Date: Tuesday 13 May
Time: 12:50 – 14:20
Venue: H-367 International Christian University, Mitaka City, Osawa, Tokyo
Language: English
All welcome. For more information, contact Kimie Takahashi (tkimie[at]icu.ac.jp)

【特別講義】奈良橋陽子「言語とジェンダー in Films」

映画界で国際的に活躍されている奈良橋陽子さんによる特別講義が国際基督教大学にて開催されます。「言語とジェンダー」をテーマに奈良橋さんの映画業界での経験をお話頂きま す。言語学習、バイリンガリズム、ジェンダー、映画、メディア等に興味がある方、 是非ご参加下さい。

日時：5月13日火曜日
時間：１２：５０－１４：２０
会場：国際基督教大学　東京都三鷹市大沢　H-367
自由参加

４月９日刊行予定『異文化コミュニケーションを問いなおす』イングリッド・ピラー[著]　カバー・帯写真：渡邊リカルド

Since its publication in 2011, Intercultural Communication: A Critical Introduction has been widely adopted as a textbook and it is exciting to see that our work is now more readily accessible to a Japanese audience.

The book is now available for pre-order on the publisher’s website as well as on several major online bookstores including amazon.co.jp and Rakuten.

***************

『異文化コミュニケーションを問いなおす　－　ディスコース分析・社会言語学的視点からの考察』刊行のお知らせ

イングリッド・ピラーのベストセラー「Intercultural Communication: A Critical Introduction」の日本語訳が４月９日に創元社より出版されることとなりました。英語原本は２０１１年の刊行から世界の大学で使用されており、日本語版は初の翻訳本です。

ご予約は創元社ウェブサイトまたはオンラインブックストアーからお申し込み頂けます：アマゾン、楽天ブック。お問い合わせはこちらで承っております。

著者：イングリッド・ピラー：マッコーリ大学言語学部教授（オーストラリア）。ドイツ、スイス、アラブ首長国、アメリカなどの大学で教えるなど、国際的に活躍。異文化コミュニケーション、社会言語学、言語習得学、多言語主義、バイリンガル教育が主な研究テーマ。自ら主宰する研究ウェブサイトLanguage on the Moveにて数々の論文やブログを一般公表している。

翻訳：高橋君江、渡辺幸倫、藤田ラウンド幸世、菅野素子、樋口くみ子、加藤明子、清水友子、田村亮、羽井佐昭彦、柳川浩三（順不同）

内容紹介：著者が長年研究テーマとしてきた「人権」、そして「社会的包摂」を対話の軸とした新しい形の異文化コミュニケーション学。「文化」「言語」「異文化コミュニケーション」といった概念が構築されてきた過程や影響を今までにないクリティカルな視点から考察する。グローバル化が進む中で生きる人々の経験や多国籍企業のビジネス戦略、移民や亡命者の体験など、世界各国から集められた資料を凝縮し、学習用、研究用に最適な好著。

本書を書こうとした動機の一つとして、この分野を現実の生活にある異文化コミュニケーションに対応させ、それを反映するものにしたいという願いがある。現実の異文化コミュニケーションは、経済的・社会的・文化的なグローバリゼーションや、国境を越えた移動や留学体験の中に組み込まれている。　第一章「はじめに」より

Written by Masaaki Sasaki of Sankei Shinbun, the article in question has the catchy title of “「Water」が通じない！？　東京五輪にも教訓 (They don’t understand “Water”!? A lesson for the Tokyo Olympic Games”. It reports on the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games under the slogan of “英語の通じない五輪 (Olympic Games Without English)”. Sasaki points out that due to the Soviet-style education system and to the delay in the internationalisation of Sochi as a whole, locals such as police and taxi drivers speak “only” Russian. The writer subsequently warns that Sochi’s language challenge is a good lesson for the organizers of the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympic Games.

In the article, which has been featured in the special section on the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games on Yahoo Japan (www.sochi.yahoo.co.jp), an Austrian visitor was reportedly appalled at the inability of personnel to speak English at security checkpoints at train stations. A Japanese woman was apparently surprised that a local shop keeper couldn’t even understand “water”. And an American visitor, who is said to have been to 16 Summer and Winter Olympic Games, is quoted as saying “This is the first Olympic Games I visited where we can’t use English”.

Sasaki explains that this is the first time Sochi, a resort area frequented only by Russians, has been visited by a large number of international visitors. A survey conducted by a local agency last year found that 80% of residents didn’t possess basic knowledge of English.

The writer goes on to point out the growing concern among the International Olympic Committee regarding this language issue as the next few Games (2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro, 2018 Winter Games in Korea and 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo) will be held in ‘non-English speaking’ countries. The article ends by suggesting the importance of a technology-based solution for Tokyo, such as smart phone applications allowing communication with foreign visitors.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s English bidding speech in Buenos Aires in September 2013. Credit: Reuters

Indeed, English language proficiency has been central to the discourse of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games from the beginning. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe gained a great deal of public admiration when he gave a speech in English at the bidding meeting in Buenos Aires in September 2013. His “impressive” speech in English, which is considered as one of the key winning factors, is even used as learning material how to give presentations in English.

Having secured the right to host the 2020 Olympic Games, Japanese people from all walks of life have increasingly expressed their concern about Japanese people’s presumed ‘poor’ English. The former Tokyo Governor was so worried that last year he proposed to send 200 Japanese secondary school teachers of English overseas for a three-month training period every year. There is no doubt that English fever will further intensify in the years to come, as was the case for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games (Zhang, 2011).

It is against this context of the taken-for-granted belief that English is neceessary to host successful Olympic Games that many of the comments on the article about the Sochi 2014 Winter Games need to be understood. These comments reveal a wide range of deep-seated disagreement with, if not contempt of and disgust for, the English-centric mindset.

Published on 19 February 2014, the article attracted 1,170 comments on Yahoo Japan site by 25 February. Yahoo Japan allows you to see comments in five different ways; (1) timing of posts (latest to earliest), (2) agreement [no. of thumbs up), (3) disagreement [no. of thumbs down], (4) trending [no. of thumbs up + no. of thumbs down), and (5) sympathized (most to least) [no. of thumbs up minus no. of thumbs down]. I’ll introduce the top five most-agreed comments here.

“The flip side of this is egocentrism among English monolingual speakers”

The most agreed (and simultaneously most disagreed, trending and sympathized) comment of all was made by fre***** (handle name) as follows:

“裏を返せば、英語しか話せない連中の自己中 [The flip side of this is egocentrism among English monolingual speakers; my translation]”

fre*****’s comment has received 10,039 thumbs up and 1,760 thumbs down, attracting a whopping 172 replies. The replies are a site of intense debate, mixed between approval and disapproval.

The other four most-agreed comments are:

Number 2: “こんなのはさ、受け入れる側の国も最低限の英語を学ぶようにするのと同時に、行く人間も現地での挨拶くらい覚えてから行けよ。相互理解とか国際協調とかいうならそれが第一歩。[The issue like this, people in a host country should learn basic English, but at the same time visitors should learn local greetings before they go. That’s the first step towards mutual understanding and international corporation. My translation. 8,717 thumbs up; 454 thumbs down; 15 replies]

Number 3: さすがにWater位は日本人も分かるとは思うけど、案外同様のことが起こるかもね。戦後の日本で簡単な英会話本が結構売れたこともあったし、これからは自発的に簡単な会話が学べ、活用できる環境になれば良いと思う。 [Japanese would at least understand water, but something similar might happen. A lot of English conversation books have been sold after the war, and I hope an environment where we can learn basic conversation proactively and make use of it will be created. My translation. 3,415 thumbs up; 249 thumbs down; 31 replies]

Number 4: 「水」ぐらいは、ロシア語を覚えて行ってもいいんじゃないの？そんな、ソチの地元民からすれば、別に英語を話さなきゃいけない義務なんか無いだろ。[Shouldn’t they have learnt at least “Water” in Russian? It is not a duty of Sochi residents to speak English. My translation. 2,740 thumbs up; 124 thumbs down; 13 replies]

Number 5: 世界中どこでも英語が通じると思ってる方がバカでしょ！[Those who think English is used everywhere in the world are stupid! My translation. 2,865 thumbs up; 273 thumbs down; 24 replies]

Here, I’m not trying to demonstrate whether more or less people endorse or reject English as an Olympic language. Rather, I find an internet site such as Yahoo Japan an intriguing space to learn about wide ranging counter-discourses, including disgust for the hegemony of English as a global language and its resulting English-centric arrogance that often unfolds at international events such as the Olympic Games. These are the comments we have little chance of hearing face-to-face. Four out of the top five comments are critical of the hegemonic discourse of English as an international language and it is criticisms such as these that often remain unexpressed in other media, particularly in a country where English has long been equated to intelligence and hence academic, professional and personal success.

