Aspects of Topic Shift in Japanese from the Viewpoint of Multidimensional Indicators

Analysis of First Meeting Conversation between Two Women

Abstract

　This paper investigates the characteristics of topic shift in a first conversation between two female native speakers of Japanese. The method involved labeling each topic shift using a multidimensional array of six indicators: relevance of content; process of ending the preceding topic; trigger for introducing the following topic; topic area; action function of topic introduction utterance; and attitude toward the conversation partner. The relationship between relevance of content and the other items was examined as the main explanatory variable. The results showed that, in relation to the process of ending the preceding topic, there were many “sudden shift” cases in which the process of termination of the preceding topic did not take place in topic shifts where the relevance of the content was “development”, and few “cooperative shift (sufficient)” cases in which the termination process was carried out sufficiently. On the other hand, “cooperative shift (sufficient)” was found to be a common indicator in topic shifts where the relevance of the content was “new” or “reappearance”. A connection was also shown between the relevance of content indicator on the one hand, with the indicators of trigger for introducing the following topic and attitude toward the conversation partner.