Browsing by Subject "Japanese"
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Item Language, culture and ethnicity : interplay of ideologies within a Japanese community in Brazil(2011-05) Sakuma, Tomoko; Hancock, Ian F.; Epps, Patience L.; King, Robert D.; Nishida, Chiyo; Traphagan, John W.This dissertation is a sociolinguistic study of the ideologies about language, culture and ethnicity among Japanese immigrants and descendants in Brazil (hereafter, Nikkeis) who gather at a local Japanese cultural association, searching for what it means to be “Japanese” in Brazil. This study focuses on how linguistic behaviors are ideologically understood and associated with cultural activities and ethnic identities. Using the language ideologies framework, it seeks to describe the ways in which Nikkeis negotiate and create social meanings of language in both local and transnational contexts. Nikkeis are an overwhelmingly celebrated minority group in Brazil. In this context, the cultural association serves as a site where symbolic cultural differences are constructed by those Nikkeis who strive to identify themselves as a prestigious minority. This study demonstrates that the Japanese language is one of the important resources in performing the Nikkei identity. At the same time, due to an on-going language shift, Portuguese as a means of communication is becoming increasingly more important for cultural transmission. Thus, the members of the association, which include both Japanese monolinguals and Portuguese monolinguals, are in constant negotiation, trying to strike a balance between symbolic values of Japanese, pragmatic values of Portuguese, as well as their own language competencies. The goal of this project is to answer the following three research questions: 1) What social meanings do Nikkeis assign to Japanese and Portuguese, and how does this perception affect Nikkeis’ identity formation? 2) What are the characteristics of linguistic practices in the association and how do the speakers use available linguistic resources to construct identities? 3) How can this study inform us about the transforming reality of the Japanese Brazilian community in this global age? Contributions of this study include furthering of the sociolinguistic research on language ideologies, linguistic practices and identity construction in an immigrant community. It also contributes to the study of language shift, by underscoring the role of language ideologies in rationalizing language choices. This project is also significant for the study of Japanese diaspora in Latin America, providing the first sociolinguistic investigation of a Japanese cultural association in Brazil.Item Negotiating story entry : a micro-analytic study of storytelling projection in English and Japanese(2011-05) Yasui, Eiko; Streeck, Jürgen; Maxwell, Madeline; McGlone, Matthew; Keating, Elizabeth; Hayashi, MakotoThis dissertation offers a micro-analytic study of the use of language and body during storytelling in American English and Japanese conversations. Specifically, I focus on its beginning and explore how a story is projected. A beginning of an action or activity is where an incipient speaker negotiates the floor with co-participants; they pre-indicate their intention to speak while informing the recipients of how they are expected to listen to the following talk. In particular, storytelling involves a specific need to secure long turn space before it begins since unlike other types of talk, a story usually requires more than an utterance to complete. Drawing on conversation analysis, I investigate how various communicative resources, including language, gesture, gaze, and body posture, manage such negotiation of the floor during entry into a story. This study involves two focuses. First, it examines not only vocal means, but also non-vocal devices. Thus, I explore the linguistic resources employed to project the relationship between a forthcoming telling and ongoing talk. Specifically, I investigate how coherence and disjunction are projected differently – some stories are continuous with prior talk while others may start as a new activity. I also investigate the vocal resources for projection of a return to an abandoned story. Specifically, I demonstrate how a continuation and resumption are projected differently. Finally, I investigate the employment of non-vocal devices relevant to the projection of story entry. Secondly, this study takes a cross-linguistic perspective. By examining conversations in two typologically different languages, American English and Japanese, I investigate how linguistic resources are consequential to the way projection is accomplished. Also, since only few studies have been conducted on storytelling in Japanese conversation, I aim to contribute to a better understanding of how the previous findings from English storytelling can be applied to Japanese conversations. Storytelling is an important activity for human social life; telling of what we did, saw, heard about, or know helps us build good relationships with our interactants. This dissertation thus aims to explore how interactants co-construct a site for an important interpersonal activity in everyday interaction.Item Roles of technology and of reading among five self-directed adult learners of Japanese as a foreign language(2016-08) Abe, Kana; Garza, Thomas J.; Schallert, Diane L; Horwitz, Elaine K; Liu, Min; Worthy, Mary JLittle is known about foreign language learners who teach themselves without help from educational institutions. Particularly, less commonly taught languages pose unique challenges to self-learn. For instance, Japanese is especially difficult for English- speaking self-directed learners due to the strict copyright law, which makes it difficult to access learning materials, and orthographical differences between English and Japanese. This dissertation study therefore explores how learners of