Portraits of Second Language Learners: An L2 Learner Agency Perspective 9781783099887

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Portraits of Second Language Learners

SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION Series Editors: Professor David Singleton, University of Pannonia, Hungary and Fellow Emeritus, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland and Associate Professor Simone E. Pfenninger, University of Salzburg, Austria This series brings together titles dealing with a variety of aspects of language acquisition and processing in situations where a language or languages other than the native language is involved. Second language is thus interpreted in its broadest possible sense. The volumes included in the series all offer in their different ways, on the one hand, exposition and discussion of empirical fi ndings and, on the other, some degree of theoretical reflection. In this latter connection, no particular theoretical stance is privileged in the series; nor is any relevant perspective – sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic, neurolinguistic, etc. – deemed out of place. The intended readership of the series includes fi nal-year undergraduates working on second language acquisition projects, postgraduate students involved in second language acquisition research, and researchers, teachers and policy-makers in general whose interests include a second language acquisition component. All books in this series are externally peer-reviewed. Full details of all the books in this series and of all our other publications can be found on http://www.multilingual-matters.com, or by writing to Multilingual Matters, St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK.

SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION: 122

Portraits of Second Language Learners An L2 Learner Agency Perspective

Chie Muramatsu

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS Bristol • Blue Ridge Summit

DOI https://doi.org/10.21832/MURAMA9870 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Control Number: 2017061010 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN-13: 978-1-78309-987-0 (hbk) Multilingual Matters UK: St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK. USA: NBN, Blue Ridge Summit, PA, USA. Website: www.multilingual-matters.com Twitter: Multi_Ling_Mat Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/multilingualmatters Blog: www.channelviewpublications.wordpress.com Copyright © 2018 Chie Muramatsu. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. The policy of Multilingual Matters/Channel View Publications is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products, made from wood grown in sustainable forests. In the manufacturing process of our books, and to further support our policy, preference is given to printers that have FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody certification. The FSC and/or PEFC logos will appear on those books where full certification has been granted to the printer concerned. Typeset by Nova Techset Private Limited, Bengaluru and Chennai, India. Printed and bound in the UK by the CPI Books Group Ltd. Printed and bound in the US by Edwards Brothers Malloy, Inc.

この本を父と母に捧げます。 To My Mom and Dad

Contents

Transcription Conventions 1

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xi

Introduction Beginning Second Language Learners and Second Language Learning: A Socially Situated View Second Language Learner Agency: Second Language Learners as Social Agents Identity and Investment: The Theoretical Canon Rethinking Investment The Foci of the Book The Research Site: Why Middlebury? Narrative Inquiry: Stories Whose Stories to be Told? Data Collection and Analysis Ethical Considerations Summary Structure of the Book

1 1 3 5 6 9 11 12 13 16 17 18 19 20

Second Language Socialization, Community and Second Language Learner Agency Introduction Becoming Speakers of Cultures Second Language Socialization Community and Community of Practice Legitimate Peripheral Participation School and Classroom Communities Local Communities Locating Agency in Second Language Socialization Research Agency, Identity and Investment Summary

42 44 45

Community Introduction Middlebury College Summer Language Schools

47 47 47 50 vii

21 21 21 23 27 28 30 35

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The Japanese School Summary and Overview of Subsequent Chapters

54 65

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Parker: Lost Opportunities, Reconnection and Transforming Beginning Energetic Student Finding his Place A Frat Boy who Wants to Speak Japanese Gambaru ‘Work Hard’ Languaging The Pursuit of Authenticity This is my Second Chance Becoming a Speaker of Japanese Discussion

66 66 66 68 69 71 72 80 86 90 94

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Alison: Shame, Resistance and Overcoming Beginning I Cannot Speak Japanese Why Did I Come Here? Resistance Avoidance Facing Clicking Speaking Discussion

100 100 101 104 106 114 121 124 125 131

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Naiya: Separation, Resistance and Accomplishing Beginning Between Two Worlds Life is a Process Separation Resistance Silence Japanese is Only an Obstacle Accomplishing Discussion

134 134 135 137 141 146 149 166 169 172

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Danielle: Identities, Ambivalence and Becoming Beginning Becoming a Japanese Language Student I am the Oldest Student I am a Teacher Struggle Becoming a Teacher of Japanese Discussion

176 176 177 180 189 195 200 203

Contents

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Conclusion Introduction Role of Communities in Second Language Learning Agency and Investment Revisited Individual Differences Revisited Limitations of the Study Implications for Pedagogy Epilogue

References Index

ix

206 206 206 208 210 213 213 215 217 223

Transcription Conventions

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Hepburn style romanization is used. The symbols used to describe paralinguistic information are as follows: ? rising intonation , continuing intonation followed by a short pause … omission (?) unclear utterance * ungrammatical sentence [ beginning of overlap xxx inaudible Other non-verbal information is described in parenthesis: ( ) e.g. (Multiple people are laughing) Comments and information added by the researcher are placed in squared brackets: [ ] e.g. I forgot [what I was going to say]. [Fujimoto] saw from the window

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1 Introduction

Beginning

On an early summer’s day in 201x,1 I was driving down a country road in northern New England. All I could see from my car windows were barns, cows, fields and farmhouses. I was beginning to worry whether I was heading in the right direction. I had been driving on this country road for a while, so I looked at my clock. I wanted to arrive there before sunset. I wished that I had invested in a GPS. For a graduate student heading off on her first field trip for her dissertation study, however, a GPS just wasn’t in my budget. I looked at my printout of the directions. I should be getting very close to Middlebury by now. Comfortingly, a road sign appeared and informed me that Middlebury was a few miles away. Feeling relieved, I laughed cynically at myself. This was not my fi rst time driving to Middlebury. I had taken this road trip – a two-day journey from Iowa City to Middlebury – several times over the past summers to teach at Middlebury College. This summer, as a novice researcher, I would be conducting an ethnographic study for a period of nine weeks. With my teacher’s lens replaced by my researcher’s lens, I was more nervous and scared than excited and happy to return to my old teaching post. What is Middlebury?

Middlebury is a small town in northern New England with a population of approximately 6588 according to the 2010 US census. Like many other places in New England it is known as a summer vacation destination. I was sometimes asked by a stranger at a random place, such as a bookstore or grocery store in Iowa City, if I had been to Middlebury when that person saw me wearing Middlebury T-shirts. When I answered ‘yes’, the response was almost always, ‘It’s a beautiful place!’ with an emphasis on the word ‘beautiful.’ Yes, indeed, Middlebury is a beautiful place. If I mentioned that I had taught Japanese at one of the summer language schools there, the response was almost always, ‘Lucky you! It’s a great school!’. Middlebury means different things to different people. To those who spend their vacations in northern New England, Middlebury is one among many small, yet beautiful, historic towns. Otter Creek, the longest river 1

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Portraits of Second Language Learners

in the state, divides the downtown into east and west. From the Main Street Bridge which connects the two sides of downtown, you can look over Otter Creek. Along the creek are restaurants where you can dine outside with a view of the flowing river. A little further down the hill you will fi nd a suspension bridge, where you can look over the Otter Creek waterfall as it splashes down right in front of you. If you continue across that suspension bridge you enter a district called Mable Works. At fi rst glance it looks like an old warehouse, which is not far off the mark. The building was originally constructed as a gasworks in the first half of the 19th century, according to the local museum. Mable Works now houses restaurants, shops and offices. On Saturday mornings the parking lot is taken over by the Farmers’ Market. Fresh vegetables, fruit, bread, pastries, cookies, cheese, honey, maple syrup, soaps, crafts, pottery, flowers and other local goods are sold there. To those who know someone who attended a private liberal arts college in New England, Middlebury is known for its college, one among many great schools in New England. It is a small liberal arts institution founded in the early 19th century, initially as a school to train young men for the ministry, like many other colleges and universities started during that era. In the late 19th century the college became coeducational and in the early 20th century it continued to grow student enrollment, facility size, faculty number, curriculum breadth and endowment value. Middlebury College is now known as one of the leading liberal arts colleges in New England. For someone like me, who is in the field of foreign language teaching and learning, Middlebury is known for its summer intensive immersion foreign language programs, which are grouped under the general name of the Middlebury Summer Language Schools. Every summer since 1915 the college has hosted its Summer Language Schools in various foreign languages. In the summer of 201x, when I obtained permission to conduct an ethnographic study in the Japanese School, the college offered Summer Language Schools in 10 languages: Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. The Middlebury magic

I pulled my car over in front of the Campus Security Office and walked inside. ‘Can I help you?’, a woman said in a businesslike tone. Five minutes later, I walked out the office with a parking sticker, my dorm room key and reactivated college ID card in my hand. Middlebury, here I come! My summer at Middlebury had officially begun. I returned to my car and took a deep breath before I started the engine. The campus was quiet – almost too quiet. I looked for people driving along College Street, heading to Hepburn Hall where the Japanese School was housed that summer. The Language School students would arrive on

Introduction 3

Friday. I arrived early because I wanted to attend the Japanese School faculty/staff meeting the next morning. The campus would soon revive when the students arrived to participate in the language school. Every summer, approximately 1300 students come from all over the United States and some travel from outside the United States. They gather at Middlebury to study a foreign language for a period of seven or nine weeks depending on the length of their programs. It was the year after I received my Master’s degree when I first taught in the Japanese School at Middlebury College. I was a fresh, young, ambitious and also naïve second language (L2) teacher. Working with many experienced Japanese language instructors I soon felt overwhelmed and incompetent. In those days, in the hallways, on the way to the cafeteria and in informal gatherings I overheard other instructors mention the ‘Middlebury magic’, referring to the students’ language development while they are studying at Middlebury. It is so remarkable that instructors like to joke that it is the work of magic – a magic that exists at Middlebury. At that time I was preoccupied with my immediate tasks and teaching and did not give any more thought to it, but the idea of ‘Middlebury magic’ stayed in the back of my memory. Then later, when I was given the opportunity to return to Middlebury to teach, I started to wonder again what the magic was really about. Does such an idea really exist in the context of foreign language teaching and learning? What is the essence of the magic that the instructors were referring to? What is the magic that can only be observed at Middlebury? What was really happening inside the Middlebury Language Schools? These lingering questions led me to pursue my research interest in ethnographic study at Middlebury. Second Language Learners and Second Language Learning: A Socially Situated View

If I am asked about my occupation, I answer that I am a Japanese language teacher. My career began at the University of Iowa as a teaching assistant. At that time the Japanese economy was not as strong as it had once been, sushi restaurants were not as popular as they are now and Japanese popular culture was not as widely recognized as it is today in the United States. Nonetheless, some students were interested in the Japanese language and culture and studying Japanese at the University of Iowa. As a novice teacher and graduate student, I spent many nights in my office writing lesson plans, grading homework and preparing for the next day’s lesson. On Friday nights I walked home through a downtown filled with college students heading to a bar or already tipsy and loud. At weekends I went to the library and watched the crowd of people dressed in Iowa Hawkeye T-shirts tailgating at a football game. I have been teaching Japanese in the United States ever since. I am now an older, more experienced teacher. During all my years spent teaching

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Portraits of Second Language Learners

Japanese, what always kept me engaged were my students. Therefore, when the time came for me to start writing the proposal for my dissertation study, I knew what the topic was going to be – L2 learners. In particular, I was fascinated and amazed by the great degree of variability among the students whom I met in their views of Japanese language and culture, their understanding of social and academic affordances made available to them, the ways in which they engaged in the task of learning Japanese and the ways in which they define themselves as speakers of Japanese. I wanted to shape my dissertation study around my fascination with these students by undertaking a detailed inquiry. Hence I turned to the second language acquisition (SLA) literature. The area of studies I fi rst concentrated on was the literature on individual differences. The studies on individual differences are one of the most wellestablished areas of inquiry in the SLA literature. The topics of investigation typically focus on L2 learners’ variability in their socio-psychological state (e.g. anxiety, beliefs, motivation and willingness to communicate), cognitive abilities (e.g. aptitude and working memory) and learning styles and strategies (for more information, see chapters in the recent SLA handbooks by Dewaele, 2009; Dörnyei & Skehan, 2003; Ellis, 2008; Skehan, 2012; Gregersen & MacIntyre, 2014). As I read, the arguments that researchers made and the implications that their study results suggested made real sense to me on paper; however, when I tried to locate my own undefi ned, yet defi nite, research interests in the literature, I was lost. These studies were able to establish the categories or profiles of L2 learners – the categories or the profi les of L2 learners who are likely to lead to success in L2 learning – yet they were not able to adequately address the dynamic, intricate and organic relationship between L2 learners, social affordance and L2 learning that I had observed. Indeed, I felt a sense of strangeness about the absence of individual learners as real people in these studies. Therefore, I was delighted when I discovered a new emerging line of study on motivation that had been initiated by Dörnyei and Ushioda (2009). In particular, Ushioda’s (2009: 215) ‘person-in-context relational view of language motivation’ gave me a theoretical warrant and a clear direction for my own future study. The following excerpt explains more clearly this ‘person-in-context’ view of language motivation: Let me summarize then what I mean by a person-in-context relational view of motivation. I mean a focus on real persons, rather than on learners as theoretical abstractions; focus on the agency of the individual person as a thinking, feeling, human being, with an identity, a personality, a unique history and background, a person with goals, motives and intentions; focus on the interaction between this self-reflective intentional agent, and the fluid and complex system of social relations, activities, experiences and multiple micro- and macro-contexts in which the person is embedded, moves, and is inherently part of it. (Ushioda, 2009: 220)

Introduction 5

Second Language Learner Agency: Second Language Learners as Social Agents

Ushioda is not the only researcher who called for a reconceptualization of L2 learners in SLA research. Firth and Wagner (1997, 2007) more boldly criticized the uniform and inorganic representation of L2 learners in SLA research and emphasized the need to expand our understanding of L2 learners as actual socially situated beings. Many researchers, such as Block (2007), Thorne and Black (2007), Kramsch (2010), Lantolf and Pavlenko (2001), Norton (2000) and van Lier (2008), among others, also raised their voices to emphasize the need to (re)conceptualize L2 learners as ‘intentional human agents who play a defi ning role in shaping the qualities of their learning’ (Dewaele, 2009: 638), while simultaneously recognizing that they might be vulnerable to variable social positions in a community by being caught in the complex web of social power relations. Given this framework, L2 learning can be viewed as a process of L2 socialization by participating in a new social community of practice, navigating their lives, negotiating their social positions and identities and establishing their voices in a new target language community. L2 learners, as social agents, create, navigate and defi ne their own learning processes. They do not passively emulate the normative practices of the target language communities or accept undesirable social values and positions being simply imposed on them; instead, they negotiate, resist and shape their learning processes and experiences. SLA research thus needs to abandon its rather simplistic portrayals of these complex phenomena and understand and document L2 learning as a dynamic social process shaped by the interplay between the social world and its human agents. Human agency is the concept originally defi ned and used in various disciplines in the social sciences and relatively recently introduced into the fields of applied linguistics and SLA. As the socially and contextually grounded L2 learning theories and research became an important pillar in the fields, L2 learner agency has become an important theoretical concept. Deters et al. (2015), in their recent edited volume, provided an overview of diverse approaches to the conceptualization of human agency in SLA research, concluding that there is no single defi nition of L2 learner agency which adequately addresses the diverse research interests and contexts of L2 learning. My study adopts the defi nitions of agency that are used in the poststructuralist models of L2 learning which view L2 learning as a fundamentally socially mediated activity and process; in addition, ‘agency is never a property of the individual but a relationship that is constructed and renegotiated with those around the individual and with society at large’ (Lantolf & Pavlenko, 2001: 148). Lantolf and Pavlenko (2001), from a perspective of sociocultural theory, view agency as a mediated relationship between individual learners and the social world. Even though L2 learners are engaging in the same

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activity, socioculturally, they are not all engaging in the same activity because each individual learner’s relationship to the social world is not the same. Therefore, the meaning or ‘significance’ (Lantolf & Pavlenko, 2001: 148) that individual learners construct through their engagement in a particular activity is not the same for all learners. What they fi nd meaningful or significant in the process of the engagement is mediated by individual learners’ personal histories, goals of learning, beliefs and relationships to the social world in which they live. Lantolf and Pavlenko argue that it is this significance that ultimately shapes the individual learners’ orientation and engagement in the activity of learning. Ahearn (2001: 112), in the field of linguistic anthropology, views agency as the ‘socioculturally mediated capacity to act.’ Duff (2012: 417) explains agency as ‘people’s ability to make choices, take control, selfregulate and thereby pursue their goals as individuals leading, potentially, to personal or social transformation.’ More recently, Duff and Doherty (2015), in the framework of second language socialization research, emphasize the aspects of agency as the personal enactment of L2 learners and address the powerful role of L2 learners who take charge of their own learning processes – namely, ‘self-directed socialization’ (Duff & Doherty, 2015: 54, italics in original). My study follows the footsteps of these scholars and understands that L2 learner agency is the very force of L2 learners to navigate, control and take charge of their own learning processes in pursuit of their learning goals. A sense of agency enables individuals to imagine, perform, accept, refuse and resist. In other words, agency enables individuals to make deliberate and purposeful choices with regard to how they relate as individuals to the social world, how they take ownership of their actions in the pursuit of enterprises in their lives and create opportunities for self-transformation. Despite the increasing recognition of the importance of agency in L2 learning, agency has not yet gained a central focus as a topic of investigation. In the current SLA literature, especially in the framework of social theories of learning, agency is often associated with studies on identity. Especially after the publication of the groundwork by Norton (2000), in which she proposed the two influential concepts of identity and investment, agency has been placed, in a sense, in the shadow of identity and treated as a sort of umbrella term for investment and identity overall. Identity and Investment: The Theoretical Canon

When I read Norton’s (2000) book for the fi rst time, I was stunned by the stories of the five immigrant women in Canada. As a nonnative speaker of English living in the United States, I felt their struggles and challenges were my own even though my life in Iowa City was very different from theirs in Canada. I cheered for their desires for the future

Introduction 7

and their willpower to act on their social realities. As a graduate student in the field of SLA, I was stunned by Norton’s profoundly social view of L2 learning. She argued that viewing and defi ning L2 learners in binary terms, such as motivated or unmotivated, introverted or extroverted or inhibited or uninhibited, without realizing that such categories are often socially constructed by inequitable social relations of power, fails to integrate L2 learners with the social world in which they live and are inherently part of. As an alternative, Norton proposed the theory of identity to address how the social relations of power affect L2 learners’ access to the target language community of practice and hence shape their opportunities for learning. Here she defi nes identity and argues that L2 learning is empowered by L2 learners’ desires for their identity negotiation, reassessment and reconstruction in new target language communities. I use the term identity to reference how a person understands his or her relationship to the world, how that relationship is constructed across time and space, and how the person understands possibilities for the future. (Norton, 2000: 5)

Norton understands identity as a site of struggle, and at the same time as possibilities for change. L2 learners will commit to learning an L2 with the understanding that they will gain resources that are otherwise impossible. Norton has defi ned such L2 learner commitment to learn an L2 as ‘investment.’ She explains the construct of investment as follows: The concept of investment, which I introduced in Norton Peirce (1995), signals the socially and historically constructed relationship of learners to the target language, and their often ambivalent desire to learn and practice it. It is best understood with reference to the economic metaphors that Bourdieu uses in his work – in particular, the notion of cultural capital. Bourdieu and Passeron (1977) use the term ‘cultural capital’ to reference to the knowledge and modes of thought that characterize different classes and groups in relation to specific sets of social forms. They argue that some forms of cultural capital have a higher exchange value than others in relation to a set of social forms which value some forms of knowledge and thought over others. If learners invest in a second language, they do so with the understanding that they will acquire a wider range of symbolic and material resources, which in turn increase the value of their cultural capital. Learners expect or hope to have a good return on that investment – a return that will give them access to hitherto unattainable resources. (Norton, 2000: 10)

Norton’s notion of investment is drawn from the economic metaphor proposed by the sociologists Bourdieu (1977, 1991) and Bourdieu and Passeron (1977). They conceptualized social power in terms of the acquisition of symbolic capital, namely economic capital (e.g. money, real estate and material goods), social capital (e.g. social status, membership and reputation) and cultural capital, which entails having ‘knowledge, skills

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and other cultural acquisition, as exemplified by educational and technological qualifications’ (Bourdieu, 1991: 14). When L2 learners learn an L2, they expect that ‘they will acquire a wider range of symbolic and material resources, which in turn increase the value of their cultural capital’ (Norton, 2000: 10). As the value of their cultural capital increases, they will eventually be able to gain access to ‘hitherto unattainable resources’ (Norton, 2000: 10). To maximize the return on their investment, L2 learners have the capacity to choose what they will invest in and what they will not. Consider the case of Katarina in Norton’s (2000) study. She stopped investing in learning English (even though she could have continued to take the class for free) when she realized that she was positioned as an unskilled and uneducated immigrant woman in a new social community because of her limited English ability, despite all the high qualifications that she had already earned in Poland. Instead, she decided to invest in learning computer skills because she believed that the acquisition of computer skills would give her a better return than learning English and allow her access to hitherto unattainable resources – that is, for her, gaining the social identity of a skilled and educated woman. In a subsequent publication, Norton (2001) proposed another theoretical construct, imagined communities – ‘groups of people, not immediately tangible and accessible, with whom we connect through the power of the imagination’ (Kanno & Norton, 2003: 241) – and argued how L2 learners’ imagination empowered them to invest (or not to invest) for L2 learning. For example, Norton (2001: 164) analyzed Katarina’s case as follows: Katarina had been a teacher who had taught for seventeen years. In this position, she was a highly respected professional. When she came to Canada, she could not fi nd employment as a teacher, and enjoyed little status or respect as a part-time homemaker for the Community Service, a job that was only good ‘for now.’ She eagerly sought recognition from people who were fellow professionals, and wished to have a profession in Canada in which she could meet like-minded people. Her imagined community, then, was a community of professionals. (Norton, 2001: 164)

To gain a membership in her imagined community of professionals, Katarina stopped investing for learning English; instead, she started to learn computer skills. Thus, an L2 learner’s imagined community invites an imagined identity and, in turn, influences the L2 learner’s investment for learning. In the second edition of her 2000 book, Norton (2013) revisited her theory of identity and has argued that her constructs of identity, investment and power are still powerful constituents of L2 learning within the framework of the socially oriented research on L2 learning and teaching, more than a decade after the publication of the first edition of her book.

Introduction 9

Most recently, Darvin and Norton (2015), in their article published in the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics followed by their presentation at the American Association for Applied Linguistics Annual Conference in Toronto in 2015, proposed a comprehensive model of investment as a response to the demands of the digital age which is characterized by mobility, fluidity and diversity. They have argued that, in the digital age, the ‘spaces of language learning continue to multiply and evolve with distinct and increasingly invisible structures of power’ (Darvin & Norton, 2015: 51); therefore, a theoretical model of investment needs to examine the macrostructure of power, rather than the microstructure of power found in particular communicative events, which shapes the ‘disposition, social position, and the condition in which learners can claim the right to speak’ (Darvin & Norton, 2015: 51). Since the publication of Norton (2000), combined with the social turn in SLA research, her theory of identity and construct of investment have become the theoretical canon for the social theory of learning in SLA research. Her notion of investment, in particular, has ‘sparked considerable interest in the field of applied linguistics and language education’ (Norton, 2013: 7). Kramsch, in the Afterword of Norton’s 2013 book, states the influence and significance of the notion of investment as follows: In the North American context, investment, in SLA has become synonymous with ‘language learning commitment’ and is based on a learner’s intentional choice and desire. In this view, learners are no longer passively structured by powerful institutions; nor are they simply moved to learn what others teach them. They can exercise their agency, claim their right to be heard, change perceptions and institutional prejudices, and strive to become whoever they want to be. (Norton, 2013: 195, italics in original)

Rethinking Investment

My L2 teaching career is exclusively based on the context of higher education in the United States, more precisely higher education in the Midwest. The majority of the students whom I met at the University of Iowa were from middle-class Caucasian families in Iowa and the surrounding states, and many were the fi rst generation in their family that had attended a university. If you ask why they were studying Japanese, they would say it was because they were interested in the Japanese culture – whatever their defi nition of Japanese culture was. Not only in Iowa but also in many other cities in the Midwest, students have practically no or at the most very few opportunities to speak Japanese once they step outside their classrooms. Do the majority of these students pursue a career in Japanese after they graduate from a university? I don’t think so. Do the majority of these students go study abroad to Japan while they are

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Portraits of Second Language Learners

studying in university? Some students do, but they are not in the majority. Do the majority of these students visit Japan during their lifetimes? Again, some do but many students never leave their home states. Nonetheless, they still say, ‘I want to study Japanese’ and engage themselves in the activity of learning Japanese. Being a novice SLA researcher, I tried to apply the existing categories of motivation to my students’ desires and commitment to learn Japanese; however, none satisfied me. I also tried to apply Norton’s notion of investment to my students to explain their desires and commitment to engaging in the activity of learning Japanese. However, I was troubled by the economic metaphor, which is the theoretical underpinning of the construct of investment. Norton views L2 learning as the acquisition of capital in the hope of receiving returns and benefits. When L2 learners learn an L2, they expect to receive a return that gives them access to hitherto unattainable resources. At the beginning, it started as a trivial question just smoldering in my mind. Then, as I interacted with students over the years, it evolved into the concrete research question that I wanted to pursue. I wanted to investigate the applicability of the construct of investment proposed by Norton (2000) to L2 Japanese learners in the context of the United States – whether her theoretical underpinning of the construct of investment that views L2 learning as the acquisition of capital based on L2 learners’ ‘costbenefit assessment’ (Duff, 2012: 413) would be applicable to L2 learners who were studying Japanese in a community in the United States. Power is one of the important theoretical concepts underlying Norton’s theory of identity and the construct of investment. The L2 learners whom Norton studied were adult immigrant women who had moved to Canada for various reasons and tried to establish themselves as legitimate speakers of English and legitimate members of their community. However, a power asymmetry, in social and economic terms, was evident. Consequently, they were caught in inequitable power relations and struggled to claim their right to speak. In this context, as Kramsch (Norton, 2013: 194) puts it, ‘learning English could indeed represent the hope of a better, more equitable, more democratic form of life’, and L2 learning could indeed be viewed as the acquisition of capital, which promises L2 learners a return that will give them access to hitherto unattainable resources. While power exists in all social communities, power relations may be structured differently in each community. L2 learners in the world face different challenges, exercise their agency in different ways, overcome their obstacles and claim themselves as the speakers of the language and the legitimate members of the community. Hence, I argue that we need to enlarge the scope of investigation and examine the diverse portraits of L2 learners who are situated in diverse social contexts. The previous studies that investigated L2 learning in relation to its social contexts have predominantly focused on learners of English as a second

Introduction 11

language (ESL) who came to live in the target language communities as immigrants or refugees, where the social and economic power asymmetry was evident. Furthermore, English is considered the language of the ‘global marketplace’ (Pavlenko & Norton, 2007: 672). In such contexts, learning English is associated with the acquisition of social and economic capital to gain entry into the global market, which creates a (symbolic) power asymmetry between L2 learners and members of the target language communities. My study will investigate L2 learners of Japanese who are situated in a social community of the Middlebury Language Schools in the United States, where L2 learners choose to come to study their target languages by their own decisions. By studying L2 Japanese learners (non-ESL learners) in a social community where inherent social power asymmetry does not exist, I intend to examine whether Norton’s (2000) concept of investment is able to explain L2 learners’ driving force for studying Japanese. The Foci of the Book

In this book I will present a case study of four advanced L2 learners of Japanese who are situated in a social community of the Middlebury Language Schools (they were enrolled in the Japanese School, one of the Middlebury Language Schools) in the United States. The goal of the study is to document and analyze the different ways in which L2 learners exercise their agency in pursuing the enterprise of learning an L2 by making deliberate choices, accepting or resisting, conforming or refusing, positioning themselves in certain ways, making sense of self and actions and taking ownership of their own L2 learning. Agency is a fundamental force for humans to act on the social world. This study thus examines the dynamic interplay that takes place between community and L2 learner agency in L2 learning. In doing so, I intend to examine (a) the applicability of the notion of investment proposed by Norton (2000) to the L2 learners whom I study in the social community of the Middlebury Language Schools; and (b) the other forms of L2 learner agency that might emerge in the process of L2 learning in that community. Another goal of the study is to contribute to a greater understanding of how individual differences of L2 learners, defi ned as different ways in which L2 learners engage in the community of practice and exercise their agency, form different trajectories of learning and create different experiences of socialization in the end. The previous studies on individual differences in L2 learning have tended to focus on the internal factors of L2 learners to explain diverse outcomes of L2 learning. My study intends to expand the horizon of that research and explore how the different ways in which L2 learners engage in the social world will form different learning processes and result in diverse experiences of socialization.

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Portraits of Second Language Learners

The overarching questions that guided my study are: (a) How do the four advanced L2 learners of Japanese exercise their agency in learning Japanese in the community of the Middlebury Language Schools? and (b) How do the different ways in which the four learners exercise their agency in learning Japanese form different trajectories of learning and result in diverse experiences of L2 socialization as outcomes? The fi rst question focuses on the negotiation of meaning by the four learners in a new community. I document and examine the ways in which the four learners understand the new world surrounding them, view and position themselves in a new social community, perceive and negotiate the meaning of mundane events, interpret and construct the meaning of what they do, understand the task of learning Japanese, use social, cultural and linguistic resources of the community, seek connection with other people, solve the conflicts that they face, steer their learning, and work to achieve the goal of their enterprise of learning Japanese. The second question traces the processes of learning by the four L2 learners. I examine how the different ways in which they exercise their agency form different learning processes and create different experiences of socialization both during the program and at the end. The term ‘outcome’ is used to describe the results of the individual learners’ negotiation of agency in the community to achieve learning goals – what they gain as a result of socialization through their participation in a new community of practice. The Research Site: Why Middlebury?

I chose the Middlebury Language Schools as the site for my study partly because I had a personal quest through my own teaching experience in the Japanese School there, but more importantly, because I was interested in the Middlebury Language Schools as a social community – a social community that is uniquely created for the purpose of learning an L2. A group of L2 learners gathers in this community, lives together, studies together and interacts with each other for a period of seven or nine weeks (the length of the program varies depending on the choice of language). These L2 learners are required to communicate only in the target language they are studying while they are there. This immersion environment is comparable to that in many study abroad contexts; however, it is also different in several ways. One important difference is that the native speakers of a target language in this community are all L2 instructors. During the duration of their stay in this community, L2 learners and instructors reside in the same place and interact with each other in the target language through their participation in daily events and activities for the purpose of learning an L2. The Middlebury Language Schools have named this hybrid language-learning community ‘the richest, most effective language-learning environment on earth’ (Middlebury College, 201xa: 3). By closely studying this hybrid

Introduction 13

social community, I intend to examine the ways in which L2 learners, as social agents, exercise their agency, navigate themselves in a new social community, defi ne themselves as speakers of Japanese and shape their learning processes and outcomes. Narrative Inquiry: Stories

This study takes the form of a narrative. My first encounter with narrative research was an ethnographic writing course at the University of Iowa. One day in my professor’s office, she lent me a book. When I went to her office a week later to return it, she asked me what I thought about the book. I said I really enjoyed reading it. I felt as if I were there with the people in the book and witnessed everything with them. I was also emotionally involved in their stories. I felt their joy, hopes, frustration and disappointments as my own. Then my professor asked me what I thought about the book as a study. My immediate response was, ‘This is not a study. The author just wrote the stories of Chinese immigrant children in the US.’ My professor laughed and our conversation ended. As the semester went on and I learned more about ethnographic studies and writing, I started to realize that my answer had been wrong. At the beginning of the semester in my professor’s office, I did not yet have the eyes of an ethnographic researcher and writer. Benson (2014) notes that narrative inquiry – in other words, the use of stories in academic research – in the humanities and social sciences has begun to play an important role. Combined with the social turn, narrative inquiry in the field of SLA has also grown considerably over the past decade or so. Narrative inquiry takes a variety of forms and approaches. The most common approaches in applied linguistic research are perhaps the case study, the ethnographic study and the autobiographical study, all of which focus on participants’ experiences with regard to the research questions that are being investigated. Ethnographic case study

Narrative inquiry is an epistemological choice that researchers make. My study takes the form of an ethnographic case study. Ethnographic methods are the research techniques originally developed and used among ethnographers who study the other and the other culture (Peacock, 2001). ‘The other’ can be an exotic ethnic group living in a remote area, a social group in our community or elsewhere, or a school or a classroom. Regardless of the topics of research inquiry, the goals of ethnographic studies are twofold: (a) to understand ‘the other’; and (b) to convey researchers’ understanding in writing to the audience/readers whom researchers have in mind. Since in ethnographic studies a researcher is the only tool of data gathering and analysis, understanding is achieved

14

Portraits of Second Language Learners

through the lens of the researcher. Thus, understanding involves researchers’ interpretation (Geertz, 1973) or translation (Clifford, 1986) of ‘what was presumably witnessed and understood during a stay in the field’ (Van Maanen, 1988: 3). Fieldwork is the epistemological ground of ethnographic studies. Through the engagement in the lives of others over a long period of time, researchers fi rst gain access to the natives (the people whom they are studying) and gradually become a participant in their lives. A challenge for researchers is to maintain an objectivity–subjectivity balance during the period of their stay in the field. If they are involved in the natives’ lives too much, researchers will lose their objective stance. If they detach themselves from the natives, researchers will not be able to gain insider perspectives. On the one hand, researchers detach their subjective feelings and personal experiences from their ethnographic lens; on the other hand, their personal experience and feelings shape their ability to understand a practice of the natives (Rosaldo, 1989). Thus, ethnographic studies are, no doubt, experiential and idiosyncratic. In the field of humanities research, in order to gain in-depth understanding of the other people whom researchers are studying, ethnographic methods are often combined with the case study design. Case study is the ‘study of the particularity and complexity of a single case, coming to understand its activity within important circumstances’ (Stake, 1995: ix). In a case study, researchers are ‘interested in understanding the meaning people have constructed, that is, how they make sense of their world and the experiences they have in the world’ (Merriam, 1998: 6). Hence, a case study aims to understand and gain an emic perspective on ‘what it means for participants to be in that setting, what their lives are like, what is going on for them, what their meanings are, [and] what the world looks in that particular setting’ (Patton, 1985: Preface). My study takes the position that L2 learning is a socially situated activity and process arising from the dynamic interplay between individual learners as agents and social communities. Therefore, the aim of investigation is to understand individual learners’ lived experience of learning an L2 in a particular setting (the Japanese School at Middlebury) in a particular time period (the 201x summer session). The ethnographic case study approach allows me to examine the dynamic, socially situated and relational nature of L2 learning and to convey diverse portraits of L2 learners to my audience/readers. Ethnographic writing: Positioning as a writer

My study adopts a narrative nonfiction, essayistic style. Based on my fieldwork experience, I attempt to reconstruct a story of the field. The goal of my ethnographic writing is, nonetheless, to provide an authentic

Introduction 15

representation of my research inquiry. Following the positioning of Clifford (1986) and Geertz (1988) as ethnographic writers, I consider myself as part of the study and understand that my relations to the participants and subjectivities are relevant to the nature of my understanding and interpretation of the data. Therefore, I choose to disclose my personal lens as part of my ethnographic lens. This is one effort that I make my epistemological stance transparent. Interpretations that researchers draw from their data unavoidably involve interpreters’ biases regardless of the absence or presence of their voices in the text. Researchers employ various techniques in order to establish the trustworthiness of studies. Two of the most important techniques that researchers employ are (a) triangulation (Lincoln & Guba, 1985); and (b) thick description (Geertz, 1973). Triangulation is the ground for researchers to make assertions by collecting multiple sources of data and examining emergent themes from multiple perspectives. Writing a thick description is another way to establish the credibility of studies by providing contextualization and the complexity of human behavior and thoughts. Thick description provides the ground for readers to make inferences. Drawing from their knowledge, personal experience and intuition, readers relate what is described in the texts to their own perspectives and lives (Patton, 1990; Stake, 1995). Duff (2006: 66) argues that the aim of research is to ‘generate new insights and knowledge.’ In ethnographic case studies, ‘new insights and knowledge’ are generated through thick description, contextualization, triangulation, prolonged observation and researchers’ objective–subjective lenses. Ethnographic studies are studies of human beings by another human being. The nature of studies is relational, reflexive and idiosyncratic. Moreover, and most importantly, there is no way researchers can totally capture the lives of others. Ethnographic realities are always partial, incomplete and plural (Clifford, 1986; Duff, 2006; Geertz, 1973; Wolcott, 2008). As Duff (2006: 75) puts it, ‘there are multiple possible “truths” to be uncovered or (co-)constructed, which may not always converge.’ The goal of my ethnographic text is to offer my interpretation of what I saw and what I understood through my fieldwork conducted in the summer of 201x at Middlebury College. I attempt to establish the trustworthiness of the study by employing various techniques suggested in previous studies, including engagement in prolonged observation, writing thick description, triangulation, and disclosing my personal lens and making transparent the process of coming to know what I claim to know. The interpretation I offer in this study is, however, my version of reality. This is only one way to conduct and write an ethnographic case study, but this is the way I have chosen, aiming the study to be well-grounded in the contemporary traditions and research conventions of anthropology, sociology and education.

16

Portraits of Second Language Learners

Whose Stories to be Told?

In order to obtain narrative data in Japanese (due to the Language Schools policy, all communication with the focal students needed be conducted in Japanese while the Language Schools were in session), study participants needed to have a higher level of Japanese language proficiency. Therefore, I recruited the study participants from the students in Level 4 (Intermediate 2, the second most advanced level) and Level 5 (Advanced, the most advanced level) courses. At the end of the first week of the program, I made an announcement in each class and asked the students if they were interested in participating in my study. Initially, four students from Level 4 and one student from Level 5 had agreed to participate in the study; however, the student in Level 5 withdrew from the study around halfway through the program. Therefore, the four students from Level 4 remained as the participants. Level 4 roughly corresponds to the levels of the Intermediate Mid through Intermediate High of the ACTFL oral proficiency guidelines at the beginning of the summer session. Thus, the main characters of this book (henceforth, I will refer to them as focal students) are Parker Stewart, Alison Beil, Naiya Williams and Danielle Sanders (all pseudonyms). Parker had just fi nished his junior year at university when I met him in the Japanese School. He was studying economics and Japanese. Parker had lived in Japan for five years when he was a child. His family had relocated to Tokyo due to his father’s job assignment. Parker was one year old at that time. Parker and his older brother had attended an international school and therefore he had not learned Japanese. He began his formal Japanese language study when he entered university. He came to Middlebury to improve his Japanese language skills. Alison was a doctoral student in post-war Japanese literature at a university in Germany. She was working on her doctoral thesis when I met her in the Japanese School. It was her first time visiting the United States. She had received a fellowship from her graduate program and was planning to go to Japan to do research after fi nishing at Middlebury. Alison had lived in Japan for three years when she was a child because her parents had taken teaching positions in a German School in Tokyo. While living there, she and her younger sister had attended the German School and, therefore, she had not learned Japanese. It was after she entered university that she began studying Japanese. She came to Middlebury to improve her Japanese language skills, especially her speaking skills. Naiya had just fi nished her junior year in college when I met her in the Japanese School. She was majoring in Japanese. She had studied abroad in Nagoya, Japan during her sophomore year. She was born and raised in New York City. However, her parents lived in Trinidad. Naiya had lived with her grandmother since birth. She was one of the eight African American students in the Japanese School. She came to Middlebury to improve her Japanese language skills.

Introduction 17

Danielle was a certified high school Japanese language teacher in her 50s when I met her in the Japanese School. She had received a Master’s degree in secondary education with a focus on Japanese at a university in the Midwest in 1997. Prior to her graduate study she had lived in Japan for three years due to her boyfriend’s (now husband’s) relocation to Japan. They had lived in Ibaragi, a prefecture in the north of Tokyo. During the time Danielle lived in Japan, she taught English to Japanese people at an English conversation school in the local community. She came to Middlebury to refresh and improve her Japanese language skills. When I met her at Middlebury, she lived in a mid-size city on the East Coast with her husband. Finally, there is the fi fth character in this book – the researcher herself. This book presents the stories of these five people: the four L2 learners of Japanese who committed themselves to learning Japanese in the community of the Middlebury Language Schools, and a Japanese graduate student/Japanese language teacher (myself) who challenged herself to step into the world of L2 Japanese learners. Data Collection and Analysis

The primary data sources consist of: (a) my observations; (b) interviews with the focal students; (c) audio-recorded conversations of the focal students with other members of the community; and (d) various artifacts, such as the Summer Language Schools student handbook, the Middlebury College website, the welcome letter to Language Schools students, the focal students’ tests, quizzes and assignments, the class handouts and printed and physical objects. The observation began from the day when the staff of the Japanese School arrived at Middlebury and continued to the end of the program. During that time, I stayed in the same dorm as the students and instructors, participated in the same school activities as the members of the school and dined in the same cafeteria where the members dined. I also obtained permission from the three instructors of the Level 4 course to sit in on at least two sessions each day. I also met each focal student once a week, starting from the end of the second week for Alison, Danielle and Naiya and from the end of the third week for Parker. All four focal students signed the consent form. Although at the beginning of the study we planned to meet once a week, it sometimes did not happen for various reasons. However, both the focal students and I made efforts to meet regularly and talk about the focal students’ experiences in the Japanese School. The total amount of interview time varied considerably across the four focal students: approximately 3 hours 20 minutes for Parker, 7 hours 30 minutes for Alison, 6 hours for Naiya and 2 hours 14 minutes for Danielle. Each interview lasted from 20 minutes to 40 minutes on average. Sometimes we talked for over an hour. The variation in the total time of

18

Portraits of Second Language Learners

the interviews with the focal students had various causes. In the case of Danielle, she and I kept close contact on a daily basis; consequently, the time I spent interviewing Danielle was less. Also, she became ill during the third and fourth weeks and we were not able to meet. In the case of Parker, he joined the study a week after the other three focal students did. I audiorecorded the interviews (with some exceptions due to technological problems) and transcribed them later. The collection of the conversation data from the focal students began at the end of the sixth week after consent was obtained to place audiorecording devices in public areas. I asked the focal students to carry MP3 players and audio-record their conversations whenever possible as long as the other party was comfortable with being recorded. The focal students started to audio-record their mealtime conversations in the dining hall. I also requested that they audio-record their conversations when they talked or studied in a group, or when they chatted with someone during free time or study breaks. Parker produced 50 hours 44 minutes of audio-recordings in total, Alison produced 13 hours 57 minutes, Naiya produced 15 hours 29 minutes and Danielle produced 31 hours 51 minutes. Following the tradition of qualitative research (Merriam, 1998; Patton, 1990), I analyzed the data that I had collected inductively. The themes in this study have emerged from the data, and the assertions are grounded in multiple data sources. The entire procedure of the data analysis consisted of recursive examination of different sets of the data that I had collected. I read, reread, analyze, reanalyze, interpret and reinterpret the different sets of data at both macro and micro levels. It was an inefficient and timeconsuming process to examine and re-examine multiple sets of data repeatedly without pre-established categories or procedures; however, this process was the only way to establish the trustworthiness of my claims. Ethical Considerations

Ethical considerations are some of the most important and intricate aspects of qualitative research. Researchers face issues unique to their study participants and contexts and must make decisions in their research participants’ best interests. My foremost concern was how truthfully I could protect the anonymity of my research participants without compromising the purpose of my study. After careful consideration and consultation with my professors, who are more experienced and familiar with the ethics of qualitative studies, I decided to (a) uncover the research context with the permission of Middlebury College; and (b) mask the exact year of the data collection. Due to the uniqueness of the Language Pledge, along with the location and the structure of the Language Schools, many readers would be able to associate the research site with the Middlebury Summer Language Schools even though I use pseudonyms for everything related to the research site.

Introduction 19

Regarding the names of people who appear in this book, I used pseudonyms for everyone except (1) the Vice President for Language Schools, Schools Abroad and Graduate Programs, (2) the director and the coordinator of the Japanese School at Middlebury College, and (3) the researcher (myself). The data collection was conducted during a summer at some point between 2010 and 2012. Summary

In this first chapter I have introduced the three overarching themes of this entire book: L2 learners, L2 learning and the social community. With regard to community, I introduced the macro-context of the research site, the social community of the Middlebury Language Schools. With regard to L2 learners, I noted my positioning as a researcher who views L2 learners as social agents who play a defining role in creating, navigating and shaping their own learning processes and outcomes. With regard to L2 learning, I revisited the theory of identity and the construct of investment proposed by Norton (2000), which is one of the most influential theories to conceptualize L2 learners’ desires and commitment to learn an L2 within the framework of the social theory of learning in the applied linguistics research. In doing so, I stated both the theoretical and personal motivations for the study. I particularly questioned the theoretical underpinning of Norton’s notion of investment, which views L2 learning as the acquisition of capital in the hope of receiving returns and benefits. I argue that this economic metaphor is applicable to those ESL learners who are situated in social contexts where social, economic and symbolic power asymmetry is evident; however, it might not be comprehensible enough to capture and explain the commitment of the L2 Japanese learners whom I will present in this study. Furthermore, I discussed the epistemological choice that I made as a researcher. The knowledge I gained in the field will be presented as a form of narrative – in other words, stories. As researchers, we all must make decisions with regard to what counts as knowledge and how we achieve and report it. The choice that I made in this study concerns the purposes and aims of my study as well as my belief that narrative inquiry can be a powerful research tool in applied linguistics studies. Finally, I described the methods used for data collection and analysis. As Garrett and Baquedano-López (2002: 343) put it, ‘one of the most significant contributions of language socialization research is the insight it has yielded into everyday life – the mundane activities and interactions in which ordinary individuals participate, constituting the warps and woof of human sociality.’ All the themes discussed and excerpts used in this book are the examples of recurrent events of my focal students through their participation in the most mundane activities of the Japanese School and interactions with other members of the community during a period of nine weeks while we were at Middlebury.

20

Portraits of Second Language Learners

Structure of the Book

Seven chapters follow after this introductory chapter. The fi rst three (Chapters 2, 3 and 4) set the stage for my study. Chapter 2 discusses the theoretical basis of my study with a focus on three theoretical pillars: L2 socialization, community and L2 learner agency. I will fi rst discuss the fundamental tenets and assumptions of L2 socialization theory and then introduce the key theoretical concepts to understand what constitutes a community. Following the review of previous studies relevant to the aims of my study, I will examine the place of agency in the current L2 socialization research and discuss the role of L2 learner agency in L2 socialization. Chapter 3 analyzes the community of the Middlebury Language Schools and the practices of the Japanese School. I fi rst describe the historical, social and academic contexts of the research site and then move to a more specific community of practice. Chapters 4, 5, 6 and 7 – the main chapters of the book – present the stories of the four focal students: Parker (Chapter 4), Alison (Chapter 5), Naiya (Chapter 6) and Danielle (Chapter 7). In these chapters I highlight the different ways in which these four focal students engaged in a community of practice, negotiated the meaning of their participation, constructed and reconstructed their sense of self and shaped their learning processes. I also document how the different ways in which these learners exercised their agency shaped different trajectories of learning and created different experiences of language learning. Finally, Chapter 8 presents the conclusion of my study – namely, what we can learn from the stories of the four L2 learners. Note (1) To protect the anonymity of my study participants, I decided to mask the exact year of the data collection. The data collection was conducted during a summer at some point between 2010 and 2012. Please read the section on ethical considerations at the end of this chapter for a more detailed explanation of my decision.

2 Second Language Socialization, Community and Second Language Learner Agency

Introduction

This chapter discusses the three theoretical pillars of my study: second language (L2) socialization, community and L2 learner agency. Social theories of learning view learning as fundamentally a social phenomenon, which is inseparable from the society or the social community of which learners are inherently part. L2 socialization theory, one of the social theories of L2 learning, understands L2 learning as a process of social participation in a local community of practice. In L2 socialization theory, L2 learning is defi ned as a ‘process by which novices or newcomers in a community or culture gain communicative competence, membership, and legitimacy in the group’ (Duff, 2007: 310). As they learn to participate in a local community of practice, L2 learners learn to appropriate a language in accordance with the sociocultural norms of a target language community, adopt normative practices, (re)construct identity and establish themselves as competent members of the community (Duff & Talmy, 2011; Garrett & Baquedano-López, 2002; Wenger, 1998). I begin this chapter with an introduction to language socialization theory, from which L2 socialization theory is developed, focusing on its fundamental tenets and assumptions. Becoming Speakers of Cultures

Historically, studies on language socialization began with an inquiry into how children learn their fi rst language. While linguists, such as Chomsky (1965), have viewed language as a linguistic competence with which children are innately endowed, linguistic anthropologists, such as Hymes (1972), have viewed language as cultural and social as well as linguistic competences – that is, an ability to use a language, participate in 21

22

Portraits of Second Language Learners

society and function as a competent member of a sociocultural community. Thus, language socialization research primarily addresses the acquisition of language by children, including the acquisition of culturally and socially requisite knowledge and skills for participating in a social community and using a language in socially and culturally appropriate ways. The foundation of language socialization studies was established in the early 1970s with the proposals of the ethnography of communication by Gumperz and Hymes (1964, 1972) and communicative competence by Hymes (1972). They argued that the acquisition of language encompasses sociocultural knowledge, as well as linguistic knowledge, which are necessary for members of a speech community to participate in socially organized activities and perform speech acts in socially and culturally appropriate ways. Inspired by the ethnography of communication, language socialization studies developed during the late 1970s and early 1980s. One of the most influential contributions to language socialization research was the work of Ochs and Schieffelin, who conducted a field study on children’s language acquisition among Samoans and the Kaluli people of Papua New Guinea, respectively (Ochs, 1988; Ochs & Schieffelin, 1984; Schieffelin, 1990; Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986). Ochs and Schieffelin (1984) argued that the process of acquiring a language is embedded in and constitutive of the process of becoming socialized to be a competent member of a particular social community. They observed that, in the process of acquiring a language, Samoan and Kaluli children did not receive simplified input in interaction with their caregivers. Samoan and Kaluli caregivers placed their children in the position of observers and overhearers of recurring social events, directed their attention to people and situations and provided scaffolding for them rather than simplified input, namely a situation-centered orientation of language acquisition. Ochs and Schieffelin (2011: 8) argue that ‘human beings become attuned to socioculturally saturated linguistic cues that afford their sensibility to a fluidity of contexts’ and hence they ‘not only become speakers of languages; they also become speakers of cultures.’ Since the publication of the seminal work by Ochs and Schieffelin (Ochs & Schieffelin, 1984; Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986), language socialization research has been conducted cross-culturally in various contexts. Although the focus of these studies is predominantly on children’s acquisition of language, other studies have investigated language learning in multilingual communities (e.g. Duff, 1995, 1996; Fader, 2011; Friedman, 2009; Moore, 2006). These studies illustrate that the most mundane linguistic activities in children’s daily lives at home and in school can be the ways of socializing them into the values and ideologies of local social communities. For the children in those communities, learning a language occurred simultaneously with the process of acquiring the values and ideologies associated with the language.

Second Language Socialization, Community and Second Language Learner Agency

23

Second Language Socialization

Language socialization, as a paradigm or an approach to the investigation of L2 learning, has been brought into the field of SLA by proponents such as Atkinson (2002), Duff (1995, 1996, 2002, 2007) and WatsonGegeo (2004), among others. As Duff and Doherty (2015) noted, L2 socialization research is an interdisciplinary investigation which encompasses a wide variety of topics, such as linguistic anthropology, education, pragmatics and identity. Keeping the purpose of this study as a central focus, I summarize the fi ndings of previous L2 socialization studies. L2 socialization research primarily concerns two questions: (a) how L2 learners are socialized to the use of a target language (how L2 learners learn to speak an L2); and (b) what L2 learners are socialized into through the use of target language (what L2 learners learn in the process of and as a result of L2 socialization). Kanagy (1999) and Ohta (1999) highlighted the powerful role of interactional routines in L2 classrooms in the acquisition of appropriate ways to participate in a social community within the context of L2 classrooms. Kanagy (1999) studied L1 English kindergartners learning Japanese as an L2 in an immersion classroom. She examined the process by which young children, who already had a sociocultural competence in their L1, would acquire interactional skills in an L2 within the context of an immersion classroom. She focused on the acquisition of the kindergartners’ interactional competence to initiate and respond to L2 discourse sequences. She found that the teacher’s consistent provision of scaffolding, such as modeling, repeating and offering verbal and nonverbal cues, helped the children acquire interactional competence in Japanese. Ohta (1999) studied the interaction between teachers and students in L2 Japanese classrooms in a university. She found that the initiation– response–follow up (IRF) routine functioned as a tool to shape L2 learners’ ability to use the follow-up turn of the IRF routine to provide assessments of their interlocutor’s utterances. In the IRF sequence, the teacher initiates a question, the student responds to the question and the teacher provides feedback or an assessment on the student’s response. Although student participation was limited to the response turn, the teacher’s repeated production of assessment with the sentence-fi nal particle ne, which functioned as an affective alignment, enabled the students to produce extended assessment with the sentence-fi nal particle ne over time. For example, a first-year Japanese language student, Candace, spontaneously produced ne-marked assessments not only during teacherfronted activities but also during learner–learner activities by the end of the year through repeated participation in interactional routines of the classroom guided by the teacher. He (2003, 2004) and Poole (1992) have shown how L2 teachers’ values and ideologies compose classroom culture. He (2003, 2004) studied the

24

Portraits of Second Language Learners

teacher–student interaction in two Chinese heritage language schools that were offered during evenings and weekends. These children were either born in the United States or immigrated with their parents at a very young age. Most of them attended local elementary schools. Some were English dominant while others were bilingual. Parents sent their children to these Chinese heritage schools to have them learn literacy skills in Chinese. In her analysis, she focused on the various participating roles of the students assigned by the teachers. She observed that the students were sometimes expected to be collaborative speakers and sometimes obedient listeners. In He’s words, classroom practice socialized the students into the participant roles of talking collaboratively and cooperatively, ‘appropriating or relinquishing authorship, withholding talk on a given moment, and listening between the lines and responding accordingly’ (He, 2003: 142). Furthermore, He (2004) brought readers’ attention to the teacher’s use of Chinese pronouns (we/us versus they/them), which dichotomizes Americans as ‘they/them’ and Chinese as ‘we/us.’ She argues that the teacher’s use of Chinese pronouns indexed her collective national identity as Chinese. It was her way of socializing students to be members of the Chinese community within the context of a Chinese heritage language classroom. The excerpt highlights the contrast between the teacher’s persistent use of ‘we/us’ to refer to the members of the heritage language classroom and the students’ use of ‘we/us’ to refer to their identity as Americans. She argued that the students’ self-presentation appeared to be multifaceted and fluid; they categorized themselves as members of simultaneously existing multiple groups and moved in and out of those groups with ease, aligning themselves at various points in time with the Chinese language school, their daytime school or their teacher, or all three. Poole (1992) investigated how white middle-class American ESL instructors in a beginning-level US university ESL course socialized students through classroom interaction in English. Poole found that that the ESL teachers made various accommodations and mitigations of the status asymmetry between teachers and students. For example, the teacher used an inclusive first-person pronoun (we) when giving scaffolding and trying to jointly accomplish a task, such as by saying ‘describe the picture and see if we can make a story out of it’ (Poole, 1992: 605, underline is mine). When evaluating the students’ accomplishments, the teacher used a second-person pronoun (you) to give credit to the students, such as by saying ‘Good work, you guys. That’s hard. You – you did a good job’ (Poole, 1992: 605, underlines are mine). She also documented the avoidance of an overt display of asymmetry by the teachers. For example, when a teacher tried to solicit an opinion from the students, the teacher said, ‘Where should we put the things in the room?’ and ‘How should – how should we fi x this room?’ (Poole, 1992: 608), rather than using directives. Poole argued that ESL teachers’ beliefs about the importance of inclusiveness, positive feedback and the experience of success were manifested

Second Language Socialization, Community and Second Language Learner Agency 25

in the ways in which they used language and interacted with their students. She concluded that classroom teacher–student interaction encodes the sociocultural values and ideologies of teachers, and hence that second language contexts include cultural dimensions that powerfully and necessarily affect both the teaching and learning of the target language. Akiyama’s (2003) findings echo Poole’s claim. Akiyama studied how L2 culture is represented and learned in a foreign language classroom, focusing on L2 Japanese students at a university in the United States. She observed daily classroom interaction between teachers and students in a summer intensive L2 Japanese classroom and examined how L2 learners perceived the Japanese culture presented in that foreign language classroom. Akiyama’s study revealed that learning Japanese culture (perceived by the students) was not limited to the culture ‘explained in the textbook and presented through gestures, word choices, or intonation’ (Akiyama, 2003: 220), but was also constituted by mundane classroom activities, including the way the students were taught, the way they were treated and how the teachers interacted with each other as well as with their students. Moreover, the students were active rather than passive participants in the creation of the L2 classroom community. The classroom context was dynamically shaped by the L2 learners and, in turn, the classroom context shaped the composition of Japanese culture in the foreign language classroom Akiyama observed. In other words, the L2 culture that the students in this classroom perceived was the culture of their classroom as it was co-constructed by the members of the L2 community. Cook (2006), DuFon (2006) and Iino (1996, 2006) expanded the horizon of L2 socialization research beyond L2 classroom contexts. While Cook (2006, 2011) and DuFon (2006) demonstrated that dinner table conversation with host families in study abroad contexts could be a rich site of L2 socialization, Iino (1996, 2006) highlighted the issues of ideology that underlie host families’ beliefs and dinner table conversations. DuFon (2006) documented how L2 learners acquired different values on, views of and practice with food through their experience of living and interacting with their Indonesian host families as they learned to speak Javanese. These study abroad students not only learned a variety of vocabulary and expressions related to food, but they also learned to understand food as pleasure or the enjoyment of life. Prior to tasting a food, the host family usually offered it to the study abroad student and encouraged the student to accept the offer. After dinner was over, the host family commented on the food by complimenting or criticizing the taste and asked the student whether the food was good. Through this interactional routine over the dinner table, the study abroad students came to realize that eating dinner (tasting food) was a pleasure of their everyday lives, and the host family was trying to ensure that the new company enjoyed the food. Through this socialization process, the students developed different views and values on eating and tasting food over time.

