2024 Volume 27 Issue 1 Pages 143-154
Our society is full of stereotypical discourses and they often influence our thoughts and actions. How then, do we form and share common images of people with certain attributes in our daily interactions? Using conversation analysis, this study demonstrates the process in which the researcher and Japanese-Taiwanese youths collaboratively constructed “stereotypes” of Taiwanese people based on the descriptions of the youths’ Taiwanese mothers described during interviews. The results revealed the following interactional practices: 1) the researcher’s use of “Japanese” and “Taiwanese” as paired membership categories to elicit the youths’ narratives, naturally orientated the youths towards their mothers’ “Taiwanese-ness,” 2) the youths’ utilization of the utterance “yappari Taiwan(jin) wa ～ janai desu ka” to present their mothers’ characteristics as category-bound predicates, and 3) researcher-initiated laughter occurring early in the youths’ narratives. Through these practices, the identity of the researcher manifested as a “Japanese who knows Taiwanese people well and as someone capable of finding humor in Taiwanese people’s behaviors that may be negatively perceived.” Moreover, as the Japanese-Taiwanese youths aligned with the researcher’s stance through laughter, the co-construction of a stereotype of Taiwanese people could be said to have been accomplished by these two parties who are both “Japanese individuals familiar with Taiwanese people.”
