Joint Utterance Construction in Japanese Conversation [1 ed.] 9789027296146, 9789027226228

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Joint Utterance Construction in Japanese Conversation

Studies in Discourse and Grammar Studies in Discourse and Grammar is a monograph series providing a forum for research on grammar as it emerges from and is accounted for by discourse contexts. The assumption underlying the series is that corpora reflecting language as it is actually used are necessary, not only for the verification of grammatical analyses, but also for understanding how the regularities we think of as grammar emerge from communicative needs. Research in discourse and grammar draws upon both spoken and written corpora, and it is typically, though not necessarily, quantitative. Monographs in the series propose explanations for grammatical regularities in terms of recurrent discourse patterns, which reflect communicative needs, both informational and socio-cultural.

Editors Sandra A. Thompson University of California at Santa Barbara Department of Linguistics Santa Barbara, CA 93106 USA

Paul J. Hopper Carnegie Mellon University Department of English Pittsburgh, PA 15213 USA

Volume 12 Joint Utterance Construction in Japanese Conversation by Makoto Hayashi

Joint Utterance Construction in Japanese Conversation

Makoto Hayashi University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam
/
Philadelphia

8

TM

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hayashi, Makoto Joint Utterance Construction in Japanese Conversation / Makoto Hayashi. p. cm. (Studies in Discourse and Grammar, issn 0928–8929 ; v. 12) Includes bibliographical references and indexes. 1. Japanese language--Discourse analysis. 2. Conversation analysis--Japan. 3. Dialogue analysis--Japan. I. Title. II. Series. PL640.5 .H39 2002 495.6’0141-dc21 isbn 90 272 2622 9 (Eur.) / 1 58811 337 X (US) (Hb; alk. paper)

2002034191

© 2003 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa

For Atsuko

Table of contents

Acknowledgments

xi

Chapter 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Orientation 3 1.2 Some major themes of the study 5 1.2.1 Grammar and interaction 5 1.2.2 Activity and participation as analytic concepts 7 1.2.3 Temporality and projectability 9 1.2.4 Embodiment 11 1.3 Organization of the study 11 Chapter 2 Preliminaries 15 2.1 The data 15 2.2 Grammar of conversational Japanese 17 Chapter 3 Activity, participation, and joint utterance construction 25 3.1 Introduction: Activity, participation, and co-participant completion 25 3.2 Differentiated participation in situated activities through co-participant completion 28 3.2.1 Interactive achievement of shared perspectives 29 3.2.2 Differentiated displays of empathetic understanding of another’s experience 36 3.2.3 Demonstrating shared yet independent knowledge 44 3.2.4 Assisted explaining 46 3.2.5 Delivering a response in the form of co-participant completion 56

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Table of contents

3.2.6 Converting a dispreferred action to a preferred action 3.3 Summary and concluding remarks 71

64

Chapter 4 Grammar and opportunities for joint turn construction 75 4.1 Introduction: Projectability of unfolding turn-shapes as an resource for joint turn construction 76 4.2 Delayed syntactic projectability in Japanese 78 4.2.1 Observation: Co-participant completion is routinely delayed in Japanese 79 4.2.2 Account: Syntactic practices of Japanese result in delayed projectability 89 4.2.3 A further pattern: An acknowledgment token prefaces co-participant completion 96 4.2.4 Summary of the section 102 4.3 Local configurations of talk in the immediate sequential context as resources for co-participant completion 103 4.3.1 Repeated turn-constructional formats 103 4.3.2 Emergent ‘rhetorical’ formats 107 4.3.3 Recognizable courses of action 112 4.4 Summary and concluding remarks 116 Chapter 5 Language and the body as resources for socially coordinated participation in situated activities 121 5.1 Language and the body as temporally unfolding, public resources for social organization 122 5.2 Language and the body in co-participant completion 124 5.3 Language and the body in word searches 149 5.3.1 Initial observations of language and the body in word searches in Japanese 150 5.3.2 Distal demonstratives as ‘prospective indexicals’ 157 5.3.3 The interaction between language and the body during word searches revisited 164 5.4 Concluding remarks 168

Table of contents 

Chapter 6 Postposition-initiated utterances: An interactional account of a grammatical practice 173 6.1 Introduction 173 6.2 Procedure for the interactive deployment of postposition-initiated utterances 175 6.3 Social actions achieved through postposition-initiated utterances 179 6.3.1 Pre-emptive answering 180 6.3.2 Co-responding 187 6.3.3 Re-implementing a question in pursuit of a further response 193 6.4 Discussion 201 6.5 Concluding remarks 204 Chapter 7 Conclusion 205 7.1 Summary of main findings 205 7.2 Implications and directions in future research 209

Notes

213

References

223

Appendix 241 Name index 243 Subject index 245

Acknowledgments

The theme of this book is collaborative work in utterance construction. Having completed this manuscript, I feel that it is truly a product of the collaborative support of many teachers, colleagues, and friends over the years. First and foremost, I would like to express my profound appreciation to Barbara Fox, without whose unwavering support and constant encouragement, this work would not have been possible. Working with her for many years has contributed tremendously to developing my general philosophy of language and to cultivating my appreciation of the relevance of the ‘messy details’ of reallife language use to the theory of syntax. Through her extraordinarily warm and caring character, she also showed me how to be a mentor in a truly meaningful way. This has contributed greatly, and still does, to my philosophy as a practitioner in the teaching profession. I would like to extend my thanks to Lise Menn, Curt LeBaron, Dan Jurafsky, Sandy Thompson, and Aug Nishizaka for their many helpful comments and suggestions on this manuscript, and for Scott Saft for editorial assistance. Thanks also goes to Bob Jasperson, Junko Mori, and Tomoyo Takagi, who, as close friends and supportive colleagues, have shared their interests in Conversation Analysis with me over the years, and stimulated me to pursue the lines of work that I developed in this book. I am tremendously grateful and indebted to Chuck Goodwin, who has been a great inspiration for me for many years. He provided a vision of the importance of examining not only talk but also the visual aspect of interaction, and taught me how to do it. His insightful commentary and advice always open my eyes, and his generosity and hospitality always make me want to go visit him in Los Angeles. My sincere thanks goes to Hiroko Tanaka, whose careful reading of this manuscript and countless comments contributed immensely to refining my analysis. Without her extensive, insightful feedback and constructive criticisms, the arguments presented in this book would have been impoverished and much less clear. Working with Hiroko has been a true delight for me, as we kept find-



Acknowledgments

ing our interests in grammar and projectability in Japanese talk-in-interaction so similar to each other’s. I owe a tremendous debt to Manny Schegloff, who invited me to come to study with him at UCLA in 1997–1998, which turned out to be a once-in-alifetime experience for me. He has been enormously generous in giving both his time and his intellect to show me what ‘doing Conversation Analysis’ is all about. What I learned from working with Manny at UCLA will remain with me as a treasure. Sandy Thompson deserves my gratitude for her constant support and encouragement over the years, and for her hospitality while I was in Southern California. A part of Chapter 5 has been published in Research on Language and Social Interaction, Vol. 36, No. 2 (Lawrence Erlbaum, 2003), and a shorter version of Chapter 6 has appeared in Studies in Interactional Linguistics, edited by Margret Selting and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlem (John Benjamins, 2001). I am grateful to the publishers for permission to reprint these earlier papers in this manuscript. Finally, I wish to express my special thanks to my family. To my parents I owe a great debt for always being understanding. My greatest thanks goes to Atsuko for her constant love, encouragement, and inspiration. It is to her that I gratefully dedicate this book.

Chapter 1

Introduction

This book concerns how participants in Japanese conversation negotiate and achieve joint courses of action in the midst of a single turn at talk by employing ‘joint utterance construction.’ Joint utterance construction here refers to a domain of practices by which a speaker produces an utterance that is designed to grammatically continue (and sometimes complete) an ongoing utterance initiated by another speaker. An example of one type of joint utterance construction, i.e., ‘co-participant completion’ (a term adopted from Lerner & Takagi 1999), can be seen in fragment (1) at line 4, in which Asami produces an utterance that is designed to grammatically continue and complete Chika’s utterance-in-progress in lines 1 and 3. By completing Chika’s utterance, Asami demonstrates her understanding of the unfolding course of Chika’s story. (1) [KG 13] ((Chika has been telling a story about her recent trip to a friend’s wedding at which she received a variety of gifts including ‘dried bonito packages.’ In this segment, she describes her effort to make her baggage small to decrease the size of her baggage.)) Chika: katsuobushi tte na:: hukuro panpan ya kara [::,] dried.bonito QT FP package puffy CP because “Because the packages of dried bonito flakes are so puffed up,” [ ] 2 Kyoko: [u::]::n. “Uh huh” 3 Chika: .hhh moo-= EMP “.hhh like,” wa na:. 4→Asami: =chicchaku narahen small become:not FP FP “((they)) wouldn’t get smaller, would ((they))?” 1

(QT: quotative particle; FP: final particle; CP: copula; EMP: emphasis marker. See the Appedix for the symbols used in the original Japanese lines.)

