Chihiro Kinoshita Thomson & Emi Otsuji Business Japanese Textbooks: Multi-Perspective Analysis

University of New South Wales
School of Modern Language Studies
Sydney NSW2052
AUSTRALIA
NEW ZEALAND
c.thomson@unsw.edu.au

Abstract

Gender inequity in language textbooks in terms of character visibility, choice of language and occupation, etc. is in general well established. It is also true in the case of Business Japanese textbooks. However, single perspective description of a textbook and perhaps its comparison with a reality in the target business world would fall short of telling the whole story around the gendered textbook. This paper analyses a Business Japanese textbook from multi-perspectives. Not only the textbook is analysed and compared to the reality of the Japanese Business world, the authors of the textbook, a teacher who taught a course using the textbook, and students who took the course using the textbook were interviewed and the data was analysed. The preliminary findings suggest that (1) the surface structure of the textbook which appears gender-non-specific can be deceiving; (2) the authors' attempt to create more balance in gender may not be understood by users; (3) the teacher belief in equity in gender may not be transmitted to students; (4) the students using the same textbook and being taught by the same teacher can develop different understanding of gender in Japanese.

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