and Y. Okada

colonialization policies, sanctions grew stronger and the Ainu were forced to assimilate socially, economically, as well as linguistically. In the process, severe discrimination arose, and many Ainu people avoided transmitting the Ainu culture and language to younger generations, and, as a result, the Ainu language usage experienced rapid decline (Oguma, 2014). The same process has been seen in many indigenous and minority communities around the world. At the same time though, there were a few cultural anthropologists and linguists actively studying Ainu culture and language. The work of Kyosuke Kindaichi, Itsuhiko Kubodera, and Mashiho Chiri still have great influence today. Mashiho Chiri was Ainu, and Yukie Chiri, Mashiho’s older sister, is widely known for writing Ainu Shinyōshū [A collection of the Ainu epics of the gods]. In her seminal work, Yukie Chiri lamented her ancestral culture being weakened but at the same time stated her strong desire for its survival. In addition to the Chiri siblings, there were Ainu people who worked fervidly to keep the Ainu culture and language from perishing. We must not forget the achievements of Tatsujiro Kuzuno, Tasuke Yamamoto, and Matsu Kannari, who participated in various studies as informants as well as documenting a vast amount of Ainu language material themselves. It is no exaggeration to say that Shigeru Kayano, who was the first Ainu member of the Diet, is the most famous Ainu. Kayano not only documented and translated over 200 folktales (Kayano, 1993) but also started Ainu language classes in Nibutani in 1983 (Honda, 2013). Ainu language classes were passed on to the next generation, including Maki Sekine and Kenji Sekine, and their daughter, Maya Sekine, who runs a popular YouTube channel that introduces the Ainu language and culture. There were more than ten Ainu language classes in 2014  in Hokkaido (Yoshimoto, 2014). Yuko Honda, who was in charge of the children’s class when Ainu language classes were established by Shigeru Kayano, became a professor at Sapporo University and created the mechanism for accepting Ainu youth at the university that this chapter focuses on. Young people who studied Ainu language and culture in the Urespa program have been involved in Ainu culture in various regions after graduation. For instance, for the Ainu radio course where Kayano taught as the first instructor in 1987, the instructor in 2021 was  Daiki Kuzuno, the grandson of Tatsujiro Kuzuno, who graduated from the program in 2020.

5  Creation and Expansion of a Safe Place to Be Ainu… 

85

Furthermore, there are a few other graduates of the program currently assisting Kenji Sekine’s Ainu language class for children in Nibutani. The next section describes the data in which former and current participants in the Urespa program describe their experiences.

Data The data for this chapter come from semi-structured interviews with current and former members of the Urespa program. There were eight interviewees, four females and four males, and all of them were in their 20s; two of them were wajin and six were Ainu. Four of them were current members, while four were graduates of the program. All of the interviews were conducted in Japanese, videotaped, and transcribed, and some were translated into English. The Japanese to English translation was done by one of the authors. Each interview lasted about one hour, and for all of the interviews, both authors were present. Due to space constraints, we focus here on three of the participants’ descriptions of their experiences. We are using Ainu names the interviewees chose for themselves to represent their conversation in the data. Throughout the data, four themes emerged: (a) Urespa and identities; (b) a safe place to be Ainu; (c) language and cultural understanding; and (d) language and perception. The following data section is separated into these four closely related themes.

Urespa and Identities While the interviews illustrated that the identity development processes of each person are quite unique, many interviewees acknowledged the complex and permeable nature of identities (e.g., Ohara, 2016) as a feature of their Ainu language learning and Ainu identity reclamation. In the first excerpt below, nepki kur states that he has fully developed two identities, Japanese and Ainu, through his study of Ainu language and culture in the Urespa program.

86 

Y. Ohara and Y. Okada

Excerpt 1: nepki kur 日本人としての自分とアイヌの文化を引き継いでいる身として の自分という二 つ の ア イ デ ン テ ィ テ ィが で き た あ が っ た 感 覚がありますね。 [I have a feeling that I have developed two identities, a Japanese self and an Ainu self who is a successor of the Ainu culture].

The compound verb dekiagatta in the phrase “two identities were developed” indicates something was created that did not exist before. In this case, it refers to the formation of two separate identities, a Japanese self and an Ainu self. That he could develop two parts, “Japanese self and Ainu self,” through his participation in the Urespa program suggests that identities are dynamic, complex, and malleable. Excerpt 2 shows the interviewee amam e kur explaining how the Urespa club provided a safe environment for him to be Ainu. Excerpt 2: amam e kur ウレ シパクラブは他のアイヌの子達もいたので別に隠す必要が なかったっていう環境があったっていうのが大きいのかなとも 思ったんですよね。まあもし自分がアイヌだって19才の時に知 ってウレ シパクラブがなかったら多分そこまで変われなかった のかなっていう思いはありますね。 [The club had other Ainu kids, so there was an environment where there was no need to hide it. I found out I was an Ainu when I was 19, and if there had not been Urespa club, I do not think I could have changed this much.]

Being with other Ainu students, amam e kur expresses ease of being Ainu and states that without participating in the Urespa club, he could not have changed as he did in terms of developing his Ainu identity. The next excerpt continues from excerpt 2 as he expresses how he thinks about the Urespa club.

A Safe Place to Be Ainu Excerpt 3: amam e kur ウレ シパクラブ内にいる時は何があっても大丈夫と言う安全な 空間があったので多分それですごく楽だったんだと思います。

5  Creation and Expansion of a Safe Place to Be Ainu… 

87

多分ウレシパの子みんなそこまで強く意識してなくてもウレシパ ってそういう安全な空間があるって無意識で思って いると思います。 [I think it was very comfortable when I was in the club because there was a space where I could be safe no matter what. Even if the members in the club are not so strongly aware, I think they unconsciously know that it is a safe space.]

His usage of the phrase anzen na kūkan “safe place” to describe the Urespa club makes it clear that having a safe place to practice Ainu language and culture is crucial to the reclamation of an Ainu identity. He continues below in excerpt 4 to emphasize the importance of freely expressing Ainu identity and to state his strong desire to create such a safe space for Ainu children. Excerpt 4: amam e kur やっぱりウレ シパクラブにいた時のそのアイヌとしていても安 全な空間っていうのはすごく大事だなと思っていて、今のアイ ヌ語の子供たちを見ているとアイヌ語教室の時はそういう空気 感はあるけど、やっぱり学校の中ではまだそういう空気感では ないのかなという印象があるので、やっぱりそういう学校をア イヌの子供達に作っていきたいという思いは今でも思っている ので、できれば若いっていうか本当にちっちゃいアイヌの子た ちがちっちゃい頃から安全にアイヌである空気感の環境ができ るようにしたいなと思っています。 [After all, I think that the environment where one feels safe to be an Ainu as we felt in the club is very important. Looking at the Ainu children today, I have the impression that there is such an environment when they are in the Ainu language class but it does not seem yet there is such an atmosphere at school. I still have a desire to create such a school for Ainu children, so if possible, I would like to create a space where Ainu children can safely be Ainu from a young age.]

He states that when children are in the Ainu language class, where he serves as an assistant, the children feel comfortable expressing their Ainu identity, but at the same time, he suspects that it is not the same when they are in their regular school. Hence, studying the language is not

88 

Y. Ohara and Y. Okada

necessarily enough to develop an Ainu identity; what is needed is a safe place where they can freely develop their identity.

Language and Cultural Understanding Some of the interviewees spoke more directly to the role of language in developing Ainu identity. In excerpts 5–6, amam e kur describes how a study trip to Hawaiʻi led to a realization of the importance of language. Excerpt 5: amam e kur これ言うと恥ずかしいんですけどハワイに行くまで言語がそれ ほど重要だと思っていなかったんですよね。アイヌ語を好きな 人がやればいいと思っていたんですよ。アイヌ語ができなくて もアイヌだからそれには変わりないと。 [I am embarrassed to say this but until I went to Hawaiʻi I did not think language was that important. I thought whoever likes the Ainu language, should do the language. I was thinking that even if I do not speak the Ainu language, it does not change the fact that I am an Ainu].

Here, he indicates his belief prior to visiting Hawaiʻi that speaking Ainu was not closely related to “being” Ainu, but excerpt 6 shows how understanding of the language-identity connection changed. Excerpt 6: amam e kur でその本当にハワイで言われた通り本当にその言語の中でしか あのその民族の価値観、何かその民族の特徴っていうのがすご く言語の中に現れているなと思っているんですよすごく。何か 最近まあいろん な ア イ ヌ の 物 語 を 読 んだ り ア イ ヌ 語 を 読 ん だりしていると。 [and just like we were told in Hawaiʻi, it is only in the language that we can see the values of the ethnic group. I think the characteristics of the ethnic group are expressed in the language as I read various stories of the Ainu and Ainu language.]

As he reads Ainu stories, he began to see what a language holds in terms of a unique Ainu worldview and Ainu cultural values.

5  Creation and Expansion of a Safe Place to Be Ainu… 

89

Another interviewee, ranma takar, who grew up in one of the towns in Hokkaido with a large population of Ainu, describes how her involvement with the Ainu language has changed her desire to learn it herself. In excerpt 7, she relates this motivation to identity. Excerpt 7: ranma takar そのA君がBさんと今一緒の仕事場にいて日常生活の言葉全部ア イヌ語で喋ってるんですよ。だからBさんとそのA君と私3人でい たら私に喋りかけるときだけBさんは日本語でA君とは全部アイ ヌ語で喋っているからそれが悔しくて。しかもその2人はアイヌ の血筋じゃないので何か複雑な状況になるんですよね。え、何 で私はアイヌの血筋でアイヌって言ってのにその会話に入って いけないんだろうとか。だからうん何かそういう悔しさみたい な私一番バネになるタイプ、いい刺激をもらってがん ばれている感じ。 [A is now in the same workplace as B, and they speak all everyday things in the Ainu language. So if three of us, A, B, and I were together, then B only speaks Japanese when he talks to me and in Ainu when he talks to A, which is frustrating for me. Moreover, since the two are not of Ainu descent, it is a complicated situation. Why can’t I participate in the conversation with them even though I’m of Ainu bloodline and telling people that I am Ainu? So with that kind of frustration, I am very much the type that would use it as a springboard. I feel I am getting great inspiration from this and I’m doing my best.]

In this passage, she recognizes that two of her associates speak Ainu but are not of Ainu descent and thus suggests the malleable nature of the relationship between language and ethnicity; one does not need to be Ainu to speak the language. At the same time, hearing these non-Ainu people speak the language constitutes a source of frustration in her awareness that she cannot join their conversation in Ainu despite being of Ainu descent. She makes an additional comment on the connection between identity and language below. Excerpt 8: ranma takar アイヌならアイヌ語できるんでしょって言われた時に何もでき ないとただ単に格好つかない。

90 

Y. Ohara and Y. Okada

[When you were asked, since you are Ainu, you can speak the Ainu language, right? And if you cannot at all, then it is simply not cool.]

In this statement, ranma takar makes note of the pressure of the expectation that those who are Ainu know the language. Therefore, while it is apparent to her that a person does not have to be Ainu to be a speaker, she nonetheless sees the Ainu language as an important aspect of identity. In exploring the identity-language relation, some of the interviewees noted how learning the language allowed them to develop an Ainu identity because it gave them knowledge that expanded their understanding of being Ainu. This idea is explicated in the next section.

Language and Perception As excerpt 9 shows, nepki kur formulates Ainu language learning as a key to gaining an experience that goes beyond that of a person without knowledge of Ainu language. Excerpt 9: nepki kur ただの日本人が見えないような所が見えてくる。今まで何かわ からなかった家にあった僕のばあちゃんとかが使っていたもの に初めて僕の中で名前がつくという体験は、さっき言っていた 自分たちがどこから来て何をしていたというのを身をもって体 験できることだった。 [Some things that ordinary Japanese people cannot see become visible. Things that are in my house that my grandmother and others were using, I did not know what they were. They were named for the first time in my mind, that experience was an actual experience of understanding where we came from and what we used to do that I was talking about earlier.]

After first stating that his study of Ainu led him to gain insights not available to typical Japanese, he then provides some specifics about the names his grandmother used for things and how “seeing” these names led to a deeper understanding of where he and other Ainu came from and what were they doing. He expands on this idea below in excerpt 10.

5  Creation and Expansion of a Safe Place to Be Ainu… 

91

Excerpt 10: nepki kur トュキ(神々と祖先のための儀式用カップ) とかイクパスイ(神 々と祖先のための木彫りの儀式用スティック)とか家にあったん ですよ。今まで全く目にすら映らなかったものが形とか機能を 知ってからあれってそっちを見ると初めて存在に気付く。全く 存在に気付けなかったものに気付けるようになった。一年生、 二年生の頃は実家に帰る度に何かしら見つけていましたね。 [tuki (ceremonial cup for gods and ancestor) and ikupasuy (wooden-­carved ceremonial stick for gods and ancestor) were in my house but they did not even come into my vision, but learning its form and function, then I realized for the first time its existence in my house. For something I could not even realize was there, I became able to perceive its existence. In my junior and senior years and every time I go back home, there was something I discovered].

As nepki kur states, there were items in his parents’ house which, because they were unnamed to him, went unacknowledged and were therefore meaningless. Yet, his study of Ainu language and culture allowed him to give names and meanings to those objects. Learning Ainu, in other words, made them visible.

Discussion Semi-structured interviews with current and former participants of the Urespa program illuminated how they perceived changes in themselves and their perception of surroundings through their learning of the Ainu language. They described how their experience with Ainu language learning expanded their understanding of the importance of the relationship between language and identity. Both nepki kur in excerpt 1 and amam e kur in excerpt 2 affirmed that the Urespa program was instrumental in developing their Ainu identity, thus illustrating that identity is a process and not a fixed state (cf. Moore, 2019). As amam e kur indicated in excerpts 3 and 4, even today school does not seem to represent a safe space for Ainu children. In fact, the school is repeatedly shown as the place where discrimination frequently occurs (Hokkaidō Kankyō

92 

Y. Ohara and Y. Okada

Seikatsu-bu, 2017). He expresses concern over children not acquiring their ancestral language, the language which was forcefully taken from them for generations in their own land by colonial force. He argues that a safe environment enabling Ainu children and youth to freely cultivate identity is crucial for reclaiming and cultivating Ainu identity. Moreover, amam e kur in excerpts 5 and 6 expresses the importance of Ainu language for understanding Ainu culture. Conflicting language ideologies as illustrated by Nicholas (2019) and Lee (2009) among Native youth are also present among these young Ainu adults. Although aman e kur in excerpt 5 stated that his identity as an Ainu was intact even without knowledge of the language, ranma takar showed us there is expectation that if you are Ainu, then you speak the language. Furthermore, the interviews make it evident that language learning affects not just mental constructs such as identity but also perceptions of one’s physical surroundings. Even at the lexical level, as nepki kur explained in excerpts 9 and 10, learning Ainu words infused new meanings into their existences. In this sense, the responses of the interviewees embody the words of Kramsch (2009, p. 40): “Words not only have consequences for the way we know and define ourselves and how we act upon people and events, they also bring to life meanings that did not exist before.” Learning ancestral languages is fundamentally different from learning other languages: it is intimately connected to identity and to the recovery process not only for individual learners but also for their family and ancestors (Ohara, unpublished manuscript). The interviewees are keenly aware that the language they are committed to learn is something they could have acquired naturally and effortlessly as a child if the Japanese government did not enforce the assimilation policies and if the political, historical, and social climates were different. With many of the participants referencing the Urespa program as a safe place for the learning of Ainu language and culture, the importance of a safe place for the well-being of Indigenous peoples cannot be underestimated. As Taff et al. (2018) assert, learning ancestral languages is healing generations of ancestral wounds. Among First Nations in Canada, there was an inverse relationship between communities with knowledge of Indigenous language and youth suicide (Chandler & Lalonde, 1998), and mental wellbeing was tied to the ability to speak Māori for Māoris in New Zealand (Durie, 2006). By

5  Creation and Expansion of a Safe Place to Be Ainu… 

93

providing safe places for students to explore the connection between language and identity, programs such as Urespa are crucial for the protection and development of Ainu identities.

Conclusion It was 100 years ago when Yukie Chiri expressed her intense desire for the perpetuation of the Ainu identity in the preface to the Ainu Shinyōshū [A collection of the Ainu epics of the gods] (1923, p. 5). Time flows ceaselessly, the world progresses without limit. If at some point just two or three strong persons appeared from among us, who, in the harsh arena of competition, now expose what wreckage we have become, the day would eventually come when we would keep pace with the advancing world. That is our truly earnest wish, what we pray for day and night.4

This chapter indicates that through the learning of Ainu language and culture in the Urespa program, more people may be developing the type of Ainu identity which makes it possible to fulfill Yukie Chiri’s wish for “strong persons.” It will be these people with strong Ainu identities constructed that will be able to help guide an Indigenous group such as the Ainu through the “wreckage” resulting from colonization and harsh forced assimilation policies in the 100 years since these words were written. The Urespa program is not just providing a safe place for Ainu students to study Ainu language and culture, it is working to remedy some of the major problems faced by the Ainu people including discrimination, access to higher education, as well as economic instability (Hokkaidō Kankyō Seikatsu-bu, 2017). Furthermore, the Urespa project is one manifestation of the indestructible desire of the people, known and unknown, to transmit and continue the Ainu identity.

94 

Y. Ohara and Y. Okada

Notes 1. Various English translations have been used for the term “Urespa” but we are using the one from Maeda and Okano (2013). 2. Following many writing about Ainu, we use the word wajin to refer to non-Ainu Japanese. 3. Various proposals have been articulated depending on the position of the researcher. For instance, please view the meeting announcement of Committee for Hokkaido History Compilation. Accessed on March 1, 2021. https://www.pref.hokkaido.lg.jp/sm/bsh/hokkaido-­shi/hokkaido-­ shi/r2-­2zenkindai.html 4. The English translation used here is from Chiri and Shelden (2009).

References Chandler, M. J., & Lalonde, C. (1998). Cultural continuity as a hedge against suicide in Canada’s first nations. Transcultural Psychiatry, 35(2), 191–219. Chiri, Y. (1923). Ainu shinyo¯shu¯ [A collection of the Ainu epics of the gods]. Kyo¯do Kenkyu¯sha. Chiri, Y., & Shelden, K. (2009). The song the owl god himself sang: An Ainu tale. The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 7(4), 1–13. https://apjjf.org/-­ Chiri-­Yukie/3026/article.html Davis, J. L. (2017). Resisting rhetorics of language endangerment: Reclamation through indigenous language survivance. Language Documentation and Description, 14, 37–58. Durie, M. (2006). Measuring Mānori wellbeing. New Zealand Treasury guest lecture series. Treasury. Fukazawa, M. (2019). Ainu language and Ainu speakers. In P.  Heinrich & Y. Ohara (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of Japanese sociolinguistics (pp. 3–24). Routledge. Gottlieb, N. (2008). Japan: Language policy and planning in transition. In R. B. Kaplan & R. B. Baldauf Jr. (Eds.), Language planning and policy in Asia (Vol.1: Japan, Nepal and Taiwan and Chinese characters) (pp.  102–169). Channel View Publications. Hokkaido¯ Kankyo¯ Seikatsu-bu. (2017). Hokkaido¯ ainu seikatsu jittai cho¯sa [Report on the conditions of the Ainu people in Hokkaido]. Hokkaido¯ Kankyo¯ Seikatsu-bu.

5  Creation and Expansion of a Safe Place to Be Ainu… 

95

Honda, Y. (2013). About Urespa project. In Sapporo University Urespa Club (Ed.), Urespa Oruspe (pp. 125–133). Karinsha. Kayano, S. (1993). Ainu ethnic and linguistic revival. In N. Loos & T. Osanai (Eds.), Indigenous minorities and education: Australian and Japanese perspectives of their indigenous people, the Ainu, aborigines, and Torres Strait islanders (pp. 360–367). Sanyusha. Kitahara, J. M. (n.d.). Ainu ni tsuite [About the Ainu]. Ainugo ākaibusu [Ainu language archives]. Assessed December 22, 2021, from https://ainugo.nam. go.jp/takar/about/index.html Kramsch, C. (2009). The multilingual subject. Oxford University Press. Kubota, R. (2019). English in Japan. In P.  Heinrich & Y.  Ohara (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of Japanese sociolinguistics (pp. 110–126). Routledge. Lee, T.  S. (2009). Language, identity, and power: Navajo and Pueblo young adults’ perspectives and experiences with competing language ideologies. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, 8(5), 307–320. https://doi. org/10.1080/15348450903305106 Lee, T. S., & López, N. (2013). “It is best to know who you are through your culture”: Transformative educational possibilities for native American youth. In K. M. Jocson (Ed.), Cultural transformations: Youth and pedagogies of possibility (pp. 139–164). Harvard Education Press. Maeda, K., & Okano, K. (2013). Connecting indigenous Ainu, university and local industry in Japan: The Urespa project. The International Education Journal: Comparative Perspectives, 12(1), 45–60. McCarty, T.  L., , Romero-Little, M.  E., Warhol, L., & Zepeda, O. (2011). Critical ethnography and indigenous language survival. In T.  L. McCarty (Ed.), Ethnography and language policy (pp. 31–51). Routledge. Moore, S. (2019). Language and identity in an Indigenous teacher education program. International Journal of Circumpolar Health, 78(2). https://doi. org/10.1080/22423982.2018.1506213 Nakagawa, H. (2013). Ainugo fukkō no michisuji [path for revitalization of the Ainu language]. In Sappro University Urespa Club (Ed.), Urespa Oruspe (pp. 65–103). Karinsha. Nicholas, S. E. (2019). Without the language, how Hopi are you?: Hopi cultural and linguistic identity construction in contemporary linguistic ecologies. In T. L. McCarty, S. E. Nicholas, & G. Wigglesworth (Eds.), A world of indigenous languages: Politics, pedagogies and prospects for language reclamation (pp. 173–193). Multilingual Matters. Oguma, E. (2014). The boundaries of ‘the Japanese’. Trans Pacific Press.

96 

Y. Ohara and Y. Okada

Ohara, Y. (2016). Reinventing Hawaiian identity: Conception of ethnicity and language in the language revitalization movement. Internationale Asienforum, 47(1–2), 57–80. Ohara, Y. (unpublished manuscript). Language and wellbeing: Countering the negative impacts of Hawaiian language endangerment through language revitalization. Taff, A., Chee, M., Hall, J., Hall, M.  Y. D., Martin, K.  N., & Johnston, A. (2018). Indigenous language use impacts wellness. In K.  L. Rehg & R.  Campbell (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of endangered languages (pp. 862–883). Oxford University Press. Uzawa, K. (2019). What does Ainu cultural revitalisation mean to Ainu and Wajin youth in the21st century? Case study of Urespa as a place to learn Ainu culture in the city of Sapporo, Japan. AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 15(2), 168–179. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1177180119846665 Wyman, L. T. (2012). Youth culture, language endangerment and linguistic survivance. Multilingual Matters. Wyman, L. T., McCarty, T. L., & Nicholas, S. (2014). Beyond endangerment: Indigenous youth and multilingualism. In L. T. Wyman, T. L. McCarty, & S. E. Nicholas (Eds.), Indigenous youth and multilingualism: Language identity, ideology, and practice in dynamic cultural worlds (pp. 1–25). Routledge. Yoshimoto, Y. (2014, May 17). Sōhatsuteki ni seikisuru sōgoizon -Nibutani ainugo kyōshitsu no bunseki kara [Emergent interdependency: Based on an analysis of Nibutani Ainu language school]. [Paper presentation]. Japanese Society of Cultural Anthropology Conference, Chiba, Japan.

6 In Search of Indigenous Identity through Re-Creation of Ainu Self-­Sustaining Community: Praxis and Learning in Action Tatsiana Tsagelnik

In this chapter, two cases of Ainu language learning and practice are presented as examples of culturally safe spaces that emerged from a natural need for a reliable community that does not imply institutional duties or responsibilities. The Tokapci itak1 parent-and-child study sessions are an initiative launched by me, a native speaker of an endangered language, Belarusian, married to an Ainu man from the Tokachi region of Hokkaido, as an attempt at creating an ethnically natural environment for our preschool-­ age daughter and establishing a culturally safe space for young Ainu mothers and their children with a focus on learning of the Ainu language. The second case, Kamuynomi,2 is a project designed around a religious ceremony with a purpose of natural community revival. It involves the usage of the Ainu language, learning of history and culture. The project was started and organized by the late Ota Mitsuru,3 an Ainu linguist and T. Tsagelnik (*) Graduate School of Education, Multicultural Education Division, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Mielick et al. (eds.), Discourses of Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11988-0_6

97

98 

T. Tsagelnik

educator of Ainu descent who was involved in Ainu language education as a teacher for more than 20 years, teaching at Ainu local communities for adults and children, at universities in Hokkaido and through internet-­ based resources. Both initiatives are self-sustainable and voluntary. The two case studies are united by the same goal of Indigenous community resurgence through the provision of a culturally safe space for Indigenous cultural praxis and language learning in circumstances where public assistance cannot be expected. The concept of “cultural safety” in relation to Indigenous people emerged within the nursing education field and was defined by Maori nurses and other health specialists as: An environment which is safe for people; where there is no assault, challenge or denial of their identity, of who they are and what they need. It is about shared respect, shared meaning, shared knowledge and experience, of learning together with dignity, and truly listening. (Williams, 1999, p.213)

In this chapter, the concept of cultural safety and safe space indicates an environment where Ainu people are secured from any racial, social, cultural prejudices and abuse, and where they can behave without concealing their ethnic origin and cultural background, share their experiences and stories, and reconnect with ancestors to rediscover the meanings and create new senses of their identity as Ainu. The chapter begins with a brief introduction to historical factors that have influenced the current state of the Ainu language and the positioning of Ainu people in the Japanese linguistic landscape. Then, two case studies based on a narrative inquiry approach are presented through the voices of the Ainu participants.

 istorical Background and the Current State H of the Ainu Language Since the active Japanese colonization of Hokkaido commenced in 1868, the Ainu people have been exposed to assimilation policies as well as racial and social discrimination. As a result, the traditional structures that Ainu society have been operating under for hundreds of years have been

6  In Search of Indigenous Identity through Re-Creation of Ainu… 

99

significantly damaged, and cultural practices and language restricted and oppressed (Siddle, 1996; Mason, 2012). Nowadays, many Ainu find themselves in a process of rediscovering and searching for positive meaning as bearers of Ainu ethnic heritage. The language of the Ainu, the Indigenous people “of the northern part of the Japanese archipelago, and in particularly Hokkaido,”4 has gone through marginalization, prohibition and forced denial due to colonial policies, and was included into the UNESCO list of endangered languages under the category of “critically endangered” in 2009.5 The first acts of Japanese language intrusion into Ainu livelihood on a policy level were conducted in 1799–1821 when the Bakufu, the central governing body of Japan in the Edo period, forced Ainu to learn the Japanese language and adopt Japanese customs in order to strengthen its positions in the northern frontier and to ensure protection of its interests from Russian influence (Siddle, 1996). A more drastic change happened with the introduction of Meiji period policies oriented toward Ainu people’s “integration” through marginalization and assimilation. These started with the Japanization of Ainu toponyms (1869–1882) as an act signifying the Japanese Empire’s colonial rule of Ainu lands, and integration of Ainu people into the Japanese nation by enforced adoption of Japanese names to incorporate Ainu into the Japanese family register system (1871–1876) (Kitahara, 2019). Such a policy was accompanied by the prohibition of Ainu customs (1871) (such as tattooing among women, wearing earrings among men and burning the households of the deceased), the ban of traditional way of hunting (1876) and fishing (1883), and forced relocations from ancestral lands which resulted in the disruption of traditional economic livelihood (Siddle, 1996; Emori, 2007). A crucial moment for intensification of the assimilation policy toward the Ainu people was the introduction of a compulsory education system for the “former Aboriginal children” in 1901 (Ogawa, 1997). It was conducted in the Japanese language and intended to raise subjects loyal to the Japanese Emperor (Siddle, 1996), not leaving any opportunities for children to use the Ainu language in school settings, and pressing adults to abandon the transmission of Ainu knowledge to their children in the favor of the majority language and culture (Ogawa, 1997).

100 

T. Tsagelnik

Institutional oppression combined with racial and social discrimination forced many Ainu to make a choice in favor of a language shift toward Japanese, the language of the colonizer (Maher, 2001). Marginalization of the Ainu language, reduction of its status in public arenas and depreciation of its prestige in Japanese society resulted in its elimination from all public domains and the interruption of intergenerational transmission. The Ainu language was limited to a restricted use in private spheres and became a language of family, intimacy and community (Anderson & Iwasaki-Goodman, 2001). It was not an uncommon strategy for Ainu parents who were native speakers of the language to avoid intentionally passing down their mother tongue, providing explanations to their children that this language “will not bring happiness but will cause even more serious discrimination” or simply saying that “this is not for children’s ears.”6 The choice in favor of the Japanese language was mainly caused by a desire to escape discrimination and succeed in the majority society. For some, the language was associated with a traumatic experience that caused abandoning communication in Ainu, an example of which is a story told to me by an Ainu Elder whose mother started avoiding having conversations in Ainu after her father had an experience of being detained by the police for a matter related to speaking Ainu. Several generations of Ainu have grown up for whom knowledge of the Ainu language has not been an essential element of their Ainu identity. Since the activation of the movement for Ainu rights revival in the 1970s, many forward-looking and encouraging initiatives have been undertaken to revive the language (e.g., creation of learning materials, establishment of Ainu language classes, a speech contest, a training program for Ainu language teachers and a radio education program). Yet, despite these positive tendencies in the resumption of praxis of the Ainu language, its usage today is primarily limited to rituals and ceremonies, cultural performances (reciting pieces from Ainu oral literature, singing and dancing), naming of foods and ingredients from Ainu cuisine, tools, techniques and products for Ainu arts (Maher, 2014; Martin, 2011). For many Ainu (especially for those who are not involved in regular cultural practices) their ancestral language is still hardly accessible due to many factors.

6  In Search of Indigenous Identity through Re-Creation of Ainu… 

101

Since the Ainu language had been excluded from all public and most private domains due to the policies and discriminatory attitudes toward Ainu people, the Ainu language was associated with inferiority from the policy-makers’ side and as a disadvantage from the Ainu perspective. As a result, the prestige of the language suffered a drastic decline in both public and private spaces. Even nowadays it can be frequently heard from Ainu people that learning the Ainu language is not economically beneficial, and that proficiency in Ainu leads to neither a high social status nor to prestigious or well-paid job opportunities. In addition, Ainu language learners face such barriers as a lack of learning materials for different dialects which are sensitive to Indigenous language learning specificity, a deficiency of culturally appropriate approaches to teaching, a common vision on language revitalization strategies, a shortage of materials that would reflect the linguistic needs of the twenty-first-century Ainu life (Anderson & Iwasaki-Goodman, 2001) and an insufficient number of culturally safe classrooms for Ainu learners (Martin, 2011). The learning of Ainu language also requires significant expenses to purchase learning materials, such as dictionaries, and it is time consuming as usually one has to balance work and family duties and make time for language and culture learning. The main motivation for Ainu language learners of Ainu descent to regain their ancestral language, above all, is empowerment of themselves as bearers of Ainu heritage, strengthening identity and getting confidence as Ainu (DeChicchis, 1995), reclaiming their Indigenous right to speak their native language, and transmitting it to the next generations. The question of motivation will be discussed further in the sections which present the Ainu participants’ narratives.

About This Research This research is based on the principles of narrative inquiry approach, which appeals to the investigation of interviewees’ experiences and the meanings they make out of them through their own stories and perspectives (Barkhuizen, 2015). The data collected through semi-structured interviews conducted in the Japanese language is supported by

102 

T. Tsagelnik

observations I made as an initiator of parent-and-child study sessions, and a repeat-attendee of the Kamuynomi project. To accentuate the testimonies of the Ainu interviewees and to strengthen their presence, some expressions are presented as direct speech marked by quotation marks. All translations of quotes into English were done by me. My research methodology is strongly grounded on the concept of reclaiming Indigenous voices, that have been overwhelmingly silenced and underrepresented, as an essential aspect of decolonization. Though I am an outsider to the Ainu community and a foreigner in Japan, my approach is rooted in my personal experience as someone coming from the Belarusian nation, which has been colonized by neighboring Russia for several centuries and is still in the process of reclaiming our suppressed language, rewritten historical legacy and the right for existence. The following sections explain about the background of the parent-­ and-­child study sessions and the emergence of the Kamuynomi project, describe these projects’ content and present the testimonies of four Ainu interviewees: Kiyomi and Megumi—young Ainu mothers and participants of the parent-and-child study sessions, and Yoshihiro and Rapaki— constant members of the Kamuynomi project. All the interviewees were asked for their preference on the presentation of their names in the chapter. Only Rapaki (who appears later, in the Kamuynomi case study section) preferred to be called by the Ainu name given to him by Ota Mitsuru. All the other interviewees preferred to be called by their real names, explaining their decision by a desire to be open about their Ainu identity and the activities they are involved in.

 arent-and-Child Study Sessions P as a Safe Space Tokapci itak parent-and-child study sessions were formed in the spring of 2018 by three mothers whose children at the time of the beginning of the sessions were all two years old. Two of the mothers were born and raised in the Tokachi region and are of Ainu descent, and the third is me, a foreigner married to a Tokachi Ainu man. My motivation as the initiator, a

6  In Search of Indigenous Identity through Re-Creation of Ainu… 

103

non-Ainu mother, was provided by my personal experience of rediscovery of my identity as a Belarusian through a return to the language of my ancestors, as well as by my Ainu husband, who values the ability of speaking Ainu as a significant part of his Indigenous identity. The idea of organizing Tokapci itak parent-and-child study sessions was motivated by an idea shared by my Ainu husband and me in raising our daughter in a positive environment, in which she would embrace her identity as Ainu from very young childhood. Another trigger was the visit to Aotearoa (New Zealand) as a family in the beginning of 2018 as a part of the Aotearoa/Ainu Mosir Exchange Program,7 a project designed for the Ainu to learn from the experience of Maori people, who have advanced in the revival of their culture and reclamation of Indigenous rights. Success of the Maori language revitalization which started from creation of Te Kohanga Reo (“language nests”) inspired the creation of the parent-­ and-­child community as an endeavor to promote Ainu language among the Ainu parents and to create a positive environment for the formation of Ainu identity among our children through communication with Ainu friends of the same age and usage of the Ainu language. The spring of 2018 was also suitably timely as it was the time when all the participants of the study sessions met at the Ainu Culture Preservation Society in Sapporo in search of an Ainu community and Ainu environment for their children. The sessions are carried out in a casual atmosphere rotating from one house to another, usually starting with a dinner which is followed by relaxed learning of the Ainu language in the form of playing games and singing Ainu traditional or translated songs which involve both children and parents. There is no Ainu language instructor as compared to Te Kohanga Reo in Aotearoa, where the language revitalization movement in its beginning was grounded in language transmission from the generation of Elders to children (Smith, 1989). During Tokapci itak study sessions, parents are cooperating by coming up with ideas for joyful Ainu language learning for their children. They also consult with Ainu language experts if there are questionable points. Until now the main goal for the sessions was not to master the language itself but rather to introduce it to the children and motivate them for the further learning of their heritage language.

104 

T. Tsagelnik

At the very start of the study sessions, the purpose was to concentrate on the language learning. But after carrying out several sessions and further consultations with my husband, it became clear that Ainu language learning without certain preconditions is a complicated process and that the approach to parent-and-child language learning would have to be changed from a format of purely study sessions to, first and foremost, one of building up a comfortable and safe space for the participants. The meetings were thus partly transformed into sessions for exchanging thoughts and sharing experiences, discussing Ainu-related topics, and learning about episodes in Ainu history and about inspiring and prominent Ainu people. Interviews with the Ainu parent-participants (Megumi and Kiyomi) were conducted around the time when the study sessions began and once again two years later. A transformation in the participants’ motivation and attitude toward their ancestral language and also a positive influence on the children’s identity formation as Ainu have been noted.

In Search of a Community It was the spring of 2018 when I asked Kiyomi and Megumi whether they would want to carry out Ainu language study sessions with our children. It was a few months after our visit to Aotearoa, when my husband and I came back inspired by the words of our Maori hosts to focus on our goals and move toward them with people who shared our beliefs, and I was looking for like-minded Ainu women. Kiyomi and Megumi accepted my offer immediately and seemed very inspired by the idea. Later when I asked them in retrospect about their motivation for participation in the sessions, the common answer was that the invitation had been timely and good, as both had seen it as an opportunity to provide their children with the company of friends from the same cultural background. Megumi realized that she wanted to supply her son with the environment that she herself would have wanted to have as a child. She regrets that she started concentrating on learning the Ainu language “too late.” Megumi had been exposed to the language since her childhood, at the local Ainu Culture Preservation Society where it was used in religious

6  In Search of Indigenous Identity through Re-Creation of Ainu… 

105

rituals performed by the community, and in communication with her grandmother, who was a native speaker and used some Ainu words and phrases in front of her grandchildren. However, she still had an image that the Ainu language was one which was “difficult and hard to approach.” After Megumi moved to Sapporo, various opportunities to learn or use the Ainu language emerged, and study sessions were one of them. Kiyomi admits that after moving to Sapporo from her hometown of Obihiro, she was in search of a community to belong to and rely on. At the same time, she was looking for a safe community for her son to count on in case he was in trouble and had “no place to go.” The main motivation was to “prepare an environment” for her child rather than to study seriously about Ainu no koto (Ainu things). Kiyomi liked the idea of study sessions being a small-scale group, a cozy space which could provide her a feeling of safety and help to restore inner stability, and where she could relieve the loneliness she felt in childrearing caused by the lack of community support she had experienced after moving to Sapporo. Kiyomi did not have the desire to put all her efforts into learning the language, but rather was simply enjoying the company and communication. Both women reconsidered their attitude toward the Ainu language after gaining a new role as mothers and responsibility for establishing a cultural foundation for their children.

Language as a Tool for Self-Acceptance At the time of the second interview two years later Kiyomi admitted that she does not feel that she would want to make her son master the Ainu language, but rather wishes to familiarize him with the language to a certain extent. Kiyomi admits that before meeting my family, where both my Ainu husband and I were making efforts to teach and transmit Ainu language to our child, she had no example to follow in regard to how the Ainu language could be articulated, as she had never heard adults in her family communicating in Ainu. Kiyomi’s husband is a foreigner and her son, who has been raised by both parents speaking in Japanese, recently got interested in his father’s native language. Kiyomi interprets this as a

106 

T. Tsagelnik

sign for her to add some of her heritage language to the family vocabulary. She does not recollect hearing any words in Ainu from her family and admits that she feels envious of those who have such memories from their childhood, as the hearing of certain words can arouse a sense of nostalgia that can be shared with other Ainu. Her grandfather used words that sounded for her like “old words from Hokkaido dialect,” but she does not know whether these were Ainu terms. Kiyomi confesses that though she does not have a set goal regarding proficiency in the Ainu language, but at present she is highly motivated to learn it herself and is thinking about presenting at the annual Ainu speech contest. Kiyomi is still, as she admits, “searching for the Ainu inside herself,” and feels that the language is the missing part of the puzzle of her identity, which will help her to express her feelings and thoughts openly and more positively. The reason she feels a necessity to fill in this “missing part” lies in her experience of not being acknowledged as an Ainu by her facial features. She recollects an episode from her childhood in which an Ainu friend remarked, “Isn’t it good that you look less Ainu?” (kokunai8 kara ii jan). This made her feel as if her Ainu identity had been denied and that she had been looked upon, to use her expression, as an “incomplete Ainu.” For her, the Ainu language has acquired a sense of being “a tool for self-acceptance” and for the gaining of acknowledgment from the community. These two processes are interdependent; Kiyomi believes that if she gains acceptance from other Ainu, all the parts will “fit together” and she will be able to “come face-to-face with herself ” and strengthen her self-acceptance as Ainu.

L anguage as Empowerment and Tool for Communication with the Ancestors Megumi has a different experience: she is sometimes mistaken for a foreigner, being asked which country she comes from, or praised for her perfect Japanese. Being able to speak her heritage language is a way for Megumi to empower her identity and bolster her confidence as a bearer of Ainu culture. One of her dreams is to, “at least once in her life,” experience engaging in a conversation carried out completely in the Ainu language and to be able to respond naturally and express herself in Ainu.

6  In Search of Indigenous Identity through Re-Creation of Ainu… 

107

For her, the Ainu language is also a medium through which to deliver her thoughts to her ancestors. In the past, in times when she mused upon the “difficulties and troubles” and painful experiences that her grandparents and previous generations had undergone, she sometimes even “felt sick of being Ainu” (iya ni nacchatta), but now she wants rather that these ancestors be able to see that Ainu culture is being inherited and continuing to live. Megumi believes that by keeping the Ainu culture alive she makes her ancestors “joyful and happy.” She wants her ancestors to know that the times are changing and that “it is getting better for an Ainu to be Ainu.” For Ainu, bonds with their ancestors and continual communication with them through the performance of icarpa (rituals in commemoration of ancestors) is one of the fundamental elements of the Ainu traditional worldview (Fujimura, 1985). Megumi, as a mother of an Ainu boy, is motivated to teach her son at least some Ainu (“maybe not to the level of becoming bilingual but at least to some extent”) and to thus provide the grounds for him to be able to naturally articulate his feelings to the ancestors and to directly deliver prayers, once he is of an age to participate in or himself conduct Ainu religious ceremonies. Megumi wholeheartedly appreciates the way in which Ainu men are devoted to sustaining Ainu religious and cultural practices, but she admits that in her hometown men usually read prayers from a paper. By contrast, Megumi notes that as a woman she has no experience of delivering prayers at a kamuynomi herself, but says that she wishes for her son to be able to deliver his thoughts toward his ancestors and the Ainu deities in a natural way, to be able to utter his words and feeling with confidence, and to be able to respond naturally to any unforeseen changes in the circumstances or scenario of the kamuynomi, which may differ from year to year.

 amuynomi as a Space for Natural Revival K of Ainu-ness The Kamuynomi project described herein was started almost 17 years ago solely by Ota Mitsuru, an Ainu educator and linguist, as an experiment in restoration and rehabilitation of a self-sustaining and independent

108 

T. Tsagelnik

Ainu community. Ota acquired his ability in the Ainu language in his family from his grandfather, as well as from Ainu Elders in the Asahikawa area. He was also well-informed in Ainu history and regional ethnography, had been trained in pedagogy at university, was educated in linguistics and was knowledgeable in a variety of foreign languages. He had been devoting all of his professional knowledge and life experience to the restoration of a sustainable Ainu society, focusing in the first place on identity and language. Within Ainu traditional culture, the kamuynomi is a religious ceremony performed for the sake of communication with the kamuy (deities), such as the delivering of prayers, calling for favors and expressing gratitude to and maintaining connections with one’s ancestors through the icarpa, which is often performed as part of the kamuynomi. Ota’s choice for the site of his Kamuynomi was not accidental, but rather a location described in Ainu epics as a place where legendary heroes lived.9 In the present flow of the Ainu cultural restoration movement as promoted by policies, organizational or public initiatives and the Ainu themselves, there is a tendency to separate the notions of Ainu culture, language, history, religion and education. Ota, however, believed that all these elements of the Ainu world are intertwined and inseparably related to each other, and that the process of restoration should involve all facets at once. His Kamuynomi as a project usually lasts for two days. The first day starts with the preparations at Ota’s household with a kamuynomi in the backyard followed by dinner and friendly conversation inside the house. The main kamuynomi takes place on the second day, when the participants head for the ceremony site by car, making several stops on the way at places which have Ainu names or are relevant to Ainu history and culture. The site for the main kamuynomi was selected at a place on a hill occupied by a Shinto temple. According to Ota, in Hokkaido it was a common practice for wajin settlers to build up Shinto and Buddhist temples on top of casi—Ainu sacred sites used for defensive and religious purposes. After all the necessary preparations of the ceremony site, the main kamuynomi is carried out, and lunch shared by all. The next stop of the participants is a beach where another ceremonial ritual is performed. This seaside is used as a camping site and usually packed at that time of the year with people having barbeques and children playing in the water. Each of the three ceremonies is followed respectively by an

6  In Search of Indigenous Identity through Re-Creation of Ainu… 

109

entertainment program for the deities and ancestors such as the reciting of Ainu legends and the performance of songs or dances in Ainu or in any other language which participants are comfortable with. The Kamuynomi event carried out according to Ainu traditions is attended by Ainu, wajin and foreigners who express a desire to participate and support this initiative. Ota started the Kamuynomi alone, and gradually came to be accompanied by more and more regular members who joined him every year, repeaters who were coming back depending on their availability, and other attendees welcomed by the organizer and participants. Ota’s policy as an Ainu and educator was not to pressure anyone in terms of participation in the Kamuynomi or on the learning or usage of the Ainu language, but rather to provide an environment which would in an unconstrained manner encourage and arouse interest in the learning of Ainu language and history. The next section presents the experiences of two regular members of the Kamuynomi, Yoshihiro and Rapaki.

 xposure to Ancestral Language through E Natural Practice Yoshihiro was not interested in Ainu religious practices. He agreed to participate in the Kamuynomi for the first time because his old friend, Ota Mitsuru, knew that Yoshihiro played the guitar and sang, and asked him to perform after the Kamuynomi. Yoshihiro had had an experience of taking part in Ainu religious rituals before, but at this time he encountered a feeling of being a stranger (or as he expresses his feeling in Japanese, away-kan アウェイ感), an outsider who is “not supposed to be there,” because he could not understand even a word of the language being used for the ritual. He assumes that such a feeling is rooted in his attitude to his own presence at such an event. Previously when he had been approached by Ainu seniors (senpai), his participation as a young Ainu man had been indisputable in such ceremonies. But engagement in Ota’s Kamuynomi was a conscious choice that helped him become aware of the gap in knowledge of Ainu culture and language between him and other participants. That feeling of self-exclusion became the first step for him to

110 

T. Tsagelnik

recognize the importance of learning the Ainu language for himself, to overcome that feeling of being an outsider. Another regular member of the Kamuynomi, Rapaki, who has already been learning the Ainu language for several years, also notes that when one who does not have an opportunity to be frequently exposed to the language finds oneself in such an environment where the language is naturally articulated, one might get a feeling of discomfort (iwakan). Rapaki also notices that Ota’s Kamuynomi differs from similar rituals he had participated in before, as it is performed not according to a fixed manual, but rather flexibly in response to the changing context of each year’s circumstances. Participation, particularly in the Kamuynomi organized by Ota, has not significantly influenced Rapaki’s attitude toward the Ainu language, but it provoked his curiosity to the meaning of the words Ota was using during the ritual. Rapaki enjoyed listening attentively to Ota’s speech and trying to catch and to understand the meaning of familiar phrases. During the Kamuynomi, the Ainu language is used not only for inonno itak (prayers) but also for the performances to entertain deities and ancestors, during the mini excursions arranged by Ota on the way to the ceremony site, and throughout preparations, including in the utterances of dirty jokes in Ainu. However, Ota never placed pressure on the participants to deliver their prayers solely in the Ainu language. Those who do not feel confident in improvising in inonno itak are welcomed to deliver their prayers in any language they feel comfortable with, or to “speak out from the heart,” as Rapaki recollects Ota’s advice to him. Rapaki became a regular member of the Kamuynomi because he was able to identify himself with its concept, and it resonated with his own vision for the revitalization of Ainu society. He commented: [It is an initiative] prepared by ourselves, totally at our own expenses. Isn’t it the right way to do things? This space is created from the cooperation of all the members, whether they are Ainu or Samo (ethnic Japanese). I think this is the crucial mindset, an important action that is rarely seen nowadays and that needs to be restored. And Ota-san brought it to life. That is what made me participate.

None of the Kamuynomi members had set a specific goal of improving their Ainu language abilities by participating in this religious ceremony.

6  In Search of Indigenous Identity through Re-Creation of Ainu… 

111

Its natural, informal atmosphere and friendly tone, the absence of public officials with their ceremonial speeches and the absence of any particular obligations attract the Ainu participants and encourage them to return to the Kamuynomi site year after year. In regard to the Ainu language itself, for instance, Yoshihiro, despite admitting the importance of revival of the ancestral language, states with regret that the Ainu language is “impracticable” and “of no use” (tsukaimichi ga nai) in contemporary Japanese society. Sometime before, there was an idea of the Ainu language being used as a secret language for communication among Ainu, but Yoshihiro notes that recently the number of wajin who can understand it is increasing. On the one hand, Yoshihiro tries to think pragmatically that instead of putting effort into the Ainu language, which is difficult to find application for, it would be more practical to use the same time for learning other foreign languages, such as English and Chinese. But on the other hand, he expresses his concern that being able to articulate himself in the Ainu language is indispensable for “establishing identity as an Ainu”: My testimony to prove to others that I am Ainu is my hirsuteness and strong facial features. If I am asked to demonstrate proof of my Ainuness, should I pull up my shirt? I think, ability to speak the Ainu language can be such a proof.

Participation in the Kamuynomi and preparations for it became an enjoyable and safe space for Yoshihiro, but he did not feel comfortable uttering prayers during the ritual in any language, explaining that he is Christian. But his attitude changed when he realized that he could not understand much during Ota’s funeral which was carried out in Ainu tradition and in the Ainu language. Yoshihiro bewails that he was not able to contribute to the funeral ceremony by joining others in sending off his friend according to Ainu traditions in the language of his ancestors. The Kamuynomi started by Ota Mitsuru is inherited and continued to be performed by the members of the community he created around Ainu religious ritual. After Ota’s passing Rapaki, Yoshihiro, and other regular participants of the Kamuynomi feel responsible for the Ainu spirit that lives in the concept of revival of a self-sustainable Ainu community founded by Ota.

112 

T. Tsagelnik

Conclusion The two cases presented of Tokapci itak parent-and-child Ainu sessions and the performance of a religious ceremony of Kamuynomi are based on the strategy of regenerating an environment favorable for community (re-)building, where traditional elements are combined with newly produced ones which correlate with the present visions of Ainu individuals on their ethnic heritage. Parent-and-child study sessions have become an option for creating a safe space for learning and sharing experiences, which have always been vital elements for parenting and child-rearing. The Kamuynomi represents an example of a recreated Ainu community constructed without any external support, based on the motivation of the members, who cherish the principles of self-sustainability and cooperation that Ainu society used to operate on before it had been interrupted by Japanese colonization. What is most important is that it functions according to community rules, which is one of the preconditions for the process of decolonization. It is a space where such essential Ainu cultural components as rituals, language, worldview, behavioral patterns and so on are naturally absorbed, accepted, practiced and inherited. The possibility of the continuing and voluntary maintenance of these two initiatives by the people involved suggests their relevance and significance to the needs of contemporary Ainu society, those of awakening of one’s identity and accommodating to the conditions of using the ancestral language without being burdened by any duties or responsibilities. Bringing back an ancestral language to one’s personal life or community, the usage and transmission of which has been systematically denied and subjected to the pressure of rejection, (hence causing interruption of healthy relations and the natural livelihood of that society), is a complex and sensitive process. The distance created between Ainu people and their ancestral language caused by its displacement from everyday use provokes a questioning of historical legacy as well as a seeking for role models of how to approach and exercise the language in the context of one’s revitalization and empowerment of Indigenous identity. For Ainu individuals learning their ancestral language, which is heavily endangered, not easily accessible and deprived of

6  In Search of Indigenous Identity through Re-Creation of Ainu… 

113

economic and social status, this process is not related to learning itself or improving socioeconomic conditions per se but rather to knowing and (re-) discovering oneself, gaining confidence and formulating positive meaning in regard to one’s identity as a bearer of Ainu ethnic heritage. Such safe and informal spaces as the parent-and-child sessions and the Kamuynomi can provide a feeling of security and acceptance from the community, becoming places of healing and salvation for adult individuals (most of whom have been openly or indirectly exposed to discrimination or biased behavior), and a natural environment for the formation of children’s positive identity. These two processes are intertwined and mutually influencing. Children embrace their ethnic identity within a culturally healthy community by the medium of their heritage language, and the naturalness with which children absorb knowledge and behavioral patterns transmitted from adults can be stimulating and inspiring for the latter to expand immersion into their ancestral culture. I predict that these reasons are important enough ones for the participants involved in the above-described initiatives to continue their efforts in empowering their Indigenous identity and reclaiming their culture and language, despite the challenges they experience.

Notes 1. Tokapci itak is an Ainu term meaning “Tokachi language” and indicates the Tokachi region dialect of the Ainu language. 2. In this chapter, the word “kamuynomi” is used in two senses: when it appears in lower case (as in kamuynomi), it is referring to a specific type of religious ceremony widely practiced by the Ainu people; when appearing as a name in italics with the first letter capitalized (Kamuynomi), it is indicating the specific, long-standing and ongoing Kamuynomi event instigated by Ota Mitsuru, discussed at length in this chapter. 3. Ota Mitsuru was slated to be a co-author of this chapter, but his contribution to this volume was interrupted by his sudden demise. 4. Ainu no hitobito no hokori ga sonchō sareru shakai o jitsugen suru tame no shisaku no suishin ni kansuru hōritsu [Law on Promotion of Measures to Realize a Society that Respects the Pride of Ainu People]. (2019, December 1). Chapter 1, Article 1. Official Web Portal of Government of Japan. https://elaws.e-­gov.go.jp/document?lawid=431AC0000000016

114 

T. Tsagelnik

5. UNESCO Interactive Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger. http:// www.unesco.org/languages-­atlas/index.php 6. Interviews conducted in 2014  in Tokyo with Ainu women born in the 1950s. 7. For more details about the Aotearoa/Ainu Mosir Exchange Program, see http://aaexchange.blogspot.com/p/mission.html 8. In this context, the Japanese word kokunai is being used to refer to how a person’s facial features are perceived to be “not strong” or “not thick,” in comparison with ethnic Japanese. Ainu phenotypical features considered to be “strong” are hirsute skin, long eyelashes, thick eyebrows and deeply set eyes. 9. Specific information on place name or other facts that may indicate the geographical location are intentionally undisclosed.

References Anderson, F. E., & Iwasaki-Goodman, M. (2001). Language and culture revitalisation in a Hokkaido Ainu community. In M.  G. Noguchi & S.  Fotos (Eds.), Studies in Japanese bilingualism (pp. 45–67). Multilingual Matters. Barkhuizen, G. (2015). Narrative inquiry. In B. Paltridge & A. Phakiti (Eds.), Research methods in applied linguistics: A practical resource (pp.  169–185). Bloomsbury Academic. DeChicchis, J. (1995). The current state of the Ainu language. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 16(1–2), 103–124. https://doi. org/10.1080/01434632.1995.9994595 Emori, S. (2007). Ainu minzoku no rekishi [the history of Ainu people]. Sōfūkan. Fujimura, H. (1985). Ainu, kamigami to ikiru hitobito [Ainu, people living with gods]. Fukutake Shoten. Kitahara, J. (2019). Current status and issues of Ainu cultural revitalization. In N. Greymorning (Ed.), Being indigenous perspectives on activism, culture, language and identity (pp. 187–200). Routledge. Maher, J. C. (2001). Akor Itak – Our language, your language: Ainu in Japan. In J.  A. Fishman (Ed.), Can threatened languages be saved? (pp.  323–349). Multilingual Matters. Maher, J. C. (2014). Reversing language shift and revitalization: Ainu and the Celtic languages. The Japanese Journal of Language in Society, 17(1), 20–35. https://doi.org/10.19024/jajls.17.1_20

6  In Search of Indigenous Identity through Re-Creation of Ainu… 

115

Martin, K. (2011). Aynu itak: On the road to Ainu language revitalization. Media and Communication Studies, 60, 57–93. http://hdl.handle.net/2115/47031 Mason, M. (2012). Dominant narratives of colonial Hokkaido and imperial Japan: Envisioning the periphery and the modern nation-state. Palgrave Macmillan. Ogawa, M. (1997). Kindai Ainu kyōiku seidoshi kenkyū [Research of the history of the Ainu education system in modern times]. Hokkaido¯ Daigaku Tosho Kanko¯kai [Hokkaido University Books Publication Society]. Siddle, R. (1996). Race, Resistance and the Ainu of Japan. Routledge. Smith, L. T. (1989). Te reo Maori: Maori language and the struggle to survive. ACCESS: Contemporary Issues in Education, 8(1), 3–9. https://pesaagora.com/ access-­archive-­files/ACCESSAV08N1_003.pdf UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in danger. (2009). UNESCO interactive atlas of the World’s languages in danger. http://www.unesco.org/languages-­ atlas/index.php. Williams, R. (1999). Cultural safety—What does it mean for our work practice? Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, 23(2), 213–214. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-­842X.1999.tb01240.x

7 Hear our Voice: New Speakers of Ryukyuan Language—Negotiation, Construction, and Change of Identities Madoka Hammine

This chapter addresses issues of language reclamation, revitalization, and the need for decolonization, by extracting relevant data from my doctoral dissertation. I add my personal reflection as an Indigenous new speaker of my ancestral languages, Yaeyaman and Okinawan. From decolonizing perspectives, revitalizing Indigenous languages seeks to address historical domination and to reclaim identities, which necessitates community mobilization, healing, and transformation. Although the discourse of multilingual, multiethnic, and multilingual reality in Japan is emerging (e.g., Maher & Yashiro, 1995), there is a lack of research by scholars to articulate how the discourse reshapes, creates, and negotiates the reality within marginalized communities. It is also important to note that replacing monolingualism or homogeneity with multilingualism or multiculturalism is not sufficient for shifting power dynamics within local and national communities. Imposing the discourse of language revitalization on Indigenous language communities might not solve the complex issues

M. Hammine (*) Meio University, Nago, Japan © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Mielick et al. (eds.), Discourses of Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11988-0_7

117

118 

M. Hammine

on the ground. Thus, we need to examine language revitalization, endangerment, and reclamation from the viewpoint of the marginalized. The focus of this chapter is on language reclamation and revitalization of the Yaeyaman language, one of the Ryukyuan languages spoken in the Ryukyu Islands of Japan, including the Amami, Kunigami, Okinawan, Miyakoan, and Dunan (Yonaguni) languages1 (see Figs.  7.1 and 7.2). These vernacular languages are considered to be endangered (Moseley, 2010), and can be seen as a reflection of the modern history of Japan. The Kingdom of the Ryukyus existed from 1429 to 1879, and Ryukyuan Islands were incorporated into Japan in 18792 when the first expansion of the national language (kokugo) from mainland Japan began. The expansion of the Japanese language in the Ryukyus was accelerated during the period of U.S. occupation (1945–1972) after World War II. Although an early U.S. policy supported Ryukyuan language revitalization, the miserable living conditions after the Battle of Okinawa fueled

Fig. 7.1  Map of the Ryukyus in relation to Japan Mainland

7  Hear our Voice: New Speakers of Ryukyuan… 

119

Fig. 7.2  Ryukyuan languages (Adopted from Heinrich & Ishihara, 2019, p. 166)

a desire for Ryukyuan Islanders’ reversion to Japan by assimilating their speech into Standard Japanese (Heinrich, 2015). A consensus emerged within Okinawa Prefecture based upon the following underlying assumptions: (a) that the Ryukyu Islands would be ceded back to Japan and (b) that children would not be successful, educationally and economically, if they were not proficient in Japanese (see also Fujita-Round, 2022). Thus, the Ryukyuan languages were considered by many islanders as an obstacle to succeed in a united Japan. With the subsequent internalized assimilation under the postwar U.S. occupation (Masiko, 2014), most Ryukyuan Islanders have stopped transmitting their languages to younger generations. By the 1950s and 1960s, with schools’ campaigns of hyōjungo reikō (“Speak the Standard Language”), Ryukyuan languages were no longer being transmitted at home. Teachers continued to encourage students to speak Japanese and discouraged them from speaking their local languages (Kondo, 2008). In the twenty-first century, warnings from UNESCO (e.g., UNESCO, 2003),3 aiming to raise awareness about language endangerment and

120 

M. Hammine

acknowledge the need to safeguard the world’s linguistic diversity, made an impact on language awareness in Japan among scholars as well as the central and local government. Suddenly, Ryukyuan linguistic varieties attracted attention worldwide! Although the claim that endangered languages are universal assets of human beings is internationally common, it needs careful consideration. Documenting endangered languages could entail “colonial practice” to collect data and preserve it for research purposes. This practice, if coming from colonial understanding of endangered languages, could possibly “endanger endangered languages” (Whaley, 2011: 339) by viewing “languages” as a static object which can be preserved by documentation. In preserving linguistic diversity, it is also important to consider the issue from people’s identity negotiation: how these languages are experienced by Indigenous speakers if they face difficulties economically, socially, and culturally (e.g., Davis, 2017; Roche, 2019). Considering the influence of historical layers of colonialism that subjugated their languages and cultures through education, decolonization starts from listening to voices of learners or  new speakers on the ground. In other words, research also needs to provide a basis for action for speakers/learners of these vernaculars. I use a term, “new speaker,” as opposed to the traditional speaker who acquired these vernaculars as their first language, to describe members of those speech communities who “relearned” the language after language shift has taken place, taking the form of adult learning, or through formal/informal training from their elders and/or recalling it from childhood (O’Rourke et al., 2015). New speakers of Ryukyuan languages are emerging in different communities in the Ryukyus (e.g., Ishihara, 2016; Zlazli, 2021; see also Valsecchi and Heinrich in this volume). New speakers constantly negotiate their identities while learning their heritage languages. Therefore, to foster inclusive understanding of linguistic repertoire of both new speakers/learners and traditional speakers, research needs to go beyond a simple dichotomy of essentialist versus non-essentialist views of endangered language and its speakers/learners.

