electronic journal of contemporary japanese studies (ejcjs)
Conference and Seminar Papers in 2002

KenkyuProceedings of a Postgraduate Research Seminar in Japanese Studiesth

Oxford Brookes University Research Centre, Oxford Brookes University, UK, Saturday 28 July, 2001
Post-Graduate Network in Japanese Studies (PGN)

The role of teachers as ‘InterCulture Practitioners’ in teaching
Japanese culture
Hitomi Nakata
MA candidate
Department of Linguistics and English Language, University of Durham
Hitomi.Nakata@durham.ac.uk

1. Introduction
The aim of this paper is to examine how language teachers can incorporate culture study into
their language teaching in the classroom. It has been argued that second language (L2)learning should be linked with cultural awareness of the target language, no matter what thelearners’ goals are. L2 learners might want to acquire language skills only - such as speaking,listening, reading and writing, for communication in study, business or for their social needs but since ‘each language has its own models of expression’ (Byram 1997:52), understanding
the culture through key words and phrases that are associated with it is a necessarycomponent to language learning.
The problem, however, relates to methods of introducing and explaining cultural dimensions
in the classroom curriculum. In classroom conditions which are limited in terms of time andspace, there is a need for designing an appropriate syllabus and developing useful materials.
A further question arises from a more basic aspect of teaching cultures. Cultural contours are
not always explicit, and so people are not always aware of their national identity andconsequent cultural characteristics. What can language teachers do to engender a sense ofcultural identity and to raise awareness of cultural attributes?
Learners have (often unconsciously) acquired their own identities through their nationalities.
Once they encounter and have a negative reaction to other cultures, how can teachers
accommodate or even compromise learners’ own cultural perceptions with regard to theconcepts of the other culture? It is not an easy task to understand an unfamiliar culture andsometimes even alter one’s way of seeing the world, and so it is important for the language
teacher as mediator and experiencer to be aware of his or her roles; they are supposed not tobe judgmental or biased towards any particular culture, and should always keep a neutral
stance.

11

To carry out this aim of investigating the relationship between language and culture andfinding answers to these pedagogical questions, I will first mention briefly the transitional
notion of culture from the pre-modern period to its current interpretation in the post-modern
computer age. Secondly, in order to elucidate the question of culture-clash as it is related tothe job of the language teachers, my discussion will use two key terms: ‘ICP’ (‘InterCulture
Practitioner’) and ‘rich points’, as coined by Agar in 1994 and 1991 respectively. Thirdly, theoverall aspects of the significance of culture education are explored in relation to learners’
general perceptions toward cultures. Finally, an example of teaching Japanese culturalexpressions will be demonstrated using a set of conversational phrases that can not be directlytranslated in English.

2. Modern interpretation of culture and interculture
As globalisation has progressed and high mobility has been encouraged at the beginning of
the 21st century, plenty of information and materials (both tangible and intangible) have been
exchanged between societies and which affect our society. Even if one never steps out of
one’s home town or home country, one can still enjoy ample imported goods and information.
Does this necessarily mean, however, that one is interculturally competent, or do cultures nolonger bear any distinctive attributes?
There is enormous diversity in interpretation of the exact definition of the word culture.
According to the anthropological and sociolinguistical points of view, it has been determinedin two ways. First, Culture with a capital C. The culture of artefacts and human tradition: thefine arts, music, drama, literature, and so on. Secondly, there is culture with a small c:referring to a series of customs, traditions and ‘historically transmitted patterns of meaning’(Wierzbicka 1997: 21) in which one can define one’s identity according to the social norms ofthe group. In a community, one is expected to behave and act as a member of the group inaccordance with others.
As for the first definition, it seems that all human beings can appreciate (or at least have thecapacity to value and savour) the whole range of arts, irrespective of period and place oforigin. For example, Japanese traditional arts are not only supported by domestic devotees
but also evaluated by many international fans. In other words, as the data shows in Nakata(1997), being Japanese is not in itself requisite for the appreciation of Japanese arts. There is
no strict relation between one’s nationality and cultural preferences. So it is quite possible tohave a community of people who appreciate a specific art whose members are drawn from allover the world.
It is argued that a similar phenomenon can be seen in the domain of culture with a small c, as
it has been becoming easier to go beyond national borders as words such as ‘borderless’,‘international’ or ‘multinational’ have become increasingly familiar. Especially since the mid
1990s, as the Internet has emerged and become indispensable to many people, access to andacceptance of other cultures have also become more feasible. The Internet was originallydeveloped as a strategic network of the American military (Hatasa 2000). This governmentoriginated strategy has become widespread as a means of communication at the individuallevel over the last ten years.
The emergence of the Internet (and other new technologies) in the 21st century raises thequestion as to whether it is still necessary for people to learn about each other’s cultures in
our increasingly borderless world. I would answer ‘no’ to this question since the phenomenonof globalisation through computer technology is a highly problematic one. It is easy forcultural friction to occur in our seemingly borderless world when people retain the illusion
12

