This division researches concepts and phenomena related to culture, society, thought, and history from ancient times to the present from a broad perspective beyond disciplinary boundaries, aiming to construct an integrated knowledge system to investigate various aspects of cultural formation and transformation from different angles. Our exploration includes lingua-cultural practices concerning gender, race, ethnicity, nation, ecology, multicultural symbiosis, history and memory, colonialism and globalization, and other themes. We nurture the capacity of students to analyze these themes through literature, cultural theories, and fieldwork, from an interdisciplinary perspective drawing from the history of thought and society, psychoanalysis, anthropology, environmental humanities, and other approaches.

We analyze the mechanisms of multidimensional production, reception, and transmission of various texts and representations, including print and video, with the aim of clarifying a wide variety of cultural phenomena. Specifically, we will explore the cultural transformations, translations, and adaptations that occur when people come into contact with different languages and cultures, compare the diachronic and synchronic aspects of the language and culture of different regions and peoples, and systematically examine the dynamics of cultural industries, popular culture, and media culture.

The division of Sociolinguistic and Communication Sciences is committed to examine the emerging problems in the real world from the perspective of “communication.” We are intent on synergizing practical skills to overcome such problems for realization of a fairer society with theories derived from various fields related to language in context. The division also emphasizes the ability to design communication as well as language and cultural literacy that creates symbiosis in modern society where multiple languages and cultures coexist and often compete against each other.

This division explores the ways in which people use, learn, and teach languages other than their first language. With a strong practical emphasis on the teaching and learning of the second language, it also covers other research areas such as social, cultural, and psychological aspects of second language education.

In today’s world, opportunities to use multiple languages are on the rise. To take on such a challenge, the courses offered by this division cultivate abilities to interpret and unravel issues related to the second language, both in practice and theory, and thereby educate competent specialists to address these issues.

Our division conducts research on the structures and functions of natural language, analyzing and describing universal rules and principles that govern the human language faculty. We look at the system of language from synchronic and diachronic perspectives. We also work on theoretical frameworks and methodologies for the digital processing and analysis of language and cultural-historical resources. Cross-disciplinary analyses of large-scale text corpora and digital archives, using advanced statistical modeling and machine learning, are combined with detailed text analysis and insights from our expertise in language and humanities studies. In this way our studies in language and culture are founded on robust data and evidence, ensuring scientific reproducibility/replicability.

This division explores the structures and processes of language abilities as one human cognitive mechanism through scientific perception of human cognitive systems from the viewpoint of language information processing—how humans recognize the outside world, acquire knowledge, and process various information. Additionally, regarding cognitive linguistics—which occupies such a position in linguistics—we conduct research that bridges and applies to both theoretical frameworks and specific linguistic research.