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Attitudes toward language study and cross-cultural attitudes in Japan
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International Journal of Intercultural Relations 32 (2008) 81–90 www.elsevier.com/locate/ijintrel
Attitudes toward language study and cross-cultural attitudes in Japan Toshiyuki Sakuragi * Department of Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, Gustavus Adolphus College, 800 West College Avenue, St. Peter, MN 56082-1498, USA
Abstract Despite its obvious importance, the issue of language study remains to be a relatively unexplored research area in the field of intercultural communication. A previous study reported a generally positive relationship between attitudes toward language study and cross-cultural attitudes among college students in the United States. However, one should be cautious about generalizing such a research finding to populations outside of the United States, for the Americans may not be typical among industrialized nations with regard to their attitudes toward foreign languages and cultures. The present study, therefore, attempted to replicate the previously reported relationship between attitudes toward language study (a general attitude, instrumental/integrative attitudes, attitudes toward specific languages) and cross-cultural attitudes (worldmindedness and social distance), using a comparable sample of college students in Japan. Contrary to the previous study, the results of the survey of 116 Japanese students did not indicate a positive relationship between a general attitude toward language study and a cross-cultural attitude. The results of the present study, however, were consistent with those of the previous study with regard to (1) the relationships between different motives for language study and social distance, and (2) the relationships between attitudes toward specific languages and social distance. # 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Language education; Cross-cultural attitude; Japan; Chinese; English; Korean; Spanish
1. Introduction While few people question the importance of the issue of language learning in intercultural communication, it has been an underrepresented research area in our field. This situation may be largely due to a relatively small amount of interaction between language educators and intercultural communication scholars particularly in the United States. Despite some notable efforts to integrate the bodies of scholarship in language education and intercultural communication in recent years (e.g., Paige, Jorstad, Siaya, Klein, & Colby, 2003; Sercu, 2004b), there remains a relative dearth of empirical studies on language education with an explicit focus on intercultural relations. In a recent example of such studies, Sakuragi (2006) examined the relationship between several types of attitudes toward language study and cross-cultural attitudes among American college students. The results of the study supported the hypothesized positive relationship between a general attitude toward language study and cross-cultural attitudes. More importantly, the results also indicated that attitudes toward specific languages perceived to be associated with ethnic minorities in the United States are more strongly related to cross-cultural attitudes.
* Tel.: +1 507 933 7384; fax: +1 507 933 7041. E-mail address: [email protected]. 0147-1767/$ – see front matter # 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ijintrel.2007.10.005
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Although the relationship between attitudes toward language study and cross-cultural attitudes found in Sakuragi’s (2006) study seems to have the potential for culture-general applicability, one must also consider the possibility that the United States may not be typical among industrialized nations with regard to an attitude toward language study.1 Over the years, presidential commissions, politicians, and business leaders in the United States have tried to draw public attention to the nation’s deficiency in language skills while language teachers have expressed their concern about ‘‘a national culture uninterested in other cultures and peoples’’ (Kecht, 1999, p. 17). A comprehensive report published recently by American Council on Education on the state of language education in the United States documents various areas for improvement (Siaya & Hayward, 2003). These facts surrounding language education in the United States should caution us against generalizing research findings based on American samples. The primary purpose of the present study, therefore, was to examine the applicability of the previously reported relationship between attitudes toward language study and cross-cultural attitudes to a cultural setting that is very different from the United States. Japan was chosen as the cultural setting for this study due to some interesting contrasts it presents to the United States as well as the present author’s familiarity with the culture. 2. Japanese attitude toward foreign languages and cultures Language education appears to occupy a far more important position in Japan than in the United States. Virtually all students in Japan start their foreign language (in most cases, English) study by the time they enter junior high school, and many parents try to give their children a competitive edge by starting their foreign language study earlier at juku (private ‘‘cram schools’’). Since a foreign language is one of the required subjects of entrance examinations for most high schools and universities, students must spend a considerable amount of time studying a foreign language in order to gain entrance into desirable schools. The vast majority of university students are required to study English, and in many cases, a second foreign language. After college, fluency in a foreign language (especially English) is considered as an important skill for advancing one’s career as well as commanding considerable social prestige. Private language schools, often called eikaiwa gakkou (English conversation schools), thus constitute a large industry in Japan, drawing students from all social and age groups (McVeigh, 2002). Consistent with the Japanese emphasis on language education is their interest in ‘‘foreign’’ cultures in general. Visitors to Japan cannot fail to notice the ubiquity of foreign artifacts—movies, music, food, etc. Gaikokumura (foreign country theme parks) are scattered throughout the country, catering to people who want to experience foreign cultures without the hassle and cost of traveling overseas (Kitamura, 2006; Seargeant, 2005a). To satisfy Japanese people’s intellectual interest in foreign cultures, bookstores are filled with books translated from foreign languages (Schiffrin, 2003), and larger stores have a ‘‘comparative cultures’’ section, where books discussing cultural differences between the Japanese and other peoples constitute a popular genre, nihonjinron.2 As an academic discipline, international/intercultural communication has gained such popularity in Japan that many universities offer a major program focusing on it. Japan, however, has far less diversity of its population than does the United States, and such a difference is also likely to influence the development of cross-cultural attitudes. The existence of various minority groups (Sugimoto, 2002) notwithstanding, Japan has one of the most ethnically homogeneous populations among the industrialized nations. Therefore, people in Japan generally have many fewer opportunities to come in contact with people with different ethnic backgrounds than do people in the United States. It should be, however, noted that the number of legal and illegal foreign workers in Japan is on a sharp rise due to the labor shortage caused by the nation’s low birth rate and aging population. The impact of this issue on cross-cultural attitudes among the Japanese, therefore, will continue to gain importance in the future. 1
The sample in Sakuragi’s (2006) study in the United States consisted of students whose first language was English, and most of the participants were European Americans from Upper Midwestern states. The sample, therefore, cannot be considered to be representative of the entire U.S. college student population. The homogeneity of the sample, however, provided the benefit of simplifying the research design and the interpretation of the results. In this research design, for example, a ‘‘target language’’ was considered to be a language one may wish to study as a foreign or the second language. Such a definition of a target language would not be appropriate with a sample of students with more diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. 2 Critics (e.g., Dale, 1986; Mouer & Sugimoto, 1986; Sugimoto, 2002) of nihonjinron, however, have expressed concerns about its tendency to overemphasize the uniqueness of the Japanese culture to the extent of almost being ethnocentric.
