Keiko Yoshioka is a Lecturer at the Leiden University Institute for Area Studies and Head of the Japanese language programme. She specialises in Japanese language and second language acquisition, with a focus on Japanese language pedagogy, multimodal interaction—especially gestures—Japanese ideophones, and politeness in language use. Her recent research examines how speakers, in both native and second languages, use gestures, intonation, and ideophones to describe everyday events like motion. She also studies how gesture features such as form, size, and synchronisation with speech reveal L2 language development. Additionally, she is interested in how politeness shapes the use of gestures in conversations and classroom settings.

More information about Keiko Yoshioka

Research

Field of interest
My research interests focus on the psychology of second language acquisition. I am particularly interested in how the knowledge of learners’ L1 (mother tongue) and L2 (the second, third etc. language(s)) possibly interact in various L2 situations. I adopt an interdisciplinary approach (linguistic and psychological), and analyze speech as well as gestures which co-occur with speech. The domains of language use that I am interested are those of space and time. I am also interested in language pedagogy with a specific focus on Japanese as a second language.

Dissertation
PhD University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Dissertation title: “Linguistic and gestural introduction and tracking of referents in L1 and L2 discourse”, completed October 2005.

CV

Education
PhD Groningen University, Groningen, the Netherlands. Area of concentration: Second language acquisition, gesture studies and Japanese linguistics.

MA Department of Foreign Languages, Eastern Michigan University, Michigan, U.S.A. Area of concentration: Second language acquisition, teaching English as a second language (TESOL).

BA Department of English Language Studies, Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan.

Key publications

Selected work
(in print) (with Beryl Hilberink-Schulpen). The role of grammar in the conceptualization of ‘progression’: A comparative analysis of Dutch and Japanese event descriptions. In Filipović, Luna and Kasia M. Jaszczolt (Eds.), Space and time across languages and cultures. Cambridge: John Benjamins.

2009. Dainigengo shuutoku kenkyu ni okeru gesuchaa kenkyu (Gesture studies in SLA research). Acquisition of Japanese as a Second Language (in Japanese), 12: 127-144.

2008. Gesture and information structure in L2 discourse, Gesture 8(2): 236-255.

Publications