7  Hear our Voice: New Speakers of Ryukyuan… 

121

Positionality Locating myself as an Indigenous scholar, as well as a learner and speaker of Ryukyuan languages, I attempt to localize the view of language endangerment by using a larger framework of decolonization. Being originally from the Ryukyus but educated at universities outside the Ryukyus, I have experienced the ideology of homogenous Japan both within and outside the nation. Growing up in the Ryukyus in the 1990s, my family has always spoken to me in Japanese, and I went through my compulsory education in Japanese. Both of my grandmothers and late grandfathers speak(spoke) varieties of the Yaeyaman language and the Okinawan language as native speakers. However, they did not speak to my parents in these vernaculars. Due to prevailing homogenizing ideologies of Japan, I only realized later when I started studying at university in Tokyo that people from the mainland viewed me as Okinawan, asking me to speak in hōgen.4 Ryukyuan Islanders tend to have different terms of expressing and identifying themselves from others, such as Uchinaanchu for people from Okinawa Island and Yaimapïtu for people from Yaeyama. Traditionally, islanders have been culturally, linguistically, historically, and spiritually different from “mainland” Japanese (Nakagawa, 2020). Historically, people from the Ryukyus had been treated as a racialized minority within Japan as demonstrated by jinruikan [ethnic cultural house] in 1903.5 Similar to Nakagawa (2020), I am often mistaken for a foreigner, or hāfu [mixed ethnic individual] in mainland Japan and often I am not seen as “Japanese” when I am abroad. By encountering people who see me as the Other, I realized that I did not know any of the vernacular languages of my ancestors due to collective assimilation over the generations. I consciously became a learner of my ancestor’s languages in my mid-20s. At the time of my doctoral studies, I was a student who studies Ryukyuan in graduate school abroad with roots both in Yaeyama (my father’s side) and Okinawa (my mother’s side). For my doctorate studies, I chose to conduct research in Yaeyama language communities. It was a choice and process of struggles and healing. By struggles, I refer to occasional moments of being used as a subject

122 

M. Hammine

of research by linguistic researchers or being viewed as “exotic” essentialized islander by the majority when presenting my work. By healing, I refer to moments such as being connected with my ancestors, family, our local histories, cultures, and traditions as well as creating a space/material/art with other learners of Ryukyuan languages. Since these varieties relate to my heritage, the process of research has been emotional in both positive and negative ways. As a Ryukyuan new speaker, such struggles and healing to take back my heritage languages and cultures have shaped my research (e.g., Hammine, 2020). In this chapter, I analyze identity negotiations of Yaeyaman language learners and speakers, using my experiences of learning and teaching the Yaeyaman language.

Methodology and Research Questions Employing Indigenous methodologies (Smith, 1999) as a larger framework for this research, I explore how identities of Yaeyaman language speakers and learners are shaped and reshaped by the interface between language policies, ideologies, economy, and material conditions. Indigenous methodologies acknowledge and respect the ontology and epistemology of the participants or the community within which the research is conducted (Smith, 1999; Wilson, 2008). Knowledge in the Indigenous research paradigms are seen as relational and are shared with all creations and the Earth rather than owned as an individual entity by the researcher. A fundamental difference between dominant paradigms and Indigenous paradigms is that the relationship goes beyond the researcher and the participants. To articulate differences in research paradigms, I especially acknowledge yuntaku, an active form of listening, as a way of narrating the voices of learners, speakers, and teachers of Yaeyaman/ Ryukyuan cultures and languages (Uehara-Carter, 2013). I use yuntaku as a way to bring herstory, stories, and histories from viewpoints of the marginalized. It is a way to bring human stories and experiences that are usually excluded in dominant Western and/or dominant Japanese and/or dominant Ryukyuan views. In order to examine new speakers’ identity negotiation in language reclamation activities, the following three research questions are examined.

7  Hear our Voice: New Speakers of Ryukyuan… 

123

1 . How do new speakers of Yaeyaman negotiate/construct their identities? 2. What kind of support is needed for language reclamation activities in Yaeyama? 3. Whose voice, perspective, or position is not being taken into account in our work? The study is based on an ongoing ethnographic fieldwork from 2017 to 2022, during which I observed the use of Ryukyuan, especially meeramuni or Miyara Yaeyaman. I also draw on linguistic ethnography as a methodology to establish a holistic analysis (Creese & Copland, 2015). I observed the use of Yaeyaman in formal and nonformal settings in multiple locations in Yaeyama as well as in a diasporic Yaeyaman community on Okinawa Island, including online study groups held via Zoom. As a partial cultural insider, I focus on the decolonization process of identifying and resisting the multilayered imposition of dominant (Japanese/central) values and knowledge systems on Indigenous languages and cultures. At the same time, I am aware of my position as a knowledge producer/researcher who comes to the village, trained in Western education institutions. My research process has been interactive. During and after my doctoral studies, I have been engaging in language reclamation activities in the Yaeyaman language such as making a language learning podcast, holding a radio program in Yaeyaman, and leading a language learning group with new speakers of Yaeyaman. In 2020, Matthew Topping from the University of the Ryukyus and I held a workshop to invite local members to a Master-Apprentice Program6 in Yaeyaman. Before COVID-19, I often visited people’s houses as well as their fields where they grow crops. The pandemic brought some difficulties and challenges regarding my fieldwork due to travel restrictions. My data consists of field observation notes, audio/video recordings of language practices, semi-structured interviews, and an ethnographic diary of the Yaeyaman language online classes. Using video and audio recorders, interviews lasted from one to ten hours. Participants of interviews included new speakers (learners) of Yaeyaman, regular schoolteachers, teachers who teach Yaeyaman voluntarily, and traditional speakers of Yaeyaman. I conducted interviews using both Yaeyaman and Japanese. Interviews are transcribed, translated, and analyzed by the researcher. Different themes

124 

M. Hammine

related to endangerment and reclamation of Yaeyaman were generated. The following discussion summarizes the extracted data and shows some inhibitions that could arise in language reclamation projects.

Results and Discussion Change in Language Policies and Identities To answer the first research question, I first analyze how speakers/learners of Indigenous languages construct identities embedded in language policy and language ideologies held within the community. Although there is no policy to establish Ryukyuan languages with official status in Japan, recently in Okinawa Prefecture some locally driven language initiatives have been implemented. Some examples include: (1) passing the Ordinance to establish a “Community Language Day (shima kutuba no hi)” held annually on September 18;, (2) declaring that local languages are the foundation of Okinawan culture and the constitution of cultural heritage, (3) publishing textbooks of Ryukyuan languages designed for elementary and junior high schools, and (4) establishing a Center for the Promotion of Community Languages in 2017 on Okinawa Island. These measures are designed to promote language education in the Ryukyuan languages and literacies as seen in the distribution of textbooks to elementary schools and junior high schools in the prefecture (see Ishihara, 2016). During my fieldwork in schools in Yaeyama, participants mentioned that these textbooks were distributed but not necessarily used in schools. Local teachers have reported some difficulties due to the restrictions of gakushū shidō yōryō [Course of Study]. Public school teachers are transferred to different schools within the prefecture after several years following the national system of teacher placements. As a result, most teachers who work in different villages in Yaeyama may not be from Yaeyama. This system has also contributed to difficulties in implementing sustainable language education in Yaeyaman schools. One of the participants whom I learn Yaeyaman from has shared the experience of being punished for speaking Yaeyaman at school. The

7  Hear our Voice: New Speakers of Ryukyuan… 

125

participant (P1) was born and raised in Miyara and moved to Okinawa for his first job. After several years on Okinawa Island, he returned to Miyara. Many Yaeyaman speakers who experienced assimilative policies in school for speaking in Yaeyaman have seen the change in language policies. For those generations, seeing their children and grandchildren start learning their languages may cause emotional confusion. Currently, schools are starting to promote education of languages which they were punished for speaking in school. Some of my teachers/participants of this research have similar experiences. This participant (P1) shares his experiences with the change of language policies. Interview extract 1.7 P1: Nowadays, my grandchild says to me, “shikaittu miihaiyuu” [thank you very much in Miyara Yaeyaman], when he comes home from school. I am like…why? I used to be punished for speaking in sumamuni in school. Time has changed. If we had had a hōgen as a school subject, I would have gotten fine grades in school…. I would have gotten all As in my school. MH: So it was wrong to speak in sumamuni in school? P1: Oh, yes. It was… Once we used sumamuni in school, you know, we had to stay late in school and clean our school. We were assigned extra work of cleaning by teachers. I used to hit our classmate from his/her back and make him/her say “agaa [ouch]” then I can give this “hōgenfuda [dialect placard]” to this student to clean the school instead of me. (Interview with a traditional speaker/teacher conducted in Japanese, recorded on June 20, 2017)

This interview shows that changes in language policies affect native speakers. This traditional speaker’s experience with his grandchild speaking sumamuni [Yaeyaman] with him brought him confusion at first, but at the same time brought him a moment of surprise. Schools, in the name of educating people in the Ryukyus, used strategic assimilative policies including hōgenfuda [dialect placard] when this participant was in school. Now, the time has changed: sumamuni is considered to be important so children should learn it at school. Recently, Ishigaki City launched a campaign for people of Yaeyama, Yaimapïtu.8 Yaeyaman has also started to be used in media, including a

126 

M. Hammine

local TV station, radio, and social networking service such as Facebook and Instagram. Identities of traditional speakers who were punished for speaking Yaeyaman may need to be transformed. The recognition of multilingualism and prefectural government policies might cause confusion for traditional speakers to speak the language which they were forced to abandon in school in the past. While the presence of Indigenous languages in media is a further step for the future, it is also crucial to recognize the need for support for traditional speakers, to transform their past and start speaking Yaeyaman to younger generations.

Ideological Challenges in Indigenous Values, Languages, and Cultures Ideologies underlying these local/national language policies have two main problems. First, due to the modern divisions of prefectures, local Okinawan prefectural policies do not include linguistic varieties spoken in the Amami Islands (see Fig. 7.2), which belong to Kagoshima Prefecture under the modern administrative division. Creating language policies which cover Ryukyuan languages, including the Amami Islands has been partially hindered by modern administrative divisions. The Amami linguistic varieties, as a result, lack prefectural-level funding for revitalization activities. This is an example where modernization and history have solidified a one-nation-one-language ideology in the process of nation building (e.g., Befu, 2001; Oguma, 1998). A second problem is that ideologies of language and culture—encouraged by national policies in the Ryukyus—seem to have put local languages and speakers into ongoing self-marginalization. Some traditional speakers of Yaeyaman tend to view their language as unsophisticated or not educated. Some of the traditional speakers tend to show an unconscious devaluation of the Yaeyaman language by limiting the use of Miyaran only among what they define as “uneducated people” (Hammine, 2020). The linguistic self-­ marginalization is at work unconsciously in the ways speakers talk about their languages. During fieldwork interviews, I encountered three types of attitudes among the traditional speakers (Hammine, 2020). First, there were

7  Hear our Voice: New Speakers of Ryukyuan… 

127

traditional speakers who advised me to not use the local language, pointing out that young people knew nothing about it. People who showed this attitude tended to emphasize the age difference between themselves and me, commenting, “You are too young to speak the language.” This type of traditional speaker seems to be proud of speaking Miyaran but sometimes get angry when insiders who are younger use the language, especially honorifics, incorrectly. On the other hand, younger speakers (in their 30s or 40s) seem to be afraid of misusing Miyaran, especially proper honorifics, which is known to be complicated and different from Japanese. Second, there are some traditional speakers who praised me, telling me, “You are doing a great job.” However, they spoke to me only in Japanese. These people might have spoken only Japanese to younger people and may find it difficult to change their linguistic behavior toward young people. Finally, there were people who encouraged me in speaking Miyaran and who also spoke back to me in Miyaran. Negative attitudes toward Indigenous languages are the result of historical domination of Japanese values over Indigenous Ryukyuan values. Local languages are seen and viewed by some traditional speakers themselves as “not-sophisticated.” Identities of traditional speakers are embedded in unconscious devaluation of their own languages and linguistic varieties and do not work positively to transmit Indigenous languages to new speakers. When new speakers decide to learn and speak these languages, traditional speakers could unconsciously inhibit their language learning. The incompatible language attitudes between new speakers and traditional speakers of Yaeyaman act as an obstacle for successful language learning of new speakers.

Creating a Space with New Speakers To further discuss examples of traditional speakers’ attitudes toward new speakers, let me go back to the same interview that I introduced previously. The interviewee, a teacher and speaker of Yaeyaman, continued talking to me in sumamuni, by suggesting that I speak in Yaeyaman with my father. He continued suggesting that I should call him “ottō” instead of “otōsan” [father]. In the middle of the interview, he mentions that the

128 

M. Hammine

Japanese way is sophisticated. I included parts of the interview in Miyaran and translated these into English. Interview extract 2 P1: (When you were growing up,) you also did not use sumamuni, right? MH: No, I did not use it when I was little. I just listened to my grandparents use it at home. But that’s the only time I listened. P1: Your grandparents are from Miyara, so they are good at it. But because your parents worked for school, they do not use it. You should speak with your father in Miyaran. What does he say? MH: Yes, that’s a good idea. P1: What do you call your father? Otōsan di du anjiru?9 [Do you call him otōsan?] MH: Yes, I call him that. P1:  Otōsan di yarabiuru? [Do you call him otōsan?] Kurigaraya, ottō di anji [From now on, you should call him ottō]. MH: Yes. P1:  Ottō, baaya yaahanu. Zumangasaa saari hoori. Banuge noongasaa nmahaaru munoo uguryoori [Father, I am hungry. Please take me somewhere. Could you take me somewhere where I can eat something tasty?]. MH: Yes. P1: I used to use sumamuni with my father. When I was small, people used to call “otto¯” but it has changed into “oto¯san,” which is more sophisticated. (Interview with a speaker/teacher of Yaeyaman, conducted in Japanese, recorded on June 20, 2017)

Although some traditional speakers might have unconscious linguistic self-marginalization, young learners of Yaeyaman tend to have positive language attitudes toward their heritage language. For instance, one of the new speakers in my study group reminds us of community language policies for parents to speak Miyaran for parents at school events. Interview extract 3. P3: I think younger people tend to have a more positive view of Okinawa and Yaeyaman. It is very different from the older generation. I would like to ask you a question. How was your lesson at Elementary School? Did you notice anything about meeramuni [Miyaran] and children?

7  Hear our Voice: New Speakers of Ryukyuan… 

129

MH: I started making Disney songs10 into Yaeyaman with my linguist friend. P3: How was the reaction of the children? MH: Children were surprised, and they noticed by themselves that it was their meeramuni [Miyaran]. One child said, “Is this in English?” and the other child said “No, it is in Miyaran.” P3: People often tell me that people from Miyara can speak Miyaran more than other communities. I used to be the president of the student committee, and in Miyara, we had to give a speech in Miyaran. For students, I had to speak in standard Japanese but for parents, I had to make a speech in Miyaran. I had to memorize the whole speech. MH: Do people tell you that in Miraya, people speak it more? P3: I think we have a strong love for our village. (Interview with a learner/new speaker of Yaeyaman, conducted in Japanese, recorded on December 5, 2020)

The islanders in Yaeyama have chosen (or are made to choose) to assimilate themselves into Japanese by abandoning their languages. The language shift has influenced traditional speakers’ attitudes toward their languages. However, the above experience of a learner and a new speaker of Yaeyaman shows a site of resilience from younger generations and local community toward national language policies. By making a space for children and younger generations in Miyaran, the new speakers negotiate their identities in relation to languages.

Standardization, Resources, and Power To address issues of the second research question, this section focuses on different layers of power both within and outside communities. The Ryukyuan languages have different varieties (see Fig. 7.2). No Ryukyuan languages, including Yaeyaman, have a standardized writing system or orthography. As in other Ryukyuan linguistic varieties, there is no standard writing system of the Yaeyaman language, and it is written differently according to contexts. Similar to other minoritized language contexts, standardization remains a potent way of inventing language, producing languages as bounded discrete entities, and subsequently

130 

M. Hammine

increasing the social status of those who use them (Costa et al., 2017). It reveals issues of multilayered power relationships within Indigenous language communities. On the other hand, standardization is inherently a limitation of diversity within Indigenous language communities. It is thus a way of both validating groups and limiting group-internal diversity. While a consistent writing system, whether alphabetic or syllabic, is essential for documentation and revitalization, this sometimes acts as an obstacle for new speakers to acquire literacy in Indigenous languages. In the Ryukyus, Ogawa (2015) has made practical suggestions for a consistent writing system of Ryukyuan languages. Although research articles and books written for linguists exist, educational materials and learning materials for children rarely exist for the Yaeyaman language. Doing work with Yaeyaman myself, I create my learning materials for Yaeyaman lessons. For instance, I produced learning materials including a series of language learning podcasts. In the study group and podcast for learning Yaeyaman, I have used one method to write sounds in Hiragana. However, not everyone in Miyara agrees with this way of writing. I have come across people who refused to read it when I showed my writing. Some people prefer to use Hiragana, while others use Katakana. By making learning materials, I myself might be involved in creating inequality within communities by choosing one variety over the other. The lack of educational materials and teacher training adds another layer to this issue. Teachers of Yaeyaman tend to work as unpaid volunteers without teaching qualifications, which increases the self-perception of teachers of Yaeyaman as unsophisticated language teachers. This may also further add to the discrimination of Indigenous languages as seen in the lack of formal programs, accreditation, and official governmental recognition. Currently, without opportunities to be recognized as teachers, many work voluntarily. The local radio program which I run with two new speakers of Okinawan is also run voluntarily. Without economic support for teacher education and learning materials development, teachers will not be able to continue working successfully since they perceive themselves simply as volunteers. The problems related to standardization reminds us that transmitting local languages is not merely the transmission of language structures but rather the reclamation of cultural values and identities of the community.

7  Hear our Voice: New Speakers of Ryukyuan… 

131

As a non-native speaker and learner of Yaeyaman, my position has always been influenced by native speaker teachers who tell me not to use certain ways of writing over the other. I reflect on my position; who am I to write Miyara Yaeyaman? Promoting a writing system relates to language standardization. Choosing a writing system to balance the spoken and written vernacular is language planning that involves an ideological assertion. This step is a matter of negotiation among islanders, stakeholders, and researchers (see Fujita-Round, 2022 for similar issues with the Miyako language).

Personal Reflection: The Need for Decolonization To answer the third research question, I add my personal reflection and discuss the need for decolonization based on my research. Learning my own heritage languages from elders has been a process of sharing and reclaiming identities for myself. Having a part of my family from Ishigaki Island, elders in the village have welcomed me during my fieldwork. I understood Indigenous languages are embedded in the ancestral land and space.11 Gradually, I came to understand more about my grandparents, their pain of not speaking their languages to their children for the sake of their success. I came to understand why I thought cultures from mainland Japan, including languages, are perceived as better. I now have a choice to write this chapter in English, while I can also choose to speak Yaeyaman, Okinawan, or Japanese but it is also important to note that for people who “had” to stay in the village, the language of the village may not contain the same meaning. The language of socioeconomic “success” has been Japanese, while Yaeyaman remained a “backward” language. Ongoing decolonization of myself and my relationship with Ryukyuan languages have been painful but at the same time transformative. It is about understanding the pain from older generations that new speakers might need to overcome intergenerationally. While researchers who work with endangered language communities in other contexts write about the need for decolonization (e.g., Leonard, 2017), researchers who work with Ryukyuan communities also need to work on listening to voices of learners, speakers, and teachers of these languages. For communities,

132 

M. Hammine

overcoming the pain cannot be achieved overnight. Voices, words, and being Indigenous language speakers have been almost lost for generations. Continuous reflection of my positionality to hear speakers’ voices has led to a continuous changing and transforming of my identities as a learner and speaker of Yaeyaman. By studying about ancestral languages, especially in Yaeyama, I realized learning a language changed me. I become someone “strange” in my own home. If I had not have learned Indigenous languages and cultures, perhaps things might have been easier without knowing about the histories or struggles of my ancestors and our histories. Or, perhaps, this is why I struggle with reclamation. Learning more about Yaeyama is more than just learning a language for me. Learning more about Indigenous languages would benefit not only us learners but also the majority. It will further establish our well-being. Identities of Indigenous youth and new speakers of Indigenous languages need to be framed as decolonization. As Mufwene (2017) notes, if the Indigenous populations feel they are disadvantaged by speaking their Indigenous languages, language revitalization does not succeed even if linguistic diversity is discursively pursued. By viewing the Global South merely as “diverse,” we might entail another colonial way of looking at diversity. The need for decolonization through bringing alternative views to histories—herstory—is necessary for the future.

Conclusion and Outlook In this chapter, I looked into how new speakers and traditional speakers of the Yaeyaman language experience identity negotiation through language reclamation/revitalization process. For new speakers to express and cultivate their identities as speakers of Indigenous languages, they need to overcome unconscious linguistic self-marginalization of traditional speakers. The alternative way of understanding and framing language, and revitalization, is necessary. Bringing the idea of “multilingualism” developed from outside is not enough since discourses, such as language rights, do not necessarily resonate in the contexts of the Ryukyus.

7  Hear our Voice: New Speakers of Ryukyuan… 

133

On the other hand, new speakers tend to express desire and willingness to learn the Yaeyaman language. Love for their land and community might be the answer for them to keep learning their heritage language. However, there is a need to create a space to release the pain and to engage in decolonization of the community itself. Where can we learn Indigenous languages? Can teachers of Indigenous languages receive enough recognition as professionals? Who provides their salaries? Can new speakers speak the language without fear of being spotted as incompetent speakers? As new speakers, we have to keep creating learning materials, language teachers, teacher training, and a safe space for people to share not only the pain from the past but also positive connections and new experiences to pass our heritage to future generations. Therefore, I conclude this chapter with the following three proposals: 1 . Taking care of trauma and emotional confusion of traditional speakers 2. Providing new speakers with a safe space of learning their heri tage languages 3. Demanding the government provide us with economic support To cultivate comfortable new users of Yaeyaman, there is a need to understand the changes in language policies. The shift to affirmative policies toward Indigenous languages affects language attitudes of traditional speakers, causing both confusion and surprise. Speakers are confused and surprised to see their children or grandchildren start speaking the language which they made an effort to forget. Their emotional transformation seems to be necessary to cultivate a space for them to speak their languages to new generations. Language revitalization programs, therefore, should be inclusive for both traditional speakers and new speakers so that their identities as speakers of Indigenous languages can be transformed. To break a chain of oppression and assimilation, both traditional speakers and new speakers have to overcome confusion and experience transformations in their identities. Traditional teachers can see themselves as possible “teachers” of these languages, whereas new speakers can see themselves as being competent human beings both in  local and in global senses.

134 

M. Hammine

Acknowledgments  I would like to acknowledge my gratitude first to all my research participants. This work was made possible by the support from my family, friends, colleagues, and my students. I would like to express my gratitude to my colleagues, other Indigenous scholars, for discussions and talks on decolonization via Zoom. Shikaittu miihaiyuu.

Notes 1. The author employs the English translation Amami, Okinawan, Kunigami, Miyakoan, Yaeyaman, and Dunan for Shimaguchi, Uchinaaguchi, Miyaakufutsu, Yaimamuni, and Dunanmunui. 2. Different islands in the Ryukyus were incorporated in different years into Japan. For instance, Amami Islands were incorporated into Japan in 1871, earlier than the rest of the Ryukyus. 3. The report entitled “Language Vitality and Endangerment” by UNESCO Ad Hoc Expert Group on Endangered Languages (UNESCO, 2003). 4. Hōgen is often translated as dialect in English. However, as both Jarosz (2015) and Shimoji (2018) acknowledge, Ryukyuan is usually regarded as an independent language (or even a group of languages) by domestic and international researchers because there is no mutual intelligibility between the mainland dialects and Ryukyuan. 5. The racialization of Ainu and Ryukyuans became historically apparent at the World Exposition in 1903 where Okinawans, Ainu, and the other minority groups in Japan’s empire were exhibited in a jinruikan, a so-­ called ethnic cultural house. 6. Master-Apprentice Initiative started in Ishigaki in 2020 with a help of a researcher Matthew Topping from the University of the Ryukyus. 7. The author translated the interview conducted in Japanese to English for this chapter. Where the participants used Yaeyaman, the author intentionally included the original speech and provided translation in parenthesis. 8. The Ishigaki City established a website for Yaeyaman people to interact with each other through the Internet. (http://yaimapitwu.com) 9. Pronunciations may vary individually. 10. I translated four songs from Disney movies as educational materials to teach Yaeyaman in school. 11. I have talked about being a cultural insider as well as researcher with Dr. Martha Tsutsui Billins’s on a podcast about linguistic fieldwork called fieldnotes (https://fieldnotespod.com)

7  Hear our Voice: New Speakers of Ryukyuan… 

135

References Befu, H. (2001). Hegemony of homogeneity: An anthropological analysis of “nihonjinron.”. Trans Pacific Press. Costa, J., De Korne, H., & Lane, P. (2017). Standardizing minority languages: Reinventing peripheral languages in the 21st century. In J.  Costa, H.  De Korne, & P.  Lane (Eds.), Standardizing minority languages (pp.  1–23). Routledge. Creese, A., & Copland, F. (2015). Linguistic ethnography: Collecting, analysing, presenting data. SAGE Publications. Davis, J. L. (2017). Resisting rhetorics of language endangerment: Reclamation through indigenous language survivance. Language Documentation and Description, 14, 37–58. Fujita-Round, S. (2022). Language communities of the southern Ryukyus: Miyako, Yaeyama and Yonaguni. In J. Maher (Ed.), Language communities of Japan. Oxford University Press. Hammine, M. (2020). Speaking my language and being beautiful-decolonizing indigenous language education in the Ryukyus with a special reference to Sámi language revitalization [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University of Lapland. Heinrich, P. (2015). Japanese language spread. In P.  Heinrich, S.  Miyara, & M.  Shimoji (Eds.), Handbook of the Ryukyuan languages (pp.  593–626). Mouton de Gruyter. Heinrich, P., & Ishihara, M. (2019). Ryukyuan languages in Japan. In C. Seals & S. Shah (Eds.), Heritage language policies around the world (pp. 165–184). Routledge. Ishihara, M. (2016). Language revitalization efforts in the Ryūkyūs. In M. Ishihara, E. Hoshino, & Y. Fujita (Eds.), Self-determinable development of Small Islands (pp. 67–82). Springer. Jarosz, A. (2015). Nikolay Nevskiy’s Miyakoan dictionary: Reconstruction from the manuscript and its ethnolinguistic analysis studies on the manuscript [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. The Adam Mickiewicz University. Kondo, K. (2008). Hōgenfuda: kotoba to karada [Dialect Tag: language and body]. Shakaihyōronsha. Leonard, W. Y. (2017). Producing language reclamation by decolonising ‘language’. Language Documentation and Description, 14, 15–36.

136 

M. Hammine

Maher, J.  C., & Yashiro, K. (1995). Multilingual Japan: An introduction. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 16(1–2), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.1995.9994590 Masiko, H. (2014). The politics of the movement to enforce standard Japanese under the U.S. occupation (P. Heming, Trans.). In M. Anderson & P. Heinrich (Eds.), Language crisis in the Ryukyus (pp.  82–102). Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Moseley, C. (Ed.). (2010). Atlas of the world’s languages in danger, (3rd ed.). UNESCO Publishing. Online version. Accessed June 28, 2021, from http:// www.unesco.org/languages-­atlas/. Mufwene, S. S. (2017). Language vitality: The weak theoretical underpinnings of what can be an exciting research area. Language, 93(4), 202–223. Nakagawa, S. (2020). Coda: The incommensurability of English language Pedagog[uer]y and sustainability—Spirits and protein. In J.  Goulah & J. Katunich (Eds.), TESOL andsustainability: English language teaching in the anthropocene era (p. 177). Bloomsbury. O’Rourke, B., Pujolar, J., & Ramallo, F. (2015). New speakers of minority languages: The challenging opportunity–foreword. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 231, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-­2014-­0029 Ogawa, S. (2015). Orthography development. In P.  Heinrich, S.  Miyara, & M. Shimoji (Eds.), Handbook of the Ryukyuan languages (pp. 575–590). De Gruyter Mouton. Oguma, E. (1998). Nihonjin no kyōkai: Okinawa, Ainu, Taiwan, Chōsen, shokuminchi shihai kara fukki undō made [The Boundary of Japanese: Okinawa, Ainu, Taiwan, Korea, from colonial occupation to reversion movement]. Shinyōsha. Roche, G. (2019). Articulating language oppression: Colonialism, coloniality and the erasure of Tibet’s minority languages. Patterns of Prejudice, 53(5), 487–514. https://doi.org/10.1080/0031322X.2019.1662074 Shimoji, M. (2018). Dialects. In Y.  Hasegawa (Ed.), Cambridge handbook of Japanese linguistics (pp. 87–113). Cambridge University Press. Smith, L. T. (1999). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. University of Otago Press. Uehara-Carter, M. (2013). Nappy routes and tangled Tales: Critical ethnography in a militarised Okinawa. In D.  Broudy, P.  Simpson, & M.  Arakaki (Eds.), Under occupation: Resistance and struggle in a militarised Okinawa (pp. 2–22). Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

7  Hear our Voice: New Speakers of Ryukyuan… 

137

UNESCO. (2003, March 10–12). Language vitality and endangerment UNESCO ad hoc expert group on endangered languages. [Document submitted to the international expert meeting on UNESCO Programme safeguarding of endangered languages Paris]. Accessed January 8, 2022, from http://www.unesco.org/new/ fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CLT/pdf/Language_vitality_and_ endangerment_EN.pdf. Whaley, L. J. (2011). Some ways to endanger an endangered language project. Language and Education, 25(4), 339–348. https://doi.org/10.1080/0950078 2.2011.577221 Wilson, S. (2008). Research is ceremony: Indigenous research methods. Fernwood Publishing. Zlazli, M. (2021). While we are asleep: Master/Mentor-apprentice language learning initiative in the Ryukyus. SOAS Working Papers in Linguistics, 20, 1–26.

8 Ryukyuan Language Reclamation: Individual Struggle and Social Change Patrick Heinrich and Giulia Valsecchi

In Japan, individuals are learning languages for many motives, in different ways, and with different consequences. In this chapter, we explore language reclamation, defined by Leonard (2012) as “a larger effort by a community to claim its right to speak a language and to set associated goals in response to community needs and perspectives.” Language reclamation involves emotional exposures, an unsettling of identity, and efforts to overcome collective trauma (see also Chap. 13).1 In this chapter, we discuss subjective difficulties of Ryukyuan language reclamation and the societal implications thereof. Based on the inductive analysis of 13 semi-structured interviews conducted with individuals involved in Ryukyuan language reclamation, we highlight salient personal

P. Heinrich (*) • G. Valsecchi Department of Asian and North African Studies, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Venice, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Mielick et al. (eds.), Discourses of Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11988-0_8

139

140 

P. Heinrich and G. Valsecchi

experiences common to our consultants and the ways in which these experiences lead both to the (re)construction of perceptions and believes about themselves and the Ryukyus, which results, in turn, in sociopolitical engagement. How can one become a ‘Ryukyuan-language-speaking Ryukyuan’ when one has been raised as a ‘Japanese-speaking Japanese’? The dilemma is twofold. Firstly, according to dominant ideology, being Japanese means speaking Japanese. Speaking another language undermines such an identification. Secondly, Ryukyuan learners are exposed to what Kramsch (2009) describes as “the pain of using a symbolic system that irremediably belongs to others, whose use is to a large extent dictated by others, and that enables them to measure the distance that separates the [present language-learning] Self from the [native speaking] Other.” When applied to language reclamation, this issue becomes yet more complex, because reclaiming Ryukyuan involves stepping out of conventional categories of belonging and membership and of Self and Other. As we will see in this chapter, Ryukyuan language reclaimers perceive Ryukyuan as ‘their language’ from the start. Contrary to learning English, for example, one can regard oneself as a member of Ryukyuan-speaking society but learn to speak Ryukyuan only afterward. Language reclamation is not simply an expansion of a multilingual repertoire: it is a reappropriation of something that was lost, and that should have been maintained (Chap. 7 in this volume). Ryukyuan languages are sister languages of Japanese. UNESCO distinguished between six Ryukyuan languages (Moseley, 2009).2 After the military annexation of the Ryukyu Kingdom in 1872 and its forced incorporation into the Meiji state, Japanese administrators declared Ryukyuan languages, cultures, and customs to be epiphenomena of Japanese language, culture, and customs (Oguma, 2001). Japanese academia, particularly linguistics and folklore studies, gave their academic stamp of approval to this view. Ryukyuan languages were declared to be ‘greater dialects’ (dai-hōgen) of Japanese, even though no research was launched to support such claims. Rather, research accommodated the political view that the Ryukyus were Japan. Due to their vast difference to Japanese, Ryukyuan languages became subsequently suppressed in manyfold and purposeful ways. They were replaced in all public domains

8  Ryukyuan Language Reclamation: Individual Struggle… 

141

by the 1920s and in the 1950s and 1960s also in private domains such as family and neighborhood (Anderson & Heinrich, 2014). All Ryukyuan language varieties are endangered today, and they are set to become extinct by the mid-century (Heinrich et al., 2015). As a legacy of Meiji-period ideology, Ryukyuan languages are still framed as ‘Japanese dialects’ by the Japanese state, and they therefore still await their entry into the school education system and can only be learned informally. However, language policies supportive of language reclamation efforts would require ‘languages’ to start with. This leaves language activists with the sole option to contest or resist national language (Japanese) policies and to engage in grassroots activities instead. As an effect, anybody who is reclaiming a Ryukyuan language is involved in grassroots activities and therefore consciously or unconsciously resists national language policies (Heinrich & Ishihara, 2018; Hammine, 2021). Note, however, that Ryukyuan language reclamation is not equally embraced by the entire population of the Ryukyus and that the views and endeavors of our consultants remain exceptional at the time of writing this chapter. Just like everybody else in Japan, Ryukyuans have been socialized as Japanese, who are widely believed to share (since immemorial times) one language, one culture, and one identity (Befu, 2001). According to such a view, Ryukyuan is Japanese. Letting go of this belief and accepting that young and middle-aged Ryukyuans do not know their own language is painful. Individuals who reclaimed Ryukyuan languages come to perceive themselves differently. They also change their views on the Ryukyus and Japan. Reclaiming Ryukyuan involves thinking about and acting on the Ryukyus, and it is at this nexus that their activities exceed the realm of ‘language learning’ and cross over into ‘language reclamation’.

Survey and Data A brief word on our own position. We are Europeans studying the Ryukyus from an area studies perspective. Heinrich has been collaborating with and has sought to support activists in the Ryukyus for the past 20 years, while Valsecchi is new to the field. We support the view that

142 

P. Heinrich and G. Valsecchi

Ryukyuan should be made available to formal language education, believe that these languages should be maintained, and that academic research should be adapted to support such efforts. We are aware that Indigenous studies require and are best pursued from Indigenous perspectives, and we therefore leave as much space as possible to the words and views of our consultants. What effects does Ryukyuan language reclamation have on the identity of the individuals engaging in it? What views, believes, hopes, and goals are involved? What does it take for attempts to reclaim Ryukyuan to be successful? To answer these questions, we interviewed 13 people who have studied a Ryukyuan language as adults. Ten interviewees are from Okinawa, two are mainland Japanese, and one is a foreign resident in Okinawa (see Table 8.1). We video-recorded and transcribed all interviews, but for interviewee no. 8, who did not want to be recorded. All consultants expressed their consent that we could use the data for academic papers. Some spoke on conditions of anonymity, and we therefore Table 8.1 Interviews

8  Ryukyuan Language Reclamation: Individual Struggle… 

143

anonymized all consultants. We identify them with acronyms, which allow the reader to recognize their nationality/identity, gender, and age. The interviews were semi-structured and conducted in Japanese or in English (refer to the appendix for interview questions and the sentence completion task). Japanese interviews have been translated into English by us.3 We apply critical ethnography in our analysis because we seek to explore not simply “what there is” but “what could be” (Thomas, 1993). Doing so allows us to examine actions, attitudes, and ambitions that are otherwise downplayed or concealed by dominant beliefs about language and identity. Critical ethnography is also a fitting approach because Ryukyuan language reclamation is itself an act of exploring ‘what could be’. Language reclamation implies to swim against the current of conformity. It takes strong convictions to keep reclaiming Ryukyuan in the face of dominant views on Japanese society, language, and culture (Fija & Heinrich, 2007; see also Chap. 13).

Individual Struggle and Change The study of language endangerment emphasizes that speaking a specific language involves a particular representation of the world. Speakers place themselves in the world differently according to the language they speak. The urgency to combat language loss stems from an understanding that language endangerment results not solely in the loss of a unique representation of the world but also in a loss of placing oneself in a particular way in the world (Harrison, 2007). This means that our consultants are not simply learning to speak Ryukyuan—they are learning it to be (more) Ryukyuan. Practitioners of language reclamation become aware of the gap between who they were in the past and who they aim to become. Following Kramsch (2009), we refer to the construction of new perceptions and attitudes about oneself as a speaker of a language as the ‘symbolic 2’ function of language. Put simply, in the context of Ryukyuan language reclamation, learning to speak Ryukyuan entails not only acquiring new linguistic structures (symbolic 1). Those who endeavor to use Ryukyuan must also engage in the deconstruction and reconstruction of

144 

P. Heinrich and G. Valsecchi

a whole range of things that were once central to their identity (symbolic 2). From an emotional, relational, and embodied point of view, language reclamation is an unsettling experience.

Learning my Language to Become Myself I decided to learn Ryukyuan because it’s my language (OJ-F-30-1 and OJ-F-40-1); If I had not learned Ryukyuan, then I would not have found my real self, […] I would have remained incomplete (OJ-M-50); Studying Ryukyuan languages for me is like becoming myself (O(A)-M-50). This way of framing Ryukyuan language reclamation is common to our consultants. They had learned foreign languages before, but studying Ryukyuan was different. Foreign language learning involves the acquisition of a symbolic system that belongs to others. With Ryukyuan language reclamation, the symbolic system is perceived as already belonging to the learner, even if it is not yet mastered: “Oh, I’m from Okinawa but I don’t speak like Okinawan people. What happened?” (OJ-F-30-1); I asked myself “why can’t I speak Uchinaaguchi [Okinawan language] even if I am Uchinaanchu [Okinawan]?” (OJ-F-40-2). Ryukyuan is both present and absent in the lives of our consultants, even before they engage in language reclamation. It is their language, but not quite yet. There is a feeling that something is missing or that something has been taken away. I feel like the ability to speak Uchinaaguchi was taken away from me (OJ-F-50). I had forgotten that something like Ryukyuan languages existed […]. I always felt Japanese, but something was missing, and I couldn’t name it (OJ-F-40-1). What we have at hand here is not simply a matter of discovering, but one of remembering and re-discovering. Ryukyuan language reclamation deals with the re-construction of something that has been broken. Reclaiming Ryukyuan is like reconnecting what was forcefully disconnected (OJ-F-40-1); it’s like looking for something that has been lost (OJ-M-50). Our consultants framed their efforts of language reclamation as a process of becoming oneself. This is different from the expansion of identity through foreign language learning: Maybe I studied English in order to become American. The same with Japanese. One studies Japanese in order to become even more Japanese. Okinawan is different. I study Okinawan to be

8  Ryukyuan Language Reclamation: Individual Struggle… 

145

myself (OJ-F-20). Another consultant spoke about developing another version of me—a version that was latently already present: That version already exists in me because I was brought up in that context. I am sure I have that Ryukyuan me. […]. Speaking or listening to Ryukyuan is like realizing my Ryukyuan self (OJ-F-40-1). The positive implications of ‘becoming oneself ’ also surface in the outcomes of the reclamation process: Studying Ryukyuan totally matches what I am looking for. It makes me happy. That I am following my own goals. It has liberated me (OJ-F-20); Speaking or listening to Ryukyuan is like being relieved, like having hope. It feels like home (OJ-F-50). Another consultant stated that I don’t think that there is a societal motivation to learn Ryukyuan. It comes from the inside, from a desire to change personally (OJ-M-50). Not everybody is able to undertake the transformation necessary for successful language reclamation. It is this that makes our consultants exceptional in a Ryukyuan setting. One of them, an experienced Okinawan language teacher, told us that most people will not be able to change identities and language. It takes skills, and also privileges. Most have no choice. They have been born in Japan, and they think of themselves as Japanese, but Ryukyuan language with Japanese identity does not work (O(A)-M-50). Reclamation requires a fundamental renewal of self-identity.

Unlearning and Being Rebellious I always had a Japanese identity. I did not even think about being Uchinaanchu. This changed when I went to Hawai‘i. When asked “where are you from”, I replied “I am Japanese”. One day, I randomly met an old local guy. He asked me “where in Japan are you from?” “Okinawa” I said, and then he went “oh, then you are not Japanese, you are Okinawan”. At first, I did not understand what that was supposed to mean. I felt offended. Back then I knew nothing about Okinawan history and culture. […] I went like “what?”, but then I started to hang out at sanshin lessons and with the Okinawan community, and it slowly dawned on me “oh that’s what he meant”. Okinawan is different (OJ-M-20-2). This experience exemplifies the trajectories of many of our consultants. Discovering that they could be (or that they

146 

P. Heinrich and G. Valsecchi

already are) Ryukyuan strikes them as a radical new realization. When I went to Tokyo, I was often asked whether I was hāfu [having a Japanese and a non-Japanese parent]. At my university, many students had an international background. Many of my friends were mixed or had international experience. They perceived me as different. They thought that I am not Japanese. I was shocked (OJ-F-30-1). Language is fundamental in questioning or undoing Japanese identity: If Uchinaaguchi had been transmitted to me, I might not have said “I am Japanese” (OJ-M-20-2). When asked to complete the sentence ‘before studying Ryukyuan I was more…’, two consultants said I was more Japanese-like (OJ-M-50, OJ-F-40-1). All consultants agreed that Ryukyuan language reclamation involves to some extent a ‘rebellious spirit’. This poses challenges to language teachers. Unless learners are ready to question their own identity, efforts of studying Ryukyuan will stall: I don’t teach just language. […] Okinawan language is identity, but many students are not interested in this. Being Japanese is okay for them. If you believe in the myth of Japan as a monolingual nation, you cannot learn Okinawan. For most students Okinawan is part of Japanese, and they see themselves as Japanese (O(A)-M-50). We see again the distinction between language learning (remaining as Japanese as before) and language reclamation at work. Reclamation challenges and transforms identities. Ryukyuan language reclamation can be hard to justify to others. It questions common beliefs about the Ryukyus and its relation to Japan. There no longer is suppression […] but one is seen as some sort of a weirdo when speaking the language (OJ-M-20-2). Some embrace this outsider role: People think I am weird, but I never wanted to be normal from the beginning (OJ-F-30-1). Once the language is reclaimed, speaking Ryukyuan can become a rebellious act: Now I use it on every occasion. Even if I feel uncomfortable. […] Once we were in a restaurant. They understood the language there, but they did not use it. We started to order in Ryukyuan, and they were like “what’s going on?” We only used Ryukyuan and English, no Japanese. People admire English speakers, and they humiliate people who speak Ryukyuan. But we used both. They did not know how to take it (OJ-F-40-1).

8  Ryukyuan Language Reclamation: Individual Struggle… 

147

Emotional and Relational Change Ryukyuan language reclamation involves emotions that are usually not triggered by language learning. Learning Ryukyuan languages for me is like an emotional rollercoaster (OJ-F-30-1). The spectrum of emotions is wide. For example, sadness emerges when one comes to understand what has been lost (OJ-M-50), but reclamation may also involve anger: It is saddening to learn how Okinawan speakers have been treated in the past and to see the effects of this today. Their inability to speak and their shame to use the language. There is sadness and there is anger (O(A)-M-50). At the same time, when asked whether Ryukyuan language reclamation contributed to their happiness, 12 out of 13 consultants replied affirmatively. Ryukyuan languages also set off emotional reactions of older full speakers or of nonspeakers (Japanese monolinguals): When I visit families of native speakers in their 80s and 90s, they usually have their sons or daughters serve me tea, and sometimes I feel that they are not happy. Because they don’t speak the language, but I speak it. This also makes it difficult to speak the language, because I don’t want them to get angry. I think this also makes new speakers or learners drop out. Nobody likes to be hated (OJ-F-30-1). But things are changing: When I speak Uchinaaguchi, there are people who think I should not speak it, and I feel affected by their negative reactions. But the majority is happy. I think it is slowly changing (OJ-F-50). Ryukyuan is also perceived to be more effective than Japanese to express emotions and feelings. This is one of the advantages of speaking Ryukyuan: I think it is helpful for me to speak Ryukyuan, because I can communicate how I feel (OJ-F-20); I can express my real sentiments (O(A)-M-50). This perception was captured as follows in a comparison between Okinawan and English: Uchinaaguchi is not just a tool [like English]. I feel like it serves authentic interpersonal communication, communicating with the heart (OJ-F-F0). Ryukyuan language reclamation has consequences on interpersonal relations. Reclaiming Ryukyuan implies to confront conflicts with family, partners, colleagues, or community members: I started being evaluated by my grandmother and by my parents. They told me that I was not good at speaking Uchinaaguchi. Because of these comments, it was hard to speak. When I speak, they point out that something sounded strange, and they speak

148 

P. Heinrich and G. Valsecchi

Japanese to me. It happens often (OJ-F-30-2). Negative reactions may also entail gender dimensions: Women are supposed to speak a lot of polite language, or they are not supposed to speak Ryukyuan altogether because that is ‘a very male thing to do’ (FR-M-30). Difficulties also manifest because reclaiming Ryukyuan is an investment in one’s own identity: I’m looking into my own Ryukyuan roots. I’m in the process of reconstructing everything, including religion. I can still say I am a Muslim, but my understanding of being Muslim is different from that of most people, like my husband’s. He feels insecure and threatened because I am becoming someone he doesn’t know (OJ-F-40-1). Usually, however, reclaiming Ryukyuan is a means for re-­ creating meaningful relations. Speaking Ryukyuan restores a bond with older generations: If you try to speak with older people in Uchinaaguchi, they will immediately say that you are different. You become sort of popular with them, they say stuff like “you’re a good kid”. The connection becomes stronger (OJ-M-20-2). This is not always the case as many elders have difficulties coming to terms with their native language, and a sense of shame is hard to overcome. However, speaking Ryukyuan to others engaged in reclamation is always appreciated: When I write something in Uchinaaguchi on Instagram, my friends comment or put a like on it. We encourage each other. To be able to talk about Okinawa and our life as Uchinaanchu in Uchinaaguchi feels really good. Until now, I thought that what I did wasn’t really appreciated. But if I actually speak the language, people are very happy. We share this joy (OJ-F-40-2).

Societal Struggle and Change Language reclamation includes a desire for sociopolitical change. All consultants had already developed ideas about this, and they all spoke without hesitation. They thought that there is nothing ‘normal’ in not speaking one’s ancestral language, but this is not what most people think in the Ryukyus (or in Japan). Hence, endangered language reclamation efforts involve a critique of society as it currently is. Languages are endangered because they are placed in a hostile language ecology. Language reclamation entails attempts to change this, and it therefore seeks to integrate nonlinguistic issues (Leonard, 2017). Three larger issues came up in

8  Ryukyuan Language Reclamation: Individual Struggle… 

149

the interviews: the role of present-day school education; the necessity of decolonization (although not everybody used this term); a desire for more civic engagement for language, culture, and education.

Speaking Ryukyuan Should be Normal When asked why she was learning Okinawan, one consultant told us because it’s my language (OJ-F-40-1). We were also told I chose to learn Ryukyuan because I am Okinawan (OJ-F-20). Why should somebody have to rationalize why they want to speak their ancestral language? It should be normal: Speaking or listening to Ryukyuan is for me something which should be seen as normal for anybody who is Ryukyuan (OJ-M-20-2). Not everybody sees it this way, though: In Osaka, it’s normal to speak Kansai-ben, but in Okinawa we cannot speak Uchinaaguchi. How comes? (OJ-M-20-1). The present situation in the Ryukyus is seen as abnormal. If Okinawan society was healthy, it would be totally normal for its languages to be transmitted. Something is wrong here (OJ-F-20). Becoming aware of this is part of the individual trajectories. It is the outcome of study and self-reflection. From 2003 to 2004, I was an exchange student at the University of Hawai’i. I learned about the Hawaiian language revitalization movement, and I asked myself ‘Why can’t I speak Uchinaaguchi, even if I am Uchinaanchu?’ (OJ-F-40-2). The answer to this is given by another consultant: When Okinawa came under control from outsiders [in this case mainland Japanese], the view emerged that Okinawan was inferior. I would like to flip this discrimination around and show it has no basis. In that way, one comes to see that the transmission of Ryukyuan is something good (OJ-M-50). Not everybody in the Ryukyus (or Japan) understands why Ryukyuan language reclamation matters. Our consultants seek to change this. Education policies and practices are seen as a problem. Ryukyuan languages did not fade away naturally. It was intentional. Language policies did this, and linguistic imperialism. Okinawan people don’t have the chance to learn about this (OJ-F-40-2). In a similar vein, the history we learn in school is Japanese history, but we are different. We have our own history. The culture, too, is different, we have our own culture (OJ-M-20-1). Some were

150 

P. Heinrich and G. Valsecchi

straightforward. The main problem of Ryukyuan language learning is the Japanese school system (O(A)-M-50). A similar opinion was that there should be more support for Ryukyuan language, because they need more support (OJ-M-50). The latter statement is obviously true given the fact that Ryukyuan is set to become extinct by mid-century if no countermeasures are taken (Heinrich et al., 2015). Consider the following statement by one consultant who is fluent in English: Convincing those working in the education sector is difficult. For example, on Irabu Island, they unified all schools into one comprehensive school from elementary to middle school […]. I suggested that their new school song could also have a version in Irabu-­ Miyakoan. There are five regional dialects on Irabu. I therefore suggested five verses, one for each dialect. I could then make an English version. “How about this?”, I asked. The song would have three different versions, Japanese, Irabu-Miyakoan, and English. The principal said no but asked me if I could help them with their English curriculum. […] It was awkward (J-F-50). This anecdote underlines that giving Ryukyuan languages more space, making them more visible, and teaching them, even to a small extent such as in a school song, are hard to realize in the present situation.

Decolonizing and Recentering the Ryukyus Decolonization refers to the undoing of domination, including attitudes and beliefs. Consultants talked about this in detail. Some of them were familiar with decolonization theory. I never thought that speaking Ryukyuan implied discussing decolonization. […] By speaking Ryukyuan, I hope to psychologically contribute to decolonization (OJ-F-40-2). There are good reasons to engage in decolonization, because a lingering sense of shame discourages the use of Ryukyuan. Some people feel embarrassed, they think they are not supposed to speak the language (J-M-50). Before learning it, I never thought that speaking Ryukyuan implied overcoming a lot of shame and a sense of inferiority. It is a coming-out, in the literal sense (FR-M-30). What has been subject to devaluation needs to be reappreciated. Long-­ standing negative attitudes need to be surmounted. The misconception of a ‘monolingual Japan’ might have been debunked and discredited in academia, but it remains in the minds of many. Why did I have to grow up

8  Ryukyuan Language Reclamation: Individual Struggle… 

151

as a Japanese? Why did I have to become Japanese? The answer is because of 1972. Why was there a reversion then? In order to be like the mainland. Economically, too. But if you look at it today, you see that our precious language, culture, and identity have vanished, but that discrimination remained. When I realized this, I could not help but think that something terrible is happening in Okinawa (OJ-M-20-2). Consultants believe that reclaiming Ryukyuan contributes to Ryukyuan self-esteem, culture, language, and way of life. Okinawa has been perceived as something lower. We have been looked at from above. But one can change this by learning and speaking Ryukyuan. By restoring one’s language, one can also restore one’s self-esteem. One can combat Okinawan’s dependency on the mainland, too, and strengthen a spirit of independence (dokuritsushin). In other words, one engages in decolonization (OJ-M-50). Decolonization, too, is emotionally charged. When I lived in Yamagata and Tochigi Prefecture, lots of people asked me about Okinawa, but I did not speak the language, nor had I studied its history. I understood that I was ignorant about the things that surrounded me. This kept bugging me (OJ-F-20). Decolonization is a difficult undertaking in Japan. To live as a minority in Japan is hard. Questions of diversity and minority rights are ignored. Okinawan people have experienced rejection. They have been singled out for the way they speak Japanese. Now that Okinawans are part of Japan and speak Japanese well, we are telling them ‘we are not Japanese, we are Okinawans, we speak Ryukyuan’. I think most are scared by this. They have a trauma. Especially the native speakers (OJ-F-40-2). These difficulties notwithstanding, the immediate threat to Ryukyuan calls for a fundamental break with prior attempts of language revitalization and for a more radical shift towards language reclamation (see Leonard, 2017). Ryukyuan languages with Japanese identity do not work. Defending Ryukyuan positions with Japanese identity does not work. […] The Ryukyus are dominated by Japan and America. Unless this changes, no advances will be made with language (O(A)-M-50). Some consultants felt that Okinawa Prefecture could take a clearer stance toward the issue of domination, and also toward Ryukyuan. Words like Uchinaanchu, Uchinaaguchi and shimakutuba [community speech] are easy to use because they are not Japanese [but Okinawan]. If they said words like Ryūkyū shogo [Ryukyuan languages] or senjū minzoku [Indigenous people], they would have to admit that we are

152 

P. Heinrich and G. Valsecchi

a minority in Japan. They [those at the prefecture] are trying to avoid that (OJ-F-40-2). Decolonization requires alternative visions for the Ryukyus and its languages. Therein, the Ryukyus are no longer the periphery of Japan. They constitute an independent geographical and cultural center. The Uchinaanchu spirit, the Uchinaanchu way of thinking is addressed today under the assumption of Okinawa being (in) Japan (Nihon no naka no Okinawa) – as if Okinawa was the deep countryside of Japan. If Uchinaaguchi was again used in everyday life, we could again think about Okinawa as Okinawa (Okinawa o chūshin ni). If we did not think of having to match Japanese standards all the time, if we focused more on Okinawa, our self-­ confidence would increase (OJ-F-40-2). Language is seen as a good starting point. At present, Okinawa society is operating within the Japanese system. I don’t think this system matches us. There are problems of education, economy, development, military bases, and so on, and there are inevitably conflicting views if you discuss these things in Okinawa. However, I don’t think that anybody would be against maintaining Ryukyuan. All agree that this would be good. Maybe one should start with language and then address one issue after the other? One could reform the societal system step by step, change it in a way that suits our way of life. Also in this sense, one’s language is important (OJ-F-20). Attempts to maintain Ryukyuan without efforts of decolonization are perceived as ineffective. There are training courses for learning and teaching Uchinaaguchi at the Center for Community Language. Pronunciation and grammar are studied there, but before turning to grammar one needs to understand the present state of the Ryukyuan languages. Why are they in decline, and why do we want them to survive (OJ-F-40-2). Such efforts require a reevaluation of language utility. In the current political and ideological frame, benefits of speaking Ryukyuan are superficial. Language services and workplaces that require Okinawan need to be created, work that pays a decent salary. Okinawan on your CV gets you nowhere today (O(A)-M-50). Others seek to depart from existing values, pointing out that Ryukyuan perspectives contribute to wellbeing. If we started to think from the perspective of Okinawa, we could build a better society. We were born and raised here. Our language exists here. With this kind of awareness, Okinawa would be properly appreciated. If everybody looked at their own

8  Ryukyuan Language Reclamation: Individual Struggle… 

153

village [and not always compare it to mainland Japan], they would understand that it does make sense to live here. We could make Okinawa a better place, a happier place (OJ-F-40-2).

 yukyuan Studies and Language R Reclamation Henceforth Critical reflection about the Ryukyus affects perceptions of Ryukyuan language studies. I am first an activist and then a teacher. I don’t just teach language (O(A)-M-50) is the strongest statement we collected. This attitude is driven by the desire to make Okinawans feel Okinawan (O(A)-M-50). Learners hope that their efforts of reclaiming Ryukyuan will have positive effects on society at large. I feel like I am contributing to Okinawa. […] In this sense, I am glad that I am learning the language (OJ-­ F-­30-2). Maintaining the languages for future generations is another motive. I chose to learn Ryukyuan because I wanted to pass it on to young people… and because it’s fun (OJ-F-50). Reclaiming Ryukyuan involves civic engagement. By speaking Ryukyuan, I hope I can contribute to bring back Okinawa for Okinawan people (OJ-M-50). Such engagement transcends Ryukyuan languages. By speaking Ryukyuan, I hope to raise awareness, to stand with people who are marginalized. […] This is the number one thing I want to achieve by speaking Ryukyuan (OJ-F-40-1). This form of engagement can transcend the Ryukyus and Japan. Learning Ryukyuan is also about justice. I now feel emotionally more connected to people who experience injustice in general. Not only in Japan, but around the world […]. By speaking Ryukyuan, I hope I can contribute to a better future (OJ-F-30-1). Advocacy for Ryukyuan and demanding more space in education and in everyday life are often portrayed as ‘political’ endeavors, while the ‘Okinawa-is-Japan’ approach is not. Some of our consultants thought this to be naïve. Political? The question to ask is ‘what do you mean by political?’ Calling Ryukyuan hōgen [dialect of Japanese] is political. To think that one is Japanese is political. Everything is political. It would be good if academics would be more political. Anyhow, that’s what I am doing (OJ-­ M-­20-2). Research on Ryukyuan languages that does not purposefully contribute to a reevaluation of the Ryukyus is seen to have little impact.

154 

P. Heinrich and G. Valsecchi

Without addressing the political implications, nothing will change. Always excluding anything that could be political – you cannot revitalize language like this. One just creates data in the service of the Japanese. It just creates publications on which careers are built (OJ-M-20-2). Another consultant thought that everything in research is for the Japanese (O(A)-M-50). In their view, reclaiming an endangered language calls for an intellectually autonomous framework. Such a framework would incorporate the results of decolonization.

Outlook Reclaiming Ryukyuan shapes subjective realities such as attitudes, perceptions and values that belong to the Ryukyus. Ryukyuan language reclamation implies to disconnect from a former identity as Japanese-speaking Japanese and from the dominant view of Ryukyu-as-Japan. Language reclamation requires recentering the Ryukyus as an independent linguistic and cultural realm. No longer at the periphery of the Japanese Archipelago, speaking Ryukyuan then entails a new sense of being in the world and of acting upon it. Language reclamation is an act of liberation. Its practitioners do not care so much if their ‘Japaneseness’ is being questioned or not. They want to be Ryukyuan. For them, the task of passing as bona fide Japanese, which led directly to unfavorably comparing the Ryukyus to the mainland, has come to an end. Trying to be ‘like everybody else’ in Japan inevitably results in cultural loss. Reclamation is not a backwards-oriented activity. Its practitioners display cosmopolitan and transcultural attitudes when forging new pathways into a future that is more rewarding, just, and culturally rich. In doing so, they set an example for others to follow, inside and outside of the Ryukyus and of Japan. Reclaiming Ryukyuan languages opens new possibilities, and it fundamentally changes identities. Ryukyuan languages are essential for this new sense of being, for looking back, for looking ahead, and ultimately to transform and enrich society.

