Anti-"Japanese Language Theory"

Author: (Japanese) Soichiro Arishige
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2005-02-01
Features: The author, who teaches French and French literature as a profession, along with his wife, a native French speaker, and their child who grew up in a Japanese-French bilingual environment, together weave a series of life stories filled with the tension of language and culture colliding. Starting from the surface of daily life, the book digs for depth in the ordinary, using personal experiences of the author and his family to deliver a sharp critique of the then-popular cultural trend in Japan known as "Japanese Language Theory." Amid this critique, it unfolds unique and profound cutting-edge linguistic theories and sociological theories, fundamentally subverting the values of what constitutes the beauty of language, as well as what constitutes institutions and knowledge. The book was awarded the Japan Yomurika Literary Prize and is a must-read classic in the fields of humanities and social sciences.