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Kanno, Yasuko. (2003). Negotiating Bilingual and Bicultural Identities: Japanese Returnees Betwixt Two Worlds. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.
Pp. xii+188
$18.50 ISBN 0-8058-4154-7Reviewed by Chang Pu
University of Texas, San AntonioOctober 10, 2005
In Negotiating bilingual and bicultural identities, Yasuko Kanno explores the bilingual-bicultural identity development of four Japanese adolescents (i.e. Rui, Sawako) through their years in North America and the later return to Japan. Kanno’s driving force in writing Negotiating bilingual and bicultural identities is her willingness to examine “how young kikokushijo [Japanese returnees] first encounter another language and culture, and go on to mature into bilingual and bicultural young adults” (p. 2). The process of adjustment and readjustment in different linguistic or cultural contexts and four participants’ perspectives in the ways they see themselves make this study unique. The study focuses attention to how English as a Second Language (ESL) learning and intercultural conflict affect identity construction, and how participants recognize their bilingual and bicultural identity through managing cross-cultural transition.
In Chapter 1, Kanno explicitly presents her position in the study: “bilingual and bicultural identities are multiple, hybrid, and changing” (p. 14) and clearly identifies her main goal: to demonstrate the process of becoming bilingual and bicultural. After introducing her motivation for this research, she explains how narrative-inquiry and communities of practice are suitable to frame her study. Influenced by Connelly and Clandinin’s (1990) and MacIntyre’s (1981) narrative-inquiry, Kanno inserts the four individuals’ stories so as to make young sojourners’ transnational experiences as well as identity change visible and meaningful. In addition, under the framework of Communities of practice (Lave and Wanger, 1991), Kanno leads us to social communities where her participants were surrounded in years of study: Canadian schools, hoshuko (a Saturday supplementary school), and Japanese universities. For students, school as a major social community is a powerful environment of where learning and socialization coincide.
The first chapter provides details on data collection and analysis methodologies, and background information of the participants. Kanno uses triangulation strategies to make her study trustworthy; data sources and artifacts she used included interviews (with participants and their families or friends), letters, e-mails, journals and telephone conversations, as well as member checks to guard internal validity.
A further strength of Kanno’s book lies in four focal participants’ narrative stories which are presented in Chapters 2, 3, 4, and 5 respectively. Employing narrative inquiry, these four chapters gave each participant a stage to present complex factors affecting their transnational practices, such as reasons for their sojourns, parents’ influence on their educational careers, peer pressure, personality, attitudes towards English learning, home literacy development, influence of English proficiency, performance contrast between North American schools andhoshuko, and the strategies they employed to become members of the mainstream community. Through narrative stories, readers can easily recognize an important impact of schooling on participants’ bilingual and bicultural development. The evidence reinforces that schools as “communities” connect students with peers and influences their recognition of identities, as well as learning.
Chapter 6 weaves together the previous four chapters, analyzing the four participants’ bilingual-bicultural identity development process through three phases: their sojourn to North America, reentry to Japan, and later reconciliation. As Kanno highlights, analyzing Japanese students’ lives with two languages (English and Japanese) in these three phases helps us recognize gradual changes in their identities, the ways they see themselves, and their self-perceived inclusion with peers. Kanno notes: “In their sojourn, the students assumed that one can keep only a single linguistic and cultural allegiance; in phases of reentry and reconciliation, they gradually realized the possibility to be bilingual and bicultural” (p.107). Through analyzing participants’ practices in three school sites (Canadian high schools, hoshuko, and Japanese universities), readers get to know exactly how the four participants engaged in different community practices while constructing and reconstructing their identities.
Canadian school
In Canadian schools, the four participants were all enrolled in ESL class; however, their ESL school experiences went beyond second language learning. No matter what attitudes towards learning English existed, all participants, except Rui who had less language problems, experienced a difficult time in socialization or being involved in the mainstream community. To Sawako, ESL class was her “clique” because of more contact with Japanese students and easier communication. Also, her parents’ high expectation for her to go to a top Japanese university kept her in a less-challenged ESL program so as to keep up her grades. Consequently, she became more involved in the Japanese community with less contact to the mainstream community (p. 35), which is a common phenomenon of many ESL students in North American schools. The separation from the mainstream group also reinforced the participants inferior identity at school as well as their feelings of marginality. ESL students usually attributed this outcome towards their lack of confidence and limited English.
