This paper attempts a corpus-based metaphorical analysis of wine discourse as part of investigating how metaphor functions in a particular context, wine discourse. This preliminary research is based on Lakoff and Johnson's claim that all thinking is originated from bodily experience and metaphor is rooted in "a fundamental embodied cognitive mechanism" (Lakoff and Johnson 1980). This cognitive view considers metaphor as an everyday language and thoughts embedded in a basic cognitive instrument of human beings, as opposed to the traditional view that metaphor is used for a decorative purpose. Aiming at efficient and precise sampling rather than intuition-oriented data processing, a corpus-based method is applied in extracting the keywords from wine tasting notes, followed by manual selection of actual cases of metaphor from among these keywords. In referring to Caballero and Suarez-Toste's (2008) categorization of conceptual metaphors in "winespeak," potential problems and prospects of metaphorical analysis of wine discourse are also discussed.

This is a pilot study trying to see if a corpus can be effectively used to see children's language development. A corpus of language samples of a child named Michelle Tanner, a character from an American TV show Full House was compiled and put into analysis to examine her language development over a period of eight years. Her language samples were analyzed using corpus software, AntConc (Anthony, 2011) from the viewpoints of such developmental indicators as frequently used words, average sentence length, "be" verbs, future tense, present perfect tense, as well as "I" clusters, "you" clusters, and "if" clauses. The data showed a certain acquisition order of English syntax/grammar in Michelle's language development over the eight years, and this exploration revealed that a corpus can be an effective tool to analyze children's language development.

This paper unravels the linguistic construction of the myth surrounding certain exquisite violins, specifically those made by Stradivari and Guarneri del Gesu. Under the assumption that the value has to a great degree been constructed through language, the analyses focused on how these violins were narrated during interviews when the violinists were asked to describe their violin. As analytical frameworks Roland Barthes' constructs presented in Myth Today and Writing Degree Zero were employed. The analyses show that the multiplicity of the signified include a destined partnership, a teacher who inspired the violinist, as well as a time machine that takes the violinist to past heroic composers and legendary violinists who engaged the particular instrument, among others. Consequently, the names Stradivari and Guarneri del Gesu signify not only the instruments but also various factors that produce mythical value.

The North and South of India were split over English status in the process of framing the Constitution of India. This article focuses on the controversy over English status in independence-era India and reveals the logical structures of “language ideologies” that northern and southern leaders constructed. The analysis shows that the northern leaders attempted to construct the Indian national identity by eliminating English from the official language while the southern leaders called for English as an official language in order to stand on an equal footing with the North and maintain their Dravidian identity. It exemplifies that selection and justification of a certain language is a part of the process in which a community is imagined and constructed.

Media outlets around the world are social institutions that present discourse from a particular society. These discourses are stories written by journalists representing their viewpoints and values, which are influenced by particular ideologies from their own society. To help understand and try to uncover ideologies embedded within media discourse, a critical discourse analysis (hereafter known as CDA) can be used to analyse the use of vocabulary and grammar, but within the social context that they are written in. This paper uses a CDA to investigate how two different media outlets report the controversies surrounding Japanese history textbooks and their portrayal of the events from World War II. The first two sections will establish the theories of CDA before the analysis of the two media texts is carried out using Fairclough's framework for CDA (1995, 2001).

The purpose of this paper is to identify linguistic features with which advertisers try to build relationships with consumers in Japanese and American cosmetic advertising, drawing on the notion of interpersonal function of Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics. The analyses conducted in this study revealed two distinct kinds in Japanese and American cosmetic advertising discourses. The typical Japanese advertising discourse is that advertisers try to tell their potential consumers how their products are good, and they want to share them with you and the others. In contrast, the typical American advertising discourse focuses on how their products are different, and that you should keep them for yourself because they will make you different.

This paper presents the results of an investigation into the effects of repeating selected news stories, in pairs, on oral fluency in Japanese university classrooms. A revised version of Nation's "4/3/2" task was implemented, with rotating pairs and with ever- decreasing narration times. It includes such fluency-enhancing elements as formulaic language units, automatization, and task repetition. Participants in this study were second- year English majors taking a Media English course. Classes met twice a week for a full school year. Tests were administered at the beginning and at the end of the year. Oral fluency was measured using an interview test that assessed rate of speech, and using a standard college speaking test. Results showed that oral fluency improved as measured by both tests, thus lending support to the use of Nation's 4/3/2 technique.

