This dissertation is an ethnography of teaching and learning language in Japan. It examines teacher-student interaction in the classroom as well as Japanese standard language and orthography at a preschool in Hokkaido, Japan. After reviewing the history of Japan's standard language and Japanese schools, this dissertation examines classroom practice which can show how Japanese language and education policies are received and appropriated by teachers and students.

The dissertation reveals that the classroom discourse implicitly embodies particular knowledge and beliefs (e.g., standard Japanese and orthography), particular positions (e.g., teachers, students), and particular relationships (e.g., between teachers and students) in the classroom. The standard Japanese commodified during the Meiji period was based on the educated speech of Tokyo and since then the Ministry of Education (current Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology) has been responsible for decision-making and implementation of language policy. This dissertation examines the Course of Study and state-sponsored textbooks, and what those products mean for the construction of the nation. It also looks at the language use through the lens of a preschool's institutional practice. The data demonstrates how educational institutions such as schools play a key role in the construction of legitimate knowledge, positions, and relationships. The classroom is where the main elements of education such as ideologies, policies, and textbooks, integrate together to produce contexts and the content of learning.

By examining how the teacher creates new methods and the use of language by students through various forms of accommodation and resistance, this dissertation shows how the teacher and students in the study express, negotiate, and solve problems in the classroom. In such practices the teacher shifts out of the traditional role of transmitting knowledge to students, and instead facilitates activities and encourages students to communicate with people, express themselves, and participate in a community. Finally, this dissertation emphasizes that teachers should not always treat each student as a student who is "imperfect" and needs to be corrected, but as an individual who is responsible for his or her own learning.