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In contrast, the American university students who studied abroad in Japan in Iino’s study (1996, 2006) had an experience that was quite different from those who studied abroad in Indonesia. Iino (1996, 2006), like DuFon (2006), examined the dinner table conversations of 30 Japanese host families and American university students. He found that the students were socialized into the Japanese host families’ folk beliefs about gaijin ‘foreigners’, which were tied with the nihonjinron ‘theories of the Japanese or ideologies of the Japanese’ published in the 1970s. Nihonjinron emphasizes the uniqueness and particularity of the Japanese language and culture in relation to the Western world in particular and presents a dichotomized view of Japanese and Westerners (Yoshino, 1992). In nihonjinron, people believe that certain kinds of Japanese food are so unique that foreigners are not able to eat them and that the Japanese language is so unique and difficult that no foreigners are able to master it (Miller, 1982). Iino found that the Japanese host families perceived the American students as gaijin and so set different norms and expectations when speaking and interacting with them. As a result, the students were socialized into the role and identity of being foreigners who would not be able to eat Japanese food or learn to speak the Japanese language. Consequently, the students learned to ‘do foreigners’ when communicating with Japanese people. One of the students stated, ‘I played the role of gaijin [foreigners] in most situations’ (Iino, 2006: 160). Iino also reported the case of another student who played the role of a sort of clown by pretending to be ignorant about Japanese language and culture so as to preserve and present the image of a non-threatening gaijin. He stated: If I speak good Japanese, I thought they would not think me kawaii ‘amiable’ and expect me to use all the keigo ‘honorifics’ rules and manners. I don’t know much about keigo and I have no intention to be like a Japanese businessman. I didn’t feel it necessary to master the Japanese language unless you really want to live there for the rest of your life, and I don’t want to do that. (Iino, 2006: 160–161)

Cook (2006) also examined dinner table conversations between American university students and their Japanese host families. She found that folk beliefs based on nihonjinron were still pervasive at these dinner tables, yet she also observed occasions when the students challenged the host family’s folk beliefs and, as a result, both the student and the host family co-constructed modified stories. For example, when Alice’s host mother explained the Japanese custom of cherry blossom viewing, Alice challenged the host mother’s explanation of drinking sake ‘rice wine’ while viewing cherry blossoms. The Japanese host mother went on to argue that it was a Japanese custom that everyone observed. Alice challenged her again by expressing disbelief and suggested reading a book instead of drinking. Although the host mother continued to emphasize the difference between Japanese culture and American culture, she agreed

Second Language Socialization, Community and Second Language Learner Agency 27

with Alice that reading a book under cherry blossoms would be more romantic than drinking sake. Cook argued that episodes like Alice’s offered opportunities for the Japanese host family to re-examine its own cultural assumptions and become aware of a different perspective. In doing so, they might discover that what they believed to be true might not be true. Cook concluded that dinner table conversations between the study abroad students and their host families served as ‘opportunity space’ (Ochs et al., 1989: 238) for them to co-construct shared perspectives. The L2 socialization research reviewed in this section has highlighted various aspects of L2 learning. These studies, taken together, have demonstrated that L2 learning entails not just learning a language. L2 learners, in an L2 classroom or at a dinner table with a host family, learn more than just a language. They learn teachers’ beliefs and ideologies as well as sociocultural practices and ideologies of the target language community. Community and Community of Practice

In L2 socialization, social community plays a central role in learning a language. Language learning does not take place independently of its social context, but it is situated in the local community of practice. How exactly does a local community play a role in L2 socialization? What exactly is the local community of practice? This section focuses on the role that social communities play in the process of L2 socialization. First, I introduce the theory of Community of Practice (Wenger, 1998), a social theory of learning which conceptualizes the components of community (what makes a social group a community) and how a community as a whole offers learning opportunities for novices (L2 learners). Community of Practice is one of the most widely cited theories in the socially oriented studies of L2 learning which examine the affordance structures of social communities. In this book, I refer to the studies that focus to a greater extent on the affordance structures of social communities in the process of L2 socialization as Community of Practice-oriented L2 socialization research. Community of Practice (CoP; Wenger, 1998) views learning (not specific to L2 learning but learning in general) as a socially situated process composed of four elements: community, practice, meaning and identity. The fundamental question that CoP asks is what it takes for learning to happen. Learning does not happen just by living in a community – whether it is a classroom or a new country. It requires meaningful social participation in a community of practice. Wenger (1998: 55–56) defi nes participation as follows: I will use the term participation to describe the social experience of living in the world in terms of membership in social community and active involvement in social enterprises. Participation in this sense is both

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personal and social. It is a complex process that combines doing, talking, thinking, feeling, and belonging. It involves our whole person, including our bodies, minds, emotions, and social relations. (Wenger, 1998: 55–56)

Meaning, in this sense, refers to the meaning of the experience of living in the world. By living in the social world, we try to make sense of ourselves and our actions by interacting with other people in a community and engaging in social activities. Meaning is not a static or pre-existing entity, but rather it is located in the ‘process by which we experience the world and our engagement in it as meaningful’ (Wenger, 1998: 53). Wenger refers to this process as the negotiation of meaning. It is the very process by which we defi ne who we are, what we do and how we interpret what we do. CoP assumes that learning takes place as we participate in a community of practice and fi nd that our existence and actions are meaningful in that community. What exactly does a community consist of? In the ordinary sense, a community implies geographical boundaries such as a neighborhood where people live. However, a community in the CoP framework does not necessarily imply a social group that is delimited geographically. What determines a specific social group as a ‘community’ involves: (a) mutual engagement; (b) a joint enterprise; and (c) a shared repertoire. By living in the social world, we all belong to a community of practice. In fact, we belong to multiple communities of practice simultaneously at any given time at work and in our personal lives. One example of a community of practice is family. Families establish habitable ways of life. Families develop their own unique ways of doing things, routines, rituals, artifacts, stories and histories. When we visit and stay at other people’s homes, we get a sense that each family operates in a different way. Family members, whether they agree or disagree and whether they live together or live separately, engage in their family practice together (mutual engagement) and try to keep their family going (a joint enterprise). Over time, the joint pursuit of enterprise creates artifacts, symbols, stories and rituals that have become part of their community of practice (a shared repertoire). Communities of practice are a ‘social configuration’ (Wenger, 1998: 5) in which we negotiate meaning and defi ne ourselves. In other words, without communities of practice, our actions and our sense of self have no meaning. Legitimate Peripheral Participation

Finding our participation in a community meaningful involves mutuality. Members of a community are actively involved in mutual processes of making and negotiating meaning in the pursuit of their joint enterprise. When novices or newcomers join a new community, they learn to participate in such mutual processes of making and negotiating meaning

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increasingly over time. CoP specifically refers to this process as ‘legitimate peripheral participation’ (Lave & Wenger, 1991: 29). Legitimate peripheral participation is ‘structured to open the practice to nonmembers’ (Wenger, 1998: 100). Peripherality and legitimacy are ‘two types of modification required to make actual participation possible.’ Peripherality provides novices with an ‘approximation of full participation that gives exposure to actual practice’ with a lessened cost of error and risk. Legitimacy provides novices with a community’s recognition as competent members of that community. Hence, legitimate peripheral participation is best understood as a sort of necessary transition process whereby novices eventually move toward full participation in a community of practice as fully fledged members of that community. Peripheral participation with a lessened cost of error and guidance from experts, combined with a sense of legitimacy as a member of a community, provides novices with opportunities for learning to become fully fledged members of a community. As we participate in a community of practice over time, our participation forms a trajectory. CoP identifies the types of trajectories that lead novices either to full participation or to marginal position in a community. These trajectories are peripherality and marginality. The crucial difference between these two types of trajectories is that the former enables participation and thus opportunities for learning are available to novices, whereas the latter prevents participation and opportunities for learning are not available to novices. Wenger (1998) explains the two types of trajectories as follows: In the case of peripherality, some degree of non-participation is necessary to enable a kind of participation that is less than full. Here, it is the participation aspect that dominates and defi nes non-participation as an enabling factor of participation. In the case of marginality, a form of  non-participation prevents full participation. Here, it is the nonparticipation aspect that dominates and comes to defi ne a restricted form of participation. (Wenger, 1998: 165–166, italics in original)

As we participate in a community of practice, we locate ourselves in a social landscape, decide what to care about and what to neglect, and choose with whom we seek connections and with whom we do not. In other words, we negotiate meaning by selecting what to participate in and what not to participate in. Thus, non-participation is an inevitable part of life. Our experience of engaging in a community of practice involves both participation and non-participation. With respect to the trajectories, although peripherality and marginality both involve a combination of participation and non-participation, they produce different experiences and learning outcomes. When novices or newcomers are considered by the other members of a community to be included in full participation in the future, non-participation becomes an

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opportunity for learning. Even though their trajectory remains peripheral, non-participation becomes an enabling factor for participation. In contrast, when participation is restricted by social forces and/or power relations, novices or newcomers are then relegated to a marginal position in a community and hence, non-participation prevents opportunities for learning. In sum, CoP views learning as a foremost aspect and an outcome of the process of social participation in communities of practice by negotiating the meaning of our actions, constructing and defi ning who we are and eventually establishing legitimate positions in new social communities. School and Classroom Communities

Schools and L2 classrooms are, without doubt, social communities operated and maintained by their local community of practice. Much of the CoP-oriented L2 socialization research has examined how L2 classrooms, as social communities, afford (or do not afford) opportunities for learning for L2 learners. One of the early contributions was made by Willett (1995), who documented the process by which Xavier, a fi rst-grader in a local elementary school in a small university town in the United States, was socialized into having the identity of a needy dependent child. Xavier (a boy) was one of four ESL students (along with three girls – Nahla, Etham and Yael) in Room 17. Nahla, Etham and Yael were friends from the beginning. Their friendship had formed originally in their 30-minute pull-out ESL class. Mrs Singer, the teacher in Room 17, allowed the three girls to sit together and this seating arrangement made their friendship even more solid. Xavier, on the other hand, entered the community of Room 17 quite differently from these three girls. First, he was the only male ESL student in Room 17. Although Xavier was born in California, he was raised in a Spanish-speaking environment (his parents were immigrants from Mexico). Although many of the students’ parents had professional status in the local university, Xavier’s parents did not. Unlike the other three ESL girls, who were allowed to sit together as a group, Xavier was placed between two English-speaking girls. Xavier did not seek help from the girls; nor did the girls offer help to Xavier. Willett argued that this was because of the subcultures of boys and girls in Room 17. This seating arrangement increased Xavier’s need for help from the teacher and the assistants. However, Xavier did not receive sufficient help because the teacher and the assistants believed that every child deserved attention; hence, they could not spend much time with him. The three ESL girls worked together to complete class assignments, which appeared in the teacher’s eyes as if these girls were independent workers with no need of help. Xavier, in contrast, had to ask for help from the teacher and the assistants more often and had to seek constant assurance that he was

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doing the work correctly. Consequently, Xavier started to be identified as a ‘needy child’ (Willett, 1995: 497) who could not work independently. The teachers worried about Xavier and assigned him to additional ESL lessons. Furthermore, they had Xavier work in ESL workbooks rather than do regular assignments. Xavier resisted having to work on the ESL workbooks. However, the more he resisted, the more the teacher thought of him as a problem child. This perception continued even after Xavier scored at Level 4 (Level 1 is the least proficient and Level 5 is the most proficient) on the Bilingual Syntax Measure. The teacher decided that Xavier would benefit from continuous support and accommodations. In contrast, the three ESL girls, who had gained the reputation of being independent workers, exited their ESL classes even though they had scored at the same level as Xavier did. Willett’s study demonstrates how an ESL student’s social identity as a ‘needy child’ was constructed in classroom practice, and such negative identity imposed on Xavier interfered with his becoming a competent member of the classroom community. Duff (2002), Harklau (2000), Miller and Zuengler (2011) and Talmy (2008) also reported that the discursively constructed social identity of L2 learners in classroom communities of practice resulted in marginalizing them from the mainstream classroom practice of their respective classrooms. Harklau (2000) documented the process of three immigrant ESL students being transformed from motivated ESL high school students to deficient speakers of English in a local community college. The three female ESL students (Aeyfer, Claudia and Penny) had lived in the United States for more than six years when the study began. They attended the same high school and the same community college. In high school they were perceived as determined, hardworking students who were an ‘inspiration for EVERYONE’ (Harklau, 2000: 46, capital letters in original). This representation was partly attributed to their hard work at school but mostly came from the institutional representation of immigrant students, who overcame hardship and obstacles to succeed. For example, for a classroom assignment, Aeyfer wrote an autobiography in which she described a hardship she had experienced. In her last year in Turkey (her home country), she was forced to leave school to work for her family. She prayed to Allah to send her back to school. It was her dream to attend school, which would be attainable only in the United States. Her autobiography received sympathy, support and admiration from her peers and teacher, and it was displayed on the classroom wall with a picture of Aeyfer sitting between two flags, one Turkish and one American. After Aeyfer, Claudia and Penny graduated from high school as successful immigrant students, they entered community college. Through college placement tests they were all identified as nonnative speakers of English. Although they were allowed to take three introductory college courses, they were placed in low intermediate- to advanced-level ESL

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courses. Initially, the three students expressed their eagerness to begin their college career with ESL courses. They thought that the ESL courses would help them prepare for college-level academic work. However, the reality was different. The majority of the students in the ESL courses were individuals who had arrived in the United States not long before. Aeyfer, Claudia and Penny soon realized that these ESL courses would not help them succeed in college. In the courses, the students were often asked to discuss or write about such topics as ‘my country’, ‘my hometown’ and ‘food in my country.’ These assignments were not problematic for those who were new residents of the United States. However, for Aeyfer, Claudia and Penny, who had lived in the United States for many years and whose cultural affiliations and identities were situated in multi-ethnic contexts, those assignments were not as simple as they appeared. Their countries and hometowns that the teacher expected them to write about existed only in their remote memories. For example, in response to the assignment ‘Return home’, Penny, who had just become a United States citizen, wrote a ‘detached and speculative composition’ (Harklau, 2000: 55) which made her teacher question the truthfulness of the content. As the semester progressed, their initial eagerness and motivation deteriorated as they were constantly positioned as deficient English speakers and cultural novices in the United States. Over the course of one year, they were identified as unsuccessful immigrant students and, most importantly, they decided to drop out of college. Talmy (2008) studied the production of social identity by old-timer high school ESL students in Hawaii. Talmy found that local ESL students who had lived in Hawaii for many years were constantly positioned as ‘FOB (fresh off the boat)’ (Talmy, 2008: 626) and were given the identity of being newcomers in their high school classroom community. Such an institutionally conceived representation placed constraints on the way they were taught, what they were taught and eventually what they were socialized into. Duff (2002) also reported that old-timer ESL students, in this case in a Canadian high school, were positioned as Asian immigrants in a mainstream classroom despite the fact that they had been living in Canada for many years. This practice silenced the students and took away their opportunities to participate in classroom activities. Miller and Zuengler (2011) documented a negative consequence of classroom practice. May, an ESL student in a US high school, was picked on by her ESL teacher and was forced to speak up in class. In response to being forced to leave her peripheral space in the classroom community, she resisted speaking English. Miller and Zuengler argued that May was being forced into a false legitimacy as a member of the classroom community. This classroom practice negatively affected May’s desire to speak English.

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More recently, Kanno and Harklau (2012), in their edited volume, presented a collection of case studies that examined L2 socialization processes by transnational youth/non-traditional students in Canada, whom the authors referred to as ‘linguistic minorities’ (Kanno & Harklau, 2012: 2). As earlier studies have shown, the linguistic minority students in these case studies faced various social and linguistic challenges and struggled to claim their legitimacy as a member of their respective school/ classroom communities. In the context of higher education, Atkinson (2003) also reported the negative consequences of an institutional practice in India, which he named dys-socialization. He documented the process by which students who had a lower socio-economic status and did not come from an Englishspeaking background in an Indian college became identified as unsuccessful students. In an English-medium college in southern India, two groups of students were enrolled: (a) traditional students who were considered elite students; and (b) non-traditional students who were considered newcomers. Those non-traditional students were Tamil and did not come from an English-speaking background. Even though the school became more accessible to non-traditional students, actual school practice marginalized them by reinforcing the values and practice of an elite English higher institution. Consequently, non-traditional students, instead of being successfully socialized into becoming L2 English speakers and competent members of the school, were socialized into having a feeling of inferiority and the identity of non-English speakers. In Canada, Morita (2002, 2004) studied the socialization process among university students. She examined how the local community of practice afforded legitimate peripheral participation for Japanese female graduate students at a Canadian university. For example, in the case of Rie, one of the study participants, her multilingual and multicultural background (she was a zainichi ‘a Korean who is a permanent resident of Japan’) were viewed as an asset in one course and thus she was able to gain legitimate membership in that course. She stated, ‘I could feel my own presence in this course’ (Morita, 2004: 592). However, she struggled to gain legitimacy in a different course. Rie believed it was ‘important to claim [her] right to learn’ (Morita, 2004: 593); therefore, she expressed her needs as an L2 English speaker in class and also through emails to the instructor of the course. She asked the instructor to understand her situation and make certain accommodations in her teaching. The instructor, however, did not agree to make these accommodations for her. Instead, she described Rie’s English ability as a language barrier and told her that it was difficult to adjust the course content for a ‘non-English speaker’ (Morita, 2004: 593) and that she could not do much without slowing down the rest of the class. Although Rie projected herself as a legitimate but marginalized participant, the instructor constructed Rie essentially as ‘someone with a deficit’ (Morita, 2004: 593).

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Fuentes (2012) documented the educational experience of Nasim, a senior at a university in the United States. Nasim arrived in the United States as a refugee from Iran with her family. At that time she was enrolled in the 11th grade. Before attending the university she had attended a community college and taken an ESL course. At the university she was required to take advanced ESL courses to satisfy the university’s English language proficiency requirement. Nasim felt that the university implemented high academic standards, and its high academic demands and high-stakes environment created a competitive atmosphere among the students. Moreover, she felt that the competitive school culture ultimately divided the students into two groups: the students who met the university’s high academic standards and those who did not meet the university’s high academic standards. English learners found it more difficult to meet the university standards because they tended to lack linguistic, cultural and social capital compared to their native English-speaking peers. Nasim felt that the university’s value and success were built on the cultural and social capital of native English speakers. In her view, English learners’ success at university depends on the acquisition of their native English- speaking peers’ cultural capital and habitus. Such institutional values and practice of the university led to Nasim’s discouragement, disappointment and disengagement from the university. Although Nasim was an academically capable student (she maintained a 3.4–3.5 GPA), she started to minimize her academic and social engagement with the university. Fuentes (2012: 227) stated that ‘she objected to the entire value system of the university.’ Although the university provided the students with various opportunities for socialization, such as student organizations and clubs, Nasim spent her time alone in a university café, studying and preparing for her upcoming classes. She felt a sense of alienation and of not belonging to the university community. Despite such feelings of alienation, Nasim persisted in her studies and successfully graduated from the university. Fuentes (2012: 231) argued that her success was due to her ‘selective acculturation.’ She selectively accepted and rejected the elements of the institutional practice of the university. Although she rejected elements of the university culture, she also started to recognize the importance of assimilating into the new culture in order to achieve her goal (i.e. graduating from the university and attending optometry school). By navigating her engagement in the institutional practice of the university, she successfully accomplished her goal at the end of her senior year. To sum up the fi ndings of the studies reviewed in this section, we have learned that participation in the school/classroom community of practice is a challenge for immigrant students and those whose native language is not English. The underlying asymmetry in social, cultural and linguistic capital between L2 learners and the members of the dominant community

Second Language Socialization, Community and Second Language Learner Agency 35

places L2 learners in a marginalized position within the community. In many cases, legitimate peripheral participation was not afforded to the L2 learners that they studied. Local Communities

This section reviews the findings of previous studies that examined L2 socialization process in local communities of practice. The earliest study that sought to connect L2 learning and a community was probably that of Schumann (1978). Schumann studied the L2 development of a 33-year-old, working-class Costa Rican male, Alberto, for 10 months, and found that Alberto showed very little progress in learning English. Schumann attributed Alberto’s lack of progress to the social and psychological distance between Alberto and the people in the target language community. For example, Alberto was unwilling to take an ESL class because he perceived that there was a social and psychological distance from the target language community. Consequently, his English use became functionally restricted and eventually pidginized. Based on his fi ndings, Schumann proposed the acculturation model of L2 acquisition, wherein he claimed that ‘the degree to which the learner acculturates to the TL (target group) will control the degree to which he acquires the second language’ (Schumann, 1978: 34). Schumann’s acculturation model of L2 acquisition was criticized for its simplistic linear view of L2 learning and for its lack of consideration of social power structure. For example, Schmidt (1983) pointed out that Alberto’s unwillingness to take an ESL class could be attributed to other sources, such as a previous negative school experience and/or the demands of a busy life. Thus he claimed that it was important not to automatically consider lack of formal study an evidence of high social and psychological distance from a target language community. Norton (2000) argued that Alberto’s lack of progress in learning English was due to his lack of opportunities to practice English. She suggested the possibility that ‘the dominant power structures within society had relegated Alberto to a marginalized status’ (Norton, 2000: 116). Regardless of the limitations of his model, Schumann was probably the first SLA researcher to attempt to integrate the roles of sociocultural contexts and individuals into L2 learning. Two decades after Schumann’s proposal of the acculturation model of L2 acquisition, Norton (2000) also sought to explain L2 learning as it related to its social contexts. In her study, Norton documented the L2 socialization process of four immigrant women in Canada. One of the most important fi ndings of her study was uncovering the fact that opportunity for learning was not a privilege given to L2 learners, but rather a right that L2 learners had to claim by negotiating their social identities and resisting the marginalizing practice of the dominant community. The case of Martina, one of her study participants, illustrates this point well.

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Martina had immigrated to Canada from Eastern Europe to fi nd a better life for her children. Because she was not a proficient speaker of English, she was unable to fi nd a job in her profession and instead was employed in a fast food restaurant where she worked with young L1 English speakers. In restaurant I was working a lot of children but the children always thought that I am – I don’t know – maybe some broom or something. They always said, ‘Go and clean the living room’, and I was washing the dishes and they didn’t do nothing. They talked to each other and they thought that I had to do everything. And I said, ‘No.’ The girl is only 12 years old. She is younger than my son. I said, ‘No, you are doing nothing. You can go and clean the tables or something.’ (Norton, 2000: 99)

To resist being positioned as something invisible like a ‘broom’, Martina reframed her relationship with her co-workers as a domestic, repositioned herself as their mother rather than a powerless immigrant or a ‘broom’, and she reclaimed her ‘right to speak’ (Norton, 2000: 8). Katarina, too, struggled to fi nd her place in a new community. She was a Polish immigrant who had a Master’s degree in biology and 17 years of teaching experience in her home county. She was also a fluent speaker of other European languages besides Polish but had spoken no English. Because of her low English proficiency, Katarina was constantly positioned as an ‘unskilled and uneducated’ (Norton, 2000: 142) immigrant woman in the new community. Instead of accepting that new identity as an ‘unskilled and uneducated’ immigrant woman, Katarina sought her place in an 18-month computer course. In order to (re)gain her legitimate membership as a professional individual in the new community, she dropped out of her ESL course and started to work as a part-time homemaker to pay her educational expenses. She stated, ‘I choose computer course, not because I have to speak, but because I have to think’ (Norton, 2000: 91). Ricento (2013) reported the case of Fernando, a 51-year-old pediatric surgeon from Colombia, who moved to Calgary, Canada, with his family as a refugee. Fernando was a highly trained surgeon. In Colombia he had owned his own clinic. His wife was a certified accountant. They had an excellent lifestyle with their two children. However, in Canada, his socioeconomic status, the fact that his medical degree and license were obtained in Colombia (a non-English speaking county) and his limited English proficiency became barriers to re-establishing himself as a surgeon. When he first arrived in Canada three and a half years earlier, he and his wife did not speak any English. On arrival in Canada he participated in an English class provided by a local program. However, he felt that English instruction was a waste of his time because it was not appropriate for his needs. Fernando applied for various survival jobs; however, he did not get hired. He was frustrated by the barriers preventing him from getting any

Second Language Socialization, Community and Second Language Learner Agency 37

type of job, the lack of opportunities to interact with English-speaking Canadians, by his fi nancial and social situations and – foremost – an affront to his dignity. One day, Fernando took his daughter to the emergency room of a local hospital. As a pediatric surgeon, he understood that her symptoms indicated a diagnosis of appendicitis. He told the doctor that she was suffering from appendicitis but the doctor did not believe him. This experience was not just a language barrier for him, but rather a humiliating experience. Ricento (2013) noted that Fernando’s case is not an exception. There are many highly trained and educated people in Canada who left their own countries to search for security, freedom and democracies. However, they have found that ‘there is yet another sort of hidden price to be paid’ (Ricento, 2013: 187) to enjoy the ‘full blessings of liberty’ in Canada. Social and economic capital asymmetry unmercifully places them in a marginalized position of the society and labels them as unskillful refugees. Karol, a 38-year-old male Polish immigrant in the United States, in Teutsch-Dwyer’s (2001) study, found that his process of L2 socialization was simultaneously the process of (re)construction of his masculinity in a new social community. Because of his limited English proficiency, Karol was unable to present himself appropriately within the male discourse of the United States. His brother-in-law had opened his home to Karol and had initially welcomed Karol into his family; however, he soon found that Karol lacked the qualities of appropriate maleness and masculinity. Karol, too, knew that his limited English proficiency and his social and socioeconomic status in the United States did not meet his brother-in-law’s standards of ‘what constituted an appropriate male conversation partner’ (Teutsch-Dwyer, 2001: 188). Consequently, Karol started to form a social circle with three female co-workers (one of them later became his girlfriend and they started to live together) at their workplace. With his friendly manner, his jokes and his funny stories, which his brother-in-law regarded as a lack of appropriate male qualities, he became a popular man among these three women in the United States. His new social reality and position (re)granted Karol the ‘right to speak’ (Norton, 2000: 8), and he thus felt that ‘his position was elevated to the position of an equal in conversations’ (Teutsch-Dwyer, 2001: 190). In the context of study abroad sojourns, Polanyi (1995) and Talburt and Stewart (1999) also found that gender is a mediating factor for L2 learning. The young female American university students in Russia (Polanyi, 1995) and in Spain (Talburt & Stewart, 1999) found themselves humiliated by constant sexual remarks and flirtation from male members of a target language community. Such undesirable humiliating social encounters limited their opportunities for having meaningful interaction with people in a target language community. In the case of Misheila in

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Talburt and Stewart’s study, her study abroad experience ended her desire to learn Spanish. Siegal (1995, 1996) documented the study abroad experience of two Caucasian women and their ambivalent feelings about learning Japanese, highlighting the different ways in which the sociolinguistic competence of the two learners was manifested in their L2 Japanese use. The study has shown that learning to speak Japanese in accordance with the sociocultural norms of the Japanese community was a challenge for the two learners. They were both caught between their ambivalent feelings about the use of certain sociopragmatic forms (e.g. the use of honorifics) and conflicting pragmatic and social needs to engage in the normative practice of the Japanese community, yet the two learners faced the conflicts and the task of learning Japanese in different ways. Arina, a 25-year-old native of Hungary and a scholar of Japanese literature, initially expressed her negative feelings about the use of honorific language. In her perception, honorific language was associated with Japanese women’s humble speech, and she did not care for a language style that was ‘too humble’ (Siegal, 1995: 234). At the beginning, she did not understand the pragmatic meaning of shifting speech styles according to contexts. However, Arina began to realize the relevance and necessity of using honorific language in order to maintain a desirable image in Japanese (e.g. a competent learner of Japanese and a scholar of Japanese literature). Siegal explained that ‘she formed an appreciation for the concept of a changing self mirrored in language to suit different situations’ (Siegal, 1995: 234). Siegal identified four significant social events in which Arina participated that affected her language attitude. One example was participating in an Uma club (a businessman’s club) annual meeting where she, along with other foreigners, was asked to talk about her negative experiences of living in Japan. Although Arina was specifically asked to talk about her negative experiences, she was aware that the members of the Uma club did not want to hear serious criticism of Japan. Therefore, Arina did not include any negative incidents that had happened to her. According to Siegal, her speech was ‘appropriately humble’ (Siegal, 1995: 239), including the humble forms sasete itadaki (lit. ‘to receive the humbly exalted favor’), o kiki itadaki (lit. ‘receiving a favor of listening’), the self-deprecating formula watashi no tsutanai hanashi (lit. ‘my stupid speech’) and the formal expression makoto ni arigatoo gozaimasu ‘thank you very much.’ In describing Arina’s sociolinguistic competence at the end of her last year in Japan, Siegal said she ‘fi nally acquiesced to a characteristic of Japanese language: formulaic phrases and honorific language have their place in certain contexts’ (Siegal, 1995: 239). On the other hand, Mary, a 45-year-old native of New Zealand and a high school Japanese language teacher with a graduate degree in applied linguistics, did not experience the same transformation as Arina had. As a Japanese language teacher

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and also a professional with a graduate degree in applied linguistics, Mary addressed the importance of speaking a language in a socioculturally appropriate manner. Regardless of her recognition of the sociocultural signifi cance of politeness when speaking, Mary appeared as massively inappropriate in her conversation with a male Japanese professor (in his 30s), who functioned as Mary’s advisor while she was studying abroad in Japan. Mary visited the professor’s office to receive his hanko ‘official seal, an equivalent of his signature’ on a university document (it was what Mary had told the professor when she set an appointment with him). However, the real purpose of the visit was to inform him that she would be leaving Japan to attend a conference in the United States. Since she had just returned to Japan from her vacation in New Zealand, Mary deliberately planned the organization of the conversation to establish herself as a professional individual who was familiar with applied linguistics and to position herself as equal to the professor. Siegal argued that this linguistic practice was necessary for Mary because she needed to justify the fact that she would be leaving Japan again shortly after she had returned to Japan from a trip home. The confl icting pragmatic need to present herself in a polite demeanor when speaking to the professor and simultaneously establish herself as an applied linguistics specialist made Mary consciously and unconsciously position herself as having the same social and professional status as her male professor. Consequently, Mary’s language use appeared massively inappropriate in that conversation with the professor. In her conversation with the professor, Mary used various linguistic devices to display her polite demeanor, including the use of the ‘singing voice’ (Siegal, 1996: 367), vowel lengthening and the use of the epistemic stance marker deshoo. The singing voice and vowel lengthening (e.g. ma in gozaimasu [polite form of copula]) are usually associated with cheerfulness; however, they are inappropriate in a conversation with a professor. Moreover, Mary used the epistemic stance marker deshoo 10 times in the conversation. Siegal argues that because Mary was not confident with the use of honorific language, she used deshoo in lieu of honorific language. As discussed in Cook (2011) earlier in this chapter, deshoo can mitigate the force of utterance, when used in a question, by making the question more indirect. However, the use of deshoo indexes the authority of the information (i.e. the information falls in the speaker’s territory, which indexes the speaker as the authority over the information). Therefore, the use of deshoo can be considered a possible face-threatening act when used in a conversation with a social superior. Thus, Mary’s effort to present a polite demeanor as a professional individual in front of the professor resulted in a massive pragmatic failure. Kinginger (2004) documented a transformational process of Alice, an American university student who was learning French as an L2, over a

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period of four years. Alice came from a working-class family. Her mother was single and had a peripatetic lifestyle. Alice and her younger sister had moved continually. Therefore, much of Alice’s schooling took place in a home school program. When she was 15, Alice fi nished the home schooling high school program, enrolled in a regional college and began studying French. Alice was enthusiastic about learning French. By the time she began her study abroad program, she had reached and exceeded the third-year level of college French education. According to Kinginger, Alice’s motivation to study French arose from the image of France created by the American mass media. There is no poverty in France. People live in mansions. They sit in cafés and order wine. They appreciate impressionist art. For Alice, France was the country of her dreams. She imagined herself being in France and interacting with the French people with higher cultural awareness. Alice also dreamed of becoming a French teacher. She imagined herself as a teacher who was committed to the role of language teaching and promoting intercultural awareness and social justice. In the fall of 1998, Alice departed for France. Facing the social reality of living in France, ‘her image of France and of herself as a student and a speaker of French were repeatedly challenged’ (Kinginger, 2004: 232). During her fi rst year she lived in a university residence hall. Like other participants in the study abroad programs, Alice had access to a group of fellow students. However, Alice’s position within the group was unique because she was older than the others and because she had grown up poor and, at times, homeless; she had an ‘acute awareness of the privileges afforded to her as a study abroad participant, and fewer material resources’ (Kinginger, 2004: 232). Alice’s initial experience of living in France was thus unproductive and frustrating and she became progressively depressed. Even though Alice faced the challenge of living in her new social reality, she continued to try to gain access to the French people and to practice French. She deliberately situated herself in the social networks that she developed by hanging out in local hotels and ‘making the rounds of rooms in the residence hall where students gathered to eat and drink’ (Kinginger, 2004: 236). By the end of her study abroad program in France, Alice became aware of the complexity of language and the serious effort required to attain advanced proficiency in French. Moreover, Kinginger argues that her years of language learning had taught Alice not only the ability to communicate in French but also ‘to stick with things’ (Kinginger, 2004: 238). In deciding each day to continue reaching for her dream despite the many obstacles, Alice had in fact learned how to overcome her ‘previous general tendency to abandon difficult pursuits’ (Kinginger, 2004: 239). When she returned to her university in the United States to complete her degree, Alice was no longer the same Alice she had been before her study abroad. Rather, she had been transformed into a different Alice, one who pursued her goal of becoming a language educator.

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Brown (2016) reported the case of Julie, a 50-year-old lesbian and feminist from the United States learning Korean, highlighting her transformational process during a six-week period while studying abroad in Seoul. Brown (2016: 808) described the learning environment where Julie studied as ‘hostile towards homosexuality.’ Julie struggled to gain access to the community and to (re)defi ne her identity. Julie lived in a dormitory for international students with a roommate, Cristina, a graduate student from the Philippines. As Cristina and her other acquaintances were more proficient in Korean, Julie relied on them for help in fulfi lling her needs, such as buying a cell phone and ordering food at restaurants. She was thankful to them; however, at the same time, she felt that this reliance was limiting her opportunities to speak and practice Korean. Thus, she started to separate herself from her Koreanspeaking acquaintances, including Cristina. At her dorm and in her Korean classroom, Julie struggled to fi nd her position. Her fellow students/classmates were much younger than her, and she felt isolated and like an outsider. Not only her age, but also her sexuality made her feel like this. Before arriving in Seoul, Julie had decided to feminize her appearance by wearing more feminine-looking clothes. However, as she received hostile looks and overheard people speaking to each other as if she was a man or a woman in the new community, Julie felt frustrated. She felt that she was ‘unable to fit into any social legitimized female identity’ (Brown, 2016: 817) in Korea. Julie decided not to come out to Korean people, although she was open about her sexuality with other international students. Julie’s situation was worsened by the presence of her classmate, Peter, a ‘“sexist” and “narcissistic” 65-year-old European male’ (Brown, 2016: 808, double quotation marks in original). Although she was disgusted by his unacceptable behaviors and comments that sexualized female students, Julie volunteered to sit next to him during the class to protect (in a sense) other female students. In addition, as Peter and Julie were the two oldest students in the class, everyone in the class, including her teacher, seemed to assume that dealing with Peter was Julie’s logical role. Although it was her own decision, Julie felt that she was sacrificing her opportunity of studying abroad. Julie continued to struggle with her dilemma between performing her role of dealing with Peter and the desire to make her study abroad experience more meaningful and fruitful. One day she decided to take a break from her assumed role of dealing with Peter. On that day, she was late for class and saw the only free seat was next to Peter. Instead of sitting there, she moved the chair to another table and left him to sit alone. Brown (2016) argued that, by leaving Peter to sit alone, the responsibility for dealing with him became mediated by the entire group; more importantly, the action of moving away from Peter played a crucial role in redefi ning her identity. Within the class she was no longer the ‘“older” student who was

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cosigned to look after Peter’ (Brown, 2016: 821) but became the ‘“cool old person”’ (Brown, 2016: 821). She also became a parent-like figure to some students. After she gave a presentation about Buddhism in class, she started to be recognized as a knowledgeable person, which made her feel very good. Furthermore, Julie decided not to dress in an overtly feminine manner, which attracted less attention. She also let her hair grow longer and kept it that way. For Julie, her short hair had been a ‘marker of her lesbian identity’ (Brown, 2016: 821). In her post-study abroad interview, Julie stated that she felt comfortable with longer hair even after returning to the United States. Moreover, by traveling around Seoul, she restructured her preconceived idea of Korean culture and society, especially the idea that the Korean culture does not accept lesbianism or other alternative identities. Brown (2016) remarked that Julie also came to realize that the ‘general homophobia in the Korean society did not necessarily justify her to conceal her sexuality from all Koreans’ (Brown, 2016: 821). At the end of the program she came out to one of her Korean teachers, whom she perceived as ‘“rebellious” and “outside the box”’ (Brown, 2016: 821). To sum up the fi ndings of the studies reviewed in this section, we have learned that social participation in a target language community is a challenge for L2 learners. In adult immigrant situations, the studies have revealed two issues: (a) difficulty gaining access to participate in a target language community of practice; and (b) difficulty gaining legitimacy as a member of a target language community. The asymmetry in social, cultural and linguistic capital places L2 learners in a marginalized space of the target language community and identifies them as illegitimate speakers and members of the community. In study abroad contexts, L2 learners face different challenges. Unlike adult immigrants, study abroad students are given legitimate places in the target language community at the beginning of their study abroad sojourns. However, as they face the reality of living in a new culture and are immersed in practices of the new social community, they soon realize that their new reality is not as friendly as or as desirable as they initially hoped it would be. The studies reviewed in this section highlighted the trajectories of their L2 socialization by negotiating identities, resisting and accepting the new social reality, restructuring preconceived ideas and navigating their pathways to achieve their goals. Locating Agency in Second Language Socialization Research

L2 socialization theory is developed from first language (L1) socialization – how children are becoming speakers of their cultures. In this sense, L1 socialization is considered a uniform linear process of emulation by focusing on the role of the experts (e.g. the children’s mother), who provide scaffolding for novices and guide them to become competent speakers

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of the language and successful members of the community. In the framework of L2 socialization, unlike L1 socialization, L2 learners already possess a ‘repertoire of linguistic, discursive, and cultural traditions and community affi liations’ (Duff, 2007: 310). Thus, L2 learner agency is prominent in L2 socialization. L2 learners do not passively accept their marginalized position in a new social community. When they are positioned undesirably, they resist and negotiate the undesirable social reality (e.g. Brown, 2016; Duff, 2002; Fuentes, 2012; Morita, 2004; Norton, 2000). Hence, L2 socialization research should view L2 socialization as a dynamic process of negotiation of meaning and needs to (re)conceptualize L2 learners as individual social agents/participants in a new community of practice who have the willpower to challenge the new social reality. In the L2 socialization literature, L2 learner agency has been reported as forms of resistance and non-participation. Previous L2 socialization research has identified two types of resistance: (a) the resistance to accepting or taking on the social role or identity constructed by a dominant language community (e.g. Atkinson, 2003; Brown, 2016; Duff, 2002; Harklau, 2000; Miller & Zuengler, 2011; Morita, 2002, 2004; Norton, 2000; Talmy, 2008); and (b) the resistance to adopting and conforming to the normative practices of a target language community (e.g. Fuentes, 2012; Siegal, 1995, 1996). The term ‘resistance’ is used in this study to describe the oppositional feelings and actions of people (Ahearn, 2001). The first type of resistance is observed when a particular social position or identity in a new social community is imposed on L2 learners, who resist accepting their new position as an illegitimate member of a community. For example, non-traditional students (in Atkinson, 2003; Duff, 2002; Harklau, 2000; Miller & Zuengler, 2011; Talmy, 2008) showed their resistance to the marginalizing practice of the school by displaying destructive and/or undesirable classroom behaviors. Morita’s (2002, 2004) Japanese student’s silence in Canadian university classrooms was a form of resistance to being marginalized as an incompetent nonnative speaker of English. When Martina, in Norton’s (2000) study, realized that she was positioned as something invisible like a broom, she resisted accepting her new position. Julie in Brown’s (2016) study rejected continuing to play the cosigned role of the older student who looked after Peter. Nasim’s resistance toward accepting and assimilating the institutional practice of the university which is built upon the cultural and social capital of native English speakers (Fuentes, 2012) is an example of the second form of resistance. Arina’s initial resistance using Japanese honorific expressions (Siegal, 1996) was another form of resistance. Mary, too, resisted conforming to the sociocultural norms of the Japanese language when she faced conflicting pragmatic needs to present herself as a scholar of applied linguistics. The studies by Fuentes (2012), Morita (2002, 2004) and Norton (2000) have shown that L2 learner agency can be manifested as a form of

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non-participation in particular social practices. When L2 learners face a new social reality which is undesirable for them, they choose not to participate in that practice. For example, Katarina (Norton, 2000, 2001) stopped attending her ESL class when she realized that she was being positioned as a powerless immigrant woman, and instead decided to take a computer course to (re)gain her legitimacy. She reoriented her investment to becoming an educated professional rather than to becoming a proficient speaker of English. Her agency made her decide not to participate in a certain practice (learning English as an ‘unskilled and uneducated’ immigrant woman) but rather to participate in another (learning computer skills as an educated individual). Rie (Morita, 2002, 2004) also decided to reorient her goal of study. After making fruitless efforts to negotiate her marginal position in the classroom community, she decided not to participate in certain aspects of the classroom practice but instead selectively participated in different aspects of it which were relevant to her own learning. Nasim (Fuentes, 2012), too, selectively participated in the practices of the university, which Fuentes (2012: 231) referred to as ‘selective acculturation.’ While she was studying hard to meet the high standards of the university, Nasim never participated in any of the socialization activities that the university sponsored. Agency, Identity and Investment

As previous studies on L2 socialization have revealed, L2 learner agency plays a powerful role in shaping the trajectories of their learning, orienting and reorienting themselves in the new world, positioning and repositioning themselves as members of the new community and achieving diverse outcomes at the end. What, then, is the crucial force of L2 learners that makes them engage and reengage in the practices of the target language community, negotiate and renegotiate the meaning of everyday activities, and defi ne and redefi ne a sense of themselves even when they find themselves in a powerless position and/or have a contesting feeling toward the target language community of practice? Norton (2000, 2013) has argued that it is L2 learners’ investment in the hope that they will receive a good return in the future – a ‘return that will give them access to hitherto unattainable resources’ (Norton, 2000: 10) – such as a legitimate membership status in the community from which they can speak for themselves. However, I have raised a question as to whether Norton’s conceptualization of investment, which is based on L2 learners’ ‘cost-benefit assessment’ (Duff, 2012: 413) alone could explain their diverse desires and drives to learn an L2. Should L2 learning be understood as the invested interest of L2 learners exemplified in the economic metaphor proposed by Norton (2000)? The studies of Brown (2016), Fuentes (2012) and Kinginger (2004) suggest that the notion of investment may not be comprehensive enough

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to capture the diverse desires and drives for learning an L2 by different types of L2 learners who are situated in different social contexts. For example, Julie in Brown’s (2016) study rejected her identity of an ‘“older” student who was cosigned to look after Peter’ (Brown, 2016: 821, double quotation marks in original) and redefi ned herself as a ‘“cool old person”’ (Brown, 2016: 821, double quotation marks in original). I argue that Julie’s identity negotiation was not motivated or fueled by her cost-benefit assessment of acquiring ‘access to hitherto unattainable resources’ (Norton, 2000: 10) in a return for learning an L2 (Korean). Vice versa, learning Korean for Julie was not a way to gain or increase cultural capital which would later grant her an ideal social identity within the group. Alice in Kinginger’s (2004) study, too, did not have an invested interest in learning French. I argue that it was Alice’s aspiration for personal transformation – from a young woman from a working-class single-parent family to a person she could admire or dream to be – that made her engage and reengage in the pursuit of learning French. For Alice, becoming a speaker of French was a ‘way of reorienting herself in the world – a “mission”’ (Kinginger, 2004: 240, double quotation marks in original). Although Alice was very eager to increase her cultural capital (the acquisition of French), I argue that it was not her invested interest (her hope/ expectation to receive a good return in exchange for learning French) that made her engage and reengage in the pursuit of her ‘mission.’ Likewise, what made Nasim, a university student in Fuentes’s (2012) study, commit to university study was her strong aspiration to graduate from university, which was her life goal. As she was pushed into a marginalized position in the university community, she kept engaging in the pursuit of her goal. By accepting and resisting the instructional practices of the university, she successfully accomplished her goal in the end. These three case studies suggest that L2 learners may engage in the task of learning an L2, not because they have invested interest in a future return but because they have aspirations to pursue their enterprise in their lives. The notion of investment (Norton, 2000, 2013) could be one way for L2 learners to realize their aspirations, act on the social world and negotiate their identities, yet it may not be comprehensive enough to explain the other ways in which L2 learners negotiate the meaning of their everyday lives, defi ne and (re)defi ne a sense of self and shape trajectories for the future. This study will explore the ways in which the four advanced learners of Japanese exercise their agency to pursue their enterprise in their lives during a summer at Middlebury College. Summary

This chapter discussed the three theoretical pillars of my study: L2 socialization, community and L2 learner agency. L2 socialization is a dynamic process shaped by L2 learner agency and the affordances of

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social communities. To date, L2 socialization research has paid greater attention to the affordance structures of social communities; however, it has paid less attention to individual L2 learners as social agents. When an undesirable position or identity is imposed on L2 learners, they exercise their agency to resist it. When they fi nd a conflict between their beliefs, wants and needs and the practices of a target language community, they resist conforming to those practices. Furthermore, such feelings of resistance may lead L2 learners to choose not to participate in certain aspects of a target language community of practice. Despite the recent recognition of the important role of L2 learner agency, L2 learner agency has not become the central focus of inquiry in SLA research. In the current SLA literature, because agency tends to be treated as an umbrella term that encompasses identity and investment associated with Norton (2000, 2013), the role of agency is not yet fully explored. The studies conducted by Brown (2016), Fuentes (2012) and Kinginger (2004) have suggested the possibility that the concept of investment alone is not comprehensive enough to explain L2 learners’ diverse, idiosyncratic, social and personal desires for learning an L2, and that other forms of L2 learner agency may play an influential role in learning an L2. More research is needed to examine: (a) the applicability of the notion of investment to various types of learners situated in various social contexts; and (b) how other forms of L2 learner agency may emerge to shape learning processes and the nature of outcomes.

3 Community

Introduction

Community is one of the central foci of my study. In this chapter, I describe and analyze the community of Middlebury College and the practices of the Japanese School. What makes the Middlebury Language Schools a community? What constitutes the Japanese School as a community of practice? I thus present an in-depth analysis of the social community in which my focal students were embedded. I fi rst describe the macro context in which Middlebury College is situated, including its historical background, campus location, campus buildings and practices, and then move on to an analysis of the community of Middlebury Language Schools – what is the very essence of this hybrid community created for the purpose of learning an L2? Finally, I will present my analysis of the Japanese School as a community. The goals of this chapter are: (a) to present a description of the research site to take my readers into the community of the Middlebury Language Schools as if they were there in the summer of 201x; and (b) to provide my analysis of the community to convey a sense of what my focal students’ lives were like, what practices they engaged in and what social milieu they lived in. Middlebury College

The campus of Middlebury College is located on the hill of a valley between two mountain ranges in northern New England: one on the west side of the state and another on the east side. The main campus, with its 350 acres and 2200 trees, provides a home for the Middlebury College students and faculty. The Facility Services Office oversees the maintenance of all the facilities and the landscape of the campus, including academic and business buildings, residence and dining halls, faculty/staff rental properties, the athletic field, sidewalks, roads, parking lots, trees, lawns and so on. Adirondack chairs are placed here and there, so that people can sit and talk, take a nap, read, study or just enjoy being outside. Old limestone buildings and modern architecture are well blended and create a rigorous, yet relaxing, atmosphere.

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Coexistence of the old and the new

One of the prominent characteristics of Middlebury College is a coexistence of the old and the new. When you arrive at Middlebury College from Main Street, the first building that comes into sight is Twilight Hall, named after the first African American to graduate from a college in the United States. I remember the impression I received when I entered the building for the fi rst time in 2005 – spooky. The building looked like someone’s residence rather than a school building. Classrooms were located upstairs and equipped with tables, chairs, a blackboard, an overhead projector and a window air conditioner. The old-style architecture, the squeaky stairs and dark hallways reminded me of an ancient house that I had seen in old movies. One day, I noticed pictures of a black person on the wall with a note saying ‘Class of 1823.’ I later learned that these were pictures of Mr Twilight after whom the building was named. After passing Twilight Hall and following the street, one comes to Old Chapel Road. If you enter Old Chapel Road, the first building that appears is Painter Hall, a stone building built in 1815. Painter Hall was named after one of the initial founders of Middlebury College. It is now known as the oldest college building in the state. After passing Straus Hall, you will see an old chapel built in 1836, which served as classrooms for a century. It now serves as administrative offices. After passing the old chapel, one encounters a brand-new facility named the Axinn Center. ‘Have you gone to the Axinn Center yet?’, I was asked several times in my conversations with Middlebury College staff and students when they found out that I was a visitor for the summer. When you step inside the building, you understand what motivated this question. In a sense, like Twilight Hall, the Axinn Center does not look like a college facility. With large glass windows, high ceilings, a lot of open spaces and a large reading room equipped with chairs, sofas and a portrait of Mr Axinn, the person for whom the building was named, the building looks like the lobby of a modern hotel. ‘Wow’, was my, and perhaps many others’ first impression of the Axinn Center. According to the college website, the Axinn Center is equipped with state-of-the-art classrooms and offices and received the Boston Society of Architects’ Sustainable Design Award for its integration of history, modernity and sustainability. The Axinn Center is the very first college building that the Summer Language School students step into when they arrive on campus and the fi rst face of Middlebury College that they see. The most familiar college facility for the Summer Language School students is McCardell Bicentennial Hall. It stands on a hill above the valley at the northeast edge of the campus and overlooks the college campus on one side and a beautiful mountain valley on another. This large building was built in 1999, probably using the most advanced and innovative technology known at the time. The building features various

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science facilities, including laboratories, a science library and a rooftop observatory, as well as lecture halls and classrooms. During the summer of 201x, most of the language classes were held in this building. The lobby, located in the middle of the building, was used for school events and ceremonies. The rooftop observatory was open to the students and became a popular nighttime attraction for the students. The back area of the building also became a popular place for the students to go and watch the beautiful sunsets set against the mountains.

Environmental stewardship

Another face of Middlebury College is its environmental stewardship. The college’s efforts on behalf of environmental sustainability are manifested in various forms. One such effort is the reduction of food waste. In the summer of 201x, the students in the nine Language Schools dined at three dining halls. Due to the Language Pledge that the students signed at the beginning of the program, dining halls and mealtime schedules were assigned according to the languages spoken, with the exception of breakfast. For example, the students in the Japanese School had their lunches and dinners in Atwater Dining Hall from 12:30 to 1:30 and from 5:30 to 6:30, respectively. During those times, only the students and faculty in the Japanese School were allowed to enter the dining hall, so they could communicate only in Japanese during their mealtimes. Atwater Dining Hall is located at the southeast edge of the campus. This large oval-shaped dining hall consists of triple-panel glass windows and high ceilings, which provide natural light and a view of the college campus for diners. Atwater seats 225 people and features open cooking, where diners can see how their food is prepared as they pass through the food serving area. Since Middlebury College has adopted a no-tray policy, the students take a plate and proceed to the food section. ‘Your eyes are bigger than your stomach’, the note in the dining hall says. According to the college website, every year, the college composts 300 tons of food waste through their composting program. ‘Come back for more’, another note says. Atwater Dining Hall also features a hearth oven. The pizza served right from the stone oven is, of course, everyone’s favorite. Students patiently wait in a line to get their slices. There is also a salad bar. Various kinds of desserts and fruit are served daily. Freshly picked berries and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream are the students’ other favorites. Twenty-five percent of the food at Middlebury College is supplied locally, according to the college’s website. The college purchases food from 47 local food producers and also procures small amounts of fresh produce from the studentrun organic garden. In contrast to the sophisticated look of the inside, Atwater Dining Hall looks odd from the outside. The roof is sloped and covered with

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shrubs and grasses. Atwater was built in 2005 and at that time the college decided to adopt a sustainable design for its new dining hall. The green roof covered with shrubs and grasses reduces heat loss in winter and lowers heating costs. In summer, excess heat is absorbed and reradiated, which lowers the costs of air conditioning. History, tradition and modernity

As the Summer Language Schools progress, the participating students, even without any prior knowledge of Middlebury College, gradually become aware of the various faces that the college represents and the practice that makes up the academic culture of Middlebury College. As symbolized by various buildings on campus, the prominent characteristic of Middlebury College is the amalgamation of dual elements – history and foresight, tradition and modernity, locality and globalization, rigor and flexibility – and these elements are melded together to make up the core practice of the Middlebury College community. Although most of the Summer Language School students and faculty are not affi liated with Middlebury College, they quickly learn the community of practice of Middlebury College through participation in the daily activities of the Summer Language Schools. Summer Language Schools

The bell of Mead Memorial Chapel rings proudly once the convocation ceremony is over to announce that the Summer Language Schools have now officially begun. Hundreds of students walk out of the Chapel. Each face is glowing with excitement and pride. Tonight, the nine-week programs in Chinese, Japanese and Russian have started. The convocation reminds me of J.K. Rowling’s fantasy novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, particularly the scene in the opening ceremony at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Whereas Hogwarts consists of four Houses – Gryffi ndor, Huffl epuff , Ravenclaw and Slytherin – the nine-week program of the Summer Language Schools has three – Chinese, Japanese and Russian. It is perhaps the atmosphere of Mead Memorial Chapel that contributes most to creating this illusion. The chapel was built in 1914 and rises on the highest point of the campus. The building has a white marble structure and the facade is a Greek revival colonnade. The interior is Georgian style. Its spire rises straight up into the sky. As I sit in the chapel, listening to the speech given by Dr Geisler, the Vice President of the Language Schools, Schools Abroad and Graduate Programs, and hear the students clap, whistle and stamp their feet, my reality – the world where I have come from and had belonged to – gradually starts to fade. ‘Welcome to Middlebury.’ Dr Geisler’s voice seems to overlap with that of Albus Dumbledore,

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the  headmaster of Hogwarts School. I fi nd myself gradually getting absorbed into that otherworldly bubble that I now think of as ‘Middlebury time.’ The Language Pledge

The Middlebury Language Schools are summer intensive foreign language programs. The majority of the students and faculty there are not affiliated with Middlebury College. They gather at Middlebury College from all over the United States and some travel from outside the country for the time when the Language Schools are in session and return to their home institutions after the session ends. Why do students choose to come to Middlebury to study a foreign language, travelling all the way to a small town in New England? The coordinator of the Japanese School says that it is because of the schools’ reputation. Middlebury has the reputation for being sort of the original immersion program where students take the Language Pledge and would be immersed in the particular language that they are studying. So, for some people, it’s the premier program. The reputation for coming to Middlebury is significant. This is the ultimate language immersion program. (Interview with Wendy, the coordinator of the Japanese School)

The Middlebury Language Schools adopt a total immersion approach. The students and faculty of each school live together in the same building and dine together at the same dining hall for the seven or nine weeks of the program. During that period, the only language that they speak is the language they are studying or teaching. All students are required to sign the Language Pledge – a promise that they will communicate only in the language of their school for the duration of the program. The Student Handbook explains the Language Pledge as follows: The Language Pledge, a formal commitment to speak the language of study as the only means of communication for the entire session, is required for all summer language students. The Language Pledge plays a major role in the success of the program, both as a symbol of commitment and as an essential part of the language learning process. Violation of the Language Pledge deprives both you and your fellow students of an important opportunity. The Language Pledge requires that you not speak, read, or hear English or other foreign languages at any time, even off campus. This means that you should have no contact with students and faculty of another School, even if you speak the language of that School. You will be given a verbal warning for the fi rst violation and a written warning for the second violation. Subsequent violation will be considered grounds for expulsion. This Pledge has been a major key to the success of the Middlebury Language Schools for almost 100 years. We are confident that you understand its importance and will adhere to it. (Middlebury College, 201xb: 5)

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In this explanation, the words ‘commitment’ and ‘success’ appear twice. Your commitment to ‘speak the language of the study as the only means of communication for the entire session’ will be the major key to your success in the program. The Language Pledge is a ‘symbol’ of your commitment and has been the ‘major key’ to the success of the Middlebury Language Schools. Although the handbook does not explain what it means by ‘success’, the message is clear. The Language Pledge is very important. You had better adhere to it while you are at Middlebury. At the convocation, Dr Geisler told a joke about a former student in the Japanese School. The student took the Language Pledge so seriously that he refused to speak English in the emergency room at the hospital. Dr Geisler assured the students that some exceptions would apply in such situations. For example, the Language Pledge is waived in emergency situations, when speaking to people in business offices and stores (it is impossible for them to understand and speak 10 languages) and when staying in touch with family members. In such cases, however, the handbook states that students should keep the use of English to the ‘absolute minimum that you feel you need.’ That will be hard … No English. (A male student) I am really excited and partially terrified ahh, but um I think the idea of it is fantastic, and I had a colleague come here and really learned, so I am looking forward to that. (A female student) The Language Pledge means that I only speak Chinese for 9 weeks. … Once I start speaking Chinese, after a couple weeks, I’ll start thinking in Chinese and dreaming in Chinese. By the end, it would be hard to switch back to English. (A female student)

These are some of the students’ responses to the Language Pledge posted on the Summer Language Schools’ homepage. I found these comments in the fall of 201x. The students had probably been interviewed in the Axinn Center when they fi rst arrived on campus. Feeling ‘excited and terrified’ is probably true for all the students. It is exciting because taking the pledge and adhering to it for nine weeks will push you to think in the language and dream in the language. At the end of the program, it will be hard to switch back to English because you would have been immersed in the language so intensively. At the same time, it is terrifying because taking the pledge means that you will give up the right to speak your own language for the time you are at Middlebury. Miracle

Giving up the right to speak one’s native language and placing oneself in an immersion environment where only the target language is allowed to be spoken require an enormous commitment. In return for such a

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serious commitment, Dr Geisler assures the students of a remarkable outcome – what he calls a ‘miracle.’ Every summer, students and teachers, scholars and artists, entrepreneurs and political leaders from around the world gather at the Middlebury Language Schools. They apply their considerable efforts to one goal – creating the richest, most effective language-learning environment on earth. Within this environment, a miracle occurs: in just seven or nine weeks of study, newcomers to a language gain a remarkable level of fluency. Those who arrive with basic language skills expand them dramatically, allowing them to engage with native speakers in an informed discussion of cultural, political, or social issues. (Welcome letter from Dr Geisler, in Middlebury College, 201xb: 1)

The ‘miracle’ is only possible when the students’ serious commitment and efforts are combined with the Middlebury Language Schools’ rich academic environment, namely the ‘one goal – creating the richest, most effective language-learning environment on earth.’ According to Dr Geisler, what facilitates such a magical outcome of study is the Language Pledge, because the Language Pledge provides the students with opportunities to create a ‘solid foundation in language – reading, writing, listening, and speaking’ in class, and opportunities to ‘foster meaningful engagement and fluency acquisition’ outside the classroom. The catalyst for this miracle is the Language Pledge, a promise made by students, faculty, and staff to communicate solely in their language of choice for the duration of their time in the program. Within the classroom, the Language Pledge supports the creation of a solid foundation in language – reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Outside the classroom, the Pledge fosters meaningful engagement and fluency acquisition, as students participate in a vast range of cocurricular activities, all of which happen in language. … While this powerful formula has remained consistent throughout our history, the Language Schools have also experienced continuous change and growth. (Welcome letter from Dr Geisler, in Middlebury College, 201xb: 1)

The words of Justin Baker, a former student in the Japanese School in 2007 and 2009, echo Dr Geisler’s statement: What really makes Middlebury the best is that you don’t just memorize words and grammar to put into use at a later date; you take what you learn in class and immediately apply it in real time, to real-life situations, in order to bring your goals to fruition. (Middlebury College, 201xa: 9)

The learning formula of ‘students + regular learning environment’ produces regular learning outcomes. However, the formula of ‘students’ serious commitment (symbolized as a form of the Language Pledge) + “one goal – creating the richest, most effective language-learning environment on earth”’ makes it possible to produce magical learning outcomes.

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Taking the administrator’s point of view, Dr Hatasa, the director of the Japanese School, states that the Language Pledge has a dual function. One is the catalyst for the magical outcome of the study, as Dr Geisler states. The other is an institutional and administrative strategy to make Middlebury’s language programs distinctive and competitive among the many other summer language programs offered all over the world and in the United States. The costs of attending the nine-week programs at Middlebury, including tuition, room and board, school-hosted activity fees and facility fees, were US$10,000 in the summer of 201x. These did not include transportation costs and the students’ own recreational expenses. In terms of cost, studying Japanese at Middlebury is not necessarily less expensive than other study abroad programs in Japan. For example, attending the eightweek summer study abroad program sponsored by the Hokkaido International Foundation costs US$5500 for tuition and homestay fees (for the 2013 session). Taking other costs into consideration, such as transportation costs from the United States to Hokkaido (Hokkaido is the northern island of Japan) and the students’ recreational expenses, the total costs of the two programs would be comparable, or perhaps attending the Hokkaido program would even be less expensive than attending the Japanese School at Middlebury. Thus, students have choices. Many students choose to study abroad because they believe that the best way to study a foreign language is to go to the country where the language is spoken and immerse themselves in the authentic linguistic and cultural environment. Then why do some students choose to study at Middlebury? It is because of the reputation of Middlebury Language Schools and their 100year history of success. It is the ‘powerful formula’ that the Middlebury Language Schools offer to their students. It is the Language Schools’ endless effort to provide ‘the richest, most effective language-learning environment on earth.’ ‘No English Spoken Here’ – this is the symbol of the Middlebury Language Schools. Yes, they ask for serious commitment from their students. However, in return, they promise a magical outcome. 日本語で夢を見たくありませんか ‘Wouldn’t you like to have a dream in Japanese?’, Dr Hatasa says to his future students. The Japanese School

The Japanese School was one of the ten Summer Language Schools that Middlebury College hosted in 201x. In that summer, the Japanese School enrolled 88 students and employed 27 staff members including the director of the school, the coordinator, 19 Japanese language instructors, three interns, two bilingual assistants, one instructor for the three-week instructional technology (IT) course, and the rakugo ‘traditional Japanese comic storytelling’ performance event staff. The IT instructor stayed at

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the Japanese School for three weeks from the sixth week through the eighth week. The rakugo performance event staff stayed at the Japanese School for a few days during the fourth week, which was when the event took place. During the nine weeks when the school is in session, the members of the Japanese School, including both instructors and students, live in the same dormitory, dine in the same cafeteria and participate in the same activities in accordance with the policy of the Middlebury Summer Language Schools. The curriculum covers eight semester hours’ worth of content materials. Therefore, the daily teaching/learning load is, without a doubt, intense. The curriculum of the Japanese School consists of (a) daily lessons; (b) co-curricular activities; and (c) extra-curricular activities. In the morning, the students have four sessions of Japanese language lessons. In the afternoon, on a weekly basis, they participate in a club activity of their choice: tea ceremony, martial arts, rakugo ‘traditional Japanese comic storytelling’, karaoke or news club. In addition to this co-curricular activity, the students have the option to participate in extra-curricular activities, such as dance, soccer, volleyball and/or an a cappella choir. At weekends, the Japanese School hosts various events, including a sports event (Week 1), the rakugo week (Week 4), the Summer festival (Week 4), a karaoke party (Week 6), a talent show (Week 7) and movie nights. Besides the school-hosted activities and events, the Japanese School invites specialists from various fields to give lectures to the students. In the summer of 201x, three specialists were invited, including two professors from the fields of SLA and political science, respectively, and an atomic bomb survivor. During the lectures, the Language Pledge was suspended and the students were able to ask questions and engage in discussion in English. In the remainder of this section I will present my analysis of the Japanese School – what constitutes the Japanese School as a community of practice with focus on three elements: (a) mutual engagement; (b) a joint enterprise; and (c) a shared repertoire. My goal is that readers know, by the time they fi nish reading this section, how the Japanese School as a community operates and what constitutes it as a community of practice. The geographical boundary: Hepburn Hall

In the summer of 201x, Hepburn Hall was home to the students and faculty in the Japanese School for a period of nine weeks. Hepburn Hall is a five-story symmetrical building constructed in 1916. It consists of 86 single rooms and 39 double rooms and it accommodates 164 people. The top floor is the attic. Small windows protrude from the roof. In the middle is a round cupola. The summer of 201x was the second time the Japanese School was situated in Hepburn Hall. The building had

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housed the Arabic School before that school moved to a new location in California. The gray brick symmetrical building with its cupola reminded me of an exotic palace that I had seen in a children’s book. I felt as if I would stray into Aladdin’s world as I passed through the entrance door. Only the Japanese national fl ag hanging at the entrance connects this building to Japan. The building has two entrances: the main entrance and the back entrance. The main entrance is located at the top of an ascending path and looks down toward the south campus. Two pillars and the arch between them silently claim that this is the main entrance to the building. The back entrance is located at the east side of the building. People in the Japanese School use this back entrance more often for functional reasons throughout the summer. Both entrances are secured by automatic locks. A Japanese School student or faculty identification card must be swiped in order to enter the building. Inside the back entrance, the fi rst thing you will notice is the sign saying 日本語学校へようこそ ‘Welcome to the Japanese Language School’, written in calligraphic ink. For the fi rst few days, the characters 学校 ‘school’ were missing, which provided a conversation topic for the students. From each end of the sign, a few sets of senbazuru ‘a thousand paper cranes’ are hanging. Every summer since 2005, the Japanese School has made two sets of senbazuru: one set to be sent out to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park before the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing on 6 August and the other to be kept in the Japanese School as part of the school tradition. There are also bulletin boards on the wall in the hallway. Students check the schedule for the day and the week as they walk by. On the first floor, to the right of the back entrance, there is a lounge furnished with a dining table with eight chairs, two square tables, two large sofas, three loveseats, five soft chairs, a piano, a vending machine and a fi replace. Besides the furniture, two televisions – one for watching TV Japan (a Japanese satellite program) and another for playing Wii – and several fans can be seen. Next to the lounge, there is a small kitchen with a small four-burner stove, a refrigerator, a microwave, some kitchen utensils, dishes and silverware. Next to the kitchen there is a small room named the ‘seminar room’, with four dining tables, 10 chairs, a whiteboard and an old window air conditioner. This room is the only public space equipped with an air conditioner in the entire building and is used as a classroom for Level 5 in the morning. The stairs in front of the kitchen take you to a wide-open space on the second floor, located above the lounge, called the Zoo. According to the college website, the room came to be known as Hepburn Zoo because it had been used to display a collection of ‘hunting trophies’ belonging to Mr Hepburn, who had made a large donation to the construction costs of the building. More recently, it has been used as an

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informal performing space for theatre students. When the Japanese School is in session, it is used for club activities, workshops, group activities and meetings. The south side of the building (the left side from the back entrance) is the residential area. There are an elevator and stairs in the middle. One wing stretches out toward the east and another to the west. At the end of each wing there are two units, which are separated by a door. Each unit contains three separate rooms and a shared bathroom. It accommodates same-sex residents. Otherwise, all of the floors are co-ed. Teachers are placed in one of those units. Exceptions are the fi rst and the fi fth floor. The fi rst floor serves as office space, including instructors’ offices, copy rooms, the director’s office, the coordinator’s office and the bilingual assistants’ office. The fi fth floor is the attic. All of the rooms on the fi fth floor are singles. Each room is equipped with a portable air conditioner. Male students live in the east wing and female students in the west wing. Also, the fi fth floor is the only floor where no instructors live. The elevator of the building only goes up to the fourth floor. The residents of the fi fth floor have to take stairs from the fourth floor to get to their rooms. Wendy, the coordinator of the Japanese School, is the person who is responsible for the actual room assignments. Students request either a single room or a double room. If students request a double, they are asked to provide their roommate preferences. According to Wendy, the students who are placed on the fi fth floor are ‘older students’, because she thought that they ‘deserve a quiet private space with air conditioning.’ Air conditioning is indeed a privilege at Middlebury College during the summer. No dorms are equipped with air conditioning. Although the summer at Middlebury does not last long, it goes over 90 degrees Fahrenheit during the hottest days of the season. In the summer of 201x, due to a recordbreaking heatwave on the East Coast, the Language Schools canceled classes for one day. During those hottest days, while the younger students sought shelter on campus, the older students on the fi fth floor stayed comfortably in their rooms. Practice: Mutual engagement, a joint enterprise and a shared repertoire

On the Sunday morning two days after the program has started, there is a line of students in the hallway in front of the director’s office. One student comes out of the office. Another student walks in. A few minutes later, the student comes out and another student walks in. ‘Have you taken the pledge yet?’ becomes the greeting that Sunday morning. It is a line of students waiting to sign the Language Pledge. The Language Pledge is a sheet of paper. It is up to the director of each school to decide how students sign the pledge. Dr Hatasa, the director of the Japanese School,

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meets with the students individually in person in his office and asks them to sign the pledge in front of him. It’s possible to make the students sign the pledge at a place like the opening ceremony where everybody is present. I have decided to have them sign individually because I thought that the seriousness [of signing the pledge] in terms of formality could be enhanced. Fortunately, the number of students is not too large. It’s like performing a ritual of preparing them for the beginning. I don’t know how seriously they take the ritual [of signing the pledge]. But, obviously, I think it will make a difference when they are asked to sign the pledge there [in the director’s office], compared to when they are asked to sign together. (Interview with the director of the Japanese School. Original in Japanese, translation is mine.)