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3. Variables in the present study Following the research design of Sakuragi’s (2006) study, four types of attitudes toward language study were examined in this study: a general attitude, an integrative attitude, an instrumental attitude, and attitudes toward specific languages. A general attitude toward language study is one of the attitudinal factors identified by Corbin and Chiachiere (1995), and it relates to the degree of importance a person places on language study in his/her overall education. Instrumental and integrative attitudes relate to different motivations for language study (Gardner, 1979, 1983, 1985; Gardner & Lambert, 1972). An instrumental attitude reflects a desire for enhancing one’s career and gaining social recognition through language study, whereas an integrative attitude reflects a desire for forming interpersonal relationship with speakers of the target language. Attitudes toward specific languages relate to a person’s desire to study, interest in, and fascination with a particular language (Corbin and Chiachiere, 1995). For the presents study, Chinese, English, Korean, and Spanish were selected as the target languages. The selection of these target languages was made to achieve a reasonable symmetry with the target languages selected in Sakuragi’s (2006) study, in which French represented a language that has traditionally occupied a prestigious position in language education with relatively little conceptual association with ethnic minorities and/or recent immigrants, whereas the other target languages—Chinese, Japanese, Spanish—have greater degrees of association with ethnic minorities and recent immigrants in the United States. Among the target languages selected for the present study, English is the foreign language that occupies the most prominent position in Japanese society. English is also the language that is the least likely to be associated with ethnic minorities and immigrants in Japan; English has been overwhelmingly perceived as the language for communicating with ‘‘Westerners’’ (Parmenter & Tomita, 2001), and a dominant signifier of eikaiwa gakkou (English conversation schools) industry’s ubiquitous advertising is ‘‘an Occidental whiteness’’ (Bailey, 2006). In contrast, both Chinese and Korean languages are strongly associated with the ethnic minority status and the immigration issue. Spanish language is associated with both Spain and Latin America, but it is reasonable to expect that, just as in the United States, the latter is becoming more salient in the minds of the Japanese as Spanishspeaking workers from Latin America have become significantly more visible in Japan in recent years (Tsuneyoshi, 2004). As in Sakuragi’s (2006) study, two types of cross-cultural attitudes—worldmindedness and social distance—were examined in the present study. Worldmindedness is a tendency to adopt ‘‘a world view of the problems of humanity, whose primary reference group is [hu]mankind, rather than Americans, English, Chinese, etc.’’ (Sampson & Smith, 1957). The concept of social distance was first proposed by Park (1924) and was further developed by Bogardus (1925, 1933, 1947, 1958, 1967), who defined social distance as ‘‘the degree of sympathetic understanding that exists between two persons or between a person and a group’’ (1933, p. 268). These two types of cross-cultural attitudes can be distinguished by the different levels of abstractness they represent; while worldmindedness addresses international issues in relatively abstract terms (e.g., ‘‘Our country should . . .’’), social distance represents a degree of individual willingness to accept people with various ethnic backgrounds into one’s own personal relationships. Therefore, building upon Gudykunst, Wiseman, and Hammer’s (1977) model of a cross-cultural attitude, Wiseman, Hammer, and Nishida (1989) identified worldmindedness as an affective (emotional) predictor, and social distance as a conative (behavioral) predictor of intercultural competence. Such a distinction for different types of cross-cultural attitudes seems particularly useful for capturing the possible difference between the Japanese and the Americans in their cross-cultural attitudes; whereas the Japanese seem to be more interested in ‘‘other cultures,’’ the Americans generally have much more experience of intercultural relations in their daily life. 4. Hypotheses and research question As stated earlier, the primary purpose of the present study was to test the cross-cultural generalizability of the relationship between attitudes toward language study and cross-cultural attitudes previously reported for an American sample. In Sakuragi’s (2006) study, a general attitude toward language study correlated significantly with both worldmindedness (r = .17, p < .05) and general social distance (the sum of social distance scores for all the target groups in the study) (r = .19, p < .05) among American college students. Although the magnitude of these correlations
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was small, it seems reasonable to expect to find such associations among Japanese college students as well. Therefore, the following hypotheses were advanced: H1. There is a positive correlation between a general attitude toward language study and worldmindedness. H2. There is a negative3 correlation between a general attitude toward language study and social distance. With regard to the different purposes of language study, the only significant correlation found in Sakuragi’s (2006) study was between an integrative attitude and general social distance (r = .19, p < .05). However, considering that both instrumental and integrative attitudes are positive attitudes toward language study, it seems reasonable to expect both motivational types to be positively related with cross-cultural attitudes. A difference likely to be found, then, is in the strength of association; considering an integrative attitude’s focus on forming an interpersonal relationship with speakers of the target language, an integrative attitude is likely to be more strongly associated with a cross-cultural attitude than is an instrumental attitude. Therefore, the following hypotheses were advanced: H3. The correlation between an integrative attitude and worldmindedness is stronger than the correlation between an instrumental attitude and worldmindedness. H4. The (negative) correlation between an integrative attitude and social distance is stronger than the correlation between an instrumental attitude and social distance. The most important finding of Sakuragi’s (2006) study was the divergent relationships that attitudes toward specific languages had with cross-cultural attitudes. Specifically, attitudes toward Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish were found to correlate significantly with both worldmindedness and social distance, whereas an attitude toward French did not correlate significantly with worldmindedness or social distance. As a possible explanation for these results, Sakuragi (2006) pointed out the different ways these target languages are perceived in the United States; Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish are associated with recent immigrants and/or an ethnic minority status in various degrees, but French does not seem to have such an association in the general perception. As discussed earlier, to examine such differential effects of target languages in Japan, English was selected as a language comparable to French in the United States while Chinese, Korean, and Spanish were selected as languages comparable to Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish in the United States. Accordingly, the following hypotheses were advanced: H5. The correlations between attitudes toward Chinese/Korean/Spanish and worldmindedness are stronger than the correlation between an attitude toward English and worldmindedness. H6. The (negative) correlations between attitudes toward Chinese/Korean/Spanish and social distance are stronger than the correlation between an attitude toward English and social distance. In addition to testing these hypotheses regarding the relationship between attitudes toward language study and cross-cultural attitudes, a cross-cultural comparison was planned between the Japanese sample collected for the present study and the American sample collected for Sakuragi’s (2006) study on attitudes toward language study and cross-cultural attitudes. As discussed earlier, the Japanese society seems to place much more emphasis on language education than does the American society. Such a stronger societal emphasis, however, may not necessarily translate into a positive individual attitude toward language study, for many Japanese may feel that they are forced to study foreign languages due to practical concerns (for their academic success, career advancement, etc.). Contrasting environments for the development of cross-cultural attitudes are another societal feature that distinguishes between the two countries: a greater emphasis on foreign cultures and international affairs in education in Japan on one hand, and a greater ethnic diversity in the United States on the other hand. It is, however, not clear whether such differences between the two societies would actually correspond to group differences in cross-cultural attitudes. Would greater knowledge of and interest in foreign cultures and international affairs correspond to a higher level of worldmindedness? Would greater diversity of a nation translate into smaller social distance? Sampson and Smith (1957), who developed the concept of worldmindedness, did propose a distinction between worldmindedness
3
In the actual statistical test of this hypothesis, however, the predicted direction of the correlation coefficient is positive due to the scoring method of the Social Distance Scale; a higher score on the scale indicates greater acceptance of the target group of people, i.e., smaller social distance.
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and internationalmindedness, arguing that a person can be international-minded (i.e., interested in and knowledgeable about international affairs) without being world-minded. It is also possible that greater proximity to people with different ethnic backgrounds may not necessarily reduce social distance. To explore such possible differences between the two nations, the following research question was advanced: RQ: What are the differences between the Japanese and the Americans in attitudes toward language study and cross-cultural attitudes? 5. Method 5.1. Participants Students at two universities in Japan participated in the study. The selection of these institutions was made so that the key profiles of these institutions (a larger public university and a smaller private university in suburban settings) resemble those of the two institutions used for Sakuragi’s (2006) study in the United States. After eliminating incomplete responses and individuals whose native language was not Japanese, 116 participants (62 male, 54 female, mean age = 19.43) were available for the analysis. 5.2. Instrument Japanese language versions of the attitude measures used by Sakuragi (2006) were prepared for the present study. All the measures except Social Distance Scale used a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). A general attitude toward language study and attitudes toward specific languages were measured by the items selected by Sakuragi (2006) from the scale developed by Corbin and Chiachiere (1995). A general attitude (i.e., the degree of the importance placed on language study in one’s overall education) was measured by the following four items: (1) I couldn’t really claim to be educated without knowing a foreign language; (2) Learning a foreign language is probably a significant part of my education; (3) Learning a foreign language certainly yields a better understanding of English (‘‘English’’ was replaced by ‘‘Japanese’’ for this study); (4) The first step in achieving cross-cultural understanding is learning a language. A set of four items was used to measure an attitude toward each of the four target languages: Chinese, English, Korean, and Spanish. The four items for measuring an attitude toward Korean language, for example, were: (1) I am fascinated by the Korean language; (2) I have a strong desire to learn Korean; (3) I would like to know as much Korean as possible so that I can really get to know Korean-speaking people; (4) I think Korean sounds really neat. Instrumental and integrative attitudes toward language study were measured by the 4-item Instrumental Orientation and the 4-item Integrative Orientation subsets of Attitude/Motivation Test Battery (Gardner, 1985). Each item was modified to be language-general by replacing the original ‘‘French’’ with ‘‘a foreign language.’’ Examples of the items include ‘‘Studying a foreign language is important to me because I will need it for my career’’ (an instrumental attitude) and ‘‘Studying a foreign language can be important for me because I will be able to participate more freely in the activities of other cultural groups’’ (an integrative attitude). Worldmindedness was measured by the following five items from the Worldmindedness Scale (Sampson & Smith, 1957): (1) Our country is probably no better than many others; (2) It would be better to be a citizen of the world rather than of any particular nation; (3) Our responsibility to people of other countries ought to be as great as our responsibility to people of our own area; (4) Any healthy individual, regardless of race or religion, should be allowed to live wherever he/she wants to live in the world; (5) Our country should permit the immigration of foreign peoples even if it lowers our standard of living. The selection of these items was based on the study by Wiseman et al. (1989), which chose six items from the 32-item Worldmindedness Scale because ‘‘the items were more culture-general in orientation and tended to focus on issues of current concern’’ (Wiseman et al., 1989, p. 356). These six items were also used by Hammer, Bennett, and Wiseman (2003) for assessing the construct validity of Intercultural Development Inventory. Out of these six items, Sakuragi (2006) selected the five items listed above due to their focus on the concept of one’s own country/nationality. Social distance was measured by the Social Distance Scale (Bogardus, 1967). The Social Distance Scale was used in the United States in several large-scale surveys conducted by Bogardus (1925, 1933, 1947, 1958, 1967) to examine
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Table 1 Cronbach’s alphas, means, and standard deviations of scales Scale
a
M
S.D.
