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- Convenors:
-
Momoyo Shimazu
(Kansai University)
Yury Panchenko (University of Valencia)
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- Section:
- Japanese Language Teaching (AJE)
- Sessions:
- Saturday 28 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Brussels
Short Abstract:
In this panel, we will focus on "Ba" as a perspective to better understand our activities related with discourse and learning. "Ba" appears and gives us meaningful insights when we consider which aspects of activities we focus on and what kinds of discourse we use to describe those aspects.
Long Abstract:
In this panel, we will introduce research conducted since our last session at the 23rd AJE Symposium and re-examine the notion of "Ba" in studies related to Japanese language education. We see the panel session not as a one-time event but as a sustainable project to deepen our research, so we organized an annual panel session to keep examining "Ba." Through these sessions, we aim to accumulate and systematize academic research and educational practices within the framework of "Ba" in fields related to Japanese language education.
Last year, our panel examined the concept of "Ba," which is used often in daily life, but has different definitions and connotations depending on academic fields (Shimazu, Ohira and Yagi, 2020). By observing what kind of "Ba" we provide and/or create in the context of language education, we also show that although "Ba" exists in various ways such as being visible and fixed, or being virtual and mobile, the interactions and relationships between activities and participants in the "Ba" create our practices.
We will also focus on "Ba" as an analytical framework to observe our practices and as a perspective to better understand our activities related with discourse and learning. In line with the conference theme, we will especially "pick up" the multi-layered contexts "Ba" provides. We will show that "Ba" appears and gives us meaningful insights when we consider which aspects of activities we focus on and what kinds of discourse we use to describe those aspects. By accumulating academic studies and educational practices from the perspective of "Ba," we believe we will be able to shed light on studies that have not garnered much attention within the traditional framework of Japanese language education studies.
Accepted paper:
Session 1 Saturday 28 August, 2021, -Momoyo Shimazu (Kansai University)
Paper short abstract:
This study investigates the process in which a female Japanese immigrant in the UK identifies where she belongs through self-observation. Her autoethnography shows that her voice always negotiates her various social roles and identities, including traveling and other activities, according to “Ba”.
Paper long abstract:
This study investigates the process in which a Japanese woman, M, identifies where she belongs through observing herself in a new environment. M, as an autoethnography researcher, has been recording her oral tweets as many times a day as possible since she arrived in the UK as a short-term immigrant. In this study, I will use “Ba” (Shimazu, Ohira and Yagi, 2020) as an analytical framework to understand M’s daily routine. From the view of identity as a sense of “where I belong” (Hosokawa, 2011) in a multilingual and multicultural society of this age, I will discuss how the perspective of “Ba” helps in obtaining this sense.
The data for analysis was 72 hours of audio recordings taken over 143 days from September 11, 2019 to January 31, 2020. From this data, I will first reconstruct fragmentary events into stories in chronological order from tweets that describe M’s emotional changes according to her moving from “Ba” to “Ba.” Then, I will analyze these accounts using a framework of “interpretive autoethnography” (Denzin, 2014) and examine her “voice, roles and identity” (Kramsch, 2003) in them.
M’s autoethnographical data reveals the trajectory of the daily routine of a short-term immigrant, through which she reconstructs her identity as a multilingual speaker in her new environment. Analysis shows that M’s inner “voice” seems to be the key to making her new life meaningful to her. Her autoethnography tells us her daily practice consists of 1) contemplation of her “voice,” 2) verbalization of her “voice,” and 3) listening to her “voice,” or verbalized discourse, alone. It also tells us that her “voice” always negotiates her social roles and identities according to “Ba”; where she moves, spends her time, performs her daily routines, and accomplishes her activities.