Furthermore, Number 2 and 4 most-agreed comments condemn the imposition on non-English speaking residents of an Olympic host city to accommodate visitors in English; at the same time, they are an expression of a multilingual mindset. Indeed, many other comments outside the top five suggest that the real issue is the fact that complaining visitors didn’t bother to learn basic Russian before they arrived, as in this comment:  “ロシアは英語圏じゃないから、通じないのは当たり前じゃん。逆になんて英語しかしゃべれないやつに合わせなあかんの？他国に行く事前に、相手国の最低限日常用語くらい勉強してから行け！英語イコール国際的じゃねーよ。勘違いすんな！！[Of course they don’t use English because Russia is not an English speaking country. Why do they have to accommodate English monolingual speakers? Learn basic everyday vocabularies of the country before you visit! English doesn’t equal being international. Don’t fool yourself!!]” These pro-multilingual comments constitute a sharp contrast to the discourse of monolingual or English-crazed Japan.

Overall, interactive sites such as these demonstrate that the role of English as a global language may be much more contested than it seems on the basis of mainstream media discourses.

Zhang, J (2011). Language Policy and Planning for the 2008 Beijing Olympics: An Investigation of the Discursive Construction of an Olympic City and a Global Population PhD thesis, Macquarie University, Sydney.

Japan Store near the University of Yangon

“Welcome to the Golden Guest Inn, Ms Takahashi! We’ve been expecting you!” A Chinese-Burmese man warmly welcomed me on my arrival at his family-run inn in Yangon. It’s just a typical welcome greeting, not a big deal, of course, except that he delivered this in his fluent Japanese: “ようこそゴールデンゲストインへ、高橋さん！お待ちしてました！”

My cheerful conversation in Japanese with this smiling inn owner was set against a conversation in English earlier that day: just then, a Western NGO staff had told me that “Burmese are too busy learning English. Not many people are interested in learning Japanese at this stage”.

It was not only the Japanese-speaking inn owner that proves this observation wrong. Let me give you a quick account of what you could expect in Yangon if you know Japanese.

One of the first things that you’ll notice is the hundreds of busses on the roads of Yangon that are imported from Japan. Some busses still carry original logos in Japanese, while some others are covered with local advertisements. Inside, however, most of the busses still have original Japanese signs and notices. Japanese tourists love those signs as a quick google image search of “日本語　バス　ヤンゴン” demonstrates.

Japanese writing left on the window: Forwarded to ミャンマー(Myanmar) from アル アイン (Al Ain, UAE)

Also, expect to see many second hand cars and trucks from Japan running around in town. Many of them carry Japanese writings on the body of the cars or markings on the windscreen. Why would the car owners leave these writings on? It seems that they function as a symbol of authenticity. While products made in China and South Korea are on the increase, Japanese products continue to be seen as ‘high quality’ and thus desirable. No wonder, then, that Daiso is already there, as well as its local equivalent shops who sell “Japanese products”.

You’ll also find many Japanese(-themed) eateries in Yangon, even if the scale and range is still limited in comparison to other major cities in Southeast Asia, which is currently going through a Japanese food craze. Japanese eateries are often more expensive than local ones but many of them are packed with locals and Japanese expats alike. My favorite is Oishii Sushi on Latha Street in downtown Yangon, where the Burmese owner spent 12 years training as a sushi chef at Bikkuri Zushi in Tsuzuki-ku, Yokohama.

Indeed, I met many Japanese-speaking Burmese in Myanmar. Realizing that I’m Japanese, they excitedly told me that they love everything Japanese; that they have Japanese friends who taught them Japanese; and that their family members are studying or working in Japan. Of course, these language proficiencies in Japanese remain invisible to non-Japanese speakers.

What is strikingly visible, however, is the rapidly increasing number of Japanese companies that are opening their businesses in Yangon.

Ads about Japanese Entertainment Festival 2014 with the Genie Family anime characters at Sakura Tower (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Genie_Family)

Enter Sakura Tower. Located across from the Traders Hotel (by Shangri-La) and built by a Japanese company, Sakura Tower hosts many large Japanese corporations and organisations including Honda, Mitsubishi Corporation, ANA, NTT, NHK and JICA. When I had a coffee at Sakura Tower’s Sky Bistro, one third of the customers were Japanese expats having power lunch. I happened to meet a young Japanese man who told me that he decided to open a business in Yangon because he thought Myanmar was “Asia’s last frontier”. During our conversation, a Japanese car pulled up and the driver yelled out, “吉田さん、迎えに来ました！(Mr. Yoshida, I’ve come to pick you up!” Mr. Yoshida turned to me and said, “He is my local business partner. I’m studying Burmese, but it helps a lot that his Japanese is really good.”

Indeed, Japanese-speaking local people are one of the factors that make Myanmar attractive to Japanese businesses. For instance, established in 2008, Myanmar DCR is rapidly expanding its IT business by hiring Japanese-speaking local staff. According to their website, Japanese is their official company language and everything is presumably carried out in Japanese. It is likely that as more Japanese businesses, large or small, are entering the Myanmar market, the demand for Japanese speaking staff will increase further.

Given all these observations above, it is rather surprising that there seems to be little discussion on improving the provision of Japanese language education in Myanmar. It is understandable that improving English language education is a must for Myanmar as it continues to embrace globalization. At the Seminar on Promoting Multilingual Education, which was held in Yangon in early February, English was the only international language (in addition to minority languages and Burmese) that was considered worth discussing. Chinese was mentioned occasionally but only as a remote option. Other languages, including Japanese, did not even rank a mention.

Learning Japanese in Mon State: “I want to study in Japan in the future”

During the seminar, however, I met many local students who expressed their interest in learning Japanese. During lunch time, for example, an English-speaking young man, a member of the Mon ethnic group, showed me his notebook which was full of Japanese writing, saying that he wanted to study in Japan in the future. A teacher told me that her 23-year-old son, who is currently studying Japanese in Japan self-funded, is seeking a scholarship to continue his studies in Tokyo. They both said that Japanese proficiency and familiarity with Japanese culture would be a great advantage given that more Japanese businesses are entering Myanmar and that English proficiency alone would no longer suffice to secure attractive employment. Although they are not trained language education experts, these participants, who never spoke up during the official parts of the workshop, can clearly see that a single-minded focus on English is short-sighted.

In fact, a language policy without a material basis might leave many multilingual youths disillusioned. Towards the end of the last day at the seminar, a male high school student stood up and commented: “All these discussions are very useful. But we want to be kept informed, too, like what we are learning all these languages for or what we can do with these language skills in the future.” Also, some of other young Burmese I met during my visits are already multilingual, and yet they are uncertain about finding meaningful work or securing scholarships in the future.

To build a socially-inclusive language policy in Myanmar necessarily requires research on the intersection between multilingual proficiency and employment and education. It will be crucial to have a systematic understanding of current and emerging employment (for instance, foreign companies and organisations in local areas) and further educational opportunities locally and internationally, and to base language policy on language requirements to secure these.

English textbook used at the non-Government school

“I take a bilingual approach, so you might not understand some parts of my class. But I hope you’ll enjoy it.” Dressed in a blue traditional dress, a tall middle-aged Burmese teacher explained her teaching approach to me in the beginning of her class on English at a non-government tertiary school.

The school is located some 40 minute taxi ride away from downtown Yangon, the former capital city of Myanmar. Facing the class of some 50 students from various ethnic backgrounds, she began her class by taking attendance, and then started instructing her students to work on the section on Iceland as a tourist destination in their textbook Travelling.

I have never been to Iceland, and I’m not sure how many of these students are ever going to visit the Nordic country, but looking around the class, I saw all students glued to their textbook. Seeing the recent developments in the country, teaching English for tourism is important indeed.

As Myanmar moves towards further democratization, the country is rapidly emerging as an attractive travel destination. Compared to my first visit to Myanmar two years ago, I saw more Western tourists out and about in the city with a local tour-guide this time. In addition, touted as the ‘last frontier in ASEAN’ by international investors, Myanmar has also seen a rapid increase in the number of business travellers from all over the world. At the same time, the country is taking many measures to encourage tourism. These include visas on arrival and the presence of stylish brand new Toyota Tourist Police cars. In contrast to the much older-looking ‘normal’ police cars these seem to create some sense of safety for tourists. Apart from me, there were several European tourists taking photos of the Tourist Police cars.

Tourist Police cars in Yangon

English proficiency is crucial for the young generation to gain employment in the emerging tourist market. Apart from careers in tourism, English is also seen as an important educational qualification. As Dr. Thein Lwin (2011, p. 12) explains, recent years have seen an unprecedented popularity of English in this former British colony where English proficiencies “lead to economic advantages, help in dealing with the outside world, and improve prospects of study abroad and employment.”

Indeed, many students I met at the school mentioned above said that they are planning to apply for a scholarship to study abroad. Many scholarship programs are available but all require high English proficiency. One student, from Shan State, has set his heart on studying in neighbouring Thailand, and if he succeeds, he’d be the first person from his village to study for a master’s degree abroad. At this stage, for him and his aspiring classmates, their future success depends largely on English.

