ABSTRACT
The present chapter is a sequel to Chapter 7 that addresses Japanese business magazines’ front-cover feature of English study methods, drawing upon my previous study on Japanese working women’s magazines’ discourses about English study (Kobayashi, 2015). Two Japanese working women’s magazines are examined to explore the extent to which and how working women’s magazines position English study as their front-cover topic theme.
Overall, by turning a blind eye to gender discrimination in the Japanese business world, the two working women’s magazines employ a pro-women yet uncritical discourse about working women’s re-investment in English study outside the workplace for feminized purposes (e.g. fun travel abroad, job opportunities as freelance interpreters/translators). This chapter ends with a literature-based comparison between Japanese working women’s magazines and western ones, in particular Cosmopolitan, hoping to add a larger body of extant knowledge on western women’s magazines.
The present chapter calls for more attention from university-based researchers in language education to discourse targeted at Japanese working women who used to dream of using English beyond the school context and yet are guided to re-study English for feminized purposes outside the male-dominant corporate world.
