The Idea of English in Japan

Ideology and the Evolution of a Global Language

Philip Seargent (2009). Multilingual Matters: Bristol

I ran across this at the end of my digging around for the sociolinguistics module. I didn’t have time to read it then, but it’s clearly relevant to my interests so I read it anyway when a window opened up. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it’s in large part an extended exercise in discourse analysis, so that ties in very nicely.

The Idea… holds as its core thesis that English in Japan is essentially a cultural commodity, and in this role as a commodity performs a completely different function to what may more usually be expected of it as, y’know, a real-world language. It’s more important for what it signifies than for what it does. I’m not sure you would find many native English speakers who’ve been in Japan for any length of time who’d disagree, but it’s always nice to see it backed up with a bit of research.

The Geography of Thought

Apologies for the lack of updates. I've settled on an essay from the Lexis module and am focussing on that right now. Family holiday scheduled for the end of July and it's going to be fraught enough without having to proofread stuff right before we leave. I'm almost done with the actual Sociolingusitics units. They're utterly fascinating, so it's a bit of a shame that none of the assessment questions quite hold my interest in the same way. I'll definitely be posting about them soon enough though.

In the meantime I actually read that book I mentioned in my post on Lexis Two and, as predicted, loathed it. I was going to post about it at length here but it quickly became apparent that even by the low standards I've set for myself on this blog I wasn't going to be able to maintain even the slightest hint of authorial impartiality. So I've put it up over at my other blog. Here it is, in all its sweary glory -

The Geography of Thought

Doing Applied Linguistics

Groom, N and Littlemore, J (2011). Routledge: London

A.K.A. Sampling Bias A-Go-Go

Some of the most common advice on structuring a speech is as follows: tell them what you are going to say, then say it, then tell them what you said. The authors of this book have taken that advice very much to heart, so much so that I’m half tempted to use the Introduction and Conclusion sections of each chapter as a basic grammar exercise for some of my students, comparing the future and past tenses in English in otherwise unchanged passages.

It is an introductory text though, so there’s value in covering the basics thoroughly. The opening chapters (1-4), specifically addressing the field of Applied Linguistics – what it is and does – are something I think I’ll returning to repeatedly as I get up to speed with the terminology. I have a bit of prior experience with social science (and indeed physical science) research methodologies though, so the chapters addressing these were less personally helpful. Not aimed at the likes of me perhaps. Fair enough.

However, “[i]t is also an important part of the applied linguist’s remit to go about creating problems – or more precisely, to go about identifying problems which have hitherto gone unnoticed” (p12). So let’s take the authors at their word and pick some holes in this baby, shall we?

Hand biting to commence in 3, 2, 1…