Many local teachers teach English bilingually, as the teacher I mentioned in the introduction, and the focus is on practical English, English for tourism, for instance. It is obvious that learning English is serious business in Yangon. However, not all teachers seem to realize that.

For instance, one student, Elizabeth (pseudonym), told me about a visiting professor from the US. Assuming that volunteer teachers are welcome in a country where English language education is being taken so seriously, I said “Oh that’s great!” I also knew that Elizabeth was an admirer of the US – she had studied in the US for one year on a scholarship in 2013, and she said she was aspiring to go back there to pursue a master’s degree in business.

She hesitantly replied, however, “Well… actually no so great”. The reason – the US professor’s teaching approach didn’t match their sense of identity as adult learners of English:

We didn’t like her class because … she treated us like children. She gave us children’s books to read, and like, we are adults, but she asked us to sing songs, and we were like, what the he-!?

Elizabeth continued to explain how the professor asked them to sing Christmas songs, which they didn’t want to, but “we didn’t want to be impolite, so we sang along those stupid songs and did everything she asked us to do” she said, half-smiling and half making a face.

Elizabeth’s story reminded me of a similar experience I had when I was studying at a two-year college of English in Tokyo back in the 1990s.

In our second year, we had a new teacher from the US, a fresh university graduate, to teach literature. The textbook she chose for us was Mother Goose. While some of my classmates found it useful to learn “American culture”, the majority erupted in anger. In the second week, we told her at the beginning of class that we were offended by her choice of Mother Goose. I remember one frustrated classmate telling her off, “You think we are children?!” What she didn’t know was the fact that many of my classmates could have easily gone to a four-year university but chose this immersion school to master English for the purpose of career development and further education. Just like the students I met in Yangon, English was not some kind of fun hobby but serious business for us.

Our American teacher was lucky. She learned, even if the hard way, that selecting learning materials requires knowing her students’ sense of identity and their aspirations. By contrast, the professor teaching at Elizabeth’s school seems to have gone home without realising how her teaching materials may have been offensive to some of her students. Whether they become tour guides or office workers or English teachers or continue to study overseas, reading American children’s books and learning how to sing Christmas songs may have some use but it also runs the risk of hurting adult students’ dignity.

Of course, whether more practical textbooks like Travelling are preferable to children’s books depends on the context in which learning takes place. Children’s books or songs can be very useful for adults learning a new language but learning materials need to match the students’ aspirations, and their purpose needs to be clearly explained to them.

This is all language teaching 101, and the current English language teaching boom in Myanmar shows that there are many opportunities to put high-quality English language teaching it into practice.

These are the kinds of comments I have been hearing ever since the Guardian published an article last month on sexless young Japanese as the reason behind the nation’s low birth rate. As these reports went viral on social media, several people asked me for my thoughts on sexless Japan.

The gist of the currently trending discourse is this: The world’s third biggest economy’s population is shrinking and aging rapidly. By 2060, Japan’s current population of 126 million is predicted to drop by one-third because fewer and fewer babies are being born each year. These articles claim that the reason behind Japan’s declining birth rate is that many young Japanese are not having sex while others are in paid-for relationships with virtual anime girlfriends.

In her Guardian article, Abigail Haworth begins with an interview with sex and relationship therapist Ai Aoyama, aka Queen Love, who is photographed in her red kinky outfit, standing next to a middle-aged male client cuddling a small dog. Queen Love is quoted as saying “Both men and women say to me they don’t see the point of love. They don’t believe it can lead anywhere… Relationships have become too hard.”

Citing recent official statistics on young people preferring to stay single and losing interest in sex, Haworth goes on to report on the views of career-oriented women who claim that a marriage would only jeopardize their professional and private lives, as well as those of so-called soshoku danshi (“grass-eating men”) who have little sexual appetite and regard relationships as ‘troublesome’. Both groups are presented as having little to no interest in sex and, consequently, their generation is single-handedly leading their nation to the brink of extinction.

Anita Rani, the presenter of the BBC documentary series “No Sex Please, We’re Japanese” has a different group in the same generation of young adult Japanese to blame, namely Japan’s ultra geeks, known as otaku. In her article Japanese men who prefer virtual girlfriends to sex, Rani explains that otaku find real relationships troublesome and are instead enjoying virtual relationships with Nintendo-computer game characters. The reporter also cites ‘several surveys’ that show that even when men and women are in relationships, they barely have sex, and only 27% claim to have sex every week.

Then Rani claims that Japan’s shrinking birth-rate is a time-bomb and the country’s reluctance to accept migrants is another serious, contributing factor. This leads Rani to ponder: “Japan has managed to preserve its unique culture in an increasingly globalised world but could that very sense of identity stand in the way of solving its population problems?”

So, what do I make of all this?

Orientalist discourses of exotic Japan and its weird inhabitants are centuries- old. Unfortunately, they continue to be disguised as scientific facts and are increasingly commodified for media outlets’ profits in today’s digital age. In the global media, sex sells, weird Japan sells, and combining these two discourses sells big time. Journalists such as Haworth and Rani may well have been physically in Japan, but their analysis was obviously done through a stereotypical way of seeing and with the stereotypes of their Western audiences – and the dollar sign – in mind.

Have sex or not have sex, Japanese are never normal from the perspective of ill-informed journalists and researchers. Their sex life has become a commodified concern, and this ‘concern’ is deeply patronizing and racist as Beckie Smith argues in her recent article in The Independent:

We have a kind of voyeuristic fascination with Japan’s strangeness, spurred on by irresponsible journalism and sensationalised headlines. These stories gain traction because they support a simplistic view of East Asia which is at best patronising and at worst overtly racist. Lazy journalism supports these prejudices; every poorly written puff piece and ill-researched documentary serves, as one viewer charmingly put it, as “confirmation of Japanese weirdness”.

But if it is not heartless, materialist Japanese women, grass-eating Japanese men without any sex drive and creepy otaku that are behind the nation’s falling birth rate, what is? Well, Japan has slipped to 105^th place among 136 countries in the gender equality list; 25% of pregnant women have experience in being harassed in their workplace; 22,000 children are on waiting lists for day-care centres; and all five awardees of the Order of Culture and all 15 Persons of Cultural Merit selected by the Japanese government this year are male. Unfortunately, for women having children is largely incompatible with holding a job and the stay-at-home mum is an increasingly unattractive and economically unfeasible option.

A series of ethnographic research conducted by Ingrid Piller and myself with single Japanese women of this generation fleshes out this perspective further.

The women we interviewed in Australia mentioned sexism and gender inequality in the workplace as the main reasons why they had left Japan in the first place. Although all of them were seeking love and romance, most of our participants continue to remain unmarried and childless. This has nothing to do with the fact that they are all hard-nosed career women – they are not – and everything to do with the fact that ‘flexible’ mobile jobs such as those in the hospitality industry are incompatible with raising a family.

For instance, the bilingual Japanese flight attendants in their 20s and 30s we spoke to for research that has just been published in Language, migration and social Inequalities: A Critical Sociolinguistic Perspective on Institutions and Work (Duchêne, Moyer and Roberts, 2013) had limited opportunities to pursue romantic goals due to their irregular shift work and frequent absence from their social networks. Their long-term goal was to marry, have children and quit their job. However, as their jobs did not enable them to save and the job was incompatible with that goal, the only scenario that made this a likely outcome was to find a bread-winner husband and revert to traditional gender roles.

In a neoliberal employment regime – of which low-cost airlines provide a prototypical example – there is less and less opportunity and time to enjoy intimacy, to care for children and to nurture family relationships. The women we spoke to were under continuous pressure to compete and to be ever more productive. They were well aware that their jobs were perpetually on the line in Japan’s ageist, sexist and cut-throat job market where the tradition of life-long employment has long gone.

Young adult Japanese women may have sex but they don’t want to procreate. Does that make them so different from their globally mobile but economically insecure peers in other countries? I don’t think so. It is not only this generation of Japanese that is opting out of starting families; the same is true internationally: Generation On-the-Move is trapped in perpetual insecurity and competition (aka ‘flexibility’), and the stability necessary to raise a family becomes increasingly difficult to achieve.

In addition to gender inequality and socio-economic insecurity, there is another way of looking at the issue of the shrinking Japanese population. Put in the bigger picture, a smaller population is more sustainable on a planet with limited resources. Ultimately, a sustainable approach needs to undergird the engagement with the root cause of perpetual gender inequality; it also needs to involve rethinking the issue of the shrinking national population itself in light of the world’s overpopulation and the promotion of multicultural Japan.

Piller, I., & Takahashi, K. (2006). A Passion for English: Desire and the Language Market. In A. Pavlenko (Ed.), Bilingual Minds: Emotional Experience, Expression and Representation (pp. 59-83). Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.

Piller, I., & Takahashi, K. (2010). At the intersection of gender, language and transnationalism. In N. Coupland (Ed.), The Handbook of Language and Globalization (pp. 540-554): Blackwell.

