Ryuko Kubota

The point of departure of this dissertation is the striking similarities between the dispositions critical media literacy education aims to cultivate and the characteristics conspiracy theorists claim to embody. The golden question of critical literacy, “who benefits?” is in fact the central question of conspiracy theorists: “cui bono?” While critical media literacy educators teach learners to disrupt the common sense, to interrogate multiple viewpoints, to focus on sociopolitical issues, and to take actions and promote social justice (Lewison et al., 2002), conspiracy theorists claim that they do exactly those things (Harambam, 2020). The question, however, is not demarcating “critical” from “conspiratorial,” but “desirable” from “undesirable” exercises of critical reading and writing. This is because the former demarcation presupposes the undesirability of conspiracy theorizing, the danger of which is evident from the fact that actual conspiracies take place rather frequently in politics and, thus, stigmatization of conspiracy theorizing makes it easier for conspirators to get away with their conspiracies (Pigden, 2007). To demarcate educationally desirable from undesirable enactments of critical reading and writing, this dissertation embarks on dialectical investigations of analysis, critique, and argument. The analysis part consists of discourse analysis of educational YouTube videos on conspiracy theories. With this, I identify the ways in which conspiracy theories are constructed in educational discourse and highlight the reductive sense of rationality promoted in it. In the critique part, such a reductive sense of rationality is criticized. Through a conceptual examination of meanings, care, and values, I highlight the limitations of the overreliance on scientific objectivity and facts in the discussion of conspiracy theories and claim that literacy education ought to pay attention to the centrality of meanings and values in the textual genre of conspiracy theories. In the argument part, drawing on Robert Brandom’s (1994, 2019) inferentialism with an existentialist spin, I argue for an educational approach that is capable of accounting for conspiracy theories in terms not only of epistemic matters of facts but also of axiological matters of concern. Through this, I offer my answer to the demarcation question and discuss educational implications that arise from it.

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Despite common-sense assumptions that the bond between a person and their mother tongue is inviolable when they spend their childhood as a monolingual user of the dominant societal language, some Japanese people who became users of English after childhood (late plurilinguals, or LPs) have reported a wish to distance themselves from their first linguaculture, Japanese. In this study, I used critical realist grounded theory method to construct theory that explains the nature and causes of this phenomenon. Analysing the linguistic (auto)biographies of 17 LP participants, I conceptualised the phenomenon as first language dissociation (FLD). I defined FLD as a relatively enduring psychosocial process through which a person distances themselves from their L1 because of its entanglement with, and subsequent connotation of, perceived impediments to their current or future flourishing. I identified a complex set of push/pull causes operating at various levels of the psychosocial world that form the causal mechanism for FLD among Japanese-English LPs. Causes that pushed the participants away from the Japanese linguaculture included intersubjective conflict with norms associated with the Japanese linguaculture or with Japanese-speaking significant others (a conflictive state I termed contrasubjectivity), and self-Orientalist linguaculture ideologies, often inculcated through language education. These push causes result in a form of negative affect: undesire. Undesire adheres to a once-desired object—in this case, Japanese—that has come to connote illbeing, and compels one to distance oneself from it. Concurrently, the onset of acquisition of a second language—English, with its attendant ideologies—opens up a psychological mirror dimension that promises greater intersubjective harmony, or prosubjectivity. This contrast between the negative affective valence of the Japanese linguaculture and the positive affective valence of the English linguaculture intensifies over time and is further amplified as those experiencing FLD engage in a variety of distancing behaviours. Finally, I established the conditions under which some Japanese-English LPs who have experienced FLD might reassociate with their first linguaculture. I conclude the dissertation by summarising my theory, reflecting on the strengths and limitations of the study, and discussing its implications for the fields of applied linguistics, multilingualism and critical language pedagogy.

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This dissertation describes the production and governance of young migrants in Japan as (educational) ‘problems’ and ‘deficits.’ It examines the discursive and non-discursive contexts of the Japanese government’s ethnocentric policy aspirations to realize multicultural coexistence against a backdrop of increasing newcomer populations. It notes, however, that the policy aspirations are problematic because they uphold a majoritarian ideals based on ‘cosmeticism,’ ‘paternalism,’ and ‘difference-blindness.’ Such ideals are premised on an ontology of Japanese exceptionalism known as Nihonjinron. Young migrants’ disinvestment is a by-product of the contradictory policy aspirations of coexistence and Nihonjinron through which they get labeled as deficits based on unilateral assessments of their Japanese language abilities. Disinvested young migrants are placed in a bracketed state of [co][existence] which delimits their lives a priori as forms of non-living and non-existence. The prime objective of the research project for this dissertation was to suspend the policy aspirations of [co][existence] to assist six disinvested young migrants of JSL centre Kaede in reinvesting amid the contested policy landscape in order to envision alternative futures. My attempts at aiding their reinvestment entailed intervening through the theoretical lenses of a ‘policy problematization,’ which was plugged into Multiple Literacies Theory’s (MLT’s) reontologized notion of literacies and subjectivities. The research mapped the MLT-informed literacies as ‘sense,’ ‘intensive,’ and ‘immanent’ readings and new subjectivities as becoming within the affective policy landscapes of [co][existence]. The research pursued these goals by co-creating videos through a post-qualitative methodology of what I call ‘minor video-making,’ in which a group of young migrants and myself as researcher-educator-videographer collaborated as ‘intercessors’ to produce two short docufictions titled Watermelons and Humans and Always. I subsequently analyzed these videos with principles of Deleuzian film/cinema-philosophy to assist the participants in developing aspirations, hopes, and subjectivities for alternative forms of coexistence in Japan. Becoming-Japanese was our joint reinvestment in challenging both our fixed points of identity and the logics and rationalities of [co][existence] policy aspirations. During the minor video-making and subsequent analysis processes, the participants developed and demonstrated parallel thoughts and practices that generated the potential for other modes of life and existence for them in Japan.

