Participation in Dialogue by Side-Participants through the Use of Feeling Cards and the Accompanying Transformation in Participants’ Behavior: Working Towards Equal Footing Dialogue Between Native and Non-Native Speakers of Japanese

Abstract

This research project aimed to promote equal footing dialogue on the topic of community development between native speakers (NS) and non-native speakers (NNS) of Japanese living in the same community. We analyzed multi-party dialogues involving both NS and NNS. Because some NNS were at beginner level Japanese, interpreters were provided for each group, and all participants were given multilingual feeling cards to be used as communication aids to encourage direct interaction without the use of interpreters. During the dialogues, we observed side-participants who were left on the periphery of the dialogue use the feeling cards to physically enter the engagement area formed by the other participants, and also use the visual information on the feeling cards as a means of demonstrating understanding or disagreement with the utterances of other group members. In particular, other participants were seen to adjust their linguistic behavior to accommodate speakers of different languages who engaged in these behaviors, forming a “new linguistic situation” within the dialogue space. In this way, feeling cards allowed people who were more likely to become side-participants, particularly NNS at beginner Japanese level, to actively participate in dialogues.