Foreign language learning has always been important, and will be. But will be on what basis? Throughout this article we emphasize the importance of learning a foreign language, especially English in the context of Japan, and we do so not because the world is globalizing but because, as social constructionists would say, reality arises from the linguistic interaction, which requires you to acquire skills for “building” syntactically coherent sentences. One of the things observed in English learning in Japanese universities is that some students lack the intentionality toward the coherence of a sentence, sentences and the whole text. This attitude toward language can be seen in their way of treating pronouns, the definite article, the conjugation of verbs and so on. These are the elements in sentences that have weak stimuli, so learners must pay proactive attention to them. This leads us to conclude that English learning provides us with a valuable opportunity where one can get skills for building syntactically coherent sentences by rectifying the inadequate way of treating the above elements. English learning becomes more important as people lead lives where they need to quickly respond to strong stimuli embedded in linguistic information.

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This paper will focus on the speech that Boris Johnson, who was Prime Minister at the time, gave to the nation; in the address, Johnson forbid the UK population to go out during the global health crisis that COVID-19 caused. The study will attempt to elucidate, in part by reference to classical rhetoric, what English expressions Johnson used to persuade the people to accept the unprecedented inconveniences of the curfew.

  In this speech, Johnson used different verbs, especially auxiliary verbs, in each content block. In some content blocks, however, he used few verbs, relying instead mostly on nouns to add an appealing rhythmic cadence. In addition, Johnson specifically repeated “stay at home” five times during the speech, treating the phrase as a slogan and placing it in both the introduction and conclusion of the speech for emphasis. In short, he dared to repeat the same phrase without paraphrasing, which is preferred in English, and because the sentences and expressions are plain, the repetition enhanced the sense of urgency in what was a crisis situation. This paper analyzes the particular expressions Johnson used in his risk management speech to clarify how certain phrases can prove more persuasive in times of crisis.

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Jackendoff (1983, 1990, 1996) categorizes Extension (e.g. The sidewalk goes around the tree.) and Orientation (e.g. The sign points to Philadelphia.) as State. However, there are some similarities between these types and Motion (e.g. John ran into the house.), which contains GOAL and Path, and is categorized as Event. This means that it is more appropriate to treat Extension and Orientation as Event instead of State. Four semantic tests were conducted: (1) what happened test, (2) the simple present test, (3) perception verb complement test, and (4) believe-type complement test. The results of these tests show that Extension and Orientation have eventivity. This eventivity reflects mental scanning. In our mind, we scan the shape of a long object such as a road and look towards the direction that an object such as a road sign points out. In brief, the movement of our mental eyes is involved in Extension and Orientation. This study concludes that even if they describe static situations, Extension and Orientation should be classified as Event proposition.

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Nichibeikaiwatecho (Anglo-Japanese Conversation Manual), published on September 15, 1945, is said to have sold 3.6 million copies or more in three months after its first publication. According to the Japanese playwright Hisashi Inoue, within just a month after Japan’s surrender to the Allied Powers, the negative image of Americans, once considered “evil creatures” in wartime Japan, had changed into such a positive image that many Japanese were inclined to speak to them. Inoue says that the publication of Nichibeikaiwatecho synchronized with this emotional shift, and for this reason the small handbook sold like hot cakes. In a sense, it was the time when ‘America’ was closest to the Japanese. The presence of the Americans was one of the major factors that led to the brisk sales of Nichibeikaiwatecho and the nationwide boom of Tadaichi Hirakawa's radio program English Conversation, which started on February 1, 1946. As is shown in these cultural phenomena, the framework for English learning in postwar Japan was apparently formed by the publishing and broadcasting media. This implies, however, that the various trends in the contemporary school education were overshadowed by these new phenomena. In this article, I will overview the school education resumed immediately after Japan's defeat in the Asia-Pacific War, by highlighting the history of school textbooks and radio broadcasting. This study will give us an opportunity to view the enthusiasm for English learning in postwar Japan from a slightly different perspective than the conventional ones.

