The original plan was to have a complete Japanese translation to appear side-by-side with the English. Unfortunately, there was a general lack of time and writing skills (on my part) to get it finished on time, and as it would have come to something like six pages anyway, i scrapped all but the translation of the first paragraph (to serve as, I hope, a sort of hook for Japanese readers, for whom it is especially intended). I also had to do away with about a page or so of information I believe is quite important to a lot of the argument being made here -- again, page limits forced a compromise, and it would have taken far more that what I had at the time anyway to fully demonstrate the links I wanted people to see.
Nonetheless, I hope someone out there gets something out of it. Tear it apart as you wish; it's an open forum, and we're all well opinionated persons at this point in the game.
11.2007
平成十九年十一月
Our Mistakes Concerning English
kelsey
六、七回目に文を読んだところだっただろうか。風通しの悪い、空いている部屋で隣に座っている女子中学生が、何度も原稿を繰り返して言い直し、僕のことばを繰り返しながら聞いていた。彼女にはあと三日しかなかった。スピーチの原稿を暗記しなければならないのに、部活や勉強に忙しくて、まだ最初の一、二文も、ちゃんとおぼえていないらしかった。先生や両親が聞いている前で発表しないといけないスピーチの原稿の一ページも。すでに、彼女に文章を書き直させていた僕は、英語で言いたいことを、彼女はもう分かっていると思いながら練習に入った。ところが、彼女の自信のない声は、部屋の扇風機の音に消え入ってしまって聞こえない。発音しようとしている単語の意味もよく理解していないのに、彼女の顔はだんだんこわばっていった。窓からバンのメガホンをとおして、昔ながらの響きが残っている愛国心を代表する曲がブリキのような音で鳴ってきて、彼女は曲の音にかき消されないように、もっと顔をぎゅっとして、ただ僕の言ったことばに集中しようと頑張っていた。
This is not an uncommon scene here in Japan today. The Ministry of Education, Culture, Science, Sports and Technology (MEXT) has been generously funded to carry out the government agenda of creating a bilingual Japan by 2006/07.[1] Though the agenda’s timeline has ended, the popularity of English as an international lingua franca, and the government’s own international economic interests, have not died down. The plan applies to everyone in the country, and not just those interested in the language. It seems to be assumed that English will be as valuable to the rice paddy farmhand of Kotohira or Tsuji as it will to the corporate employee of downtown Tokyo or Osaka. Japan believes there is much benefit in a bilingual citizenry – a citizenry that includes any one regional Japanese dialect and the ‘international’ monodialect English. This belief has coincidentally arisen at the same time with a national reawakening for Japanese tradition and national identity.
Of course not everyone thinks this way. JET Program ALTs, including myself, have had a valuable opportunity to see and work in the inner structure of the education system in this country, and to witness a small part of the period of adjustment Japan is still making to the overarching globalization effort. Through this short time, I have reconsidered many times what my purpose is in being here and what the government’s actual intentions are for us ALTs through this major reforming engagement toward Japanese-English bilingualism. It now seems to me that there are a few conceptual mistakes about the role of English and why English has become a mandatory subject in Japan’s education.
There are at least two major factors for the discrepancy concerning what version of English should be learned in Japanese education. One of these factors is country-wide popularity of the globalizing World English (WE). With the awareness of the growing number of English speakers in the world, there is a pleasant but unrealistic idea that has formed that English can be an all-encompassing communication bridge between us and the billions of other people around the world, interlinking us in a web of idea-sharing and harmony. Thus, WE is thought of as a sort of ‘door to the world’. This may be partially true, but it ignores essential lingual and political details, for example that there are over twice as many speakers of Chinese (about 1.051 billion) than English, and that in fact English (at 340 million) is only fourth in the sheer number of native speakers in respect to Hindi (370m) and Spanish (350m).[2] In fact, English is really in the top ranking only in the number of countries where it is spoken, due to the European and American colonialism that spread around the world, including Japan, centuries before. There have been identified hundreds of different dialects and thousands of country-variable portmanteaux of English – thus, it is better to say that there are many Englishes throughout the world. However, with so many differences and exceptions, it is hard to say that WE is really a single, unifying lingual ‘bridge’.