Piller, I., & Takahashi, K. (2012). Japanese on the Move: Life Stories of Transmigration. Retrieved from http://languageonthemove.com/japanese-on-the-move

Piller, I., & Takahashi, K. (2013). Language work aboard the low-cost airline. In A. Duchêne, M. Moyer & C. Robers (Eds.), Language, Migration and Social (In)equality. A Critical Sociolinguistic Perspective on Institutions and Work. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Takahashi, K. (2012). Multilingualism and Gender. In M. Martin-Jones, A. Blackledge & A. Creese (Eds.), Handbook of Multilingualism (pp. 419 – 435). London: Routledge.

Takahashi, K. (2013). Language Learning, Gender and Desire: Japanese Women on the Move. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Burmese newspaper in a Bangkok restaurant

They say, ‘Aaaah, Pamma (Thai word for ‘Burmese’)…. You don’t look Myanmar!’ Obviously, they think all Burmese are poor migrants. I stopped telling them I’m from Burma. They react nicely if I say I’m from Singapore.

Thiri’s experience is part of the narrative of the intensifying internationalisation of higher education in Thailand. Since the 1990s, Thailand has been driven to internationalise its higher education as part of its economic expansion effort in order to generate income (Lavankura, 2013). As a result, the number of international programs offered by Thai universities steadily increased from 14 programs in 1984, to 520 in 2003, and to 981 in 2010.

English as the medium of instruction is the key characteristic of these international programs (see Piller and Cho, 2013). Pad Lavankura (2013, p. 670) from Ramkhamhaeng University explains that “the extra demand for international programs is based on a growing need for graduates competent in the English language, in addition to being competent in their own discipline”. Similar to other Southeast and East Asian countries, Thailand enthusiastically embraces the discourse of English as capital to elevate its standing in the global economic and academic system. Against the background of Thailand’s poor record in English language proficiency (ranked 53 out of 54 countries; English First, 2012), and in thrall to the glamorous global status of the language, English MoI international programs have become an attractive option among middle- and upper-class Thais desiring to improve their social status and access to better employment.

While the majority of students enrolled in the international programs are Thai nationals, the number of international students has seen a steady increase. Lavankura (2013, p. 666) observes that ‘the ambition to “catch up with the West” continues, but the idea has been expanded to include other geographical parts of the world, especially the ASEAN countries”. According to the Office of the Higher Education Commission (2013), the total of international students enrolled in higher education in 2010-2011 was 20,309, and the highest number of international students came from China (8,444), followed by Myanmar (1,481), Laos (1, 344) and Vietnam (1,290).

Foreign Students in Thai Higher Education Institutions 2011

Indeed, many of my students are international students, mainly from other parts of Asia such as China, Myanmar, South Korea and Taiwan. Many of them opted out of going to an expensive English-speaking country and chose Thailand instead as a study overseas destination for affordable tuition fees, geographical proximity to their home country, friendliness of Thai people and wonderful local food.

Two students in my course told me eagerly that they have much more opportunity to use English here than they had in their home countries of China and South Korea. As a result, their confidence in their English has increased since they arrived in Bangkok. Few of them have learnt much Thai, but that has not caused much discomfort or inconvenience, and in fact, they say they are often admired by local Thais for their fluency in English, and their national identity as Chinese and South Korean has a strong currency in Thailand.

This positive reception by locals and their instant admiration for English-speaking Asians is rare in the narratives of the Burmese international students I’ve met to date. In fact, the opposite is true as demonstrated by Thiri’s experience. Another story comes from Tom, a young Burmese MBA student. Tom and his Thai-speaking Burmese friend were shopping in a watch shop one day. Tom asked several questions in English to a smiling Thai shopkeeper, who eventually asked him where he was from:

I said I was from Myanmar, and he said ‘Oh… Pamma…’ and quickly turned to other shopkeepers and start talking amongst themselves. My friend can understand Thai and said, ‘they are saying you won’t be buying anything because you are poor. They are surprised that a man from a poor country can speak English.’ I was so sad.

It is not only the public space where the stigmatisation of Burma impacts their everyday lives as international students. Speaking to several Burmese students enrolled in international programs at universities across Bangkok, I have learned that they have experiences of being excluded from classroom activities, of being called names, and of being ridiculed for their perceived naivety and accent in English on campus. As a result, there is a tendency to study and socialise among themselves. This obviously reduces access to interactional opportunities in English as a lingua franca, and they are well aware that such socialisation is counterproductive. Commonly, however, many of them have been able to form close friendship with their fellow international students, who share their goals of gaining more proficiency in English and more international experience.

‘With the introduction of the “Global 30” Project, the best universities in Japan are now offering degree programs in English’

My observations in this post are based on anecdotes that I have been collecting informally since I arrived in Thailand in 2011. The problem I see is that their complex experience of study overseas in English as a lingua franca in a (so-called) non-English speaking Asian country remains largely invisible in the fields of Applied Linguistics, Intercultural Communication and related areas, as the research focus to date has been concentrated on fee-paying Asian students studying in English-speaking Western countries.

As demonstrated by Ingrid Piller and Jinhyun Cho (2013) in the case of internationalisation of higher education in South Korea, and as further exemplified by Japan’s ambition to internationalise its higher education and by Thailand’s declaration of their plan to become a regional education hub, universities in Asia are en route to attracting Asian international students to their English MoI international programs.

The commodification of internationalisation of higher education within English-crazy Asia is a relatively new ball game in the name of globalisation. How do we make sense of this and its impact? One possible way is to start documenting challenges and issues faced by this emerging student population, like those experienced by the Burmese students discussed in this post. Such research efforts must look closely into the historical tensions among nations and ethnic groups and their impact on everyday negotiations of identity, access to interactional opportunities and a sense of belonging on and off campus.

Piller, I. & J. Cho (2013). Neoliberalism as language policy. Language in Society , 42 (1), 23-44 DOI: 10.1017/S0047404512000887

Lavankura, P. (2013). Internationalizing Higher Education in Thailand: Government and University Responses. Journal of Studies in International Education, 17 (5), 663-676 DOI: 10.1177/1028315313478193

ライター:高橋君江(Kimie Takahashi) | 翻訳: 貝和慧美 (Emi Kaiwa)

バンコクの憂鬱

「タイ人から出身地を聞かれた時は、『フィリピン、それかシンガポールから来ました。』って答えるようにしてるんです。そうすると、嫌な顔されないですみますから！」最近出会った経営学を学ぶ若いミャンマー人女子留学生が、バンコクでの暮らしぶりを教えてくれた。タイ語があまり話せないティリさん（本掲載内、登場人物は全て匿名）は、バンコクでの生活は英語でこなしている。アジア人なのに流暢な英語を話すという事に驚かれ、売店のタイ人に出身地がどこなのか聞かれる事が多いという。「どこから来たの？」という質問には慣れたが、その答えに対してのタイ人の反応は未だに悩みの種だ。

「『あぁ、パーマ（タイ語でミャンマー人の意）．．．、ミャンマー人みたいに見えないね！』って言われるんです。明らかに、タイ人は、すべてのミャンマー人が貧しい移民民族だと考えているんです。だから、もうミャンマー出身だって言わないんです。シンガポールから来たと言うと、優しくしてもらえますから。」

ティリさんの経験の背景には、タイ王国（以下、タイ）で過熱する高等教育の国際化への取り組みがある。1990年代以降、タイは、収入を増やす為の景気拡大の一環として高等教育国際化を推進してきた（Lavankura, 2013）。その結果、タイの大学におけるインターナショナルプログラムは増加し、1984年には14だったプログラム数が、2003年に520へ、そして2010年には981にも上った。

これらのインターナショナルプログラムの重要な特徴は指導言語が英語であることだ。（Piller and Cho, 2013参照）。ラムカムヘン大学のパッド・ラバンクラ（Lavankura, 2013、p.670）は、「大学の卒業生に専門分野における能力だけでなく、高い英語力が求められている現状が、インターナショナルプログラムへの需要増加の根底にある。」と述べている。他のアジア諸国と同様に、タイは経済と学問をグローバルレベルに高めていくための資本として英語を取り入れている。英語能力が低いとされているタイ人（54か国中53位；English First, 2012）にとって、グローバルステイタスである英語が出来る事への憧れは強まる一方だ。よって、英語で学べるインターナショナルプログラムは、高い社会的地位やより良い仕事に就きたいと考えている中流、上流階級のタイ人の間で魅力的な選択肢として注目を集め始めている。

タイ王国の高等教育機関で学ぶ留学生2013年盤

インターナショナルプログラムに入学している生徒の大多数がタイ人である一方、留学生の数も増え続けている。ラムカムヘン大学のパッド・ラバンクラ (2013, p. 666) は、「『西洋に追いつけ』という強い風潮はこれからも続くが、この考え方は、他の地域、特にASEAN諸国へと拡大している」との見解を示している。高等教育事務局（2013）によると、2010年～2011年の間にタイの大学へ入学した留学生数の合計は20,309名で、留学者数の多い国は順に、中国（8,444名）、ミャンマー（1,481名）、ラオス（1,344名）、ベトナム（1,290名）となっている。