8  Ryukyuan Language Reclamation: Individual Struggle… 

155

Appendix Open Questions 1. How long have you been interested in learning Ryukyuan? When did you start to become more serious about learning it? What happened then? 2. What languages did you study before learning Ryukyuan? Do you think that this experience had an impact on why you learned Ryukyuan? Did this experience also influence your studies of Ryukyuan? 3. The majority never learns Ryukyuan languages. Why is it you who is learning Ryukyuan (as opposed to all those who do not?). Does learning Ryukyuan involve emotions? Do you feel rebellious about learning Ryukyuan? 4. What is for you different in learning a foreign language like English and learning Ryukyuan? Is it more difficult to learn Ryukyuan? More fun? Why? 5. In the past, people in the Ryukyus were discouraged to speak their language. Do you feel an effect thereof when learning Ryukyuan? 6. What’s the benefit of speaking Ryukyuan (vs., e.g., English) for you? Do your friends and family also benefit from it? Does Ryukyuan society benefit from it? 7. Do you think that individual acts of learning and speaking Ryukyuan can contribute to social, cultural, or political change? 8. Do you think that your status in society changed due to speaking Ryukyuan? Did you expect a change of status? 9. Does learning Ryukyuan invite you to reflect on larger issues (e.g., race, gender, class, and social justice)? 10. Can we ask you something very personal? On a scale from 1 to 10, how happy do you feel now? Does speaking Ryukyuan contribute to this sense of happiness?

156 

P. Heinrich and G. Valsecchi

Sentence Completion Task 1. When I think of Ryukyuan, my first memory is … 2. I chose to learn Ryukyuan because …. 3. Learning Ryukyuan for me is like …. 4. Speaking or listening to Ryukyuan for me is like …. 5. When I speak or listen to Ryukyuan, I become more …. 6. I use some Ryukyuan when … 7. I think it is helpful for me to speak Ryukyuan because …. 8. I think Ryukyuan language can do …. better than Japanese language. 9. The main problem of Ryukyuan language learning is …. 10. I wish there would be more support for Ryukyuan language because …. 11. Before I studied Ryukyuan, I was more …. 12. If I had not learnt Ryukyuan, then …. 13. By learning Ryukyuan, I want to become more …. 14. Before learning it, I never thought that speaking Ryukyuan implied … 15. By speaking Ryukyuan, I hope I can contribute to ….

Notes 1. Madoka Hammine shared her conceptualization of language reclamation with us. We are grateful for her suggestions and help. We are also indebted to the editors of this book for their thoughtful comments on earlier versions of this chapter. Research and writing of this chapter have been equally shared between us. The author order simply reflects the alphabetical order of our family names. 2. In the following, we use the generic term ‘Ryukyuan’ to refer to the six Ryukyuan languages which are themselves made up of about 700 local varieties. Note that ‘Okinawan’ is but one Ryukyuan language. The heavy emphasis on Okinawan in Ryukyuan Studies, including in this chapter, should not mislead readers to think that these issues can only be studied with regard to Okinawan. On the contrary, much more research should be devoted to the remaining five Ryukyuan languages. 3. Yumiko Ohara kindly read and discussed our interview questions before we conducted the interviews.

8  Ryukyuan Language Reclamation: Individual Struggle… 

157

References Anderson, M., & Heinrich, P. (Eds.). (2014). Language crisis in the Ryukyus. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Befu, H. (2001). Hegemony of homogeneity: An anthropological analysis of ‘Nihonjinron’. Trans Pacific Press. Fija, B., & Heinrich, P. (2007, November 3). ‘Wanne Uchinanchu  – I am Okinawan.’ Japan, the US and Okinawa’s Endangered Languages. The Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 5(11), Article ID 2586. https://apjjf.org/-­Patrick-­ Heinrich/2586/article.html. Hammine, M. (2021). Educated not to speak our language: Language attitudes and Newspeakerness in the Yaeyaman language. Journal of Language Identity and Education, 20(6), 379–393. https://doi.org/10.1080/1534845 8.2020.1753200 Harrison, D. K. (2007). When languages dies. Oxford University Press. Heinrich, P., & Ishihara, M. (2018). Ryukyuan languages in Japan. In C. A. Seals & S. Shah (Eds.), Heritage language policies around the world (pp. 165–184). Routledge. Heinrich, P., Miyara, S., & Shimoji, M. (Eds.). (2015). Handbook of Ryukyuan languages. De Gruyter Mouton. Kramsch, C. (2009). The multilingual subject. Oxford University Press. Leonard, W.  Y. (2012). Framing language reclamation Programmes for Everybody’s empowerment. Gender and Language, 6(2), 339–367. https:// doi.org/10.1558/genl.v6i2.339 Leonard, W. Y. (2017). Producing language reclamation by Decolonising ‘language’. In W. Y. Leonard & H. De Korne (Eds.), Language documentation and description (Vol. 14, pp. 15–36). EL Publishing. Moseley, C. (Ed.). (2009). Atlas of the World’s language in danger (3rd ed.). UNESCO. Oguma, E. (2001). Shiryō kaidai [Material notes]. Edge, 12, 38–95. Thomas, J. (1993). Doing critical ethnography. Sage.

Part III Japanese Language Learner Identity

9 Conflicting and Shifting Professional Identities of Two Indonesian Nurses: L2 Japanese Socialization at Workplaces in Japan and after their Return to Indonesia Chiharu Shima

A significant phenomenon in our globalized era has been the international migration of skilled immigrants and professional workers. In particular, the immigration of nurses has increasingly been necessary to relieve shortages in developed countries, including Japan. As the first official national immigration plan for healthcare professionals was enacted, the Japanese government agreed to issue visas for nurses and caregivers from Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam based on an Economic Partnership Agreement (“EPA”) with each of these countries. The first group of nurses and caregivers from Indonesia arrived in Japan in 2008, followed by those from the Philippines in 2009, and from Vietnam in 2014. Under the EPA-based program, EPA nurses and caregivers are

C. Shima (*) Graduate School of Global Communication and Language, Akita International University, Akita, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Mielick et al. (eds.), Discourses of Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11988-0_9

161

162 

C. Shima

required to pass a national licensure exam to obtain permanent residency in Japan. However, this is difficult, particularly for EPA nurses. In addition, even for those who pass the exam, many EPA nurses do not settle down in Japan but choose to return to their home country for various reasons (Asai & Minoura, 2020; Kurniati et al., 2017). Despite this trend, few studies have investigated what EPA nurses actually experienced during their stay in Japan and how these experiences influence their professional identities, as well as their lives after returning to their country of origin. Drawing upon language socialization as a conceptual framework, this study investigates how the professional identities of two Indonesian female nurses, who came to Japan through an EPA-based program but returned to Indonesia before passing the national licensure exam, shifted as their roles changed in different contexts. Language socialization perspective focuses on the human developmental process of acquiring the practice, skills, and knowledge necessary to become a competent member of a community or sociocultural group (Ochs & Schieffelin, 1984; Watson-Gegeo, 2004). Ochs and Schieffelin (1984) argued that language acquisition is embedded in and constitutive of the process of becoming socialized as a competent member of a social group, and that the process of acquiring language is determined by socialization practices and ideologies, in concert with neurodevelopmental influences. While many traditional language socialization studies focus on L1 children-caregiver interactions, researchers have also examined the process of language socialization in various L2 communities, including workplaces (Jupp et al., 1982; Roberts, 2010; Sarangi & Roberts, 2002). Research findings show that L2 socialization processes can be very different from those taking place in the comparatively homogeneous, monolingual context of L1 socialization, and that a given community of practice is often a site of resistance and conflict. Despite L2 learners’ desire to assimilate into the practices of their new L2 community, they may experience difficulty in accessing other community members as well as being accepted by them; some may even face opposition and discrimination by community members. In certain instances, L2 learners do not fully invest in learning particular practices of the new community (Norton, 2001), based on their desire to retain the commitment and

9  Conflicting and Shifting Professional Identities of Two… 

163

identity associated with a particular community that is distinct from their target community. In line with these L2 language socialization studies, the current study aims to reveal complex and conflicting socialization processes that involve the negotiation and transformation of identities. By closely examining the EPA nurses’ different work experiences during their stay in Japan and after returning to Indonesia, I demonstrate how their identities were fluid and contextually negotiated, influenced, and shaped by a complex web of language use, forms of participation, and available resources in the workplace.

EPA Scheme and Experiences of EPA Nurses The EPA program is a milestone in Japan’s immigration policy because it is the first bilateral EPA in which the Japanese government has supported the entry of foreign workers in its healthcare field. For Indonesian EPA nurses, EPA guidelines require that candidates not only be qualified but also have at least two years of clinical experience. Under the policy, after intensive Japanese language training, EPA nurses move to their employment institutions, such as hospitals and nursing care homes across Japan, and begin on-the-job training (OJT). Thereafter, they work as assistants or trainees in those facilities while studying for the national licensure exam to become fully qualified nurses. EPA nurses can stay in Japan for up to three years. However, to renew their residency, they must pass the national licensure examination, which they can take annually up to a maximum of three times. The overall pass rate for the exam is approximately 90%. However, the pass rate has been very low for EPA nurses; in the most recent exam in 2021, that pass rate was 11.1% despite various arrangements for international exam takers, such as an extension of time to complete the exam. During the first few years after the EPA program was implemented, a lack of information seemed to cause confusion for both candidates and host institutions (Hirano & Wulansari, 2009). For example, the results of a survey of Indonesian nurse candidates reported by Hirano and Wulansari (2009) revealed their lack of knowledge about the nature of the EPA and

164 

C. Shima

working conditions. EPA nurses’ motivations for participating in the program were to develop their career and nursing skills (66.7%) and to learn how to use advanced technology in their work (41.7%). However, despite their expectations, they are unable to engage in actual nursing practice unless they pass the exam. Although candidates for nursing jobs are fully licensed in Indonesia and have more than two years of work experience, they cannot engage in medical care in Japan; instead, they are required to perform other tasks such as bathing and feeding patients or emptying bedpans. In this capacity, they are called kango joshu (nurse’s aides). In fact, research findings and news reports indicate EPA nurses’ resistance and identity conflicts in working in Japan, influenced by disappointment and cultural friction at work (Kurniati et al., 2017). Over the past decade, the situation has changed. Previously, EPA nurses who returned home were associated with negative images concerning drop out or maladjustment to Japanese society due to linguistic and cultural gaps, professional downgrading, and family obligations, among others. However, more recent studies explain the return of EPA nurses in terms of their well-being, characterizing returnees as active agents who coordinate their lives (Asai & Minoura, 2020; Hirano & Yoneno, 2021). And yet, sufficient attention has not been paid to the processes of how returnees experience their (re)socialization in their new workplaces upon returning to Indonesia. Providing lived experience of two Indonesian female nurses, the current study explores how their identities were shaped and reshaped in relation to their language abilities and the everyday workplace practices in their workplace communities in Japan and in Indonesia.

Methods This study employed an ethnographic case study approach (Chapelle & Duff, 2003; Duff, 2008; Merriam, 1998) to examine the learning processes of EPA nurses with wider sociocultural and sociopolitical perspectives. By observing recurring cultural and linguistic patterns of interaction that constitute the socialization processes of EPA nurses in the workplace communities in Japan and after returning to Indonesia, I aimed to study

9  Conflicting and Shifting Professional Identities of Two… 

165

the tacit cultural knowledge of a community, with an emic or insider perspective on people in the community and by interpreting practices in a culturally and socially situated context.

Focused Participants The main participants for this study were two female Indonesian nurses, Wani and Nini, who were recruited through the EPA and were working at the same institution, Kawamura Hospital (pseudonym), in western Japan. At the hospital, Wani and Nini both worked as nurse’s aides in a dialysis room and general wards. When I first met them in 2010, they were both in their mid-20s. Wani and Nini came to Japan in 2008 and 2009, respectively. They were both qualified nurses in Indonesia; however, they had little experience with Japanese language prior to their arrival in Japan. Although they received six months1 of intensive language training offered by the program, the rest of their language learning was arranged at the discretion of their host institution. Kawamura Hospital arranged study sessions for EPA nurses to prepare for the national licensure exam with their Japanese mentors for several hours per week. However, Wani and Nini did not pass the exam during their stay in Japan and returned to Indonesia. When I visited them in Indonesia in March 2016, they both worked as nurse interpreters for different Nikkei (Japanese) clinics in Jakarta using their Japanese language skills. During my fieldwork in Kawamura Hospital, I continuously volunteered to help the EPA nurses, including Wani and Nini, to learn the Japanese language and prepare for the board exam. I am a female Japanese person, and I was in my early 30s with the experience of studying and working overseas as a Japanese teaching professional at the time of data collection. My professional background as a Japanese language teacher as well as my English skill enabled me to access the research site. Also, my female gender often helped me to get closer to the participants in a hospital where an overwhelming majority of nurses and nurse’s aides, and all of the EPA nurses, are female, and this was true both inside and outside the workplace. For example, informal conversations with hospital employees in the female locker room after their work was one of the

166 

C. Shima

important opportunities for me to get to know people privately and explain what I was doing in person. However, at the same time, I was also concerned with the impact of my presence, in particular, the possibility of being perceived as an “authority” or “expert” who would oversee and evaluate the performance of the EPA nurses or the EPA host institution. In order to establish my “non-threatening” position at the research site, I spent time building rapport with the research participants, including both EPA nurses and their Japanese colleagues at lunch time or whenever possible. I also rented a room in the same apartment building where the EPA nurses were living and participated in social activities with the hospital staff such as Karaoke nights. My extended exposure and frequent contact with people at the hospital seemed to contribute to befriending the EPA nurses and other hospital staff. Through participation in these activities, we often talked about our personal lives and nonresearch-­ related matters and that in turn helped us build mutual trust. In our conversations, the EPA nurses, as well as many Japanese workers, commented that my nonemployee status made them feel comfortable and safe in talking about their problems at work as I had no influence on their job relations.

Research Context For the current case study, I focus on data from two research periods: (1) a year-long ethnography conducted at Kawamura Hospital from June 2010 to May 2011, when Wani and Nini were working there as nurse’s aides, and (2) follow-up fieldwork conducted in Indonesia in March 2016, when I visited them at their respective workplaces. The first dataset was part of the data I collected for my larger project. Kawamura Hospital has 108 beds with different units, such as internal medicine and cardiovascular disease. I visited the hospital four days a week and mainly observed two contexts: study sessions, where EPA nurses were studying for the national licensure exam, and their workplace, where they worked as nurse’s aides. The collected data included (1) observation and video/ audio recording of interactions between EPA nurses and their Japanese colleagues and patients, (2) interviews and informal discussions/chats, and (3) a collection of artifacts.

9  Conflicting and Shifting Professional Identities of Two… 

167

The second dataset was from the fieldwork I conducted in Indonesia in March 2016, when I visited Wani and Nini, as well as two other Indonesian EPA nurses who had worked in Kawamura Hospital and returned to Indonesia. Wani and Nini were both working for Nikkei clinics, where the majority of the patients were Japanese. I visited their clinics and observed how they were actually engaging in their work there for a total of two to three hours for each nurse. In addition, I conducted individual interview sessions with them, each lasting approximately two hours. For Wani, I was also able to interview a Japanese colleague working with her in the same clinic.

Data Analysis This study followed the basic assumption of the ethnographic approach: the approach is concerned with the culture and characteristics of a group and considers the importance of context and the subjective perceptions of the people involved (Erickson, 1992; Madden, 2010). I integrated all sources of data and approached them from a holistic standpoint to analyze them interpretively. In addition, data collection and analysis were iterative processes (Madden, 2010; Merriam, 1998). Data were reviewed as collected and supplemented with additional data to reinforce the initial exploratory analysis. As is often the case with qualitative studies, the data analysis was inductive, and categories and themes emerged from the collected data. More concretely, referring to Madden (2010), I conducted my analysis based on the following four steps: (1) organizing primary field data, (2) organizing secondary data (the synthesis of primary data and background reading, and theorizing and searching for alternative explanation), (3) interpreting (making meaning from the data), and (4) writing. I first considered the cases of the two EPA nurses individually and created tentative categories and themes for each of them. During that process, I repeatedly read through my field notes and the transcribed interviews for each participant, writing down themes and ideas that came up continually during the initial review, and identifying the relationships between the themes. After recurring themes and categories became apparent for each case, a set of thematic codes were interpreted through comparison and analysis of different cases.

168 

C. Shima

Results Wani’s Case Wani is a Catholic Indonesian, who was born and raised in Jakarta. She participated in the EPA program partly because she was motivated by the idea that she could contribute toward resolving Japan’s nursing shortage. After living and working in Japan for almost two years, Wani resigned before the end of her contract and returned to Indonesia in July 2010. For Wani, I will especially focus on how she accepted and resisted being positioned as a non-native speaker of Japanese at work below.

 mbivalent Attitudes Toward her Position as a “Non-Native” A Speaker of Japanese When she was working in Japan, her oral participation at work at Kawamura Hospital was characterized by closeness with her colleagues. While her spoken Japanese was not grammatically correct and rather broken, in many instances her friendly and talkative demeanor helped her build good relationships with her colleagues and learn from them. For example, she was often invited to her colleagues or patients’ homes for dinner. She referred to one of her colleagues and his wife, who also worked as a nurse at the hospital, as otōsan (father) and okāsan (mother) and asked them for advice about problems she experienced, ranging from small matters to those concerning her love life. The solidarity she enjoyed with her colleagues allowed her to use humor as a conversational strategy. The following example illustrates her strategic approach to making a request: When she did not understand what a colleague said because of his dialect and strong accent, she teased him by saying, “Please speak beautiful Japanese,” or “I understand only good language.” She would say this very slowly in an intentionally accented voice, as if she were emphasizing her non-nativeness in Japanese. This became an inside joke among the staff with whom she was working, and when she did not understand her interlocutor’s Japanese, Wani herself or some other Japanese colleague would often say this phrase to the speaker. In this way, Wani created

9  Conflicting and Shifting Professional Identities of Two… 

169

opportunities for herself to have unknown phrases repeated or rephrased by her colleagues, while maintaining a fun and casual atmosphere by using humor. This example also highlights how she negotiated power relations and social boundaries between herself and dominant group members with humor or by using an unusual manner of speaking (Rampton, 1995), rather than simply accepting her position as a limited L2 speaker. Although she gained access to the social network at work relatively easily and found opportunities to learn the language, she struggled to participate in the study sessions for the nursing licensure exam. Wani noted2: I tried, I tried, and I tried to push myself to memorize kanji [Chinese logographic characters] so hard. I spend much time both at work and home for study. I did my best, but my brain cannot accept, so what I have to do is, more and more, learn and learn. But in the middle of my struggles, she [Japanese mentor] still wants me to study more and more, and I became down and down.. . I was feeling I’m a stupid 15-year-old student who cannot do anything by herself. But one day, I said to myself, wait a minute, I have experience in working, I can speak another language, like English, and I don’t want to be pressured like this. And I decided to stop learning and go home. (Wani, 07/13/2010)

Wani further explained that while she came to Japan hoping to “work for real people” and “help others in need,” she realized that the hospital’s main expectation for EPA nurses was to pass the exam. The hospital’s pressure and her struggles to achieve this result made her feel more discouraged each day; ultimately, she resigned and returned to Indonesia in July 2010. Wani’s resignation and subsequent nonparticipation can be interpreted in terms of a gap between the hospital’s objective for her (passing the exam) and her own goal (helping people in need). The two parties had different understandings, given a lack of communal negotiation, and thus Wani could not negotiate the meaning of her participation in the study sessions to her own expectations. Wani’s resignation is also closely related to her positionality. While she successfully utilized her status as a

170 

C. Shima

novice or newcomer to a new culture in terms of participating in conversations at work and socializing in the workplace community, she resisted being placed as a novice or newcomer in contexts where that status conflicted with her identity as a competent professional nurse; this is partly responsible for her nonparticipation.

Re-Defining Herself as a “Good” Bad Speaker of Japanese Returning to Indonesia, Wani found a job at Nikkei Clinic A in Jakarta. Her main work duties were to attend to Japanese patients who visited Clinic A and escort them as medical interpreters when Japanese patients were referred to specialists in various departments at a nearby hospital. According to Ms. Ogawa (pseudonym)—Wani’s Japanese colleague and a qualified and experienced nurse in Japan who worked for the clinic as an adviser to support Japanese patients—Clinic A is one of the least popular Nikkei clinics among EPA nurse returnees. Unlike many other EPA returnees who resigned within a few weeks, Wani had already been working there for nearly five years at the time of my visit. I asked Wani about the reasons for the high turnover rate of EPA returnees at the clinic, and she highlighted the existence of Japanese advisers at the clinic. Because Japanese advisers, including Ms. Ogawa, are prohibited from engaging in any nursing actions given that they are not registered in Indonesia, they seek Japanese-speaking Indonesian nurses, who are often EPA returnees, to better support Japanese patients. However, Japanese colleagues’ training and advice often provokes resistance from EPA returnees in the clinic. According to Wani, many of the EPA returnees underestimate the work at Clinic A because of their overconfidence in their work experience in Japan and cannot accept their inability in the Japanese language when it is pointed out by their Japanese colleagues. Therefore, many EPA returnees choose to move to other Nikkei clinics where no Japanese advisers work. In contrast, Wani seemed to appreciate the advice she received from her Japanese colleagues. Wani noted: Ogawa san sometimes says that my explanation is not appropriate. She points out the mistakes. EPA returnees hate this practice with Ogawa san,

9  Conflicting and Shifting Professional Identities of Two… 

171

and many of them start crying when Ogawa san points out their mistakes. I sometimes feel bad, not for Ogawa san, but for myself. I feel like I am not doing a good job for patients. For me, being scolded or being corrected is not a problem at all. It has already happened so many times. I know I need help to be a good nurse. Other Nikkei clinics pay more and have no advisers, so many EPA nurses move. They say it is a better job. However, I like to work here because you can trust people here. My Japanese is still bad. However, here, I speak good Japanese. I mean, bad Japanese, but the best Japanese I can speak for patients. (Wani, 03/24/2016, original in Japanese)

The above excerpt shows an interesting contrast between her attitude toward the study sessions in Japan and her efforts to prepare for interpreting duties. Although she was demotivated and resisted studying medical jargon in Japanese in study sessions in Japan as described in the prior subsection, she seemed to have been actively studying and using Japanese at the clinic in Indonesia. In fact, when I visited her in Jakarta, I was surprised by her improvement in Japanese language skills. Presumably, the medical knowledge and jargon in the exam preparation materials in Japan more or less overlapped with what she needed for her current work duties. However, her reasons for learning them were completely different in these two contexts. In addition, unlike the study sessions where her mentors’ objectives (to help Wani pass the exam) and her own goal (to help people in need) were mismatched, in Clinic A, Wani and her Japanese adviser shared a common objective of supporting Japanese patients. Furthermore, Wani’s qualification as a registered nurse in Indonesia provides her with an advantage over her Japanese colleague. Thus, Wani’s complex positioning blurs the expert-novice relationship, allowing Wani to accept her position as someone who speaks “bad” Japanese, yet exerts her best effort when speaking Japanese to support her patients.

Nini’s Case Nini is a Muslim Indonesian from Central Java, Indonesia. In total, she had approximately four years of work experience, including three years in Taiwan and one year at a laboratory for health check-ups in Indonesia

172 

C. Shima

before she moved to Japan in November 2009. She explained that she applied for the program because of her desire to visit Japan with her interests in Japanese pop culture and her practical need to earn more money for higher education to obtain a university degree in Indonesia in the future. Nini completed her initial contract with Kawamura Hospital in August 2012, but decided to extend her contract3 for one more year to take the national licensure exam again. Although Nini did not pass the exam on her attempt in the following year, she passed the exam to obtain a prefectural assistant nursing license, which allowed her to conduct nursing duties under the direction of a doctor or registered nurse. Being certified as an assistant nurse, Nini continued working at Kawamura Hospital but returned to Indonesia in August 2014. For Nini, I will highlight her ambivalent and conflicted feelings between a sense of fulfillment and burdens as a professional nurse as her responsibility increased at work.

 vercoming the Sense of Being “Useless” and Taking O Ownership of the Work During my observation in Japan, Nini’s participation in interactions at work was marked by a higher degree of silence than other EPA nurses. It was rather rare for Nini to engage in long conversations with colleagues or patients. Most of her interactions at work tended to be short informational exchanges about work-related matters. Her silence was sometimes negatively evaluated by her colleagues in the dialysis room. During interview sessions, Nini’s Japanese colleague viewed her as a passive and quiet person when compared with other EPA nurses such as Wani. A Japanese nurse even criticized her for not making a conscious effort to actively speak and improve her Japanese skills. When staff assignments were changed and Nini was moved from the dialysis room to the ward, she reported that she faced many more difficulties at work, particularly with interactions. According to Nini, there were always other nurses or dialysis technicians monitoring dialysis treatment, and when Nini had problems understanding patients’ requests, she could ask them for help. However, on the ward, both the nurses and nurse’s

9  Conflicting and Shifting Professional Identities of Two… 

173

aides were busy, and there were many occasions in which she needed to provide patient care by herself. As a result, Nini needed to speak with her patients as well as colleagues more often in the ward than in the dialysis room. Furthermore, she mentioned that the communication tasks she had to cope with were more complex in the ward. Interestingly, however, Nini seemed to enjoy this situation despite the difficulties she faced. She noted, “I feel I am speaking real Japanese now. It is very hard, but it is very fun too. I feel they need me. I really want to learn real Japanese for the patients” (Nini, 05/25/2011, original in Japanese). Nini commented on her contributions to her colleagues: “When I was in the dialysis room, I was useless. [There was] not much work to do. However, there is no time to get bored [in the ward] because there are lots of things to do, and you feel you are really working” (Nini, 05/25/2011, original in Japanese). In addition, when she became certified as an assistant nurse, her work duties significantly changed. Nini noted: Now, I have to give patients their medicine. I do infusions, too. I need to report at handover meetings, keep nursing records, and so on. So much…I feel a lot of pressure, and I am so scared. I check, check, and check. I cannot make mistakes. My colleagues said, “You are no longer a candidate, and you get paid just like us. We count on you.” They became stricter. I am very scared and nervous every day. I spend a lot of time checking the handbook of medicine, checking with my colleagues to see whether my understanding is okay, and checking how my colleagues are writing records. So much pressure…but I feel like, oh, look at me. I am working as a professional nurse in Japan. I am part of the team. They said they needed me. (Nini, 10/25/2013, original in Japanese)

Nini’s comments illustrate how she viewed herself in terms of her contributions to her workplace community. For example, despite the difficulties, Nini became motivated to improve her Japanese skills in the ward, where she was more responsible for patient care. Also, being needed by the hospital staff in her everyday work was a participative experience in which she was a competent member of the community.

174 

C. Shima

Conflicting Self as a Cross-Cultural Mediator Nini left Japan because of her husband who was still residing in Indonesia. Returning to Indonesia, Nini started working as a nurse interpreter at Nikkei Clinic B in Jakarta. However, unlike Clinic A, there were no Japanese advisers at Clinic B. When I visited Nini, she was one of five EPA returnees working there. In addition to her concerns that she was unable to understand patients’ complaints or doctors’ explanations, Nini wondered whether cultural information should be added to make the explanation more understandable to her patients. She provided the following examples: For example, when you have a fever in Japan, ice is used to reduce the fever. However, in Indonesia, the body is warmed to reduce a fever. An Indonesian doctor told my patient to warm the body. So, I delivered the doctor’s message. The Japanese patient was surprised and asked me questions with a confused face. In addition, doctors’ explanations often tend to be short and simple. For example, when a patient has a virus, the doctor will say that it is no problem and that it will disappear by itself. However, to comfort patients, I want to add, for example, that the patient needs to obtain sufficient nutrition, drink lots of water, rest, and improve the immune system; then the body will cure itself. I do not know whether I should add my words. But if I were a patient, I would want more explanation. (Nini, 03/25/2016, original in Japanese)

The above excerpt demonstrates her expertise as a transnational nurse who has knowledge of medical practices in two different cultures. While Nini was concerned with the possibility of exceeding her authority by adding words to the doctor’s original message, Nini articulated her desire to comfort Japanese patients by communicating with them in a Japanese way. In this context, her language-related challenge seems to be beyond mere information exchange. Rather, it is about how Nini can better serve patients who are in need of her support.

9  Conflicting and Shifting Professional Identities of Two… 

175

Conclusion In this chapter, I have introduced two Indonesian EPA nurses’ shifting identities as transnational workers based on the different contexts in which they engaged in their work assignments using L2 Japanese. Although the findings reveal a number of interesting points, two are particularly notable: (1) the reciprocal relationship between identity and participation, and (2) the situated nature of their investment in language learning and the influence of language skills on their professional identities. First, the two cases demonstrated that the two EPA nurses experienced multiple workplace communities, and their interpersonal relationships varied accordingly. Wani’s positioning as a “non-native speaker” of Japanese or a novice member of the community was constructed through her participation in everyday practice. Findings suggest that her participation was facilitated or hindered partly depending on whether she accepted or strategically activated such status or not, thereby creating a reciprocal relationship between identity and participation. Similarly, Nini’s positioning of herself influenced her participation. Nini remained quiet in a dialysis room where she had a Japanese colleague to turn to whenever she faced difficulties and who could solve any problems. As a result, she positioned herself as a sort of surplus in the labor force, making herself feel useless. With such a passive attitude, Nini came to have fewer opportunities not only to practice Japanese but also to build solidarity with her Japanese colleagues. Second, the two EPA nurses’ participation trajectories in both Japan and Indonesia demonstrated that their investment in learning Japanese was contextual. Their participation was fluid and changing according to the type of Japanese being spoken and the context in which it was being used. For example, Nini’s reassignment from the dialysis room to the ward created opportunities to expose herself to various work duties that required interaction with others in Japanese. For Wani, although she resisted studying Japanese medical jargon for the licensure exam, she worked hard to learn it to better serve her Japanese patients after she returned to Indonesia. This necessity, as well as the feeling of being needed

176 

C. Shima

by someone, seemed to motivate them to learn and use Japanese. Consequently, their own positioning and/or others’ positioning of them as non-native speakers of Japanese sometimes became irrelevant when the objective of helping people in need was prioritized. While this study focused only on two Indonesian EPA nurses, both had distinctive personal histories, experiences, and perspectives on working in Japan and Indonesia. Their narratives demonstrated that their expertise was interactively co-constructed and dynamic in a given context, which significantly shaped both nurses’ language socialization and identity negotiation processes at work. Further studies that focus on individual cases are necessary for an in-depth understanding of skilled immigrants’ mobility.

Notes 1. While Wani received six months of intensive language training in Japan, Nini’s initial language training was divided into two parts: four months in Indonesia and two in Japan. 2. For the quotations, I employed verbatim transcription and my translation for the interviews/chats conducted in English and in Japanese, respectively. 3. In March 2011, the Japanese government decided to allow an extension of stay of the EPA nurses for one more year, when the candidate met certain criteria.

References Asai, A., & Minoura, Y. (2020). EPA Indoneshiajin kangoshi kaigofukushishi no nihon taiken [EPA Indonesian nurses’ and caregivers’ experiences in Japan]. Akashishoten. Chapelle, C., & Duff, P. (2003). Some guidelines for conducting quantitative and qualitative research in TESOL. TESOL Quarterly, 37(1), 157–178. https://doi.org/10.2307/3588471 Duff, P. (2008). Case study research in applied linguistics. Lawrence Erlbaum/ Taylor & Francis.

9  Conflicting and Shifting Professional Identities of Two… 

177

Erickson, F. (1992). Ethnographic microanalysis of interaction. In W. LeCompte, L. Millroy, & J. Preissle (Eds.), The handbook of qualitative research in education (pp. 201–226). Academic Press. Hirano, Y., & Wulansari, S. Y. (2009). The Japan-Indonesia economic partnership agreement through the eyes of Indonesian applicants: A survey and focus group discussion with Indonesian nurses (Vol. 3, pp. 77–90). Bulletin of Kyushu University Asia Center. https://doi.org/10.15017/14077 Hirano, Y., & Yoneno, M. (Eds.). (2021). Foreign nurses working in Japan: Assessments of the EPA program. University of Tokyo Press. Jupp, T., Roberts, C., & Cook-Gumperz, J. (1982). Language and disadvantage: The hidden process. In J. Gumperz (Ed.), Language and social identity (pp. 232–256). Cambridge University Press. Kurniati, A., Chenm, C.-M., Efendi, F., & Ogawa, R. (2017). A deskilling and challenging journey: The lived experience of Indonesia nurse returnees. International Nursing Review, 64(4), 494–501. https://doi.org/10.1111/inr.12352 Madden, R. (2010). Being ethnographic: A guide to the theory and practice of ethnography. Sage. Merriam, S. B. (1998). Qualitative research and case study application in education. Jossey-Bass. Norton, B. (2001). Non-participation, imagined communities, and the language classroom. In M. Breen (Ed.), Learner contributions to language learning: New directions in research (pp. 159–171). Pearson Education. Ochs, E., & Schieffelin, B. B. (1984). Language acquisition and socialization: Three developmental stories and their implications. In R. A. Shweder & R. A. LeVine (Eds.), Culture theory: Essays in mind, self and emotion (pp. 276–320). Cambridge University Press. Rampton, B. (1995). Crossing: Language and ethnicity among adolescents. Longman. Roberts, C. (2010). Language socialization in the workplace. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 30(2), 217–227. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0267190510000127 Sarangi, S., & Roberts, C. (2002). Discoursal (mis)alignments in professional gatekeeping encounters. In C. Kramsch (Ed.), Language acquisition and language socialization: Ecological perspectives (pp. 197–227). Continuum. Watson-Gegeo, K. A. (2004). Mind, language, and epistemology: Toward a language socialization paradigm for SLA. The Modern Language Journal, 88(3), 331–350. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0026-­7902.2004.00233.x

10 “Your Class Is Like Karaoke”: Language Learning as a Shelter Kazuhiro Yonemoto

In response to the Japanese government’s policy promoting the globalization of higher education, more and more universities are encouraging education in English and the use of the English language on campus. For example, some institutions are enabling students to obtain degrees in English without requiring Japanese language proficiency (Horiguchi et al., 2015; Kurachi, 2016; Murata, 2015). These circumstances have led to a decrease in the priority of Japanese language education within universities as well as in the number of international students who come to Japan to study Japanese (Iori, 2014; Kurachi, 2016). Consequently, the need for Japanese language education at universities has begun to face what researchers have described as a “kikiteki’ jôkyô [a crisis situation]” (Iori, 2014, p. 86) and a “sonzoku no kiki [existential crisis]” (Kurachi, 2016, p. 3). As such, Iori (2014) proposed addressing the significance of Japanese language education at universities by reexamining and more efficiently improving the content and teaching methods to motivate learners and develop their Japanese language skills more effectively. K. Yonemoto (*) Tokyo Medical and Dental University, Tokyo, Japan © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Mielick et al. (eds.), Discourses of Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11988-0_10

179

180 

K. Yonemoto

Undoubtedly, one of the goals of language education is effective language acquisition. However, as seen in the case of English language education (e.g., Kubota, 2011; Norton, 2013; Takahashi, 2013) and Japanese language education overseas (Kubota et al., 2014), learners are not just interested in communicating in the target language; they also often have affective goals, such as self-esteem, self-affirmation, self-discovery, and emotional fulfillment. The literature further suggests that learners who need to learn a language in a second-language setting, like immigrants, might even stop learning if they do not attain the affective goals they had envisioned (Norton, 2001). Therefore, Japanese language education should be provided based on an understanding of the learners’ affective goals rather than focusing exclusively on language acquisition. To contribute to the discussion of the significance of Japanese language education at Japanese universities, this chapter explores two questions: (1) How do learners perceive their Japanese language learning experience at university? (2) What affective goals do Japanese language learners expect to achieve in their Japanese language learning? This chapter discusses how learners’ perspectives can be reflected in the practice of Japanese language education at the university level.

Background of the Study This inquiry applies the concept of identity to examine the affective domain (Kramsch, 2009; Pavlenko, 2005) of language learning. Identity is defined as “how people understand their relationship to the world, how that relationship is constructed across time and space, and how people understand their possibilities for the future” (Norton, 1997, p.  410). Research on the affective domain in the field of second language education, including emotions, is increasing. Such studies highlight the importance of developing a better understanding of the affective domain of second-language learning as well as the fact that the affective domain is socially and contextually constructed (Norton, 2013; Pavlenko, 2005) rather than viewed as an individual psychological construct. Language education for adults tends to focus on improving language proficiency, because language acquisition is assumed as the goal of

10  “Your Class Is Like Karaoke”: Language Learning as a Shelter 

181

learning. However, as seen in the cases of English language education (Kubota, 2011; Norton, 2013; Takahashi, 2013) and Japanese language education overseas (Kubota et al., 2014), in many cases communication in the target language is not the only goal for learners, who often have affective goals such as forming a positive identity through learning a language. For example, research on English language education in Japan has revealed that language learning focuses not only on communication in English but also on “akogare (desires)” (Kubota, 2011; Takahashi, 2013)—for example, Japanese women can have romantic desires for English, the West, and Western men, so the English education industry takes advantage of this affective aspect of learners. Similarly, Japanese language education is no longer limited to learning as an investment for employment, university admission, or settlement in Japan, as witnessed in the past. Rather, Japanese can also be studied as a leisure activity for pleasure and enjoyment, and Japanese language learning can be deeply linked to identity and self-fulfillment (Kubota et al., 2014). Due to its nature, language learning in higher education is often discussed in binary terms, such as whether a language should be taught to facilitate communication with others or for specific purposes (e.g., academic and occupational), (Lodge, 2000). Just as learners in the study by Kubota et al. (2008) believed that social justice should not be addressed in the language classroom, many strongly hold the idea that language acquisition is the focus of language classes. However, learners who need the language could discontinue their participation in learning (Norton, 2001), which casts doubt on this belief. Being overly conscious of learners’ expectations can lead to the commodification of education without considering the educational purposes that language education should have (Phipps & Gonzalez, 2004). In other words, both the overemphasis on language acquisition and the overconsciousness of learners’ expectations can call into question the meaning of language education and the role of language educators. It is also important to keep in mind that learners, especially those in higher education, have expertise in areas other than language. Accordingly, even in cases in which Japanese is presumably essential for academic and daily life purposes, as for international students, it is imperative to better understand learners from various aspects, including the affective domain.

182 

K. Yonemoto

Current Study In this inquiry, I focus on the international students’ perceptions of their experiences in Japan and the Japanese university setting. I examine their perceptions from a social constructivist perspective, whose central principle is that an individual’s understanding and interpretation is constructed not in isolation, but through significant interaction with others in particular contexts (Williams & Burden, 1997).

Participants and Settings The participants included one male student and one female student attending a university in Tokyo, Japan. Reflecting the research questions in this inquiry and taking into account ethical issues, the criteria for choosing the participants were as follows: (1) they had studied Japanese for more than two semesters at the current university and (2) they had taken the author’s course in the past but were not enrolled in the author’s course at the time of the interviews. Both participants were enrolled in a PhD program in the medical field, although they belonged to different departments. In addition to pursuing their degree, they also attended noncredit Japanese courses at the same university. In theory, the university has no requirement of Japanese language proficiency for admission, and international students could obtain a degree in English. However, in reality, as Murata (2015) stated, not all of university life is possible in English; for instance, some courses are offered only in Japanese, most of the emails from the university are in Japanese, and many students, faculty, and staff members are unable to communicate in English. Thus, the Japanese language program aims to provide students with opportunities to learn the Japanese language to the extent necessary for daily life on and off campus. Like these two participating students, most of the international students at this university are enrolled in graduate programs. Elkin (all names in this inquiry are pseudonyms), a male student from China, came to Japan to pursue a PhD degree and get a doctor’s license in Japan. Although he plans to return to China in the future, he intends

10  “Your Class Is Like Karaoke”: Language Learning as a Shelter 

183

to gain work experience in Japan after completing his doctoral program. He grew up speaking Uighur and Chinese and learned English at school. He had never studied Japanese before coming to Japan. He studied Japanese in a year-long intensive program at a different university in Japan before entering the current university. Although he seemed to have the Japanese language skills necessary for daily life and basic coursework, he also took an advanced Japanese class taught by the author for two semesters. Kanok, a female student from Thailand, also came to Japan for her PhD. She had studied Japanese for two months before coming to Japan. At her current university, she took an intensive beginner Japanese course taught by the author and subsequently continued on to take the upper-­ level classes with other instructors. Kanok was educated entirely in Thai until entering the university and had studied English as a subject since kindergarten. After obtaining her PhD at the current university, she plans to engage in postdoctoral work abroad, including Japan, and then eventually return to Thailand. The interviews with each participant were conducted at different times, but each student was interviewed during their second year in Japan. At the time of the interviews, the students were in their late 20s or early 30s. English and Japanese were used during the interviews based on the preference of the participants. While Japanese was mainly used in the interview with Elkin, English was most often used with Kanok.

Data Collection The primary data were collected through one-to-one semi-structured interviews. Two interviews were conducted with each participant between 2019 and 2020. Each interview lasted for 40–45  minutes. In the first interview, they were asked to share their experiences before coming to Japan, focusing on their previous language-learning experiences and their motivations for studying in Japan. In the second interview, they were asked about their experiences after coming to Japan, with a focus on Japanese language and Japanese language learning.

184 

K. Yonemoto

Analysis I initiated the analysis by transcribing the audio-recorded data from the interviews. Employing a thematic analysis approach (Braun and Clarke, 2006), I then read through the transcriptions, marking and coding any passages that raised questions and issues related to the research questions. I also compared the passages and grouped them into meaningful categories. Two intricately intertwined themes emerged: the need to learn Japanese and a place to express who they are. The English passages are presented as they were uttered by the participants, and the Japanese passages are followed by an English translation provided by the author in parentheses.

Role of the Researcher My relationship with the participants was formed primarily in the classroom in which I was the teacher, and the participants were the learners. All of the courses I have taught are optional, noncredit courses. However, the general climate of the university sets a clear and strong boundary between students and faculty, perhaps reflecting the nature of the medical field. For example, many students have a designated supervisor (often the professor who is also the department chair) and faculty member (lower-­ ranked professors in the same department) who actually teaches them. In order to participate in on-campus events or take Japanese language courses, students must gain the approval of their supervisor, and to obtain it, they might need to make an appointment through their secretary. My position at university is unique in that I belong to a department that has little to do with the departments with which international students are affiliated. In addition to teaching Japanese, I also play a role in supporting specifically international students and improving the university environment for them. For example, the first setting in which I met the participants was not the classroom, but the orientation session for international students upon entrance to the graduate school, whose purpose is to provide necessary and useful information for living and studying in Japan. I also assist international students with any questions about procedures on and off campus and their scholarship applications outside

10  “Your Class Is Like Karaoke”: Language Learning as a Shelter 

185

the university such as practice for the interview in English or Japanese, depending on the student’s preference. In Japanese language classes, I do not regard students simply as someone to be taught. Instead, I aim to create a space in which students can express their thoughts and opinions, even at a beginner level. As a researcher, I stand in alignment with my goals at the university, and this was explained explicitly to the participants. Needless to say, in analyzing and interpreting their voices, I must be sensitive to power imbalances in the teacher-learner relationship. That is, throughout this inquiry, I committed to practicing “reflexivity” (Talmy, 2010), which is defined as “the process of critical self-reflection on one’s biases, theoretical predispositions, preferences, and so forth” (Schwandt, 2001, p. 224).

Results and Discussion Need to Learn Japanese One of the commonalities between the participants as described in the interviews was the need to learn Japanese to live or study in Japan. Neither participant was required to use Japanese in their home countries, nor was particularly interested in Japan before moving there. However, the two differed in how they came to realize the need to learn Japanese and the degree to which they felt such a need.

Elkin Elkin made a strong statement about the importance of the Japanese language: “日本語が話せない人は日本に来ない方がいい。(If you can’t speak Japanese, you shouldn’t come to Japan.).” He also expressed that a very high level of Japanese language proficiency is necessary, stating, “日本人をごまかすぐらい日本語が必要だ。(You need a good command of Japanese that can deceive Japanese people.).” This way of thinking about Japanese seemed to have been formed through his experiences in Japan, especially at the university.

186 

K. Yonemoto

Although he touched on some of the difficulties he experienced in his daily life in Japan, such as at a convenience store, Elkin most impressively mentioned his experiences with Japanese people using the Japanese language at the university. Since entering the university, despite his high level of Japanese language ability, he had been excluded from various places just because he was an international student. For example, this occurred in his department. [初対面の人は]あ、この人[Elkin]日本語しゃべれないかなって 思うかもしれないけど、でも、その人[同じ研究室の人]も最 近は[私が日本語を話せるのを]知ってるはずなのに、あまり相 手にしない場合もおおいんです。…それは、すごく寂しくな る。([People who meet me for the first time] may think that, ah, this person [Elkin] cannot speak Japanese, but, although recently that person [who is in the same lab] knows [that I can speak Japanese], they often ignore me.… That makes me lonely.)

Initially, Elkin thought this exclusion occurred because other people assumed that he could not speak Japanese. However, as he indicated, this situation did not change even after the people around him realized his Japanese language ability. On one occasion, Elkin stood right in front of a Japanese student in his lab who spoke to another Japanese student behind Elkin as if Elkin were invisible. He faced a similar experience in the university dormitory, when the Japanese students organized a party in the dormitory but did not invite him. He still attended, and he felt like he was accepted by the Japanese students. However, he was not invited to subsequent similar parties. On the one hand, Elkin seemed to believe that even higher Japanese language skills would help him overcome such exclusion. He stated, “も し相手はそんなに日本語はうまくないなら、そんなに真剣に 対応しないじゃないですか。(If my Japanese is not good, people do not listen to me seriously).” In other words, he believes that, by acquiring a high level of Japanese proficiency, he would be seen as Japanese and treated equally like the Japanese, which is supported by his desire to “deceive Japanese people” with his language skills. On the other hand, Elkin implied that high Japanese language skills would not change how

10  “Your Class Is Like Karaoke”: Language Learning as a Shelter 

187

Japanese people treat him. This could be because, since he was in front of me, a teacher of Japanese, he did not want to dismiss the importance of learning Japanese or the hope that could be gained by learning Japanese.

Kanok Unlike Elkin, in Kanok’s department, international students seemed to be relatively warmly accepted. She mentioned that she communicated mostly in English with other members of the department and noted that communication in Japanese was also welcomed, stating that “all せんせ い (teachers) are happy to speak Japanese with us [international students].” Kanok described the behavior of a department’s secretary as an example, stating that she would speak in Japanese first and, if Kanok did not understand, would then speak in English. Although Kanok was in an environment in which international students were well understood, in reality most of the activities in the department were conducted in Japanese, especially when Japanese students were present. She described her daily conversations in Japanese in the department as follows: Sometimes, we want to join the conversation, but they mostly talk in Japanese. Sometimes, we cannot understand and we just nod. We just talk to each other only [about] the research topic. We mostly use English more than Japanese.

This situation arose beyond everyday conversations. Kanok stated that, if she could understand Japanese, she would be able to learn more about other members’ research. She seemed convinced that communicating in Japanese in her department was neither practical nor a reality. She stated, “I prefer [to] speak English because it’s easier and faster to communicate.” Based on her description of the language used in her lab meetings, Kanok appears to view it as common for international students to adjust not only to the Japanese language but also to the Japanese way of doing things, which I will further discuss in the next section.

188 

K. Yonemoto

So why did she still think that Japanese was important? In the interview, Kanok shared her experience of finding an old man who had fallen along the side of the street and not being able to help him. She said that this was when she realized the importance of knowing the Japanese language. He fell down on the floor, the side of the road. But at that time, I had a very limited Japanese, and I just asked him, おじいさん、大丈夫です か。(Are you ok?) and おじいさん (old man) was like, 痛い痛い。(It hurts, it hurts.). And I saw he was bleeding from his head. After that, some おばあさん (old lady), she walked and I asked [for] some help. At that time, I cannot speak Japanese, I just point, and help, help, help. And that おばあさん (old lady), she called the ambulance. I’m so sorry for him, I cannot speak Japanese, I cannot ask anything. At that time, I just think, ah, Japanese is important for me.

Kanok did not seem to feel the need for Japanese as strongly as Elkin did for communication on campus, but she was aware of the need for Japanese based on events that happened off campus. Naturally, the Japanese that she considered necessary was not technical Japanese used for research activities, but rather everyday conversational Japanese. Moreover, Kanok’s reasons for improving her Japanese did not include the desire to change how other people would treat her. It could be pointed out that her relatively positive sentiment about learning Japanese might have been attributed to the fact that the interviewer was a Japanese language teacher. However, the fact that Kanok continues to study Japanese with other instructors after taking my course despite the courses being noncredit bearing confirms that she feels the need to learn Japanese. Furthermore, she never mentioned any unfair treatment like Elkin had experienced.

A Place to Express Who They Are Elkin and Kanok were in different environments, but through different experiences, they felt the need for the Japanese language in different ways. They also shared the belief that the Japanese language class was not just a

10  “Your Class Is Like Karaoke”: Language Learning as a Shelter 

189

place to learn Japanese. At the time of the interviews, Elkin was not taking a Japanese class as he had completed the most advanced course at the university, and Kanok was taking an upper beginner’s class.

Elkin Elkin initially took a Japanese language course with the intention of continuing his Japanese language studies after entering the current university. Although he sought to learn Japanese, the significance of the Japanese language classes seemed to have changed due to the environment he was in, as previously described. 実に言えば、来たてのころ、本当狙いは日本語を勉強する。い っとき、ストレスがすんごいたまったんじゃないですか。で、 解消は主にする。(To tell the truth, when I first came here, my real aim was to study Japanese. For a while, I was really stressed out. So, my main goal became to relieve stress.)

During the interview, Elkin suggested that it was normal for students to get stressed out and that he was not the only one facing such a situation. In his case, it is not hard to assume that the source of his stress came from the challenging relationships in his department, which he believed existed not only among Japanese students but also with supervisors. 自分の先生はあんまり私をしゃべさせないんですよね。しゃ べらせない。それはストレスのほんの一部です。(My supervisor doesn’t let me talk much. Doesn’t let me talk. That is a part of my stress.)

As a result, he felt silenced by others in his department—namely, Japanese speakers. According to Elkin, the hierarchy in his department was rather obvious, and it was difficult for students and international students at the bottom of the hierarchy to resist this situation. Feeling silenced changed the way he thought about the role of Japanese class. In order to explain the meaning of the Japanese class to him, Elkin used the metaphor that “先生のクラスはカラオケみたいなところ です。(Your class is like karaoke.).” For this reason, unlike what we will

190 

K. Yonemoto

see with Kanok, the interview made clear that Elkin’s relationships with other students in the Japanese class were not as important to him. Rather, he seemed to value the Japanese language class as a place where he could talk about what he wanted to express. In addition, he recognized his Japanese teacher as a person who would listen to him. [日本語のクラスは]いっぱいしゃべって、楽しんで。ストレス の解消の仕方です。......大きい声で、自分の仕事場でダメでし ょ?好きなことも言えないじゃないですか。先生のクラスできる んですよ。......[日本語のクラスでは]そんな遠慮しなくていいで す、学習者ですから。([Japanese language class is where] I can talk a lot and have fun. It is a way to release my stress.... We cannot talk loud at our workplace. We cannot say what we want to say. We can do it in your class.... I don’t need to hesitate [in class] as I am a learner.)

Depending on his stress level, his reasons for coming to the Japanese class seemed to shift between learning Japanese and stress relief. He appeared to recognize that he could flexibly exercise his position as a student in the Japanese class. Elkin might not be aware of such unfair treatment or stress in his day-­ to-­day life in his department. He also might not be aware of the importance of learning Japanese. However, he had seemingly become more conscious of his feelings as he reflected on his experiences with the Japanese language through the interviews with the author. It was particularly interesting that, although his experiences in his department had led him to be frustrated with unfair treatment resulting from power relations with his teachers, Elkin placed himself in the position of a student, even in his relationship with the author. These observations suggest that, when positioning himself as a student in relation with the author, the ease of expressing his own feelings and thoughts was emphasized when compared to the relationship with the teachers in his department.

Kanok Interestingly, Kanok also stated, “I can be myself here [in the Japanese language classroom], but sometimes I cannot be myself in my

10  “Your Class Is Like Karaoke”: Language Learning as a Shelter 

191

department,” although for different reasons from Elkin. In her case, being oneself means being able to do ordinary tasks such as chatting with friends and eating snacks without worrying about her surroundings. She explained that international students in her department were warmly accepted in her department, which was a relatively small laboratory, and she seemed to be very aware of other people. She shared the following observation of the environment. There was another international student in her department who unknowingly made loud noises or spoke loudly. Although the student was not explicitly warned about it, Kanok sometimes heard Japanese colleagues sighing as if they were disturbed by the noise. She suggested that the reason behind this perception was a different relationship than the one in the Japanese language classroom. Because in the Japanese class, I felt like I stayed with friends, but in my office, I stayed with co-workers. If there are only Thai students, I feel [the] same as the Japanese class. I’m not sure why, but when we have Japanese people, we will keep quiet.

As she did not want to disturb her colleagues who were working, she seemed to think it was natural to keep quiet in the department. Such perception was shaped not only by the above observations of Japanese in her own lab but also by the accounts of other international students. Kanok stated that she was not the only one who was quiet in the department; this was most likely true for many international students in other departments. It is relevant to point out that her observation was based on the reaction of the Japanese people to the behavior of the international students. It is also significant that her comment above echoes Elkin’s description that regarded his lab as a “workplace.” In contrast, she recognized Japanese language class as a place where she did not have to be quiet. Kanok indicated that she wanted to study Japanese. On the one hand, she appreciated the fact that people in her department were very understanding of international students speaking or trying to speak Japanese. On the other hand, she suggested that the department was not an environment in which she would enjoy conversation for the previously mentioned reasons, nor was it an environment in which she could use Japanese without hesitation, which factored into her own Japanese language ability.

192 

K. Yonemoto

[T]he problem is our Japanese level is not so high. Sometimes, we cannot understand what they [Japanese people] said. And we have to ask in English again. That is a little barrier between Japanese and international students in the department.

Even in Japanese class, when talking to teachers, Kanok said that she got nervous that she might make a mistake. However, with her friends, they were at about the same level as her, so she did not have to worry about making a mistake. Although both Elkin and Kanok thought that they could be themselves in the Japanese language class, unlike Elkin, Kanok seemed to emphasize the relationships with others that could be gained in the Japanese language classroom. She appeared to value the comfort and pleasant time that she experienced through these relationships. This perception by Kanok might be related to what the author valued in Japanese class. As I mentioned earlier, even at a beginner level I emphasized and explained the importance of learners being able to talk about their thoughts and opinions in class. In this respect, it is qualitatively different from the activities in her department, which possibly gave her a sense of comfort. Still, it is pertinent to note that, even in such a comfortable setting, Kanok felt nervous talking to Japanese instructors, which is important in comprehending her perspective.

Summary and Conclusions Neither participant thought that language learning was simply about learning a language or that the Japanese language classroom was just a place to do so. Furthermore, the Japanese language learning they described in this inquiry was characterized by its close connection to self-­fulfillment, not the romantic or neoliberal desires identified in other studies (Kubota, 2011; Takahashi, 2013), in which desires were prominent among the affective aspects of learning. The Japanese language class was a place in which students could express themselves and have their voices heard, which was difficult for them in other places. With a few differences, the Japanese language classroom was a place for them to escape from other places. However, those other places—namely, their departments—were

10  “Your Class Is Like Karaoke”: Language Learning as a Shelter 

193

where they spent most of their time at the university to achieve the goal for which they came to Japan. Therefore, it seemed that the Japanese language class played a role as a shelter in their university life. However, this does not mean that Japanese language education played only a secondary role in the university. Previous studies have indicated that, with the increase in the number of English medium programs, Japanese language is increasingly not required for university admission (Horiguchi et al., 2015; Kurachi, 2016; Murata, 2015). The participants in this inquiry were such international students. As Murata (2015) described, the reality that they faced in the university was different in some ways from what they had imagined before admission. This gap was seemingly created by the fact that the globalization of universities, as Horiguchi et  al. (2015) and Murata (2015) pointed out, is primarily geared toward Japanese students. As a result, although Japanese universities now appear to be more open to international students on the surface, they have not sufficiently met the expectations of international students. This interpretation is supported by the fact that both Elkin and Kanok were, to a greater or a lesser extent, influenced by the Japanese in ways that transformed their thinking and behavior, being aware of the presence of Japanese students. How can we fill this gap? The first step is to better understand what international students are experiencing and to reflect this understanding in education. Both previous studies and the current inquiry have shown that the globalization of Japanese universities is seemingly being undertaken without a thorough understanding of the students affected by it. In particular, the international students in this inquiry appeared to feel excluded from the university in some way. Both Elkin and Kanok suggested that other international students faced a similar situation. This reality makes international students look like mere tools in the globalization of universities. Thus, it is necessary to consider the kinds of experiences universities should provide to its students. This inquiry suggests that little attention has been paid to the experiences of international students outside their department or university. Engaging in this inquiry as a Japanese language teacher, I realized the need to take a more critical look at my own positioning. That is, am I not attempting to overcome the existing problems by accepting the status

194 

K. Yonemoto

quo and using Japanese language learning as a shelter? The participants’ interviews illustrated that their perceptions were implicitly and explicitly influenced by my understanding of the situation that international students faced. As a teacher, I had always told my students that I would be there to help them if they had any problems on or off campus and that I would like to hear their voices in my Japanese classes. In other words, as Elkin described, it was “like karaoke,” at least in the Japanese classroom, where they could relieve their stress or be less nervous. It is necessary to consider whether or not using Japanese language learning as a shelter is merely a makeshift solution and to provide a more comprehensive remedy in terms of why they need a shelter. This inquiry sought to understand the affective aspects of language learning from students’ voices. It demonstrated that the Japanese language classes could play a dual role for international students: a learning place and a shelter. Future studies should explore what Japanese language teachers think about the affective goals that learners envision. Research has not fully explored whether Japanese language instructors actually attempt to understand the affective goals of learners and how they are reflected in their practice. From this point of view, clarifying Japanese language teachers’ awareness of international students’ affective goals will lead to discussions about Japanese language education that reflects learners’ affective goals more concretely.

References Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77–101. https://doi.org/10.119 1/1478088706qp063oa Horiguchi, S., Imoto, S., & Poole, G. S. (2015). Introduction. In S. Horiguchi, S. Imoto, & G. S. Poole (Eds.), Foreign language education in Japan: Exploring qualitative approaches (pp. 1–18). Sense Publishers. Iori, I. (2014). Korekara no nihongo kyôiku ni oite motomerareru koto [What is expected in Japanese language education in the future]. Kotoba to mozi, 50, 86–94. Kramsch, C. (2009). The multilingual subject. Oxford University Press.

10  “Your Class Is Like Karaoke”: Language Learning as a Shelter 

195

Kubota, R. (2011). Learning a foreign language as leisure and consumption: Enjoyment, desire, and the business of eikaiwa. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 14(4), 473–488. https://doi.org/1 0.1080/13670050.2011.573069 Kubota, R., Austin, T., & Saito-Abbott, Y. (2008). Diversity and inclusion of sociopolitical issues in foreign language classrooms: An exploratory survey. Foreign Language Annals, 36(1), 12–24. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1944-­ 9720.2003.tb01928.x Kubota, R., Seo, M., Kito, Y., Sano, K., Yamaguchi, Y., & Yonemoto, K. (2014). Yokakatsudô to shôhi to shiteno nihongo gakushû: Honkon, Pôrando, Furansu, Kanada ni okeru jirei o motoni [Learning Japanese as leisure and consumption: Cases from Hong Kong, Poland, France, and Canada]. In Committee for Academic Papers of the Ninth Symposium for Japanese Language Education and Japanese Studies (Ed.), Nihongo kyôiku to nihon kenkyû ni okeru sôhôkô apurôchi no jissen to kanôsei [Interactivity: Praxis and possibilities in Japanese language education and Japanese studies] (pp. 69–85). Coco Publishing. Kurachi, A. (2016). Daigaku no gurôbaruka ga nihongo kyôiku puroguramu to kyôin no tachiichi ni oyobosu eikyô [Globalization of universities and its influence on Japanese-language education programs and full-time instructors in Japan]. Bulletin of the Department of Teaching Japanese as a Second Language, Hiroshima University, 26, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.15027/39736 Lodge, A. (2000). Higher education. In S.  Green (Ed.), New perspectives on teaching and learning modern languages (pp. 105–123). Multilingual Matters. Murata, A. (2015). Stuck in between: English language environment for international students and skilled foreign workers in Japan. In S.  Horiguchi, S. Imoto, & G. S. Poole (Eds.), Foreign language education in Japan: Exploring qualitative approaches (pp. 51–64). Sense Publishers. Norton, B. (1997). Language, identity, and the ownership of English. TESOL Quarterly, 31(3), 409–429. Norton, B. (2001). Non-participation, imagined communities, and the language classroom. In M. Breen (Ed.), Learner contributions to language learning: New directions in research (pp. 159–171). Pearson Education. Norton, B. (2013). Identity and language learning: Extending the conversation (2nd ed.). Multilingual Matters. Pavlenko, A. (2005). Emotions and multilingualism. Cambridge University Press. Phipps, A., & Gonzalez, M. (2004). Modern languages: Learning and teaching in an intercultural field. Sage.