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This paper first examines and discusses the most prominent rhetorical techniques used in some political speeches in the U.S. today. Then, it analyzes and compares the rhetorical techniques used in the UN speech given by then U.S. President George W. Bush on September 19, 2006, and the UN speech given by then Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez the following day. Moreover, it explores how the rhetorical theories apply in both speeches. While Bush relied heavily on the technique of ethos in his speech, Chávez tried to counter Bush in his speech by making maximum use of the power of logos, pathos and ethos. He did this to cover up that Venezuela is not as powerful as the U.S. with the power of his oratory. Apart from the content of the speech, the purpose of this paper is to deepen our understanding of English expressions further and to explore English expressions from a new perspective by clarifying the state of the oratorical battle that makes full use of skillful rhetorical techniques. This paper draws on an oral presentation, “Rhetorical Techniques in Two Opposing Political Speeches: The Use of Ethos, Logos, and Pathos,” given at the 50th Annual Meeting of the Japan Society of English Usage and

(JASEUS) on December 19, 2021, with additions and corrections.

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Dynamo (1929) and Days Without End (1934) have been quite unpopular and controversial in relation to the issue of faith. Eugene O’Neill wrote these two plays to be part of a trilogy which deals with the abandonment of old-God and the subsequent search for substitute God. However, these two plays faced box-office disasters: Dynamo ran for only fifty performances; Days Without End, fifty-seven. O’Neill thinks it is necessary to depict a human figure in distress over the loss of faith and the subsequent search for a substitute God figure, remarking his idea in a letter: “It is really the first trilogy that will dig at the roots of the sickness of today as I feel it” (Bogard and Bryer [eds] 1988). Thus, it is worthwhile examining how the playwright presents the protagonists’ loss of faith in these two plays which brings about a sort of spiritual void generating not only their anguish but the need for new faith. Therefore, this paper focuses on the examination of the scenes in the two plays where the protagonists’ deprivation of their original faith and their quest for its substitute are depicted. In order to explore this issue, in Section 1, this paper deals with the process of the abandonment of faith by the protagonists in Dynamo and Days Without End: in Section 1.1, this paper examines the process in which Reuben in Dynamo abandons his faith in God; and in Section 1.2, the process whereby John Loving in Days Without End abandons his religious faith. Moreover, in Section 2, this paper illustrates the quest for new faith: in Section 2.1, this paper examines the scenes in which Reuben seeks for the substitute god figure in the dynamo; in Section 2.2, the scenes which reveal the internal struggle of John and masked Loving, resulting in the protagonist’s return to the Christian faith.

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Discourse analysis has been getting increasing attention amongst English as a Foreign Language (EFL) school teachers in many academic fields of study in recent years as a greater number of EFL students are likely to study abroad, especially in English-speaking countries. An abstract genre analysis that focuses mainly on pattern underlying specific text types can be helpful for such language teachers to find out new ideas of teaching reading and writing. This study compares six different abstracts of the research papers in Applied Linguistics by identifying five move structures (Introduction, Purpose, Method, Product, and Conclusion) and fourteen sub-move options of the abstract genre. The study also looks closely at some of the main lexical cohesions (e,g., repetition, synonym, antonym, and hyponymy), grammatical cohesions (e,g., additive, adversative, causal, temporal, anaphoric, cataphoric, comparative, ellipsis, and tense usage). It would be worth investigating how well each abstract of the research papers is organized and what makes its abstract so important in terms of the contents. The paper makes a few suggestions for the future possibility of applying the genre-based ESP (English for Specific Purposes) teaching in secondary - and tertiary - level educational settings in Japan.

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Prescriptive grammar considers the phrase ‘too Adj of a(n) N’ to be ungrammatical although descriptive grammar states that it is often used in US informal

. The present study uses ANOVA to analyze the acceptability of the form by age group in the US and the UK, and compares the data with those of prescriptively grammatical ‘too Adj a(n) N.’ In my recent survey, the acceptability of the form without ‘of’ surpassed that with ‘of’ for people over 60 years of age in both countries; however, while the former did not show a significant change as age decreased, the latter showed an increase. In the US, the latter switched places with the former for those roughly in the Millennial generation (born in 1981-1995). Additionally, in both countries, the two forms switched places in formality for those roughly in the Millennial generation, as in acceptability, suggesting some association between acceptability and perceived formality. This study believes that young native speakers’ possible reference to the ‘of-dropping’ informalization of expressions such as ‘a couple of NP’ has led to their relatively low acceptance of the form without ‘of.’