The director believes that it is ultimately the students’ decision as to how strictly and how honestly they adhere to the Language Pledge while they are in the Japanese School. He is aware that every student has a computer and a cell phone, and that every room is connected to the internet. It is indeed up to each student to decide how strictly and how honestly they adhere to the Language Pledge during the course of the nine weeks. He is also aware that the Language Pledge can be a site of struggle for students as the program goes on. By having the students sign the pledge individually in front of him, Dr Hatasa expects and hopes that they will take the Language Pledge seriously. By making the pledge-signing activity a sort of ‘ritual’, he presents the Language Pledge as something sacred and profound, so that it becomes the students’ personal pledge rather than a school rule imposed upon them. ‘There are only two types of people here in the Japanese School: one is those who want to teach Japanese, and another is those who want to learn Japanese’ (original in Japanese, translation is mine). This is how Dr  Hatasa describes the members of the Japanese School. Those who want to teach Japanese are Japanese language instructors. They all have advanced degrees from a university in North America in Japanese pedagogy, SLA, foreign language education or applied linguistics. They all have experience in teaching Japanese as a foreign language at post-secondary level. In Dr Hatasa’s words, they are ‘Japanese language professionals.’ This is one important point at which Japanese School’s immersion environment crucially differs from that of study abroad situations where students interact with ordinary native speakers of Japanese once they step out of the classroom. The instructors in the Japanese School are not affiliated with Middlebury College. They all gather at Middlebury for one purpose – to teach Japanese. The other group of people is the Japanese language students. Although they differ in age, gender, academic and social background, reasons for studying Japanese and reasons for choosing Middlebury, they all gather at the Japanese School for one purpose – to advance their competence in

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Japanese. They have also made various investments (e.g. time, expense, energy, emotion, etc.) to come to Middlebury to study Japanese. Moreover, they are all committed to speak only Japanese for a period of nine weeks in order to acquire higher Japanese language proficiency. The director’s description of the Japanese School as having only ‘two types of people’ accurately captures the characteristic of the members of the Japanese School. ここでの全ての活動は学生の日本語の向上のためにあると思ってください

‘Please keep in mind that all activities here in the Japanese School are for students to improve their Japanese.’ Dr Hatasa told the instructors at the very first faculty meeting. Besides regular classroom hours, the Japanese School implemented various cultural activities and events throughout the course of the nine weeks. The primary purpose of these activities, according to the director’s policy, is not to provide opportunities for students to experience authentic Japanese culture, but to create opportunities for them to use Japanese through participation and engagement in various activities and events. The director states: It’s impossible to offer authenticity in a place like this [a small town in New England]. I don’t expect the instructors to be cultural experts, either. That’s simply not possible. (Interview with the director of the Japanese School. Original in Japanese, translation is mine.)

The Japanese School does not aim to provide fi rst-hand experience of Japanese culture for the students as study abroad programs do; instead, the Japanese School promises to provide abundant opportunities and resources for the students to use Japanese in real-life situations. The director also made two requests of the instructors at the fi rst faculty meeting: 学生の間違いを直してください ‘Please correct students’ mistakes’ and 学生と友達にならないでください ‘Please do not become friends with students.’ In an immersion environment like Middlebury where the students and teachers live in the same building, there are unlimited opportunities for students and teachers to interact with one another. SLA research suggests that corrective feedback provided during real communicative events is likely to provide opportunities for acquisition (see the special issue on the role of corrective feedback in Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 2010, for more detail). As a specialist in Japanese language education, the director promises that the instructors will not only provide opportunities to speak the language but also create opportunities for learning by providing corrections whenever they interact with students. Moreover, over the course of nine weeks, the students and teachers get to know each other well. The director’s words, 学生と友達にならないでください ‘Please do not become friends with students’, remind the instructors of their responsibilities at Middlebury as language professionals and in maintaining professional codes, despite their close, daily association with their students.

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The Japanese School’s policy was presented to the students in a form of a skit at the opening ceremony. In his opening speech, the director introduced the instructors to the students and told them what their life (living with language professionals) for the next nine weeks would be like. Then three instructors appeared onstage and started to perform a skit. Two of them were playing the role of students. The way they were dressed – bath towel around their head, bathrobe and toothbrush – indicated that the action was taking place early in the morning. One student, half asleep, was walking toward the bathroom. An instructor, also half asleep, was walking from the opposite direction. They meet in the middle of the hallway and exchange greetings. おはようございます ‘Good morning [polite]’, the student says, and the instructor replies, おはようございます ‘Good morning [polite].’ In the next scene, as before, a student who has just awakened walks toward the bathroom, meets an instructor coming from the bathroom in the middle of the hallway, and they exchange greetings. This time, the student says to the instructor, おはよう ‘Good morning [impolite]’ without using a polite form. The instructor dramatically expresses his disapproval and immediately corrects the student’s language. The student realizes that she has made a mistake and rephrases the greeting with a polite form. This skit communicated with the students in two ways. One is that instructors offer corrections at any time, not only in classrooms. Another is that students are expected to use polite language whenever they speak to an instructor. In other words, the skit conveyed a message that the instructors in the Japanese School would not just chit-chat with the students. As language professionals, they always watch the students’ language and provide corrections when necessary. Furthermore, the student–teacher relationship is different from the student–student relationship. Although students and teachers live together, spend a lot of time together and may even see each other only minutes after awakening, there is always a social status difference between students and teachers, which must be reflected in their language use. It was around 11 o’clock at night. I stepped out of Hepburn Hall to smoke a cigarette. I lit it and looked up at Hepburn Hall. About half of the room lights were on, and I guessed that many students were still studying. I moved my eyes to the fi rst floor where the instructors’ offices are located. About half of the room lights were on, a sign that many instructors were still working. I knew as a fact that the Level 4 students were still working. They had to spend two hours that night after dinner watching a movie, which would be used as new instructional material in class in upcoming weeks. It was around 9:20 when the screening was over and they came back to Hepburn Hall. As I pictured the faces of the Level 4 students, I recalled a small incident that had happened in class that day. When Miyamoto-sensei, the head instructor of Level 4, announced that the students would be required to attend the movie screening from 7:00 to 9:00 that night, the students started whining. After hearing the

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students’ ええ- ‘boo’ reaction, Miyamoto-sensei told the students, 今日はち ょっとたくさん宿題がありますが、がんばってください ‘You have a lot of homework today, but please work hard.’ Danielle, seated in the very fi rst row, responded to Miyamoto-sensei’s comment by saying, でも、時間がかかりま すね ‘But, it will take time, you know’, with the sentence fi nal particle ne, which seeks mutual agreement between the speaker and the hearer. Miyamoto-sensei looked at her and said, ここはミドルベリーですね ‘This is Middlebury, you know’, with the sentence fi nal particle ne to seek mutual agreement. When she heard ここはミドルベリーですね ‘This is Middlebury, you know’, Danielle stopped complaining. Instead, she told Miyamotosensei, 文句を言うのも練習ですから ‘Complaining [in Japanese] is also practice [to speak Japanese].’ ここはミドルベリーですね ‘This is Middlebury, you know’ is a powerful statement. It reminds students of the purpose of coming to Middlebury and of their commitments. ‘This is Middlebury, you know.’ ‘Work hard.’ I could hear only the sound of sighing and silence in the classroom. Danielle later recalled this small incident and stated: アメリカで一番いい言語のプログラムだ から、夜１０時まで映画を見て、その後 宿題をして、小テストの勉強をして、睡 眠が足りずに朝授業に行って、難しい単 語を使って映画の話をさせられるのは、 腹も立つし、夜１０時に寝たかったんで すが、仕方がないと思う。

It grates on my nerves that we watch a movie until 10:00 at night and then do homework and study for a quiz. In the morning, we go to class without getting enough sleep and are forced to talk about the movie using difficult vocabulary. I wanted to go to bed at 10:00, but I think it’s unavoidable because [Middlebury is] the best language program in the United States.

The students might have to stay up late. They might not be able to get enough sleep. But, it is 仕方がない ‘unavoidable; cannot be helped’ because this is Middlebury, and that is why they chose to come here. 全ての活動は学生の日本語の向上のためにある ‘All activities are for students to improve their Japanese.’ The Japanese School is made up of two types of people: those who are committed to teach Japanese and those who have committed to learn Japanese. In this environment with unlimited opportunities for learning situated in the historical context of the Middlebury Language Schools, the students and teachers in the Japanese School make every effort to pursue their enterprise of learning Japanese. This is the community and the practice of the Japanese School. Legitimate peripheral participation

In the theory of Communities of Practice (CoP), legitimate peripheral participation is the necessary condition that turns participation into opportunities for learning. In this section, I analyze the practice of the Japanese School from the perspectives of peripherality and legitimacy,

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concerning whether the practice of the Japanese School grants its students peripherality and legitimacy. In applying the notions of peripherality and legitimacy to the practice of the Japanese School, one important consideration needs to be made. That is the hybrid nature of the community of the Japanese School. One of the premises of CoP is that learners/novices are situated in the community of practice into which they wish to be socialized. In the context of L2 socialization, the communities of practice in which L2 learners wish to gain communicative competence and membership are the target language communities. Thus, for the students in the Japanese School, their target language community is Japan. Unlike in study abroad situations where language-learning environments are situated in the target language countries, and learners have an actual exposure to the target language communities of practice as they participate in daily events and activities, the Japanese School is located in the United States and situated in the academic context of the Middlebury Language Schools. Therefore, it is not possible for the students in the Japanese School to have an actual exposure to the authentic sociocultural practice of Japan. As the director explained, authenticity is not the primary element that the Japanese School aims to offer for its students. Rather, what the school provides for the students are opportunities to use Japanese in real-life situations. The immersion environment in which the students and instructors live together provides the students with opportunities not only to speak Japanese but also to use Japanese socioculturally appropriate ways. Students (novices) sometimes receive explicit instructions from instructors (experts) on how Japanese society operates and how certain sociocultural practice is reflected in language use. Furthermore, the students’ linguistic and pragmatic errors are expected and have no social consequences (e.g. a negative evaluation of the speaker). Through various modifications and accommodations, such as ‘lessened intensity, lessened risk, special assistance, lessened cost of error, close supervision’ (Wenger, 1998: 100) and so on, the students are given an ‘approximation of full participation that gives exposure to actual practice’ (Wenger, 1998: 100). In this regard, it can be said that the Japanese School itself is a peripheral community that prepares its students for full participation in the target language community of practice (Japan). However, whether or not full participation is actually realized as the outcome of the socialization in the Japanese School cannot be argued until students actually go to Japan and participate in the sociocultural practice of the Japanese society. On the other hand, as discussed earlier in this chapter, the Japanese School forms its own community of practice. The two types of people – those who want to study Japanese and those who want to teach Japanese – gather at the Japanese School and make joint efforts to realize their enterprise of learning Japanese. Situated in the framework of the Middlebury Language

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Schools and the history of the Japanese School, the students and instructors mutually engage in the everyday activities of the school and jointly create the shared repertoire of the school practice. In this community, all members are expected to be active participants rather than to stay in a peripheral space of the community. The only exception applied was for the Level 1 students, who joined the Japanese School with no Japanese language background. Because of their limited language proficiency, they are given an option to stay in a peripheral space of the community. For instance, they sit together as a group during mealtimes and speak a limited amount of English quietly among themselves. For the first few weeks, Level 1 students are given a status of legitimate silent speaker of Japanese; however, such accommodation is gradually taken away several weeks into the program. With regard to legitimacy, all students in the Japanese school join the community in ‘inbound trajectories’ (Wenger, 1998: 154); that is they join the school ‘with the prospect of becoming full participants in its practice’ (Wenger, 1998: 154). Previous studies on community-oriented L2 socialization (reviewed in Chapter 2) have found that legitimacy is not a privilege, but rather a right that L2 learners must claim and earn. Moreover, because of inequitable power relations between L2 learners and a target language group, gaining access to a target language community of practice has been found to be a struggle for L2 learners. In many cases, L2 learners become marginalized from the community of practice. In contrast to previous fi ndings, in the case of the Japanese School, I have found that legitimacy and access are granted to the students from the beginning. Being a legitimate speaker of Japanese and being a legitimate member of the community are, for them, both a privilege and a right, granted to them and protected by the institution. The students’ legitimacy as members of the community is initially established by the institutional practice of the Middlebury Language Schools and reassured through the practice of the Japanese School. For the Language Schools, their students are, in a sense, their guests. They went through the application procedures and were selected to become members of the community. In the summer of 201x, 95 students out of 240 applicants attended the Japanese School. Upon acceptance, they paid their tuition and room and board fees and officially established their institutional membership in the community. Upon their arrival at Middlebury College, they are warmly welcomed by a bilingual assistant and/or the coordinator of the school in the gorgeous lobby of the Axinn Center. In accordance with the academic policies of the Middlebury Language Schools, their right to be legitimate members of the community is guaranteed and protected regardless of their ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation and level of target language proficiency. Their legitimacy as members of the community is reassured as the students participate in the practice of the Japanese School. For example,

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at the end of the second week of the program, the director performs his gishiki ‘ritual.’ The ritual takes place during the lunchtime on Friday when everybody in the Japanese School gathers in the dining hall. He holds a microphone in his hand and calls each student’s name as he walks by each table. A few days prior to the performance of his ritual, a bilingual assistant announces to everybody that the director will memorize all the students’ names by Friday and demonstrate his accomplishment in front of everyone at lunchtime. Cheers arise from the crowd each time the director fi nishes naming all of the students seated at each table. He moves from table to table, and within five minutes he successfully ends his ritual with loud applause and cheers from the students and faculty. He explains why he performs this ritual every summer – that it is his effort, as an administrator, to make connections with the students rather than to remain a distant administrator. His performance of calling out each student’s name in front of everyone serves as another ritual for the Japanese School as a community. It officially (re)grants legitimacy for the new members of the community. The director’s performance reassures the students that everyone is given an equal degree of legitimacy as a member of the Japanese School regardless of the level of their language proficiency as well as their social, cultural, ethnic and academic backgrounds. On another occasion, I heard loud cheers arise from the crowd during lunchtime. Two Level 1 students fi nished making an announcement in front of everyone in the dining hall. This lunchtime announcement serves as another form of acknowledgement of one’s legitimacy as a speaker of Japanese. Every day at lunch, some students give oshirase ‘announcements’ about school activities and events, reminders, schedule changes and so on. Standing in front of everyone and making announcements in a second language with a microphone takes some courage. At the beginning of the program it was the bilingual assistants’ job. Then they gradually passed their job on to students. The first student announcement was made by a Level 5 student. Cheers arose from the students with an envious gaze. As the program went on, more lower proficiency level students started to make announcements. The lower the levels went, the louder the cheers became. Then the loudest cheers were given to the Level 1 students with a whistle of celebration. The students in the Japanese School are aware of the challenge that the lower level proficiency students have faced. For those who are in higher proficiency levels, it was the stage that they went through once themselves. With institutional legitimacy initially granted to the students by the Language Schools and the reassurance given through the practice of the Japanese School, I argue that legitimacy is both a privilege and a right granted to the students in the Japanese School.

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Summary and Overview of Subsequent Chapters

In this chapter, I examined the community in depth. I fi rst described the wider historical, social and academic contexts of Middlebury College in which the Japanese School was embedded. Then I analyzed the Japanese School as a community of practice with a focus on three elements: (a) mutual engagement; (b) a joint enterprise; and (c) a shared repertoire. Situated in the 100-year tradition of the Middlebury Language Schools and the rich academic environment of Middlebury College, the Japanese School formed a unique community of practice. The uniqueness was the hybridity of the community. On one hand, it was a peripheral community of Japanese society, which provided the ‘approximation of full participation’ (Wenger, 1998: 100) into the target language community of practice; on the other hand, it was a community under the umbrella of the Middlebury Language Schools and operated in accordance with the regulations and policies of an academic institution in the United States. This duality in the community of practice afforded peripherality and legitimacy for the students. In the subsequent chapters, I will present the case studies of the four focal students: Parker (Chapter 4), Alison (Chapter 5), Naiya (Chapter 6) and Danielle (Chapter 7). The aim of these chapters is to describe and analyze the focal students’ socialization processes in relation to my study questions. Each chapter consists of four main components: (a) beginning, (b) engagement (labeled under different headings), (c) outcome of L2 socialization (labeled under different headings) and (d) discussion. In the first section (beginning), I recount the beginning of my relationship with the focal students, including how I met them, how they came to participate in the study and what impression I initially received from them. In the next sections (engagement), I describe how my focal students engaged in the community of practice of the Japanese School. In doing so, I focus on the recurring themes and events that emerged from the data. Description in this second component is organized chronologically to trace the trajectories of learning by the focal students. In the third component (outcome of L2 socialization), the focus of the description shifts to the students’ internal changes. Based on data drawn from multiple sources (i.e. my observations, interviews with the focal students and audio-recorded conversations of the focal students with other members of the community), I describe from an emic perspective what they gained or achieved at the end of the summer session. In the last section, I present the analytical discussion of the case study in relation to the research questions that I have posed in this study. Finally, in Chapter 8, reflecting upon the fi ndings of this study, I state my conclusion – what the stories of the four L2 Japanese learners can tell us about L2 learning, and what implications we can draw from them.

4 Parker: Lost Opportunities, Reconnection and Transforming

Beginning いいですよ ‘Yes, I can’, Parker said as if he was agreeing to lend me a book. We were at the drink stand in a corner of the dining hall. Parker looked at me with a glass of water in his hand. It was certainly an unexpected answer as I had just asked if he was interested in participating in my study. He did not ask for any details but simply said, いいですよ ‘Yes, I can.’ It was almost the end of the third week. Considering the length of the program, I could not wait any longer to find a fourth participant. I was glad that my recruitment was successful, but at the same time I wanted to ask, ‘Don’t you want to know more about my study?’. This was the beginning of my journey to get to know Parker and his experience of learning Japanese at Middlebury. I became interested in Parker as a potential study participant because of the gap between the image that he projected and his enthusiasm to learn Japanese. In my eyes, he looked like a typical young Caucasian man who had been raised in an upper-class American family. He was from California. He liked to surf. At university he was studying economics. Nothing, at least on the surface, connected Parker to Japan. Yet he was very eager to learn Japanese. More precisely, he was very eager to learn the Japanese way of speaking and behaving.

Energetic Student スチュワートさん、こんにちは ‘Hi, Stewart-san’, I spoke to Parker from behind him. We were standing in line in the dining hall to get our lunch. Atwater Dining Hall adopts an open kitchen style. As we go through the food section, we can see through the kitchen. One of the kitchen staff brought out a large tray full of French fries to the food counter. That day’s 66

Parker: Lost Opportunities, Reconnection and Transforming 67

menu was hamburgers with French fries. The freshly made French fries smelled so good that they brought back my appetite. Parker looked back at me and said hi. His forehead was sweating. From his sweat, running shorts and Nike sneakers, I guessed that he had just come back from running. Parker, Tuan and other students – sometimes three or four people and sometimes just Parker and Tuan – run three miles almost every day before lunch. Their class ends at 11:50am and the Japanese School lunch starts at 12:30pm. During the 40-minute break, some students go back to their rooms in Hepburn Hall. Some stay in the lobby of Bicentennial Hall where their daily classes are conducted. Some wait in front of Atwater Dining Hall while chatting with other students. Considering the size of the Middlebury College campus (and the time required to walk across the campus from one building to another), the students quickly learn that 40 minutes is not long enough to do much of anything. Parker decided to use this time to go for a run. While we were getting food on our plates, Parker and I started to chat. I asked about his running route. He said he usually ran along the trail starting at the college’s golf course. To me, going to the golf course and coming back would in itself take 30 minutes. I expressed my admiration to him. Sally, who overheard our conversation, told me, スチュワートさんは 日本語学校で一番元気な学生ですよ ‘Stewart-san is the most energetic student in the Japanese School, you know’, and laughed. スチュワートさんは元 気 ‘Stewart-san is energetic’ is probably the common view of Parker among members of the Japanese School. The conception of Parker that スチュワートさんは元気 ‘Stewart-san is energetic’ by other members of the Japanese School has a lot to do with Parker’s visibility in the school through his participation in school activities and events. Parker was, without a doubt, one of the most visible students in the Japanese School. His presence was everywhere. All of the students in the Japanese School joined at least one club as part of a cocurricular activity. Besides participating in a club activity, Parker joined three other optional groups: yosakoi group (a style of Japanese group dance, combining traditional and aerobic dance movements and music), the volleyball team and the soccer team. The volleyball and soccer teams participated in the Language Schools tournament and played against a team from a different Language School every week. Although winning the game was not the primary purpose of the activity, the fans of each team (including both students and instructors) cheered enthusiastically for the players during games. Moreover, because each team represented its Language School, the players on the team, in a sense, also represented their Language School. In the Japanese School, whenever the team won a game, the result was announced at the next meal in front of the students and instructors, and the players received loud cheers and applause. Parker, as a member of the team, also received cheers and applause.

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Finding his Place

Parker’s visibility in the Japanese School also had to do with the ways in which he spent his free time. He spent almost all of his free time in the public area, except when he was sleeping in his room at night. I always knew where to fi nd him – in the lounge. Every day after lunch, 寮のラウン ジで２時から１２時までゆっくり勉強しています ‘I slowly study from 2:00pm to midnight in the lounge’, Parker said. He used the expression ‘slowly study’ because between 2:00pm and midnight, he not only studied but also did other activities, such as going to club meetings and practices, taking breaks, going to dinner and visiting his instructors to ask questions. He used the lounge as a sort of home base and returned there after he fi nished other activities. The lounge had a large dining-style rectangular table where eight people could be seated, along with two other tables, sofas, loveseats and chairs. The front left corner of the lounge, where the large table was located, became Parker’s hangout place in the afternoons and at night. Besides Parker, there were always six to eight students studying together. One night, I sat in a corner of the lounge. Eight students, including Parker, were seated at the dining table. Some students were staring at their computer screens. Other students were typing while looking at their textbooks. Some were writing something on a sheet of paper. Parker was watching his computer screen, wearing a headset. None of them was talking. They looked very serious. I moved my eyes to the other side of the room. Sofas, loveseats and chairs were occupied by students. I looked at the small tables placed near the windows. They were also occupied. None of the students was talking. Only the two fans placed at the front and back of the room were making sounds. Occasionally, a student walked into the room and bought a snack from the vending machine. The sound of the vending machine resonated loudly in the room. I was sitting there awhile but I felt like a stranger. I stepped out of the building and took a deep breath. The cool air felt good. It was the beginning of July and the third week into the program. Early July in northern New England does not feel like the beginning of summer. I looked up at the sky. It was dark. I took a box of Marlboro Lights out of my purse and tried to light up. Then I noticed the sign saying, 建物の近くでたばこをすわ ないでください ‘Please do not smoke near the building.’ I moved away from the ashtray mounted on the building wall, walked toward a bench and sat in the dark. The routine that Parker had established at the beginning of the program never changed until the end, except for one thing – Parker and his study mates migrated to the seminar room when real summer visited Middlebury. Beautiful stone buildings are good for winter but were not built for the summer heat, and the students sought a cool place to study. Some went to the library. Some studied in the Axinn Center. Some

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tolerated the heat by running a fan. None of the older buildings on campus has air conditioning. The seminar room was the only public space with air conditioning in Hepburn Hall. The room was used as a classroom for the Level 5 course in the morning but was available to all Japanese School students for the rest of the day. Compared to the lounge, which was a big open space, the seminar room was an enclosed small space. Although the room was available to any student in the school, it practically became a private space for Parker and his study mates. Tadaima ‘I’m home’ or ‘I’m back’ and okaeri ‘Welcome back’ are the expressions used among the regulars in the seminar room. なんか「お邪魔します」って感じ ‘I feel like ojamashimasu’ (lit. ‘Excuse me for disturbing you’, the greeting used when entering someone’s home) was how one of the non-regulars described how it felt to him to go into the seminar room. Students have their preferences and styles in terms of how and where to study. Some students prefer to study alone and some study in a group. Some students prefer to study in their own rooms and some like to study in a coffee shop. Parker said, 私にとっては、グループで言語を勉強するのは大 切だと思います ‘For me, studying a language in a group is important.’ This was the reason why he chose to study in the lounge. He thought it was important to study a language in a group because he believed that the students could teach and learn from each other. 私にとって、グループで、言語を勉強する のは、大切だと思います。例えば、質問が あったら、他の人、隣の人に聞けますが、 で も、一人で勉強しているのは、困りますね。 それと、勉強している間に、隣の人は時々 質問があったら、私に聞きます。それは、 私はいい練習だと思います。私はその質問 の答えをわかったら、教えられます。私は わからなかったら、私も誰かに聞きます。

For me, studying a language in a group is important. For example, if I have a question, I can ask other students, the students next to me. But if I study alone, it would be a problem. Also, other students ask me if they have aquestion. I think that’s a good practice. If I know the answer, I can teach. If I don’t know the answer, I also ask someone.

A Frat Boy who Wants to Speak Japanese

When he applied to the Japanese School in January, Parker did not know about the Language Pledge. He chose to study at Middlebury because he believed ミドルベリーは一流のプログラムです ‘Middlebury is the first-rate program.’ He had known about Middlebury College due to its reputation and strength in foreign language study. One day, after he was accepted in the Japanese School, he learned about the Language Pledge while he was reading the materials that he had received from Middlebury College. At that time he thought that the pledge was a sort of gesture meaning なるべく日本語を話しましょう ‘Let’s speak Japanese as much as possible’, and he did not realize that it was a serious commitment, that 日本語だけ話さなければならない ‘You have to speak only Japanese.’

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Portraits of Second Language Learners

After spending a few weeks in the program, he came to believe that the Language Pledge was the best aspect of the program. プレッジは本当に重 要だと思います。言語の勉強にとって必要だと思います ‘I think that the pledge is really important. It is necessary for language learning’, Parker said. Parker thought that, because of the pledge, he had plenty of opportunities to speak Japanese not only in class but also outside class, which he had never experienced anywhere – at his university or even when he was staying in Japan. 日本に行っても、他にアメリカ人や英語を話 せる外国人がいたら、まあ、多分、一般的に 英語を話します。例えば、私と他の英語を話 せる人が話している時に、何かわからなかっ たら、英語に変わって、英語で話します。そ れは母語ですから、困った時に英語に変え ますね。 でも、それは、ここで、 できない。

Even if I go to Japan, if there are other Americans or foreigners who can speak English, generally speaking, we probably speak English to each other. For example, while I am talking to another Englishspeaking person, if I don’t know how to say certain things [in Japanese], I will switch to English and start speaking English. It’s my mother tongue, so I will switch to English if there is a problem. But, I cannot do that here.

Parker lived in Japan for seven years. He was one year old when his family moved to Japan due to his father’s job assignment. 日本語は全然 話さなかった ‘I didn’t speak Japanese at all’, Parker recalls. His family lived in Tokyo, and his parents sent their children – Parker and his older brother – to an international school. ひらがなを勉強したのを覚えてる ‘I  remember that I studied hiragana.’ Parker recalls the memories of learning Hiragana (one of the three scripts of Japanese) in the Japanese language class at his school. It was after going to college that Parker officially (re)started studying Japanese. In the summer after his sophomore year, he returned to Tokyo for the fi rst time since his family had moved back to the United States when he was eight. Parker stayed in Tokyo for over two months and worked at a co-op in Tokyo as an intern through an international internship program. Through interaction with Japanese people, Parker quickly learned that living in Japan did not necessarily provide opportunities for him to speak Japanese. Japanese people wanted to speak English with him, and with his international friends he spoke English. Blond hair, hazel eyes, gingham check shirt, cotton shorts and sandals – nothing, at least from his appearance, connects Parker to Japan. He looks like a stereotypical upper-class young American man who would be, in my biased opinion, a more natural fit in a Spanish language class. ‘Frat boy’, Naiya describes Parker in a cynical tone. Naiya is always cynical, but her observations sometimes surprise me. Parker belongs to a fraternity at his university. I went onto his Facebook page and peeked at his pictures. In his pictures, Parker was smiling with other Caucasian boys with their arms around each other’s shoulders. In another picture, he was

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smiling with a group of Caucasian girls who were wearing dresses straight out of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue. I went back to his main Facebook page and noticed that he had more than 800 ‘friends.’ ‘Frat boy’, indeed, accurately captures a face of Parker. Who would imagine that this ‘frat boy’ would want to learn and speak Japanese? Gambaru ‘Work Hard’

Morning is not a good time to talk to Parker. He is walking with his eyes half-closed. He usually skips breakfast at the dining hall and eats an energy bar as he walks to class. The choices that he made at Middlebury cut down on his sleeping time. Parker has spent practically every afternoon participating in school activities and, consequently, his time for doing homework, studying for daily quizzes and preparing for the next day’s lessons is reduced. As a result, he stays up late to fi nish what he needs to get done by the next morning. よし、がんばろう ‘All right, Gambaro (“work hard” in volitional form)’, Parker tells himself in the seminar room. がんばるは、あなたのキャッチフレーズね ‘Gambaru “work hard” is your catch phrase, isn’t it?’, one of his study mates teases him, and laughs. Gambaru ‘work hard’ was indeed Parker’s motto at Middlebury from the beginning until the end of the program. He repeatedly mentioned in our interviews that he had to 精一杯がんばる ‘Seippai gambaru “work hard as best one can”.’ 日本語を話すのが上手になりたいのは、ここに来た理由 ‘I want to become better at speaking Japanese. This is the very reason why I came here’, Parker looked at me. 日本語を話すのが上手になりたいのは、こ こに来た理由なんですが、だから、今は、 ひまな時間があまりないんです。 でも、そ れは、仕方がなくて、精一杯がんばらなく ちゃいけないんです。

I want to become better at speaking Japanese. This is the very reason why I came here. So, now, I don’t have much free time. But, it cannot be helped. I have to work hard as best I can, you know.

精一杯がんばらなくちゃいけない ‘I have to work hard as best I can’ – I was trying to comprehend the meaning of his words while I was nodding and watching his face. I once asked Parker if he had considered spending less time participating in the group activities, so that he would be able to spend more time studying and doing homework in the afternoons. Parker immediately said no. いつも人たちといるのは必要だと思います。その時(人といる時)、日本語を話 せて、進歩できます ‘I think it’s necessary to be with other people. At that time [when I am with other people], I can speak Japanese and improve my language.’ Parker believed that creating opportunities to interact with other people would simultaneously create opportunities for him to speak Japanese and improve his language skills. For Parker, participating in the club and group activities and interacting with other people were part of

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the process of gambaru ‘work hard’ to improve his Japanese language skills. Parker’s motto, seippai gambaru ‘work hard as best I can’, was manifested in various ways. Besides being involved in club and optional group activities, Parker actively participated in the events that the school hosted at weekends. At the athletic event at the end of the fi rst week, for example, he was seen in every activity. 全部のゲームに参加しま した ‘I participated in all of the games’, Parker said. At the talent show at the end of the seventh week, he volunteered to be an emcee. He also joined the rakugo club after the midterm break and performed a kobanashi ‘comical short story’ in front of everyone at the talent show, along with the other members of the rakugo club. 落語が特に好きという訳では ないんですが、人たちの前で話す力がなりたいので、そのために、落語は役に立 つと思います ‘It is not that I particularly like rakugo but I am not com-

petent at speaking in front of people. So, for that reason, I think rakugo is useful’, Parker explained as the reason why he joined the rakugo club in the second half of the program. In his personal life, he limited the time he spent checking email messages and Facebook. He also limited his contact with his family. 無駄遣いしたくない ‘I don’t want to waste’, Parker said. 朝から夜まで日本語だけ話して、そして夜の 時、３時間４時間英語だけ話して見て聞いてと したら、さっきの日本語だけ話すの、無駄だと 思います。せっかく、勉強した、かんばったは 無駄になると思います。

I speak only Japanese from the morning tonight. If I speak, watch and listen to English at night for 3 or 4 hours, my effort of speaking only Japanese would be wasted. My hard work would be wasted.

As his words described, Parker spent his time in the Japanese School speaking Japanese from morning to night until he went to bed. Languaging

The seminar room served not only as a place for learning for Parker, but also as a place for socializing. He explained that one of the best aspects of the program was the other students. He hesitantly told me that he had thought 一般的に、日本語を勉強している学生は、たぶん、オタクっぽい人 ‘Generally, students who study Japanese are otaku “nerd or geek”-like students.’ However, Parker, through interaction with other students in the Japanese School, soon discovered that 全部の学生は、オタクというわけじ ゃない ‘It is not that all students [in the Japanese School] are otaku.’ Although Parker interacted with various students on various levels, he became close to the ‘regulars’ in the seminar room. These ‘regulars’ consisted of several students from Levels 3 and 4. Literally every day, they gathered in the seminar room and studied together. While studying, they also talked about various things, such as the movies they had seen, music

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they liked, plans for going out on weekend nights, homework, assignments, complaints and so on. Among many other activities that took place in the seminar room, one in which the ‘regulars’ repeatedly engaged was talking about language. In the SLA term it is called languaging (Swain, 2006). When L2 learners engage in using language to talk about problems that they encounter in a target language, such as appropriate word choice, better sentence structures to carry their intended meaning or certain grammar points, they may come to a new insight and develop a more accurate and complete understanding of how the language works. This ‘“coming-to-know-while-speaking” phenomenon’ (Swain, 2006: 97) is defi ned as languaging in the SLA literature. According to Swain, languaging is the very moment in which learning is taking place. Students in the Japanese School often engaged in languaging while they were in class, having conversations in the dining hall, chatting during school activities and events and walking to the dining hall or classroom. Yet, the occurrence of languaging is fundamentally incidental and unpredictable. Because Parker and the other members of the seminar room study group regularly met and studied together, languaging became more like a regular activity. It usually started with someone’s question and ended up as a discussion involving everyone in the room. Excerpt 1 shows one such occasion. Parker is working on his assignment: describing a scene from a movie that the Level 4 students had seen in class. Parker encounters some difficulty in describing a particular scene. In that particular scene, Mr Fujimoto (the main character in the movie), a government agent whose job it is to deliver an important government document in person, is visiting the home of Naoki, who is the recipient of the document. Suffering from some mental disorder, Naoki shuts himself off from society and stays in his room all day long. When Mr Fujimoto rings the doorbell, Naoki does not answer. After a few attempts, Mr Fujimoto gives up delivering the document and walks away, retracing his steps. At the last moment before he leaves the property, he looks back at the house and sees Naoki standing at the second-floor window, looking down at him. In Excerpt 1 Parker is trying to solve a problem that he has encountered. The excerpt starts with Parker’s self-talk (Line 1). He is probably trying to say, ‘Fujimoto saw Naoki who came out to the second-floor window’ (underlining is mine). In Line 1, however, he says, ‘[Fujimoto] saw Naoki in the second-floor window’ (underlining is mine), which is grammatically incorrect. In Line 2 Parker rephrases ‘in the second-floor window’ as ‘from the window’ (underlining is mine). It is likely that Parker meant ‘Naoki was watching Fujimoto from the second-floor window’, considering the fact that he was clearly aware that Fujimoto was standing outside and looking up at Naoki, who was inside the room and watching Fujimoto through the window. However, Parker’s

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utterance ‘from the window’ (Line 2) can be interpreted as ‘[Fujimoto saw Naoki] from the second-floor window’, which would place Fujimoto inside the room. Eva, who is another Level 4 student and a regular in the seminar room, notices the inaccuracy in Parker’s description (Line 3). In Line 9, however, Eva realizes Parker’s intent, and from Line 10, Parker and Eva together try to come up with the appropriate description – Fujimoto is outside and looking up at Naoki and Naoki is inside the room watching Fujimoto through the second-floor window. However, they cannot come up with the appropriate way to express the spatial relationship, and at the end of the excerpt, Eva tells Parker that she needs time to think alone. Excerpt 1 Seminar room conversation

P: Parker; EV: Eva (Level 4) 1 P:

2 P:

じゃあ、もう一度。*２階の窓 に直樹を見る(ひとり言)

(10秒) あ、窓からxxx (ひとり言)

1 P:

2 P:

3 EV: 窓から？ (笑い) 4 P: 窓からでしょ？ 5 EV: 藤本は窓

3 EV: 4 P: 5 EV:

6 P: いやいやいや 7 EV: どうぞどうぞどうぞ 8 P: 藤本は窓から

6 P: 7 EV: 8 P:

9 EV: でた、ああ、そんな「窓から

9 EV:

10 P:

でた」か 見た時に

10 P:

11 EV: 大丈夫だよ 12 P: xxx 藤本は、外、外で

11 EV: 12 P:

13 EV: 外から見た？（笑い）

13 EV:

14 P:

どうやって言う？ 外で、２階、 ２階の窓、に？

(８秒)（PとEVは何かボソボ ソと話している） 16 EV: ちょっと待って。

15

14 P:

15 16 EV:

Well, then, one more time. *In the second-floor window, [Fujimoto] sees Naoki. (Talking to himself) (10 seconds) Ah, from the window xxx (talking to himself) From the window? (Laugh) From the window, isn’t it? Fujimoto [topic marker] the window No no no Please please please Fujimoto [topic marker] from the window Came out, oh, that ‘came out from the window’, I see. When [Fujimoto?] saw [Naoki?] You are right. xxx Fujimoto [topic marker] outside, at outside Saw [Naoki] from outside? (Laugh) How do we say it? At outside, [Fujimoto saw] the second-floor, in the secondfloor window? (8 seconds) (P and EV are mumbling something) Wait a moment.

Parker: Lost Opportunities, Reconnection and Transforming

17 P: ほんとに難しいよ 18 EV: そんなに難しくない

17 P: It’s really hard. 18 EV: It’s not that hard.

19 P:

19 P:

じゃあ、お願い

20 EV: ちょっと待って

75

Then, please.

20 EV: Wait a moment.

After three minutes, Eva starts to talk to Parker again. This time, she agrees with Parker and says, さっき言ってたことは正しいと思うよ ‘I think what you said a little while ago is correct.’ After hearing Eva’s statement, さっき言ってたことは正しいと思うよ ‘I think what you said a little while ago is correct’, Parker expresses some upset feelings in a comical way, but soon they start to discuss their original problem (Excerpt 2). Although Eva agrees with Parker’s description that ‘[Naoki who came out] from the window’, they are both aware that ‘from the window’ (underlining is mine) is problematic. Naoki did not come out of the window. He was inside the room, standing and watching Fujimoto through the secondfloor window. In the middle of the talk, Eva and Parker start to laugh. They probably start to laugh because they know, in terms of linguistic structure, that the sentence that they are trying to construct is not very complex, yet they are unable to construct the sentence to express what they want to say. In Line 10 Parker decides to draw a picture on the whiteboard. Then Parker and Eva (re)engage in talk to solve the language problem that they are facing. Excerpt 2 Seminar room conversation

EV: Eva; P: Parker; JN: Jen (Level 3) 1 EV: 窓、窓、何だっけ、ええと、窓か ら出た直樹とか

2 P:

窓からでた時でしょ？ ちょっと、正しくないよ

3 EV: 窓にでた、窓にでてきた 4 P:

例えば、なんか、あの、ある人 が、あの、家にいる、ね？ で も、あの、じゃ、わたし、わたた た、べべ、おれは(手の平で机 をたたく音)外にいるね？ そし て、その人は

5 EV: (笑い)

1 EV: The window, window, what was it, uhm, ‘Naoki who came out from the window.’ 2 P: ‘When [Naoki] came out from the window’, isn’t it? It’s not correct. 3 EV: Came out to the window, Came out to the window. 4 P: For example, uhm, some person, uhm, is home, right? But, then, I [watashi], wata, ta ta be be, I [ore] (sound of hitting the desk with a hand) am outside, right? And then, that person [topic marker] 5 EV: (Laugh)

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6 P: 7 8 9 10

EV: P: EV: P:

(３秒)忘れちゃった、窓か ら見た(笑い) (笑い) 全然わからない。 (笑い) (笑い)絵を書く、絵を書く

6 P: 7 8 9 10

EV: P: EV: P:

11 JN: 言葉でできない？

11 JN:

12 EV: (笑い)本当に説明できない。え

12 EV:

えと、外に行ったら ２階の窓を見て、その窓、その 部屋で、誰かいて、ま、まど、外 から、その窓を見て、

13 P:

よし、はい、はい(Pはホワイトボ 13 P: ードに絵を書き終わる)

14 15 16 17

(笑い) どうやって どうやって説明する？ どうやって文を作る？

EV: P: EV: P:

(笑い)

14 15 16 17

EV: P: EV: P:

(3 seconds) I forgot [what I was going to say], saw from the window (laugh) (Laugh) I have no idea. (Laugh) (Laugh) I will draw a picture, I will draw a picture. You cannot explain in words? (Laugh) I really cannot explain. Uhm, [Fujimoto] went outside, looked at the second-floor window, that window, at the room, there was somebody, and from the wi, window, from outside, [Fujimoto] looked at the window, OK, yes, yes (P fi nishes drawing a picture on the whiteboard.) (Laugh) How How do we explain? How do we make a sentence? (Laugh)

When Parker and Eva (re)start discussing their language problem, Sally comes into the seminar room (Excerpt 3). Sally is a Level 5 (the highest proficiency level) student. As Jen (a Level 3 student, another regular in the seminar room) explains in Line 1, Sally was considered sempai (one’s senior usually in school or company) by some students in the Japanese School. Although Sally was not a regular in the seminar room study group, she sometimes came by and chatted with whoever was in the room. As soon as Sally comes into the seminar room, Parker asks Sally for help. Parker says to Sally, 全部忘れちゃった ‘I have forgotten all [my Japanese]’ (Line 2). ‘全部忘れちゃった “I have forgotten all [my Japanese]”’ is an exaggeration. Parker, of course, has not forgotten all the Japanese that he has learned in the past. He may have been trying to convey a sense that the language problem that he was trying to solve should not be so difficult. Sally looks at the whiteboard and tries to comprehend the situation. As she understands the language problem that Parker and Eva are facing, she joins the discussion about how to construct a sentence describing the scene that Parker and Eva saw in the movie. As the discussion goes

Parker: Lost Opportunities, Reconnection and Transforming

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on, other students in the seminar room join the discussion. From Lines 14 through 18, Parker and Sally are fi nally able to co-construct the sentence that Parker (and everyone in the seminar room at the end) were trying to figure out. Excerpt 3 Seminar room conversation

JN: Jen; P: Parker; SL: Sally (Level 5); S?: Unidentified student; SS: Multiple students 1 JN: (サリーが部屋に入ってく る) あ、先輩！ あ、お願い。全部忘れち ゃった、日本語。お願い (サリーは 状況を理解し ようとしているよう) 3 P: Aさんは、窓、から、Bさ んを見た？ どうやって 見た？ 4 EV: (笑い) 窓で 5 SL: ああ 外で見たけど 6 P: 7 SL: はい 外で、窓に見た？ 8 P:

2 P:

9 10 11 12

S?: SS: JN: SL:

窓から？ いやいや 外から それは、いや、だめ。窓 からだったら、Bさん

13 EV: そうそうそうそう (複数の学生が話しだ 14 SL:

す） あの、窓で、あの、Aさん はBさんを、あの、窓で た、窓で立って

15 P:

窓で立っている

16 SL:

窓で立っている（声が大 きくなる）２階の窓で立 っている

1 JN: (Sally comes into the seminar room.) Ah, sempai [address term used to refer to one’s senior]! 2 P: Ah, please. I have forgotten all [my Japanese]. Please. (Sally seems to try to understand the situation.) 3 P: A-san saw B-san, from, the window? How did [A-san] see? 4 EV: (Laugh) at the window 5 SL: Ah 6 P: [A-san] saw [B-san] outside 7 SL: Yes 8 P: At outside, [A-san] saw [B-san] in the window? 9 S?: From the window? 10 SS: No no 11 JN: From outside 12 SL: That, no, that is not good. If it was ‘from the window’, B-san 13 EV: That’s right that’s right. (Multiple students start to talk.) 14 SL: Uhm, at the window, uhm, A-san [topic marker] B-san [object marker], uhm, at the window, stand at the window 15 P: standing at the window [this is part of a noun-modifying clause] 16 SL: standing at the window (SL’s volume becomes larger), standing at the second-floor window

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Portraits of Second Language Learners

17 P: 18 SL:

[Bさんを見た [Bさんを見た。それぐら

いかな

はぁ(息をはく) 19 P: 20 EV: ああ、すごい

17 P: [saw B-san 18 SL: [saw B-san. This is probably it. 19 P: Ha (exhaling) 20 EV: Wow, great.

This is exactly what Parker mentioned in our fi rst interview. Students can teach each other and learn from one another. 私にとって、グループで、言語を勉強 するのは、大切だと思います。例え ば、質問があったら、他の人、隣の人 に聞けますが、でも、一人で勉強して いるのは、困りますね。それと、勉強 している間に、隣の人は時々質問があ ったら、私に聞きます。それは、私は いい練習だと思います。私はその質問 の答えをわかったら、教えられます。 私はわからなかったら、私も誰かに 聞きます。

For me, studying a language in a group is important. For example, if I have a question, I can ask other students, the students next to me. But if I study alone, it would be a problem. Also, other students ask me if they have a question. I think that’s a good practice. If I know the answer, I can teach. If I don’t know the answer, I also ask someone.

Among the members of the seminar room study group, Parker became close to Tuan, a Level 3 student. Tuan was a student at Middlebury College during the regular school year. He had studied abroad for a year in Japan as an exchange student when he was in high school. Tuan was, to my eyes, a typical Middlebury College student – bright, confident, positive and inquisitive. Parker and Tuan quickly became close. They started to run together before lunch, went swimming together, went out together, planned a party together and studied together in the seminar room. Due to his ethnic background, Tuan speaks Hawaiian and Vietnamese along with English. When Parker and Tuan were together – mostly with other students and sometimes just by themselves, they often talked about language. Tuan was, probably due to his multilingual background and also his curiosity, sensitive about how different languages work. He generated many questions about Japanese and wasn’t shy about asking these questions to the people around him. In the seminar room, Tuan often shared his curiosity about Japanese with Parker and other members. The following excerpt, for example, shows one such occasion. In Excerpt 4, Tuan is asking if he can change the expression okagesamade ‘thanks to’ into a negative form, ‘no thanks to’ (Lines 1–5). Okagesamade is a set phrase to express the speaker’s appreciation for and a feeling of being indebted to other people for their help. In terms of linguistic structure, okagesamade ‘thanks to’ consists of: (a) okage, literally means ‘shade’, which originally meant ‘God’s shade’; (b) sama, an honorific address term; and (c) de, part of the copula. In Line 7 a student responds to Tuan’s question and says, okagesamade wa nai, using the negation of the copula.

Parker: Lost Opportunities, Reconnection and Transforming 79

In Line 10 Parker expresses his opinion that the negative form of okagesamade ‘thanks to’ is not actually used and is impossible to make into a negative form. Ben (a Level 3 student) disagrees with Parker (Line 11) and says that there must be a way to say it (Line 14). In Line 15 Parker brings up another expression, seide ‘because of.’ Seide ‘because of’ conveys a sort of opposite meaning to okagesamade ‘thanks to.’ It is used when the speaker blames a third person for an unexpected negative outcome. From Line 16, Parker and Ben start discussing the difference between when to use おかげさまで okagesamade ‘thanks to’ and when to use seide ‘because of.’ After listening to the discussion between Parker and Ben for a while, Tuan throws in a new topic (Line 17). He brings up another set phrase, tondemonai ‘certainly not; no way; don’t mention it.’ Tondemonai ‘certainly not; no way; don’t mention it’, as a set phrase, dismisses the force of the interlocutor’s utterance. It is a set phrase and is not usually conjugated. However, in Line 17 Tuan tries to change tondemonai ‘certainly not; no way; don’t mention it’ into a negative form. Parker and Ben then realize that Tuan is sort of experimenting and playing with language. Tuan tells Parker and Ben, who were engaging in the discussion in a serious manner, that they are too serious. Excerpt 4 Seminar room conversation

TN: Tuan (Level 3); P: Parker; S?: Unidentified student; B: Ben (Level 3)

1 TN: 「おかげさまで」の反対 は？

2 P: xxx 3 TN: そうじゃないけど、例えば、 おかげ（ P がTNの発話を

さえぎる） あ、おかげさま 4 P: 5 TN: おかげさまで、例えば、おか げさまはthanks to,でもno thanks toというは、ないで しょ(笑い) おかげさまで、元気 6 P:

7 S?:

おかさまではない

8 TN: おかげさまではない？ おかげさまではないで 9 S?: 10 P:

いや、 でも、そのことを、絶 対、言わないでしょ。言え ない

1 TN: What is the opposite of okagesamade ‘thanks to’? 2 P: xxx 3 TN: It’s not that. For example, okage (P cuts off TN’s utterance.) 4 P: Ah, okagesama 5 TN: Okagesamade, for example, okagesama is ‘thanks to’, but there is no ‘no thanks to.’ (Laugh) 6 P: Okagesamade, I am doing well. 7 S?: Okagesamade wa nai [negation of okagesamade] 8 TN: Okagesamade wa nai? 9 S?: Okagesamade wa nai de [negation of okagesamade] 10 P: But, [people] never say that. It’s impossible [to say that].

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Portraits of Second Language Learners

11 B:

でも、そのこと、ない

11 B:

12 TN: でも、英語である

12 TN:

でも、日本語でxxx でも、それは、なんか、言い 方がある せいで 15 P: 16 TN: でも、でも、せいは、xxx (PとBが「せいで」の使い方 について話し始める）

13 P: 14 B:

17 TN: とんでもない、とんでもなく

17 TN:

13 P: 14 B:

18

ない？（笑い） (２秒) TN: わかる？ (２秒)

19 TN: 冗談だけ。きらい。君たちい つもまじめ

15 P: 16 TN:

TN: 19 TN:

But, not a such thing, [disagreeing with P] But, it’s possible to say it in English. But, in Japanese xxx But, that’s, uhm, there must be a way to sat it. Seide ‘Because of’ But, but, sei is xxx (P and B start talking about how to use seide ‘because of.’) Tondemo nai, tondemo nakunai? (Laugh) (2 seconds) Do you understand [what I mean]? (2 seconds) It’s just a joke. I hate [you, two]. You are always serious.

Day after day in the seminar room, Parker, Eva, Tuan and the other members of the study group engaged in discussing a variety of subjects, including the most mundane events in their life at Middlebury, language problems they encountered, their curiosity about language, the topics of their fi nal projects and so on. No matter what they were discussing, there was one thing that never changed – they were speaking in Japanese. Unlike what Parker had experienced during the previous summer in Japan, where students started to speak English when it was difficult for them to express themselves in Japanese, at Middlebury, because of the Language Pledge, students had to carry out all their conversations in Japanese. Here, the students could not switch to English no matter how difficult it was to explain in Japanese. Language Pledge があるから、日本語だけで話せるでしょ ‘Because we have the Language Pledge, we can speak only in Japanese’, Parker says, as if he had discovered a new treasure in his life. The Pursuit of Authenticity

Parker’s Japanese language goal was to learn to speak in the same way that Japanese people do. He mentioned the proverb ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do’, and said that foreigners should adopt the sociocultural norms of Japanese society and speak and behave in the same way that Japanese people do if they want to learn Japanese. Parker not only did gambaru ‘work hard’ to create opportunities to use Japanese through

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participation in school activities and events and interaction with other members of the school, but also did gambaru ‘work hard’ to emulate the way in which Japanese people speak and act. One such effort was the adoption of the gesture of tegatana o kiru (lit. making chopping motions with one’s hand). When he spent a summer in Tokyo, Parker observed that some Japanese men used the gesture of tegatana o kiru. The summer before he came to Middlebury, Parker had stayed in Tokyo for more than two months in order to learn about Japanese language and culture through an international internship program. That particular internship program aims to provide American university students with the experience of living in a foreign country and fostering cross-cultural awareness through being immersed in the target culture and language and interaction with local people. Parker worked at a co-op in Tokyo and lived with a Japanese host family. One day at the co-op, he noticed that a Japanese man made a hand movement that Parker had never seen in the United States. The Japanese man was making chopping motions with his hand while he was talking to another Japanese person. Since then, Parker had started to notice that not only that particular Japanese man, but also other Japanese men, used the same gesture – chopping motions with a hand. One day, Parker asked his host family about the gesture. They told Parker that it was the gesture used by Japanese men saying すみません ‘I am sorry; excuse me.’ Parker has adopted not only the gesture of tegatana o kiru but also the head movements that accompany it. When apologizing, Japanese people bow. The gesture of tegatana o kiru often accompanies the nodding head movement. Parker usually brings his right hand above his temple and bows multiple times as he says すみません ‘I am sorry; excuse me’ and makes the chopping motions at the same time. The gesture of chopping motions and head movements fit well with the image of middle-aged Japanese men, but they look comical when adopted by a young Caucasian man. 変 ‘strange’, Naiya once told me, bringing up the topic of Parker’s gesture. Parker, indeed, often uses this gesture. He was doing it the other day in class in front of everyone. Parker’s efforts to gambaru ‘work hard’ to emulate Japanese behavior were manifested in another way. One day, the Level 4 students read a few episodes from the comic book ダーリンは外国人 ‘My darling is a foreigner’, which became popular in Japan. The focus of the lesson was on cross-cultural diff erences between the United States and Japan. The book tells the story of a Japanese woman (Saori) and an American man (Tony) as they start a relationship, encounter cross-cultural differences, overcome various issues and eventually marry. One of the episodes that the Level 4 students read describes how Japanese people eat noodles. In the episode, Tony expresses his surprise when he sees Japanese people slurp soba ‘buckwheat’ noodles. Saori tells Tony that

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it is the Japanese way of eating noodles. Tony, who grew up with American culture, was raised to believe that slurping noodles was bad manners. A couple of weeks after the Level 4 students read this episode, there was an occasion on which the Level 4 students gathered together and cooked gyoza ‘dumplings’ and soba ‘buckwheat’ noodles. Parker, while eating soba noodles, surprised everyone by slurping his noodles loudly. 外国人だからすすらないのは、おかしいでしょ ‘It’s odd not to slurp just because you are a foreigner, isn’t it?’, Parker later said. Parker’s effort to gambaru ‘work hard’ to emulate the Japanese way was also manifested in his language use, particularly in his choice of the fi rst-person pronoun. Parker, through his internship experience of living in Tokyo, noticed that watashi ‘I’ was not actually used by male Japanese speakers. Watashi is a gender-neutral fi rst-person singular pronoun (the English equivalent of ‘I’). It can be used in both formal and informal conversations. For these reasons, watashi is introduced and taught as a default fi rst-person singular pronoun in L2 Japanese classrooms. Parker, in his Japanese classes, had been taught to use watashi ‘I’ to refer to himself. However, he had noticed when he was living in Tokyo that the majority of the male speakers with whom he interacted used ore rather than watashi to refer to themselves. Ore is also a fi rst-person singular pronoun, but it is used by male speakers in informal conversations. At Middlebury, Parker identified himself using both watashi and ore. Excerpt 5 shows the coexistence of both variations in his language use. In the excerpt, Parker, Tuan and Jen are talking about volleyball on the way to the library. Parker is a member of the school volleyball group. In Line 5 Jen asks Parker why he is not going to the practice. Tuan (Line 6) asks if he has an exam the next day (therefore he needs to study today). Parker tells Tuan and Jen that, even though he doesn’t have the exam until the following Monday, he wants to review (Line 10). In this utterance, he uses watashi ‘I’ to refer to himself. Tuan starts talking about his exam (Line 11), and for the next 40 seconds he talks about his plans for preparing for the exam. After a 6-second silence, Parker changes the topic of conversation and shares the news that he has fi nally picked up his school T-shirt from the office. In this utterance, Parker uses ore ‘I’ to refer to himself (Line 12). Excerpt 5 Conversation on the way to the library

TN: Tuan; P: Parker; JN: Jen 1 2

TN: バレーボール、４時 はい、それは日曜日でし P:

1 2

3

JN:

3

ょ？ 練習

TN: Volleyball, 4:00 P: Yes, that’s on Sunday, isn’t it? JN: Practice

Parker: Lost Opportunities, Reconnection and Transforming

あ、え、今日？ちゃあ [Pは ４時にバレーの練習がるこ とを知らなかったよう]

4

P:

え、どうして？ 何かある、 明日？ TN: 試験？ JN: 明日じゃないでしょ？ 明日じゃない。月曜日 P:

5

JN:

6 7 8

TN: JN: P:

4

P:

5

JN:

6 7 8

9 TN: 明日じゃない？ 月曜日。だけど、復習した 10 → P:

いから、全部復習。私 は、xxx（TN の発話と重 なる）

11

TN: 私の試験は月曜日。明日の 方、いいでしょ？

9 TN: 10 → P:

11

TN:

(TN は、どうして明日試験 を受けるほうがいいと思う か理由を説明しはじめる。 短い沈黙のあと、TN は自 分の試験勉強の計画につ いて話しはじめる) (６秒) 12

P:

おれは、やっとTシャツを 持って来た

12

P:

83

Ah, eh, today? [P did not seem to know that there was a volleyball practice at 4:00.] Eh, why? Do you have something tomorrow? Exam? It’s not tomorrow, is it? It’s not tomorrow. Monday. Not tomorrow? Monday. But [I] want to review, review all. I [watashi] xxx (overlaps with TN’s speech) My exam is on Monday. It would be better [to have the exam] tomorrow, isn’t it? (TN starts explaining the reason why he prefers to take the exam tomorrow. After a short pause, TN starts talking about his plans for preparing for the exam.) (6 seconds) I [ore] have fi nally picked up my T-shirt.

Parker’s use of watashi and ore was, however, not random. He was aware of the pragmatic appropriateness of the use of each personal pronoun. Parker often identified himself using ore when speaking with other students. However, he used watashi to refer to himself when speaking with instructors. Excerpt 6, for example, shows Parker’s use of watashi to refer to himself in conversation with an instructor at the lunch table. In the excerpt, a female instructor starts playing a sort of guessing game about the relationship between students’ personalities and the gender of their sibling(s). In Line 1 the instructor asks Parker if he has an older sister. Parker answers that he has an older brother (Line 6). In Line 7 she expresses surprise at Parker’s answer because, considering his personality, she thought that Parker had an older sister. She continues to tell Parker that boys who have older siblings are friendly (Lines 12–18). In Line 19 Parker asks for a clarification about whether the instructor

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Portraits of Second Language Learners

thought that he looked friendly, using the first-person singular pronoun watashi ‘I’ to refer to himself. Excerpt 6 Lunch conversation

I: Instructor; P: Parker スチュワートさん、お姉さ んがいるでしょ？

1

お兄さんが？ お姉さん お兄さん お兄さん？ はい、お兄さんがいます お姉さんがいると思いまし た P: お兄さんではだめです か？(笑い)

2 3 4 5 6 7

1

I:

2 3 4 5 6 7

P: I: P: I: P: I:

8

9

(複数の学生が笑ってい る) P: なんで、すみません(笑 い)

8

I: Stewart [P’s last name]-san, you have an older sister, don’t you? P: Older brother? I: Older sister P: Older brother I: Older brother? P: Yes, I have an older brother. I: I thought you had an older sister. P: Is it not good to have an older brother? (Laugh)

9

P:

10

I:

お姉さんがいそうな性格で す

10

I:

11 12

P: わかりますか？ I: そう、あの、男の子で、お姉

11 12

P: I:

さんがいる男の子はとって もフレンドリーです とても何？ 13 P: 14 I: フレンドリーです 15 P: フレンドリー？ 16 I: はい 17 → P ああ、だから、私はフレンド リーに見えますか？ 18 I: そうそうそう(複数の学生 が笑っている) 19 P: ありがとうございます

13 P: 14 I: 15 P: 16 I: 17 → P: 18

I:

19

P:

(Multiple students are laughing.) Why, I’m sorry [for not having an older sister]. (Laugh) Considering your personality, you seem to have an older sister. Do you know [that]? Yes, uhm, boys who have older sisters are very friendly. Very what? Friendly Friendly? Yes Ah, so, do I [watashi] look friendly? That’s right. (Multiple students are laughing.) Thank you.

After this excerpt, the instructor shares her impressions of boys who have older sisters and boys who have older brothers. She mentions that, in her view, boys who have older brothers like sports. Parker immediately points out a contradiction in her statement because Parker participates in all the sports groups at Middlebury. In his utterance, he uses, again, watashi ‘I’ to refer to himself.

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Thus, Parker consciously chose when to use watashi and when to use ore and continued to refer to himself as ore in informal conversation with other students. He mentioned the reason for his choice of ore as 「俺」の方が日本 人っぽい ‘Ore is more Japanese-like/Japanese-ish.’ Toward the end of the program, the Level 4 students learned about tanka (a type of Japanese short verse consisting of 31 syllables) and were given the opportunity to create their own tanka and present it in class. Parker presented the following tanka: 俺が死ぬ こともわかった その前に 幸せになる それだけでいい ‘I [ore] am going to die, I know, before that, I am going to be happy, that’s all I want.’ When explaining his tanka, Parker mentioned his choice of personal pronoun and said, 日本人の男の人は「私」ではなくて、よく「俺」を使う ‘Japanese men more often use ore than watashi’ and 「俺」の方が日本人っぽ い ‘Ore is more Japanese-like/Japanese-ish.’ When he finished, he concluded with a series of chopping motions with his right hand. Other students were also aware of Parker’s use of ore. スチュワートさん は、いつも「俺」使う ‘Stewart-san always uses ore.’ Andy, for example, frowns. Andy, who advocates gender neutrality in language use, probably understood Parker’s use of ore as his desire to signal his maleness. Parker, however, chose to use ore to identify himself because ore was the pronoun actually used among the Japanese men whom he had met in Tokyo; therefore, ore was a more authentic way of referring to himself as a male learner and speaker of Japanese. In Parker’s words, ore is more 日本人っぽい ‘Japanese-like/Japanese-ish’ than watashi. While Parker gambaru ‘work hard’ to learn authentic ways of speaking and behaving in Japanese, he was, at the same time, critical of other students who did not gambaru ‘work hard’ to adopt Japanese ways. For example, Parker was sensitive about other students’ pronunciation. 中級２ の授業を取っているのに、初級１の発音がある人がいる ‘There are students [in the Level 4 course] who have Level 1 pronunciation even though they are taking the Level 4 course’, Parker said. He was critical of those students because he thought that their pronunciation could have improved if they had worked harder. それは、その人のせいじゃないかも しれないけど、ええ、実は、その人 とペアしたら、ちょっと嫌な感じで した。ほとんどの時がまんした。時 々、がまんできるかな、それはちょ っとひどいですね（笑い）。その人 も、がんばったら、もっと上手に なると思います。でも、何も言わな かった。

That [having non-Japanese like pronunciation] may not be their fault, (fi ller), actually, but I was annoyed during pair work when I worked with that person [a person who had nonJapanese like pronunciation]. I put up with it most of the time. Sometimes, I wondered how much more I could tolerate (laugh). This sounds terrible, I know. I think their pronunciation would become better if they worked hard. But, I didn’t say anything.

