A Critical Study of Discursive Practices of 'Othering'
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A CRITICAL STUDY OF DISCURSIVE PRACTICES OF ‘OTHERING’ IN CONSTRUCTION OF NATIONAL IDENTITIES: THE CASE OF LEARNERS OF JAPANESE AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE by MASATAKA YAMAGUCHI (Under the Direction of Betsy Rymes) ABSTRACT This study investigates images of Japan/Japanese from a critical perspective by drawing on the methodology of discourse analysis. Theoretically, I attempt to synthesize critical discourse analytic perspectives with micro-analytic traditions from a linguistic anthropological perspective, with particular reference to the Critical Discourse Analysis and Conversation Analysis controversy. The primary data was collected from learners of Japanese as a Foreign Language at a U.S. institutional setting. By the analysis, I argue that there are tensions between unifying or essentialized national identities and fragmenting or cosmopolitan identities. Specifically, I found that, on the one hand, there are social realities of immigrants, diaspora or exchange students in the local community, who are both long-term and short-term residents. At the same time, cultural materials such as games or music produced in Japan are consumed by American learners of Japanese. These forces work in the direction of fragmenting tendencies of culture. On the other hand, the participants are dominated by the ideology of nationalism, which strongly essentializes or permanently fixes national identities, which leads to the unifying directions. The discourses that the participants produced exemplify both tendencies, though the analyses indicate that the unifying forces are stronger. In this study, I critically focus on the essentialist discourses because of its exclusive and potentially violent nature. In the end, I propose a critical pedagogy, with particular reference to teaching Japanese culture, which emphasizes anti-essentialist national identity in order to live with ‘difference’ or with multicultural orientations in the globalized world. INDEX WORDS: Critical discourse analysis (CDA), conversation analysis (CA), linguistic anthropology, national identities, Japanese, Americans, construction of ‘others,’ foreign language education, nationalism and globalization A CRITICAL STUDY OF DISCURSIVE PRACTICES OF ‘OTHERING’ IN CONSTRUCTION OF NATIONAL IDENTITIES: THE CASE OF LEARNERS OF JAPANESE AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE by MASATAKA YAMAGUCHI MS, Georgetown University, 1999 MA, Aoyama Gakuin University, Japan, 1995 BA, Aoyama Gakuin University, Japan, 1991 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2004 © 2004 Masataka Yamaguchi All Rights Reserved A CRITICAL STUDY OF DISCURSIVE PRACTICES OF ‘OTHERING’ IN CONSTRUCTION OF NATIONAL IDENTITIES: THE CASE OF LEARNERS OF JAPANESE AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE by MASATAKA YAMAGUCHI Major Professor: Betsy Rymes Committee: Ben G. Blount Sarah E. Blackwell Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia August, 2004 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to express my deepest gratitude to Dr. Betsy Rymes for her long-term and unconditional support. Also, I deeply thank Dr. Sarah Blackwell for her helpful editorial suggestions and constant encouragement. Dr. Ben G. Blount provided very useful suggestions, which I greatly appreciate. I thank Dr. William Provost for his long-term support of my studies and for his dedicated service to all the students as the director of the linguistics program since 1999. I really wish early recovery of his health condition. Finally, this study was supported by Graduate School Assistantships for Finishing Doctoral Students and I thank the Graduate School for the award. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS........................................................................................................... iv LIST OF TABLES ......................................................................................................................... ix LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................................... xi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1 1.0. What is the Study about?...................................................................................... 1 1.1. Why ‘Critical’? What Does ‘Critical’ Mean?....................................................... 3 1.2. Introduction from a Social Perspective of Second/Foreign Language Acquisition........................................................................................................... 7 1.3 Overview ............................................................................................................. 10 2 LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL ASSUMPTIONS ............................... 13 2.0. Introduction to the Literature ............................................................................. 14 2.1. Social Construction of ‘Others’ from Discourse Analytic Perspectives............. 16 2.2. Approaches to Discursive Practices of ‘Othering’ ............................................. 19 v 2.3. Situating the Study in Perspectives: Theoretical Assumptions and Concepts.... 35 2.4. CA vs. CDA Controversy ................................................................................... 46 3 METHODOLOGY AND DATA....................................................................................... 50 3.0. Introduction ........................................................................................................ 50 3.1. Setting and Participants...................................................................................... 50 3.2. Research Questions ............................................................................................ 54 3.3. Procedures, Implementation and Corpus............................................................ 56 3.4. Freelisting Survey............................................................................................... 61 3.5. Appendix ............................................................................................................ 68 4 DISCURSIVE PRACTICE OF COMPLAINING ........................................................... 71 4.0. Abstract............................................................................................................... 71 4.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................ 71 4.2. Research Questions with Reference to Management of Complaint Sequences. 72 4.3. Methodology ...................................................................................................... 73 4.4. Participants and Data Analysis........................................................................... 74 4.5. Discussion .......................................................................................................... 83 4.6. Concluding Remarks and Implications for Further Studies ............................... 85 4.7. Transcription Conventions ................................................................................. 88 vi 5 LANGUAGE PRACTICES OF GENERATION 1.5 JAPANESE................................... 89 5.0. Abstract............................................................................................................... 89 5.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................ 90 5.2. Background, Participants and Methodology ...................................................... 92 5.3. Data Presentation and Analysis .......................................................................... 95 5.4. Discussion ........................................................................................................ 129 6 LITERACY PRACTICES OF JFL LEARNERS ........................................................... 139 6.0. Introduction ...................................................................................................... 139 6.1. Three Models of Researcher and Researched (Cameron et al., 1992; 1993) ... 140 6.2. Discourses in Literacy Events .......................................................................... 142 6.3. Discussion ........................................................................................................ 149 7 DISCOURSES OF NATIONALISM.............................................................................. 153 7.0. Introduction ...................................................................................................... 154 7.1. Literacy Event on April 7th in 2003 .................................................................. 155 7.2. “Shadow Conversations”: Intertextuality of the Discourses of Wars............... 172 7.3. Discussion ........................................................................................................ 190 8 CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS ...................................................................... 194 8.0. Conclusions ...................................................................................................... 194 vii 8.1. Pedagogical Implications.................................................................................. 199 REFERENCES .................................................................................................................. 206 viii LIST OF TABLES Page Table 3.1: Types of