INTRODUCTION

[Andrew Barke]

Hi,
I am a doctoral student at Tohoku University in Japan. After teaching
Japanese in New Zealand for three years, I came to Japan just over a year a
go to continue studying. My interests lie in the expression of gender in
Japanese, particularly in the context of group conversation. As Japan is
said to be a "group-oriented" society, contrasting with the Western
individualistic notion of self, I am interested in examining how this
cultural characteristic affects the manner in which gender is expressed in
communication.


Andrew Barke
Graduate School of
International Cultural Studies
Tohoku University