Language Identities of Japanese Home-background Speakers and their Language Learning Needs

Abstract

Language education for home-background speakers or heritage learners has recently attracted significant attention in many countries. This case study reports on some of the findings on these speakers' backgrounds, profiles and language identities, utilising the data collected from a survey and focus group interview with 10 tertiary-level Japanese home-background speakers. We found that although all are classified as ‘home-background speakers’, they are a very heterogeneous group of students in terms of their backgrounds and language identities. This paper also discusses the implications of the findings for Japanese language education designed for this group of students, and points to the necessity of understanding the diverse needs of these students when educators are developing courses of study for them.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Associate Professor Helen Marriott for her assistance and invaluable comments on previous versions of this paper. We are also thankful to the editors and the anonymous reviewers of the journal for their insightful comments.

Notes

¹Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, Kaigai zairyū hōjinsū chōsa tōkei.

²de Kretser and Spence-Brown, The Current State of Japanese Language Education.

³Yoshimitsu, ‘Japanese Language Socialisation’.

⁴Block, Multilingual Identities, 36.

⁵Oriyama, ‘Heritage Language Maintenance’.

⁶Clyne, et al., Background Speakers.

⁷Valdés, Spanish for Native Speakers, 1.

⁸Kondo-Brown, ‘Heritage Language Students’.

⁹Matsunaga, ‘Instructional Needs of College-level Learners’.

¹⁰Kondo-Brown and Fukuda, ‘A Separate Track’.

¹¹Kondo-Brown, ‘Differences in Language Skills’.

¹²Ibid., 575

¹³Lee and Kim, ‘Heritage Language Learners’ Attitudes'.

¹⁴Kondo, ‘Social-psychological Factors’.

¹⁵Lee, ‘The Korean Language in America’.

¹⁶For example, Cho, ‘The Role of Heritage Language’; Cho, Cho and Tse, ‘Why Ethnic Minorities’; Lee and Kim, ‘Heritage Language Learners’ Attitudes'; Tse, ‘Finding a Place to Be’.

¹⁷Kawakami, ‘Children Crossing Borders and Literacy Education’, 1.

¹⁸Kawakami, Idō suru kodomotachi to Nihongo kyōiku.

¹⁹Hatori, ‘Fukugō aidentiti to Nihongo kyōiku kenkyū’.

²⁰Clyne, et al., Background Speakers.

²¹Clyne, ‘Managing Language Diversity’; Lo Bianco, Second Languages.

²²de Kretser and Spence-Brown, The Current State of Japanese Language.

²³Kagan, in ‘In Support of a Proficiency-based Definition’, found a similar trend in the case of Russian heritage learners; see also Kondo-Brown, ‘Differences in Language Skills’.

²⁴Yoshimitsu, ‘Japanese Language Socialisation’.

²⁵Oriyama, ‘Heritage Language Maintenance’.

²⁶Rampton, ‘Displacing the “Native Speaker”’; Leung, et al., ‘The Idealised Native Speaker’.

²⁷Leung, et al., ‘The Idealised Native Speaker’, 547, citing Hall, ‘The Question of Cultural Identity’.

²⁸Leung, et al., ‘The Idealised Native Speaker’, 555.

²⁹Block, Multilingual Identities, 36.

³⁰Richards, The Language Teaching Matrix.

³¹For a more detailed analysis of the language use and learning needs of the participants, see Kurata, ‘Meruborun no daigaku ni okeru keishō nihongo gakushūsha’.

³²Dörnyei, ‘The L2 Motivational Self System’.

³³Norton Pierce, ‘Social Identity, Investment, and Language Learning’.

³⁴Dörnyei, ‘The L2 Motivational Self System’.

³⁵Bourdieu, ‘The Economics of Linguistic Exchanges’.

³⁶Norton and Gao, ‘Identity, Investment’.

³⁷Hornberger and Wang, ‘Who are our Heritage Language Learners’.

³⁸Leung, et al., ‘The Idealised Native Speaker’.

³⁹Hall, ‘The Question of Cultural Identity’.

⁴⁰Miller, Audible Difference, 43.

⁴¹Hall, ‘The Question of Cultural Identity’.

⁴²Lo Bianco, Crozet, and Liddicoat, Striving for the Third Place.