The main objective of this paper is to investigate the indirect modes of communication in natural dialogs. The present paper clarifies, among others, the following indirect communicative modes: (i) inferential indirect mode, (ii) context-dependent indirect mode, (iii) metonymic indirect mode, and (iv) metaphorical indirect mode. It is shown that these modes of communication constitute the core part of the underlying mechanism of communication of natural dialogs. A wide range of dialog examples (in English and Japanese novels and plays) are analyzed as empirical evidence to clarify the communicative modes of (i)〜(iv) mentioned above.

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While studies on metaphor in second or foreign language teaching and learning have been popular, little progress has been made in studies on metonymy in the second or foreign language despite the fact that metonymy is one of the basic cognitive processes and metonymic expressions are just as frequently used in daily life as metaphors. This paper presents an overview of research on metaphor and metonymy in foreign language learning and discusses the aspects of metonymy comprehension by learners of English whose first language is Japanese with reference to the research of Arizono (2016, 2019, 2020). The results of analysis suggest that intervention by a teacher and cooperation with other learners are required for learners to take full advantage of strategies for successful metonymy comprehension.

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A number of studies have reported that Japanese language, compared to English, has more of a tendency to construe situations as thematic relations and use intransitive verbs. Despite this linguistic predisposition, Japanese learners of English tend to judge natural sentences with intransitive verbs in English as ungrammatical and instead use unnatural passive constructions. One of the reasons for this can be uneven distributions of syntactic structures in textbooks, which is one of the main resources of English that learners are exposed to. This current research analyzed the syntactic structures in textbooks for a high school course called Eigo Hyogen [English Expressions]. The results found that despite the Japanese language having a tendency to prefer an intransitive construction to refer to an externally-driven thematic relation, such cases rarely appeared in the textbooks analyzed. In the rare occasions that they did appear, it was likely to be depicted in a passive construction. By alleviating this bias and presenting more English sentences that conform to the way native speakers of Japanese habitually describe situations, we believe that Japanese native speakers will be able to learn and use English with better efficacy.

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[in Japanese]

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English education in “Society 5.0” requires not only teaching language, but also fostering students who, as their own problems, seriously face complex social challenges of the new era. This paper proposes practical methods of English education to raise students’ awareness of Diversity & Inclusion and SDGs. We did a questionnaire survey on “English and society” among university students at five universities and a junior college, and saw that there was a relation between students’ attitude toward Diversity & Inclusion and their willingness to learn English. This paper also discusses, as examples of complex and changing situations of English, positive and negative roles of English in multi-lingual India and spread of automatic English translation in English classes in Japan. We conclude we need “inclusive college English education” in classes.

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