English as a Lingua Franca in Japan

Towards Multilingual Practices

Mayu Konakahara, Keiko Tsuchiya, Mayu Konakahara, Keiko Tsuchiya

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9783030332877
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030332884
• Topic: Lingue e linguistica
• Subtopic: Politiche educative

This edited book examines the phenomenon of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) in the Japanese context, using multilingualism as a lens through which to explore language practices and attitudes in what is traditionally viewed as a monolingual, monocultural setting. The authors cover a broad spectrum of topics within this theme, including language education policies, the nature of ELF communication in both academic and business settings, users' and learners' perceptions of ELF, and the pedagogy to foster ELF-oriented attitudes. Teaching and learning practices are reconsidered from ELF and multilingual perspectives, shifting the focus from the conformity to native-speaker norms to ELF users' creative use of multilingual resources. This book is a key resource for advancing ELF study and research in Japan, and it will also be of interest to students and scholars studying multilingualism and World Englishes in other global contexts.

© The Author(s) 2020

M. Konakahara, K. Tsuchiya (eds.)English as a Lingua Franca in Japanhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33288-4_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: English as a Lingua Franca in Japan—Towards Multilingual Practices

Mayu Konakahara¹ and Keiko Tsuchiya²

(1)

Department of English, Kanda University of International Studies, Chiba-shi, Chiba, Japan

(2)

International College of Arts and Sciences, Yokohama City University, Yokohama, Japan

Mayu Konakahara (Corresponding author)

Email: [email protected]

Keiko Tsuchiya

End Abstract

1 Introduction

This book aims to explore English as a lingua franca (ELF) phenomena in Japanese contexts from the perspectives of multilingualism. With the acceleration of globalisation, society increasingly becomes interconnected and heterogeneous (Dewey, 2007; Jenkins, 2014; Seidlhofer, 2011; Vertovec, 2009). The advancement of transportation and communication technology makes it easy for people to cross geographical boundaries both physically and virtually, which creates more and more multilingual and multicultural spaces in a range of contexts in various parts of the world (Martin-Jones & Martin, 2017). In such contexts, English, albeit not exclusively, is widely used as a lingua franca among people with multilingual and multicultural backgrounds (Seidlhofer, 2011). ELF, as defined by Seidlhofer (2011), refers to “any use of English among speakers of different first languages for whom English is the communicative medium of choice, and often the only option” (Seidlhofer, 2011, p. 7; emphasis deleted). One thing to be noted here is that ELF is not a variety of English like American English and Indian English but “a variable way of using … English that functions as a lingua franca” (Seidlhofer, 2011, p. 77). That is to say, the term ELF does not in any way indicate a static linguistic entity but indicates a phenomenon in which English is used as a means of intercultural communication among multilingual speakers.

