‘Weird English from an American’? Folk engagements with language ideologies surrounding a self-help English language learning comic book published in Japan

Abstract

This article reports on a study of how users of a self-help English language learning comic book published in Japan engage with various English-related ideologies through posting customer reviews on online bookstores. Analysis of the reviews demonstrates that these users occasionally celebrate, and at other times counter, dominant language ideologies, drawing on their own views about English, English language teaching, ideal English teachers, and native English speakers. By elucidating how the users struggle with prevalent language ideologies, the article argues that contrary to the traditional sociolinguistic belief that English is infrequently used among people in Japan, a country belonging to the Expanding Circle within the framework of World Englishes, they have active engagements with the language. The argument contributes to the review of the concept of language use, serving as a promising start for the reconsideration of the nation-state division over English based on the degree of English use.

Keywords:

• Folk engagements
• language ideologies
• Japan
• self-help English language learning comic books
• customer reviews

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Professor Alastair Pennycook and Doctor Emi Otsuji for their continual guidance on my doctoral research project. I am also grateful to anonymous reviewers and Professor James F. D’Angelo for their insightful comments on an earlier draft. Needless to say, any limitation or shortcoming is entirely my own.

Notes

1. Terms such as ‘Japanese’ and ‘Japanese people’ imply that their existence is pre-given and distinct, which I would like to eschew. However, these labels are frequently utilized in the comic book as well as its customer reviews. After due consideration, I have decided to follow them in this article, although I am very aware of problems surrounding this decision.

2. (Amazon/23 May 2012) indicates that this is a customer review posted on Amazon.co.jp on 23 May 2012. All English data are my translations.

3. My search on Amazon.co.jp using the author name David Thayne generated 286 book titles (as of 20 October 2016).

4. Shitamachi refers to traditional districts of cities in Japan: especially, the eastern area of Tokyo such as Asakusa and Ueno.

5. English used in the original Japanese texts is presented in italics in the translated texts.

6. A number of customer reviews refer to multiple themes. Such reviews were classified into one of the seven themes depending on their central topic, and marginal notes were then added to them to alert the other theme(s). Of the seven themes, ‘Thayne as a native speaker’ has the most reviews except ‘others,’ which suggests that his ‘nativeness’ is the focus of interest for a certain number of users regardless of how they view it.