Worldmindedness General social distancea General attitude toward FL study Integrative attitude Instrumental attitude Attitude toward Chinese Attitude toward English Attitude toward Korean Attitude toward Spanish
.42 .93 .58 .85 .72 .85 .83 .86 .84
16.06 41.28 13.85 17.03 13.94 12.82 15.81 11.52 12.38
2.94 10.40 2.86 2.55 3.01 3.60 3.33 3.52 3.34
a Note: The sum of social distance scores for all the target groups. The value indicates the degree of willingness to accept various groups; a larger value indicates a smaller social distance.
attitudes toward 30 racial/ethnic groups as well as in the follow-up studies conducted by other researchers (Kleg & Yamamoto, 1998; Owen, Eisner, & McFaul, 1981). The scale asks the subjects to indicate the degree of their willingness to accept a member of a certain ethnic group into their own personal relationships. The target ethnic groups used for Sakuragi’s (2006) study in the United States were: Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish. For the present study, ‘‘Japanese’’ was replaced by ‘‘Americans.’’ Participants were asked to indicate their highest level of acceptance for each target group by choosing a number from 1 through 7: (7) as family members by marriage; (6) as close friends; (5) as neighbors; (4) as members of my occupation in my country; (3) as citizens of my country; (2) only as visitors to my country; (1) I would rather not accept members of this group in my country. A higher score (i.e., a higher level of acceptance) represents a smaller social distance. The translation of these scales involved three steps: the scales were translated into Japanese first by the present writer; the translation was then checked by two English–Japanese bilinguals separately; and revisions were made through discussions among the three. Cronbach’s alphas of the measures used in the present study were generally comparable to those reported by Sakuragi (2006), indicating an acceptable level of reliability, with two exceptions of Worldmindedness (.42) and a general attitude toward language study (.58). Cronbach’s alphas, means, and standard deviations of the measures are summarized in Table 1. 5.3. Analyses of data For testing the hypotheses for the study, the computation of Pearson product–moment correlations was planned. An additional step of comparing two correlation coefficients was also planned for testing Hypotheses 3, 4, 5, and 6. For example, to test Hypothesis 3, the first step would be to compute Pearson product–moment correlations (1) between an integrative attitude and worldmindedness, and (2) between an instrumental attitude and worldmindedness. If both correlations were found statistically significant, as the second step, a t-test would be conducted to compare the two correlation coefficients. For examining the research question for the study, t-tests were planned to compare mean scores of the Japanese sample for the present study with those of the American sample reported by Sakuragi (2006) on attitudes toward language study and cross-cultural attitudes. 6. Results To test Hypothesis 1 (there is a positive correlation between a general attitude toward language study and worldmindedness) and Hypothesis 2 (there is a negative correlation between a general attitude toward language study and social distance), Pearson product–moment correlations were computed. A general attitude toward language study was not found to correlate significantly with worldmindedness or general social distance. Therefore, neither H1 nor H2 was supported. (Correlations among the variables in the present study are summarized in Table 2.) As the first step to test Hypothesis 3 (the correlation between an integrative attitude and worldmindedness is stronger than the correlation between an instrumental attitude and worldmindedness) and Hypothesis 4 (the correlation
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Table 2 Intercorrelations between scales Scale
GSD
GFL
WM GSD GFL INT INS CHI ENG KOR
**
.02 .15
.30
INT .04 .31** .58**
INS .18 .00 .48 ** .46 **
CHI .04 .26 ** .21 * .32 ** .14
ENG .02 .05 .35 ** .49 ** .30 ** .27 **
KOR .08 .24 ** .29 ** .33 * .19 * .72 ** .22 **
SPA .11 .27 ** .43 ** .39 ** .25 ** .59 ** .48 ** .65 **
Note: WM, worldmindedness; GSD, general social distance; GFL, general attitude toward foreign language study; INT, integrative attitude; INS, instrumental attitude; CHI, attitude toward Chinese; ENG, attitude toward English; KOR, attitude toward Korean; SPA, attitude toward Spanish. * p < .05. ** p < .01.
between an integrative attitude and social distance is stronger than the correlation between an instrumental attitude and social distance), Pearson product–moment correlations among the relevant variables were computed. Neither an integrative attitude nor an instrumental attitude was found to correlate significantly with worldmindedness. Therefore, H3 was not supported. A significant correlation, however, was found between an integrative attitude and general social distance (r = .31, p < .05) while no significant correlation was found between an instrumental attitude and general social distance. These results support H4. (Since the correlation between an instrumental attitude and general social distance was not statistically significant, the second step of comparing the two correlation coefficients was deemed unnecessary.) Among the four target languages in the measure of attitudes toward specific languages, English received the highest preference rating, followed by Chinese, Spanish, and Korean. The results of ANOVA indicated a significant effect of the target language (F(3, 345) = 66.81, p < .01). Tukey-HSD post hoc tests revealed that the differences between English and Chinese ( p < .01) and between Spanish and Korean ( p < .05) were statistically significant, whereas the difference between Chinese and Spanish was not significant. As the first step of testing Hypothesis 5 (the correlations between attitudes toward Chinese/Korean/Spanish and worldmindedness are stronger than the correlation between an attitude toward English and worldmindedness) and Hypothesis 6 (the correlations between attitudes toward Chinese/Korean/Spanish and social distance are stronger than the correlation between an attitude toward English and social distance), Pearson product–moment correlations between attitudes toward Chinese, English, Korean, and Spanish languages and cross-cultural attitudes were computed. None of the attitudes toward the four target languages was found to correlate significantly with worldmindedness. H5, therefore, was not supported. However, attitudes toward Chinese, Korean, and Spanish languages were found to correlate significantly with general social distance (Chinese-social distance r = .26, p < .01; Korean-social distance r = .24, p < .01; Spanish-social distance r = .27, p < .01), whereas the correlation between an attitude toward English and general social distance was not statistically significant. These results support H6. To examine the research question on the possible differences between the Japanese and the Americans in attitudes toward language study and cross-cultural attitudes, t-tests were conducted to compare the mean scores of the Japanese sample for the present study with those of the Americans sample previously reported (Sakuragi, 2006). No significant difference was found between the two samples on a general attitude toward language study. With regard to the motives for language study, while the two groups did not differ significantly on an instrumental attitude, the Japanese scored significantly higher than the Americans on an integrative attitude (t = 7.73, p < .001). As to cross-cultural attitudes, the Japanese scored significantly higher than the Americans on worldmindedness (t = 3.53, p < .001), whereas the Americans scored significantly higher on general social distance (indicating smaller overall social distance) than the Japanese (t = 5.32, p < .001). 7. Discussion The primary purpose of this study was to examine the cross-cultural generalizability of the previously reported relationships between attitudes toward language study and cross-cultural attitudes. Contrary to the results of a survey
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of American college students reported by Sakuragi (2006), a general attitude toward language study was not found to significantly correlate with worldmindedness or social distance for the Japanese sample. The inadequate internal consistency of the measures of a general attitude toward language study and worldmindedness for the Japanese sample may have contributed to the non-significant correlations.4 Another possible explanation for the absence of significant correlations may be found in the different circumstances in which students are exposed to language study in the two societies. Namely, language study is often elective in the United States, whereas in Japan, as discussed earlier, it is required of virtually every student from junior high school through college. Therefore, many Japanese may feel that the importance of language study in one’s education is not a matter of personal judgment but is imposed by the society. The Japanese sample in this study in fact did not report a more positive attitude toward language study in general than did the American sample in Sakuragi’s (2006) study despite the greater societal emphasis on language education in Japan. The lack of correlation between a general attitude toward language study and cross-cultural attitudes among the Japanese sample, therefore, may reflect such mixed feelings toward language education in Japan. It should also be noted, however, that the magnitude of the correlations between a general attitude toward language study and crosscultural attitudes reported by Sakuragi (2006) for