Ways of debating in Japan: Academic debate in English Speaking Societies

Japanese students' debate in English is analyzed in a linguistic approach found in the ethnography of communication/speaking. The author argues that English debate in Japan is a form of verbal communication both in speech and in writing in a goal-oriented speech community called the "debate community" whose members share particular ways of speaking in debate. These have been adapted from the Anglo-American academic debate.;The data come from various sources that the author collected while involved in debate. These include the transcripts of video-taped debates, manuscripts of speeches, manuals of debate written by students, debaters' and judges' notes during the debate, and the author's knowledge as an insider of the community.;After two introductory chapters that cover the nature of research and literature review, Chapter 3 gives an overview description of a debate round in a tournament. Chapter 4 discusses Western (especially American) and Japanese rhetorical traditions of debate and how the Western tradition of debate has been adapted in Japan. Chapter 5 describes the "debate community" in Japan as consisting of debaters, coaches, and judges. Several ways of speaking in debate are analyzed in relation to components of communication such as status and norms of participants in debate. Chapter 6 reveals that Japanese debaters have developed a peculiar system of speech acts (proving, attacking, and defending) that serves their own goals and norms of communication. Chapter 7 finds the two major dimensions of argument structures, "vertical" and "horizontal," which are realized by a special technique of note-taking called "flowsheet." Chapter 8 investigates how winning, the purpose of a debate as a game, is perceived by debaters and judges. Chapter 9 first shows that apparently strange ways of speaking in debate are best understood in terms of different goals of communication. Second, major features of components of communication are summarized with reference to relationships among these components. Finally, legitimacy of Japanese English is supported and challenge is offered to traditional assumptions in linguistics such as the primacy of speech and the linearity of speech. Implications for education and possible questions for future research are also given.