Parker was also critical of other students who did not gambaru ‘work hard’ to study Japanese. He noticed that one of his classmates was doing homework in the morning right before class. Another day, he saw another

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classmate doing homework in the morning before class. Parker felt that those students were wasting their opportunity to improve their Japanese language skills. それはちょっと、何と言う、イライラじゃ なくて、自分の中に、怒る、怒るじゃな い、その人の理由は納得できない、とい う感じ。それは、前の日、時間がたくさん あります。その前の日は、ええと、いや、 まあ、つまり、がんばらなかった。前の日 にたぶん何か「ああ嫌だ」とか「眠い」と か「後でする」とか、本気にしないようで す。 でもみんなは、このプログラムは高い ですね。だから、そんなお金を払ったか ら、精一杯がんばらなくちゃいけない でしょ、日本語が上達になるために。

That [doing homework in the morning before the class] is, how can I say, not annoying, angry, not angry [he is looking for the right word to express his feelings], I felt that I cannot accept that. They have a lot of time on the day before. On the day before, they, uh, in short, they didn’t work hard. On the day before, they were probably not serious, like ‘I don’t want to do it’, ‘I’m sleepy’ or ‘I’ll do it later.’ But everyone, this program is expensive. Since everyone paid such an amount of money, we have to work hard as best we can in order to improve our Japanese.

This is my Second Chance

Parker is, as usual, walking with his eyes half-closed in the morning. His blond hair which has grown since mid-June looks blonder in the sunlight. He is wearing moccasins today. About a month ago, the cicadas were singing and 暑い ‘it’s hot’ was a common phrase used among the students and faculty in the Japanese School. It is now getting close to mid-August. The morning chill and the yellow leaves at the tops of some of the trees are hinting the arrival of the fall in Middlebury. 忙しい ‘I’m busy’ and 試験は いつ？ ‘When is your exam?’ have become the new greetings among the students. In less than a week, the students will leave Middlebury for home. Parker and the other regulars continued to meet and study together in the seminar room during the last week of the program, as they had been doing regularly during the previous month. The topic of their conversation, however, shifted exclusively to their fi nal exams and oral presentations. Parker and the other regulars of the seminar room stayed up late to prepare for their exams and presentations. In less than a week, Parker would be leaving Middlebury. I was thinking of the question that had been lingering in my mind since my first interview with Parker – why did he say, 精一杯がんばらなくちゃいけない ‘I have to work hard as best I can’? Parker studies economics and Japanese at his university. He had taken three years of Japanese before he came to Middlebury. At Middlebury, with all his hard work, he has been doing well in terms of his grades, if that is something he is concerned about. There is really nothing that obligates him to study Japanese as hard as he imposes on himself. His words, 精一杯がんばらなくちゃいけないんです ‘I have to work hard as best I can, you know’ and 無駄遣いしたくない ‘I don’t want to waste’ carry some sense of urgency. セカンドチャンスだから ‘because [this is] my second chance’, Parker said, after a short pause, when I asked where the energy for his gambaru

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‘working hard’ came from. Parker was always articulate when he answered my questions. It was the fi rst time I saw him showing signs of hesitation. 後悔しないため ‘not to regret’, he said. 簡単にして、後悔しないためです。来た 時に本当にがんばろうと思っていたんで す。過去に行けないから、ミドルベリーで 勉強しているうちにがんばらなくちゃい けないでしょ。それは、そのことを考えた ら、簡単です。ミドルベリーで勉強してい るうちにがんばればよかったねという気 持ちがあるのはだめでしょ。

In short, it’s not to regret. When I came [to Middlebury], I decided that I was going to work really hard. Because I cannot go back to the past, I have to gambaru ‘work hard’ while I’m studying at Middlebury, you know. That, if I think of that, it’s easy. It’s not good to have a thought that I should have worked harder while I was studying at Middlebury, you know.

Parker’s biggest regret in his life is his Japanese. He lived in Japan for seven years, but he did not learn any Japanese while he was there. 全 然習わなかった。あいさつぐらいでした。 「こんにちは」 「いだたきます」とか ‘I didn’t learn [Japanese] at all. Just greetings like konnichiwa “hello” and itadakimasu (lit. “I humbly receive food”, the expression used before eating meals)’, Parker recalls. Yet, as soon as people hear that he lived in Japan for seven years, they expect him to speak Japanese fluently. 「日本 語話せるはずだね」 「いや別に」 ‘“You should be able to speak Japanese.” “Not really.”’ was the conversation that Parker had over and over again after he came back to the United States. When he was a child, 答えがなく て困ったんです ‘I was confused because I did not have the answer [for why I was not able to speak Japanese]’, Parker recalls. As he went through this ritual over and over again, a sense of regret grew in his mind. Each time he went through this ritual, he was reminded that he was unable to speak Japanese even though he had lived in Japan for seven years. それは私のせいじゃなくて、でも、日本に７年間住んでいたのに、全 然習わなかった ‘It was not my fault, but I did not learn [Japanese] at all even though I had been living in Japan for seven years’, he said. At Middlebury, too, Parker went through this ritual. It was during the party that Parker and Tuan planned for the students on Friday. It was a mystery how the students communicated, but there were many people at the party from the various levels. Music was playing through a speaker connected to someone’s computer. There were drinks and snacks on the table in the corner. Some students were playing games. Other students were dancing to the music. Still other students were talking. Everyone looked relaxed that Friday night. Parker saw me and approached me. I thanked him for inviting me to the party and we started to chat. I noticed that Parker was wearing a ring with some symbols inscribed on it. I asked Parker about his ring. He told me that it was his fraternity ring. He looked proudly at the ring. When I was looking at his ring closely, Hua joined our conversation. Hua and I started to ask Parker about his fraternity and his university. Hua seemed unusually

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talkative that night. As our conversation went on, Hua started to target her questions toward Parker. Excerpt 7 shows their exchange. As they talk, Hua fi nds out that Parker is studying economics and Japanese at his university. Then she asks, ‘Why Japanese?’ (Line 5). Hua’s tone of voice carries some sense of disapproval. She probably wants to know why Parker is studying Japanese, which, in her view, has nothing to do with his other major, economics. Hua asks Parker again why he is studying Japanese (Line 7). He tells her that he wants to become better at Japanese. Hua continues to ask Parker why he wants to become better at Japanese (Line 13). Her tone of voice is clearly challenging Parker. Considering the fact that students come to Middlebury to study Japanese, Parker’s desire to become better at Japanese is a legitimate one. Hua continues to ask if Parker likes Japan. Instead of answering Hua’s question directly, Parker tells her that he lived in Japan from age two to age eight. As soon as Hua hears that Parker lived in Japan for seven years, she expresses her surprise and asks why Parker is still in Level 4 (Hua is a Level 5 student). Parker explains that he went to an international school and did not study Japanese at all. Excerpt 7 Conversation at a party

H: Hua (Level 5); P: Parker 1 H: スチュワートさんの専攻、

何？ 2 P: 経済と日本 3 H 経済と日本語？ 4 P: (うなずく) 5 H: どうして、日本語？ 6 P: ど、どうして？ 7 H: どうして、日本語？ 経済と 全然関係ないでしょ？

8 P: ど、どうしてって 9 H: (フアは自分の専門と日本

語の関係について話し始 める）スチュワートさんは どうして日本語を勉強して いるの？

10 P:

卒業したら、１年ぐらいに 本に行きたい。それから、 多分、大学院に行くかなと 思っている

11 H: じゃあ、JET Program と か？

1 H: What is your major? 2 3 4 5 6 7

P: H: P: H: P: H:

Economics and Japanese Economics and Japanese? (Nodding) Why Japanese? Wh, why? Why Japanese? [Japanese has] nothing to do with the study of economics, does it? 8 P: Wh why 9 H: (Hua starts talking about her specialization and the reason why she is studying Japanese.) Why are you studying Japanese? 10 P: I want to go to Japan for a year after I graduate. Then, probably, I might go to a graduate school. 11 H: Then JET Program?

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12 P:

あ、ん、JETはあまり好き じゃない。日本語を話さな くてもいいでしょ。もっと日 本語を話す仕事をして、日 本語がもっと上手になりた い

13 H: どうして、日本語が上手に

なりたいの？ どうして？(声が大きくなる) どうしてって 15 H: 日本が好き？ 16 P: 俺は２歳から８歳の時ま で、日本に住んでいた 17 H: あ、そう？ え、でも、じゃ あ、どうしてそのレベル？

14 P:

18 P:

インターナショナルスクー ルに行ったから、英語だけ だった (声が小さくなる)。 日本語を全然話さなかっ た

19 H: ふうん

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12 P:

Ah, uhm, I don’t like JET. I don’t have to speak Japanese, you know. I want to something that I use more Japanese, and I want to become better at Japanese. 13 H: Why do you want to become better at Japanese? 14 P: Why? (Larger volume) Why 15 H: Do you like Japan? 16 P: I lived in Japan from when I was two to eight years old. 17 H: Oh, is that so? Ah, but, then, why [are you] at that level? 18 P: I went to an international school, so [I spoke] only English (volume is becoming smaller). I didn’t speak Japanese at all. 19 H: I see.

When Parker came back to the United States, he was eight years old. At that time he was not particularly interested in studying Japanese. 子供でし たから、したことは遊びだけだった ‘I was a child, so all I wanted to do was to play’, Parker recalls. Parker entered a third-grade class and his brother entered a fi fth-grade class in a local elementary school when Parker’s family moved back to California. 子供たちは、珍しいこと違うことは、変扱い する ‘Children fi nd something unusual or different strange’, he said. His older brother decided not to maintain his ties to Japan (language, experience, culture and other things that tied him to Japan) because, according to Parker, his brother thought that とけ込みたかったから、日本のこと、捨てた ほうがいい と思った ‘he should abandon his tie to Japan because he wanted to be integrated [into his class and his American classmates].’ Parker, on the other hand, decided to maintain his ties to Japan. He explains: あまりいじめられなかったし、日本人のク ラスメートがいたし、それは、私の日本に 住んでいたことは、いいね、捨てない方が いいという気持ちがあったからかもしれ ません。

I didn’t get picked on much, and there was a Japanese classmate in my class. So, I probably thought that my experience of living in Japan was a good thing, and I should not abandon [my ties to Japan].

His desire to keep his links to Japan, combined with his sense of regret that he was unable to speak Japanese even though he had lived in Japan for seven years, induced Parker to make various efforts to learn Japanese. When he was a child, Parker received private lessons at a Japanese family’s

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house. In his high school, he took Japanese courses for two years. He even attended a Japanese language class at a local community college while he was in high school. However, nothing seemed to work. His Japanese language skills did not improve. Parker recalls: ３年生の時、junior collegeで勉強したけ ど、高校生の宿題と短大の宿題もあったか ら、高校の宿題終わって、短大の宿題をす るかわりに寝たということです。短大の授 業では、みんな英語ばかり話したんです ね。だから、あんまりがんばらなかったん です。

When I was a junior in high school, I studied [Japanese] at a community college, but I had homework from both my high school and the community college. I slept instead of doing homework for my Japanese class at the community college after I fi nished my high school homework. In the [Japanese] class at the community college, everyone spoke English. So, I didn’t work hard.

When he entered university, Parker decided to major in Japanese. Although he had studied Japanese for two years in high school, he was placed in the first-year Japanese course, based on the results of his placement test. Parker, however, soon found that the first-year course was too easy for him. During his first two years of Japanese language study at university, Parker did not study much. As a result, he did not learn much. In the third year, he began to wonder how much better he would have been able to speak Japanese by then if he had studied hard during his first two years. 大学１年生の時に、１年生の日本語の授業 を取って、それは簡単すぎるから、あまり勉 強しなくていいという気持ちがあったか ら、あまり勉強しなかった。試験の時に、ま あまあでしたが、ほんとに、１年生の時に、 ２年生の時にほんとにがんばったら、今は どれぐらい話せるかなという気持ちがあ る。だから、ちょっと後悔があるんです。今 はちょっと消えるようにしたいんです。忘れ たいと思います。

When I was a first-year student in my university, I took the first-year Japanese language course. It was too easy, so I thought that I didn’t have to study hard, and I didn’t study. My exams were okay. But, I really wonder how much I would have been able to speak now if I had studied hard when I was a first-year and second-year student. So, I feel regret. I now want to erase it. I want to forget it.

Parker is a regular college student. He hangs out with his friends. He goes out on weekend nights. He goes to parties. On some occasions, studying and doing homework did not make it to the top of his priority list. 宿題を するかわりに寝た ‘I went to bed instead of doing homework’, he recalls. Therefore, when he decided to go to Middlebury in the summer of 201x, he made a commitment to himself – seiippai gambaru ‘working hard as best one can.’ Middlebury was his second chance to become a speaker of Japanese and his second chance to make up for lost time in the past. Becoming a Speaker of Japanese

Prior to coming to Middlebury, Parker had spent a summer in Tokyo through an international internship program. It was the first time he had

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returned to Japan since he had moved back to the United States. When Parker was living in Japan as a child, his life was contained in a world of English. He spoke English at home. He spoke English at school. Whenever he went out, one or both of his parents were always with him. He did not have to use Japanese. He did not have to learn Japanese. Therefore, he did not know Japanese. When he returned to Tokyo the previous summer, Parker experienced a strange feeling. The sounds of Japanese re-evoked his childhood sensation of living in Japan – the times when he had been surrounded by foreign sounds, which Parker had forgotten for a long time. Then he felt 自然だし、静かな気持ち ‘natural and calm.’ ７年間住んでいたけど、international school に入ったし、英語だけ話してい る友達がいたし、やっぱり日本の社会 にとけ込まなかったんですが、おもしろ いことは、東京はにぎやかなんです が、東京に行った時に、自然だし、静か な気持ちがあったんです。その時に、住 んでいた時に、日本語を全然わからな かったから、日本語を話したのは音だ けだったからだ。

Although I lived [in Japan] for seven years, I went to an international school, had Englishspeaking friends, and I was not integrated into the Japanese society, but the strange thing is that when I went back to Tokyo, I felt natural and calm even though Tokyo was busy. That time, when I had been living in Japan, I did not understand Japanese, so I only spoke [he probably meant ‘communicated’] through the sounds of Japanese. That’s probably why.

While Parker rediscovered his connection to Japan, he was constantly reminded that he was a foreigner when he was working at the co-op in Tokyo as an intern. 日本人にとって私はいつも、白人、外国人、アメリカ人 ‘For Japanese people, I am always a white, a foreigner, an American’, Parker says. Seeing foreigners – more specifically, seeing Caucasians – in Tokyo is no longer unusual in the 21st century. Tokyo is one of the biggest international cities in the world. However, at a local level, seeing and interacting with foreigners still remains unusual, according to Parker. At the co-op in Tokyo, Japanese people who saw a white young man working as a cashier or a delivery person did not hide their surprise. 人間扱いしてくだ さい ‘Please treat me like a human’, Parker said. 本当に（外国人に対し）珍しい気持ちが あります。去年働いている時に、もちろ ん東京の人は、外国人見たことがあるけ ど、働いている外国人を見てびっくりし た。目の前に外国人をみて「ええー」び っくりした。どうしよう、私は外国人です から、驚かせてすみませんでした。どう しようかな。いつも俺は外国人。 「すみ ません」 「ちょっと仕方がないんです。申 し訳ございません。」人間扱いしてくだ さい、ということですね。本当に嫌なこ とは、びっくりした後、英語を話す。なん で、英語？ 私は働いているでしょ。

[Japanese people] really have unusual feelings [toward foreigners]. When I was working [at the co-op in Tokyo] last year, of course people in Tokyo have seen foreigners, people were surprised when they saw a foreigner working [at the store]. They saw a foreigner in front of them and were surprised like ‘Oh no.’ What should I do? I am a foreigner. I am sorry to surprise you. What should I do? I am always a foreigner. ‘I’m sorry.’ ‘It cannot be helped. I am very sorry.’ Please treat me like a human. That’s what I want to say. The thing that I hate most is that they start speaking English after they are surprised. Why English? I am working, you know.

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Although Parker went to Japan to learn to speak Japanese, his efforts were rejected by Japanese people even before he started. Moreover, not only was he not given the opportunity to speak Japanese, but he was also repeatedly reminded that he was an outsider. Furthermore, Parker quickly learned that Japanese people did not expect foreigners to speak Japanese. At the same time, he was thinking about the nostalgic sensation that he experienced in the middle of Tokyo. It was something that he had forgotten a long time ago and something that had connected Parker to Japan. 友達はもう日本にいないし、日本に行く時 に、私の、インターナショナルスクールと か、経験した所に行けるけど、それだけで す。時間がたつと共に、その経験が遠くなる と思います。 でも、なんか、日本語を勉強し たら、もう少し近くなる？ ちょっと難しい。日 本語を勉強する前に、日本に住んでいた は、なんか自己暗示にすぎないでした。

I don’t have [childhood] friends in Japan any more. I can go to places like I used to go [when I was living in Japan] such as my international school, but that’s it. As time passes, my experience moves far away. But, if I study Japanese, does it become closer? It’s difficult [to explain]. Before I started to learn Japanese, living in Japan was just some sort of self-suggestion.

Almost 15 years after he moved back to the United States, Parker rediscovered his connection to Japan. Furthermore, he realized that studying Japanese was the only way for him to maintain this connection. アメリカに帰ったばかりの時は、記憶は 自然に覚えられましたが、それはだんだ ん、時間がたつと共に、自然じゃないよう になる。 でも、日本語を勉強しはじめた ら、記憶が消えてしまう、ごめん、ちょっ と待って、うまく説明したいんですが、説 明しにくいですね。あの（ポーズ）ごめん （ポーズ）あ、その記憶を守られる方法 を見つけた。そういうこと。日本語を勉強 で、そのこと覚えられる。わかるか？

When I moved back to America, I was able to remember my memories [of living in Japan] naturally. Those memories gradually, as time passes, become unnatural. But, because I started to learn Japanese, my memories will disappear. Sorry. Wait. I want to explain better, but it’s difficult to explain. Uhm (short pause) sorry (short pause), ah, I found a way to protect my memories. That’s what it is. By studying Japanese, I can remember my memories. Do you understand?

The summer before Parker came to Middlebury, he had rediscovered his lost connection to Japan. However, he was not given the opportunity to create a way to protect his memories. He was constantly rejected because he was a foreigner with blond hair, white skin and hazel eyes. In this sense, too, coming to Middlebury and studying Japanese was his second chance to protect his connection to Japan. なるべく相手のように話したいんです ‘I want to speak like a Japanese person as much as possible.’ Parker believes that speaking Japanese like Japanese people do is the way not to be treated as a foreigner and the way for him to step into the world of Japanese without being rejected. Therefore, he wants to speak Japanese like 私の場合は、もちろん白人だけど

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(強調）顔だけ、顔しか違わない ‘in my case, I am a white [emphasis], but only my face, only my face is different.’ なるべく相手のように話したいんです。 なぜかと言うと、簡単にして、外国人扱 いされたくないからだ。アメリカ人のよう に、日本人じゃないように日本語を話し たら、saki、karaokeという、英語でそう いうことがありますが、日本語で話した ら、日本語の発音を使います。必ず。そ のように話したら、相手に、相手は私に 仲良くなれると思います。私の場合は、 もちろん白人だけど（強調）、顔だけ、顔 しか違わない。

I want to speak like a Japanese person as much as possible. Because, in short, I don’t want to be treated as a foreigner. If you speak Japanese like Americans, like non-Japanese, like in English, saki, karaoke, if you speak Japanese, you use Japanese pronunciation. Absolutely. If I speak like that [like Japanese people speak], I think I can become closer to the interlocutor. In my case, I am white (emphasis), but only my face, only my face is different.

Looking back his eight weeks at Middlebury, Parker said, つかれた ‘I’m tired.’ It was the fi rst time I heard Parker say つかれた ‘I’m tired.’ But soon he added, でももう少しがんばらなくちゃいけないですね ‘But, I have to gambaru “work hard” a little bit more’ because ずっとせっかくがんばったの に、最後の時にがんばらなかったら、それは無駄です ‘I have gambaru “work[ed] hard” until now. If I don’t work gambaru “work hard” up to the end, it [his previous hard work] will be wasted.’ At the fi nal ceremony in the fi nal week, Parker’s parents and brother came to Middlebury. They sat with Parker during the ceremony. One of the traditions of the Japanese School at the fi nal ceremony is to watch a slideshow of the Japanese School. The slideshow contained pictures of various scenes from the past nine weeks. Each time a slide was displayed, applause and sometimes laughter arose from the students and instructors. What I noticed while watching the slideshow was the number of slides that contained photos of Parker. His presence was everywhere. After the ceremony, I asked Parker what he thought about the slideshow. He said: 私はそんなに参加したから、写真何枚もあ ったから、それはよかったと思います。私 はほんとにがんばったっていうことです。

I participated that much, there are many pictures of me, so, it was good, I think. That shows that I really gambatta ‘worked hard.’

When Parker came to Middlebury, he made a commitment to himself – he would seiippai gambaru ‘work hard as best one can.’ Coming to Middlebury was, in many senses, a second chance for him. Over the course of the nine weeks there were times when Parker thought that もう 嫌だ、早く寝たい ‘It’s enough. I want to go to bed now’, but he continued to gambaru ‘work hard’ because he was aware that it was his second chance and the last chance for him to regain what he had lost in the past and also the opportunity to build the way to his future of becoming a speaker of Japanese. The slideshow was a piece of evidence and a trajectory of his hard work over the past nine weeks.

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At the end of the program, Parker said, 本当に来てよかったです ‘I am really glad that I came.’ He continued: ３年間勉強していたのに、んー、まだ日本 語を話すことは恥ずかしかったと思います。 どうやってかな、あ、間違えたらどうするか な、と思い込んだので、ちょっとだめだった けど。今は、もちろん、学校のおかげで、日 本語だけ話したから、今は恥ずかしくない と思います。今も間違える、必ず間違えるけ ど。

Even though I had studied Japanese for three years, I think I still felt embarrassed about speaking Japanese. I was thinking like ‘how should I say’ and ‘what if I made a mistake’, so it was not good. But, now, thanks to the Japanese School, I spoke only Japanese. I think I don’t feel embarrassed [about speaking Japanese] now even though I still make mistakes, I surely make mistakes.

Parker’s feeling of embarrassment about speaking Japanese was also there when he talked to his father. His father is a multilingual speaker. He speaks English, Spanish and Japanese. Although both Parker and his father are able to speak Japanese, Parker did not talk to his father in Japanese because he felt embarrassed about his Japanese language skills. However, at Middlebury, Parker spoke Japanese with his father for the first time. 父は日本語を話せるけど、来る前にあまり 話さなかった。たぶん、なぜかと言うと、 私は、さっき言った通り、日本語を話すの がちょっと恥ずかしかったから、あまり話 さなかった。 でも、昨日、夕べ、もちろん英 語を家族に話していい、話したかったけ ど、私はなるべくよく日本語を話したかっ た、父に。日本語で会話にように話せて、 よかったと思う。父と会話のように話した のは初めてです。

My father can speak Japanese, but I did not talk [to him in Japanese] before I came to Middlebury. Probably because I was, as I said before, embarrassed about speaking Japanese. But, yesterday, last night, I, of course, could speak English to my family and I wanted to, but I wanted to speak Japanese as much as I could to my father. It was good that we were able to have a conversation in Japanese. It was the fi rst time for me to have a conversation in Japanese with my father.

Over the course of nine weeks, Parker (re)gained various things that he had lost in the past. Moreover, he built a new bridge to his future. As I watched Parker and his family drive off to Massachusetts for their family vacation, I sent my silent applause to Parker while waving farewell. Discussion

Parker’s L2 socialization process described above has posed a number of important questions for understanding L2 learning. From an etic perspective, Parker’s L2 socialization can be viewed as a seamless unproblematic process of emulation of the target language and culture. However, a close examination of his engagement in the community of practice from

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an emic perspective has revealed that it involved constant negotiation of meaning. Parker’s negotiation of meaning took place at multiple levels. First, what Parker negotiated was access to the target language community of practice – his legitimate position in a Japanese community. His desire to regain and search for his reconnection to Japan had been rejected during the previous summer because of his ethnicity as a Caucasian. The prevailing folk beliefs about gaijin ‘foreigners’ among Japanese people, discussed in Iino’s (1996, 2006) study, had impeded Parker’s participation in the target language community of practice and had relegated him to an illegitimate position in the community. This practice which Parker had encountered during the previous summer in Tokyo convinced him that the only way for him to gain access to the target language community of practice was to emulate the Japanese way of speaking and behaving; in his words, 顔だけ、顔しかちがわない ‘only my face, only my face is different.’ This determination served as the basis on which Parker defi ned himself as a learner and a speaker of Japanese at Middlebury. Parker’s negotiation of meaning also took place at a personal level. Parker understood his opportunity to study Japanese at Middlebury as his second chance to make up for lost time in the past – his regret that he had not gambaru ‘worked hard’ to study Japanese and had wasted his opportunities to become a speaker of Japanese – and to build the way to his future of becoming a speaker of Japanese. His sense of regret and desire for self-transformation served as the basis on which Parker negotiated the meaning of his participation in the Japanese School. In this sense, Parker negotiated the meaning of his sense of self of the past, the present and the future. Parker’s engagement in the practice of the Japanese School over time resulted in a remarkable self-transformation at the end of the program. The important question to be discussed is whether Parker’s driving force for learning Japanese at Middlebury can be explained using Norton’s notion of investment. Norton (2000, 2013) has argued that L2 learners learn an L2 with the understanding that the gain or increase in their cultural capital (e.g. language skills) would bring them a better return for the future, based on the economic metaphor proposed by Bourdieu and Passeron (1977) in the field of sociology. For investors (e.g. L2 learners), increasing cultural capital (and deciding what cultural capital to increase) is important because it would eventually determine the value of return on their investment. For example, Katarina in Norton’s (2000) study stopped investing in learning English because she thought that her English skills would not promise her a better return for the future; instead she decided to take a computer class, which she believed would give her a better

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return and eventually grant her ‘access to hitherto unattainable resources’ (Norton, 2000: 10). Katarina invested in learning computer skills rather than learning English, with the understanding that the acquisition of computer skills would provide her with the opportunity to establish herself as an educated person in the new community. Could Parker’s driving force for learning Japanese at Middlebury be explained using the economic metaphor exemplified in Katarina’s case? The core notion of the investment is the symbolic exchange (return). The conception of investment assumes that L2 learners invest in learning an L2 with the understanding that their investment would be exchanged for other forms of symbolic capital in the future. In Katarina’s case, she expected that her increase in cultural capital (learning computer skills) would be exchanged for social capital (establishing her desirable identity) in the future. This was the primary driving force for Katarina to learn computer skills (and not to learn English). In Parker’s case, what did he expect that his investment in learning Japanese would be exchanged for? As discussed earlier, Parker negotiated his meaning of participation in the community of practice of the Japanese School primarily at two levels: (a) gaining access to a community of practice in Japan; and (b) making up for lost time in the past and building the way to his future of becoming a speaker of Japanese. Parker, based on his experience of living in Japan during the previous summer, probably understood that his investment in learning Japanese would be exchanged for social capital, which is access to the target language community of practice and the opportunity to gain legitimacy as a speaker of Japanese in the community. In the latter negotiation, what did Parker expect that his investment in learning Japanese would be exchanged for? I argue that Parker did not view or understand learning Japanese as a symbolic exchange as conceptualized in the notion of investment. Parker’s primary driving force for learning Japanese was his aspiration for self-transformation. He negotiated his sense of self of the past, the present and the future. In this sense, it can be argued that his primary drive for learning Japanese was not his interest in or desire for exchanging his cultural capital (Japanese language skills) for other forms of symbolic capital (economic and/or social capital), as in the case of Katarina. Parker’s case study is more comparable with the case study of Alice by Kinginger (2004), in which she argued that Alice’s aspiration for selftransformation from a young woman from a working-class single-parent family to a ‘person who she can admire’ (Kinginger, 2004: 240) served as Alice’s primary drive for learning French. Thus, Parker’s case study, together with Kinginger’s, suggest that L2 learners do not necessarily understand L2 learning as a symbolic exchange of their capital. The two studies suggest that the notion of investment would be better understood

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as a form of L2 learner agency, which would be applicable for certain types of learners situated in certain social contexts. The different ways in which Katarina in Norton’s (2000) study and Parker ‘invested’ in learning an L2 might be attributed to the different affordance structures that the communities provided for L2 learners. What makes Parker’s L2 socialization process strikingly unique compared to not only Katarina’s case but also the fi ndings of previous studies is the absence of social constraints in the process of socialization. Previous studies on L2 socialization (e.g. Atkinson, 2003; Brown, 2016; Duff, 2002; Fuentes, 2012; Harklau, 2000; Iino, 1996, 2006; Kanno & Harklau, 2012; Kinginger, 2004; Miller & Zuengler, 2011; Morita, 2002, 2004; Norton, 2000; Ricento, 2013; Talmy, 2008; Teutsch-Dwyer, 2001; Willett, 1995) have collectively shown that the social structures, power relations and ideologies of the target language community, whether it is an L2 classroom or a local community, place constraints on the process of socialization by L2 learners. In other words, it is possible to argue that different affordance structures of communities influence what forms of L2 learner agency might emerge and how L2 learners exercise their agency in the process of L2 learning. The notion of investment might be able to explain the driving force for L2 learning by the L2 learners who are caught in inequitable social relations of dominant communities where learning an L2 could indeed be viewed as the acquisition of capital in the ‘hope of a better, more equitable, more democratic form of life’ (Kramsch, in the Afterword of Norton, 2013: 194); however, it might not be able to explain the driving force for L2 learning by other types of learners who are placed in different social contexts, as in the case of Parker. Agency is a socially mediated capacity to act. L2 learner agency needs to be viewed and examined in relation to the social contexts and affordance structures of the communities in which L2 learners are placed. Unlike the findings of previous studies on L2 socialization, which have shown the hindering role of social communities, Parker’s case study has demonstrated the facilitative role of the social community. The affordance structure of the Japanese School allowed Parker to exercise his agency for learning Japanese freely, without any social constraints. To highlight the difference in the affordance structure of social communities between previous studies and Parker’s case study, I will compare Parker’s L2 socialization process with Iino (1996, 2006), who examined L2 socialization processes by American learners of L2 Japanese who participated in a study abroad program in Japan. The major challenge that the L2 learners in Iino’s study faced was the Japanese host families’ folk belief about gaijin ‘foreigners’ as being innocent outsiders who would not be able to learn and speak Japanese. This folk belief not only limited the L2 learners’ opportunities for learning Japanese but also undermined

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their agency to learn Japanese. What the L2 learners eventually learned to do during their study abroad in Japan was to play the role of kawaii gaijin ‘amiable foreigners’ in order to meet their host families’ expectations. In contrast, Parker did not face such social obstacles at Middlebury. In the Japanese School, none of the native speakers imposed the folk belief about gaijin on their students. Rather, as professionals, they placed high expectations on their students and challenged them and encouraged them to learn by providing corrections, signaling their linguistic problems and engaging them in talk about topics beyond those of the classroom. Thus, for Parker, the social category of being a Caucasian never became a hindering factor for learning Japanese. Instead, what he found were: (a) abundant opportunities and resources for him to learn and use Japanese; and (b) the affordance structure in which he could freely exercise his agency and pursue his goals of learning Japanese at Middlebury. Parker himself had gone through the same kind of study abroad experience as the students in Iino’s study prior to coming to Middlebury. Therefore, he was ready to take any opportunities afforded to him and use any resources available to him for learning Japanese. As a consequence, over the course of nine weeks, Parker achieved a remarkable outcome of self-transformation. The Japanese School and study abroad programs are comparable in terms of the L2 learning environment. Indeed, Middlebury Language Schools are often compared to study abroad programs. They both provide immersion environments in which L2 learners can use the target language in real communication in class as well as outside of class. They both provide peripherality for L2 learners. L2 learners initially join the community as novices of the language and culture and receive guidance from experts (such as their teachers and host family members). Despite a number of similarities, however, there are also differences. One crucial difference is the affordance structure. The Japanese School is a hybrid social community created for the purpose of learning Japanese. The members of the community are either (a) Japanese language instructors who want to teach Japanese; or (b) L2 learners who want to learn Japanese. The experts with whom L2 learners interact on a daily basis are not ordinary native speakers of Japanese, but language professionals who specialize in Japanese language pedagogy. Their job is to provide their students with opportunities to learn Japanese. They would not impose any social constraints that might hinder their learning opportunities. The hybridity of the social community also creates abundant opportunities for student–student interaction, using the target language. In the community of Middlebury, where the Language Pledge was in effect for 24 hours and seven days a week, learners are required to communicate in the target language and are not able to switch to English no matter how

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challenging and frustrating it is. This is another difference between the affordance structure of the Japanese School and that of study abroad programs where learners can speak English to each other once they step outside their classrooms. I argue that it was this affordance structure that made it possible for Parker not only to learn the Japanese language but also to exercise his agency in the way he wanted in order to achieve his goal of learning Japanese at Middlebury.

5 Alison: Shame, Resistance and Overcoming

Beginning

When I climbed down the stairs and walked out of Hepburn Hall, Alison was already there waiting for me. She was sitting at a picnic table, smoking and watching the other students playing volleyball. ‘Watching’ is probably not a precise description. Her eyes looked vacant. She was directing her eyes toward the volleyball court but probably not watching anything. I approached her and apologized for being late for our first meeting. ううん、大丈夫。私は早く来て、たばこ吸ってた ‘No, it’s all right. I came [here] early and have been smoking’, she said. She made it clear that it was not I who had come late but it was she who had arrived early. Fair and honest – this was my impression of Alison, and this impression never changed throughout the program. I sat next to her and took out a cigarette. My cell phone was showing 4:34pm. I was indeed late. As a conversation starter, I mentioned the weather. Alison looked at the sky and replied, そうね ‘That is so.’ After that, I did not know what else to say to continue the conversation. We were seated silently, smoking and watching the volleyball game. Before the silence became uncomfortable, Alison said, じゃあ、どこ？ ‘Well then, where?’ She was asking where we should go to talk. I said, じゃあ、あ そこはどう？ ‘Well, how about over there?’, pointing at the outside dining area in front of Proctor Hall. うん、いい。じゃあ、行きましょうか？ ‘Yes, that’s fine. Shall we go?’ Alison stood up from the bench. Alison was tall. I once asked her how tall she was. She said she was 174 centimeters tall (approximately 5 feet 8 inches) and she didn’t know how many feet that was. I laughed. It also took me a while to remember how many feet my height was. Alison was from Germany. Coming to Middlebury was her first visit to the United States. She had arrived in New York a few days before the Middlebury Language Schools started. She had stayed in a youth hostel in New York City before coming to Middlebury. Just from her appearance – a Caucasian, with hazel eyes and brown hair – she looked no different from the other American students. I also stood up from the bench and we started walking toward Proctor Hall. This 4:30 meeting became our routine. We met regularly at a picnic table in front of Hepburn Hall and walked to the outside dining area of Proctor Hall. 100

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Alison was different from many other students in the Japanese School in one respect. She had been born, raised and educated in Germany. She had never attended an American school before she came to Middlebury. The majority of the students in the Japanese School were American students, regardless of their ethnic background, who had been born and raised in the United States. There were international students in the school; however, they had been enrolled in an American school (either a college or a university) for at least one year before coming to Middlebury. In the summer of 201x when I met Alison, she was in the last year of her graduate program in Germany (equivalent to a doctoral program in the United States) and was in the process of writing her thesis. 専門は戦後文学です ‘My specialization is post-war literature’, one female student said when she introduced herself in class on the very first day. 戦後文学 ‘post-war literature’, I repeated the word silently. I stopped taking notes and tried to think who would be classified as post-war Japanese writers. I could name only one. I looked at the owner of the voice. She was seated in a chair, wearing a pair of black plastic framed eyeglasses. Her long hair was tied in a bun at the back of her neck. Her ears, nose and lower lip were pierced. There was a tattoo on her lower calf. This was Alison. I quickly became interested in knowing what had driven this contemporary-looking young woman to pursue her doctoral degree in Japanese literature of the 1950s and 1960s. I looked at her face again. Her long straight upward eyebrows, black plastic framed eyeglasses and tightly closed mouth created a certain impression. I circled Alison’s name on my notebook and wrote ‘potential participant’ next to it. I Cannot Speak Japanese

It was Sally who told me that Alison was interested in participating in my study. Sally was one of Alison’s ５階の友達 ‘fi fth-floor friends.’ ‘Fifthfloor’ refers to the fi fth floor of Hepburn Hall. Her room was next to Alison’s, and they were both smokers. I was delighted to learn that Alison was interested in participating in my study. It was already the end of the second week, and I was starting to worry whether anyone would be interested in participating. At the same time, I was also curious to know why Alison was interested in participating in my study and was concerned about whether I would be able to establish a rapport with her, recalling the impression that I had received of her on the very fi rst day of class. I pictured her straight upward eyebrows, hazel eyes behind her glasses with their black plastic frames and tightly closed mouth with a lip piercing. Moreover, I was concerned about the level of her oral proficiency. Alison did not talk much. Through my observations during the fi rst and second weeks and my brief conversations with her, I received an impression that her silence was partly due to her lack of adequate oral proficiency in Japanese.

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あまり話せないんですから ‘I cannot speak well’, Alison replied with a laugh when I asked why she chose to come to Middlebury. I heard a cynical tone in her voice. 博士論文を書くけどほんとに話せないんですから ‘I write [am writing] my dissertation [on post-war Japanese literature] but I cannot speak [Japanese]’, she continued. This time I heard the frustration in her voice. We were seated in a chair in the outside dining area in front of Proctor Hall. As if to hide her emotions, Alison took out her cigarette case and started to roll her tobacco. Alison did not smoke regular cigarettes; she rolled her own tobacco. Perfume が入っていないんですから、味がもっと いい。それに、健康でいい ‘There is no perfume [in this tobacco], so it tastes better. It’s healthy, too’, she said and laughed. She probably noticed a contradiction in her statement. I was watching Alison’s long fingers rolling the tobacco. I asked if she used a filter. She answered, no. She said she used to use fi lters before but she ran out of them after she came to the United States and did not know where to buy new ones. Alison lit her tobacco. I heard the burning sound of dried tobacco leaves. I asked how long she had been smoking. She said since she was 14 years old. ドイツで、大体人は、たば こを吸う、ワインを飲む。私の友達みんな吸うと、ワインを飲む。私はびっくりし た。アメリカ人は飲まない、吸わない、ね ‘In Germany, most people smoke and

drink wine. All of my friends smoke and drink wine. I was surprised. American people don’t drink and smoke, right?’ She expressed her reaction to a cultural difference between Germany and the United States. お酒 とたばこは悪いものだと思ってる ‘They think that alcohol and cigarettes are bad things’, she said. 日本人もよく ‘Japanese people also often’, Alison started to talk about Japanese people, so I continued and fi nished the sentence, 吸うし、飲むね ‘smoke and drink.’ Alison offered me her tobacco. I accepted her offer. I lit the tobacco and inhaled the smoke deep into my lungs. Alison had lived in Japan twice: once in her childhood and the second time when she was an undergraduate student. When Alison was born, Germany was still divided into the east and the west. Her hometown was in the southern part of Germany, close to the French border. In 1949, three western states of Germany, including Alison’s hometown, comprised the Federal Republic of Germany (known as West Germany). When the wall between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic (known as East Germany) collapsed, Alison was 10 years old and was living in Japan. Alison’s parents were both certified secondary school teachers. They had sought an opportunity to teach at a German school outside Germany. Upon their request, the government gave Alison’s parents two options: one was to go to France and the other was to go to Japan. According to Alison, her parents did not want to move to France, so they decided to go to Japan. One day at dinner, Alison’s parents announced that the family would be moving to Japan. It was the fi rst time for her parents as well as for Alison and her sister to fly and to live in another country. At that time they did not know anything about Japan. 行きたくない ‘I don’t want to go’

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was Alison’s fi rst reaction. She was happy with her friends and family in Germany. She did not want to move to Japan. The school where Alison’s parents taught was one of the two official German schools in Japan. It was founded in 1904 and consisted of a preschool, kindergarten, primary school and secondary school. Upon completing the secondary school, the students received the official German high school diploma. Alison and her family stayed within the German community and did not have much contact with Japanese people. Alison recalled, みんなドイツ 語話して、その時、外人があまり日本に住んでいなかった ‘Everyone spoke German, and at that time, not many foreigners were living in Japan’ and 子供はいつも（私たちを）見てる。長い鼻とかおもしろい外人とか ‘[Japanese] kids are [were] always watching [us] like [people with] long noses, strange foreigners, and something like that.’ Alison did not have any close Japanese friends during her four-year stay in Japan. After Alison went back to Germany and fi nished her secondary education, she entered a university, one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in Europe as well as in Germany, where she majored in Japanese studies – ‘Japanology’, Alison told me. At the university, Alison, for the fi rst time in her life, studied Japanese. The second time that Alison went to Japan was her study abroad year. She studied at Kyoto University for a year. Kyoto is a city located in the western part of Japan, which had been an imperial capital of Japan for more than a thousand years since 794. 京都は私にとって一番きれいな町 ‘For me, Kyoto is the most beautiful city’, Alison said. I was thinking about the comment Alison made about her ability to speak in Japanese. I was curious to know why she perceived her speaking skills as not being strong. I asked, 大学でずっと日本語を勉強してきたんでし ょ ‘You have been studying Japanese at universities, haven’t you?’ Alison sighed and said, 大学で、２年だけ日本語を勉強しなければならない。その後は 漢文。だから、私は２年間だけ勉強して、その後は試験あった。試験受けた後は終 わった ‘At the university, I have [had] to study Japanese for two years.

After that, [I had to study] classical Chinese text. So, I studied [Japanese] for only two years, and there was an exam after that. After I took the exam, [my Japanese language study] ended.’ During the fi rst two years of study at the university, Alison studied modern Japanese. The lessons focused on Kanji, reading and grammar but not conversation, Alison recalled. After she passed the exit examination in modern Japanese, she started to learn classical Japanese. At Kyoto University, she was trained to read academic books, articles and literature written in Japanese. だから、読 めるは問題ないけど、全然会話練習しなかった ‘So, I don’t have a problem reading, but I didn’t practice conversation at all’, she explained. Furthermore, in Kyoto, she stayed in a 外人の寮 ‘Foreigners’ dorm’ where only foreign students lived, and most of the communication with other students in the dorm was conducted in English. Even when she had an

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opportunity to talk to Japanese people outside the university, they wanted to talk to Alison in English. From her experience of living in Japan, Alison learned that living in Japan did not automatically provide opportunities to speak Japanese. Alison was a multilingual speaker. Besides Japanese, she spoke a few other foreign languages to various degrees. She started to learn English in elementary school. ドイツ語と英語は似てるから、私たちにとって、ドイツ人にと って全然問題ない。だから、みんな話せる ‘Because German is similar to English, it’s not a problem for us, for German people to speak English’, she told me. She also learned French in high school. At one time, I saw her speak to one of the French instructors in French and she came back with several cigarette filters in her hand. After graduating from the university, Alison had gone to Ecuador in South America and had taught English in a small village (‘a small village in the middle of a jungle [original in Japanese]’, in Alison’s words). At that time, she learned Spanish by herself. She was touched by people’s open-mindedness and willingness to communicate and felt an emergent desire to speak Spanish. 私は南米で旅行した時、ほんとに他 の人と話したかったから、一生懸命自分で勉強して、私は、スペイン語を大好きか ら、スペイン語を勉強するのはやさしかった ‘When I travelled around South

America, I really wanted to talk to other people. So, I studied very hard by myself, and because I like Spanish, it was easy to learn Spanish’, she recalled. On the contrary, she never felt such an emergent desire to speak Japanese. ‘I never wanted to speak Japanese (original in English)’, she said, looking back at the years that she had studied Japanese in both Germany and Japan. 私は日本語を話すのは好きじゃない、実は。下手ですから、よく説明 できないから、恥ずかしい。だから、話したくない ‘I don’t like speaking Japanese, in fact. Because I am not good at it, I cannot explain well, it’s embarrassing, so I don’t want to speak [Japanese].’ Why Did I Come Here?

When Alison applied to Middlebury, she did not really think about what her life was going to be like in the full-immersion setting of Middlebury. She did not consider to what extent the Language Pledge would affect her life there. Since it was her first visit to the United States, Alison was hoping that she would be able to travel to other cities such as Boston and New York over some weekends while she was staying in Middlebury. In particular, she wanted to visit the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, which possesses a large collection of Japanese paintings from the early modern era. However, she realized after arriving at Middlebury that visiting another city would not be as easy as she had imagined. Middlebury College is located in a rural area where there are practically no public transportation services available. Without a car, it is impossible to go anywhere outside the town. Furthermore, Alison learned that weekends were not completely free time for the students. There was a school-hosted event

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almost every weekend and, most importantly, she needed to study in order to keep up with the class and fi nish all the homework assignments. Furthermore, Alison quickly learned the reality of the Language Pledge – what it was like not to be able to communicate in English (or German) and to speak only Japanese no matter what the time of day, where you were and to whom you were speaking. Before she came to Middlebury she had thought that the students would speak English with each other in private situations such as in the dorm. 帰りたい ‘I want to go home’, Alison told me in our fi rst meeting. Pledge はいい考えと思って、だけ ど、そんな大変、わからなかった。日本語を勉強したいですから、ここに来たけど、 そのこと前にわかったら、来なかった ‘I thought that the pledge was a good

idea, but I didn’t know [the pledge was] that[this] hard. I came here because I want[wanted] to study Japanese, but I would not have come if I had known beforehand’, Alison sighed. After two weeks, Alison seemed to be questioning her decision to come to Middlebury. でも、悪い点は同様 にいい点。その場所は本当につまらないんですから、勉強がよくできる ‘But, bad aspects can be good aspects. Since this place is really boring, I can study more’, Alison also mentioned, as positive aspects of the environment in which she was placed. It sounded to me, however, that this was an effort to convince herself that she had made the right decision to come to Middlebury. She also mentioned the importance of the Language Pledge. 日本より、ミドルベリーの方がたくさん日本語を話してる ‘I have been speaking more Japanese at Middlebury than in Japan’, she said. During the first half of the program, Alison was going back and forth between two thoughts: the justification of her decision to come to Middlebury and the uncertainty as to whether she had made the right decision. 私はなんでここに来た？ ‘Why did I come here?’, Alison kept asking herself. ９週間は本当に長い ‘Nine weeks are really long’, she sighed. She was counting the number of days left until the end of the program. What Alison found most difficult at Middlebury was the lack of a social life. As a graduate student, Alison was used to studying for as many hours in Berlin as she was at Middlebury. However, in Berlin, she had a social life with her friends. For Alison, the time she spent with her friends was as important as the time she spent studying. At Middlebury, however, Alison found it difficult to have a social life, partly because everybody was always busy studying and partly because they had to communicate in Japanese. Alison felt that the Language Pledge was an obstacle to making new friends. Students often talked about superficial things, such as 今日何 した？ ‘What did you do today?’, 何が好き？ ‘What do you like?’ and どこ から来た？ ‘Where are you from?’, but did not talk about personal feelings or thoughts. Therefore, Alison felt, 知っている人は、あんまり知っていない ‘I don’t know much about the people I know.’ Alison spent her free time with a group of her fifth-floor friends from the beginning to the end of the program. They became acquainted at the very beginning when the students were still able to speak English before

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signing the Language Pledge. Later on, Alison became close to Nicole, Brian and John and preferred to spend time with them. Nicole was a high school Japanese language teacher. Brian was a doctoral student in Chinese literature. John was a veteran who had come back from Afghanistan and was starting his graduate study at a university in the coming fall. They were all in the same age range. Nicole and John had lived in Japan for three years and taught English at local public schools. The three were all Level 2 (Beginning Level 2) students, while Alison was in Level 4. The four of them often sat together in the dining hall and went to a bar together on weekend nights. Alison and Nicole became particularly close. They met after class and walked to the dining hall together almost every day. Alison laughed a lot when she was with Nicole. She acknowledged in our final interview that they spoke English sometimes, especially after the midterm break, because ‘around the nakayasumi (midterm break), people were really tired, and we all felt that we needed to speak English (original in English).’ In order to go beyond a superficial human relationship and relate to each other in a deeper sense, Alison felt that speaking English was necessary. Resistance

Alison established her daily routine at Middlebury and strictly followed it while she was there. Alison’s day started at 5:30am. She woke up at that time every morning to the sound of her alarm. She packed her shampoo, conditioner, towel, clothes and her course pack in her backpack and headed out to the gym. The gym was located down the hill on the edge of the campus, the northwest side of Hepburn Hall. Alison put her backpack in her locker and went to the fitness center. She always used the elliptical at the left corner of the fitness center. She placed her course pack in front of her on the machine, and while she was working out she reviewed the vocabulary and Kanji that she had studied the previous night. After a 40–45 minute workout, she went back to the locker room and took a shower. After showering, she went back to her room, prepared for the day and went to Proctor Hall for breakfast. After breakfast, she went to class. In class, she always sat in a chair in the right-hand corner in the back row. This was Alison’s morning routine, which never varied throughout the program. After class, Alison usually met up with Nicole and chatted while waiting for the dining hall to open for the Japanese School. At lunch, she always ate a salad with olives and cheese before the main dish. After lunch, Alison went back to her room and studied from 2:00 to 4:30. Then she took a break and studied again from 6:00 to 10:00 at night. She did not go to dinner except at weekends. These activities constituted her daily routine. The only time Alison made an exception was the time when the soccer World Cup games were broadcast. Germany defeated England and Argentina and faced Spain in the semi-fi nals. I went with Alison, Nicole,

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Brian, John and a few other students to a restaurant in town to watch the game. The restaurant was crowded. It was a close game, but Germany lost to Spain 1–0. In the middle of the whoops of joy, Alison looked depressed. She canceled our meeting and I did not see her for the rest of the day. ベイルさんは、とてもstrong-willedだと思う ‘I think you are very strongwilled’, I once told Alison as a compliment. Alison laughed and said, 私は そのパターンが必要。毎日予定が必要 ‘I need that pattern. I need a schedule every day.’ ドイツにも自分で予定を作る ‘In Germany, too, I set my own schedule’, she told me. In Germany, Alison woke up at around 7:30am and went to the gym to work out. After breakfast, she went to the library and stayed there from 9:30am to 8:00pm. She sometimes needed to attend lectures, meet her advisor or do other errands, but she usually spent her entire day at the library working on her thesis by 本を読んだり、論文を書い たりする ‘reading books and writing my thesis.’ 夜はsocializationの時間 ‘Night is my socialization [socializing] time’, according to Alison. At night, she saw her friends, went out for dinner or drinks, or sometimes visited friends’ apartments. This was the daily routine that Alison had established for herself in Berlin. At Middlebury she tried to follow the same pattern she had in Berlin. The difference was that Middlebury already had a predetermined schedule for the students. こっちは、みんなが 同じ予定。自分で作らない ‘Here, everyone has the same schedule. You don’t make one on your own’, Alison laughed. The students’ life at Middlebury was, no doubt, communal. The students lived in the same dormitory and went to class at the same time. Everyone had the same food at the same dining hall at the same time. To counteract the communal nature of life in Middlebury, Alison made her new daily routine as close as possible to the one she had in Berlin. She chose not to go to dinner at 5:30 because having dinner at 5:30 was not part of her daily routine in Berlin. Mass phenomenon

On Friday afternoons, Hepburn Hall stood in a deadly silence. The only sounds were those of the cicadas, whose chirping proclaimed their presence. Students were either outside or were napping in their rooms. 金 曜日の午後はなんかちょっと悲しい ‘Friday afternoons make me a little sad’, Alison said when we met on a Friday afternoon. I asked her how the exam was. She said it was all right. １１時まで勉強した ‘I studied until 11 o’clock’, she sighed. I knew that she was supposed to study only until 10:00pm according to her routine. I also knew how much she disliked having to change her routine. I complimented her on her hard work. She said, でも、 みんなはもっと勉強する。クラスメートは３時まで勉強した、夜３時まで ‘But, everyone studies more. Classmates studied until 3:00, until 3:00 o’clock in the morning’, and shook her head. Alison often expressed her feeling of surprise about how hard everyone worked to learn Japanese.

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There was no doubt that Alison studied hard while she was at Middlebury. Her hard work, however, was already part of her established routine as a graduate student. Moreover, she valued her free time as much as she valued her study time. She set her study hours to last until 10:00 at night and, after that until bedtime, she did things for herself – listening to German music, watching the news in German and talking to her family and friends on Skype. 日本語だけできない ‘I cannot live only in Japanese’, she said. Therefore, it was a surprise for her to see everyone working hard every day until late at night studying Japanese. She said, いつも勉強しなき ゃの感じがする ‘I feel like I have to study all the time.’ She stated: みなは夜遅くまで勉強するとか、朝 早く起きて勉強する。本当に勉強だ け。ちょっとこわいね。みなは、ひ まとか自分のこと全然忘れて、日本 語だけ集中する。みなそうすれば、 それは大きいものになる。Force にな る。「私は３時半まで勉強してた」 それは「私はいい学生」、そんな感 じ。ちょっとこわいね。

Everyone studies until late at night or studies early in the morning. Only studying, really. It’s a little scary. They forget about their free time and about themselves and concentrate on only Japanese. If everyone does so, it will become a big thing. It will become a large force. ‘I studied until 3:00 am’ will be ‘I am a good student.’ That’s how it feels. It’s a little scary.

Alison also expressed her surprise about the other students’ persistent desire and effort to observe the Language Pledge. みんな日本語だけ話した い。それはちょっとこわいと思う ‘Everyone wants to speak only Japanese. I think that’s a little scary’, she said. One day there was an incident that shocked Alison. Sally, one of Alison’s fi fth-floor friends, had a visit from Wendy, the coordinator of the Japanese School. Wendy told Sally that someone had reported that she was speaking English in Hepburn Hall. On the previous day, Sally had been talking to her daughter in English using a public telephone in Hepburn Hall because Sally’s daughter had broken her arm and had been taken to a hospital emergency room. Since Sally did not own a cell phone, it was understandable that she had used the public phone to call her daughter. Her reason for speaking English was considered legitimate and Sally did not get any kind of reprimand or warning after she explained the situation. However, Alison was shocked to learn that someone had actually reported to Wendy that Sally was speaking English. 誰かがそのこと Wendy に言った。信じられない、誰が ‘Someone told that to Wendy. I cannot believe it. Who?’ Alison did not hide her surprise. 会話を聞けば、わかるね。それは家族のこと。それはちょっと変。それはこわい。 それは mass phenomenon ‘If you listen to the conversation, you under-

stand that it’s about a family matter. It’s strange. It’s scary. It’s a mass phenomenon.’ She shook her head. As the weeks went by, Alison started to feel that individual students’ desires to learn and speak Japanese were growing into a large invisible force which shaped the practices of the Japanese School. In her eyes, it was projected as a ‘mass phenomenon’, and she expressed her feeling of こわい ‘being scared’ about the ‘mass phenomenon’ that she observed.

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The communal nature of student life at Middlebury probably required various adjustments for Alison – who lived by herself in an apartment in Berlin and had the freedom to make her own schedule – to adapt to a fullimmersion environment where she was required to live with other people and follow the preset school schedule. However, I did not understand why Alison perceived the nature of the students’ lives in the Japanese School and their engagement in the school practice as a ‘mass phenomenon.’ Moreover, why did she feel こわい ‘being scared’ about it? Alison’s emergent conception of a ‘mass phenomenon’ seemed to be related to her background. A mass phenomenon was perhaps not an unfamiliar concept to Alison. It can be found in the modern history of Germany. Alison was born and grew up in Germany during the Cold War. Also, her partner was Jewish, and his family had left their home country, the Czech Republic (then Czechoslovakia), and had moved to Austria for political reasons. Considering her background as a German and the sociopolitical context in which she had grown up, it is possible that Alison related what she observed in the Japanese School to the concept of a mass phenomenon that she was familiar with in her life history as a German. In our email correspondence Alison told me that, for Germans, the war was the ‘field we are well educated in.’ To Alison, the concept of war perhaps existed in a much closer sense than it did for any of the other students in the Japanese School. Growing up in Germany, she had been taught the danger of nationalism and mass phenomena, in which ‘people take part in a big idea without noticing that they are not thinking themselves anymore.’ For reasons other than her background as a German, nationalism and a mass phenomenon were familiar concepts for Alison. They can be found in the modern history of Japan, and Alison was a doctoral candidate in the field of post-war Japanese literature. In particular, she had conducted extensive research on works of Yukio Mishima (henceforth, Mishima), one of the most influential writers in the post-war period of Japan. One day Alison told me with a smile that she had some good news. She had received an email from a publisher notifying her that they were going to publish her paper along with her German translation of Mishima’s short novel. The story is about the ghosts of the leaders of the 26 February incident (an abortive coup attempt by young officers of the Imperial Japanese Army in 1936) and of the kamikaze pilots of 1945, who sacrificed their young lives for the emperor. I had never heard of the novel until Alison told me that she had written a paper on it which she had presented at a conference. I tried to recall as much information as I could about Mishima to congratulate her on her great news. However, all I was able to recall were the titles of his two novels and some details of his suicide. I confessed that I had not read many of Mishima’s works. Alison immediately said, それは全然問題ない ‘That’s not a problem at all.’

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I asked why she had chosen Mishima as the theme of her doctoral thesis. それは、私の先生は、戦後文学の先生です ‘That’s [because] my professor is a professor of post-war literature’, Alison started to explain. Alison had not been able to decide on the theme for her Master’s thesis. Her advisor, who had written her doctoral thesis on Mishima, suggested that Alison, too, take up his works in her thesis. 私はMaster 論文を書かなければならな いから、何を選ぶかわからなかったけ ど、と、三島はおもしろいと思って。 で も、興味じゃない。私は、実は、三島あま り好きじゃないけど、研究のため、そのト ピックはいいと思う。

Because, I have [had] to write my master’s thesis, I did not know what to choose, and I thought Mishima was interesting. But [Mishima is] not my interest. I actually don’t like Mishima, but I think, for research, that topic is good.

Mishima’s works are inseparable from the concept of war because not only was he a writer in the post-war period of Japan, but in his literary works he pursued an aesthetic of unselfish and idealistic death (Keene, 2003) which was often manifested as a form of death for the emperor. In the short novel that Alison translated into German, for example, the main characters of the story are young officers of the Imperial Japanese Army and kamikaze pilots who sacrificed their lives for the emperor. On the one hand, Mishima was an acclaimed writer who had been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature three times; on the other hand, he was often described as a nationalist (Keene, 2003). The post-war era of Japan when Mishima published the majority of his works (the 1950s and 1960s) was a time when Japan was going through rapid social, economic and political changes. As much as Mishima was a writer, he was a political activist. He was vocal about his worship of the emperor and criticized the pacifism of post-war Japan as hypocritical democracy. In the summer of 201x, Alison was working on Mishima’s critical essay Bunka Boeiron (In Defense of Our Culture), the topic of her doctoral thesis. Through her graduate work on Mishima, Alison had become familiar with the national discourse of Japan during wartime. As the leaders of the 26 February incident and the kamikaze pilots of 1945 had chosen to do, so too had people died for their idealism (for the emperor or nation) at several points in the modern history of Japan. In Alison’s words, ‘people take part in a big idea without noticing that they are not thinking themselves anymore.’ In the Japanese School, when Alison encountered the students’ persistent desire to learn and speak Japanese and felt that their desires were growing into a large invisible force, it is possible that she related what she observed to the mass phenomenon found in the modern history of Japan through the works of Mishima. Cultural hegemony

What did Alison fear through her conceptualization of a ‘mass phenomenon’? This became my lingering question as I observed and talked

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to Alison in the Japanese School. 小さい日本 ‘small Japan’ – she described the Japanese School in this way. Through participation in and observation of the practice of the Japanese School, Alison perceived that the Japanese School was replicating a 小さい日本 ‘small Japan’ at Middlebury, and that in the 小さい日本 ‘small Japan’ students were 日本人のロールをし てる ‘playing roles of Japanese (this is the literal translation of Alison’s words).’ In Alison’s eyes, the students’ eagerness to participate in the school activities and their desire to learn and speak Japanese were reflected as the emulation process of 日本人になる ‘becoming Japanese.’ Excerpt 8 Interview

A: Alison; R: Researcher A: いつからミドルベリーの研究の予定 A: From when, do you have a plan ある？ to do research at Middlebury? R: A year ago R: １年前 A: なんでミドルベリー？ ミドルベリ A: Why Middlebury? Is Middlebury ーは特別な経験？ [learning Japanese at Middlebury] a special experience? R: そう思わない？ R: Don’t you think so? A: xxx (笑い) 私にとって特別な経験 A: xxx (laugh) For me, it is a special けど、いい経験かどうか experience, but [I am not sure] if it is a good experience. R: いい経験とか悪い経験とか、それは R: It doesn’t matter if it’s a good 関係ないんですよ。ベイルさんの経験 experience or a bad experience. I が知りたい。ミドルベリーでベイルさ want to know your experience, んがどんな経験をしているか what experience you are having at Middlebury. A: The school wants to create a A: 学校は小さい日本を作りたいね small Japan. R: Small Japan R: 小さい日本 A: そう思う。あの、白人、ようじん、よう A: I think so. Uh, White, youjin にん、westerners [trying to say seiyoujin ‘westerners’], younin [trying to say seiyoujin ‘westerners’], westerners [in English] R: 西洋人 R: Westerners [in Japanese] A: 西洋人は着物を着て、おりがみを作 A: Westerners wear kimono, make って、落語を聞いて origami, listen to rakugo, and R: (笑い) R: (Laugh) A: 他の人は、その経験楽しいね。たぶ A: For other people, that experience ん、日本に行ったことない人は、日本 is fun. Perhaps, for those who の文化的なものとか、それはたぶん have never been to Japan, おもしろいけど、私にとって、それは Japanese cultural things are こわい。なんで、みんな日本人になり probably fun, but for me, that is たい？ scary. Why does everyone want to become Japanese?

