The idea of English as an international language has gained a refreshed momentum in the discussions around English education policy in Japan. To detect a shift in learners’ attitudes towards Japanese English (JE), and to elucidate the ideology they embrace regarding their motivation for improving their proficiency, a questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews were conducted with 112 advanced-level learners of English from a university in Tokyo. It was revealed that they (1) display a lingering preference for US English, despite increased exposure to World Englishes; (2) evaluate JE less favourably in competence and status dimensions than other Asian Englishes; and (3) are not content with simply achieving a high level of proficiency, but are still dedicated to acquiring L1-like speech as their ultimate goal. This quintessentially Japanese perfectionism is reflected in the word eigodo, or ‘the way of English’, where do (/doː/) is a stoic value system in the process of mastering artistic skills. The findings demonstrate how culture-specific ideology serves as an underlying mechanism that ensures a reconciliation between a preference for L1 English and an inferiority to other L2 Englishes.
Yutai Watanabe (Wed,) studied this question.