Considering the trend of globalization and other global changes, the direction of Japanese society should be towards “a society that is tolerant of diversity and loosely cohesive”. What can language researchers do when they consider “new learning and teaching” within this context? This paper clams that “education for democratic citizenship” as proposed by Germany and the Council of Europe has a possibility as “alternative learning and education”. I will also argue how we can localize it into Japanese society.

This paper explores the definition of Japanese language teachers’ competencies as well as future directions of Japanese language teacher education. Specifically, it investigated the characteristics of the competencies mentioned in the report of the Agency for Cultural Affairs and how they were determined. This study showed that Japanese language teachers’ competencies can be summarized as knowledge, skills, and attitude, and found that the “attitude to continue learning” was emphasized not only during training and the early stages of a career in Japanese language teaching but also at more advanced levels. The study determined that the grounds for advocating these competencies were backed up by opinions from Japanese language teacher training and are referred to as “new competencies.” Furthermore, challenges for Japanese language teacher education based on this view of teacher competencies were found to include 1) the possibility that teachers who are exploited as human widget may burn out, 2) division and opposition may emerge owing to differences in position and roles, and 3) teaching methods may fall into elementalism. Finally, in a move to eliminate such possibilities and maintain balance between the growth of teachers and the development of Japanese language teachers’ communities based on the concept of professional capital, the development of professional learning communities and cross-boundary learning was examined.

This paper examines how people change through dialogues with different others, using ethnographical observation and conversation/discourse analysis. It also attempts to interpret the results of the analysis from the viewpoint of learning. In the field of life-long learning, there are two kinds of learning: formative learning - a theory of child learning, and transformative learning for adult learning. This paper examines group discussions among adults which were conducted towards problem-solving from three perspectives: (1) diachronic observation focusing on a target person, (2) comparative analysis of different types of discourse, and (3) conversation analysis from a micro perspective. The analysis showed: (1) changes from passive to active attitudes, (2) recognition of participants’ social roles and strengthening of group membership identity, and (3) facilitating mutual understanding through gaining new perspectives towards others. The analysis indicates that people change through dialogue with different others and that the changes lead to formative learning.

This paper describes an action research study focusing on a community salon in the Mogusa apartment complex in Hino City, Tokyo. The purpose was to identify the learning needs of the elderly residing in Mogusa and design a nonformal learning environment. The six-year study consisted of two phases: (1) a phase in which learning needs were explored through dialogues, and (2) a phase in which workshops were planned separately for the various learning needs. The results indicated that (1) a non-formal learning environment design was achieved at the salon, (2) the salon stakeholders gained the ability to independently discover needs and design workshops, and (3) the salon stakeholders also began to move out the community and visit a university.

In this study, we elucidate how not only knowledge and skills, but also mental attitudes, or ethos, can be passed on from older to younger generations through co-participating in activities. These mental attitudes include intersubjective values, customs, manners, and the social norms of a community. We have employed the methodology of interaction analysis using video recordings of preparation activities for the Nozawa-Onsen Dosojin Festival. In Analysis 1, we illustrate how the art of rope binding ‘kesho-shibari’ is learned, describing how the beauty of the form is the essence of the skill. In Analysis 2, we illustrate how through co-participating in the stacking of lumber, the younger generation learn how to take initiative in the activity in a short time while maintaining the orderly arrangement of the lumber. These analyses show that knowledge, skills, and ethos are acquired together. Finally, we propose a learning model that enables community members to move on a trajectory of knowledge, skills, and ethos in a new activity, once the mental attitude has been acquired. This study clarifies not only a way of transmitting culture but also suggests an ethnologic device that educates and unifies a community.

Musical expression is created by varying timings and dynamics to match the musician’s interpretation of the composition and/or expressive intention, which are not written in the musical score. Learners should be able not only to conceptually grasp and hear the structure of variations, but through their perception and adjustment of movement, also to actually express this as they perform music in lessons. Using video recorded data of one-on-one piano lessons at a college of music, this study examined how multimodal resources, such as utterances, vocalizations, musical sounds and gestures, were co-operatively organized by a student and the instructor who is also a professional performer. The analysis shows the following: (1) The instructor interweaves auditory impressions and concepts of music through speech, piano playing, vocalization, and gestures to instruct on the structure of variation. (2) Adjustment of performance, demonstration of understanding and confirmation were exchanged between the student and the instructor through integrated gesture repetition within performances. (3) A student’s musical expression was seen to adjust in auditory and visual synchronization with these gestures. These results are discussed in terms of “professional vision” and music education.