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As a Japanese L2 learner of English, I sometimes find conflicts between certain aspects of American culture (particularly the Midwestern culture that I know) and my beliefs and my sense of self. I also fi nd myself evaluating Japanese people who are newcomers to the United States and who innocently emulate the American way. However, I see it as a personal choice and never felt a sense of fear. Alison was seemingly viewing and interpreting the practice of the Japanese School and the other students’ engagement in it through a different filter. Alison’s fear seemed to be directed at the students’ unproblematic view of the Japanese language and culture and their innocent desire and eagerness to emulate them. Alison explained about her feeling of こわい ‘being scared’ in this way: Indeed it scared me that people were so obedient. I also fi nd the picture of Japan and Japanese [that] often want to draw themselves (as a peaceful nation that is proud of its traditions, aesthetics and art, without reflecting other aspects of it) highly problematic. I have done research on how national and cultural identity was established and created in Japan. I have thought a lot about nihonjinron [‘theories of the Japanese’] and I have the feeling that one should be aware of how culture is being ‘used.’ I don’t know too many Japanese people in [between] the age of 20–30 folding origami as a hobby. (Original in English)

Alison, through her graduate study, had acquired an extensive knowledge of nihonjinron ‘theories of the Japanese.’ She mentioned as references such scholars as Harumi Befu and Peter N. Dale, who have argued that the nihonjinron, which emphasizes the uniqueness of the Japanese people and culture, is a form of cultural hegemony and a manifestation of Japan’s nationalism (Befu, 1993). Dale (1986) asserts that ‘nihonjinron may be defined as works of cultural nationalism concerned with the ostensible “uniqueness” of Japan in any aspect, and which are hostile to both individual experience and the notion of internal socio-historical diversity’ (Befu, 1993: 1). Through her graduate work, Alison had been familiarized with the idea that the Japanese culture is an artifact or a product of national ideology ‘conditioning the way Japanese regard themselves’ (Dale, 1986: 15). In the Japanese School, it is possible that Alison felt that the students were being socialized into the cultural hegemony found in the discourse of the nihonjinron through participation in the activities and events of the school. Moreover, she felt こわい ‘being scared’ that the students were so willing and eager to become part of the cultural hegemony reproduced in the 小さい日本 ‘small Japan’ at Middlebury, without considering or being aware that culture is a constructed artifact and a representation of national ideology. In Alison’s eyes, perhaps, school activities and events reflected the practice of the reinforcement of the nihonjinron. Alison felt that such hegemony was also evident in the way the Japanese School socialized its students into the use of the Japanese language. For example, one day she heard a teacher, who was seated at the

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same lunch table as Alison and several other students, say みんなの発音 はアメリカっぽいです。日本人の発音は全然違う。みなさん、がんばってください ‘Your pronunciation sounds like English. Japanese people’s pronunciation is totally different. Everyone, work hard.’ Alison expressed disagreement with the teacher’s comment when I met with her later. She said that nativeness should not be the goal of foreign language study. She explained her position in Excerpt 9. Excerpt 9 Interview

A: Alison; R: Researcher A: 私は英語がペラペラけど、時々変

な言葉を使って、だけど、英語は 私の母語じゃないから、それは 全然大丈夫だと思う。外人ですか ら、それはいいよ。だから、英語 で論文を書かなければならない 時、ちょっと変なexpression、表 現使うけど、私の先生は「それは 大丈夫。それは外人の論文のお もしろさ」と言った。

R: Uniquenessということ？ A: そうそうそうそう。それは、本当

におもしろい。おもしろさは、自 分の表現ですから。何年も外国 に住んでいる人とか、ちょっと変 な表現使うね。 でも、それは大丈 夫。 でも、ここで、違うね。目的は おもしろさじゃない。日本人の日 本語。それは、 できない。

A: Although I am fluent in English, I sometimes use strange expressions, don’t they? But, English is not my mother tongue, so it’s all right. I am a foreigner, so that’s okay. When I have to write a paper in English, I use strange expressions, but my professor said, ‘That’s all right. It’s the interestingness of foreigners’ papers.’ R: Do you mean uniqueness? A: Yes, that’s right. It’s really interesting because uniqueness is your own expression. People who lived abroad for a long time use strange expressions. But, it’s all right. But, here it’s different. The purpose is not the uniqueness. It’s Japanese people’s Japanese. I cannot do that.

Alison was critical of other students who tried to speak 日本人の日本 語 ‘Japanese people’s Japanese.’ She thought that a female student, one of the residents of the fi fth floor, always used a high-pitched voice when speaking Japanese. 彼女は英語を話す時、本当に普通。だけど、日本語を話す 時、全然違う ‘When she speaks English, she is really normal. But when she speaks Japanese, it’s totally different’, Alison said, and imitated the high-pitched voice of the female student. ‘私は声のトーンは、ドイツ語でも 日本語でも英語でも変わらない ‘My tone of voice never changes in either German, Japanese, or English’, Alison said. Furthermore, Alison thought that the students were too apologetic when speaking Japanese. エレベーターの中でもみんな「すみません、すみません」とか言って、日本人みた い ‘Also in the elevator, everyone says “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” They are like Japanese.’ Alison imitated their gesture of apologizing. 私は日本人に なりたくない ‘I don’t want to become Japanese’, she said.

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Alison’s feeling of 私は日本人になりたくない ‘I don’t want to become Japanese’ was perhaps due to her resistance to taking part in the practice of the nihonjinron which she felt was manifested in the practice of the Japanese School, and her reaction of こわい ‘being scared’ toward other students’ unproblematized and innocent views of the Japanese language and culture and their eagerness to participate in the cultural hegemony, which in Alison’s eyes, reflected a ‘mass phenomenon.’ Avoidance

The choices that Alison made in the Japanese School resulted in her limiting her opportunities to speak Japanese. She spent most of the afternoons and nights in her room on the fi fth floor. She did not go to dinner except on Fridays and Saturdays. At lunch she preferred to sit with her fi fth-floor friends. 私は本当にいろいろな人の隣に座りたくない ‘I really don’t want to sit next to various people’, she said. 私は食堂に行って、誰がいると見て、その テーブル座りたいとか、そのテーブルも 大丈夫とか、一人二人友達がいるから、 そこに座ってもいいとか思う。私は知らな い人のテーブルに座らない。たぶん、その 人はおもしろくていい人だけど、今はちょ っと、誰が知ってる。その人と話したい。 私はいつもニコールとか、ジョンとか、ブ ライアンとか[と座る]。私は中級２の人と いっしょに食べない。先生といっしょに食 べられない、食べたくない。

I go to the dining hall, look around to see who is there, and think like ‘I want to sit at that table xxx’, ‘that table is fi ne’ or ‘I can sit there because one or two of my friends are there.’ I don’t sit with people I don’t know. Probably, they are interesting and fun people, but now I know who [is who?]. I want to talk to those [I know]. I always [sit with] Nicole, John and Brian. I don’t eat with Level 4 students. I cannot eat, I don’t want to eat with teachers.

Alison contained herself within a small group of her fi fth-floor friends. She did not seek out opportunities to interact with her classmates outside of class unless it was necessary. She also avoided sitting with teachers in the dining hall. I asked why she did not like to be seated with teachers. 先生がいるとしゃべられない。それに、いつも学校みたいな感じ がするから ‘I cannot talk to teachers. Also, it feels like always being at school’, she answered. 自然な会話じゃない ‘Not natural conversation’, she 「何勉強してる」 「今日何した」それはたぶん先生の also said. 「どこから来た」 仕事けど、先生にとっても大変ね ‘“Where are you from?” “What are you studying?” “What did you do today?” It’s probably their job but it’s tiring for them, too.’ Although Alison was aware of the teachers’ efforts to engage students in conversation and create opportunities for them to speak Japanese, 練習のために人と話したくない ‘I don’t want to talk to people for practice’, Alison said. She felt strange talking to teachers just for the sake of practice and engaging in a conversation on a topic in which she was not even interested. Alison thought that such

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conversation was meaningless. For Alison, conversation was a meaningful linguistic engagement that she would fi nd interesting. Therefore, she felt that talking to teachers was not helpful for practicing conversation. Excerpt 10 Interview

R: Researcher; A: Alison R: 日本語を話すのがもっと上手に

なりたいと思ってミドルベリーに 来て、 でもオフィスアワーに行か ない、先生と同じテーブルに座ら ない、それだと、上手にならない とは思わない？

A: それは関係ない。オフィスアワー

行く時、それはあの、何起こる？ 先生は私に文法を教えてくれる けど、それは会話の練習じゃない から、それは関係ないと思う。

R: じゃ、先生と話すことは別に会

話が上手になるとは思わない？

A: ん、もちろん日本人と話す時もっ

と上手になるけど、あの、それは 私の先生だけじゃなくて、それは 日本人と話すと、だから。

R: ここにいる日本人は先生だけだ ね。

A: そう R: だから、先生とテーブルに座ら

なかったら、日本人と話すチャン スはないでしょ、ここでは。

A: なるほど。そう、だけど、生徒たち

と話す時も、練習だと思う。たぶ んその日本語は正しくないけど、 他の学生は知らない言葉を使う 時、私はそれはどんな意味とか、 他の人は説明してあげるね、だか ら、それも練習だと思う。とか、毎 日日本語を聞く時、それも練習。

R: うん、絶対そうだと思う。

R: You came to Middlebury because you wanted to improve your Japanese, but you don’t go to office hours and you don’t sit with teachers. If so then, don’t you think that your Japanese won’t improve? A: That’s not relevant. When going to office hours, that’s uhm what happens? Teachers teach me grammar, but that’s not conversation practice. So, I think it’s not relevant. R: Then, you don’t think speaking to teachers will improve your conversation skills? A: Um, of course, when [if] I speak to Japanese people, my Japanese will improve more, but uhm that’s not only [speaking to] my teachers but also speaking to Japanese people, so. R: The only Japanese people here are teachers. A: Yes R: So, if you don’t sit with teachers, there will be no opportunity to speak to Japanese people here. A: I see. That is so. But, I think speaking to other students is also a practice. Their Japanese isn’t probably cor rect, but when they use the word that I don’t know, I ask what it means, and they will explain what it is to me. So I think that is a practice, too. Also, listening to Japanese every day, that’s a practice, too. R: Yes, absolutely.

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A: 私は、練習するために人と話した

くない。なんか、興味あれば、も ちろん、あの、会話したいけど、 練習のためはちょっと変な感じ がする。だから、何、今先生の隣 に座って、選んだトピックについ て全然興味がないなら、その 会 話が好きじゃないなら、意味ない と思う。ある人は、ほんとに、い つも先生の隣に座りたい。No matter what 勉強したいけど、 私はちょっと。その理由は変、私 にとって。

A: I don’t want to talk to people in order to practice [a language]. If I am interested, of course, I want to have a conversation, but I feel a little strange [to talk to people] for practice. So, if I sit next to a teacher, and I am not interested in the topic, and if I don’t like the conversation, it’s meaningless [to talk]. Some people, really, always want to sit next to teachers. They want to study no matter what, but I don’t, to me, that reason is strange.

Despite her careful avoidance, Alison sometimes ended up sitting with people with whom she would rather not sit. Excerpt 11 shows one such occasion. In this excerpt, Alison, Nicole and Ken are initially seated together at a lunch table. Nicole (Level 2) is Alison’s closest friend. Ken (Level 1) lived on the fifth floor. After about a minute, Ellen and a teacher join the table. Ellen, an L2 speaker of Japanese, is a student in the three-week intensive Instructional Technology (IT) course. The IT course is a content-based course that the Japanese School offers for Japanese language teachers. To enroll in this course a high level of Japanese language ability is required. Ellen had lived in Japan for seven years because of her husband’s job before coming to Middlebury. In the summer of 201x, Ellen was an adjunct assistant professor of Japanese at a liberal arts college in the United States. She had arrived at Middlebury four days before this conversation took place. At the beginning (Line 1 through Line 11), Alison is leading the conversation by initiating questions to both Nicole and Ken. In Line 12 Nicole acknowledges Ellen and says hello. After the greeting, Nicole tries to ask Ellen something, but her speech is interrupted by an instructor’s utterance 座ってもいいですか？ ‘May I sit?’ Ellen and the instructor join the group at the table and start talking. Excerpt 11 Lunch conversation

A: Alison; NC: Nicole (Level 2); K: Ken (Level 1); E: Ellen (a student in the IT course) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

それは全然味ない。 何？ そのパスタ ほんと？ うん (３秒) スープはどう？ A: NC: まだわかんない 、でも

A: NC: A: NC: A:

1 2 3 4 5

A: NC: A: NC: A:

That has no taste at all. What? That pasta Really? Yes (3 seconds) 6 A: How is the soup? 7 NC: I don’t know yet, but

Alison: Shame, Resistance and Overcoming

おいしそう。 8 A: 9 NC: うう、うん(スープを飲んで いるよう)、おいしい じゃあ、私もスープを食 10 A: べて (Kが立ち上がった よう)どこに行く？ フライドポテト 11 K: こんにちは 12 E: 13 NC: こんにちは (Eと先生がテーブルに 加わる)

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8 A: It looks delicious. 9 NC: Uu Un (seems like she is trying the soup), delicious 10 A: Well then, I will have the soup. (K probably stood up) Where are you going? 11 K: French fries 12 E: Hello 13 NC: Hello (E and an instructor join the table.)

Ellen thanks the instructor for letting her observe her class, and for the next 30 seconds Ellen and the instructor talk to each other. While the two are talking, Alison, Nicole and Ken remain silent. After a 23-second silence, Ellen initiates a conversation with Nicole by asking さっき何か聞こ うとしているところでしたか？ ‘Were you about to ask me something a little while ago?’ (Line 14 in Excerpt 12). Nicole, herself a high school Japanese language teacher, probably knew about the IT course. In Line 15 she asks Ellen, IT クラスに入りましたか？ ‘Did you enter the IT course?’, and in the following turns Nicole and Ellen talk about the IT course. Alison and Ken are probably overhearing the conversation. Excerpt 12 Lunch conversation (continued)

A: Alison; NC: Nicole (Level 2); K: Ken (Level 1); E: Ellen (a student in the IT course) 14 E: 15 NC: 16 E: 17 NC: 18 E: 19 NC: 20 NC: 21 E:

さっき何か聞こうとしてい るところでしたか？ あの、ITクラスに入りまし たか？ そうです どれぐらい勉強します か？ ええと、３週間コースです ３週間、ああ (４秒) そのITの勉強は、日本 語、日本語を教えるのた めに？ そうですね。ええ。特に、日 本語教材を作るための、あ の、クイズとかテストか、イ ンターネット、大学にあるリ ーソース、いろいろを教えて くださるから、すごく便利で すよ。

14 E:

Were you about to ask me something a little while ago? 15 NC: Uhm, IT, did you enter the IT course? 16 E: That’s right. 17 NC: How long will you study? 18 E: It’s a three-week course. 19 NC: Three weeks, ah (4 seconds) 20 NC: Is the IT study for Japanese, Japanese language teaching? 21 E:

Yes, that’s right. Especially, in order to prepare Japanese language instructional materials, uhm, quizzes, tests, internet and university resources. It’s very convenient that the course teaches [honorific] various things to me.

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22 NC: ここに住んで、ヘップバー 23 E:

ンで住んでいる？ そうですね。ええと、ヘッ プバーンホールの３階。 同じですよね？ヘップバ ーンホールでしょ？

24 NC: はい 25 E: みんな、だと思いましたけ 26 27 28

ど。教室もヘップバーン の１階ですね NC: すみません？ E: あの、教室もヘップバー ンの１階にあります NC: Oh、はいはいはい。ああ

22 NC: Do you live here, do you live in Hepburn [Hall]? 23 E: That’s right. Uhm, the third floor in Hepburn Hall. Isn’t that the same? You live in Hepburn, too, right? 24 NC: Yes 25 E: Everyone, I thought. The classroom is also on the fi rst floor in Hepburn. 26 NC: Pardon? 27 E: Uhm, the classroom is also on the fi rst floor in Hepburn. 28 NC: Oh, yes yes yes. Ah

After a 3-second pause, Ellen initiates another question (Line 29 in Excerpt 13). This time, she directs the question to Alison. Ellen asks, 上級ク ラスですよね ‘You are in the advanced class, aren’t you?’ Alison answers that she is in Intermediate. Ellen asks Nicole the same question. Nicole answers that she is in Beginning 2. Ellen probably thought that Alison was a Level 5 (Advanced) student. あ、中級ですか ‘Oh, intermediate’ in Line 31 seems to indicate Ellen’s surprise at Alison’s answer. In Line 34, after a 4-second pause, Ellen initiates a question, again, and asks Alison, じゃ、大学の方でよく 勉強してきたんですか ‘Well then, have you been studying [Japanese] well in college?’ Alison answers はい ‘yes’ to Ellen’s question, but her tone indicates some reluctance to respond. It is uncertain whether Ellen noticed Alison’s tone of voice. Ellen responds, ああ ‘ah’ to Alison’s answer. Alison, again, says はい ‘yes’ to Ellen’s question, again, but this time in a low voice. Ellen continues to ask Alison questions. In Line 38 she asks, 何のきっ かけで、日本語を選びましたか？ ‘Why did you choose [to study] Japanese?’ In the following turn, Alison answers, その質問はちょっと難しい。よくわかん ないんですけ ‘That question is a little difficult. I’m not sure.’ Ellen probably noticed Alison’s reluctance. She withdrew her question by saying, じゃ あ、消して。消して。いいよ ‘Well then, forget it. Forget it. It’s okay’, and supports Alison’s position by saying 私も答えられない、今 ‘I cannot answer [the question] either now.’ The conversation ends with Alison’s agreement, そ うね ‘that is so.’ After a 6-second silence, Ellen starts talking to the instructor, and Nicole starts talking to Alison. Excerpt 13 Lunch conversation (continued)

A: Alison; NC: Nicole (Level 2); K: Ken (Level 1); E: Ellen (a student in the IT course) 29

E:

上級クラスですよね？

29

E:

30

A:

私は中級

30

A:

You are in the Level 5 class, aren’t you? I am in intermediate.

Alison: Shame, Resistance and Overcoming

31 32 33 34

あ、中級ですか。上 級？ NC: 初級２ E: あ、初級２か、そっか (４秒) E: じゃ、大学の方でよく 勉強してきたんです か？

E:

35 → A:

はい(答えるのを躊躇し ているよう) 36 E: ああ 37 → A: はい (小さい声) 38 E: 何のきっかけで、日本語 を選びましたか？ 39 → A: (１秒)その質問はちょ っと難しい。よく [わかんないんですけど 40 E: [難しい 41 NC: (笑い) 42 A: うん 43 E: じゃあ、消して。消し て。いいよ。 44 A: ありがとう 45 NC: (笑い) 46 E: 答えなくていいわ。私も 答えられない、今

47

A:

そうね

31

119

E:

Oh, intermediate. [Are you in] Level 5? 32 NC: Beginning 2 33 E: Oh, beginning 2, I see. (4 seconds) 34 E: Well then, have you been studying [Japanese] for a long time in college? 35 → A: Yes (Tone of her voice sounds reluctant to answer.) 36 E: Ah 37 → A: Yes (in a low voice) 38 E: Why did you choose [to study] Japanese? 39 → A: (1 second) That question is a little difficult. [I’m not sure. 40 E: [It is difficult 41 (Laugh) 42 A: Yes 43 E: Well then, forget it. Forget it. It’s okay. 44 A: Thank you. 45 NC: (Laugh) 46 E: You don’t need to answer. I cannot answer [the question], either now. 47 A: That is so.

Alison could have answered Ellen’s question 何のきっかけで、日本語を 選びましたか？ ‘Why did you choose [to study] Japanese?’ differently, rather than saying その質問はちょっと難しい。よくわかんないんですけど ‘That questions is a little difficult. I’m not sure’, which ended the conversation with Ellen. The fi ller ん ‘n’ and a 1-second pause in Line 39 seem to indicate that Alison was trying to think how to answer Ellen’s question. After the pause, Alison said その質問はちょっと難しい。よくわかんない んですけど ‘That questions is a little difficult. I’m not sure’ instead of trying to elaborate and explain why she started studying Japanese. When Alison was asked the question, she may have thought that it was too complicated to explain in Japanese and, therefore, she was not confident as to whether she would be able to adequately perform the task. On the other hand, it is possible that Alison felt uncomfortable sharing with a stranger the details as to why she had started studying Japanese. Considering what she had told me about her perception of her speaking skills, I think that her lack of confidence and her feeling that 下手ですか ら、よく説明できないから、恥ずかしい 。だから、話したくない ‘Because I am

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not good at, because I cannot explain well, I feel embarrassed. So I don’t want to speak [Japanese]’ held her back from speaking Japanese. After this exchange Alison did not talk to Ellen again for the rest of the meal. Alison did not exchange any words with the instructor, either. She carried on a conversation with only Nicole and Ken. Alison almost always sat with Nicole at lunchtimes. Nicole was a high school Japanese language teacher. She had spent a few years in Yamagata, located in the northeast part of Japan, as an assistant English teacher for the local school district. She was initially placed in Level 3 (Intermediate 1), but she decided to study in Level 2 (Beginning 2) at Middlebury. She was outgoing, interactive and friendly and did not hesitate to speak Japanese with anyone in the Japanese School. She was often the one who initiated a new conversational topic and was often at the center of conversations. Because Alison was almost always with Nicole, she stayed, in a sense, in Nicole’s shadow. The interaction in Excerpt 14 includes Alison, Nicole and an instructor. In the excerpt, Nicole is asking the instructor about the meaning of sumimasen. Sumimasen is a Japanese phrase that can be translated as ‘thank you’, ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘excuse me.’ Nicole asks the instructor why sumimasen can mean ‘thank you’ and ‘I’m sorry.’ Alison overhears the conversation and joins in three times (Lines, 9, 11, 16). Excerpt 14 Lunch conversation

NC: Nicole; I: Instructor; A: Alison; I2: Intern 1 2 3

4 5 6 7 8

NC: 先生、ちょっと質問が

あるんですが 何ですか？ I: 「すみません」の NC: あの、 意味は、あの、 「ありが とうございます」と、あ の、あの 「ごめんなさい」 I: NC: なんで？ なんで？ (声が大きく I: なる) NC: (笑い) I: なんでか (ひとり言)

9 → A:

10

I:

11 → A:

「すみません」の元 の、げんき？げんきは 何ですか？ 「すむ」という動詞で すね。 住む？ ああ、ほんとで すか？

1

NC: Teacher, I have a question.

2 3

I: What is it? NC: Uhm, the meaning of sumimasen is uhm, ‘thank you’ and uhm uhm

4 5 6

I: I’m sorry NC: Why? I: Why? (Increased volume)

7 8

NC: (Laugh) I: Why is it (Talking to himself) 9 → A: What is original, the origin? [wrong word] the origin [wrong word] of sumimasen? 10 I: It is the verb sumu. 11 → A:

Sumu [to live]? Oh, is it really?

Alison: Shame, Resistance and Overcoming

「すむ」で、 「すまな い」 「すみません」

12

I:

13

NC: 昨日、校長先生から説

明してくれました あ、ほんと、じゃ、いい 14 I: じゃないですか でも、校長先生は、 15 NC: あ、 いろいろな先生にそれ 質問してください、と言 った 16 → A: ああ、そうですか。今、 テスト？ 17 NC: はい 「すまない」は、自分 18 I: の気持ちが「済まな い」っていうことだと思 うんですよね。その「申 し訳ない」から、自分は 「済まない」、違う？ 校長先生、何て言っ た？ 19 NC: 知っていますか、どうし て「すみません」は、 「 ありがとう」と「失礼し ます」の意味がありま すか？ 20 I2: なんで？ (I2は会話の 途中でテーブルに加わ った)

12 13 14 15

I:

It’s sumu [to be done]. So, sumanai [negative], sumimasen [negative polite] NC: The director explained it to me yesterday. I: Oh, really? Then you are fi ne. NC: Ah, but, he said, ‘Please ask that [question] to many teachers.’

16 → A: 17 18

19

20

121

I see. Is it a test now?

NC: Yes I: Sumanai is that your feeling is ‘not yet done’, I think. Because you feel sorry [moshiwakenai], you are ‘not yet done.’ Isn’t it right? What did the director say? NC: Do you know why sumimasen has the meanings of both ‘thank you’ and ‘I’m sorry’? I2:

Why? (I2 joined the table in the middle of the conversation.)

After this excerpt, Nicole, the instructor and the intern continued talking. Alison, however, remained silent during the rest of the conversation. The interactional pattern seen here was typical of Alison when talking with instructors at lunch – Nicole initiated and stayed at the center of the conversation and Alison peripherally participated by contributing a few turns. Alison did not initiate conversations with instructors, nor did she ever place herself at center stage in a conversation. She preferred to stay in Nicole’s shadow. I interpreted Alison’s reluctance and avoidance to talk to instructors and other people whom she did not know well as almost a fear of speaking Japanese. Facing

‘Speaking is my problem (original in a mix of Japanese and English)’, Alison once told me. In our meetings, she repeatedly expressed her frustration and embarrassment about not being able to speak Japanese, especially her inability to express herself in Japanese. In our final interview she explained her problem at greater length.

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Excerpt 15 Interview

R: Researcher; A: Alison (Original in English) R: A: R: A: R: A: R: A: R: A: R: A: R: A: R: A:

R: A:

You mentioned before that speaking was your personal problem. Yeah I’ve been thinking about that. Yeah Why uhm Why do you think? This is just my thought. Yeah I felt that you were almost scared of speaking Japanese. It’s almost like you have a fear or you feel ashamed. I do yeah yeah It’s like you have a fear uhm because of the gap between yourself and your Japanese-speaking self, probably your Japanese proficiency is not high enough to express yourself. Yeah So, you feel ashamed and fear that you wouldn’t be able to present yourself Yeah and what other people think of you Yeah. I probably in general I don’t feel like speaking, I don’t feel comfortable speaking a language that I am not really good at. I don’t mind speaking English because I know that no matter what I can express myself, so, and in Japanese, indeed, it’s true. I never wanted to speak. I don’t know if scared is the right word, but I just don’t, never felt comfortable with it, so if I spoke to friends who knew me, it wasn’t a problem at all because uhm I thought that they would know me and understand what I was trying to say, but indeed, speaking to teachers or speaking to the people just xxx, yeah, scared, just I didn’t feel comfortable with it. Where did the uncomfortableness come from when speaking to people who don’t know you? I think the thing is that I don’t want to sound like a two-year-old kid, but I’m defi nitely doing it in Japanese, so it’s kind of like I feel stupid and so, yeah that’s why.

私は中級２で一番下手 ‘I am the least proficient student in Level 4’, Alison sighed one day. We were, as usual, seated at a table in the outside dining area in front of Proctor Hall. Alison opened her tobacco case and started to roll a cigarette. As I always did, I watched her long fi ngers do their job. I often forgot that Alison was from Germany. At Middlebury, everyone was from somewhere else and was new to the environment. ‘I am from Berlin’ did not sound very different from ‘I am from Boston.’ I tried to imagine what it was like to live in Berlin. However, my imagination was not of much use because I have never been to Europe. べルリ ンは本当におもしろい町。私はベルリンが大好きから、ずっとベルリンに住みたい

Alison: Shame, Resistance and Overcoming

123

‘Berlin is a really interesting city. I love Berlin, so I want to live there forever’, Alison said. When she talked about Berlin, her eyes became bigger and her voice sounded more confident. Alison had lived in Berlin for many years since starting graduate school there. Alison once told me about her advisor – Dr KawanaHeinrich. The fi rst part of her hyphened surname silently claims her Japanese identity. She is a well-known scholar of Japanese Studies and is considered an authority on Japanology, particularly the field of post-war Japanese literature, according to Alison. She has been Alison’s advisor since Alison entered her graduate program. Alison’s graduate program often hosted scholars and writers from different countries. Because of the reputation of Dr Kawana-Heinrich, the program often had international visitors. On such occasions, graduate students were asked to give the guests a tour of the campus, show them around the city of Berlin and join them for dinner. As a doctoral student in Japanology, Alison was often asked to take care of Japanese guests and was invited to formal and informal events. ‘I refuse to speak [Japanese] with them’, Alison said. I am at a university and whenever we have visiting scholars, I refuse to speak [Japanese] with them because it is embarrassing. You can translate [Japanese literature] on one hand and refuse to speak [Japanese] on another. That’s, that’s crap. I mean that’s just not good. (Original in English)

When Alison needed to talk to the Japanese guests, she just told them that she was not able to speak Japanese and conversed with them in English. Alison felt deeply embarrassed about this because, although she could read, analyze and translate the works of Mishima, she had to tell Japanese scholars that she could not speak Japanese. Alison was, in a sense, an elite student. She had earned her undergraduate and graduate degrees from two of the most prestigious universities in Germany. She had been studying with a highly acclaimed scholar in the field and was in the last stage of writing her doctoral thesis when she came to Middlebury. Considering her academic background alone, she was a promising young scholar of Japanology and post-war Japanese literature. Moreover, she was a multilingual speaker. She was able to speak four European languages, namely German, English, French and Spanish, to varying degrees. Nevertheless, she struggled with limitations in speaking Japanese. When speaking Japanese, Alison felt that she sounded like a two-year-old child. It was almost like a stigma for her academically, socially and personally. She was frustrated, disappointed and deeply embarrassed about her (in)ability to speak Japanese and ashamed of her Japanese-speaking self. For Alison, going to Middlebury probably felt like taking a detour in her academic career. She knew that she would need to face the source of

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Portraits of Second Language Learners

her embarrassment and shame some day. One day in Germany, Alison learned about the Middlebury Language Schools through the Japan Studies mailing list. At that time, she already had planned to spend a few months of the following fall in Kyoto for her research. She did not know anything about the Middlebury Language Schools but, after reading the description of the program, Alison decided to apply. ‘Nobody made me come. I applied for it just because I wanted to’, Alison said, and continued, ‘I knew that I had to do it.’ ‘I knew it was going to be hard, and I knew it wasn’t going to be the best summer of my life.’

Clicking

With her determination to overcome her fear of speaking Japanese by becoming a more proficient speaker, Alison came to the United States for the first time in her life and started her new school life as an L2 learner of Japanese at Middlebury. However, facing the reality of the situation, Alison could not stop questioning whether she had made the right decision to come to Middlebury. It was after the midterm break when I noticed a change in Alison’s attitude. 何かが変わったよね ‘Something has changed’, I told Alison. She said, うん、自信が多くなった、わかんない ‘Yes, I’ve gained more confidence, I don’t know’, she smiled. It was not that Alison had more free time in the last half of the program. In fact, the students became busier by the day after the midterm break while preparing for their fi nal exams, oral presentations, class projects and school events, in addition to doing their daily homework and studying for daily quizzes. 魔の７週目 ‘Devil’s seventh week’ – this was what the teachers called the seventh week of the program. Many students got run down and became sick during the seventh week. While listening to the students complaining about how busy they were, I was watching the change taking place in Alison. I recalled the day when Alison told me, 私は今日わかった ‘I figured it out today.’ It was right before the midterm break. I asked what she had figured out. 私は知ってる言葉で説明できる ‘I can explain [myself] with the words that I know.’ We were, as usual, seated at a table in front of Proctor Hall. I heard an excited tone in Alison’s voice. During the fifth week (the midterm break started at the end of the fifth week), the students in Level 4 were working on a group project. The task was to present unusual trivia that would astonish people in a parody of the Japanese television show Toribia no Izumi ‘The Fountain of Trivia.’ In the show, a panel of five judges evaluate each piece of trivia and vote on how interesting it is by pushing the ‘hee button’ every time they are astonished. Hee is a Japanese interjection to express surprise. At Middlebury, the total number of hee elicited by each group’s presentation was used to

Alison: Shame, Resistance and Overcoming

125

determine which trivia item was the most astonishing, and the trivia item that earned the most hee was awarded a prize. Alison worked with two other classmates and decided to present a trivia item about octopuses. Alison wanted to explain that ‘octopuses are mollusks’ in Japanese, but she was unable to do so because she did not know the Japanese for ‘mollusks.’ Then she realized that she could say, タコは骨がない動物 ‘octopuses are animals with no bones’ without using the word ‘mollusks.’ Likewise, she realized that she could use the word kokoro ‘heart (that perceives emotions and feelings)’, which was already a familiar word to her, to say that an octopus has three hearts, not using the word shinzou ‘heart (as an organ)’, which was the word that she did not know. 私は知ってる言葉で説明できる ‘I can explain [myself] with the words that I know.’ At this moment something clicked for Alison. From the end of the sixth and the beginning of the seventh week, I started to notice that Alison was smiling more. I also noticed that the tension I had felt in Alison’s attitude before the midterm break had disappeared. She continued to follow her daily routine just as strictly and to study as hard as before, but the change in her attitude was visible in her behavior. For example, Alison participated in a study group meeting for the fi rst time. At the group study meeting she had an insight. 他の人も同じ 問題があるとわかった ‘I realized that other people also had the same problems’, and those who spoke more in class did not necessarily understand more. だから、私は金曜日の試験で、会話の試験で、そんなに緊張していなかっ た ‘so I wasn’t so nervous in the conversation exam on Friday’, she said. Alison later explained about her change in our fi nal interview (Excerpt 16). Excerpt 16 Interview

A: Alison; R: Researcher (Original in English) A: There was a certain point when I figured out that I could actually express myself in Japanese, and that was probably the point when I really wanted to learn more. R: Yes, I remember. A: Yeah, that was probably the point when I wanted to do this, and another thing is nine weeks were so long. Having passed like nakayasumi ‘midterm break’, it was like okay it was going to get less and less. So I felt so much better after that. It was like over the hill, kind of. We were getting there. We were getting to the end. That really helped a lot as well Speaking

Among the changes I witnessed in Alison, the most prominent was that Alison started to speak more Japanese. Excerpt 17 shows an example of her change in participation in a conversation. In this excerpt Alison is

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Portraits of Second Language Learners

seated with two male instructors in Level 4 (I1 and I2), Pablo (Level 4), Kris (Level 2) and Nicole (Level 2). Prior to this conversation, I1, I2, Alison and Pablo were talking about food. In the middle of the conversation, Nicole joins the table and starts complaining about the complexity of the grammar she had learned earlier that day. Kris (Nicole’s classmate) and Nicole start talking about the grammar. After their conversation there is a 7-second silence. After the silence, Alison initiates a new topic (Line 1). She invites everyone (at the table) to go to a music event by saying, みんな今日音楽イベントに行きましょう ‘Everyone, let’s go to the music event tonight.’ Kris, who loves music, immediately responds to Alison’s invitation (Line 2 through Line 4). In Line 5, however, in response to someone’s question, Alison replies that she is not going to the event because she has a lot of homework. This causes laughter because Alison’s utterance, 音楽イベント行きましょう ‘let’s go the music event’, pragmatically assumes that the speaker is also going to the event. Excerpt 17 Lunch conversation

A: Alison; P: Pablo (Level 4); K: Kris (Level 2); I1: Level 4 instructor; I2: Level 4 instructor; NC: Nicole (Level 2) 1 A: みんな今日、音楽イベント 2 3 4 5

K: A: K: A:

に、行きましょう はい 行きますか？ はい、絶対 私？ えっ、宿題が多い

6 I1: 「行きましょう」とか言って おいて(笑い) 7 K: はい 8 I1: 行かないんですか？（笑

い） (複数の笑い) 9 I2: 「ましょう」は何だったん だ？ (笑い） (複数の笑い) 10 I1: セールスがうまいですね うん（笑い） 11

1 A: Everyone, let’s go to the music event tonight. 2 K: Yes 3 A: Are you going? 4 K: Yes, defi nitely. 5 A: Me? Ah, I have a lot of homework. 6 I1: You said ‘let’s go.’ (Laugh) 7 K: Yes 8 I1: You are not going? (Laugh) (Laughter by multiple people) 9 I2: What was ‘let’s’ for? (laugh) (Laughter by multiple people) 10 I1: You are good at advertising. 11 Yes (laugh)

In Line 12 (Excerpt 18), Pablo initiates a new topic. He asks Alison about a recent accident that happened in Germany. The accident happened during the annual Love Parade electronic dance music festival in a small town in Germany. Twenty-one people died from suffocation and hundreds of people were injured. Alison knew about the accident. From Line 12 through Line 29, the conversation takes place between Alison and Pablo.

Alison: Shame, Resistance and Overcoming

127

Excerpt 18 Lunch conversation (continued)

A: Alison; P: Pablo (Level 4); K: Kris (Level 2); I1: Level 4 instructor; I2: Level 4 instructor; NC: Nicole (Level 2) 12 P: あの、その、事故、Love Paradeというイベントがある

12 P: Ahm, that, accident, there is an event called Love Parade.

13 14 15 16 17

13 14 15 16 17

A: P: A: P: A:

けど 何？ xxx

Love Parade?

そうそうそう 知ってる？ うん、もちろん。なんか、あ の、それは、ほんとに大変 18 P: ベルリンで？ 19 A: 違う、他のcity。他の町に引っ 越して、今小さいcity, Duisburgという小さいci、町 に引っ越して、その町は、小さ いから

A: P: A: P: A:

18 P: 19 A:

20 P: xxx 21 A: そうそうそう、その隣の町。そ

20 P: 21 A:

22 23 24 25

P: A: P: A:

xxx

22 23 24 25

P: A: P: A:

26 27 28 29

P: A: P: A:

ああ、そう すごく大変 誰のせいでなった？ 誰のせい、それは難しいね。そ の、あの、パネル(？)の前に高 い壁があって、その人は、なん か、xxx あの、その道を、あ の、あの、逃げたかった。(Aは 事故がどうして起こったのかせ つめいを続ける)

26 27 28 29

P: A: P: A:

の町は、小さいから、たぶん、 そんな大きい、観、観客者は、 あ、ちょっと無理。なんか、そ の、あの、その町で、５万人住 んでいるけど、１４０万が来た から

５０万 ５０万 だ、 で、だけど、１４０万が来た から、ほんとに大変だった。そ れは、私は、本当に、絵を見 て、本当になんか、やけあせ、 冷や汗

What? xxx Love Parade? Yes yes yes Do you know? Yes, of course. (fi ller), uhm, that is really awful. In Berlin? No. Another city. [The event] moved to another city, now moved to a small ci, a small city called Duisburg, and that city is small, so. xxx Yes yes yes, the city next to it. Because that city is small, it was probably impossible [to have] such a large crowd. (Filler) That, uhm, in that city, 500,000 people are living, but 1,400,000 people came. xxx 500,000 people 500,000 people So, but 1,400,000 people came, so, it was really tough. That is, I really [started to] sweat with fear after seeing the pictures That is so. Very awful Who caused the accident? Who caused? That’s difficult. Ahm, there was a high wall in front of the panel (?), those people, (fi ller), xxx uhm, wanted to run through the path. (A continues to explain how the accident happened.)

In Line 30 (Excerpt 19), a Level 4 instructor joins their conversation, Nicole joins in Line 33 and another Level 4 instructor joins in

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Line 38. From Line 39 until the end, Alison stays at the center stage of the conversation. Excerpt 19 Lunch conversation (continued)

A: Alison; P: Pablo (Level 4); K: Kris (Level 2); I1: Level 4 instructor; I2: Level 4 instructor; NC: Nicole (Level 2) 30 I2: 31 32 33 34

ああ、聞きました、聞きま した。 今２０人 ２０人

A: I2: NC: xxx あの、Love Parade知っ A:

ていますか。あの、大きい テクノ音楽のイベントあっ た。前は、そのイベントは ベルリンで、ベルリンのイ ベントだったけど、今、あ の、小さい町に引っ越し た。その町で５０万人が住 んでいるけど、観客は、１ ４０万人

30 I2:

Ah, I’ve heard, I’ve heard.

31 32 33 34

Now 20 people 20 people xxx Uhm, do you know Love Parade? There was a big techno music event. Before, it took place in Berlin, a Berlin event, but now, it moved to a small city. In that city, 500,000 residents are living, but the audience was 1,400,000 people. (The school announcement begins.) (The announcement is over. Students are still clapping their hands.) Those people, uhm, wanted to go to the big stage, uhm, in front of the panel, they suddenly got into a panic, and 20 people died. Because there were so many people, they could not move, and breathe, what should I say, because they could not breathe, in the middle Very crowded Very crowded 520 people got, got injured. That [accident], why did people die? (filler) because [they] got into a panic and could not breathe. Because there were really many people, they could not move, and in the middle of that, what should I say, they couldn’t breathe.

A: I2: NC: A:

(お知らせが始まる) 35 A:

(お知らせが終わり、拍手

35 A:

36 P: 37 A:

すごく混んでいる すごく混んでいる、５２０ 人が、け、けが、した あれ、どうして人が死んだ んですか？ なんかパニックになって、 息が、 できなかったから。 ほんとに人が多かったか ら、全然動けなかって、そ の真ん中で、なんという、 息ができなかった。

36 P: 37 A:

38 I1: 39 A:

が続いている）その人は、 あの、みんあ、あの、大き い舞台 (？) に行きたかっ て、あの、パネルの前で、 偶然パニックになって、２ ０人が死んでしまった。人 が多かったから、全然動 かなくて、息が、なんとい う、息ができなかったか ら、その真ん中に

38 I1: 39 A:

Alison: Shame, Resistance and Overcoming

40 I2: 41 A:

窒息？ そう、ちそくしてしまった。 本当に大変とか、なんか、 あの、そのxxxはすごく強 かったから、その人は、あ の、あの、上から、 で

40 I2: 41 A:

42 P: 43 A:

引っ張る？ 引っ張る、うん、引っ張る こともできなかった 窒息したんですか そう 毎日亡くなった人の数が 増えていくから。最初は １０人ぐらいで、今は２０ 人ぐらい

42 P: 43 A:

２０人 でも、あの、ironyは何で すか？ 皮肉 皮肉は、あの、イベントの 名前はLove Paradeだっ た ああ どういう意味です か、Love Parade？ それは、あの、意味は、２ ０年前ベルリン始まって、 あの、あの、テクノのイベン トだったから、みんな、実 は、戦争に反対した人が、 あの、その考えがあった。 ２０年前、それは小さいだ った。３００人くらい。 で も、今は１４０万人

47 A: 48 P:

ほ

54 I2:

44 I2: 45 A: 46 I2:

47 A: 48 P: 49 A: 50 P: 51 I2: 52 I1: 53 A:

54 I2:

44 I2: 45 A: 46 I2:

49 A: 50 P: 51 I2: 52 I1: 53 A:

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Suffocated? Yes, they suffocated [missing a mora]. Really awful (fi ller) uhm, that xxx was very strong, so, those people, uhm, uhm, from the top Pull? Pull, yes, they couldn’t be pulled. They suffocated. Yes Every day, the number of deaths increases. At the beginning, it was about 10 people, but now about 20. 20 people But, uhm, what is ‘irony?’ Hiniku The irony is that the name of the event was Love Parade. Ah What does it mean, Love Parade? It’s uhm, the meaning is, it began in Berlin 20 years ago, uhm, because it was a techno [music] event, everyone, in fact, people who were against the war had the idea [of having a techno music event?]. Twenty years ago, it was a small event with only 300 people. But now 1,400,000 people. Wow

Furthermore, Alison started to go to the instructors’ office hours to ask questions. 何でもなかった ‘It was nothing’, she said after her first visit. As the end of the program approached, Alison seemed to be more relaxed and comfortable. ‘They all said like the fi rst week and seventh week would be so hard, and I was like yeah [tapping the table] I didn’t feel it at all (original in English)’, Alison later recalled. It was also during the seventh week that Miyamoto-sensei, the head instructor of Level 4, told Alison that her Japanese was improving. ‘It was

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really important that Miyamoto-sensei said that my Japanese was becoming better (original in English)’, Alison recalled. Toward the end of the seventh week, Alison went to see Miyamoto-sensei during his office hour to ask some questions about the reading material that the Level 4 students had read during that week. About a minute after Alison started to ask a question, Miyamoto-sensei changed the topic of conversation and started to talk about Alison’s Japanese language skills (Excerpt 20). In the excerpt, Miyamoto-sensei praises Alison for her performance in the reading comprehension section (he teaches reading comprehension). Then he continues to praise Alison by saying that her Japanese language skills, including both speaking and reading, have really improved. Excerpt 20 Conversation during Miyamoto-sensei’s office hour

M: Miyamoto-sensei; A: Alison M: あ、ところで、ベイルさん、読解 (試験の読解問題について)、とて もよくできてました

A: ああ、ありがと[う M: [ベイルさん、(日本 語が)ほんとに(強調)のびましたね A: (笑い) M: 中間の後、話すのも読むのも、ほ A:

んとに ありがとうございます

M: Oh, by the way, Beil-san, you did a very good job in the reading comprehension (referring to the previous exam). A: Ah, thank yo[u. M: [Beil-san, [your Japanese] has really (emphasis) improved. A: (Laugh) M: After the midterm, both speaking and reading A: Thank you.

Although it was brief, Miyamoto-sensei’s comment meant a lot to Alison. It gave her confidence and assurance that she had indeed made the right decision to come to Middlebury. ‘I am glad that my Japanese has improved’, Alison said at the end of the program. ‘I defi nitely did learn a lot.’ Miyamoto-sensei described Alison as 中級２でいちばん伸びた学生 ‘the student who improved the most in Level 4’ in our informal conversation at the end of the program. ‘What did Middlebury mean to me? I don’t know’, Alison said, ‘but I’m happy now.’ She looked at me. I recalled the impression that I had received at our fi rst meeting – fair and honest. Alison knew that the nine weeks at Middlebury had not made her proficient in Japanese. She continued to have difficulty expressing herself in Japanese. However, she also knew that she was able to explain herself with the words that she knew. ‘I’ll speak’, she said. ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll go back to my room. I have more packing to do.’ This was the last time I saw Alison. I know that if I go to Japan, I won’t be able to figure out things as easy as I think because if Japanese people speak in the normal way that they

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usually speak, it’s not understandable, and of course going back to literature is hard again as well. It’s not that Middlebury has solved the problems that I had, but I defi nitely, whenever I meet a Japanese person, I will be able to, like, I’ll be able to, I, I, I’ll speak. I’m not going to just refuse, like ‘I’m sorry I cannot do that. I’m not going to go dinner with you because I cannot speak Japanese.’ I’m not going to do that. (Original in English) Discussion

In this chapter, I have described Alison’s L2 socialization process by highlighting how her personal and academic backgrounds intersected with the social practices of the Japanese School and influenced the ways in which she participated in the community of practice of the Japanese School. Alison’s socialization process, especially for the first five weeks, was characterized as a process of struggle and resistance. When she came to Middlebury and joined the community of the Japanese School, what she saw was a ‘mass phenomenon’ – students’ unproblematic view of the Japanese culture and their innocent desires and eagerness to ‘become Japanese.’ At that time what emerged in her mind were feelings of こわい ‘being scared’ and resistance toward taking part in the ‘mass phenomenon’ that she observed – more precisely, resistance toward taking part in the cultural hegemony that was reproduced in the community of the Japanese School. Akiyama (2003) has argued that learning experiences are colored and complicated by the variety of backgrounds that individual students bring to class. In Alison’s case, her nationality as a German and her academic background in Japanology, especially her extensive knowledge about the nihonjinron ‘theories of the Japanese’, seemed to lead her to construct the filter through which she viewed and interpreted the community of practice of the Japanese School, negotiated the meaning of her participation in the new community and defi ned herself as a learner and speaker of Japanese. L2 learners’ resistance is not a new phenomenon in L2 socialization research. Previous studies have found L2 learners’ resistance to the marginalization imposed by members of dominant communities (e.g. Atkinson, 2003; Duff, 2002; Harklau, 2000; Morita, 2002, 2004; Norton, 2000; Talmy, 2008). When L2 learners face undesirable social practices, they exercise their agency to resist them. In this regard, the resistance found in previous studies is the exercise of L2 learner agency to claim their legitimacy and gain opportunities to participate in the target language community of practice. In Alison’s case, however, her resistance served neither to claim her legitimacy nor to gain opportunities to participate in the practices of the Japanese School. Rather, it was her choice not to become part of the practices that she observed in the Japanese School which she considered undesirable. In this sense, Alison’s resistance is similar to that of Nasim, a university student in Fuentes’ (2012) study.

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Nasim originally came to the United States as a refugee from Iran. When she entered the university she faced the values and practices of the institution, which she felt were built upon the cultural and social capital of native English speakers. Nasim felt that English learners’ success at the university depended on the acquisition and adaptation of the values and habitus of their native English-speaking peers. For her, such institutional practice was undesirable; thus, she decided not to participate in it. Wenger (1998) argued that socialization processes are comprised of both participation and non-participation in the new community of practice. In the context of L2 socialization, L2 learners exercise their agency to negotiate their participation in the target language community of practice by accepting and rejecting, and thereby shape the trajectories of their learning. In addition to her negotiation of participation in the practice of the Japanese School, Alison negotiated the meaning of self as a speaker of Japanese. What had originally brought Alison to Middlebury was her determination to face the shame of being a Japanologist who could not speak Japanese well, to overcome her feelings of embarrassment and to open a way to become a speaker of Japanese. Alison was a successful doctoral candidate and a future scholar of Japanology in Germany. She was perhaps deeply frustrated by the gap between her German-speaking self and her Japanese-speaking self. Moreover, she was embarrassed and ashamed about her inability to speak Japanese well. In his autobiographical case study of learning Japanese, Cohen (1997) documented his ambivalent feelings about speaking Japanese. Cohen, a successful applied linguist and multilingual speaker, faced challenges similar to those Alison faced when he was learning Japanese. He documented that his ‘feeling of insecurity’ (Cohen, 1997: 147) resulted in his reluctance to speak Japanese, and that the perception that Japanese was a ‘private language’ (Cohen, 1997: 147), which might not welcome nonnative speakers to use it, had limited his opportunities to speak Japanese. In Alison’s case, too, her feelings of embarrassment and shame and lack of confidence became an emotional barrier which limited her opportunities to speak Japanese. When Alison faced the hard reality of Middlebury, she was caught up in various emotions – uncertainty, selfdoubt, embarrassment, shame and lack of confidence. Although it had been her decision to come to Middlebury, she struggled to step out of her old self and take a first step into the world of Japanese. When Alison’s emotional barrier was reduced by two key events (one was her realization that she could actually express herself in Japanese, which she had thought would never be possible; the other was her teacher’s assurance that her Japanese language skills were indeed improving), Alison gained confidence in her ability to speak Japanese. These two events became turning points in her learning process and opened the door to the world of Japanese.

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It is uncertain whether these turning points influenced Alison’s understanding of the practice of the Japanese School and her feeling of resistance to emulating native-speaker norms in speaking Japanese. However, as her emotional barrier was reduced, Alison started to negotiate the meaning of her participation in the practice of the Japanese School differently. Finally, I will discuss whether Alison’s primary force for learning Japanese can be explained through the notion of investment (Norton, 2000). As discussed earlier, the core notion of investment is the symbolic exchange that takes place as a goal of L2 learning. L2 learners learn an L2 (acquiring cultural capital) with the expectation that their acquisition of cultural capital would be later exchanged for another form of capital (economic or social capital). The question to be considered is whether Alison’s desire to learn Japanese was linked to her desire to gain economic or social capital. I argue that Alison’s desire to learn Japanese was linked to her desire for personal change. It was her aspiration to overcome her feelings of embarrassment and shame and open up a way to becoming a speaker of Japanese. In this sense, Alison was negotiating the meaning of self of the past, the present and the future as a speaker of Japanese rather than gaining social recognition or identification as a competent speaker of Japanese or a scholar of Japanology who is also proficient in speaking Japanese. L2 learners come from diverse backgrounds and have diverse wants, needs and purposes to learn an L2. They make different choices and exercise various forms of agency to achieve their goals of learning an L2. The notion of investment that Norton (2000) proposed can explain the driving force for L2 learning by certain types of learners but may not be comprehensive enough to capture the driving force for L2 learning by a wider range of learners situated in diverse social contexts and affordance structures. L2 socialization research needs to document such diverse forms of L2 learner agency and the multidirectional nature of L2 learning processes shaped by a dynamic interplay between L2 learner agency and the affordance structures of the target language communities.

6 Naiya: Separation, Resistance and Accomplishing

Beginning

It was the fi rst dinner in Atwater Dining Hall. Students were talking to each other in English. In less than 48 hours, they would be talking to each other in Japanese. I sat at the back of the dining hall and looked around. If I had not known that the students had met each other only a few hours earlier, I would have thought that they had known each other for a long time. At each table, students seemed to be having fun talking to each other. Apart from the main crowd, there were two female students whose enjoyment in talking to one another was evident. One of them was laughing so hard that I could hear her laughter above the noise of the dining hall. I looked at the owner of the voice. She was wearing a pair of white plastic framed glasses and was laughing with her mouth wide open. The white plastic frames made her face look sharper, contrasting with her dark skin tone. This was my first encounter with Naiya. Naiya was one of nine African American students in the Japanese School. According to the director, the ratio of African American students in the Japanese School was higher in the summer of 201x than in previous years. Moreover, the ratio of African American students who were enrolled in the upper level courses in the summer of 201x was also higher than in past years. ‘I am glad that there are more African American students in the upper levels this year (original in Japanese)’, the director said. Naiya was one of them. On the first day of class, I noticed that the black female student who had been laughing very hard in the dining hall was sitting in the Level 4 course. Contrary to the impression that I had received in the dining hall on the fi rst night, she was quiet. She didn’t talk much. She didn’t laugh much. She remained seated while listening to other people talk. This contrast – between when she was laughing so hard and when she remained silent – became clearer as the days went by. This sharp contrast made me interested in getting to know her. 134

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135

Naiya was my neighbor in Hepburn Hall. However, I could not fi nd the right moment to talk to her. She always went straight back to her room after class. She always came late to the dining hall. When she was around, she was always with the person whom I had seen her with in the dining hall on the fi rst night. Moreover, I was probably a little hesitant about seeking out an opportunity to talk to her because I did not know what to talk about. Therefore, it came as a surprise when she told me that she was interested in participating in my study. It was on the Friday afternoon of the second week. I had found a participant for my study. Between Two Worlds

Meeting in front of my room and walking to the Grill became our weekly routine. In the fi rst interview I asked Naiya about her favorite place on the Middlebury College campus. Since she mentioned the Grill, it became our meeting place. The Grill was located in the Student Union down the path. The Student Union was one of the facilities that the students visited frequently over the summer. They received their letters and packages there. There was an ATM machine and a convenience store in the building. There was also a small café/bar on the fi rst floor. On the second floor there was a restaurant called the Grill. The building was originally constructed as a gymnasium in 1912 and remodeled in 1998. The main area had a vaulted ceiling and a large open space with tables, chairs, sofas and pool tables. The Grill and the bar were open until 2am on Fridays and 1am on Saturdays. The Student Union was also one of the few places on campus where students could speak English. Because the people who worked there did not speak nine languages, the students needed to speak English in order to communicate with them. It was open to people in the community as well as to the students, faculty and staff of Middlebury College. Televisions hanging from the wall were tuned to regular cable programs. You could hear people talk in English as well as other languages. It was up to individual students to decide how and how often to use the facility. Some students used it more and others less. At dusk, I often sat on an Adirondack chair placed in front of Hepburn Hall next to the path down the hill to the Student Union. After the bustle of the daytime hours, the college campus revealed a different face. As I smelled the lawn, soil and steamy air coming out of the ground, I thought about random things. There is something about dusk that makes people nostalgic and lonely. I often recalled memories of my late grandmother. My grandmother had died in the summer. That summer had been exceptionally hot, according to my mother. I had received a call from my brother. On that night I saw a firefly. As I watched the firefly dance in the field, I wondered if it was my grandmother who had come to say good-bye to me.

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While I was caught between my nostalgia and my reality at Middlebury, I sometimes saw Naiya come out of Hepburn Hall and walk down the path. She was wearing a pair of skinny jeans and an oversized tee. With a pair of white D&G plastic framed eyeglasses, she looked sharp and sophisticated. 一番好きな服を着ていると、一番好きな自分になる ‘I become my favorite self if I am wearing my favorite clothes’, she told me in the fi rst interview. We were seated in the coffee shop in the library. I looked down at my clothes and felt embarrassed. Naiya continued, その服 が好きだったら、着てくださいね。それが一番いい ‘If you like those clothes, please wear them. That is the best’, and she looked at my clothes. I felt even more embarrassed. She was wearing gray skinny jeans, an oversized printed tee and black sneakers. 大きいTシャツにベルトをつけて、スキニージ ーンズをはきます。そのスタイルが好きです ‘I wear an oversized tee shirt with a belt and a pair of skinny jeans. I like that style’, she told me. As she had claimed, she often wore skinny jeans and an oversized tee at Middlebury. Those skinny jeans fit well on her long slender legs. I often teased her that she could have been a model if she had been taller. Naiya visited the Grill every day. It was her favorite place at Middlebury. I once asked her the reason. 家の気がします ‘I feel like I am at home’, Naiya said. テレビの音が聞こえて、他の人は英語を話して、なんかリラッ クスできる ‘I can hear the TV and people speak English. I can relax’, she added. Naiya usually went to the Grill at night after dinner. She sometimes ordered food. She sometime bought snacks and her favorite Snapple lemon tea. 二つの世界 ‘the two worlds’ – this was how Naiya described the Grill and the Atwater Dining Hall. For Naiya, the Grill was the place where she could feel relaxed with her favorite food and drink. The dining hall, on the other hand, was the place where she had to go because she had a 責任 ‘responsibility’ as a student. She said: [Atwater に行くのは] ちょっと責任。ミドル ベリーに日本語を勉強-しに行きますから、ミ ドルベリーのルールを、しなければなりませ ん。もうお金を払った(笑い)だから、全部のこ とをしなければなりません。

[Going to Atwater is] my responsibility. I came to Middlebury to study Japanese, so I must follow the Middlebury rules. I  already paid (laugh), so I must do everything.

Naiya challenged my assumptions in many ways. Each time, she reminded me that I was seeing and interpreting things based on my own knowledge, experience and belief as a Japanese language teacher. It never occurred to me that there was a student at Middlebury who would think that going to the dining hall was a responsibility. 日本語が上手になったら [な りたかったら]、全部の事をしなければなりません。しないわけにはいかない ‘If you [want to] improve your Japanese, you must do everything. You have to do so’, she said, using an expression that she had just learned in class. しな いわけにはいかない ‘have to do’ literally means ‘cannot not do.’ Naiya perhaps used しないわけにはいかない ‘have to do’ as an equivalent of have to or

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must. For Naiya, going to class, eating in the dining hall and participating in a club and other school-related activities were things that she had to do to improve her Japanese language skills while she was at Middlebury. At night, after she had fi nished most of her responsibilities for that day, Naiya visited the Grill. Before she started to work on the rest, she visited another world for a while, wearing her favorite skinny jeans and an oversized tee.

Life is a Process

It was 2:30pm. I heard a knock at the door. Naiya was always punctual. I checked myself in the mirror. I grabbed my purse and opened the door to my room. Naiya and I walked side by side down the path toward the Grill. She complimented me on my sleeveless tee. I told her that I had bought it on sale at Banana Republic. At the Grill I bought two Snapple lemon teas. We sat down at a table near the stairs. The air conditioning felt good. The weather forecast was predicting that a giant heatwave would arrive on the east coast in a few days, and the air temperature was expected to go up to 100 degrees. The non-air conditioned stone buildings of the college are built for winter but defi nitely not for summer. I decided not to think about the weather until it became an inevitable reality. Naiya showed me her exam. The Level 4 students had an exam every other week, which accounted for 60% of their course grade. The exam included Kanji, reading comprehension, grammar, video (narrative) and conversation. I asked how the results were. She said they were okay. もっ と勉強した方がいい [よかった] ですが、私、単位がとれないから ‘I should [have] studied more but I cannot earn credits, so …’, she added. She was not taking the course for credit and therefore did not have the pressure to get a good grade. However, she said: プレッシャーがありません。 でも、プライドがあ りますから(笑い)精一杯、がんばらないわけに はいかない。正しいでしょう？ 習ったばかりの 文法。

I don’t have pressure. But, I have pride (laugh), so I have to work hard as much I can. Is it correct? It’s the grammar that I just learned.

I glanced at her scores. She had received 100% on the video (narrative) and 95–96% on the rest. Naiya often described her activities at Middlebury using the expression しなければなりません ‘I must/have to do.’ Naiya came to Middlebury to study Japanese. In order to improve her Japanese language skills, according to Naiya, 全部の事をしなければなりません ‘I must/ have to do everything.’ She had to study hard, go to the dining hall and do everything in accordance with the ミドルベリーのルール ‘Middlebury rules.’ Her life at Middlebury was filled with a sense of responsibility. Naiya did not come to Middlebury because someone made her come. Naiya was not learning Japanese because someone made her do so. It was her decision to

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come to Middlebury. It was her decision to study Japanese. In this sense, there was no external pressure on her to study hard or to participate in the school activities. Then where did her sense of しなければならない ‘must do’ come from?

Roots

Naiya identified herself as a New Yorker. She was born in New York City and was raised there by her grandmother. Her grandmother was an immigrant from Trinidad who raised Naiya and two other siblings in New York City. Naiya called her grandmother Granny. According Naiya, her granny was an old-school Trinidadian woman who spoke English with a heavy Trinidad accent. I once asked her about her granny. Naiya answered, おばあちゃん、うるさい (笑い) すごく強い ‘My granny, she is fastidious (laugh) and very strong.’ In our fi nal interview, Naiya explained about her grandmother: Even though I am the baby, I don’t get babied. Does that make sense? I am free to go on and do my own things but still free to fail, you know. So if I go out like I say I’m going to study in Japan. ‘Ok, go ahead and do that. But if you hate it, you’re still going to stay there. You are not coming home.’ That type of thing (laugh). So, I know how to depend on myself rather than depending on other people. (Original in English)

I thought about the life of a Trinidadian woman who had immigrated to the United States and raised her three grandchildren in New York City. Naiya’s parents, who lived in Trinidad, had decided to leave their children with their grandmother in New York City instead of raising them at home in Trinidad. ‘They made the best choice’, Naiya said. According to Naiya: Trinidad became better these days but is still a poor country. So, you just have more opportunities here in America to get good education, stuff like that. … I am not a Trinidadian. I can’t stay there. It’s very 田舎すぎ ‘too remote’ to be free, travel around and such. (Original in English)

I recalled one incident in the dining hall. One day during lunchtime, Naiya and I were seated next to each other at a table with several other students. Someone started to talk about family and asked Naiya where her parents lived. Naiya said that her parents lived in Trinidad. Then the student told Naiya, じゃあ、ウイリアムズさんは、トリニダード人ですね ‘Oh, then, you are a Trinidadian.’ Naiya immediately responded, いいえ、私はアメリカ 人。ニューヨークから来ました ‘No. I’m an American. I’m from New York.’ The tone of her voice sounded stronger than usual. I sensed that the topic of her parents and Trinidad was not something that she enjoyed talking about with others. There was another male student in Level 5 who came from Trinidad. In the first lecture series he was appointed to introduce the guest lecturer, in English, to the audience. Since no English was allowed

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at Middlebury, it was a rare opportunity for the students to hear another student talk in English. Some of Naiya’s female friends found him attractive because of his Trinidad accent; however, Naiya did not find him or his English attractive at all. Rather, she found his English weird. ‘They [Naiya’s female friends] said it’s his accent. He is so Trinidadian. I’m like ugh. It’s like my family. I can’t. Gross (original in English)’, she frowned. Pursuit of interest

Although Naiya denied her identity as a Trinidadian, she admitted that her grandmother was the most influential person in her life. She shaped Naiya’s life in a number of ways. As Naiya grew up, one of the things that her grandmother taught her was that life was a process. 人生 はプロセスでしょ ‘Life is a process, isn’t it?’, she told me one day when I asked about why she was studying Japanese. I sometimes forgot that Naiya was only 20 years old. When I was 20 years old, I was too immature to ponder life. Naiya said that going to college was one example: いい仕事を見つけるために、大学に行った 方がいい。まあ他の方法もありますが、それ は一番やさしい。だからします。将来に何か したいことがあったら、今あまりしたくないこ とをしなければなりません。そのことができ るように、今つらい時があるでしょう、わかり ますか。

In order to fi nd a good job, you should go to college. Well, there are other ways, but it is the easiest. That’s why you do (go to college). If you have something that you want to do in the future, you have to do things that you don’t want to do now. In order to be able to do that (in the future), you have a hard time now. Do you understand?

