Language education in a national school abroad in a bilingual society: a case of Japanese school in Catalonia

ABSTRACT

This paper explores language education in a Japanese school in Catalonia from the viewpoints of language policy with special attention to ideology. Our main goal is to identify the major factors which influence over the school’s language education. As a national school abroad, this school should include national, local and global viewpoints in its education. Language education is one of the methods to respond to this expectation. The results of data analysis, collected through semi-structured interviews with the vice-principal and principal of the school as well as parents, suggest that home country ideologies have an important influence over the school’s and sojourner families’ views on language and language education. Our study has demonstrated that an ideology-loaded, top-down LEP is not appropriate for the current situation. Therefore, it proposes a need to update and revise the language education of Japanese schools abroad. This may ultimately lead to suggesting an involvement of the agents (principals, teachers and parents) and participants (students) who are absent from the design of the LEP.

要旨

本研究はカタルーニャの日本人学校における言語教育を言語政策の視点から特にイデオロギーに着目して分析し、学校の言語教育に最も大きい影響を与える要因を探る。海外における日本国民の教育機関として、日本人学校はナショナルな視点、地域的な視点、そしてグローバルな視点を教育に盛り込むことが期待されており、言語教育はこうした期待に応えるための手段の一つとされている。学校長や生徒の家族との半構造化インタビューのデータを分析した結果、日本のイデオロギーが特に学校や短期滞在の駐在員家庭の言語および言語教育に対する見方に大きく影響していることが分かった。また、イデオロギーをふんだんに含んだトップ・ダウン式の言語教育政策は現状に即していないことが明らかになった。さらに、本研究は在外日本人学校の言語教育を現状に合わせて見直しする必要性、そして究極的には言語教育政策をデザインする段階で不在となっているエージェント（学校長、教師、保護者）および参加者（生徒）をもそのプロセスに含めることを提唱するものである。

KEYWORDS:

• Language policy
• language education policy
• education for intercultural understanding
• ideology
• Japanese school
• Catalonia

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the reviewers and the editor for their many valuable suggestions, and all my colleagues for their great support. I especially thank all the participants who collaborated in this study. Without them, this study would not have been possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Makiko Fukuda (Ph.D in Catalan Philology, Universitat de Barcelona, 2009) is a sociolinguist and an assistant lecturer at Department of Translation and Interpretation and East Asian Studies of Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. She is a collaborating researcher at the Research Centre for Sociolinguistics and Communication (CUSC) of Universitat de Barcelona and a member of East Asian Studies & Research Center (CERAO) of Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. She specialises in language policy, bi-/multilingualism and language transmission. She has long been working on Japanese community in Catalonia and its relation with languages. The results of her research have been published in several journals and books. She has been awarded with Extraordinary Doctorate Prize for the academic year 2009/2010 for her doctoral dissertation Els japonesos a Catalunya i la llengua catalana: comunitat, llengües i ideologies (Japanese in Catalonia and Catalan language: community, languages and ideologies). She has also been awarded with Jaume Camp de Sociolingüística Prize (2010) by Òmnium Cultural and Institut d’Estudis Catalans for her doctoral dissertation.

ORCID

Makiko Fukuda http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8601-6609

Notes

1. The terms ‘expatriate’ or ‘sojourner’ are often used while referring to these Japanese citizens, since they share some common features. Expatriates show more specific motivations for staying in the destination country due to their high professional skills and are already employed with legal status when they enter the host society. On the other hand, sojourner is a more encompassing term (Sinangil & Ones, 2001). Therefore, in this study we use the term ‘sojourner’.

2. The English translation' for ‘llengua pròpia’, which is adopted by Catalan government.

3. «Si se separa la gent per la llengua, s’acabarà balcanitzant Catalunya», dBalears/E.P., 22/01/2018, https://dbalears.cat/politica/2018/01/22/310869/puigdemont-separa-gent-per-llengua-acabara-balcanitzant-catalunya.html, consulted on January 23, 2018

4. http://www.mext.go.jp/a_menu/shotou/clarinet/002/002.htm

5. In some Japanese schools, the local language is taught as a compulsory subject since it is a necessary condition in order to be authorized as a formal educational institution by the educational law of the host country (e.g. Japanese schools in Thailand, in Indonesia and in Munich).

6. In the present study, we will not treat covert and overt attitude separately, since the boundary between them is not precise (Lybaert, 2017).

7. As there is only one Japanese school in Catalonia, the school’s real name has been used.

8. All of them comprise a couple of Japanese–Spanish nationalities.

9. Except for those who possess ‘double nationalities’.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by CUSC (Centre de Recerca en Sociolingüística i Comunicació) of Universitat de Barcelona under a grant provided by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología [grant number: BFF 2002-01323] to the project ‘Evolució de les societats plurilingües: representacions, comportaments i capitals lingüístics’, EVOPLUR); by the research group INTERASIA of Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona under a grant provided by the Spanish Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia [grant number: HUM2005-08151/FILO] to the project ‘Interculturalitat d’Àsia Oriental en l’era de la globalització. Processos lingüístico-literaris i socio-polítics’, within I+D CICYT MEC, and a grant provided by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación [grant number: FFI2011-29090] to the project ‘El Impacto de Asia Oriental en el Contexto Español: Producción Cultural, Politica(s) y Sociedad’.