確かに、私の学生の多くは留学生で、主に中国、ミャンマー、韓国、そして台湾などの他のアジア地域から来ている。彼らの多くは、費用のかさむ英語圏の国には行かずに、学費を賄う事ができ、地理的にも母国と近く、友好的な国民性があり、且つ食事のおいしいタイを留学先として選ぶ。

私の授業を受けている中国人と韓国人の生徒は、タイにいる方が母国にいた時よりも英語に触れる機会がとても多いと言う。その結果、バンコクに着て以降、彼らの英語力に対する自信は高まっている。タイ語ができなくとも生活に不便を感じる事は少なく、実際には、英語を話す方がタイ人に賞賛されるという。そして、彼らの国籍はタイで強い価値をもつ中国と韓国だ。

このようにタイ人から好意的に歓迎されたり、英語を話すアジア人として瞬時に賞賛されることは、私が今まで出会ったミャンマー人留学生の体験の中ではほぼ皆無である。ティリさんの体験のように、逆のケースの方が多いのだ。ミャンマー人の若いＭＢＡ学生のトムさんがいい例である。ある日、トムさんとタイ語が話せるミャンマー人の友人で時計店で買い物をしていた時の出来事だった。トムさんは、タイ語があまり話せないので、英語でタイ人店員に質問していたところ、「どこから来たのですか？」と尋ねられた。

「ミャンマーから来たと答えました。そしたら店員が、『あ、パーマ』と言うと、すぐに他の店員の方を向き、自分たちだけで話し始めました。僕の友人はタイ語がわかるので、通訳してくれたのですが、『彼らは、君がミャンマー出身で貧しいから、何も買うはずがない、と言っている。貧しい国出身なのに君が英語を話せる事に驚いているよ。』と。とても悲しい想いをしました。」

ミャンマー人留学生として生活する上での問題は、公共の場所だけに限らない。バンコクにある数々の大学のインターナショナルプログラムに入学したミャンマー人留学生達と話す中で、キャンパス内でも、クラスの諸活動から仲間はずれにされたり、嫌な名前で呼ばれたり、ナイーブさや英語のアクセントなどを馬鹿にされるなどの経験があるという事がわかった。その為、ミャンマー人学生は固まって行動する傾向にある。その結果、インターナショナルプログラムで学ぶ学生間の共通語である英語を使う機会が減る事になってしまい、彼ら自身、この様なミャンマー人同士だけのコミュニティー形成は逆効果である事に気づいている。ただその一方で、他国からの留学生と友人関係を築いているミャンマー人学生も多く、英語力を高めたり、より国際的な経験を得ていることも事実だ。

グローバル30プロジェクトの始動に伴い、今、日本の一流大学が英語での学位取得プログラムを開始している。

この記事で述べた私の見解は、2011年の来タイ以降、非公式に収集してきた逸話に基づいている。課題と思われるのは、応用言語学や異文化コミュニケーションなどの分野では、研究対象が西洋の英語圏におけるアジア人自費留学生に集中しており、（俗にいう）アジアにおける非英語圏に留学して英語を共通語として学んでいる学生たちの複雑な経験があまり研究されていないことである。

アジアの大学は今、英語インターナショナルプログラムによるアジア人留学生獲得に本腰を入れつつある。イングリッド・ピラー及びジンヒュン・チョウ (2013)が検証した韓国における高等教育の国際化、日本の高等教育国際化への取り組み、さらにアジアの地域教育のハブ国を目指すタイの計画がその良い例である。

英語崇拝のアジア、この地域における高等教育の商品化は、グローバリゼーションという名の下に始まったばかりだ。今後、アジアにおける高等教育の国際化・商品化とその影響をどのように理解していけばよいのだろうか？一つの方法は、上述したミャンマー人学生の話のような、留学生が直面している問題等を調査していく事である。その様な研究は、国家間・民族間の歴史的な問題とそれらが学生たちの日常生活において、どのようにアイデンティティーの形成、人との係わり合いの機会、キャンパス内外での帰属意識に影響を与えているかなどに注目する必要があるだろう。

Piller, I. & J. Cho (2013). Neoliberalism as language policy. Language in Society , 42 (1), 23-44.
Lavankura, P. (2013). Internationalizing Higher Education in Thailand: Government and University Responses. Journal of Studies in International Education, 17 (5), 663-676.

Mariko Watanabe and Ingrid Piller celebrate their reunion at Yaccomaricard in Chit Lom

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In early July, YM Fashion’s CEO Mariko Watanabe flew in from Tokyo to Bangkok. She was scheduled to meet Ingrid Piller, who, on the way back from the Middle East to Australia, also just arrived in Bangkok to deliver a plenary speech at the H.I.S. Research and Industry Forum on Linguistic Diversity and Tourism in Amazing Thailand at Assumption University.

Mariko and Ingrid first met in Tokyo back in 2010 when YM Fashion Co., Ltd. became an official supporter of Language on the Move. Collaboration between the fashion industry and academics is unique, originating from the company’s increasing interest in the role of language and communication in their global business operation.

The day after the Forum, the CEO and the sociolinguist celebrated the success of the event in Chit Lom, one of Bangkok’s most fashionable neighbourhoods. Their conversation soon turned to YM Fashion’s first overseas venture in Thailand, which began some 26 years ago and was a trail-blazing endeavour in Japanese-Thai joint ventures.

In 2012, Thailand overtook the US for the first time and ranked second, after China, as the most desired destination for international joint ventures by Japanese companies (Japan External Trade Organization, 2013). At the time of Mariko’s first visit in the 1980s, however, the situation was quite different and only a handful of large-sized Japanese companies had manufacturing operations in Thailand. Mariko says “Bangkok back then was a small touristy city without much of its skyscrapers, glamorous shopping centers and the Skytrains. During the rainy season, it once took us three days by taxi to get to the airport.”

Japanese Business on the Move

The survey points at an assumption that has long been present in the minds of the Japanese – to succeed overseas you need English. In the context of global business, the Japanese language is often considered as useless because, in the mentality of many Japanese companies, it is assumed to be only spoken by the Japanese in Japan. The trajectory of Mariko’s company in Thailand, however, is a story that not only challenges this myth but also highlights the importance of setting aside pre-conceptions about linguistic deficits and of embracing cultural and linguistic diversity.

Yaccomaricard in Chit Lom

Mariko established YM Fashion in Tokyo in 1979 with her husband Isamu Watanabe and their long-time friend Yasuko Hayata. Ten years later, YM Fashion International Thailand was set up in 1990 with a young Thai partner. At the time of the launch of their business in Bangkok, none of the founders or their staff spoke English or Thai on a functional level. How did a Japanese medium-sized fashion retail company manage to find a local contact, secure a partnership, hire and train employees, and grow to operate a 7,000sqm factory with 400 employees and 10 retail shops in central Bangkok today? Mariko explains that the opportunity to expand YM Fashion and develop its trademark brand Yaccomaricard in Thailand originally came through an informal international network of hippies in the late 1980s. And their story in Thailand is a story of languages on the move, beginning with a business proposal from unlikely collaborators.

Hippie Connections

Back in the 1980s in Tokyo, two German internationalists, Guy and Helga Pachet, were producing European-style baby clothes at home. After a long trip around the world in the 60s and the 70s, the couple had settled in Tokyo where their first baby was born. As their home-made European children’s clothes gained popularity in their local area, they wanted to commercialise their production. They turned to their friend Mariko to explore collaborative business opportunities.

Mariko initially turned down their proposal. Communication was a problem. Guy spoke German, French and English but had very little Japanese at the time. Mariko and her staff couldn’t speak English, let alone German or French.

Mariko: “I didn’t think it would be possible to work together if they couldn’t speak Japanese. I asked him to learn Japanese first. I promised that, in the meantime, we would try to learn English. But he learned Japanese better and faster than I ever learned English [laughs].”

As Guy quickly taught himself Japanese, the couple and YM Fashion began collaborating, and soon their new brand, Annya and Besna, became a hit among fashion-conscious mothers in the upmarket town of Denenchofu, Tokyo. As sales increased, the need to secure a production site devoted to Annya and Besna emerged. The couple decided to turn to their old hippie connections in Bangkok, Thailand.

Passion for Success

From left: Mariko Watanabe, Helga and Guy Pachet, and Punsuri Revirava in Yawara, Bangkok, 1989

In 1989, the Pachets and Mariko flew to Bangkok to meet Punsuri Revirava, whom they knew from their travels during their hippie years. The three parties, the Pachets, YM Fashion and Punsuri, co-founded a company, Clair Moda. Punsuri, who is Chinese-Thai, provided a manufacturing site within her family-owned shop house and initially secured six seamstresses for the production. Mariko was responsible for teaching the six young Thai women how to sew and produce clothes that would satisfy the desires and tastes of highly discerning Japanese consumers. She recalls that in terms of language, training the Thai workers was not a problem.

