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Exploring Learners' Investment and Meaning-Making University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations Dissertations and Theses July 2019 Language Learners as Agentive Meaning-Makers: Exploring Learners' Investment and Meaning-Making Shinji Kawamitsu Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2 Part of the Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education Commons, Curriculum and Instruction Commons, and the Language and Literacy Education Commons Recommended Citation Kawamitsu, Shinji, "Language Learners as Agentive Meaning-Makers: Exploring Learners' Investment and Meaning-Making" (2019). Doctoral Dissertations. 1647. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/1647 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. LANGUAGE LEARNERS AS AGENTIVE MEANING-MAKERS: EXPLORING LEARNERS’ INVESTMENT AND MEANING-MAKING A Dissertation Presented by SHINJI KAWAMITSU Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 2019 College of Education Language, Literacy and Culture © Copyright by Shinji Kawamitsu 2019 All Rights Reserved LANGUAGE LEARNERS AS AGENTIVE MEANING-MAKERS: EXPLORING LEARNERS’ INVESTMENT AND MEANING-MAKING A Dissertation Presented by SHINJI KAWAMITSU Approved as to style and content by: Theresa Austin, Chair Margaret Gebhard, Member Yuki Yoshimura, Member ____________________________________ Jennifer Randall Associate Dean of Academic Affairs College of Education DEDICATION To my parents who gave me access to so many things ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would first like to thank my students who participated in my study. During the project, they supported me in various respects. Their distinct commitments to learning and approaches to world language learning are so dynamic and complex that I can truly state that it was my students who made me understand that what can be known is only partial and cannot be represented as the “truth.” I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Theresa Austin, for her guidance through this doctoral process. Her supervision enhanced my understanding of language, literacy, and culture in world language education. I am also grateful to my committee members, Dr. Meg Gebhard and Dr. Yuki Yoshimura, for their patience and insightful perspectives. I would further like to thank Dr. Yuri Kumagai, Dr. Kimbery Kono, Atsuko Takahashi, Dr. Joannah Peterson, Yuko Takahashi, and Dr. Maki Hubbard at Smith College. I learned a lot from working with them and sincerely enjoyed being part of the team. I would also like to thank my senior colleagues in the Five College region, particularly Dr. Naoko Nemoto at Mount Holyoke College and Mako Koyama-Hartsfield at UMass. They supported me in so many ways, and I cannot overstate my thanks for their support in overcoming the obstacles I faced throughout my PhD work. I would like to thank my friends, Marsha Liaw, Payal Banerjee, and Rafi Ahmed, for their friendship. I will not forget the time we spent together at our favorite places. Without their friendship, my life in the US would have been so different. I also would like to thank my fellow doctoral students, Charles Estus, Rosa Alejandra Medina Riveros, Hyunsook Shin, Simone Gugliotta, and Ying Zhang. Our hard-work, which v ranged from organizing graduate student annual conferences to setting up our (online) study groups, created unforgettable and rewarding experiences. Lastly, I would like to thank my parents and family. Their generous support and patience allowed me to finish this PhD work. My weekly FaceTime meetings with Chihiro and Haruna are something that will remain in my heart for its impact on my decision-makings in so many various contexts. vi ABSTRACT LANGUAGE LEARNERS AS AGENTIVE MEANING-MAKERS: EXPLORING LEARNERS’ INVESTMENT AND MEANING-MAKING MAY 2019 SHINJI KAWAMITSU B.A., KANSAI GAIDAI UNIVERSITY M.A., MARSHALL UNIVERSITY Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Theresa Austin The motivation for this research is the subordinated position of writing in Japanese language education. As many studies indicate, writing in Japanese language education is often perceived as a space for teachers to monitor learners’ acquisition of grammar structures and kanji (Hirose, 2015; Kumagai & Fukai, 2009; Ramzan & Thomson, 2013). Such discourse of writing conceives Japanese writers, especially elementary writers, as individuals who have little agency in making meaning. The purpose of my dissertation study is to explore alternative discourses of writing that position elementary Japanese language learners as agentive meaning-makers. For this inquiry, first, I explore literatures that inform this dissertation study. This literature review explores systemic functional linguistics, or SFL, which explicitly situates one’s meaning-making in a social context. This review also explores critical instantiations of SFL, which emerged across disciplines. Then, I design a conceptual framework that is essential for my inquiry. I revisit (critical) SFL theories of text and context, and weave them together with post-structuralist theories of identity to investigate collegiate Japanese language learners’ identity and their meaning-making. Based on this vii conceptual framing, I propose a new pedagogy. This pedagogy resides in literacy practices which enhance learners’ awareness of linguistic choice in a social context (Rose & Martin, 2012), while it also actively incorporates literacy practices in which individuals can invest their time and effort in negotiation with their future affiliation (Norton Peirce, 1995; Norton 2013). I utilized this pedagogy to teach a personal narrative genre in a US college level elementary Japanese course. By drawing on Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis (1989; 1992; 2003), I conducted textual analysis on each participant’s personal narrative texts and interpreted the linguistic cues in reference to their negotiations with identities and writing tasks. Overall, the four case studies of Mary, Andrea, Jean, and Lapis showcase a complex picture of investment and meaning-making. Their meaning-making is, on the one hand, to achieve the intended goal and purpose of writing, but on the other hand, is to organize and reorganize who they are and how they relate to the social world (Norton, 2013, p. 4). This suggests L2 learners’ meaning-making is enabled and/or constrained in certain ways, and equally important, contingent on learners’ agency, investment, and identity. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................... v ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................... vii LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................... xiv LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................... xvi LIST OF EXAMPLES .................................................................................................... xvii CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Overview of the Field ........................................................................................ 1 1.2 Problem Statement ............................................................................................. 4 1.3 The Study ........................................................................................................... 5 1.4 Research Questions ........................................................................................... 7 1.5 Significance of the Study ................................................................................... 9 2. A REVIEW OF THE RELEVANT LITERATURE ..................................................... 11 2.1 Introduction ..................................................................................................... 11 2.2 Systemic Functional Linguistics ...................................................................... 11 2.2.1 Text and Context in SFL .................................................................. 13 2.2.2 Register ............................................................................................. 15 2.2.3 Genre ................................................................................................ 17 2.2.4 SFL and Education ........................................................................... 19 2.2.4.1 Shared Experience ............................................................. 19 2.2.4.2 Equal Access ..................................................................... 20 2.2.4.3 Explicit Teaching ............................................................... 20 2.2.5 SFL-informed Curriculum: Teaching Learning Circle ..................... 21 2.2.5.1 Building Field .................................................................... 23 2.2.5.2 Deconstruction ................................................................... 23 2.2.5.3 Joint Construction .............................................................
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