Japanese as a Translanguage: A Developing Minority Language in Japanese―English Bilingual Children in Australia

要旨

What are the characteristics of bilinguals’ minority first language literacy, and how are they compared with those of the first language (L1) and the second language (L2) learners, respectively? The questions arose partly as a result of a longitudinal study of the development and maintenance of a minority first language literacy in Japanese–English bilingual children in Sydney, Australia, and partly due to the fact that despite a number of studies on bilingual acquisition, no study has yet been carried out to answer such questions. Moreover, the development and maintenance of Japanese literacy for the first and the second generations have been a major concern for Japanese communities overseas. This is because Japanese literacy is highly regarded to be an important asset for a person ‘to be regarded as an educated member of Japanese society’ (Hatano, 1995: 255), and the Japanese script is an essential part of the Japanese culture. However, studies on various linguistic minorities have generally pointed out that of all language skills, writing seems to suffer most in the process of language loss since it is the least required skills in their daily lives and it would need constant use or training for its maintenance (Smolicz & Secombe, 1985; Butcher, 1995; Clyne, et al., 1997; Nagaoka, 1998; Noguchi, 1998). This may be especially true with Japanese, whose orthography involves two types of syllabic alphabets (kana) and a large number of complex ideographic characters (kanji). Accordingly, nonstandard features in written language — the most salient characteristics of school-aged Japanese–English bilinguals’ literacy in Japanese as a minority first language — were compared with those of Japanese monolinguals and L2 learners of Japanese who are native English speakers. This double comparison was aimed to distinguish developmental features from transference ones.

主題