Rate My Professor Jun Ohashi

Jun Ohashi is Associate Professor in Japanese Studies and Japanese Studies Convenor at the Asia Institute within the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne. He holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne. Throughout his career at the university, he has advanced from Lecturer, as noted in 2013, to Senior Lecturer and currently Associate Professor. His research focuses on interpersonal pragmatics, (im)politeness, reciprocity, discourse analysis, social norms, and common ground, approached from non-Western perspectives. Key areas include language use in relation to social norms and speaker intention, the discourse of international students, cross-cultural and inter-language pragmatics, social categorisation, agency, face, and politeness.

Ohashi has published extensively on Japanese pragmatics and language interactions. His monograph Thanking and Politeness in Japanese: Balancing Acts in Interaction was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2013, synthesizing prior research on thanking and politeness. Notable journal articles include 'Linguistic rituals for thanking in Japanese: Balancing obligations' in the Journal of Pragmatics (2008), 'Japanese culture-specific face and politeness orientation: A pragmatic investigation of yoroshiku onegaishimasu' in Multilingua (2003), 'An emerging role-identity and honorifics: A longitudinal study of email exchanges in a Japanese community' in the Journal of Pragmatics (2018), and 'Feedback in Japanese and Australian first encounters' also in the Journal of Pragmatics (2022). Recent publications extend to international education, such as 'Chronomobility of international students under COVID-19 Australia' in Frontiers in Sociology (2023) and 'Why did Australia lose international students to Canada?: Trends in Chinese students explained by numbers and their real voices' (2021). His scholarship has accumulated over 289 citations on Google Scholar. As Convenor, he oversees Japanese Studies programs, contributes to language teaching, and engages in public outreach through webinars like 'How learning Asian languages changes your worldview' (Melbourne Asia Review, 2023), the NINJAL Seminar for Japanese Language Teachers, podcasts on Japan-Korea-China relations, and discussions on the centenary of Japanese language teaching at the University of Melbourne.