This study uses multimodal analysis to examine interactions to teach physical techniques in Karate lessons for children. The analysis specifically focuses on scenes where the primacy instructor of the Karate lesson (the Shihan) gives instructions to help trainees develop a conscious awareness of their imaginary opponent. The results show that these instructions encourage the trainee and the teacher to co-imagine the opponent even during practice with no opponent and to exchange their perceptions directly through haptic interaction. This enables them to be able to share the experience that contains not only physical/external but also cognitive/internal dispositions which competent practitioners are expected to have. Finally, this paper emphasizes that this kind of multimodal interaction allows the efficient instruction of intercorporeal dispositions directly through various practices in training situations.

This study focuses on the ways exhibits are explained to children visiting the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (Miraikan). While Science Communicators (SCs) explain about exhibits to children, adults accompanying children or caregivers, often offer assistance to children. In the cases examined here, we found that caregivers added comments or physically lifted their children, so that their children could have more opportunities to speak, to understand about an exhibit, or be able to adequately view it. The assistance of caregivers was found to not only help deal with problems, but also contributed to the unfolding of activities. Although neither the SCs nor the caregivers were trained in education, they collaborated effectively in order to support the children’s full participation and treated the children as principal participants. The results show how education in museums is put into practice and indicate the importance of education and learning in our daily lives.

This paper attempts to anatomize the repeat-after-the-teacher activity and subsequent activities often observed in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) classrooms in Japan. Drawing on linguistic anthropology of education, this study regards the above-mentioned activities as “metalinguistic use of language”. By paying particular attention to the “poetic” aspects of such language use, this paper reveals the ways in which the metalinguistic practice of EFL sets focus on and reifies “English” as its object language. Also, the study depicts the “creativity” of the English language classroom through identifying other metapragmatic regimentation processes relevant to the pragmatics of metalanguage from the viewpoint of metacommunication, thereby pointing to the metalanguage socialization effect which poetic emergence of object language can bring about.

When considering new learning and teaching methods, it is necessary to revisit and review concepts considered as self-evident in accordance with the demands of society and technological progress. In this paper, we discuss hand raising as an example of a concept considered self-evident and propose an alternative way for students to express an opinion. The alternative we suggest involves using the annotation tool FishWatchr Mini during presentations in elementary school social studies. Raising one’s hand is a way to assert one’s intention to talk. However, the use of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) offers the unique advantage of allowing children to simultaneously express their opinions and discover other children’s opinions. This is useful because it teaches children how to actively participate in society and handle the diverse range of opinions found online. Contemporary society requires people to have these abilities, hence children should be taught these skills in educational settings. Furthermore, the teacher plays the crucial role of a facilitator who can quickly grasp, organize, and present many children’s opinions. In this paper, as an actual example of this role, we discuss how teachers manage “consecutive annotations” by children and employ a teaching method that uses the annotation results.

This study clarifies changes in the perception of the medium of instruction in Bhutan. Bhutan is a multilingual society with 19 languages in use. English was selected as the medium of instruction when school education was introduced in the 1960s. This study divided the changes in education in Bhutan into three periods and focuses on how the goal of education, that is, the concept of “equality in education”, has changed. In the first period, “equality of access to education” was the goal of education policy, with the belief that education leads to equal success. The second period focused on the formation of national identity. Currently in the third period, diversification of education according to ability is set as the new goal. This study investigated how teachers and students perceive the medium of instruction. The result showed that teachers listed “equality” as the criteria for selecting English, emphasizing that English as a language would lead to equal success in the future. While students stressed the importance of educating all citizens in Dzongkha based on the criteria of “identity”. This study clarified that the “desirable medium of instruction” imaged by these two generations reflects the education policy and the social stance of language experienced by the two generations.

In previous studies of Japanese oral narratives, the use of evaluation devices for making storytelly more effective, such as negation (Yamada, 2000), (soshi) tara “…and …” (Katoh, 2003) and historical present (Kodama, 2011), has been analyzed individually or specifically focusing on some parts of narratives. This research qualitatively analyzed a celebrity’s experiential narrative recounted on a TV program. Longacre’s analytical narrative framework was used, in addition to a reconsideration of Labov’s narrative structure and concept of evaluation. The aim was to clarify the kinds of evaluation and how and where these kinds of evaluation are combined in narratives holistically and comprehensively. As a result, various types of evaluation were found to contribute to making the storytelling more effective as follows: 1) intensive and cumulative use of syntactic internal evaluation devices for emphasis of unexpectedness and vividness, 2) insertion of external evaluation and embedded orientation clauses to navigate listeners’ interpretation and understanding of the narrative, and to create distinct gaps between story characters’ images/thoughts and actual utterances, 3) evaluative actions and quotations of speech and thought to extend the climax or the peak of the story, 4) minimize the length of the climax or punchlines.

