Are Australian fans of anime and manga motivated to learn Japanese language?

Armour, William S.; Iida, S

doi:10.1080/02188791.2014.922459

Cited by 24 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…Through anime, she felt "the spirits of being strong, brave and selfless" and these qualities must had "something to do with the authors," the Japanese people. Such changes of perceptions and attitudes with regard to Japanese people were found to be highly widespread among the interviewed participants, suggesting the participants' interest in Japanese cultural products and experiences of Japan enhance their willingness to socialize with Japanese people and learn the language (e.g., Matsumoto, 2007; see also Armour & Iida, 2016). This might extend the statistical finding that participants who were motivated to understand more about the Japanese culture would be more interested in Japanese cultural products and, in turn, be more willing to learn the language.…”

Section: Interview Findingsmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…Recent studies in Australia and the United States have identified that Japanese language learners could be motivated by cultural products such as Manga (Northwood & Kinoshita Thomson, ) and their motivation might have been sustained by peak learning experiences or those “moments in which a person has a sense of the highest fulfillment and happiness” (Matsumoto, , p. 197; see also Armour & Iida, ). In China, Tanaka () found that Japanese learners’ attitudes toward Japan were an important predictor of their motivation.…”

Section: “Posture” As a Means To Theorize Language Learning Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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What Motivates Chinese University Students to Learn Japanese? Understanding Their Motivation in Terms of ‘Posture’

Teo

Hoi

Gao

et al. 2019

The Modern Language Journal

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In light of popular nationalism on the rise in China and Japan, this inquiry develops and validates a survey instrument to document university students’ motivation to learn Japanese in mainland China and explore how the learning of a foreign language may lead to better cross‐cultural understanding. A total number of 398 Chinese learners of Japanese in Chinese universities participated in the survey and 12 of them participated further in post‐survey interviews. The results confirm that participants’ interest in Japan‐related products, employment opportunities, and activities contribute to the motivation to learn the language for cross‐cultural understanding and undertake cross‐cultural exchanges with Japanese people. The results suggest that increased exposure to Japan‐related affairs in the media coverage undermines their desire for intercultural communication and increases the approach for interacting with Japanese people. This means it is necessary for Japanese language educators to engage with Japanese language learners and to address macro contextual processes such as rising tensions between the two countries, negative coverage on China in Japan's media, and negative coverage on Japan in the Chinese media.

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Section: Interview Findingsmentioning

confidence: 93%

Section: “Posture” As a Means To Theorize Language Learning Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Motivates Chinese University Students to Learn Japanese? Understanding Their Motivation in Terms of ‘Posture’

Teo

Hoi

Gao

et al. 2019

The Modern Language Journal

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show abstract

“…In the Australian context, there are three major studies that are noteworthy in this regard. Northwood and Thomson found the extent of the JPC impact on Japanese learners in high schools (2010) and in universities (2012) and Armour and Iida (2016) examined JPC fans in the general public and focused on mainly examining whether participants were interested in initiating formal Japanese language study. Northwood and Thomson (2010) investigated 464 students in high schools in the Sydney area who were learners of Japanese.…”

Section: Motivation and Out-of-class Activitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A portrait of Japanese popular culture fans who study Japanese at an Australian university: Motivation and activities beyond the classroom

Imura

2018

East Asian Journal of Popular Culture

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This article presents a quantitative study with a focus on portraying Japanese Popular Culture (JPC) fans who take a Japanese language course at a university. Questionnaires were administered to students who were studying Japanese as a foreign language (JFL) at a multi-campus university in Australia. 247 participants (which accounts for an 85.6 per cent response rate) responded to questions concerning interest in studying Japanese, future motivation and out-of-class activities related to JPC. Further data regarding JPC consumption in retrospect and perceived benefits of JPC in studying Japanese were collected from those who identified themselves as JPC fans. It revealed that nearly three-quarters of the students were self-claimed JPC fans. While both fans and non-fans showed high interest in the language, interest in traditional culture and travel to Japan, fans revealed substantially higher motivation than non-fans in all other accounts, namely future motivation. Non-fans, however, showed relatively high motivation only in future employment. A prominent finding was that fans were exposed to Japanese language far more frequently outside the classroom than non-fans of JPC. The most popular activities for fans were watching anime, listening to J-pop music and playing video games. Reading 'manga' was also a frequent activity but they were reading translated 'manga'. The findings suggest that future motivation associated with Japan and Japanese language is an important element in continuing Japanese language study. This article has implications for the role of popular culture in 2 foreign language (FL) education, in particular when many FL learners are interested in popular culture like JPC.

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“…As a burgeoning popular phenomenon, anime receives a substantial amount of scholarly interest in a number of areas, including gender studies (e.g., Saito 2014), cultural studies (e.g., Fennell et al 2012), language pedagogy (e.g., Armour and Iida 2014) and fan-translation/fan-subtitling (e.g., Lee 2011). However, despite the extensive interdisciplinary study of anime, linguistic examination of discourse in anime and other Japanese telecinematic texts remains limited.…”

Section: Anime and Character Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“Watashi-tachi wa ningen da!”: A Corpus-Assisted Analysis of a Non-Human Character in the Anime Series ‘From the New World’

Lee¹

2018

NVJS

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This paper focuses on how social meanings indexed by language use in the real world can be recontextualised in telecinematic texts such as anime to construct and convey different aspects of a character's identity. In a case study of the science-fiction anime series, From the New World (Shinsekai Yori; 2012-13), the paper analyses three corpora comprised of dialogue from the series in order to shed light on the discursive construction of the non-human character Squealer. A non-human character was selected to minimise the influence of preconceptions about identity. Drawing on Androutsopoulos's (2012) three-level film analysis framework and Bucholtz and Hall's (2005) identity framework, the approach incorporates both computerised and manual discourse analysis. The computer-facilitated keyword analysis provides initial insights into the character's demographic information and speech style, showing the key linguistic features used by the character's species, and by extension, the focal character. This is complemented by a detailed analysis of dialogue from selected scenes which shows how various aspects of the character's identity are expressed using different linguistic devices in different contexts. The analysis demonstrates that shifts between the use and non-use of certain linguistic features serve to foreground different aspects of a character's identity-namely, stances and presentational personae. By integrating corpus linguistic analysis with scene-based analysis drawing on sociolinguistic concepts, the study shows how we can gain insights into telecinematic characters' identities through language. The paper also highlights issues encountered in applying corpus linguistic methodologies to analyses of Japanese language, which may be of use to future researchers and software developers in this area.

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Are Australian fans of anime and manga motivated to learn Japanese language?

Cited by 24 publications

References 12 publications

What Motivates Chinese University Students to Learn Japanese? Understanding Their Motivation in Terms of ‘Posture’

What Motivates Chinese University Students to Learn Japanese? Understanding Their Motivation in Terms of ‘Posture’

A portrait of Japanese popular culture fans who study Japanese at an Australian university: Motivation and activities beyond the classroom

“Watashi-tachi wa ningen da!”: A Corpus-Assisted Analysis of a Non-Human Character in the Anime Series ‘From the New World’

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