This article provides an overview of comparative studies in Conversation Analysis (CA) and critically considers their findings and remaining issues. I start with a discussion of a ‘mismatch’ between CA’s goals and those of comparative research. I then critique three representative studies in comparative research in CA published in the 1990s that compared interactional practices observed in English conversation and those in Japanese. Finally, I introduce the newly developed field of pragmatic typology and discuss the significance of its central method, the natural control method.

The purpose of this research overview is, first, to summarize and clarify the features of “perspective-taking,” which is further specified in terms of a new typological grid for “perspectivizaiton” that differentiates types of “frame of reference” (FOR) and specific “depictive modes” (DM). Second, based on the “etic” grid proposed above, I examine specific instances in which different types of FOR/DM and bodily representations emerge through broadly defined “perspectivization” in order to confirm the validity of the model for contrastive analysis of perspectives.

Contrastive study is more than merely one field of linguistics. The method of contrast forms the basis of language study. This is because it is through contrast that differences can be identified. What contrastive study, a field that already has generated a number of outstanding studies, needs today is the development of a fundamental theoretical basis of contrastive study. Elucidation of the state of language itself from the ontological viewpoint of how language comes into existence, or how language is realized, is an essential point in asking the question of what to contrast, and how. There is a need to make a sharp distinction between those things that have appeared in the form of words and those that have not—i.e. language in utero —and to exclude the metaphysics of language. There is a fundamental danger of a utilitarian view of language that trivializes language as a mere tool of communication and of a teleological view of language that sees it as being conducted for some purpose. Instead of seeing language as merely a semiotic subject, there is a need to look closely at language as something deeply related to human existence, by focusing on the linguistic fields in which language actually is practiced.

Many Japanese-speaking Chinese language learners and Chinese-speaking Japanese language learners experience culture shock when they hear expressions of propositional modality used by native speakers, and misunderstand the implication the speaker intends to convey. The purpose of this paper is to find and theoretically explain the reasons why such misunderstandings occur. In this paper, first, I investigate the practical use of propositional modality in these two languages and clarify the differences in the use of modality between them by proposing a Critical Point Differential Hypothesis. Next, I describe the mechanism of occurrence of various kinds of misunderstanding between Japanese and Chinese in intercultural communication by applying Grice’s Cooperative Principle to the use of propositional modalities in the two languages. Finally, I conclude by explaining how this research can contribute to deepen mutual understanding between Japanese and Chinese people.

This paper examines conversational management in American English and Japanese in conversations between teachers and students meeting for the first time. The analysis characterizes the teacher-student relationship by observing how teachers and students act during (1) opening phases to negotiate who will tell a story first, (2) phases to end the story and allow the next person to tell a story, and (3) phases to look for a new topic to share. The American pairs demonstrated equalizing behaviors to level possible status difference between teachers and students by, for example, providing equal opportunities to tell their own individual experiences. The Japanese pairs, on the other hand, displayed complementary roles by, for example, the teacher suggesting a topic for the student to talk about. It is argued extensively that the Japanese teacher-student relationship is characterized as a quasi-parent-child relationship that conveys a sense of inseparatedness. This can be interpreted more appropriately by introducing the notion of dual mode thinking that incorporates rationality and sensibility (Shimizu, 2003).

This comparative study of request discourse in Chinese, Korean and Japanese employs both monitoring and introspective observation. When making a request, one first plans a course of action and then selects the appropriate utterances, and this process is influenced by socio-cultural factors. In Chinese and Korean contexts, there are interdependent relationships not found in Japanese. In China, the function of mutual requests is to promote a relationship known as Guan-Shi, in which requests cannot easily be refused. Typically, request discourse involves a clear description of the requirement and the underlying reason, so that the person being asked can fully understand what is being asked of them. In Korea, where the mutual request system is more stylized than in China, the situation is carefully explained and reference is made to the circumstances of the person being asked. One can refuse such a request, but in that case it is necessary to offer an acceptable reason. In Japan, there are no interdependent relationships based on exchange of requests. Personal requests are considered troublesome. Therefore, requests are expressed indirectly, and the listener has to infer that a request has been made.

The aim of this paper is to compare the ways in which Japanese and Australians cohere and develop topics in first-encounter conversations. As a framework for the analysis, the classification of “co-selection” by Kushida (1997) was employed. The result of the analysis showed that in Japanese conversations, “bounded movement of topics” was made more frequently, and conversations consisted of shorter segments of topics. However, in Australian English conversations, “stepwise movement of topics” was made, and conversations consisted of longer segments of topics compared to Japanese conversations. Also, we revealed that these differences resulted from the co-selection preferences of each language speaker. The Australian participants utilized various types of co-selections to cohere the topics, like narrow-ranging, wide-ranging, or tangential co-selection. Contrarily, Japanese participants made mainly narrow-ranging co-selection. In addition, sometimes they tried not to make co-selections, and tried to avoid the pursuit of topics. These results indicate that expectation of involvement differs between the two languages. We argue that in Australian English, speakers tend to become more deeply involved at an earlier stage in first-encounter conversations than in Japanese. We also point out that the different preference of co-selections can also explain the differences in styles of self-disclosure and topic-development between Japanese and English indicated in previous studies.

