On Being a Gaijin
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ON BEING A GAIJIN: LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY IN THE JAPANESE WORKPLACE A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAIʻI AT MĀNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN EAST ASIAN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES (JAPANESE) DECEMBER 2014 By Stephen J. Moody Dissertation Committee: Haruko Cook, Chairperson Christina Higgins Shoichi Iwasaki Yumiko Tateyama Min Sun Kim Keywords: social identity, workplace discourse, intercultural communication © Copyright 2014 Stephen J. Moody All rights reserved ii To Melissa iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS As others have said so many times before, a dissertation cannot be accomplished alone. An exhaustive list of gratitude is not possible, but I make by best attempt here. First, I am grateful for my advisor, Professor Haruko Cook, who took me under her wing the first semester I arrived and guided my research through the graduate programs. Her classes were insightful and her many hours reviewing manuscripts are greatly appreciated. I could not be more thankful for her guidance and mentorship. I would also like to thank the members of my committee. Professor Christina Higgins introduced me to Interactional Sociolinguistics and her thoughtful seminars were some of the most valuable instruction I received. I am grateful for Professor Shoichi Iwasaki’s instruction in functional grammar. His masterful typology, Japanese, was always within arm’s reach while working with the data in this study. I have also benefited from Professor Yumiko Tateyama who provided important insight into Japanese pragmatics and the nuances of how learners use language. I appreciate Professor Min Sun Kim for her service as University Representative and providing insights on intercultural communication from a different perspective. During my time in the program, I have been the beneficiary of excellent instruction from many others. I want to acknowledge Professor Dina Yoshimi for her example of high quality and rigorous research, and Professor Shinichiro Fukuda for his entertaining courses on Japanese syntax and generous giving of time for individual instruction. I also benefited from the expertise of Professors Gabrielle Kasper, Richard Schmidt, Katsue Reynolds, and Alexander Vovin. As anyone in EALL knows, no student would survive without the prompt, exact, and so very kind support of Evelyn Nakanishi. Thank you for always responding to my naïve and constant e-mails. iv I especially acknowledge the support of a generous grant from the Center for Japanese Studies at the University of Hawaii and a research award from the College of Arts and Sciences that made travel and data collection possible. I am grateful to have shared my academic experiences at UH with a fun, bright, and engaged group of colleagues. Maiko Ikeda helped transcribe a significant portion of my audio recordings and provided helpful comments on early drafts, and Nana Suzumura also helped me interpret a few troublesome in the data. I also benefited from many helpful discussions about this project, as well as much needed chat about anything other than this project, with Sean Forte, Saori Hoshi, Nicole Wilder, Keiko Hata, Vera Hanaoka, Yoriko Ito, Yunchuan Chen, Nobu Kubota, Tomoki Kimura, Noriko Noma, Xia Xue, and Lin Chuan. I am certain I have neglected others, for which I apologize and express my gratitude. Of course, this project would not have been completed without the kind cooperation of the interns and companies. To David, Ethan, Susan, Mike, Joe, Olya, and all of the others who will go unacknowledged by their real names: Thank you! This project would not have happened without Professor Masakazu Watabe who negotiated access to the companies. Since my time as an undergraduate, his optimistic attitude, humble sense of humor, as well as his unshakable commitment to his students and the more important things in life is an example I hope to emulate but of which I will certainly fall short. On a personal note, while in Hawaii my wife and I benefited from kind associations with friends who made living so far away from family a little more pleasant. To Dainan and Romney Skeem, Ben and Laurie LeSeuer, Geoff and Rachel Beissinger, members of the McCully Ward and many others: Thank you for friendship and support. v And lest I forget Martin Ma and his wonderful wife Amanda, you have been a shining light of friendship and an example of the dedication it takes to complete a dissertation. I have been blessed with many supportive family members who provided much needed support and encouragement throughout this journey. My father, J. Ward, is responsible for sparking my interests in both academics and Japanese, and a constant sounding board for everything on my mind from school to politics to sports. Sorry I didn’t go to that other school. (Go Bucks!) My gratitude for the angelic concern of my mother, Cindy, is too much to even attempt to mention here. I have also been constantly sustained by my siblings and their spouses, Emily, Mike, Jeanette, Evan, Aaron, Alan, Heather, as well as my supportive in-laws Darrel, Shari, Jason, Shanna, Ben, Shannon, Andrea, Laura, Zack, Sean, Sarah, and Corbin. It wouldn’t have happened without all of you. And finally, my deepest gratitude, love, and appreciation is reserved for my wife, Melissa, and our daughters, Katelynn, who was born when the data collection started, and Leah, who has not yet arrived as I write this but who will be here by the time I defend it. It is these three who are most important to me in this ephemeral world and are the motivation for everything I do. Thanks for letting your daddy put in some long hours at school. And to Melissa: Your love and support over these past four years is what got me through. There is simply no way I could have done this without you. I promise to make it worth it. vi ABSTRACT This dissertation investigates the construction and utilization of ‘outsider’ identities in an intercultural workplace setting. The participants are American university students employed as summer interns in companies in Japan where the primary language spoken was Japanese. The data come from roughly 50 hours of audio recordings taken during observations of the daily work routines of six interns in four different locations, as well as supplemental field notes and interviews. This study takes an Interactional Sociolinguistics approach which ties macro-level structures to micro-level interaction by analyzing the use of contextualization cues which index sociocultural knowledge. This allows moment-to-moment discursive practice to be understood within various contextual frames in an investigation of ‘outsider’ identity in professional environments. The central questions of this study are twofold: 1) How are interns linguistically constructed as gaijin ‘foreigners’ by themselves and others and 2) In what ways is the notion of gaijin used in the accomplishment of goal-oriented social interaction. In answering these questions, the theoretical framework of this study draws from a social constructionist perspective of language and social identity. Identities are seen not as pre-existing monolithic entities but as objects which can be dynamically performed, negotiated, and transformed within interaction. Discursive work is a central tool in accomplishing such activities. The investigation focuses on identity work accomplished through the use of three particularly prominent contextualization cues: 1) names and other forms of reference 2) addressee honorifics and items associated with ideologies of politeness and 3) the use of English in an otherwise Japanese environment. This study has implications for sociolinguistic work on intercultural communication in which the notion of ‘identity’ has been fruitful for understanding how differences in vii sociocultural backgrounds lead to different interpretations of linguistic cues and cause misunderstanding. This study expands knowledge in this area by also considering how identities are used as a tool in the accomplishment of local activities. It finds that the embodiment of stereotypes can actually be effective for both challenging outsider positions as well as strengthen intercultural relationships by providing an opportunity for shared experience. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................... iv ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................................. vii LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................................ xii LIST OF FIGURES ..................................................................................................................... xiii LIST OF DATA EXCERPTS ...................................................................................................... xiv LIST OF TRANSCRIPTION SYMBOLS................................................................................... xvi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS IN INTERLINEAR GLOSSES ................................................. xviii CHAPTER 1 SOCIAL IDENTITY, INTERACTION, AND GAIJIN ......................................... 1 1.1. Constructing and Using Identites .................................................................................. 5 1.1.1. Social constructionism .......................................................................................... 9 1.1.2. Indexicality and contextualization