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The ESSC as a Tool for Understanding Writers' Lives and Society : Comparison of Young People in the United Arab Emirates and Japan by Examining Each Country's ESSC Stories

Learner Corpus Studies in Asia and the World

1

283-300

神戸大学国際コミュニケーションセンター

2013-03-23

2014-06-24

This paper aims to highlight the UAE young people by comparing with Japanese young people. As a tool of comparison, the Extremely Short Story Competition or ESSC, an anthology of English short stories is employed. Two ESSCs written by UAE youth and Japanese youth are examined respectively. Stories in these two are created under the similar conditions. Analysis of the frequently-appearing topics in each ESSC roughly outlines daily lives, general mindset, behavior, preference, values and culture of two groups. These data help us to understand the holistic life and society of young people in the UAE and Japan. Results of topic analysis show that youth in both countries are in the midst of seeking for their identity, and regard friends to be important. Both youths also appreciate the beauty of nature and feel affection toward living creatures. As a unique trend for Emirati youth, they talk about death very often. It may largely attribute to the high ratio of fatal traffic accidents. The UAE society is highly family-oriented, and life is connected to Islam and God. As for Japanese youth, they are keen to engage a various kinds of hobbies. They also like to express their romantic feeling and thankfulness to their environment. The ESSC was originally created to develop English learners’ writing ability. This study newly proved that the corpora generated by ESSC would illuminate writers’ life and society, and the ESSC could contribute to sociological understanding of ESSC writers.

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