Introduction

             Article entitled Japanese Sociolinguistics by Janet S. Shibamoto listed the main points of Sociolingustics in Japan as the writing system, loanword usage, standardization, honorification, language and sex, and bilingualism and minority languages in 1987. Below discusses the ways in which recent research on Japanese sociolinguistics responds to social change and what is of urgent concern today. Sociolinguistics in Japan was established when Kokuritsu Kokugo Kenkyu-jyo was founded in 1949.

Background Information

            Very few Japanese people speak English or other second languages, they even pronounce English words in Japanese accents because 128 million Japanese people use Japanese as their mother tongue. The writing system consists of a combination of three scripts: ideographic characters (kanji) and two phonetic scripts, hiragana and katakana, which developed over time. The area of social change over the past 20 years has opened up new areas of sociolinguistic research covering technological advances and a regional focus on the importance of the English language. Japan also leads the world in the use and development of the mobile Internet. The level of immigrants in Japan is increasing so that communicative English is needed, even now, the policy is to want English to become a compulsory curriculum in elementary schools.

The Writing System

Loandwords

Dialects

Honorifics

Language and Gender

Minority languages and bilingualism

The level of immigration in Japan is increasing from time to time so that many elementary school children whose first language is not Japanese. Japanese students who take education abroad and return to Japan, how they choose to use the language leads to the construction of a new identity. This polemic can create social barriers in Japan between those who are fluent in English and them whos not.

Language planning and language policy

Research on language planning and language policy is still being discussed and researched. Japanese language research on language policy focuses on the nature of language policies developed and implemented in Japan, as well as research experts documenting and analyzing that ideology and politics.

 

 

The above article references the book The Routledge Handbook of  Sociolinguistics Around the World