For Naiya, studying Japanese at Middlebury was one of the processes through which she decided to go to improve her Japanese skills. When Naiya came to Middlebury, she had just fi nished her junior year and was ready to start her senior year at her university in the fall. She had never studied Japanese until she attended the university. She had studied French for four years in high school. According to Naiya, however, she did not remember anything about French. Her initial motivation for studying Japanese was 言語が好きですから、大学に入って、新しい言語を勉強しよう、と 思って、日本語を選びました ‘Because I like languages, I thought that I should study a new language when I entered the university and therefore chose Japanese.’ After she had studied Japanese for one year at the university, she studied abroad at Nanzan University in Japan for a year. It was 一番大変な経験 ‘the most difficult experience’, she recalled. She could not speak Japanese well at that time. Her host family could not speak English. すごく大変でした ‘it was very difficult’, Naiya said. As time passed, however, her experience of studying in Japan turned into a positive one. By the time she returned to her university, 日本語は私をtrapしてしまいました ‘the Japanese language trapped me’ and she decided to continue studying

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Japanese. でも、ミドルベリーに申し込んだ理由は ‘But, the reason why I applied to Middlebury is’, she placed an emphasis on the word でも ‘but’, and continued: もう３年間日本語を勉強しましたから、*ほんと に、 できる、 くらい、を、したいです。いちば ん、 できる日本語のレベルを手に入れることがし たい。

Because I already studied Japanese for three years, *I want to do really possible. I want to attain the highest proficiency level possible.

Naiya chose the words carefully and asked me if I understood what she meant. I said yes and asked what the highest proficiency level possible was for her. She answered: 私もそのレベル、よくわかりません。私にでき るレベルです。それは、ちょっと足りないね(笑 い)。多分、論文を書けるレベル、本当の論文。 そして、まじめなテーマについての論文。は い。それは私にとって、一番できるレベルだと 思います。

I don’t know that level, either. It’s the level that I can attain. That’s not sufficient for others (laugh). Probably, the level where I can write academic papers, real papers. Papers about serious topics. Yes, that’s the highest proficiency level possible for me.

まだまだですが ‘But, still a long way to go’, she added. I told her that it would not be so long. She looked at my face and said, うそをつかないでよ ‘Don’t tell a lie’ and laughed. Naiya believed that there was a gap between her current level of proficiency and the level she wished to reach. Therefore, she decided to come to Middlebury, even though she had been told by her Japanese language instructor at university that it would be really stressful to live and study in an environment where English was not allowed, because she believed that nine weeks of study at Middlebury would enable her to attain the level she wanted. ２週間がたって、髪をむしってると思いました ‘I thought I would be pulling my hair out after two weeks’, Naiya laughed. I asked Naiya about her future goals. She told me it would be 分不相応 [bun fu sou ou] ‘beyond one’s limit’ for her. Bun fu sou ou literally means being inappropriate (fu sou ou) to your bun. According to a Japanese dictionary (Matsumura, 2006), bun refers to ‘the social ranking/status or the abilities that a person has (original in Japanese).’ The idea of bun is based on the feudal system during the Edo period (1603–1867), when the social classes were strictly divided and the social hierarchy determined people’s lives. Under the feudal system you were expected to know your bun. You were allowed to live only within the limits of your bun. If you ever crossed your bun you were subjected to some social sanction. The feudal system in Japan came to an end with the beginning of the Meiji restoration in 1868, yet the ideas of bun sou ou ‘within one’s limits’ and bun fu sou ou ‘beyond one’s limits’ remain in the social value system of modern Japanese society. Naiya told me that she learned the expression bun fu souou ‘beyond one’s limits’ in class. Her future goal was, according to Naiya, to live a life that would be a little bun fu sou ou ‘beyond one’s limits’ to her.

Naiya: Separation, Resistance and Accomplishing

理想の分不相応の生活は、行きたい所があ ったら行ける生活、それで、どこでも旅行が できて、いろいろな人に会える生活。それが 一番いい生活。 でも、その生活ができるよう にお金が必要でしょう。

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My ideal bun-fu-sou-ou ‘beyond-mylimits’ life is a life in which I can go anywhere I want to go, I can travel anywhere and I can meet many people. That’s the best life. But, I would need money in order to have a life like that.

To realize her ideal bun fu sou ou ‘beyond one’s limits’ life, there were several processes that Naiya needed to take. Going to college was one such process. In each process there would be fun times and hard times and things that Naiya would and would not like. Yet she had to accept and cope with all of them to complete one process and move onto the next. For Naiya, Middlebury was one process that she needed to go through to reach the proficiency level she hoped to attain in Japanese. Therefore, regardless of her likes and dislikes, 全部のことをしなければなりません ‘I have to do everything.’ It was the task that Naiya had given to herself while she was studying at Middlebury. いつも人生にたくさんプロセスがありあます ‘There are always many processes in life’, she told me. In the 20 years of her life, Naiya had probably gone through many processes. She stated: 普通の人間のように、いろいろな経験があ りますね。その経験をして、何か、そういう lessonを取って、もっといい人間になりま す。まあ、時々もっと悪い人間になりますが (笑い)。今、大学に入って、日本に留学する ことができました。それは、子供の時、全然 そんなことができないと思いました。(中略) 私のおばあちゃんがよく言ったことは、いつ も自分の力でやりたいことをやるということ です。 「やりたいことがあったら、やりなさ い」と言います。だから、私はいつも次にあ ることのためにがんばります。今はうれしい ですが、１年間後、もっとうれしくなります。 その考えがありますから、もう日本に行きま したが、次の所、どこでしょう？次の言語は どこ？次の服はどこ？何？そんな考え方。

Like normal people, I have had various experiences in my life. Through such experiences, I learned a lesson and became a better person. Well, I become a worse person (laugh). Now, I’m in college, and I was able to study abroad in Japan. That’s something that I never thought would be possible when I was a child. … The thing that my grandmother often told me was to do things on your own. ‘If you have something that you want to do, do it’, she said. So, I always work hard for my next stage. I am happy now, but I will be happier after one year. I think like that. So, although I have already been to Japan, I am thinking where will be the next place? Where is my next language? Where, what will be my next clothes? I think like that.

Separation

When Naiya decided to go to Middlebury in the summer of 201x, she knew what she was getting herself into – life without English. With a sense of responsibility in her mind, she arrived in Middlebury. After facing the reality of the Middlebury immersion program, contrary to her expectations she felt that 意外に私は大丈夫 ‘unexpectedly, I am all right.’ While seeing her friends go through difficult times emotionally, she found herself doing fi ne in the new environment. As she participated in the daily school activities, Naiya soon recognized the existence of two groups in the Japanese School. One was the

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Japanese group and the other was the student group. Those who belonged to the Japanese group were 日本人と日本語がペラペラに話せる人 ‘Japanese people and those who can speak Japanese like a native.’ Those who belonged to the student group were 日本語を勉強している学生 ‘students who are learning Japanese.’ Furthermore, Naiya thought that these two groups would never intersect except superficially. She stated: Excerpt 21 Interview

N: Naiya; R: Researcher N: 学生にとって、ミドルベリーに二つ のグループがあります。(笑い)日本 語を勉強している学生と日本人と 日本語がペラペラに話せる人。その 二つのグループは、全然、まざ、ま ざる？ まざる？

R: まざる？ N: まざらい R: え、じゃ、こっちのグループは、先

生とか私とか、他に学生も 入る？ N: いいえ、学生はペラペラじゃないか ら R: じゃあ、こっちのグループは、日本 人、だ N: はい、日本人。(二人の笑い) ちょっ とひどいね R: 何それ？ N: ごめんなさい。でも、それは本当。 日本人（笑い）と学生

N: For students, there are two groups at Middlebury (laugh). Students who are studying Japanese and Japanese people and those who speak Japanese like a native. Those two groups never get mi, mix? Mix? R: Mix? N: Never mixed. R: Well, then, this group includes the teachers and me. Are the students in this group, too? N: No. Because students don’t speak like a native. R: Then, this group, includes, Japanese. N: Yes, Japanese. (N & R laugh) It’s terrible. R: What is that? N: I’m sorry. But, it’s true. Japanese (laugh) and students.

I thought about who else would belong to the Japanese group. Then I realized that all of the Japanese people in the Japanese School were teachers except the director and me. There were three Japanese student interns, but they were part of the teaching team. In Naiya’s mind, ‘Japanese people’ meant the teachers, and she saw a separation between the Japanese/teacher group and the student group. Naiya’s recognition of the two groups in the Japanese School was indeed a legitimate observation. Naiya attributed her sense of the separation between the teachers and the students to a cultural difference between the United States and Japan, specifically the difference in the teacher–student relationship between US and Japanese culture. 日本の文化は先生と学生が友達になることは嫌ですね、 だめでしょう ‘The Japanese culture doesn’t like that teachers and students become friends. It’s not good, is it?’, Naiya said. 先生は目上だから ‘Because teachers are meue [social superiors]’, she also said. Meue ‘social superiors’

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refers to someone who is older, more experienced and has a higher social status. As opposed to meue ‘social superiors’, meshita ‘social junior’ refers to someone who is younger, less experienced and has a lower social status. In teacher–student relationships, teachers are considered meue ‘social superiors’ and students are considered meshita ‘social junior.’ According to the sociocultural practice of the Japanese culture, meshita ‘social junior’ is expected to show linguistic politeness toward his/her meue [‘social superior’] by the use of keigo ‘honorific language.’ In class, Level 4 students were explicitly taught to use keigo ‘honorific language’ when speaking to teachers. Naiya perceived this linguistic practice of emphasizing the meue ‘social superiors’/meshita ‘social junior’ relationship as a 冷たい関係 ‘cold relationship’ and a barrier to building a 本当の 関係 ‘real relationship’ with the Japanese teachers. Furthermore, Naiya felt that there was a difference between the practice of the Japanese School and the sociocultural practice of Japan. On the one hand, the students were required to live in a dorm with their teachers and were expected to interact with them all the time; on the other hand, the Japanese culture’s linguistic and sociocultural norms separate teachers and students. Naiya found this a ‘big contradiction (original in English).’ She stated: Anytime I came to one of the parties, like the French xxx party when I was there, students were always interacting with their teachers. But, teachers were always drinking with them and partying dada. It’s different [be]cuz in the Japanese culture, it’s already a separation between teacher and student. So, I found it contradictory that they were say, yeah you are going to live and hang out with sensei ‘teachers.’ I’m like, but it’s Japanese. You don’t live and hang out with your sensei ‘teachers.’ It’s your sensei ‘teachers.’ Sensei ‘teachers’ [singing voice], you know. So, I found that to be a big contradiction. And, this [is?] how I knew this is not going to work out like that because I’m living, eating, and always seeing someone else. They were my tomodachi ‘friends’ [pronounced slowly and clearly]. They were not my sensei ‘teachers.’ That’s why it’s just, it’s not going to work out, especially in a culture like Japanese, you know. Maybe in American xxx, you are going to live [with] and talk to your professor. Yeah, you can do that. I would be able to do that like make my professors my tomodachi ‘friends.’ But, in Japanese it’s not the same. There is always a separation. (Original in English) Naiya’s sense of separation was also psychological. ‘I can’t separate jugyou sensei “classroom teachers” and regular person sensei “teachers”’, she said. To Naiya, sensei ‘teachers’ were the people she would see in class. They would give her homework, correct her language mistakes and evaluate her achievement. However, they were not the people she would relate to as a person once she stepped outside the classroom. I don’t have much outside interactions with senseis ‘teachers’ and I’m okay with that (short pause) because, it’s weird to me. I can’t separate jugyou

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sensei ‘classroom teacher’ and regular person sensei ‘teacher.’ Honestly, I can’t. That’s how I always feel like I’m xxx. I can’t just say, ‘Hey sensei “teacher”, what did you do today?’ I have to think. ‘Ah! I have to change the Keigo “honorific language”. I have to make sure it’s right tense (emphasis).’ All else [?] they are going to say, ‘No!’ (laugh) That was wrong, and it hits me, so (laugh), that’s the way it is. Yeah. (Original in English)

Over the course of the nine weeks at Middlebury, Naiya did not seek any opportunity to talk and interact with the teachers outside of class. She had minimal interaction with them. She never visited any of her teachers’ office hours. She preferred to study alone in her room or sometimes with her friends. In the dining hall she carefully avoided being seated with a group of teachers. The physical separation between the teachers and the students seemed also to be a factor that constructed her sense of separation. In Hepburn Hall the instructors’ offices were located on the first floor. There were a few students who lived on the fi rst floor, but most students lived on the second to fi fth floors. Naiya felt that the teachers were ‘different from us’ because senseis ‘teachers’ were always on ikkai ‘the first floor’ and did not ‘go out drinking and partying or stuff like that.’ In Naiya’s eyes, the separation was created by the teachers themselves by physically separating themselves from the students – in Naiya’s words, by ‘maintaining their sensei-ness “teacher-ness”.’ As long as they physically separated themselves from the students and maintained the ‘sensei-ness “teacher-ness”’, Naiya felt that they were ‘not quite human.’ The truth of the matter is outside the classroom you don’t see the senseis ‘teachers.’ If you see them, it’s only to pass them and say konnichiwa ‘hello.’ Honestly, I mean all the senseis ‘teachers’ were always on ikkai ‘the fi rst floor’, right? Every once in a while I see them walk around ikkai ‘the fi rst floor’ and come out of their office, and go to sleep, but that’s another reason why they are so different from us. They don’t go out drinking and partying or stuff like that, so they maintain their sensei-ness ‘teacher-ness?’ (laugh) because they maintain the sensei-ness, they are not quite human so we can’t really become friends with them and interact, all stuff like that. (Original in English)

Naiya’s sense of the separation between the teachers and students was also in effect in her relationship with the American professors and Japanese language teachers whom she had met in her university or in Japan, according to Naiya. However, such separation had gradually vanished as she got to know them better and discovered the 人間らしいこと ‘human things’ that they did, such as making mistakes and telling jokes. Naiya particularly found that telling jokes was significant in building a human relationship. According to her, that was because she was a New Yorker (according to Naiya, New Yorkers love sarcasm) and liked to laugh. Therefore, in building a teacher–student relationship, she found, 冗 談を言える先生、それは私にとって一番大事 ‘teachers who can tell jokes, that’s

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the most important thing for me.’ In the Japanese School, however, Naiya was unable to break through her sense of the separation between the teachers and the students. The linguistic, cultural, psychological, physical and discursive barriers were always on Naiya’s mind, and she felt 先生と話 したくない ‘I don’t want to talk to teachers.’ Excerpt 22 Interview

N: Naiya; R: Researcher 先生は本当に違う世界から来まし た。なんか、そうですよね？ それは、先生という人？ 別に 日本 人、アメリカ人関係なく？

N:

N:

うん、先生。 でも、特に日本語の先 生。どうしてでしょうね

N:

R:

それは、じゃあ、ミドルベリーの先 生だけじゃなくて、南山でも、ウイリ アムズさんの大学でも日本人の先生 という意味？それとも、ミドルベリー の日本語の先生という意味？

R:

N:

ああ、違うねぇ。南山の先生は、そ のseparationがだんだん消えまし た。そして、授業の外で先生と話せ るようになりました。 でも、ミドルベ リーでその時間がありませんね、９ 週間だけありますから。先生と仲 がよくなることは難しい、私にとっ て。私、本当に、友達になること は、難しい、なりにくい。先生は目 上だから。目上だから、あまり話し たくない。先生は、私を直せるか ら。そして、直す時ちょっと恥ずか しくなりますから、先生と話す時、 会話じゃなくてテスト、テストのよう な気がします。だから、緊張してあ まり先生と話したくない

N:

R:

南山の時は、どんなことがきっか で、separation がなくなってった の？

R:

N: R:

R:

Teachers come from a different world. Isn’t that so? Do you mean teachers in general? Not related to Japanese or Americans? No, teachers. But, Japanese language teachers in particular. I don’t know why. Do you mean not only the Middlebury teachers [the Japanese language teachers in the Japanese School] but also the teachers at Nanzan and your university? Or, you mean only the Middlebury teachers? Oh, they are different. As for the Nanzan teachers, the separation gradually went away, and I was able to talk to teachers outside of class. But, at Middlebury, we don’t have enough time. We have only nine weeks, so it’s difficult to become close to the teachers [in the Japanese School] for me. It’s really difficult to become friends. They are meue ‘social superiors.’ Because they are meue ‘social superiors’, I don’t want to talk to them. Because the teachers can correct me, and when they correct me, I feel embarrassed. So, when I talk to teachers, I feel like I am having a test, not a conversation. So, I get nervous and don’t want to talk to them. When you were at Nanzan, how did the separation go away?

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N: R: N:

先生は、人間らしいことをします。 (笑い) 例えば、間違えたり、冗談を言った り。冗談を言える先生、それは私に とって一番大事。

N: R: N:

Teachers did human things. (Laugh) For example, they made mistakes and told jokes. Teachers who can tell jokes, that’s the most important thing for me.

Resistance ウルフパックみたい ‘Like a wolf pack’ – so Naiya one day described a group of teachers with whom she had sat at dinner the day before. I stopped sipping Snapple lemon tea through a straw and tried to comprehend what Naiya had just said. I remembered seeing Naiya seated with a group of teachers in the dining hall. Naiya and Luke (Level 2) were the only students at the table. I peeked at Naiya while I was having my meal. She sat there silently. She was not eating much. She laughed occasionally, which indicated that she was listening to other people’s talk. 私、食べられちゃうか ら (笑い) そんな気持ち ‘I would be eaten (laugh). I felt like that’, Naiya described her feelings afterwards. Her descriptions were always unique and vivid. The whole world was filtered through her lens and presented to me in various forms of reality. ウィルソンさんしかいない、学生は ‘Wilson [Luke’s last name]-san is [was] the only student’, Naiya said and sighed. Excerpt 23 Interview

N: Naiya; R: Researcher N: あ、あと、もう一つひどい。昨日、は

い、昨日、晩ご飯の時、たくさん先生 と食べした。(日本語を)間違えまし た。(笑い) もう、そんなこと、もうこ れからしたくないよ、ほんとに。(テ ーブルにいた先生の名前を挙げて いく)ウィルソンさんしかいない、学 生は(溜め息)

N: Oh, one more terrible thing. Yesterday, yes, yesterday, I ate with many teachers at dinner. I made mistakes [in Japanese] (laugh). I don’t want to do that from now on, really. (Naiya lists the names of the teachers who were seated at the table.) Wilson-san was the only student. (Sigh)

R: どうしてそんなに先生と話すのが嫌 R: Why do you dislike [feel なの？ unpleasant, or reluctant] talking to teachers? N: なんででしょうね。先生だから (笑い)

N: I don’t know why. Probably because they are teachers. (Laugh)

R: (笑い)

R: (Laugh)

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N: (笑い) ほんとに。ほんとに話したく N: (Laugh) Really. I really don’t ない。特にグループの先生。一人ず want to talk [to teachers], つ、多分できますが、グループの先 especially a group of teachers. 生は wolf pack みたいね。ああ I probably can [talk to a teacher] ー、私食べられちゃうから(笑い) そ individually but, a group of んな気持ち。ずっと静かでした。そ teachers look like a wolf pack. れで、早く出ました Ahh, I might be eaten (laugh). I felt like that. I was quiet the whole time. Then I left early.

Naiya’s feeling 先生と話したくない ‘I don’t want to talk to teachers’ was one of the most difficult feelings for me to understand. No matter how hard I tried not to think like a teacher and look at things through my teacher’s eyes, I could not deny myself as a Japanese language teacher. I kept asking myself what made Naiya so reluctant to talk to teachers and I tried to understand the world of Naiya. Another feeling that Naiya repeatedly addressed was her embarrassment when she talked to teachers. Naiya felt that the nature of the conversation would change when a teacher (or teachers) was (were) present. When only students were talking at a dining table, they could talk freely without worrying about the accuracy, structure or complexity of their language. In Naiya’s words, 内容だけが必要 ‘only content is necessary.’ When instructors were present in a conversation, however, they did not let the students invent words or use other linguistic shortcuts. They made sure that the students paid attention to the accuracy of their talk. They provided corrections on linguistic errors and signaled students’ language problems. To Naiya’s eyes, such a linguistic interaction became 会話じゃな くてテスト ‘a test rather than a conversation’, which made Naiya nervous and not want to talk with the instructors. She explained: 私はよく、たくさん先生がいるテーブルに 座ったら、ちょっと静かになりました。で も、たくさん学生がいるテーブルに座った ら、もっと元気になります。他の学生が私 の間違いがわからないとか、気にしないか ら、内容だけが必要？ でも、先生だった ら、文法と構成と長さ、そんなことが (笑 い) 必要になって、すごく緊張して間違え ます。

I often, if I was seated at the table with many teachers, I became quiet. But, if I am seated at the table with many students, I become more active. Other students do not notice or do not care about my mistakes. So, all I  need is content. But, with teachers, I  need grammar, structure and length (laugh). So, I get very nervous and make mistakes.

先生は、私を直せるから、そして、直す 時、ちょっと恥ずかしくなりますから、と 話す時、会話じゃなくてテスト、テストの ような気がします。だから、緊張してあま り先生と話したくない。

Since teachers can correct me and I feel embarrassed, I feel like I am having a test rather than having conversation when I talk to teachers. So, I get nervous and don’t want to talk with the teachers much.

Correction is, in a sense, a unique and sensitive act. It is unique because it occurs in specific contexts. It is sensitive because it involves

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power. Correction often occurs when people are learning something new or are acquiring new skills or behaviors. Parents correct their children. Teachers correct their students. Whatever the relationship may be, it implies that the one who corrects possesses more power than the one who is corrected. Furthermore, corrections can be perceived differently – as an embarrassment, indignity, apprehension, encouragement and learning opportunity – depending on various contextual and personal factors. Naiya took the teachers’ corrections as a source of embarrassment. Being corrected is, more or less, embarrassing to anyone because it involves the denial of the behavior or the language that the person has performed or used. It communicates that the person’s behavior or language is wrong, which probably hits anyone’s feeling to some degree even though the power relation between the one who is correcting and the one who is being corrected is as clear as a teacher–student relationship. Correction can occur not only in a teacher–student relationship but also in a student–student relationship. There are, again, individual differences among students with regard to how they perceive peer-initiated corrections. Some students are more open to peer corrections and some are less and, of course, this openness would vary depending on contextual factors as well. Naiya views peer corrections negatively. 先生になる人 がいる ‘There are students who become a teacher’, Naiya said. She continued: 時々それ [間違いを直すこと] は、ほんとに役 に立つからいいと思いますが、時々、声はちょ っと(笑い)、そんな、ええと、言葉は何です か、condescending、 「私はあなたよりいい」と いう声のトーンで直して、嫌な感じ。私はみん な日本語を勉強しますから、みんなは同じだ と思います。

Sometimes it [correcting mistakes] is really useful, so I think it’s good, but sometimes the voice is a little (laugh), that, well, what’s the word, condescending. They [people who become a teacher] correct with the ‘I am better than you’ type of tone, and I feel displeased/ annoyed. I think everyone is the same because we all study Japanese.

私は人間よ (笑い) 日本人じゃない。もちろん間違いがある ‘I’m a human being (laugh), [I’m] not a Japanese. I, of course, make mistakes’ and 先生 じゃないよ。みんな同じ。そして、間違いがあってもわかるでしょ ‘[We are] not teachers. Everyone is the same, and we understand each other even though there is a mistake’, Naiya added. No matter how willing or unwilling one is to accept peer corrections, the power structure of the relationship between the provider and the receiver of the correction does not change. In other words, peer correction creates a temporary power imbalance between the students. In Naiya’s mind, the students were みんな同じ ‘everyone is the same.’ Naiya perceived peer-initiated corrections negatively because she believed that the students were all equal; therefore, no student should be in a position to correct the others. That was the teachers’ job. 間違いがあってもわかるでしょ ‘We understand each other even though there is a mistake.’ Don’t act like you are better than others. We

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are all equal. Don’t be a sensei ‘teacher.’ These were the messages that I heard in Naiya’s voice. Silence

Another phenomenon that puzzled me was Naiya’ silence in conversation – more precisely, her silence in conversation when one or more teachers were present. I illustrate Naiya’s different interaction patterns with Excerpts 24–31. Excerpts 24–27 show Naiya’s interaction with other students in the dining hall. Naiya was initially seated with Jen (Level 3), Yan (Level 4), Alice (Level 4) and Kevin (Level 2). Latasia (Level 3) and Scott (Level 2) joined the table later. No instructor was present for this conversation. Yan and Alice were Naiya’s classmates. Latasia was Naiya’s closest friend at Middlebury. They came to Middlebury from the same university and stayed close while they were at Middlebury. Scott was also Naiya’s friend, whom she had met at Middlebury. The conversation starts with Naiya’s question as to whether her peers are going to continue studying Japanese after Middlebury (Excerpt 24). In Line 1 Naiya initiates a question and asks Kevin if he is going to continue to study Japanese. Naiya was probably surprised, in an earlier conversation, to learn that her close friend, Scott, would not continue studying Japanese after Middlebury. After this unexpected discovery, Naiya tries to fi nd out whether the other students are going to continue to study Japanese. Kevin answers no. He states that he came to Middlebury to fulfi ll a language requirement (Line 6). In Line 8 Jen joins the conversation and expresses her surprise at Kevin’s answer. After hearing Kevin say that Japanese is not his 一番好きなもの ‘most favorite thing’, Naiya pretends to cry to express her sadness perhaps to learn that Kevin does not have the same passion for studying Japanese as Naiya does. In turn 15 Naiya directs the same question to Alice. This time, Naiya expresses her joy in fi nding a person who plans to continue to study Japanese after Middlebury. In Line 28 Alice expresses her negative opinion about not continuing to study Japanese after Middlebury. In the following turn, Naiya agrees with Alice and elaborates on her statement by saying, せっかくミドルベリー に来ましたから、続ける ‘Since we made a lot of efforts to come to Middlebury [to study Japanese], we will continue [studying Japanese].’ She uses the adverb sekkaku to express her feeling that she has made a lot of effort (e.g. spending her time, money and energy) to come to Middlebury to study Japanese, so she does not want to waste it. When she pronounces the word sekkaku, Naiya emphasizes it. By placing an emphasis and adding exaggeration, Naiya is possibly trying to mitigate the potential negative pragmatic force of her utterance. Alice’s comment can be taken as a criticism or a disapproval of Kevin’s decision of not continuing to

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study Japanese after Middlebury. By emphasizing and exaggerating her expression, however, Naiya manages to make her utterance sound more like sarcasm rather than criticism or disapproval. Excerpt 24 Lunch conversation

N: Naiya; K: Kevin (Level 2); JN: Jen (Level 3); A: Alice (Level 4); L: Latasia (Level 3) 1 N:

ミドルベリーが終わって、日 本語を続けますか？

(発話なし) は(息をのむ)、スコットさん と同じ？ 4 K: [私は 5 N: [続けない？ 6 K: 私は、language requirement を、終わりた いのでここに来ました 7 N: [Oh, ほんとう？ 8 JN: [それだけ？ 9 K: はい 10 N: ええ (驚いている) 11 JN: どうして日本語？ 好きだ から？ 12 K: 今わかりません (笑い) おも しろい、 でも、私の一番好き なものじゃない 2 K: 3 N:

13 14 15 16 17

N: JN: N: A: N:

18 A:

(泣くまね) (笑い) 悲しいですね だれも、アリスさん？ もちろん わあ!（笑い） やった! （笑い） どうして、ミドルベリーに 来て、続けないのかわかり ません

19 N:

ん、そうですね、せっかく (強調)、ねぇ。せっかくミド ルベリーに来ましたから、続 ける、いいね

20

(JN と Yan が話しはじめ る。N, A, K は黙ったま ま。Latasia が加わる)

1 N:

Will you continue studying Japanese after Middlebury is over? 2 K: (No verbal response) 3 Ha (gasping) same as Scott-san? 4 K: [I 5 N: [You won’t continue? 6 K: I I came here because I want to fi nish my language requirement. 7 N: [Oh, really? 8 JN: [That’s it? 9 K: Yes 10 N: [Expression of surprise] 11 JN: Why Japanese? Because you like it? 12 K: Now I don’t know. (Laugh). It’s interesting, but it’s not my most favorite thing. 13 N: (Pretending to cry) (Laugh) 14 JN: It’s sad. 15 N: No-one, Alice-san? 16 A: Of course 17 N: Wow! (Laugh), Yeah! (Laugh) 18 A: I don’t understand why you [or people in general] won’t continue after coming to Middlebury 19 N: Yes, that’s right. Since we made a lot a lot of effort (emphasis) to come to Middlebury, we will continue. That’s good. 20 (JN and Yan start talking. N, A and K remain silent. Latasia joins the table.)

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After Naiya’s comment, the conversation moves away from the topic of whether the students will continue to study Japanese after Middlebury or not. However, Kevin re-opens the topic and asks Naiya, 日本語を続くつ もりですか ‘Do you plan to continue Japanese?’ Kevin used the verb tsuzuku ‘to continue’ in his question (Excerpt 25). However, tsuzuku is the wrong verb choice. Tsuzuku is an intransitive verb. Kevin should have used a transitive verb, tsuzukeru ‘to continue.’ When Naiya asked the same question earlier in Line 1, she used the transitive verb, tsuzukeru. Considering the level of her Japanese language proficiency, it is likely that she noticed Kevin’s wrong verb choice. However, she does not say anything about his verb choice and continues the conversation. She answers that she will continue studying Japanese because it is her major. In the following line Kevin initiates another question. This time, he asks about her future job plans. After a 5-second pause, Naiya answers that she doesn’t know. In the following turn Alice joins in the conversation and starts talking about her experience of being asked a similar question. The conversation ends with Naiya’s comment that it is fun to study Japanese, but she is not sure if she will use much Japanese in the future. Excerpt 25 Lunch conversation (continued)

N: Naiya; L: Latasia; K: Kevin; A: Alice 22 K: 日本語を続くつもりです

25 K: どんな仕事ほしいです

22 K: Are you planning on continuing [wrong verb choice] studying Japanese? 23 N: Yes, of course. Well, it’s my major. (Laugh) 24 K: I see. (4 seconds) (Y and JN are still talking.) 25 K: What kind of job do you want?

26 27 28 29

26 27 28 29

か？

23 N: はい、もちろん。まあ、専 攻 (笑い) 24 K: わかります (４秒) (YanとJN はまだ 話し続けている）

N: A: N: A:

30 N: 31 A: 32 N:

か？ (５秒) よくわかりません 私と同じです ねえ(Aに同意) 私も日本語を専攻してい て、ええと、人々は、何の仕 事がほしいですか ねえ [いつも私 [日本語は楽しいです ねえ。楽しいだから、専 攻しています。 でも、なん か、将来に日本語がある か？ さぁ (笑い) 今、おも しろい

(5 seconds) I don’t know. The same as me. Ne (N agrees with A.) I am majoring in Japanese, too, and (fi ller) people [ask] me what kind of job I want. 30 N: Ne (agreement) [I always 31 A: [Japanese is fun. 32 N: Ne (agreement) because it’s fun, that’s why we are majoring. But, uhm, do I have Japanese in the future? I don’t know. (Laugh) It’s fun now. N: A: N: A:

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About six minutes later, Naiya, Latasia and Scott start to talk (Excerpt 26). Latasia initiates a new topic by saying 今日の鳥肉はとてもjuicy ‘today’s chicken is very juicy.’ From Line 34 through Line 38, Latasia and Naiya express their pleasant surprise about the chicken. In Lines 37 and 39, Scott shows disagreement. His tone of voice in Line 39 clearly indicates disagreement with Latasia and Naiya. In Line 40 Naiya catches Scott’s cynical tone and asks the reason for his disagreement. Scott is a vegetarian. Latasia knows that Scott is a vegetarian but Naiya does not. In fact, Naiya thinks that she has seen Scott eat chicken before. Latasia and Scott say that it was tofu wrap that Naiya saw. Naiya is, however, still suspicious and tells Scott not to lie (Line 52). From Line 55 through Line 60, Naiya, who is still not completely convinced that Scott is a vegetarian, tries to make Scott eat meat. However, Scott’s persistent rejection of eating meat fi nally convinces Naiya that he is a vegetarian. Excerpt 26 Lunch conversation (continued)

L: Latasia; N: Naiya; S: Scott (Level 2) 今日の鳥肉はとても juicy ねえ はい びっくりしました [そうですか？ [わたしも そうですか？ (皮肉的なト ーン) 40 N: え、どうして？ (笑い)「そうで すか？」(Sの口調をまねる) (笑い) 41 L: ベジタリアンね？

33 34 35 36 37 38 39

Oh、ベジタリアン？

42 43 44 45 46

33 34 35 36 37 38 39

42 43 44 45 46

L: N: L: N: S: L: S:

N: S: N: S: N:

うん ほんと？ はいはいはい チキンを食べましたね？

L: N: L: N: S: L: S:

40 N: 41 L: N: S: N: S: N:

47 L: 肉を食べません (笑い)

47 L:

48 N: ほんと？ 49 N: でも、私はスコットさんが肉

48 N: 49 N:

を食べたことを、見る気がし ます 50 L: たぶん、とうふ wrap 51 S: はい、とうふ wrap 52 N: うそをつかないでよお、 大丈夫

Today’s chicken is very juicy. It is. Yes I’m surprised. [Is that so? [Me too Is that so? (Cynical tone of voice) Eh? Why? (Laugh) ‘Is that so?’ (N is imitating S’s tone of voice) (laugh) You are a vegetarian, aren’t you? Oh, you are a vegetarian? Yes Really? Yes yes yes You ate chicken [before], didn’t you? He doesn’t eat meat. (Laugh) Really? But, I think I have seen Scott-san eat meat.

50 L: Probably, tofu wrap 51 S: Yes, tofu wrap 52 N: Don’t lie. It’s okay.

Naiya: Separation, Resistance and Accomplishing

53 54 55 56 57 58

S: L: N: S: L: N:

大丈夫です xxx (笑い) 肉はいい！ うそです 肉が大好きね (笑い) 肉はいいよ。ほんとに？ 食べ てみたくない

59 S: ほんと、ほんと 60 N: ほんと？ 61 S: はい

53 54 55 56 57 58

153

S: L: N: S: L: N:

I’m all right. xxx (Laugh) Meat is good! That’s a lie. You like meat. (Laugh) Meat is good, you know. Really? Don’t you want to try? 59 S: Really, really. 60 N: Really? 61 S: Yes

The conversation moves away from the topic of Scott’s vegetarianism, and Naiya starts talking to Latasia and Jen about other things. Seven minutes later, Naiya re-opens the topic of Scott being a vegetarian and asks him, 魚 も食べられない？ ‘You cannot eat fish, either?’ (Excerpt 27). After learning that Scott has been a vegetarian since he was 13 years old, Naiya tells Scott that he is not following a fad, mixing the English word ‘fad’ into her statement. Naiya expresses her negative opinion about those who temporarily become vegetarian. In Line 70 Naiya initiates another question and asks Scott if he was all right when he was in China. Scott’s answer overlaps with Latasia’s comment that there is a lot of tofu in China. After hearing the word tofu, Naiya expresses her dislike of tofu because it has no taste. In Line 74 Scott tries to explain probably something like tofu itself has no taste but tofu becomes flavorful when it is mixed with other ingredients and seasonings. However, after he states 豆腐だけ味がない、でも、豆腐と、豆腐と ‘tofu itself has no taste, but tofu with, tofu with’, he encounters difficulty in expressing in Japanese what he wants to say. In the following line, Latasia provides help for Scott by using the English word absorb. Excerpt 27 Lunch conversation (continued)

L: Latasia; N: Naiya; S: Scott (Level 2) 62 N: あ、魚も食べられない？ 63 64 65 66

S: N: S: N:

(発話なし) いつから？ あの、１３歳 ああ、じゃあ、fadじゃいない

67 L: Fad じゃない 68 N: No 、ん、みんなはちょっとな んか、fad 69 S: １３歳の時にベジタリアンにな りました、あの、

62 N: Oh, you can’t eat fish, either? 63 S: (No verbal response) 64 N: Since when? 65 S: Uhm, 13 years old 66 N: Oh, then you are not following a fad. 67 L: Not a fad 68 N: No, um, everyone is like, fad. 69 S: I became a vegetarian when I was 13, uhm,

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70 N: 中国に行った時、大丈夫でし

た？ 71 S: [大丈夫でした 72 L: [たくさん豆腐がある 73 N: 豆腐、わ（嫌いという口調）味 がない 74 S: はい、豆腐だけ味がない、で も、豆腐と、豆腐と 75 L: Absorbs ね？ 76 S: Absorbs 、はい

70 N: Were you all right when you went to China? 71 S: I was all right. 72 L: There is a lot of tofu 73 Tofu, woo (negative tone), no taste 74 S: Yes, tofu only has no taste, but tofu with, tofu with 75 L: Absorbs, right? 76 S: Absorbs, yes

In Excerpts 24–27 Naiya engaged in various conversational activities with the other participants. She initiated a topic of conversation, asked and answered questions, expressed her likes and dislikes, stated her opinions, tried to be humorous and mitigated the pragmatic force of her utterances. Although Naiya took more turns than the other participants, she never dominated the conversation. Rather, Naiya and the other students mutually engaged in the construction of talk. The following four excerpts (Excerpts 28–31) show Naiya’s participation in conversation when an instructor is present. The four excerpts are taken from two lunch conversations. In Excerpts 28 and 29 Naiya is seated with Mark (Level 4), Brian (Level 2) and an instructor (Level 3). Mark is Naiya’s classmate. Brian is a Level 2 student. A few minutes later, the Instructional Technology (IT) course instructor joins the table. Before this excerpt, Mark and the instructor were talking about the food rules of Orthodox Judaism. Mark practices Orthodox Judaism and was explaining the rules of kosher food to the instructor. After the conversation between Mark and the instructor fi nished, Brian joins the table (Excerpt 28). In Line 5, after another 6-second silence, the instructor initiates a new topic by saying あとちょっとですね、お つかれさまでした ‘We are almost there. Good work.’ Naiya responds to the instructor’s statement by showing agreement. She says, うん、ね ‘Yes, we are.’ うん ‘un’ is an informal expression for hai ‘yes.’ ね ‘ne’ is a sentencefinal particle which has various functions. In this case, Naiya is expressing agreement or shared understanding that the program is getting close to the end. Considering that Naiya is speaking to an instructor, however, hai, so desu ne ‘yes, we are’ with an addressee honorific would be the pragmatically appropriate answer. Nevertheless, the instructor does not correct Naiya’s pragmatic error. From Line 11 through Line 17, the instructor tries to fi nd out the name of the head instructor of the course in which Brian is studying. After confirming that the head instructor of the course is Sato-sensei, the instructor starts asking Brian about what he (his class) is going to perform at the upcoming talent show (Lines 17–25). Brian tells the instructor that they are going to sing a song. In Line 29 the instructor directs the same

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question to Naiya and Mark. The instructor knew from Mark’s response that Naiya and Mark were classmates. After a 2-second pause, Mark starts explaining what the Level 4 students are going to perform (Lines 31–34) at the talent show. In Line 35 the IT course instructor joins the table. Excerpt 28 Lunch conversation

N: Naiya; M: Mark (Level 4); B: Brian (Level 2); I: Instructor; IT: IT instructor 1 I: 2 B: 3 I: 4 M: 5 I: 6 N: 7 M: 8 I: 9 M: 10 11 I:

12 B: 13 I: 14 15 16 17

B: I: B: I:

18 B: 19 20 21 22 23

I: B: I: B: I:

あら、こんにちは こんにちは(Bがテーブルに 加わる) (６秒) ウイリアムズさん(Nの苗字) とクラスメートですか？ うん (６秒) あとちょっとですね。 [おつかれさまでした [うん、ね あとちょっとですけど、 まあ けど、これからがもっと大変 ですね そうですね (２秒) ウィルソン [Bの苗字] さん は、さとう先生 [the head instructor of Level 2] の学 生ですか？ (発話なし) クラスメートですか？(NとB をさしているよう)

1 I: 2 B: 3 I: 4 M: 5 I: 6 N: 7 M: 8 I: 9 M: 10 11 I:

12 B: 13 I:

いいえ 先生は？ あ、さとう先生 さとう先生。学芸会は何をし ますか？ ああ、 「るるる」という歌です

14 15 16 17

ん？ るるる ああ [という [「るるる」という歌、いいで すね

19 20 21 22 23

B: I: B: I:

18 B: I: B: I: B: I:

Ah, hello Hello (B joins the table) (6 seconds) Are you classmates with Williams [N’s last name]-san? Yes (6 seconds) We are almost there. [Good work. [Yes, we are. We are almost there, but well But, it will be harder from now on. That’s right. (2 seconds) Wilson [B’s last name]-san, are you Sato-sensei’s [head instructor of Level 2] student? (No verbal response) Are you classmates? (T is seemingly pointing at N and B.) No [Who is] your teacher? Oh, Sato-sensei Sato-sensei. What will you do at the talent show? Uhm, the song called Ru Ru Ru. N? Ru Ru Ru Oh [called [song called Ru Ru Ru. That’s good.

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Portraits of Second Language Learners

24 B: 25 I: 26 I: 27 B: 28 I: 29 I: 30 31 M: 32 I: 33 M:

34 I: 35 IT: 36 I: 37 IT: 38 N:

そうですね いいですね (２秒) もう練習できました？ 昨日の晩、xxx

xxx (２秒) 何をするんですか？(NとM に向かって) (２秒) あの、テレビの番組のスキッ ト ああ、そうなんですか。へぇ、 あれですか、 「あるあるあ る」ですか？ そう、あ、そういうことです。 ミドルベリーについて、おも しろいトリビアを見せるつも りです ああ、そうなんですか。へ ぇ。あ、こんにちは ここ空いてますか？ いいで すか？ あ、どうぞ、どうぞ こんにちは こんにちは

24 B: 25 I: 26 27 28 29 30 31

That is so. That’s good. (2 seconds) I: Have you practiced it? B: Last night, xxx I: xxx (2 seconds) I: What will you do? (talking to N and M) (2 seconds) M: Well, a skit of a TV program

32 I:

Oh, is that so. Is that it? Aru Aru Aru?

33 M: Yes, that’s right. We are planning on showing funny trivia about Middlebury. 34 I:

Oh, is that so. Wow. Ah, hello

35 IT: Is this open? May I? 36 I: Ah, please, please 37 IT: Hello 38 N: Hello

After a 12-second silence, the instructor initiates another topic (Excerpt 29). This time, she asks, ７週間で一番楽しかったことは何ですか？ ‘What was the most fun thing during the past seven weeks?’ and directs the question to Brian (Line 39). Brian does not understand at first and asks the instructor to repeat the question. The instructor’s question, ７週間で一 番楽しかったことは何ですか？ ‘What was the most fun thing during the past seven weeks?’ is not an easy question to answer, although the sentence structure is simple, because it requires an addressee to reflect on the past seven weeks, recall the events and experiences and decide which event/ experience has been the most fun. Brian’s initial answer is わかりません ‘I don’t know’, and then he names the karaoke party that took place a week earlier. In Line 49 the instructor asks the same question to Naiya. Naiya immediately answers, 祭の、なが、流しそうめん ‘flow, flowing Japanese noodle at the [summer] festival’, which took place at the end of the fourth week. In Line 54 the instructor asks the same question to the IT instructor. Because the question is addressed to him shortly after he has returned to the table (from the food section), and also because he has spent only two weeks at Middlebury (he arrived at the end of the fi fth week), he is unable to answer the instructor’s question on the spot. After asking three

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people (Brian, Naiya and the IT instructor) the same question, this time the instructor (Line 59) tells Brian to ask the same question to Masudasensei, another instructor (who has probably joined the table afterwards). In the following turn, Brian asks the question to Masuda-sensei. Excerpt 29 Lunch conversation (continued)

I: Instructor; B: Brian (Level 2); N: Naiya; IT: IT instructor 39

I:

40

B:

41

I:

42 43 44

B: I: B:

45 46

B: I:

47

B:

48

I:

今日クラスで話したんで すけど、７週間で一番楽 しかったことは何です か？ すみません、もう一度お 願いします ミドルベリーに来てか ら、今まで、今日まで？

39

I:

40

B:

41

I:

あ、そうそう 一番楽しかったことは わかりません (２秒) イベント？ イベントでもいいです よ、Atwaterの昼ご飯で もいいですよ。(笑い) あ、たぶん、カラオケパ ーティー ああ、そうなんですか

42 43 44

B: I: B:

45 46

B: I:

47

B:

48

I:

49 I: ウイリアムズさんは？ 50 → N: 祭の、なが、流しそうめ ん

49 I: 50 → N:

51 52

I: N:

53

I: 流しそうめん？ N: はい、それは楽しかった (２秒) IT: いただきまあす

53

IT:

54

I:

ミドルベリーに来て、今 までで、一番楽しかった ことは何ですか。今年の 夏、一番楽しかったこと

54

I:

55

IT: 今までで (笑い) 一番、楽 55

51 52

しかったこと？ (５秒)

IT:

I talked about this in class today. What is the most fun thing during the past seven weeks? Excuse me, one more time, please. Since you came to Middlebury, so far, until today? Oh, right right The most fun thing I don’t know. (2 seconds) Event? Events are fi ne. Lunch at Atwater is fi ne. (Laugh) Ah, probably, Karaoke party Karaoke party, oh, is that so. How about you? Naga, nagashi somen [flowing Japanese wheat noodle] at the [summer] festival Nagashi somen? Yes, that was fun. (2 seconds) Itadakimasu [an expression before having a meal] What has been the most fun thing so far since you came to Middlebury? This summer, the most fun thing So far, (laugh) the most fun thing? (5 seconds)

158

56

57 58 59 60

Portraits of Second Language Learners

IT: 何でしょうね。(短い沈 56 黙)(笑い) あ、 でも、この 食堂で、朝、ソーセージ とかあるのは、楽しかっ たというか、うれしかった ですね I: (笑い) しぶいですね IT: なかなか台湾にはないん ですよ。だから、ちょっと うれしかった。 I: なるほどね。じゃあ、ウィ ルソンさん、増田先生に 聞いてください B: あ、あん、ああ、あ、ミド ルベリーで、今で、今まで で、一番、好きな、イベン トは何ですか？

57 58 59 60

IT: I wonder what that is (short pause) (laugh) Oh, in the dining hall, when there were sausages in the morning, I had fun, or rather, I was happy. I: (Laugh) Interesting IT: It’s hard to fi nd morning sausages in Taiwan. So, I was glad. I: I see. Then Wilson [B’s last name]-san, please ask Masuda-sensei. B: Uh, uhn, uh, oh, at Middlebury, since, so far, what is your favorite event?

In these two excerpts (Excerpts 28 and 29), the instructor is playing a dominant role by initiating topics of conversation, asking questions and assigning who answers which question when. Consequently, the interaction was limited to two people – the instructor and the person to whom the instructor addressed the question. Moreover, the structure of the conversation became similar to that of a chain drill, which is an instructional technique often used in beginning-level foreign language classrooms. The teacher fi rst initiates a question and calls on a few students in turn to answer the question. After the teacher makes sure that the students understand the meaning of the question, the teacher calls on another student and has the student reconstruct the question, just as the instructor in this excerpt told Brian to do in Line 59. In order for the learners to reconstruct a sentence, they need pay attention to the linguistic structure of the sentence as well as its meaning. It is sometimes the case that the learners are able to comprehend a question but are not able to reconstruct the question that they have just heard. Thus, by having the students reconstruct the sentence after meaning-focused practice, the teacher creates an opportunity for the students to draw their attention to the syntactical structure of the sentence. Naiya, in these excerpts, maintained minimal engagement in the conversation. She was probably carefully listening to and observing what was happening at the table and participated in the conversation only when it was necessary. For example, when the instructor directed a question to Naiya in Line 49 and asked, ウイリアムズさんは？ ‘How about you, Williams [Naiya’s last name]-san?’, Naiya immediately answered, 祭の、なが、流しそうめん ‘flow, flowing Japanese noodle at the [summer] festival’ without any pause or filler. In order for Naiya to answer the instructor’s question and name the

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most fun activity during the past seven weeks, she needed to listen to the conversation and prepare her answer in case the instructor called on her. Naiya, except on this occasion, remained silent even when she had opportunities to speak. For example, in Line 29, when the instructor asked Mark and Naiya about the Level 4 students’ plans for the upcoming talent show, Naiya remained silent. The 2-second pause (between Lines 29 and 31) following the instructor’s question seems to indicate that Mark and Naiya were silently negotiating who would answer the question. With regard to their Japanese language ability, Naiya was no less proficient than Mark. She was capable of explaining what the Level 4 students were planning to do for the upcoming talent show. However, Naiya chose to remain silent and did not say a word while Mark was explaining to the instructor. Excerpts 30 and 31 also show Naiya’s minimal engagement in conversation when an instructor is present. In these excerpts, Naiya is seated with Nick (Level 4), Emma (Level 4), Scott (Level 2) and an instructor (Level 2). Nick is Naiya’s classmate. Scott is a Level 2 student and one of Naiya’s close friends at Middlebury. They all know each other well. At the beginning, Nick and the instructor are talking about food. After a 14-second silence, Emma comments on Scott’s nails (Excerpt 25). Nicole (Smith-san), Scott’s classmate, had painted his fi ngernails red. In Line 2 the instructor expresses her surprise and asks Scott, どうしたんですか ‘What happened?’ It is not very common for a male student to have a red manicure. Scott responds to Emma and the instructor and says, スミスさ ん、しました ‘Smith-san did it’ (Line 3), and then self-corrects his utterance and this time says, スミスさんに、させられました ‘I was made/forced to do it by Smith-san’, using a causative-passive form (Line 5). His second utterance (Line 5) is, however, not true. It was not Scott who painted his own nails; it was Nicole (Smith-san). In Line 7 the instructor provides corrective feedback by saying, 「させられました」は、スコットさんがしました ‘Saseraremashita [causative-passive form of “do”] means you did it.’ Scott realizes that he needs to reformulate the form. From Line 10 through Line 16, the instructor and Scott engage in a reformulation process. In Line 16, with the scaffolding of the instructor, Scott is fi nally able to reformulate the form. In the following turn, the instructor provides a metalinguistic comment to reinforce Scott’s understanding. In the next turn, Scott confirms his understanding. Excerpt 30 Lunch conversation

N: Naiya; NK: Nick; S: Scott; I: Instructor 1

NK: スコットさんの爪が好き

1

2

I:

お、どうしたんですか？

2

です。爪が好きです

NK: I like your nails, Scott-san. I like your nails. I: Oh, what happened?

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3

Portraits of Second Language Learners

S:

スミスさん、しました

3

S:

スミスさんしました。あ の うん、じゃあ 私は、スミスさんに うんうんうん さ、せられ

9 10 11 12

I: S: I: S:

13 → I:

されました

13 → I:

14

Oh, さ、させられました

14

15 → I:

されました

15 → I:

16

されました、Oh、されま した

16

17 → I:

Passive.「させられまし た」はcausativepassiveだから

17 → I:

18

Oh、はいはいはいはい

18

S:

19

NK: I want pretty nails too.

20

I:

ああ、そうですか 私は、スミス、スミスさん に、させられました 6 NK: 私もきれいな爪ほしい 「させられました」は、 7 → I: スコットさんがしました

4 5

I: S:

8

S:

9 10 11 12

I: S: I: S:

19 20

S:

S:

S:

はい NK: ニックもきれいなつめほ しいの I: (笑い) じゃあ、スミスさ んにお願いしたら、どう ですか？

Smith-san [Level 2 student] did it. 4 I: Oh, is that so. 5 S: I was forced/made to do it by Smith, Smith-san. 6 NK: I want pretty nails, too. 7 → I: Saseraremashira [causative-passive form] means you did it. 8 S: Smith-san did it. Uhm

S:

S:

Yes, then I, by Smith-san Yes yes yes Sa, serare [causativepassive form] Saremashita [passive form] Oh, sa, saseraremashita [causative-passive form] Saremashita [passive form] Saremashita [passive form], oh, Saremashita [passive form] Passive. Saseraremashira [causative-passive form] is causative passive, so Oh, yes yes yes yes yes

(Laugh) Then why don’t you ask Smith-san? (NK and T are looking around the dining hall and trying to find Smith)

The topic of the conversation moves to Nick, who said that he wanted to get his nails painted like Scott’s. However, the instructor redirects the topic of conversation back to Scott by asking, 嫌でしたか ‘Were you annoyed?’ (Excerpt 31). This move can be considered an initiation of providing more corrective feedback. Since Scott used the passive form in his reformulation (Line 37), the meaning of the sentence implies that he was annoyed by Nicole’s (Smith-san’s) action of painting his nails red. However, Scott’s attitude probably does not indicate annoyance. Thus, it

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is likely that the instructor asked the question (Line 21) in order to confirm Scott’s intended meaning. In Line 28 Scott says that he likes the manicure. As the instructor thought, Scott did not mean that he was annoyed by Nicole’s (Smith-san’s) action of painting his nails red. He actually liked it. In the following turn, the instructor recasts the sentence, using another form (a receiving verb) to indicate the speaker’s favorable attitude or appreciation toward a third person’s action. It is uncertain whether Scott noticed the instructor’s corrective intent. He continues to focus on the meaning (he likes his manicure) and starts talking about his feelings. He tries to explain that his self-esteem increased, and he now feels like Beyoncé. Naiya starts laughing as soon as she hears Scott say 私の self-esteem ‘my self-esteem’ (Line 30). Scott fi nishes his sentence with the instructor’s help (Line 35). Naiya starts laughing again when Scott says that he feels like Beyoncé. Excerpt 31 Lunch conversation (continued)

I: Instructor; S: Scott; N: Naiya 21

I:

22 23 24

S: I: S:

25

I:

26 27

S: I:

28 S: 29 → I:

30

S:

31 32 33 34 35 36 37

N: S: N: I: S: N: I:

え、嫌でしたか？ 嫌 でしたか？ いやです うん、迷惑でしたか？ Oh、私にとって、あの (２秒) これはスミスさ んの考え スミスさんの考えです か？ はい じゃあ、 でも、スコット さんはどうですか？ あのう、好きです。 じゃあ「されました」 じゃなくて「してもら いました」ですね

21

I:

22 23 24

S: I: S:

25

I:

Smith-san’s idea?

26 27

S: I:

Yes Well, but, how about you?

はい、好きです (２秒) 私の

30

S:

31 32 33 34 35 36 37

N: S: N: I: S: N: I:

self-esteem (笑い) (ジェスチャー？) わあ(笑い) (笑い) あのxxx Oh oh(笑い) あがりました？

28 S: 29 → I:

Were you annoyed? Were you annoyed? Annoyed Yes, was it annoying? Oh, for me, uhm (2 seconds) this is Smith-san’s idea.

Uhm, I like it. Then it’s not saremashita [passive form] but shitemoraimashita [an expression of appreciation]. Yes, I like it. (2 seconds) My self-esteem (Laugh) (Gesture?) Wow (laugh) (Laugh) Uhm xxx Oh oh (laugh) Went up?

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38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

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S: あがりました I: 高くなりました？ N: (笑い) いい ですね。 今、私はビヤンセの気 持ちがあります N: ビヤンセ？ (笑い) I: (笑い) とてもきれい です S: 好きだったら、あの、 指輪 [指？] N: あ、あ、あ (笑い) あ、 そうそうそう I: あれ、でも、スミスさ んはしていませんね (２秒) I: 自分はしてないの？

S:

38 39 40

S: Went up I: Became higher? N: (Laugh) That’s good.

41

S:

42 43

N: Beyoncé? (Laugh) I: (Laugh) Very pretty

44

S:

45 46 47

I now feel like Beyoncé.

If you like, uhm, ring (He probably meant fi ngers) N: Ah, ah, ah, (laugh) ah, that’s so so so. I: But, Smith-san is not wearing [manicure]. (2 seconds) I: Isn’t she wearing [manicure] for herself?

In Excerpts 30 and 31 the instructor is engaging in incidental focuson-form. She provides various forms of corrective feedback and tries to draw the students’ attention to form while also having them engage in real communication. For example, the instructor draws a student’s attention to the possible incorrect use of an inference morpheme (Line 7). She provides recasts (Lines 13, 15). She also draws the student’s attention to the difference between the passive and causative-passive forms (Line 17). Finally, she corrects the erroneous use of the passive form (Line 29). All this feedback except the last resulted in subsequent modifi cation by the student. Furthermore, the instructor provides scaffolding for the student. From Line 12 through Line 17, Scott notices his incorrect use of the causative-passive form and tries to reformulate it as a passive form; however, he has trouble with the reformulation. The instructor persistently provides recasts along with encouragement to Scott until he is finally able to reformulate the correct form by himself. In this conversation Naiya did not say a word until Line 31. In parallel with the conversation between Scott and the instructor, another conversation was taking place among Nick, Emma and Alex (a Level 2 student who joined the table later). Naiya, however, did not join their conversation and just listened to the conversation taking place between Scott and the instructor. Considering Naiya’s language proficiency, she probably understood everything that was going on between Scott and the instructor – Scott being corrected on his mistakes and the instructor correcting his mistakes. Nick, who noticed Naiya’s silence, later told Naiya, ウイリアムズ さん、今まで何も言わなかったよ。言葉一つも言わなかったよ ‘Williams [Naiya’s last name]-san, you didn’t say [haven’t said] anything, not even a

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word.’ Listening to Nick’s comment, Naiya started to laugh. Then Nick went on, それは私の知ってるウイリアムズさんです ‘That’s the Williams-san I know.’ I initially hypothesized that Naiya might be resisting the power that the teachers possessed over the students. Using Bourdieu’s (1991) metaphors, teachers possessed various kinds of social and cultural capital, including linguistic abilities, knowledge, experiences, social status and so forth. At Middlebury the teachers not only possessed such symbolic power but also were officially granted the right to exercise it for the purpose of L2 teaching and to facilitate the students’ learning. The following excerpt (Excerpt 32), however, indicates that my hypothesis is not quite right. This excerpt is taken from a dinner conversation. Naiya was seated with the director of the Japanese School, Luke (Level 2), Sunny (Level 2) and the instructor of the IT course. Before this excerpt, the director, Sunny and the IT instructor were talking about lamb and the kinds of meat that Korean people eat. After a 7-second silence, the director starts talking to Luke (Line 1). あ、ごめん、ごめん、じゃあ ‘Oh, sorry sorry, then’ seems to indicate that they had talked about this topic earlier. He asks Luke if he was born in Indianapolis and has lived there his whole life. However, Luke does not understand the director’s question (Line 2). The director recasts the word うまれた ‘was born’ twice (Lines 3, 5), but Luke still does not get it. He says that he doesn’t understand (he probably meant that it was more difficult for him to understand) male speakers’ speech. The director tries to rephrase the question twice (Lines 7, 9), but Luke still does not understand since he doesn’t know the word うまれた ‘was born.’ In the next turn, he asks what うまれた ‘was born’ means. In Line 11 Naiya enters the conversation, probably with the intention of answering Luke’s question. Before Naiya provides the answer, the director starts acting out, probably, the scene of a mother giving a birth (Line 13). Due to the Language Pledge, the use of English is not an option. After the director’s performance, Luke fi nally understands the meaning of うまれる ‘to be born.’ In Lines 14–21, Naiya mediates the conversation between the director and Luke and makes sure that Luke understands the question being asked by the director. After a short pause, the director asks the same question to Naiya (Line 22). She answers that she was born in New York. Then, in Line 26, the director says that he was born in a hospital. This utterance is intended to be a joke. Naiya understands the illocutionary force of the utterance. In the following turn, she tells the director that his joke is ちょっとつまらない ね ‘a little lame’ (Line 27). Naiya’s comment causes laughter. In the next turn, the director praises Naiya by saying そのくらい言えるようになったら大 丈夫だな ‘if you can say things like that [in Japanese], [your Japanese language skills] are good.’

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Excerpt 32 Dinner conversation

D: Director; L: Luke (Level 2); N: Naiya; S2: Sunny (Level 2) 1 D: あ、ごめん、ごめん。じゃあ、ジョ

1 D: Oh, sorry, sorry. Then Johnson [L’s last name]san, you have lived in Indianapolis since you were small? Were you born there, too? (短いポーズ ) すみません、わかり 2 L: (Short pause) I’m sorry. ませんでした I didn’t understand. うまれた（はっきり、ゆっくり） 3 D: Born (speaking clearly and slowly) うまれて？ 4 L: Born [wrong pronunciation] うまれた (はっきり、ゆっくり) と 5 D: The place [where you ころ were] born (speaking clearly and slowly) ええ (短いポーズ ) ほんとに、男 6 L: Eh (short pause) really, の人が全然わかりません。[xxx I don’t understand men [male speech] at all. [xxx 7 D: [born, [うまれ た、どこでうまれましたか？ (はっ where were you born? きり、ゆっくり) (clearly and slowly) あ 8 L: Uh (４秒) (4 seconds) うまれた所はどこですか？ 9 D: Where is the place you were born? あの、うまれる、何ですか？ 10 L: Uh, what is umareru [born]? うまれる？ 11 N: Umareru [born]? はい 12 L: Yes [うまれる、うまれる、うまれる、 13 D: [Umareru, umareru, おりゃあ (子供が生まれる場面 umareru, (D seems to be をジェスチャーで再現しているよ acting out a scene of giving う) birth) [なんか、お母さんは (笑い) そん 14 N: [(Filler) mother (laugh) なこと (笑い) like that (laugh) 生まれます？ 15 S2: Umaremasu? はい 16 N: Yes はい 17 L: Yes そして、ずーっと 18 N: And since then はい 19 L: Yes インディアナ？ 20 N: Indiana? はい 21 L: Yes (Short pause) (短いポーズ ) ウィリアムズはどこで生まれた？ 22 D: Williams [N’s last name], where were you born? ンソンさんは、インディアナポリ スに、小さい頃からずっといた の、生まれたのもインディアナポ リス？

2 L: 3 D: 4 L: 5 D: 6 L: 7 D: 8 L: 9 D: 10 L: 11 N: 12 L: 13 D:

14 N: 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

S2: N: L: N: L: N: L:

22 D:

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23 24 25 26 27

N: D: N: D: N:

ニューヨーク ニューヨークか はい 私は、私は、病院で生まれました あ、は、は、ん、ちょっとつまらな いね (複数の人の笑い)

28 D: そのくらい言えるようになったら 大丈夫だな

23 24 25 26 27

165

N: D: N: D: N:

New York New York Yes I, I was born in a hospital. A, ha ha ha, nm, [it’s] a little lame. (Multiple people are laughing) 28 D: If you can say things like that [in Japanese], [your Japanese language skills] are good.

