2018 Volume 16 Pages 249-259
So far, researchers on language and language education have regarded the objectiveness (third-person perspective) of language meaning as so vital that they made efforts to exclude the subjectiveness (second-person perspective) as much as possible. As a result, the engaging aspect, or engagingness of language, which should be considered inherent in language, has also been easily excluded by the researchers. The editors and authors questioned this and mention that engagingness has to be considered as critical in the various fields which deal with language, including developmental psychology, pedagogy, social anthropology, national language education, English language education and Japanese language education. As we have arrived in the globalized era, we keep in contact with others from different languages, cultures, and identities on a daily basis. This book proposes that this age has met with a refashioned turn on language and language education. It provides us with suggestions for considering language education for and language education research on fostering“citizenship”for us to live together in this era, as well as raising people as“critical beings”to actively participate in their societies and communities.
