There is an ongoing debate whether phenomena of disfluency (such as filled pauses) are produced communicatively. Clark and Fox Tree ("Cognition" 84(1):73-111, 2002) propose that filled pauses are words, and that different forms signal different lengths of delay. This paper evaluates this Filler-As-Words hypothesis by analyzing the…

This study investigates the emergence and development of the discourse-pragmatic functions of the Japanese subject markers "wa" and "ga" from a usage-based perspective (Tomasello, 2000). The use of each marker in longitudinal speech data for four Japanese children from 1;0 to 3;1 and their parents available in the CHILDES…

Research on second language (L2) communication strategies over the past three decades has concerned itself broadly with defining their usage in terms of planning and compensation, as well as with the use of taxonomies for coding different types of strategies. Taking a Conversation Analytic (CA) perspective, this article examines the fine-grained…

Recent studies illustrate cases of turn continuations that are not necessarily criterially dependent on clausal syntax (Couper-Kuhlen & Ono, 2007; Ford, Fox, & Thompson, 2002), advancing a more multidimensional construal of turn expansions, in general, which, as Auer (2007) put it, "is not a syntactic issue alone" (p. 651). This study further…

This dissertation uses conversation analysis as a theoretical and methodological framework to examine the organization of in-house business meetings that are conducted in Japanese. In particular, this study focuses on how institutionality becomes apparent within the participants' interactions. The data consists of six videotaped in-house…

This article reports on how, against a background of relatively stable patterns of second language negation, a Japanese-speaking adult learning English made use of a negative formula, "I don't know," and how, in and through interaction, analyzed it into its component parts and began using "don't" more productively.…

This paper examines the use of Japanese addressee honorific in several social contexts (e.g., family dinner table and faculty meetings) and considers the relationship between social norms and variations. It attempts to reconsider the notion of discernment (Ide, 1989, 2006) in line with Bourdieu's (1977) conception of "habitus,"…

This paper explores how referent honorifics contribute to identity construction on a Japanese TV shopping channel program. Drawing on Ochs' twostep model of indexicality (1993, 1996) and Agah's proposal (1993) that honorifics are not directly linked to social status but index a "relative position within events of discursive interaction"…

Korean learners of the Japanese language and Japanese learners of the Korean language not only feel that it is easier to learn the respective foreign language, but also acquire Japanese and Korean faster than learners from other countries because of the grammatical similarity between Japanese and Korean. However, the similarity of grammatical…

Previous research shows that American learners of Japanese (AJs) tend to differ from native Japanese speakers in their compliment responses (CRs). Yokota (1986) and Shimizu (2009) have reported that AJs tend to respond more negatively than native Japanese speakers. It has also been reported that AJs' CRs tend to lack the use of avoidance or…

Although there have been many studies examining the acquisition of grammar in Japanese as a second language (L2) (e.g., Nagatomo, 1993; Noda, Sakoda, Shibuya, & Kobayashi, 2001), discourse analysis research on the L2 acquisition of Japanese discourse structure is still in its infancy. This study examines how L2 learners organize their spoken…

This volume collects empirical studies applying Conversation Analysis to situations where second, third and other additional languages are used. A number of different aspects are considered, including how linguistic systems develop over time through social interaction, how participants 'do' language learning and teaching in classroom and everyday…

In Japanese, self-qualification, or a qualifying segment of talk that reduces the force of the speaker's own utterances, is frequently introduced with contrastive markers, such as "demo," "kedo," and "ga." This study explores the relationship between the grammatical and pragmatic competence of Japanese L2 learners by examining their use of such…

This study examines casual interactions between first language (L1) and second language (L2) speakers of Japanese, paying special attention to the coordination of vocal and non-vocal resources that are brought to bear on the achievement of intersubjectivity. More specifically, this study investigates a practice of "embodied completion" (Olsher…

Describes some of the major structural features of the modern Japanese written language as they are manifested at the level of graphology. (FL)