JOURNAL OF MULTILINGUAL RESEARCH

Biography:

Manako Fujiwara was born and raised in Kyoto, Japan. She came to the U.S. as a graduate student at Arkansas University in 1991, majoring Communication Studies. At the same time, I taught Japanese as a Graduate Teaching Assistant. She got a job as a Teaching Specialist at the University Minnesota and taught various levels of Japanese courses. She became a doctoral student in Communication Studies at the University of Minnesota. She is focus area of study was intercultural and interpersonal communication. Her dissertation was about difference in communication among friends between the U.S. and Japan. She got an instructor position in Japanese at Winona State University, MN. Since 2007, She has been teaching Japanese language and culture at George Mason University.

Research Interests:

Her focus area of study was multilingualism in Japan and/or among Japanese. She would like to know their current status, pros and cons to be a multi-language speaker. She was also interested to see if there is any relations between multilingualism and cultural relativism. Her prediction would be that if a person is multilingual, this person would be more tolerant to cultural diversity. She is more accepting the cultural difference they may face in different situations.