Is Chinese replacing Japanese as the East Asian business language?

Alms, Kasey; Lenz, Rachel C.; Kung, Brian

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Title

Is Chinese replacing Japanese as the East Asian business language?

Author(s)

• Alms, Kasey
• Lenz, Rachel C.
• Kung, Brian

Contributor(s)

Carmody, Patrick

Issue Date

2008

Keyword(s)

• Chinese
• Japanese
• Language
• Neoliberalism
• Youth
• Flexible Capital
• Globalization
• Economics
• ANTH499 S08

Abstract

For our project we sought to find if Chinese is replacing Japanese as the East Asian business language just as the economy is shifting from Japan towards China. We limited our research pool to non-heritage undergraduates at the advanced level of Japanese and Chinese languages. We conducted eight interviews, four on Chinese learners and four on Japanese learners, and found their motivations behind studying these languages. We also sought to discover if their motivations reflected common trends of neoliberalism. Overall, our findings matched our hypothesis and there was a division of motivations: Chinese was learned for business purposes while Japanese was learned for entertainment purposes.

Series/Report Name or Number

Anth 499, East Asian Youth and Global Futures, Prof. Nancy Abelmann and Prof. Karen Kelsky: East Asian youth have experienced perhaps the world’s most compressed development as well as the world’s most aggressive globalization policies. This course examines how youth in East Asia (China/s, Japan, and the Koreas) are making their way in our globalizing world, focusing in particular on the transformations in work, education, recreation, gender, and sexuality brought about by neoliberal economic restructuring in the region. Topics studied include the insecure job market for young people, consumerism, globalized pop culture phenomena such as Pokemon, the Korean wave, and Internet gaming, emergent LGBT communities, etc. Students are encouraged to focus their research projects on aspects of the U. of I. student life that reflect the experiences of East Asian youth in a global market. The U of I offers a fascinating window on East Asian youth because of the many college (and pre-college) students who make their way here – as well as the movement of “Amercian” youth to East Asia. Through participation in the Ethnography of the University Initiative (EUI), students will conduct local field research that reveals the global processes at issue. The course syllabus is available at: www.eui.uiuc.edu/docs/syllabi/ANTH499S08.doc

Type of Resource

text

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