Secondly, with the United States being the highest ranking economic competitor in the world (in regards to GDP), if any English is important to learn, many say it should be the ‘American’ dialect. These people perhaps believe that it is for the country’s benefit to develop good economic relations with the world’s wealthiest superpowers, and one clearly diplomatic way to do this is to study and use the wealthier country’s particular version of its language. Indeed, nearly all of the resource materials available for private English study, as well as those that are used in the public education system [3], cater to a United States version of English, especially in pronunciation, intonation, word choice and spelling.
There may be other reasons to cater to this particular form of English. For instance, some argue that ‘American English’ is the most neutral form of English among those of other countries. But in reality, this idea of neutrality is absurd. The selection of a ‘neutral’ – which here means ‘being a common middle-ground among a diversity of types’ – is arbitrary: it is merely propagated as a ‘standard’ variation. The lingual monoliths known as General American English and Received Pronunciation (RP), or the Queen’s English, are each also known as “Network English” and “BBC English,” denoting the English accents and word choices used in media in the United States and Britain respectively. They have become representative dialects of the nations they serve, despite representing only a small particular region of each country among a diversity of language variations.[4] However, as BBC has reduced its discrimination against English accents and manners of speaking, it has lost popularity among English authorities and learners in other countries (i.e. Japan). These countries instead consider monodialect United States Network English the ‘most neutral form’ of the whole English language.[5] Unfortunately, this particular kind of English is often what people refer to when talking about World English – thus, WE has become more and more associated with the United States’ General American English.
In my opinion, we should recognize that the education of English as a truly international language cannot resemble the education of any other subject in Japanese public schools, for English’s diversity in the real world – what I call real-world Englishes (RWEs) – requires diversity in how it is learned and taught. Therefore, one more point to consider is that Japan’s present highly centralized education system would probably be in knots trying to accommodate that diversity. With RWEs, English education would revolve around mostly those living in the English-speaking communities of particular regions of the country or continent, including both immigrants and English-speaking Japanese, and not merely around the dominant patterns offered by superpower nations. Today’s ‘World English is little more than a language industry provided by those supporting the world’s dominating corporate leaders. Meanwhile, an education system of RWEs supports the world by giving equal representation of the world’s English speakers and not conforming to one standard form of English in one’s own country. This system of RWEs would also prove what many authorities and learners of English might fear: that there really is no perfect English, only more context-appropriate English. In reality, the present education of World English is strongly centralized around the United States. That is, this order for bilingual citizenry is a top-down determination by authorities, further perpetuated by its popularity among a misunderstanding public, concerned for Japan’s welfare in a U.S.-oriented world economy.
In short, the simplistic pragmatism idealized in World English as a single language communicable among the world’s billions is critically challenged by the technicalities of the language’s evolution, as well as ethically challenged by its political history and government intentions. I do not mean here that all intentions for learning English are to appease the United States. Besides envisioning it as a door to the world, the government and many education authorities appear to view the language as a door to Japan as well.[6] But with language imperialism comes cultural imperialism, as we can see with the English language detracting more and more attention from the nation’s traditional character through its introduction of especially U.S. attractions (i.e. Disneyworld, Hollywood, Halloween, individual-oriented attitudes toward pedagogy, etc.). In any case, if this nation-wide Japanese-English bilingualism is to come true, I believe it is now every Japanese citizen’s obligation to reconsider exactly why English has become such a valuable industry to this small island country, and finally, if everyone can live with English’s unnecessary lingual and cultural American monopoly.
[1] From the MEXT English program website: http://www.mext.go.jp/english/topics/03072801.htm
[2] There are many websites and disputes regarding this topic. These are some of the sites I referred to: http://www.vistawide.com, http://web.ku.edu/idea, and http://www2.ignatius.edu/faculty/
turner/languages.htm.
[3] Mike from the New Horizon textbook may have been born in Australia, but the textbooks’ CDs reveal that he didn’t grow up there…
[4] Network English was actually derived from only a small portion of the United States mid-eastern region. Unfortunately, the mistaken idea of a ‘neutral’ English (i.e. media’s Network English) is made by many United States citizens as well as Japanese, such as the big business of accent reduction indicates.
[5] Of course, this American English will naturally seem easier for you to understand if you have only listened and read American-style English since you were a student. But this does not mean it has any ‘natural neutrality.’
[6] There is a persistent theme throughout the textbooks and in the opinions of many teachers that English is an essential tool to sharing aspects of Japanese culture to foreigners and the ‘outside’ world.
I wish to especially thank Kishinoue Kayoko, Ben Dewar and Nakamura Hanako for their constant help and support in the forming and writing of this essay.
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