This paper sheds light on the inherent disfluency of spoken language from a grammatical point of view. Previous research has pointed out the possibility of relevance of morphological complexity to the plausibility of disfluency patterns. Apart from this, we suggest that the degree of agglutinativity of a language also affects disfluency. According to our Agglutinativity Hypothesis, a high degree of agglutinativity in a language tends to allow for a “prolongation+continuation” type of disfluency within a single morpheme. We show this based on observations of Chinese, French, Hungarian, Korean, Sinhalese, Tamil, Turkish, and Japanese.

This paper proposes a new orientation of language use called “ba-based language use,” which serves to complement “agent-based language use” that has been considered the standard model of language use. Comparable cross-linguistic video data of the “Mister O Corpus,” including English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Thai discourse was analyzed in terms of the interactional linguistic features displayed by participants. The results show that the English and Chinese speakers interacted as agents whose intentions were rather directly expressed. On the other hand, the Japanese, Korean and Thai speakers interacted by embedding themselves in ba (lit. “field”), through language use that induced partners’ responses, situating themselves as if entraining themselves and resonating with each other. Based on the results obtained in this study, two types of orientation of language use are proposed.

There are two differences between Japanese and Chinese regarding the use of yes-no questions with indefinite elements (YNQs) and wh-questions (WHQs). 1) There are cases when YNQs can be used naturally in Japanese, but not in Chinese. 2) There are cases when WHQs can be used naturally in Chinese, but not in Japanese. Two factors were found to be relevant to these differences. (1) Pragmatic factor: presuppositions of questions in Chinese are more sensitive to the intrinsic functions of speech situations than in Japanese. (2) Grammatical factor: the choice of YNQ or WHQ is dependent on the speaker’s assumption in Chinese, whereas it is dependent upon the real world situation in Japanese.

This study investigates overlapping responses, especially agreements to assessments/assertions, in three typologically unrelated languages—Finnish, Japanese and Mandarin, using videotaped face-to-face conversation as data. Adopting conversation analytic methodology, we argue that the basic motivation for agreeing to an assertion-type turn at a position earlier than a TRP is to show epistemic independence and to manipulate the responding turn’s sequentiality. In the overlapping, agreeing responses, we found two common patterns: (i) agreeing particle + demonstration of understanding, and (ii) repetition with epistemic modification. Grammatical resources used in the overlapped turns common to all three languages include bi-clausal structures, such as conditional (‘if–then’) clauses and causal (‘because–so’) clauses, and the Topic + Comment structure. One resource available to Finnish and Mandarin was SVX word order, while quotation construction was found to be available only to Japanese. In all of these structures, the first or early part strongly projects what is going to be produced next, and this helps the other participant start his or her response before a TRP. Our study suggests that it is a common practice in human cultures, at least in the three examined here, to negotiate the participants’ relative epistemic positions in conversation by manipulating the turn-onset position and linguistic design.

The aim of this study is to consider the possibility of a more objective comparison of equivalent expressions of two languages. In comparing linguistic expressions of two languages, especially in cognitive linguistics, translations have been often used. However, comparisons using translations can be problematic. In this study, problems of translation-based comparison are discussed and a new method for a more objective linguistic comparison of two languages is proposed. Some results of the studies based on this method are also described as case studies.

Focusing on structural and linguistic features, this study examines how American and Japanese speakers convey their ideas in public speaking. While many studies dealing with written language have been conducted, apart from studies of political discourse, there are few studies of how spoken language is used in public speaking. In this study, “TED Talks” delivered by American and Japanese speakers were analyzed to look at how speakers engage their audience. First, the study examined 1) how speakers construct episodes within their talks, and 2) how they employ expressions. The results revealed that American speakers tend to convey information with high certainty. They lead their audience to the goal and tend to present as “leaders”. On the other hand, Japanese speakers were seen to share the process of constructing their talk with the audience and use linguistic features to resonate with the audience. They tend to be “partners” with the audience in their talk.