Recently, researchers have focused on not only varieties of English (i.e., Englishes) but also learners' motivation towards learning, particularly with regards to their international posture. Understanding the concept of English varieties and improving English skills are of equal importance for learners of English as a foreing language. Although listening has been considered one of the most difficult skills for Japanese learners to acquire, shadowing has captured the attention of researchers for the past 15 years as one of the most effective training methods for improving listening comprehension. Thus, this study examined whether the incorporation of multiple Englishes into shadowing training is effective for language learning and whether learners' level of international posture lead to improvement in their listening comprehension skills. A total of 47 Japanese university freshmen participated in this experiment. A textbook with a CD containing various Englishes and eight lessons was given to students in this study. The results show that shadowing training by using various Englishes is effective for improving learners' comprehension skills. The results also suggest a positive relationship between listening comprehension skills and higher international posture among learners.

Dictogloss is a language teaching technique proposed by Wajnryb (1990), where learners work cooperatively to reconstruct sentences after listening to a short text. This paper reports how dictogloss activities can be adapted to learners' levels. Dictogloss is an effective tool to perform Focus on Form (FonF) instruction in Communicative Language Teaching. However, if the materials and procedures do not match the learners' levels, it might not be an effective technique to improve their English proficiencies. In this paper, some adjustments of dictogloss activities based on learners' levels are introduced. Furthermore, it is focused on what each learner noticed after conducting dictogloss. It was found there were distinctive differences in their noticing points among learners of different levels. The points learners noticed are categorized into two types: self-monitoring of their language features and their strategic abilities for performing dictogloss. These findings will give some suggestions for improving learners' metacognitive abilities by using dictogloss.

Considering English as a tool of communication, language education cannot be regarded as successful if it only focuses on how much knowledge about English students accumulate instead of focusing on how capable they are communicating with it. The author firmly believes that second language education should always be discussed in the context of communication. Therefore the perspective of Pragmatics needs to be paid considerable attention. Above all, the concept of politeness is particularly important. However, the opportunity for the students to learn English from the point of view of politeness is rather limited for various reasons such as the shortage of teaching time or difficulty finding a place for it in the curriculum. The classroom also lacks the necessary context within which politeness can be understood. Politeness can only be understood in association with language in context. In this regard, cinema has the potential to be a rich resource that provides students with exposure to real conversational situations. This paper discusses how to teach politeness through film and subtitle translation by using the politeness strategy devised by Brown and Levinson (1987) as a framework. It further discusses how subtitle translation contributes to the enhancement of the students' communication ability.

This article describes the results of an analysis of "learning logs" written by EFL learners based on the concept of self-regulated learning. In the concept of self- regulated learning, learning consists of three phases: the forethought phase, the performance phase, and the self-reflection phase. A total of 106 first and second-year college students, divided into two groups according to their English proficiency levels, kept learning logs for reflection and monitoring of their learning for 4 months. The collected data were analyzed with KH Coder, a text-mining software developed by Higuchi (2001-12). The results show that the students at the beginning level have difficulty in monitoring their own problems in learning. The results also show that students at both the beginning and intermediate levels have difficulty in pursuing the aims set by themselves.

This paper discusses the effects and the theoretical backgrounds of "speech production training through reconstruction of a full message from a text skeleton" proposed by Someya (2011). A pilot study was conducted on 35 non-English-major university students for 15 weeks to examine if the method is applicable to "average" university students. After getting familiarized with texts through shadowing or repeating activities, students were asked to reconstruct the conceptual contents of the text orally with the help of "text skeleton," or a simplified version of an outline of the text, which consists of key-words and -phrases of the target text. Students were required to reconstruct the text making a full use of their meta-linguistic abilities. They were encouraged to paraphrase the original sentences and speak without preparation to promote their online processing. The pilot test results showed improvement in the sentence construction ability of most students. This implies, from the perspective of Levelt's speech production process, the method can be effective in promoting learners' grammatical encoding abilities. Also, the questionnaire conducted on the 15th week indicated a high sense of self-efficacy among students.

This is a result of a reflection on the significance of feedback in the teaching of writing through current news topics in English: focused on a teacher training course. In a review of two pivotal papers by Ferris (1995) and Truscott (1996), an attempt was made to clarify differences in both arguments on the significance of grammar correction, and a conclusion was made as follows: both researchers were enthusiastic for the improvement of their students' learning process, although their views of results of their efforts differed. Then another examination of two research papers focused on different aspects of the teaching of writing in English in Japan was made, revealing the fact that no adequate consideration was given to the learning process of their research subjects. Finally, some findings of the latest feedback researches were applied into the learning process of one of the participants in the 2011 teacher training course.