196 

K. Yonemoto

Schwandt, T. (2001). Dictionary of qualitative inquiry. Sage. Takahashi, K. (2013). Language learning, gender and desire: Japanese women on the move. Multilingual Matters. Talmy, S. (2010). Qualitative interviews in applied linguistics: From research instrument to social practice. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 30, 128–148. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0267190510000085 Williams, M., & Burden, R. L. (1997). Psychology for language teachers: A social constructivist approach. Cambridge University Press.

11 “No Need to Invest in the Japanese Language?”: The Identity Development of Chinese Students in the English-­Medium Instruction (EMI) Program of a Japanese College Keiko Kitade

English-Medium Instruction (EMI) has been implemented by the government in undergraduate and graduate programs of Japan’s colleges to attract foreign students without them having to meet the requirement of Japanese language proficiency. Unlike the utilization of English as a medium-of-instruction (MOI), as is done in Europe’s plurilingual education system, EMI programs in the Japanese context have been criticized due to their monolingual nature (Iino, 2019). The discussions are mainly at the policy level; however, how EMI program students in Japanese colleges envision their college life and future careers remains unexplored. This study addresses the question and discusses how Japanese language skills, or lack thereof, might influence overseas students’ identities and

K. Kitade (*) Department of Letters and Graduate School of Language Education and Information Science, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Mielick et al. (eds.), Discourses of Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11988-0_11

197

198 

K. Kitade

career opportunities. The narratives of two Chinese EMI students over their four years of college life were transcribed and visualized using a Trajectory Equifinality Modelling (TEM) diagram in order to identify their developmental trajectories and transitional events. Dialogical Self Theory (DST) was employed to capture the transformation process of their identity. The findings illustrate how fluency in the Japanese language may help determine international students’ identities as well as their career options after graduation.

Background  nglish-Medium Instruction in Japanese E Higher Education English-Medium Instruction (EMI) has been perceived to help institutions in non-English-speaking countries attract international students without proficiency requirements in the local language while offering an immersive English-language environment for local students (Saarinen & Nikula, 2012). With the “Global 30” project, starting from 2011, the Japanese government planned to increase incoming international students to 300,000 by 2020, focusing on bringing in degree-seeking undergraduate and graduate students to 13 selected Japanese universities, with no Japanese language proficiency required for admission. Some previous studies critically highlight issues in EMI practice in Japanese colleges, including lack of dissenting argument surrounding EMI implementation. EMI programs in Japanese colleges can be used to recruit overseas students to mitigate falling domestic college enrollment under Japan’s declining birthrate. Some studies (Iino, 2019; Shohamy, 2013; Toh, 2019) claim that the Japanese government and administrators have prioritized global marketing goals regarding EMI, uncritically accepting English as a lingua franca and introducing EMI without recognizing the power dichotomy brought by English, the globally dominant language (Iino, 2019). Rather than promoting diversity and multiculturalism, Kubota (2015) argued that EMI in Japan has promoted

11  “No Need to Invest in the Japanese Language?”: The Identity… 

199

“Englishization” or Westernization under neoliberal globalization and emphasized economic efficiency and individual responsibility over the rights of people. An important difference between EMI in Japanese higher education and in Europe is “English-only” policy in Japan, distinct from English as medium-of-instruction (MOI). Hashimoto (2013) describes Japanese policy as a “dualism” that maintains Japanese as the national language while tactically placing English as an additive language in “English-only” EMI programs. Iino (2019) claims that one reason for this dualism is the Japanese government’s paradoxical policy of “global human resources,” which underlines the need to both nurture Japanese national identity and educate students to meet global standards or “Anglo linguacultural norms” (Iino, 2019, p. 89). Hashimoto (2013) concludes that this monolingual policy ironically reinforces the essentialist dichotomy of “Japan and foreigners.”

Overseas EMI Students in Japanese Higher Education Most overseas students in EMI in Japanese higher education are from Asia and learned English as an additional language in their home countries. Iwasaki (2015) indicates some attractive aspects for Asian students coming to Japan (in general, not merely for EMI programs): lower international student tuition fees than other developed countries, the flexible student visa status allowing part-time work, relatively good employment opportunities, and a simple working visa process. However, the Japanese language requirement and the weak performance of Japanese universities in international rankings discourage studying in Japan. English-speaking people are few in Japan compared to Europe, and Japanese language proficiency is necessary to find a job with a high salary. EMI is implemented to overcome such obstacles, and most EMI students are not fluent in Japanese. However, EMI programs were implemented top-down, with little introspection, including about how Japanese language skills or lack thereof might influence overseas students’ identities and career opportunities.

200 

K. Kitade

Lack of Japanese skills can isolate overseas students. Some colleges offer optional Japanese language courses for overseas EMI students; however, as Hashimoto (2013) states, English classes alone are overwhelming for most EMI students, and additional Japanese language courses compound this feeling even further. Moreover, the dualism policy mentioned above escalates the isolation of overseas EMI students on campus, positioning them as “foreigners.” Tsukada (2013) examines the identities of Chinese EMI students in Japanese colleges and reports that they live in segregated Chinese and/or English-speaking communities where they rarely need the Japanese language. In these communities, they seldom experience marginalization or real-world language needs and language politics. However, Tsukada (2013) is a snapshot, and the long-term development of these students’ identities has been unexplored. Another obstacle for overseas EMI students is the high Japanese language fluency requirements of local companies in hiring international students (Iino, 2019). Although Japanese universities recruit overseas students with no Japanese language proficiency, these students struggle to find work in Japan, and mostly move on to European universities for further studies or return home to find work. In sum, Japanese language proficiency influences overseas EMI students’ situation during college and their career choices and prospects after graduation; however, EMI implementation in Japanese higher education prioritizes economic profiteering and seldom considers the limited career choices overseas EMI students face after college in Japan. To solve the critical problems with EMI programs and explore this reality that overseas students may confront, this study addresses the long-term development of overseas EMI student identities in relation to two additional languages—English and Japanese.

 verseas Students’ Identity and Investment O in the Local Language Transnational students negotiate identities as they enter new sociocultural contexts requiring different linguistic and cultural codes. They may be forced into peripheral positions in these contexts due to insufficient

11  “No Need to Invest in the Japanese Language?”: The Identity… 

201

knowledge of these codes. For example, some studies (e.g., Benson et al., 2012) illustrate international students’ identity formation as their target language skills improved and show how they adjusted to local communication and norms as their self-efficacy and participation in the local community increased. However, other studies show that socio-historical aspects such as “investment” (the question of where to invest linguistic capital, e.g., Norton, 2013) may also affect transnational people’s identity development and language learning. Investment is key to explaining the socio-­ historical, changeable nature of identity through a postmodern lens (Darvin & Norton, 2015). Specifically, Norton and Gao (2008) emphasize the strong connection between investment in English and the identity of Chinese students in Mainland China. One advantageous aspect of investment over the notion of motivation to learn is that it enables the analysis of identity negotiation with linguistic capital and ideologies. De Costa and Norton (2016) claim that language learning is not merely the acquisition of a linguistic system but an identity negotiation because the choice of language that they commit to learning can determine their future identities. For Chinese EMI students in Japan, Tsukada (2013) finds that most invest in English rather than Japanese because they envision themselves in imaginary English-speaking communities (e.g., Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). However, as mentioned earlier, their real and envisioned identities are not static and may transform during their college lives. They are in the middle of a critical period in their lives—the transition from adolescence to adulthood (Super, 1988). In this transition, students envision and choose their occupations based on their abilities and interests, negotiating social expectations.

 he Development of Identities Within T the Dialogical Self and Imagination To investigate the relationship between investment in and development of identity for overseas EMI students, this study employs the Dialogical Self Theory (DST) framework (Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, 2010) with

202 

K. Kitade

the concept of imagination (Zittoun, 2008). Both concepts have evolved from the Vygotskian social constructivism approach in psychology that perceives human development as a social and graduated process in time. DST is a currently developing and flourishing approach in the field of social/cultural psychology in continental Europe to explain the multiple, transformational, and contextually constructed aspects of identity (e.g., Hermans & Gieser, 2011). As such, DST highlights the dynamic negotiation process of identity regarding the relationship between the environment and multiple forms of self. Hermans and Hermans-Konopka (2010) extend the understanding of the interrelated self, “I as a knower” and “me as known,” also referred to as the “decentralized self ” (Sarbin, 1952), with the notion of multi-voicedness of self, or “polyphony” (Bakhtin, 1929/1973; Emerson & Holquist, 1984) to realize the concept of self as the constructs of multiple positions. DST emphasizes the dialogical relationship between positions or voices, which may occur along two interrelated dimensions—internal and external positions. The internal positions (e.g., “I as a woman, wife, researcher”) and external positions (e.g., “my husband, my children, my colleagues, my research partners”) are commingled, and dialogs may occur among the different positions with/in the self. Instead of viewing the environment and self separately, DST perceives the environment and self as an interrelated system where one or more imagined alternative or integrated selves might emerge from out of multiple contradictory and competing selves. With the focus on the dialogical self in the sense of time, Zittoun (2008) proposes the role of imagination in promoting the dialog between past and future I-positions and generating tensions between the positions. The imagination triggered by experience initiates dialogs that connect past-present-future positions. Through the dialog, future I-positions in the imagination are generated to explore the expanded possibility, as well as the compromised positions (Zittoun & Gillespie, 2016). Zittoun (2020) further suggests that imagination may be triggered by geographical and socio-material transitions across space and time. The imagination not only influences one to move to another place, but the transnational and trans-sectional experiences can expand one’s imagination due to facing new situations and taking alternative views to one’s past and possible future. This study, which incorporates the concept of imagination in the

11  “No Need to Invest in the Japanese Language?”: The Identity… 

203

dialogical self, may reveal the process of students with transnational experiences transforming their identities at the micro-level and over the lifecourse development. Considering the socio-economic background of EMI programs in Japanese higher education and the peripheral positions of overseas EMI students in Japan, this study explores the following question: how do Chinese students in an EMI undergraduate program in Japan experience identity transformations along with their career development? To answer this question, this study traces their long-term development, including their senior year when they decide on their future career.

Data and Method To address the introspective ideas of overseas EMI students in Japan, data were collected and analyzed according to a narrative inquiry framework (Barkhuizen et al., 2013). Participants were recruited from an e-mail list sent by an EMI class instructor at a private university in Japan. The EMI program was established in 2011 as a new major related to global issues in the department. In the summer of 20xx, seven overseas EMI students were initially interviewed for the pilot study, and two Chinese female students, Han and Ko, were invited for further interview sessions in the following two years. Han and Ko were selected as participants because both entered the EMI program immediately after high school graduation and expressed plans to enter a graduate program in Europe during the initial interviews. In addition, the largest population of overseas students in Japan, and in the EMI program, is Chinese despite somewhat tense historical and political Japan-China relations. Summaries of the four (Ko) and five (Han) interviews are shown individually in Table 11.1. After three interviews upon completion of their sophomore year, the interviews followed in their junior and senior years. The last interviews were around their graduation. As Ko transferred to a college in England, her interviews were conducted in four sessions. All interviews were recorded and transcribed for further analysis. The interviewer/researcher was a Japanese female faculty member who taught Japanese language teacher education and intercultural communication; she had not met Han or Ko before the interviews.

204 

K. Kitade

Table 11.1  The summary of interview data Han 1 2 3 4

Ko

Participants’ College Year at the Interviews

90 min 109 min 69 min 191 min

117 min Completed sophomore 119 min year 100 min E-mail exchanges referring to the Completed junior year Trajectory Equifinality Modeling (TEM) figures 5 101 min 85 min Completed senior year

Method Interview procedures and data analysis followed, using two interrelated methods, Trajectory Equifinality Modeling (TEM; Sato et al., 2009) and DST (Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, 2010). Both frameworks have grown out of cultural psychology (Valsiner, 2007), which extends the Vygotskian perspective in recognizing the regulation of socially constructed meanings in human cognition and development. The research initially employs TEM to illustrate the long-term developmental process and find the transitional points in the participants’ life course. TEM diagrams, which illustrate the interviewee’s life trajectory while confirming the intersubjectivity of the interviewer and interviewee, distinguish TEM from other narrative methods. The interviews were conducted following the three steps suggested by Sato (2012). The first interview started with questions prepared by the researcher asking about the students’ reason for applying to the Japanese EMI program, their future career plan after graduation, and their life experiences in Japan. Subsequently, the life-line interview method (Assink & Schroots, 2010) was employed to extract their experiences and associated meanings, along with a timeline beginning with their decision to apply to the EMI program. After completing a draft of the TEM diagram, the critical events, called bifurcation points (BFPs), including the social regulations/social guides were then identified. Subsequently, the BFPs represent pivotal points when one direction is chosen over another.

11  “No Need to Invest in the Japanese Language?”: The Identity… 

205

After determining the developmental stages of their trajectory and the transitional points of their development with the TEM diagram, this study utilizes DST to observe the transitions at the micro-level. To trace the growth of the alternative self through tensions among I-positions, the diagram illustrating the various I-positions (Hermans & Hermans-­ Jansen, 2005) is based on the participants’ narratives. An example of the diagram is shown in Fig.  11.1. The positions in the external domain reflecting the social expectations (e.g., “I as a teacher”) may conflict or match another position in the internal domain (e.g., “I as a mother”). As a result of the dialogs between the personal and professional positions, the third position (e.g., “I as a teacher who considers the life course growth of the students as well as their learning in the class”) may form to show an alternative future direction. Thus, DST can examine how the new dynamic and consistent self appears through the negotiation of both social (internal/external) and chronolectal (past-present-future) aspects. Specifically, Hermans (2013) suggests three central concepts—third position, meta-position, and promoter-position—in educational studies utilizing DST (Fig. 11.2). The third position mitigates and lessens the conflict between positions. The third position is not a compromise I-position

Self

The dialogical relationship The emergence of the third position

The thi third hir ird position er I as a mother My daughter

Internal positions positi onss

I as a teacher

External positions

External world

The students in my class Fig. 11.1  The diagram illustrating the development of I-positions. (Adopted from Hermans & Hermans-Jansen, 2003, Fig. 23-1, p. 544)

206 

K. Kitade I-position

Self A role model senior teacher

The emergence of the third position TThe thi third rd position position on

I as a mother

My daughter

The dialogical relationship

Internal positions

External positions

External world

I as a teacher

The students in my class

The promotor position The meta position

Fig. 11.2  The diagram illustrating the development of I-positions with promotor and meta positions

between the positions, but it takes advantage of the combined two original positions in suggesting the future-oriented direction. The meta-­ position is referred to as “observing ego,” which allows a broader perspective to reflect upon oneself. Permitted to consider relevant linkages and alternative positions, the meta-position can promote the organization of the self. Finally, the promoter-position plays a crucial role in life career development due to its temporal nature, while meta-positions explain the spatial concept in DST. The successive unrelated I-positions may suddenly connect to form new meanings with a promoter-position. Hermans (2013) states that significant others such as “a role model senior teacher” in Fig. 11.2 and the “developmental impetus of I-position, like I as a person who goes on and never gives up” are examples of promoter-­ positions in the organization of self to open new potential for future development. The identifications of the repertoire of I-positions, third position, promoter-position, and meta-position, as well as the dialogical relationship between the positions, suggest the developmental process of self at the micro-level. In particular, the studies in career narratives (Meijers & Lengelle, 2012; Tsuchimoto, 2020) indicate that the analysis with DST adequately explains the continuous practice of identity ­(re-) positioning.

11  “No Need to Invest in the Japanese Language?”: The Identity… 

207

Findings Both Han and Ko reported an initial goal of going to a graduate school in Europe after the EMI program in Japan; however, both gradually changed their plans during the four years of college life, as indicated in the revised goals, summarized in Table 11.2. The following section will discuss how their initial plans changed along with their identity development through (during and due to) their college life.

Han’s Identity Development Along with Her Trajectory Han’s trajectory (Table 11.3) suggests how she dramatically transformed herself through the four years of college life in Japan. First, she applied for the EMI program at a Japanese college after she failed to get into her first-­ choice Chinese college and wanted to escape from the pressure of the Chinese national college entrance examination (BFP1). It was her first time to study abroad and live alone. When she came to Japan, she preferred staying in a small world and visualized her future career as a professor. Her original plan was to continue studying in a graduate program in Europe—one of the most popular paths for overseas EMI students, because master’s degrees are necessary to find high-salary jobs in China, and the graduate programs in Japan are less valued in academia in China compared to those in the US or Europe. Han decided not to take optional Japanese language classes after the mandatory credits (BFP2) because she had never thought of living in Japan after her graduation until the end of the second stage. However, in the third stage, Han started to think of living in Japan, marrying a Japanese husband, and becoming a homemaker. She changed Table 11.2  The initial and revised goals (The equifinality points) of Han and Ko Han

Ko

The initial goal Attend graduate school in Europe The revised goal Find a stable job Suggest an alternative perspective in the in Japan Western-dominated academia

208 

K. Kitade

Table 11.3  The stages and BFPs of Han’s trajectory The Stages of Han’s Trajectory

BFP

1. Wanted to avoid the Chinese national exam 2. Wanted to attend a graduate school in Europe after graduation 3. Started to think of living in Japan as a future option

BFP1: Failed to get accepted to her first-choice unviersity BFP2: Decided not to take Japanese classes anymore

4. Realized the limitations of living in Japan without knowing Japanese

5. Gave up attending a graduate school in Europe

BFP3: Found a part-time job BFP4: Needed to learn Japanese for more options BFP5: Felt okay to find a job and live in Japan in the future BFP6: Realized that the Japanese language was necessary to take more specialized contents classes in the major BFP7: Visited a friend in England BFP8: Wanted to study at a graduate program in Switzerland BFP9: Worked as a research assistant for a Chinese professor BFP10: Decided to find a job in Japan BFP11: Realized lack of Japanese communication skills at a job interview

her mind because of a part-time job she was introduced to by a senior Chinese EMI student (BFP3). She was working part-time at a temple, guiding foreign tourists. Her colleagues at the temple were all married to local Japanese female part-timers. It was almost the first time that Han had met local Japanese people outside the EMI students’ community. As she had gradually increased contacts with the local community in the fourth stage, her junior year, she slowly realized the limitation of living in Japan without speaking Japanese. She faced the reality that she needed to be fluent in Japanese to join a student club activity. Moreover, the various classes offered for EMI are considerably restricted in number and content compared to the ones offered in Japanese (BFP6). At the fifth stage, she acknowledged the reality of employment rates for full-time academic positions for young instructors when she worked as a research assistant. She gave up on going to graduate school in Europe and changed her career plans (BFP9).

11  “No Need to Invest in the Japanese Language?”: The Identity… 

209

The Development of Han’s I-Positions Looking closer at Han’s transformation in the trajectory, I-positions found in Han’s earlier (second) and later (third and fourth) stages are compared in Fig.  11.3. During the earlier stage, Han realized that she could not effectively participate in the local Japanese community either on or off campus due to her lack of Japanese language fluency. Han talked about her experience in visiting a student club for a board game as follows: “I tried one [club] but failed because of my situation, just because my Japanese was not that good. I failed to communicate with the club members because they were all Japanese. No one spoke Chinese or English. They were…they were…Japanese. I visited the club once, and then no more. No more.” (from Han’s first interview)

As Han lived in the English/Chinese speaking community with EMI students on campus, such a challenging experience terrified her and hindered her contact with the local community again. From the first to third interviews, Han kept saying that she was happy living in a small world and rarely felt motivated to study the Japanese language. Han’s status as a

 The lecturer who cannot find a stable position in academia  Other EMI students who plan to attend a graduate program in Europe

 The coworkers at Han’s part-time job complaining about being homemakers  The female employees working at Japanese companies where gender equality is still developing  Japanese companies that require a high level of Japanese language proficiency for overseas students

I as a person used to live in the small academic world I as a person wanted to wife become “a housewife”

Promoter position on I as a finisher who could complete a degree in a foreign country I as an EMI student who studied on her own to pass the high-level Japanese language test I as a woman with a goal to improve gender equality

Fig. 11.3  The I-positions in the later stage of Han’s trajectory

Third position: I as a challenger who can survive and overcome difficult situations Imagined future self: 1. Find a job at a prestigious company in Japan 2. Contribute to changes in Japanese society regarding gender equality

210 

K. Kitade

foreigner belonging to the closed overseas EMI community reflected directly on her imagined future self in the earlier period. Han said that the reason she wanted to become a professor or homemaker was as follows: “I want to reduce the connection from the whole society as much as possible. I prefer a small, simple atmosphere. Staying in university is the easiest way to have a kind of closed environment and not have to worry about things in a career very much. Of course, housewife is. I just want to avoid the pressures from the society. One of my colleagues at the temple [where Han worked part-time] told me that she got married right after her graduation. She never had to work full-time.” (Han’s first interview)

Figure 11.3 shows the change in Han’s identity and career plan. Han gradually discovered the reality of the world outside the EMI community and gave up the plan to become either a professor or a homemaker. In the fifth stage, she found a research assistant position for a young Chinese lecturer/postdoctoral researcher through her friend named Tom. Tom told her how competitive the employment system was in finding a tenured position in academia. Simultaneously, she learned the negative side of being a homemaker from her colleagues at the part-time workplace, with some of them struggling to make a living after divorce. As she experienced reality shock in her senior year, Han started to envision herself employed at a Japanese company, as going back to China had never been a choice for her. As Han stepped out of the closed EMI community to enter the local Japanese society, she realized that foreign as well as Japanese affiliated companies required high Japanese fluency for overseas candidates. Her success in passing the highest level of the Japanese Language Test and completing a college degree in Japan became promoters that challenged her past I-positions living in a small world. The various I-positions that appeared during Han’s college life show how Han’s perspective toward herself, as well as the surrounding environment, had changed through her sojourn period. Han’s resilience developed through her recognition of both the real world outside the EMI community and herself as a young adult in the first stage of career development.

11  “No Need to Invest in the Japanese Language?”: The Identity… 

211

Ko’s Identity Development Along with Her Trajectory Unlike Han, Ko’s trajectory (Table 11.4) suggests an alternative to the typical trajectory of Chinese EMI students in Japan. What makes Ko’s sojourn in Japan different from Han’s is Ko’s earlier experience living in Japan as a high school exchange student for six months (BFP1). With that experience, Ko was more prepared to communicate in Japanese and live abroad as she started college life. When Ko was a high school student, the first stage in the trajectory, she started to question the Chinese national entrance exam system in which students must score highly to Table 11.4  The stages and BFPs of Ko’s trajectory Stages of Ko’s Trajectory

BFP

1. Questioned the system of BFP1: Went to Japan as a high school Chinese national entrance exam exchange student BFP2: Questioned the Chinese national entrance exam system 2. Identified herself as being in an BFP3: Struggled with English and was motivated to study Japanese language to extraordinary position in EMI know local communities program BFP4: Did well in a Japanese essay contest 3. Explored local communities BFP5: Applied for the post of library staff BFP6: Met with senior local Japanese people at the event of pound steamed rice hosted by the former host grandparents BFP7: Took a Japanese class for regular Japanese student BFP8: Decided to participate in grassroot 4. Questioned her original plan, activities after graduation instead of going to a graduate school, and going to a graduate school sought more options 5. Transferred to a college to BFP9: Enjoyed the discussion in study anthropology anthropology class BFP10: Got a good grade on the term paper 6. Questioned the dominance of BFP11: Conducted the thesis on the Western theories in Asia Japanese seniors’ agricultural community BFP12: Interviewed the Japanese senior farmers introduced by the former host grandparents BFP13: Completed the thesis

212 

K. Kitade

enter the privileged colleges without thinking about what they want to study seriously (BFP2). She felt that she should leave China, or she would be stuck in the system forever. In her freshman year in Japan, she revealed herself as an exceptional student in the EMI program, the only Chinese EMI student who could communicate in Japanese (BFP3). One of the most significant events in her sojourn in Japan was BFP6, when she met with the senior local Japanese farmers at the new year’s event of pounding steamed rice to make a food called mochi. Her earlier host grandparents were farmers, and they invited her to join the event. As she met local senior farmers, she realized the importance of communicating with the local people to understand the insiders’ views, which are not usually accessible for foreigners or outsiders to the community. Like Han and other overseas EMI students, Ko initially planned to go to graduate school in Europe after her graduation (1st EFP), but she started to question the plan at the end of her sophomore year. She felt that the experiences in the grassroots activities are essential to understand the world rather than only studying the theories. In her junior year, Ko was accepted into a year-long exchange program in England from the Japanese college. Ko had initially moved to England as an exchange student from the Japanese college, but she decided to transfer to the college in England because she was interested in studying anthropology (BFP9). In Ko’s last stage of the trajectory, she reflected on her study in both Japan and England and questioned the dominance of Western theories in academia in Asia. Her critical position had been generated through the ethnographic views she had learned in the field of anthropology and her transcultural experiences in her life.

The Development of Ko’s I-Positions Ko’s identity formation during her sojourn in the second and third stages is effectively explained with her critical perception toward the other overseas EMI students in her external domain: “Many EMI international students stay inside the EMI community. They think Japanese people are outside, and Japanese society is not relevant to them.” (From Ko’s first interview, originally in Japanese and translated by the researcher)

11  “No Need to Invest in the Japanese Language?”: The Identity… 

 Ko’s parents and grandparents in China  The earlier host grandparents and their friends in a Japanese farm community  Professors of the EMI program in Japan who teach Western theories only  Professors in the anthropology department who are obsessed with Western theories only

213

The meta position: I as a Chinese want to contribute to the development of Chinese society

I as an ethnographer who values insiders' and Asians’ perspectives

I as an Asian student who studied Western theories only

I as a transcultural person who studied Western theories but who wants to value the Asian perspective as welll d ffuture self: Imagined Understand multiple perspectives to suggest alternatives to the Westerndominated academic world

Fig. 11.4  Ko’s I-positions emerged in the last stage

She talked about herself as different from the other EMI international students and wanted to explore the various local authentic Japanese communities rather than the international communities in Japan where people have the intention of gaining international experiences. Ko’s I-positions at the end of college life in Fig. 11.4 reflected her transnational experience in China, Japan, and England. At the time of the last interview, Ko had completed her degree in England and had come back to Japan for a short break before graduation. Thus, Ko’s I-positions related to her family in China, earlier host family in Japan, and the professors in England are in a dialogical relationship “as a Chinese person who wants to contribute to the development of Chinese society,” “as an ethnographer who values the insider and Asian perspective,” and “as a student from Asia but studied Western theories only.” The meta-perspective she had learned in her studies in the field of anthropology and from her own transnational experiences promoted those dialogs to generate a higher level of integration: “I as a transcultural person, who studied Western theories but want to value the Asian perspective as well.” Her experience studying in England made her realize the theories supported in the world are a Western-centered view and not only the European

214 

K. Kitade

and North American scholars, but also we [Asian scholars] are obsessed with the [Western] theory and imitate it. We should have more original ideas. The question generated Ko’s future self as I want to challenge in suggesting the alternative perspective to the Western ones. In fact, she changed her original plan of pursuing a graduate program in Europe, and was thinking of graduate work in Asia after doing some volunteering to better understand the world.

Discussion The data illustrate how Han and Ko’s perceptions of the world not only reflect their present identities but also regulate or expand the development of their life career. As Han’s case suggested, peripheral status in Japanese society may shape one’s future vision of living in a small, segregated world. The findings highlighted how the dilemma inherent in EMI policy in Japanese higher education affects the identity and career development of overseas EMI students. The EMI program in Japanese higher education appeals to overseas students, without the requirement for Japanese language fluency. However, as Han and Ko’s cases suggest, the inconsistent language policy in Japan regulates these students’ identities. Contrary to the Japanese government’s expectations, the EMI students with no Japanese language fluency seldom have access to the local community or employment opportunities in Japan. Instead, international students from Asia see the course as a steppingstone to attend a graduate program in Europe. Ko noted that the institutions hire EMI faculty members who teach Western theories more or less exclusively, which enhances the capital of academic degrees from Europe and North America. In addition, Han and Ko’s resilience to the power structures observed in their trajectory shows two different purposes of EMI education for the transnational students: Han decided to invest in studying Japanese language to live in Japan, and Ko critically reflected on her transnational experiences and decided to try and change the Western-dominated academic field by helping to introduce Asian perspectives. These students’ reactions may be explained with reference to the three types of (language)

11  “No Need to Invest in the Japanese Language?”: The Identity… 

215

education in a globalized world suggested by Kramsch (2020): “for future national citizens,” “for future consumers,” and “for future denizens of a global society.” Han’s case represents the second purpose, that is, value placed on human capital and development of a competitive spirit to survive in the age of neoliberalism. Han had initially wanted to avoid facing the competitive world. However, she gradually established her autonomy in order to survive in the capitalistic world, developing Japanese language fluency and self-efficacy during college life. In contrast, Ko’s case portrays the last type, as Ko not only recognized the socio-historical and political dimensions in academia but also felt responsible for solving existing inequity. The varied data reveal how interpretations of transnational or intercultural experiences may impact one’s envisioned self or vice-versa. Finally, the present study employs narrative inquiry, in which emphasis is on participants’ introspective meanings. An important point in narrative inquiry is the relationship between the researcher/interviewer and the participants/interviewees. Considering China and Japan’s tense historical and political relationship, the fact that the interviewer was Japanese may have influenced the Chinese interviewees’ responses to some extent. Also, the fact that the interviewer was a faculty member of the college which the interviewees attended may have impacted their interview accounts. However, unlike in cross-sectional studies conducted at one time point, the relationship between the participants and the researcher was developed over three years and seemed to promote open and honest exchanges.

Conclusion This study explored the identity development of Chinese students in the EMI program of a Japanese college. The fact that monolingualism is still broadly supported over plurilingualism in Japan (Toh, 2019) affects the identity and envisioned careers of overseas students in the EMI program. Additionally, the study’s cases highlight how the experiences of life-career transitions and border crossing during college years play a crucial role in regulating or expanding students’ future career options. The design of EMI in higher education is responsible for the dynamic life-course

216 

K. Kitade

development of transnational and domestic students. Further discussions and studies examining contextual, political, and ethical dimensions (Kramsch, 2020) are required to design better higher education for transnational students.

References Assink, M., & Schroots, J. J. (2010). The dynamics of autobiographical memory: Using the LIM life-line interview method. Hogrefe Publishing. Bakhtin, M. M. (1973). Problems of Dostoevsky’s poetics. Ardis. Barkhuizen, G., Benson, P., & Chik, A. (2013). Narrative inquiry in language teaching and learning research. Routledge. Benson, P., Barkhuizen, G., Bodycott, P., & Brown, J. (2012). Study abroad and the development of second language identities. Applied Linguistics Review, 3(1), 173–193. https://doi.org/10.1515/applirev-­2012-­0008 Darvin, R., & Norton, B. (2015). Identity and a model of investment in applied linguistics. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 35, 36–56. https://doi. org/10.1017/S0267190514000191 De Costa, P. I., & Norton, B. (2016). Introduction: Identity, transdisciplinarity, and the good language teacher. The Modern Language Journal, 101(Supplement), 3–14. https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12368 Emerson, C., & Holquist, M. (1984). Problems of Dostoevsky's poetics. University of Minnesota Press. Hashimoto, K. (2013). ‘English-only’, but not a medium-of-instruction policy: The Japanese way of internationalizing education for both domestic and overseas students. Current Issues in Language Planning, 14(1), 16–23. https:// doi.org/10.1080/14664208.2013.789956 Hermans, H. J. (2013). The dialogical self in education: Introduction. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 26(2), 81–89. https://doi.org/10.1080/10720537. 2013.759018 Hermans, H. J., & Gieser, T. (Eds.). (2011). Handbook of dialogical self theory. Cambridge University Press. Hermans, H. J. M., & Hermans-Jansen, E. (2005). Dialogical processes and the development of the self. In J. Valsiner & K. J. Connolly (Eds.), Handbook of developmental psychology (pp. 534–559). SAGE Publications Ltd. https://doi. org/10.4135/9781848608306

11  “No Need to Invest in the Japanese Language?”: The Identity… 

217

Hermans, H., & Hermans-Konopka, A. (2010). Dialogical self theory: Positioning and counter-positioning in a globalizing society. Cambridge University Press. Iino, M. (2019). EMI (English-medium instruction) in Japanese higher education: A paradoxical space for global and local sociolinguistic habits. In K. Murata (Ed.), English-medium instruction from an English as a lingua franca perspective (pp. 78–95). Routledge. Iwasaki, K. (2015). Nihon kigyō no jinzai gurōbaruka ni muketa kibishī michinori [Difficulties the Japanese industry faces for globalizing employees]. RIM, 15(59), 29–53. Kramsch, C. (2020). Educating the global citizen or the global consumer? Language Teaching, 53(4), 462–476. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261444819000363 Kubota, R. (2015). Gurōbaruka shakai to gengo kyōiku, kuritikaru na shiten kara [Language education in an era of globalization: Critical perspectives]. Kuroshio Shuppan. Meijers, F., & Lengelle, R. (2012). Narratives at work: The development of career identity. British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, 40(2), 157–176. https://doi.org/10.1080/03069885.2012.665159 Norton, B. (2013). Identity and language learning: Extending the conversation. Multilingual Matters. Norton, B., & Gao, Y. (2008). Identity, investment, and Chinese learners of English. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 18(1), 109–120. Rizvi, F., & Lingard, B. (2010). Globalizing education policy. Routledge. Saarinen, T., & Nikula, T. (2012). Implicit policy, invisible language: Policies and practices of international degree programs in Finnish higher education. In A. Doiz, D. Lasagabaster, & J. Sierra (Eds.), English-medium instruction at universities: Global challenges (pp. 131–150). Multilingual Matters. https:// doi.org/10.21832/9781847698162-­011 Sarbin, T. R. (1952). A preface to a psychological analysis of the self. Psychological Review, 59(1), 11. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0058279 Sato, N. (2012). DV higaisha shienin to shite no jikokeisei [Self-formation as a DV victim supporter]. In Y. Yasuda & T. Sato (Eds.), TEM de wakaru jinsei no keiro: Shitsuteki kankyō no shintenkai [The life trajectory with TEM: The new horizon of the qualitative study] (pp. 55–71). Shinsei shobō. Sato, T., Hidaka, T., & Fukuda, M. (2009). Depicting the dynamics of living the life: The trajectory equifinality model. In J. Valsiner, P. Molenaar, M. Lyra, & N. Chaudhary (Eds.), Dynamic process methodology in the social and developmental sciences (pp. 217–240). Springer.

218 

K. Kitade

Shohamy, E. (2013). The discourse of language testing as a tool for shaping national, global, and transnational identities. Language and Intercultural Communication, 13(2), 225–236. https://doi.org/10.1080/14708477.2013.770868 Super, D. E. (1988). Vocational adjustment: Implementing a self-concept. The Career Development Quarterly, 36(4), 351–357. https://doi.org/10.1002/ j.2161-­0045.1988.tb00509.x Toh, G. (2019). Challenges in English-medium instruction (EMI) at a Japanese university. World Englishes, 39(2), 334–347. https://doi.org/10.1111/ weng.12434 Tsuchimoto, T. (2020). Tenki ni okeru kyaria shien no ōtoesunogurafi. [Autoethnography of career support in transition]. (doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.34382/00014037 Tsukada, H. (2013). The internationalization of higher education as a site of self-­ positioning: Intersecting imaginations of Chinese international student and universities in Japan [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University of ­ British Columbia. Valsiner, J. (2007). Culture in minds and societies: Foundations of cultural psychology. Sage. Zittoun, T. (2008). Learning through transitions: The role of institutions. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 23(2), 165–181. https://doi. org/10.1007/BF03172743 Zittoun, T. (2020). Imagination in people and societies on the move: A sociocultural psychology perspective. Culture & Psychology, 26(4), 654–675. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354067X19899062 Zittoun, T., & Gillespie, A. (2016). Imagination: Creating alternatives in everyday life. In V. Glăveanu (Ed.), The Palgrave handbook of creativity and culture research (pp. 225–242). Palgrave Macmillan.

12 Who Speaks Yasashii Nihongo for Whom?: Reimagining the “Beneficiary” Identities of Plain/ Easy Japanese Noriko Iwasaki

This chapter examines changes in Japanese students’ awareness of the imagined beneficiary identity of Yasashii Nihongo (easy, plain, simplified Japanese) as well as the benefits and drawbacks of Yasashii Nihongo and of the related linguistic behaviour of “foreigner talk,” through discussion with Italian students who use Japanese as a second language (L2). As will be described in the next section, Yasashii Nihongo can be considered a type of foreigner talk, and both Yasashii Nihongo and foreigner talk are called upon or observed in contact situations where speakers of different first languages (L1s) or different cultures interact. The Japanese students discussed Yasashii Nihongo and foreigner talk with L2 Japanese-speaking Italian students in Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) activities, implemented as a collaboration between an undergraduate course for students interested in teaching Japanese as an L2 at Nanzan

N. Iwasaki (*) Nanzan University, Nagoya, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Mielick et al. (eds.), Discourses of Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11988-0_12

219

220 

N. Iwasaki

University and a graduate course at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. In other words, the students discussed the contact situation language and linguistic behaviour in the contact situation itself.

Background As the presence of foreign residents and tourists has become ubiquitous across different parts of Japan and as the Japanese government has established Specified Skilled Worker visas to tackle labour shortages, the need for Yasashii Nihongo has drawn a great deal of attention. The term Yasashii Nihongo refers to a variety of Japanese language modified for those who are not proficient in Japanese. The term can be translated as “plain,” “easy,” or “simplified” Japanese but some authors, such as Iori (2016a), opt to use the Romanised expression Yasashii Nihongo because of the polysemy of the adjective yasashii (e.g., easy, simple, soft, gentle, kind). The current paper also uses this Romanised expression. The idea and the terminology were introduced after the Great Hanshin-­ Awaji Earthquake in 1995 by researchers seeking to find ways to inform foreign residents of indispensable information at times of disasters (Sato, 1996). This was because a high proportion of casualties among foreign residents and their subsequent hardship were attributed to their inability to comprehend information provided to rescue or support victims. Hence, the Yasashii Nihongo originally proposed by Sato (1996) and his research group at Hirosaki University was formulated as a guideline for modifying Japanese originally written for an L1 audience, for the purpose of creating more comprehensible versions of Japanese disaster alerts and public announcements for an unspecified “foreigner” audience (see Hirosaki Daigaku Jinbungakubu Shakaigengogaku Kenkyu¯shitsu, 2013, for example). Since then, the use of Yasashii Nihongo has been extended for use in non-disaster situations and is now often recommended for communication in public sites such as regional government offices, tourism, the service industry and Japanese language education (Iori, 2016b; 2019a). The website of Shutsunyūkoku Kanrikyoku [the Immigration Services Agency of Japan], for example, offers Gaikokujin Seikatsushien

12  Who Speaks Yasashii Nihongo for Whom… 

221

Pōtarusaito [Portal site to support foreigners’ lives], where Yasashii Nihongo is one of the available language choices. In 2020, the Immigration Services Agency of Japan and Bunkachō (the Agency for Cultural Affairs1) together published Zairyūshien no tame no yasashii nihongo gaidorain [The Yasashii Nihongo guidelines to support foreign residents], which is downloadable from the agency’s webpage.2 Though the guidelines specifically focus on written Japanese, they also state that Yasashii Nihongo is effective in spoken language (Shutsunyūkoku Kanrichō and Bunkachō, 2020, p. 5). Iori (2016c) offers a “manual” for speaking Yasashii Nihongo and recommends behaviour such as speaking slowly and clearly, paraphrasing and avoiding difficult words or expressions. Such linguistic behaviour is akin to “foreigner talk,” the term used by Ferguson (1968) to refer to a simplified version of the language which speakers use to communicate with “outsiders who are felt to have very limited command of the language or no knowledge of it at all” (p. 5). L1 Japanese speakers’ “foreigner talk” (how they modify their language) has also been studied since the 1980s (Skoutartides, 1981; Long, 1992). Yasashii Nihongo used in two-way communication is similar to or the same as foreigner talk (e.g., see Ozaki, 2013, and Yanagida, 2013). However, they do differ as their naming may suggest. While foreigner talk may indicate ways of talking that L1 speakers use for foreigners, the term Yasashii Nihongo refers to a simplified variety of Japanese (e.g., a language choice of multilingual services as in the Immigration Agency’s portal site above) rather than linguistic behaviour—the behaviour often referred to as “accommodation,” whereby speakers adjust their language for their conversation partner (Giles & Smith, 1979). Iori (2019b) suggests that Yasashii Nihongo serves as a lingua franca in local communities and as a language to be taught to support immigrants as an alternative, easier way for foreign residents to start learning Japanese. He provides a grammatical syllabus to teach the language and argues that foreign residents can learn to convey their messages and comprehend language written in Yasashii Nihongo within a short period of time. Questions arise as to who should learn and speak the modified language and for whom. The government websites and documents such as the guidelines published by Shutsunyūkoku Kanrichō and Bunkachō

222 

N. Iwasaki

highlight the merit of Yasashii Nihongo for nihonjin “Japanese” to help gaikokujin “foreigners.” The categories of “Japanese” and “foreigners” are foregrounded in these documents. Media reports on its use give the impression that it is considerate of L1 speakers of Japanese to use Yasashii Nihongo for foreigners. Hence, it seems that the government documents and media discursively construct the beneficiary of Yasashii Nihongo as “foreigners” and suggest that L1 Japanese speakers should use it to help foreigners and to facilitate “multicultural coexistence.” The current author was struck by the use of the term gaikokujin “foreigners” in the media upon returning to Japan after nearly 30 years abroad as a foreign resident in the U.S. and the U.K. (as well as in South Korea, albeit only for several months). One then questions what constitutes the imagined identity of “foreigners.” In addition, having been a non-native speaker of the dominant language of the respective countries, namely English and Korean, and having experienced “foreigner talk” as an interlocutor, she wished to explore the issue of modified language in further detail. In fact, as Hashimoto (2018b, p.  142) points out, the creators and promoters of Yasashii Nihongo do not necessarily take the users’ perspectives into consideration. Moreover, the term “foreigners” in Japanese language education is discussed as if it consists of a single category (Hashimoto, 2018a, p.  121), which is often contrasted with the other category, “Japanese,” as pointed out by many researchers (e.g., Burgess, 2012; Ostheider, 2019). In reality, both “Japanese” and “foreign” individuals vary in the ways they use language(s) as well as in their needs, desires and preferences. Against the backdrop of these concerns, the current author collaborated with Patrick Heinrich (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice) and implemented COIL activities where Japanese students and Italian students had opportunities to interact and use Japanese mostly through a messaging service (often referred to SNS in Japan, which stands for Social Networking Service) of the students’ choice (most students chose LINE; details are given below). In the contact situations, they discussed Yasashii Nihongo and foreigner talk from L1- and L2-speaking users’ perspectives. The current study examines whether and how L1 Japanese students changed their perceptions of whom and what Yasashii Nihongo and foreigner talk are for—through the COIL activities with those whom they likely

12  Who Speaks Yasashii Nihongo for Whom… 

223

consider as the beneficiary of the modified language. In other words, the research question was whether and how they deconstructed the discursively constructed beneficiary of Yasashii Nihongo as “foreigners” (as a single category) in the activities.

Setting and Participants Courses and Participants The Japanese students were all enrolled in an undergraduate course titled “Nihongo no Kaiwa Kyōiku [Teaching Japanese Language Conversation]” that the author taught from November 2019 to January 2020. It is an elective course; the students chose the course likely because they were interested in Japanese language education. As part of the course, 26 students in Japan collaborated with 25 graduate students enrolled in courses in reading academic Japanese texts and in sociolinguistics at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice in Italy. The majority of the students in both groups were women. The duration of the collaboration activities was approximately four weeks. Of the 26 Japanese students, 24 completed the course and upon completing the course, 23 gave consent for their data (discussed below) to be used for research.3 Among them were 11 second-year, 9 third-year and 3 fourth-year students. Two students belonged to Foreign Language Departments (one in the American/British Department, another in the Asian Department); the others all belonged to the Department of Japanese Studies. Among the 23 students, 9 of them had stayed or studied abroad in the past (one student spent 2 years of her childhood in Thailand; 2 students studied in the U.S. for an academic year; one student spent a semester in Australia; 5 students spent 1 month in Australia, Canada, Malaysia or the U.S.). Some of the other 14 students had travelled abroad for several days but they all stated that they had very little experience in interacting with non-L1 speakers of Japanese in Japanese. The Italian students had visited Japan and had ample experience of using Japanese in contact situations. Pseudonyms are used to refer to all participants.

224 

N. Iwasaki

COIL-Related Activities The students were randomly assigned to groups of 2 to 4 members. They were instructed to contact each other on a weekly basis and make an effort to synchronously see each other using a video-call program of their SNS choice. The students exchanged greeting video clips; they emailed each other to introduce themselves and to decide on their choice of SNS. In the second week of the course, the current author gave a lecture on Yasashii Nihongo to L1 Japanese students in Japanese, and a 20-minute segment of the lecture was video-recorded and shared with Ca’ Foscari students. The lecture included the background information (its origin, its use for one-way communication and two-way communication, plus some examples of modified Japanese). Likewise, a video-recorded lecture in English by Patrick Heinrich on foreigner talk in his sociolinguistics course was shared and viewed by Japanese students; the current author provided a summary translation and explanations in the class for those who were not used to lectures given in English in the class. There were reading assignments associated with COIL activities. Both groups of students read Kimura’s (2019) chapter on Yasashii Nihongo written in Japanese. Kimura describes unfortunate situations that foreign students encounter in Japan, such as situations where L1 Japanese speakers respond in English to L2 Japanese-speaking students studying in Japan just because they are foreigners (which Kimura described as gaikoku shusshinsha “those from foreign countries”), despite their use of Japanese. Kimura states that this tends to happen with students from the U.S. or Europe, whose appearance suggests their foreign origins. He suggests that the use of Yasashii Nihongo rather than English serves as a more desirable means in such situations. In addition, L1 Japanese students read Shin’s (2007) paper on foreigner talk from the viewpoints of 15 L2 Japanese speakers from East Asia working as Japanese language teachers at a university in Japan. Shin’s study sheds light on what expert L2 Japanese language users feel and think about foreigner talk, as they are likely to use foreigner talk themselves with their students and at the same time are at the receiving end of foreigner talk. The study found that most participants had negative

12  Who Speaks Yasashii Nihongo for Whom… 

225

feelings towards foreigner talk. They had varied experiences and had complex attitudes towards using foreigner talk (“teacher talk”) in the classroom. Importantly, the participants in this article are proficient Japanese speakers from East Asia, whose appearance may not be obviously “foreign,” yet they have still experienced foreigner talk. Having read these articles,4 the students were given two main questions to discuss with their COIL partners: What are the merits and demerits of the use of Yasashii Nihongo and foreigner talk? And when would the use of Yasashii Nihongo and foreigner talk potentially be discriminatory? In the course, Yasashii Nihongo used in two-way communication (Ozaki, 2013) was regarded as similar to foreigner talk, and the students did not distinguish between them. The Japanese students reported a summary of what they discussed with their Italian partners in the class. Furthermore, during the course, L1 Japanese students were given an assignment to use L2 English. They were instructed to write about how they felt about using English and send their writing to their Italian partners to receive feedback. This encouraged them to reflect upon the affective dimensions (both frustration and pleasure) of using L2 in the contact situation and also to shift the power balance often associated with the “native speaker vs. non-native speaker” dichotomy, as the Italian students attended English-medium classes at their university and were proficient users of English.

Data and Method of Analysis The Japanese students kept two types of activity logs: COIL activities and class participation. The former contains the dates, group members’ names, method of communication, types of activities and their reflection and thoughts, and the latter contains records of participation in classroom activities (lectures, group discussion) and their reflections. They also wrote a one-page reflection paper at the end of the course in the class (about one month after the COIL activities). The Japanese students’ COIL activity logs were imported to NVivo, which aids qualitative analyses. Statements in the logs that appear to

226 

N. Iwasaki

relate to any newly achieved awareness or changes in their thoughts about communicating in the contact situation as well as about Yasashii Nihongo and foreigner talk were coded as nodes. The nodes were categorised to identify themes related to the research question. The students’ classroom activity logs and reflection papers they wrote in class at the end of the course were also examined. The latter helps to identify impactful learning experiences because it had been written spontaneously one month after the COIL activities were completed.

Findings The L1 Japanese students’ activity logs contained 1 to 10 entries. The students primarily used LINE, a popular messaging application in Japan, except for one group, which used WhatsApp, as the method of communication. About half of them used video chat as well as text messaging and emails; others used phone or text messaging only or did not specify which functions of LINE they used. The group formation changed somewhat due to the students’ availability, and their interactions involved 2 to 7 members. Four main related themes emerged: (1) awareness of their own prejudice or stereotypes about “foreigners,” (2) awareness that not all L2 speakers would benefit from or appreciate Yasashii Nihongo or foreigner talk, (3) Yasashii Nihongo and foreigner talk are for mutual understanding, benefiting both parties, and (4) it is the attitude to the other that is important, rather than the language. Below, when quoting from their logs and reflection papers, short quotes are translated to English with or without direct quotes in Japanese scripts, and lengthy quotes are given in Japanese scripts and translated to English.

Awareness of Their Own Prejudice/Stereotypes Many students commented that it was their very first time interacting with L2 Japanese speakers in Japanese and were unsure how to talk. In their early log entries, many wrote about their realisation that they themselves had

12  Who Speaks Yasashii Nihongo for Whom… 

227

held stereotypes that “foreigners” could not speak Japanese well, despite having read Kimura (2019) and had some understanding about such common stereotypes. Many students were surprised that the Italian students spoke Japanese well, “without resorting to English” (noted by Bara), and “spoke naturally like speaking with Japanese people” (Asuka). Hana specifically wrote, “話せないだろうという固定観念を抱いていた自分が 恥ずかしく思った” [I felt ashamed of myself because I had a stereotype that they could not speak Japanese well]. Another student, Chiharu, noted in the final reflection paper that it was shocking to learn about her own prejudice. Likewise, Sakura stated, “外見で日本人じゃないと思った ら日本語は使えないと思ってしまう” [if I get an idea that someone is not Japanese by their appearance, I tend to think that they cannot use Japanese]. She further notes in her class activity log as below: Excerpt 1 from Sakura’s entry in the classroom activity logs: 差別をしているつもりはなかったが、「日本人=日本語が話せ る」、「外国人=日本語を話せない」と勝手に頭の中で分けて考 えてしまっているのだと実感した。 I did not mean to discriminate, but I realised that I had categorised people in my mind without much consideration, and thought, “Japanese equals those who can speak Japanese” and “foreigners equal those who cannot speak Japanese.”

Further, having heard about the Italian students’ experiences in contact situations, many also better understood L1 speakers’ tendency to judge the other party’s language proficiency by their appearance (mitame, gaiken) as “foreigners” and that this was discriminatory. Another category to which they tended to assign the Italian students was that of gakushūsha (learners). In the final reflection, Misa stated “‘ 相手は学習者だから…’といった勝手なイメージを持たないよ うにすることが大切だと思いました” [I thought it was important to try not to have an unfounded image of someone you are interacting with, thinking “they are learners, so they (must be) …”]. Other students also mentioned the category of “learners.” Aoi realised that she had earlier always regarded “foreigners” as (Japanese) learners. Chiharu noted in

228 

N. Iwasaki

the final reflection paper that being able to interact with Italian students without difficulty made it possible for her to get to know each individual, without categorising or labelling them as “a foreigner learning Japanese.”

 ot All L2 Speakers Would Benefit from Yasashii N Nihongo or Foreigner Talk Some students who had learned about Yasashii Nihongo before attending the course commented that prior to the COIL activities, they had thought that Yasashii Nihongo would be unquestionably advantageous for (all) L2 Japanese learners or foreigners: 学習者にとって利点だとば かり思っていた [I had just thought that it would be advantageous for learners] (Hana in her class activity log) and Yasashii Nihongo would be good to use (across all contact situations) (Hikari, Yayoi). Hikari, stated in the class log, “COILを振り返ってみて前はやさしい日本語に 対してはいいイメージしかなかったが…” [I previously only had a positive image with regard to Yasashii Nihongo but…]. Based on discussions with their Italian partners, some students understood that the use of Yasashii Nihongo would indeed boost Japanese learners’ confidence and would be a good starting point (Natsumi, Yui). Many Japanese students, however, also realised that Yasashii Nihongo and foreigner talk would be beneficial specifically for shoshinsha (elementary-­ level) Japanese learners (Aoi, Shiori, Akari), rather than all L2 Japanese speakers. At the same time, many students heard from the Italian students, who are proficient users and highly motivated learners of Japanese, that they found the use of modified language insulting or discouraging (Mai, Natsumi, Aoi, Nana, Kazuya, Yui) and that its benefit depends on the L2 Japanese speakers’ level of Japanese proficiency, motivation, and the situation (Asuka, Yuri). Though they had learned from their Italian partners that they did not necessarily benefit from Yasashii Nihongo or foreigner talk, the students realised that they still tended to modify their language. Kazuya, for instance, stated in his reflection paper (despite knowing the partners’ Japanese proficiency), “無意識にやさしい日本語を使いそうにな

12  Who Speaks Yasashii Nihongo for Whom… 

229

ったので、そういった意識を変えていかなければならない” [I was unconsciously inclined to use Yasashii Nihongo. This kind of feeling needs to be changed]. Hana also stated below: Excerpt 2 from Hana’s reflection paper: グループで会話しているときにイタリアの学生さんから私達日 本人が無意識のうちに「やさしい日本語」を使っていると指摘 されてハッとしたし、学習者の動向だけではなく学習者を目の 前にした時の自分の対応を知る機会になったので、心において おくべきだと感じている。 While discussing in our group, the Italian students pointed out that we, Japanese, were unconsciously using Yasashii Nihongo. Their comment startled me. The COIL activities gave me opportunities to learn not just about Japanese learners but also about my own reaction in contact situations. I should keep that in mind.

 asashii Nihongo and Foreigner Talk are Y for the Benefit of both Parties Some students realised that Yasashii Nihongo and foreigner talk would be beneficial for L1 Japanese speakers because it enables or facilitates communication with less proficient speakers of Japanese (Yuri, Nana, Yui), stating, for example, “母語話者も自分の伝えたいことを伝えられる” [native speakers can also convey the messages they want to convey] (Nana). These students came to realise that unlike the one-way conveyance of messages in disaster alerts and announcements, both parties have reasons to be involved in two-way communication and it is beneficial for both to understand the interlocutor and to be understood.

What Matters Is Attitude, Rather than Language The Japanese students learned from the Italian partners that it is not the language that matters, but the attitude to communication. Yuri states, 伝 えようという気持ちが大事だと教えられた [I learned from them that willingness to communicate is what is important].

230 

N. Iwasaki

In her final reflection, Asuka listed important points she learned, including the below. Excerpt 3 from Asuka’s final reflection paper: お互いに理解しあおうという姿勢。日本語だけが他者とのコミ ュニケーションツールになるのではなく、やさしい日本語や英 語など、複数の言語を活用してコミュニケーション ができるという発想。 Attitude to make an effort to understand each other. The idea that one can communicate by utilising multiple languages including Yasashii Nihongo and English, rather than limiting the medium for communication to Japanese.

Like Asuka some students appeared to realise that it is not a specific type of language that is needed, but rather an attitude focused on understanding each other by creative means not limited to Japanese.

Discussion Through the COIL activities, many of the L1 Japanese students realised that they had a stereotype of “foreigners” as people who look different and are incapable of using Japanese. Some of them were ashamed (Hana) or shocked (Chiharu) about their own stereotypes and prejudice. Iino (2006), who investigated the norm of interaction commonly observed in homestay interactions in Japan, noted a group-as-a-whole phenomenon among families hosting American students. The group-as-­ a-whole phenomenon assumes that “individuals are human vessels that reflect and express the group’s gestalt” (Wells, 1985, p. 114). Iino suspects that overemphasis on the differences between Japanese and outsiders in the Japanese media, and the pervasive Nihonjinron [Theory of Japanese] (e.g., Japanese is so unique that foreigners cannot learn it) (e.g., Befu, 2001), may have reinforced the group-as-a-whole phenomenon and affected people’s mentality. Similarly, the stereotypes held by Japanese university students in the current study may have been reinforced by governmental guidelines and the media, which foreground the differences between “Japanese” and “foreigners.”

12  Who Speaks Yasashii Nihongo for Whom… 

231

Such categorisation may reinforce the likelihood of “overaccommodation” (Zuengler, 1991), or foreigner talk perceived by non-native interlocutors as making more adjustments than necessary. When perceiving overaccommodation, non-native speakers feel that they are treated as a member of a generic group of “foreigners” or “learners” rather than as an individual. Many Japanese students who had heard about Yasashii Nihongo prior to the course mentioned that they had a predetermined idea that the use of Yasashii Nihongo was only good and considerate (Hikari, Yayoi). They realised that though using Yasashii Nihongo is often seen as the Japanese people’s kind and considerate effort to convey messages to foreigners, at times it can be condescending or insulting and can hurt L2 Japanese speakers, depending on who they are (e.g., depending on their proficiency or their motivation). They became aware that not all “foreigners” are the same and that some are capable of understanding “normal” Japanese without modification, even if foreigner talk or Yasashii Nihongo may be important for elementary-level Japanese users. Hence, Yasashii Nihongo may not always be the best solution for communication. Even after this realisation, however, some students, such as Hana and Kazuya, noted that they realised that they had continued to modify their language, showing the pervasiveness of this phenomenon. Moreover, the beneficiary is not always a “foreigner.” Through discussions with their Italian partners, some of the students eventually realised that both parties benefit from successful communication. Some researchers have pointed out that Yasashii Nihongo as a modified variety of Japanese can be problematic in several respects. First, it potentially limits the language that L2 speakers are expected to learn and use (Burgess, 2012; Yasuda, 2013; Ito & Tokarev, 2021). Second, behind Yasashii Nihongo lies a monolithic view of Japanese, as also pointed out by Yoshinaga (2015). Yasashii Nihongo is a simplified version of “standard” Japanese, an imagined, uniform language of Japanese native speakers. Such a monolithic view neglects linguistic diversity in Japan and creates a hierarchy among different (varieties of ) language(s), such as indigenous languages and generational, regional or occupational varieties, as well as hybrid varieties that arise in contact situations and immigrants’ (heritage) languages. Hence, Yoshinaga (2015) as well as Ito and Tokarev (2021) call for a plurilingual, pluricultural approach.

232 

N. Iwasaki

Jenkins (2006, 2009), who discusses English as a lingua franca, also problematises a monolithic model that regards lingua franca English as a deficient variety in comparison with the native speaker English, and instead promotes a pluricentric approach, which is open to creativity. Without setting a linguistic agenda or limiting linguistic resources to English, the lingua franca, according to Jenkins (2009), has “substantial potential for accommodation  – the scope for its users to adjust their speech in order to make it more intelligible and appropriate for their specific interlocutor(s)” (p. 201, emphasis added). Hence, it is not a specific variety of the language that is called for, but skills to utilise available verbal and non-verbal resources, including other languages. In fact, Asuka’s awareness in the final paper (Excerpt 3) is related to this. Both L1 and L2 speakers may need to foster such attitudes and skills, but as Ozaki (2013) pointed out, it may be the L2 speakers who are more experienced and skilful in contact situation communication. It is not desirable to promote Yasashii Nihongo as a Japanese variety to use in contact situations, but some of its methods of modifying the language for simplification may constitute a useful part of plurilingual, pluricultural resources when used with care in accordance to the interlocutor’s needs. What needs to be promoted is the skill and attitude for accommodating linguistic and communicative demands. Through the COIL activities, the L1 Japanese speaking students became aware of their own prejudice and stereotypes regarding Japanese language. The activities seemed to have deconstructed the beneficiary identity “foreigners” as a homogenous group, and they became aware of the importance of understanding the individuals. It should be noted here that though the students often mentioned the individuals’ appearance (being white) as being one of the typical attributes of stereotyped foreigners, this might be partially due to the fact that their COIL partners happen to have this attribute. It would be interesting to know whether and how students’ awareness would differ if they engage in similar activities with East Asian partners, for example. Though the students seem to have deconstructed the generic “foreigner” identity to an extent, this does not mean that they have deconstructed the other group, that is, the imagined identity of the benefactor, “Japanese.” In their activity logs and reflection papers, the

12  Who Speaks Yasashii Nihongo for Whom… 

233

expression “nihonjin” is often used, which creates a dichotomy or generalisation (Ohri, 2005). Especially midway through the activities, after reading Shin’s (2007) paper, students defended “nihonjin” or Japanese native speakers. Kazuya, for example, states, “日本人の気遣いを学 習者が理解する必要もある” [(L2 speakers) should also understand Japanese people’s consideration], and Nana says “日本人の配慮であ ると思う” [it is Japanese people’s consideration] and Yui “日本語母 語話者は悪気があってするわけではないし、むしろ思いやり でやってしまっているということを、日本語学習者に早め に教えておくことは良いことだと思う” [it would be good to let Japanese learners know early on that Japanese native speakers simplify their language out of their goodwill] (Yui). Students generalise the Japanese group and their intention of using foreigner talk. It seems that the students neglected to reflect upon themselves as individuals. Though some attention was paid to resolve the power balance of the native speaker versus non-native speaker in the course, students did not have opportunities to question the assumed homogeneity in the “native speaker” category (e.g., Doerr, 2009).