Japanese as a foreign language approach their learning in self-directed learning settings and how reading and technology in particular play roles in their learning. Additionally, this study examines the applicability of extensive reading materials in these learners’ learning situations. With a case-study method, five participants (four women and one man) participated in this study. These participants had various backgrounds, including different proficiency levels and diverse reasons for learning Japanese. Per participant, an initial online survey, two interviews, two observations with the think-aloud protocol, diary entries, and an analysis of learning materials were used for data analysis. Results indicated that these participants approached their self-directed learning in various ways. Technology played an important role for these learners mainly in order to access information (e.g., looking up meanings of words, cultural information). In contrast, although these participants mostly admitted the importance of reading in learning Japanese, only one of the participants actively read Japanese for learning. As expected, most participants claimed that the difficulty of kanji (a Japanese writing system using Chinese characters) is the main reason that of Japanese reading is so challenging. During the reading project time, the participants were highly motivated to read the materials that they received. However, there were a few motivational fluctuations throughout the reading project, and their motivation did not often correspond to the actual amount of reading. Overall, the participants’ experiences with the extensive reading materials were positive. Upon completing the reading projects, the participants expressed the potentiality of using these materials for their self-directed learning. Yet, they also addressed several concerns and challenges of the materials themselves, including lack of texts that readers are interested in reading, small furigana (i.e., pronunciation guides for kanji), and vertical reading.Item Rumor mongering: scapegoating techniques for social cohesion and coping among the Japanese-Americans in United States internment camps during World War II(Texas A&M University, 2008-10-10) Biggs, Jenny CatherineThis thesis examines the linkages between the verbal response to social stress, the ostracism of individuals from a social group, and the subsequent increased cohesion of the remaining members. To write the thesis, I utilized these printed references in the forms of scholarly research, journals, diaries, and interviews primarily from the Texas A&M Sterling Evans Library and the online journal resource JSTOR as well as a video documentary. Previous research into the genres of rumor, identity, and scapegoat accusations are explicated. Then, these approaches are applied to the rumors told by the Japanese-Americans who were removed from their homes and sent to internment camps in the United States during World War II. The internment camps were rife with scapegoat accusations between the internees whose once unified culture group was fissured along lines of loyalty to the United States or to Japan. These scapegoat accusations against fellow internees were an outlet for the stress exerted upon them by the American government that was not directly combatable. Even processes as complicated as changing social dynamics can be observed through the mechanisms of rumors and scapegoat accusations.Item Testing the Head Directionality Parameter in L2 Japanese(2012-05) Smith, Megan; Farley, Andrew P.; Vanpatten, Bill; Kim, Min-JooIt had been hypothesized that Universal Grammar specifies both universal principles of language to which all of the world’s languages conform, and a small set of parameters, by which languages may vary. The Head Directionality Parameter (HDP) was hypothesized to govern two basic, widely attested, word order options: subject-object-verb (Japanese-type languages) and subject-verb-object (English-type languages). The HDP is also thought to govern the relative ordering of all heads and complements in a given languages. This thesis reports two studies that test the psycholinguistic validity of the HDP in adult second language acquisition. In Study 1, classroom learners of L2 Japanese who had not had exposure to embedded clauses but did know basic word order were tested on their sensitivity to violations of grammatical complementizer-clause word order. In Study 2, native English speakers who had had no prior exposure to Japanese received basic input regarding word order in Japanese in simple SOV sentences and in post-positional phrases. They were then tested on their sensitivity to violations of head-final word order in polar questions and embedded clauses. In both studies, participants took longer to read ungrammatical sentences than they did grammatical ones, suggesting that the HDP is active in adult SLA.Item Translating Hiromi Kawakami’s “Tread on a snake”(2014-05) Puente-Aguilera, Ana Deyanira; Cather, KirstenThis report includes my translation of the short story “Tread on a Snake” (Hebi o Fumu) by Kawakami Hiromi, which is presented here as a significant contribution to modern Japanese literature in translation. The story received the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 1996, although support for it was not unanimous as seen in my translation of the judges’ comments offered here as well. Following the translation of the story itself is an essay that discusses my personal experiences translating the story. I discuss elements that may be unique to the experience of translating Kawakami’s works, but also many that are applicable more broadly to issues of translation that go beyond her works and even Japanese literature as well. Challenges included maintaining the author’s tone and voice, the appropriate use of notes to provide cultural background, and the deliberate use of non-translated terms in a translation.