that they have had prejudice-free interactions with people in different parts of the world
whom they have not actually seen in person; this is not the real world but a virtual one.
Information transmitted by computer is modified, filtered and culturally neutralized in order
to be accepted by as many people as possible. Moreover, cultural information specific topeople as individuals, such as social norms, ethical beliefs, behaviour patterns andcommunicative codes can not be easily read or conceived from a computer screen. In short,intangible information and interaction by way of computer are different than from actual andtangible intercultural communication.
What about e-mail? The emergence of e-mail has surpassed other tools of correspondence forthe last decade or so. Its style of communication often demands an immediate response
whereby the recipient has to be spontaneous without having time to reflect on the appropriate
international protocol. So recipients in this situation will tend to rely on their particular
strategies for sending a message, in other words those derived from their own culture. As email is not expected to be very formal, there is usually no problem so long as the context istransferred as well. If one knows the difference between an ‘acceptable and internationallyneutral style of writing messages’ and ‘one-culture specific phrases or expressions’, personalcommunications and business negotiations will be conducted all the more smoothly withoutcausing any unnecessary misunderstanding.
It should be emphasised that intercultural education, especially in relation to language
teaching, is now needed more than ever before by the current generation of the computer age;
this is cultural education in the true sense of the word.

3. Culture and language in L2 teaching and learning
Learning L2 in countries where the target language is not spoken is a type of quasiinternational experience in which learners encounter new lifestyles, ways of thinking,behaviour, and types of interaction represented by the language. So language teachers are
responsible for explaining cultural behaviour as well as language skills: the reason why
people of the target language use this or that phrase at a certain time and how. The links
between language, communication and interaction should be taken into account to adjust andlead learners into this new world.
In teaching Japanese in a Western society such as the United Kingdom, it should be pointed
out that there are some specific expressions in Japanese which indicate social virtues, forexample ‘groupism’ and ‘anti-individualism’. Wierzbicka (1997) chose wa as one of the
keywords for understanding Japanese culture. Wa is usually translated by words such as‘harmony’, ‘peace’ and ‘unity’, but none of these translations covers the full sense of theconnotation, in the sense that they lack the implication of harmony within the group. The
most approximate concept may be ‘consensus’, which connotes the emphasis on mutual
understanding or setting goals for a group rather than on aiming for individual success.
This strong group orientation leads to a tendency to avoid making distinctions - in both in agood and bad sense - in Japanese society. As the Japanese saying goes, ‘the nail that stands up
will be pounded down’. Wierzbicka introduces some interesting examples of thisconfrontation-avoiding society, for example having relatively little litigation, focusing on waeven in a baseball team in which players are otherwise expected to compete. In Japanesesociety, it is quite often observed that the individual identity is realised in relation to othermembers of the group or community, rather than emphasising one’s own opinion orindividual power. In this way, this small but very specific word wa is sometimes used torepresent the nature of the Japanese society.
13

