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Nihonjinron, Native-Speakerism, and Recent MEXT Policies on EFL Education

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Ideology, Agency, and Intercultural Communicative Competence

Part of the book series: Intercultural Communication and Language Education ((ICLE))

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Abstract

My overarching goals in this book are to observe how EFL education is conducted at four Japanese JHS, explore how ICC-oriented content and education actually unfold, and interrogate the presence and importance of nihonjinron and native-speakerism, two ideological discourses said to impede foreign language education. I have argued for the need to conduct this type of inquiry from a stratified perspective , which essentially looks at constitutive ‘layers’ of a particular social process or event—in this case, EFL education in Japanese JHS. In adopting a stratified approach, my intention is to reveal points of convergence and divergence across data collected at different strata, thus hopefully gaining insight not only into ideological processes in situ but also the relationship between, and the distinct features of structural cultural and agentive forces at play in Japanese JHS English classrooms . I devote this chapter to an interrogation of the presence and importance of nihonjinron and native-speakerism in recent Japanese policy documents on EFL education. Doing so allows for an initial glimpse into Japanese JHS English education from the angle of structure and culture. A source of inspiration for the exploration of the potential links between nihonjinron, native-speakerism and EFL policies includes critiques made by analysts such as Tollefson and Tsui (2007: 260–261), who suggest that “policies promoting the acquisition and use of English may be linked […] with discourses that seek to reinvigorate nationalism , national languages , and national cultural identities […] as part of nation-building and nation-preserving processes.” The critical analysis of classroom discourse , or spoken text , in the following chapter includes a discussion on the consumption aspect of policy discourse (i.e., how the MEXT policies are interpreted, implemented, and/or appropriated at the four JHS where ethnographic data was collected). The study in this chapter, on the other hand, begins with a summary of Japanese government policies on EFL education over the past four decades, including a discussion on The MEXT Plan of 2003, henceforth referred to as Section 9 (MEXT 2010), and The Five Proposals (MEXT 2011a), the two main policy documents under scrutiny in this chapter. This is followed by a thematic CDA of Section 9 and The Five Proposals. Finally, I look at how the findings gathered in this chapter inform our understanding of educational policy, and explore implications for ICC-oriented contents in secondary school EFL education policy.

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    Jeremie Bouchard

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Bouchard, J. (2017). Nihonjinron, Native-Speakerism, and Recent MEXT Policies on EFL Education. In: Ideology, Agency, and Intercultural Communicative Competence. Intercultural Communication and Language Education. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-3926-3_5

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