Emerging perspective-taking, persistent othering: English and intercultural development in Japanese elementary schools

Abstract

This study examines how Japanese elementary school students conceptualise English, its users, and cultural difference during the early stages of formal language education. Drawing on questionnaire data from 151 students in Grades 3-6 in a private, urban-area school, the analysis identifies both developmental shifts and ideological stabilities in learners' representations. While perspective-taking and decentering begin to emerge - particularly around Grade 5 - English remains consistently positioned as belonging to externalised, predominantly Western others. Students demonstrate increasing social differentiation in their descriptions of English users and a growing ability to recognise themselves as "foreigners" in other contexts. However, this developmental shift does not extend to a reconceptualisation of English as a shared communicative resource or as part of their own linguistic repertoire. The findings reveal a paradox: while learners' cognitive capacity for intercultural awareness grows, the ideological framing of English as inherently foreign does not loosen. More troublingly, learners appear to be internalising this framing as a natural feature of their linguistic world, rather than recognising it as a social construction that could be otherwise. Situating the analysis within intercultural education and language ideology research, the study argues that developmental maturation alone is insufficient to upset symbolic boundaries towards language ownership, the internalization of which can constrain learners' ability to position themselves as legitimate English users. It concludes that elementary intercultural education in Japan needs to directly address questions of ownership, positionality, and representation if emerging perspective-taking capacities are to lead into future meaningful intercultural participation.