Using the methodology of conversation analysis (CA) as a central framework, this book describes in detail the structures and procedures used by Japanese



Chapter 1

speakers to jointly produce a coherent grammatical unit-in-progress, and additionally, it explores the range of social actions that speakers accomplish by employing that practice. Such research is part of a larger project intended to investigate how humans achieve intricate coordination of their behavior with that of their co-participants in their everyday social encounters and how language plays a constitutive part in making such micro-level social coordination possible. Joint utterance construction was chosen as the focus of the present study because it provides a particularly conspicuous arena for investigating the details of the processes and practices by which speakers achieve precisely-timed social coordination of their linguistic (as well as non-linguistic) conduct within the boundaries of a single turn at talk. The significance of this study lies in offering a systematic, in-depth analysis of a range of issues relevant to joint utterance construction, such as ‘joint participation in activities,’ ‘temporality in grammatical structure,’ and ‘embodiment and its relevance to projectability’ (see below), which have yet to be considered within a single study. Joint utterance construction also offers a fruitful site for exploring the interpenetration between the grammatical organization of language and the organization of social interaction. By focusing on talk-in-interaction among speakers of Japanese, this book presents a detailed description and analysis of the situated workings of Japanese grammar in the negotiation and achievement of joint utterance construction, and demonstrates how the typological features of Japanese shape the ways in which Japanese speakers participate jointly in ongoing activities within a turn at talk. It also shows how the structures of participation in the unfolding courses of situated activities shape (or at least affect) the ways in which speakers exploit particular features of Japanese grammar in accomplishing joint utterance construction. Through the examination of these and other aspects of joint utterance construction in Japanese, this study aims to contribute to our further understanding of how grammar and social interaction organize one another in the achievement of micro-level social coordination. It is, thus, a part of a growing body of interdisciplinary research that seeks to understand the relationship between grammar and social interaction (cf. Ochs, Schegloff, & Thompson 1996; Couper-Kuhlen & Selting 1996; Ford & Wagner 1996; Selting & Couper-Kuhlen 2001; Ford, Fox, & Thompson 2002; among others).

Introduction

. Orientation The last twenty years or so have seen a tremendous upsurge in rigorous, systematic, and empirical research into language as it is used in naturally-occurring interactional contexts (see Goodwin & Duranti 1992; Schiffrin 1994; and Duranti 1997 for reviews of this body of work in different research traditions). Detailed empirical examination of language in social interaction has uncovered many crucial features of language in situ that could not be revealed if we only analyzed an idealized, abstract version of language based on the examination of imagined sentences or dialogs. One such feature is the sociallydistributed, interactively-organized nature of language in interaction. That is, what might traditionally be regarded as the outcome of mental processes in the mind of a single speaker, be it a ‘sentence,’ ‘speech act,’ or ‘story,’ is in fact the product of the multi-party collaborative work of several participants (cf. Sacks 1974; Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson 1974; Schegloff 1972; Schegloff, Jefferson, & Sacks 1977; Jefferson 1978; Sacks & Schegloff 1979; C. Goodwin 1979, 1980, 1981, 1984, 1987, 1996a; M. Goodwin 1980; C. Goodwin & M. Goodwin 1987; Duranti & Brenneis 1986; Lerner 1987, 1991, 1996a, 1996b, 2002; Ochs, Schieffelin, & Platt 1979; Schegloff 1996a; Scollon 1976; among others). In this perspective, the form and meaning of linguistic material, even if it comes out of the mouth of one participant, are inextricably bound up with, and dependent on, the interaction between speaker(s) and hearer(s) during the unfolding course of the activity in which the utterances are embedded. In other words, language in situ does not (only) belong in the minds of isolated speakers, but is constituted by a community of interacting participants producing and understanding language as a form of participation in socially organized activities. Language in everyday social encounters, thus, “functions as a link in human concerted activity” (Malinowski 1923: 312) rather than merely a static, abstract system of signs. The present study holds to this conceptualization of language, i.e., language as a socially-distributed, interactively-constituted phenomenon. The point of departure for this study is the notion that language resides among interlocutors as forms of participation in situated activities and serves as a ‘link’ in coordinated behavior in such activities. This concern with the role of language in the achievement of coordinated behavior in situated activities is motivated by my belief that social coordination in interaction among members of society is a core component of human social life. The ethologist J. M. Cullen has argued that “all social life in animals depends on the coordination of interactions between them” (1972: 101). I believe this also applies to the social life of humans.





Chapter 1

Arguably, without social coordination among its members, society would simply break down. If indeed the constitution of human society depends on the coordination of interactions among its members, and if talk constitutes a major part of such interactions, then it follows that the exploration of the details of how humans accomplish social coordination at a micro level in their everyday interaction and how language figures in that process would make a crucial contribution to the human and social sciences. It is within this larger framework of inquiry into human social coordination that the present study investigates ‘joint utterance construction’ – a phenomenon (or a domain of phenomena) that highlights the interactive meshing of the grammatical structures of separate participants’ utterances ‘as a link in human concerted activity’ within the boundaries of a turn at talk. This investigation underscores the significance of several key features of language in situ – most notably, ‘activity-implication,’ ‘temporality,’ and ‘embodiment’ (cf. Schegloff, Ochs, & Thompson 1996: 21–23) – as crucial to our understanding of the processes by which speakers accomplish micro-level social coordination of their conduct in the midst of a turn at talk. First, joint utterance construction allows us to examine in a most direct way how the activities in which participants are engaged at the moment of speaking can shape the grammatical organization of language in situ. While there are many ways in which the organization of activities can shape the organization of language deployed in interaction, the grammatical meshing of two participants’ actions observed in joint utterance construction conspicuously exhibits how the structures of participation in joint activities by two (or more) participants within single turns directly affect the emerging grammatical structures of those turns. The second issue highlighted by the examination of joint utterance construction is the temporality of grammatical structure in situ and its relevance to the organization of participation. That is, joint utterance construction enables us to examine how the moment-by-moment unfolding of grammatical structures in emerging utterances progressively reveals possible future courses of action-in-progress, and how that shapes different participation possibilities for co-participants during the course of an unfolding turn. If the ordering of elements in the progressive realization of grammatical structure in a temporally unfolding utterance affects the organization of interactional participation at the moment, then, it seems plausible to explore how the variances in the ordering of grammatical elements in typologically different languages (e.g., SVO vs. SOV word orders, prepositional vs. postpositional structures, etc.) matter to the ways in which joint utterance construction is achieved. In other words, joint utterance construction in typologically divergent languages might pro-

Introduction

vide us with a window into the relationship between language typology and the projectability of future courses of utterances provided through different grammatical resources. Third, close examination of how participants achieve joint utterance construction reveals that language, however important it is, is only one of the semiotic resources used by participants to achieve socially coordinated participation in utterance construction. Bodily conduct, for instance, plays an equally, if not more, important role in helping co-participants foresee the future courses of action-in-progress and in enhancing the possibility of precise coordination of behavior among different interlocutors. The close analysis of joint utterance construction in Japanese conversation presented in this book, then, demonstrates some ways in which we can analytically come to terms with these key features of language in situ as critical aspects of the practices in question. It shows that the notions of activity, participation, temporality, projectability and embodiment are all relevant and crucial to our understanding of the situated workings of grammar (and Japanese grammar, in particular) in the negotiation and achievement of precisely-timed social coordination in joint utterance construction. The present study, thus, aims to contribute to our further understanding of the relationship between grammar and social interaction by providing a systematic examination of the intricate interplay among grammar, activity contexts, temporality, and bodily resources within a coherent framework of analysis of joint utterance construction in Japanese. The next section discusses some of the major analytical themes of the present study that have been touched on briefly so far. It is hoped that this discussion will elucidate the coherent analytical threads that run through the ensuing chapters.

. Some major themes of the study ..