the American sample was small (worldmindedness, r = .17, p < .05; social distance, r = .19, p < .05) and did not differ significantly from that of the corresponding correlations for the Japanese sample (worldmindedness, r = .02, z = 1.53; social distance, r = .15, z = .32). As to the effect of different motives for language study, the results of the present study in Japan were consistent with those of the previous study in the United States; an integrative attitude was found to correlate significantly with social distance, whereas an instrumental attitude was not found to correlate with worldmindedness or social distance. The two types of motivation for language study, however, appear to be more differentiated in Japan than in the United States as indicated by the significantly smaller correlation between an instrumental attitude and an integrative attitude for the Japanese sample (r = .46) than that for the American sample (r = .70) reported by Sakuragi (2006) (z = 2.96, p < .01). The greater differentiation in motivation in Japan is not surprising, given the socially imposed nature of the emphasis on language study; while the practical benefits (e.g., gaining entrance to desirable schools) and the social prestige associated with language skills are generally taken for granted in Japan, an integrative motivation is based more on a conscious and personal decision. With regard to the effect of different target languages, attitudes toward all the target languages except English were found to correlate significantly with social distance. These results mirror the results reported by Sakuragi (2006) for the American sample: attitudes toward all the target languages except French correlated significantly with social distance. As discussed earlier, English in Japan and French in the United States can be distinguished from the other target languages in the two studies (Chinese, Korean, and Spanish in Japan; Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish in the United States) in their apparent lack of perceptual association with ethnic minority groups and/or recent immigrants. The lack of correlation between an attitude toward English and a cross-cultural attitude found in the present study is congruent with the social construction of the ‘‘whiteness’’ of the English language in Japan postulated by various observers (e.g., Bailey, 2006; Kelsky, 2001; McVeigh, 2002; Seargeant, 2005b). As to the pedagogical implications of the results of the present study, the significant correlations found between attitudes toward Chinese, Korean, and Spanish languages and social distance point to the potential benefit of increasing the diversity of languages taught in school. Such a possible benefit seems particularly noteworthy in light of the larger overall social distance reported by the Japanese sample in the present study than that reported by the American sample in Sakuragi’s (2006) study. The link between the diversity of languages taught and a cross-cultural attitude has also been postulated in the context of the institutional cultures of Japanese schools. Shibata and Okado (2001), for example, conducted a survey of two types of schools – (1) those offering only English as a foreign language and (2) those offering other languages in addition to English – and found that the latter group of schools generally placed a higher priority on fostering a global perspective and intercultural competence than did the former. The dominance of English in language education in Japan, however, is expected to intensify in the foreseeable future, aided by various initiatives the Japanese government has been rolling out in recent years. The government’s action plan to ‘‘cultivate Japanese with English abilities’’ (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and
4 Considering the acceptable level of internal consistency reported for the full (32-item) version of the Worldmindedness Scale (e.g., Cronbach’s alphas of .83 and .86 reported by O’Leary (2001) and Vassar (2006), respectively), future studies may benefit from increasing the number of the items for measuring worldmindedness.
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Technology, 2003), for example, aims at teaching English at all elementary schools. While the Japanese government’s action plan speaks of the importance of ‘‘international understanding’’ and ‘‘the perspective of living as a member of the international society,’’ the plan has a single-minded focus on the denotative level of ‘‘communication abilities,’’ specifying such standardized tests as TOEFL and TOEIC as the ultimate measure of progress. Such a practical approach, popularized under a slogan ‘‘English as a tool for international communication,’’ has been gaining considerable public support. Such an ‘‘instrumental’’ approach, however, has drawn criticisms from communication scholars (e.g., Hirai, 2001; Itaba, 2001) for its simplistic view of intercultural communication. It is notable that many of the communication scholars in Japan are also language teachers, and their dual roles have been conducive to promulgating the concepts and theories in intercultural communication in the context of language education.5 If communication scholars and language teachers can continue to strengthen their cooperative relationship, language education will reap greater benefits from the emerging pedagogical models for integrating intercultural training into language teaching (e.g., Bennett, Bennett, and Allen, 2003; Byram, 1997; Byram, Nichols, & Stevens, 2001; Sercu, 2004a). Research, however, must provide a solid foundation for the efforts to develop effective pedagogy for fostering intercultural competence in language classrooms. Recognizing the need to set a research agenda for this largely unexplored domain, Sercu (2004b) proposed settings, teachers, learners, teaching materials, and assessment methods as important variables for understanding the process of developing intercultural competence in language classroom. The present study focused on just one aspect (attitude) of one of these variables (learners). In researching these areas, efforts also must be made to delineate culture/language-general and culture/languagespecific factors. Such efforts have been hampered in the past by the dearth of previous studies that examined comparable samples from different cultures using comparable methodologies (see Paige et al., 2003 for the most comprehensive review of literature in this area). The comparison of the results of the present study and those of the preceding study (Sakuragi, 2006) revealed a possible culture-general principle (i.e., the salience of target languages in relation to a cross-cultural attitude) as well as some culture-specific factors (e.g., group differences in two types of cross-cultural attitudes). These two studies together, however, examined only two culture/native-language groups and several target languages. Only a larger number of cross-cultural/linguistic studies will allow us to evaluate the tenability of such a culture/language-general principle with greater confidence. References Bailey, K. (2006). Marketing the eikaiwa wonderland: Ideology, akogare, and gender alterity in English conversation school. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 24, 105–130. Bennett, J. M., Bennett, M. J., & Allen, W. (2003). Developing intercultural competence in the language classroom. In D. L. Lange & R. M. Paige (Eds.), Culture as the core: Perspectives in second language education (pp. 237–270). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing. Bogardus, E. S. (1925). Social distance and its origins. Sociology and Social Research, 9, 216–225. Bogardus, E. S. (1933). A social distance scale. Sociology and Social Research, 22, 265–271. Bogardus, E. S. (1947). Changes in social distance. International Journal of Opinion and Attitude Research, 1, 55–62. Bogardus, E. S. (1958). Racial distance changes in the United States during the past thirty years. Sociology and Social Research, 43, 127–135. Bogardus, E. S. (1967). A forty-year racial distance study. Los Angeles: University of Southern California Press. Byram, M. (1997). Teaching and assessing intercultural competence. Clevedon, UK: Multicultural Matters. Byram, M., Nichols, A., & Stevens, D. (Eds.). (2001). Intercultural competence in practice. Clevedon, UK: Multicultural Matters. Corbin, S. S., & Chiachiere, F. J. (1995). Validity and reliability of a scale measuring attitudes toward foreign language. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 55, 258–267. Dale, P. N. (1986). The myth of Japanese uniqueness. London: Croom Helm. Gardner, R. C. (1979). Social psychological aspects of second language acquisition. In H. Giles & R. N. St. Clair (Eds.), Language and social psychology (pp. 193–220). Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Gardner, R. C. (1983). Learning another language: A true social psychological experiment. Journal of Languages and Social Psychology, 2, 219– 239. Gardner, R. C. (1985). Social psychology and second language learning: The role of attitudes and motivation. London: Edward Arnold Publishers. Gardner, R. C., & Lambert, W. E. (1972). Attitudes and motivation in second-language learning. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Gudykunst, W. B., Wiseman, R. L., & Hammer, M. R. (1977). Determinants of a sojourner’s attitudinal satisfaction: A path model. In B. Ruben (Ed.), Communication yearbook I (pp. 415–425). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Press.
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A similar situation also seems to exist in Europe, where the concept of ‘‘ICC,’’ Intercultural Communicative Competence, appears to be gaining acceptance among language educators (e.g., Byram, 1997; Sercu, 2004a).
