Language teacher subjectivities in Japan’s diaspora strategies: Teaching my language as someone’s heritage language
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Kyoko Motobayashi
Abstract
This study demonstrates the ways in which discourses in a state-sponsored volunteer program incited transformations of individual subjectivities, focusing on a group of Japanese language teacher volunteers training in Japan to become teachers of Japanese as a heritage language for the country’s diaspora (Nikkei) population in South America. As teachers of heritage Japanese at Japanese language schools in these Nikkei communities, their work was central to Japan’s diaspora strategies, which reframe the Nikkei population as Japan’s “diplomatic assets” connected to Japan through their Nikkei identity. Focusing on these language teachers as important actors in Japan’s diaspora strategies, this study illustrates how their encounter with the institutional discourses resulted in the transformations of their subjectivities. Such transformations occurred during the volunteer training sessions hosted by Japan’s international cooperation agency to conceptualize their roles as teachers of Japanese as someone’s heritage language. By illustrating the ways in which these volunteer individuals’ transformations fit within state diaspora strategies, this article underscores the role of state actors in the process of subjectification, which has tended to be overlooked in previous studies of governmentality.
Acknowledgement
This paper is based on a doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of Toronto. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Monica Heller, for all her guidance and support throughout the dissertation project. My appreciation also extends to Normand Labrie, Shiho Satsuka, Bonnie McElhinny, Ken Kawashima and Miyako Inoue, for their invaluable comments as committee members or reviewers of the dissertation. I would also like to thank Kati Dlaske, Mireille McLaughlin, Elisabeth Barakos and the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments. This research was made possible in part by the Government of Canada Award and Matsushita International Foundation Research Grant.
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©2016 by De Gruyter Mouton
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- “Languaging the worker: Globalized governmentalities in/of language in peripheral spaces”
- Language policy and governmentality in businesses in Wales: a continuum of empowerment and regulation
- Linguistic minorities and the multilingual turn: constructing language ownership through affect in cultural production
- Shaping subjects of globalisation: at the intersection of voluntourism and the new economy
- Language teacher subjectivities in Japan’s diaspora strategies: Teaching my language as someone’s heritage language
- Discussion: Imagining the languaged worker’s language
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- “Languaging the worker: Globalized governmentalities in/of language in peripheral spaces”
- Language policy and governmentality in businesses in Wales: a continuum of empowerment and regulation
- Linguistic minorities and the multilingual turn: constructing language ownership through affect in cultural production
- Shaping subjects of globalisation: at the intersection of voluntourism and the new economy
- Language teacher subjectivities in Japan’s diaspora strategies: Teaching my language as someone’s heritage language
- Discussion: Imagining the languaged worker’s language