Grammar and interaction

The study reported in this book situates itself within a growing body of interdisciplinary research focusing on the interpenetration of the organization of grammar and the organization of social interaction (e.g., contributions in Ochs, Schegloff, & Thompson 1996; Couper-Kuhlen & Selting 1996; Ford & Wagner 1996; Ford, Fox, & Thompson 2002; Selting & Couper-Kuhlen 2001; among others). While individual approaches might differ, the researchers





Chapter 1

working in this area of inquiry share the view that language is “an open system whose internal organization is less than optimally structured formally, and that this organization is a complex response to its ecological setting – the communicative and interactional functions which it serves, and the full cognitive, social, and physiological properties of the human user” (Thompson 1992: 32). If we understand the organization of language as ‘a complex response to its ecological setting,’ then: it should hardly surprise us if some of the most fundamental features of natural language are shaped in accordance with their home environment in copresent interaction, as adaptations to it, or as part of its very warp and weft. . . For example, if the basic natural environment for sentences is in turns-at-talk in conversation, we should take seriously the possibility that aspects of their structure – for example, their grammatical structure – are to be understood as adaptations to that environment. (Schegloff 1996a: 54–55)

Grammar, thus, not only provides resources for organizing linguistic elements in utterances used by participants to build their contribution in social interaction, but its very structure emerges out of recurrent patterns of language use shaped by interactional contingencies, as adaptations to them (cf. Hopper 1987, 1988, 1998). In this view, the direction of influence between grammar and language use is not one-sided as is typically assumed in traditional linguistics, where so-called ‘competence’ is considered a prerequisite, but never an outcome, of so-called ‘performance.’ What is suggested in the quotation above is that grammar and use are much more intertwined, each feeding into and shaping the other. This line of thinking concerning the reflexive (and perhaps dialectical) relationship between grammar and interaction has inspired many careful studies of conversational interaction in a wide range of diverse languages (e.g., Hakulinen 1993, 1998, 2001; Sorjonen 1996, 2001a, 2001b, 2002; Laury 1997; Helasvuo 2001a, 2001b on Finnish; Selting 1992, 1996a, 1996b, 2000, 2001; Scheutz 2001; Uhmann 2001 on German; Mazeland & Huiskes 2001 on Dutch; Steensig 2001 on Danish and Turkish; Tao 1996; Wu 1997, 2000 on Mandarin Chinese; Kim 1992, 1993, 1997, 2001; Kim & Suh 1994, 1996, forthcoming; Park 1997, 1998, 1999 on Korean; Ford & Mori 1994; Fox, Hayashi, & Jasperson 1996; Lerner & Takagi 1999; Mori 1994, 1999a, 1999b; Tanaka 1999a, 1999b, 2000a, 2000b, 2001a, 2001b; Takagi 1999, 2001; Hayashi 1994, 1999, 2001a, 2001b; Hayashi, Mori, & Takagi 2002 on Japanese; among others). These studies explore how recurrent communicative needs, or ‘interactional pressures,’ shape grammatical practices in a given language and/or across languages, as well as how diver-

Introduction

gent typological features of different languages (e.g., word order, morphological markings, clause connectors, anaphora, discourse particles, etc.) are mobilized to accomplish certain interactional tasks in particular, perhaps languagespecific ways. The present study draws its inspiration from this body of work, and expands its scope of inquiry into the interpenetration between grammar and interaction through a detailed examination of joint utterance construction in Japanese. While in recent years there have been empirical studies on joint utterance construction in Japanese that have touched on the relationship between grammar and interaction (e.g., Ono & Yoshida 1996; Hayashi & Mori 1998; Lerner & Takagi 1999; Szatrowski 1993, 1996; Strauss & Kawanishi 1996; Akatsuka 1997a, 1997b; Tanaka 1999a; Morita 2001, forthcoming), the present study departs from them by offering a systematic, in-depth analysis of a range of issues relevant to joint utterance construction, such as activity-implication, temporality, and embodiment (see below), which have not been dealt with within a single study. It is in this regard that this book aims to contribute to this newly emerging field. ..

Activity and participation as analytic concepts

The present study takes the notions of ‘activity’ and ‘participation’ as central for the analysis of joint utterance construction. Underlying this analytic focus on activity and participation is the idea that language is always situated in actual context of use, and that its deployment constitutes social action. The view of language as social action has a rather long history, and has been pursued in a variety of disciplines, including anthropology (e.g., Malinowski 1923, [1935] 1978; Hymes 1964, 1972; Gumperz 1964, 1972, 1982; C. Goodwin 1981; Ochs 1988; M. Goodwin 1990; Duranti 1994; among others), philosophy (e.g., Wittgenstein 1958; Austin 1962; Searle 1969; among others), psychology (e.g., Bühler 1934; Vygotsky 1962, 1978; Leont’ev 1981a, 1981b; Wertsch 1981, 1985; Clark & Wilkes-Gibbs 1986; among others), sociology (e.g., Goffman 1981a; Garfinkel & Sacks 1970; Sacks 1984; Schegloff 1995; Schegloff & Sacks 1973; Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson 1974; among others), and linguistics (e.g., Labov 1972; Labov & Fanshel 1977; Levinson 1979, 1988; among others). It is important to note here, however, that using the notions of activity and participation as the frame of reference for analyzing language does not simply entail identifying individual utterances with certain kinds of action, such as a ‘promise,’ an ‘apology,’ etc. Rather, it gives us a way of thinking about larger frames within which interdependent actions, including sequences of utterances, operate coherently. In this way of proceeding with an analysis of language, one does not





Chapter 1

start with individual utterances, as most linguists and speech act theorists do, but with the larger courses of events – i.e., activities – that interacting participants engage in and build together by producing utterances and other conduct. Individual pieces of linguistic (and other) conduct, then, are seen as forms of participation in, and integral parts of, such activities. Among those who use the notion of activity as the frame of reference for their analysis, some have elaborated on the notion of ‘participation’ not only as a dimension of human interaction, but as a key analytic concept. While different researchers have used different terms with slightly different analytic foci (e.g., ‘participant structure’ in Philips 1972; ‘participation status’ in C. Goodwin 1981, 1984; Heath 1986; ‘participation framework’ in Goffman 1981b; ‘participant framework’ in M. Goodwin 1990; see Duranti 1997: 294–314 for a discussion of these concepts with different shades of meaning), they all pay serious attention to the fact that the activities that participants engage in shape the structural arrangement or ‘alignment’ among the participants vis-à-vis one another and vis-à-vis what is being said or done. Thus, according to M. Goodwin (1990: 10), “activities align participants toward each other in specific ways (for example, the activity of constructing a turn at talk differentiates participants into speaker and hearer[s]), and this process is central to the way in which activities provide resources for constituting social organization within face-to-face interaction.” Consider, for another example, how the activity of storytelling not only aligns participants as storyteller(s) vis-à-vis story recipient(s), but that the details of what is said in the telling may also further differentiate recipients into ‘knowing recipients’ and ‘unknowing recipients’ (C. Goodwin 1981, 1984), depending on the knowledge that the recipients possess about the content of the story. These activity-contexts and the participation frameworks invoked by them inform participants what can constitute relevant actions at the moment, and thereby allow them to coordinate their actions vis-àvis those of the others also participating in the same activity. The notions of activity and participation, thus, provide extremely useful analytical tools for analyzing the achievement of socially coordinated participation in joint utterance construction examined in this book (see especially Chapters 3 and 6). Now, it must be noted that the preceding discussion about activities and participation frameworks should not be taken to suggest that activities and the participation frameworks that they invoke serve as static contextual frames within which participants are made to behave in certain ways. Rather, participation in activities should be regarded as a dynamic process. As C. Goodwin points out:

Introduction

participation is a temporally unfolding process through which separate parties simultaneously demonstrate to each other their ongoing understanding of the events they are engaged in together by building actions that contribute to the further progression of those very same events. (1996b; emphasis added)

In other words, participation in an activity is a dynamic process in which participants (both speaker and hearer[s]) engage actively in negotiating and achieving joint courses of action on a moment-by-moment basis by utilizing a number of features that they see as relevant at each moment to interpreting what is going on, what is likely to happen, and what to do next during the unfolding course of the activity in progress. This understanding of participation as a dynamic process through time leads us to another set of important dimensions of language in situ that will be explored in this study – namely, the temporality and projectability of action in interaction. Let us now discuss how these notions play a significant role in the analysis of joint utterance construction presented in this book. ..

