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The English on display in the picturebook by Shaun Tan includes various breaks with grammatical convention, such as a lack of tense morphemes, subject omission, and non-use of the first-person pronoun. However, not only are these deviations acceptable to native speakers, but the anomalous English plays a crucial role in showcasing the protagonist as a communicatively undeveloped outsider (Ikarashi and Maher). Building off Eugenio Coseriu’s integral linguistic ideas, this article investigates how what may seem grammatically insufficient language can in fact function quite naturally given appropriateness at the textual level. In exploring the motivations for a writer to opt for such non-standard expressions, this study proposes that the protagonist’s characterization demands a strange, nuanced manner of speaking, though such deviation is not without its own peculiar conventions. Furthermore, comparison with the Japanese translation of will allow for a better understanding of just what kind of unique leeway exists at the textual level for defying linguistic standards in English as opposed to Japanese.

This article shows, using the example of number agreement, that an ecological perspective with a focus on the situation of the utterance (i.e. here-now-I-real) is an effective way to understand differences in grammar among individual languages and to identify commonalities above and beyond such differences. On the surface, English and Chinese would appear to be exact opposites in terms of whether or not they conform to the rule of number agreement, while the position of Japanese would appear to be ambivalent on this question. But in fact this is not the case. Numerous languages around the world are consistent in the way number distinction is more likely to arise the higher the subject’s position on the animacy hierarchy. Chinese and Japanese are no exceptions. Leaving aside differences in individual circumstances, languages differ only in the boundary lines on the animacy hierarchy where number distinction becomes obligatory. In order to reach the above understanding, it is essential to see animacy from an ecological perspective. Furthermore, an ecological perspective is essential as a principle for explaining levels of not only animacy but also self-expressiveness, esteem, and transitivity. The prevailing view of language as separate from the situation of the utterance requires considerable revision on the subject of grammar.

We investigate how competing forces interdiscursively manifest in Japan-based higher education through a critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1993, 1995). Higher education job advertisements are constitutive of institutions’ public images that are targeted toward academics in specific fields. They are discursive spaces where marketized discourse has colonized previously dominant discourses of universities as independent authorities (Fairclough, 1993, 1995). Such marketized discourses within higher education express neoliberal ideologies and free-market conventions (Ball, 1998; Pack, 2018). However, the international extent of university discourse marketization is largely implicitly assumed rather than empirically examined, hence we investigate these forces with respect to Japanese higher education.

This essay analyzes the children’s imaginative play in Kazuo Ishiguro’s various novels, with a special focus on . Children often engage in various types of repetitive imaginative play, acting out stories about things that do not actually exist in order to avoid the pain of confronting their problems. An exploration of children’s play and the roles performed by the guardians and Madam helps us read the novel from a new perspective – the view of Buddhism. is the Buddhist philosophy which describes “the impermanence of all phenomena.” In , shadows of death weigh heavily on the reader as an unavoidable reminder of the nature of life. This brings to the Japanese readers’ minds. The view of Buddhism has imbued Japanese literature since the Kamakura Era (1185), and a reading of from the Mujo perspective sheds light on the condition of its protagonists. My analysis aims to introduce the doctrine to anglophone literary studies by foregrounding the poignancy and resilience found in

Jonathan Safran Foer’s 2005 novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, approaches the emotional complexities of death and mourning within New York City in wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Set after the death of young Oskar Schell’s father in the World Trade Center, the narrative follows Oskar on a quest for an understanding of loss. Situated in the confines of the city, the novel is an urban exploration for self-identity while faced with the unrecoverable loss of both human life and the iconic image of the city: the Twin Towers. Due to the absence of a physical body, Oskar perceives his father’s gravesite as a meaningless memorial, and he searches the metropolis for an alternative sense of resolution to his mourning. Foer’s narrative proffers an analysis of modern man and the shifting urban territory, where the complexity of place-identity, the individuals interaction with persons and locations, becomes embroiled in the post-9/11 memories and an altered urban fabric. Foer augments the story with photographs, including the iconic ‘falling man’ image that starkly silhouettes an imminent death against the tower. Oskar blends the falling man into a semblance of his father; in doing so, he places his father’s body at a temporal and identifiable place—although now shattered—within the metropolis and moving toward a more conscious engagement with the real, determinedly preserving remembrance of his father. Within this context, I utilize Foer’s novel to argue that our post-9/11 world has altered our cognitive understanding of space in the metropolis, demonstrating the continuing shift in the psychological mindset for coping with both urban life and death.