"Language Choice in a Multicultural Community: A Japan Share House Case Study"

Abstract

Young Japanese urbanites who prefer integrated school/work/social lives often turn to share houses to meet their needs for higher-quality housing, social life outside of work, and a better living environment. With Japan’s foreign population increasing yearly, share house set-ups geared towards international culture exchange have been increasingly popular, especially among young people. This kind of housing set-up that promotes multilingualism and multiculturalism piqued the interest of the researcher which brought this case study to analyze the domains of language use and choice of multilingual native Japanese living at a share house in Chiba, Japan. The case study also focused on the participants’ language acquisition and maintenance. Findings reveal that Japanese is used for most of the participants’ daily communication, while English is used as a universal language when communicating with non-native Japanese speakers. Some participants speak dialects that they use to communicate with their families, and some even speak a third, fourth, and fifth language which they use for work and travel abroad. Lastly, the participants were found to have acquired their mother tongue at home while their L2 to L5 was acquired from school and reinforced through their external environment.