Temporality and projectability

Once we conceptualize language as socially organized forms of participation in interaction rather than as a static, abstract system of signs, then, we must come to terms with temporality as a crucial feature of its constitution (cf. Hopper 1992). Simply put, language (including its grammatical structure) is always deployed through the passage of time in real-life social encounters. This seemingly obvious fact figures crucially in the ways in which participants coordinate their behavior with that of the co-participants in ongoing interaction. As an utterance is produced, its structure (syntactic, prosodic, etc.) emerges moment by moment. This progressive linguistic shaping of an utterance opens up or narrows down participation possibilities for co-participants in the unfolding course of an activity in progress. Consider, for instance, Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson’s (1974) account of turn-taking. According to these authors, a temporally unfolding utterance displays a progression toward a possible completion point, the arrival of which opens up an opportunity for others to start talking and become the next speaker. What is crucial here is that participants (both the speaker and hearer[s]) orient to possible turn completion in advance of its actual arrival and organize their conduct vis-à-vis that prospect. In a slightly different vein, C. Goodwin and M. Goodwin (1987) show how, within the unfolding course of an assessment utterance (i.e., an utterance devoted to making an assessment of something), hearers can join in the activity of





Chapter 1

assessment before the speaker’s actual production of an assessment segment (e.g., an adjective that carries the core of the assessment) through making a concurrent assessment of their own, produced simultaneously with the speaker’s assessment. What makes these kinds of anticipatory actions possible is ‘projectability’ – i.e., the property commonly found in human social action that prefigures its possible future trajectories before the entire course of that action has unfolded (e.g., Terasaki 1976; Schegloff 1980; Streeck 1995). Projectability allows co-participants to see what is happening at the moment, in what direction it is going in the (near) future, and what they can, or are expected to, do next. Thus, C. Goodwin (2000b: 149) argues: The accomplishment of social action requires that not only the party producing an action, but also others present, such as its addressee, be able to systematically recognize the shape and character of what is occurring. Without this it would be impossible for separate parties to recognize in common not only what is happening at the moment, but more crucially, what range of events are being projected as relevant nexts, such that an addressee can build not just another independent action, but instead a relevant coordinated next move to what someone else has just done.

The projectability of “the shape and character of what is occurring” provides co-participants with resources for producing “a relevant coordinated next move” to not only what someone else has just completed, but also what s/he is recognizably still doing, or about to do, at that moment (cf. Lerner 1987, 1991, 1996a, 1996b, 2002; C. Goodwin & M. Goodwin 1987; Tanaka 1999a). Projectability, thus, is at the heart of the achievement of socially coordinated participation in ongoing activities. What furnishes human action with projectability, then? With regard to verbal action, one key contribution to projectability appears to be grammatical structure. Grammar, in a rather traditional sense, organizes the ordering of linguistic elements deployed in the temporal unfolding of an utterancein-progress. It is at least plausible, then, to entertain the possibility that projectability might vary with different grammatical resources and structures in disparate languages. Take English and Japanese for instance. The former has a fairly rigid SV(O) word order, employs prepositions, and gives more weight to word order than to morphological inflection to express grammatical relations. The latter, on the other hand, has a flexible word order with the verb (or predicate in general) tending to come at the end. It employs postpositions rather than prepositions, and its grammatical relations tend to be marked through the postpositions. How does each set of these grammatical configurations mat-

Introduction

ter in the way projectability is furnished in the two languages, and how does it matter in the way speakers of these languages accomplish joint utterance construction? The present study seeks to answer these questions through a detailed examination of the relevance of typological features of English and Japanese to joint utterance construction (see Chapter 4). ..

Embodiment

Another important consequence of taking the notions of activity and participation as central for the analysis of joint utterance construction is the fact that these notions allow us to deal with different kinds of phenomena occurring in interaction, including linguistic and non-linguistic ones, in an analytically integrated manner. That is, the emphasis on participation reframes language as only one of the diverse semiotic resources used by participants to jointly build a coherent event in which they participate. In fact, we often find that language deployed in interaction is inextricably intertwined with coordinate bodily practice and the material surroundings (cf. Hanks 1990, 1992; C. Goodwin 1981, 1994, 1995a, 1995b, 1996a, 1996b, 2000a, 2000b, in press; M. Goodwin 1980, 1995a, 1995b; Streeck 1993, 1994, 1996; LeBaron & Streeck 1997, 2000). One might even suggest that talk is so deeply interwoven with bodily conduct that the former is not really separable from the latter in any systematic manner (cf. Fox 1995). The awareness of this thoroughly embodied character of talk in interaction leads us to examine in detail how language, bodily conduct, material objects, etc., are mobilized by participants as resources to assemble relevant forms of participation at each moment in an ongoing activity. The present study pays close attention to the visual aspect of interaction and explores how bodily conduct, such as gaze, gesture, and posture, is relevant to the achievement of coordinated participation in utterance construction. In particular, the study investigates how embodied conduct contributes to furnishing the projectability of future courses of unfolding talk and thereby to allowing co-participants to anticipate what is going to happen not only in the speaker’s bodily conduct but also his/her linguistic conduct (see Chapter 5).

. Organization of the study The remainder of this book is organized as follows. Chapter 2 provides some preliminaries: an overview of the data used for the present study and some notes on the grammar of conversational Japanese. The latter is meant to of-





Chapter 1

fer some background for those readers who do not know Japanese about some basic structural characteristics of the language, so that they might better understand the phenomena discussed in the ensuing chapters. Chapter 3 begins our exploration of joint utterance construction in Japanese with particular attention to the types of activities that participants engage in at the moment when they perform joint utterance construction. In particular, the chapter investigates how the relevant framework of participation invoked by the ongoing activity shapes the form of participation by a current non-speaker, who opts to furnish a completion to the current speaker’s utterance-in-progress and thereby affects the emergent outcome of the linguistic structure being constructed. It will be shown that co-participants deploy particular kinds of utterance-final forms (e.g., so-called sentence-final particles or lack thereof) in their completing utterances that reflect their differentiated participatory stances toward the activities-in-progress. The chapter thus explores how interactional structures (i.e., structures of participation in situated activities) affect the grammatical shaping of emerging utterances. Chapter 4 foregrounds the relevance of temporality to the workings of grammar in situ by exploring the potential relationship between divergent typological features of English and Japanese, such as word order, on the one hand, and the ways in which joint utterance construction is carried out, on the other. The central question to be investigated is whether, and if so, how, such typological differences matter in the ways in which a temporally unfolding utterance progressively projects its future course in the two languages, and how that shapes opportunities for joint utterance construction. It will be shown that differences in grammatical structures of the two languages do appear to affect the way projectability is furnished, although participants can also mobilize other features of talk in interaction to anticipate the future course of an ongoing utterance. This chapter thus explores how grammatical (and other) resources might influence the shaping of opportunities for interactional participation. Chapter 5 explores embodiment in the process of joint utterance construction. It examines how vocal and visual conduct deployed during the unfolding course of an utterance mutually contextualize and elaborate one another, and how such mutual contextualization progressively enhances the projectability of the future course of the activity-in-progress. The analysis shows how coparticipants orient to the unfolding vocal and visual conduct of the current speaker as constituting a coherent whole in assembling an action, and how that shapes the relevant forms of co-participation by current non-speakers. This chapter thus underscores the importance of examining the role played by the

Introduction

participants’ bodies in the achievement of micro-level social coordination in joint utterance construction. Chapter 6 discusses a particular type of joint utterance construction in Japanese referred to in this study as “postposition-initiated utterances.” Through a close examination of this potentially language-specific practice of joint utterance construction, the chapter demonstrates that co-participants in Japanese conversation have available a grammatical practice with which to ‘graft’ a new utterance onto an element in another speaker’s utterance and thereby redirect the projected course of an action-in-progress. The analysis shows that, on the one hand, particular interactional needs (i.e., a need to shift the direction of an ongoing utterance away from its projected course) shape a particular type of joint utterance construction, which displays a nonconventional use of grammatical resources in Japanese (i.e., deploying postpositions utterance-initially), and that, on the other hand, the availability of a particular grammatical feature, i.e., postpositions, allows participants to accomplish a particular action (i.e., redirection) in a particular, perhaps languagespecific way. Thus, the chapter provides another testimony to the mutual influence between grammar and social interaction. Chapter 7 concludes the study by summarizing its main findings. Implications for the study of grammar and interaction and directions for future research are also indicated.



Chapter 2

Preliminaries

This chapter provides some preliminaries for the analysis developed in the subsequent chapters. Section 2.1 introduces the data used for the present study. Section 2.2 offers a brief description of some aspects of Japanese grammar that will be relevant to the analysis.

. The data The database for the present study consists of recordings of naturallyoccurring, casual (i.e. non-task-oriented) conversations among adult peers who are native speakers of Japanese. The following provides a description of each conversation.