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Hammer, M. R., Bennett, M. J., & Wiseman, R. (2003). Measuring intercultural sensitivity: The intercultural development inventory. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 27, 421–443. Hirai, K. (2001). Gengo seisaku no riron [Theories in language policy]. In S. Ishii, T. Kume, & J. Toyama (Eds.), Ibunka komyunikeeshon no riron [Theories in intercultural communication] (pp. 201–213). Tokyo: Yuhikaku. Itaba, Y. (2001). Gengo unyouron [Language use theories]. In S. Ishii, T. Kume, & J. Toyama (Eds.), Ibunka komyunikeeshon no riron [Theories in intercultural communication] (pp. 189–200). Tokyo: Yuhikaku. Kecht, M.-R. (1999). Integrated learning and internationalized education through languages across the curriculum. ADFL Bulletin, 30(3), 17–22. Kelsky, K. (2001). Women on the verge: Japanese women, western dreams. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Kitamura, K. (2006, July 30). For curious Japanese, nibbles of foreign cultures. The New York Times, 5.3. Kleg, M., & Yamamoto, K. (1998). As the world turns: Ethno-racial distance after 70 years. The Social Science Journal, 35, 183–190. McVeigh, B. J. (2002). Japanese higher education as myth. London: M E Sharpe. Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology. (2003). Regarding the establishment of an action plan to cultivate ‘‘Japanese with English abilities.’’ Retrieved April 16, 2007, from http://www.mext.go.jp/english/topics/03072801.htm Mouer, R., & Sugimoto, Y. (1986). Images of Japanese society: A study on the structure of social reality. London: Kegan Paul. O’Leary, P. F. (2001). The impact of college on worldmindedness. (Doctoral dissertation, the University of Iowa, 2001). Dissertation Abstracts International, 62(12A), 4090. Owen, C. A., Eisner, H. C., & McFaul, T. R. (1981). A half-century of social distance research: National replication of the Bogardus’ studies. Sociology and Social Research, 66, 80–98. Paige, R. M., Jorstad, H. L., Siaya, L., Klein, F., & Colby, J. (2003). Cultural learning in language education: A review of literature. In D. L. Lange & R. M. Paige (Eds.), Culture as the core: Perspectives in second language education (pp. 173–236). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing. Park, R. (1924). The concept of social distance. Journal of Applied Sociology, 8, 339–344. Parmenter, L., & Tomita, Y. (2001). Virtual intercultural competence: A programme for Japanese elementary school students. In M. Byram, A. Nichols, & D. Stevens (Eds.), Intercultural competence in practice (pp. 133–145). Clevedon, UK: Multicultural Matters. Sakuragi, T. (2006). The relationship between attitudes toward language study and cross-cultural attitudes. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 30, 19–31. Sampson, D. L., & Smith, H. P. (1957). A scale to measure world-minded attitudes. The Journal of Social Psychology, 45, 99–106. Schiffrin, A. (2003, November 28). In Japan, books are windows to the world. Chronicle of Higher Education, 50(14), B5. Seargeant, P. (2005a). Globalisation and reconfigured English in Japan. World Englishes, 24, 309–319. Seargeant, P. (2005b). ‘‘More English than England itself’’: The simulation of authenticity in foreign language practice in Japan. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 15, 326–345. Sercu, L. (2004a). Intercultural communicative competence in foreign language education: Integrating theory and practice. In K. Van Esch & O. St. John (Eds.), New insights into foreign language learning and teaching (pp. 115–130). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Sercu, L. (2004b). Researching the acquisition of intercultural communicative competence in a foreign language: Setting the agenda for a research area. In K. Van Esch & O. St. John (Eds.), New insights into foreign language learning and teaching (pp. 131–155). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Shibata, S., & Okado, H. (2001). ‘‘Gurookarizeeshon’’ no doukou to gengo kyouiku no yukue: ‘‘Tayouka’’ o meruru ankeeto chousa o tegakari toshite [Globalization and language education: A survey regarding the possibility of diversifying foreign language education in Japan]. Gengo Bunka Ronshuu [Studies in Language and Culture, Nagoya University], 22(2), 43–57. Siaya, L. M., & Hayward, F. M. (2003). Mapping internationalization on U.S. campuses: Final report 2003. Washington, D.C. American Council on Education. Sugimoto, Y. (2002). An introduction to Japanese society (2nd ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Tsuneyoshi, R. (2004). The ‘new’ foreigners and the social reconstruction of difference: The cultural diversification of Japanese education. Comparative Education, 40, 55–81. Vassar, B. M. (2006). An internal structure assessment of two measures of worldmindedness and their relationship with cultural pluralism, social distance, and social dominance orientation. (Doctoral dissertation, Oklahoma State University, 2006). Dissertation Abstracts International, 67(03A), 840. Wiseman, R. L., Hammer, M. R., & Nishida, H. (1989). Predictors of intercultural communication competence. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 13, 349–370.
International Journal of Intercultural Relations 32 (2008) 81–90 www.elsevier.com/locate/ijintrel
Attitudes toward language study and cross-cultural attitudes in Japan Toshiyuki Sakuragi * Department of Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, Gustavus Adolphus College, 800 West College Avenue, St. Peter, MN 56082-1498, USA
Abstract Despite its obvious importance, the issue of language study remains to be a relatively unexplored research area in the field of intercultural communication. A previous study reported a generally positive relationship between attitudes toward language study and cross-cultural attitudes among college students in the United States. However, one should be cautious about generalizing such a research finding to populations outside of the United States, for the Americans may not be typical among industrialized nations with regard to their attitudes toward foreign languages and cultures. The present study, therefore, attempted to replicate the previously reported relationship between attitudes toward language study (a general attitude, instrumental/integrative attitudes, attitudes toward specific languages) and cross-cultural attitudes (worldmindedness and social distance), using a comparable sample of college students in Japan. Contrary to the previous study, the results of the survey of 116 Japanese students did not indicate a positive relationship between a general attitude toward language study and a cross-cultural attitude. The results of the present study, however, were consistent with those of the previous study with regard to (1) the relationships between different motives for language study and social distance, and (2) the relationships between attitudes toward specific languages and social distance. # 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Language education; Cross-cultural attitude; Japan; Chinese; English; Korean; Spanish
1. Introduction While few people question the importance of the issue of language learning in intercultural communication, it has been an underrepresented research area in our field. This situation may be largely due to a relatively small amount of interaction between language educators and intercultural communication scholars particularly in the United States. Despite some notable efforts to integrate the bodies of scholarship in language education and intercultural communication in recent years (e.g., Paige, Jorstad, Siaya, Klein, & Colby, 2003; Sercu, 2004b), there remains a relative dearth of empirical studies on language education with an explicit focus on intercultural relations. In a recent example of such studies, Sakuragi (2006) examined the relationship between several types of attitudes toward language study and cross-cultural attitudes among American college students. The results of the study supported the hypothesized positive relationship between a general attitude toward language study and cross-cultural attitudes. More importantly, the results also indicated that attitudes toward specific languages perceived to be associated with ethnic minorities in the United States are more strongly related to cross-cultural attitudes.
* Tel.: +1 507 933 7384; fax: +1 507 933 7041. E-mail address: [email protected]. 0147-1767/$ – see front matter # 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ijintrel.2007.10.005
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Although the relationship between attitudes toward language study and cross-cultural attitudes found in Sakuragi’s (2006) study seems to have the potential for culture-general applicability, one must also consider the possibility that the United States may not be typical among industrialized nations with regard to an attitude toward language study.1 Over the years, presidential commissions, politicians, and business leaders in the United States have tried to draw public attention to the nation’s deficiency in language skills while language teachers have expressed their concern about ‘‘a national culture uninterested in other cultures and peoples’’ (Kecht, 1999, p. 17). A comprehensive report published recently by American Council on Education on the state of language education in the United States documents various areas for improvement (Siaya & Hayward, 2003). These facts surrounding language education in the United States should caution us against generalizing research findings based on American samples. The primary purpose of the present study, therefore, was to examine the applicability of the previously reported relationship between attitudes toward language study and cross-cultural attitudes to a cultural setting that is very different from the United States. Japan was chosen as the cultural setting for this study due to some interesting contrasts it presents to the United States as well as the present author’s familiarity with the culture. 2. Japanese attitude toward foreign languages and cultures Language education appears to occupy a far more important position in Japan than in the United States. Virtually all students in Japan start their foreign language (in most cases, English) study by the time they enter junior high school, and many parents try to give their children a competitive edge by starting their foreign language study earlier at juku (private ‘‘cram schools’’). Since a foreign language is one of the required subjects of entrance examinations for most high schools and universities, students must spend a considerable amount of time studying a foreign language in order to gain entrance into desirable schools. The vast majority of university students are required to study English, and in many cases, a second foreign language. After college, fluency in a foreign language (especially English) is considered as an important skill for advancing one’s career as well as commanding considerable social prestige. Private language schools, often called eikaiwa gakkou (English conversation schools), thus constitute a large industry in Japan, drawing students from all social and age groups (McVeigh, 2002). Consistent with the Japanese emphasis on language education is their interest in ‘‘foreign’’ cultures in general. Visitors to Japan cannot fail to notice the ubiquity of foreign artifacts—movies, music, food, etc. Gaikokumura (foreign country theme parks) are scattered throughout the country, catering to people who want to experience foreign cultures without the hassle and cost of traveling overseas (Kitamura, 2006; Seargeant, 2005a). To satisfy Japanese people’s intellectual interest in foreign cultures, bookstores are filled with books translated from foreign languages (Schiffrin, 2003), and larger stores have a ‘‘comparative cultures’’ section, where books discussing cultural differences between the Japanese and other peoples constitute a popular genre, nihonjinron.2 As an academic discipline, international/intercultural communication has gained such popularity in Japan that many universities offer a major program focusing on it. Japan, however, has far less diversity of its population than does the United States, and such a difference is also likely to influence the development of cross-cultural attitudes. The existence of various minority groups (Sugimoto, 2002) notwithstanding, Japan has one of the most ethnically homogeneous populations among the industrialized nations. Therefore, people in Japan generally have many fewer opportunities to come in contact with people with different ethnic backgrounds than do people in the United States. It should be, however, noted that the number of legal and illegal foreign workers in Japan is on a sharp rise due to the labor shortage caused by the nation’s low birth rate and aging population. The impact of this issue on cross-cultural attitudes among the Japanese, therefore, will continue to gain importance in the future. 1
The sample in Sakuragi’s (2006) study in the United States consisted of students whose first language was English, and most of the participants were European Americans from Upper Midwestern states. The sample, therefore, cannot be considered to be representative of the entire U.S. college student population. The homogeneity of the sample, however, provided the benefit of simplifying the research design and the interpretation of the results. In this research design, for example, a ‘‘target language’’ was considered to be a language one may wish to study as a foreign or the second language. Such a definition of a target language would not be appropriate with a sample of students with more diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. 2 Critics (e.g., Dale, 1986; Mouer & Sugimoto, 1986; Sugimoto, 2002) of nihonjinron, however, have expressed concerns about its tendency to overemphasize the uniqueness of the Japanese culture to the extent of almost being ethnocentric.