ELF research, which emerged in the late 1990s, has now become a productive research field in applied linguistics and sociolinguistics. The field started with a few seminal studies, such as Jenkins (2000), which explored mutual intelligibility of English pronunciation in international contexts, and Seidlhofer (2001), which pointed out the necessity of more linguistic descriptions of ELF in order to rebut the validity of what is believed to be “native English speaker” norms (henceforth “NS” norms) for successful intercultural communication. Since then, an increasing number of ELF corpora have been compiled either officially or individually by audio-recording—and increasingly video-recording—actual instances of ELF interactions in social, academic, and business/workplace settings in European and Asian contexts, e.g., the Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE, 2013), the Corpus of English as a Lingua Franca in Academic Settings (ELFA, 2008), and the Asian Corpus of English (ACE, 2013). A substantial amount of descriptive research on ELF has been conducted at various linguistic levels, such as phonology, lexis-grammar, and pragmatics. Earlier research focused on identifying linguistic forms of ELF (i.e., product); yet, its research focus has shifted to the investigation of functions, exploring an online process of meaning-making. What these analyses, conducted from an emic perspective, have revealed is the successful, dynamic, multilingual, and communicatively effective nature of ELF interactions (see Jenkins, Baker, & Dewey, 2018; Jenkins, Cogo, & Dewey, 2011 for a summary of the field). In addition to descriptive research, people’s attitudes and identities in relation to English and English language teaching (ELT) have been investigated from the viewpoint of ELF (ibid.), reporting generation gaps (Kalocsai, 2009; Ranta, 2010) as well as a degree of ambivalence in people’s attitudes and identities in relation to English (Jenkins, 2007; Murata, Konakahara, Iino, & Toyoshima, 2018). Meanwhile, in more recent work, ELF scholars have started to actively discuss the pedagogical implications of research findings in ELF on the one hand (Bayyurt & Akcan, 2015; Bowles & Cogo, 2015; Kiczkowiak & Lowe, 2019) and seek to explicitly position ELF in relation to theories of multilingualism on the other (Cogo, 2018; Hülmbauer & Seidlhofer, 2013; Jenkins, 2015; Seidlhofer, 2015). While the empirical and theoretical discussion on these two matters still remains to be seen, the brief review of ELF research above indicates a gradual but profound development of the field.

Meanwhile, with globalisation, the transgressing activities and practices in a diverse linguacultural society have led to a shift in sociolinguistics and applied linguistics research: from monolingual norms to “the existing bi/multilingual repertoires” of learners and users (May, 2014, p. 8), and from cross-cultural communication, where people from two distinct cultures interact, to intercultural, or transcultural, communication (Baker, 2016), into which individuals draw on their multicultural/lingual practices. Thus, a dynamic and fluid interaction among multilinguals in a third place or third culture (Bhabha, 1994; Kramsch, 2009) became ordinary. The complex sociocultural identities and practices of multilingual individuals are indexed through creating a translanguaging space (Garcia & Li, 2014) and exercising translingual practice (Canagarajah, 2013), utilising semiotic resources embedded in multiple languages available for effective communication, simultaneously projecting “localism” with using both local and global languages by forming and transforming transcultural flows (Pennycook, 2007, p. 103).

Japan, which is often seen as a monolingual and monocultural society (see the criticisms against the myth in Heinrich, 2012; Honna, 1995; Maher & Yashiro, 1995 to name a few), is also getting more and more multilingual and multicultural by the force of the current globalisation. The Japanese government, for example, has set a target of forty million annual visitors by 2020 (JTA, 2019), when the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games will be held. Indeed, the number of international visitors arriving in the country has been increasing every year; the majority of them come from Asian countries such as South Korea (27.5%), China (27.8%) and Taiwan (15.4%) (JNTO, 2019). While these figures reflect part of the transient multilingual reality in Japan, the similar tendency is observed in the number of foreign residents in Japan. According to the Ministry of Justice, the total number of foreign residents hit a high record in 2018 (MOJ, 2018).¹ Likewise, in academic contexts, many universities and colleges in Japan have promoted the implementation of English-medium instruction to internationalise their institutions by attracting more international students as well as making Japanese students “global” citizens (MEXT, 2011, 2014; Murata, 2016).² Moreover, multilingualisation and multiculturalisation have been enhanced in business contexts. It has been reported in the Nikkei Asian Review that the number of foreign workers in Japan hit a record of 1.46 million as of October 2018, with Chinese (27%), Vietnamese (22%), and Filipinos (11%) accounting for 60% of the foreign employees in Japan (Sato, 2019). Likewise, Japanese companies now have more than 75 tho...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: English as a Lingua Franca in Japan—Towards Multilingual Practices
• Part I. ELF in Japanese Education
• Part II. ELF in Educational Settings in Japan
• Part III. ELF in Business and Institutional Settings in Japan
• Part IV. Reflections and Directions of ELF Research
• Part V. Conclusion
• Correction to: Complexity of English as a Multilingua Franca: Place of Monolingual Standard English
• Back Matter