Abstract
This article examines how people “orient to” the public/private distinction “in action.” Many studies argue that this distinction – one of the important properties of the “modern family” – forces housework into the domestic sphere. However, few have examined the actual interactional processes through which the distinction is established, maintained, and perhaps negotiated. To explicate one such process from a conversation analytic perspective, this article focuses on conversations about one kind of housework – making dinner. These are conversations between mothers and staff members in two “Kosodate Hiroba” in Osaka. Mothers repeatedly refer to (making) dinner when they are leaving a Kosodate Hiroba. When a mother produces such an utterance (hereafter, a “trigger”), she either talks to herself or addresses it to an infant of hers who cannot speak yet. Such a turn design of the trigger makes her treat (making) dinner as a private matter. Since (making) dinner is a private matter in the trigger, other people in the Kosodate Hiroba may or may not respond to it. A response to a trigger shows that the trigger is now accessible by others, that is, it is public. The degree of a trigger’s publicness varies with the type of response to it. The first type, a private response, or a soliloquy, makes a trigger public, but this type of response is not designed to elicit relevant further responses by others present. The second type of response is addressed to the trigger-utterer’s infant (who cannot speak yet). This type of response makes a trigger more public than the first type, because the trigger-utterer may respond to it. The third type of response is addressed to the trigger-utterer herself. This type of response maximizes the publicness of the trigger because the trigger-utterer is urged to respond to it. The response type is determined by whether or not the response involves agency of the person(s) who prepare(s) dinner: The more the response is oriented to agency, the more public it makes the original private trigger.