Face-to-face conversations: 1. FH: a video-recording of a 55-minute conversation between two male speakers of the Kansai dialect in their mid-twenties. 2. FM: a video-recording of a 35-minute conversation between two male speakers of the Kansai dialect in their mid-twenties. 3. HR: a video-recording of a 40-minute conversation among three female friends in their mid-twenties; one of the participants speaks the Tokyo dialect, while the other two speak the Kansai dialect. 4. KG: a video-recording of a 90-minute conversation among three female friends in their mid-twenties; conducted in the Kansai dialect. 5. KOB: a video-recording of a 90-minute conversation among four female friends in their mid-fifties; conducted in the Kansai dialect. 6. OBS: a video-recording of 60-minute conversation among four female friends in their mid-forties; conducted in the Tokyo dialect. 7. RKK: a video-recording of 55-minute conversation among one female and two male participants in their mid-twenties; two of the participants use the Tokyo dialect, while the other one uses a dialect from southern Japan.



Chapter 2

8. TG: a video-recording of a 90-minute conversation among three male friends in their mid-twenties; conducted in the Kansai dialect. 9. TYC: a video-recording of a 90-minute conversation among two married couples in their mid-twenties; three of the participants use the Tokyo dialect, while the other one uses a dialect from the Shikoku region.

Telephone conversations: 10. KMI: an audio-recording of a 17-minute conversation between a male and a female participant, conducted in the Kansai dialect. 11. MJM: an audio-recording of a one-minute conversation between two male participants, conducted in the Kansai dialect. 12. TI: an audio-recording of a 18-minute conversation between a male and a female participant, conducted in the Kansai dialect. 13. TK: an audio-recording of a 15-minute conversation between a male and a female participant, conducted in the Kansai dialect. The audio part of each conversation was transcribed according to the conventions developed by Gail Jefferson and commonly used in conversation analytic research (cf. Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson 1974: 731–734; Atkinson & Heritage 1984: ix–xvi; and Ochs, Schegloff, & Thompson 1996: 461–465; see the Appendix for transcript symbols employed in the present study). To make the transcripts of Japanese language materials accessible to those readers who do not know Japanese, I employ the following conventions in the transcripts: (1) the original Japanese utterances are presented in italics in the first line; (2) a word-by-word gloss or grammatical description is provided in the second line (see the Appendix for abbreviations used for grammatical description in the second line); (3) a vernacular English translation appears in quotation marks in the third line; and (4) unexpressed elements in the Japanese original are supplied in double parentheses in the vernacular English translation. Translating temporally unfolding talk from one language to another involves a number of difficulties, especially when the structures of the two languages are as divergent as English and Japanese. Since the temporal ordering of elements within a turn at talk is critical for understanding the workings of joint utterance construction, my main concern in preparing transcripts with English translations was to provide English-speaking readers with a sense of how elements in the original Japanese utterances are deployed in the temporally unfolding turns at talk. This sometimes resulted in a lack of naturalness in the translations. It must be kept in mind, however, that translation is always a rough approximation at

Preliminaries

best, and thus readers are strongly encouraged to inspect the original Japanese lines to see how joint utterance construction is accomplished. For the visual part of the conversations, I employed the technique used by many researchers working on the relationship between vocal and visual conduct, i.e., combining the transcript for the audio part with visual representations such as frame grabs and drawings (cf. C. Goodwin 2000a, 2000b; LeBaron & Streeck 1997, 2000; Streeck 1994). To complement these visual representations, I also provided narrative descriptions of visual conduct in the text surrounding the transcript.

. Grammar of conversational Japanese In this section, I briefly discuss several aspects of Japanese conversational grammar. This brief grammatical description is meant to offer some background for those readers who do not know Japanese about some basic structural characteristics of the language, so that they might better understand the phenomena discussed in the ensuing chapters. From the perspective of word-order typology, Japanese is often described as an SOV, or verb-final, language (where S stands for subject, O for direct object, and V for verb). Examples (1) and (2), taken from my database, illustrate a transitive verb and an intransitive verb occurring in sentence-final position respectively. (1) [TYC 21] Kanji:

mae nakamura ga na:: hige nobashiteta. before Nakamura SP FP mustache was.growing

[ Subject ] [ Object ] [ Trans. Verb ] “Nakamura was growing a mustache before.” (2) [TK 5] Kumi:

takaragaike no ike ga arimasu. Takaragaike LK pond SP exist [ Subject ] [Intrans. Verb] “There is Takaragaike Pond (Lit., Takaragaike’s pond exists).”

Not only verbs, but also other types of predicates (i.e., predicate adjectives, predicate nominals) typically appear sentence-finally.





Chapter 2

(3) [OBS 1] Emiko:

demo .hh but chotto a.little

purin ni shitara pudding DP be:if amasa ga: (.) tsuyoi yo ne:, sweetness SP strong FP FP [Predicate Adj. ] “But .hh for a pudding, ((its)) sweetness is a little (.) strong, isn’t ((it))?”

(4) [RKK 1] Seiji:

koko ga: hay- moto hayashi sh(h)uuraku. here SP former Hayashi village [ Predicate Nominal ] “This is Hay- former Hayashi V(h)illage.”

As these examples illustrate, when a predicate is produced in a sentential utterance unit, it is overwhelmingly placed in the final position. Thus, the so-called ‘canonical’ word order of Japanese can be characterized by a ‘predicate-final’ structure in which a predicate (a verb, a predicate adjective, or a predicate nominal) typically follows other constituents within a sentence (cf. Alfonso 1980; Kuno 1973; Martin 1975; Shibatani 1990). Other than the strong tendency that predicates appear at the end of sentential units, Japanese is known to exhibit a fair degree of flexibility in the ordering of other syntactic constituents (cf. Kuno 1973; Martin 1975; Shibatani 1990). For instance, the utterance in (5) displays the OSV word order: (5) [HR 8] Sanae:

sore o: .hhh jooshi ga kanchigai shitete: that O boss SP misunderstood:and [ Subject ][ Trans. Verb ] [ Object ]

“That, ((my)) boss misunderstood, and”

The following two instances show that obliques, i.e., constituents other than the subject, the direct object, and the indirect object, may occur in any order before the final predicate: (6) [TG 9] Arito:

sore HUEstiba* de hakobu n desu ka. that Festiva in carry N CP Q [Object] [ Instrument ] [Trans. Verb ] “That, do ((you)) carry in Festiva?” ((*name of car))

Preliminaries

(7) [TG 13] Ikuro:

arito ima suutsu de kayotten no Arito now suit in is.commuting FP [Vocative] [Adv. (Time)] [Instrument ] [Inrans. Verb] “Arito, are ((you)) commuting wearing a suit now?”

Thus, even though the word order of Japanese is often characterized as SOV, the distribution of S and O (and other constituents) is more complex than suggested by the simple SOV order, especially in naturally-occurring conversation. Another notable feature of Japanese often described in the literature is that, in many utterances, sentence-final predicates are accompanied by auxiliary verbs and/or so-called final particles (glossed as FP’s in the transcripts). Auxiliary verbs and final particles are deployed to express (i) the speaker’s affect, perspective, epistemic stance, etc., towards the content of the sentence; and (ii) the speaker’s interpersonal sensitivity towards the addressee in the speech situation (cf. Watanabe 1953; Haga 1954; Uyeno 1971; Kuno 1973; Martin 1975; Maynard 1989a, 1993; Cook 1990, 1992; Iwasaki 1993a, 1993b). In the following instance, a sentence-final predicate (mushishite ‘ignore’) is accompanied by an auxiliary verb (kureru), a nominalizer (n), a copula (da), and final particles (yo and ne). The elements after the predicate are presented in bold face. (8) [TYC 16] Muneo:

kumiai no hoo mo betsuni::: (.) sono hen union LK side also not.particularly that thing wa mushishite kureru n da yo ne::. TP ignore give.the.favor.of N CP FP FP “The Union will ignore those things for us, right?”