Mariko: “I couldn’t speak Thai, and these girls are from rural areas in Thailand, so they could speak neither English nor Japanese. Basically I taught these girls everything by using Japanese and through body language. These women still work for us today, and 26 years on at our factory, they have become leaders and teach apprentices how to sew using Japanese technical terms.”

A year later, YM Fashion bought out Clair Moda in order to set up YM Fashion International Thailand. That was also when they invited a young Thai woman, Ichaya Khamala, to come on board as co-owner and CEO. Under Thai business law, a foreign company must have a Thai partner who maintains a significant share in the company. While majoring in Business Studies with a minor in Japanese at Thammasat University, Ichaya had worked as a part-time interpreter for Mariko in the previous year. 22-year-old Ichaya had limited work experience and no experience whatsoever in running a company. Mariko recalls that it was unheard of for a Japanese company to partner with a fresh university graduate, and a woman to boot. However, she had no hesitation:

Mariko: “What she had instead of experience was language proficiencies in Thai, Japanese and English and a passion for business success in her country on the verge of an economic boom. She had so much passion and desire to learn and grow with us.”

As their collaboration began, Mariko taught Ichaya everything she knew about production and business management, and for all these years, Japanese has remained the language of their transnational partnership. From the beginning, Mariko not only instructed Ichaya how to do business, but also helped her improve her spoken and written Japanese.

At the same time, all the YM Fashion employees who have been transferred from Japan to Thailand to oversee the production are required to undertake a three-month intensive course in Thai immediately upon their arrival. As Mariko explains: “How can Japanese managers win the heart of their Thai workers if they can’t speak Thai?”

Global Expansion and Family

The day before the Forum: Sei and Mariko Watanabe select outfits for Ingrid’s keynote speech at Yaccomaricard in Chit Lom

On her trip to Bangkok this time, Mariko was accompanied by her daughter, Sei Watanabe. Together with her younger brother Kari, Sei established YM Fashion UK in 1997 and managed the operation until her return to Japan in 2012. The siblings will take over YM Fashion in Japan in the near future as Mariko and Isamu ready themselves for retirement. As the mother of a young girl herself, Ingrid asked Mariko how she had managed to raise her children while building a successful fashion company and expanding overseas.

Mariko explained that she always took her children along on her business trips, letting them directly experience culture and language of other countries so that they would develop a deep appreciation for diversity. It was also important for Mariko and Isamu to raise their children multilingually:

Mariko: “After the war, we wanted to study English, but English education in Japan was really inadequate at that time. Early on in our overseas ventures, we did everything we could to succeed without English, but we always thought that our children must learn English AND other important languages to thrive even more in the 21^st century.”

Starting with English as a second language, their children went on to also learn French and Thai. While making sure their children learnt English is unsurprising, the insistence on French and Thai, too, is unusual. Mariko argues that French is the language of global fashion and continues to be important in international business negotiations and Thai is the language of their close partner and first overseas expansion.

Not only did Mariko work to instil an appreciation of cultural and linguistic diversity in her own children but she’s also committed to ensure that the children of production workers have similar opportunities. The nursery school that is located within the Thai production site, was established to cater for the young children of workers. The nursery teaches not only Thai but also English and the library provides children’s books in different languages.

Over her long career Mariko has remained a passionate internationalist: “We live in Japan, we live in Asia and we live in the world. Our perspective is global.” She never let herself be held back by the limited opportunities available to women of her generation: where she lacked language resources, she responded with flexibility by drawing on Japanese, her passion for fashion, her commitment to capacity building in Thailand and the common humanity that binds us all.

Carrying on the legacy of the pioneering founders, the next generation of YM Fashion – Sei, Kari and Ichaya – are equipped not only with many more language resources, but also an appreciation of linguistic and cultural diversity characteristic of the 21^st century business world in which they operate.

____

MARIKO WATANABE | Founder and CEO of YM Fashion Co., Ltd, Japan

Mariko Watanabe

Mariko was born in Hokkaido, Japan, in 1938. Having studied at the Kuwasawa Design Institute in 1957, Mariko worked as a freelance buyer, importing second-hand clothes to Japan, and later opened a vintage European clothes shop in Keio Limone Harajuku in 1975.

Mariko launched a new women’s brand, Yaccomaricard, with Yasuko Hayata and Isamu Watanabe in 1977 and established YM Fashion Co., Ltd. in 1979.

Having celebrated its 35^th anniversary in 2012, YM Fashion today has 24 direct shops and 120 wholesale shops in Japan, 11 direct shops in the UK and Thailand, and 42 wholesale shops in Europe and the US.

 

Khun Yuvadee acknowledged the fact that although many tourism service providers face language- and communication-related challenges in catering for international tourists in Thailand, there has been little academic research that addresses this issue in any depth. She raised the example of the Japanese market. While Japanese tourists are considered as a ‘good market’ in Thailand, they often expect to be catered for in Japanese, and the shortage of Japanese-speaking Thai tourism-workers has resulted in difficulties in satisfying client needs and desires during their stay. These are, however, anecdotes, and there is a need for further research that will explore a shortage of workers with Japanese language skills and its implications for Thai tourism.

From left: Nareerat Vanapirome, Khun Yuvadee Nirattakun (TAT) and Kimie Takahashi

Another challenge Khun Yuvadee raised as a growing issue in Thailand is the rapid growth of the Chinese market. Thanks to the 2012 megahit movie “Lost in Thailand”, Thailand has seen an unprecedented tourism boom among Chinese holiday makers, reaching 2.5 million visitors last year. While the boom is an enviable success, it has also created a number of challenges, particularly to the tourism service providers in smaller tourism destinations such as Chiang Mai, where the movie was filmed. This popular rural destination is struggling to supply accommodation, transportation, professional (and bilingual) workers and language support for millions of Chinese tourists who usually arrive in large groups.

Khun Yuvadee also alerted us to TAT’s latest research that shows that while spa is one of the most popular tourist activities, international tourists find it difficult to communicate with spa technicians. However, how and when these difficulties arise and with whom, and the consequences of them for the tourists, the workers, the enterprises and Thai tourism more broadly remain unexplored. Taking their research as a starting point, we are set to collect data from spa businesses in Bangkok as part of the project.

The research team thanks Khun Yuvadee for her generous support and looks forward to collaborating with TAT on the Thailand-on-the-Move project.

Sociolinguistics of Amazing Thailand launched

The Language-on-the-Move team is proud to announce the launch of a new sociolinguistic research project entitled “Language, Mobility and Tourism: Thailand on the Move towards ASEAN 2015”. Funded by Assumption University of Thailand and led by Kimie Takahashi, the project explores the role of language learning and multilingualism in tourism-related workplaces in Bangkok. It is modeled on the language and tourism projects conducted by Ingrid Piller in Switzerland (with Alexandre Duchêne) and Australia (with Kimie Takahashi). The interactive project site is hosted by Language on the Move.

Starting in March 2013, the research team will interview and conduct fieldwork with up to 30 workers in a range of tourism-related industries (e.g., hotels, restaurants, souvenir shops, spa and beauty businesses). They will also seek to collect comments from experts and officials in tourism-related organisations (e.g., Tourism Authority of Thailand, the Thai Hotel Association, the Ministry of Tourism and Sports). Key questions that will be addressed in this project include:

1. What kinds of linguistic challenges is Thai tourism facing in catering for international visitors?
2. What types of language resources are available and needed in Thai tourism?
3. Is there any relationship between language proficiency and mobility of workers in tourism?
4. As a holiday destination, how is Thailand represented globally?

As part of the project, Ingrid has been invited to visit Assumption University in July to jointly conduct a two-day workshop with the research team. The workshop will be designed to highlight the importance of interdisciplinary approaches to understanding tourism and language issues inherent in the industry. More information will be available at the project site shortly. Throughout the life of the project (March 2013 – August 2014), updates about data collection and collaboration with partners will be made regularly on its interactive website and through Facebook and Twitter.

“Imported Teacher”, the British Council’s new campaign in Thailand

As a language educator in Thailand my in-box is always full of invitations to conferences devoted to ASEAN and English language teaching. At such conferences, keynote speakers from the UK or the US make similar, if not identical, arguments for the importance of English as a lingua franca in the linguistically diverse ASEAN region. Their trump card is normally the economic value of English.

For example, at a seminar I attended recently in Bangkok, an American TESOL celebrity told an audience of Thai English teachers that: “English-speakers earn THREE times more than non-English speakers” [capitalization original to her Powerpoint slide]. This was a fact, she assured us, by referring to a report about English in the Middle East and North Africa. Commissioned by the British Council, the report claims that English-speaking receptionists in a city such as Bagdad in Iraq can earn three times more than their non-English-speaking counterparts. It’s impossible to determine the sample size but the results are based on 50 job ads for all kinds of professions. Only receptionists have a three-fold earning differential. To generalize on the basis of a handful of job ads for receptionists in Baghdad to a global assertion is, well, problematic, to put it mildly …

Propaganda such as this result in a single-minded wave of English fever. Of course, this is not unique to Thailand – Japan, South Korea and many other Asian nations also have their hearts set firmly for English. But it is important to ask ourselves if such a narrowly focused belief in the power of English – based as it is on questionable data and assumptions – is a good thing for Thailand and for its ASEAN project. The reality of ASEAN nations today are the ever-increasing flows of people and businesses from various linguistic and cultural backgrounds; in such a fluid transnational space, chances are that languages other than English are more useful or more realistic choices.

