A CULTURAL STUDIES APPROACH TO KAIWA DRAMA SCRIPTS: CULTURAL VALUES AS AN OUTCOME OF CROSS-CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING-BASED SPEAKING LEARNING
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21009/ishel.v2i1.58535Keywords:
cultural studies, kaiwa drama scripts, Japanese cultural values, project-based learning, cross-cultural understandingAbstract
Japanese conversation (kaiwa) instruction often emphasizes grammatical accuracy while overlooking the cultural values underlying Japanese communication. This study aims to identify and map Japanese cultural values (uchi-soto, honne-tatemae, enryo-sasshi, jouge kankei, and wa) represented in kaiwa drama scripts produced through cross-cultural understanding-based speaking learning via Project-Based Learning (PjBL). A mixed methods design was employed: qualitative content analysis on representative scripts from an anthology of 17 student-produced bilingual (Indonesian-Japanese) drama scripts, combined with corpus-based frequency analysis of lexical-structural markers across the entire corpus (±244,600 characters). The findings show that all five values appear consistently, manifested through register shifts toward lecturers, indirect refusals, gaps between verbal expression and characters’ true feelings, in-group/out-group awareness, and harmony-oriented conflict resolution; frequency analysis of 905 markers shows jouge kankei and enryo-sasshi dominate (66.2% and 18.2%) due to their grammatical bound to keigo, while the remaining three values are manifested more implicitly through narrative structure. The study concludes that writing, translating, and performing drama scripts within PjBL functions as a vehicle for internalizing cultural values, positioning such values as a learning outcome rather than supplementary content.
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