Damian J. Rivers

Ideologies of Internationalisation and the Treatment of Diversity within Japanese Higher Education.

Drawing on various sources of official discourse and public commentary pertaining to the recent implementation of two large-scale strategies aimed at internationalising student and academic staff populations within Japanese higher education institutions, this paper will present a number of broad multifaceted perspectives addressing those issues which may hinder the success of the two strategies. Announced in 2008 and 2009 respectively, the ‘300,000 international students plan’ and the ‘Global 30’ Project aim to enable 30 select universities to attract 300,000 international students to Japan by 2020. The 30 institutions, known as centres for internationalisation will each strive to recruit between 3000 and 8000 international students from across the globe. However, since the late 19th century Japanese attempts at the importation of ethnolinguistic diversity into the education system have been greeted with accusations of insincerity and the masking of a predominantly self-serving nationalistic agenda. The current paper will also seek to assess whether the self-serving nationalistic argument is still valid in relation to contemporary internationalisation efforts.

Strategies and Struggles in the ELT Classroom: Language Policy, Learner Autonomy, and Innovative Practice.

Within the Japanese English Language Teaching context and consistent with the dominant conversation role assigned to the native English speaker teacher, there exists a belief that the most effective manner in which to teach and promote multilingualism and intercultural understanding is through restricting students to monolingual practices and prohibitive pedagogies. These beliefs, whilst entrenched in ideologies of cultural dominance and linguistic imperialism, have also nourished the foundations for the learner autonomy movement to develop through the creation of numerous self-access learning centres. In consideration of these core issues and building upon earlier context-specific work, this paper documents an attempt at negotiating the contradiction created by those institutions who promote the virtues of learner autonomy on one hand, whilst enforcing strict linguistic prohibitions on the other hand. Situated within a Japanese university, 43 mixed-ability English language learners were presented with two reflective awareness-raising strategies that sought to assist them in being more able to make informed classroom language choices when faced with the demands of a prescriptive English-only language learning environment. The results suggest that the English-only policy represents an unrealistic target for the majority of learners and one which may promote a number of negative consequences.

Idealized English Teachers: The Implicit Influence of Race in Japan

English as a Foreign Language (EFL) education within the context of Japan is firmly underpinned by sociohistorical constructions of racial difference and racial hierarchies that have considerable influence on contemporary student and institutional attitudes. Embracing these sociohistorical foundations, this article adopts experimental procedures to explore the implicit influence of race upon student ratings of desirability of prospective non-Japanese EFL teachers in Japanese tertiary education across a number of manipulated conditions. Through presenting students with EFL teacher profiles of White, Asian, and Black racial heritage teachers, the experimental results indicate that the White teachers were rated as the most desirable when all explicit attributes such as age, country of origin, English language ability, Japanese language ability, and teaching experience were standardized across all three race conditions. However, when these explicit attributes were manipulated, the implicit influence of race was seemingly negated, as the students demonstrated a statistically significant preference for those teachers who retained the idealized attributes regardless of their race, namely the ‘native speaker’ of English status.

National identification and intercultural relations in foreign language learning

Abstract Framed within debates concerning national identification and English as a Foreign Language education within Japan, the current study explores the relationships between three specific attitudinal facets of Japanese national identification (internationalism, patriotism and nationalism), the perceived vitality of English-speaking nations, the intercultural appeal of English-speaking people, and attitudes toward learning English within a sample of 377 Japanese university students majoring in English at the undergraduate level. Based primarily on theoretical principles set forth by the author, a process of structural equation modelling was undertaken in order to test a proposed model of the various interactions and relationships. A number of important relationships were identified and are discussed from a socio-political and socio-educational perspective.

Modelling the perceived value of compulsory English language education in undergraduate non-language majors of Japanese nationality

Adopting mixed methods of data collection and analysis, the current study models the ‘perceived value of compulsory English language education’ in a sample of 138 undergraduate non-language majors of Japanese nationality at a national university in Japan. During the orientation period of a compulsory 15-week English language programme, the 138 students (from four individual classes) wrote about and discussed their beliefs in regard to the institutions position that English language education was important (as reflected through the compulsory status of the English language classes undertaken in their freshmen year). The qualitative textual responses gathered during the orientation period were thematically divided into three categories: an international friendship orientation, an international career orientation and an international engagement orientation. The theoretical principles underpinning these three categories were used to inform the creation of a Japanese language survey instrument administered at the end of the 15-week programme. The quantitative survey data gathered were subsequently fit to a three-factor model of the ‘perceived value of compulsory English language education’. The findings are discussed in relation to the various positions of English language education within the Japanese context.

The Authorities of Autonomy and English Only: Serving Whose Interests?

One could make the argument that many modern-day democracies, despite appearing to promote the expansion of individual freedoms and liberties, demonstrate a more substantive interest in maintaining a status quo in which authorities are able to reduce individual freedoms and liberties unopposed under the rhetorical guise of the powerful acting in the best interests of the powerless. While this claim may seem quite fanciful to some readers, the observation that the dynamics of many modern-day democracies reflect a push-and-pull relationship between facets of democracy and facets of dictatorship (see McLaren, 2008; McCormick, 2011; Sharp, 2002) cannot be so easily contested. Indeed, the term ‘democracy’, as one associated with struggle and hope, is ‘the word that resonates in people’s minds and springs from their lips as they struggle for freedom and a better way of life’ (Schmitter and Karl, 1991: 114).

