How Language Attitudes in Japanese Society Effect Parents Responsible for Language Inheritance: Interviews with Japanese mothers in Japanese-English marriages

ニホン　シャカイ　ノ　ゲンゴ　タイド　ガ　ゲンゴ　ケイショウ　ヲ　ニナウ　オヤ　ニ　モタラス　エイキョウ　ニチエイ　コクサイ　ケッコン　カテイ　ノ　ニホンジン　ハハオヤ　ヘノ　インタビュー　ヨリ

トクナガ, アカネ

Tokunaga, Akane

Mother Tongue, Heritage Language, and Bilingual Education Research Association

言語継承

社会の言語態度

母語話者志向

テーマ分析

Research Note

The “language attitudes” of society and individuals toward languages influence new language learning and language loss (Tanaka, 2003). Therefore, we posit that the language attitudes of Japanese society affect the language inheritance of international marriage families living in Japan and examine how the language attitudes of Japanese parents in Japanese-English international marriages affect their children’s language inheritance. Interview conversations with six mothers were analyzed using Thematic Analysis (Boyatzis, 1998), yielding the following categories: “the selection and selection criteria of the children’s elementary schools,”“ concerns about prejudices in Japanese society and countermeasures against them,”“ evaluation of their children’s Japanese and English language abilities and learning environment,” and“ balance between work and parental responsibilities.” The results showed the effects of language attitudes of Japanese society, such as preconceived notions of the language abilities of foreigners in Japan and Japanese people’s orientation toward native speakers in language education, as well as eliciting the complicated feelings of mothers trying to protect their children from the language attitudes of Japanese society.