Conclusion The Japanese students found that their Italian partners were Japanese users with whom they could discuss issues on a par with and who should not be regarded as “learners” in need of simplified Japanese. Having had opportunities to interact with them in Japanese and to hear their views seems to have helped to deconstruct the imagined “foreigner” identity as the beneficiary. It required hands-on experience for the Japanese students to become aware of their own stereotypes, suggesting that the general public in Japan may fall for the simplistic notion of “foreigners,” especially those who look foreign (such as those who are white) who need modified language. Moreover, at least some of the students maintained the imagined benefactor identity as “Japanese,” or “Japanese native speakers.” The idea of assumed homogeneity of their own category as Japanese or Japanese native speakers seemed persistent, requiring sensible measures to deconstruct it.

234 

N. Iwasaki

Notes 1. This agency is a special body of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, and among their policies is “Japanese Language Policy and Education (https://www.bunka.go.jp/english/policy/japanese_language/index.html), where they state that they “aim to improve and disseminate the Japanese language, and highlight the importance of Japanese language education as the basis of Japanese culture.” 2. It is downloadable from the webpage below (most recent access on August 7, 2021) https://www.bunka.go.jp/seisaku/kokugo_nihongo/kyoiku/92484001.html 3. The study abides by the university ethics policy and was approved by the ethics review committee. At the beginning of the course, the students were informed that the researcher planned to report on COIL activities and that the students had freedom to choose whether or not they consented to the inclusion of their data at the end of the course. 4. The students also discussed their questions for the article authors: the Japanese students for Kimura and Shin, and the Italian students for Kimura. In response to the students’ video-recorded questions, both authors kindly created video-clips with their answers for the students to view. The students found the opportunity extremely valuable.

References Befu, H. (2001). Hegemony of homogeneity: An anthropological analysis of Nihonjinron. Trans Pacific Press. Burgess, C. (2012). ‘It’s better if they speak broken Japanese’: Language as a pathway or an obstacle to citizenship in Japan? In N. Gottlieb (Ed.), Language and citizenship in Japan (pp. 37–57). Routledge. Doerr, N. M. (2009). Introduction. In N. M. Doerr (Ed.), The native speaker concept: Ethnographic investigations of native speaker effects (pp.  1–10). De Gruyter. Ferguson, C. A. (1968). Absence of copula and the notion of simplicity: A study of normal speech, baby talk, foreigner talk and pidgin. ERIC no. ED030844. Accessed March 27, 2021, form https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED030844. Giles, H., & Smith, P. (1979). Accommodation theory: Optimal levels of convergence. In H. Giles & R. N. St. Clair (Eds.), Language and social psychology (pp. 45–65). Basil Blackwell.

12  Who Speaks Yasashii Nihongo for Whom… 

235

Hashimoto, K. (2018a). Japanese language for foreigners: Policy on foreign nationals and EPA scheme. In S. A. Houghton, D. J. Rivers, & K. Hashimoto (Eds.), Beyond native-speakerism: Current exploration and future visions (pp. 115–131). Routledge. Hashimoto, K. (2018b). Japanese language teachers’ views on native speakers and “Easy Japanese”. In S.  A. Houghton, D.  J. Rivers, & K.  Hashimoto (Eds.), Beyond native-speakerism: Current exploration and future visions (pp. 132–146). Routledge. Hirosaki Daigaku Jinbungakubu Shakaigengogaku Kenkyūshitsu. (2013). Hokyōban “yasashii nihongo” sakusei no tame no gaidorain [Enriched version: guidelines to create “yasashii nihongo”]. Accessed March 25, 2021, from https://www.fdma.go.jp/singi_kento/kento/items/kento207_20_ sankou5-­6.pdf. Iino, M. (2006). Norms of Interaction in a Japanese Homestay Setting: Toward a Two-Way Flow of Linguistic and Cultural Resources. In M. A. DuFon & E. Churchill (Eds.), Language learners in study abroad contexts (pp. 151–176). Multilingual Matters. Iori, I. (2016a). “Yasashii Nihongo” kenkyū ga nihongo bogowasha nittotte motsu Imi: “Yasashii Nihongo” wa gaikokujin no tame dake no mono dewa nai [What does “Yasashii Nihongo” mean for the native speakers of Japanese?: “Yasashii Nihongo” is not only for foreigners. Hitotsubashi Daigaku Kokusai Kyōiku Sentā Kiyō, 6, 3–15. http://hermes-­ir.lib.hit-­u.ac.jp/rs/bitstream/10086/27456/1/kokusai0000600030.pdf. Iori, I. (2016b). The enterprise of yasashii nihongo: For a sustainable multicultural society in Japan. Jinbun-Shizen Kenkyū, 10, 4–19. http://hermes-­ir.lib. hit-­u.ac.jp/rs/bitstream/10086/27835/2/jinbun0001000040.pdf Iori, I. (2016c). Yasashii Nihongo: Tabunka kyōsei shakai e [Yasashii Nihongo: For a society of multicultural coexistence]. Iwanami Shoten. Iori, I. (2019a). Maindo to shite no : Rinen no jitsugen ni hitsuyō na mono [Yashii nihongo as a mindset: What is needed to put the principle into practice]. In I. Iori, K. Iwata, T. Sato & N. Yanagida (Eds.), to tabunka kyōsei [Yasashii nihongo and multicultural coexistence] (pp. 47–66). Koko Shuppan. Iori, I. (2019b). Chiiki nihongo kyōiku to nihongo kyōiku bunpō: ‘Yasashii nihongo’ to iu kanten kara [local Japanese language education and pedagogical grammar of Japanese: From the perspective of ‘yasashii nihongo’]. Jinbun Shizen Kenkyū, 3, 126–141. http://hermes-­ir.lib.hit-­u.ac.jp:80/rs/bitstream/10086/17337/2/jinbun0000301260.pdf

236 

N. Iwasaki

Ito, H., & Tokarev, A. (2021). From Yasashii Nihongo in non-disaster times towards a plurilingual language education approach: An outlook from the perspective of “reasonable accommodation” [Version 1]. F1000Research, 10:52. https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.36372.1 Jenkins, J. (2006). Current perspectives on teaching world Englishes and English as a lingua franca. TESOL Quarterly, 40(1), 157–181. https://doi. org/10.2307/40264515 Jenkins, J. (2009). English as a lingua franca: Interpretations and attitudes. World Englishes, 28(2), 200–207. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-­971X. 2009.01582.x Kimura, G. C. (2019). “Nihongo ni yoru kokusaika” to : Ryūgakusei ukeire no kanten kara [“internationalization through Japanese” and Yasashii Nihongo: From the perspective of accepting foreign students]. In I.  Iori, K.  Iwata, T.  Sato, & N.  Yanagida (Eds.), to tabunka kyōsei [Yasashii Nihongo and multicultural co-living] (pp.  47–66). Koko Shuppan. Long, D. (1992). Nihongo ni okeru komyunikēshon: Nihongo ni okeru forinā tōku o chūshin ni [communication in Japanese: Focusing on foreigner talk in Japanese]. Nihongogaku, 11, 24–32. Ohri, R. (2005). ‘Kyōsei’ o mezasu chiiki no sōgo gakushūgata katsudō no hihanteki saikentō: Bogowasha no ‘nihonjin wa’ no disukōsu kara [critical re-examination of community language programs: The ‘we Japanese’ discourse]. Nihongo Kyōiku, 126, 134–143. Ostheider, T. (2019). “Yasashii nihongo” kara “wakariyasui kotoba” e: Kyōtsugo to shite no nihongo no arikata o mosaku suru [From Yasashii Nihongo to easy-to-comprehend language: Exploring Japanese as a lingua franca]. In I. Iori, K. Iwata, T. Sato, & N. Yanagida (Eds.), to tabunka kyōsei [Yasashii Nihongo and multicultural co-living] (pp.  83–97). Koko Shuppan. Ozaki, A. (2013). ‘Yasashii nihongo’ de tsukuru chiiki shakai [local communities to be created via ‘yasashii nihogo’]. In I. Iori, Y. Lee, & A. Mori (Eds.), ‘Yasashii nihongo’ wa nani o mezasuka [What does ‘yasashii nihongo’ aim for?] (pp. 59–77). Koko Shuppan. Sato, K. (1996). Gaikokujin no tame no saigaiji no kotoba [language for disaster time for foreigners]. Gekkan Gengo, 25(2), 94–101. Shin, U. (2007). Nihongo no forinā tōku ni kansuru ichi kōsatsu: Hibogowasha nihongo kyōshi no ishiki chōsa o tooshite [a re-examination of foreigner talk

12  Who Speaks Yasashii Nihongo for Whom… 

237

in Japanese: Voice from the non-native Japanese teacher]. Waseda Daigaku Nihongo Kyōikugaku, 1, 25–37. Shutsunyūkoku Kanrichō & Bunkachō. (2020). Zairyūshien no tame no yasashii nihongo guideline [Yasashii Nihongo guidelines to support stay in Japan]. Accessed March 25, 2021, from https://www.bunka.go.jp/seisaku/ kokugo_nihongo/kyoiku/92484001.html. Skoutartides, A. (1981). Gaikokujin no nihongo no jittai (3): Nihongo ni okeru forinā tōku [Foreigner talk in Japanese]. Nihongo Kyōiku, 45, 53–62. Wells, L. J. (1985). The group-as-a-whole perspective and its theoretical roots. In A. D. Colman & M. Geller (Eds.), Group relations reader 2 (pp. 109–126). A.K. Rice Institute. Yanagida, N. (2013). ‘Yasashii nihongo’ to sesshoku bamen [‘Yasashii nihongo’ and contact situations]. In I. Iori, Y. Lee, & A. Mori (Eds.), “Yasashii nihongo” wa nani o mezasuka [What does ‘Yasashii Nihongo’ aim for?] (pp.  79–95). Koko Shuppan. Yasuda, T. (2013). Yasashii Nihongo no hihanteki kentō [critical examination of Yasashii Nihongo]. In I. Iori, Y. Lee, & A. Mori (Eds.), “Yasashii Nihongo” wa nani o mezasu ka [What does ‘yasashii nihongo’ aim for?] (pp.  321–341). Koko Shuppan. Yoshinaga, M. (2015). Nihongo kyōiku to yasashisa: Nihonjin ni yoru nihongo no manabinaoshi [Japanese language education and yasashisa: Japanese people’s re-learning of the Japanese language]. In M. Yoshinaga & H. Yamashita (Eds.), Kotoba no “yasashisa” to wa nanika (pp. 19–43). Sangensha. Zuengler, J. (1991). Accommodation in native-nonnative interactions: Going beyond the “what” to the “why” in second-language research. In H. Giles, J.  Coupland, & N.  Coupland (Eds.), Contexts of accommodation (pp. 223–244). Cambridge University Press.

13 Discursive Construction of Heritage Desire: Nikkei Identity Discourse in a Layered Politics of Representation Kyoko Motobayashi

This chapter is an attempt to document part of a layered politics of representation of the Japanese diaspora by the Japanese state, one produced and conditioned by multiple subject positions and institutional relations. This will be done through analyzing the representation of the Japanese diaspora population in the institutional setting of a government-­ sponsored international volunteer program from Japan, called the “Nikkei society volunteer program” (hereafter “Nikkei volunteer program”). This program is specifically designed to dispatch volunteers from Japan to the communities of Japanese emigrants and their descendants (hereafter “Nikkei communities”) in various South American countries, as part of Japan’s official development assistance (ODA). Drawing on data from ethnographic research conducted at the program’s pre-departure training sessions held in Japan, this chapter examines the ways in which discourses on Nikkei identity are differently constructed at multiple discursive scales: in policy documents, formal lectures, and in casual and spontaneous interactions during the training.

K. Motobayashi (*) Ochanomizu University, Tokyo, Japan © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Mielick et al. (eds.), Discourses of Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11988-0_13

239

240 

K. Motobayashi

This chapter pays particular attention to the representation of “heritage desire” as being situated at the core of Nikkei identity. Here, “representation of ‘heritage desire’” denotes a construction of an imaginary Nikkei identity in the volunteer training discourse engaged by Japanese participants. This theme emerged out of the author’s observation in the field, and it helps us understand how the participants on the Japanese side have forged an imagination of subjectivity, affective stances, and related cultural practices of the South American Nikkei population, in this particular institutional setting of sending heritage Japanese language teacher volunteers from Japan (cf. Motobayashi, 2016, for the volunteers’ becoming of heritage Japanese teachers). The Nikkei heritage desire was a recurrent theme in the data, but it emerged in slightly different ways at different occasions and scales. Of note for this chapter is the nuanced but important difference in the ways of representing interculturality and “heritage desire” of Nikkei population between institutional discourse conveyed in official lectures, and spontaneous “off-topic” interactions during the workshops. In what follows, I first outline the theoretical and methodological framing for the chapter. I will then provide an analysis of policy documents, as well as two ethnographic vignettes from the pre-departure volunteer training program. The aim is to illuminate the different discursive fields from which Nikkei heritage desire and identity is constructed— firstly describing an official lecture on emigration which replicates official constructions of the Nikkei population in policy discourse; and secondly describing a sequence of spontaneous interactions that complicate the neat representations of the communities and allow an alternative interpretation of the Nikkei experience to emerge. The multiple moments illustrated in this chapter are manifestations of, and part of the web of, perspectives involved in making social, discursive, and political meanings of the South American Nikkei identity.

13  Discursive Construction of Heritage Desire: Nikkei Identity… 

241

Theory, Context, and Methodology The analysis is informed by the discourse-oriented ecological framework of language policy and planning (LPP) research (Hult, 2010; Heller, 2001; Barakos & Unger, 2016), as well as by critical intercultural studies (Dervin & Machart, 2015; Piller, 2017; Holliday, 2011). Discourse and ecologically oriented LPP work, which focuses on how discursive processes operate within and across scales of space and time (Hult, 2010), allows us to examine a more nuanced way in which the politics of diaspora representation take shape in a layered way. While researchers in LPP studies have long been committed to understanding the linkage between macro and micro, such as “micro-level instantiation of macro-level categories and micro changes shaping macro structures” (Mortimer & Wortham, 2015, p.  161), the simple “twoscale account” (p.  160) of macro and micro has been criticized recently. Rather, their focus has shifted to identifying specific discourses pertinent to a particular LPP situation, tracing the trajectories of heterogeneous resources, and examining how they take shape on different scales in a particular LPP situation (Hult, 2010; Mortimer & Wortham, 2015). Critical intercultural studies contribute to illustrating the constructed nature of culture and interculturality. Researchers in this field question the notion of pure or neutral hybridity in the discourses of intercultural identity, and demonstrate the unequal power wielded by different accounts of culture, which often results in the primacy of one account over others (Dervin & Machart, 2015). It is thus a useful frame for the analysis in this study that analyzes different accounts of interculturality and of associated practices for linguacultural inheritance that emerge on different occasions in this study. This line of scholarship explicates the ideological nature of linguistic (Heller, 1999, 2007) and cultural (Holliday, 2011) categories, in particular, how traditional linguacultural essentialism has been pertinent while they manifest in different forms in contemporary context where various intercultural and cross-lingual encounters are accelerated (Heller, 1999, 2007; Holliday, 2011). In contemporary context, “hybridity,” “diversity,” and “multiplicity” of language and culture are increasingly celebrated. However, those claims are often

242 

K. Motobayashi

accompanied by simplified hybridity, such as ideological views of multilingualism as a set of “parallel monolingualisms” (Heller, 1999, p. 5; see also Heller, 2007) or of multiculturalism based on the “neo-essentialist” culturalism (Holliday, 2011, p. 7). What are common in these observations are an awareness that both language and culture are political and ideological constructions, and even at the time of linguacultural border crossings, essential views of languages and cultures, based on the national state framework as the basic unit, are still maintained, resulting in masking the more dynamic and heterogeneous nature of language and culture in the real lives of contemporary migrants or transnationals. Drawing on insight from these fields, this chapter will illustrate the ways in which and moments at which discourse regarding diaspora’s interculturality and “heritage desire” as part of their ways of being are differently constructed, forming varying scales and layers, to constitute part of a politics of representation (Blommaert, 1999; Mehan, 1996; Motobayashi, 2020; Shapiro, 1988). The data were collected in Japan between 2008 and 2010, at the pre-departure training sessions of the Nikkei volunteer program. This program has been situated at the intersection between international cooperation and emigration policies of Japan, and in its current form, it places volunteers in specific Nikkei communities for two years at a time (see Motobayashi, 2015 for the detailed history of this program). This study particularly focuses on the Nikkei Japanese Language School Teachers [Nikkei Nihongo Gakkō Kyōshi] (hereafter referred to as “Nikkei JLSTs”) jobs within the Nikkei volunteer program, who are expected to teach Japanese at the Nikkei Japanese language schools in South America. Before volunteers are sent to their placement, they undertake two kinds of training: the first in March and the second from April to June.1 The first training session, called “technical supplementary training [gijutsu hokan kenshū],” was provided only to the JLST volunteers in the Nikkei program and was delivered for the duration of about two weeks (March 9 to 19). This focused on the pedagogical skills and related knowledge required for the JLST volunteer job. The second training, “pre-­dispatching training [haken mae kunren],” was larger scale and provided for the entire Nikkei volunteers, rather than just limiting it to the JLST volunteers. The second training, lasting for a two-month period (April 8 to June 5),

13  Discursive Construction of Heritage Desire: Nikkei Identity… 

243

consisted of both “language study [gogaku] (i.e., foreign language learning)” and “general lectures [ippan kōza].” These training sessions were held at an affiliated center of the organizing  institution  in the Kanto region of Japan. The data cited in this study are all from the first training, focusing on the skills training for JLST volunteers. During this training, volunteers are introduced to the core components of their position—the principles of the program, specific policies, and practical skill training— to provide Japanese language teaching for the learners in the Nikkei community. Data collection methods included participant observation of the training sessions, document analysis, and in-depth interviews with the participants. The volunteer trainees in the program are native speakers of Japanese recruited in Japan, and the two instructors were former Japanese delegates of other Nikkei-related programs of  the same institution, employed as paid staff at the time of research. The author attended all the classes in the first training session with the volunteers, and most of the lectures in the second training session except for foreign language classes. Although the author had not been involved in any activities related to the volunteer program before the research, her experience of studying applied linguistics in graduate schools in Japan and Canada had affected her communication with the volunteers and staff members.

 he Institutional Discourse: Policy Discourse T and the Pre-Planned Lecture Series  olicy Discourse on Nikkei Populations: Nikkei P Populations as “Foreign but Simultaneously Japanese” Japan’s Nikkei policy discourse regarding Nikkei identity and culture has been constructed around the shared national ancestry, the Nikkei positionality of having dual affiliation and two aspects, and the Nikkei desire to maintain cultural and linguistic ties to Japan while residing overseas. An analysis of Japan’s Diplomatic Bluebook [gaikō seisho] and the reports by the Overseas Emigration Council [Kaigai ijū shingi-kai] (OEC)

244 

K. Motobayashi

revealed that the official policy began to acknowledge dual affiliation and two aspects of the Nikkei population in the 1990s, describing the Nikkei population’s position between being Japanese and foreign, as “offspring of [Japanese] emigrants” (OEC, 1993, p. 2) who are the former “nationals of our country” (OEC, 1993, p. 1) at the same time as those who “also have an aspect as foreigners who could understand our country better” (OEC, 1993, p.  2). With the latter aspect, the Nikkei population was expected to play an important role in “strengthening and expanding the diplomatic basis [gaikō kiban no kyōka kakujū]” of Japan (OEC, 1993, p. 3). A chronological analysis of Japan’s post-war Diplomatic Bluebooks revealed that since the 1990s, a metaphor of Nikkei population being a “bridge” came about in conjunction with a series of reconceptualizations of the population. The term “bridge,” a metaphor focusing on the duality of the geographic and social affiliation as well as the connecting functions of the Nikkei population, first appeared in 1995/H7 in the Bluebook vol. 38. It was repeated throughout the late 1990s until 2003 (except for 2000 and 2001), constituting part of the rationale to call for more systematic support for the Nikkei population (Motobayashi, 2015). The logic of heritage desire, based on observations by the Japanese government about “emotion [omoi]” and “desire/demand [yōbō]” (OEC, 2000) of the Nikkei communities, is also notable in official documents on the Nikkei-Japan connection. It is stated in the OEC, 2000 document that the more the Nikkei population assimilated into their country of residence, the more they feared losing their connection to Japan, fueling a desire and demand for learning Japanese language and culture to confirm their roots in Japan (OEC, 2000). Within this logic, Japanese language teaching is considered as an important “bonding tie” [chūtai] between Japan and the Nikkei population—an activity that is deeply connected to the issue of their “identity” (OEC, 2000). As such, the representation of Nikkei positionality as having a dual affiliation of being simultaneously “Japanese and foreign,” and the representation of their imagined affective stance longing to connect with Japan, altogether contribute to positioning the Nikkei population through official policy as strategically useful. The Nikkei population is deemed to be diplomatic assets for Japan through the combination of the

13  Discursive Construction of Heritage Desire: Nikkei Identity… 

245

two discourses regarding their traits, that is, those of dual affiliation and of heritage desire. The teaching of Japanese language as part of the Nikkei volunteer program is situated in this context. As described below, the official discourses that produce a category of Nikkei groups who are rooted in their Japanese identity, having dual affiliation and longing for maintaining Japanese heritage, is echoed in the main lectures on Nikkei emigration delivered during the volunteer training sessions.

Message Delivered at the Pre-Planned Lecture  migration, Heritage, and Emotion as a Key E Conceptual Component Nikkei emigration history was introduced as being a fundamental part of Japanese language teaching in the South American Nikkei context early in the training. Indeed, “ijū [emigration]” was one of the recurrent topics, particularly during the first round of training sessions which offered a series of courses that focused on the issue of migration. In those courses, the data suggest, “emigration” implied something beyond the mere mobility of emigrants’ bodies. Rather, it was treated as a key mechanism in the politics of similarity and difference between Japanese people in Japan and the Nikkei community in South America, tracing shared national ancestry while simultaneously referencing the geographic and temporal distances emerging because of the emigrants’ mobility. The lectures on the history of emigration emphasized the national and ethnic ties between Japanese and Nikkei populations, identifying, for example, the emigrants’ home prefectures and major departing ports on a map, or illustrating the Nikkei tradition as something focusing on “inheritance” and “maintenance” of Japaneseness. This deliberate attempt to create ties between Nikkei and Japanese citizens was combined with continual reminders of the geographic distance between Japan and volunteer destinations in South America, made via maps and discussions about the destination. In addition, the temporal distance between the emigrants’ departure time in the past and contemporary Japan was

246 

K. Motobayashi

emphasized—verbally through the historical explanation provided in the lecture, and visually via the presentation of monochrome pictures of various aspects of emigrants’ lives (Motobayashi, 2015). One of the core courses of this early training was entitled “The history of Japanese emigration and Japanese language education: The method and practice of ijū education.”2 This course included a formal lecture, multiple rounds of group work, and presentations created by the volunteers to demonstrate their learning. The lecture, delivered by Mr. Fujiwara (a pseudonym), himself a former delegate of a Nikkei-related program, outlined the specificity of Japanese language teaching in the South American Nikkei context, and emphasized the following concepts as important components of the teaching in the Nikkei communities: “emigration [ijū],” “heritage [keishō],” and “emotion [omoi].” Here, in addition to the “emigration [ijū]” as a “central pillar” of the volunteers’ teaching while serving in the Nikkei communities, the concept of “heritage” and “emotion” were introduced as being closely related to the emigration concept (fieldnotes, March 9). The notion of “heritage,” another key word that was discussed in the lecture, was shown to include various cultural practices and emotionally laden efforts on the education of Nikkei children as Nikkeis. In the lecture, Mr. Fujiwara stated that the position of Nikkei JLSTs was established in order to deal with an explicit expectation and desire of the Nikkei population to raise and educate their children “as a Nikkei population” [Nikkeijin to shite], and to ensure the inheritance of “Nikkeiness.” Indeed, many of the language schools in which the volunteers would work were initially set up by Nikkei communities themselves, and only subsequently staffed via volunteers from Japan. To this end, as Mr. Fujiwara was clear to set out, the role of the Nikkei JLSTs was “not just teaching correct Japanese language.” Nikkei JLST volunteers were also “expected to educate” and “discipline” Nikkei children and youth. He stated that these activities were in accordance with the “desire” of Nikkei society (fieldnotes, March 9). Institutional course arrangements also supported these statements made by the instructor in the courses on emigration. The concrete training on cultural activities at the Nikkei Japanese Language Schools (JLSs) was provided, and there the notion of “heritage” was emphasized along with the history of emigration (fieldnotes, March

13  Discursive Construction of Heritage Desire: Nikkei Identity… 

247

16), and the cultural activity designed to facilitate understanding of emigration history and heritage for the students at the Nikkei JLSs was discussed as well. Another concept that is also repeatedly emphasized in this lecture, and others throughout the training, was the affective aspects of emigration and heritage. The “emotional investment [omoi]” made by the South American Nikkei population was particularly highlighted. The lectures explained that there is strong emotional investment on the side of the Nikkei communities in Japanese language education and Japanese style education, which led to their efforts and commitments in establishing and maintaining the Nikkei JLSs. The discussion of these emotional investments was accompanied by stories of the “great hardships” that the Nikkei population had experienced in order to establish these schools. One representative—and extreme—example provided in the lecture was a story about a community that vacated cows from one of the farm buildings so that the space could be used as a Japanese language school (fieldnotes, March 9). This story is an indirect legend narrated by a lecturer who had heard it in the 1980s from a local teacher. While this could be a rural myth, the story is a powerful one—evoking images of early Japanese immigrants in South America, who were so invested in maintaining their Japanese heritage that they used every space available, including that integral to their livelihood, such as farm spaces, to secure their children’s education in Japanese. A more recent, and perhaps more factual, example was the story of local Nikkei farming women in the community, who, although working during the week, volunteer to teach at the schools at the weekend (ibid.). While emphasizing the emotional and material investment the Nikkei communities make in ensuring their children’s education in Japanese language and style, these examples also contribute to the construction of a romantic and noble image of the Nikkei community members, who, even in the face of such hardships, keep struggling for the education of their children in situations where it is difficult to find Japanese language teachers, make active and voluntary involvement in the children’s education in Japanese, and make efforts in order to overcome the lack of human and material resources.

248 

K. Motobayashi

In this way, the concepts of emigration, heritage, and emotional investment were introduced to emphasize the strong affective stance and associated practices of Nikkei population for the inheritance of Nikkei tradition. At the same time, an accelerated diversity in the Nikkei communities was mentioned, producing another kind of discourse on ethnic boundary-­ making in the South American Nikkei communities.

The Nikkei/Non-Nikkei Distinction as “Theirs” The issue of Japaneseness and foreignness in the context of Nikkei history emerged as a topic when the lecture touched upon the increasing diversity of Japanese language learners in contemporary Nikkei societies. In doing so, the categories of “Nikkei” and “non-Nikkei” were drawn upon to explain the Japanese language learners in the South American context—categories that were introduced as “their” terms, that is, as being used in South American Nikkei communities. Japanese language learners in contemporary Nikkei societies, Mr. Fujiwara explained, did not belong exclusively to the Nikkei population; they also included the “‘non-Nikkei [hi-nikkei]’ populations, such as ‘pure’ Brazilians and ‘pure’ Argentinians.” Those who are called “non-­ Nikkei” here are those who do not have the historical or ethnic ties to Japan that the Nikkei population has, and are “foreigners to Japan” in his terms; it was also explained that those non-Nikkei learners come to the Nikkei JLSs to learn Japanese as a foreign language. Thus, the lecture presented the Nikkei JLSs as having a combination of two goals: “Japanese as a heritage language” for the Nikkei population and “Japanese as a foreign language” to be promoted “internationally” to the non-Nikkei population. He wrote “Heritage  – Nikkei [keishō  – Nikkei]” and “Promotion – Non-Nikkei [fukyū – hi-Nikkei]” on the white board. This dual conceptualization of language teaching—heritage for Nikkei and promotion for non-Nikkei—has been operationalized as the dual functions expected of the Nikkei JLSs in South America (see Motobayashi, 2015, chapter 5, for the details of the dual conceptualization of language teaching and the dual role of the schools in the history of the Nikkei communities).

13  Discursive Construction of Heritage Desire: Nikkei Identity… 

249

It should be highlighted that the distinction between “Nikkei” and “non-Nikkei” were introduced as terms used by the South American Nikkei population: “They use such terms over there,” said Mr. Fujiwara. The expression “over there”—“mukō” in Japanese (literally meaning “over there” and can also be used to mean “people over there”)—was used to refer to the Nikkei population in South America. He continued, “They sometimes reject non-Nikkeis as foreigners,” and then he joked, “of course, there is a question of ‘who is actually the foreigner?’” Indeed, this comment implies two categorical distinctions. The first is the distinction between the “Nikkei” and “non-Nikkei” and the second is the categorization of the people “over there [mukō]” as opposed to those “over here.” The first distinction between the “Nikkei” and “non-­ Nikkei”—a distinction that depends on the ethnic or cultural affiliations of the parties, which may perhaps sound exclusionary, was cited as a common practice in South American Nikkei communities. In fact, the body of literature suggests that, in the South American Nikkei context, they create distinctions between those who are of Japanese descent and those who are not, using terms such as “non-Nikkei” or “foreigners.” This is a common issue that has been addressed in the Nikkei research and among Nikkei educators in Japan (e.g., Takahashi, 1993, 1997; Maeyama, 2001; Roth, 2002; Tsuda, 2001). These usages are, in part, associated with the way Nikkei communities are formed and the Nikkei desire to maintain their community in their countries of residence (Maeyama, 1984). Important to this paper is that this binary distinction is cited, in this context, to reinforce the second categorization of the people “over there [mukō]” as opposed to those “over here”—that is, the distinction between the South American Nikkei population and the Japanese volunteer candidates and lecturers in Japan. Mr. Fujiwara’s attribution of the “Nikkei/ non-Nikkei” distinction as “theirs,” positioning himself as a member of “us being here,” and the turning of the first distinction regarding the context-specific usage of the term “foreigner” in the Nikkei community into a joke, functions complexly but effectively to allow the participants on the Japanese side to escape from the essentialization while explaining the heritage-promotional language teaching. The volunteers in the room, who were invited to laugh at this joke with Mr. Fujiwara, were, perhaps, invited to become a part of—or were already regarded as being a part

250 

K. Motobayashi

of—the “us being here” dynamic in this context. Thus, the volunteers were made aware of two issues: that there is a set of categorical terms “Nikkei” and “non-Nikkei” and that these distinctions are “theirs,” rather than “ours.” As such, the Nikkei/non-Nikkei categorization, which is ethnic-based categorization and risks an essentializing and exclusionary tone, was attributed to the Nikkei’s practice and constructed by the Japanese practitioners as “their” desire to maintain their ethnic community. At the same time, based on this binary distinction, a distinction was introduced between “heritage” and the “promotion” of the Nihongo-Japanese language teaching. In this discourse, the Nikkei are portrayed to be maintaining clear borders between “us” and “them” and “heritage” and “promotional Japanese” language teaching. Homogeneity within the linguistic and cultural borders was taken for granted, and, when confronted with diversity and complexity, the categories were multiplied. Here, Nikkei population was portrayed to be striving to maintain clear borders between “Nikkei” and “non-Nikkei.” The Nikkei representation emphasized the emotional investment in heritage maintenance based on the Nikkei emigration history centering on the shared ancestry roots. It also underscored their creating a clear-cut categorical border between Nikkei and non-Nikkei (reproducing national categories overseas) distancing themselves from other ethnic communities in their countries of residence. These together forge an image of the Nikkei loyalty to the Japanese ancestry, essentializing the Japanese and foreign categories “over there.” Such a portrayal is more complex than in the policy documents but it is in a similar vein. This official lecture delivered by Mr. Fujiwara was different, in a nuanced but important way, from another instance of manifestation of Nikkei heritage desire in a workshop I had attended—an informal and spontaneous discussion on an alternative perspective—to which I will now turn.

13  Discursive Construction of Heritage Desire: Nikkei Identity… 

251

 n Informal Lecture on the Reality A of the South American Nikkei Communities: Alternative Perspectives on “Heritage Desire”  Sequence of Off-Topic Exchanges Between Naoko A and Mr. Katayama Although the pre-planned lectures mostly aligned with official policy discourse regarding the Nikkei population, presenting them as a homogeneous group with regard to both their desires and their identity, there were occasions where alternative perspectives were presented in the pre-­ departure training programs. This section examines one such moment, a sequence of “off-topic” interactions between volunteer candidates and the instructor in a workshop on designing teaching plans. The data presented below are derived from a group presentation session where volunteers developed activity plans for “emigration education [ijū gakushū].” The aim of the course was to encourage volunteer candidates to gain practical knowledge that would enable them to design Japanese language classes for Nikkei children’s “emigration education”—that is, Japanese language classes that also facilitate Nikkei children’s understanding of the history of Japanese emigration. This section focuses on an interaction primarily occurring between Naoko (a pseudonym), a volunteer candidate in her twenties (at the time of research), who led the discussions on her group’s teaching plan, and Mr. Katayama (a pseudonym), a course instructor for the class, who had previously served as a volunteer in Brazil. Naoko’s group chose to design a lesson based on the topic of “food,” and the teaching plan was entitled “Food time travelling.” Through their presentation, the group demonstrated that they had understood the importance of integrating Japanese language teaching with raising awareness of Japanese heritage in the South American Nikkei communities—a key issue they had learned through the training session by that point. Naoko explained that the overall goal of the proposed teaching plan was to raise Nikkei children’s historical and cultural awareness, and simultaneously, enhance their learning of the Japanese language. This was done by facilitating learning activities about the food that the early migrants

252 

K. Motobayashi

had eaten. Their teaching plan included asking children to conduct interviews with the older generation of emigrants, and encouraging them to read locally published recipes in Japanese. Naoko’s presentation lasted for about 15 minutes, and it was followed by the group members’ reflections, comments, and discussions. During the reflection session after the presentation, Naoko commented on a bilingual recipe that the group had cited in the handout. The recipe had been published by a Japanese-Brazilian culinary specialist in 1934. “This may be a little off topic for this class,” said Naoko, “but the kind of Japanese language used to explain [the food], probably the so-called koronia-go I guess, contained a lot of strange nouns, and in the case of some [recipes], we could hardly make out how to cook [the dish] when we read them” (emphasis added). Naoko identified three examples of “strange nouns” from the bilingual text, which were not intelligible to her, such as peneira, katete rice, or bandeeja. In response to Naoko’s comments after the “Food time travel” presentation, Mr. Katayama, the instructor for this course, presented some alternative perspectives on “heritage desire” and language heterogeneity among emigrants, by telling a short story—what he called “emigration joke [ijū kobanashi]”—centered around linguistic complexity and confusion in their post-emigration experience.3

An Emigration Joke: “Codfish” Story Following the group’s presentation, Mr. Katayama shared an “emigration joke” regarding the language practices of the emigrants. Mr. Katayama: xxx xxx the [topic of ] food they used to eat, I thought xxx xxx is in a sense, well, interesting, xxx. Well, I’m not sure if this is relevant here, but, well, back then, someone who migrated, um, went to a store and wanted to get food—well, codfish, dried codfish, sort of dried fish, dried fish I guess—and well, he couldn’t speak Portuguese then, so, he said, “Give me tara, give me tara,” but he couldn’t make himself understood, so he got

13  Discursive Construction of Heritage Desire: Nikkei Identity… 

253

angry and said bakayarō and then he got the codfish. This is one of the jokes, the migration jokes. The class: (silence). Mr. Katayama: Well, they call tara bakayaru there. Volunteers: Oh (laughing). Mr. Katayama: And, well you’ll probably hear this kind of story a lot until you even get fed up with it, but, please, react to it each time. Volunteers: (laughing). Mr. Katayama: So that’s important. But, well, I’m just joking here. (An excerpt from a transcription of “Group Study: The history of Japanese outmigration and Japanese language teaching [Practice and method of emigration studies II]” March 19. My translation.)

The sequence began as an off-topic tangent, as indicated by Mr. Katayama’s comment “[w]ell, I’m not sure if this is relevant here, but.” Narrated here is a story about a Japanese emigrant in Brazil at a grocery store trying to buy some food. At the core of this story is an unanticipated communicative success due to a cross-lingual quasi-homophonic pair. The word for codfish is tara in Japanese and bacalhau4 in Portuguese, and the Portuguese word sounds similar to the Japanese expression “bakayarō [what a fool].” Due to the phonetic similarity between the two words in the two languages, the Japanese emigrant, who did not know the word for “codfish” in Portuguese, unknowingly pronounced something similar to the right Portuguese word, bacalhau, when he expressed his frustration in Japanese. In narrating this story, Mr. Katayama pronounced bacalhau [/bakaˈʎaw/]5 using relatively open syllables,6 as is characteristic of the Japanese language (i.e., “ba-ka-ya-ru” [/bakajarɯβ/]), so it sounds similar to “ba-ka-­ ya-ro-o [/bakajaro̞/],” or “what a fool” in Japanese as mentioned above. In this way, the story presents an image of an emigrant struggling to buy food because of a language barrier, but centering on the unexpected and humorous cross-linguistic phonetic similarity that enables him to be successful. The volunteers seemed to get the joke after this explanation, and this was indicated by their “Oh” followed by laughter. However, this story indicates something more than just a humorous similarity between two words and the struggle of Japanese emigrants; it also provides an alternative perspective on Nikkei “heritage desire.” This is implied in the comment Mr. Katayama added to his retelling of the

254 

K. Motobayashi

joke—which invited the second round of laughter from the volunteers— the fact that “emigration jokes” like this one were common (“you’ll probably hear this kind of story, a lot”) in South American Nikkei communities, and that listening respectfully to such stories is also part of the volunteers’ jobs. Regardless of whether the codfish joke is based on a real story, if we suppose that such stories are circulated within the Nikkei communities, it indicates another aspect of the “heritage desire” of the Nikkei population, which is different from the official one. The heritage desire indicated here is a way to pass down the emigrants’ language experiences, which were accumulated after they came to the new land so these experiences were not something they brought from their original country, Japan. The Japanese emigrant in the codfish story, for example, failed to get what he wanted in his first attempt because he was using Japanese (i.e., the only linguistic resource available to him at that time); however, he ended up getting what he wanted in a completely unanticipated way because of the unexpected similarities between the two words in the two languages. The story itself is about an incidental and fortuitous event, but the action of talking and joking about such an experience is a willful one; it is accompanied by a vigorous and lively image of emigrants proudly narrating their post-emigration experiences. This image goes beyond the “official” one in Mr. Fujiwara’s lecture, which presents an image of emigrants who devote almost everything to the maintenance and inheritance of the original Japanese language and culture, considered to be the sole core of their identity and self-esteem. As such, the codfish story sheds light on a different aspect of the emigrants’ experience and resilience: living with two languages and sharing episodes about bilingualism and post-emigration experience, amazement, and wonder in the community. The extent of the circulation of such stories within South American Nikkei communities is still unclear. Nevertheless, this image of emigrants and the Nikkei population who are willing to tell the volunteers such post-emigration stories, complements the official account of emigrants’ “heritage desire” and emotional investment in maintaining only their original, and rather static, Japanese language and culture. As such, by introducing this “emigration joke,” Mr. Katayama presented a concrete image of the realities of early emigrants’ daily lives. His action indicated a certain accumulation of post-emigration history and identities in the Nikkei communities, which constitutes an important part of reality in

13  Discursive Construction of Heritage Desire: Nikkei Identity… 

255

contemporary Nikkei societies that should be respected by the volunteers. These perspectives were alternatives to what the volunteers were told in the official lectures on emigration history, and conveyed a more nuanced picture of Nikkei diaspora culture. Mr. Katayama’s “informal” lecture, which was spontaneous and unplanned, constructed Nikkei culture differently from Mr. Fujiwara’s formal lecture that echoed the official discourses on the emotional traits and linguistic practices of the emigrants and the Nikkei population. However, in the context of the training sessions that I observed, the official construction was dominant while the heterogeneous and complex reality of language and emigration was relegated to informal, off-topic discussions. Both Naoko and Mr. Katayama framed their comments as if they were “deviating from the actual class content” (Naoko) or focusing on a “really off-topic/unrelated topic” (Mr. Katayama). They both had reasons for mentioning the dynamic nature of post-emigration experiences (the diglossic situation in the Nikkei communities and the koronia­go issues), but both felt that they needed some sort of excuse to introduce it into the class discussion, since it was not included in the official curriculum. The unequal status attached to the historical accounts addressing constructions involving the Nikkei language and culture was best understood when it was linked to the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affair’s policy trends in relation to the Nikkei population.

Discussion and Conclusion As this chapter has shown, representations of the South American Nikkei identities and heritage desire differed at various points and at different scales within the institutional setting of the Nikkei volunteers’ training, being entextualized in the policy documents, conveyed in the lectures in the training sessions, and co-constructed by the volunteer trainees and the instructor in workshops. Echoing policy discourse, official presentations emphasized Nikkei’s dual affiliation as a relatively simplified hybridity and parallel mono-culturalisms, describing Nikkei’s heritage desire as a desire to maintain “purely authentic” Japaneseness overseas, which was positioned as being one of the unchangeable cores of Nikkei identity. It

256 

K. Motobayashi

thus represents contemporary Nikkei culture as a reconciled duality involving heritage “Japaneseness” and newly gained “foreignness.” In contrast, spontaneous conversation between Japanese volunteer trainees and instructors touched upon Nikkei’s desire to pass down their post-­ emigration experiences and the dynamic nature of the experienced linguistic and cultural environment. It forged an image of the actual heterogeneity, and dynamic border crossing in the linguacultural practices, in contemporary Nikkei communities, providing an alternative perspective of Nikkei heritage desire. These different representations each addresses the contemporary complexity of the South American Nikkei communities, however, the unequal statuses of the different historical accounts were notable. Japan’s Nikkei policy discourse regarding Nikkei identity and culture has been constructed around the shared national ancestry and the imagined Nikkei desire to maintain cultural and linguistic ties to Japan. The policy discourses were echoed in the official lecture of the volunteer training, and it emphasized Nikkei emigration, heritage, and emotional investment to explain their desire to maintain the Japanese heritage, which was presented as being the core of their identity. It also represented them as being distanced from other communities, portraying the Nikkei population to be striving to maintain clear borders between “Nikkei” and “non-Nikkei.” The Nikkei heritage desire is understood here as a desire of trying to reproduce original and static Japanese language and culture. Such discourse from the Japanese side, producing a category of Nikkei groups who are rooted in their Japanese identity, internally homogeneous and somewhat culturally essential, constitutes part of the Japanese representation of Nikkei population within the context of combined foreignness and maintained Japaneseness. This representation was given primacy over all other possible representations of the emigrant population, and it rationalizes the distinction between “heritage” and “promotional” Japanese language teaching, the former being for Nikkei population and the latter for non-Nikkei population, being based on Nikkei desire. In spontaneous interactions, however, the complexity and overlap of experience and language emerged, showing that these official distinctions are not necessarily the lived reality of emigrant experience. The “codfish” story, introduced by Mr. Katayama, provided an alternative

13  Discursive Construction of Heritage Desire: Nikkei Identity… 

257

interpretation of the “heritage desire” attributed to the Nikkei population. The story of an unanticipated lesson about a quasi-homophonic pair of Japanese and Portuguese words comically and effectively illustrates an emigrant’s encounter with a new language. Citing the story and reporting the circulation of similar stories, passed down to younger generations and willingly told to outsiders coming to stay—the spontaneous lecture constructed an image of emigrants who accumulated stories based on their post-emigration linguacultural dynamics and their practices of crossing linguacultural borders. Touching upon the heritage desire of passing down the post-emigration episodes based on their dynamic linguistic and cultural border crossings in the new land, this spontaneous conversation complements the official image ascribed to the emigrants— that of having devoted almost everything to the “maintenance” of what they brought from Japan. The nuanced but important differences at different occasions of the institutional discourse constitute part of the politics of representation in a layered way, constituting the social, discursive, and political meanings of the South American Nikkei identity in this particular institutional setting.

Notes 1. This study was conducted with a cohort of Nikkei volunteer candidates around 2010. Due to the small number of the volunteers, I do not identify the specific year in this study in order to ensure the confidentiality of the cohort members. 2. The original quotes were in Japanese, and this translated version is mine. Other than for some key words and concepts, the Japanese originals are not presented in this article due to space limitations. 3. This was followed by an alternative explanation of “Nikkei linguistic history” and a demonstration of his knowledge of the emigrants’ linguistic practices and the koronia-go language, which are not included in this chapter due to the limited space. (See Motobayashi, 2015 for details.) 4. According to Ikegami et al. (1996), bacalhau means codfish in Portuguese, and especially in a culinary context, it refers to dried and salted codfish.

258 

K. Motobayashi

5. I use the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to illustrate the phonetic resemblance between the three terms: the Portuguese word bacalhau, the Japanized pronunciation of bacalhau by Mr. Katayama, and the Japanese word bakayarō. The IPA for bacalhau is taken from a dictionary. The IPAs for Mr. Katayama’s utterances are based on my attempt to illustrate his pronunciation in the recorded data to the best of my ability. 6. An open syllable is a vowel preceded by a consonant; the frequent use of such syllables is a characteristic of Japanese pronunciation.

References Barakos, E., & Unger, J.  W. (2016). Discursive approaches to language policy. Palgrave Macmillan. Blommaert, J. (1999). Language ideological debates. Mouton de Gruyter. Dervin, F., & Machart, R. (Eds.). (2015). Cultural essentialism in intercultural relations. Palgrave Macmillan. Heller, M. (1999). Linguistic minorities and modernity: A sociolinguistic ethnography. Continuum. Heller, M. (2001). Undoing the macro- and micro dichotomy: Ideology and categorisation in a linguistic minority school. In N. Coupland, S. Sarangi, & C.  N. Candlin (Eds.), Sociolinguistics and social theory (pp.  212–234). Routledge. Heller, M. (2007). Bilingualism: A social approach. Palgrave Macmillan. Holliday, A. (2011). Intercultural communication and ideology. Sage. Hult, F. M. (2010). Analysis of language policy discourses across the scales of space and time. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 202, 7–24. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl.2010.011 Ikegami, M., Kinshichi, N., Takahashi, K., & Tomino, M. (1996). Gendai porutogaru go jiten [Dictionary of contemporary Portuguese]. Hakusuisha. Maeyama, T. (1984). Burajiru Nikkeijin ni okeru esunishitī to aidentitī: Ninshikiteki, seijiteki genshō to shite [Ethnicity and identity of the Japanese in Brazil: Politicocognitive phenomena]. Minzokugaku Kenkyū [Ethnographic Research], 48(4), 444–458. https://doi.org/10.14890/minkennewseries.48.4_444 Maeyama, T. (2001). Ibunka sesshoku to aidentitī: Burajiru shakai to nikkeijin [Intercultural contact and identity: The Brazilian society and Nikkeijin]. Ochanomizu Shobo.

13  Discursive Construction of Heritage Desire: Nikkei Identity… 

259

Mehan, H. (1996). The construction of an LD student: A case study in the politics of representation. In M. Silverstein & G. Urban (Eds.), Natural histories of discourse (pp. 253–276). University of Chicago Press. Mortimer, K. S., & Wortham, S. (2015). Analyzing language policy and social identification across heterogeneous scales. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 35, 160–172. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0267190514000269 Motobayashi, K. (2015). Language teaching as foreign policy: Japanese language teachers in Japan’s international cooperation volunteer program [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University of Toronto. Motobayashi, K. (2016). Language teacher subjectivities in Japan’s diaspora strategies: Teaching my language as someone’s heritage language. Multilingua, 35(4), 441–468. https://doi.org/10.1515/multi-­2015-­0009 Motobayashi, K. (2020). State management of bilingualism: A comparative analysis of two educational language policies in Japan. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 23(10), 1175–1191. https://doi. org/10.1080/13670050.2018.1436518 Overseas Emigration Council [Kaigai ijū shingi-kai]. (1993/H5). Ijūsha oyobi nikkeijin ni kansuru kongo no seisaku (Kaigai ijū shingi-kai iken) [Future policies regarding emigrants and Nikkei population (Opinion report of Overseas Emigration Council)]. October 25, 1993/H5. Overseas Emigration Council [Kaigai ijū shingi-kai]. (2000/H12). Kaigai nikkeijin shakai to no kyōryoku ni kansuru kongo no seisaku (Kaigai ijū shingi-kai iken) [Future policies regarding cooperation with nikkeijin societies abroad (Opinion report of Overseas Emigration Council)]. December 11, 2000/H12. Retrieved July 6, 2010, from http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/annai/shingikai/ ijyu/nikkei.html Piller, I. (2017). Intercultural communication: A critical approach (2nd ed.). Edinburgh University Press. Roth, J.  H. (2002). Brokered homeland: Japanese Brazilian migrants in Japan. Cornell University Press. Shapiro, M. (1988). The politics of representation: Writing practices in biography, photography, and policy analysis. University of Wisconsin Press. Takahashi, Y. (1993). Nikkei burajiru imin shi [History of Nikkei Brazilian emigrants]. San-ichi Shobo. Takahashi, Y. (1997). Nikkeijin sono imin no rekishi [Nikkeijin and the history of emigration]. San-ichi Shobo. Tsuda, T. G. (2001). From ethnic affinity to alienation in the global ecumene: The encounter between the Japanese and Japanese-Brazilian return migrants. Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, 10(1), 53–91. https://doi. org/10.1353/dsp.2011.0047

Part IV English Language Teacher Identity

14 “It Feels Like I’m Stuck in a Web Sometimes”: The Culturally Emergent Identity Experiences of a Queer Assistant Language Teacher in Small-­Town Japan Ashley R. Moore

With the inception of the Japanese government’s Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program in 1987, Assistant Language Teachers (ALTs) became an important part of many foreign language classes in Japan. Generally, ALTs are foreign university graduates working in Japan to support foreign language education in elementary, junior and senior high schools. Today, an increasing number of ALTs are employed by private dispatch companies or hired directly by local boards of education, and, according to the latest available figures, there were 18,484 ALTs working in Japan in 2016 (MEXT, 2017). Although we can assume that a large number of the ALTs that have worked in the Japanese

A. R. Moore (*) Vancouver, Canada Department of Language and Literacy Education, Boston University Wheelock College of Education & Human Development, Boston, MA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Mielick et al. (eds.), Discourses of Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11988-0_14

263

264 

A. R. Moore

education system are queer, which is to say that their sexual and/or gender identity transcends heteronormative and/or cisnormative ideologies, to date, almost no research has explored if and how such facets of their identities become relevant in terms of their experience of living and working in Japan. In this chapter, I analyse the identity experiences of “Dale” (pseudonym), an ALT working for a private dispatch company and stationed in “Asagawa” (pseudonym), a small town—population: 10,000 and shrinking—in central Honshu. Self-identifying as a gay, cisgender man, Dale, was one of 16 participants in a study I began in 2016, which explored the classroom learning experiences of queer learners of Japanese as a second or foreign language (JS/FL) (see Moore, 2019, 2021a, 2021b). The aims of this chapter are twofold; first, I will use data from my interviews with Dale to highlight some of the factors that queer ALTs may take into account when making decisions about how to manage those facets of their identities. Second, I will use this discussion to begin sketching out a theory of identity in applied linguistics that understands it as an emerging, dynamic product of a complex social ecology.

The Many Masks of the ALT An insightful body of work has explored the experiences of ALTs, frequently using the concept of identity as a primary theoretical lens. While often privileged in terms of status and financial reward (at least for those employed by the JET Program, which generally pays higher salaries) through the oppressive and pernicious ideology of native speakerism, ALTs often struggle for professional recognition as teachers (e.g., Geluso, 2013; Miyazato, 2009). Instead, they tend to be positioned within the classroom ecology as models of “native” pronunciation and “authentic” embodiments of and informants on their “native” culture. Ohtani (2010) notes that the denial of a professional teaching identity to ALTs has in fact been carefully curated since the inception of the JET Program in order to limit the threat they may pose to the authority of their Japanese English teacher counterparts. This is achieved through limited-term contracts and a set of enduring selection criteria

14  “It Feels Like I’m Stuck in a Web Sometimes”: The Culturally… 

265

that favour young university graduates and do not usually require any prior teaching experience. Ohtani also notes that many ALTs experience a sense of isolation in their workplaces, uncoupled from the social practices of the schools. Moreover, Takeda (2022) has shown how the liminal status of the ALT is further compounded when one takes race into account, as those ALTs who do not embody the idealised White native speaker experience challenges to their implicit claim of being a “native speaker.” Although ALTs were not historically encouraged to learn Japanese (Kubota, 2002), many do invest significant time and effort into learning the dominant language (Breckenridge & Erling, 2011), and thus develop concomitant language learner identities alongside more or less recognised language teacher identities. As I will show, for Dale, embedded in small-­ town Asagawa, these two identities were not only concomitant, but also intertwined in complex ways. Indeed, this intertwinement shaped the editorial decision to position this chapter at the border of the sections focusing on Japanese language learner identities and language teacher identities in the present volume. My later analysis examines how, within the context of Asagawa, these two facets of Dale’s identity interacted with another aspect of who he was: his identity as a gay man. Being a queer ALT in Japan can pose unique challenges. In the early years of the JET Program, McConnell (2000) reports how the Council of Local Authorities for International Relations (CLAIR), the Japanese government-affiliated foundation responsible for running the programme, was unsympathetic—and in some instances, outright homophobic—in their response to requests for support from queer programme participants who were struggling to manage their identities and find community in an unfamiliar country (pp. 87–90). Since those days, various support networks for queer ALTs have existed (Stonewall Japan, n.d.), although the names, structure, and scope of these networks have shifted over the years, as has the nature and strength of their relationship with CLAIR. However, aside from these two descriptive reports, to the best of my knowledge, no research has been published on the experiences of queer ALTs in Japan.

266 

A. R. Moore

 ueer Teachers and Learners Looking Q for Spaces to Flourish Space constraints prevent me from offering a comprehensive overview of the literature on the experiences of queer teachers and learners, or even queer language teachers and learners (see Nelson, 2020, for a recent discussion). However, evidence from a number of studies (Nelson, 2009; Leal & Crookes, 2018; Lawrence & Nagashima, 2020) reminds us that many queer language teachers still fear the consequences that indexing their queerness in the classroom might have on their career. Leal and Crookes’s (2018) case study of Jackson, a queer English teacher working in the United States, underscores the importance of queer-friendly educational institutions in terms of empowering queer teachers to exercise agency in terms of their queerness in class. In terms of queer language learners, the results of my aforementioned study exploring the classroom experience of queer JS/FL learners (Moore, 2019) showed how they used three distinct types of information to gauge the queer-friendliness of the teachers and other students in their classes: • Salient indicators: perceived characteristics of others, such as nationality, age, and gender, that each participant fallibly understood to correlate with queer-friendliness, based on their prior subjective experiences • Insider evidence: observed behaviours of others, such as reading a particular newspaper, or espousing liberal/conservative beliefs, that each participant fallibly understood to correlate with queer-friendliness, based on their prior subjective experiences • Explicit statements: unambiguous statements made by others expressing queer-friendly or homophobic/transphobic views Based in part on these types of information gleaned about the people around them, the participants made decisions on which identity management strategies (IMSs) to employ, such as passing as heterosexual or cisgender, covering to avoid indexing any specific sexual or gender identities, or implicitly or explicitly coming out (Griffin, 1991). Echoing the

14  “It Feels Like I’m Stuck in a Web Sometimes”: The Culturally… 

267

findings of Leal and Crookes (2018), in Moore (2021a), I used data from the same study to illustrate the importance of proactively queer-inclusive educational institutions in the wellbeing of queer students, and the influence of social structures on queer learners’ IMSs.

L anguage Teacher Identities as Emerging Experiences of the Social Ecology At a basic level, identity can be understood as “who we are—that is, who we perceive ourselves or are perceived by others to be” (Moya, 2000, p. 8). Through my discussion so far, it should be clear that this process of perceiving is thoroughly shaded by systems of power in the social world. Attempting to define language teacher identities (LTIs), Barkhuizen (2017) picks up on their entanglements with power, noting that they are, among other things, cognitive, social, emotional, ideological, and historical—they are both inside the teacher and outside in the social, material and technological world. … They are struggle and harmony: they are contested and resisted, by self and others, and they are also accepted, acknowledged and valued, by self and others. They are core and peripheral, personal and professional, they are dynamic, multiple, and hybrid, and they are foregrounded and backgrounded. (p. 4)

In my view, we could substitute “LTIs” for sexual or gender identities, and Barkhuizen’s composite definition would still hold true. His definition has implications for how we theorise identity, as it implies the need for a theory of identity that can help us to pick up the finely woven net of the social world and understand how our experiences of identity emerge as various tensions exert themselves through the social relationships that compose the net. A model of the social world that I have found useful in terms of grasping its complexity is Layder’s (2006) theory of social domains. Layder understands social phenomena as the dynamic products of four confluent domains:

268 

A. R. Moore

• Psychobiography: Individual social actors, with their unique biographies and dispositions accrued over their lifespans (e.g., “Dale”) • Situated activity: More fleeting episodes of activity that social actors engage in together (e.g., going to the convenience store with a friend) • Social setting: The context in which situated activity takes place, understood as the more enduring sets of structural roles, objects and practices that typically make up the context (e.g., the customers, clerks, products, small talk, sales, and so on that we expect to reproduce the idea of a “convenience store”) • Contextual resources: Macro-level resources distributed unevenly across the social world; these can be both material (money, property, etc.) and cultural (ideologies, laws, etc.) The domains are all interconnected and can shape one another in non-­ determined ways. For example, my psychobiography is shaped by the contextual resources available to me during particular periods of my life, by the roles I assume in different social settings, by the situated activity I engage in with others, and vice versa. In some cases, the pull of some domains might have more of a shaping force on unfolding events than others. To foreshadow an example from my analysis below, a free-spirited Japanese female might suddenly get up and start belly dancing in the middle of a language class, defying certain cultural and gender norms (contextual cultural resources) and the expected practices associated with the role of “teacher” she had assumed within the social setting of the classroom. Thus, in order to study one’s experiences of identity, I suggest it is helpful to theorise it as an always-emerging experience, shaped in non-determined ways by the complex social ecology, understood here through Layder’s model of the four social domains. Thus, in this chapter I set out to answer the questions: • In what ways do the four social domains act in confluence to shape Dale’s identity experiences as an ALT embedded in Asagawa? • How do these identity experiences influence his decision-making in terms of the IMSs he employs around his sexual identity while embedded in Asagawa?

