1 June 2001 (10 Sivan 5761)
I seem to have a strong potential tendency to develop intellectual addiction to things that really fascinate me though it does not happen "every Monday and Thursday". Then I simply become unable to think of anything else in the initial state of fascination, trying to know all I can about the thing in question day and night, even subconsciously while sleeping. Such addition happened when I encountered, e.g., Hebrew, Yiddish, and the Internet, and started learning them. This is happening again as I am fascinated by XML (Extensible Markup Language) and its great potentials. It is totally changing my mindset.
Today's world of computing is characterized by its overreliance on physical layout vis-à-vis logical structure or its mixture of the both at best. The storing and processing of texts, which remain the central tasks of computing, are still dominated by such layout-oriented formats as Word, PDF and TeX/LaTeX to mention just a few. Deplorably, even HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), which is meant to be a structure-oriented language for Web publishing, is abused worldwide by those who are severely limited by a layout-oriented mindset. Although the physical layout is important as an interface between data and our tangible world, what is more important is the logical structure of text data in terms of their storage and reusability.
The basic principle, or even philosophy, of XML is the separation of the physical layout from the logical structure of texts. XML is a metalanguage for describing markup languages known as XML applications. XML documents made with any one of these XML applications, such as XHTML (Extensible Hypertext Markup Language), which is a reformulation of HTML as an application of XML and in which this site is authored, do not (and should not) include any information about their physical layout, which is assumed separately by stylesheet languages such as CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and XSL (Extensible Style Language). It may take some time for those with a layout-oriented mindset to understand this concept and its full implications.
XML enormously enhances the value of text data as it marks up inline and block text chunks using purely logical, or semantic, elements and attributes, and facilitates structure-oriented queries. I have already XMLized this site by switching from HTML to XHTML, and am planning to convert the other documents of mine to XML and to adopt XML as the internal data storage format for a lexical database and an electronic corpus of Modern Hebrew, which I am going to build as the sources for writing a descriptive grammar of Modern Hebrew.
8 June 2001 (17 Sivan 5761)
As a reply to a question posted to a mailing list on Modern Hebrew in Japanese I had a chance this week to characterize communication strategies of Modern Hebrew. I noticed at the same time that actually by simply negating them I could get communication strategies of Japanese, i.e., 1) to verbalize your emotions and thoughts as minimally as possible, 2) not to convey your opinions and criticisms directly to a person in question, 3) to take an intellectual criticism emotionally as an attack against your personality, 4) not to doubt questions (or paradigms) per se, 5) to find what is common with your interlocutor and agree with him or her rather than to disagree, 6) to answer a question naively without, God forbid, answering it with a question, 7) never to be sarcastic, 8) to make understatements, 9) never to interrupt someone else's speech, 10) never to pepper your speech with jokes.
I could not help sighing after making this list. Although I am aware of the so-called cultural relativism and political correctness, and Japanese is supposed to be my mother tongue, I dare say that these communication strategies of Japanese, which are not my inventions after all, really make me sick. I must be a flawed product in a factory called Japanese society to think this way, but this is how I feel. I do not want to suffer from "brain death" and become a human robot like many of the citizens of this society. It is extremely rare for me to be able to enjoy a conversation with someone in Japanese in Japan.
Although there are people who are poor at communication, I am more and more inclined to believe that the desire to communicate with others is our universal instinct as social animals in whatever means we may do so. But when it comes to the main purpose of communication, each speech community interprets it quite differently with its own sociolinguistic history. For example, people in Japanese society communicate with each other mainly in order to confirm that they are like everyone else, while for their Israeli counterparts communication is an occasion for intellectual or emotional stimuli.
The Japanese approach to communication may help keep the society "harmonious" on the surface, and actually this may be what has developed Japan materialistically, but it has also helped sweep all the problems under the carpet and have an illusion that they have been solved. I see more and more disadvantages of this approach than its advantages these days. Although Israeli society may be an extreme case in the opposite extreme in this respect, Japanese society must restore trust in its language and move to the direction of more "transparent" communication strategies.
15 June 2001 (24 Sivan 5761)
I am more and more intrigued by the dynamism of a classroom, which I see more and more as a communication space rather than a place where information, but not necessarily knowledge, flows unilaterally, and silence on the part of students prevails. In addition to the content of a lesson per se, there are so many factors, both verbal and nonverbal, that contribute to the formation of this dynamism that a classroom can be considered a microcosmos of a society. But unlike a general society, one person, i.e., a teacher, can largely forge the dynamism of this microcosmos, of course with the cooperation of the students. The first one or two lessons are especially important as the atmosphere formed then will generally accompany the course set in a physical space called classroom until the last lesson.
One of the first things I pay special attention to before I start teaching the very first lesson is the size of a classroom relative to the number of the students and their physical distribution there. Students in Japan, if given a free choice, have a strong tendency to sit as far away as possible from the teacher in class to avoid any possible interaction with him or her, so the first rows are generally vacant and the students are concentrated in the last rows of a classroom. I always have to start the first lessons by asking them to move forward to the first rows. I have noticed that the physical distance between a teacher and students is extremely important in order to make a classroom a lively communication space. Almost every time I happen to have a look at another classroom through open doors, I am amazed to see that the students are concentrated in the rear, and wonder how the teacher does not notice this. I have also noticed that when the classroom is too big relative to the number of students, and there are more vacant seats than the occupied ones, this has the same negative effect on the atmosphere even if the students are seated on the front seats. This is the only factor I could find in explaining the difference of atmosphere in class between two identical courses with more or less the same composition of students.
