Pickups from new acquisitions - January 2010

Japan, sport and society : tradition and change in a globalizing world / edited by Joseph Maguire and Masayoshi Nakayama.
London : Routledge, 2006.
ISBN: 0-7146-8293-4
Call #: 780.13 JAP

Evolving for centuries in relative isolation, sport in Japan developed a unique character reflective of Japanese culture and society. In recent decades, Japan’s drive towards cultural and economic modernization has consciously incorporated a modernization of its sports cultures. Japan, Sport and Society provides insights into this process, revealing the tensions between continuity and change, tradition and modernity, the local and the global in a culture facing the new economic and political realities of our modern world. The book is comprised of ten essays by Japanese authors and divided into three parts according to area of interest as follows: 1. Making of sport and modern Japanese society, 2. Social reconstruction, reproduction, and sport, and 3. Modernization, globalization and sport: a critical examination. These areas of interest cover topics as diverse as innovation in Japanese martial arts, the development of sport in Japanese schools, economic development through sport, playfulness and gender in Japanese society, and the changing field of Japanese sport. The essays are supplemented throughout with graphs, charts, and photographs.

Socializing identities through speech style : learners of Japanese as a foreign language / Haruko Minegishi Cook.
(Second language acquisition ; 32)
Bristol, U.K. : Multilingual Matters, c2008.
ISBN: 978-1-84769-100-2
Call #: 810.13 COO

Drawing on the perspective of language socialisation and a theory of indexicality, this book explores ways in which learners of Japanese as a foreign language and their Japanese host families socialise their identities through style shift between the masu and plain forms in a homestay context. Qualitative analysis of dinnertime conversations demonstrates how learners are implicitly and explicitly socialised into the norms of style shift in Japanese in interaction with their host family members.

This book differs from previous research on learners’ acquisition of the honorifics in two ways. First, the focus of the book is not on the statistical analysis of learners’ development of sociopragmatic competence, but rather on ways the learners and their host family members use linguistic resources to construct their social identities in the daily routine of dinnertime talk. Secondly, this book questions the conventional and widely accepted meaning of the masu form as a marker of politeness or formality, demonstrating that it is not limited to these spheres but has multiple social meanings, and that these meanings are also fluid and context-dependent. It draws on language socialisation and a theory of indexicality, both of which are founded on the assumption that language is an integral part of the social world.

The book is one in a series called Second Language Acquisition, edited by Professor David Singleton, that 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. The intended readership of the series, including this item, includes final-year undergraduates working on second language acquisition projects, postgraduate students involved in second language acquisition research, and researchers and teachers in general whose interests include a second language acquisition component.

New Library Books - February 2010