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The growth of the ageing population worldwide has been noted as one of the “major forces shaping the 21st century” (World Health Organization, 2007, p. 6). Reflecting the trends of global demographics, Canadian census indicates that the proportion of seniors is rapidly growing across Canadian provinces (Statistics Canada, 2014). However, one peculiarity of the Canadian context is that the increased number of seniors can be in part attributed to immigration patterns. With many immigrant seniors arriving in Canada with little to no English, language learning support becomes a significant issue for research, educational practice, and seniors’ wellbeing. By drawing on the theoretical constructs of the contact zone and agency, this thesis examines the role of English language learning in the lives of ageing immigrants in Canada. Ten immigrant seniors participated in a customized language learning class in a community-based program, which was centered on narrative expression as the main pedagogical strategy. The participants were asked to create written and multimodal texts in response to a series of prompts about their language learning and use upon arrival in Canada. In addition, each of the participants was interviewed about their language learning experiences. Thematic analysis of written, spoken, and multimodal data suggests that senior adult language learners seek social connection through agentive undertakings of language learning. The oral and written narratives of the participants portray language learning as a way to grow social circles and work through experiences of racism, ageism, and linguicism. In addition, practices observed during the classroom-based ethnography support the use of narrative as a core pedagogical practice, and story-sharing as a strategy to facilitate language learning in community-based settings.

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In the context of unprecedented globalization and migration flows, South Korea, known for promoting the modern nation-state’s ‘one-nation, one-language’ ideology, has undergone recalibration of its national identity and language ideologies. Since the mid-2000s, the South Korean government has developed a dual contradictory bilingual framework—assimilative Korean as a Second Language and celebratory multilingual development—particularly for damunhwa (multicultural) families consisting of international marriages between Korean men and foreign women and their children. Despite the government’s enthusiastic development of language policy, little is known of the grounds on which this bilingual initiative was established and how it is practiced in families. Adopting an approach that Bronson and Watson-Gegeo (2008) have called “language socialization as topic,” this qualitative study employed a document analysis and interviews to investigate the representational practices of foreign mothers across their lifespan in South Korea. I first address how the national-level language policy guides the regulation of foreign mothers’ four linear life trajectories: marriage, migration, childbirth and education, and home economics. Findings from the policy analysis represent the government’s (1) emphasis on damunhwa mothers’ exclusive use of Korean, (2) selective recommendation of heritage/foreign language for nationalistic purposes, and (3) discouragement of heritage language use in damunhwa families. They also demonstrate the government’s lack of concern with the roles of Korean fathers in family language socialization. The four damunhwa mothers in this study—from Japan, China, Vietnam, and Kyrgyzstan—presented their survival stories on learning to become dedicated mothers who are expected to use Korean with their children. Their narratives also demonstrate how the linguistic hierarchy is exacerbated and how they are demoralized in their bilingual workplaces. The mothers’ stated promotion of heritage languages often serves instrumental purposes rather than fostering bilingual and bicultural identities. These findings explain how damunhwa mothers have become the heart of linguistic nationalism in globalized times for South Korea, where the government has failed to recognize the fundamental importance of the situated nature of multilingual socialization of families. Through illuminating what has been neglected by policy makers, this dissertation calls for more equitable and gender-sensitive approaches to bilingual education in transnational and translingual times.