Another nonverbal factor which I consider important in addition to proxemics mentioned above is eye contact. Although to have constant eye contact with the interlocutor(s) is attributed a negative value in Japanese communication, and actually many teachers in Japan teach unilaterally without looking at the students, my experience shows me that it can make a huge difference in a classroom as it makes students involved more actively in the classroom activities.
Once these nonverbal conditions are met, I try to have as many verbal interactions with as many students as possible without sparing words of praise when they say or do something good, thus encouraging them to get involved more in the interaction. Since students in Japan are discouraged throughout primary and secondary education to interact with teachers or with each other in class, I am almost always amaze my students with my communication-oriented way of teaching. Although they may be poor at verbal interaction and rather awkward in the first lessons, they gradually get used to interact in class. When I see that the more communication-oriented a certain classroom activity is, the more joy they radiate, I am convinced that the desire to communicate is something universal and it must be incorporated in teaching.
22 June 2001 (1 Tamuz 5761)
One remark I made as a joke last week seems to have offended a student of mine in Japanese as a foreign language due to the difference in our sense of humor. I regretted that I had not noticed this difference before, and I apologized to her in class. This week it was I who was offended by her. I am extremely bothered when someone criticizes someone else behind his or her back instead of conveying the criticism directly to him or her. The following is a letter I wrote to her this week:
"I was sorry that you were absent from our class today. I guess that this was because of what happened in class last Wednesday. When I came to the university today, I found a letter which Prof. X [name suppressed] addressed to me to the effect that you asked him to transfer you to another class because I "mocked" you, and I rushed to his room to talk with him about this.
First of all, I would like to apologize to you again, as I did a number of times in class, if I had offended you with anything I said to you. I had and have no intention of mocking you and other students. Through many years of university teaching, I have found that humor has a very important role to play in class to make the atmosphere more comfortable for students and help them enjoy studying. And this is what I do in the course you were absent from today and the other courses of mine, where this philosophy of teaching is quite favorably accepted by the students on the whole. Last Wednesday I made a big mistake in misevaluating your sense of humor. Somehow I had an impression that you shared more or less the same sense of humor as mine, but what happened last Wednesday and afterwards has shown me that I was wrong, and I regret for not having noticed this before.
I was also quite offended by your reaction. Instead of complaining directly to me, who seemingly offended you, you complained about me behind my back. I consider myself mature enough to receive any direct criticism from anyone, and I myself say what I think directly to someone if I find something wrong with him or her. To criticize someone behind his or her back is, according to my philosophy of life, unfair. I wanted you to complain directly to me. I behave and speak according to the belief that there must be direct communication between the people involved. In this respect, and probably in many other respects, I do not share the Japanese way of communication to avoid any confrontation, which in my humble opinion is nothing but a manifestation of immaturity and childishness.
Anyway, if you should be ready to pardon me for any offence I might have caused you without any malice, I really would like to see you back in our class. I will be more careful as I am aware now that my cynicism and sarcasm are liable to be misunderstood as mockeries against my original intention."
Or am I the one who is immature and childish?
29 June 2001 (8 Tamuz 5761)
This week I received an official notice about the time of my presentation which had been approved some time ago by the World Union of Jewish Studies for the 13th World Congress of Jewish Studies, which will be held this August at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I am also invited to read a paper at the Hebrew language workshop which will also be held this August at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. So my annual visit to Jerusalem in August will be quite hectic this time but hopefully more meaningful than usual.
The World Congress of Jewish Studies is the most impressive congress I know in every respect. Hundreds of Jewish and non-Jewish scholars who are scattered in the four corners of the world but are united by their common interest in Jewish studies gather together in Jerusalem every four years, and present their latest research results. The diversity of the topics of the presentations and the languages used there - mainly Hebrew and English but also Yiddish, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Russian - reflects the linguistic, historical, geographical and cultural diversity of the Jewish people in the past and the present.
I therefore find it a great honor to be able to read a paper there among all the academic giants. This is the fourth consecutive time for me to participate in the congress, and the second time to take an active part in it. Last time I was one of the two from Japan who read papers there, but I am happy to find that this time there are as many as seven active participants from here.
In spite of the general interest in the Jewish people, there are no institutionalized academic Jewish studies in Japan. Many of the researchers who major or "claim to major" in Jewish studies are self-trained, and are forced to teach courses that have little or nothing to do with their majors. Fortunately, things are gradually changing; more and more scholars are recognizing the importance of Modern Hebrew as an emerging academic lingua franca in Jewish studies, and more and more graduate students, though small in absolute number, are heading for one of the Israeli universities to equip themselves with the right academic tools including the practical knowledge of Modern Hebrew.
One of the greatest benefits I have been enjoying through the experience of studying for my doctorate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is the personal connection I could establish there not only with scholars of this and other Israeli universities but also with scholars and future scholars who came to Jerusalem for a short or long period. This also helps me not to feel nervous or isolated in participating in such a big conference as there are many other participants I know personally, some of whom are quite close friends. Actually the best part of taking part in the World Congress of Jewish Studies is meeting them again and reinforcing the friendship with them, and hopefully getting acquainted with new people from among all the participants flocking to Jerusalem from Israel and the Diaspora.