The auxiliary verb kureru indicates that the action of ‘ignoring’ is done by the Union on behalf of the speaker (thus, ‘for us’ in the translation), whereas the combination of the nominalizer n and the copula da is deployed by the speaker “to involve the hearer in the affairs he is talking about” (Makino & Tsutsui 1986: 327). The sequence of the final particles yo and ne is used to seek confirmation from the hearer about the assertion being made by the speaker (thus, the tag question ‘right?’ in the translation). While signaling propositional attitudes and/or interpersonal relationships is certainly an important function of these auxiliary verbs and final particles, these grammatical elements also play a significant role in the operation of turntaking. Based on detailed observation of turn-taking organization in Japanese, Tanaka (1999a) demonstrates that participants orient to these elements occurring after sentence-final predicates (which she terms ‘utterance-final elements’)





Chapter 2

as indicating that the current turn is about to reach completion, and therefore that speaker transition will soon be relevant. Thus, along with the predicatefinal structure, utterance-final elements constitute an important part of the organization of turn-taking in Japanese. The implications of the deployment of these utterance-final elements for the achievement of a range of different social actions through joint utterance construction will be discussed in Chapter 3. The import of the predicate-final structure and utterance-final elements for the organization of turn-taking in Japanese can be further observed through an examination of ‘post-predicate extensions.’ In naturally-occurring Japanese conversation, it is not uncommon to find utterances in which some syntactic constituents, such as the subject, the direct object, adverbs, etc., are produced following the predicate (cf. Hinds 1982; Clancy 1982; Maynard 1989a; Simon 1989; Ono & Suzuki 1992a). In the following utterances, for instance, ‘postpredicate extensions’ are shown in bold face in the original Japanese line. (9) [RKK 20] Akira:

shiranakatta na sore wa. didn’t.know FP that TP [Post-Predicate Object] [ Predicate ]

“((I)) didn’t know ((it)), that one.” (10) [TI 14] 1 Hayao: tabu:n, probably 2 Izumi: u:n. “Uh huh” de:: yuuko san ga:. 3 Hayao: ichiban ue most above CP:and Yuuko TL SP [ Predicate ] [Post-Predicate Sbject] (Translation of lines 1 and 3) “Probably, ((she)) is the oldest, Yuuko is.”

While utterances that do not display the ‘canonical’ predicate-final structure are rather common, Tanaka (1999a) has shown that participants nonetheless regularly orient to the predicate (and utterance-final elements, if any) as the final component within an ongoing turn. This ‘predicate-final orientation’ is displayed through the initiation of a next turn on completion of a predicate in the prior speaker’s utterance even when that prior speaker continues to produce a post-predicate extension. The following instances illustrate predicate-final orientation displayed by the second speaker.

Preliminaries

(11) [TK 2] [ Shin:

Subject

]

[ Predicate ]

[Post-Pred. Adv.]

YUUdachi ga- (.) kek- kuru mitai yo [ashita.] evening.shower SP come seem FP tomorrow

“((It)) seems there is going to be an evening shower, tomorrow” [ ] [u::::n.] “Yeah”

→Kumi:

(12) [OBS 9] [Predicate ] [Post-Predicate Subject] Keiko: on’naji yo [eri mo. same FP collar also “((It))’s the same, the collar, too.” [ →Emiko: [A! honto::. oh really “Oh! really::.”

In both instances, the second speaker initiates her responsive utterance immediately after the final particle yo in the first speaker’s utterance, even though the first speaker moves on to produce a post-predicate extension without a prosodic break. These cases suggest the interactional import of the predicatefinal structure and utterance-final elements for the organization of turn-taking in Japanese. Another important characteristic of conversational Japanese is the prevalence of so-called ‘ellipsis,’ or unexpressed syntactic constituents (cf. Clancy 1980; Hinds 1982, 1983; Kuno 1973; Martin 1975; Maynard 1989a; Ono & Thompson 1997). Unlike English, which requires the presence of overtly expressed core arguments (i.e., subject, and direct object, and indirect object), Japanese allows its speakers to leave syntactic elements unexpressed when the unexpressed elements are identifiable based on contextual information, or explicit reference to them is unimportant, to be avoided, etc. Thus, in the following utterances, the speaker leaves unexpressed one or more syntactic elements that are recoverable from the context in which the utterances are produced. The unexpressed elements are presented in double parentheses in the English translation. (13) [KG 4] ((subject and indirect object unexpressed)) Chika:

hokkaidoo itta tte itta kke. Hokkaido went QT said Q “Did ((I)) tell ((you)) that ((I)) had gone to Hokkaido?”

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

Chapter 2

(14) [OBS 8] ((direct object unexpressed)) Yaeko:

Miho ga haiten no. Miho SP is.wearing FP “Miho is wearing ((it)).”

(15) [TYC 38] ((line 4; verb unexpressed)) ((Yurie and Kanji are the hosts and Shoko is a guest.)) Yurie: ato orenji juusu gurai [shika nai n desu] kedo. rest orange juice about only not.exist N CP but “((We)) only have orange juice left.” [ ] juusu ka. ] 2 Kanji: [ orenji orange juice Q “Orange juice.” 3 (1.4) 4→Shoko: ya wa- watashi wa zenzen. .hhh well I TP at.all “Well, I- I ((don’t need anything)) at all. .hhh” 1

Note that, unlike languages like Spanish and Italian, Japanese utterances do not show overt morphological marking, such as verb agreement, which could indicate information about the ‘missing’ arguments.1 Finally, it should be noted that Japanese is a postpositional (as opposed to prepositional) language. As Kuno notes, “[a]ll case relations and other functional relations that would be represented in English by prepositions, subordinating conjunctions, and coordinating conjunctions are expressed in Japanese by ‘particles’ that are postpositional” (1973: 4–5). Traditionally, postpositional particles in Japanese are classified into the following four categories: case particles (kaku joshi), adverbial particles (fuku joshi), conjunctive particles (setsuzoku joshi), and final particles (shuujoshi). Case particles are those that mark grammatical case (e.g., subject, direct object, etc.) for the preceding nominals (as in (16)), whereas adverbial particles indicate semantic relations that would be expressed by adverbs in English (e.g., ‘also,’ ‘only,’ etc., as in (17) and (18)). A conjunctive particle occurs at the end of a clause and serves to link that clause to a subsequent one (as in (19) and (20)). Final particles are used at the end of a phrase, a clause, or a sentence to express the speaker’s epistemic stance, display sensitivity to the addressee, and/or manage turn-taking (see the discussion of example (8) above).

Preliminaries

Case particles: (16) [HR 8] ((o → direct object particle; ga → subject particle))

Adverbial particles: (17) [TYC 11]

(18) [OBS 1]

Conjunctive particles: (19) [TYC 33]

(20) [OBS 8]

The import of these postpositional particles for joint utterance construction will be discussed in Chapters 4 and 6. See also Tanaka (1999a) for an illuminating account of the ‘situated utility’ of postpositions in the management of turn-taking in Japanese.





Chapter 2

For further information about conversational Japanese, the reader is referred to Maynard (1989a, 1993), Szatrowski (1993), R. Hayashi (1996), Fox, Hayashi, and Jasperson (1996), Mori (1999a), and Tanaka (1999a), among others. In this chapter, I introduced the data used for the present study, and provided a brief description of some key aspects in the conversational grammar of Japanese that are relevant to the analysis in the subsequent chapters. The remainder of this book will be devoted to exploring how these grammatical features of Japanese can be relevant to the ways in which Japanese speakers accomplish joint utterance construction.

Chapter 3

Activity, participation, and joint utterance construction

In this chapter I begin exploring joint utterance construction in Japanese with an examination of ‘co-participant completion’ (cf. Lerner & Takagi 1999; also called ‘anticipatory completion’ in Lerner 1987, 1991, 1996a, 1996b). Coparticipant completion is a practice whereby a participant produces an utterance that is grammatically fitted to the ongoing trajectory of another participant’s utterance-in-progress and which brings that other participant’s utterance to completion.1 Taking as a point of departure the perspective that speaking in interaction is a form of participation in socially organized activities, the analysis in this chapter pays particular attention to the organization of situated activities within which co-participant completion is practiced, and examines a number of different ways in which participants accomplish delicately maneuvered participation in the ongoing activities by employing co-participant completion. Through this examination, I show how the details of the organization of activities-in-progress and the frameworks for relevant participation invoked by those activities bear on the grammatical manifestation of the interactive meshing of two participants’ actions achieved through co-participant completion. The goal of this chapter, thus, is to explicate some ways through which the grammatical structuring of jointly produced utterances is shaped by the speakers’ negotiation of particular kinds of participation in situated activities-in-progress.

. Introduction: Activity, participation, and co-participant completion The analysis presented in this chapter uses the notions of activity and participation as central analytic tools to investigate co-participant completion in Japanese. The notion of activity has been taken as central in many approaches to the study of language and cognition, including pragmatics (Levinson 1979), linguistic anthropology (Gumperz 1982, 1992; Ochs 1988; Duranti



Chapter 3

1992, 1994), Vygotskian psychology (Vygotsky 1978; Wertsch 1981; Leont’ev 1981a; Engeström 1987), and the study of ‘everyday cognition’ and ‘situated learning’ (Rogoff & Lave 1984; Lave 1988; Chaiklin & Lave 1993; Lave & Wenger 1991). However, the way it is conceptualized and employed differs from one study to another.2 The present chapter adopts the conceptualization of activity proposed by Charles and Marjorie Harness Goodwin (e.g., C. Goodwin 1981, 1984, 2000b; M. Goodwin 1980, 1990; C. Goodwin & M. Goodwin 1987, 1992a, 1992b, 1996; M. Goodwin & C. Goodwin 2000). The focus of the Goodwins’ notion of activity is on the temporally-unfolding, interactive process through which a coherent course of interdependent actions is collaboratively established and sustained by multiple participants acting in concert with one another. In this perspective, activities not only provide the participants with context that guides the interpretation of what is happening, but also invoke frameworks for relevant subsequent participation that allow the participants to build next actions that contribute to the further progression of the very same activities. For instance, in their classic demonstration of concurrent participation in assessment activities in interaction, C. Goodwin and M. Goodwin (1987) have explicated the details of how two speakers conjointly participate in ongoing assessment activities, such as seen in the following exchange. (1) [C. Goodwin & M. Goodwin 1992a: 78; 1992b: 168] 1

Nancy: Jeff made an asparagus pie

((lowers upper ((nod with trunck)) eyebrow flash)) 2 3

it was s::so[: goo:d. [ Tasha: [I love it.

