1990年代前半のオーストラリアの新聞紙上に見られる「日本語学習不要論」について

抄録

According to a survey conducted by The Japan Foundation in 1993, the number of those learning Japanese language in Australia is about 160,000people showing an increase of approximately three times compared with a survey conducted in 1990. As the number of Japanese language learners gets increased in such a short period and teaching of Japanese starts to attract attention of society along with it, there had come up generally a voice of having concern about overshooting of voluminous expansion and comments denying the necessity of learning Japanese. This paper serves the purpose of analyzing the content of comments denying the necessity of learning Japanese as seen in the newspaper articles in the first half of the 1990s. Those newspapers of which the subject of research was centered are "The Australian" and "The Sydney Morning Herald". The main tenor of those comments are as follows: (1) As a result of a rapid increase of Japanese language learners, those able to deal with Japanese are already in surplus in the labor market. (2) Japanese is a "difficult" language for English native speakers. (3) Language proficiency of teachers of Japanese is low with effective Japanese language teaching not put into effect at schools. (4) Japanese economy is in a slump for too long. Chinese has more practical usefulness than Japanese. (5) Australian business doesn't need large numbers of people skilled in Asian languages including Japanese. (6) The number of those learning Japanese had increased too many. But Australia is a country taking over European culture. (7) Common language of business in Asia is English. (8) Business and industry generally place greater priority on cultural awareness than on language proficiency. It is more effective to. learn Japanese culture and society than Japanese language. Teaching of Japanese is said to have slowed down in terms of its growth rate from around 1995except in the primary sector. As if it goes together with that trend, comments denying the necessity of learning Japanese as seen in the newspaper articles had decreased remarkably in comparison with the first half of the 1990s. It would take a little longer, though, until one will have come assessing that trend as an exaltation of non-interest toward Japan or as an evidence of decrease of news value along with the fact that Japanese had come to occupy a certain position in school education system in Australia and had become a "normal" foreign language in the same manner as French or German.