Fusae Takasaki Ivarsson
Senior Lecturer
Department of Languages andAbout Fusae Takasaki Ivarsson
Researcher, Teacher
Background
Fusae Ivarsson took her B.A. in Japanese at International Christian University, Tokyo, and her M.A. in Applied Linguistics at the University of Essex. She obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Gothenburg in 2016, writing her dissertation A Study of the L2 Kanji Learning Process: Analysis of Reading and Writing Errors of Swedish Learners in Comparison with Level-matched Japanese Schoolchildren.
The dissertation analyses reading and writing errors of kanji (Chinese characters used to write the Japanese language) collected from groups of Swedish learners of Japanese and Japanese schoolchildren who have learned the same number of kanji. It compares cognitive types and occurrence tendencies of the two groups’ errors for the purpose of investigating cognitive characteristics of Swedish learners' kanji learning process.
Research
Fusae Ivarsson's current research interests centre on ”yakuwarigo” or “role language”. Role language is “a characteristic way of speaking; it has a special set of spoken language features that include vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation, which correspond to the speaker’s social and cultural stereotypes” (Kinsui 2017). Her recent research in this area includes:
- analyses of speech styles of characters in Japanese fictive works (manga, literature, film, etc.) in relation to character archetypes and attributes;
- analyses of English and Swedish translations of the features described in (1) above; and
- a special set of orthographic deviations and other written language features (e.g. writing kanji-words in hiragana or hiragana-words in katakana and special use of furigana or text orientation) in Japanese fictive works to emphasize characters’ attributes or states, clarify situations or suggest atmosphere.
She is also interested in a broader range of cross-writing system issues in the field of second language (L2) writing systems, especially multi-scriptorial characteristics of the Japanese writing system and their application to L2 Japanese teaching.
Teaching
Fusae Ivarsson has taught Japanese at the University of Gothenburg since 1997. She teaches at all levels, mainly in the subjects of writing system, translation, grammar, reading comprehension and composition. She also supervises bachelor’s and master’s theses.