14  “It Feels Like I’m Stuck in a Web Sometimes”: The Culturally… 

269

Methodology As noted above, Dale was one of 16 participants in a study exploring the classroom experiences of queer JS/FL learners (see Moore, 2019, for further details about the other participants). Like the majority of those participants, Dale answered a call for participants that I posted in a closed Facebook group for queer people affiliated with Japan. Data was generated through semi-structured interviews, and concurrently processed and analysed using a constructivist grounded theory method (Charmaz, 2014). Immediately after each interview, I produced a verbatim transcript and subjected each transcript to largely inductive, line-by-line coding. As the data generation and analytical exploration progressed iteratively, I began to analytically group the inductive codes into focused codes that spoke to my evolving research questions and helped me to explore my nascent conceptual categories. At the same time, I began to cautiously introduce extant theory—some familiar to me (e.g., Layder, 2006), some new (e.g., Griffin, 1991)—where I felt it offered insight into understanding the experiences of the participants. Throughout the study, I used the constant comparative method and analytic memo writing to drive the development of my theory. In follow-up interviews conducted with half of the participants, including Dale, I asked questions that would help me generate the data necessary to test the sufficiency of my theory, stopping when satisfied that I had achieved theoretical sufficiency; that is, analysing more data led to no new theoretical insights, and I had elaborated and interrelated theoretical categories. Thus, although the analysis I present here can be understood as a case study illuminating the identity experiences of a queer ALT embedded in small-town Japan, it is the analytic product of the methodological procedures of the broader and deeper study described above. Dale, 24 years old at the time of our first interview, was born and raised in an evangelical Christian family in the United States. He identified as White. Although his family moved around due to one parent being in the military, he spent the majority of his childhood in a southeastern state. He first began learning Japanese as part of his undergraduate degree in East Asian studies. Due to programme constraints, Dale had not studied in

270 

A. R. Moore

Japan during his time at university. Thus, his first experience of stepping foot in Japan was moving to Asagawa to begin work as an ALT for a private company, where he was dispatched to the town’s elementary schools. At the time of our first interview, Dale had been living in Asagawa for around 12 months. He was taking two weekly, one-to-­one Japanese classes, each taught by a different volunteer teacher at the town’s International Relations Center (IRC). Although he was “mostly” enjoying his experience living in Asagawa, he described it as “a little small” for him, and had plans to move to one of Japan’s major cities in the future. He participated in two interviews, the first of which took place in person in January 2016, at a café not far from the train station in a larger city neighbouring Asagawa. The second interview was conducted via Skype in September 2016. Both were audio-recorded and lasted 84 minutes and 69 minutes, respectively. My questions in the first interview were structured around Dale’s biographical information, sexual and gender identities, Japanese language learning history, and his experiences as a queer-identifying person in his Japanese language classes. In the second interview, I caught up with Dale’s experiences as a student in the IRC classes, and asked questions designed to generate data that could inform my developing theories regarding the kinds of information queer learners used to make decisions on the management of their identities in language classrooms, and how this was linked to their eventual choice of IMS. Dale and I had much in common. I also identify as a cisgender gay man, had worked as an ALT in rural and small-town Japanese elementary schools, and had taken various small group and one-to-one Japanese language classes while living in Japan. At times, I drew on these overlaps in our experiences as resources for establishing rapport and making meaning together, and I approached our interaction as an active interview (Holstein & Gubrium, 2016).

Analysis and Discussion In Layder’s (2006) model, all four domains (psychobiography, situated activity, social setting and contextual resources) are always present and shaping events, including the experience of identity, in non-deterministic

14  “It Feels Like I’m Stuck in a Web Sometimes”: The Culturally… 

271

ways as they unfold in the social world. My analysis will focus on four accounts that Dale made relevant in response to my interview questions. Analysing Dale’s accounts of the events, I show how the four domains confluently exerted varying forces on Dale as he made decisions on how to manage various facets of his identity—including his queerness—while embedded in Asagawa. Account One: “That’s something that I don’t think I would see from anyone else in … probably a solid twenty-mile radius.” When I asked Dale in the first interview whether queer-related topics had ever come up in his Japanese language classes at the IRC, Dale began his account by constructing contrasting portraits of the two volunteer teachers. While he obviously had a lot of respect and affection for both, he described his Saturday teacher as “a little bit older and … a little bit more traditional.” As well as the salient indicator of her age, he drew on insider evidence he had accrued through their situated activity together, such as her use of heteronormative language when asking Dale about his romantic life, to conclude that she would be unlikely to have a positive reaction were he to share his sexual identity with her. In contrast, he jumped to describe his teacher on Fridays as “possibly the most liberal Japanese woman I’ve ever met in my entire life.” Later in the interview, I came back to Dale’s vivid framing for his teacher, “Matsuisan,” and asked him to tell me more about “this super liberal Japanese volunteer teacher.”1 Dale explained that he had arrived at this evaluation of her through information about her he had garnered through his social networks in the town and his own interactions with her, the latter exemplified by an episode of situated activity in which he had shared some music with her by one of his favourite bands, an Iranian-Canadian duo called Niyaz (see Appendix for transcription key): 1 Dale: … they take some of that traditional [Sufi] poetry and adapt it to 2 like dance music (1.1) and I brought this up with {Matsui}san one- one 3 day and it turns out @that she@ also loves like- we called it desert

272 

A. R. Moore

4 @music because we didn’t-@ 5 Ashley: @yeah@ 6 Dale: @we- I’m talking to her in Japanese and she doesn’t know much about 7 it@ so it was the easiest way for us to describe= 8 Ashley: =yeah= 9 Dale: =but- and she just sort of got up and @started belly dancing@ 10 Ashley: @@@@@@ 11 Dale: ’cause she was like I- I just love this kind of music so that’s something 12 that I don’t think I would see from anyone else 13 Ashley: yeah 14 Dale: in you know probably a solid twenty-mile radius Dale makes Matsui-san notable by discursively constructing the geocultural context of Asagawa and its environs as one in which it would be unlikely that anyone, let alone a teacher in the social setting of the language classroom, would perform an impromptu belly dance. Indeed, Matsui-san’s breach of the norms of the classroom social setting and the wider social context, or contextual cultural resources in Layder’s (2006) model, was one of many pieces of information that Dale used to explain his evaluation of her as someone with whom he could probably share his sexual identity safely. Other information that Dale made relevant in this account of Matsui-san as someone who might likely be queer-friendly included the fact that she had children but was unmarried (a salient indicator), and her professed desire to travel to the United States (insider evidence), which, Dale added, “is something that we don’t often get from people around here,” again using his discursive construction of the norms of the local context to highlight both Matsui-san’s marked international outlook, and what he saw as the domestic concerns of the local populace in general. It is worth reiterating here that both salient indicators and insider evidence are inherently fallible forms of information on which to base the evaluation of another person’s queer-friendliness, but they remain valuable sources of information for queer people navigating heteronormative and cisnormative spaces.

14  “It Feels Like I’m Stuck in a Web Sometimes”: The Culturally… 

273

Despite Dale’s stated desire to share his sexual identity with Matsui-san and the positive salient indicators and insider evidence, when we first spoke in January, he was still unsure about sharing that information with her. From a socio-ecological perspective, we might ask which mechanisms were sustaining Dale’s hesitancy, and to which of the domains these mechanisms might be primarily attached. Account Two: “That was kind of a warning sign. That kind of made me think … maybe it’s not the right environment.” Dale had mentioned experiencing a “mix of emotions” when faced with heteronormatively framed questions and comments about his romantic life from the teacher for his Saturday class, his students and even their parents. He answered my request to expand on those feelings with an account that began with a public event connected to human rights that had been held in Asagawa a few months prior to our first conversation. One of the speakers at the event was a transgender woman who talked about her experiences. Upon arriving at the event, Dale saw some of the staff members from the local schools where he worked, including a support teacher. When he next saw the support teacher at school, she asked him what he had thought of the event, and he replied by broadening the subject to LGBT people in general and positing that they are “a lot more common” in the United States. 15 Dale: … and she said- she was like you know そうですね she look- it was kind of strange ’cause she just looked at me and she 17 said yeah maybe they’re just as common here but people don’t say 18 anything about it it was jus- it was a very bizarre- like gave me a really 19 strange feeling it was kind of scary to be honest (1.3) um (2.6) so that was 20 kind of a warning sign and that kind of made me think you know maybe21 maybe it’s not the right environment (1.4) um additionally it’s a very

274 

A. R. Moore

22 small town and they- (2.0) they talk a lot 23 Ashley: hm 24 Dale: and it’s not that I care that they know but (1.6) my job is important to me 25 and I wouldn’t want the teachers to say things to the kids that aren’t 26 necessarily true you know= 27 Ashley: =hm= 28 Dale: =that are just based on their view of gay people or whatever (3.4) and yeah 29 (1.3) and you know how the grapevine game goes 30 Ashley: yeah 31 Dale: so an- I- I’ve heard that a lot of- a lot of Japanese culture is very gossipy 32 but= 33 Ashley: =hm 34 Dale: I can confirm that in- in the boonies 35 Ashley: [@yeah@ 36 Dale: [it’s worse At the time, I remember being slightly surprised by Dale’s reading of this episode of situated activity as “kind of a warning sign” (line 20). Through his discursive construction of the teacher’s gaze, notably pointed “at me” (line 16), and his choice of adjectives such as “strange” (line 16), “bizarre” (line 18) and “scary” (line 19) to describe his affective experience during the episode, Dale seems to suggest that the teacher had guessed that he might be queer and was implying that he should keep that information to himself. Dale’s affective experience makes more sense as he continues his account to include the sense of jeopardy he fears in terms of his professional identity as an ALT (lines 24–26) if information about his sexual identity began to circulate on the “grapevine” (line 29) that he sees running through the “very small town” (lines 21–22) of Asagawa. This impression is reinforced by a more general trope that Dale has absorbed regarding the allegedly “gossipy” nature of “Japanese culture” (line 31), especially in rural areas (“the boonies,” line 34)—a stereotype with which I unfortunately affiliate (line 35) as it resonated with an experience from my own time as an ALT (see below). But how did Dale form this image of the town?

14  “It Feels Like I’m Stuck in a Web Sometimes”: The Culturally… 

275

Account Three: “The woman behind her whom I had never seen in my entire life whispered to her in Japanese like, ‘No that’s the elementary school teacher.’” After Dale shared the above account, I recounted an experience from my time as an ALT in which, after a weekend visit to an out-of-town onsen, I was surprised to go to school on Monday and discover that the teachers already knew where I had been. A student had spotted me there and wasted no time sharing this with the wider school community. This account prompted Dale to share the following: 37 Dale:  yeah it’s- it’s real my uh my neighbour and I are the only two in 38 {Asagawa} like I said 39 Ashley: hm 40 Dale: and she does middle school and I do elementary school I remember that 41 like one of the first (1.0) couple of weeks that we were here we went to 42 one of the two combinis [convenience stores] in our village and (1.0) there 43 was one (1.9) cashier that I had seen before and one that I hadn’t (1.0) and 44 my friend and I walked in and I went up to the register and I was like 45 buying some water or something and she said oh like howshe said 46  something like how’s middle school or like how’re you doing middle 47 school something and the woman behind her whom I had never seen in my 48 entire life whispered to her in Japanese like no that’s the elementary 49 school teacher (1.0) I was just like okay you know 50 Ashley: @yeah@ 51 Dale: alright guys 52 Ashley: @@

276 

A. R. Moore

53 Dale: and then always like the teachers will come up to us and ask us like how 54 such and such an event was 55 Ashley: [oh yeah 56 Dale: [because they saw us there or someone they know saw us there and told 57 them and so (1.2) for the most part that’s fine but it’s- it’s when (1.3) you 58 have information that could be twisted in like a negative way that- that 59 makes it kind of not- not cool Across these accounts, Dale constructs an image of Asagawa as a small community (it is notable that in line 42, the town of Asagawa becomes a “village”) through which intimate information about its inhabitants— their jobs, their marital status—flowed freely through whispers to unknown and unseen others (lines 47–49). While Dale himself had taken advantage of this network to build up knowledge of Matsui-san, and the nature of the information itself could be harmless enough, Dale’s discursive choices show that when it came to potential tensions between his sexual and professional identities, the network becomes reframed as a grapevine for harmful gossip. Eight months later, during our second interview, the metaphors that Dale recruited to discursively construct the interconnected social world of Asagawa developed even further along this affective trajectory. The grapevine had become a sticky web: 60 Dale: like I don’t know how long I’m gonna be here for @so@ 61 Ashley: @@ 62 Dale: it feels like I’m stuck in a web sometimes like anything I do over here like might affect something over there you know

14  “It Feels Like I’m Stuck in a Web Sometimes”: The Culturally… 

277

Account Four: “I decided that personally for me I would rather just take the middle road.” During our first interview, Dale had mentioned that he was “comfortable with talking about [his sexual identity] if I’m like directly asked but if I’m not directly asked, it’s kind of like weighing the situation,” an IMS described by six other participants that I inductively coded as “If asked, will tell” (IAWT). Hoping to explore the conditions under which IAWT became attractive to those participants, in our second interview, I asked Dale where he thought his preference for this approach came from. While he would later go on to posit that queer people might adopt an IAWT policy “in an environment where they don’t have any kind of other protections,” Dale first accounted for his preference for IAWT by pointing to his formative experiences, part of his psychobiography. Growing up in an evangelical Christian household, Dale found that his childhood peers at the public school he attended resented his efforts to share his religious beliefs with them. This was a reaction with which he came to sympathise to some extent (“a lot of those people have very good points”). He perceived similar feelings among his social networks vis-à-vis queer identities, most notably among his fraternity brothers while in university (Dale didn’t come out until after university): 63 Dale: … I was also in a fraternity so a lot of my fraternity brothers and they 64 would say things about like not liking gay people or whatever- it seemed 65 like it was always because they had this idea in their head of this po66 person who would just (1.0) you know be out on the corner wearing a 67 rainbow flag and vomiting glitter you know 68 Ashley: @yeah@ 69 Dale: just this kind of egregious caricature and I think- I imagined at least that 70 part of that (1.2) was based on people who are very in your face about 71 their sexuality

278 

A. R. Moore

72 Ashley: uh hm 73 Dale: uh so I decided that personally for me I would rather just take the middle 74 road, as it were @ Thus, Dale’s declared preference for adopting an IAWT approach to his sexual identity was, in part, a product of his psychobiography, having received negative feedback from his peers in the past when he had been perceived as pushing his religious beliefs on them. It was also a product of the homophobia he witnessed (and perhaps internalised) while living in the fraternity, which in itself can be seen as a contextual cultural resource—albeit an oppressive one—that has repeatedly been observed being reproduced within the social setting of the US college fraternity (e.g., Worthen, 2014). Through analysing these four interconnected, negotiated accounts that Dale made relevant in response to my questions about his experiences as a queer language learner in Asagawa, I have used Layder’s (2006) social domain model of the social world to grasp the finely woven social forces, operating on different scales of time and space, that have shaped his identity experiences. Notably, Dale’s accounts rarely stayed within the discursive walls of the IRC classroom; the social networks through which these forces travelled in small-town Asagawa blurred the bounds of the classroom’s social setting, as Dale’s decision-making around if and how to share his queerness with his teachers was intricately tied up with his precarious LTI as an ALT and concerns for professional security.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have used my analysis and discussion of Dale’s intersecting identities as a gay man, a Japanese language learner, and as an ALT, to explore the analytic potential of a conceptualisation of identity that understands it as an always emerging and dynamic product of our complex social ecologies. I have used social domain theory as a theoretical tool that is, I think, productive in terms of getting an analytic handle on that complexity, showing how the domains of psychobiography, situated activity, social setting and contextual resources shaped Dale’s identity experiences.

14  “It Feels Like I’m Stuck in a Web Sometimes”: The Culturally… 

279

Unfortunately, Dale was correct when he implied that Japan was a place in which queer people are denied legal protection against discrimination. As a recent joint letter—signed by 116 human rights and LGBT+ organisations and sent to former Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga—implores, Japan should legally enshrine the protection of the rights of queer people, including employment rights (Human Rights Watch, 2021). Until such contextual resources are in place, companies employing ALTs should make an explicit commitment to, and enact, non-­discriminatory policies for the benefit of employees like Dale. Of course, this is not to say that under such conditions Dale would share his sexual identity with others. Nor is it to say that he should. However, I hope that we can all agree that no one should live with the fear of losing their job because they identify (or are identified by others) as queer, and such structural protections would go a long way in terms of enhancing the wellbeing of all employees. Finally, readers may enjoy learning that between our two interviews, Dale did choose to share his sexual identity with Matsui-san. Listening to him retell that “nice, great conversation,” it struck me that, within Asagawa’s social web, Dale had found some strands along which trust and acceptance could flow.

Appendix Transcription Key Example

Meaning

… [Sufi] (1.0) {Matsui}-san one- one @that@ describe= =yeah @@@

[@yeah@ [and

Data from the same turn omitted Information added to aid comprehension Timed pause of one second or more Disguised information False start or syntactic shift Spoken with a laughing intonation Latching Syllables of aspirated laughter English translation of preceding non-English data Overlapping speech

280 

A. R. Moore

Note 1. Another piece of insider evidence that Dale seemed to marshal in his account of Matsui-san as being potentially queer-friendly was the fact that she insisted on him using the generally polite suffix of “-san” as opposed to the expected “-sensei,” normally afforded those in a teaching or expert position. Matsui-san’s rejection of a social norm that typically indexes expertise and hierarchical power within the social setting of a classroom worked alongside the other forms of norm-defying insider evidence to suggest to Dale that she might be someone with whom he could safely share information about his identity as a gay man.

References Barkhuizen, G. (2017). Language teacher identity research: An introduction. In G.  Barkhuizen (Ed.), Reflections on language teacher identity research (pp. 1–11). Routledge. Breckenridge, Y., & Erling, E. J. (2011). The native speaker English teacher and the politics of globalization in Japan. In P. Seargeant (Ed.), English in Japan in the era of globalization (pp. 80–100). Palgrave Macmillan. Charmaz, K. (2014). Constructing grounded theory (2nd ed.). Sage. Geluso, J. (2013). Negotiating a professional identity: Non-Japanese teachers of English in pre-tertiary education in Japan. In D. J. Rivers & S. Houghton (Eds.), Native-speakerism in Japan: Intergroup dynamics in foreign language education (pp. 90–102). Multilingual Matters. Griffin, P. (1991). Identity management strategies among lesbian and gay educators. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 4(3), 189–202. https://doi.org/10.1080/0951839910040301 Holstein, J. A., & Gubrium, J. F. (2016). Narrative practice and the active interview. In D.  Silverman (Ed.), Qualitative Data Analysis (4th ed., pp. 67–82). Sage. Human Rights Watch. (2021, January 26). Japan: Introduce LGBT equality act before Olympics. https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/01/26/japan-­introduce­lgbt-­equality-­act-­olympics#. Kubota, R. (2002). Impact of globalization on language teaching in Japan. In D.  Block & D.  Cameron (Eds.), Globalization and language teaching (pp. 13–28). Routledge.

14  “It Feels Like I’m Stuck in a Web Sometimes”: The Culturally… 

281

Lawrence, L., & Nagashima, Y. (2020). The intersection of gender, sexuality, race, and native-speakerness: Investigating ELT teacher identity through duoethnography. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, 19(1), 42–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/15348458.2019.1672173 Layder, D. (2006). Understanding social theory (2nd ed.). Sage. Leal, P., & Crookes, G. V. (2018). “Most of my students kept saying, ‘I never met a gay person’”: A queer English language teacher's agency for social justice. System, 79, 38–48. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2018.06.005 McConnell, D.  L. (2000). Importing diversity: Inside Japan’s JET program. University of California Press. MEXT. (2017). Gaikokugo shidō joshu (ALT) nado no ninyō keiyakukei taibetsu ninzūtō no jōkyō (Heisei 28 nendo) [A report on the types of contract and numbers of Assistant Language Teachers, etc. (2016)]. Retrieved from https://www.mext.go.jp/component/a_menu/education/detail/__icsFiles/ afieldfile/2017/04/07/1384236_05.pdf Miyazato, K. (2009). Power-sharing between NS and NNS teachers: Linguistically powerful AETs vs. Culturally powerful JTEs. JALT Journal, 31, 35–62. https://doi.org/10.37546/JALTJJ31.1-­2 Moore, A.  R. (2019). Interpersonal factors affecting queer second or foreign language learners’ identity management in class. The Modern Language Journal, 103(2), 428–442. https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12558 Moore, A. R. (2021a). “[It] changed everything”: The effect of shifting social structures on queer L2 learners’ identity management. Journal of Language, Identity and Education. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 15348458.2021.1874383 Moore, A.  R. (2021b). Research-as-social-practice and the challenge—And promise—Of thinking intersectionally about LGBTQ+ issues in language teaching and learning. In J. M. Paiz & J. E. Coda (Eds.), Intersectional perspectives on LGBTQ+ issues in modern language teaching and learning (pp. 23–53). Palgrave Macmillan. Moya, P. M. L. (2000). Introduction: Reclaiming identity. In P. M. L. Moya & M. R. Hames-García (Eds.), Reclaiming identity: Realist theory and the predicament of postmodernism (pp. 1–26). University of California Press. Nelson, C. D. (2009). Sexual identities in English language education: Classroom conversations. Routledge. Nelson, C. D. (2020). Queer thinking about language learning: Current research and future directions. In K. Hall & R. Barrett (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of language and sexuality. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxf ordhb/9780190212926.013.34

282 

A. R. Moore

Ohtani, C. (2010). Problems in the assistant language teacher system and English activity at Japanese public elementary schools. Educational Perspectives, 43, 38–45. Stonewall Japan. (n.d.). Stonewall Japan history. https://stonewalljapan. org/history/ Takeda, Y. (2022). Mobilising dilemmatic subject positions: A discourse analysis of an Asian Canadian assistant language teacher’s narrative. Language, Culture and Curriculum. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.108 0/07908318.2022.2048003. Worthen, M. G. F. (2014). Blaming the jocks and the Greeks? Exploring collegiate athletes’ and fraternity/sorority members’ attitudes toward LGBT individuals. Journal of College Student Development, 55(2), 168–195. https://doi. org/10.1353/csd.2014.0020

15 Discursive Positioning of the Philippines and Filipino Teachers in the Online Eikaiwa Industry Misako Tajima

Since its inception in the 2000s, the Philippines-based online eikaiwa industry has been flourishing in Japan. In particular, because of COVID-19 lockdowns, which have accelerated e-learning as a whole, the use of remote English lessons offered by Filipino teachers at extremely low prices (normally, less than 200 yen [approximately US$1.50] for a 30-minute lesson) has substantially increased (Morales, 2020). This trend may help challenge the long-held belief that “native speakers”1 from, for example, the United States (US) or the United Kingdom (UK) are the “best” teachers, enhancing the legitimacy of Filipino teachers as English professionals. However, it is also pointed out that this new style of teaching and learning is entangled with neoliberal governmentality (Tajima, 2018a, 2020) as well as neoliberal economies (Tajima, 2018a, 2018b). Against this backdrop, for critical inquiries in language and language education, the ideological, cultural-political, and socioeconomical aspects of what is occurring in the Philippines-based online eikaiwa industry

M. Tajima (*) Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Ibaraki University, Ibaraki, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Mielick et al. (eds.), Discourses of Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11988-0_15

283

284 

M. Tajima

should be explored. In this chapter, I aim to examine discursive constructions of the Philippines and Filipino teachers in the educational sector. By pursuing this topic, I address how individuals ideologically position the “other” on the basis of various elements such as nationality, native/ non-native speakerness, and professionalism. Focusing on the new English tutoring industry allows me to apply a level of scrutiny that will accord a more comprehensive view of identity negotiation processes in language education than what is available in the literature. I also discuss the impetus for the trend in Japan of outsourcing English teachers from the Philippines, by situating the phenomena observed within this sector in a broader context. This chapter will advance transboundary investigations and provide other disciplines with profound insights into the interrelationship between Japan and the Philippines.

Positionality of Eikaiwa Teachers Inquiries into the eikaiwa industry have mainly focused on how supposed Western native English-speaking teachers are positioned at franchised schools. One of the classic works is that of Lummis (1976), which, as early as 45 years ago, discussed racial concerns observed within this industry, suggesting that “the expression ‘native speaker’ is in effect a code word for ‘white’” (p.  3). Subsequently, research on the positionality of eikaiwa teachers has been conducted from the perspective of race and gender. Drawing on the well-known discourse of akogare (longing/desire), for example, Bailey (2007) reflected on his experiences and positionality as a white male teacher in Japan’s eikaiwa schools. Simultaneously making use of the data produced through his interviews with eikaiwa learners, he argued that females’ akogare for the West can be granted “as a result of learning English, through learning English, or through habituating the locales frequented by (white, male, gaijin, heterosexual) English speakers, or a combination of these activities” (p. 594). Appleby (2014) similarly examined the identity negotiation processes experienced by Western male teachers working in the field of English Language Teaching (ELT) in Japan, including eikaiwa schools. The examination demonstrates how

15  Discursive Positioning of the Philippines and Filipino… 

285

racialized, intimate, and seductive attractiveness is implicitly stirred up in the field, with masculinity and heterosexuality as the norm. Although other studies further advance investigations into the discourse of akogare (e.g., Nonaka, 2018; Piller & Takahashi, 2006; Takahashi, 2013), eikaiwa teachers’ voices (e.g., Hooper & Hashimoto, 2020; Nagatomo, 2016), and franchised eikaiwa schools under neoliberalism (e.g., Nuske, 2019; Simpson, 2018, 2020), I highlight remote eikaiwa lessons offered from the Philippines (Tajima, 2018a, 2018b). I illustrate how female teachers working in Japan’s online eikaiwa industry are constructed as distinctly gendered entities, stressing that these discursive constructions have emerged in the complicated nexus of past and present multiplex elements existing between Japan and the Philippines. I conclude that when one addresses gender concerns within the online eikaiwa industry, one should consider the economic, social, political, historical, and cultural relations between Japan and the Philippines, and the long-established emotional and somatic connections between Japanese men and Filipinas. In this chapter, I refer to Tajima (2018a, 2018b) and research on the discursive positioning of the Philippines and Filipino teachers, while contemplating wider contexts in which this educational industry has emerged.

The Study Epistemology This chapter is based on a larger multifaceted research project that explored the ideological constructions of English and its speakers in Japan (Tajima, 2018a). The project is located in critical language studies that epistemologically draw on what Kubota and Miller (2017) call “postmodern constructionism including poststructuralist theory” (p.  133). This theoretical paradigm indicates two crucial aspects of language ideology research: Power is exerted by daily discussions and deeds, and ideology is constructed in discourses and power relations rather than only by social structures. These two perspectives are deeply influenced by

286 

M. Tajima

Foucault’s (1980) concept of knowledge not as “truth” but as the “régime of truth” (Kubota & Miller, 2017). Foucault suggests through this conceptualization that whether a certain system of knowledge is true or false does not matter, but how it engenders effects of truth does matter. Because Tajima (2018a) focused on how participants discuss issues related to English and its speakers, examining language ideologies that construct or are constructed in and through the discussions, this Foucauldian standpoint was the most applicable for the study.

Data and Analytical Procedure Tajima (2018a) concentrated on three research topics, one of which was the Philippines-based online eikaiwa industry. For the research topic, of the various types of data collected for the project, I used advertising produced by ten online eikaiwa providers and 213 comments posted by registrants. For the advertising, I selected the ten providers because they were introduced in a business magazine featuring English Language Learning (ELL) (Diamond Weekly, January 11, 2014) as major institutions offering remote English lessons from the Philippines. Regarding the registrants’ comments, I used クチコミランキング (“word-ofmouth ranking” in English), one of the largest and most famous platforms ranking products or customer services based on user reviews. Both were available online. In-person interaction with research participants was also an important data source. In particular, my positionality―I was born and raised in Japan with Japanese as the main language and started to learn English as a school subject in junior high school―had much in common with the participants, which greatly helped extract learners’ voices. I conducted individual interviews with five university students and ten working adults, eight of whom were taking Filipino online eikaiwa at the time of the interviews. The remaining participants were not taking Filipino online eikaiwa, although they had experience of attending franchised eikaiwa schools where the majority of the teachers were so-called native speakers. In the project, I analyzed those learners’ input as well. By doing so, I learned why they did not have an interest in being tutored by Filipino

15  Discursive Positioning of the Philippines and Filipino… 

287

teachers; those learners’ accounts could also be considered their thoughts, beliefs, and feelings about English and its speakers, that is, the learners’ language ideologies (Kroskrity, 2004) (as epitomized by a participant, Atsuko (pseudonym), mentioned in the following section). For data analysis, I situated this chapter within critical discourse studies (CDS; e.g., Djonov & Zhao, 2014; Wodak & Meyer, 2009). Of particular interest to CDS is the nexus of language and power, and the primary purpose of CDS is consequently to denaturalize ideologies that have become naturalized in texts and other semiotic resources (e.g., Fairclough, 2001). Because the main focus of the chapter is data on how individuals ideologically position the Philippines and Filipino teachers, the selection of CDS was relevant. For the actual analytical procedure, I began by translating the Japanese online data (advertising and registrants’ comments) and interview data into English. Next, to detect key themes (Morris, 2015), I read English translations and original Japanese texts. I also attempted to identify noteworthy quotations (Rubin & Rubin, 2012), some of which were incorporated into the subsequent analysis and discussion section. Similarly, some findings of the study, including the noteworthy quotations, were utilized in the concluding section to explore the wider socioeconomic context.

Legitimacy of the Philippines and Filipino Teachers Providers’ Perspective: Speakers of American English An impetus of the current increasing use of Filipino online eikaiwa lessons is the low tuition fees. In the advertising, all ten providers I accessed, therefore, pitch this financial aspect to potential registrants. Simultaneously, the providers present rationales for their employment of Filipino teachers in terms of the teachers’ quality. The logical flow often employed in those rationales is that although the providers offer lessons at surprisingly low prices, this offer is never equivalent to the saying “You get what you pay for.” Throughout their advertising, the providers strive

288 

M. Tajima

to guarantee the eminence of the teachers they hire. The following excerpts are parts of the online advertising produced by two providers (Gun Gun Eikaiwa and Tenori Eigo2):

Excerpt 1 Most teachers are from the Philippines, which has the third largest English-speaking population in the world. The English spoken by the teachers is close to American English, and [their] pronunciation, with scarcely any accent, is easy to follow (Gun Gun Eikaiwa, 2017).

Excerpt 2 The Philippines is the third-ranking English-as-an-official-language country in the world after the US and the UK. Some of you might wonder, “Doesn’t the [Filipinos’] pronunciation have an accent? Isn’t it hard to follow, compared with that of American or British people?” However, many American companies have chosen the Philippines as [a location for their] call centers, and [the English spoken by Filipinos] has been accepted by American consumers (Tenori Eigo, 2017). These two rationales are the archetype of how discourses produce effects of truth irrespective of whether they are true or false (Foucault, 1980). First, Gun Gun Eikaiwa claims that the Philippines “has the third largest English-speaking population in the world.” However, the size of the English-speaking population is substantially contingent on how it is counted. In relation to this analysis, a more fundamental question emerges: What does the term “English-speaking” mean? In Tenori Eigo’s rationale (“the third-ranking English-as-an-official-language country in the world after the US and the UK”), the provider does not explain why they ranked the Philippines third. However, if the provider writes about the number of English speakers within the country (in a similar manner to Gun Gun Eikaiwa; this supposition sounds the most feasible), the question concerning who is included in the number emerges again. In addition, the relevance of describing the US and the UK as an

15  Discursive Positioning of the Philippines and Filipino… 

289

“English-­as-­an-official-language country” could demand further scrutiny because English has official status at the federal level in neither of the countries. The most notable question might be whether there is any correlation between the size of the English-speaking population of a certain country and the quality of its local teachers. The Philippines’ having a large English-speaking population does not necessarily prove the professional distinction of Filipino teachers. In these respects, the two providers may present the rationales by rather advantageously and plausibly utilizing various pieces of information in a “patchworked” manner. However, in the context of advertising, these types of rationales have the substantial possibility of working efficiently; notably, the providers have thus far been successful in gathering registrants. For individuals interested in online eikaiwa, the rationales help create a positive impression of the Philippines regardless of its truth or falsehood. In particular, when the country is compared with the US and the UK, generally conceived as the two top English-speaking nations, the Philippines is positioned as a country sufficiently legitimate to produce excellent English teachers. Here, an argument could be that the rationales offered by the two providers have effects of truth even if their authenticity is uncertain (Tajima, 2018a). The inclusion of the Philippines in the same category as the US and the UK is a recent trend in the history of the eikaiwa industry. This is because, as mentioned earlier, most franchised schools have thus far emphasized that the majority of their teachers are from “the center nations” (Canagarajah, 1999, p. 4). The eikaiwa industry (and the whole field of ELT in Japan) has lionized supposed Western native English-­ speaking teachers, frequently excluding non-Western English users such as Filipinos, regardless of proficiency and professional skills (e.g., Hayes, 2013; Kubota, 2002; Kubota & Fujimoto, 2013; Lummis, 1976). In other words, the industry has perpetuated “the idealization of a native speaker as someone who has perfect, innate knowledge of the language and culture and thus is the best teacher of English” (Kubota, 2002, p. 21). However, a question arises regarding this new movement (the act of comparing the Philippines with the US and the UK): Is the movement a watershed in the history of Japan’s ELT field? After contemplating how Filipino teachers are described in the two aforementioned excerpts, my

290 

M. Tajima

answer to this question was no; their means of publicizing the teachers might result in reproducing and reinforcing the primacy of native speakers. First, in Gun Gun Eikaiwa’s rationale, Filipino teachers are promoted as legitimate because of their US-like English. The teachers are discursively constructed as speakers of the English that is “close to American English”; likewise, their pronunciation is depicted as “[having] scarcely any accent” and “easy to follow.” Second, positioning Filipino teachers in association with American English also holds true for Tenori Eigo’s rationale. In the case of this provider, offshore call centers participate in its assertion of Filipino teachers’ legitimacy. In response to anticipated questions regarding their English such as “Doesn’t [Filipinos’] pronunciation have any accent?” Tenori Eigo offers the following answer: “[…] many American companies have chosen the Philippines as [a location for] their call centers, and [the English spoken by Filipinos] has been accepted by American consumers.” In other words, in this provider’s argument, speakers of the English evaluated by US consumers as acceptable are sufficiently competent to teach learners in Japan (Tajima, 2018a, 2018b). Thus, in the online eikaiwa sector, Filipino teachers are discursively constructed through the providers’ emphasis on the US and American English, and these phrases play a crucial role in asserting the teachers’ legitimacy. Although the providers do not explicitly deploy the term native speakers, they implicitly use its power by positioning the Philippines as a country in the same category as the US and the UK and by positioning Filipino teachers as speakers whose English is almost equivalent to American English (Tajima, 2018a).

L earners’ Perspective: Speakers of Chantoshita Kireina Eigo3 In this subsection, I explore how learners react to the claims of legitimacy made by providers, that is, how Filipino teachers are (re)positioned by learners. To this end, I begin with a narrative account produced by Atsuko. Atsuko is an employee of a video game company, where she occasionally uses English for her duties. Although she had attended franchised

15  Discursive Positioning of the Philippines and Filipino… 

291

eikaiwa schools, at the time of the interview, she had not taken online lessons offered by Filipino teachers. In Excerpt 3, Atsuko expresses her thoughts, beliefs, and feelings about learning English from Filipino teachers:

E  xcerpt 3 […] I don’t know because I have no idea about the level of Filipinos, but as long as they are native speakers, I’m sure it’s okay. […] Cheap and er, even if [teachers are] Filipinos, as long as you can talk with individuals who speak, well, chantoshita eigo, [it’s okay. But] […] I’m not quite sure whether you can call [it] “English learning.” For example, er, what to say, if you want to learn grammar or, for example, you want to learn kireina eigo, […] chantoshita pronunciation or something like that, I’m not sure whether that cheap Filipino eikaiwa would do the job (Interviewed on January 13, 2015). In Excerpt 3, Atsuko employs two particular Japanese modifiers to convey her thoughts, beliefs, and feelings about Filipino online eikaiwa: chantoshita and kireina. Here, both terms require further explanation. First, if the modifier chantoshita were to be rendered into English, considering that it is used with words such as “eigo (English)” and “pronunciation,” the adjective “proper” would be the most appropriate. However, this Japanese modifier chantoshita bears several other meanings, such as “correct,” “decent,” “legitimate,” “suitable,” and “tidy.” As a result, Atsuko’s statements “people who speak, well, chantoshita eigo” and “if you want to learn […] chantoshita pronunciation” exhibit more than “proper English” and “proper pronunciation.” Chantoshita eigo, for example, can sometimes signify “correct English with legitimacy” and at other times mean “English suitable for a certain occasion.” It can also move beyond the mere act of modifying the term “English” and extend into describing a certain speaker of the language; the modifier chantoshita could connote an “aesthetic” (Kroskrity, 2004, p. 512) aspect of the speaker, such as his/ her “decency” and “tidiness” (Tajima, 2018a). The other modifier kireina, likewise, carries multiple meanings. When it collocates with the term

292 

M. Tajima

eigo, the closest equivalent adjective may be “clear,” and the overall translation of the phrase kireina eigo is deemed to be “interference-free English.” However, the word kireina (as well as its original form kirei) also implies “beautiful,” “clean,” “fine,” “graceful,” and “pure.” Thus, the phrase kireina eigo expresses more than “clear, interference-free English”; depending on circumstances, it can be interpreted as, for example, “beautiful English,” simultaneously suggesting the speaker’s “gracefulness” (Tajima, 2018a). Considering this nature of chantoshita eigo and kireina eigo, I return to Excerpt 3, in which Atsuko does not talk of specific Filipino teachers. As her disclaimer at the outset shows, she has little knowledge of Filipinos. Drawing on her scant understanding, Atsuko iterates two conditions for Filipino online eikaiwa to be acceptable: “as long as [Filipinos] are native speakers” and “as long as you can talk with individuals who speak, well, chantoshita eigo.” From these conditions, I can say that Atsuko regards ordinary Filipinos as neither native speakers nor speakers of chantoshita eigo. Another interpretation could be that she consciously or unconsciously identifies native speakers as speakers of chantoshita eigo. In addition, her account is intriguing because even if the second condition is fulfilled, namely, even if Filipino teachers speak chantoshita eigo, she still questions whether learning English from them is an appropriate choice; she adds, “I’m not quite sure whether you can call [it] ‘English learning.’” This is because, as Atsuko further states, she is concerned that learners might not be able to acquire “grammar,” “kireina eigo,” or “chantoshita pronunciation” through “that cheap Filipino eikaiwa.” Here, the providers’ discursive positioning of Filipino teachers as speakers of American English is challenged. In other words, Filipino teachers are repositioned through Atsuko’s discursive practice as not being able to teach grammar or as not speaking kireina eigo with chantoshita pronunciation, simultaneously conceptualizing this type of English as belonging to native speakers (Tajima, 2018a). The notion of kireina eigo is also observed in customer reviews posted by online eikaiwa registrants. To further explore this notion, I introduce Excerpts 4-7. The registrants are a 29-year-old housewife, a 34-year-old female office worker, a 34-year-old male office worker, and a 44-year-old male office worker:4

15  Discursive Positioning of the Philippines and Filipino… 

293

E  xcerpt 4 I had been worried about [teachers’] accent, but they spoke more kireina eigo than I had imagined.

E  xcerpt 5 The pronunciation of every teacher is kirei, and I don’t notice any accent peculiar to the Philippines.

E  xcerpt 6 I hadn’t expected much, but [my teachers] spoke with the same correct accent as a native [speaker] did […]. […] I’m very satisfied.

E  xcerpt 7 I talked with several teachers. As expected, [I noticed] pronunciation peculiar to Filipinos in many of the teachers, which made it impossible to catch [what they said]. As demonstrated in Excerpts 4 and 5, the modifier kireina (or its original form kirei) is often employed when Filipino teachers’ English is depicted (this term is also adopted in some other customer reviews within my dataset). However, Excerpts 4 and 5 differ from Atsuko’s account. In her account, Filipino teachers are positioned as speakers of non-kireina eigo, and the registrants of Excerpts 4 and 5 use the term kirei(na) to explain the teachers favorably (“[T]hey spoke more kireina eigo than I had imagined” and “The pronunciation of every teacher is kirei”). Notably, in Excerpt 4, the registrant appears to have changed her mind after the lessons. In her comment, she “had been worried about [teachers’] accent” before beginning to engage with Filipino online eikaiwa. However, through her first-hand experiences of interacting with the teachers during the lessons, she now perceives their English as more kirei

294 

M. Tajima

than she anticipated. This type of attitudinal transition is observed in Excerpt 6 as well. The registrant starts his comment by saying, “I hadn’t expected much”; however, within the same comment, he eventually writes, “I’m very satisfied.” Furthermore, by posting the sentence “[my teachers] spoke with the same correct accent as a native [speaker] did […]),” he also helps reinforce the providers’ implicit discursive positioning of Filipino teachers as native speakers. That being said, my intention in this chapter is not to strongly argue that actual interaction with Filipino teachers encourages learners with uncertainty about the legitimacy of the teachers to alter their evaluation. Of course, as exemplified by Excerpts 4 and 6, direct experiences of communicating with the teachers could help registrants adjust their preconceptions. However, some individuals continue to have a negative impression of Filipino teachers even after attending the lessons offered. The registrant of Excerpt 7, for example, writes in his comment that “[a]s expected, [I noticed] pronunciation peculiar to Filipinos in many of the teachers.” Here, the phrase “[a]s expected” implies that the registrant anticipated “pronunciation peculiar to Filipinos” before the lessons and actually recognized it while interacting with the teachers. In addition, according to the registrant, this “marked” pronunciation of the teachers interfered with his understanding of what they said. Thus, registrants’ reactions to providers’ claims of legitimacy regarding Filipino teachers are complicated; the reactions display contradictions or ambivalence based on the registrants’ immediate experiences of the lessons and their mixed thoughts, beliefs, and feelings about such ideological notions as chantoshita kireina eigo and native speakers. In this context, what matters is not to examine whether the judgments formed by the registrants are accurate but to explore how particular ideological notions are discursively constructed and how the notions are used to (re)position specific English speakers as legitimate/illegitimate teachers (Tajima, 2018a).

15  Discursive Positioning of the Philippines and Filipino… 

295

Further Discussions and Conclusion For investigations into the ideological and cultural-political aspects of the online eikaiwa industry, I have thus far explored how the Philippines and Filipino teachers are discursively positioned by providers and learners. To locate this discursive positioning in a wider socioeconomic context, I discuss in this section the impetus of the trend in Japan of outsourcing English teachers from the Philippines. As Tajima (2018a, 2018b) points out, what matters here is neoliberal capitalist economies. For Japanese providers, under a neoliberal doctrine of capitalism that encourages companies and investors to access places where labor costs are as low as possible, the employment of teachers residing in the Philippines helps the providers yield profits. Simultaneously, for Filipino teachers, who are privileged people with a “good” command of English within the country (Tupas, 2008), online eikaiwa tutoring has become a site where their lessons making use of their English skills serve as a valorized commodity (Cameron, 2005; Heller, 2010), reinforcing the typical neoliberal view that linguistic skills are human capital gained through individual responsibility and effort (Kubota, 2011; Park, 2016; Tajima, 2020). However, the commodification of Filipino teachers’ lessons based on their linguistic skills does not emerge at a personal level alone. The Philippines’ national policies are also of great consequence in the same way as the policies have something to do with the development of offshore call centers within the country and the increase of overseas Filipino workers (Pennycook, 2020). As Pennycook continues to argue: The Philippines has become a cheap destination to learn English, and, like all processes of impoverishment, these are not mere accidents of history but a very clear result of political and economic policies in the 20th century that saw the Philippines change from a colony of the USA, to a part of the Japanese empire, and a cornerstone (basecamp) of US counter-communist operations. (Pennycook, 2020, p. 228)

In relation to this argument, it should be noted that, as mentioned in the quotation above, Japan has never been unrelated to the current circumstances of the Philippines. The noteworthy relations between the two

296 

M. Tajima

countries started with Japan’s invasion and occupation of the Philippines during the Pacific War, followed by the former’s participation in the postwar development schemes in the latter in the 1960s; the flourishing of sex tourism and international marriages similarly matter (Tajima, 2018a, 2018b). What is more, almost all those events and trends have promoted the disparity between Japan and the Philippines, causing Japanese people to position Filipinos in particular ways (e.g., Ogaya, 2016; Suzuki, 2000). In this respect, it can be argued that what is occurring in Japan’s online eikaiwa industry is an embodiment of the Philippines’ marketing its citizens as well as the unequal power relations between the two countries. For example, the construction of the teachers as speakers of American English through providers’ advertising is in line with the trend that the Philippines positions its call center workers and overseas workers as skillful users of English. However, according to Lorente and Tupas (2014), those Filipino workers’ English is often viewed in reality as “affordable” rather than “authentic.” Tupas and Salonga (2016) similarly point out that “cheap transnational Filipino labor” is used “through a marketable and globally comprehensible English for the accumulation of new capital” (p. 377), resulting in “material and symbolic inequalities” (p. 378) among not only varieties of English but also speakers of the varieties. This reality corresponds closely with the learners’ challenge discussed in the previous section, namely the counter-positioning of the Filipino teachers as those who do not speak chantoshita kireina eigo. In this counter-­positioning, the legitimacy of the English spoken by the teachers is questioned in the same way as transnational Filipinos’ English is regarded as “inauthentic” (Lorente & Tupas, 2014; Tupas & Salonga, 2016). In addition, given the unequal power relations between Japan and the Philippines, the counter-positioning of the teachers by the learners can also be interpreted as a manifestation of existing racial stereotypes about Filipinos that have been perpetuated within Japanese society for a long time (e.g., Ogaya, 2016; Suzuki, 2000). Thus, the discursive positioning of the Philippines and Filipino teachers is not only site-specific (specific to the online eikaiwa industry) but also multi-sited (circulating in various other sites, such as the call center industry). Likewise, the seemingly site-specific positioning in the online eikaiwa industry is entangled with how Filipinos have been viewed in

15  Discursive Positioning of the Philippines and Filipino… 

297

Japanese society as a whole. In this respect, an argument could be made that my inquiry into the discursive positioning of the Philippines and Filipino teachers is not merely a particular study in a particular field. Although this chapter helps enrich research on identity negotiation processes in language education, it could also begin to elucidate the entire cultural-politics and socio-politics of the interrelationship between Japan and the Philippines in the contemporary world.

Notes 1. To indicate that the definition of “native speakers” is complicated and political, I enclosed the term in quotation marks. Hereafter, I stop this practice to avoid clumsiness despite my awareness of difficulties that may stem from this decision. 2. I use these two providers’ names as they are because their websites are open to the public online. 3. The terms chantoshita, kireina, and  eigo are Japanese words, indicating “proper,” “clear,” and “English” respectively. However, the first two modifiers (chantoshita and kireina) are tinged with cultural-political connotations when they collocate with  the  last noun (eigo). Therefore, I  wrote these Japanese modifiers in romaji when each of them was used together with  the  noun eigo. While analyzing and  discussing my data, I  explain the  difficulty of  making word-for-word translations of  the  modifiers in further detail and provide their multifaceted meanings. 4. The online platform provides information on reviewers’ occupations, ages, and genders, as filled out voluntarily by them.

References Appleby, R. (2014). Men and masculinities in global English language teaching. Palgrave Macmillan. Bailey, K. (2007). Akogare, ideology, and ‘charisma man’ mythology: Reflections on ethnographic research in English language schools in Japan. Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, 14(5), 585–608. https://doi. org/10.1080/09663690701562438

298 

M. Tajima

Cameron, D. (2005). Communication and commodification: Global economic change in sociolinguistic perspective. In G.  Erreygers & G.  Jacobs (Eds.), Language, communication, and the economy (pp. 9–23). John Benjamins. Canagarajah, A.  S. (1999). Resisting linguistic imperialism in English teaching. Oxford University Press. Diamond Weekly. (2014, January 11). Daiyamondo Sha. Djonov, E., & Zhao, S. (2014). From multimodal to critical multimodal studies through popular discourse. In E. Djonov & S. Zhao (Eds.), Critical multimodal studies of popular discourse (pp. 1–14). Routledge. Fairclough, N. (2001). Language and power (2nd ed.). Longman. Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972–1977 (G, Colin, Trans.). Pantheon Books. Gun Gun Eikaiwa. (2017). http://www.gge.co.jp/ Hayes, B. E. (2013). Hiring criteria for Japanese university English-teaching faculty. In S.  A. Houghton & D.  J. Rivers (Eds.), Native-speakerism in Japan: Intergroup dynamics in foreign language education (pp.  132–146). Multilingual Matters. Heller, M. (2010). The commodification of language. Annual Review of Anthropology, 39, 101–114. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.012809.104951 Hooper, D., & Hashimoto, N. (Eds.). (2020). Teacher narratives from the eikaiwa classroom: Moving beyond “McEnglish.”. Candlin & Mynard ePublishing. Kroskrity, P. V. (2004). Language ideologies. In A. Duranti (Ed.), A companion to linguistic anthropology (pp. 496–517). Blackwell. Kubota, R. (2002). The impact of globalization on language teaching in Japan. In D.  Block & D.  Cameron (Eds.), Globalization and language teaching (pp. 13–28). Routledge. Kubota, R. (2011). Questioning linguistic instrumentalism: English, neoliberalism, and language tests in Japan. Linguistics and Education, 22(3), 248–260. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2011.02.002 Kubota, R., & Fujimoto, D. (2013). Racialized native speakers: Voices of Japanese American English language professionals. In S.  A. Houghton & D. J. Rivers (Eds.), Native-speakerism in Japan: Intergroup dynamics in foreign language education (pp. 196–206). Multilingual Matters. Kubota, R., & Miller, E. R. (2017). Re-examining and re-envisioning criticality in language studies: Theories and praxis. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 14(2–3), 129–157. https://doi.org/10.1080/15427587.2017.1290500

15  Discursive Positioning of the Philippines and Filipino… 

299

Lorente, B. P., & Tupas, T. R. F. (2014). (Un)emancipatory hybridity: Selling English in an unequal world. In R. Rubdy & L. Alsagoff (Eds.), The global-­ local interface and hybridity: Exploring language and identity (pp.  66–82). Multilingual Matters. Lummis, D. (1976). English conversation as ideology. In Y. Kurokawa (Ed.), Essays on language (pp. 1–26). Kirihara Shoten. Morales, N. J. (2020, March 23). Online tutors boosting incomes as demand surges due to coronavirus lockdowns. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-­ health-­coronavirus-­philippines-­educat/online-­tutors-­boosting-­incomesas-­demand-­surges-­due-­to-­coronavirus-­lockdowns-­idUSKBN21A0YC. Morris, A. (2015). A practical introduction to in-depth interviewing. Sage. Nagatomo, D.  H. (2016). Identity, gender and teaching English in Japan. Multilingual Matters. Nonaka, C. (2018). Transcending self and other through akogare (desire): The English language and the internationalization of higher education in Japan. Multilingual Matters. Nuske, K. (2019). Vehicle of erotic liberation of instrument of career survival? Japan’s ideologies of English as reflected in conversation school advertisements. Discourse, Context, and Media, 31, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. dcm.2019.100319 Ogaya, C. (2016). Idō wo ikiru: Firipin ijyûjosei to fukusû no mobiritî [Living in motion: Filipino migrant women and their multiple mobilities]. Yûshindo. Park, J. S.-Y. (2016). Language as pure potential. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 37(5), 453–466. https://doi.org/10.108 0/01434632.2015.1071824 Pennycook, A. (2020). Translingual entanglements of English. World Englishes, 39(2), 222–235. https://doi.org/10.1111/weng.12456 Piller, I., & Takahashi, K. (2006). A passion for English: Desire and the language market. In A. Pavlenko (Ed.), Bilingual minds: Emotional experience, expression and representation (pp. 59–83). Multilingual Matters. Rubin, H. J., & Rubin, I. S. (2012). Qualitative interviewing: The art of hearing data (3rd ed.). Sage. Simpson, W. (2018). Neoliberal fetishism: The language learner as homo œconomicus. Language and Intercultural Communication, 18(5), 520–532. https://doi.org/10.1080/14708477.2018.1501845 Simpson, W. (2020). Producing the eikaiwa English language lesson: A dialectical approach to the contradictions of commodity production. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 24(4), 514–531. https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12415

300 

M. Tajima

Suzuki, N. (2000). Between two shores: Transnational projects and Filipina wives in/from Japan. Women’s Studies International Forum, 23(4), 431–444. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-­5395(00)00111-­4 Tajima, M. (2018a). Engagements with English in Japan: Ideological constitutions of the language and its speakers (Doctoral dissertation). https://opus.lib.uts. edu.au/handle/10453/127892. Tajima, M. (2018b). Gendered constructions of Filipina teachers in Japan’s skype English conversation industry. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 22(1), 100–117. https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12272 Tajima, M. (2020). Engagement with English as a neoliberal endeavor: Reconsidering the notion of language learning. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 17(4), 296–315. https://doi.org/10.1080/15427587.2020.1739527 Takahashi, K. (2013). Language learning, gender and desire: Japanese women on the move. Multilingual Matters. Tenori Eigo. (2017). http://tenorieigo.com/ Tupas, T. R. F. (2008). Anatomies of linguistic commodification: The case of English in the Philippines vis-à-vis other languages in the multilingual marketplace. In P. K. W. Tan & R. Rubdy (Eds.), Language as commodity: Global structures, local marketplaces (pp. 89–105). Continuum. Tupas, R., & Salonga, A. (2016). Unequal Englishes in the Philippines. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 20(3), 367–381. https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12185 Wodak, R., & Meyer, M. (Eds.). (2009). Methods of critical discourse analysis (2nd ed.). Sage.

16 Framing, Ideology, and the Negotiation of Professional Identities Among Non-­Japanese EFL Teachers in Japan Robert J. Lowe

This chapter is concerned with the topic of professional identity, and in particular how the contextual discourses that influence the construction of professional identity among language teachers may reproduce dominant ideology within the field. To do so, I will present a frame analysis of ethnographic data from one specific professional context, mixing my own experiences working in this context with the recollections of three interviewees. Using a framework focused on ideology critique, this chapter aims to investigate how dominant ideology in the field of ELT influences the construction of professional identity, and how this in turn can be resisted. This study took place at the (pseudonymous) English Teaching Institute (ETI), a semi-public institution in Tokyo, which focuses on both language teaching and cultural exchange. It is part of a large and well-­ established global organization, and this gives it some level of prestige in comparison to many of the other language schools in the city. As well as

R. J. Lowe (*) Ochanomizu University, Tokyo, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Mielick et al. (eds.), Discourses of Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11988-0_16

301

302 

R. J. Lowe

conducting in-house classes, ETI has several contracts to conduct teaching, teacher training, and curriculum development projects with both universities and public schools. I was a part-time teacher at ETI for a number of years, and worked in a variety of different programs including teaching in-house classes and university courses. My three interviewees were all full-time employees during the period we were working together. The participants in this study were: Ian: A male teacher originally from Scotland who first came to Japan in the early 2000s, and was eventually hired by ETI to work on the team-teaching project. This was a project developed with junior high schools in a nearby city, in which each English class was assigned an ETI teacher to team-teach with the regular school teacher. He was later tasked with teacher training and finally promoted into a managerial post before leaving ETI for a university position. Paul: A male teacher from England who, after completing a CELTA course (the Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages offered by Cambridge ESOL), worked in a variety of countries before settling in Japan. After working for a while as a teacher of general classes, Paul was given the opportunity to work on university contracts, and finally moved into a more management-focused position. He finally left ETI to pursue full-time university employment. John: A male teacher from England who came to Japan following his CELTA training. After joining ETI he initially worked on business English courses, both in-house and on company premises. He later joined the team-teaching project, along with Ian, and remained in that position for around three years. After completing his master’s degree, John left ETI in order to seek work in universities.

As with Paul and John, I am also a male teacher from England, who came to Japan following a CELTA course. After working in conversation schools, I took up part-time positions at several universities, and also at ETI. I taught a range of courses for the institute, including on-site business, general English, and exam preparation classes, as well as off-site courses at universities and colleges. I mostly left ETI for full-time

16  Framing, Ideology, and the Negotiation of Professional… 

303

university work in 2012, though I taught occasional courses on a parttime basis for a little while after. For all of the participants, myself included, working in this context had an important impact on how we constructed our professional identities, particularly in relation to our understandings of the Japanese education system, and our role within it. The experiences described in this chapter happened several years ago, and are presented through the memories and recollections of the participants. As such, while I describe this as ethnographic data, it is not strictly speaking an ethnography, as the data were collected some years after the events in question. However, it would also be inaccurate to call this an interview study, or a narrative study, as I work with a variety of different data sources including artifacts (in the form of teaching materials) collected at the time I was employed at ETI, though most of the data presented in this study are drawn from my interviews. For this reason, I choose to label this as an  ethnographic  study, though  an unconventional and retrospective one.

A Model for Critical Research While there are several theoretical  frameworks used by critical applied linguists, I base my approach to analysis in this chapter on the early critical theory of Max Horkheimer, which is  in turn representative of a humanistic Marxism. For Horkheimer a critical research program must be specific to its social and historical epoch, and researchers must adapt their work to the particular context in which they are writing (Abromeit, 2011). This is a model of critical theory which sees the goal of social research as being to achieve some form of emancipatory social change, whereby the insights gained may contribute toward “man’s emancipation from slavery” (Horkheimer, 1937/1972, p.  246), with ‘slavery’ understood here as oppression by dominant social forces. A key step in this emancipatory process is ideology critique; that is, understanding how common beliefs in society can help to uphold structures of domination in which some people are privileged over others. This is a view of ideology as a set of beliefs created and reinforced to maintain the current social order. Before we can challenge the dominant social

304 

R. J. Lowe

order, we must first uncover and problematize the ideology which makes this order appear natural and commonsensical.

Frame Analysis and Ideology Critique The question of how to uncover ideology is one that has troubled theorists for some time. Approaches that have been used for this purpose include critical discourse analysis (Machin & Mayr, 2012) and critical grounded theory (Hadley, 2019). However, in this chapter I will employ the tool of frame analysis in analyzing data to uncover hidden ideology. The process of framing is one in which people employ their ideological resources in processes of meaning-making, the end result of which is a more-or-less standardized perceptual filter through which people can interpret their experiences and justify their actions (Lowe, 2020, p. 53). The concept of frames was most famously conceptualized by Goffman (1974), but my formulation of frame analysis is closer to (though not identical with) the way it has been employed by Feagin (2013) on racial framing and counterframing, and the framing perspective in social movement research. Social movement researchers examine how frames are used by social movements in order to mobilize participation in response to perceived injustices. Here, I borrow and adapt concepts and terms from this field of research to investigate how framing can be used to legitimate dominant and subordinate perspectives in society, and show how frames are constructed from different strands of ideology in order to accomplish social goals of either domination (on the part of a dominant group) or resistance (on the part of a subjugated group). I refer to these as master frames and counter frames, respectively, adapting terminology from Snow (2004). On this view, frames are partially agentive, in the sense that they can be (re)constructed to motivate action and thus achieve goals. Social movement researchers such as Snow and Benford (2000) suggest that while ideology cannot be directly or empirically observed, framing can. Thus, I have elsewhere suggested that for researchers hoping to uncover hidden or normalized ideology, it may be possible to start by observing the frames being used to analyze events and experiences, break this framing down into its constituent discourses, and then work backward to identify the

16  Framing, Ideology, and the Negotiation of Professional… 

305

underlying ideology which is being drawn on in the construction of these frames. In order to understand the framing participants are employing, this chapter presents at times extensive data abstracts, so as to capture the complexity of their identity shifts. Frame analysis has commonalities with the critical discourse analysis approach of writers such as Fairclough (2010), but is distinguished by its focus on ethnographic data beyond texts, and can thus be placed closer to what Block (2018) calls “critical discourse studies” (p. 23). For a detailed methodological description of the frame analysis approach, see Lowe (2021). There is a subtle balance here between structure and agency. One major critique of the ‘false consciousness’ view of ideology used in critical theory is that it denies people agency. Rather than being conscious actors, they are seen as deluded; as if under a spell cast by a dominant class. However, a consideration of framing allows us to balance these two perspectives. Master frames (in the sense used here) serve the interests of dominant powers, and thus are structural in the sense that they influence public thought in ways people may not be aware of. However, counter-­ frames can also be constructed by subjugated groups as part of a conscious resistance to this master frame, and can present new and challenging perspectives on the issues in question. A successful counter-frame can eventually lead to a frame transformation  (another term adapted from social movement research), in which the master frame itself is shifted by this insurgent power. Such a shift can even lead to a change in the underlying ideology. In this sense, a frame analysis approach (Lowe, 2021) to ideology critique can retain an understanding of the structural force of dominant ideology while also allowing for the disruptive agency of social actors in challenging and transforming the ideology.

