The purpose of this course is to look at “Multilingual Society and Communication” from various angles and illustrate the various linguistic phenomena that can be observed. The course will focus especially on the examination of Japan as a multilingual society. It is also the goal of this course to develop sensitivity for the diversity of languages. Following issues are to be discussed:
- language policy and language planning
- language rights
- language spread
- language education
- language contact
- maintenance, loss and revitalization of minority languages
- linguistic imperialism and monolingual hegemony
- bilingualism, multilingualism and diglossia
- code switching
- pidgin and creole languages
- History of Japanese language education