In this excerpt Naiya did not remain silent. She tried to be a sort of mediator between the director and Luke, who had trouble understanding the question. Furthermore, she provided a blunt evaluation of the director’s humor. Her speech act (evaluating the director’s humor) could have been considered a face-threatening act; however, the director took it as a sign of high language proficiency. In considerations of power, the director was at the top of the hierarchy. He was the person who possessed the most power in the Japanese School. However, in this excerpt Naiya played the role of a co-constructor of the conversation. This excerpt suggests that symbolic power was not the factor contributing to Naiya’s nontalk in conversation. If it is not power, then what is it? One possible explanation is that Naiya did not perceive the director as a teacher, and the reason for that is that he did not create the sensei-ness ‘teacher-ness’ that Naiya saw in the other teachers’ actions, attitudes and demeanors. As the director himself mentioned in the interview with me (‘I try not to create distance between students and me. I candidly approach students and enter their circle’), he created his own way of relating to the students, motivating them to learn Japanese and providing them with learning opportunities. Partly as his administrative strategy and partly due to his personality, the director created different discourses and engaged in different practices from those of the instructors. The excerpt above gives us a glimpse of his engagement with his students. ‘What can I do to become funny in my second language like Hatasa-sensei?’ – this was a question that a student asked at the first lecture given by an invited scholar. The lecture was entitled, ‘What Can You Do to Facilitate Your L2 Learning?.’ During the question session after the lecture, a male student raised his hand, stood up and asked this question. The auditorium was filled with laughter although the student looked very serious. The director often told jokes to his students and made them laugh. The very fi rst time he showed his sense of humor in public was at the

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Language Schools’ opening convocation, which took place on Sunday evening, the third day after the students’ arrival. The students and faculty of the nine-week programs (Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and Russian) and administrators of the Language Schools all gathered in the chapel. The students were seated in groups by the language school that they attended. After some opening remarks by Dr Geisler, the president of Middlebury College gave a speech. Following the president’s speech, Dr Geisler introduced each language school’s director and coordinator. When introduced, the directors stood up, approached the podium and said a few words in their languages. The Japanese School was the third to be introduced. Each time a school was introduced, the students who belonged to that school gave a loud cheer for their school director. Since I do not understand Russian or Chinese, the response of the students to the remarks by the directors of those schools created for me an impression of propaganda. When the Japanese School was introduced, the students gave a loud cheer, just like the previous two language schools’ students had. Dr Hatasa approached the podium. Instead of saying any words, he took a pair of sunglasses from his suit pocket and put them on. He also took a table knife from his pocket, held it in front of his face and started to lick it. After a short silence, the chapel fi lled with laughter. I realized that his performance was a parody of a scene from a Japanese fi lm that the students in the Japanese School had watched the previous night. In that particular scene, the main character, pretending to be a hired killer, is showing off in front of Japanese gangsters by licking his knife. Following the laughter, Dr Hatasa told the students, ９週間がんばりましょう ‘Let’s work hard for the nine weeks.’ Applause and a louder cheer arose from the students. It is possible that Naiya intuitively grasped the diff erent types of practices that the people in the Japanese School created and engaged in. Among those, she felt resistance toward the practices of the teachers. Their activities had a purpose – providing learning opportunities for the students. Naiya, however, perceived such teacher activity as a difference between the teachers and the students. Her perception, combined with her sense of separation, made Naiya resist participation in the teachers’ practices. Naiya carefully listened to other people talking and interpreted what was happening at the lunch/dinner table. The more the teachers engaged in their teacherly practices, the quieter she became. Japanese is Only an Obstacle

Naiya occasionally expressed her frustration about the difficulty of communicating with teachers in Japanese. どうして先生は私をわかりません か？ 恥ずかしいね ‘Why don’t teachers understand me. It’s embarrassing’,

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she said. 友達はいつもわかります ‘My friends always understand me’, she raised her shoulders. She continued: Excerpt 33 Interview

N: Naiya; R: Researcher 1 N: 私たちの考えは同じ。いつも

友達は英語から日本語に (笑い) 訳していますから、だ から、他のアメリカ人の間違 い、全然気づけません。口が 開いて、もう (強調) 何かを 言う、わかります。だから、私 とウィルソンさん、あまり話 しません、手振りでわかるか ら(笑い)ほんとに、sign language みたい、わかりま す。

2 R: 言葉は、日本語はいらな い？

3 N: はい、そうそうそう (笑い)

4 R: 5 N: 6 R: 7 N:

8 R: 9 N:

日本語は、ちょっと、ああ、 英語の言葉も忘れてしまい ました (笑い)。あの、日本語 は  medium ですが、私たち アメリカ人だから、わかる(強 調) Medium はいらない はい、そうそうそう。日本語 は obstacle だけ (溜め息) (笑い) (笑い) ちょっと会話の obstacle です。日本語に、日 本語を気にしないで ほんと に話します。手振りとか顔の 表現とか、そんなこと。ひど いけど、本気です 友達だから、言葉で言わな くても、何を考えてるかわか るんだ 友達だけじゃなくて、学生、 わかります。会話のcontext がわかったら、相手の言葉 を言う前にわかります

1 N: Our thoughts are the same. My friends always translate from English to Japanese (laugh), so [we? they?] cannot notice other Americans’ mistakes at all. As they open their mouths, and I already (emphasis) know what they are going to say. So Wilson-san and I don’t talk much. We understand each other from the gestures, so (laugh) really, it’s like sign language. We understand [each other]. 2 R: No need for language, Japanese? 3 N: Yes, that’s right. (Laugh) Japanese is a little (filler), oh, I forgot the English word, too (laugh). Well, Japanese is a medium, but since we are Americans, we understand (emphasis). 4 R: You don’t need a medium. 5 N: Yes, that’s right. Japanese is only an obstacle. 6 R: (Sigh) (Laugh) 7 N: (Laugh) Obstacle to conversation. We talk without paying attention to Japanese. [We rely on] Gesture, facial expressions, things like that. It’s terrible, but I am serious. 8 R: Because you are friends, you understand each other without words. 9 N: Not only my friends, I understand the students. If I understand the context of a conversation, I understand the student’s words before he or she actually says them.

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10 R: 言う前にわかる？ 11 N: 私にとって、言う前にわかり ます

10 R: Before saying? 11 N: For me, I understand before they say.

The fundamental function of language is to serve as a medium of communication. Although people use other mediums, such as gesture and facial expressions, language is the most powerful and efficient medium of human communication. However, Naiya reminded me that this was not always the case in L2 conversation. At Middlebury the majority of the students are native speakers of English who were born and raised in the United States. In this sense, they were homogeneous in terms of their linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Therefore, as Naiya says, 会話のcontextがわかったら、相手の言葉を言う前にわかります ‘If I understand the context of a conversation, I understand the student’s words before he or she actually says them’, because 私たちの考えは同じ ‘our thoughts are the same.’ Naiya gradually started to perceive Japanese as an 会話のobstacle ‘obstacle of conversation’ rather than an effective medium of communication. Many of Naiya’s friends at Middlebury were Level 2 students. Considering the level of their Japanese language proficiency, it was a challenge for them to carry on a conversation in Japanese in the same way as they could in English. As they started to realize that their L2 was not working well as a medium of communication, they started relying less on the language and more on other mediums such as context, background knowledge, gestures, facial expressions, laughter and so forth. Excerpt 34 shows a conversation among Naiya and her friends. In this excerpt, Naiya is seated with Nick (Level 4), Scott (Level 2) and Yan (Level 4). In Line 1 Nick starts talking about Scott’s red manicure. Nick tells Scott that he had thought that he liked Scott’s manicure but  now he doesn’t want one for himself because he likes Scott’s akaiyoko. The word akaiyoko is seemingly a Japanese word. Akai means red and yoko means side. However, akaiyoko (red side) does not make sense. Scott initially does not understand what Nick means by akaiyoko (red side), but he seems to realize what akaiyoko (red side) is (Line 4). Yan, in Line 7, notices Scott’s manicure. Scott’s manicure is not new knowledge to Nick and Naiya but it is to Yan. Yan expresses his surprise. Scott does not respond to Yan but says, これは私の burgundy frost 性格です ‘This is my burgundy frost personality.’ Burgundy frost is probably the color of the nail polish. In Lines 9–18, Scott, Naiya and Nick engage in conversation about Scott’s ‘burgundy frost feeling.’ Yan (who does not know Scott well), however, is unable to follow the conversation and says, わかんないよ ‘I don’t understand.’ In the following turn, Scott suggests that they talk about this topic later at a bar.

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Excerpt 34 Lunch conversation

N: Naiya; S: Scott (Level 2); NK: Nick (Level 4); Y: Yan (Level 4) 1 NK: [Sのマネキュアが] よかっ

1

たと思ったけど、今、ほしく ない。なぜなら、スコット 君のあかいよこ？

2 S:

(発話なし) (２秒)

2

3 4 5 6 7 8 9

あかいよこ？ あかいよこ、はいはい すきですから [Oh、ありがとう [え、ちょっと、つめ、ええ！ きれいでしょ？ これは、私の burgundy frost 性格です。 Burgundy frost? (笑いな がら)

3 4 5 6 7 8 9

NK: S: NK: S: Y: NK: S:

10 N: 11 S:

あの、今日は、burgundy frost な日です (NKとNは大声で笑う)

私は起きるとき、あの、 ん、はい、burgundy frost の気持ちがありま す 13 N: Burgundy frost はどんな 人ですか？ 14 NK: かなあ あの 15 S: 16 N: Stripper でしょ？ (笑い) 17 NK: ああ、やだ 18 N: (笑い) 19 Y: わかんないよ

12 S:

10 11

12

13 14 15 16 17 18 19

NK: I thought that [your manicure] was good, but now I don’t want it because your akaiyoko [red side?]? S: (No verbal response) (2 seconds) NK: Akaiyoko? S: Akaiyoko, yes yes NK: I like it. S: [Oh, thank you. Y: [Eh, your nails, ee! NK: Isn’t it pretty? S: This is my burgundy frost personality. N: Burgundy frost? (Laughing and speaking at the same time) S: Uhm, today is a burgundy frostish day. (NK and N are laughing hard.) S: When I wake [woke] up, uhm, yes, I have [had] a burgundy frost feeling. N:

What kind of person is burgundy frost? NK: [I] wonder S: Uhm N: Stripper, isn’t s/he? (Laugh) NK: Oh no N: (Laugh) Y: I don’t understand.

In the excerpt, Naiya, Scott and Nick were engaging in a high-context conversation. Because Naiya and Nick know Scott well, they were able to communicate with him by relying more on shared background knowledge and less on language. Accomplishing

Naiya’s sort of dual participation pattern in her engagement in the practice of the Japanese School continued until the end of the program.

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Although she actively sought out opportunities to interact with her friends, she avoided interaction with teachers. From the beginning to the end of the program, Naiya never visited the instructors during their office hours. Another pattern that was consistent in her life at Middlebury was Naiya’s study pattern. She preferred to study alone in her room, and she spent hours studying Japanese every day. Before coming to Middlebury, Naiya had told her friends in college and at home that she would not be able to respond much to their messages on Facebook while she was at Middlebury. She had also told them that she would not be able to talk to them on the phone. During the course of the nine weeks she kept minimal contact with her friends outside of Middlebury and placed herself in the immersion environment of the Japanese School. The only person with whom she kept contact was her grandmother. When she needed to, she talked to her grandmother on the phone. Naiya had a purpose when she went to Middlebury. As her grandmother had taught her, Naiya understood that life consisted of processes. For her, going to Middlebury was one such process which she needed to go through and complete in order to move forward in her life. When she returned to the United States from her study abroad program and realized that 日本語は私をtrapしてしまいました ‘Japanese language trapped me’, she had decided to follow her interests and pursue her study of the Japanese language. At the same time, she had also known, ‘I am free to go on and do my own things but still free to fail (original in English).’ In her grandmother’s words, ‘Go ahead and do that. But if you hate it, you’re still going to stay there (original in English).’ Therefore, going to and studying at Middlebury was the challenge and also the task that Naiya had given to herself. She was aware that living in an immersion environment where she was not allowed to speak English for an extended period of time was going to be stressful – as stressful as ２週間がたって、髪をむしってると思いました ‘I thought I would be pulling my hair out after two weeks.’ Therefore, for Naiya, ‘failing’ was not an option. Over the course of the nine weeks she enjoyed her free time with her friends in the Japanese School; however, she was also serious about studying Japanese. During the last few weeks of the program, the students became busier preparing for various assignments and events in addition to their daily routines. One of these was the fi nal project. For Naiya, the fi nal project was an important assignment. It was an opportunity for her to demonstrate her progress over the eight weeks of study at Middlebury. It was also an opportunity to evaluate her ability to write 本当の論文、そ して、まじめなテーマについての論文 ‘a real paper, a paper on a serious theme’ in Japanese. Naiya chose ワーキングプア ‘the working poor’ for

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the topic of her fi nal project. In the introductory paragraph she provided a defi nition of the working poor and wrote, ワーキングプアはアメリ カとヨーロッパの問題だと思っている人が多いですが、日本でも大変な問題にな っています ‘Many people think that the working poor is a problem in the

United States and Europe. However, it has become a serious problem in Japan.’ In the main paragraphs Naiya pointed out various issues contributing to the production and reproduction of the working poor in Japan, including the increasing number of temporary workers due to the slow economy, the vicious cycle between low wages and the high cost of living, lack of support from the government, and Japanese people’s attitudes toward receiving social welfare. At the end, she concluded that the working poor is a social issue rather than a personal problem, and that the Japanese government must take action to improve regulations on companies to provide benefits for temporary workers. Naiya presented on the second day of the class presentation. She was the second-to-last person to present. I recalled the fi rst day of the class when the students in Level 4 had been asked to introduce themselves. Naiya was the next-to-last person to speak then as well. I looked at Naiya. She was standing in front of the classroom, wearing a white tee and pair of gray skinny jeans. She looked sharp and sophisticated with her white plastic D&G glasses. At the beginning she looked a little nervous but she fi nished her presentation successfully. On the grading sheet, Noda-sensei commented on Naiya’s fi nal paper: ウィリアムズさんが書いていたように、ワーキン グプアは深刻な問題だと思います。私も知り合い がフリーターをしているので考えさせられます。 とてもわかりやすい説明で、はっきりとした主張 が書けていて、すばらしいと思います。

As you wrote, I agree that working poor is a serious problem. A person who I know is also a temporary worker, so I am made to think [about this topic]. I think your paper is excellent. You explained very well and argued your points clearly.

When I complimented Naiya on her good work, she said, うれしい ‘I’m glad’, and smiled. これは本当に難しかったから、原稿を書くのは本当に 難しかったから、うれしい ‘This was really hard, writing the draft was really hard, so I am glad’, she continued. On the day before Naiya left Middlebury, we met at the Grill for the last time. As I watched her face and talked to her, I thought about the Naiya I had seen for the fi rst time in the dining hall. Nine weeks later, she was still laughing as hard and as loudly as she had been on the fi rst day of the program. However, I could also see a sense of relief on her face and hear a sense of accomplishment in her voice. She was probably relieved because she had been released from the responsibility that she had given herself at the start. She felt a sense of accomplishment because she had successfully completed the task that she had set herself before coming to Middlebury. いつも人生にたくさんプロセスがありあます ‘There are always many

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processes in life’, I recalled Naiya’s life philosophy. She had just completed one process and was moving on to another in search of the next destination in her life. Discussion

In this chapter I have described Naiya’s L2 socialization process by highlighting how her sense of separation between the teachers and the students in the Japanese School influenced the way in which she participated in the community of practice of the Japanese School. As previously discussed (in Chapter 3), the Japanese School was a hybrid L2 learning social community created for the purpose of learning Japanese. A unique aspect of the school practice was that all of the Japanese language teachers were native speakers of Japanese who had been professionally trained to teach L2 Japanese. In the director’s words, ここでの全ての活動は学生の日本 語の向上のためにある ‘all the activities in the Japanese program are for students to improve their Japanese’; indeed, the teachers’ responsibility was to facilitate the students’ Japanese language development. They were fully aware of their responsibility and faithfully engaged in teacher practices whenever and wherever they interacted with the students. Naiya perceived such teacher practice as not only a difference between the teachers and the students but also the source of separation between them. She felt the existence of two separate groups in the Japanese School and resisted participating in the practice of the teacher group through a form of silence. Duff (2002) and Morita (2002) argued that L2 learners’ silence in classrooms is a form of resistance to the dominant communities of practice, which place them in marginalized positions in classroom communities. When they face an undesirable social practice, instead of exercising their agency to act against it, some L2 learners exercise their agency not to participate in undesirable classroom practice through silence. In this sense, the silence as a form of resistance reported in previous studies is a silence forced on these individuals by members of the dominant communities. Naiya, too, used silence to exercise her agency not to participate in what she considered to be the undesirable practices of teachers. Naiya’s silence is, however, different from that found in previous studies in two respects. Naiya was not silenced by other members of the community. Rather, it was her own self-imposed silence – her decision and choice not to participate in the learning-centered teacher practices when these occurred outside the classroom. As found in the study of Alison (Chapter 5), Naiya’s case study has shown an important role of an L2 learner’s perception and understanding of the social context in which they are placed. Whereas Alison’s understanding was colored by her ethnic and academic backgrounds, Naiya’s understanding was discursively constructed as she participated in the community of practice, combined with her understanding of the Japanese

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language and culture. Her emergent perception of the separation between the teachers and the students became a psychological barrier for Naiya and determined the way in which she exercised her agency to participate in the practice of the Japanese School. The most prominent form of her exercise of agency was her resistance to talking when teachers started to engage in their practice. One of the aspects of the teacher practice that Naiya resisted most was the teachers’ correction of errors in the students’ language use. Naiya interpreted error correction by teachers outside of class as embarrassing. As in the case of Alison (Chapter 5), whose feeling of embarrassment became an emotional barrier to speaking Japanese, Naiya’s feeling of embarrassment also became an inhibiting factor to her speaking Japanese. Whereas Alison’s feeling of embarrassment was derived from her perception of her inability to speak Japanese, Naiya’s feeling of embarrassment was created by teachers – more precisely, the teacher practice of correcting the students’ language errors in conversations outside the classroom. Naiya felt that this practice of error correction was similar to taking a test, and she did not fi nd that it was helpful to her learning. Corrective feedback, especially the type of corrective feedback that draws L2 learners’ attention to linguistic forms while they are engaging in real communication (integrated form-focused instruction), has been argued to play a facilitative role in L2 learning (e.g. Spada & Lightbown, 2008; Spada & Tomita, 2010). However, Naiya’s affective response to the teachers’ error correction did not make the feedback a learning opportunity. Rather, it created an affective barrier in Naiya’s mind. She found their correction embarrassing, and it limited her opportunities to speak Japanese with them. In theory, the conversations between teachers and students in the dining hall could provide infi nite opportunities to facilitate L2 learning by providing corrective feedback, linguistic and cultural resources and scaffolding through genuine communication. Many L2 learners whose opportunities to use an L2 tend to be limited to classroom settings seek opportunities to use an L2 in genuine communication beyond classroom contexts. Some choose to study abroad, where they can immerse themselves in an environment which provides them with abundant linguistic and cultural resources necessary for their L2 development. However, their learning opportunities are not always maximized as they had hoped, due to various social, individual and contingent factors. For example, in the context of study abroad in Japan, Japanese people’s long-conceived belief in nihonjinron, which emphasizes the uniqueness and particularity of the Japanese language and culture, socializes L2 learners into the discourse of gaijin ‘foreigners’ (Iino, 1996, 2006), as in the case of Parker (Chapter 4). Similarly, Alison (Chapter 5), when she was studying in Japan, found that living in Japan did not automatically provide opportunities to speak Japanese. She stayed in a 外人の寮 ‘Gaijin’s [Foreigners’] dorm’ where she

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communicated with other students in English. Outside the university, she learned that Japanese people wanted to talk to her in English. Julie in Brown’s (2016) study also faced various social constraints (both at school and outside school) and struggled to fi nd her position in the new community of practice while she was studying abroad in Korea. Naiya, on the other hand, was immersed in the rich affordances of the Japanese School and was surrounded by abundant learning opportunities. Yet she practically refused to take advantage of such opportunities. She preferred to stay with her friends and to talk about topics of interest. Nonetheless, over the course of the nine weeks, Naiya was able to accomplish her goal of learning Japanese at Middlebury. She chose to go there because she wanted to challenge herself by pushing the limits of her Japanese language ability. Her goal of learning Japanese at Middlebury was to be able to write 本当の論文 ‘a real paper.’ On the one hand, Naiya’s agency worked to limit her opportunities to speak Japanese; on the other hand, she made persistent efforts to achieve her goal. Naiya’s grandmother taught her that life was a process. She also taught Naiya not to hesitate to pursue her interests in her life. Pursuing her interests was the very reason why she had decided to come to Middlebury. It was also the reason why she continued to study Japanese. Naiya had given herself a task before coming to Middlebury. From that moment, accomplishing the task became her responsibility. From the moment she decided to go to Middlebury to study Japanese, Middlebury became her process – the process that she needed to complete to move onto the next stage of her life. Therefore, for Naiya, accomplishing her goal of learning Japanese was very important. It was this significance that shaped Naiya’s agency to study Japanese at Middlebury from the beginning to the end of the program. Lantolf and Pavlenko (2001) argued that the meaning of signifi cance that people construct ultimately shapes the individual learners’ orientation and engagement in the activity of learning. Furthermore, significance is not a fi xed construct of individual learners, but a mediated relationship (re)constructed and (re)negotiated by living in the social world. Naiya shaped the trajectory of her learning by rigorously engaging in the practices that she found significant and by rejecting the practices that she did not fi nd significant or desirable. This combination of participation and non-participation in the Japanese School’s community of practice ultimately led her to achieve her goal of learning Japanese. As in the cases of Parker (Chapter 4) and Alison (Chapter 5), Naiya’s primary drive for learning Japanese does not involve the exchange of symbolic capital (investment) outlined in the economic metaphors in Norton (2000). Naiya’s desire to gain cultural capital is her pursuit of interest – her mission to fi nish one process and move on to the next stage of her life. Naiya did not have the invested interest that her increased cultural capital

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(acquiring higher Japanese language skills) would be later exchanged for another form of social or economic capital. Based on Naiya’s case study, along with the cases of Parker and Alison, I argue that L2 learners’ uniquely socially mediated aspirations to learn an L2 may not be explained by the notion of investment alone.

7 Danielle: Identities, Ambivalence and Becoming

Beginning

I looked over the large lecture room from the back. Everyone was looking down and working on a test. The students were taking the placement test. I had volunteered to be a proctor. While watching the students take the test, I was wondering who among them would become participants in my study. Suzuki-sensei approached me and whispered that I should have the next student get ready for the oral interview. While taking the written exam, the students were called out to the lobby of Bicentennial Hall for an oral interview one student at a time. I whispered to a female student and let her know that it was her turn. She stood up and started to walk toward the door. From her physical appearance I guessed that she was in her late 40s or early 50s. At the door, I told her to wait. I checked and saw another student still seated at the interview table in the lobby. ‘Can I go?’, the female student asked. I looked at the interview table again. The student was standing up from the chair. I said, はい ‘yes’, and opened the door for her. ‘Can I go?’ It was a low firm voice. I sensed a little bit of irritation in her tone. I followed her with my eyes – short hair, wirerimmed eyeglasses and a low, fi rm voice. Stern and strict, that was the impression I got from this female student. On the next day I saw her in the dining hall again. I was seated with a group of older female students. We had fi nished eating lunch and were talking about our plans for the afternoon. She came to our table and asked us if anyone wanted to go shopping with her, 私は車がありますから ‘since I have a car’, she said. The others at the table declined her invitation. I didn’t need to go shopping but I thought that it would be a great chance to get acquainted with her, so I said yes. Instead of going in Danielle’s car, we took mine. I asked what she wanted to buy. She said cranberry juice and vodka. 寝る前にクランベリー 176

Danielle: Identities, Ambivalence and Becoming 177

ウォッカを飲むのが好きなんです ‘I like to drink cranberry vodkas before I go to bed’, she said. She said that she also needed to go to a pharmacy. She said she was taking several medications; one of them was for migraines. I didn’t ask the details of her medication, but I wondered whether she would be able to survive the nine weeks of the intensive immersion program. After we had stopped at a liquor store and a pharmacy, Danielle asked me what I wanted to buy. I told her that I wanted to go to the Ben Franklin downtown. Danielle and I shopped at the Ben Franklin and returned to Hepburn Hall. When I dropped her off at the entrance, she stood in front of me and said 本当にありがとうございました ‘I really thank you’, and bowed. As I drove away from Hepburn Hall I modified my fi rst impression of her. I added another adjective – polite. Danielle was the first person to volunteer to participate in my study. On the day I had announced that I was recruiting participants for my study from Level 4 students, she came to my room and expressed her interest. At the fi nal stage of the consent process, I asked her to read the consent form and told her to ask any questions that she might have. Danielle started reading the consent form very carefully. She took so long that I started to worry that she might have second thoughts about participating. I was ready to answer any questions and make necessary accommodations. A few minutes later, Danielle moved her eyes away from the form and looked at me. I waited for her words. She said, ひとつタイポがあります ‘There is a typo.’ She pointed to a word on the form. I had misspelled ‘minutes’ as ‘minuets.’ I thanked her for pointing out my spelling mistake and asked if she had any questions about the study procedures. She said no and continued, 私は英語の先生ですから、英語の間違いが気になるんです ‘I am an English teacher, so I am sensitive about English mistakes.’ I realized that she was checking the accuracy of my English while she was reading the consent form. Danielle was a high school Japanese language teacher. She received her teaching licensure in Japanese as well as in English from a university in the Midwest in 1997. When I met Danielle at Middlebury, she had been teaching Japanese at a high school in an East Coast city for 10 years. She had also taught English as a second language (ESL) to international students at a college as a part-time instructor during her school break.

Becoming a Japanese Language Student

Middlebury had held a special place in Danielle’s imagination since she was at college. One of her friends whom she had met in a theater club attended the Russian School. As an undergraduate, Danielle studied English literature and was actively involved in a theater club throughout her college years. Through theater, she also met her husband, who at that time was a biology student fascinated by Russian drama. They shared the

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same passion for theater and found love for each other. After she became a Japanese language teacher, spending a summer at Middlebury had been Danielle’s longtime dream. 私の日本語は下手になってしまいましたから ‘My Japanese got bad’, Danielle said, when I asked why she wanted to come to Middlebury to study Japanese. Since 1997, when she became a certified Japanese language teacher, she had not had the opportunity to able to put any serious time and effort into maintaining or improving her Japanese language skills. Being a high school teacher and a wife, she simply had not been able to afford the time and expense to do so. In the summer of 201x, she received a grant from her school district for professional development, which was enough to cover part of the Middlebury costs. Danielle did not hesitate to take this opportunity. She applied to the Japanese School. In June, she put everything that she would need for her new life at Middlebury into her car, left her house on the day after school fi nished, and drove to Middlebury. At Middlebury, Danielle began to enjoy her dream life right away. Like the other older students, she settled into a single room on the fi fth floor of Hepburn Hall, decorating her room with things that she had brought from home. She had indeed brought various things – books, pictures, a bicycle and her knitting bag. In her free time she explored the town of Middlebury. She checked out the small shops downtown. She rode her bicycle around the neighborhood. She drove to a neighboring town to fi nd out what was out there. Danielle was, in the simplest term, a person who was full of curiosity, and she was always eager to follow her inquisitive impulses. It was this curiosity, in a sense, that had taken her to Japan. When her husband – back then, according to Danielle, they were not yet married and were in an on-and-off relationship – was invited to join a research team at a university in Japan, he had asked Danielle if she wanted to go with him. At that time there was nothing much going on in her life, so she agreed. ま だまだ若かったから ‘I was still young back then’, she laughed. At that time Japan was a country that she knew about only through the mass media. Although she had some ideas about Japan, she thought, 日本について聞い たことは whole storyじゃない ‘the things that I have heard about Japan is not the whole story’ and wanted to see Japan with her own eyes. In Japan she found an English teaching job at a private English language conversation school. She became a teacher for the first time in her life. To her surprise, she found herself enjoying teaching English. やっぱり 私はしゃべることが好きです ‘Sure enough, I love talking’, she laughed. During the three years of her stay in Japan she taught English to a variety of people, including Japanese school children, a group of engineers and an 80-year-old woman. No matter where and whom she was teaching, とても 楽しかった ‘it was a lot of fun’, she said. Furthermore, she found that Japanese people were always kind, welcoming and helpful. だから私は日本

Danielle: Identities, Ambivalence and Becoming 179

人が好きになりました ‘Therefore, I became fond of Japanese people’, she told me. After a positive experience of teaching English for three years, Danielle left Japan and headed back to the United States. After returning home, she thought about what she would do next and decided to pursue her career as an ESL teacher. She was applied to the teacher certification program at a university, but when she learned that they did not have a certification program for ESL teachers, she was enrolled in the certification program for Japanese language teachers. できるかなと思ったけど、勉強してみた ‘I wondered if I could do it, but I tried studying it anyway’, she said. Danielle’s curiosity and challenging spirit eventually led her to establish herself as a high school Japanese language teacher, and it later brought her to Middlebury. She was highly interactive with the other members at Middlebury, including both students and teachers. As she had described herself earlier, 私は話すのが好きです ‘I love talking’, she was not hesitant about talking to anyone in the school. In class, she always sat in the center of the front row and was never shy about speaking up. She joined the rakugo ‘traditional Japanese comic storytelling’ club and performed a kobanashi ‘comical short story’ at the rakugokai (a formal public event hosted by the Japanese School) held at the college theater. She joined the a cappella club and gave performances at various social events. She was also not shy about expressing her personal feelings and emotions. Within the first few weeks, Danielle became known to most of the members of the Japanese School. I once asked Danielle how she was adjusting to her new life as a student. 一つびくりしたことは、私はだいたい若い人、大丈夫です ‘One thing that surprised me was that I am mostly okay with young people’, she said. However, contrary to this positive response, she seemed to be having a difficult time adjusting to her new environment. She often suffered from headaches and she had trouble sleeping at night. She looked tired some days. 大丈夫ですか ‘Are you all right?’, I asked her one day on the way back to Hepburn Hall from the dining hall. はい、大丈夫です ‘Yes, I’m all right’, she said. I knew she was suffering from a migraine. I had overheard a conversation between Danielle and Miyamoto-sensei, the head instructor of Level 4, earlier that morning. She was telling him that she had not been able to fi nish her homework because of a headache. After a short silence, she continued, 私は日本語を勉強するためにここに来ましたから ‘I came here to study Japanese, so … .’ The utterance seemed to be directed at herself rather than at my question. As the first few weeks went by, Danielle seemed to become less confident about her decision to come to Middlebury. ‘I’m too old for this’ は日 本で何と言いますか ‘How do I say “I’m too old for this” in Japanese?’, she asked me. I could not tell whether she was serious or joking. Having faced the reality of the intensive total immersion program, Danielle was probably going back and forth between two ideas: her desire to improve her

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Japanese language skills at Middlebury and her self-doubt about whether she would actually be able to fi nish the program. She was probably struggling with the hard fact of her age compared to most of the Japanese School students. From the end of the third week through the middle of the fourth week, Danielle fell ill. I did not see her for several days. It was not until Wednesday of the fourth week that I was able to see her again. She showed up to the rakugo club practice. The members of the rakugo club were preparing for their performance at the upcoming rakugokai. After the practice I asked how she was doing. She said she had had problems adjusting to some new medication, which had been causing her constant headaches, but she was doing better. たくさん宿題をしなけ ればなりませんね ‘I have to do a lot of homework, don’t I?’, she laughed. I asked if she would be able to perform at the rakugokai, which was going to be held in a few days. The rakugokai was a formal public event hosted by the Japanese School. The other members of the rakugo club had already started practicing their performance while Danielle was sick. I was concerned about whether she would be ready in time. だいじ ょうぶだと思います。がんばります ‘I should be fi ne. I will work hard’, she smiled. Danielle seemed to be at her worst, both mentally and physically, in the third and the fourth weeks of the nine-week program. I was seriously worried that she might tell me that she was going home. She did, however, manage to recover from her health problems. As she had told me she would, she gave a great performance at the rakugokai. I am the Oldest Student

Danielle visibly stood out in the Japanese School not only because of her active participation in school activities but also because of her appearance. She was distinguishable from the rest of the students in the Japanese School at a glance. Her silver hair, which Danielle called shiraga ‘gray hair’, made her stand out among the students, most of whom were in their 20s. Danielle was in her early 50s. 私はミドルベリーのおばあさんです ‘I am the grandma of Middlebury’, she joked in conversation with other students. She was open about her age and identified herself as 一番年上の学生 ‘the oldest student’ in the Japanese School. Danielle’s sense of herself – 私は一番年上 ‘I am the oldest’ – was manifested in various ways, including the ways in which she viewed human relations in the Japanese School and related to other members of the school. With her disposition that 私は話すのが好きです ‘I love talking’ and her candor to follow and pursue her curiosity, it did not take long for Danielle to establish a unique position in the Japanese School. ああ、サンダ ース [ダニエラの苗字] さんだから ‘Well, it’s Sanders [Danielle’s last name]san’, the students would say to each other with a wry grin.

Danielle: Identities, Ambivalence and Becoming 181

For example, at the end of the fourth week, a local taiko ‘Japanese drums’ performing group was invited to the Japanese School and gave a workshop on how to play the taiko. Danielle enjoyed the hands-on experience of playing the taiko. She had seen taiko performances before but had never had a chance to play. While participating in the workshop, another thing caught her eye. It was the leader of the taiko group, a middle-aged Caucasian male who was giving the workshop to the students. After the workshop when the leader was putting the taiko drums back in his van with the help of other people, Danielle approached him and started to chat. Then, all of a sudden, she asked, 何歳ですか ‘How old are you?’ After a little hesitation, the leader laughed and told her his age. He was in his mid-40s. Danielle continued, ああ、そうですか。もう年なのに太っていませ んね ‘Oh, is that so? You are already old but not fat.’ After a short silence, the leader laughed and told Danielle, 多分、太鼓をしているからでしょう ‘It’s probably because I have been playing taiko.’ Weight had been one of Danielle’s concerns. She once told me that she had tried a weight loss program and had lost 20 pounds. At Middlebury she often expressed her concern about her weight gain because of the buffet-style dining at the school cafeteria. When Danielle saw the leader of the taiko group, she was perhaps curious about how he, a middle-aged Caucasian man, maintained his weight and stayed fit. Considering the sociocultural and contextual factors – the social distance between Danielle and the leader of the taiko group, the social status difference between the two people (the leader was the guest instructor of the taiko workshop), and the sociocultural norms of Japanese – Danielle’s behavior (asking a stranger who is of a higher social status about his/her age at a fi rst meeting) is considered rude. Moreover, in her question, Danielle used the word nansai ‘how old’, which is an impolite expression for asking one’s age, instead of a polite expression oikutsi ‘how old.’ Furthermore, Danielle used noni ‘but/although’ as a conjunctive particle to state her opinion もう年なのに太っていませんね ‘you are already old but [noni] not fat.’ Noni not only expresses a contradictory relationship between two events/states but also carries the speaker’s attitude or judgment. The statement もう年なのに太っていませんね ‘you are already old but [noni] not fat’ carries Danielle’s judgment that he is already old and her assumption that old people are fat. The leader of the taiko group, who was a bilingual speaker of Japanese and English, probably understood the pragmatic meaning of Danielle’s statement. His hesitation and laughter and the short silence possibly indicate his understanding of the pragmatic errors that Danielle made. The people who overheard the conversation between Danielle and the leader, including instructors, other students and myself, looked at each other with a wry grin. Wry-grin moments were also observed in her conversations with other students. Excerpt 35 is an example of a wry-grin moment. The excerpt is taken from a dinner conversation. At the beginning of the conversation,

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Pablo (Level 4), Kelli (Level 4) and Danielle are talking about the school newspaper distributed by the members of the News Club. Pablo is a member of the News Club and has written a small article based on a short interview with Kelli. After a few minutes of conversation on the topic of the newspaper, Eva (Level 4) joins the table, and they start to talk about the presentation they had given in class on the same day. In Line 1 Danielle initiates a new topic after an 11-second silence. She tells Pablo that she has a complaint. When talking to Pablo, Danielle uses the address term (a suffi x) kun, rather than san. San is a neutral and formal suffix which can be attached to the names of both male and female persons. Kun is generally used to address a male person. When a female person addresses a male person with kun, it indicates that the male person is of either an equal or a lower social status than the female addresser. In this particular context, it is likely that Danielle is positioning herself above him. As soon as Danielle fi nishes her utterance, someone starts to giggle. Danielle reopens the topic of the newspaper that Pablo has written the article for. Danielle complains that there is no picture of her in the newspaper. In Line 2 Pablo says that her picture is on the News Club’s blog. In Line 5 Danielle confirms what Pablo has just said. In Line 6 Pablo gives an affirmative answer. After listening to the conversation between Pablo and Danielle, Kelli asks if Pablo interviewed Danielle as well. In Line 8 he answers no. In Line 9 Danielle says that nobody (in the News Club) asked Danielle for an interview. In Line 10 Pablo says that he interviewed only Kelli. In Lines 11 and 13 Danielle states that men like to talk to young pretty women, which implies that that is the reason why no-one, including Pablo, asked Danielle for an interview. In Line 14 Kelli agrees with Danielle’s statement. But then Kelli says that she and Pablo like to argue, dismissing Danielle’s claim that Pablo interviewed Kelli because she is young and pretty. After learning that Pablo and Kelli like to argue, in Line 19 Danielle shifts to her role as a teacher and tells the other students at the table, それはだめです。子 供たち、けんかしないでください ‘That is not good. Children, please don’t argue.’ in a high-pitched animated voice. Eva, who has been listening to the entire conversation, aligns herself with Danielle, playing the role of a child and saying, ‘Yes, teacher’ in the following turn. Excerpt 35 Lunch conversation

D: Danielle; P: Pablo (Level 4); K: Kelli (Level 4); EV: Eva (Level 4) 1 D:

あ、 マ、 マルティネス[Pの苗 字]君、私はちょっと文句が ありますね。(誰かのクスク ス笑い) 私の写真はどこ？ [ないでしょう

1 D:

2 P:

[あ、ブ、ブログ、ブログで

2 P:

A, Ma, Martinez [P’s last name]-kun, I have a complaint for you. (Someone is giggling) Where is my picture? [Not here, you know. [Ah, b, blog, on the blog

Danielle: Identities, Ambivalence and Becoming 183

3 4 5 6 7

D: P: D: P: K:

8 P: 9 D: 10 P: 11 D:

は？ ブログ ブログにありあますか？ はい、そう サンダース[Dの苗字]さん もインタビューしました か？ いいえ いええ、誰も私をインタビュ ーしませんでしたが ケリーさんだけ ケリーさんの方がきれいで すから、はい、わかりました

3 4 5 6 7

D: P: D: P: K:

8 P: 9 D: 10 P: 11 D:

12 K:

私の写真はない

12 K:

13 D:

でも、男の人は、きれいな女 の人と話したいんです うん、 でも、パブロさんと私 は、けんかするのが好きで す (複数の笑い)

13 D:

14 K:

そうですか それだけ[です [けんかですか？ そう、けんか それはだめです。子供たち、 けんかしないでください (高 いアニメ調の声色) 20 EV: はい、先生 21 K: 楽しいです 22 P: ケリーさんと私、賛成の意味 は、まだわかりません

15 16 17 18 19

D: K: D: K: D:

14 K:

Ha? Blog [Is my picture] on the blog? Yes, that’s right. Did you interview Sanders [D’s last name]-san, too? No No, no-one did interview me. Only Kelli-san Because Kelli-san is prettier [than I am], yes, I understand. There is no picture of me [in the newspaper]. But, men want to talk to pretty women. Yes, but, Pablo-san and I like to fight.

(Multiple students are laughing.) 15 D: Is that so. 16 K: That’s [all. 17 D: [Fight? 18 K: Yes, fight 19 D: That’s not good. Children, please don’t fight (highpitched animated voice). 20 EV: Yes, teacher 21 K: It’s fun. 22 P: Kelli-san and I don’t know the meaning of agreement [agreeing with each other].

In Excerpt 35 Danielle is picking on Pablo. She knows that there is nothing surprising about not finding any pictures of Danielle in the school newspaper because, as she mentioned, nobody interviewed her. It is not known why Pablo told her that her picture was on the News Club blog. Perhaps it was his attempt to get away from Danielle’s direct accusation. The next excerpt (Excerpt 36) shows an interaction between Pablo and Danielle on a different occasion. In this excerpt Danielle is aligning herself with Pablo as a classmate. Danielle and Pablo are talking about a quiz at the breakfast table. The Level 4 students have had a quiz on kanji and vocabulary every day since the first week. However, the students have discovered that they need to study only the vocabulary for the quiz that

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they are having on that day. In Line 1 Danielle starts the conversation with humor by saying 今日の難しい小テストのために ‘for today’s difficult quiz.’ Both Danielle and Pablo know that this day’s quiz will not be difficult compared to the ones they have had in the past. Moreover, when addressing Pablo, Danielle uses san, not kun as in the previous excerpt. In Line 5 Danielle appears to compliment Pablo on his hard work. From Line 6 through Line 11, Danielle and Pablo share the joy of their unexpected discovery. Excerpt 36 Breakfast conversation

D: Danielle; P: Pablo 1 → D: So, マルティネスさん、 2 3

P: D:

4 P: 5 → D: 6 7 8 9

10 11

ああ、今日の難しい小テ ストのために ん？ たくさん勉強しました か？ もちろん マルティネスさんは、な じみですね

あの、いくらですか？ １ページだけね １ページだけ 試験の後の小テストは いいんですけど、この、 このessay には漢字が ないみたいね P: それだけ、うれしいで す D: ねえ。私は今日 [今朝] ゆっくりして、楽しい、 ああ、楽しみにしていま す [楽しんでいます]

P: D: P: D:

1 → D: So, Martinez [P’s last name]-san, uh, for today’s difficult quiz 2 P: N? 3 D: Did you study a lot? 4 P: Of course 5 → D: Martinez-san, you are a regular [You work hard regularly/everyday]. 6 P: Uh, how much? 7 D: Only one page. 8 P: Only one page 9 D: I don’t mind having a quiz after an exam, but this, this essay doesn’t seem to have kanji. 10 P: That’s all. I’m happy. 11

D: Me too [with a sentencefinal particle to show agreement]. I’m taking it easy today [this morning] and fun, uh, looking forward to it [enjoying it].

The two excerpts (Excerpts 35 and 36) show different roles that Danielle chooses to play in her interactions with Pablo. In Excerpt 36 she positions herself as a classmate and relates to her interlocutor on equal terms. In contrast, in Excerpt 35, she positions herself above her interlocutor and almost overpowers him. 私は失礼ですね。でも、あまり気にしませ ん。私は一番年上ですから ‘I’m rude, I know. But I don’t care because I am the oldest’, Danielle laughed when I asked her to reflect on some of the conversations she had with other students. Danielle was aware that interacting with Pablo in the way she had done in Excerpt 35 was 失礼 ‘rude.’

Danielle: Identities, Ambivalence and Becoming 185

Even though Danielle was older than Pablo, at Middlebury they were classmates and should relate to each other on equal terms. However, Danielle intentionally overpowered him by making a false accusation. For her, it was acceptable behavior because she was 一番年上 ‘the oldest.’ Danielle’s positioning of herself as 一番年上の学生 ‘the oldest student’ influenced the way in which she viewed and interacted with the instructors in the Japanese School as well. In the Japanese School, according to Danielle, 松本先生しか私より年上の先生がいないんです ‘there are no teachers who are older than I except Matsumoto-sensei.’ Although Danielle was older than the instructors in the Japanese School (except Matsumoto-sensei), she was aware that Japanese sociocultural practice expects students to speak politely to their teachers. Furthermore, she addressed the importance of being polite in communication with others. Her father was a military officer, and she grew up in a family that valued politeness and protocol. 私はまだ時々、父と 話す時、 ‘sir’ を使います ‘I still sometimes use “sir” when speaking to my father’, Danielle said. When Danielle and I went to the farmers’ market one day, she stopped at a cookie stand. I heard Danielle address the middle-aged woman at the stand as ‘ma’am’, as shown in Excerpt 37: Excerpt 37 Conversation at the farmers’ market

D: Danielle; W: Female vendor at a cookie stand 1 D: xxx I’ll have one of those. 2 W: Okay. You want it in a bag? 3 → D: No, ma’am. I’ll just put it in my hand and eat it as I wander around. 4 W: Okay (lengthening the vowel o).

Despite Danielle’s recognition of the importance of being polite in communication, she consciously and unconsciously kept positioning herself as 一番年上 ‘I am the oldest’ in front of the instructors as well as other students. In Excerpt 38 Danielle is talking at the lunch table with a male instructor of Level 4, Jennifer (Level 2 student in her late 20s, a high school Japanese language teacher) and two other students. Jennifer starts to talk about the otaku ‘nerd/geek’ students in her high school Japanese language class. After Jennifer and Danielle talk for a while about the characteristics of their otaku ‘nerd/geek’ students, Jennifer, in Lines 1 and 3, says that her otaku students are immature and childish. In Line 4 she says that she herself is still a child. In Line 5 Danielle agrees with Jennifer’s assessment of herself and states, ジェンちゃんも子供ですからね ‘Jen-chan is a child, too.’ Jen is Jennifer’s nickname. Danielle addresses Jennifer with her nickname plus chan, which is an address term (a suffi x) typically used for little girls. In Line 12 Danielle further says, 私の視線 から、みんなは子供ですが、石田先生も ‘From my perspective, everyone is a

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child. Ishida-sensei, too.’ In Line 13 the male instructor agrees with Danielle’s statement after a short pause. The short pause may be an indication of his reluctance to agree. Although he is younger than Danielle, he is one of her course instructors and he has a doctoral degree in SLA from a university in the United States. Calling him a child can be taken as a face-threatening act. Excerpt 38 Lunch conversation

J: Jennifer (Level 2); D: Danielle; I: Ishida-sensei (Level 4 instructor) 1 J:

私とそのオタクは本当にいい けい、関係が[あるから

2 D: [んんん 3 J: すごくおもしろい。いつも笑

4 D: 5 J: 6 D: 7 J: 8 D: 9 J: 10 D:

11 I:

います。いっしょに（短いポ ース）まだちょっと子供みた い うん 私も子供ですから、あの、ま だ ね うん (笑い) ジェンちゃんも子供 ですからね ありがと (笑い) でも、私の視線か ら、みんなは子供ですが (笑い) 石田先生も (笑い)

(短いポーズ ) そうですね (小さい声で)

1 J:

I and the nerdy students have a really good re, [relationship, so 2 D: [nnn 3 J: It’s very interesting. We always laugh together (short pause) They are still like children. 4 D: Yes 5 J: I am a child, too, uh, still 6 D: Right 7 J: Yes 8 D: (Laugh) Jen-chan is a child, too. 9 J: Thank you 10 D: (Laugh) But from my perspective, everyone is a child (laugh). Ishida-sensei, too (laugh). 11 I: (Short pause) That’s right (smaller volume).

On another occasion, Danielle called another male instructor けち ‘a stingy person.’ When the Level 4 students gave a group presentation at the end of the fi fth week, several instructors were invited as judges. Each group presented a piece of trivia that would surprise the audience. After each presentation, the judges were asked to individually give a score to the group, and the group that received the highest total score was to be awarded a prize at the end. After Danielle’s group fi nished their presentation, the judges wrote down their scores and showed them to the presenters. Danielle noticed that a young male instructor had given a low score to her group. As she walked by the instructor to return to her seat, she said, xxx先生、けち ‘Teacher xxx, you are stingy’, to him. Danielle later told me, 私は失礼でしたね。でも、若くて男の子のように見えました ‘I was rude, I know. But he is young and looked like a boy’, and laughed.

Danielle: Identities, Ambivalence and Becoming 187

Danielle’s positioning of herself as 私は一番年上 ‘I am the oldest’ was also reflected in her ambivalent attitude toward the use of keigo ‘honorifics’ to the instructors at the Japanese School. At the beginning of the seventh week, the Level 4 students received a lesson on keigo and were told that they should use keigo when speaking to the instructors. For the Level 4 students, including Danielle, learning keigo was a review because keigo is usually introduced at the end of second-year Japanese. Danielle expressed frustration because she thought that the keigo review should have been done earlier, so that she could have had more opportunities to practice keigo while she was at Middlebury. 私は１５年前に敬語を習いまし たから、全部忘れてしまいました ‘I learned keigo 15 years ago, so I have forgotten it all’, she frowned. After the keigo review lesson, Danielle tried to use keigo whenever possible. When she was seated with instructors in the dining hall she tried to speak using keigo. When she was talking about an instructor with other students she tried to use keigo in reference to the instructor. On the one hand, Danielle had the desire to speak politely to the instructors in Japanese; on the other hand, she did not see the need to use keigo to them because she was older than the majority of the instructors in the Japanese School. She stated, 松本先生以外の先生には、敬語を使わな くてもいいと思います。私の方が年上ですから ‘I think I don’t need to use keigo to the instructors [in the Japanese School] except Matsumoto-sensei because I am older than them.’ Danielle seemed to understand the function of keigo as the expression of politeness from a person of a lower status to a person of a higher status in the social hierarchy. Moreover, Danielle measured one’s status based solely on the age difference between the two people. Since Danielle was older than all the instructors (except Matsumoto-sensei), she felt that she did not need to use keigo to them. Excerpt 39 shows Danielle’s ambivalent attitude toward the use of keigo. Right before this excerpt, Danielle was talking with John (Level 2) for about ten minutes. After John leaves, Jennifer joins the conversation (Line 1). Danielle and Jennifer briefly talk about food. After a 6-second pause, Danielle initiates a conversation with a male instructor (it is unknown when the instructor joined the table). Danielle asks the instructor if he was able to sleep well, using the honorific form of ‘to sleep’ immediately followed by laughter (Line 7). However, the form that she used is incorrect. Overlapping with her laughter, the instructor indicates nonunderstanding by saying ‘ha’ with rising intonation. In the following turn, Danielle rephrases the question while laughing at the same time. However, the form is again incorrect. After a short pause, the instructor recasts the correct form (Line 10), which overlaps with Danielle’s speech and laugh. As soon as the instructor fi nishes his recast, Danielle says は ‘ha’ with rising intonation. Then the instructor recasts the correct form again, followed by brief laughter. In the next turn, Danielle successfully reformulates the form while laughing at

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the same time. After a 3-second pause, the instructor replies to her question. Then Danielle provides comments on her (in)ability to use keigo. In the following turn, Jennifer joins the conversation and says はい ‘yes.’ In the next turn, Danielle initiates a new topic and starts talking to Jennifer. Excerpt 39 Breakfast conversation

J: Jennifer (Level 2); D: Danielle; I: Instructor 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15

J: おはようございます D: おはようございます、ジ

ェニファーさん。ああ、 何？ J: 今日のxxx D: ポテト J: ちょっと D: ああ (６秒) → D: 先生、よくお寝になさ いましたか？ (笑い) え？（Dの笑いと重な る) D: (笑いながら) よく睡眠 なさいましたか？ (笑 い) I: (短いポーズ ) お休み [になりましたか D: [敬語(笑い)は？ I: (笑い) お休みになりま したか D: (笑いながら) お休みに なりましたか？

I:

(３秒) I: はい（小さい声で） D: やっぱり敬語はまだま だ下手です (笑い)。

1 2

J: Good morning D: Good morning Jennifer-san. Ah, what is it?

3 4 5 6

J: D: J: D:

7 → D: 8

I:

9

D:

10

I:

11 12

D: I:

13

D:

14 15

I: D:

16 17

J: D:

18

J:

「いらっしゃる」 「おっし ゃる」できますけど、そ れ以外、だめです

16 17

J: (笑い) はい D: ああ、きれいですね、

18

J:

あの、そのイヤリング。 その指輪もきれいです

ありがとう

Today’s xxx Potatoes A little Oh (6 seconds) Teacher, did you sleep [wrong honorific form] well? (Laugh) Ha? (Overlapping with D’s laughter) (While laughing) Did you sleep [wrong honorific form] well? (Laugh) (Short pause) Did you [sleep [correct honorific form] well [Keigo (laugh) Ha? (Laugh) Did you sleep [correct honorific form] well (While laughing) Did you sleep [correct honorific form] well? (3 seconds) Yes (lower volume) As was expected, my keigo is still bad (laugh). I can say irassharu [honorific form of to go, to come, and to be] and ossharu [honorific form of to say], but not others. I am bad. (Laugh) Yes Oh, [that’s] pretty. That [wrong demonstrative], those [correct demonstrative] earrings. That ring is pretty too. Thank you.

Danielle: Identities, Ambivalence and Becoming 189

Danielle’s question in Line 7 (whether the instructor had slept well the previous night) was probably prompted by a conversation she had had with John immediately before. John told Danielle that he could not sleep well the previous night because he had a dream in Japanese and found himself tired in the middle of the night when he awoke from the dream. Then John told Danielle that he had prayed to God to have an English dream. He repeated his prayer by saying 今から英語の夢をお願いします ‘Please let me have an English dream from now on.’ As soon as Danielle heard John say 今から英語の夢をお願いします ‘Please let me have an English dream from now on’, she started to laugh very hard. When Danielle initiated a question (whether he had been able to sleep well the previous night) to the instructor, she probably thought that she should use keigo. However, as Danielle says in Line 15, although she can use some of the most frequently used honorific forms, she still has a problem with low-frequency honorific forms, such as ‘to sleep.’ It is possible that Danielle was already aware that the honorific form that she used in Line 7 was incorrect. In response to Danielle’s question, the instructor says え ‘ha’ with rising intonation. It is unknown whether he did not understand Danielle’s question or whether he intended to offer implicit corrective feedback on her incorrect honorific form. In her following turn, Danielle rephrases the question, using a different verb. At this point, the focus of the conversation has shifted from Danielle’s concern about the instructor’s sleep to her use of keigo. What Danielle appears to be doing is trying out different honorific forms of ‘to sleep’ rather than addressing the instructor politely. In Line 10 the instructor’s recast overlaps with Danielle’s new topic initiation. 敬語は ‘keigo (plus topic marker)’ in her speech indicates that she is going to talk about keigo rather than the instructor’s sleep. ‘Ha?’ in Line 11 indicates that Danielle was not expecting to hear feedback from the instructor. It is uncertain how the instructor interpreted Danielle’s use of keigo. There is a 3-second silence after Danielle’s successful reformation of correct form of ‘to sleep’ before the instructor responds to Danielle’s question (Line 14). Danielle, however, does not respond to the instructor’s answer; instead, she initiates a new topic and starts talking to Jennifer. I am a Teacher

Danielle’s sense of herself that 私は一番年上 ‘I am the oldest’ was combined with her identity as a teacher and together influenced the way in which she positioned herself in the Japanese School. In Level 4, for example, the majority of the students were undergraduate students who had graduated from high school not long before. A few of them were 18-year-olds who just had finished their first year of college. In Danielle’s eyes, her classmates were probably projected as gakusei ‘students’ and overlapped with the Japanese language students in her high

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school classrooms. 私は先生、みなさんは学生という考え、まだ、あります ‘I still think that I am a teacher, and everyone else is a student’, Danielle stated. She described the students in Level 4 as みなさんは大体まじめな 生徒 ‘most students are well-behaved pupils’, but she noticed one male student, David, who acted as immaturely as her high school students. She described David as まだ子供だから、頭はいいけど、自分を他の人の目か らあまり見られない ‘because he is still a child, even though he is smart, he cannot look at himself from others’ point of view.’ One day in class, Danielle scolded David in front of everyone. It was a day when the students in the Level 4 class gave group presentations. One group came up to the front of the class and started to get ready for their presentation. While the group members were checking their PowerPoint slides, someone pressed the ‘view’ button by accident. The task of the presentation was to present a piece of trivia that would surprise the audience. Showing PowerPoint slides to the audience before the actual presentation could ruin the whole presentation. Laughter erupted from the audience, and suddenly David started to yell, saying もう見ちゃった！ 見ち ゃった！ ‘I’ve already seen it! I’ve seen it!’ Danielle stood up from her seat, looked at David, and said, リー [デイビッドの苗字]さん、静かにしてください。 わかるでしょ？ ‘Lee [David’s last name]-san, please be quiet. You know, don’t you?’, in a firm voice. After a short silence, some giggling occurred. David murmured something and fell silent. Danielle’s sense of herself as a teacher was also manifested in other behavior. As Danielle admitted, 私はみなさんの話し方をよく直したいんです ‘I want to correct other students’ speech/utterances’, and she corrected other students’ language errors. Danielle was aware that she was a student, not a teacher, in the Japanese School – just like any other student. She was also aware that some students would not welcome her corrections. Nonetheless, she corrected other students’ linguistic errors because it was the practice that she had been engaged in for many years as a high school teacher. She stated: もちろん、大体同じレベルですけど、私の 間違いは同じかもしれませんが、私がわか ったら、その間違いが、わかったら、すぐ （両手をたたく）直します。例えば、今覚 えていないんですけど、あー、カタカナの 発音とか、すぐ直しますが、ちょっと失礼 ですね。だから、私はもうしない方がいい かもしれませんが、もしクラスメートは何 か間違いがあったら、大体します。しすぎ るのは、ちょっと、失礼だと思うから、時 々しない方がいいと思っていましたね。や っぱり私はまだまだ先生の考え方がありま すね(笑い) 。

Of course, [the Level 4 students are] mostly at the same level, and I make the same mistakes [as my classmates make], but if I know, if I know that there is a mistake, I will immediately [claps her hands once] correct it. For example, I don’t remember now, but uh, the pronunciation of Katakana and so on. I will immediately correct it. It’s rude, I know. So, I probably shouldn’t do it, but if my classmates make mistakes, I mostly do [correct their mistakes]. Overdoing is probably rude, so I thought that I should not do it often. Indeed, I am still thinking like a teacher (laugh).

Danielle: Identities, Ambivalence and Becoming 191

Excerpt 40 shows Danielle’s correction of her classmate’s inappropriate word choice. At the beginning of the class, the instructor, Danielle and her classmate Nick were talking about the Kanji ‘Chinese character’ 囲 as in the Kanji compound word 周囲 ‘surroundings.’ Nick mentions that 井 looks like the pound sign (#) on a cell phone keypad and starts asking why the sign # is called ‘pound’ in English. In Line 1 Danielle starts to explain the reason. In Line 3 Danielle tells Nick that # used to be used as the symbol for pound, which is a unit of weight. In Line 4 Nick expresses his admiration for Danielle. In his speech, he uses an honorific form of ‘to know’ as in ダニエラさんは、いろんなこと、ご存知 ですね ‘You know [honorific form] many things.’ Although the intent of Nick’s honorific use is unclear, it is possible that Nick used an honorifi c form because Danielle was older and more knowledgeable. In Line 5 Danielle defl ects the force of Nick’s compliment by saying, ‘because I am old.’ In Line 6 Nick states that he wants to be an old person, using the word toshiyori. Although the English translation of toshiyori is an old man/woman, the Japanese word toshiyori refers to elderly people. Danielle is in her 50s but not old enough to be referred to as toshiyori. In Line 7 Danielle corrects Nick’s word choice. She states that referring to her as toshiyori is ちょっと失礼ですよ ‘a little rude’, and he should use the word, toshiue ‘older’ instead of toshiyori. In Line 8 Nick realizes that he has made a pragmatic mistake and apologizes to Danielle. In Line 10 Nick produces private speech in which he is possibly trying to teach himself the word toshiue, for which he did not know the appropriate usage. Excerpt 40 Conversation in a classroom

D: Danielle; I: Instructor; NK: Nick 1 D: 2 I:

あ、むかしむかしは

(全体に) はい、じゃあ、はじめ ましょう。おはようございます

ほんとのポンド、重さのポンド のシンボルでした 4 NK: すごおい。ダニエラさんは、い ろんなこと、ご存知ですね 5 D: そう、年を取ったからね 6 NK: すごい。私も年寄りになりたい

3 D:

7 D:

(笑い)「年寄り」はちょっと失礼 ですよ。 「年上」の方がいい

8 NK: あ、すみません

1 D: 2 I:

Ah, a long time ago (To the whole class) Well, let’s begin. Good morning. 3 D: It was the real pound, the symbol for weight pound. 4 NK: Wow. You know [honorific from] many things. 5 D: Yes, because I am old. 6 NK: Awesome. I want to be an old person [toshiyori]. 7 D: (Laugh) Toshiyori ‘old person’ is a little rude. Toshiue ‘older’ is better. 8 NK: Oh, I’m sorry.

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9 D: いいえ 10 NK: なんか、スイッチします。年、 上。すみません。

9 D: No 10 NK: (Filler) I’ll switch. Toshi, ue. I’m sorry.

Whereas some students, like Nick, were willing to accept Danielle’s corrections, some students were less so. One of the Level 4 students, for example, described Danielle as a 本当にいい人 ‘really good person’ but うる 「私の方があ さい ‘annoying.’ She said that Danielle was 先生、本当に先生。 なたよりわかる」そんな声 ‘teacher, really a teacher. “I-know-more-thanyou” kind of tone’, and imitated Danielle’s tone of voice to me. She continued, 私たちは同級生。この場合、あなたは先生じゃない。声。直してもいい。で も、声はほんとにうるさい ‘We are classmates. Here, you [Danielle] are not a teacher. The voice. It is okay to correct, but the voice is really annoying.’ Moreover, Danielle was seeing the operation of the Japanese School from a teacher’s perspective. She often expressed her admiration for the school curriculum. She told me that she was impressed with the various events and activities that the school offered to students outside of class. 運動会を見て「運動会ができるかな」。 でも私は一人ですから。落語を見て、私 の上のレベルの学生に、落語を見せて、 興味があったら、落語をしてみたい。

After watching the athletic event, I wondered if I could do [implement] it [at my high school]. But I’m alone. After watching rakugo, I [want to] show rakugo to my higher-level students, and if they are interested, I want to try doing [implementing] rakugo [at my high school].

やっぱり私は先生の目で見ていますね ‘After all, I’m looking at [things] with teacher’s eyes’, she laughed. Danielle seemed to be particularly impressed by the implementation of the rakugo week. プロの落語家をアメリ カに呼んで、それぞれのレベルをまわっているのは本当にすごい ‘It’s really great that the Japanese School invites professional rakugo players, and they visit each level’, and 私も教師ですから、これは難しいとよくわかります ‘Because I am also a teacher, I know this [the implementation of rakugo week] is difficult’, she stated. During the rakugo week, high-ranking professional rakugo performers were invited from Japan, and the students were not only able to see their performance fi rst hand but also given opportunities to interact with them in class. The members of the rakugo club, in particular, received first-hand training from the rakugo performers and were given a chance to perform at the rakugokai, a rakugo performing event open to the public at the end of the rakugo week. Danielle was a member of the rakugo club and performed at the rakugokai. Danielle seemed to view the instructors in the Japanese School from a teacher’s perspective, too. She often expressed her admiration for them. The following statement is, for example, Danielle’s comment on the Level 4 instructors.

Danielle: Identities, Ambivalence and Becoming 193

先生方はチームとして、よくがんばります ね。中級２の４人の先生方は、いつも会議し たり、いつも、well coordinatedという授業 ですね。それから、この時間目で、に、教え ていない先生もよく来ますね。いろいろ、 本当に私は感動しました。

My teachers work hard as a team. The Level 4 teachers always have meetings, and their lessons are always well coordinated. Furthermore, teacher(s) who is not teaching often go to another teacher’s class [to observe]. With various things, I am really impressed.

