Journal of Asian Pacific Communication - Volume 20, Issue 1, 2010

It has been widely accepted that parental language beliefs play a crucial role in language maintenance. Studies show that Chinese immigrants are not exempted from language shift although they are frequently reported cherishing their language as an important part of their culture. This paper attempts to find out how parental language beliefs reflect their daily language behaviour. Eight recent Chinese migrant families had 60 minutes of conversation recorded each month for one calendar year. Their language use has been analyzed and compared with the information gathered from a home language use questionnaire. Results show that there is a substantial gap between parental language beliefs and their actual language behaviour. Although the parents state they strongly support mother tongue maintenance, within 28 months, the use of mother tongue had dropped significantly and there is very little evidence showing much effort from the parents to prevent this from happening. This could be either because they want their children to keep their first language but do not know how to do this, or, their language beliefs are different from their behaviour. This should raise methodological issues regarding how to interpret parental language beliefs properly in the research area.

The two factors of ‘gender-identity’ (whether the speaker is male or female) and ‘gender-congruence’ (whether or not the gender of speaker and listener is the same) can be assumed to act differently in determining levels of politeness. To investigate this assumption, the present study was designed to analyze university student politeness levels in Japan and South Korea when they (i.e., speakers) asked various people (i.e., listeners) to purchase a concert ticket. A decision tree analysis revealed hierarchies of factors predictive of politeness levels specific to young Japanese and Koreans. Among Japanese, distance (i.e., extent to which speaker and listener are acquainted) was the strongest followed by power (i.e., extent of disparity in social status) and gender-identity/gender-congruence. Among Koreans, however, power appeared to override distance, resulting in the descending order of power and gender-identity/gender-congruence. Regarding gender-related factors, the results of these parallel studies in Japan and South Korea generally suggested a distinctive influence of gender-identity on politeness levels when listeners held equal or lesser power than speakers, while gender-congruence was implicated when listeners held greater power.

Many aspects of the use of the Maori language are highly controversial in New Zealand, and humour is one way in which the sensitivities relating to the language can be negotiated in everyday workplace contexts. This article examines the use of the Maori language by Maori and Pakeha participants during humorous episodes at staff meetings in a Maori organisation in New Zealand. The episodes analysed include humour indirectly relating to the Maori language, where the language is not the topic of discussion but its use plays an important implicit role, as well as humour directly focussed on the Maori language, where use of the language is the explicit topic of the humour. Use of the Maori language in these episodes includes Maori greetings, pronunciation of Maori words, the use of Maori lexical items, more extended stretches of Maori, Maori discursive features, and lexical items in English with Maori cultural connotations. The Maori language is used in a humorous context by both Maori and Pakeha staff members, in similar and different ways. Humorous episodes using the Maori language appear to serve a range of functions, including releasing tension (e.g. relating to sensitive issues around the Maori language), marking ingroups and outgroups (and sometimes bonding between the two), referencing Maori cultural norms, and constructing Maori identity.

This paper looks at compliance-gaining interaction in a Japanese elderly care facility from a conversation analytical point of view. Focus is on the various ways compliance is sought for by the caring staff with getting the residents out of bed and starting the daily morning care procedures. Three extracts are discussed in detail. The analysis shows how the residents in all three cases display clear signs of resistance to get up, but finally have to submit to the planned course of actions pursued by the care workers. A closer look at how this is played out in interaction suggests that the residents’ compliance is enforced rather than gained.

This paper summarizes several studies conducted over the past fifteen years investigating Thai communication behavior. Thai cultural values emphasize social harmony, a trait strongly influencing intercultural communication effectiveness (ICE). Various studies are reported identifying those communication behaviors associated with ICE. The paper presents critical commentary about the methods and means of the research program and suggests ways in which Thai communication behavior contribute to ICE. The paper concludes with recommendations for future research.

This study investigated how the offender’s responsibility, offense severity, offender’s prior relationship with the offended person, and culture influence the offender’s concerns for self- and other-positive and negative face when apologizing to the offended person. The study hypothesized that responsibility, severity, and relationship have positive relationships with other-positive, other-negative, and self-positive face concerns but a negative relationship with self-negative face concern. Culture was expected to moderate the effect of relationship on the four face concerns. Results supported the main effects of responsibility and relationship on other-positive, other-negative, and self-positive face concerns, but these effects were moderated by culture such that the expected positive relationships were supported only among U.S. Americans but not among Chinese. U.S. Americans varied their face concerns when apologizing based on situational and relational cues whereas Chinese did not make such distinctions; Chinese maintained relatively high levels of face concerns across the different levels of responsibility and relationship type.

This article examines the most extensive case of diglossia in history, that of diglossia in East Asia. In pre-modern times, Classical Chinese functioned as the high (H) language variety in not only China, but also Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, and this entire region can arguably be viewed as a single instance of diglossia in the sense that the rise and eventual decline of diglossia in these societies followed similar patterns, and changes in one society often affected the others. Examination of diglossia in East Asia shows that even during long centuries of apparent stability, gradual changes were always underway, hence supporting Hudson’s (2002) view that stability in diglossic patterns is at best relative. The East Asian case also supports Coulmas’ (2002) view that writing is pivotal to any theory of diglossia, in that the division of roles between H and L in East Asia was essentially one of written/spoken language. Finally, the case of East Asia suggests that there are two essentially different kinds of diglossia, a traditional kind which is common in pre-modern societies and in which H is what Anderson (2006) calls a “sacred language,” and a less common modern kind in which H is a modern standard language.