Introduction: English in Japan in the Era of Globalization

Abstract

The subject of this book is the role played by the English language in contemporary Japan. The nine chapters of the book examine this role from various perspectives and in various domains, and taken together they represent a wide-ranging survey of the linguistic, social and cultural issues that arise from the use of English in Japan. A major focus for many of the chapters is the education system, where the teaching and learning of English, as well as policies and planning about English, operate as a primary means of mediation between the language and society. With English traditionally having the status of a predominantly ‘;foreign’ language in Japan, the majority of the population have their first and most sustained encounter with it via formal education, and thus the practices and debates that are current in pedagogical circles have a significant influence on the state and status of the language in wider society. Other chapters examine the role of English in broadcast and print media, and in the public space of rural and urban Japan. In each case, a central concern is the way in which the language and the particular context under examination converge, as well as the social and cultural significance that results from this convergence. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 19 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.