Ideology and Professional Identity Work on identity has generally drawn on either structuralist or poststructuralist theory (Block, 2007; McEntee-Atalianis, 2019), depending on the weight placed by the analyst on the structural influence of society on the individual, and the possibility of individual agency breaking through this influence. In this chapter, I would like to position

306 

R. J. Lowe

the concept of identity somewhere between these two poles. As noted above, the framing perspective I adopt here allows for an analysis of the complex interplay between structure and agency. From a structural perspective, I consider the formation of professional identity to be assimilation into a set of beliefs or attributes that are already well established within a field. However, this process occurs in dialogue with the “highly agentive act of investment in, or identification with, already available subject positions” (Gray & Morton, 2018, p.  10). In other words, the work of identity formation is an ongoing negotiation between structure (identifiable through master framing) and agency (identifiable through counter-framing). This account suggests that within a particular field, the formation of professional identities may be strongly influenced by the dominant ideology of that field, and that professional training may in turn reinforce that dominant ideology. As such, a critical investigation (of the type outlined above) into this topic must take into account the role ideology plays in shaping and influencing a person’s identity, while also examining how subjects can start to resist that dominant ideology through a process of counter-framing. By gaining an understanding of these processes, it may be possible to challenge or subvert this dominant ideology, and thus begin to realize emancipatory change. While I mentioned poststructuralism earlier, as this is the framework most referenced in accounts of identity in ELT, I am aware of the difficulties of reconciling the broadly Marxist approach to ideology adopted here with poststructuralist perspectives. In  response to this, I would simply say that the relationship between structure and agency is not wholly deterministic. As Marx (1852/2019) says: “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past” (p. 480). In other words, a dominant ideology is inherited, and strongly influences the environments in which our identities form. However, this does not prevent us from exercising agency in challenging and transforming the structure. I believe a framing perspective allows for an exploration of this relationship between the two. For myself and the participants in this study, working at ETI was a source of pride. As Paul put it, this was seen as “the pinnacle of language

16  Framing, Ideology, and the Negotiation of Professional… 

307

teaching”, and so it is little wonder that the ideology of ETI would feed into our constructions of our professional identities. In the sections that follow, I will first identify the master frame of ETI in relation to the Japanese education system, and then show how this influenced the teachers’ developing professional identities. This will be accompanied by examples from my data which illustrate both this framing, and the process of identity formation which it influenced. Following this, I will provide an example of the agentive process of counter-framing in order to highlight the complex negotiation between structure and agency in the formation of these teachers’ identities.

 aster-Framing: The Japanese National M Character, the Failures of Japanese Education, and the Role of ETI The framing of ETI was comprised of a number of prominent discourses which determined how the Japanese people and the Japanese education system were perceived. Due to space constraints, I will focus here on just two of the most salient discourses, as they are interconnected and highly relevant to the role that ETI was considered to play in relation to the Japanese education system. The first of these discourses regarded the Japanese national character. During my time working in ETI, there was a general framing of Japanese students as shy or passive (a common stereotype of Asian students; see Liu, 1998). As one example, I taught general English to a class comprised entirely of Japanese students. After several months, a Saudi Arabian student joined the class, and in preparation for this I was given a short impromptu meeting with the ETI managers who explained that I would have to be very careful in how to manage my classes, because students from the Middle East are supposedly far more assertive than Japanese students, and the rest of the class would most likely be intimidated by their presence. It was suggested I would have to really encourage participation among the class members, because otherwise the Japanese students would be unlikely to speak. This framing was also mentioned by

308 

R. J. Lowe

my participants. For example, Paul noted that after teaching some Japanese students in Australia he had been left with a similar impression, and that this was reinforced by ETI management when he arrived in Japan: Paul: I remember saying in the interview for the Tokyo job that that was the kind of impression that I had of Japanese students. And I remember the interviewer saying, “Yeah, that’s exactly how it is.” I don’t think … It’s hard to know now what I knew then. Do you know what I mean? But I think going in, we were really focused on teaching communicatively, and improving students’ communicative skills.

Paul here echoes a common sentiment found among my participants. While working at ETI, the Japanese were framed as having a shy, passive, and uncommunicative national character, which meant that the role of ETI and its staff was to promote communicative skills and encourage classroom interaction. A second, related, discourse that figured heavily in how ETI teachers framed their practices concerned educational technology, and ETIs relationship to the Japanese education system. The educational technology of communicative language teaching (CLT), and the ability of ETI to deliver classes using this approach was considered one of their main strengths, and was a selling point for university and business contracts. This was very much a component of my time working in ETI, with the lesson plans featuring large amounts of communication through pair-­ practice and discussion-based activities. The textbooks used for courses were of the kind widely used around the world, with titles such as Business Advantage and English Plus. Inside were neatly spaced-out units with the familiar pattern of warming up exercises, reading passages, discussion topics, and a grammar ‘focus’. When teaching on university contracts, a premium was placed on providing communicative activities for students, as this was the kind of learning environment that they (supposedly) would otherwise not be exposed to. In other words, the Japanese education system was framed as uncommunicative and as using inappropriate educational technology, and this in turn was used to justify and rationalize the practices of ETI.

16  Framing, Ideology, and the Negotiation of Professional… 

309

This framing was commonly described by my participants. For example, Ian referenced this with regard to how the Team-Teaching Project was promoted: Ian: The idea that, “We teach English properly.” It’s communicative. (…) You don’t get communicative language teaching in Japanese schools. Your children will not learn English unless there is some kind of communicative language teaching going on. Here we are to do that for you. A gross simplification, but ETI can be accused of that. And there is some truth in that I think, although it’s a bit more nuanced than that.

In this extract, we see clear evidence of this framing around the ‘correctness’ of communicative language teaching, and the inadequacy of Japanese schooling. During his time in ETI, Ian was aware of, and believed, the common discourse that Japanese language lessons are not centered around a communicative approach, and are therefore inherently inferior to classes with a CLT focus. ETI, by contrast, was seen as an exemplar of the CLT approach, and was thus able to sell itself as teaching English ‘properly’. This was also a point referenced by John in regard to the team-teaching program: Rob: …Why did the schools (…) pay for this service from ETI? What were they thinking they could get that they couldn’t get from their regular teachers? John: Well, I guess it’s the same with any ALTs  (Assistant Language Teachers). I guess they thought they were getting communicative classes, and they were getting authentic native speaker people, which I guess they saw themselves as not being.

John here reinforces the point made by Ian, that the framing of ETI as offering expertise in communicative teaching allowed for access to a particular market within the local education system. This framing of Japanese English classes as uncommunicative, and ETI as providing ‘correct’ teaching approaches allowed ETI to legitimate its dominant position within the industry, and thus to win contracts through its supposed authority in providing communicative methods. Paul made the same point rather

310 

R. J. Lowe

succinctly, stating that “the idea was that we’re going in there to help them to speak. Because they need this. This is what’s lacking.” The master frame of ETI can thus be summarized quite simply through the following two points: • The Japanese are uncommunicative, passive, and reticent in class, and the Japanese education system is inadequate for not providing a sufficiently communicative focus. • ETI’s services are thus necessary for correcting the deficiencies of the Japanese education system.

 he Influence of This Frame on Teachers’ T Professional Identity With regard to teacher identity, statements from my interviewees seem to indicate that this master framing influenced them quite strongly. As Ian stated when asked what he saw as his role within the team-teaching program: Ian: I think it very much depended on the teacher I was working with. So, you would have a team teacher, a Japanese team teacher, who you worked very closely with. (…) I was with very experienced Japanese English teachers at first. And they basically said, “Okay, we want you to do this. Can you do this? And we want you to do that.” Then as I gained more confidence and experience, I would negotiate a bit more. I would feel that my role there was to… I saw the purpose of the Team-Teaching Project was to also give the students the opportunity to learn English communicatively as well as learn the Japanese curriculum in terms of English. So that was part of my role, was part of that negotiation with the team teacher. And then as I got more experienced, I worked with less experienced teachers so I would actually almost mentor them in how to teach English a bit more communicatively, how to have group work and how to have speaking and how to set up speaking activities in class and that kind of thing. Actually, I ended up getting a lot of respect from other Japanese teachers as somebody who can almost

16  Framing, Ideology, and the Negotiation of Professional… 

311

train them in how to do these things, which I think are the things they say that they want to happen in junior high school and high school classes. They explicitly state that they want English classes to be taught in English, and back when I started on the Team Teaching Project that was not happening, anecdotally that was not happening that often I don’t think. I think it happens more now. So, it was kind of bringing and showing the ways of teaching in English, not necessarily CLT but teaching in English.

For Ian, it seems that his initial inclination to follow the instructions of the more experienced Japanese teachers eventually gave way to a greater level of confidence in his own role as expert and mentor. He was soon giving advice on how to teach English communicatively, and “bringing and showing” the ways of teaching English in English. The language of “bringing” was echoed by John, in his description of his role in in the project: John: At the beginning, I totally went with it, and I kind of supported it, I guess. I thought it was completely valid, and I felt that the communicative lessons that we were bringing were really good, and were high quality, and they were something different that the students weren’t getting in their other classes. I felt pretty proud of that.

This development of professional identity is difficult to separate from the framing outlined earlier, in which the purported communicative expertise of ETI was a necessary interjection into the supposedly non-­ communicative (and thus unsatisfactory) lessons in the school. The notion of ‘bringing’ CLT to these schools is rather telling, as it shows how ETI was framed as an outside expert acting as a beneficiary to the local education system (a point also highlighted by Kumaravadivelu, 2012). The statements from Ian and John regarding their pride and the respect they received from their Japanese colleagues seem to indicate that this framing on an institutional level also began to influence their professional identities in a fundamental way, particularly with regard to how they saw themselves and their role in relation to the Japanese education system. They appear to have seen themselves as outside experts whose job was to

312 

R. J. Lowe

impart communicative methods to the Japanese teachers with whom they were working, and to provide ‘superior’ CLT-based lessons for the students. The same ideology appears to have influenced Paul, who was working at the university level on outsourced contracts: Paul:  I think going in, we were really focused on teaching communicatively, and improving students’ communicative skills. There was often discussion skills, presentation skills. So, I guess my assumption or what I was told was that this is what they needed for university, that they didn’t have … They hadn’t been taught how to speak at school. They weren’t very good at that kind of thing. (…) I think that project probably informed the beliefs that I had as well, because why else would somewhere in Tokyo decide to hire a company to help teach the students how to speak? I think that was probably something that played into that assumption.

As with the team-teaching projects, the university projects were framed as an opportunity to develop the students’ speaking skills, as this was something that had supposedly not been sufficiently addressed in their schooling. As with the other two participants, this master framing seems to have had an influence on Paul’s professional identity, as he explicitly notes when stating how this understanding of the role of ETI “informed the beliefs” he held. The framing outlined here has a clear ideological focus, articulated plainly by John: John: The communicative way was definitely pushed as the best way to teach English. I don’t know, it almost felt like we were saying, “We’re doing them a favor. We’re relieving these poor souls from their dull, soulless existence with our fun, communicative classes.” You almost felt like when you walked into the class that you were almost giving the students a break, if you know what I mean.

The Japanese schooling system was framed as teaching English in an outdated, non-communicative way, and the role of ETI was in turn framed as necessary to ‘bring’ superior CLT methodology to the schools, universities, and students. For the teachers, this framing seems to have

16  Framing, Ideology, and the Negotiation of Professional… 

313

influenced their professional identities, in that they came to position themselves as experts armed with a communicative methodology, whose role was ‘relieving’ students from their uncommunicative lessons and ‘bringing and showing the ways of teaching English’ to the teachers. They thus saw themselves as positive agents of change, reproducing discourses of local deficit which Jenks (2017) has related to a “white savourist” attitude in the Korean context. This was most explicitly vocalized by Ian, who describes moving from a perception of himself as a novice to an expert, gradually gaining confidence in his role as an importer of superior teaching methodology to the schools.

Strands of Ideology By examining the discourses that make up this framing, it is possible to detect the ideological presuppositions on which they are based. Looking at these two prominent discourses, there is an unmistakable connection to the ideology of native-speakerism, which defines Western institutions and their ‘native speaker’ representatives as having the most worthwhile perspective on language teaching (Holliday, 2005). There is also an element of linguistic imperialism here, if we consider the imposition of communicative methods to be a form of cultural imperialism (Phillipson, 1992; Canagarajah, 1999). While my participants did not mention some of the more obvious surface-level manifestations of these ideologies, such as the imposition of Western models of English or the celebration of the (so-called) ‘native speaker’, the way in which ETI framed its own practices in relation to the Japanese education system contains identifiable traces of educational and cultural chauvinism. This was clearly not intentional or malicious, and at the time it is apparent that the teachers were unaware of these attitudes. However, this is in the nature of the ideology, and as will be shown in the next section, through processes of reframing the participants began to gain an understanding of these attitudes, leading eventually to shifts in their professional identities.

314 

R. J. Lowe

Counter-Framing: Doubt and Resistance This master frame had a strong influence on the professional identities of the teachers who started to align themselves with these values. However, there was also evidence of resistance to this framing, and of the creation of counter-frames on the part of the teachers, which helped them to come to new and contrary understandings of both their roles and that of ETI. Some of these shifts appear to have taken place during their time working at the institute, while some occurred later. For both Paul and Ian, the main element which helped them to construct a counter-frame was a greater level of practical engagement with the realities of the Japanese education system. For example, Paul’s work with public school teachers demonstrated that the kind of communicative focus he had previously thought omitted for reasons of cultural deficiency was actually impractical given the realities of the system: Paul: My attitude has changed. Particularly in the past couple of years, because I’ve actually got experience of working as a freelance teacher for [a major university press], and I’m working quite a lot with junior high school and high school teachers. And in particular, I’m working with two very closely. I’m talking to them every couple of weeks about their lessons. I don’t know how to explain it. But I think that if I was in charge of 50 students in a classroom, I’m not sure that I’d … The challenges that they face and the pressures from the entrance exams and from, I guess, parents as well. Because that seems to be something that the teachers are very conscious of. And from their managers as well. It all ties into the fact that it’s not always possible to focus on little speaking activities when the grammar’s going to be on the test.

Similarly, Ian was forced to reconsider his beliefs along the same lines after coming to understand his daughters’ experience with the Japanese education system: Ian: My daughter’s in first year now, so I’m going to see what happens next year. But I felt they started to get worn down by the pressure of… They feel the pressure of having to get into a good high school coming, and all the kind of academic hoops that they have to jump

16  Framing, Ideology, and the Negotiation of Professional… 

315

through for that. So I think I was on board, and maybe to an extent still am on board with a lot of the stuff about communicative language teaching. However, I would never say that the communicative language teaching is the only way that the children can actually learn to use English or anything like that.

Needless to say, neither of these counter-framings are a ringing endorsement of the Japanese education system. However, what they do represent is a shift away from a belief that the Japanese education system is inherently problematic due to a lack of understanding of the benefits of communicative teaching, and toward an understanding that Japanese English teachers are making rational and well-informed choices about what is in the best interests of their students given the constraints of the system in which they teach. This counter-framing gives a more positive, and less culturally chauvinistic understanding of the teachers’ relationship to their working context. A second influence on counter-framing was caused by feelings of disenchantment with the constraints of the ‘professional foreigner’ subject position that the ETI framing assumed teachers would adopt. This was explained by John, when discussing how his beliefs had changed over time, and what had influenced this change in attitude: John: Maybe part of it was becoming older. Without wishing to sound like Bruce Willis, “I’m too old for this shit,” approach. Kind of playing the part of the fun westerner, maybe part of that was it. Part of it was just academic inquiry, which is a really boring way to go about things. But I guess part of it was that. But that didn’t come until quite a lot later. Yeah. (…) But again, towards the end, I got kind of tired of it, and I kind of felt slightly … Not objectified, but slightly essentialized as playing the British card (…) So I think that influenced how I saw myself as a teacher in the beginning, because I was really happy to be back in the world of Britain and British English. Then afterwards, I think I reacted against it, because I felt that way. (…) I think that kind of made me a much more evenhanded teacher, I guess, much more open to not only whatever, British and American English, but different kinds of world English, and things like that. I became interested in just … I think, part of that was a reaction against that essentialization, which I willingly embraced in the beginning.

316 

R. J. Lowe

For John, the restrictive role that ETI forced him to play (see also Miyazato, 2009; Hashimoto, 2013) caused him to start questioning the validity of the ETI framing. This made him open to different varieties of English, and his academic explorations of the critical literature in ELT led him to explicitly question the assumption that communicative teaching methods are inherently superior to those used in Japanese schools. He mentioned this explicitly when talking about the teacher training workshops with which he was involved: John: I found myself very wary of [the workshops] at the end. The idea that … Often it was new teachers, as well, espousing our wisdom to these teachers that had often been teaching for 30 or 40 years, and knew exactly what they were doing. (…) Just the communicative bias, just the arrogance of western privilege. Yeah. It wasn’t based on anything, because I didn’t see their lessons. I had no idea what they did in their classes. So how could I judge? But yeah, I felt that I was a better teacher, and that they could learn a lot from me.

To a much greater extent than Paul or Ian, John adopted an explicitly critical approach following his departure from ETI. For all three of the participants, and myself, experiences with the realities of the Japanese education system, and a growing understanding of our place within it, led to a gradual counter-framing of the practices of ETI and its relationship to Japanese English teaching. While the master framing of ETI initially led us to see ourselves as experts responsible for bringing communicative approaches to Japan, and thereby ‘enlightening’ Japanese teachers and students (a common phenomenon; see Bax, 2003), this process of counter-framing allowed for shifts in our professional identities into becoming more critical teachers, working within the system rather than imposing our beliefs from the outside. However, these identities are always under negotiation, and the ideology of ETI has a lingering influence. As John explained when asked whether his experiences at ETI still influence his identity as a teacher: John: Oh, I’m sure they do. I’m sure they do. That was where I kind of cut my teeth in materials development. I learned from the people that were there, and now, when I make my own materials now,

16  Framing, Ideology, and the Negotiation of Professional… 

317

which I do for pretty much every single class I teach at universities, I’m totally influenced by the way that the lessons are constructed, and the kind of activities that I include in my lesson plans, which all came from my time at ETI.

Conclusion In this chapter I have used a frame analysis approach in an attempt to uncover the hidden ideology of one particular ELT institute, and how this ideology influenced the professional identity of teachers working within it. Through an examination of the ways in which the English Teaching Institute framed the Japanese people, the Japanese education system, and its own practices in relation to these, it was possible to detect  the ideologies of native-speakerism and linguistic imperialism influencing this framing. This influence also clearly extended into the professional identities of the teachers, who seemed to take on the mantle of being ambassadors of communicative teaching, under the belief that this was something the Japanese needed instruction in. However, the data also pointed toward ways in which the participants had begun to produce counter-frames based on deeper and more critical engagement with, and understanding of, the Japanese education system. This is a process that took place over the time they worked in ETI, and for each participant, their views appear to have crystallized upon reflection after leaving the institute. This led to transformations in their professional identities, away from the culturally chauvinistic and toward the critically reflexive. This small-scale study provides an example of how dominant ideology can influence the professional identities of teachers, and how teachers can resist that ideology. This study is limited to a few participants who were all white, male, and British, and it would be interesting for future research to focus on a more diverse group of informants. Nevertheless, in this case the shared background of the participants acts as a complement to the near-homogeneity of the research setting itself, and thus serves to amplify the shared ideological assumptions uncovered in this chapter. This study also highlights the utility of frame analysis for this form of nuanced ideology critique, and thus points toward potentially emancipatory avenues for the profession.

318 

R. J. Lowe

References Abromeit, J. (2011). Max Horkheimer and the foundations of the Frankfurt school. Cambridge University Press. Bax, S. (2003). The end of CLT: A context approach to language teaching. ELT Journal, 57(3), 278–287. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/57.3.278 Block, D. (2007). Second language identities. Continuum. Block, D. (2018). Sociolinguistics and political economy: Neoliberalism, inequality, and social class. Bloomsbury. Canagarajah, A.  S. (1999). Resisting linguistic imperialism in English teaching. Oxford University Press. Fairclough, N. (2010). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. Routledge. Feagin, J.  R. (2013). The white racial frame: Centuries of racial framing and counter-­framing (2nd ed.). Routledge. Goffman, E. (1974). Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. Northeastern University Press. Gray, J., & Morton, T. (2018). Social interaction and English language teacher identity. Edinburgh University Press. Hadley, G. (2019). Critical grounded theory. In T. Bryant & K. Charmaz (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of current developments in grounded theory (pp. 564–592). SAGE Publications. Hashimoto, K. (2013). The construction of the ‘native speaker’ in Japan’s educational policies for TEFL. In S. Houghton & D. J. Rivers (Eds.), Native-­ speakerism in Japan: Intergroup dynamics in foreign language education (pp. 159–168). Multilingual Matters. Holliday, A. (2005). The struggle to teach English as an international language. Oxford University Press. Horkheimer, M. (1937/1972). Traditional and critical theory. In M. Horkheimer (Ed.), Critical theory: Selected essays. Herder and Herder. Jenks, C. (2017). Race and ethnicity in English language teaching: Korea in focus. Multilingual Matters. Kumaravadivelu, B. (2012). Language teacher education for a global society: A modular model for knowing, analyzing, recognizing, doing, and seeing. Routledge. Liu, D. (1998). Ethnocentrism in TESOL: Teacher education and the neglected needs of international TESOL students. ELT Journal, 52(1), 3–10. https:// doi.org/10.1093/elt/52.1.3

16  Framing, Ideology, and the Negotiation of Professional… 

319

Lowe, R. J. (2020). Uncovering ideology in English language teaching: Identifying the ‘native speaker’ frame. Springer. Lowe, R. J. (2021). Frame analysis in critical ethnography: Applications for ELT research. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 34(3), 307–320. https://doi. org/10.1080/07908318.2020.1858851 Machin, D., & Mayr, A. (2012). How to do critical discourse analysis. Sage. Marx, K. (1852/2019). The eighteenth brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. In D. Fernbach & A. Tariq (Eds.), The political writings (pp. 477–583). Verso. McEntee-Atalianis, L. (2019). Identity in applied linguistics research. Bloomsbury. Miyazato, K. (2009). Power-sharing between NS and NNS teachers: Linguistically powerful AETs vs. culturally powerful JTEs. JALT Journal, 31(1), 35–62. https://doi.org/10.37546/JALTJJ31.1-­2 Phillipson, R. (1992). Linguistic imperialism. Oxford University Press. Snow, D. (2004). Framing processes, ideology, and discursive fields. In D. Snow, S.  Soule, & H.  Kriesi (Eds.), The Blackwell companion to social movements (pp. 380–412). Blackwell Publishing. Snow, D., & Benford, R. (2000). Clarifying the relationship between framing and ideology in the study of social movements: A comment on Oliver and Johnston. Mobilization: An International Quarterly, 5(1), 55–60. https://doi. org/10.17813/maiq.5.1.976335015g30u5j9

17 Emotion and Identity: The Impact of English-Only Policies on Japanese English Teachers in Japan Luke Lawrence

Despite the fact that an English-only approach to English Language Teaching (ELT) first began to take hold of the industry in the 1970s as an extension of ideologies surrounding Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), the concept and practice of English-only classes have been very slow in proliferating and diffusing around the globe. Although English as a medium of instruction (EMI) has been taken up enthusiastically in a number of English as a Second Language (ESL) and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) content lesson settings (see Hino, 2017 for case studies of EMI approaches in Japan), the same cannot be said to be true of EFL language learning contexts. This chapter focuses exclusively on the latter and this distinction should be borne in mind throughout the chapter. Studies thus far that have investigated the impact of English-only policies on teachers in the Japanese context have largely concentrated on the practical possibilities of implementing English-only in the classroom (Tahira, 2012) or the sociocognitive impact in terms of language anxiety L. Lawrence (*) Toyo University, Tokyo, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Mielick et al. (eds.), Discourses of Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11988-0_17

321

322 

L. Lawrence

and confidence in carrying out the policy (Machida, 2019; Reed, 2020). This study aims to move away from the sociocognitive into the sociocultural realm by looking at the impact of English-only policies on the identities of Japanese Teachers of English (JTEs) across a broad range of educational contexts with varying strengths of policies.

Literature Review English-Only Policies English-only policies can be traced back to the Direct Method at the beginning of the twentieth century, which, in tandem with the success of the communicative approach in the 1970s, was spread around the world via Berlitz’s vast global network of private language schools (Kerr, 2016). The ideology behind English-only policies states that the best way to teach a language is in the target language and that any interference from the students’ L1 should be completely eliminated. I use the word “ideology” rather than practice to refer to this phenomenon because it is just that, a belief or an idea that has no basis in empirical pedagogical validity, what Phillipson (1992) refers to as the “monolingual fallacy.” Despite the lack of evidence for the efficacy of this approach, the idea that it represents a superior pedagogical technology (Holliday, 2006) has been widely adopted by the ELT industry worldwide and use of the students’ L1 and of translation has become taboo (Cook, 2010) (although, the recent work of translanguaging scholars [e.g. Garcia & Wei, 2014; Canagarajah, 2011] provide an interesting and welcome counterpoint to this approach). Despite the concept becoming widespread, until recently the practice has not kept pace with the ideology, and this is especially true in Japan where the Japanese version of the grammar translation method, yakudoku, is still in wide use in formal compulsory education (although see Lawrence, 2017 for a nuanced update of how yakudoku is carried out in practice). However, in recent years, a number of top-down policies have started to come into force across different educational contexts.

17  Emotion and Identity: The Impact of English-Only Policies… 

323

Private English conversation, or eikaiwa, schools represent not only the earliest adoption of English-only policies in Japan, but also the strictest implementation of them. Eikaiwa schools can be seen to offer a simulation of a “foreign” experience in the classroom (Kubota, 2011). In order to create the illusion of students entering into a foreign zone when they attend an eikaiwa lesson, strict English-only policies are in place in most schools. The high proliferation of both public and private universities in Japan means that the tertiary sector makes up a substantial number of the English language teachers in Japan. Policies vary according to each institution, but as more universities clamour to attract overseas students and be seen as “international,” English-only classes are becoming more common, although with perhaps less strict enforcement than in eikaiwa schools (Hashimoto, 2013). In the case of senior high schools in Japan, according to the declaration by the Ministry of Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), from 2013 “English classes should be conducted principally in English” (MEXT, 2011, p.  8) and since 2020 the same is also true of middle schools (MEXT, 2014). Although it is too early to assess the rate of compliance to this decree in middle schools, the evidence from senior high schools indicate that adherence to the policy is far from universal (Takegami, 2016). Reasons for this non-compliance include a lack of time (there is a perceived need to cover all aspects of the coursebook), lack of oral language skills by JTEs and the prioritising of grammar and exam skills over spoken communication skills (Takegami, 2016).

Teacher Identity: Emotion and Teacher Agency After focusing solely on the learner for a number of years, research on language teacher emotion has begun to gather pace in recent years (see recent edited volumes by Martinez Agudo, 2018 and Gkonou et  al., 2020). Although many studies are focused on the individual psychological aspect of “emotion labour” (Benesch, 2017) such as burnout and fatigue, research by Zemblyas (2003), Wolff and De Costa (2017) and De Costa et al. (2020) has also focused on the impact of teacher emotions

324 

L. Lawrence

on language teacher identity, which has helped to shift the conception of emotions from a psychological model to a social model. As with identities, emotions can be viewed as discursively constructed by the context and environment they are operating in and the social norms and values that the contexts represent (Benesch, 2017). Wolff and De Costa (2017) therefore advocate for an ecological approach to teacher identity and emotion that takes into account social, institutional and personal aspects. In her theoretical overview of language teacher agency (LTA), Kayi-­ Aydar (2019) takes a similarly ecological approach, defining LTA as “a language teacher’s intentional authority to make choices and act accordingly in his or her local context” (p. 15). For teachers that operate within top-down power structures, as is the case in this study, the impact on the sense of self when that authority is lacking can have profound consequences. Mandated policies around language use in the classroom can be seen as an oppressive impingement on the agency of many bilingual language teachers around the world that work in monolingual classrooms and speak the L1 of their students. A final key aspect to consider is the connection between teacher emotions and their ideologies and beliefs. Ideologies and beliefs can play into emotions, whilst at the same time, emotions can create and alter beliefs, a relationship that Barcelos and Ruohotie-Lyhty (2018) describe as “dynamic, interactive and reciprocal” (p. 116).

A Note on Reflexive Interviews Reflexive interviewing is an approach to research interviews that recognises and embraces the presence of the researcher or interviewer in the interview process (Mann, 2016). Instead of treating the research interview as a purely instrumental means of extracting data from participants, reflexive interviews see the interview as a socially situated speech event (Talmy, 2010) that is co-constructed between interviewer and interviewee. This is reflected not only in the interview process itself, but also in the representation of the data. Rather than limiting the data shown to the readers to eye-catching, one-line pull-quotes, a reflexive interview presents the build-up (and sometimes the aftermath) of the conversation in order to show the co-construction that led up to the quote in an

17  Emotion and Identity: The Impact of English-Only Policies… 

325

honest and transparent manner (Mann, 2016). With this in mind, the data presented below consists of lengthier extracts than may usually be expected of a chapter of this length.

Data Collection and Participants Teachers from each of the main sectors of ELT in Japan were interviewed for this research: two middle school teachers, two high school teachers, two university teachers and two eikaiwa teachers. All teachers were Japanese nationals. Participants were recruited using a combination of personal contacts and “snowball” recruiting, wherein an existing contact recommended a further participant that was previously unknown to the researcher. Once recruited, participants were asked to provide basic autobiographical details about themselves (personal profiles were not able to be obtained from the two high school teachers) and interview schedules of the planned questions and topics to be covered were sent. Although slightly different interview schedules were made for each different context, the questions for all participants elicited opinions on the affordances and drawbacks of using Japanese in the classroom as well the English-only policy in their institutions. After eliciting opinions on these matters, the interview questions went on to explore feelings of guilt and sense of restriction in terms of skills and identity. During eliciting opinions on these matters, it became clear that a sense of doing something illicit was a salient feeling shared by the participants. Thus, the interview questions went on to explore feelings of guilt at breaking the rules and sense of restriction in terms of skills and identity. Semi-structured reflexive interviews were conducted face to face with all teachers in English, although due to scheduling limitations, the high school teachers, Kensuke and Ryota, were interviewed together, as were the eikaiwa teachers, Nana and Yuki. This may have had some impact on the interview process and different answers may have been given if they had been interviewed separately. After the interviews were conducted, I sent follow-up e-mails to all participants with a copy of the interview schedule in order to give them the opportunity to add any points or retract any of the answers they had given in the interview. The participants are as follows (all names are pseudonyms) (Table 17.1):

326 

L. Lawrence

Table 17.1  List of participants for interviews Name (Pseudonym)

Teaching context

Gender

Years teaching

Midori

Middle school

Female

Akari Kensuke Ryota Shinji Mayuko Nana Yuki

Middle school High school High school University University Eikaiwa Eikaiwa

Female Male Male Male Female Female Female

6 years (+6 years as school manager) 13 years No data No data 21 years 3 years 5 years 4 years

As the interviews represent co-constructed dialogue between researcher and participants, I will also briefly state my own positionality here. I am a full-time teacher of English at the university level. I have lived and worked in Japan since 2002 and experienced teaching in all of the contexts represented in this study, with the exception of high school. My position as a white, male, “native speaker” academic researcher working at a public university in Japan may have had an influence on the behaviour and attitudes of the participants during interview discussions. I attempted to mitigate against any power imbalances by keeping the atmosphere friendly and conversational. All of the interviews were transcribed and coded for salient and recurring themes across the four contexts of teaching and between the eight participants. This was done first manually and then refined using NVivo software. My premise when beginning the research was merely to explore an area that I felt was underexplored in the literature surrounding teacher identity and emotions, as such, I did not set out with clear research questions in mind.

Data and Discussion Three main themes emerged from the interviews. These were: top-down pressure to maintain policies resulting in feelings of failure and pressure to conform to the rules, difficulty connecting with students and complex

17  Emotion and Identity: The Impact of English-Only Policies… 

327

emotions related to personal identity and the presentation of self in the classroom.

Theme 1: Pressure, Guilt and Failure The majority of teachers interviewed were generally positive about the ideology and concept of using only English in the classroom. Despite this, there was a recognition of pressure from their institution and other outside stakeholders that was seen as stressful, and feelings of guilt and failure arose. In this first exchange with two high school teachers, Kensuke and Ryota, we can see ambivalent feelings of failure, a sense of wrongdoing and uncertainty: Luke: So, the kind of follow-on question is, if you do use Japanese in lessons, do you feel guilty? Or don’t, you don’t care? Kensuke: No. Not really. Luke: Not really. (laughs) Kensuke: I know, I know I’m supposed to use English more. But, because for student, for te-, for teacher, for both of us, sometimes it much easier and convenient. And sometimes, I wonder, what’s the purpose of using English? You know? Just, just to understand something? If Japanese is the easier or best language to learn. But, why not? Luke: Sure. Kensuke: (laughs) Luke: So, you don’t feel guilty? Kensuke: Not really. Luke: No. And how about you? Ryota: I don’t feel guilty either, but I’m always asking myself, English? Japanese? Which is better at this moment? Yeah, asking this kind of question, always. Luke: Do you feel, not guilty, but do you feel as if you, if you’re using a lot of Japanese that you, you’re not, you could be doing it better? Do you feel like you’re kind of failing, if you haven’t used as much Japanese as you, as much English as you think you should? Kensuke: Yeah. I think so. Ryota: Hm.

328 

L. Lawrence

Kensuke: And, you know, every time, every April I, you know, I t-, I try to use English. (laughs) Luke: Sure. Kensuke: As much as possibleLuke: And thenKensuke: But, you know, the time goes and…Yeah. Ryota: Yes. Hm. Luke: And then, d-, at the end of the year, do you feel bad? Like, ah … Kensuke: Yes. Yes. Yes. Luke: I’ve failed again. Kensuke: Yeah.

In the case of the university teachers, the pressure was seen to come directly from the head of the department that had implemented the policy and again feelings of apprehensiveness at breaking the rules, and failure were nuanced: Luke: Um, if you do use Japanese in your lessons, do you feel guilty? Shinji: Uh, if my boss is present, yes. If not, in some degree, yes. Luke: Why? Shinji: Because I’m breaking the rules is one thing. Luke: Right, right. Shinji: I think. And- and in addition, I resort to Japanese [inaudible] skills maybe. Luke: Right. So, do you think you’ve kind of … you’re failing yourself as a teacher if you … You see it as a resortShinji: Yes… Quick fix. Luke: ... something to fall back on because you haven’t got the skills, at that particular time, to do completely in English. Shinji: Yes.

Mayuko offered a different, but related perspective on feelings associated with contravening the policy: Luke: Um, if you do use Japanese in classes, do you feel guilty about it? Mayuko: I, you mean like when I say Japanese words? Luke: Yeah. Mayuko: Grammar terms. Luke: Yeah.

17  Emotion and Identity: The Impact of English-Only Policies… 

329

Mayuko: Uh, guilty. Luke: Mmm. Mayuko: Guilty, like you mean like, I’m like-. Luke: You’re doing something you shouldn’t be doing or you feel you’re failing as a teacher because you didn’t do it, you know, in English. Mayuko: No. I don’t … I think it’s effective. Luke: Mmm. Mmm. Mayuko: But I will never do it if other teachers are watching me (laughs). Luke: Okay. So, in that sense, you don’t feel guilty but you, you know, that’s something you’re not supposed to do. Mayuko: Yeah.

For the eikaiwa teachers, who were teaching under the strictest policy, the pressure to conform to the policy was explicit as well as implicitly felt: Luke: If you do use Japanese in those kind of lessons (referring to grammar-­focused lessons), do you feel guilty? Nana: Mm-hmm (affirmative), a little bit but that’s what students need I believe. Luke: Right, they need… they need the Japanese explanation. Why do you feel guilty? Nana: Because of the policy. Luke: (laughs). Nana: Once I got told off. Luke: Do you… Oh, really? Nana: Yeah. Luke: That’s interesting. Nana: Yeah. Luke: By who? Nana: By another teacher (laughs). Luke: (laughs). Nana: Yeah. ……………………………………………. Luke: Uh, same question, do you feel guilty when you use Japanese? Yuki: I guess I used to when I was working with Nana in that school. But… And right now, when I teach high school students, I don’t know about guiltiness- guiltiness? Um, but I kind of have a

330 

L. Lawrence

doubt… I have doubts when I do that, like using both English and Japanese, I don’t know if… don’t know what’s the best. Luke: Right. Yuki: Or what’s good, what’s better. Luke: Right. Yuki: But I just can’t help speaking Japanese right now to those students. Luke: Mm-hmm (affirmative), right, but something in the back of your mind feels that maybe you shouldn’t be doing it. Yuki: Mm-hmm (affirmative), I don’t know. Luke: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yuki: Right, right.

Analysis As the extracts show, the participants by and large rejected my on-the-fly interpretation of having feelings of guilt; however there was a negative feeling of apprehensiveness that was the direct result of the existence of the policy itself. Regardless of the teachers’ personal feelings about teaching in English-only, the act of breaking the rules triggered feelings of guilt that they were doing something that they should not be doing. This held true across all teaching contexts irrespective of the strictness or formality of the policy. Nana’s admission that she was verbally remonstrated by another teacher for breaking the policy affirms the conception of what can be seen as a natural act and effective teaching strategy (teachers using their own language in the classroom) as something that is illicit. This was reinforced by Mayuko who expressed strong disagreement with the policy and stated that she did not follow it, but also admitted that she would not use Japanese if someone were watching her. The second part of this theme was the feeling of failure that not adhering to the policy engendered. Shinji characterised the use of English as a means of last resort that indicated his own perceived lack of skills. Similarly, Kensuke revealed that his use of English decreases as the semester progresses, which leads to negative feelings of failure as a teacher. Other participants revealed feelings of conflict within themselves as to the best course of action as evidenced by Ryota and Yuki’s replies (I don’t

17  Emotion and Identity: The Impact of English-Only Policies… 

331

know if… don’t know what’s the best). The fraught relationship between emotion and ideological beliefs is evident in this ambivalence.

Theme 2: Connecting with Students The second theme focuses on the impact of English-only policies on the teachers’ ability to forge meaningful connections with their students. One of the junior high school teachers, Midori, points out that teaching English is only one part of her job: Luke: How about in terms of identity? Midori: Identity? Luke: Yeah, because you are Japanese. That is your identity, so speaking Japanese is part of your identity. If you not allowed to use this part, do you think that your identity is being limited? Midori: I mean I don’t think so. Luke: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Why? Midori: Because uh, just teaching English is not my job. Luke: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Midori: Um, it’s part, part, not part but uh, main job. Luke: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Midori: But um, other than that I have to um, do um, many things about my home room. Luke: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Midori: Or club activities or many, many things or um… Luke: Right, right. So, the actual English teaching is just one part? Midori: Yeah. I think so. Luke: Right, so your identity… you can express your identity in the other parts? Midori: In the other parts, yeah.

For Mayuko, frustrations with being restricted from forging deeper rapport and empathy with her students were felt strongly. When I asked her if she felt that the policy had restricted her skills in any way, Mayuko chose to interpret “skills” more broadly than I had anticipated:

332 

L. Lawrence

Mayuko: No, not really. But I feel like I would have been able to build more deeper rapport with students. And I feel like I’m not really allowed to do that. Luke: Right, right. So it’s a little bit in that kind of-. Mayuko: Yeah. I don’t know if you call it skill, though. More like aLuke: I think having a language is a skill in you. Mayuko: I think language is more than skill. Luke: But for example, if I, if you were working as an, I don’t know, investment banker, and you were completely bilingual, that would be seen as an asset. And that was int, interesting that you will be able to do various things in your job that other people that don’t have a second language can’t do. Mayuko: But that … but my point itself is like, I don’t know, if it’s directly it’s only about in the classroom. Like I’m, I’m, I was talking more about, like, when students tried to interact with me, after class, outside of class. Uh, especially around the beginning of the semester, like they were interested in talking to me, and I feel like, by not responding to them in Japanese, I feel like I’m gonna be shutting them down. Luke: Right, right. Right. Mayuko: And, um, I’m not saying I wish I could use Japanese outside of class, because I think I told you this before, but it became a problem. Luke: Yeah. Mayuko: Um, but I guess it’s, it’s a tricky thing, because I do, sometimes wish I could use Japanese, but at the same time, I feel like, it, it’s possible that I let them, um … how do you say like, I, I let them choose the easier wayLuke: Right. Mayuko: ... of course that’s not the point that I’m doing it-. Luke: Yeah. Mayuko: I wanted to, us, I want us to understand more about each other. Luke: Yeah. Mayuko: Not just being lazy and not trying. So, it’s a dilemma.

Analysis The main takeaway from these extracts is the role that English-only policies play in restricting the full expression of self-identity which is manifested in difficulties forging meaningful relations with students. By pointing out that she is able to express her identity more fully in her homeroom and

17  Emotion and Identity: The Impact of English-Only Policies… 

333

after-school club coordinator duties, Midori implies that her identity is not jeopardized by the policy as her role of English teacher is only a small part of her total professional identity as a middle school teacher. This is in contrast to Mayuko’s forthright espousal of the complex effect of policy on self-identity, stating that she feels she is prevented from building a deeper rapport with her students both inside and outside the classroom. She felt that being able to communicate with her students using their common language would help both teacher and students to understand each other more. The difference between Midori’s pragmatic separation of different spheres of her job and Mayuko’s all-encompassing anxiety points to the importance of different types and strengths of policy as well as different working contexts. The fact that in Mayuko’s working environment at a university, the English-only policy is perceived to extend to communication with students outside of the class as well as inside it, makes the emotional impact and the infringement on self-identity and beliefs more keenly felt. In Midori’s context in a middle school, she has more opportunities to interact with her students in diverse situations. Thus, her English teacher identity is but one facet of her identity at work, not her whole identity, as is the case for Mayuko.

 heme 3: Personal Identity and the Presentation T of Self in the Classroom This final theme reveals a diversity of reactions to English-only policies towards personal identity that highlights the profound effect that top-­ down policies can have on the individual identities of teachers from both a positive and negative viewpoint. As the first extracts show, a number of participants viewed the policies as a form of liberation and a chance to express themselves more authentically: Akari: … in the, like a native speaker society, I speak more. My, uh, I can express my opinion more. Luke: So you prefer your English identity? Akari: Yeah. Luke: Right, right.

334 

L. Lawrence

Akari: Yeah. Because sometimes it’s like, uh, like being in the Japanese society, just like, it’s stressful because if I say something like, maybe I’m not typical Japanese character, so that I say something like, it was my opinion. It’s okay for me. But Japanese people tend to hide their opinion and then just belong to the majority opinion. So…

This freedom to defy Japanese expectations was echoed by Nana: Nana: Uh, I- I think English version of me is more of myself. Luke: Oh, interesting, why, why, why? Nana: Because in Japanese- Japanese culture is affecting me like. Luke: For example. Nana: Mm-hmm (affirmative), like its good to be quiet or don’t say your opinion freely about I don’t know the boss or gay things. So when I talk in English I feel I can explain- explain myself better. Freely, without any restriction and I like that.

This release from Japanese conventions that an English-only environment allows was also welcomed by Shinji: Shinji: I don’t have to use honorific. Luke: Okay, right, right. That’s interesting. Shinji: Behave in a certain way. Age can be a factor, uh, position can be a factor. Luke: Mm-hmm (affirmative), and you think with English that’s, kind of, is levelled out? Shinji: I t’s- it’s more … Yeah, I would say so.

However, it was viewed somewhat negatively by Mayuko: Luke: And do you think, do you feel that you’re being restricted in any way by the policy, in terms of your identity? Mayuko: Mmm. Identity, like a teacher identity? Luke: No. Your identity as a human (laughs), as a person. Mayuko: Yeah. I think so. Luke: Can you tell me more? Mayuko: Um, identity like, identity. I, uh, just like everyone else, I do believe that I am a unique individual like everyone else. Luke: Yes.

17  Emotion and Identity: The Impact of English-Only Policies… 

335

Mayuko: But like, when I’m only using English, like I kind of have to perform a certain persona, like I, like people see me as American. Luke: Yes, yes. Mayuko: And I’m not. And, um, and I feel like people think that I’m trying to be American. Luke: Right. Mayuko: And I’m not. Luke: So how does that make you feel? Mayuko: I, well, I like this job. I mean, like, I do have like a teacher identity, and I perform with that identity in class and I enjoy that. But that’s not necessarily, that doesn’t necessarily correspond with who I believe I am overall.

Although also stating that he felt slightly freer using English, Kensuke also pointed out that all Western cultures are not the same: Kensuke: Yeah. ’Cause when I have to, when I speak Japanese, which is also Japanese cul-, in Japanese culture we have to, you know, follow or stick on the kind of Japanese culture rules. Luke: Hm. So, do you feel more free when you’re speaking English? Kensuke: Yeah, I do actually yeah. Luke: Yeah. yeah. Kensuke: So, that’s what I feel….But I also felt, you know, I went to UK and UK is quite similar to Japanese culture. Kind of the way of expressing. It’s not direct. Luke: Definitely. Definitely. Yeah. Kensuke: So, British and US is totally different. Luke: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Kensuke: So, you know, I thought, you know, if I speak English I feel f-, more free. But it maybe depends on the cultures.

Analysis This final theme highlighted the positive impact on identity for some teachers that English-only policies provided. For Akari, Shinji and Nana having the decision of whether to use Japanese or English taken out of their own hands, to some extent, allowed them to express opinions on various topics more freely and also avoid what they saw as stifling Japanese

336 

L. Lawrence

conventions, such as the use of honorifics (the complex array of prefixes and suffixes attached to names and positions used in Japanese communication to acknowledge rank, age, seniority etc.). However, rather than seeing it as liberating, Mayuko sensed the policy as imposing on her a certain expectation of identity performance that she did not welcome and was fighting to break free from. Although Kensuke also reported feeling freer in his English-speaking identity, his assertion that not all cultures are the same serves as a useful reminder of the complexity and fluidity of cultures that were portrayed as somewhat clear-cut and static by most of the participants (and myself as the researcher). This final point also highlights the deep-seated ideologies about language and its use as well as stereotypes pertaining to national stereotypes. Akari’s assertion that “Japanese people tend to hide their opinion and then just belong to the majority opinion” and Shinji’s misplaced belief in the directness of “Western” communication styles (see Beebe & Takahashi, 1989 for an exploration of the overuse of direct language in face-­ threatening speech acts by Japanese learners of English) indicate that the language beliefs and ideologies of teachers influence the emotional effect that language use and policies have on their identities. Furthermore, this can be both positive and negative.

Conclusion The interviews with eight Japanese teachers of English operating under different forms of English-only policies presented in this chapter revealed an ambivalence. On one hand some teachers embraced the policies and saw them as a way to liberate their identity from the perceived constraints of Japanese culture; however other teachers felt that they were being forced to perform an identity that they did not feel comfortable with. Despite this positivity, the consciousness that the decision of which language to use was in some part out of their control led to pressure and for some participants, feelings of apprehensiveness. Additionally, the ubiquity of English-only policies has generated a taken-for-granted assumption that it represents a superior pedagogy (Lowe, 2020). Therefore, when teachers are not able to use this pedagogy effectively, they feel they have failed as a teacher or are lacking key pedagogical skills.

17  Emotion and Identity: The Impact of English-Only Policies… 

337

Even for those teachers that viewed the policies as positively impacting their own identity, it was generally agreed that being denied access to the common language of themselves and their students makes it difficult to connect on a deep level in the classroom. Although this could be mitigated against to some extent depending on the institutional policy and working context, it still points to the importance of language in the discursive coconstruction of identity between teachers and students. It also highlights the dynamic and reciprocal connection between ideological beliefs and emotions. The complexity and ambivalence described in this study suggests that an English-only approach to teaching English can have a positive impact on the identities of teachers that are potentially liberating. However, the feelings of pressure, guilt, failure and the barriers to genuine connection with students that English-only policies produce can have detrimental effects on the emotional well-being of teachers as well as hampering their ability to teach effectively. This points to a conclusion that the best course of action would be to dispense with top-down policies and allow teachers the autonomy to make their own decisions and judgements about language use as and when the issue arises in the classroom. In contexts where this is not possible, allowing greater flexibility in the implementation of policy would help to minimise the negative impact on the teachers’ sense of self and allow them greater agency when co-constructing their identities in the classroom. It would also help to point the way towards a future that celebrates local and global identities and questions deeply ingrained ideologies and beliefs about language use in order for each teacher to become the best teacher version of themselves, free from emotional ambivalence.

References Barcelos, A. M. F., & Ruohotie-Lyhty, M. (2018). Teachers’ emotions and beliefs in second language teaching: Implications for teacher education. In J. d. D.  Martinez Agudo (Ed.), Emotions in second language learning: Theory, research and teacher education. Springer. Beebe, L.  M., & Takahashi, T. (1989). Sociolinguistic variation in face-­ threatening speech acts: Chastisement and disagreement. In M. R. Eisenstein (Ed.), The dynamic interlanguage: Empirical studies in second language variation (pp. 199–218). Plenum Press.

338 

L. Lawrence

Benesch, S. (2017). Emotions and English language teaching: Exploring teachers’ emotion labor. Routledge. Canagarajah, S. (2011). Translanguaging in the classroom: Emerging issues for research and pedagogy. Applied Linguistics Review, 2, 1–28. https://doi. org/10.1515/9783110239331.1 Cook, G. (2010). Translation in language teaching. Oxford University Press. De Costa, P., Li, W., & Rawal, H. (2020). Should I stay or leave? Exploring L2 teachers’ profession from an emotionally inflected framework. In C. Gkonou, J.-M. Dewaele, & J. King (Eds.), The emotional rollercoaster of language teaching (pp. 211–227). Multilingual Matters. Garcia, O., & Wei, L. (2014). Translanguaging: Language, bilingualism and education. Palgrave Macmillan. Gkonou, C., Dewaele, J.-M., & King, J. (Eds.). (2020). The emotional rollercoaster of language teaching. Multilingual Matters. Hashimoto, K. (2013). ‘English-only’, but not a medium-of-instruction policy: The Japanese way of internationalising education for both domestic and overseas students. Current Issues in Language Planning, 14(1), 16–33. https://doi. org/10.1080/14664208.2013.789956 Hino, N. (2017). The Significance of EMI for the Learning of EIL in Higher Education: Four Cases from Japan. In B. Fenton-Smith, P. Humphreys, and I. Walkinshaw (Eds.), English Medium Instruction in Higher Education in Asia-Pacific Multilingual Education. (Vol. 21) Springer. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/978-3-319-51976-0_7 Holliday, A. (2006). Native-speakerism. ELT Journal, 60(4), 385–387. https:// doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccl030 Kayi-Aydar, H. (2019). Language teacher agency: Major theoretical considerations, conceptualizations and methodological choices. In H.  Kayi-Aydar, X.  Gao, E.  R. Miller, M.  Varghese, & G.  Vitanova (Eds.), Theorizing and analyzing language teacher agency (pp. 10–22). Multilingual Matters. Kerr, P. (2016). Questioning ‘English-only’ classrooms: Own language use in ELT. In G. Hall (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of English language teaching (pp. 513–526). Routledge. Kubota, R. (2011). Learning a foreign language as leisure and consumption: Enjoyment, desire, and the business of eikaiwa. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 14(4), 473–488. https://doi.org/1 0.1080/13670050.2011.573069 Lawrence, L. (2017). Yakudoku today: Re-evaluating grammar translation in Japanese secondary schools. Unpublished manuscript, University of Leicester.

17  Emotion and Identity: The Impact of English-Only Policies… 

339

Lowe, R. J. (2020). Uncovering ideology in English language teaching: Identifying the ‘native speaker’ frame. Springer. Machida, T. (2019). How do Japanese junior high school English teachers react to the teaching English in English policy? JALT Journal, 41(1), 5–26. https:// doi.org/10.37546/JALTJJ41.1-­1 Mann, S. (2016). The research interview. Palgrave Macmillan. Martinez Agudo, J. d. D. (Ed.). (2018). Emotions in second language learning: Theory research and teacher education. Springer. MEXT. (2011). The revisions of the Courses of Study for elementary and secondary schools. Retrieved from: https://www.mext.go.jp/en/policy/education/elsec/ title02/detail02/__icsFiles/afieldfile/2011/03/28/1303755_001.pdf MEXT. (2014). English education reform plan corresponding to globalisation. Retrieved from: www.mext.go.jp/en/news/topics/detail/__icsFiles/afieldfile/2014/01/23/1343591_1.pdf Phillipson, R. (1992). Linguistic imperialism. Oxford University Press. Reed, N. D. (2020). Teacher views of teaching English through English (TETE) in Japanese junior high schools: Findings from the inside. The Language Teacher, 44(6), 35–42. https://doi.org/10.37546/JALTTLT44.6-­1 Tahira, M. (2012). Behind MEXT’s new course of study guidelines. The Language Teacher, 36(3), 3–8. https://doi.org/10.37546/JALTTLT36.3-­1 Takegami, F. (2016). An exploratory study on the impact of the new teaching English through English (TETE) curriculum policy in Japan: A case study of three teachers. International Journal of Social and Cultural Studies, Kumamoto University Graduate School of Social and Cultural Studies, 19, 15–30. Talmy, S. (2010). Qualitative interviews in applied linguistics: From research instrument to social practice. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 30, 128–148. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0267190510000085 Wolff, D., & De Costa, P. (2017). Expanding the language teacher identity landscape: An investigation of the emotions and strategies of a NNEST. The Modern Language Journal, 101(S1), 76–90. https://doi.org/10.1111/ modl.12370 Zemblyas, M. (2003). Emotions and teacher identity: A poststructural perspective. Teachers and Teaching, 9(3), 213–238. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 13540600309378

18 Performing Motivating and Caring Identities: The Emotions of Non-­Japanese University Teachers of English Sam Morris

Although interest in the emotional dimension of language teaching has increased in recent years, researchers are only beginning to consider how the identities and emotions of teachers intersect (e.g., Edwards & Burns, 2020; Gkonou, 2020; Lemarchand-Chauvin & Tardieu, 2018). Language teachers’ identities are inherently intertwined with their emotional experiences, being simultaneously shaped and performed through emotional displays during classroom interactions (Barcelos, 2017). In this way, we can say that identity and emotions are tied in a dynamic reciprocal relationship (King, 2016a), with each informing the other across time. This chapter is written under two important assumptions. The first is that language teacher identities are “roles” (Farrell, 2017, p. 184) that are often assigned to us, and shaped by both internal and external contexts in a dynamic and non-linear fashion (Barkhuizen, 2017). The second assumption is that identities and emotions are performative (Barcelos, S. Morris (*) Rikkyo University, Tokyo, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Mielick et al. (eds.), Discourses of Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11988-0_18

341

342 

S. Morris

2017); consequently, teachers make autonomous decisions to project a chosen identity, and they do so by employing emotion regulation strategies (Gross, 2014) to control their emotional displays. In accordance with these two assumptions, my goal for this chapter is to explicate how and why a group of non-Japanese University EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teachers emotionally performed two prescribed identity roles in their work.

Literature Review Emotions, Emotional Labour and Emotion Regulation Emotions stem from cognitive appraisals of internal and external circumstances which have drawn the attention of the individual (Lazarus, 1991), initiating a wide range of psychological, physiological, motivational and expressional changes (Scherer, 2005). When considering questions of identity, expressional changes are perhaps the most important facet of an emotion, since they represent the outer display used in the performance of identity during interactions. These displays are dynamic, continually reconstructed and managed by all participants throughout a social exchange (Boiger & Mesquita, 2012). As such, when a teacher and a student speak, their emotions are shaped by the semiotic signals they receive from each other, which are themselves located within the past and potential futures of the relationship. Emotions then, are not simply an individual, internal experience. They are afforded and constrained by cultural dispositions such as display rules and behavioural expectations known as emotional labour (Hochschild, 1983), which has a powerful impact over the identities that teachers project in the classroom. Thus, when a teacher expresses an emotion like ‘happiness’ there are likely to be a range of competing micro-, meso- and macro-level contextual factors influencing their behaviour. As may be apparent from the discussion so far, teachers are not at the whim of their emotions, but exercise an extraordinary amount of power over those that they experience and display through cognitive and

18  Performing Motivating and Caring Identities: The Emotions… 

343

behavioural actions known as emotion regulation strategies (Gross, 2014; Morris & King, 2020). Such actions are broad in nature, and influence an emotion’s valence, strength or duration. Heuristically speaking, teachers may use emotion regulation strategies in four ways: to make physical changes to the external world (known as situational strategies), to make changes to where they direct their attention (known as attentional deployment), to make changes to how they appraise an emotional stressor (known as cognitive change), or to make changes to the physiological and expressional symptoms of an emotion (known as response modulation). If a teacher wished to perform the emotional identity of a ‘serious’ teacher they could, for example, (a) select textbooks which are more academic in nature (situational), (b) prepare for a class by spending time thinking about a serious world issue (attention deployment), (c) continually remind themselves of the professional benefits that projecting a serious image will bring (cognitive change), or (d) adopt a stern face (response modulation).

 esearch on the Intersection Between Identity R and Emotion Researchers have explored the intersection between emotions and identity in three broad areas. Firstly, they have investigated how emotions inform identity development. Herein, emotionally laden critical incidents have emerged as one of the most salient catalysts for identity change, particularly in supportive institutional contexts (Edwards & Burns, 2020), and cultural standards of ‘ideal’ teachers have been shown to influence the emotional output of language teachers as they gain experience (Lemarchand-Chauvin & Tardieu, 2018). Research also suggests that emotions do not cause identities to change uniformly across time. Gkonou (2020), for example, found that teachers who moved into training positions were subject to emotional stressors which caused their identities to fluctuate back and forth between their old identities as ‘teachers’ and new identities as ‘trainers’. As can be seen from this brief review, work addressing the impact of emotions on identity development highlights the necessity to be highly sensitive to both time and context, and

344 

S. Morris

there is a need to investigate how emotions influence identity development in the Japanese context. A second thread of research has addressed the emotional labour and performance of emotions by second language teachers. Work in this area reveals that two identities are commonly prescribed to non-Japanese teachers working in Japan. The first is that of the ‘fun, energetic teacher’ (King, 2016b; Lawrence & Nagashima, 2020), a role which asserts that non-Japanese teachers should display highly positive emotions to motivate Japanese students. This prescriptive form of emotional labour is born of the notion that the work of Japanese and non-Japanese teachers in Japan is different, with Japanese teachers responsible for eigo (English), the serious, exam-oriented study of language, and non-Japanese teachers responsible for eikaiwa (English conversation), the less serious conversation-­oriented study of language (Nagatomo, 2016). The second prescribed identity is that of the ‘caring’ teacher (e.g., Cowie, 2011; King, 2016b). Teachers in Japan, particularly at the secondary level, are frequently responsible for the moral, whole person education of students (Aspinall, 2006). Such roles have been taken up by non-Japanese teachers at universities too, with a participant in King (2016b), for example, reporting that he felt responsibilities for students similar to that of a parent. Work in the emotional labour tradition typically raises parallels between identity performance and well-being. The notion of a fun teacher, for example, has been positioned as a predominantly negative form of emotional labour, with King describing it as an “emotional burden” (2016b, p. 105). Work on the emotional labour of the ethic of care too suggests that while caring for students can be rewarding (Cowie, 2011), it may also be tiring and stressful if not managed correctly (Gkonou & Miller, 2017). Performance of identity and well-being are complexly aligned, and as will be seen later in the chapter, the level of consonance or dissonance between a teacher’s chosen identity and their emotional performance is likely to be a factor in the impact of the emotional labour on their well-being. If work in the emotional labour tradition helps to explain why teachers may wish to perform particular identities, then work in the third research

18  Performing Motivating and Caring Identities: The Emotions… 

345

strand of emotion regulation is a particularly useful lens through which we may understand how teachers actually manifest their identities. Research in this area remains extremely scant, but early studies suggest that teachers frequently employ response modulation (i.e., expression management) strategies to manage their identities. For example, a teacher in Morris and King (2018) reported employing a form of response modulation known as emotional suppression to hide her true feelings of frustration and position herself as an “adult” to her teenage students (p. 442), while teachers in a later paper from the same data set reported employing genuine expression, the projection of authentic warm emotions, in order to meet their responsibilities as caring teachers (Morris & King, 2020). To the researcher’s knowledge, studies have not adequately addressed how language teachers might employ situational, attention deployment, and cognitive change strategies to perform their identities, but doing so is highly desirable since these strategies are typically positioned as preferable to response modulation strategies in consideration of well-being (Nyklíček et al., 2011).

Research Questions The research project discussed herein was an expansion of earlier work investigating the emotion regulation goals and strategies employed by non-Japanese teachers (see Morris & King, 2018, 2020). The project probed language teachers’ use of emotion regulation actions in a broad sense, but early analysis revealed that the regulation of emotions with regard to the performance of identity was highly prevalent, prompting the current paper. Herein, I consider the following research questions: 1. To what degree did the participants present identities as motivating and caring teachers, and what contextual factors influenced this? 2. How did the participants regulate their emotions to perform their identities as motivating and caring teachers, and what contextual factors influenced this?