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This study focuses on the depictions of snakes in Herman Melville’s “The Happy Failure” and Billy Budd, Sailor. We can see the similar implications in Moby-Dick, where the image of the white whale and the Leviathan overlap. It is possible to say that Melville tries to put certain meanings into such depictions. In “The Happy Failure,” the narrator’s uncle tries to test his invention, the Great Hydraulic-Hydrostatic Apparatus, but fails. He destroys this snake-like machine, changes his stubborn attitude, and willingly accepts the failure. We can see the possibility that Melville, who was not satisfied with the poor reputation of his novels, reflects his anger through this character. In Billy Budd, Sailor, it is worth noting that Claggart, Billy’s senior officer, is depicted with snake-like expressions. Melville had grieved over his son’s death, so it seems appropriate that he put the image of a snake into Claggart, who is beaten to death by Billy, to relieve his anger. I think it reasonable that Melville attained salvation by using the depictions of snakes in these stories and making the snake-like machine and character the objects of anger.

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In the course of Iago's seduction of Othello, he never proclaims explicitly that Desdemona has sexual relationships with Cassio. He, however, gives Othello clues, and makes him think himself. In the first half of his “poisoning,” his clues are basically linguistic, and in the second half, his clues are "generally-accepted" ideas and the situations in which Othello is placed. During the whole procedure, the audience is always aware of Iago's black intention to ensnare Othello and Othello's restricted scope of understanding. The audience sees Iago who proceeds his machinations totally as he intends without damaging Othello's trust to him, and it also sees Othello who is entrapped to destruction, not knowing Iago's true nature. Thus, while the audience's sympathy to Othello is controlled, it also appreciates Iago's malignant nature in his extremely efficient command of language.

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Agatha Christie (1890-1976) has long been axiomatically referred to as “the mistress of mystery,” but it is not widely known that this world-famous author was also a poet. She had sent her poems to The Poetry Review, some of which had been printed in the magazine before she made her debut as a mystery writer with her first novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920). Furthermore, she had a collection of poems—The Road of Dreams (1925)—published through a presumably private-funded way five years after she got into the storytelling business. This means that her creative impetus in her early years was basically for poetry. Then, what on earth brought Christie, who had started writing poems during her adolescence, to the genre of detective novels? How did poetry come to terms with mystery in her case? In this paper I would like to elucidate these issues by examining Christie’s early imaginative visions represented in her poems and to reveal some connection between her poetry and stories. My main focus is, above all, on her attachment to the characters in pantomimes, such as Harlequin, Columbine, and Pierrot, which is clearly seen in her poem ‘A Masque from Italy’ that might be a prototype of her later narratives.

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Task-Based Language Teaching using Computer-Mediated Communication is popular in improving learners’ communicative ability. There are many advantages of this approach including enhancing students’ autonomy, self-learning etc. (Lee & Ahn, 2016). However, there are limited studies in this field (Kitade, 2006; Stockwell, 2010), so more research needs to be conducted. This study investigated lexical diversity and syntactic complexity in TBLT using synchronous and asynchronous CMC. In the study, 18 advanced learners of English worked on decision-making tasks in small groups, using both modes of communication. Lexical diversity and syntactic complexity (the mean length of sentence, clause, and T-unit) were analyzed quantitatively. A T-test was used, and the findings indicated no significant difference regarding lexical diversity between the two modes. Conversely, statistically increases in syntactic complexity were found when considering all three variables in relation to the asynchronous CMC. These results suggest that different modes of CMC have the potential to develop different aspects of second language learning.

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This study aims to investigate the relationship between Japanese university students’ class community and their peer review activities in an EFL writing class. Their average TOEIC score was 675. They were asked to engage in peer review and write comments about their classmates’ essays in the left-hand column of the Peer-editing Sheet in class. In the right-hand column, they specified how they would respond to their peer reviewers’ comments. This study’s data mainly consists of their feedback and responses in the Peer-editing Sheet and their final interviews. From their comments and responses in the Peer-editing Sheet, they are observed to have gradually incorporated “a third person’s point of view” into their evaluation of their own essays toward the end of the period of study. Their interviews seem to imply that reading others’ essays brought them various educational benefits such as raised awareness of their readers perspective, how to improve their writing by observing others’ essays, etc. Finally, based on the “educational benefits” that a community can produce, it is proposed that peer review activities should be more extensively utilized in order to help learners grow as autonomous writers.

