6. Norms of Interaction in a Japanese Homestay Setting: Toward a Two-Way Flow of Linguistic and Cultural Resources

Peer Socialization into Gendered L2 Mandarin Practices in a Study Abroad Context: Talk in the Dorm

“…While gender and emotional engagement were salient when he spoke to his girlfriend, other factors (e.g., foreignness) might have become more relevant in his interactions with Mac. In this sense, Mac's experience seems somewhat parallel to the issue of gaijin ('foreigners,' literally 'outsiders') in studies conducted in Japan (Iino 2006;Iwasaki 2011;Siegal 1995), as in both cases the American students were exempted from local discursive norms. Yet, this interpretation is admittedly speculative.…”

“…On the other hand, study abroad research also concerns how L2 learners become able to use pragmatic and interactive features appropriately. Issues that have been investigated include politeness with host parents and siblings in homestays (Cook 2006;Iino 2006), making requests in service encounters (Shively 2011), as well as alignment seeking (Ishita 2009) typically not focused on interactions between peers and even more rarely on the peer socialization of gendered L2 practices. The oversight becomes particularly serious when we investigate the experience of American students in China, because they are in fact more likely to live in a dorm (Du 2013: 133).…”

Acculturation and acquisition of pragmatic routines in the study abroad context

“…In particular, Irish learners avoided the directness in some German expressions in an attempt to maintain their Irish politeness. In a similar vein, Iino (2006) and Siegal (1995) addressed the direct relationship between identity -specifically a desire to maintain identity -and pragmatic competence. Siegal's study is reviewed in depth for its relevance to the present study, which examines learners' desire to maintain identity as an element of acculturation.…”

Discriminatory attitudes toward intercultural communication in domestic and overseas contexts

“…The studies in the areas of educational counseling (Murphy-Shigematsu 2002), Japanese as a foreign language (JFL) education (Cook 2006;Iino 2006;Tanaka 1997), educational sociology (Okano and Tsuchiya 1999) and cross-cultural psychology suggest that most Japanese students do not picture themselves to be idealized L2-speaking selves when speaking English with other Asian students in Japan. To what extent is the intergroup relations theory capable of accounting for Japanese students' double-standard orientation to outgroup members from overseas: an excessively favorable one for European-looking residents opposed to disregard for Asian-, African-looking strangers?…”