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3. Variables in the present study Following the research design of Sakuragi’s (2006) study, four types of attitudes toward language study were examined in this study: a general attitude, an integrative attitude, an instrumental attitude, and attitudes toward specific languages. A general attitude toward language study is one of the attitudinal factors identified by Corbin and Chiachiere (1995), and it relates to the degree of importance a person places on language study in his/her overall education. Instrumental and integrative attitudes relate to different motivations for language study (Gardner, 1979, 1983, 1985; Gardner & Lambert, 1972). An instrumental attitude reflects a desire for enhancing one’s career and gaining social recognition through language study, whereas an integrative attitude reflects a desire for forming interpersonal relationship with speakers of the target language. Attitudes toward specific languages relate to a person’s desire to study, interest in, and fascination with a particular language (Corbin and Chiachiere, 1995). For the presents study, Chinese, English, Korean, and Spanish were selected as the target languages. The selection of these target languages was made to achieve a reasonable symmetry with the target languages selected in Sakuragi’s (2006) study, in which French represented a language that has traditionally occupied a prestigious position in language education with relatively little conceptual association with ethnic minorities and/or recent immigrants, whereas the other target languages—Chinese, Japanese, Spanish—have greater degrees of association with ethnic minorities and recent immigrants in the United States. Among the target languages selected for the present study, English is the foreign language that occupies the most prominent position in Japanese society. English is also the language that is the least likely to be associated with ethnic minorities and immigrants in Japan; English has been overwhelmingly perceived as the language for communicating with ‘‘Westerners’’ (Parmenter & Tomita, 2001), and a dominant signifier of eikaiwa gakkou (English conversation schools) industry’s ubiquitous advertising is ‘‘an Occidental whiteness’’ (Bailey, 2006). In contrast, both Chinese and Korean languages are strongly associated with the ethnic minority status and the immigration issue. Spanish language is associated with both Spain and Latin America, but it is reasonable to expect that, just as in the United States, the latter is becoming more salient in the minds of the Japanese as Spanishspeaking workers from Latin America have become significantly more visible in Japan in recent years (Tsuneyoshi, 2004). As in Sakuragi’s (2006) study, two types of cross-cultural attitudes—worldmindedness and social distance—were examined in the present study. Worldmindedness is a tendency to adopt ‘‘a world view of the problems of humanity, whose primary reference group is [hu]mankind, rather than Americans, English, Chinese, etc.’’ (Sampson & Smith, 1957). The concept of social distance was first proposed by Park (1924) and was further developed by Bogardus (1925, 1933, 1947, 1958, 1967), who defined social distance as ‘‘the degree of sympathetic understanding that exists between two persons or between a person and a group’’ (1933, p. 268). These two types of cross-cultural attitudes can be distinguished by the different levels of abstractness they represent; while worldmindedness addresses international issues in relatively abstract terms (e.g., ‘‘Our country should . . .’’), social distance represents a degree of individual willingness to accept people with various ethnic backgrounds into one’s own personal relationships. Therefore, building upon Gudykunst, Wiseman, and Hammer’s (1977) model of a cross-cultural attitude, Wiseman, Hammer, and Nishida (1989) identified worldmindedness as an affective (emotional) predictor, and social distance as a conative (behavioral) predictor of intercultural competence. Such a distinction for different types of cross-cultural attitudes seems particularly useful for capturing the possible difference between the Japanese and the Americans in their cross-cultural attitudes; whereas the Japanese seem to be more interested in ‘‘other cultures,’’ the Americans generally have much more experience of intercultural relations in their daily life. 4. Hypotheses and research question As stated earlier, the primary purpose of the present study was to test the cross-cultural generalizability of the relationship between attitudes toward language study and cross-cultural attitudes previously reported for an American sample. In Sakuragi’s (2006) study, a general attitude toward language study correlated significantly with both worldmindedness (r = .17, p < .05) and general social distance (the sum of social distance scores for all the target groups in the study) (r = .19, p < .05) among American college students. Although the magnitude of these correlations
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was small, it seems reasonable to expect to find such associations among Japanese college students as well. Therefore, the following hypotheses were advanced: H1. There is a positive correlation between a general attitude toward language study and worldmindedness. H2. There is a negative3 correlation between a general attitude toward language study and social distance. With regard to the different purposes of language study, the only significant correlation found in Sakuragi’s (2006) study was between an integrative attitude and general social distance (r = .19, p < .05). However, considering that both instrumental and integrative attitudes are positive attitudes toward language study, it seems reasonable to expect both motivational types to be positively related with cross-cultural attitudes. A difference likely to be found, then, is in the strength of association; considering an integrative attitude’s focus on forming an interpersonal relationship with speakers of the target language, an integrative attitude is likely to be more strongly associated with a cross-cultural attitude than is an instrumental attitude. Therefore, the following hypotheses were advanced: H3. The correlation between an integrative attitude and worldmindedness is stronger than the correlation between an instrumental attitude and worldmindedness. H4. The (negative) correlation between an integrative attitude and social distance is stronger than the correlation between an instrumental attitude and social distance. The most important finding of Sakuragi’s (2006) study was the divergent relationships that attitudes toward specific languages had with cross-cultural attitudes. Specifically, attitudes toward Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish were found to correlate significantly with both worldmindedness and social distance, whereas an attitude toward French did not correlate significantly with worldmindedness or social distance. As a possible explanation for these results, Sakuragi (2006) pointed out the different ways these target languages are perceived in the United States; Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish are associated with recent immigrants and/or an ethnic minority status in various degrees, but French does not seem to have such an association in the general perception. As discussed earlier, to examine such differential effects of target languages in Japan, English was selected as a language comparable to French in the United States while Chinese, Korean, and Spanish were selected as languages comparable to Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish in the United States. Accordingly, the following hypotheses were advanced: H5. The correlations between attitudes toward Chinese/Korean/Spanish and worldmindedness are stronger than the correlation between an attitude toward English and worldmindedness. H6. The (negative) correlations between attitudes toward Chinese/Korean/Spanish and social distance are stronger than the correlation between an attitude toward English and social distance. In addition to testing these hypotheses regarding the relationship between attitudes toward language study and cross-cultural attitudes, a cross-cultural comparison was planned between the Japanese sample collected for the present study and the American sample collected for Sakuragi’s (2006) study on attitudes toward language study and cross-cultural attitudes. As discussed earlier, the Japanese society seems to place much more emphasis on language education than does the American society. Such a stronger societal emphasis, however, may not necessarily translate into a positive individual attitude toward language study, for many Japanese may feel that they are forced to study foreign languages due to practical concerns (for their academic success, career advancement, etc.). Contrasting environments for the development of cross-cultural attitudes are another societal feature that distinguishes between the two countries: a greater emphasis on foreign cultures and international affairs in education in Japan on one hand, and a greater ethnic diversity in the United States on the other hand. It is, however, not clear whether such differences between the two societies would actually correspond to group differences in cross-cultural attitudes. Would greater knowledge of and interest in foreign cultures and international affairs correspond to a higher level of worldmindedness? Would greater diversity of a nation translate into smaller social distance? Sampson and Smith (1957), who developed the concept of worldmindedness, did propose a distinction between worldmindedness
3
In the actual statistical test of this hypothesis, however, the predicted direction of the correlation coefficient is positive due to the scoring method of the Social Distance Scale; a higher score on the scale indicates greater acceptance of the target group of people, i.e., smaller social distance.
