The objective of this dissertation is to understand how the lives of Korean Deaf people who live as language minorities in Korea have changed by studying Japanese or taking an interest in Japan. It is also aimed to discuss through their stories how th... The objective of this dissertation is to understand how the lives of Korean Deaf people who live as language minorities in Korea have changed by studying Japanese or taking an interest in Japan. It is also aimed to discuss through their stories how the field of Foreign Language Teaching, such as Japanese Study as a Foreign Language, should be concerned about Deaf or other minorities. “Diversity”, “multicultural” or “multilingual” have current trends such as “multicultural coexistence” in Japan or “multicultural family”, or CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) in Europe. In this stream, paradigm shifts have happened twice in the field of teaching Japanese as a foreign language (JFL). The first paradigm was “teaching Japanese”, and shifted to “supporting”, then “coexistence”. In this paradigm shift, the people who needed to learn Japanese diversified to include such individuals as juveniles, foreign spouses married to Japanese citizens, technical intern trainees, and foreign nurses and care workers. Despite these paradigm shifts and “diversity” becoming a keyword of the current stream, JFL field has not taken notice of minorities, such as Deaf people. This study stands on a new point of view that focuses on a language minority, Korean Deaf people. Hearing impaired people are classified according to which part of the ear or brain was damaged or what language they use. In this study, “Deaf” was defined as “the hearing impaired people who use sign language as their first language (L1). Sign language, the L1 of the Deaf has a completely different system from spoken or written language. Therefore, Korean Deaf people have more difficulty than hearing people because they need to study written Korean as a second language, and after that, they study Japanese as a foreign language. Based on these backgrounds, semi-structured interviews in Korean sign language were held from March 2014 to October 2015. In these interviews, three Korean Deaf people who have experience learning Japanese talked about their life stories. The main contents of the interview were how they became hearing impaired, their language circumstances, motives for starting to learn Japanese, and involvement with the Japanese language or Japan after learning Japanese. Interviews were recorded on video and translated to Japanese. The transcripts of the interview were analyzed. Using the transcripts, each life story of three participants was divided into three or four parts according to the turning point of their life and was analyzed by the Trajectory Equifinality Model (TEM). In analyzing, “started learning Japanese” and “started having contact with people overseas” were established as Equifinality Points (EFP). As a result, it was found that acquisition of Korean sign language and Korean written language were mentioned as Obligatory Passage Points (OPP), and that relationships with other people were Bifurcation Points (BFP) and Social Guidances (SG). As a result of the analysis and consideration, the following things were also found. First, for Deaf people, Sign Language plays a role for learning or establishing contact with others. Second, in the “Deaf community” where they can interact in their L1, sign language is important. Third, the three participants of this study have accessibility to information to study Japanese. In this study, it was found that the experience of learning Japanese or an interest in Japan gave opportunities or means to the three participants living as minorities, and it influenced and changed their lives. Therefore, even though the proficiency of participants’ Japanese is varied, the experience of learning Japanese brought them not only language proficiency, but also other values. In the classroom of JFL, it is important to provide not only “support” from the standpoint of majority, but also “accessibility”, which anyone can access whenever they need. We cannot know what minorities need without the viewpoint of the party concerned. In addition, each JFL teacher is required to have readiness for minorities. The readiness for minority means imagination concerned with how to live and learn together in a diversified society or classroom with others who have different backgrounds. JFL teachers who have readiness will be able to learn from minorities in the classroom because minority learners have the possibility to change JFL teachers, and by meeting minorities, teachers can get new viewpoints and broaden their horizons.
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