Japanese Applied Linguistics

"This state-of-the art volume covers a wide range of topics on contemporary Japanese from the perspectives of sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, and language education. Written by leading scholars in the field, the chapters in Japanese Applied Linguistics offer original and often surprising insights into Japanese language practices at the beginning of the 21st century. Through nuanced and accountable analyses, the authors unravel persisting myths about Japanese language, culture, and the learning of Japanese as an additional language, inviting readers to join their journey through the changing landscape of diverse, multilingual, multicultural Japan. With this book, editors Junko Mori and Amy Ohta have given us an outstanding example of applied linguistics as the study of language in the real world." (Professor Gabriele Kasper, University of Hawaii at Manoa) "A lively and engaging portrait of the state of the art of Japanese applied linguistics as practiced by a new generation of scholars on both sides of the Pacific. It would be hard to imagine a more convincing testament to the way applied linguistics has outgrown its narrow association with second language education and come to embrace a concern with language use across the totality of human experience in the real world. Certain to become a standard in the field, this collection offers a rich variety of perspectives on the social, political, and educational dimensions of language use in Japan today in a way that promises to inform numerous disciplines both within and beyond the linguistic sciences proper." (Professor Wesley M. Jacobsen, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University, USA) Mention Book News, November 2008 Mention Chronicle of Higher Education, August 15, 2008 Reviewed in JALT Journal, 32.1, May 2010 'This book is eclectically informative, good scholarship, and a sound plug for conversation analysis'"