It is sometimes anticipated that a student might have negative feelings or react adversely
toward this kind of cultural behaviour, even if (s)he understands the meaning and can accept it
intellectually as a concept. This affective problem may occur because the idea of groupism
may sound awkward due to the learner’s familiarity with individualism as well as other
differences of perception between East and West, such as a communication strategy of using
high/low context. To accommodate learners’ confusion in understanding the unfamiliar
culture and to be able to explain reasons behind the social phenomena, teachers of thelanguage are expected to have an experience of two languages (learners’ L1 and L2) together
with their cultures, and to understand the cognitive/affective problems. It is important to
explain the gap between learners’ L1-culture (e.g. English) and L2-culture (e.g. Japanese) in arational way, not showing the teachers’ preference for a biased personal point of view.
In this sense, the new profession of ICP, InterCultural Practitioner, as invented by Agar
(1994), can be applied to the role of language teachers. The idea was originally used withreference to mediators employed by an American and Mexican joint-venture program to solve
cultural problems in the two participating countries. The role of ICP is ‘to find the locations in
discourse where the differences occur and make the frame that explain the differences
explicit’ (ibid.: 227). That is, the ICP is in charge of trouble shooting whenever culturalproblems or misunderstandings occur between different parties and so to facilitate a mutual
understanding. The responsibilities may involve the role of reconciling A to B, pacifying
emotionally agitated people, or even counselling. According to Agar, ICP may not be able tosolve the fundamental problem, but at least their rational explanations can be helpful.
This concept immediately leads to the image of L2 teachers whose work includes explanationof new and unfamiliar cultures to learners. Furthermore, this association of language teacher
as ICP can be developed into Agar’s other concept, of ‘rich points’ (1991), and to
Wierzbicka’s analysis of untranslatable concepts and ‘keywords’ (1997). The ideas of ‘rich
points’ and ‘keywords’ refer to some vocabulary of a language, which encapsulate
untranslatable specific notions. In Agar’s article (ibid.), he describes the idea by using theanalogy of climbing mountains. Among other hard points of valleys and trails, the hardest
point of the Whorfian cliffs (from the concept of the so called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis 1 )requires learners to experience a range of associations and situations to understand themeaning of words and phrases. Rich points are therefore conceived, as Agar describes, ‘…
with the connotations of tasty, thick, and wealthy all intended’ (ibid.:176). Because theconnotation is so dense (in another word, rich) it allows even native speakers disagreement
over what they mean. Needless to say, L2 learners find it very problematic and difficult when
they want to analyses the real meaning.

4. What is the role of L2 teachers as ICP?
To the extent that translation is an activity based on human language, it should always be
possible to decode and interpret one’s own language in terms of another. In this sense, tomake learners more aware of certain words and phrases in L2, it is not ‘anathema’ (Byram
1997: 51) to use learners’ L1 to clarify the cultural meanings underlying the surface. The
most important thing, especially for beginners, is to avoid prejudicial or negative remarks
towards the target culture. The teacher’s attitude should be neutral, flexible and sensitive
toward all and any cultures that come into the discussion. This is because these factors

1‘… the structure of our language in large measure determines the way we perceive the world’ (Trask 1999:
170).

14

(neutralism, flexibility and sensitivety) toward the target culture reflect on learners’ attitudes
even when the culture is the teacher’s own.
The fact that L2 learners determine to learn the language implies that they at least have hadsome positive image of the target language and culture. They will most probably (and maybe
unconsciously) build up their (positive) attitudes while learning the language in their effort tounderstand this foreign and unfamiliar, yet exciting new culture. Thus, language teachers havea responsibility to reinforce learners’ initial motivation to learn the language and culture,develop cultural awareness and clarify questions over the differences between the new culture
and their own.
The role of teachers, therefore, is first to analyse a culture, its concepts and keywords, andthen to introduce and explain them to learners by way of paraphrase or presenting theaffective behaviour within a situation-oriented approach, and finally to step back and letlearners discover and interpret the meanings for themselves. (It is at this point that learners
may show their positive or negative feelings.) Teachers are now in a position to observe theextent of learners’ understanding and agreement, and so may lead learners into an analyticalcomparison of the two cultures.

