Nona Moskowitz


Nona Moskowitz Entered 1999 ndm2g@virginia.edu
Linguistic Anthropology Regional Focus: Japan Topical Focus: Anthropology of Education; Discourse Analysis; Local and National Identities; the Communicative Capacity of Events; Socialization Processes in Schools In my research, I am interested in the ways schools inculcate national identities or particular value systems through the aggregate of voices that define the school. From the institutional perspective, these voices are a composite of teacher/administrator voices in tandem with the discursive capacity of the school's structure and organization. I am interested in the way these voices combine to fashion particular modes of personhood but also in the ways that local voices-practices and ideologies-are incorporated into the everyday life and structure of the school. My dissertation examines how these local incorporations influence the national messages disseminated by the school. I conducted my fieldwork on Chichijima, a small island that lies 600 miles off the coast of mainland Japan. Within Japan, Chichijima is unique in terms of its history and cultural practices. A British colony until it was annexed by Japan in 1876 and later occupied by the American Navy at the end of WWII, Chichijima has alternated between British, Japanese, and American administrations. Since 1968, the Island has been Japanese again, but culturally Chichijima reflects its history in various ways. I examine the ways in which local Chichijima values, ideologies, and practices are incorporated into the national structure of the school. The bulk of my fieldwork was spent in the Island's only middle school, Ogasawara Middle. I spent the majority of the school day with the middle school students in order to experience the school day from their vantage points. In addition to discourse analysis, I have been interested in the interplay and connection between Japanese socio-cultural categories/phenomenon and formal features of the Japanese language. In my Master's thesis, I explored the role of the deictic anchor point and its relation to conceptions of self in Japan. The deictic anchor point grounds the speech act in a given time or space, a role traditionally attributed to the individual, egocentric self. My Master's research examined whether Japanese can be said to have two deictic anchor points, an individual and a group anchor point.

Entered 1999
ndm2g@virginia.edu

Linguistic Anthropology

Regional Focus: Japan

Topical Focus: Anthropology of Education; Discourse Analysis; Local and National Identities; the Communicative Capacity of Events; Socialization Processes in Schools

In my research, I am interested in the ways schools inculcate national identities or particular value systems through the aggregate of voices that define the school. From the institutional perspective, these voices are a composite of teacher/administrator voices in tandem with the discursive capacity of the school's structure and organization. I am interested in the way these voices combine to fashion particular modes of personhood but also in the ways that local voices-practices and ideologies-are incorporated into the everyday life and structure of the school. My dissertation examines how these local incorporations influence the national messages disseminated by the school.

I conducted my fieldwork on Chichijima, a small island that lies 600 miles off the coast of mainland Japan. Within Japan, Chichijima is unique in terms of its history and cultural practices. A British colony until it was annexed by Japan in 1876 and later occupied by the American Navy at the end of WWII, Chichijima has alternated between British, Japanese, and American administrations. Since 1968, the Island has been Japanese again, but culturally Chichijima reflects its history in various ways. I examine the ways in which local Chichijima values, ideologies, and practices are incorporated into the national structure of the school.

The bulk of my fieldwork was spent in the Island's only middle school, Ogasawara Middle. I spent the majority of the school day with the middle school students in order to experience the school day from their vantage points.

In addition to discourse analysis, I have been interested in the interplay and connection between Japanese socio-cultural categories/phenomenon and formal features of the Japanese language. In my Master's thesis, I explored the role of the deictic anchor point and its relation to conceptions of self in Japan. The deictic anchor point grounds the speech act in a given time or space, a role traditionally attributed to the individual, egocentric self. My Master's research examined whether Japanese can be said to have two deictic anchor points, an individual and a group anchor point.