This paper describes a survey of language usage in 37 department stores in the Tokyo Metropolitan area. The nature and degree multilingualism in these department stores was analyzed through examining language use in floor-plan brochures and directories (landscape features), and in-store closing announcements (soundscape features). Various regional tendencies were discovered. For example, stores within the central 23 wards of Tokyo use more languages than stores in outer areas of Tokyo; an emphasis on East Asian languages was found in stores in the Shinjuku area, while European languages were adopted in the Ginza, Yurakucho, Nihombashi, and Tokyo Station areas. Multilingualism was seen to evolve in the following progressive pattern: Monolingual (Japanese) → Bilingual (Japanese and English) → Quadrilingual (Japanese, English, Chinese and Korean) → Multilingual (more than five languages). We also discuss how the adoption of English, Chinese, and Korean appears to be related to practical linguistic need, while the adoption of European languages, such as French and Italian, results from image marketing strategy.

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This study examines 'pre-sequence' and 'post-sequence' features in compliment discourse by comparing the data of 30 pairs of Japanese students and 30 pairs of Korean students in everyday conversations. The following tendencies were clarified: 1. While the number of compliment discourses in Korean exceeded those in Japanese, more utterances within one compliment discourse were found in Japanese than in Korean. 2. Pre-sequences are used more often in Japanese than in Korean. In Korean, a speaker often starts the conversation with a compliment without a pre-sequence. 3. In sequences following compliments, both Japanese and Korean speakers tend to continue the topic of compliment and lead the conversation, leading to further compliments. 4. The difference between Japanese speakers and Korean speakers in number of utterances within one compliment discourse was seen to be related to the use or non-use of pre-sequences, the length of responses, and how the topic was continued.

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The World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) (Haspelmath et al. (Eds.), 2005) is a convenient tool not only for typologists but also for all linguists of all areas. WALS is a database of more than 2000 languages of the world, and contains information on some 142 linguistic features, including phonological, morphological, and syntactic features. This paper looks at certain grammatical features, for example case number and word order, of languages of Eurasia as described in WALS. This paper describes the diversity of the grammatical characteristics of these languages, while examining their common features. It was clear that the languages of Eurasia have a rich case system, SOV word order, and two types of demonstratives, and that these are different from those of standard European languages.

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This paper explores the particular notion of style-shifting whereby utterances become jokes in conversations. During analysis it became apparent that switching both to desu/masu style and karimono style occurs to make jokes in conversations. The interpretational mechanism of jokes comprises the hearer's own knowledge of socio-cultural stereotypes of characters and settings. In addition, this paper reveals that a great deal of cooperation exists between speaker and hearer so that jokes within interactions are realized. The speaker may draw the attention of the hearer by placing a short pause and/or adapting prosody, while the hearer may tune-in to the speaker through laughter, comment, echoing, co-performance and/or denial.

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