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Language policy in Japanese ethnic churches in Canada and the legitimization of church member identities

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Abstract

This paper is aimed at understanding the language policy of Japanese ethnic churches and the legitimization of church member identities in the midst of dominant languages in Canada. While church members often construct Japanese ethnic Christian churches with ‘grassroots’ language policies that seem to legitimize their Japanese language and cultural identities and practices, their membership to their churches and their Christian faith often leads them to experiencing legitimization as Christians in solidarity with other Christians in the world (Takamizawa in Torch Trinity J 4(4):34–45, 2001). Using theoretical descriptions of language planning and policy, I discuss the scholarship of ethnic church studies, kokusaika and nihonjinron discourses, and groupism as described in frame theory (Nakane in Japanese society. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 1970), as a framework to contextualize church member experiences and perceptions in the macro-, meso-, and micro-levels of language policy of Japanese ethnic churches in Canada. I use Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough in Analysing discourse: textual analysis for social research. Routledge, London, 2003) to analyze relevant language policies and interview texts that reveal the perceptions of Japanese ethnic Christian church members from three churches in Western Canada.

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  1. Defense Language Institute, San Antonio, TX, 78230, USA

    Tyler Barrett

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Barrett, T. Language policy in Japanese ethnic churches in Canada and the legitimization of church member identities. Lang Policy 16, 433–460 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-016-9414-2

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