Japanese Culture Constructed by Discourses: Implications for Applied Linguistics Research and ELT
Japanese Culture Constructed by Discourses: Implications for Applied Linguistics Research and ELT
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由话语构建的日本文化：对应用语言学研究和英语教学的启示
DOI：
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发表时间：
1999
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影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Ryuko Kubota
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Ryuko Kubota
最近的一些应用语言学文献中关于写作和批判性思维教学的ESL学生提出了教学论点，通过借鉴ESL学生和目标学术界之间的文化差异。在这些争论中，作者倾向于在东西方之间制造一种文化二分法，构建固定的、非政治的、本质化的文化表征，如群体主义、和谐、不强调批判性思维和自我表达等来描绘日本文化。本文以日本文化为例，试图对这些被视为理所当然的文化标签进行批判。本文认为：（a）在应用语言学文献中发现的本质化的文化标签与殖民话语中建构的他者相平行;（B）文化独特性也被他者本身所占有，如日本人论话语中所见代表文化民族主义和反西化的权力斗争;以及（c）新兴的研究正在产生关于日本学校教育实践的新知识和对文化背景中概念的新理解，挑战日本文化的本质概念。最后，本文从批判多元文化主义的角度提供了另一种理解文化差异的方式，并提出了一种批判素养的观点，支持文化多元主义和批判性地获得社会转型的主导语言。
Some of the recent applied linguistics literature on teaching writing and critical thinking to ESL students has presented pedagogical arguments by drawing on cultural differences between ESL students and the target academic community. In these arguments, authors tend to create a cultural dichotomy between the East and the West, constructing fixed, apolitical, and essentialized cultural representations such as groupism, harmony, and deemphasis on critical thinking and self-expression to depict Japanese culture. This article takes Japanese culture as an example and attempts to critique these taken-for-granted cultural labels. The article argues (a) that the essentialized cultural labels found in the applied linguistics literature parallel the constructed Other in colonial discourse; (b) that cultural uniqueness is also appropriated by the Other itself as seen in the discourse of nihonjinron (theories on the Japanese), which represents cultural nationalism and a struggle for power against Westernization; and (c) that emerging research is generating new knowledge on educational practices in Japanese schools and a new understanding of concepts in cultural contexts, challenging the essentialized notion of Japanese culture. Finally, this article offers another way of understanding cultural differences from a perspective of critical multiculturalism and presents a perspective of critical literacy that supports both cultural pluralism and critical acquisition of the dominant language for social transformation.