The practice of topic introduction and its development in Japanese dyadic conversation between new acquaintances -Focusing on the differences of age and gender between speakers-

Abstract

The present study examined the topic introduction and its development in Japanese dyadic conversation between new acquaintances. In order to examine how the practice of topic introduction and its development might vary depending on the interlocutors' perceived age and gender, we examined the conversation data in which three base subjects were asked to interact with six different partners who differ in age and gender. The main results are as follows. 1) The older speaker introduces topics more frequently in general. 2) The older speaker introduces hearer-oriented topics in relatively higher rate than speaker-oriented topics. 3) The speaker and interlocutor collaboratively develop a topic regardless of age and gender relationship between speakers. 4) There are four sub-categories in `topic development,' that is, `delving,' `focusing,' `clarifying' and `co-constructing.' 5) `Delving' is observed most frequently within the four types of `topic development.' 6) Incomplete utterances in 'topic development' are used more frequently toward older interlocutors. These findings can be applied to the study for making more natural utterances and topic-developments, by the computer in a human computer interaction.