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The writing center is a common writing support service in North America with unique historical and theoretical underpinnings (Boquet, 1999; Bruffee, 1984; North, 1984). In the last couple of decades, it has truly become a global pedagogy, being implemented in around 65 countries worldwide (e.g., Archer, 2007; Bräuer, 2002; Tan, 2011). Although writing centers have been well received by international scholars, more studies are needed to discuss the economic and political imperatives of establishing writing centers in respective contexts and possible impacts on different student populations as a result. To address this issue, this multilayered case study explores how the educational philosophy, pedagogical rationale and concepts of the global writing pedagogy are interpreted by administrators and enacted in pedagogical practice at Maple Leaves University (MLU), an internationalizing university in Japan. To examine the language planning stage, data were collected from interviews with five administrators and relevant university documents. For pedagogical practices, primary data included audio-recordings and student interviews from four tutor-tutee dyads concerning three types of writing tutorials: (a) Japanese students seeking consultation on Japanese writing, (b) Japanese students seeking consultation on English writing, and (c) international students seeking consultation on Japanese writing. By looking at process of implementation from a language policy and practice perspective (Hornberger, 2005; Ricento & Hornberger, 1996), this study found that the MLU Writing Center was caught between ideal literacy/educational practices of a “world-class university” (Deem, Mok, & Lucas, 2008) and the local literacy realities at MLU. In the language planning, the internationalizing goals of a world-class university (e.g., English language policies, increasing international student enrollment, and student-centered education reforms) were the primary motives behind the establishment of MLU’s Writing Center. In tutorial practices, particular aspects of the Writing Center pedagogy were challenged by tutees’ disciplinary practices, beliefs towards non-native English tutors, and Japanese language learning needs. This study adds a policy perspective to the scholarship of writing centers, encouraging further research into the macro-context of writing centers and suggesting tutors be considered as key literacy educators who could better inform policy-making from the bottom-up.

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In South Korea, English is implicated in local political processes, mediating relations of class and social (re)production (Park, 2013). Unequal access to English restricts the prospects of the disadvantaged in education and the job market (Kubota, 2011). Tracking, an institutional practice which groups students by performance, is one way in which these inequalities manifest in the neoliberalized landscape of Korean education. Situated within the frameworks of cultural production (Willis, 1977, 2004) and language socialization (Duff & Talmy, 2011), this critical ethnography explores the language learning trajectories of ninth-grade students in a Korean school over one semester who have been tracked since entering middle school. Classroom interactions and interviews are analyzed using critical discourse approaches (Talmy, 2010a). This study finds that teachers oriented to the significance of English in high-stakes exams, and naturalized tracking to provide students appropriately leveled lessons. However, their beliefs about homogenously-constituted tracks steered them to conflate students’ language competence with track categories and prevented them from attending to the multiple levels and needs of learners within each track. More importantly, there were very few differences in the instructional materials used across tracks because teachers based their lessons on the same textbook in preparation for the same tests. Consequently, many students, regardless of track, deemed tracking unconducive to learning, engaging in acts of resistance to grammar-translation-oriented classroom practices. Nevertheless, students displayed disaffiliative stances towards detracking out of concerns of being held back or tacitly positioned as having deficits. In this sense, this study argues that socialization into tracking led students to track not only their abilities but also their habitus (Bourdieu, 1990) and identities. Such tracked identities created conditions to reinforce a school hierarchy in which many low-track students were discursively co-produced as yeongpoja, i.e., students who have given up on English. This study demonstrates that the yeongpoja identity is a consequence of socialization into low tracks, manifesting students’ resistance to their stigmatized identities as well as the test-oriented instructional practices. The study concludes with a call for reexamining tracking, suggesting implications for instruction which integrate and recognize the needs, interests, and knowledge of students from diverse backgrounds.

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This study examines the construction of Chinese international students’ identities in the context of the internationalization of two Japanese higher education institutions. It employs a case study design. Two Japanese higher education institutions were selected because they had large international student bodies and English-medium programs. Both of these characteristics are central to recent Japanese internationalization policies and programs. At each institution, interviews were conducted with: 1) Chinese international undergraduate students; and 2) faculty and staff members who held leadership positions at their institutions in the area of internationalization. By using the concepts relating to imagination, the study analyzed how students saw their identities and future possibilities in and through their participation in international education in Japan. It also investigated how the institutions saw their social existence and translated it into their internationalization discourses and practices. An analysis of the intersection of the faculty/staff participants’ accounts of internationalization and international students’ stories illuminated the challenges and the potential of internationalization. Firstly, the findings revealed that the imaginations of both the institutions and students were shaped by their social positions and dominant social imaginaries of globalization. How the institutions with contrasting levels of academic prestige and international students with different socio-economic backgrounds participated in internationalization illuminated their self-positioning strategies in a competitive world. The closely linked self-positioning strategies of the institutions and students indicated the challenge of internationalization in disrupting the existing material and ideological conditions. Secondly, students’ stories indicated the potential and the limitations of the institutional environments, which are marked by many international students and the use of the English language. Some students described their transformative learning experiences emerging from the social, cultural, and political complexity of Japanese society and of their institutional settings. However, the majority of students tended to be disengaged from such complexity by seeing themselves living in an imagined pristine multicultural community on their campuses and feeling detached from the rest of Japanese society. The study concludes that internationalization in the paradigms of competition and a “creation of cultural diversity and a containment of cultural difference” (Bhabha, 1990, p. 208) holds limited potential for social transformation.

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