Self-praise has been considered to be a problematic action which should be avoided. Therefore, few studies have looked at its interactional features, even though self-praise is an occasionally observable feature of actual conversation. In light of this, the present study aims to clarify some of the interactional features in positive self-evaluation dialog and the orientations displayed by actions in which participants express positive self-evaluations. Discourse where participants talk about their strong points was selected for qualitative analysis. The results indicate that the participants exchange information, such as facts, records, or actual behaviour which evidence positive evaluation about themselves, and that participants confirm the validity of their evaluations through the exchange. Furthermore, as a means of accomplishing a mutually acceptable evaluation, ways of responding to compliments or negative evaluations about themselves were also observed. These results are discussed from the perspective of differences with previous studies and the equilibrium of evaluations between the participants.

The authors examined two two-party conversations (conversations ① and ②) and one three-party conversation (conversation ③) involving two Japanese native speakers and one non-native speaker, who were meeting for the first time, and compared the participation adjustments made to facilitate the comprehension and participation of the native and non-native speakers. The authors analyzed topic-opening participants, utterance functions, topic holders, and methods of topic development in large, middle, and small topic openings. Then, the authors discussed what kind of participation adjustment strategies the participants used as a language host or guest. The results demonstrate that in the two-party conversations ① and ②, although there were differences between the native speakers, both the native speakers and the non-native speaker made participation adjustments, allowing the non-native speaker to comprehend and sufficiently participate. However, in three-party conversation ③, the native speakers’ awareness of the need for adjustments declined while discussing some topics, leading to a decline in the non-native speaker’s ability to comprehend and participate. Based on these results, the authors demonstrated the necessity for both native speakers and non-native speakers to adjust participation, not only in two-party conversations, but also in three-party conversations.

The purpose of this study is to obtain data to improve assessment decision-making by analyzing raters’ factors for situational tasks as part of the validation of a speaking test for placement. In this study, we conducted an experiment on situational tasks with a total of 112 participants: 33 teachers with more than 10 years of teaching experience (type-A teachers), 15 teachers with three to ten years of teaching experience (type-B teachers) and 64 non-teachers. The results showed that although there was no major difference in reliability between teachers and non-teachers, non-teachers had more difficulty in discriminating between intermediate and advanced levels. In addition, the type-A teachers tended to place more importance on audio samples than the non-teachers. Non-teachers did not change their assessments depending on level, whereas teachers, especially type-A, changed their focus depending on the level. For example, “fluency” for elementary-low, “text type” for elementary-high, “expressiveness” for intermediate-low/mid, and “deference” and “fluency” for intermediate-high/advanced). These findings illustrate the need for more meticulous training sessions for non-teachers and the need to emphasize the benchmark criteria for each level in assessment training.

In this paper, I examine strategies for translating motion events from English into Japanese and Persian and discuss the similarities and differences between Japanese and Persian “rhetorical style”. J.K. Rowling’s (1999) Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (English original as well as Japanese and Persian translations) was used as corpus data for this research, from which 222 sentences were collected that included motion events representing a change in the location of a figure. The results indicated that manner of motion was encoded more in Japanese than in Persian, with manner of motion being omitted more often in Persian. Furthermore, the study revealed that both languages encoded the path of motion events with similar frequency and that both languages tended to omit path elements. A notably high use of deictic verbs was also observed for both Japanese and Persian.

This article analyzes the Japanese filler-like token, maa, in various sequential positions to identify what interactional concerns are being contextualized by the use of this elusive token. We argue that maa essentially indicates the speaker’s stance that the speakers are oriented to some problem in the ongoing interaction and are implementing the maa-marked action as the result of having dealt with that problem. Maa is thus a meta-interactional stance marker to index that the speaker is objectifying a certain aspect of the ongoing interaction as problematic and that the subsequent talk should be heard as an outcome of dealing with that issue.

This study aims to clarify the physical features of invitation discourse used on Social Networking Services (SNS) by comparing the use of Japanese native speakers (JNS) and Malay native speakers (MNS). In this study, discourse data collected through role-play techniques written by the Japanese speakers and the Malay speakers using SNS was analysed from the perspectives of “message sending format” and “use of terminal punctuation marks and symbols”. The results showed that the Japanese speakers often prioritise “topic parallelism” and send lengthy messages in email format. On the other hand, the Malay speakers tend to prioritise “immediacy” and often repeat messages in chat form. It also became clear that the Japanese speakers frequently break sentences to enhance readability, while Malay speakers tend to use the “reply” function heavily and omit terminal punctuation marks and symbols. These results show that the physical features of the message also strongly reflect the cross-cultural normative consciousness.

Recently, mainly on the Web, special writing styles such as “ure C” and “kawa E” have emerged. These are words using “okuri alphabet”, that is, words in which part of the word is converted into alphabet. They differ from the general usage of romaji (Japanese expressed in Roman characters), and are also different from conventional mazegaki, ateji, and okurigana. In this paper, I examine the expressive effects of these forms, which are primarily found in adjectives. Then, by applying cognitive frameworks such as schematization and instantiation in wordplay, I consider the process by which such notation occurs.

Framing English immersion as a metadiscursive regime, this study examines the pragmatic structure of classroom discourse between teachers and students. It examines how the classroom discourse of English immersion classes, constituting a metadiscursive regime, works to rationalize and justify the marginalization of low achievers. Data for this study was drawn from a 15-month ethnographic study of the English learning experience of students in a Korean public middle school. The results of the study are as follows. First, neither the Korean teachers nor students perceived interest in or the need for classes to be taught in English by native English teachers. Second, teachers’ efforts to empower students using learner-centered learning resulted in low achievers’ developing greater dependence on feedback. Students’ reluctance to learn native-like English implies an inverted evaluation between native-like English and Korean-accented English. This study calls for a social shift in English immersion studies and the need to pay attention to the underlying ideologies that unwittingly widen the achievement gap among students.