2013 Volume 16 Issue 1 Pages 6-21
The aim of this paper is to reconsider language education from the viewpoint of welfare linguistics. It emphasizes the importance of cooperation on three fronts: cooperation between the four areas of the language education (Japanese language education for non-native speakers, mother/heritage language education, Japanese language education for native speakers, and foreign language education); cooperation between different school subjects (by way of taking up language issues in all subjects); and cooperation between subcategories of education such as intercultural communication studies and international education. In the age of globalization, language education needs to focus not only on the development of communicative competence, but also on the education of intercultural citizens of a globalized community who can understand and tolerate differences and otherness. This paper also shows that welfare linguistics contributes to eliminating linguistic discrimination towards minority speakers, as well as enriching the lives of all members of a community. In Japan this idea is rarely found in language education, and institutional constraints exist. However, the realization of language education in a wider sense, as described in this paper, is what it means to implement the idea of the welfare linguistics in a society of multicultural co-existence.
