Transformation of Linguistic Behavior of Dialogue Participants: A Sociolinguistic Perspective

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of dialogues from a sociolinguistics perspective. Political science and public administration have empirically examined dialogues as a place for deliberation, focusing on the transformation of participants’ opinions and whether the opinions changed before/after dialogues. However, little research has been conducted on the transformation of participants’ linguistic behavior during dialogues, including what they said and the ways in which they said it. In this paper, two cases of dialogues in which observers at the actual discussion site perceived positive changes are considered with an analysis of the participants’ linguistic behaviors. The common transformations across the examples include (1) positive and constructive opinions in accordance with the theme of the discussion, (2) expression of opinions from a subjective yet legitimate standpoint as a participant in the discussion, and (3) presentation of opinions from the viewpoints of other non-participants. The result of the analysis corresponds to the aim of deliberate discussion.