Anime and Manga, Japanese Foreign Language Students, and the Assumption Popular Culture Has a Place in the Classroom

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By:"William Jay Spindler"
Published on 2010 by

In recent years the momentum in studying the relationship between popular culture and education has picked up (Alim & Pennycook, 2007). But throughout these studies, one basic assumption remains 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 Japanese foreign language students' study habits and their anime and manga interests. 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' study habits and anime/manga usage practices were predominantly solitary and not social. 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. This is probably due to the stigma against 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 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 interests in anime and manga, but they do not necessarily want to see anime and manga used in their foreign language classroom.

This Book was ranked 36 by Google Books for keyword Anime & Cartoons.

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