Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
1-1-2019
Publication Title
Educational Linguistics
Abstract
The dichotomy between native speaker (NS) and non-native speaker (NNS) remains ubiquitous across different language-learning contexts despite increasing mobility and multilingualism of society. L2 Japanese learners in particular may find themselves positioned as subordinate to NSs because of the myth of Japan being a homogeneous nation of one race and one language. To help L2 Japanese students counter such positioning and gain a sense of ownership, we implemented “plurilingual critical literacies” in a Japanese language course in the U.S. Critical literacy aims to cultivate students’ awareness that power relationships are at play in language use, and plurilingual pedagogy valorizes students’ multilingual resources. Eleven high-intermediate-level Japanese students mobilized their linguistic and cultural resources to read and discuss authentic texts by transcultural or “culturally mobile” writers (Dagnino 2015). These writers expressed resistance to the status quo and made meaning creatively, as mediators between two languages and cultures. Reading, analyzing, and discussing texts by transcultural writers motivated students to counter ideologies of NS superiority, and to own Japanese in the ways that best suited their transcultural identities.
Keywords
Critical literacy, Japanese-as-a-foreign-language, Ownership, Plurilingualism, Transcultural writer, Translanguaging
Volume
39
First Page
165
Last Page
186
DOI
10.1007/978-3-030-26994-4_9
ISSN
15720292
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Rights
Licensed to Smith College and distributed CC-BY under the Smith College Faculty Open Access Policy.
Recommended Citation
Iwasaki, Noriko and Kumagai, Yuri, "“Making it your own by adapting it to what’s important to you”: Plurilingual Critical Literacies to Promote L2 Japanese Users’ Sense of Ownership of Japanese" (2019). East Asian Languages & Cultures: Faculty Publications, Smith College, Northampton, MA.
https://scholarworks.smith.edu/eas_facpubs/6
Comments
Peer reviewed accepted manuscript.
This is the version of the chapter accepted for publication in Bagga-Gupta, Sangeeta and Golden, Anne and Holm, Lars and Laursen, Helle Pia and Pitkanen-Huhta, Anne, (eds.), Reconceptualizing connections between language, learning and literacy. Cham: Springer, pp. 165-186. (Educational linguistics ; v 39)