A Comparative Study of Immigrant Language Situations and Immigrant Language Policies from an International Perspective

20世纪80年代末以来，随着外国人口的迅速增长，日本出现了几种移民语言，成为定居的生活语言。与此同时，这些非日语人士在日常生活和对子女的教育中也遇到了各种各样的交际问题。本项目关注移民语言，从社会语言学的角度研究移民语言的现状以及针对移民语言问题的政策。根据国家的移民政策、移民的身份以及东道国社会对移民的态度，移民的语言状况会有很大的不同。然而，在研究过程中，有几个值得注意的案例被观察到，在兼顾移民和国家利益的可能性方面，日本可能过渡到一个多民族社会，就像西方移民国家所看到的那样。

Along the rapid increase of foreign population from the late 1980's several immigrant languages have emerged in Japan as settled living languages. At the same time these non-Japanese speakers have encountered various communicative problems in their daily life and in education to their children. This project has paid attention to immigrant languages and studied from a sociolinguistic viewpoint about their present situations as well as policies towards immigrants' language problems. Immigrant language situations vary greatly in accordance with state's immigrant policies, immigrants' status and the attitude of the host society to immigrants. In the course of study, several notable cases, however, have been observed in respect to the possibility to accommodate both immigrants' and the state's interests, for Japan's probable transition to a multiethnic society as has been seen in Western immigrant states.