Social Relationship and Language Barrrier

7/29/2019 Social Relationship and Language Barrrier

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Social Relationship and Language Barrier among

Students

Muhammad Umar Farooq

Department of Civil Engineering

The University of Tokyo

[email protected]

AbstractThere are many factors like language, nature of job, personal attitude and othercultural factors which affect the social relationship and it also becomes one ofthe important issues in Japan. In this paper, the author tried to evaluate these

factors especially the language among four laboratories of Civil EngineeringDepartment in The University of Tokyo. This research comes with veryinteresting facts that besides the language and nature of person, nature ofresearch and academic degree also one of the important factor for socialrelationship.

1 IntroductionSocial capital is dependent on Language and culture as well. Effectivecommunication of ideas and thoughts become difficult if language and culturalbarriers exist, as these barriers are hurdles against proper and effectivecommunication among individuals or groups2. Be a social is also very importantpart of our life because it is impossible to survive alone in this hectic and tough

life. To survive a healthy life, we must keep balance among our working, familyand other social life as well. Japan is very ideal country to live. Its very safe andpeaceful country and peoples here are very honest and quiet as well. Theuniqueness of the Japanese society makes Japanese language a heavily culture-laden one1, which contributes much to the language barrier between Japaneseand foreigners.

1.1 ObjectivesFollowing are the focus of this study..1) Is language a barrier to make a good relationship?2) Is a level of degree matters to being more social?3) Which type of lab members are more social?

4) Foreigners are good in making relationship or Japanese?5) Who is Central person?

1.2 Limitationsa) Only four laboratory student members of Civil Engineering Departmentare considered for this Survey.i) Construction Management & Infrastructure Systems Laboratory (CMIS)ii) International Project Laboratory (I.P)


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iii) Bridge Laboratoryiv) Geotechnical Laboratoryb) This is a questionnaire survey; we have to believe the answer as therespondent mention in the questionnaire except the universal known.c) We have to use some approximation and set a criteria as well based onthe answers given by the respondents. Like in this case, the author set acriteria for knowing each other and use some approximation for knowing thelanguage skills as well.

d) It was difficult to have the questionnaire from each members of thelaboratory but still author tried to have maximum answers and he achievedalmost 90% questionnaire.

2 Procedurei) First of all, Author collected the members list of the mentioned four

laboratories.ii) Questionnaire was made to know which students a person knows from the

laboratories and Japanese language Skills & English language skills wereasked in the questionnaire.

iii) Data compilation and analysis of data is done by using netdraw.iv) Results and conclusion based on the data analysis.

2.1 Data AnalysisTotal number of students was 89 including 32 foreigner students as well. Theauthor divided the language (English & Japanese) into three levels. i.e Beginner,Intermediate and Fluent. Then, it is further divided into Intermediate & Fluentinto one category because the students who are even in intermediate level cancommunicate easily.The data was analyzed on netdraw software. Laboratory,Country, English Language Skills (ELS), Japanese Language Skills (JLS) andDegree Level were considered as attributes. The results can be analyzed basedon Betweenness centrality, Closeness Centrality, Degree Centrality degree,Eigen vector Centrality etc. Where all above terms can be mathematicallycalculated by using formulas.

Netdraw network diagram based on four different laboratories (colours) and alsoon betweenness centrality (size) is shown in the figure below.


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3 ResultsThe results are divided into attributes and average value of betweenness, eigenvector and degree is calculated based on attributes groups. As shown in thetable below.Category Betweenn

ess*In degree Out degree Eigen

Vector**All 53.51 24.09 24.09 2.64

Foreigner 61.98 23.84 24.28 2.44Japanese 48.75 24.23 23.98 2.75Japanese Bigg.English 48.77 22.96 22.78 2.48

Japanese GoodEnglish 48.73 25.09 24.79 2.94Foreigner Bigg.

Japanese 69.21 23.89 24.39 2.40Foreigner Good

Japanese 52.70 23.79 24.14 2.50Master 60.09 25.14 26.06 2.84Bachelor 32.27 17.29 14.06 1.88

Doctor 44.17 22.86 23.43 2.35CMIS 66.50 25.85 26.90 3.21I.P 55.00 26.04 27.13 3.42Bridge 48.17 24.23 23.98 2.19Geotechnical 45.73 21.80 20.90 1.76*Betweenness is the measure of nodes centrality in a network equal to the number ofshortest paths from all vertices to all others that pass through that node.**Eigenvector is a measure of the influence of a node in a network. More Eigenvectormeans node is connected to more popular nodes.