In her comment, Danielle used the expression よくがんばります (yoku gambarimasu), which is the equivalent of ‘work hard’ or ‘do a good job’ in English, in reference to the Level 4 instructors. The verb gambaru indicates that one works hard to accomplish a task or a goal that requires consistent effort and endurance. If you use the word to describe someone else’s action or accomplishment, it becomes an evaluative statement. For example, teachers in Japanese schools often use yoku gambarimashita ‘you did a great job’ to give a positive evaluation to their students. Danielle was clearly aware of the pragmatic force of the expression yoku gambarimasu. At the end of the rakugokai, Danielle came to me and asked if it would be appropriate for her to tell the rakugo master (he is a high-ranking rakugo master in Japan) yoku gambarimashita (Excerpt 41). She told me that she was so impressed with his performance and so thankful for the advice and guidance he had given her that she wanted to express her admiration and appreciation to him. I told her that it would not be appropriate for her to tell the rakugo master yoku gambarimashita. She said, yappari ‘as was expected’, which is the expression that reconfi rms the legitimacy of one’s original thought. Excerpt 41 Conversation after the rakugokai

D: Danielle; R: Researcher 1 D: 村松さん、XXX 師匠に「よくが んばりました」と言うのは失礼で すか？

2 R: え、XXX 師匠に？ 3 D: XXX 師匠の performance は 本当にすばらしかったですね。 それに、私たちを本当に親切に 教えてくれましたね。私たちは下 手でしたけど(笑い)、XXX 師匠の アドバイスのおかげで、上手に できましたね。みんな笑ってくれ ました。だから、You did a

wonderful job. Thank you very much.

1 D: Muramatsu-san, would it be rude for me to say yoku gambarimshita ‘did a good job’ to Master XXX? 2 R: E? To Master XXX? 3 D: Master XXX’s performance was really wonderful. Also, he taught us really kindly. We were bad (laugh), but because of his advice, we were able to perform well [tonight]. Everyone laughed [at our performance]. So, ‘You did a wonderful job. Thank you very much.’

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4 R: 「よくがんばりました」は失礼で

すね。日本語だと「本当にすばら しかったです。どうもありがとう ございました」とか 5 D: やっぱり

4 R: Yoku gambarimshita is rude. In Japanese, you can say, ‘It was really wonderful. Thank you very much’ or something. 5 D: Yappari ‘As I expected.’

An evaluative comment such as yoku gambarimashita can be only given by a person who has enough knowledge, expertise and experience to judge one’s action and achievement. In the context of rakugo performance, Danielle is not in a position to evaluate the rakugo master’s performance. After Danielle thanked me, she went to the rakugo master’s green room and told him, 大変すばらしかったです。ありがとうございました ‘It was so wonderful. Thank you very much’ and bowed. Danielle was aware of not only the pragmatic force of but also the sociopragmatic practice underlying the linguistic expression yoku gambarimasu. Despite my explanation, Danielle continued to use yoku gambarimashita ‘did a great job’ to express her admiration for the instructors in the Japanese School. Excerpt 42 shows Danielle’s use of yoku gambarimashita ‘did a great job’ with regard to the performance of the Level 4 instructors. The excerpt is taken from a lunch conversation during the ninth week. In this excerpt, Danielle is seated with Jake (bilingual secretary), Sarah (Level 5 student) and Adam (Level 5 student). Before this excerpt, they were talking about a Level 5 instructor who had taught in the Japanese School the previous summer. Jake mentioned that she was not teaching at Middlebury because she was taking a break but might come back next summer. Danielle probably misunderstood what Jake had said about the instructor. She probably thought that the instructor took a break because she had taught Level 5 by herself the previous summer. In Line 1 Danielle says that it is impossible for one instructor to teach a course alone because Middlebury is tough for instructors as well as students. After a two-second silence, Danielle further states that in her Level 4 course there were four instructors for 15 students and they did a great job, using the expression yoku gambarimashita. In this utterance, she also uses the adverb kekkou ‘fairly’ to describe the degree of greatness. Kekkou ‘fairly’ can express (a) a state that is not perfect but is good enough; or (b) an outcome that exceeded the speaker’s expectations. Therefore, Danielle’s utterance could be interpreted as saying that (a) the Level 4 instructors did a good enough job; or (b) the Level 4 instructors’ performance exceeded Danielle’s expectations. The 13-second silence following Danielle’s utterance in Line 2 may indicate the confusion among the other students at the table. Given their proficiency levels, they are probably not sure how to interpret Danielle’s utterance. In Line 3, breaking the silence, Danielle continues that she doesn’t want to take a job where she would have to work from early in the

Danielle: Identities, Ambivalence and Becoming 195

morning until late at night. After Danielle’s utterance, another long silence follows. After the silence, Sarah changes the topic. Excerpt 42 Lunch conversation

D: Danielle 1

D: 夏学校は先生方にもつらいで すから、一人で教えるのは無 理でしょう

(２秒) 2 → D: だから、私たちの１５人の中

級２年生には、先生方が４人 いましたね。 でも、けっこうよ くがんばりましたね、先生方 は

3

(１３秒) D: 朝早くから夜くまで。実は私

は怠け者ですから、そういう 仕事したくないんです

(１５秒)

1

D: Middlebury is tough for teachers, too, so, it’s probably impossible to teach [a course] alone. (2 seconds) 2 → D: That’s why there are four teachers in our 15 students Level 4 course. But, they kekkou yoku gambarimshita ‘did a fairly great job.’ (13 seconds) 3 D: From early in the morning until late at night. Because I am lazy, I don’t want to do that kind of job. (15 seconds)

Danielle’s intent in her use of the adverb kekkou ‘fairly’ is unknown. Considering the admiration that she had previously expressed for the Level 4 instructors, it is possible that she used it to emphasize the degree of greatness. Whether Danielle is emphasizing or mitigating the force of the evaluative comment, in this excerpt Danielle gives her evaluation of the Level 4 instructors’ job at Middlebury from another teacher’s point of view. Struggle

At the beginning of the program I often saw Danielle hanging out with her fi fth-floor friends. As the weeks went by, she gradually started to spend her free time with her classmates, especially with the younger students in Level 4. Danielle’s positioning as 一番年上 ‘I am the oldest’ and also as a teacher was accepted by the younger students in Level 4 but was probably not so welcome among the fi fth-floor residents, who were mostly professional students in their late 20s and early 30s. As the weeks went by, Danielle started to feel isolated. In our interview in the sixth week, she stated:

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最近、私は、さびしい感じがありますね。 もう６週間たったけど、いい友達がいな いと思っています。どうしてかわかりま せんが。

Lately, I feel lonely. Six weeks have already passed, but I think I don’t have any good friends [here]. I don’t know why.

Danielle believed that the Japanese language was the reason why she did not have any friends at Middlebury. Because of the Language Pledge she had to communicate with the other students solely in Japanese. She felt that communicating in a foreign language was a barrier to building a friendship the way she would have done in English. However, for Danielle, speaking English was not an option. She came to Middlebury to improve her Japanese language skills; therefore, speaking only Japanese was more important than making friends. Excerpt 43 Interview

D: Danielle; R: Researcher D: やっぱり、心の中にあるのが、外国語

で、あんまり表現できないから、さび しい R: じゃあ、もし、ここで、英語も話せた ら、いい友達ができていたと思います か？

D: はい、そう思いますね。ちょっと飲みに 行って、いろいろ個人的なことについ て話して、ちょっと友達、友達になると 思いますね。ここで (ポーズ ) できな いと思いますね、残念ながら

R: それは日本語で話さなければならな いから？

D: ううん、たぶんね。そう思いますが。正

しいかどうかわかりません じゃ、日本語じゃなくて、英語で話そ うってことはしないんですか？ しません それは pledge があるから？ うん。Pledge は私の目的ね。私の目 的は、日本語を上達することですね。 他の友達がいますね、家には。だか ら、たぶん、友達を作るより、目的は 大切です (大きく息を吐く)

D: I feel lonely because I cannot express my inner thoughts in a foreign language. R: Then, if you could speak English here, do you think you would have made good friends already? D: Yes, I think so. We go out for drinks, talk about personal things, and become friends. Here (pause) I think we cannot do [these things], unfortunately. R: Is that because you have to speak in Japanese? D: Uhm, maybe. I think so. I don’t know if it’s right. Then, not in Japanese, do you try to speak in English? I don’t. Is that because of the Pledge? Yes. The Pledge is my purpose. My purpose is to improve my Japanese language skills. I have other friends at home. So, probably, my purpose is more important than making new friends (deep exhalation).

日本語でがんばりたいんです ‘I want to speak Japanese as much as I can’, she said. I noticed that her eyes were brimming with tears. 家に帰り

Danielle: Identities, Ambivalence and Becoming 197

たいんです。 ですが、こ この勉強もしたいです、終わりまで ‘I want to go home,

but I want to fi nish the study here’, she laughed, while wiping her tears with her hand. In addition to the sense of isolation that emerged in Danielle’ mind, she started to feel less confident about her ability to improve her Japanese. In particular, she started to think that her age was an obstacle to learning Japanese. At the beginning of the seventh week Danielle found out that a student in Level 1 had withdrawn from the program. Danielle was not particularly close to the student; however, they had one thing in common. They were in the same age group. His withdrawal made Danielle officially the oldest student in the Japanese School. [その学生が日本語学校を やめた] 理由がわかりませんが、一番年上の学生になってしまいました ‘I don’t know the reason [for his withdrawal], but I fi nally became the oldest student’, she said. In everyone’s eyes, it was obvious why he withdrew from the school. He had been having a difficult time keeping up. Around the same time that Danielle learned about the Level 1 student’s withdrawal from the school, she met Ellen, a student in the threeweek instructional technology (IT) course. The IT course started in the sixth week. Ellen joined the Japanese School after the midterm break. Ellen was in her mid-40s and had lived in Japan for six years. As Danielle became close to Ellen, she learned many things about her – her age, her Japanese language background, her job, her husband and so forth. While she found many similarities between Ellen and herself, Danielle also noticed a difference. Ellen’s Japanese language proficiency was much higher than hers. 私と同じぐらい日本に行ったアンダーソン [エレンの苗字]さんも、同じ時に勉強はじ めたし、私より大変上手で、ペラペラ話し ていて、先生方より、私はアンダーソンさ んの日本語が時々わからないんですね。そ れも、ちょっと恥ずかしいことですね。

Anderson [Ellen’s last name]-san went to Japan around the same time as I did. She also started to study Japanese around the  same time as I did. But, she [her Japanese language skills] is much better than I [my Japanese language skills] and speaks  Japanese very fluently. I understand teachers’ Japanese but sometimes don’t understand Anderson-san’s. It’s a little embarrassing.

It was the eighth week. There was an incident that made Danielle completely lose her confidence in her ability to learn Japanese. Danielle had been preparing for her final presentation and chose Japanese ceramics as the topic. To prepare for the draft, she read books about Japanese ceramics, searched online resources and visited one of the instructors who was familiar with Japanese ceramics to ask questions. Then she wrote the fi rst two pages of the draft and visited Ishida-sensei’s office hour to get feedback (Ishida-sensei was overseeing Danielle’s fi nal presentation). During the 20-minute meeting he pointed out a number of mistakes that Danielle had made, including grammatical mistakes, inappropriate word

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choices and incorrect sentence structure. As the conversation went on, Danielle became quieter and responded to Ishida-sensei’s comments by only saying はい、はい ‘yes, yes.’ At the end of the meeting (Excerpt 44), Ishida-sensei suggests that Danielle check the accuracy of her particle use according to the verb type (Line 6). He also mentions that without such effort her Japanese language skills will not improve. In response to his suggestion, Danielle explains that she made more mistakes in this essay than she usually does because it was a more challenging task (Line 7). Ishida-sensei then emphasizes the importance of editing by checking for accuracy after writing a draft (Lines 8, 10). Danielle, in a frustrated tone, tells him about the time and effort that she has put into writing those two pages (Lines 11, 13). At the end, Danielle thanks him and leaves the office. Excerpt 44 Conversation in the Level 4 instructors’ office

D: Danielle; I: Ishida-sensei 1 D: 「かかられる」は受け身形で

1 D: Is kakarareru a passive form?

2 I:

2 I: I don’t know because I didn’t write it. In what sense, did you use it? 3 D: Actually, I read on Wikipedia (faintly, in a subtle tone). 4 I: You should understand it first, 5 D: Yes, I understand. Uhm, of course, I probably have more [questions]. 6 I: Basically, you always check verbs by yourself and think whether particles are correct or not. Unless you always (emphasis) do this, you cannot improve your Japanese. Particles are your most common mistakes. In order to get rid of particle mistakes, every time you use a verb, you need to check whether it is an intransitive or a transitive verb, also for your review. If you do this, I think you will gradually become able to do [use verbs with correct particles].

3 D: 4 I: 5 D: 6 I:

すか？ 私が書いてないのでわかりま せんが、自分でどういう意味 で使ったんですか？ じつは、ウィキペディアで読 みました (消え入りそうな声) 自分で理解して、 はい、わかりました。あの、も ちろんもっとあるかもしれま せんが まあ、基本的には、自分で動 詞をチェックして、助詞がこれ でいいのか悪いのか、いつも (強調)やらないと、上手にな れない。助詞を間違えるのが 一番多いじゃないですか。そ れをなくしていくためには、 毎回動詞を使う時に、これは 自動詞なのか他動詞なのか っていうのを自分で復習もか ねて、やっていくと、そのうち だんだんできるようになって くると思います

Danielle: Identities, Ambivalence and Becoming 199

7 D: 短い作文を書く時よくするん ですけど、この(強調)作文の 方がもっと(強調)難しいし、よ 8

く考えていますから、もっと 間違えています I: わかります。書く時に一番大 切なのは、書き終わった時に 何回も自分でチェックする

9 D: (溜め息) 10 I: Editing の所が一番大切なの

7 D: I do when writing short essays, but this essay (emphasis) is more difficult (emphasis), and I had to think a lot, so I made more mistakes. 8 I: I understand. What is most important when you write essays is to check your writing many times by yourself after you fi nish. 9 D: (Sigh) 10 I:

で

Editing is the most important.

11 D: わかりましたが、１ページは、

11 D: I understand, but it took me many hours to write just one page on Sunday. Then, teacher, it took three hours to write this paragraph.

12 I: そうですか 13 D: 前に読んだ物をもう一度読ん

12 I:

14 I: xxx 15 D: はい、わかりました。ありがと

14 I:

日曜日、何時間もかかりまし たね。それから、先生、この段 落、３時間かかりました

で、情報をとるのが大変でし た。それから、書いて「これが 必要」と思って、また戻って読 んで、だから、本当に時間が かかりました。思ったより時 間がかかります。１日に３ペー ジできると思いましたが

うございました

I see.

13 D: I reread the materials that I had read previously. It was difficult to get information. Then, I started to write and thought, ‘I need this.’ Then, I went back to the reading again. So, it really took time. It takes [took] more time than I had thought. I thought I could write three pages in one day, but xxx

15 D: Yes, I understand. Thank you very much.

After the meeting, Danielle went back to her room and cried. She later stated: 週末からあの作文を書いていました。で も、死にそうに難しかったから、とても自 信がなくなって、泣きました。部屋で泣き ました。

I had been working on that essay since last weekend. But, it was really hard. So, I lost my confidence and cried. I cried in my room.

On the following day, Danielle went to see Miyamoto-sensei, the head instructor of Level 4, and told him, 日本語をあきらめたい ‘I want to give up Japanese.’ She told him that she was not confident in her ability to continue studying Japanese. In our conversation, she mentioned, 恥ずかしい

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‘embarrassing’ because 他の若い人にくらべて、私の日本語は下手ですから ‘compared to other younger people, my Japanese is poor/bad.’「年は関係な し」と宮本先生はおっしゃいましたが、私は、そういうこと、信じていないんです

‘Miyamoto-sensei told me that age was not relevant but I don’t believe that’, she said. Becoming a Teacher of Japanese

After the fi rst meeting with Ishida-sensei, Danielle went to see him twice more and asked him for feedback. Each time, she listened to his comments carefully and revised the draft accordingly. After she submitted the fi nal draft, she said: 心配しないでください。私はあのひどい作 文が終わったから、発表の方が上手にでき ると思いますから、自信を持つようになる と思います。

Please do not worry. I fi nished that terrible essay, so, I should be able to do a better job at the presentation, so I think I will regain my confidence.

On Monday I sat in the Level 4 classroom and waited for the student presentations to begin. I recalled the fi rst day of the class when Miyamoto-sensei had asked the students to introduce themselves. At that time Danielle was the fi rst person to speak. She had said, 私は一番 年上ですから ‘Since I am the oldest’, and started to introduce herself. In the fi nal presentations she was the second person to present. As Danielle had told me not to worry, she did a great job with her fi nal presentation. She memorized the draft, prepared the PowerPoint slides, brought real ceramics to show, made the audience laugh at her jokes and ended the presentation successfully. とても緊張していました ‘I was really nervous’, she said, and laughed after the presentation when I complimented her. I realized that it had been a while since I had seen Danielle laugh. サンダースさんの学生はラッキーですね ‘Your students are lucky’, I once told Danielle. She laughed and said, 宮本先生も同じことを言いました ‘Miyamoto-sensei told me the same thing.’ I had never seen a high school Japanese language teacher work as hard as Danielle did to improve his/ her Japanese language skills. 簡単な日本語しか話さないから、日本語が下手に なってしまいました ‘Because I speak only simple Japanese, my Japanese got poor/bad’, she repeatedly told me in our conversations. 恥ずかしい ‘embarrassing’, she also said. I tried to imagine what she was like in her Japanese language classroom. In one of the writing assignments, Danielle wrote about her experiences in her school. In her high school, students select the ‘teacher of the year’, and whoever is selected receives a trophy at the school ceremony in June. Danielle wrote, いつかそのトロフィーをもらいたいな ‘I wish I could receive the trophy some day’, but she thought it would be impossible

Danielle: Identities, Ambivalence and Becoming 201

because it was a school-wide award, and the number of students studying Japanese was small compared to the total number of students in the school. In 2005 Danielle broke both ankles and had to teach class in a wheelchair for a month. Even after she was able to walk, she had to use crutches. でも、毎日学校に通って、１日も休まなかった ‘But, I went to school every day and did not miss a class’, she wrote. At the end of the school year she was unable to attend the annual ceremony in which the ‘best teacher of the year’ was announced and the trophy awarded. Next day, when she went into school, she found out that she had been selected as the best teacher of the year and she received her trophy from the school principal. She ended her essay: 今も仕事を辞めようと思う時、そのトロフィーを見て、もう一度これをも らえるようにがんばろうと思う。しかし、今度は骨をおらない方がいい ‘When I want to quit my job, I look at the trophy and think that I should work hard to receive this again. But, next time, I had better not break my bone.’ 私は教師の仕事が好きです ‘I like teaching/I like the job of teachers’, Danielle repeatedly told me. The very fi rst time she discovered the joy of teaching was when she taught English in Japan. In a sense, she became a Japanese language teacher by accident. However, it was Danielle’s experience in Japan that opened up a new world for her and eventually led her to come to Middlebury. After she had officially established herself as a Japanese language teacher in 1997, she had looked out for opportunities to continue to work on her Japanese language skills. She had always been aware that, as a nonnative speaker of Japanese, she needed to make an effort to maintain and improve her Japanese language proficiency. However, in reality, she had been busy with her daily routines as a teacher and a wife and had not had the chance to put serious effort into the maintenance of her Japanese language skills. A year before she came to Middlebury, Danielle received a wake-up call reminding her of the need to seriously work on improving her Japanese. ミドルベリー行く前の年、日本から高校に 日本人の留学生が来ました。１６歳の高校 生でした。その高校生の前に、私の下手な 日本語、私は日本語が下手だったから、と ても恥ずかしかった。だから、私は、やっ ぱり「日本語を勉強しなければいけない」 と思って、高くてもミドルベリーに行くの がいいと思いました。

A year before I went to Middlebury, Japanese exchange students came to my high school. They were 16-year-old high school students. In front of those students, my poor/bad Japanese, my Japanese was poor/bad, so I was very embarrassed. So, I thought ‘I have to study Japanese’ and I decided to go to Middlebury even though it was going to be expensive.

The Japanese high school students sat in Danielle’s third- and fourthyear Japanese language classes. During the class, as they watched Danielle teach, they pointed out her language mistakes in front of her students.

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日本人はとても丁寧ですけど、それから、 年上の人、間違いを直すことはあんまりし たくないんですけど、やっぱり時々、がま んできなくて、私を直しました。授業中 でした。

Japanese people are very polite and so don’t want to correct older people’s mistakes. But sometimes, they could not stand it and corrected my mistakes. It was during my class.

It was probably an embarrassing experience for Danielle to be corrected in front of her students by 16-year-old Japanese high school students. Even though she was a nonnative speaker of Japanese, she was a Japanese language teacher, the authority on the Japanese language for her students. Danielle also stated: 私は自分で、生徒の読み物のために、作文 を書くのは、とても恥ずかしかった。私が 間違ったら、生徒は悪い日本語を、下手な 日本語を習うことは恥ずかしかった。だか ら（ポーズ）自信がなくなりました。それ から、もし私は日本語の教師の仕事がした ければ、それは、がまんできなかったん です。がまんできないと思うようになり ました。

I also felt embarrassed to write compositions for my students to practice reading. If I make mistakes, my students would learn bad Japanese. That was embarrassing. So (pause), I lost my confidence [with my Japanese language ability]. If I want to continue to be a Japanese language teacher, I thought I would not be able to stand it.

恥ずかしい ‘embarrassing’ was the expression that Danielle often used when describing her Japanese language skills. To Danielle, the fact that 日本語が下手になってしまいました ‘my Japanese got poor/bad’ was embarrassing in two senses. It was embarrassing in the eyes of her students. She had lost her authority with her students. It was also embarrassing to herself as a Japanese language teacher. If she continued to be a Japanese language teacher with her limited proficiency, she felt that she would not be able to tolerate herself. Therefore, she decided to spend a summer at Middlebury to improve her Japanese language skills, to regain her confidence and to become the Japanese language teacher she wished to be. Two days after Danielle gave her fi nal presentation, she received the evaluation on her draft and presentation. She received almost perfect scores for both. On the last day I asked Danielle if she had regained her confidence. She said, 私の日本語はまだまだ下手ですけど、でも、上手になった と思います ‘I still have a long way to go, but I think my Japanese has improved.’ Then she continued, ミドルベリーに来て、本当によかったです ‘I am really glad that I came to Middlebury.’ Toward the end of the program, the Level 4 students wrote a tanka ‘traditional Japanese short verse’ and their tanka were entered into a contest. Danielle’s tanka won first place. She wrote: 先生の トマトが赤くなって もうそろそろと 夏が終わる ‘My teacher’s tomatoes became red, the summer is slowly coming to end.’ Danielle’s summer at Middlebury was also coming to an end.

Danielle: Identities, Ambivalence and Becoming 203

Discussion

In this chapter I have described Danielle’s L2 socialization process, highlighting how her identities intermingled with her L2 socialization process. Since the publication of Norton’s (2000) groundbreaking work, identity has become an important area of inquiry in SLA research. To date, numerous studies have been conducted and have continually shown that L2 learning is simultaneously a process of negotiating identities. In the framework of L2 socialization theory, identity is conceptualized as one’s membership in a community. By living in the social world, we belong to multiple communities of practice. Since our identities are not something we can turn on or off as we cross the boundaries of communities, they need work. In the process of reconciling multiple identities across time and space we (re)negotiate and (re)construct the new meaning of selves (Wenger, 1998). In Danielle’s case, her sense of self as a high school teacher, combined with her emergent self-identification as the oldest student in the Japanese School, played a powerful role in negotiating the ways in which she participated in the practice of the Japanese School and related to other members of the community. Danielle’s work of reconciliation or (re)negotiation of her identities was characterized by her ambivalent feelings and, to some extent, resistance. Surrounded by younger people who were mostly in their 20s and 30s, Danielle accepted and rejected her new identity as a Japanese language student by sometimes relating to other members on equal terms and sometimes overpowering them. Previous studies have found that the reconciliation of L2 learners’ identities is a site of struggle. Being caught by social power asymmetries, L2 learners struggle to establish their legitimate position in new communities of practice (e.g. Duff, 2002; Fuentes, 2012; Harklau, 2000; Kanno & Harklau, 2012; Miller & Zuengler, 2011; Morita, 2002, 2004; Norton, 2000; Ricento, 2013; Talmy, 2008; Teutsch-Dwyer, 2001). In Danielle’s case, however, such social power relations did not come into play in the reconciliation of her identities. The different findings between previous L2 socialization studies and the case of Danielle can be attributed to the difference in the social environments in which the L2 learners were placed – more precisely, the different affordance structures that the social communities offered for L2 learners. The Japanese School, as discussed in Chapter 3, was a hybrid L2 learning community where legitimacy was granted to its members. Unlike the L2 learners in previous L2 socialization studies, Danielle did not need to negotiate her identities in order to gain access to the new community of practice and claim her right to speak. With her disposition that she likes to talk, combined with the legitimacy and her positioning, Danielle created abundant opportunities to speak Japanese and exercised her agency freely to pursue her enterprise of learning Japanese.

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Julie in Brown’s (2016) study was in a similar situation to Danielle when she studied abroad in Korea. As a study abroad student, she was given a legitimate membership status in her new community (within the context of the university). Julie was also in her 50s and older than the other students (except for one person, Peter). Surrounded by a ‘clique of “cool kids”’ (Brown, 2016: 817), Julie struggled to fi nd her position in the new community. Moreover, because of her age, she was assigned a role of looking after Peter (her classmate), who was a ‘“sexist” and “narcissistic” 65-year-old European male’ (Brown, 2016: 808). This co-constructed identity of an ‘“older” student who was cosigned to look after Peter’ (Brown, 2016: 821) placed a constraint on Julie’s learning. Unlike Julie, Danielle established her position in the rich affordance structures of the Japanese School, made persistent efforts to improve her Japanese language skills and eventually achieved a remarkable outcome of self-transformation. Her learning was, however, not a seamless process. It was characterized by her struggles, particularly her struggle with the limitations that she perceived were a consequence of her age. Yet Danielle never stopped trying to achieve her goal of learning Japanese at Middlebury. An important question to be considered is what made Danielle persistently engage in the practice of the Japanese School regardless of the challenges she faced in the process of learning Japanese. Could it be explained using Norton’s (2000) notion of investment? Danielle’s primary drive for learning Japanese at Middlebury was her desire to become the Japanese language teacher she wanted to be. Having faced (as pointed out by some Japanese high school students) the fact that her Japanese language skills had deteriorated after years of only using the language with her students, she was deeply embarrassed and felt that she could not bear to continue as a Japanese language teacher unless she could fi nd a way to improve her Japanese. It was this aspiration of Danielle’s that brought her to Middlebury, engaged her in the practice of the Japanese School, overcame the hardships and eventually achieved a remarkable outcome of self-transformation. As discussed in the studies of Parker, Alison and Naiya, the core principle of the notion of investment is the symbolic exchange that takes place as an outcome of L2 learning. In the case of Danielle, did she expect to gain another form of symbolic capital in exchange for her knowledge and skills in Japanese? Did Danielle’s interest in gaining social capital as an outcome of study serve as her primary drive for learning Japanese? I argue that Danielle’s primary drive for learning Japanese was her aspiration for personal change – her desire to overcome a feeling of embarrassment and become a Japanese language teacher she could be proud of. Danielle’s aspiration did not include her desire to gain social reputation or to be identified as a better or more competent Japanese language teacher by her students or colleagues.

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What Danielle negotiated in the process of her Japanese language learning was her sense of self of the past, the present and the future as a Japanese language teacher. Thus, Danielle’s case study, together with the studies of Parker, Alison and Naiya, suggest that L2 learners’ diverse and uniquely social and personal desires for learning an L2 may not be able to be explained using the notion of investment alone. Hence, investment is better understood as a form of L2 learner agency, which is applicable for particular types of L2 learners who are situated in particular social contexts.

8 Conclusion

Introduction

This study was conducted with the aim of gaining a deeper understanding of what it means to learn a second language (L2), situated in the theoretical framework of L2 socialization. Based on the premise that L2 learners are social agents who actively engage in their social world and shape their life experiences, this study examined the processes of L2 learning experienced by four advanced learners of Japanese, focusing on the role of their agency, in the community of a summer intensive fullimmersion program in the United States. In this fi nal chapter I discuss the implications of the fi ndings from this study – what we can learn from the studies of the four learners. I first discuss the role of communities in L2 learning. I then reflect on the role of agency in L2 learning and locate it in SLA research. In doing so, I revisit the questions posed at the beginning of this study. Following the discussion, I state the limitations of my study and implications for pedagogy. Role of Communities in Second Language Learning

With the increasing recognition of the importance of social contexts in L2 learning, SLA research has investigated L2 learning in relation to the social contexts (communities) in which the learning takes place. In the framework of L2 socialization research, previous studies have examined the affordance structures of social communities and found that L2 learners are often caught in inequitable social and power relations and placed in illegitimate positions in the target language communities. In contrast to the fi ndings of these previous studies, my study found a facilitative role for the social community. What made the Japanese School different from other social communities was its hybridity. The Japanese School is a social community created for the purpose of learning Japanese. On the one hand, it provides peripherality in the Japanese sociocultural practice for its students; on the other hand, it operates under the policies and codes of an academic institution in the United States. This dual structure of the community, combined with the operational policies and 206

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practices of the Japanese School, creates the basis for legitimate peripheral participation by removing from the learning environment the various social constraints that have been reported in previous L2 socialization studies and by providing abundant resources and opportunities for L2 learning. What became evident in this hybrid social community was that the social environment alone was not sufficient to make L2 learning happen. The case studies of the four learners have shown that L2 learning is a process of a dynamic interplay between the affordance structure of a social community and individual L2 learners’ agency. There is no doubt that the primary role of the social community in L2 learning is to offer rich and effective affordance structures that facilitate L2 learning. What then does characterize the richness and effectiveness of a social community? The Middlebury Language Schools, without a doubt, offer a very rich academic environment for the students. The college’s beautiful college campus, top-rated facilities, varied resources, history and reputation offer an ideal setting for a language learning environment. Moreover, the Japanese School’s well-designed curriculum and the total immersion approach, combined with the policy of the Language Pledge, create infinite opportunities for the students to use their target language in genuine communication. However, the fi ndings of the case studies of the four learners suggest that the richness and effectiveness of a social environment do not lie only in such physical and academic affordances. Rather, they are constructed in a dynamic relationship between the affordance structure of a social community and L2 learners’ agency in the pursuit of a joint enterprise of making L2 learning happen for themselves. In this regard, the richness and effectiveness of learning environments are not pre-existing characteristics of communities, but rather a dynamic construct that arises from the interaction between individual L2 learners’ agency and the affordances of the social community. The nine weeks of observation in the Japanese School provided a powerful reminder of the three characteristics of a social group as a community as outlined in Wenger (1998): (a) mutual engagement; (b) a joint enterprise; and (c) a shared repertoire. What I saw in the Japanese School in the summer of 201x was the consistent and persistent engagement by all members to make L2 learning happen. In the words of the director, ‘there are only two types of people here in the Japanese School: those who want to teach Japanese and those who want to learn Japanese’ (original in Japanese, translation is mine). This joint enterprise created a repertoire of practices and constructed the Japanese School as a viable L2 learning community. In a way, the positive outcome of the four learners can be attributed to this single-minded pursuit of teaching and learning Japanese that underlay all the activities in this community.

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In sum, what we can learn from the stories of the four learners is that neither the social environment nor the L2 learner alone is sufficient to make L2 learning possible. L2 learning is a joint process constructed by L2 learners and their social communities and, more importantly, it requires individual L2 learner agency to make use of the affordances of the social community in the pursuit of their enterprise of learning an L2. As constructions, the richness and effectiveness of learning environments are experienced in unique ways by individual learners, even those in the same school at the same level, taking the same classes and participating in the same school activities. Agency and Investment Revisited

Agency is the fundamental force for human action. Pavlenko and Lantolf (2000: 170) state that, in L2 learning, agency is the force for L2 learners to initiate and engage in a ‘long, painful, inexhaustive, and for some, never-ending process of self-translation.’ L2 learners, as agents, have the power to make choices, initiate certain actions, actively resist certain practices, construct identity, negotiate the meaning of their actions and take control over their learning in pursuit of their goals for learning an L2. Regardless of the recent recognition of the importance of agency, the role of agency in L2 learning has not yet been fully discussed in the SLA literature. Learning an L2 requires an extended amount of time, effort and commitment. Nonetheless, people seek out various opportunities to learn an L2 for a wide range of reasons. The students I met in the Japanese School at Middlebury were no exception. I have presented the stories of four of these students – Parker, Alison, Naiya and Danielle – by describing their experiences of learning Japanese in the community of the Japanese School. Their stories provide a number of important insights into the understanding of L2 learning from the learners’ emic perspectives. Of those insights, one of the most important implications of the study is the power of the four learners to move from their aspirations to personal transformation in the process of L2 learning. What the four learners primarily negotiated as they participated at the Japanese School was their sense of self of the past, the present and the future. Parker’s desire to become a speaker of Japanese in search of his lost connection to the past, Alison’s desire to overcome her shame in speaking Japanese, Naiya’s desire to challenge herself to move on to the next stage of her life and Danielle’s desire to become the Japanese language teacher she wanted to be brought them to the enterprise of learning Japanese at Middlebury, made them engage in the everyday activities of the school, negotiate the meanings of their actions and self, overcome the challenges they faced, navigate their learning processes and eventually accomplish their goals for learning Japanese.

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As discussed in earlier chapters, L2 learners’ driving force for learning an L2 is theorized as investment in current socially oriented SLA research. Since the publication of the seminal work by Norton (2000), the notion of investment has served as the theoretical canon to describe L2 learners’ drive for learning an L2. One question I have posed in this study is the applicability of the notion of investment to the learning environment of the Japanese School at Middlebury College. Norton conceptualizes investment in association with the economic metaphors proposed by Bourdieu and Passeron (1977) in the field of sociology. She associates L2 learning with the exchange of symbolic capital. L2 learners learn an L2 (acquire cultural capital) with the expectation that their L2 skills and knowledge will later be exchanged for another form of symbolic capital (economic and/or social capital). The case studies of the four L2 Japanese learners in my study, however, show that the notion of investment cannot adequately explain their driving force for learning Japanese in their search for the possibilities of self-transformation from the past to the future, without involving an expectation for or interest in exchanging their symbolic capital. My study suggests that L2 learners’ personal and social wants and needs to engage in the enterprise of L2 learning are more diverse, unique and contextually bounded than the notion of investment alone can explain. Thus, I argue that the notion of investment is best understood as a form of L2 learner agency which is applicable to particular types of L2 learners who are situated in particular social contexts and who construct particular social identities. Norton (2000) and my study have taken similar theoretical and methodological approaches to examine the socialization processes undertaken by L2 learners. Whereas Norton’s study revealed the power of L2 learners to negotiate their identities in their search for possibilities of a better future – in Kramsch’s words, a ‘better, more equitable, more democratic form of life’ (Norton, 2013: 194), which fueled them to invest (or not to invest) in their L2 learning, my study highlights the power of L2 learners to negotiate their sense of self of past, present and future in their search for possibilities of self-transformation. The two studies differ in (a) the types of learners studied; and (b) the affordance structures of the social communities. Whereas Norton studied circumstantial learners (i.e. learners whose circumstances require them to study and speak a target language) in a target language community where L2 learners were placed in inequitable social and power relations of the target language community, my study focused on foreign language learners who made a choice and had the privilege of spending a summer studying Japanese in the community of Middlebury College. Moreover, my study focused on L2 learners of Japanese whereas Norton (2000) studied L2 learners of English. English is considered the language of the ‘global marketplace’ (Pavlenko & Norton, 2007: 672),

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which possibly inherits social power, especially in multilingual communities such as large cities in North America, where Norton’s study (2000) took place. In such contexts, learning English is indeed associated with the acquisition of social and economic capital in order to gain entry into the global marketplace. However, learning Japanese does not involve such social and symbolic power gain. Thus, it is possible to argue that L2 Japanese learners have more diverse reasons and desires to learn Japanese. Consequently, my study has highlighted the four learners’ power to move from their aspirations to personal transformation in the process of L2 learning. These differences have foregrounded different aspects of L2 learner agency: one is investment and the other is L2 learners’ aspiration for personal transformation and negotiation of meaning of self of the past, the present and the future. Hence, I argue that L2 learners’ diverse social and personal desires and needs for learning an L2 must be understood and theorized in conjunction with the types of learners we study and the different affordance structures in which the learners are embedded. Individual Differences Revisited

Another aspect that the studies of the four L2 Japanese learners have foregrounded is the great degree of individual difference in the process of L2 learning. Even though the four learners were placed in the same affordance structures of the same community, they viewed and understood the affordances of the community differently and participated in the community of practice in different ways. The different ways in which L2 learners engage in the activity of L2 learning have traditionally been theorized and examined in the framework of motivation in the SLA literature. Starting from the sociopsychological model of motivation proposed by Gardner and Lambert (1972), followed by the ‘cognitive-situated’ (Ushioda & Dörnyei, 2012: 397) approach (e.g. Crookes & Schmidt, 1991; Deci & Ryan, 1985; Noels et al., 2000) and the recent ‘self-and-identity perspectives’ (Ushioda & Dörnyei, 2017: 451) proposed by Dörnyei (2009a) and Dörnyei and Ushioda (2009), L2 learners’ motivation to learn an L2 has been extensively studied from various theoretical perspectives for the past four decades. Researchers in various fields (e.g. social psychology, educational psychology and SLA) have tried to conceptualize the constructs of L2 learners’ drives for engaging in the activity of L2 learning. Previous studies have identified such constructs as integrative and instrumental motivations (Gardner, 1985; Gardner & Lambert, 1972), intrinsic and extrinsic motivations (Deci & Ryan, 1985; Noels et  al., 2000) and L2 self (e.g. Dörnyei, 2009a; Dörnyei & Chan, 2013; Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2009). Thanks to the fi ndings of the previous studies, we now know more about

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the drive of L2 learners to learn an L2, compared to what we knew 40 years ago. Yet what we still do not fully understand is the agentic, organic and uniquely social nature of L2 learners’ desires and drives to engage in the activity of L2 learning. The previous studies that adopted large-scale quantitative methodological approaches were able to establish predictable links between the operationalized constructs and L2 learning outcomes from an etic perspective; however, they are not able to capture the L2 learners’ desires and drives to learn an L2 which are uniquely interwoven with their sense of self, their hopes for the future and their understandings of the social world from their emic perspectives. L2 learners are socially situated individual agents who relate to the social world in idiosyncratic ways and construct the meaning of their actions and self in unique ways. Their desires and drives to engage in the activity of L2 learning inevitably mingle with their personal histories, identities and relationships with the social world and are constantly negotiated and renegotiated. In the framework of the social theory of learning, Norton (2000) has proposed the notion of investment to capture such a dynamic relationship between individual learners’ desire to learn an L2 and the social world in which they live. In the past decade or so, researchers such as Dörnyei (2009a, 2009b), Dörnyei and Ushioda (2009), Dörnyei et  al. (2015), Ellis and Larsen-Freeman (2006), Ushioda (2009) and Ushioda and Dörnyei (2012) have argued for the new epistemological approach to the investigation of individual differences in SLA research, which conceptualizes L2 learners as people who are situated in unique social, cultural and historical contexts. Dörnyei (2009b: 230), for example, argues for the importance of an ‘agent-based framework’ for the study of individual differences in SLA research. He emphasizes that researching individual difference variables discretely is no longer fruitful, and thus the future research needs to extend the theoretical boundaries and integrate individual learners and social contexts in an examination of individual differences. The four learners in my study had different personal histories and backgrounds, different reasons for studying Japanese, different senses of self and different relationships with the social world. Such differences resulted in different ways in which they understood their task of learning Japanese at Middlebury, negotiated and constructed the meaning of their engagement in the everyday activities of the Japanese School, and renegotiated and reconstructed their sense of self in the new community. The stories of the four learners also suggest that various constructs that previous studies have foregrounded, such as integrative and instrumental motivations (Gardner, 1985; Gardner & Lambert, 1972), intrinsic and extrinsic motivations (Deci & Ryan, 1985; Noels et al., 2000) and investment (Norton, 2000) can be the result of the different social contexts from which each theory was initially developed. For example, the

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theory of integrative and instrumental motivations originated in the unique social context of the coexistence of Anglophone and Francophone communities in Canada in the 1970s. The theory of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations developed based on the need for an investigation of classroom learners who were required to study and speak multiple languages in multilingual communities in Canada in the 1980s. The notion of investment was proposed in the investigation of circumstantial learners in a target language community where L2 learners were placed in the midst of asymmetrical social and power relations. My study has foregrounded the notion of L2 learner agency. I studied foreign language learners who made a choice and had the privilege of spending a summer studying Japanese in the community of Middlebury Language Schools. Hence, I argue once again that the applicability of the theories of L2 learners’ drives and desires for learning an L2 must be considered and discussed in conjunction with the social and historical contexts and affordance structures in which the L2 learners are embedded. The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition (Gass & Mackey, 2012) has, for the fi rst time in the history of SLA, placed identity and agency in the chapter on individual differences, along with aptitude, motivation, working memory, age and other individual variables. The agent-based approach to the study of individual differences in SLA research has just begun. More recently, Ushioda and Dörnyei (2017), in the special issue of the Modern Language Journal (Beyond Global English: Motivation to Learn Languages in a Multilingual World), raised questions regarding the applicability of the fi ndings of the recent L2 motivation studies (their argument is based on the result of the survey study conducted by Boo et al., 2015). They asked, ‘since current self-and-identity conceptualizations of L2 motivation at the individual–psychological level have been strongly grounded in analyses of global English learning contexts’ (Ushioda & Dörnyei, 2017: 452), whether the fi ndings of such skewed studies are adequately able to explain L2 motivation to learn languages other than English and whether researchers need to reconceptualize L2 motivation – in their words, ‘whether some significant re-thinking may be required’ (Ushioda & Dörnyei, 2017: 452). My study was conducted in the theoretical framework of L2 socialization, yet the studies of the four L2 Japanese learners suggested that L2 Japanese learners might not engage in the task of learning Japanese in the same way as L2 English learners do, especially those in the social power asymmetry in a new community of practice where learning English is associated with the acquisition of social capital and entry into the global marketplace. Future research needs to expand the scope of investigation and examine the drives and desires for learning an L2 by learners of various languages who are situated in diverse social contexts by highlighting their

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dynamic and unique interplay with the social world. With the combined fi ndings of future and previous studies across theoretical and epistemological boundaries, we will be able to advance our field and gain a more comprehensive understanding of our L2 learners and their driving force for initiating and engaging in the task of learning an L2. Limitations of the Study

My study has adopted a research design of ethnographic case studies, and thus it inherits the limitations of interpretative research and of case studies. As is the case for all case studies, this study lacks generalizability. As Patton (1990: 491) states, the aim of case studies is to provide ‘contextbound explanations rather than generalization.’ This study has provided in-depth descriptions of L2 learning experiences by four advanced L2 Japanese learners in a summer full-immersion program in the United States. The implications of the study are transferable to other L2 learning contexts only when readers make ‘naturalistic generalization’ (Stake, 1978: 6); that is, through the knowledge of particulars, readers see similarities in new and foreign contexts. Furthermore, as is the case for all interpretive research, the social reality presented in this study is my version of reality, which is colored by my personal, academic and social background. By employing triangulation and providing in-depth descriptions, I hope that readers would have seen what I saw in the Japanese School in the summer of 201x. Nonetheless, my ethnographic lens was colored by my subjectivity as a Japanese language teacher. Parker, Alison, Naiya and Danielle constantly reminded me of that. Implications for Pedagogy

It is the hope of L2 teachers and educators that all L2 learners have successful experiences and outcomes of learning an L2. ‘Success’ is an ambiguous relative term, yet in the context of L2 learning and teaching, it is often and unsurprisingly associated with how well L2 learners become able to communicate using the target language. For example, Lightbown and Spada (2013), in the fourth edition of their title How Languages are Learned – a common textbook used in introductory SLA courses in higher education – refers to ‘success’ as following in relation to individual differences of L2 learners: Both educators and researchers have an interest in understanding how characteristics of individuals are related to their ability to succeed in learning a second language. Many of us believe that individual differences that are inherent in the learner can predict success or failure in language learning. … For

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example, many teachers are convinced that extroverted students who interact without inhibition in the second language and seek opportunities to practice language skills will be the most successful learners. (Lightbown & Spada, 2013: 75)

In this context, ‘success’ refers to the acquisition of higher language skills and L2 learners’ ability to use them in interaction with other people. In this view, language is considered a set of skills, and L2 learning and teaching become the learning/teaching of those skills that are specific to the target language. The learning/teaching of an L2 undoubtedly involves skill-acquiring aspects. Furthermore, people learn an L2 to communicate with people in the target language communities/countries. The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) sets specific guidelines for L2 proficiency (the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines) and provides detailed descriptions of the set of skills that a learner at a particular level of proficiency (e.g. Novice, Intermediate, Advanced or Superior) is capable of doing with the language in a particular mode (e.g. speaking, writing, listening or reading). In other words, the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines provide L2 teachers, educators and learners with specific sets of language skills that L2 learners need to be able to perform in order to attain certain levels of proficiency. The ACTFL regularly organizes workshops to train L2 teachers and educators to become familiar with the guidelines. Although the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines are built upon wellresearched and reliable rating scales for L2 proficiency and are great resources for L2 teachers and educators, when the Guidelines start to be viewed as the goal for L2 learning, learning/teaching the L2 becomes the learning/teaching of skills, and the foreign language program/department becomes a skill-training program to teach its students to be able to perform the specific set of language skills necessary to attain certain levels of proficiency outlined in the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines. Marilynne Robinson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and professor of creative writing at the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, addressed her concerns with the current trends and culture of higher education in the United States at the 2015 Presidential Lecture in the Arts and Humanities at Stanford University. In her lecture, she pointed out that American universities and colleges were shifting their roles and values from educating their students to training them. She emphasized that a vital role of higher education should be educating students to become citizens of a democratic society instead of training them to become successful members of a docile working class. Robinson’s point may not be directly applicable to foreign language education in higher education, yet it is certainly extendable to the practice of L2 teaching at universities and colleges in the United States. As L2 teachers and educators, we stand where two (and more) languages and

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cultures meet. We stand at the forefront of educating students to become members of a global society. As our society becomes increasingly diverse, democracy needs to embrace a more global view. It is indeed our privilege that we are given the opportunity to educate our students by teaching an L2. To celebrate our privilege instead of limiting it within a narrow scope of L2 teaching/learning, we should expand our view of L2 teaching practice and look at it as an opportunity for human growth. The stories of the four learners in my study may well suggest that possibility. Epilogue

This study began with my personal interest and desire to understand L2 learners and their experiences of learning an L2. What I saw in the summer of 201x in the Japanese School was not a miracle. It was the L2 learners’ constant negotiation of meaning in pursuit of their enterprise of learning Japanese. Their efforts, struggles, ambivalent feelings, uncertainty and resistance were all part of their L2 socialization processes. Through their engagement in the community of practice of the Japanese School, they negotiated and renegotiated the meaningfulness of their actions and their sense of self. L2 learning is commingled with the most intimate sense of self and becomes the very force for self-transformation. After I left Middlebury, I had further opportunities to reconnect with my focal students twice. The fi rst time was two years later when I was writing the last chapter of my dissertation. I wanted to know how they had been doing since they left Middlebury and how their experiences of learning Japanese at Middlebury were thriving in their lives (or not). Parker had graduated from his university and was working for one of the large Japanese corporations in Tokyo. Alison had fi nished her doctoral thesis and had become an assistant professor of Japanology. ‘I felt great after Middlebury when I went to Japan. But currently, I don’t speak Japanese, so I cannot tell. Middlebury taught me that I could express myself [in Japanese]’, Alison wrote in response to my question about her Japanese language skills two years after she had studied in the Japanese School. Fair and honest – I recalled my fi rst impression of her. Naiya was living in Tokyo and working as a translator for a company. After she had graduated from her university, she studied Japanese for one more year at the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies in Yokohama. She told me that she was planning to apply to graduate schools in the future. Danielle was still teaching Japanese in the same high school on the East Coast. She was getting her second Master’s degree in teaching a foreign language with a focus on Japanese. She told me that she was working on her thesis about how to incorporate manga into Japanese language teaching. 私の日本語は少し下手になってしまいましたけど、でも、まだ自信はあり ます ‘My Japanese has gotten a little bad/poor, but I still have the confidence’, Danielle said of herself as a Japanese language teacher.

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The second time I tried to reach out to them was three years after we met at Middlebury. This time, I wanted to ask them if they were interested in reading what I had written about them and their experiences of learning Japanese at Middlebury. Naiya was the first person who replied. She wrote,１ページしか読まないつもりでしたが、面白くて、よく書けているので、最後 まで読んでしまいました ‘I intended to read only one page but read it all since it was interesting and well written.’ She also mentioned that she was glad to participate in my study. Danielle was the second person to respond. She apologized for taking so long to reply and for writing her message in English. When I read a sentence after her compliment on my writing, I was moved to tears. She wrote, ‘[After reading the chapter] I must confess that I laughed and then I cried.’ This was the best compliment that I had ever received as a novice ethnographic writer. Danielle had successfully fi nished her Master’s program and teaches Japanese at the same high school. Parker and Alison never replied to my message. I guessed that they were incredibly busy. After three years, they all have moved to the different stages of their lives. What did their experiences of learning Japanese at Middlebury really mean to them? I have no way of knowing, but I hope that Middlebury holds a special place in their hearts as it does in mine.

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Index

Access 7–8, 10, 14, 40–42, 44–45, 63, 95–96, 203 ACTFL proficiency guidelines, the 16, 214 Affordance 4, 45, 174, 208 structures 27, 46, 97–99, 133, 203–204, 206–207, 209–210, 212 Agency 4–6, 9–13, 20, 42, 44–46, 97–99, 131–133, 172–174, 203, 205–209, 212 as socially mediated 5, 97 second language (L2) learner 5–6, 11, 20–21, 43–46, 97, 131, 133, 205, 208, 209, 210, 212 agent 5, 13 14, 19, 43, 46, 73, 206, 208, 211 Ahearn, Laura 6, 43, Akiyama, Yasuko 25, 131 Alison background 16 data collection 17–18 narrative 100–131 Aspiration 45, 96, 133, 175, 204, 208, 210 Asymmetry 24, 34, 37, 42 power asymmetry, see power Atkinson, Dwight 23, 33, 43, 97, 131 Atwater dining hall 49, 66–67, 134, 136 See also Middlebury Axinn Center 48, 52, 63, 68 See also Middlebury

Capital 7–8, 10–11, 19, 34, 37, 42–43, 45, 95–96, 103, 132, 133, 163, 174– 175, 204, 209–210, 212 acquisition of 10, 19, 97 symbolic 7, 96, 174, 204, 209 See also investment Circumstantial learners 209, 212 Clifford, James 14–15 Cohen, Andrew 132 Commitment 9–10, 19, 51–54, 61, 69, 90, 93 Communicative competence 22 Community 5, 8, 10–13, 17, 19–25, 27–30, 32, 34–38, 41, 43–44, 47, 50, 55, 61–65, 95–98, 103, 131, 135, 172, 203–204, 206–212 classroom 25, 31–32, 34, 44 of practice 5, 7, 11–12, 20–21, 27–30, 33–34, 42–43, 44, 46, 50, 55, 62–63, 65, 94–96, 131–132, 172, 174, 203, 210, 212, 215 peripheral 62, 65 target language 5, 7, 42–44, 46, 63, 95–97, 209, 212 imagined 8 Community of Practice (CoP) 27–30, 61–62 mutual engagement 28, 55, 57, 65, 207 joint enterprise 28, 55, 57, 65, 207 shared repertoire 28, 55, 57, 63, 65, 207 See also legitimate peripheral participation Cook, Haruko Minegishi 25–27, 39 Cost-benefit assessment 44–45 See also investment Corrections 59–60, 98, 147–148 Corrective feedback 173 See also integrated form-focused instruction Cultural hegemony 110, 112, 114, 131

Befu, Harumi 112 Benson, Philip 13 Block, David 5 Bourdieu, Pierre 7–8, 163 Bourdieu, Pierre and Passeron, Jean-Claude 7, 95, 209 Brown, Lucien 41–46, 9, 174, 204 Case study 11, 13–14, 65, 96–97, 132, 172, 176, 205 ethnographic 13–15 223

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Dale, Peter 112 Danielle background 16–17 data collection 17–18 narrative 176–202 Darvin, Ron and Norton, Bonny 9 Deci, Edward and Ryan, Richard 210–211 Deters, Ping., Gao, Xuesong., Miller, Elizabeth. and Vitanova, Gergana 5 Dewaele, Jean-Marc 4–5 Dörnyei, Zoltán 4, 210–211 and Ushioda, Emma 4, 210–211 Dr Gueisler 50, 52–54, 166 See also Middlebury Dr Hatasa 54, 57–59, 166 See also Japanese School Driving force 96, 213 for studying/learning Japanese 11, 95–96, 209 for L2 learning/learning an L2 97, 133, 209 Duff, Patricia 6, 10, 15, 20, 22–23, 31, 32, 43–44, 97, 131, 172, 203 and Doherty, Liam 6, 23 See also self-directed socialization and Talmy, Steven 21 DuFon, Margaret 25–26 English as a second language (ESL), 11, 19, 24, 30–32, 34–36, 44, 177, 179 Ellis, Nick and Larsen-Freeman, Diane 211 Ethnographic study 1–3, 13 Ethnographic realities 15 Ethnography of communication 22 Epistemological approach 211 choice 13, 19 ground 14 stance 15 Fader, Ayala 22 Firth, Alan and Wagner, Johannes 5 FOB (fresh off the boat) 32 Friedman, Debra 22 Fuentes, Ronald 34, 43–46, 97, 131, 203 Gaijin ‘foreigners’ 26, 95, 97–98, 173 Gambaru ‘work hard’ 71–72, 80–82, 85–87, 90–93, 95, 193

Gardner, Robert 210–211 and Lambert, Wallace 210–211 Garrett, Paul and Baquedano-López, Patricia 19, 21 Gass, Susan and Mackey, Alison 212 Geertz, Clifford 15 Gender 37, 58, 63, 82, 85 Global marketplace 11, 209–210, 212 Gregersen, Tammy and MacIntyre, Peter 4 Grill, the 51, 135–137, 171 Gumperz, John and Hymes, Dell 22 See also ethnography of communication Harklau, Linda 31–32, 4, 97, 131, 203 He, Agnes 23–24 Hepburn Hall 2, 55, 60, 67, 69, 100–101, 106–108, 118, 135–136, 144, 177–179 See also Japanese School Hymes, Dell 22 See also communicative competence Identity 4, 6–10, 19, 21, 23–24, 26, 30–33, 36, 41–46, 96, 112, 123, 139, 189, 203–204, 208, 210, 212 imagined 8 See also investment Ideologies 22–23, 25–27, 97 See also Nihonjinron ‘theories of the Japanese or ideologies of the Japanese’ Iino, Masakazu 25–26, 95, 97–98, 173 Illegitimate 42–43, 95, 206 See also legitimate Immersion 2, 23, 52, 58 approach 51, 207 classroom 23 environment 12, 52, 58–59, 62, 98, 109, 170 full- 104, 109, 206, 213 program 51, 141, 177, 179, 206, 213 setting 104 Individual differences 4, 11, 148, 210–213 Integrated form-focused instruction 173 Investment 6–11, 19, 44–46, 95–97, 133, 174–175, 204–205, 208–212 See also capital

Index

Japanese School, 2–3, 11–12, 14, 16–17, 19–20, 47, 49–65, 67–69, 72–73, 76, 86, 93–99, 101, 106, 108–112, 114, 116, 120, 131–134, 141–143, 145, 163, 165–166, 169–170, 172–174, 178–181, 185, 187, 189–190, 192–194, 197, 203–204, 206–209, 211, 213, 215 See also Middlebury Joint enterprise 28, 55, 57, 65, 207 See also Community of Practice (CoP) Kanagy, Ruth 23 Kanno, Yasuko and Norton, Bonny 8 Kanno, Yasuko and Harklau, Linda 33, 97, 203 Kawaii ‘amiable’ 26, 98 See also gaijin ‘foreigners’ Keene, Donald 110 Keigo ‘honorific language’ 26, 143–144, 187–189 Kinginger, Celeste 39, 40, 44–46, 96–97 Kramsch, Claire 5, 9–10, 97, 209 Language learning commitment 9 Languaging 72–73 Lantolf, James and Pavlenko, Aneta 5–6, 174 See also significance Lave, Jean and Wenger, Etienne 29 See also legitimate peripheral participation Legitimacy 21, 29, 32–33, 42, 44, 63–64, 96, 131, 203 See also peripherality Legitimate member 10, 43, 63 membership 33, 36, 44, 204 position 30, 95, 203, 206 speaker10, 42, 63 Legitimate peripheral participation 28 29, 33, 35, 61, 207 See also participation Lightbown, Patsy and Spada, Nina 213–214 Lincoln, Yvonna and Guba, Egon 15 See also triangulation Marginal/Marginalized participant 33 position 29–30, 35, 37, 43, 44–45 space 42

225

Mass phenomenon 107–110, 114, Merriam, Sharan 14, 18 Meaningfulness 215 Middlebury 1–3, 12, 14, 16–17, 50–55, 57–59, 61, 66, 68–69, 71, 80–82, 84, 86–88, 90, 92–96, 98–99, 100–102, 104–109, 111–112, 115–116, 120, 122–124, 130–132, 136–142, 144–145, 149–151, 156–159, 163, 168, 170–171, 174, 177–181, 185, 187, 194–196, 201–202, 204, 208, 211, 215–216 College 1–3, 12, 15, 17–19, 45, 47–51, 53–54, 57–58, 63, 65, 67, 69, 78, 104, 135, 166, 209 Language Pledge 18, 49, 51–55, 57–58, 69–70, 80, 98, 104–106, 108, 163, 196, 207 Language Schools 3, 11–12, 17, 19–20, 47, 51–54, 61–63, 65, 98, 100, 124, 207, 212 magic 2, 3 miracle 52–53, 215 Miller, Elizabeth and Zuengler, Jane 31–32, 43, 97, 203 Miller, Roy 26 Misima, Yukio 109–110, 123 Moore, Leslie 22 Morita, Naoko 33, 43–44, 97, 131, 172, 203 Motivation 4, 10, 19, 32, 40, 139, 210–212 Mutual engagement 28, 55, 57, 65, 207 See also Community of Practice (CoP) Narrative inquiry 13, 19 Naiya background 16 data collection 17–18 narrative 134–172 Negotiation 96 of identity 7, 45, 203 of meaning 12, 28, 43, 95, 210, 215 Newcomers 21, 28–30, 32–33, 53, 112 Nihonjinron ‘theories of the Japanese or ideologies of the Japanese’ 26, 112, 114, 131, 173 Noels, Kimberly 210–211 Norton, Bonny 5–11, 19, 35–37, 43–46, 95–97, 131, 133, 174, 203–204, 209–211 Norton Peirce, Bonny 7

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Novice 32, 42, 62, 98 See also newcomers Ochs, Elinor 22, 27 and Schieffelin, Bambi 22 See also speakers of cultures Ohta, Amy 23 Parker background 16 data collection 17–18 narrative 66–94 Participation 12, 19–21, 23, 27–30, 34, 42, 50, 59, 61, 67, 81, 95–96, 111–112, 125, 131–133, 154, 166, 169, 174, 180 full 29, 62, 65, 174 non-29–30, 43–44, 132, 174 See also legitimate peripheral participation Patton, Michael 14–15, 18, 213 Pavlenko, Aneta and Lantolf, James 208 Pavlenko, Aneta and Norton, Bonny 11, 209 Peacock, James 13 Person-in-context 4 Robinson, Marilynne, 214 Polany, Livia 37 Poole, Deborah 23–25 Post-war era 110 Japanese literature 16, 101–102, 109–110, 123 Japanese writer 101 period 109–110 Power 7–10, 148, 163, 165 relations 5, 10, 30, 63, 97, 148, 203, 206, 209, 212 asymmetry 10–11, 19, 203, 212 structure 35, 148 Peripherality 29, 98, 208 and legitimacy 29, 61–62, 65 and marginality 29 See also legitimacy Rakugo ‘traditional Japanese comic storytelling’ 54–55, 72, 111, 179, 192–194 club 72, 180, 192 kai ‘meeting’ 179–180, 192–193

master 193–194 performers 192 Return 7–8, 10, 19, 44–45, 52, 95–96 See also investment Ricento, Thomas 36–37, 97, 203, Rosaldo, Renato 14 Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition, 212 Schieffelin, Bambi 22 and Orchs, Elinor 22 Schmidt, Richard 35, 210 Schumann, John 35 Second language acquisition (SLA) 4, 13, 23, 35, 46, 55, 58–59, 73, 186, 203, 206, 208–213 Second language (L2) learners 3–8, 10–14, 17, 19–21, 23, 25, 27, 30–31, 34–35, 42–4, 62–63, 73, 95–98, 112, 124, 131–133, 172–173, 175, 203, 205–215 Second language (L2) learning 3–8, 10–11, 14, 19, 21, 23, 27, 35, 37, 44, 65, 94, 96–98, 133, 165, 172–174, 203–204, 206 Shared repertoire 28, 55, 57, 63, 65, 207 See also Community of Practice (CoP) Siegal, Meryl 38–39, 43 Significance 6, 174 Social context 10, 19, 27, 35, 45–46, 97, 133, 172, 205–206, 209, 211–212 Socialization 5–6, 11–12, 20, 25, 34, 44, 62, 65, 97, 107, 131–132, 209 dys- 33 first language (L1) 42–43 language 19, 21–23 second language (L2) 5–6, 12, 20–21, 23, 27, 30, 33, 35, 37, 42–46, 62–63, 65, 94, 97, 131–133, 172, 203, 206–207, 212, 215 self-directed 6 Socially situated 3, 5, 14, 27, 211, 208, 209, 210 Spada, Nina and Lightbown, Patsy 173–214 and Tomita, Yoshiko 173 Speakers of cultures 21–22, 51 Stake, Robert 14–15 Story 14, 24, Subjectivity 14, 213 Success 4, 24, 34, 51–52, 54, 132, 213

Index

Swain, Merrill 73 See also languaging Symbolic exchange 96, 133, 204 See also capital Talburt, Susan and Stewart, Melissa 37–38 Talmy, Steven 31 32, 43, 97, 131, 203 Teutsch-Dwyer, Marya 37, 97, 203 Thorn, Steven and Black, Rebecca 5 Trajectory 11–12, 20, 29–30, 42, 44–45, 63, 65, 93, 132, 174 Transformation 38, 45 personal 6, 45, 208, 210 self- 6, 95–96, 98, 204 social 6 See also agency Triangulation 15, 213

227

Ushioda, Emma 4–5 and Dörnyei, Zoltán 211–212 See also person-in-context van Lier, Leo 5 Van Maanen, John 14 Watson-Gegeo, Karen 23 Wenger, Etienne 21, 27–29, 63, 65, 132, 203, 207 See also Community of Practice (CoP) Wendy 51, 57, 108 See also Japanese School Willett, Jerri 30–31, 97 Wolcott, Harry 15 Yoshino, Kosaku 26