This paper describes how conversational analysis was used to clarify how practitioners and clients manage “pain” in home massage situations. It demonstrates how the practitioner asks about the client’s pain during the course of a massage, and how this interaction affects the course of the massage. First, questions about pain are considered. In particular, “questions regarding the progress of procedures” while touching the client’s body are investigated. Whether these questions are asked with an “interrogative-negative” or “interrogative-positive” perspective is also considered. When asking a “question regarding the progress of treatment”, using an interrogative-negative question is considered to be optimal. Moreover, “interrogative-positive” questions are characterized as being designed to make it easier for clients to report pain. In addition, the use of clients’ facial expressions as a resource for designing questions depending on the situation, was also investigated. The study concludes that one of the practices that practitioners perform when designing questions is monitoring the client’s face.

The use of sentence-initial But (SIB) as a coordinating conjunction as opposed to its intrasentential counterpart is disfavored from a prescriptive viewpoint, especially in written text. Its use in practice, however, makes frequent appearances in relatively formal texts such as newspapers, dictionaries, academic papers, and language textbooks. This study examines, from a sociolinguistic point of view, whether the variation between SIB and intrasentential but is stable or is language change in progress. A survey of dictionaries and grammar books implies that the use of SIB is not a recent development, and that it has been stable at least since the 18th century. Quantitative analysis of recent use of SIB in a diachronic corpus of American English (COHA) reveals that 20–30% of use of but as a coordinating conjunction is as SIB. The relatively slow increase in the frequency of SIB in the 200 years between the 1810s and the 2000s shows that SIB can be seen as language change in progress. The change implies that the coordinating conjunction but is in the process of becoming acceptable as a linking adverbial in that it appears in a sentence-initial position.

Though the features of Japanese left-dislocation have been described focusing on the function of information structure or the problem of whether it is spoken language or written language, these abstract descriptions have not been fully examined in practice. Based on the idea of a “multiple-grammar model,” which assumes that grammar differs in each concrete language environment (genre), this paper analyzed Japanese left-dislocation based on a cross-corpus investigation. Two points were clarified: (1) left-dislocation in Japanese is related to discourse development that is larger than the information structure level and is primarily divided into <introduction or summary> or <item indication or commentary insertion> types; (2) the Japanese left-dislocation characteristics are related to a genre that assumes there is an imbalanced relationship between the speaker and the listener, which can be called “solo performance monologue”. To clarify the various genres assumed in this multiple-grammar model, it is important to adopt an approach that starts from concrete linguistic expressions, as in this paper, and specifies the genre characteristics of these linguistic expressions.

This paper examines the direction of diversification of linguistic forms in Japanese and Korean that require forethought and consideration. It investigates request expressions involving benefactive verbs, which are present in both languages. The results demonstrate that both permission-requesting expressions in Japanese and possibility-affirmation questions in Korean are often used by younger people. It was determined that these expressions are often used in requests that would place a heavier burden on the requested party, regardless of the respective ages of the speaker and listener. They were also often determined to be directed toward conversation partners with whom the speaker’s attitudinal expression selection criteria might easily waver, such as a newly-acquainted social superior or a member of the same age group, in conversations when the speaker is meeting them for the first time. In Japanese, expressions that do not refer to the “personal domain of the listener” are considered more polite, and euphemistic or indirect expressions are more common. This particular restriction is not present in Korean, resulting in a greater variety of expressions that make direct reference. These results indicate a difference in direction in Japanese and Korean in regard to diversification of request expressions.

When members of a family refer to other members, they use linguistic forms such as kinship terms, first names, and demonstratives. This paper analyses demonstratives used as reference terms for the third person, such as konoko and anohito. In this study 146 examples of demonstratives expressing the third person were obtained by means of participant observation of a family. The analyses of the demonstratives have found that speakers tend to employ demonstratives when 1) they refer to other members whose reference terms have not been fixed between the interlocutors, 2) they do not need to clarify the referent, and 3) they talk about the referent confidentially with close relatives. On the other hand, speakers avoid using demonstratives to refer to senior family members or in-laws. Moreover, it has been revealed that speakers use demonstratives flexibly, based on the conversation context and the situation. Whether or not the referent was with the interlocutor was also seen to affect the usage of demonstratives. This is not the case for kinship terms or first names.