Social Constraints and Language Learning: Filipina immigrants in Japan

Abstract

During the past two decades, a significant number of Filipinas have immigrated to Japan and married into rural Japanese households. For economic security, these women are willing to make enormous sacrifices to learn a new language and the complex cultural mores of traditional Japanese society. Using questionnaires, personal interviews, field observations and village documents, the influence of social context on the second language acquisition (SLA) efforts of seven Filipina wives currently living in a small village was analyzed to determine how social and cultural contexts affected their acculturation success and efforts to learn a second language. The data do not support the use of Schumann's (1986) Acculturation Model to explain the SLA failure or success of this small, easily accessible immigrant population in an all-Asian setting. Instead, SLA success seems to be more dependent on cultural context, and it is that context that must be addressed in any discussion of socio-linguistic acculturation into a host society. It is important to remember that, unlike the USA, Japan accepts a very small number of legal immigrants per year, and formal language instruction in support of legal immigration is essentially non-existent.