出版物 ｜Sophia Linguistica
Mariko Yoshida
This paper analyzes government-approved English textbooks currently adopted in Japanese secondary education, focusing on how they treat conversational implicature (CI). The Foreign Language section of the Japanese government’s official curriculum guidelines (Gakushu Shidō Yōryō) was also examined, as textbook publishers must follow these guidelines in order to obtain government approval. Analysis of 18 junior high school textbooks, 31 senior high school textbooks and their corresponding teachers’ manuals revealed that CI is underrepresented in both quantity and quality. The average number of CI occurrences per textbook was only 1.33 (junior high) and 2.32 (senior high). Furthermore, even in cases where CI was presented, the implied meanings were usually not highlighted in either students’ textbooks or teachers’ manuals, and very few explicit explanations were available to the readers. Textbook writers seem to yield to the temptation of exhibiting “complete sentences”, impeding their users from familiarizing themselves with naturalistic language styles that usually include a considerable number of implications.
