The Japanese Token hee as a Closing Device for a Sequence of Sequences

Abstract

It has been pointed out that hee is one language resource through which news receipt may be indicated. In this paper, I focus on hee which is not used immediately after new information is conveyed, but rather is used once a series of sequentially organized linked sequences (“a sequence of sequences”, hereafter abbreviated as SoS) has reached a possible closing point. I attempt to reveal and clarify some of the interactional functions of hee in this particular position. Through the analysis, it was observed that hee was used: 1) after the SoS developed to deal with differences in epistemic stances that arose among conversation participants, and 2) after the SoS triggered after the news reported by the recipient reached a possible closing point. Moreover, in each of the above interactional environments, it was confirmed that the speaker used hee to explicitly close the SoS and advance the conversation. Hee is a resource by which participants can lead to the next sequence after explicitly closing a series of sequences. That is, hee can be used as a resource in the procedure of organizing multiple, related sequences.