Thesis (M.A.)--University of California, Davis, 2010
In recent years the relationship between popular culture and education has been looked at with more linguistic and sociocultural emphasis than ever before (Alim & Pennycook, 2007). But while the momentum for this type of study has picked up, one basic assumption has remained the same: students are interested in popular culture, therefore they will want it used in their classrooms. In this project I studied the relationship between anime and manga interests of students studying Japanese as a foreign language. Anime and manga in this project are defined as animated and comic works produced in Japan (Poitras, 2008). While studying these interests, I found a conflict among aspects of these students' personal and academics identities
I conducted an initial survey of study habits and anime/manga usage habits, yielding 422 responses, and performed follow-up interviews of 18 participants. I found that the Japanese language students did not do any work outside of the classroom in pairs or groups beyond a small amount of required group work. In addition, the students did not use anime or manga with other students. The study habits and anime/manga usage of all the Japanese language students, then, appear to be predominantly solitary and not social
Moreover, students were able to identify anime and manga as helpful to language learning, specifically in regards to learners developing listening comprehension and better rhythm and intonation patterns. However, students thought that anime and manga were not authentic enough forms of Japanese language and culture to be utilized in the classroom
This separation of language learning and anime and manga could partially be attributed to an interesting social phenomenon: students' interest in anime and manga tends to be covert. As part of looking into the individual nature of the students' study habits and anime and manga usage, I found that even though there are large groups of students together in class, who share an interest in anime and manga, they still do not socialize based on these shared interests. I believe this is partially due to the stigma against the otaku, or anime geek. Because the students are trying to develop academic identities which could lead into the development of professional identities, there is a dissonance, or conflict, between their academic and personal identities. Students downplay their less prestigious anime and manga interests to bring their identities back into harmony, thus avoiding the otaku stigma
This study raises questions about the assumptions of instructors in curriculum development and material selection. Although there are success stories and positive results in using popular culture in the classroom (Dyson, 1997; Alim & Pennycook, 2007; Black, 2008; Williams, 2006; Ranalli, 2008), all of these stories and research projects make the assumption that students want to bring elements of popular culture into the classroom based on the single criterion of enjoyment. The present study presents a counter example: the vast majority of Japanese foreign language students at this California university have interest in anime and manga, but they do not necessarily want to see anime and manga used in their foreign language classroom