1. From these results, it is clear that foreigner students have high betweennessas compared to Japanese students and average value also. But eigen vector

value of Japanese is higher than foreigner students and average value aswell. The in degree and out degree is almost same for the Japanese andForeigner students.

2. Japanese with good English language skills have more eigen vector value.3. The foreigner students who are not good in Japanese have less value of

betweenness as compared to students with Beginner Japanese languageskills.

4. Japanese students have almost same value of betweenness for different levelof English skills.

5. Betweenness, Eigen vector value and degree of master students are higherthan the bachelor and doctor students as well. Bachelor students have theleast value.

6. Among the laboratories CMIS and I.P lab has higher values of theseparameters and geotechnical lab has the least values.

7. One another thing the author noticed that Japanese students whose are goodin English has almost knows averagely 5.75 number Foreign Students.

8. The Japanese whos considered to be Beginner in English language knowsaveragely 4.85 number foreign students.

4 Discussion and Conclusions


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Is language a barrier to making a good relationship!As from the results, it is clear that Japanese students have almost same value ofBetweenness with different level of English language ability. Its mean in thiscase foreign language does not affect the centrality of the Japanese students inthe network. For Eigenvector, Japanese students with larger value areconnected with most of the popular or central members. And also Japanesestudents who are good in English language have more Eigenvector value whichshows that the students who can speak foreign language may have contact with

the famous members in the network. The foreign students with less Japaneseskills have very high value of Betweenness and more centrally located in thenetwork. The reason may be that, mostly these students are Master studentswho have more social network.

So this results shows that obviously language affects the level of relationship.For the Japanese they have almost same degree network independent on thelanguage skills but the students who can speak foreign language are morecentrally located in a network and have more social network with foreignstudents as compared with Japanese studentsFor foreign students, language does not matter for relationship, level of degreeand type of laboratory work matters for the relationship

Is a level of degree matters to being more social!Yes level of degree matters for being more social, Results shows that Doctorstudents are less social in contact with the other students because of moreburden of work. Bachelor students are less socially active because they are justentered in the laboratories or for research work, so they have less socialnetwork.

Which type of lab members are more social!Type of laboratory/research also matters for being the social. Managementlaboratory and International Project laboratory members are doing researchmore related to management and social research topic, so they have morerelationship. Geotechnical laboratory members are doing work on theexperiment based; they have to do work in their laboratory, so they are lesssocial

Foreigners are good in making relationship or Japanese!Results shows that even foreigner students entered in the department just fewmonths to 3 years before but still they are succeed in getting the high centralityin the network. Japanese students have less value of betweenness. But the

Japanese students who are fluent in English, they had friendship with the mostfamous students in the network

Central Person!By considering the results, one foreigner student with ID FMU has the highestvalue of Betweenness, Eigen vector and Indegree as well. When it is asked fromhim, why he/she has more friends he/she just mentioned He/she wants to besocial and By chance in these laboratories they have more friends and alsohe/she actively participated in conducting this survey Second one, MO is a

Japanese, he/she is senior and very active student and can speak English veryfluently and try to have good relationship with others. She has second highestvalues of Indegree and Eigen Vector. Both of these students are belong to I.P


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and CMIS laboratory. Another one is OS, he/she is foreigner student and veryactive and has second highest value of Betweenness. From above mentionedstudents, two are girls. So its mean its better for the girls to be more social andhave central position as compared to the boys. Above results shows that theforeigner students are more popular and trying to have central position inconnecting people.

5 Remarks

There are many parameters in which the social relations matters like nature ofwork, level of degree except the language skills. But it mostly depends upon thenature/aptitude of the individual and the aptitude is usually built from theculture and the surroundings. I want to finish my discussion with a famous quoteWhere there is a will there is a way

6 AcknowledgementThe author is very grateful to students of the Civil Engineering Department whoparticipated in the questionnaire survey. The author is also very thankful to theProfessor Petr Matous for his great encouragement and motivation for thisinteresting research.

References

1) Japanese: A Heavily Culture-Laden Language By Fengping Gao2) Language & Culture Barriers By Steve Jonathan, eHow Contributor

Social Relationship and Language Barrrier

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