Second Language Learning and Identity: Cracking Metaphors in Ideo ...

In my previous research, one participant, Michiko, complained about a time when her ESL class was doing an “information exchange” exercise. The other students would come to her for information, and she obliged everyone who asked her. However, she was too busy ensuring that everyone who asked was getting her information that she did not ask for any herself. As a result, at the end of the class her paper was blank, and she felt negatively about the experience (Yoshimoto, 1999). My own experiences doing group work were similarly difficult.

Every year, when I return to Japan, I feel the presence of a different self who sees Japan with different eyes and interpretations. On May 21, 2007, the Asahi Newspaper had an article about a 16-year-old girl who was fired from her part-time job for refusing to dye her brown hair back to its original color, black. The attitude of her former employer shocks me. Is our outer appearance more important than who we are on the inside? Must we all, as Japanese people, have the same hair color?

In 2004 I returned to Japan to attend my elementary school reunion and I wrote a summer diary, focusing on my emerging different self. At the reunion, I again felt like the young “me” who was so eager to make my parents proud when I was a child. I also felt that my former classmates seemed so reluctant to meet new challenges, accepting retirement as a part of their life. At that time, Nola Ochs, a 95-year-old woman, was poised to earn a college degree, the oldest person in the world to do so. In Japan, it is expected that the elderly accept becoming old as being the time for which they are to step aside and retire. I feel a kinship with Nola Ochs as I pursue my goals in the realm of higher education.

I am beginning to understand Western ideology better with each passing year, observing it through critical eyes. Why, in education, is the modernist stance so prevalent with authoritative voices calling for “accountability”? Why do they require everything to be so logical, explicit, and direct? “Straight to the point” is a metaphor here in Canada, which means to explain something directly. In this culture, people also say, “honestly speaking,” which means that speaking directly is honest and good. However, in Japan, when we speak directly, we say the metaphor , tantouchokunyuu ni (lit., entering directly with a sword in one shot).