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10 - Embodiment, Ritual, and Ideology in a Japanese-as-a-Heritage-Language Preschool Classroom

from Part III - Language Socialization and Ideology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2020

By
Matthew J. Burdelski
Edited by
Matthew J. Burdelski  and
Kathryn M. Howard
Matthew J. Burdelski
Affiliation:
Osaka University
Kathryn M. Howard
Affiliation:
California State University, Channel Islands
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Summary

This chapter examines the ways teachers in a Japanese-as-heritage-language classroom in the United States prepare children to receive a preschool graduation certificate to be held at the end of the school year. It shows ways this preparation entails children learning an elaborate sequence of embodied moves that have to be imitated and performed in a fixed way (e.g., receiving the certificate from the school principal with both hands, taking a step back and then bowing deeply). It identifies various stages of this instruction, including modeling and demonstration by teachers of explicitly articulated “good”/“correct” and “bad”/“incorrect” examples followed by individual one-on-one rehearsal that entails an abundant amount of verbal and embodied correction of each child’s embodied moves. The chapter argues that teachers’ verbal and embodied practices during this preparation are rooted within an ideology of “correctness” of form (kata) that permeates many of the activities observed in this preschool classroom (e.g., learning to write Japanese, doing origami) in ways that prepare the children for Japanese society, in which attention to details of prescribed form is highly valued.

Keywords

Japaneseheritage languagepreschoolembodimenterror correctionelicited imitationmodeling
Type
Chapter
Information
Language Socialization in Classrooms
Culture, Interaction, and Language Development
 , pp. 200 - 223
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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