After the Tsunami, Some Dilemmas: Japanese Language Studies in Multicultural Australia. Language Australia Research Policy and Practice Papers.

This paper describes responses to linguistic pluralism in Australian policy in relation to Australia's Asian language context, and the teaching and learning of Japanese within these two frameworks. Finally, the paper considers some ideas relating intercultural language learning to all second language study termed: the Third Place. There are three approaches typically taken toward multilingualism in a given society, looking at multilingualism as a problem, a right, or a resource. Australia viewed multilingualism as a problem through the middle of the 1970s. This eventually led to a contestation of that approach, which culminated in the language as a right movement, which gained considerable ground in the later 1970s and through the 1980s. By the 1990s, the language a resource school began to gain influence. Regarding multilingualism as a resource involves construing the diversity of languages within the community as a public as well as an individual benefit and fashioning public policies accordingly. All of Australia's languages are reviewed, including a review of the role of Japanese language studies in Australian education and Japanese studies. Cultures, general knowledge, and intercultural language teaching are also discussed. (Contains 18 references.) (KFT)