5. A pedagogical approach to Japanese cultural phrases
Most Japanese cultural keywords have a complicated historical background: for example
amae, a feeling of dependency or a desire to be passively loved (Matsumoto 1988: 407);
omoiyari, empathy or conformity; bun, portion, share, one’s position in a group (ibid.). Thesewords reflect a social concept of human relationship in which people are concerned with thedifference between insiders and outsiders, and they play an important role in fostering thecommitment and hierarchy of members of a group or community. Although these keywords
are too abstract to be discussed in detail at the beginning of a course, it is possible tointroduce the concept of ‘group orientation’, which will also make students’ understanding of
culturally-based dialogues and other kinds of interaction easier.
One of the ways in which the group orientation of Japanese society is in the use of personalpronouns and other ways of referring to the self. In many L2 teaching situations, the word ‘I’is one of the first items of vocabulary to be introduced. Japanese is not exceptional in thisregard, although the subject (agent) is often omitted. However, this relatively simple ‘I’ cansometimes be problematic due to the variety of words for ‘I’ in Japanese that depend oncontext. Table 1 shows an example of how a 40 year old male teacher who has a family uses
different words for referring to himself depending on who he is talking to.
TABLE 1. HOW TO ADDRESS SELF: A CASE OF A 40 YEAR OLD MALE TEACHER WITH A FAMILYEnglishI

Addressed asoreotoosanojisanwatasisenseiboku
watakusi

Japanese
Meaning
I (casual/bossy)
fatheruncle
I (neutral)teacher
I (casual)I (formal)

15

To whomwife/parents/friends
own children
other children
anybody unfamiliar
learners
friends/co-worker
principal/bossThe most neutral style of addressing is watashi which can be used by both men and womenand in most situations. Yet as shown above, there are almost six other possibilities for a male(teacher) to address himself to others according to interlocutor. There are two basic criteria to
distinguish between these six variations. The first is the level of formality. He will use ore or
boku to someone with whom he is on close or intimate terms (e.g. his wife, parents or friends)
while watakushi is used in certain formal settings or to someone of higher status. Secondly,
what is interesting about otoosan, ojisan and sensei is that he calls himself the way hisinterlocutor calls him. In other words, he addresses himself as ojisan to his relatives’ children
or to any other children based on the idea that they would call him ojisan. Similarly, to his
pupils, he calls himself sensei, meaning ‘teacher’, and his pupils would use sensei when they
address him as their teacher.
FIGURE 1. HUMAN RELATIONS IN THE JAPANESE AND WESTERN MODELS
Anglo-American

Japanese (Asian)

self
human

human

man
ego
personthe contextual
individualcollectivism

individualism

This second style of addressing reflects both the group and situation orientation of Japanesesociety. That is, one’s behaviour (including these varieties of self-address) is structured inrelation to other members of the community or group to which one belongs, and truth is equal
to the appropriateness of one’s behaviour in the group or situation. This can be contrasted
with the values of Western standard-oriented society in which one is expected to behave as anindividual who follows a fixed norm or rule. The difference can be illustrated as in Figure 1(above).

6. Methodology
How should teachers introduce these complicated styles of interaction to their pupils? It is not
linguistically difficult to practice the sentences, but it may take a little time to make learners
understand the sociocultural system and the significance of keywords. Possible procedures
might include all or some of the following three steps:
6.1. Presentation of visual information
To show them some (possibly authentic) visual material such as (1) a commercial video, (2)TV program, (3) interview, or (4) home-made video in a fictional setting, (5) skit by native
speakers, and so on. Given such non-verbal information as facial expressions, gestures, thetiming of utterances and/or phonological information (tone of voice), etc., it is expected thatlearners will understand how to identify each other using these cultural expressions.
6.2. Consolidation through quasi-visual aids (charts, etc.)
After viewing an actual interaction and before going to the practice, learners should be given
some clear visual images which give cultural information, as shown in Figure 2 (p. 18). This16

