Japanese Applied Linguistics

Amy Snyder Ohta is Associate Professor at the University of Washington, USA where she teaches Japanese language and applied linguistics. Junko Mori is Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA where she teaches Japanese language and linguistics.

"This state-of-the art volume covers a wide range of topics on contemporary Japanese from the perspectives of sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, and language education. Written by leading scholars in the field, the chapters in Japanese Applied Linguistics offer original and often surprising insights into Japanese language practices at the beginning of the 21st century. Through nuanced and accountable analyses, the authors unravel persisting myths about Japanese language, culture, and the learning of Japanese as an additional language, inviting readers to join their journey through the changing landscape of diverse, multilingual, multicultural Japan. With this book, editors Junko Mori and Amy Ohta have given us an outstanding example of applied linguistics as the study of language in the real world." (Professor Gabriele Kasper, University of Hawaii at Manoa) "A lively and engaging portrait of the state of the art of Japanese applied linguistics as practiced by a new generation of scholars on both sides of the Pacific. It would be hard to imagine a more convincing testament to the way applied linguistics has outgrown its narrow association with second language education and come to embrace a concern with language use across the totality of human experience in the real world. Certain to become a standard in the field, this collection offers a rich variety of perspectives on the social, political, and educational dimensions of language use in Japan today in a way that promises to inform numerous disciplines both within and beyond the linguistic sciences proper." (Professor Wesley M. Jacobsen, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University, USA) Mention Book News, November 2008 Mention Chronicle of Higher Education, August 15, 2008 Reviewed in JALT Journal, 32.1, May 2010 'This book is eclectically informative, good scholarship, and a sound plug for conversation analysis'"

• Introduction, Junko Mori (University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA) and Amy Snyder Ohta (University of Washington, USA); Part I: Reexamination of language in action; 1. Conversation and grammar: Approaching so-called conditionals in Japanese, Tsuyoshi Ono (University of Alberta, USA) and Kimberly Jones (University of Arizona, USA); 2. Negotiating agreement and disagreement in Japanese: An analysis of designedly ambiguous turn completion points, Junko Mori (University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA) and Kanae Nakamura (University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA); 3. Construction of speech styles: The case of the Japanese naked plain form, Haruko Minegishi Cook (University of Hawai'i-Manoa, Hawaii); Part II: Ideologies, diversities, and identities; 4. Keigo ideology, Patricia J. Wetzel (Portland State University, USA); 5. The use of "regional" and "standard" Japanese in conversations: A case study from Osaka, Shigeko Okamoto (California State University, USA); 6. When the coach is a woman: The situational meanings of so-called masculine directives in a Japanese boxing gym, Misao Okada (Hokusei Gakuen University, Japan); 7. Discursive practices and changing identities in elderly Japanese women, Yoshiko Matsumoto (Stanford University, USA); Part III: Japanese as an additional language; 8. Laughter and second language acquisition: A study of Japanese foreign language classes, Amy Snyder Ohta (University of Washington, USA); 9. Making inquiries: Toiawase strategies by Japanese L1 and L2 callers to Japanese educational institutions, Lindsay Amthor Yotsukura (University of Maryland, USA); 10. Transnationalism, imagined communities, and language minority education in Japan, Yasuko Kanno (Temple University, USA); Part IV: Critical reflection on language pedagogy; 11. Learner competence as a resource in the Japanese as a foreign language classroom: Issues in oral assessment, Dina Rudolph Yoshimi (University of Hawai'i-Manoa, Hawaii); 12. Critical approaches to teaching Japanese language and culture, Ryuko Kubota (University of North Carolina, USA); Bibliography; Index.