東アジア諸国の人々の日本語観

要旨

The main objective of this paper is to investigate East & South East Asian peoples' views on Japanese as represented in the response data of the Japanese census 1997-98 by the National Institute for Japanese Language. Firstly, we summarize the historical and social backgrounds of those 10 Asian countries under investigation, concerning their conditions of language learning. Secondly, we analyze their images on Japanese with respect to certain five linguistic dimensions as well as the relationships between their images about Japanese, Japan, and the Japanese. The result shows that these factors are closely related to each other. Thirdly, we show that most Asian countries expect their further advancement in the relationships with Japan in economy, but that this may not necessarily lead to the rapid increase of learners of Japanese. Finally, we suggest some possibility about the near future development of East & South East Asian zone.