Let me illustrate this point by an example of a major Japanese company in Thailand. This company is considering providing English lessons for their Thai drivers, whose job it is to drive expat Japanese employees and their families stationed in Bangkok. Most of these Thai drivers speak poor English. As many of the Japanese employees and their families themselves have limited English proficiency, communication between the two parties is rather constrained.

A Japanese expat wife, whose husband works for this company, told me that she was scared of asking the driver to drive her and her children to their school in the morning. Because they don’t have a language in common, a number of failed communications have led to mistrust between them. Funded by her husband’s company, she’s learning English at a school in Bangkok, but with only a one-hour lesson per week she’s making little progress. Frustrated, her family’s decision to solve this problem with the driver was rather unique – they moved next to their children’s school.

The ideology of English as ‘useful’ is obviously implicit in the company’s consideration of providing English lessons for their drivers. It seems to keep the company from considering a more efficient option: teaching Japanese to the Thai drivers and Thai to the Japanese expats. In addition to such lessons where they can learn basics, both groups will get many daily practice opportunities with each other.

Increasing numbers of Japanese restaurants are opening in Bangkok

Despite last year’s flooding that affected over 450 Japanese companies in Thailand, more Japanese companies are planning to launch their business here. According to Teikoku Data Bank (2011), 3,133 Japanese companies are registered in Thailand, and approximately 37,000 expats (plus approx. 13,000 non-company worker Japanese) are sent from Japan to work in this country. According to some Japanese expats and business owners I’ve met, they need not English-speaking but Japanese-speaking Thais or Japanese-Thai translators. While they also pay lip-service to the importance of English and are often forced to use English, they would actually prefer to use Japanese in business negotiations and feel much more at ease in the presence of Japanese-speaking Thai interpreters. According to one consulting company, the demand for Thai-Japanese interpreters is on the rise. However, they are difficult to find. Actually, Japanese-Thai interpreters can easily earn much higher salaries than English-Thai interpreters!

For instance, a newly opened Japanese restaurant hired a Japanese-speaking Thai waiter and his starting salary is 40,000 baht – four times more than his non-Japanese speaking co-workers, twice as much as that of my English-speaking Thai friend working for an international education firm in Bangkok, and close to that of a foreign lecturer with a PhD at a reputable university in Bangkok.

Furthermore, one Japanese expat working for a major Japanese company told me that English is often not the preferred choice of language among their increasing number of Korean and Chinese clients operating in Thailand. For instance, a Japanese expat, Ken, whom I met recently, had a meeting with a Korean expat businessman in Bangkok. Ken began his meeting by greeting in Korean (Ken is Japan-born Korean with basic Korean proficiency) and mostly used Thai and sometimes English during the meeting as his Korean client speaks good Thai but cannot speak English. He had a Thai secretary who translated Ken’s ‘no-so-perfect Thai’ into ‘proper’ Thai to her Thai-speaking Korean boss.

For Thailand to be competitive in ASEAN and the global economy, English will continue to be of importance, of course. However, it seems short-sighted and dangerous to ignore other languages. As Thailand prepares for the launch of the ASEAN Economic Community in 2015 and as it strives to attract foreign investments from ASEAN Plus Three nations Japan, China and South Korea, the importance of a workforce that speaks their languages is paramount.

The need for more diverse language education and its link to employment needs to be based on empirical research evidence of the emerging language needs of international employers actually operating in Thailand in order to achieve positive policy change. Currently, this evidence doesn’t exist – a blind spot created by the relentless propaganda for English.

Underneath the zipped Asian face a Western face emerges: an English school’s ad in Bangkok (unrelated to the school in the blog post). Photo by Olan Sawangnuwatkul

Thailand is seeing an unprecedented English language learning hype. This hype, of course, is nothing but a closely engineered social phenomenon. It’s been promoted by various organisations and companies which claim that for Thailand to become more competitive as the launch of the ASEAN Economic Community in 2015 approaches, Thais must learn English. That’s why learning English is a good investment for Thais, says Michel le Quellec, President of Wall Street English (Thailand), the local franchisee of the UK-based Wall Street Institute. He assures us of the benefits of learning English:

Investing in English proficiency has an attractive return and is affordable, as they can expect a 15-20 per cent salary hike after finishing our course, or an extra Bt1 million after six years.

While it’s hard to know where Quellec’s conviction comes from, everyone involved in the business of ELT seems to be on his side. They believe that English is inevitable for Thailand and it is a career booster for Thais, but everyone also seems to think that the Thais are excruciatingly bad at learning English. It is at this point where we arrive at the inevitable question – who is to blame?

At conferences, in corridors at universities and in cyberspace, all fingers seem firmly pointed at the teachers: both Thai and foreign. For many critics including Quellec, “[T]he problem for Thailand is that there aren’t enough qualified teachers, while most teaching methods here are inefficient…” The majority of Thai teachers teaching at public schools are reportedly either underqualified or inexperienced, while most foreign teachers hired in public and private schools are shunned as unqualified and uncommitted.

A string of plans to rectify this grim situation are well under way. The Ministry of Education kicked off this year by appointing former British prime minister Tony Blair as the model English teacher and ambassador of Thailand’s Year 2012 English Speaking Program. This was followed by the proposal of increased salary for new English teachers with a university degree, and the announcement of the 100 million-baht budget to send 1,100 Thai teachers to English speaking countries for a training program during the summer vacation. Last week the Thai government working with the British Council brought more than 100 volunteers from the UK to Thailand, who will be teaching English in some 100 schools for six weeks.

In light of this engineered ELL hype and the alleged shortage of qualified Thai and foreign teachers, my friend’s experience in job hunting in Bangkok makes an intriguing story.

Originally from mainland China, Emily (pseudonym) was enrolled in a TESOL masters’ program at a university in Bangkok. To improve her CV, she applied for an English teaching position at a large franchise language school near her university. After a short job interview, a Thai interviewer declared that Emily wasn’t good enough – racially, that was.

“We can’t offer you a job because you are not white.”

Emily was taken aback, but she patiently explained that no, she’s not white, but she has two years of English teaching experience in another province and was studying an MA TESOL. Her persistence paid off and Emily was led to the principal’s office for further interview.

Indeed the Thai principal was impressed with Emily’s English. But this didn’t change the fact that she wasn’t white.

“It’s a shame! Your English is great, but you are not from a Western background. You are not white, you see. Why don’t you teach Chinese at our school? You can start immediately.”

For Emily, the principal’s offer wasn’t a good deal. To begin with, she had no experience or interest in teaching Chinese. She had no official qualification, either. What’s more, the principal asked her to use English to teach Chinese – for the school, she was capable of teaching Chinese, its complex language system and associated culture in English, but she wasn’t good enough to teach English itself. Most unfair of all, she was to teach Chinese in English for one third of the salary that English teachers were paid at the school.

It is obvious that race (being white) or the country of origin (US, UK, Australia, i.e., ‘West’) is not a qualification. Yet, the two categories remain entrenched as the primary criteria for hiring an English language teachers, while actual qualifications or work experience are secondary, if not irrelevant in the current ELT job market in Thailand. The national projects as well as the local hiring practice here are part and parcel of the global TESOL industry which is undergirded by race. What’s the point of believing in English as a global language or ELT as a profession if their race automatically renders Asians as second best?

Ad for ‘English for travel’ classes ( www.gaba.co.jp/ad)

A few weeks ago, my family and I went to Jim Thompson’s special sales at BITEC in Bang Na, a short train ride from central Bangkok. The special shuttle bus waiting at the station for bargain hunters was full of Japanese JT fans, and I struck up a conversation with an elderly Japanese couple. As they looked ‘non-tourist’ and at ease with the surroundings, I first thought that they were retirees living in Thailand. It turned out that they were actually tourists, and the main aim of their trip was to stay at the newly-opened prestigious Okura Hotel. They were enjoying the hotel, but “we actually prefer the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. We stay there every time we come to Thailand”. Curious about “every time”, I asked how many times they’d visited. They looked unsure, replying “We’ve lost count…”. Finally, they figured that, since their first trip some 20 years ago, the husband, a retired real estate sales manager, had visited about 30 times, and his wife, a retired bank worker, over 40 times!

Seeing my disbelief, Mrs. Tanaka (pseudonym) enthusiastically explained how easy and pleasurable each of their visits had been. They quickly added that neither of them could speak English or Thai, but they have never had a serious problem or unpleasant experience. They love Thai culture and for Mrs. Tanaka, “Bangkok has become home”. Before we parted, they also talked about their wish to move to Thailand permanently, but that would happen, they explained, only after they had fully fulfilled their duty to farewell Mr. Tanaka’s elderly mother, who is 100 years old.

