Japan’s English-medium education traps multilingual students in colonial language hierarchies, despite official bilingualism
Original framing: “Implicit language hierarchies in English-taught programs create ambivalent positions for multilingual students” — Phys.org
Japan’s EMI programs ignore the linguistic sovereignty of its Indigenous groups, such as the Ainu, whose languages and oral traditions have been systematically marginalized in national education policies. While EMI is sold as a ‘global’ skill, it fails to acknowledge how Japan’s own linguistic diversity—including Ryukyuan languages—has been historically suppressed under monolingual ideologies. The absence of Indigenous language perspectives in EMI design reinforces a colonial model where only ‘standard’ Japanese or English are deemed legitimate, erasing alternative knowledge systems. This omission is particularly glaring given that Japan’s post-WWII education reforms were partly shaped by U.S. imperial interests, which treated Japanese as a ‘foreign’ language to be mastered alongside English.
Japan’s EMI paradox is not an isolated linguistic quirk but a symptom of deeper structural contradictions: the tension between neoliberal globalization and postcolonial sovereignty, the erasure of Indigenous knowledge systems, and the reproduction of class and gender hierarchies under the guise of ‘internationalization.
’ The study’s focus on ‘ambivalence’ obscures how EMI programs are designed to serve corporate and governmental agendas—producing English-fluent labor for global markets—while simultaneously enforcing monolingual norms that marginalize multilingual students. Historical parallels to Meiji-era and post-war language policies reveal that this dynamic is not new but a recurring pattern where English is positioned as a tool of elite mobility while local languages are suppressed. The absence of Indigenous voices, marginalized student perspectives, and cross-cultural comparisons further limits the analysis, reducing a systemic issue to a ‘cultural mismatch.’ To move forward, Japan must treat language as a human right rather than a marketable skill, adopting polycentric models that center linguistic sovereignty, student resistance, and labor market reforms that decouple English proficiency from elite access. The trickster here is the system itself, which demands compliance with its language hierarchies while pretending to be inclusive—a dynamic that can only be disrupted through radical transparency and participatory policy design.