Language Socialization in Japanese
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LANGUAGE SOCIALIZATION IN JAPANESE
INTRODUCTION
This chapter discusses research on language socialization in Japanese, both socialization of native Japanese speakers as well as that of learners of Japanese as a foreign language. The theoretical perspective of language socialization is couched in the phenomenological tradition (Husserl, 1970 [1910]) and grew out of linguistic anthropology, in particular, the ethnography of communication (Hymes, 1964). From these academic perspectives, language socialization research considers language acquisition to be embedded in cultural practice and investigates how novices learn to become competent members in a social group by participating in the daily routines of culturally organized activities. However, due to the fact that there has been no tradition of ethnography in Japan, language socialization research has not developed there (cf. Shibamoto, 1987). To date, most research on language socialization in Japanese has been conducted by scholars who were trained in the United States. And yet, Japanese is perhaps one of the ideal languages to investigate how novices are socialized into society through the use of language, for it has rich morphology, and a great deal of social information is encoded in the language (e.g., honorifics, pronouns, and sentence-final particles). For this reason, some scholars claim that in Japanese there is no neutral sentence (cf. Matsumoto, 1988). Even a simple utterance such as “it is fine today” has several variants with different degrees of politeness, formality, and other aspects of social information. In this sense, the acquisition of Japanese truly “goes hand-in-hand with acquiring sociocultural knowedge” (Ochs and Schieffelin, 1995, p. 74). In what follows, I will first review the research on L1 socialization and then discuss the emerging field of L2 socialization in recent years. I will conclude the chapter by suggesting directions for future research. E A R LY D E V E L O P M E N T S
There were only a few notable studies on Japanese L1 socialization during the 1970s and 1980s. The decade of the 1970’s saw several influential publications in English on Japanese culture and psychology, P. A. Duff and N. H. Hornberger (eds), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2nd Edition, Volume 8: Language Socialization, 313–326. #2008 Springer Science+Business Media LLC.
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which discussed Japanese communication patterns (e.g., Doi, 1973; Lebra, 1976). For example, Lebra (1976) described Japanese culture as “omoiyari culture.” In her words, omoiyari is “the ability and willingness to feel what others are feeling, to vicariously experience the pleasure or pain that they are undergoing, and to help them satisfy their wishes (p. 38).” Doi (1973) claimed that the Japanese way of communication stemmed from amae “dependence on others,” which is “the psychology of the infant in its relationship to its mother (p. 74).” Markus and Kitayama (1991) described Japanese as group-oriented, and nonconfrontational. These publications had a great
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