346 

S. Morris

Data Collection and Analysis Data was collected over a nine-month period in 2019 from 15 participants (8 F, 7 M) working in the International Languages Department of Takazumi University (pseudonym), a private institution on the main island of Japan. A purposive sampling technique (Dörnyei, 2007) was employed to recruit medium- and long-length career teachers with more than three years of working experience within the Japanese educational system. The participants were all English L1 speakers and held master’s degrees in TESOL or applied linguistics. All had completed their formative education within Inner Circle countries, with the exception of one participant, Nancy, who was educated in various countries in Central America. The participants had taught EFL for between 5–20 years (mean = 11.9 years) and had worked in Japan for 3–19 years (mean = 8.9 years). In many ways, the participants’ experiences and backgrounds were similar to my own: I am a UK born and educated male teacher-researcher with more than 12 years’ experience in Japanese private language schools and universities. My emic position in this study stems from these similarities and entering the research I was already highly aware of the expectations placed on teachers in the Japanese context to be caring and fun, mostly due to my early career experiences working in the eikaiwa (private language) industry where performing these kinds of identities was explicitly expected. Each participant completed an interview and two class observations with subsequent stimulated recall sessions. The interviews with participants were semi-structured in nature, and included questions such as what kind of emotions do you think teachers should display and hide in the classroom? How does this institution influence your emotions in the classroom and how you regulate them? And how does being in Japan influence your emotions in the classroom and how you regulate them? The classroom observations and stimulated recall sessions were used to contextualise the initial interviews, generate accounts of event-specific incidents of emotion regulation and offer independent triangulation. During classes, audio recordings were taken, and notes were recorded on the participants’ emotional expressions, behaviours and interactions. After each class,

18  Performing Motivating and Caring Identities: The Emotions… 

347

participants recorded a list of emotions that they could recall experiencing. The audio recordings, observation notes and emotion lists were used as stimuli in the stimulated recall sessions, which followed within 24 hours of the observed classes in line with best practice (Gass & Mackey, 2017), except for two sessions which were delayed by 24 hours due to illness. A research journal was kept for the duration of the study and supported the analytical process. Formal data analysis was conducted using NVivo 12. Initially, descriptive and structural coding (Saldaña, 2016) of the emotion regulation strategies and higher order goals found in the participants’ testimonies was conducted, followed by multiple cycles of open and axial coding.

Results and Discussion The data revealed that the prescribed identities of language teachers as motivating and caring were highly prevalent amongst the teachers at Takazumi University, and that a wide range of emotion regulation strategies were used to perform these identities. Each of these points will be taken up separately below.

RQ1: Language Teachers as Motivating and Caring Since non-Japanese teachers have often been positioned as fun, lively, and motivating, it was perhaps unsurprising to find that, like other studies (e.g., King, 2016b), all the participating teachers at Takazumi University reported to habitually accentuating their positive emotions and diminishing their negative emotions. For nine of the participants, these actions were explicitly related to their professional identity, either as a mirror of their regular personality: “I think I laugh that much normally…. I feel like that’s who I am” (Alex), or as a professional front: “you have your teacher persona, and you have your regular one” (Wendy). For the remaining participants, identity performance was more implicit, with teachers describing the instrumental nature of their positive emotional displays as a “useful tool” (Brian), that was critical to the goal of language

348 

S. Morris

learning: “you can’t really speak your best second or foreign language if you don’t feel … comfortable” (Penny). In other words, while the teachers appeared to perform the identity role of a motivating teacher through their emotional displays, they did not always perhaps view their actions in those terms. The conscious performance of a caring identity was also common, being observed in the testimonies of eight of the participants. Caring emerged as something that was projected not only through warm and affectionate expressions, but also through the kinds of interactions that took place. Rick, for example, reported a considerable effort to engage with students on non-class matters, “sacrificing anything, extra time, writing references, coaching students in interviews”, an example of which was noted in Rick’s observed lesson, where he readily agreed to meet a student after class to help him with homework to be submitted for a course taught in a different department, by a different teacher. Various contextual factors emerged as catalysts for the participants’ performances of caring including project deadlines: “I don’t know who has stayed up late. And I don’t know who’s struggling. So, for me, I am especially sensitive to them on those days” (Elena); the abilities of students: “I don’t want (low level students) to think that I’m over here, just having a good time with (high level) students who are already okay” (Leonard); and the cooperative nature of Japanese culture: “there’s that philosophy that team building helps the outcome of all, and I decided to dive into that” (Mel). Throughout the testimonies, it became clear that the participants were not positive, motivating and caring simply because these identities were expected of them, but because they believed this was best for their students. The participants, for example, described being “warm and approachable… so students will be open to asking me questions” (Harry), and recognised that “it’s a stressful environment trying to have 90 minutes with only English, and I wanna create that environment where there is smiling and there is laughing” (Alex). This finding differs somewhat from other experiences that have been reported in Japan, such as that of Lawrence, who, in an autobiographical account (Lawrence & Nagashima, 2020), reported negative feelings at being described as “funny” (p. 51) by his students, which he felt reduced from his achievements as a teacher. It

18  Performing Motivating and Caring Identities: The Emotions… 

349

suggests that the emotional labour of being positive, motivating and caring may not always be something taxing, or even negative for teachers in the Japanese context, provided that this prescribed identity role is congruent with their own beliefs on best classroom practice. One possible reason for the more positive orientation towards motivating and caring identities at Takazumi University may have been the fact that these appeared self-assigned by teachers, afforded by the large degree of autonomy provided by Takazumi University. Participants reported being free to choose their own material, topics, and approaches to teaching, which gave them the opportunity to position themselves in ways which conformed with a self-selected identity. However, pedagogic autonomy on its own is not necessarily indicative: the hiring practices at the university may have led to the selection of generally positive-leaning teachers, and there may well have been tacit institutional pressures at play. It was also highly apparent that the participants performed motivating and caring identities because of the positive effect it had on their own well-being. Nine of the teachers reported receiving emotional feedback from their identity displays: “I try to give (a positive emotion) to them and then they can multiply it and give that back to me” (Penny). For the participants it appears there was an emotional transfer, a form of emotional contagion (Hatfield et al., 1994) in concordance with the notion of the dynamic bidirectional nature of student-teacher interactions (King, 2016a). Since teachers and students continually influence each other across the ontogenetic development of their relationships, the teachers’ choices to display motivating and caring emotions simultaneously influenced their own emotions through students’ responses. Positive emotions, then, were something that many participants made conscious efforts to generate in the students with the expectation that the same joy would then be reciprocated. This effort highlights the awareness and control that teachers have over the emotions that develop in interactions with students and suggests that a strong motive for a teacher enacting a particular identity may well be a hedonic one. In other words, non-­ Japanese teachers in Japan may well project motivating and caring identities due to a conscious or unconscious recognition that these emotions will be returned.

350 

S. Morris

 Q2: Emotion Regulation in Performance R of Motivating and Caring Classroom Identities Previous studies have generally only reported the use of response modulation strategies in aid of identity performance; however, for the teachers at Takazumi University, a range of strategies were employed in their performances as motivating and caring teachers, influenced by multiple contextual factors. Space precludes me from discussing all of the strategies employed, but here I discuss three salient examples.

Response Modulation: Outpouring Generally speaking, the participants reported routinely suppressing strongly negative emotional displays; however, they did not always feel this was appropriate when faced with severe behavioural issues. Kelly, for example, described a relatively uncontrolled outpouring (Yin, 2016) of emotion towards a group of male students who were not paying attention to a peer’s presentation: “I stopped (the presenter) and was just like … ‘you lot are incredibly rude! … be quiet and listen’.” Similarly, Harry reported that he “expressed a bit of anger” at a group of students who routinely failed to follow instructions, by clapping “pretty loudly” towards them, scaring some of the students. Harry felt an extended feeling of “regret” at his outburst of emotion, that he had “lost composure”, and like the elementary school teachers studied in Hosotani and Imai-­ Matsumura (2011), the teachers at Takazumi University agreed that more controlled uses of negative emotional displays were preferable to uncontrolled outbursts, which threatened their professional identities. While positioning themselves as motivating and caring teachers, three participants reported that displays of negative emotions were sometimes part of the job: “If they are being rude to each other, um, not listening to other students…. If you are not showing frustration, then I don’t think you are handling that properly” (Donald). This led to emotional dissonance for Tom, as can be seen in the following testimony:

18  Performing Motivating and Caring Identities: The Emotions… 

351

I think it is important for us- for teachers to also show disappointment or to show their (2) like a more strict side. But for me, I’ve often (2) struggled on that side more. Like I’m- I think often students enjoy my class because I’m funny…. But I think that that also like this desire to please my students, gets in the way of doing other things that as the teacher I should do.

Tom’s emotional stress here arose from an emotion regulation goal conflict (Morris & King, 2020) between his desire to present a friendly, supportive identity whilst also negotiating his professional responsibilities as a teacher to display negative emotions. When I asked him about the causes of this conflict, it seemed a range of contextual factors were at play: “low self-esteem”, a “part of my psychological system” and a love of acting which meant “the students have become my audience, and I hope that they are entertained.” Such conflicts have been shown to cause negative emotions and stress if not resolved over time (Morris & King, 2020), suggesting that the performance of caring and motivating identities through response modulation strategies can result in stress for some individuals if they cannot be reconciled with other classroom needs.

Attention Deployment: Distraction and Concentration In addition to their use of suppression, the participants also employed a pair of attentional deployment strategies known as distraction and concentration. These strategies involve the movement of an individual’s attention away from, or towards a source of emotion respectively. The sources of emotion that led to the use of distraction and concentration were relatively broad in nature; thus, the participants applied the strategies to regulate irritation when students didn’t follow instructions (Gina), guilt at showing favouritism (Tom) and frustration at technology failures (Alex). Distraction was also used effectively by Penny when dealing with the death of a pet. Realising that this kind of topic was “just too sad” for the classroom, she reported distracting attention away from her feelings, and concentrating on the students’ needs as a temporary measure of maintaining a positive face: “just stick to the plan you know, like just focus on the students and how they’re doing and how they’re learning and

352 

S. Morris

(…) then deal with it later.” Distraction and concentration are, in fact, potent and healthy emotion regulation strategies when used in the short term (McRae & Gross, 2020). Thus, in instances like Penny’s, the use of distraction can be an effective way of performing identity providing the teacher has time to process their emotions at a later date. Many emotion regulation strategies, if used repeatedly, are liable to become habitual (Gyurak et al., 2011), and for three of the participants at Takazumi University (Rick, Tom, Brian) increased teaching experience had afforded them an automatised system of distraction and concentration which allowed them to present positive and motivating identities whilst pushing aside out-of-class stresses. Rick, for example, explained “I can be in a really bad mood… and as soon as I get in the classroom [clicks fingers] it’s gone,” while Brian noted that if he was having a bad morning then positive emotions “just seems to come out…. (The bad morning) goes onto the back burner”. When I asked the participants about what was happening in these situations, their responses were indicative of the kind of performative language that has been reported by other studies (King, 2016b; Morris & King, 2020). Participants thus reported having a “persona” for the classroom (Brian, Tom) and to “maybe becoming a different person” (Rick). The kind of implicit automatic emotion regulation that Tom, Brian and Rick were able to employ is typically activated non-consciously through a specific priming mechanism (Braunstein et al., 2017), which in this case may be the very classroom itself. By entering the room, the participants were routinely able to concentrate on the needs of the class and distract themselves away from personal worries. These results are important since they suggest that when a teacher is experienced enough, and enjoying their work, they may develop the ability to apply attention deployment automatically to help them perform an identity as they enter the flow of teaching.

Cognitive Change: Reappraisal One of the most surprising contextual factors that drove the participants’ identities as motivating teachers was the visible presence of their colleagues. For four teachers, comparisons with peers resulted in negative

18  Performing Motivating and Caring Identities: The Emotions… 

353

identity-evaluations and emotions which influenced their emotion regulation behaviour. Gina, for example, reported that comparisons with her ‘bubbly’ colleague led her to suppress her positive emotional displays as a way of avoiding competing for the students’ attention: “I don’t want to mimic her friendliness. If anything, it probably makes me separate myself.” Donald, on the other hand, reported an extended level of anxiety that had emerged since he began working at Takazumi University the previous year: Until I came here, I never saw myself as a serious teacher…. (If other teachers that have lots of run around activities and I’m the one that isn’t, obviously my lesson is then the- the boring one and it’s not fun.… It’s definitely something that I’ve- that’s like struck me here.

As can be seen in Donald’s testimony, having observed his colleagues and perceived their teaching to be more energetic, he felt a direct challenge to his identity as a fun and motivating teacher. This emotional dissonance led him to employ a range of emotion regulation strategies to deal with his negative emotions, one of the most powerful of which was reappraisal (Gross, 2014), a cognitive-focused strategy through which individuals consciously reinterpret the way they view emotional stressors over time: I think the more people you talk to, yeah you kind of realise that it’s not (a problem)… when I see (previous) students… 95% of them will get all excited. Leap up-and-down. Scream my name… we didn’t have fun time classes, and they all said it was quite hard whatever, but they still- they are still just happy to see me. So, I think that’s kind of a good sign.

Donald, therefore, through conversations with his colleagues and previous students, was able to reappraise and reduce the negative emotions he felt at threats to his identity as a fun, motivating teacher, a powerful example of how reflecting on identity performances can positively influence well-being. Of course, projecting a positive and motivating identity may be a response to larger social and cultural pressures too, and for Jane, enactment of this identity was a way to counteract what she saw as the

354 

S. Morris

potentially negative effects of the Japanese education system. During her observed classes it was noted that Jane repeatedly discussed her personal life and implored the students to enjoy their private lives too: “do things to destress yourself,” “do something fun.” When I asked her about this behaviour, Jane was resolute: “I intentionally asked them…, ‘did you only do your part time job this weekend? If not go out and do something fun’…. in this culture, I don’t think they gift themselves enough fun.” Jane, therefore, saw at least part of her role as a language teacher was to ensure that students were happy and positive, not only in their school lives but in their personal lives too. Through her testimony, it became clear that Jane’s interpretation of a motivating and caring identity came from a negative emotional reaction to the Japanese high school examination system: (The students) had lots of personality the first bit of their first year, and then slowly as the Center Test encroached in … they started to lose their personalities…. And I’m like, ‘this is a problem. Am I the only one?’ I think it’s a culture- it’s a culture clash. (Jane)

Jane is describing washback from the high stakes standardised examination that is used widely for admission to university. Students moving through this strict system, in her eyes, have become shadows of their former selves, and the development of her identity as a motivating teacher was a direct response: “I have strong personalities in my class, and I don’t want to kill them.” Again then, reappraisal was the mediating emotion regulation strategy here. Jane’s recognition that Japanese high schools expected different outcomes to her American ideals led her to reposition herself within her performance of a fun, motivating identity, bringing her new meaning from her role as a non-Japanese EFL teacher. Similar to Edwards and Burns (2020), then, critical emotional incidents were a catalyst for identity development in the participants which were mediated through the emotion regulation strategy of cognitive reappraisal, suggesting that teachers struggling with identity conflict may well reconfigure the positive outcomes of their identity performances to reconcile negative emotions.

18  Performing Motivating and Caring Identities: The Emotions… 

355

Conclusion In this chapter I have considered how a group of non-Japanese language teachers negotiated the emotional labour of their positions through the performance of their prescribed identities as motivating and caring teachers. In contrast to previous work (e.g., King, 2016b; Lawrence & Nagashima, 2020), it was found that the participants felt a congruence with such identities, performing them as appropriate and indeed effective for language learning. Through their performances of positive, motivating and caring identities, the participants found reciprocated positive emotions and joy from their work, suggesting that the emotional labour of these identities may bring reward. The study also revealed a range of emotion regulation strategies being employed by participants in aid of such identities. In particular, attention deployment and cognitive reappraisal were found to be relatively commonplace, informed by the teachers’ levels of experience and critical incidents in their past. Such strategies may be considered adaptive from the perspective of language teacher well-being (Nyklíček et al., 2011). As was noted at the beginning of the chapter, explorations of the intersection between identity and emotions are contextually sensitive; thus, the study does not aim to generalise beyond its population. Instead, I hope that the stories within afford an empathetic understanding, challenging existing perceptions that the performance of a less serious identity may be unsatisfying, or indeed unwelcome. The results in this study suggest that the prescribed identities of the non-Japanese teachers may be taken up or modified as teachers experience, learn, and reflect on their identity performances, a finding which can benefit the industry as a whole as we continue to understand how emotions and identity intersect in the stressful lives of teachers. Acknowledgements  I would like to thank Jim King for his help in developing the study used for this publication. I would also like to thank the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, who supported this work through a Kakenhi Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (19K00856).

356 

S. Morris

References Aspinall, R. W. (2006). Using the paradigm of ‘small cultures’ to explain policy failure in the case of foreign language education in Japan. Japan Forum, 18(2), 255–274. https://doi.org/10.1080/09555800600731197 Barcelos, A.  M. F. (2017). Identities as emotioning and believing. In G.  Barkhuizen (Ed.), Reflections on language teacher identity research (pp. 145–150). Routledge. Barkhuizen, G. (2017). Language teacher identity research: An introduction. In G.  Barkhuizen (Ed.), Reflections on language teacher identity research (pp. 1–11). Routledge. Boiger, M., & Mesquita, B. (2012). The construction of emotion in interactions, relationships, and cultures. Emotion Review, 4(3), 221–229. https:// doi.org/10.1177/1754073912439765 Braunstein, L. M., Gross, J. J., & Ochsner, K. N. (2017). Explicit and implicit emotion regulation: A multi-level framework. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 12(10), 1545–1557. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsx096 Cowie, N. (2011). Emotions that experienced English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers feel about their students, their colleagues and their work. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27(1), 235–242. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. tate.2010.08.006 Dörnyei, Z. (2007). Research methods in applied linguistics. Oxford University Press. Edwards, E., & Burns, A. (2020). 'Opening Pandora's box': Language teachers' dynamic emotional experiences of conducting action research. In C. Gkonou, J.-M. Dewaele, & J. King (Eds.), The emotional rollercoaster of language teaching (pp. 70–88). Multilingual Matters. Farrell, T.  S. C. (2017). "Who I am is how I teach": Reflecting on language teacher professional role identity. In G. Barkhuizen (Ed.), Reflections on language teacher identity research (pp. 183–189). Routledge. Gass, S. M., & Mackey, A. (2017). Stimulated recall methodology in applied linguistics and L2 research (2nd ed.). Routledge. Gkonou, C. (2020). Identities and emotions in online teacher education programs. In H.-S. Kang, D.-S. Shin, & T. Cimasko (Eds.), Online education for teachers of English as a global language (pp. 133–148). Routledge. Gkonou, C., & Miller, E. R. (2017). Caring and emotional labour: Language teachers’ engagement with anxious learners in private language school ­classrooms. Language Teaching Research, 23(3), 372–387. https://doi. org/10.1177/1362168817728739

18  Performing Motivating and Caring Identities: The Emotions… 

357

Gross, J. J. (2014). Emotion regulation: Conceptual and empirical foundations. In J. J. Gross (Ed.), Handbook of emotion regulation (2nd ed., pp. 3–20). The Guilford Press. Gyurak, A., Gross, J. J., & Etkin, A. (2011). Explicit and implicit emotion regulation: A dual process framework. Cognition & Emotion, 25(3), 401–412. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2010.544160 Hatfield, E., Cacioppo, J.  T., & Rapson, R.  L. (1994). Emotional contagion. Cambridge University Press. Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. University of California Press. Hosotani, R., & Imai-Matsumura, K. (2011). Emotional experience, expression, and regulation of high-quality Japanese elementary school teachers. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27(6), 1039–1048. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. tate.2011.03.010 King, J. (2016a). Introduction to the dynamic interplay between context and the language learner. In J. King (Ed.), The dynamic interplay between context and the language learner (pp. 1–10). Palgrave Macmillan. King, J. (2016b). “It’s time, put on the smile, it’s time!”: The emotional labour of second language teaching within a Japanese university. In C.  Gkonou, D. Tatzl, & S. Mercer (Eds.), New directions in language learning psychology (pp. 97–112). Springer International Publishing. Lawrence, L., & Nagashima, Y. (2020). The intersectionality of gender, sexuality, race, and native-speakerness: Investigating ELT teacher identity through duoethnography. Journal of Language, Identity & Education, 19(1), 42–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/15348458.2019.1672173 Lazarus, R.  S. (1991). Cognition and motivation in emotion. American Psychologist, 46(4), 352–367. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-­066X.46.4.352 Lemarchand-Chauvin, M.-C., & Tardieu, C. (2018). Teachers' emotions and professional identity development: Implications for second language teacher education. In J. D. Martínez Agudo (Ed.), Emotions in second language teaching: Theory, research and teacher education (pp.  425–443). Springer International Publishing AG. McRae, K., & Gross, J.  J. (2020). Emotion regulation. Emotion, 20(1), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000703 Morris, S., & King, J. (2018). Teacher frustration and emotion regulation in university language teaching. Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics, 41(4), 433–452. https://doi.org/10.1515/cjal-­2018-­0032

358 

S. Morris

Morris, S., & King, J. (2020). Emotion regulation amongst university EFL teachers in Japan: The dynamic interplay between context and emotional behaviour. In C. Gkonou, J.-M. Dewaele, & J. King (Eds.), The emotional rollercoaster of language teaching (pp. 193–210). Multilingual Matters. Nagatomo, D.  H. (2016). Identity, gender and teaching English in Japan. Multilingual Matters. Nyklíček, I., Vingerhoets, A., & Zeelenberb, M. (2011). Emotion regulation and well-being: A view from different angles. In I. Nyklíček, A. Vingerhoets, & M. Zeelenberb (Eds.), Emotion regulation and well-being (pp. 1–9). Springer. Saldaña, J. (2016). The coding manual for qualitative researchers (3rd ed.). Sage Publications Ltd.. Scherer, K.  R. (2005). What are emotions? And how can they be measured? Social Science Information, 44(4), 695–729. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 0539018405058216 Yin, H. (2016). Knife-like mouth and tofu-like heart: Emotion regulation by Chinese teachers in classroom teaching. Social Psychology of Education, 19(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11218-­015-­9319-­5

19 Moving Beyond the Monolingual Orientation to Investigate Language Teacher Identities: A Translingual Approach in the Japanese EFL Context Yuzuko Nagashima

Many assume Japan is a homogeneous country with only one ethnicity, one culture, and one language, although scholarly literature has shown otherwise (Gottlieb, 2008; Liddicoat, 2007). This monolingual and monocultural ideology influenced by Nihonjinron, which refers to “parameters of a distinctive Japanese cultural and national identity” (Liddicoat, 2007, p.  34), has strong implications for the language education policy in the Course of Study by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). Their recent policies imply that English is the de facto foreign language in public education (Gottlieb, 2008), and that it should be learned through Western communicative methodology by those who speak English as their so-called native language, from primary to secondary education (MEXT, 2011, 2014). As an extension of that, monolingual language policies, especially English-only policy have been implemented

Y. Nagashima (*) Yokohama City University, Yokohama, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Mielick et al. (eds.), Discourses of Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11988-0_19

359

360 

Y. Nagashima

in wide-ranging educational contexts, including higher education. These language classes are still predominantly taught by White, native-English speakers from the Inner Circle. Moreover, flexible language practice in the classroom, including the use of students’ first language (L1), is not only discouraged but often stigmatized (Hawkins, 2015). Against these backdrops, this study explores how English language teachers developed their teacher identities in relation to translingual practice in and outside of their language classrooms. In doing so, it will show that existing monolingual orientation in the English language teaching (ELT) industry cannot capture the dynamic transformation and negotiation of translingual teacher identities and teaching practice.

Literature Review From Monolingual to Translingual Orientation in ELT Since the 1990s, applied linguists have argued that linguistic imperialism has permeated various fields of language education (Phillipson, 1992), creating an ideological construct of native-speakerism with a hierarchical dichotomy of native English speakers (NES) and non-native English speakers (NNES) (Holliday, 2006). Literature suggests that this ideological framework has produced the hegemonic power that situates NES in a superior position, especially in regard to native English-speaking teachers (NESTs) when contrasted with non-native English-speaking teachers (NNESTs). Thus, much of the previous research has focused on how NNESTs are marginalized due to the monolingual myth (Gottlieb, 2008), reproducing and reinforcing ethnolinguistic prejudice and discrimination in ELT. Although research has made remarkable progress in disclosing the pervasive unequal power distribution, this progress has also been critiqued for remaining embedded in the monolingual orientation, which did little to dismantle the hegemonic status of NES or the hierarchical binary (Cook, 1999; Kubota, 2009). Simultaneously, since the emergence of the multilingual turn (May, 2013) in applied linguistics, more flexible and fluid notions of language

19  Moving Beyond the Monolingual Orientation to Investigate… 

361

use has gained momentum. This turn came with a plethora of monikers including translingualism (Canagarajah, 2013), translanguaging (Garcia, 2009; Garcia & Wei, 2014), plurilingualism (Lau & Van Viegen, 2020), and more generally, heteroglossia (Blackledge & Creese, 2014). These terms share a fundamental principle that communication transcends the existing boundaries of named languages. In this study, the term “translingualism” is used as an umbrella term instead of others such as translanguaging and plurilingualism. This was due to the term translingualism capturing the notion of languages more holistically and going beyond the cognitive level of language practice, with a particular emphasis on the social and negotiative dimension (Canagarajah, 2011, 2013), which is the most salient to the main argument in this study. Translingualism refers to an emerging orientation to language practice, in which language boundaries are seen as socially and politically invented as discrete, autonomous entities, resulting from colonial history and “metadiscursive regimes” (Makoni & Pennycook, 2007, p. 16). Translingual orientation takes a more fluid approach toward communication processes and emphasizes language users’ agency on practice and strategies for communication rather than language systems. Additionally, since translingual orientation transcends the notions of named languages, all language users and their practice are seen as translingual, including so-called monolingual speakers. This is because all language users strategically deploy not only linguistic resources, but also other multimodal, semiotic resources, such as various signs and symbols, to negotiate meaning and identity for communicative purposes. Thus, translingual orientation incorporates all individuals, including monolingual NES, who are often excluded from research into the discussion of ELT.

Teacher Identity and Translingualism in ELT In the fields of applied linguistics, a poststructuralist approach to teacher identities has been efficacious for examining language teacher identities. In this approach, identity developments are deemed to be multiple and dynamic (Barkhuizen, 2017), socially and discursively constructed (Aneja, 2016), and changing over specific time and space (Norton, 2013).

362 

Y. Nagashima

As such characteristics of teacher identities imply, multiple intersections of identity attributes can affect the way teacher identities and practices are established (Varghese et al., 2005). Simultaneously, research shows personal narratives on lived experiences of language teachers can be a powerful resource to investigate the more nuanced and complex landscapes of teacher identity development and negotiations (e.g. Ellis, 2016; Faez, 2011) than the overly simplistic, essentialized, and dichotomous linguistic identities of NES and NNES. Moreover, various studies suggest that such life histories pertinent to teacher identity (Morgan, 2004) can also contribute as their pedagogical resources in the language classrooms (Aneja, 2016). While studies with a more critical and nuanced stance on teacher identities, especially in relation to translingualism, have made significant contributions to the literature (e.g. Ellis, 2016; Zheng, 2017), such research has yet to be explored fully outside of American and European educational contexts. In the context of Japanese higher education, the nationalistic ideology Nihonjinron also has a strong influence on the discourses of foreign language education (Liddicoat, 2007). The complex intersection of Nihonjinron and native-speaker ideologies has brought about a context-­ specific dichotomy of NESTs/NNESTs, where NESTs are deemed as superior language teachers while simultaneously being othered and marginalized as foreigners. Previous research demonstrated that these ideologies altogether play an instrumental role in various aspects in language education, such as hiring practices, institutional language policies, textbook materials, and teaching methodology (Houghton & Rivers, 2013; Seargeant, 2011). In this context, there has been little focus in literature which takes on translingual orientation to examine translingual teacher identities and their practice in relation to the monolingual discourse that they are situated in (although, see Nagashima & Lawrence, 2020). The term translingual teacher here refers to “someone who is able to embrace and integrate his/her multiple linguistic identities as he/she becomes a teacher” (Zheng, 2017, p. 32). Therefore, this study will address the gap regarding translingualism especially pertaining to teacher identities in Japanese higher education by answering the following research questions:

19  Moving Beyond the Monolingual Orientation to Investigate… 

363

1. How do language teachers’ personal and professional identities and experiences pertaining to language learning and teaching inform their translingual practice in their English language classrooms in the EFL context? 2. How do language teachers negotiate their translingual identities and their translingual experiences with monolingual orientation prevalent in ELT?

The Study Participants and Positionality Two participants, Yumi and David (pseudonyms) were recruited for this study through my professional network. During the data collection, both teachers were working for a university in Japan with an official English-­ only policy. Yumi was born and raised in Japan and had been teaching English for over 20  years in various educational contexts, including eikaiwa, test-preparation, and teacher training. She received a postgraduate degree in TESOL in Northern Ireland during this time. David is from the United States (US) and has been teaching English in Japan for 15 years at the elementary, junior high, and university level. He holds a postgraduate degree in applied linguistics from the US. They were selected because each of them belongs to a contrastive yet ideologically imposed identity category in the Japanese educational context; Yumi as a Japanese, non-native English speaker, and David as a non-Japanese, White, native-­ English speaker. Both have also shown advanced proficiency in their L2. In terms of my positionality as a researcher, I have known both participants through the workplace in the past, although my relationship did not extend beyond the professional realm with both participants. Since they are both older with significantly more teaching experience, a certain degree of power imbalances between the participants and myself might exist. However, a sense of proximity through the mutual work experiences in the past seemed to have played a more influential role in creating open and relaxed interactions in interviews, especially in Yumi’s case. This may have resulted from

364 

Y. Nagashima

the fact that we were two of the few Japanese, female English teachers in the language program we worked for. It can be suggested that our past experiences as minoritized members at work may have ended up contributing to the more intimate and deeper conversations shown in the data.

Data Collection and Analysis The data was collected from an open-ended questionnaire, videorecording and fieldnotes of the participant’s classes, and semi-structured interviews. The initial questionnaire allowed them to explore autobiographical narratives of the lived experiences that have played an instrumental role in developing their teacher identity through translingual practice. Class observation and fieldnotes were conducted to witness their actual language practice in class. Although this data did not directly affect the findings, it helped me contextualize their narratives in the questionnaire and interviews. Lastly, questions for the semi-structured interviews were generated based on the previous two datasets and with an intention to deepen the understanding of their narratives. Additionally, member validation (Richards, 2003) was conducted to verify the accuracy of the data and my interpretations. The one-on-one interviews took over two hours with David and three hours with Yumi, conducted via Zoom. Participants were given the choice of language for the interviews and thus for Yumi it was conducted in Japanese and English for David. However, the data suggest rather heterogeneous language practice in both of our interactions, although the excerpts below are translated into English due to the word limit. After the audio data from the interviews were transcribed, all three datasets were examined as a whole to identify initial categories while memos were taken in the margins. Then, the datasets were reviewed multiple times again to reduce them into emerging themes while seeking evidence for these categories (Creswell & Poth, 2017). As a result, three themes that emerged out of the data will be explored and examined in the following section: teacher identity in connection with pedagogical belief in translingual practice; workplace socialization as a site for critical reflection and transformation; and understanding of fluid and diverse boundaries of the English language.

19  Moving Beyond the Monolingual Orientation to Investigate… 

365

Findings  heme 1: Teacher Identity and Pedagogical Belief T in Relation to Translingual Practice Yumi seems to have accepted her ascribed linguistic status as a NNEST, more specifically, as a Japanese speaker of English as a foreign language. This was shown in the questionnaire where she mentions that her English language learning journey was somewhat unsatisfying and frustrating in Japan. It was predominantly filled with product-based methods such as direct translation and grammar explanation in Japanese. She states she acquired her advanced English proficiency from a language school in the UK which she attended in her twenties. In terms of her teacher identity, she considers herself not only a language teacher, but also an educator, based on her belief in the need to educate her students in a more critical sense. For me, it’s not just about teaching English, but also about things like social issues and critical thinking. This is because I think it is fundamental [for teachers to help students] to become a member of a society to make the world a better place. I happen to be teaching English and I don’t have a degree in education or anything, and it’s kind of impertinent to say I educate them [to become better] human beings, but I want them to think about these things. It may sound too strong to call it a belief, but for the sake of the next generation, too, I received many things from my teachers as I became one of the dots by chance,1 so I want to include these things more often.

This excerpt suggests that she learned more than the subject contents from her teachers in the past to help her become more critically aware of the world. She feels that it is part of her mission as a teacher to pass it down to the next generation. This realization was also manifested by her decision to create an original course focusing solely on contemporary social issues in the lifelong education program in her university. In order to implement such pedagogical belief into practice, she started to adopt a

366 

Y. Nagashima

more flexible approach to language practice for her students in the classroom. Recently, I sometimes change my teaching if it’s too difficult [for students], I’d have them discuss in Japanese and present in English. Because it’s true not all my students can handle things like social issues [discussed in English]. So, if I really want them to discuss the contents deeply and then present [in English], the discussion in Japanese would be much denser. To be honest, in terms of how much Japanese to be used in class, it’s been changed quite a lot compared to the time I thought no one should use Japanese in class, but now it’s more about how much (Japanese) is the most effective. (Yumi, interview)

Her narrative reveals she believes an advanced level of English proficiency is required for students to discuss social issues, and for teachers to educate them critically. This belief led her to think it is necessary for her non-­ advanced students to rely on their L1 along with their L2 in the classroom. Consequently, she became aware of the importance of L1 use for strategic purposes, such as having an in-depth discussion about social issues. However, this excerpt also potentially shows that she is experiencing a dilemma in dealing with the challenge of how to promote L2 use in class as an English teacher, and how to adopt the L1 use as an educator. This is based on her possible assumption that these two are mutually exclusive areas of pedagogy. In contrast, David has developed his teacher identity around the idea of being a facilitator of his students’ English knowledge. For his teaching philosophy, he specified that: An overarching philosophy has always been that the students have all this English knowledge that they’ve spent all these years studying and they just need to be given these specific outlets in which to practice that knowledge. They’ve got the knowledge up here, it’s like they’ve been reading a textbook of how to play the piano for a long time, and now they just need to practice playing the piano to make it actually happen.

19  Moving Beyond the Monolingual Orientation to Investigate… 

367

To manifest his belief of himself as a facilitator, he accepts that the use of L1 along with L2 is an effective strategy. David’s teaching practice suggests that instead of providing explicit instructions on how or when to shuffle languages, he designs activities in a way that students are implicitly promoted to flexibly choose their language use to complete each task. This strategy was also observed in one of his classes that I participated in. It depends on the activities, but if it’s something like a group project, like they have to prepare for a group speech about something and they are negotiating, if they are using Japanese for that, I don’t mind that as long as the end product is in English... it’s more like they are negotiating the connection between Japanese and English, like “Okay, we can do this in Japanese, but we need to do that in English.” (David, interview)

His approach to let his students determine how and which languages to use appropriately seems to embrace students’ linguistic ability and agency, which corresponds with the social and negotiative dimension of translingualism. Meanwhile, it should be pointed out that his implicit promotion of translanguaging practice in class is limited to students and not to himself, as he admitted at one point during the interview that “I don’t use that much Japanese in my class anyway.” He later explained this is due to the English-only policy of the program. This can be seen as his way of performing his role as a foreigner, who, according to Nihonjinron, is clearly distinguished and othered as a monolingual native English speaker, which in turn, considers him as an ideal English teacher, as the language policy implies.

 heme 2: Socialization in the Workplace to Develop T a Translingual Approach in Teaching Yumi reveals that she initially had felt pressured to teach all in English especially because of her linguistic status as NNEST. However, her pedagogy has shifted over time through socializing with other teachers in the workplace.

368 

Y. Nagashima

You know, [a Japanese English teacher] uses Japanese a lot in his class, I mean, using Japanese written on PPT slides. This was an eye-opener to me in a sense because I realized it’s just easier to understand if it’s written in Japanese, right? And he’s almost like a native speaker, right? So, he showed it to me once, and I thought, “He is that fluent in English, but he still uses Japanese, which for sure is more effective for teaching!”

It was surprising for her to see another Japanese English teacher incorporate Japanese in their presentation materials because she believes that his English is almost like a native-English speaker, which implies that she had initially assumed that those who are considered native or near-native English speakers would not need to use students’ L1 in their classroom. This episode implies that it was a critical moment for her to realize that the perceived level of English proficiency does not determine the degree of the use of L1 in the classroom. Moreover, she added that her approach to use of students’ L1 has also been influenced by NESTs. Native English speaker teachers like [another teacher], too, he worked on many small research projects, and asked me to participate in some of them to see if using Japanese or English is easier to teach grammar. And I tried it and realized I agreed [with the idea to use Japanese to explain English grammar]. So, interacting with my colleagues helped me realize, “Oh, this was what I was doing [but there are better ways to do it].” (Yumi, interview)

Another colleague of hers, who is referred to as a NEST also gave her an opportunity to reflect on her own language choice in class. By participating in some of his research projects to examine the effectiveness of the use of L1 in grammar classes, she became aware that the use of L1 can be useful even in non-content-based classes such as grammar classes. Likewise, David has traced a similar trajectory in his teaching practice from the conviction that everything had to be all in English, to a more flexible approach over time. David: When I first started, I was like, “Oh, we got [required English] classes, 100% English and no Japanese!” Yuzuko: Oh really?

19  Moving Beyond the Monolingual Orientation to Investigate… 

369

David: Oh yeah, when I first signed on, that was what I believed this program was and had to be, and I just come out of the Japanese classes at [his university] which were only Japanese, it was immersion, so I was like, “Oh okay this is an immersion style course and that’s what I’m gonna try to enforce”. And it was actually through my part-time job, one of my fellow part-time instructors there introduced me to Vygotsky and his sociocultural theory. And he’s the one that introduced me to the activities that I use now, which they use their L1 to negotiate their L2. (David, interview)

The above interactions demonstrate the importance of socialization for the purpose of professional development for language teachers (Johnson, 2009). Their socialization helped them not only to critically reflect on their teaching practice, but also on ideological beliefs that may have restricted their pedagogical resources as plurilingual teachers.

 heme 3: The Fluid and Diverse Understanding T of the Boundaries of English The last theme reveals how the participants are acutely aware of the diversity and fluidity of the English language, embodying the translingual knowledge they gained through their transnational and translingual experiences, especially outside of their teaching contexts. When asked about her thoughts on English-only policy in her language program, Yumi speculated on the legitimacy of it by saying that such language policy sets unrealistic expectations that students need to achieve native or near-native English speaker level to be a successful English learner. This is one of the characteristics of the monolingual myth (Gottlieb, 2008) where native speakers are set as the standard that language learners should aspire to become. This taken-for-granted assumption is discursively constructed as social norms and conventions, which, in turn, severely affects the power relations for those who are positioned as someone who can never meet the standard (Polyzou, 2015). When I asked her if she had any specific experiences, she responded;

370 

Y. Nagashima

When I hear comments [from students] that their English class was good because their teacher was a native English speaker, I often feel like *sigh*. I mean, I understand they enjoy listening to their “good” pronunciation, but in reality, there is more diversity to speaking English, you know? So, nowadays so-called native English speakers are minority, like how few percent, right? And [even among them] there are completely different varieties of English like Irish speakers, Hawaiian Pidgin, Singlish, and so on.

The above excerpt demonstrates her frustration with students who have been affected by the problematic and oversimplified view of language teachers as either NESTs or NNESTs while also showcasing her broader understanding and appreciation of diverse varieties of English. When she was asked if she has incorporated such a critical understanding of English to her teaching, she stated that she sometimes brings up various English pronunciations in her class, especially based on her transnational experiences in Northern Ireland and shared the following episode. [in Ulster English] they pronounce [ˈdɑːtə] for the word “data”. So, I pronounced the word that way in one of my classes last year and one student questioned me, “[ˈdɑːtə]? Shouldn’t it be pronounced [ˈdeɪtə]?” *laughter*. So, when things like this happen, I’d say “Oh this is a British pronunciation, American pronunciation would be that, and Northern Irish people would even say like this”. So, I would make a point like “You see, there are so many varieties even among so-called native English speakers.” (Yumi, interview)

Although she shared the story as if it were an anecdote, the interaction between her and the student can be seen as a critical moment in the negotiation of power. When her student questioned and attempted to correct her pronunciation of the word “data,”2 it can be taken as questioning her authenticity as an authority in the classroom, which can be connected to her imposed identity (Creese et al., 2014) as a NNEST. On one hand, the way she was positioned as an inauthentic teacher may have led her to become the victim of her students’ beliefs about NNESTs and supposed English standardization. On the other hand, her successful repositioning of herself as a legitimate language teacher by deploying her transnational identity through effective pedagogical resources turned the situation into

19  Moving Beyond the Monolingual Orientation to Investigate… 

371

a language lesson to show the diverse and fluid aspects of English. Her narrative shows that such pedagogical resources emerged from her tacit knowledge (Gu & Canagarajah, 2018) born of transnational and translingual experience as a language learner and teacher. Similarly, David demonstrated his understanding of the rather fluid nature of language practice and how monolingual language policies, especially the English-only policy, do not reflect reality. My opinion is that it is a bit silly since it is unnatural. When students take any other class we don’t tell them to throw out or ignore a whole set of knowledge or experience just to create some sort of knowledge bubble in the classroom. (David, questionnaire)

When he was asked how such unnatural language policy affects his teaching practice, especially regarding translanguaging in the classroom, he replied: David: I don’t think it’s useful to ban the first language entirely because they are not gonna stop thinking in Japanese, and as long as they are getting the synthesis, that’s real life anyways. Yuzuko: Do you feel the same way about your language practice outside of teaching? David: Hmm... I think my language choice always matches the function and I will always change languages for different purposes. I probably have the same kind of approach to my Japanese use in that I rarely force myself to stick to one language or the other. (David, interview)

This dialogue shows that he holds rather translingual views on students’ cognitive functions and the overlapping nature of L1 and L2, which he referred to as real life situations, and led him to believe in the utility of a flexible mixture of students’ L1 and L2 in class. Similarly, he illustrates a translingual view on his own language practice outside of the classrooms, which also indicates rather fluid use of his L1 and L2. It shows that his translingual identity and practice in the private context seems to correspond to, and possibly affect, his belief on monolingual language policy to a certain degree.

372 

Y. Nagashima

Discussion As a response to the first research question, it is shown from the narratives by both participants that the way their teacher identity has been developed and the way they embraced translingual practice in the classroom do not always align with their linguistic categories as a NEST and a NNEST. Rather, as Ellis (2016) argues, when examining teacher identities, the whole linguistic repertoire including their translingual practice should be considered to capture the far more nuanced and complicated pictures of their teacher identities and language practice. For Yumi, her emphasis on educating her students beyond language learning has developed her identity as a critical educator, which does not revolve around her linguistic status as a NNEST. This led her to reshape her teaching with a more flexible approach to incorporate students’ L1 as a necessary strategy to achieve her bigger goals. David’s teacher identity also does not always center around his imposed identity as a NEST. Rather, he has developed a facilitative role by encouraging students to employ their whole linguistic resources in negotiating and completing process-­ based language tasks. Simultaneously, teacher identities and practices for both teachers regarding translingualism have been affected over time by interacting with other language teachers (Johnson, 2009). Both participants share a rather similar trajectory moving from blindly believing in teaching monolingually to more heterogeneous language practice by their students. In terms of the second research question, both participants questioned the legitimacy and rationale behind the English-only policy in their workplace. Drawing on his translingual identity and language practice, David displays his belief that language policies should reflect the actual language practice by normalizing his own flexible language practice (Creese & Blackledge, 2015). Whereas, Yumi strategically demonstrated her transnational and transcultural knowledge to counter the hegemony of the standardized version of English, which was brought up by her student and instead shed new light on the more fluid nature of language boundaries (Menard-Warwick, 2008). Simultaneously, this tension can

19  Moving Beyond the Monolingual Orientation to Investigate… 

373

be seen as a negotiation between the translingual identity that she developed and the NNESTs label that was imposed upon her, mainly by students’ beliefs and expectations.

Conclusion This study explored how English teachers’ identities in Japanese higher education intersect with their translingual beliefs and practices in classrooms, and how their translingual teacher identities have developed a more flexible understanding of language practice. It seems that both participants positively perceive or promote pluralistic language practice in their students. This corresponds with their dynamic teacher identity development, which is not always congruent with the language dichotomy of NESTs and NNESTs which is imposed on them. Both participants also engage in translingual practice on a regular basis in their daily interactions in and outside of their workplace, although mainly outside of the classrooms, which led to their more progressive take on language boundaries. From these findings, I argue that their flexible understanding of language use against restrictive language boundaries imposed by monolingual ideology comes from their teacher identities that are far beyond the dichotomy of NESTs and NNESTs. Therefore, examining these teachers from the translingual orientation can help capture the nuance and complexity of their identities more accurately. It is noteworthy to posit that the dichotomy itself is the system that holds and reproduces unequal power structure between the two ideologically constructed linguistic identity categories, NES and NNES. Especially in Japan, another layer of nationalistic ideology, Nihonjinron, has situated the Japanese language education in a rather specific context where English education is implicated in the tension between nationalism and internationalization (Liddicoat, 2007). Therefore, it is imperative for language researchers and teachers to take a more critical stance to deconstruct the complex power dynamics in ELT, in both global and local contexts, in pursuit of linguistic justice and equity.

374 

Y. Nagashima

Notes 1. She is referring to a speech by Steve Jobs where he talked about connecting the dots from the past to the future in a commencement speech at Stanford University in 2005. 2. She explained that it is a variation of Ulster English that she accommodated in her English while she lived there.

References Aneja, G. A. (2016). (Non)native speakered: Rethinking (non)nativeness and teacher identity inTESOL teacher education. TESOL Quarterly, 50(3), 572–596. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.315 Barkhuizen, G. (Ed.). (2017). Reflections on language teacher identity research. Routledge. Blackledge, A., & Creese, A. (Eds.). (2014). Heteroglossia as practice and pedagogy. Springer. Canagarajah, S. (2011). Translanguaging in the classroom: Emerging issues for research and pedagogy. Applied Linguistics Review, 2, 1–28. https://doi. org/10.1515/9783110239331.1 Canagarajah, S. (2013). Translingual practice: Global Englishes and cosmopolitan relations. Routledge. Cook, V. (1999). Going beyond the native speaker in language teaching. TESOL Quarterly, 33(2), 185–209. https://doi.org/10.2307/3587717 Creese, A., & Blackledge, A. (2015). Translanguaging and identity in educational settings. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 35, 20–35. https://doi. org/10.1017/S0267190514000233 Creese, A., Blackledge, A., & Takhi, J.  K. (2014). The ideal ‘native speaker’ teacher: Negotiating authenticity and legitimacy in the language classroom. Modern Language Journal, 98(2), 937–951. https://doi.org/10.1111/ modl.12148 Creswell, J. W., & Poth, C. N. (2017). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches (4th ed.). Sage publications. Ellis, E.  M. (2016). “I may be a native speaker but I’m not monolingual”: Reimagining all teachers’ linguistic identities in TESOL. TESOL Quarterly, 50(3), 597–630. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.314

19  Moving Beyond the Monolingual Orientation to Investigate… 

375

Faez, F. (2011). Reconceptualizing the native/nonnative speaker dichotomy. Journal of Language, Identity & Education, 10(4), 213–249. https://doi.org/1 0.1080/15348458.2011.598127 Garcia, O. (2009). Bilingual education in the 21st century: A global perspective. Wiley-Blackwell. Garcia, O., & Wei, L. (2014). Translanguaging: Language, bilingualism and education. Palgrave Macmillan. Gottlieb, N. (2008). Japan: Language policy and planning in transition. Current Issues in Language Planning, 8(1), 1–68. https://doi.org/10.2167/cilp116.0 Gu, M., & Canagarajah, S. (2018). Harnessing the professional value of a transnational disposition: Perceptions of migrant English language teachers in Hong Kong. Applied Linguistics, 39(5), 718–740. https://doi.org/10.1093/ applin/amw048 Hawkins, S.  J. (2015). Guilt, missed opportunities, and false role models: A look at perceptions and use of the first language in English teaching in Japan. JALT Journal, 37(1), 29–42. https://doi.org/10.37546/JALTJJ37.1-­1 Holliday, A. (2006). Native-speakerism. ELT Journal, 60(4), 385–387. https:// doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccl030 Houghton, S.  A., & Rivers, D.  J. (2013). Introduction: Redefining native-­ Speakerism. In S. A. Houghton & D. J. Rivers (Eds.), Native-speakerism in Japan: Intergroup dynamics in foreign language education (pp.  1–14). Multilingual Matters. Johnson, K. E. (2009). Second language teacher education. Routledge. Kubota, R. (2009). Rethinking the superiority of the native speaker: Toward a relational understanding of power. In N. M. Doerr (Ed.), The native speaker concept: Ethnographic investigation of native speaker effects (pp.  233–247). Mouton de Gruyter. Lau, S. M. C., & Van Viegen, S. (Eds.). (2020). Plurilingual pedagogies: Critical and creative endeavors for equitable language in education. Springer. Liddicoat, A. J. (2007). Internationalising Japan: Nihonjinron and the intercultural in Japanese language-in-education policy. Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 2(1), 32–46. https://doi.org/10.2167/md043.0 Makoni, S., & Pennycook, A. (Eds.). (2007). Disinventing and reconstituting languages. Multilingual Matters. May, S. (Ed.). (2013). The multilingual turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL and bilingual education. Routledge. Menard-Warwick, J. (2008). The cultural and intercultural identities of transnational English teachers: Two case studies from the Americas. TESOL Quarterly, 42(4), 617–640. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1545-­7249.2008.tb00151.x

376 

Y. Nagashima

MEXT. (2011). The revisions of the courses of study for elementary and secondary schools. https://www.mext.go.jp/en/policy/education/elsec/title02/detail02/__ icsFiles/afieldfile/2011/03/28/1303755_001.pdf MEXT. (2014). English education reform plan corresponding to globalization. https://www.mext.go.jp/en/news/topics/detail/__icsFiles/afield file/2014/01/23/1343591_1.pdf Morgan, B. (2004). Teacher identity as pedagogy: Toward a field-internal conceptualization in bilingual and second language education. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 7(2–3), 172–188. https:// doi.org/10.1080/13670050408667807 Nagashima, Y., & Lawrence, L. (2020). To translanguage or not to translanguage: Ideology, practice, and intersectional identities. Applied linguistics review. AOP. https://doi.org/10.1515/applirev-­2019-­0040 Norton, B. (2013). Identity and language learning: Extending the conversation (2nd ed.). Multilingual Matters. Phillipson, R. (1992). Linguistic imperialism. Oxford University Press. Polyzou, A. (2015). Presupposition in discourse: Theoretical and methodological issues. Critical Discourse Studies, 12(2), 123–138. https://doi.org/10.108 0/17405904.2014.991796 Richards, K. (2003). Qualitative inquiry in TESOL. Palgrave Macmillan. Seargeant, P. (Ed.). (2011). English in Japan in the era of globalization. Palgrave Macmillan. Varghese, M., Morgan, B., Johnston, B., & Johnson, K. A. (2005). Theorizing language teacher identity: Three perspectives and beyond. Journal of Language,  Identity, and Education, 4(1), 21–44. https://doi.org/10.1207/ s15327701jlie0401_2 Zheng, X. (2017). Translingual identity as pedagogy: International teaching assistants of English in college composition classrooms. The Modern Language Journal, 101(S1), 29–44. https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12373

Index1

A

B

Accommodation, 221, 232 Affective domain, 180, 181 Affective goals, 180, 194 Ainu, 2, 81–93, 97–113, 134n5 Ainu culture, 81–87, 91–93, 106–109 Ainu language, 81–85, 87–93, 97–101, 103–111, 113n1 Akogare, 41, 48, 284, 285 Ancestors, 91, 92, 98, 103, 106–111, 121, 122, 132 Assistant Language Teacher (ALT), 40, 263–279, 309

Border crossing, 49, 215, 242, 256, 257 C

Career development, 203, 206, 210, 214 Caring identities, 341–355 Chantoshita eigo, 291, 292 Chinese students, 197–216 Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), 219, 222, 224–226, 228–230, 232, 234n3

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Mielick et al. (eds.), Discourses of Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11988-0

377

378 Index

Communicative language teaching (CLT), 39, 308, 309, 311, 312, 315, 321 Communities, 3–7, 9, 10, 18, 19, 24, 40–43, 45, 48–51, 59, 60, 62, 64, 67–69, 84, 92, 97–113, 117, 120–124, 128–131, 133, 139, 145, 147, 151, 162–165, 170, 173, 175, 200, 201, 208–210, 212–214, 221, 239, 240, 242–256, 265, 275, 276 Community revival, 97 Constructivist grounded theory method, 269 Contact situation, 219, 220, 222, 223, 225–229, 231, 232 Critical discourse studies (CDS), 287, 305 Critical language studies, 285 Critical race theory (CRT), 60, 62–63, 66–74 Critical theory, 303, 305 D

Decolonization, 102, 112, 117, 120, 121, 123, 131–133, 149–152, 154 Dialogical Self Theory (DST), 198, 201, 202, 204–206 Diaspora, 239, 241, 255 Dichotomy, 59, 61, 120, 198, 199, 225, 233, 360, 362, 373 Discourse, 9, 17–23, 25, 30–34, 61, 66, 68, 71–74, 117, 132, 239–257, 284, 285, 288, 301, 305, 307–309, 313, 362 Discourse Historical Approach (DHA), 25

Discursive construction, 17–34, 239–257, 272, 274, 284, 285 Discursive positioning, 283–297 Discursive scales, 239 E

Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), 3, 161–172, 174, 175, 176n3 Eigo, 39–41, 50–53, 290–294, 297n3, 344 Eikaiwa, 4, 21, 39–41, 46, 49, 51–53, 283–297, 323, 325, 329, 344, 346, 363 Emotion, 9, 44, 147, 155, 180, 244–248, 273, 321–337, 341–355 Emotional displays, 341, 342, 347, 348, 350, 353 Emotional labour, 342–344, 349, 355 Emotion regulation, 342–343, 345, 347, 350–355 English, 2, 17–34, 39, 59, 82, 102, 128, 140, 165, 179, 197, 222, 264, 283, 287–290, 304, 321–337, 341–355, 359, 369–371 English language teaching (ELT), 9, 17, 39, 53, 62, 69, 284, 289, 301, 306, 316, 317, 321, 322, 325, 360–363, 373 English-medium instruction (EMI), 4, 197, 321 English-only policy, 39, 199, 321–337, 359, 363, 367, 369, 371, 372 Escape to the classroom, 192 Essentialism, 2, 3, 19, 22, 34, 241

 Index 

379

Heritage desire, 239–257 Higher education, 93, 172, 181, 198–201, 214–216, 360, 362, 373 Homogeneity, 1, 20, 117, 233, 250 Honorifics, 127, 334, 336

Identity negotiation, 4, 10, 47, 120, 122, 132, 176, 201, 284, 297 Ideology critique, 301, 303–305, 317 Ideology/ideologies, 2, 6–10, 19, 25, 26, 30, 33, 34, 59–62, 67, 69, 72–75, 81, 121, 122, 126, 140, 141, 162, 201, 264, 268, 285, 287, 301–317, 321, 322, 324, 327, 336, 337, 359, 362, 373 Immigration, 161 Immigration policy, 163 Indigenous language, 5, 6, 9–11, 83, 92, 101, 117, 123, 124, 126, 127, 130–133, 231 Indonesia, 161–176 Indonesian nurses, 161–176 Inequality, 1–11, 130, 296 Interculturality, 240–242 International students, 3–5, 179, 181, 182, 184, 186, 187, 189, 191–194, 198–201, 212–214 Intersectionality, 62

I

J

F

Filipino teachers, 283–297 Foreigner, 67, 68, 102, 105, 106, 109, 121, 199, 200, 210, 212, 220–224, 226–228, 230–233, 244, 248, 249, 315, 362, 367 Foreigner talk, 219, 221, 222, 224–226, 228–229, 231, 233 Frame analysis, 304–305, 317 G

Gaikokujin, 222 Global citizen, 20 Global identity, 17–34, 337 Globalization, 10, 17, 20, 21, 82, 179, 193, 199 H

Identity, 1–11, 17–34, 39–54, 59, 82, 97–113, 117–133, 139, 163, 180, 197–216, 219–233, 239–257, 263–279, 284, 305, 321–337, 341–355 Identity management strategies (IMSs), 266–268, 270, 277

Japan, 1–11, 17, 39, 59, 81, 99, 117, 139, 161–176, 179, 197, 220, 239, 263–279, 283, 301–317, 321–337, 344, 359 (The Japanese) government, 92, 161, 163, 176n3, 179, 198, 199, 214, 220, 244, 263

380 Index

Japanese language, 2, 4, 6, 8, 11, 19, 27, 28, 31, 32, 64–69, 72, 73, 99–101, 118, 140, 156, 163, 165, 170, 171, 179, 180, 182–194, 197–216, 220, 224, 232, 234n1, 240, 243–248, 251–254, 256, 265, 270, 271, 278, 309 Japanese language education, 179–181, 193, 194, 220, 222, 223, 234n1, 246, 247, 373 Japanese language learning, 180, 181, 183, 192, 194, 270 Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program, 263–265 K

Kamuynomi, 97, 102, 107–113, 113n2 Kamuynomi, 107, 108 Kireina eigo, 290–294 Kokugo, 6, 118 Kokusaika, 20, 21, 30, 33 L

Landscapes of practice (LoP), 39–54 Language acquisition, 60, 70, 162, 180, 181 Language and identity, 3, 18, 28, 31, 91, 93, 143 Language attitudes, 127, 128, 133 Language endangerment, 82, 119, 121, 143 Language ideologies, 26, 30, 81, 82, 92, 124, 285–287 Language reclamation, 6, 11, 83, 117, 122–124, 132, 139–156

Language revitalization, 83–85, 101, 103, 117, 118, 132, 133, 149, 151 Language socialization, 162, 163, 176 Language teacher agency (LTA), 324 Language teacher identities (LTIs), 267–268, 278, 359–373 Layder’s theory of social domains, 267, 278 Learner perspectives, 180, 290–294 Learning trajectories, 40, 43, 44, 46, 47, 51, 53 Legitimacy, 42, 283, 287–291, 294, 296, 369, 372 Lingua franca, 198, 221, 232 Linguistic identity, 2, 9, 59–75, 362, 373 Linguistic imperialism, 149, 313, 317, 360 M

Migrant identity, 59 Migration, 161, 245, 253 Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT), 20, 21, 34, 263, 323, 359 Monolingualism, 117, 215, 242 Motivating identities, 351–354 N

Narrative inquiry, 98, 101, 203, 215 National identity, 17–20, 27, 28, 30–33, 199, 359 Nationalism, 18–21, 373 Native-speakerism, 28, 29, 59–75, 313, 317, 360

 Index 

Near-peer role-modeling, 45 Neoliberalism, 9, 215, 285 New speakers, 117–133, 147 Nihonjinron, 8, 17–20, 29, 31–33, 230, 359, 362, 367, 373 (Non)nativeness identity, 59, 61 NS/NNS dichotomy, 59, 61

381

Q

Queer identity, 277 Queer language learners, 278 Queer language teachers, 266 R

Online eikaiwa, 283–297 (The) Other, 8, 10, 121 Overseas students, 197–201, 203, 214, 215, 323

Racism, 59–75 Reflexive interviews, 324–325 Ryukyuan languages, 3, 117–133, 139–156 Ryukyus, 118, 120, 121, 125, 126, 130, 132, 134n2, 140, 141, 146, 148–155

P

S

O

Participation, 42, 43, 45, 48–50, 82, 86, 104, 109–111, 163, 166, 168, 169, 172, 175, 181, 201, 225, 296, 304, 307 The Philippines, 161, 283–297 Politics of representation, 239–257 Positioning, 54, 69–72, 74, 98, 171, 175, 176, 190, 193, 200, 244, 249, 290, 292, 296, 350 Poststructuralist theory, 285, 305 Power relations, 7, 169, 190, 285, 296, 369 Praxis, 97–113 Prejudice, 34, 98, 226–230, 232, 360 Professional identity, 69, 161–176, 274, 276, 301–317, 333, 347, 350, 363

Safe place, 81–93 (The) self, 8, 21, 202, 206 Self-access learning center, 39, 45 Social boundaries, 169 Social expectations, 201, 205 Standard/standardization, 129–131, 152, 199, 231, 343, 369, 370 Stereotypes, 7, 19, 21, 61, 62, 66, 69, 73, 226–230, 232, 233, 274, 296, 307, 336 T

Teacher identity, 8, 310, 323–324, 326, 333–335, 360–367, 372, 373 Trajectory Equifinality Modeling (TEM), 198, 204, 205

382 Index

Transitions, 44, 46, 50, 201, 202, 205, 215, 294 Translingualism, 361–363, 367, 372 Translingual practice, 360, 363–367, 372, 373 Transnational, 1, 174, 200–203, 213–216, 242, 369–372 Transnational Filipino workers, 296

W

Well-being, 5, 9, 92, 132, 152, 164, 267, 279, 337, 344, 345, 349, 353, 355 Workplace, 4, 69, 89, 152, 161–176, 190, 191, 210, 265, 363, 364, 367–369, 372, 373 Y

U

Uchinaaguchi, 144, 146–149, 151, 152 Urespa project, 81–93

Yaeyama, 121, 123–125, 129, 132 Yasashii Nihongo, 7, 219–233