This paper examines the ways in which the indexical meanings that attach to enregistered speaking styles are debated and contested in interaction by younger Japanese adults. Contested meanings include discourses of so-called "hyoojungo" 'Standard Japanese' and the speaking styles that are collectively described as 'Okinawan dialect',…

This study explored how the first language (L1) influences discourse marker use in second language (L2) speech. Some studies (e.g., Liu, 2013; Sankoff et al., 1997) have addressed the issue of L1 transfer of discourse markers in L2 speech, suggesting that non-native speakers' L1 use may influence the frequency and usage of English discourse…

This study examines the role of agency in a young trilingual child's language choice in interaction with her Mandarin-speaking grandparents. The child was born in Japan to a Chinese mother and a Japanese father. English is used as a lingua franca in the family. The study demonstrates how the child asserts her agency to negotiate the decisions and…

This study draws on multimodal conversation analysis to emically account for moments in second language (L2) English interaction in which speakers appear to be visualizing text as they talk. One way they do this is by slotting out elements of a turn-in-progress in the air, shifting their hand in a slotting gesture from left to right as they say…

This article takes a sociocultural linguistic approach to code switching in investigating discursive functions of shifts between Standard Japanese and a regional dialect (Iwate Dialect) in women's activity-centered, naturally occurring interactions. The paper extends previous scholarship to a consideration of how shifts are used for discursive…

Language immersion programs, which are a form of bilingual education, are shaped by multiple factors, including the specific characteristics of the region, the language, the community and the learners, as well as national and regional policies on language education. While the underdeveloped production skills of immersion students have been…

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…

This study analyzes the conversational styles of two dyads who engaged in a semester-long, video-mediated telecollaboration between Japan and America. While one dyad expressed the greatest satisfaction and developed the autonomy to continue the project beyond the curricular requirement, the other dyad expressed the greatest frustration, requiring…

This study examines the development of interactional competence (Hall, 1993, 1995) by English-speaking learners of Japanese as a foreign language (JFL) in a study abroad setting, as indexed by their use of the interactionally significant particle "ne." The analysis is based on a comparison of (a) 6 sets of conversations between JFL learners and…

Despite widespread acknowledgement of the importance of the social dimensions of second language acquisition, there has been little research on second language (L2) use and learning in the social networks of foreign language learners. This study examines the language use of a student of Japanese in Australia in two informal conversations he had…

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 study investigates how "unknowing" story recipients (C. Goodwin, 1979) use different types of questions in order to actively participate in storytelling and collaboratively construct a story when a storyteller is relaying his or her past experience, by examining grammar, intonation, gaze, body movements, and sequence organization in Japanese…

This paper reconsiders the theoretical concept of "identity slippage" by considering a detailed exegesis of three model conversations taught to learners of Japanese as an additional language. To inform my analysis of these conversations and how they contribute to identity slippage, I have used the work of the systemic-functional linguist Jay Lemke…

This paper presents a taxonomy of Japanese discourse types, patterned after the approach of Longacre. The types are: dialogue, narrative, procedural, expository, and hortatory. Salient features are pointed out and analyzed. (CHK)

Chinese characters are used in both Chinese and Japanese writing systems. When literate speakers of either language experience problems in finding or understanding words, they often resort to using Chinese characters or "kanji" (i.e., Chinese characters used in Japanese writing) in their talk, a practice known as "brush talk" ("bitan" in Chinese,…