Towards a More Inclusive Linguistics

Abstract

A significant gap exists in spoken language that has not been addressed by linguistics, speech science, or conversation studies. This study highlights this aspect by examining nine phenomena in modern Japanese. Furthermore, through the author’s contemporary native language research on these phenomena, I have analyzed four assumptions regarded as self-evident in current linguistics. These assumptions are: the transmissive view of communication (i.e., the idea that communication is a mutual transmission of information), sententialism (i.e., the idea that discourse is made up of sentences), the displaced view of language (i.e., the idea that language is essentially separated from the situation where it is uttered), and the carved-out symbol view (i.e., the idea that symbols are independent in both meaning and phonological form). We contend that, in order to build a foundation for willing researchers interested in speech and conversation into the void, linguists should consciously examine whether these assumptions are unjustified and hindering research. If so, they should be promptly removed.