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Mikhail Bakhtin says that we are usually unaware of the fact that we are under the pressure of incontestable linguistic norms. As long as we live only with our mother tongue, we don’t have to face the language as a norm, but there are some exceptional situations where a language appears as a normative form. One of these situations is foreign language learning. Studying a foreign language includes not only absorbing new vocabulary but also acquiring a norm, namely syntax. Acquiring a norm always comes with conflict. While conflict is a thing that we should avoid as much as we can, it is indispensable for us to gain a new insight about the world. In recent foreign language learning, there are some social factors that help learners circumvent the conflict that they are supposed to struggle with in acquiring a norm. In this article I consider what this learning environment brings about. It affects people’s sensitiveness to language, which leads to the belittling of linear recognition of the world around us and things that are going on within us. Language as a norm will be a minimum premise we should share if we try to maintain dialogical communication with others.

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This paper is concerned with nonrestrictive relative which-clauses that occur as unembedded dependent clauses, such as Which is a good thing. , Which reminds me..., etc. Although nonrestrictive which-clauses are generally regarded as more frequent in written English compared with speech, the unembedded type of which-clauses (henceforth, Which-clauses), literally independent of and separated from the preceding main clauses, are especially common in conversation and sometimes found in dialogue in fiction and very informal news texts (Biber et al. 1999). Biber et al. (1999) points out that unembedded dependent clauses are connected with the evolving nature of conversation and that Which-clauses are allowed because of the relative link that signals a close connection to the immediately preceding text. However, in order to clarify the whole picture of the occurrence of Which-clauses, further investigation is needed in terms of the general characteristics of spoken English on the one hand and the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic properties of Which-clauses themselves on the other. In the course of discussion, it becomes clear that the speaker’s real-time information processing during conversation, as well as certain functional and pragmatic properties of Which-clauses, is the key to finding out why they occur in informal English.

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Language testing and its assessment are indispensable for many EFL teachers to check how well their students have been learning English for a certain period of time. IELTS has long been well-known as a high-stakes test that can assess the four skills of learners of English separately on a highly reliable evaluation basis. In fact, it is a gatekeeper for the examinees who are applying for universities or colleges abroad. Especially, reading skills, one of the receptive skills along with listening skills, involves great many complicated learning strategies that the EFL teachers need to keep in mind. In order to help the learners of English improve their reading abilities in the IELTS reading section, the EFL teachers have to be aware of what kinds of steps or procedures the test developers would take. This is exactly the starting point for me to investigate how we should design a high-stakes reading test in the future. This case study is based on an empirical study conducted with my graduate students enrolled at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. I would like to clarify the aim of the trial IELTS reading test and its assessment by taking a sequence of procedures and analyzing it qualitatively and quantitatively.

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  Abduction is a mode of inference that Peirce focused on in his attempt to identify the way of scientific discovery. Deduction, on the other hand, is another mode of inference with a long history in Western philosophy. The difference between the two is that the former just offers a most likely (plausible) option out of possible alternatives while the latter always gives the true conclusion as long as the underlying assumptions are correct. In utterance interpretation, especially when we are interested in implied meaning (or implicature), an abductive process with its focus on hypothesis-formation is in order, because abduction is quite in line with implicature as the former is non-monotonic (i.e., with more than one conclusion) and the latter defeasible (i.e. can be cancelled). Being monotonic and non-defeasible, deduction in contrast is incompatible with implicature. Relevance theory, a pragmatic study of implicit meaning, however, depends heavily on DEDUCTIVE processes in trying to identify how implicature is produced and understood, although it obviously refers to ABDUCTIVE processes. This paper shows the widespread preference for deduction in Western literature including linguistics, and why abduction has long been ignored and even practically forgotten (to be replaced by deduction) in academic discussions.

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  Among Eugene O’Neill’s dramatic works, there is no other play like Ah, Wilderness! which can be regarded as a domestic comedy receiving a very favorable reception. With respect to this tragedian’s sole comedy, a number of arguments have been put forward among O’Neill scholars. However, little attention has been paid to stylistic analysis on the relation between dialogue and comic effects in the play. Thus, this paper aims to consider Richard’s (the protagonist) personalities and laughable speeches by Sid contributing to the formation of comic effects in the play. Through the stylistic analysis using the linguistic information obtained from the corpus data of the play, this paper deliberates over a pensive but less profound mood in Richard’s speeches functioning as a significant factor in the avoidance of the formation of a tragic atmosphere in the play. Moreover, this paper attempts to shed light on the important factors in Sid’s speeches that are effective in increasing the comic element in the dialogue.

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