Generally, limited English restricted Japanese students’ social interaction within the mainstream community and made “Canadian” identity impossible, but it partially helped ethnic identity maintenance. As Holmes (1997) concluded, identity is socially constructed from roles, norms, and expectations of the community in which people participate (p. 203). ESL programs act as an agent for Japanese language maintenance. However, Rui acquires more advanced English proficiency than the others. His comfort in immersed Canadian life, however, did not change his Japanese identity. Conversely, he consciously reinforced his Japanese identity in his days in Canada. However, from another angle, we can infer that having high proficiency in both languages gives Rui options to choose who he wanted to be. His locus of control keeps his ethnic identity intact internally. Sojourners do not need to give up their own language and culture to live in a mainstream society.
Hoshuko
Japanese young sojourners live very different lives from the dominant Western culture that occupies much of Canada. However, hoshuko and home are two places where young sojourners, according to Kanno, “can exempt from the awkward identity in their second language” (p.15). From Kanno’s observation, Kikuko’s dramatic contrast in the hoshuko and Canadian school, in terms of performance and socialization, reflects the polarization between English and Japanese (p.70). To her, “English is the language of humiliation and someone else’s language; Japanese is her language” (p.70). For Rui, hoshuko was more like a place to maintain his Japanese identity and keep himself in the community. From Chapters 2 to 5, Kanno addresses how Hoshuko played a very important role in participants’ sojourning life. It is a place to meet Japanese peers, as well as to maintain home literacy and ethnic identity. Hoshuko contains more symbolic value in young sojourners’ life. Many other research pieces (Yoshida, 2002) addressed functions of Hoshuko and confirmed its role in cultural maintenance and Japanese literacy maintenance. Since Kanno was an instructor for Grade 12 Japanese Language Arts in Hoshuko, in the book she provides more of an insider perspective about Hoshuko’s role in the triangle of language, culture, and identity. Readers can also get to know how Hoshuko operates and its relationship with Japan and Japanese universities. With rich information about Hoshuko, this book is also a good resource for researchers who conduct research in heritage language program.
Japanese universities
After sojourners entered Japanese universities, at the beginning, they all had a hard time adjusting to Japanese traditional cultures such as group orientation and the sense of senpai/kohai. This cognitive dissonance experienced at reentry was perceived as the primary root to the syndrome of reverse culture shock (Gaw, 2000).
The participants struggled with the identity of kikokushijo which affected their choice of whom they wanted to associate with, and also affected how other Japanese university students looked at them. Kikokushijo is more like a double-edged sword, as Ogbu (1990) claimed, “although kikokushijo can be thought of as a privileged class, simple class-based analysis is inferior to provide its members with a framework for interpreting educational events” (p.524). Lower proficiency in Japanese literacy made Sawako doubt her Japanese identity, and she attributed her lower Japanese literacy to the identity of Kikokushijo.
High English proficiency is socially valued in Japanese society. Before English had negatively affected participants’ identity in Canada, but it reversely gave power to participants in Japan, which made other non-sojourning Japanese feel uncomfortable. Although Kikokushijo identity makes participants a minority group both in the host country and home country, it also bridges participants with Japanese and English as well as Western culture and Japanese culture. The four participants have learned to become more positive about both Japanese and English, to be open to new culture before making a judgment, and to remain bilingual and bicultural (p.92), and gradually, according to Kanno, they shifted from “a rigid and simplistic approach to bilingualism and biculturalism to a more sophisticated skill at negotiating belonging and control” (p.135).
Through an analysis of participants’ identity narratives, Kanno argues that it is possible for bilingual individuals to strike a balance between two languages and cultures (p.2). However, the definition of bilingualism and biculturalism has not been well defined (Edwards, 2004). As Malherbe (1969) concluded, it is doubtful whether bilingualism per se can be measured apart from the situation in which it functions for a particular individual (p.50). Wei (2000) also claimed that the question of who is and who is not a bilingual is difficult to answer as well as the degree of bilingualism. On the other hand, if the term “balanced bilingual” in Kanno’s mind refers to proficiencies in both languages, she did not explicitly explain these four Japanese students’ language proficiency level in Japanese and English. Therefore, if the degree of bilingualism is hard to judge, I doubt the possibility of which two languages and two cultures can be balanced.
