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Paper short abstract

This research explores the monolingual philosophy of spoken Japanese in Japanese society from the perspective of linguistic minorities, including members of the deaf community. We would like to share our results of this research with the audience in a multilingual European society.

Paper long abstract

This research explores the monolingual philosophy of spoken Japanese in Japanese society from the perspective of linguistic minorities, including members of the deaf community.

In a previous study, we pointed out that Japanese society has a deep-rooted monolingual philosophy of spoken Japanese and that hearing people who use the spoken form of Japanese are unaware that they are more privileged as the linguistic majority of Japanese society than the deaf. In this study, in order to discover the specifics of a monolingual philosophy of spoken Japanese, we analyzed the stories of linguistic minorities of a female Korean immigrant, J, living in Japan, in addition to the stories of SODA (Siblings of Deaf ) and CODA (Children of Deaf Adults) by using a narrative inquiry approach (Bakhuizen, 2013).

The result shows that one of the specifics of monolingual philosophy can be identified in the way that the linguistic majority and minority are evaluated. The linguistic majority conducts an evaluation of the linguistic minority in order to decide whether to accept that minority as a member of society. However, the majority evaluate the minority unconsciously because the majority are privileged compared to the minority.

In the research, linguistic minorities, on the other hand, have expressed their willingness to "evaluate" the linguistic majority and reveal occasions in their stories of have been questioned about privileges and attitudes that do not respect their position.

These evaluations and questions of the oppressed minority to the powerful oppressor majority are necessary viewpoints to reframe Japanese society from the view of "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" (Freire, 1979). Moreover, they would be the first step in the process of aiming to change the oppressive situation towards a more humane society.

By revealing the power-oriented structure of "evaluation" in Japanese society, it is possible to investigate the language philosophy, such as native speakerism (Holliday, 2005), which underlies Japanese language teaching for linguistic minority students. In this presentation, we would like to share our results of this research and re-examine the perspectives of language minorities living in Japan with the audience in a multilingual European society.

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Paper short abstract

With the concept of "freedom", this presentation will consider the ethical basis of the Plurilingual and Pluricultural Competences-PLCC and the Competences for Democratic Culture-CDC, based on phenomenology, to make Japanese language education more comprehensive in the society of "living together".

Paper long abstract

With the concept of "freedom", this presentation will consider the ethical basis of the Plurilingual and Pluricultural Competences-PLCC and the Competences for Democratic Culture-CDC. Each idea advocated by the Council of Europe, such as plurilingualism, aspires to a society in which people of different languages and cultures "live together". PLCC and CDC are the results of this philosophy.

In this way, language education has become a field that deals with values such as human life and the state of society, and an ethical foundation is needed to support this. For example, how can the ideals of human rights, justice, equality in the CDC's "values" be justified? If we treated them as absolute values, education aimed at them becomes obligatory. It is less likely to be the basis for the principle of coexistence with others with diverse values. This is because language education, which assumes human rights as undeniable absolutes, can sometimes turn into oppression of particular kinds of persons. Kim (2006) advocates a "rule-based human rights principle" based on the human nature of freedom rather than a "value-based human rights principle" based on the absoluteness of human rights. This is the idea that human rights arise on the basis of consensus and agreement, which presupposes that human beings, in principle, follow their desires and bump up against each other's desires. Dialogic value creation principles, such as the "rule-based human rights principle," are more open as principles of civic participation, and it is in this mechanism that the importance of "language" is opened up.

This presentation explores the foundations of the Council of Europe's proposed principles and competencies and considers their interrelationships from the views of human rights theory, ethics and language based on phenomenology. From this viewpoint, we aim to make Japanese language education more comprehensive in the society of "living together".

Kim, T. (2006) Kyosei shakai no tame no futatsu no jinken-ron (Two human rights theories for a coexisting society), Tokyo: Transview.

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Paper short abstract

Reviewing videotaped dialogues in Japanese between native and non-native speakers, the latter explained, in their native languages, what they heard. We found patterns of confusion related to specific grammatical features; we discuss these, and propose guidelines for native speakers.

Paper long abstract

'Plurilingual and pluricultural competences (PLCC)' comprise more than the ability to use multiple languages; it includes speakers' ability to use their native language in an 'easy' way to make it more accessible for non-native speakers. Research related to this concept seeks to find ways in which Japanese communities can better communicate with non-native members who need extra support in the Japanese language. This presentation proposes that the first step is asking learners what they think they understand; only then can we establish proper guidelines for how native speakers can help improve communication.

Although variations of 'easy Japanese' have been proposed, these were based on the experiences and insights of educators and researchers, not those of Japanese as a second/foreign language (JSL/JFL) learners. This presentation addressed this limitation by investigating what learners found difficult in listening comprehension. The participants were 50 JSL/JFL learners whose native languages were European languages such as English, German, French, and Italian, and a team of native Japanese speakers who were not in the JSL/JFL field to ensure optimal validity. To collect data, we first videotaped dialogues between the learners and the native speakers of Japanese. Subsequently, we played the video and asked the learners to explain what they thought the native speaker had said, examining the conversation sentence-wise using their native language. Further, we encouraged the learners to talk about their difficulties, confusions, guesses, and strategies they had used during the conversation.

This presentation will report our findings, beginning with identifying some patterns of confusion related to grammatical features. One example was the negative form '-nai' embedded in the acknowledgement request 'ja nai desu ka'. Another example was complex sentences with the insertion of a clause in which the subject differed from that of the main clause, such as, 'Hara kun wa sugoi desu yone. Watashi, hitotsu sempai nan desu kedo, kare wa bekkaku desu'. Finally, we will propose some guidelines for native speakers that will help them avoid this confusion.