On Social Contact: the Harassment Discourse in Contemporary Japan

2021 Fiscal Year Research-status Report

• Project/Area Number: 21K01853
• Research Institution: Hokkaido University
• Principal Investigator: 野澤 俊介 北海道大学, 高等教育推進機構, 准教授 (50771325)
• Project Period (FY): 2021-04-01 – 2024-03-31
• Keywords: metacommunication / harassment / contact / institutions

Outline of Annual Research Achievements

As the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has rendered the fieldwork-oriented components of the project unfeasible or impossible to carry out, the project this year has primarily focused on two types of research. First, I have performed a survey of the existing scholarly and non-scholarly literature on relevant issues such as harassment, microaggression, and other forms of harmful contact, as well as legal frameworks for dealing with such issues. While still ongoing, this exploration has so far suggested key themes that will potentially inform the later stages of the project; e.g. the significance of the idea of ‘culture’; trans-national flows of idioms of harmful contact. Second: I have started collecting and analyzing instances of the metacommunicative process regarding harmful contact within my own university. These include posters, manuals, and other public texts of institutional speech. These instances also encompass more ‘private’ talk, where institutional participants bring up ‘improper contact’ as an object of talk within everyday interaction, often seemingly unthinkingly or without being prompted. Though the data collected is still quite limited, initial examination has prompted the question of how everyday sentiment and commonsense might be shaped by larger legal frameworks, such as various ‘advisory language’ about harmful contact adopted by universities and corporations from 'experts.' The legal aspect needs more adequate treatment in this project; the project has acknowledged its significance, but so far has not considered concrete ways of exploring it.

Current Status of Research Progress

3: Progress in research has been slightly delayed.

Reason

The project is slightly delayed because the COVID-19 pandemic has caused several of the planned research activities to be postponed. This impediment most directly concerns the fieldwork component of the project. I have conducted some informal conversations online with people who I had hoped (and I still hope) would participate in the project, but I have so far refrained from engaging them in a more formal and sustained manner given the unfeasibility of physical contact such engagement would demand. Meanwhile I had been invited to share my initial findings in international scholarly events, and these events have been cancelled or postponed. On the other hand, the project is only slightly delayed because some progress was indeed made through the exploration of the existing literature and textual data, which has suggested important questions and themes (e.g. law, culture, privacy, etc) to be taken up in the later stages of the project; besides these delays are mostly of the kind that is recoverable in the second and third years of this project (except, of course, for those cancelled events).

Strategy for Future Research Activity

Hopefully the pandemic will subside to such an extent that travel becomes possible during the project's second year, and the vaccination and other public health measures will become available to wider cross-sections of society -- which will allow me to delve more directly into fieldwork-based activities. I will consult with my potential research participants (who mostly work for universities) about the feasibility of my visit to their campus to collect in-situ data (such as flyers and posters and also interactional data). I hope to visit a few universities within Japan during the summer. I had planned trips to US institutions in my original proposal; these research trips may be made later during the second year (in February or March), or may be postponed until the summer of the project’s third year. Meanwhile I will continue to explore the discourses of harmful contact that circulate in the society, especially with an eye toward the genre of ‘how-to manual’ advisory language. These textual data and their analysis will inform questions and perspectives to be featured during fieldwork, forming a dynamic, recursive process between data collection and analysis. I will participate in several academic conferences, and will be preparing for events projected to be held in the following year (for example International Pragmatics Association and American Anthropological Association), in order to disseminate research findings widely to the international audience and to develop and maintain personal and professional networks with scholars.

Causes of Carryover

The incurring amount is mostly due to the fact that research travel (especially international trips) was rendered unfeasible or impossible by the COVID-19 pandemic during the past year. Thus, usage plan for the next year features the following categories of relatively larger expenses: domestic and international research/ conference travel, honoraria for research participants, and fees for research related-services such as transcription and translation.