Chapter7 introduces theoretical implications. Arguing with “taken for granted” assumptions of methodology and content in second language acquisition and bilingualism research, Kanno addresses the uniqueness of her study in terms of the influence of socio-cultural context on bilingual youths’ identities, differences between immigrants’ identities and those of temporary sojourners, and narrative links on exploring how learners make implicit and explicit connections among identities and integrates them into their story (p.133). Kanno claims that the reason why her participants are able to affirm their bilingual and bicultural identities in Japan is that the Japanese society recognized and valued their bilingual and bicultural identities. This also can be expanded to the notion of language status. Since English has a high status in Japan, it is a highly valued language. In Canada, Japanese language, however, is categorized as the minority language and not highly valued. This may imply that the affiliation of bilingual-bicultural identities is beyond the fact of knowing two languages and sharing two cultures. On the other hand, in the book, participants addressed their Japanese identity and emphasized their desire to integrate but not assimilate to the mainstream western culture when they were in Canada. According to Kanno, sojourner students’ identities seem more grounded in their ethnic group than those of immigrant youths (p.126). Although she did not have exact answers for the differences in identity construction and L1 development, Kanno contributes to two possible explanations: proficiency in L2 and sense of belonging. Japanese sojourners have options to choose to affirm the culture they wish to belong to or associate with: Japanese, Canadian, or both.
Chapter 8, the final chapter, discusses the educational implications on ESL students’ needs for social participation, home literacy maintenance, and teachers’ role in returnee students’ educational reintegration. Kanno believes that “once students learn that everyone is simultaneously a full and peripheral member of various communities of practice and that all these communities are constantly moving and changing, then they may be able to view their own positions in a new light”(p.144). In this way, as she suggests, students with transnational experiences feel less stressful to adjust themselves and understand their multiple identities in various communities. On the other hand, ESL teachers also need to realize that over-comfortable classroom and study environments in ESL programs may be harmful to ESL students because once they are mainstreamed or out of the ESL greenhouse, they will not have the ability to survive in the academia. In addition, ESL teachers should help ESL students move from the peripheral to the center of the communities by providing more chances to interact with the center members and promote mutual understanding as well as the understanding of cultural differences.
This book certainly contributes to a better understanding of cultural identities that young Japanese sojourners develop in the host country and home country. Also, Kanno’s goal is successfully achieved. Although the book aims to illustrate how young Japanese sojourners gradually recognize their bilingual-bicultural identity and value the change, we also recognize the challenges arising as they grow up abroad, including first language maintenance, normal academic progress, cultural identity, and preparing for the eventual return to and reintegration to home culture. Moreover, the book advocates that ESL educators should not look at ESL students with similar cultural background as the same as the whole group. Each student has a distinctive personality, different motivations, and different understandings towards second language learning. In a word, Kanno’s book makes significant advances in the research area of language learning and bicultural identity construction. There is no doubt that readers will benefit from the comprehensive analysis and will gain greater understanding of the relations among language, culture, and identity from sojourners’ transitional practices. This reader-friendly book will certainly appeal to a wide range of audiences: undergraduate and graduate students, scholars in language, culture, education, and ESL educators. Actually, anyone who is interested in sojourners’ experiences will find this book worth reading.
References
Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F.M. (2000). Narrative inquiry: Experience and story in qualitative research. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Edwards, J.V. (2004). Foundations of bilingualism. In T. Bhatia & W. Ritchie (Eds.). The handbook of bilingualism (pp.5-29). Oxford: Blackwell.
Gaw, K. F. (1999). Reverse culture shock in students returning from overseas. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 24, 83-104.
Holmes, J. (1997). Women, language, and identity. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 1, 195-223.
Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. New York: Cambridge University Press.
MacIntyre, A. 1981. After virtue: A study in moral theory. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
Malherbe, E. (1969). Comments on ‘How and when do persons become bilingual?” In L. Kelly (Ed.), Description and measurement of bilingualism (pp.41-52). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Ogbu, J. U. (1990). Cultural model, identity, and literacy. In J. W. Stigler, R. A. Shweder & G. Herdt (Eds.), Cultural psychology: Essays on comparative human development (pp. 520-541). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wei, L. (2000). The Bilingualism reader. New York: Routledge.
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Yoshida, R. (2002). Political economy, transnationalism, and identity: Students at the Montreal Hoshuko. Unpublished thesis, McGill University.
About the Reviewer
Chang Pu is a doctoral student of bilingual-bicultural studies at the University of Texas, San Antonio. Her research interests focus on bilingualism, ESL, heritage language maintenance, and language socialization in a multilingual context.
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Editors: Gene V Glass, Kate Corby, Gustavo Fischman
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