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and internationalmindedness, arguing that a person can be international-minded (i.e., interested in and knowledgeable about international affairs) without being world-minded. It is also possible that greater proximity to people with different ethnic backgrounds may not necessarily reduce social distance. To explore such possible differences between the two nations, the following research question was advanced: RQ: What are the differences between the Japanese and the Americans in attitudes toward language study and cross-cultural attitudes? 5. Method 5.1. Participants Students at two universities in Japan participated in the study. The selection of these institutions was made so that the key profiles of these institutions (a larger public university and a smaller private university in suburban settings) resemble those of the two institutions used for Sakuragi’s (2006) study in the United States. After eliminating incomplete responses and individuals whose native language was not Japanese, 116 participants (62 male, 54 female, mean age = 19.43) were available for the analysis. 5.2. Instrument Japanese language versions of the attitude measures used by Sakuragi (2006) were prepared for the present study. All the measures except Social Distance Scale used a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). A general attitude toward language study and attitudes toward specific languages were measured by the items selected by Sakuragi (2006) from the scale developed by Corbin and Chiachiere (1995). A general attitude (i.e., the degree of the importance placed on language study in one’s overall education) was measured by the following four items: (1) I couldn’t really claim to be educated without knowing a foreign language; (2) Learning a foreign language is probably a significant part of my education; (3) Learning a foreign language certainly yields a better understanding of English (‘‘English’’ was replaced by ‘‘Japanese’’ for this study); (4) The first step in achieving cross-cultural understanding is learning a language. A set of four items was used to measure an attitude toward each of the four target languages: Chinese, English, Korean, and Spanish. The four items for measuring an attitude toward Korean language, for example, were: (1) I am fascinated by the Korean language; (2) I have a strong desire to learn Korean; (3) I would like to know as much Korean as possible so that I can really get to know Korean-speaking people; (4) I think Korean sounds really neat. Instrumental and integrative attitudes toward language study were measured by the 4-item Instrumental Orientation and the 4-item Integrative Orientation subsets of Attitude/Motivation Test Battery (Gardner, 1985). Each item was modified to be language-general by replacing the original ‘‘French’’ with ‘‘a foreign language.’’ Examples of the items include ‘‘Studying a foreign language is important to me because I will need it for my career’’ (an instrumental attitude) and ‘‘Studying a foreign language can be important for me because I will be able to participate more freely in the activities of other cultural groups’’ (an integrative attitude). Worldmindedness was measured by the following five items from the Worldmindedness Scale (Sampson & Smith, 1957): (1) Our country is probably no better than many others; (2) It would be better to be a citizen of the world rather than of any particular nation; (3) Our responsibility to people of other countries ought to be as great as our responsibility to people of our own area; (4) Any healthy individual, regardless of race or religion, should be allowed to live wherever he/she wants to live in the world; (5) Our country should permit the immigration of foreign peoples even if it lowers our standard of living. The selection of these items was based on the study by Wiseman et al. (1989), which chose six items from the 32-item Worldmindedness Scale because ‘‘the items were more culture-general in orientation and tended to focus on issues of current concern’’ (Wiseman et al., 1989, p. 356). These six items were also used by Hammer, Bennett, and Wiseman (2003) for assessing the construct validity of Intercultural Development Inventory. Out of these six items, Sakuragi (2006) selected the five items listed above due to their focus on the concept of one’s own country/nationality. Social distance was measured by the Social Distance Scale (Bogardus, 1967). The Social Distance Scale was used in the United States in several large-scale surveys conducted by Bogardus (1925, 1933, 1947, 1958, 1967) to examine
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Table 1 Cronbach’s alphas, means, and standard deviations of scales Scale
a
M
S.D.
Worldmindedness General social distancea General attitude toward FL study Integrative attitude Instrumental attitude Attitude toward Chinese Attitude toward English Attitude toward Korean Attitude toward Spanish
.42 .93 .58 .85 .72 .85 .83 .86 .84
16.06 41.28 13.85 17.03 13.94 12.82 15.81 11.52 12.38
2.94 10.40 2.86 2.55 3.01 3.60 3.33 3.52 3.34
a Note: The sum of social distance scores for all the target groups. The value indicates the degree of willingness to accept various groups; a larger value indicates a smaller social distance.
attitudes toward 30 racial/ethnic groups as well as in the follow-up studies conducted by other researchers (Kleg & Yamamoto, 1998; Owen, Eisner, & McFaul, 1981). The scale asks the subjects to indicate the degree of their willingness to accept a member of a certain ethnic group into their own personal relationships. The target ethnic groups used for Sakuragi’s (2006) study in the United States were: Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish. For the present study, ‘‘Japanese’’ was replaced by ‘‘Americans.’’ Participants were asked to indicate their highest level of acceptance for each target group by choosing a number from 1 through 7: (7) as family members by marriage; (6) as close friends; (5) as neighbors; (4) as members of my occupation in my country; (3) as citizens of my country; (2) only as visitors to my country; (1) I would rather not accept members of this group in my country. A higher score (i.e., a higher level of acceptance) represents a smaller social distance. The translation of these scales involved three steps: the scales were translated into Japanese first by the present writer; the translation was then checked by two English–Japanese bilinguals separately; and revisions were made through discussions among the three. Cronbach’s alphas of the measures used in the present study were generally comparable to those reported by Sakuragi (2006), indicating an acceptable level of reliability, with two exceptions of Worldmindedness (.42) and a general attitude toward language study (.58). Cronbach’s alphas, means, and standard deviations of the measures are summarized in Table 1. 5.3. Analyses of data For testing the hypotheses for the study, the computation of Pearson product–moment correlations was planned. An additional step of comparing two correlation coefficients was also planned for testing Hypotheses 3, 4, 5, and 6. For example, to test Hypothesis 3, the first step would be to compute Pearson product–moment correlations (1) between an integrative attitude and worldmindedness, and (2) between an instrumental attitude and worldmindedness. If both correlations were found statistically significant, as the second step, a t-test would be conducted to compare the two correlation coefficients. For examining the research question for the study, t-tests were planned to compare mean scores of the Japanese sample for the present study with those of the American sample reported by Sakuragi (2006) on attitudes toward language study and cross-cultural attitudes. 6. Results To test Hypothesis 1 (there is a positive correlation between a general attitude toward language study and worldmindedness) and Hypothesis 2 (there is a negative correlation between a general attitude toward language study and social distance), Pearson product–moment correlations were computed. A general attitude toward language study was not found to correlate significantly with worldmindedness or general social distance. Therefore, neither H1 nor H2 was supported. (Correlations among the variables in the present study are summarized in Table 2.) As the first step to test Hypothesis 3 (the correlation between an integrative attitude and worldmindedness is stronger than the correlation between an instrumental attitude and worldmindedness) and Hypothesis 4 (the correlation
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Table 2 Intercorrelations between scales Scale
GSD
GFL
WM GSD GFL INT INS CHI ENG KOR
**
.02 .15
.30
INT .04 .31** .58**
INS .18 .00 .48 ** .46 **
CHI .04 .26 ** .21 * .32 ** .14
ENG .02 .05 .35 ** .49 ** .30 ** .27 **
KOR .08 .24 ** .29 ** .33 * .19 * .72 ** .22 **
SPA .11 .27 ** .43 ** .39 ** .25 ** .59 ** .48 ** .65 **
Note: WM, worldmindedness; GSD, general social distance; GFL, general attitude toward foreign language study; INT, integrative attitude; INS, instrumental attitude; CHI, attitude toward Chinese; ENG, attitude toward English; KOR, attitude toward Korean; SPA, attitude toward Spanish. * p < .05. ** p < .01.
