2018 Volume 21 Issue 1 Pages 96-112
The aim of this paper is to compare the ways in which Japanese and Australians cohere and develop topics in first-encounter conversations. As a framework for the analysis, the classification of “co-selection” by Kushida (1997) was employed. The result of the analysis showed that in Japanese conversations, “bounded movement of topics” was made more frequently, and conversations consisted of shorter segments of topics. However, in Australian English conversations, “stepwise movement of topics” was made, and conversations consisted of longer segments of topics compared to Japanese conversations. Also, we revealed that these differences resulted from the co-selection preferences of each language speaker. The Australian participants utilized various types of co-selections to cohere the topics, like narrow-ranging, wide-ranging, or tangential co-selection. Contrarily, Japanese participants made mainly narrow-ranging co-selection. In addition, sometimes they tried not to make co-selections, and tried to avoid the pursuit of topics. These results indicate that expectation of involvement differs between the two languages. We argue that in Australian English, speakers tend to become more deeply involved at an earlier stage in first-encounter conversations than in Japanese. We also point out that the different preference of co-selections can also explain the differences in styles of self-disclosure and topic-development between Japanese and English indicated in previous studies.