Cultural Essentialism and Foreigner-as-Criminal Discourse

With a relatively broad focus, this chapter explores the consequences of cultural essentialism — “a system of belief grounded in a conception of human beings as ‘cultural’ (and under certain conditions territorial and national) subjects, i.e., bearers of a culture, located within a bordered world, which defines them and differentiates them from others” (Grillo, 2003, p. 158) — in relation to identifying culture as an excuse through foreigner-as-criminal discourse in Japan. Demonstrated are the ways in which powerful public figures (e.g., politicians, lawmakers, police officers, and criminal court judges) exploit a particular brand of foreigner-as-criminal discourse — paralleling their “politics of anti-multiculturalism” (Eisenberg, 2009, p. 78) — as an integral part of the ideological management of the nation-state.

Discursive Deflection: Accusation of “Fake News” and the Spread of Mis- and Disinformation in the Tweets of President Trump:

Twitter is increasingly being used within the sociopolitical domain as a channel through which to circulate information and opinions. Throughout the 2016 US Presidential primaries and general election campaign, a notable feature was the prolific Twitter use of Republican candidate and then nominee, Donald Trump. This use has continued since his election victory and inauguration as President. Trump’s use of Twitter has drawn criticism due to his rhetoric in relation to various issues, including Hillary Clinton, the size of the crowd in attendance at his inauguration, the policies of the former Obama administration, and immigration and foreign policy. One of the most notable features of Trump’s Twitter use has been his repeated ridicule of the mainstream media through pejorative labels such as “fake news” and “fake media.” These labels have been deployed in an attempt to deter the public from trusting media reports, many of which are critical of Trump’s presidency, and to position himself as the only reliable source of truth. However, given the contestable nature of objective truth, it can be argued that Trump himself is a serial offender in the propagation of mis- and disinformation in the same vein that he accuses the media. This article adopts a corpus analysis of Trump’s Twitter discourse to highlight his accusations of fake news and how he operates as a serial spreader of mis- and disinformation. Our data show that Trump uses these accusations to demonstrate allegiance and as a cover for his own spreading of mis- and disinformation that is framed as truth.

Speakerhood as Segregation: The Construction and Consequence of Divisive Discourse in TESOL

This chapter revisits the issue of status drawn from categorization as either a native-speaker teacher of English or as a non-native-speaker teacher of English in TESOL. It remains that despite various discussions being heard (see Aneja GA, TESOL Q 50: 572–596, 2016a; Aneja GA, Crit Inq Lang Stud 13: 351–379, 2016b; Aslan E, Thompson AS, TESOL J 8: 277–294, 2016; Cook V, TESOL Q 50: 186–189, 2016; Ellis E, TESOL Q 50: 597–631, 2016; Faez F, J Lang, Identity Edu 10: 231–249, 2011; Swan A, Aboshiha P, Holliday A (eds), (En)countering native-speakerism: global perspectives. Palgrave Macmillan, Houndmills, 2015), nothing seems to change. Language teachers, researchers and academics appear content performing discursive routines which produce outcomes so predictable it is as if those discussions never actually took place (see Kandiah T, Epiphanies of the deathless native user’s manifold avatars: a post-colonial perspective on the native speaker. In: Singh R (ed) The native speaker: multilingual perspectives. Sage, New Delhi, pp 79–110, 1998). Our profession persists in orienting itself toward upholding the division of teaching professionals primarily upon status criteria derived from the idea of the native speaker as the authentic language user and proprietor (see Houghton, Rivers and Hashimoto 2018). Discontent with the current situation, the circular discourse it encourages and the endless stimulation of guilt and shame it provokes, this chapter outlines how individuals on both sides of the fracture attain status privilege and suffer status marginalization through the strategic positioning of their fabricated counterpart. It suggests that the dynamics responsible follow a pendulum-like motion whereby for one group to attain a higher status (privilege) the other group must, as a consequence, be portrayed in a manner that inflicts upon them a lower status (marginalization).

Introduction: Hip-hop as Critical Conscience: Framing Dissatisfaction and Dissent

Originating from youth cultures in the South Bronx during the late 1970s, the performative musical genre of hip-hop represents “a form of rhymed storytelling accompanied by highly rhythmic, electronically based music” (Rose, 1994, p. 2), one frequently portraying narrative experiences born from socioeconomic desperation, structural oppression, and other forms of perceived hardship (Flores, 2012; Neal, 1999). The social conditions lived by the first hip-hop artists were significant in shaping lyrical content. The South Bronx area of New York was known at the time as “America’s Worst Slum” (Price, 2006, p. 4) with Black and Latino communities facing “high rates of unemployment, extreme poverty, and other social structural barriers, such as a change from a manufacturing to a service-sector economy, along with urban renewal programs that pushed many black and Latinos from their residences” (Oware, 2015, p. 2). This situation was expedited by the construction of the Cross-Bronx Expressway (1948 and 1972), which resulted in the large-scale displacement of Blacks and Hispanics from razed neighborhoods into the South Bronx. Rose (1994, p. 33) explains how these displaced families were left with very little, and in particular with “few city resources, fragmented leadership, and limited political power”.