between an integrative attitude and social distance is stronger than the correlation between an instrumental attitude and social distance), Pearson product–moment correlations among the relevant variables were computed. Neither an integrative attitude nor an instrumental attitude was found to correlate significantly with worldmindedness. Therefore, H3 was not supported. A significant correlation, however, was found between an integrative attitude and general social distance (r = .31, p < .05) while no significant correlation was found between an instrumental attitude and general social distance. These results support H4. (Since the correlation between an instrumental attitude and general social distance was not statistically significant, the second step of comparing the two correlation coefficients was deemed unnecessary.) Among the four target languages in the measure of attitudes toward specific languages, English received the highest preference rating, followed by Chinese, Spanish, and Korean. The results of ANOVA indicated a significant effect of the target language (F(3, 345) = 66.81, p < .01). Tukey-HSD post hoc tests revealed that the differences between English and Chinese ( p < .01) and between Spanish and Korean ( p < .05) were statistically significant, whereas the difference between Chinese and Spanish was not significant. As the first step of testing Hypothesis 5 (the correlations between attitudes toward Chinese/Korean/Spanish and worldmindedness are stronger than the correlation between an attitude toward English and worldmindedness) and Hypothesis 6 (the correlations between attitudes toward Chinese/Korean/Spanish and social distance are stronger than the correlation between an attitude toward English and social distance), Pearson product–moment correlations between attitudes toward Chinese, English, Korean, and Spanish languages and cross-cultural attitudes were computed. None of the attitudes toward the four target languages was found to correlate significantly with worldmindedness. H5, therefore, was not supported. However, attitudes toward Chinese, Korean, and Spanish languages were found to correlate significantly with general social distance (Chinese-social distance r = .26, p < .01; Korean-social distance r = .24, p < .01; Spanish-social distance r = .27, p < .01), whereas the correlation between an attitude toward English and general social distance was not statistically significant. These results support H6. To examine the research question on the possible differences between the Japanese and the Americans in attitudes toward language study and cross-cultural attitudes, t-tests were conducted to compare the mean scores of the Japanese sample for the present study with those of the Americans sample previously reported (Sakuragi, 2006). No significant difference was found between the two samples on a general attitude toward language study. With regard to the motives for language study, while the two groups did not differ significantly on an instrumental attitude, the Japanese scored significantly higher than the Americans on an integrative attitude (t = 7.73, p < .001). As to cross-cultural attitudes, the Japanese scored significantly higher than the Americans on worldmindedness (t = 3.53, p < .001), whereas the Americans scored significantly higher on general social distance (indicating smaller overall social distance) than the Japanese (t = 5.32, p < .001). 7. Discussion The primary purpose of this study was to examine the cross-cultural generalizability of the previously reported relationships between attitudes toward language study and cross-cultural attitudes. Contrary to the results of a survey
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of American college students reported by Sakuragi (2006), a general attitude toward language study was not found to significantly correlate with worldmindedness or social distance for the Japanese sample. The inadequate internal consistency of the measures of a general attitude toward language study and worldmindedness for the Japanese sample may have contributed to the non-significant correlations.4 Another possible explanation for the absence of significant correlations may be found in the different circumstances in which students are exposed to language study in the two societies. Namely, language study is often elective in the United States, whereas in Japan, as discussed earlier, it is required of virtually every student from junior high school through college. Therefore, many Japanese may feel that the importance of language study in one’s education is not a matter of personal judgment but is imposed by the society. The Japanese sample in this study in fact did not report a more positive attitude toward language study in general than did the American sample in Sakuragi’s (2006) study despite the greater societal emphasis on language education in Japan. The lack of correlation between a general attitude toward language study and cross-cultural attitudes among the Japanese sample, therefore, may reflect such mixed feelings toward language education in Japan. It should also be noted, however, that the magnitude of the correlations between a general attitude toward language study and crosscultural attitudes reported by Sakuragi (2006) for the American sample was small (worldmindedness, r = .17, p < .05; social distance, r = .19, p < .05) and did not differ significantly from that of the corresponding correlations for the Japanese sample (worldmindedness, r = .02, z = 1.53; social distance, r = .15, z = .32). As to the effect of different motives for language study, the results of the present study in Japan were consistent with those of the previous study in the United States; an integrative attitude was found to correlate significantly with social distance, whereas an instrumental attitude was not found to correlate with worldmindedness or social distance. The two types of motivation for language study, however, appear to be more differentiated in Japan than in the United States as indicated by the significantly smaller correlation between an instrumental attitude and an integrative attitude for the Japanese sample (r = .46) than that for the American sample (r = .70) reported by Sakuragi (2006) (z = 2.96, p < .01). The greater differentiation in motivation in Japan is not surprising, given the socially imposed nature of the emphasis on language study; while the practical benefits (e.g., gaining entrance to desirable schools) and the social prestige associated with language skills are generally taken for granted in Japan, an integrative motivation is based more on a conscious and personal decision. With regard to the effect of different target languages, attitudes toward all the target languages except English were found to correlate significantly with social distance. These results mirror the results reported by Sakuragi (2006) for the American sample: attitudes toward all the target languages except French correlated significantly with social distance. As discussed earlier, English in Japan and French in the United States can be distinguished from the other target languages in the two studies (Chinese, Korean, and Spanish in Japan; Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish in the United States) in their apparent lack of perceptual association with ethnic minority groups and/or recent immigrants. The lack of correlation between an attitude toward English and a cross-cultural attitude found in the present study is congruent with the social construction of the ‘‘whiteness’’ of the English language in Japan postulated by various observers (e.g., Bailey, 2006; Kelsky, 2001; McVeigh, 2002; Seargeant, 2005b). As to the pedagogical implications of the results of the present study, the significant correlations found between attitudes toward Chinese, Korean, and Spanish languages and social distance point to the potential benefit of increasing the diversity of languages taught in school. Such a possible benefit seems particularly noteworthy in light of the larger overall social distance reported by the Japanese sample in the present study than that reported by the American sample in Sakuragi’s (2006) study. The link between the diversity of languages taught and a cross-cultural attitude has also been postulated in the context of the institutional cultures of Japanese schools. Shibata and Okado (2001), for example, conducted a survey of two types of schools – (1) those offering only English as a foreign language and (2) those offering other languages in addition to English – and found that the latter group of schools generally placed a higher priority on fostering a global perspective and intercultural competence than did the former. The dominance of English in language education in Japan, however, is expected to intensify in the foreseeable future, aided by various initiatives the Japanese government has been rolling out in recent years. The government’s action plan to ‘‘cultivate Japanese with English abilities’’ (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and
4 Considering the acceptable level of internal consistency reported for the full (32-item) version of the Worldmindedness Scale (e.g., Cronbach’s alphas of .83 and .86 reported by O’Leary (2001) and Vassar (2006), respectively), future studies may benefit from increasing the number of the items for measuring worldmindedness.
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Technology, 2003), for example, aims at teaching English at all elementary schools. While the Japanese government’s action plan speaks of the importance of ‘‘international understanding’’ and ‘‘the perspective of living as a member of the international society,’’ the plan has a single-minded focus on the denotative level of ‘‘communication abilities,’’ specifying such standardized tests as TOEFL and TOEIC as the ultimate measure of progress. Such a practical approach, popularized under a slogan ‘‘English as a tool for international communication,’’ has been gaining considerable public support. Such an ‘‘instrumental’’ approach, however, has drawn criticisms from communication scholars (e.g., Hirai, 2001; Itaba, 2001) for its simplistic view of intercultural communication. It is notable that many of the communication scholars in Japan are also language teachers, and their dual roles have been conducive to promulgating the concepts and theories in intercultural communication in the context of language education.5 If communication scholars and language teachers can continue to strengthen their cooperative relationship, language education will reap greater benefits from the emerging pedagogical models for integrating intercultural training into language teaching (e.g., Bennett, Bennett, and Allen, 2003; Byram, 1997; Byram, Nichols, & Stevens, 2001; Sercu, 2004a). Research, however, must provide a solid foundation for the efforts to develop effective pedagogy for fostering intercultural competence in language classrooms. Recognizing the need to set a research agenda for this largely unexplored domain, Sercu (2004b) proposed settings, teachers, learners, teaching materials, and assessment methods as important variables for understanding the process of developing intercultural competence in language classroom. The present study focused on just one aspect (attitude) of one of these variables (learners). In researching these areas, efforts also must be made to delineate culture/language-general and culture/languagespecific factors. Such efforts have been hampered in the past by the dearth of previous studies that examined comparable samples from different cultures using comparable methodologies (see Paige et al., 2003 for the most comprehensive review of literature in this area). 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