Although they claimed that they can’t speak any English, it’s probably the case that they can communicate in English to some extent. After all, they were able to get to the sales venue by themselves by using the BTS Skytrain where information signs are mostly in Thai and English. At the same time, their multiple trips to Thailand and their sense of belonging to the country despite their claimed lack of English or the local language, challenge the discourse of トラベル/旅行英会話 (English for Travel Purposes), a multimillion-dollar branch of the huge English teaching industry in Japan.

Compared to English for Academic Purposes, the king of English for Specific Purposes (ESP), English for Travel Purposes (ETP) has received less scholarly attention. But ETP provides an amazing variety of courses and materials and has a strong hold on the psyche of many Japanese. What we find in cyberspace, for example, are countless numbers of ETP-related publications, websites of private language schools, vocational schools and universities that offer ETP courses, free and paid online lessons, seminars conducted by major travel agencies, websites run by travel English experts and enthusiasts, etc. Many 英会話学校 (English conversation schools) such as the three major schools, AEON, ECC and Gaba, offer ETP courses, and the discourse in the ads of these three schools is strikingly similar: ETP courses are for people who wish to make their overseas trip more enjoyable.

Gaba, for instance, recommends their ETP course for those who desire to (1) travel alone, (2) travel without guidebooks and (3) communicate with local people. Furthermore, ECC teacher Mika Fukube explains that ‘good English’ rather than ‘broken English’ will get tourists better service overseas:

海外旅行先でのホテルやレストランなどではブロークンな英語ではなく、しっかりとした英会話を話すことで、より良いサービスが提供されます.  (If you can communicate in proper English, not in broken English, you will be able to receive good service at hotels and restaurants in your destination.) [my translation]

Then, how much and how long does a tourist need to invest in getting that better, service-winning English? AEON offers a one-year ETP course and charges JPY118,440 for a weekly group lesson (plus the registration fee of JPY 30,000 and possibly extra for textbooks), while Gaba’s one-on-one course over 8 months is pricier with JPY437,850 for 60 lessons (plus JPY 18,900 for textbooks).

All in all, the ETP business in Japan thrives on promoting the idea of English as a magical tool to make overseas travel safer, more fun and meaningful.

The flip side of the discourse, however, works to instil a profound sense of anxiety and helplessness in prospective travellers as travelling overseas without English emerges as hard and dangerous, if not impossible. I’ve lost count of the Japanese people I’ve met, who shyly or anxiously claimed “I’m scared of going overseas because I can’t speak English.”

None of this linguistic burden, anxiety or any sense of exclusion was evident in my hour-long conversation with the Tanakas. They marveled at the land of smiles and all things Thai – its people, food and cultures – that are found alongside the wide variety of Japanese signs, products and services to which they can turn should the need arise.

Bangkok was recently named the world’s third top tourism destination for 2012, after London and Paris. Hedrick-Wong, MasterCard Worldwide’s global economic advisor, pointed out Bangkok’s “tolerant culture” as the winning aspect. In light of the Tanakas’ experience, Bangkok obviously offers more than ‘cultural tolerance’. It is a multilingual city where an elderly Japanese couple are able to enjoy their stay on their own, to have meaningful contact with the locals, and to be highly mobile, all without that so-called ‘service-winning proper’ English.

Indeed, the discourse of ETP makes little sense in the ‘real’ Bangkok as an overseas tourism destination; its linguistic landscape and multilingual service provisions help to make visitors welcome and demonstrate that in contemporary Asia you can get fantastic service without English.

English and ASEAN

Ever since I arrived in Bangkok in 2011, I’ve being witnessing the amazing spread of English fever. At the national level, Thailand is wholeheartedly invested in the promise of English – the idea that proficiency in English will make ‘it’ happen for them, be it more economic development, more participation in global spheres or more 21^st century cosmopolitan look to the international community. “Learn/teach English, better and faster!” is very much the message at the education level where we are seeing the rising number of English-medium programs in secondary and higher education, the constant come-and-go of fly-in/fly-out ‘language experts’ in Bangkok, and mushrooming private English language schools throughout the country. Similar to those in many other non-English speaking Asian nations, everybody I know wants to learn English to get a good job, and most academics I meet speak of English as the key to Thailand’s brighter economic future.

The discourse of English for employment and for national competitiveness was also on everyone’s lips at this year’s Thai TESOL Conference (27 -28 Jan, 2012). One of the first panels on Day 1, “Thailand English language readiness and action plans for ASEAN 2015”, argued that English is imperative towards the launch of the Asean Community in 2015. In less than three years from now, they pointed out, the ten Asean nations will open their national borders, and Thai nationals will have to compete against English-speaking professionals and skilled workers from the other member states in local employment sectors. The panel warned that Thai people’s English is not good enough and that lack of English will leave the nation out in the cold, a sentiment that is widely circulating in media. Having attended this panel and other papers, I came out of the conference with a sense of renewed interest in the issue as well as a great sense of puzzlement.

First of all, although everyone seems to recite “Thai people’s English is not good enough”, the discussion stops short of explaining what not good enough means and for what. Most academics I speak to suggest that the notion of ‘native-speaker’ is dead in that non-native speakers should be proud of their ‘non-standard variety of English’ (whatever that maybe). However, papers at the conference and discussions I’ve had in Bangkok to date seem to suggest otherwise; these are all about how a Thai accent has to be eliminated or how Thai grammar interferes with standard English grammar, or that Thai people should stop being shy, etc. All of these discourses are evidence for the fact that the native speaker/Western ideal is well and truly alive. This schizophrenic-like approach to assessment of what’s good English is the hidden mechanism that keeps Thai non-native speakers of English forever insecure about their English, and that keeps Western native speaker teachers popular in the job market.

Another sense of puzzlement comes from a near-absence of research reports on actual language needs in Thailand’s employment sectors. This strikes me as odd, particularly since the current push for English has a strong employment basis as discussed above. At the conference, little information was offered as to what level of proficiency in what languages are needed or valued for what kinds of positions in what industry. The lack of such research, and the single-minded focus on English, also seem to blind us from multilingual resources that already exist and have worked well in industries such as tourism, and that could be expanded to strengthen Thailand’s competitiveness.

Phanisara (Nina) Logsdon on the panel above rightly called for a sustainable approach to improving language policy and education in Thailand towards 2015. Collaborative research between researchers and local industry partners, with an aim to producing an in-depth understanding of linguistic resources and changing linguistic needs in local employment sectors, may just contribute towards building part of a sustainable approach. In Asia as a whole, it’s been a popular practice to bring in Western ‘language experts’ to a country for a week or so, but such an approach has proven to be of limited benefits. A sustainable approach to researching language resources and needs entails inviting experts with a proven record of industry-based research, to work with us for capacity building on a long-term basis.

Without empirically-based research and long-term research collaborations between local and international researchers from relevant fields and industrial partners, Thailand’s debate on language policy and programs, including Thailand’s Year 2012 English Speaking Program (for which Tony Blair is a fly-in/fly-out English teacher), will remain uninformed and even continue to work as an unproductive threat to society.

How does a ‘regular Australian guy’ come to be a ‘Japanese on the Move’? On Language-on-the-Move, we have often written about how easily Australians seem to get trapped in a monolingual mindset. Simon’s story reminds us that it doesn’t have to be like that and points to the importance of foreign language education in school. Simon started learning Japanese back at high school. Hosting a Japanese exchange student, going on exchange to Japan and continuing Japanese at university all just followed naturally from that. Today, Japanese and Japan are an inseparable part of Simon’s identity and make this, after all, maybe not-so-regular Australian guy who he is.

今回のJapanese-on-the-Moveの エピソードに登場するのはサイモン・ロッドウェルさん。「普通のオージー」と自称するロッドウェルさんは、日本語を流暢にしゃべり、日本人の友人を沢山持 ち、日本には何度も訪れている。彼のインタビューが掲載される２０１１年１０月には最愛のパートナーである伊勢出身の中林千奈美さんとご結婚された。現在 多文化な町シドニーで生活されるお二人で、後に中村さんもJapanese-on-the-Moveに登場する。

「普通のオージー」である彼がなぜ「Japanese-on-the-Move」になったのか？イングリッド・ピラーと高橋君江が運営するブログ・ウェブサイト Language-on-the-Move では、オーストラリア人の「monolingual mindset（単 一言語マインドセット－英語オンリー的な考え）」について論じてきた。ロッドウェルさんの体験談から外国語学習の重要性を学び取る事が出来る。高校時代に 日本語と出会った後、日本人留学生を受け入れ、本人自らも留学生として来日し、大学進学後も日本語を学び続けた。そして現在、日本と日本語は彼のアイデン ティティーの大切な一部となっている。そんなロッドウェルさんには「普通のオージー」という自称は当てはまらないかもしれない。