At a press conference in Japan, an L2-Japanese reporter questioned an L1-Japanese politician. Although the press conference was conducted in Japanese, the politician code-switched to English during their exchange. The reporter challenged the politician's code-switching; a confrontational exchange ensued. The reporter's reaction depicts the…

Although the notion of Global Englishes (GE) has been widely discussed in the literature, few books consider how GE can be translated into educational practice. This book addresses the incorporation of GE into language policy and curriculum, pedagogy and assessment practices, and focuses on a wide range of geographical and language contexts.…

Linguistic landscape (LL) research seeks to account for the visible displays of multilingualism on public signage. While surveys of signage in the LL produce quantitative descriptions of language contact in a given area, such analyses shed little light on people's interpretations of multilingual signs. Moreover, even within more qualitative…

The development of metalinguistic awareness for linguistic politeness was examined in 68 Japanese-speaking children aged between three and five years old. A politeness judgement task was administered together with several phonological judgement tasks and false-belief tasks. Four- and five-year old Japanese children, but not three-year-olds, made…

This paper explores how referent honorifics contribute to identity construction on a Japanese TV shopping channel program. Drawing on Ochs' twostep model of indexicality (1993, 1996) and Agah's proposal (1993) that honorifics are not directly linked to social status but index a "relative position within events of discursive interaction"…

This article describes how Japanese TV programs adopting a consultation framework construct different realities for women and men concerning a specific social phenomenon, namely adultery. To do so, two perspectives, the theory of metaphor promoted by George Lakoff and membership category analysis, are combined toward a discursive analysis which…

Reports the results of interviews conducted in Sapporo, Japan, an area undergoing rapid urbanization. The study sought to determine the effect of urbanization on degree of intensity of interaction with neighbors, and on the use of honorifics. (Author/AM)

Interviewed 38 adults with deafness and little schooling in Okinawa concerning their social and language environment. Many of the individuals used an indigenous gestural system shared with hearing people that enabled them to participate in the hearing community. Most had only limited contact with the deaf community and Japanese Sign Language.…

Results of a research project with a two-fold objective: first, to determine the forms, i.e., the kinds of pronouns used by a particular group of Japanese, and, second, to interpret the ways in which members of this group use the pronouns so determined under various specifiable conditions. (RS)

This study examines the process of Japanese language maintenance or shift among children who were exposed to Japanese and English through the "one parent-one language" approach in Melbourne. The aim was to identify factors that correlate with successful and unsuccessful cases of Japanese language maintenance of such children. The data…

A sociolinguistic analysis of English loan words in use in the 1990s in the discourse of young Japanese people is presented. The study drew data from a 1993 survey of undergraduate students at two Osaka (Japan) higher education institutions, one for men and one for women, which asked what loanwords students used and heard often. The report first…

Describes the results of a subjective reaction test of over 700 Japanese college students' and office workers' attitudes toward honorifics (keigo) in Japanese. It found that subjects from higher socioeconomic classes were more outspoken and ready to judge incompetent or insufficient keigo more negatively than individuals from lower socioeconomic…

Discusses the use of English loanwords in Japanese discourse from a cognitive perspective and reveals how the world knowledge of English loanwords is applied to a text and constitutes an integral component of the discourse production process both within and beyond the sentence level. (40 references) (MDM)

Discusses the indirect style and vocabulary that many Japanese use when expressing themselves in English, explaining how the sequencing of information expressed in Japanese differs from the usual sequence in English. Also reviewed are the social norms that affect how Japanese communicate in English. (five references) (MDM)

Contrasts differences in language use across the Japanese workplace, including women's speech. Examines what is referred to as "manifestations of power" among Japanese working women. Explores "resistance to subordination" among female university students who have not yet entered professional or domestic life. Comparison of the…