The purpose of this paper is to study interpersonal differences in negotiating a suggestion among three participants through a contrastive analysis of task-solving conversations in Japanese and Russian. The data used is from triad conversations in which two participants are friends and the third is a stranger. Focusing on interpersonal differences, the author collected two types of discourse samples in each language. The first type was from situations in which a stranger joined a negotiation started by two friends. The second type was from situations in which a friend joined a negotiation started by a friend with a stranger. The results of the discourse analysis of the Japanese and Russian conversations showed that in both situations, the person who joined the conversation later moved negotiations to an agreement by supporting one of the negotiating sides. Moreover, in the Japanese conversations, the friend who joined the conversation later was seen to support the friend already in the conversation, while in the Russian conversations, a stranger joining a conversation was more likely to join the negotiation without supporting either of the negotiators and introduce new ideas that stimulated the negotiation.

The aim of this study is to verify quantitatively how speech level is used in Japanese depending on power and rank of imposition between close interlocutors. We analyzed closed role-play conversation data from twenty Japanese language speakers classified under the categories of request, invitation and apology. More specifically, we categorized main request/invitation utterance (Head-act) and other utterances in case of requests and invitations, and apologetic formulaic expressions (IFID) and other utterances in the case of apologies. We also set sub-speech levels under three main speech levels, and analyzed the data in each of the six levels. The findings were: (1) the speech level base was determined by power regardless of the type of speech act, (2) rank of imposition was expressed in differences in the sub-speech level, (3) the speech level of the main request/invitation utterance (Head-act) was higher than that of other utterances, while a higher proportion of sub-speech level was observed in other utterances. Until now little attention has been paid to sub-speech levels in studies of speech level. The results of this study, however, revealed that the classification of speech level including sub-speech levels complements studies of politeness in Japanese.

Reframing to a play frame is used universally to relieve tension during strained situations. In complaint situations, Thai native speakers often carry out reframing to a play frame when speaking with an interlocutor of different linguistic or cultural background. This paper analyzes reframing by Thai native speakers in complaint situations while conversing in Japanese. Reframing was observed when Thai native speakers acted as the complainer. They tended to make jokes with the interlocutors accompanied by humor and laughter, rather than negotiate for a quick solution. The content of joking was also analyzed for cues signaling reframing. When the joking might be face-threatening to the interlocutor, laughter, repetition, prosodic change, style-shift, or direct reported speech was used. However, when the joking was not face-threatening, only laughter, repetition, and prosodic change were used. These cues enabled the reframing of the talk as a play frame due to the emphasis on the humor of the activity.

The contemporary Sino-Japanese noun kekka ‘result’ has a variety of uses other than as a noun. It is used as a component of idiomatic adverbial phrases/clauses, a clause-final connective, and an adverb/conjunction. This paper investigates its various usages and recent history, analysing some modern and contemporary Japanese corpora. The findings are summarized as follows: (1) Corpus data from late 19th- to early 20th-century Japanese shows that the usage of kekka extended from a prototypical noun to a component of idiomatic adverbial phrases/clauses and to a clause-final connective during this period. (2) In the corpora from late 20th- to early 21st-century Japanese, kekka is mostly used as a component of idiomatic expressions, such as sono kekka ‘that result’, kekka-teki-ni ‘in result’, and kekka to shite ‘as a result’. This indicates that idiomaticization is in progress. Also, the adverb/conjunction-like use of kekka is increasingly attested. Shorter idiomatic expressions in which what used to precede and/or follow kekka is elided are also on the increase. (3) The extension to non-noun use of kekka and its change to shorter idiomatic expressions accompanies the semantic bleaching of its content meaning and involves its positional change to sentence-initial position.

This paper investigates the use of backchannels (known as aizuchi in Japanese) in Chinese, focusing on Tianjin dialect speakers by describing frequency, form, location and occurring situation. In previous studies, it has been argued that in conversations of Chinese speakers, backchannel utterances appear less frequently than in Japanese or English conversations, and that backchannels seldom appear in the middle of primary speakers’ utterances. In this study, we see that backchannels appear frequently in various forms in conversations between Tianjin dialect speakers, and suggest that the style of communication taken by Tianjin dialect speakers may be related to Tianjin culture. The analysis confirmed that backchannels are used frequently in some situations of conversation in Chinese.

This study explores how the meaning of time in a service encounter is constructed through interactions between service providers and customers. The meaning of time in a service encounter, like for example, a relaxing time in a café or fun time in a bar, can be seen as a component of the value of the service. We invoked recent developments in service-dominant logic studies to reveal how the value of a service is co-created among actors, exploring how the meaning of time is constructed through interaction between service providers and customers. We conducted a detailed examination of service interactions in a sushi bar, and identified the practice by which service providers and customers construct the meaning of time. By engaging in routine tasks like washing his knife or wiping down the counter after taking a customer’s order, the sushi chef implicitly tells customers that they have time to think. This practice gives customers ample time to make choices in their order. In sum, we identified the chefs’ practice as one that constructs the meaning of time by which the value of the service in a sushi-bar is created.