°Yeah I love that.

((nods)) ((starts to withdraw gaze))

In this exchange, the details of the unfolding course of the speaker’s conduct (e.g., the emerging syntactic structure of the form [it] + [copula] + [adverbial intensifier] + [assessment adjective] in line 2, the prosodic emphasis on the intensifier so, the gestural marking of emphasis, etc.) progressively provide the recipient with resources to make inferences about what activity the speaker is engaged in at the moment. This temporally-unfolding activity-context allows the recipient, Tasha, to project with some precision what is going to hap-

Activity, participation, and joint utterance construction

pen next in the ongoing course of Nancy’s assessment. Tasha, then, utilizes this projection as a resource to organize her conduct in such a way as to initiate an assessment of her own simultaneously with Nancy’s deployment of the assessment adjective good in line 2, and thereby accomplish precisely-synchronized participation in the ongoing assessment. Central to understanding how a situated activity such as the one just discussed is organized as a temporally-unfolding, interactively-constituted phenomenon is the notion of ‘participation’ (cf. Philips 1972; Goffman 1981b; C. Goodwin 1981, 1984; M. Goodwin 1980, 1990; Heath 1986). When an activity is initiated, the participants align themselves toward the event-in-progress as well as vis-à-vis one another in specific ways, and this situated configuration of alignment proposes a particular framework for relevant participation by reference to which the participants organize their conduct and produce activityrelevant actions during the course of the activity. For instance, when a participant initiates a telling of a story, this emerging activity invokes a participation framework in which one can relevantly align oneself as a story recipient by producing uh-huh’s while the telling is in progress, as a ‘co-teller’ by joining in the ongoing telling, or as a ‘heckler’ by producing conduct that derails the intended course of the telling, etc. (cf. Sacks 1974; Jefferson 1978; C. Goodwin 1984; Mandelbaum 1987; M. Goodwin 1990; Lerner 1992; C. Goodwin & M. Goodwin 1992a; Hayashi, Mori, & Takagi 2002). It also projects what will constitute a relevant next action by co-participants, such as producing laughter at the climax of a story characterized as ‘funny.’ In the case of an assessment activity, it invokes a participation framework that proposes displays of agreement or disagreement to be relevant next actions by recipients (cf. Pomerantz 1978a, 1984a, 1984b). Hence, we can see that Tasha in line 3 of fragment (1) organizes her conduct by reference to such a participation framework invoked by the emerging course of Nancy’s assessment, and accomplishes activity-relevant participation – a display of strong agreement – by producing a matching assessment of her own even before hearing the core of her interlocutor’s assessment (i.e., the adjective good in line 2). Note here that the details of Tasha’s conduct, including the precise placement of her utterance vis-à-vis the emerging course of Nancy’s utterance and the accompanying head nods, are shaped by her orientation to accomplishing a particular kind of participation made relevant by the ongoing activity. Thus, analyzing utterances and other behaviors as forms of participation in situated activities sheds light on the ways in which interactional dynamics shape the details of how participants’ vocal and nonvocal conduct (including the grammatical structuring of utterances) figures in interaction.





Chapter 3

Recognition of the relevance of activity-contexts and participation frameworks to the details of how the bits of conduct embedded within them are configured is quite useful for the present investigation of the relationship between activity, participation, and the grammatical manifestations of the interactive meshing of actions achieved through co-participant completion in Japanese. In the remainder of this chapter, I examine instances of co-participant completion collected from my database with a focus on what courses of activities the participants are engaged in prior to the moment when co-participant completion is performed, and what types of actions those activities invoke as relevant forms of subsequent participation. I also investigate how the current non-speakers make use of the practice of co-participant completion to accomplish delicately maneuvered participation in the activity-in-progress. Through this examination, I demonstrate how participation by the co-participants in the ongoing activity (e.g., the moment-by-moment shift of their alignment toward the other participants as well as toward the event-in-progress) affects the grammatical composition of the collaboratively completed utterances. To be more specific, I show that, in completing another participant’s ongoing utterance, co-participants deploy particular types of grammatical endings (e.g., so-called sentence-final particles or lack thereof) to indicate different kinds of participatory stances toward what is being said, and thereby accomplish finely differentiated participation in the activities-in-progress. The ensuing analyses thus document some ways that typological features of Japanese grammar interpenetrate with interactional dynamics in the achievement of coordinated participation in situated activities within the boundary of a single turn at talk.

. Differentiated participation in situated activities through co-participant completion In this section, I examine instances of co-participant completion in Japanese observed in a number of different activity-contexts.3 For the sake of convenience, in what follows I use the term ‘first speaker’ to refer to the participant who initiates an utterance to be completed by another, and ‘second speaker’ for the participant who completes the first speaker’s utterance-in-progress. The utterance that completes the first speaker’s utterance-in-progress is referred to as a ‘completing utterance.’

Activity, participation, and joint utterance construction

..

Interactive achievement of shared perspectives

One common type of action that co-participant completion is employed to accomplish is demonstrating affiliation with another participant when such a display of affiliation is made relevant by the activity-in-progress (cf. Lerner 1987: Ch. 5; Antaki et al. 1996; Hayashi & Mori 1998). As discussed above, when a participant presents his/her stance or perspective toward some object or event, e.g., through an assessment, etc., such a stance- or perspective-display regularly invokes a participation framework which makes it relevant for recipients to agree or disagree with the prior speaker (cf. Pomerantz 1984a, Goodwin & Goodwin 1987, for English; Mori 1999a, for Japanese). Among the variety of ways of ‘doing agreeing’ (e.g., producing an agreement token such as ‘yeah’ and the like), the second speaker can provide a version of ‘what the first speaker was going to say’ to demonstrate (as opposed to merely claim) that he/she shares the same stance or perspective as the first speaker. In other words, co-participant completion can be used by participants to show each other that, on the issue being discussed at least, their minds are together. A close examination of the processes of achieving shared perspectives through co-participant completion reveals that, in Japanese, the second speaker regularly deploys certain types of grammatical endings in his/her completing utterance that are devoted to the work of ‘perspective sharing.’ As discussed in Chapter 2, Japanese is a so-called ‘predicate-final’ language in which a predicate (typically a verb, but sometimes a predicate adjective or a predicate nominal) regularly occurs at the end of a clausal/sentential utterance, and therefore, co-participant completion is often realized by supplying a predicate that comes at the end of the ongoing utterance initiated by the first participant (cf. also Chapter 4). Now, as also noted in Chapter 2, a clause/sentencefinal predicate in Japanese can be followed by so-called ‘utterance-final elements’ (Tanaka 1999a), such as auxiliary verbs and sentence-final particles, which serve to indicate (i) the speaker’s affect, perspective, epistemic stance, etc., toward the proposition expressed, and (ii) the speaker’s interpersonal sensitivity towards the addressee in the speech situation (cf. Watanabe 1953; Haga 1954; Uyeno 1971; Cook 1990, 1992; Iwasaki 1993a, 1993b; Maynard 1993; Kamio 1994, 1997). This structural possibility of deploying epistemic and interpersonal stance markers after clause/sentence-final predicates allows Japanese speakers who perform co-participant completion to manage finelytuned grammatical displays of particular ‘footing’ (Goffman 1981b; Antaki, et al. 1996) on which they complete another speaker’s utterance-in-progress. In other words, unlike co-participant completion in English, the negotiation of



