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Upon encountering unfamiliar words or observing local practices in study abroad contexts, second language learners may discuss aspects of the target language and culture with their peers – 'non-native' friends from the same cultural background or 'natives' of the target culture. Such mediations are instrumental in elaborating understandings, but are naturally conditioned by the participants' intercultural stances, including their appreciation of cultural similarities/differences. This study examines the interpretive work carried out by two learners of Japanese and their respective friends in reading a Japanese manga (short comics) depicting the allegedly 'typical' Japanese behaviour around honne, i.e. restraint in expressing one's feelings or opinions. We observe rather different negotiation styles and different ideologies at play in their argumentations and discuss them in relation to the dynamics generated by the assumption of epistemic authority claimed by (and granted to) the native-speaker friend, vs. the more collaborative negotiation in the case of the non-native friend. The lack of a dominant authoritative source appears to generate more nuanced interpretive possibilities, enabling challenges to established and stereotypical discourses about cultural characteristics. This analysis illustrates dynamics which potentially question widely held (and equally ideological) beliefs about unqualified advantages of periods of study abroad for cultural learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Questioning the traditional reading instruction that overly emphasizes literal comprehension of texts, one of the authors conducted action research and revised her advanced-level Japanese reading course at a university by incorporating some principles from critical literacy. The "critical reading" course aimed at developing students' ability to analyze linguistic features of texts and making students cognizant of the effects of the writer's language choices. This article is based on interviews with six students conducted after the course and reports on their perspectives regarding the critical approach adopted in the course. The data show that all the students felt some challenge in engaging in critical reading activities, yet they found it to be intellectually stimulating and beneficial in many aspects. The positive effects and difficulties of implementing a critical approach are discussed. (Contains 6 footnotes and 1 table.)

Previous studies on L2 Japanese sojourners often reported that learners overuse the plain style or haphazardly mix the plain and polite styles upon return. These styles, which are often associated with formal or informal contexts, also index complex social and situational meanings, and native speakers are reported to shift their styles to create desired contexts. In order to better understand L2 development of the use of the plain and polite styles during study abroad, the current study examined the use of the polite/plain styles and style shifts among five English-speaking male students who studied in Japan for one academic year by comparing their performances both quantitatively and qualitatively in oral proficiency interviews before and after they studied abroad. Upon return, three predominantly used the polite style talking to the interviewer (their former teacher), while two primarily used the plain style. Though the quantitative analysis may lead one to conclude that these two students regressed in their pragmatic competence, the qualitative analysis revealed that all five learners gained some understanding of social meanings of the plain and polite styles and became more active social agents who make decisions to shift the styles.

We investigate linguistic relativity effects by examining whether the grammatical count/mass distinction in English affects English speakers' semantic representations of noun referents, as compared with those of Japanese speakers, whose language does not grammatically distinguish nouns for countability. We used two tasks which are sensitive to semantic similarity, error induction in picture naming and similarity judgments, upon nouns referring to food items (English words and their translation equivalents in Japanese), and contrasted English speakers' performance to that of Japanese speakers. Results reveal that speakers of both languages are highly sensitive to semantic correlates of the English count/mass distinction, suggesting that the grammatical count/mass distinction in English does not affect English speakers' semantic representations in a language-specific manner, contrary to predictions of linguistic relativity theories, in which this grammatical property should exert language-specific effects on English speakers' semantic representations while they are engaged in language tasks. (Contains 14 footnotes and 2 figures.)

Stating and supporting opinions are important speech acts for language learners to develop. This article examines how speakers of Japanese as their first language (L1) state and support their opinions. Performances of second language (L2) learners of Japanese were also examined to identify the language abilities that L2 learners may need to develop. While L1 speakers often sought common ground using various mitigation devices such as--zyanai desu ka ("isn't the case that"),--yone ("y'know"), and the modal adverb yappari ("after all, as expected"), L2 learners enrolled in a 4th-year Japanese course rarely sought common ground using these devices. In order to help L2 learners develop their ability to state and support opinions in a socioculturally appropriate way, it is important to provide guided opportunities for them to produce discourse-level exchanges beyond sentence-level opinion statements. (Contains 6 notes and 2 tables.)

This study investigated whether the semantic similarity and grammatical class of distracter words affects the naming of pictured actions (verbs) in Japanese. Three experiments used the picture-word interference paradigm with participants naming picturable actions while ignoring distracters. In all three experiments, we manipulated the semantic similarity between distracters and targets (similar vs. dissimilar verbs) and the grammatical class of semantically dissimilar distracters (verbs, verbal nouns, and also nouns in Experiment 3) in addition to task demands (single word naming vs. phrase/sentence generation). While Experiment 1 used visually presented distracters, Experiment 2 and 3 used auditory distracter words to rule out possible confounding factors of orthography (kanji vs. hiragana). We found the same results for all three experiments: robust semantic interference in the absence of any effects of grammatical class. We discuss the lack of grammatical class effects in terms of structural characteristics of the Japanese language. (Contains 3 figures, 3 tables and 12 footnotes.)

This paper explores the reality of 'Japanese communities' in London and the interrelation between language and identity. First, we trace the history of the Japanese community to around the beginning of the Meiji Era (1868–1912), when Japan emerged from national isolation. We then focus on one of the 'communities' established around the start of the 21st century by work-related and independent relocation. We present the life stories of two women who independently resided in London and shed light on the fluid nature of language maintenance and negotiation of identities. Through the close analysis of these personal experiences, we elucidate the complex reality of individuals who may be otherwise collectively understood as members of Japanese communities. These stories highlight the heterogeneity of the Japanese individuals in London, and therefore lead us to question the discursively constructed images of the 'Japanese communities'- and the nature and importance of 'language maintenance'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]