Visual content is used by many Japanese language learners as a learning resource, but the details of use have not been clarified. This study aimed to investigate language learning strategies in visual content use and discuss language learning outside the classroom. Analyzing questionnaires completed by 159 Thai university students majoring in Japanese, this study focused on the dimensions of strategies and the tendencies of strategy use of learners while watching visual content. The result of factor analysis showed four factors as the dimensions of the strategies: “understanding words and expressions”, “understanding social culture and content”, “reaction to unknown words”, and “focusing on sound”. This study pointed out that some features of these dimensions overlapped with existing strategies, but there were also original dimensions effected by the resource and the learning environment. Using cluster analysis, this paper described two groups distinguished by learning attitude and two groups focusing on the dimension of the strategies. When looking at the use of visual content outside the classroom it has been thought difficult to distinguish between learning purpose and pleasure, but this study described the use of visual content as part of Japanese language learning.

Imperative forms are the strongest, most direct forms of directive expression in both standard and non-standard variations of Japanese. Restrictions on how these forms are used exist and can be explained in relation to social structure and social relationships. This paper discusses the use of directives in Gokayama dialect, an area known to have retained a traditional honorific system until the 1970s, and examines the use of imperative forms—that is, who they can be used towards and in what function, using data from sociolinguistic interviews conducted between 2009 and 2012. The analysis revealed that: (i) the traditional system of using local dialect imperative forms that included honorific imperatives, was based on hierarchical social relationships and remained until the 1970s, and (ii) in the 1980s, this system weakened and evolved into a system based more on interpersonal and situational factors. This shift is closely connected to wide-ranging changes in local and national social structure. Therefore, this recent change in the use of imperative forms in Gokayama dialect can be seen as an example of the general historical change in Japanese directives.

The purpose of this study was to assess the motivation and identity of students attending Japanese language schools, with special focus on length of study. 406 students were asked to compete a questionnaire based on Expectancy-Value Theory. The results of a two-way factorial analysis of different periods of study (less than 4 months, 6–10 months, and over twelve months) and gender indicated that some factors of motivation show a low number depending on the length of study at a school. They showed that the scores for “intrinsic value” and “ability expectancy” of students who had studied for more than one year were significantly low, and that the scores for “ability expectancy” of male students who had studied for 6–10 months were significantly higher than for female students. Regarding identity, psychosocial identity in students who had been studying Japanese for less than four months was significantly high. This indicates that educators need to be aware that students at Japanese language schools may have difficulty in maintaining high motivation and self-formation (identity) when they are attending a school for a long time.

In this study, interactions between a child with high functioning autism and a graduate student in a university playroom environment are analyzed in detail from the perspective of conversation analysis, and how misunderstandings and problems arose are described. Close inspection of the interactions revealed that the autistic child’s behavior in fact indicates his sensitivity to the current situation and his orientation to the interactional problem, even though this behavior may confuse the adult co-participant. In particular, the child’s seemingly monological actions, generally seen as characteristic of autism, are in fact produced in order to construct a tentative participation framework, through which he attempts to deal with interactional problems. This study demonstrates the describability of an autistic child’s so-called “inexplicable” behavior, and emphasizes the importance of carrying out similar in-depth case studies to deepen our understanding of the diversity of reasoning underlying autistic behavior.

Recently we often hear subsidiary verbs being used in expressions to explain procedures to customers, such as “zairyo wo kitte ikimasho” (let’s cut the ingredients) and “nikonde agemasho” (let’s stew it).This tendency can be recognized as a change in politeness sensitivity. In this study, university students were asked 1) to choose the phrase they preferred in given customer service situations, and 2) to write their impression of the phrase. For the first question, honorific phrases were preferred over non-honorific phrases and longer phrases over short ones. For the second question, honorific phrases were considered to be polite whereas expressions containing subsidiary verbs were thought to be friendly, cheerful, and kind. These impressions seemed to be related to the essential meanings of the subsidiary verbs and because they are often used in shortened forms. Moreover, from the social distance point of view, responses to the second question showed that using subsidiary verbs creates appropriate horizontal distance between participants. Therefore, the frequent use of subsidiary verbs, like positive politeness strategies, can be considered an expression of considerateness through empathy and solidarity (sympathy-oriented expression). This is consistent with the direction of change in politeness sensitivity.

In this report, “The Interactive Engine Hypothesis,” the subject of Professor Stephen C. Levinson’s keynote lecture at the 20th Commemorative Conference of the Japanese Association of Sociolinguistics Sciences, is introduced, reviewed, and critically evaluated by the three participants of the conference panel discussion (the authors of this report). Specifically, the validity of the hypothesis and its impact on related fields, as well as prospects for future research are discussed from the perspective of the related disciplines of linguistic anthropology, discourse pragmatics, and cognitive science.