image of seeing ‘oneself’ in relation to others can be illustrated as below, with the same
example as in Table 1: a male teacher’s relationship with other members of his community.
6.3 Learners’ practice/role-play/skit
Having confirmed the meaning of the interaction and the relation between A and B in a given
skit, learners can go on to the stage of discussing the context and creating a situation where
they can use the expressions (as in Table 2, p. 18). The teacher might need to provide extra
information of what kind of settings are possible. (In this case, his birthday party at arestaurant where everyone of his community are gathered, etc.) Having acquired a newconcept of the culture (as appropriated through their L1), it is expected that they may evencreate some artificial situations.
6.4. Feedback in class discussion
This final stage is optional depending on time. As a whole group, they discuss whether thepresentations have adequately reflected their understanding of the concepts involved.
FIGURE 2. EXAMPLE OF VARIATION IN JAPANESE FORMS OF SELF-ADDRESS
Principal

Wife/parents

Co-worker

Wataskushi

Boku

Ore

FriendsOre

40-yrs-old male/teacher
SenseiOjisanOtoosanStudents

Other children
Own children

TABLE 2. EXAMPLE OF CONVERSATION BY A 40 YEAR OLD MALE TEACHER (TAKASHI)
At a restaurant

Gloss

Wife

: Nani ni simasu ka?

What do you want?

Takasi: Ore wa karee ni suruyo.

I’ll have curry.

His child: Nani nomu no?

What will you drink?

Takasi: Otoosan wa biiru ni suruyo.

I’ll have beer.

His boss: Tabako doodesu ka?

What about a cigarette?

Takasi: A, watakusi wa suwanain desu … Oh, I don’t smoke.

17

By going through all processes described in 6.1 to 6.3 (6.4), learners will develop competence
not only at understanding the culturally-specific expressions and types of interaction but also
at performing properly in the right time and in the right place in the country (Japan) where
their target language is spoken. Having once acquired this basic pattern of communication at
an early stage, learners can apply the concept to more advanced levels. Thus, the goal andattainment of learning language can be not only linguistic competence but cultural as well.

7. Further implications and conclusion
In their effort to understand different approaches to interaction, learners may come to perceive
their approach to equivalent situations in their daily life, which has not been thought about
critically but taken for granted, and start describing themselves in the way in which otherpeople identify them. Learning L2 culture can lead them to reassess their own culture andcontribute to learning their culture in more objective and insightful ways. Furthermore, by
analysing and comparing more than two cultures, they will be able to develop a wider
viewpoint toward the world. This should not be forced, but a teacher of any L2 as an ICP,
should be aware of this very rewarding spin-off from teaching the target language and culture.
If the teacher is successful in enhancing the learners’ awareness of their own cultural identity
to that extent, to the level of not only understanding their own and other cultures but also
recognising their identity and nationality and accommodating their findings within their
existing cultures, the introduction to the L2 world (language and culture) can be said to havemade a good start.

References
Agar, Michael (1991) ‘The biculture in bilingual’, Language in Society 20, pp. 167-81.
----- (1994) ‘The intercultural frame’, International Journal of Intercultural Relations 18: 2,
pp. 221-37.
Byram, Michael (1997) ‘‘Cultural awareness’ as vocabulary learning’, Language Learning
Journal 16 (September), pp. 51-7.
Hatasa Kazumi (2000) ‘The use of Internet No’, trans. H. Nakata, http://www.sla.purdue.
fll/JapanProj/NihongoRensai/rensai5.html.
Matsumoto Yoshiko (1988) ‘Reexamination of the universality of face: PolitenessPhenomena in Japanese’, Journal of Pragmatics 12, pp. 403-426.
Nakata Hitomi (1997) ‘Viewing Japanese Culture from Two Different Perspectives’,
presentation at Triennial Conference of European Association of Japanese Studies.
Trask, R.L. (1999) Key Concepts in Language and Linguistics, London: Routledge.
Wierzbicka, Anna (1997) Understanding Cultures through Their Key Words - English,
Russian, Polish, German and Japanese. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

18