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Chapter 3

whose ‘voice’ the second speaker is animating through co-participant completion and what kind of participatory stance he/she is taking can be indicated by the grammatical form of the completing utterance in Japanese.4 In the instances examined for the present study, co-participant completion used for achieving ‘stance/perspective sharing’ regularly involves the delivery of the following types of clusters of utterance-final elements after a predicate: a. [predicate] + yo ne (or yo na) b. [predicate] + mon ne (or mon na) c. [predicate] + [tag-question-like element, such as jan(ai), yan] What is common in these grammatical endings is that they contain the elements of both the speaker’s assertion and a solicitation of acknowledgment from the recipient. For instance, in (i) and (ii), the final particle yo and the nominalizer mon both indicate a sense of insistence in asserting a claim, while the final particle ne or na seeks agreement or confirmation from the recipient. In (iii), assertion and agreement/confirmation-seeking are conflated in the tag-question-like expression jan(ai) or yan. The juxtaposition of these two elements, i.e., assertion and agreement/confirmation-seeking, is important for accomplishing shared perspectives through co-participant completion for the following reasons. First, by invoking the sense of an assertion of a claim, the second speaker indicates that what he/she is voicing in the completing utterance is not merely a guess of how the first speaker would complete his/her utterance, but also the second speaker’s own assertion of a stance toward the issue under discussion. In other words, with yo or mon, the second speaker claims his/her ‘entitlement’ (Sacks 1992) to the content of the jointly produced utterance. On the other hand, by soliciting confirmation and agreement from the first speaker, the second speaker proposes his/her utterance as a collaborative (rather than an individual) assertion of a shared perspective, for which the first speaker’s validation is indispensable. To put it in a slightly different way, by deploying such grammatical endings as yo ne, mon ne, and jan(ai), the second speaker embeds the ‘voices’ of both participants, i.e., the first and second speakers, within the completing utterance. And when the first speaker in the subsequent turn confirms the second speaker’s rendition of the ‘dualvoiced’ completion, then a shared perspective is sequentially and interactively accomplished. Let us examine some instances. Fragment (2) presents an excerpt from a discussion about ‘tooth-brushing’ among four participants. Prior to the beginning of this excerpt, Muneo and Yurie stated that they used to have quite a few cavities because they did not like brushing their teeth. In response to this, the

Activity, participation, and joint utterance construction

other two, Shoko and Kanji, state that they love brushing so much that their dentists told them that they did it too much – the enamel on their teeth was getting scoured off. Examine the following fragment to see how Shoko and Kanji interactively accomplish ‘alliance formation’ – an alliance of ‘lovers of tooth-brushing.’ (2) [TYC 31] Shoko: ... .hh ha- haguki to ha no kokorahen ga gum and tooth LK around.here SP “... .hh The area around here between the gum and the teeth...” kezuraresugi toka:? 2 be.scoured.off etc. “... gets scoured off, or something?” 3 Yurie: a::::::. “Oh:::::.” soo na n deshoo ne::.= 4 Kanji: u:::::n na- (.) soo- tabun yeah so probably so CP N CP FP “Yeah::: (.) ((I)) guess that’s probably what ((it)) is.” 5 Shoko: watashi mo so[o iwa]reru. I also so be.told “I’m told so, too.” [ ] 6 Muneo: [((sniff))] 7 (0.5) 8 Muneo: [( )] [ ] 9 Kanji: [tada nanka moo] tsurutsuru shite nai to: just like EMP smooth is not if “((It))’s just that, like, if ((the teeth)) aren’t smooth,” 10 (0.3) i[ya da kara::] don’t.like CP because “(0.3) ((I)) would hate ((it)), so...” [ ] desu yo ] ne::. 11 Shoko: [soo so CP FP FP “((That))’s right, isn’t it?” 12 Kanji: yappari tetteeteki ni:: (0.3) as.expected thoroughly “... you know, thoroughly:: (0.3)” 13→Shoko: migakimasu yo [ne::.] brush FP FP “((we)) brush ((our teeth)), don’t ((we))?” 1

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14

Kanji:

[ ] [◦ u:::]::n.◦ “◦ Yeah:::::◦ ”

In lines 1–2, Shoko asks Kanji for confirmation about what his dentist told him about brushing too much. Kanji offers confirmation in line 4, and Shoko seconds it by saying, watashi mo soo iwareru (‘I’m told so, too’), in line 5. Kanji then states that he would not like it if his teeth were not smooth (lines 9– 10), and Shoko agrees rather emphatically with soo desu yo ne:: (‘((That))’s right, isn’t ((it))?’), at line 11. In these exchanges between Shoko and Kanji, we already observe moves of affiliation (e.g., lines 5 and 11) that display their alignment as ‘lovers of tooth-brushing.’ It is in this activity-context that coparticipant completion is employed to bring off a collaborative achievement of a shared perspective. At line 13, Shoko supplies a predicate (migakimasu ‘to brush’) that completes Kanji’s utterance-in-progress in line 12. Note here that Shoko produces the combination of the final particles yo + ne after the predicate. As described above, by deploying these particles, Shoko presents the predicate migakimasu (‘to brush’) as her own assertion of a stance, on the one hand, and proposes it as a shared perspective that requires Kanji’s confirmation, on the other. The sense that the yo ne ending conveys is roughly expressed in the translation with the pronoun ‘we’ (which is not present in the original Japanese) rather than ‘you,’ and the tag question, ‘don’t we?’ In line 14, then, Kanji confirms Shoko’s completion, and through this sequence of actions by the two participants, a shared perspective is interactively and collaboratively achieved. Fragment (3) provides another instance of stance/perspective sharing through co-participant completion. This fragment is taken from a conversation among four middle-aged women in which the participants talk about various issues and concerns related to middle-aged women. The following portion of the conversation presents a part of storytelling by Emiko, who describes her experience at a boutique to the other participants. Prior to the beginning of the fragment, Emiko mentioned that a sales woman recommended a dress with a belt around the waist, which, in Emiko’s opinion, does not look good on a middle-aged woman’s ‘lumpy’ body because the belt would only make visible the layers of body fat. In lines 1–2, 4, 6–7, Emiko states that such a dress would look good on someone who is tall and thin. In the course of this assessment utterance by Emiko embedded within the storytelling activity, then, one of the recipients, Yaeko, accomplishes relevant participation – display of agreement and alignment with Emiko as another middle-aged woman – by

Activity, participation, and joint utterance construction

co-constructing a shared stance toward the event under discussion through co-participant completion in lines 11–12, 14, and 16. (3) [OBS 6] Emiko: are wa ne:, hoso:kutte NE:, (0.3) that TP FP thin:and FP 2 ano uwazee ga atte:,= uhm height SP exist:and “If ((you)) were thin and (0.3) uhm, tall, and” 3 Yaeko: =so[o da yo ne:, so CP FP FP “That’s right.” [ 4 Emiko: [zentai ga:,= whole SP “((your)) whole body...” 5 Yaeko: =soo soo. so so “Right, right.” 6 Emiko: u- ano: hosoi kara↑, .hh beruto shitemo uhm thin because belt do:even.if su[teki na n] da kedo:= 7 nice CP N CP although “... were thin, then ((you)) would look nice in that ((sort of dress)), even if ((you)) wore a belt, bu:t,” [ ] 8 Yaeko: [u::n u:n.] “Uh huh, uh huh.” 9 Hanae: =u:n. “Uh huh.” 10 Emiko: ((TSK))hn. “((TSK)) hn” 11→Yaeko: obasan no ne, middle-aged.woman LK FP bo[kon ga ne, mata yokee]= 12→ [bokon MIM(lumpy) MIM SP FP also extra “middle-aged women will only get...” [ [ ] 13 Emiko: [obasan no [bokon bokon shita no ga sa:, middle-aged.woman LK MIM MIM is N SP FP ]= “middle-aged women’s lumpy ((body)) will...” 1

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14→Yaeko: =bokon b(h)ok(h)on te [hitotsu huechau dake= MIM MIM QT one increase only “... another layer on ((their)) lumpy ((bodies))...” [ 15 Emiko: [so. “Right.” 16→Yaeko: =[da mon ne(hh). CP thing FP “... won’t ((they))?” 17 Hanae: =[(ikani)mo ne::: heh heh heh indeed FP “Indeed. heh heh heh”

During the course of the first part of Emiko’s assessment utterance (lines 1– 2, 4, and 6–7), we already observe affiliative moves by Yaeko, who produces a number of agreement/acknowledgment tokens (lines 3, 5, and 8). In lines 11– 12, 14, and 16, Yaeko then upgrades the display of her agreement/affiliation by providing a completion to Emiko’s utterance-in-progress. In this completing utterance, Yaeko offers her understanding of what would happen if a middleaged woman were to wear a dress with a belt around the waist. Note that, by deploying the combination of mon + ne at the end of her utterance (line 16), Yaeko presents her utterance not only as her understanding of what Emiko was going to say, but also as an assertion of her independent understanding of the situation, i.e., an independent understanding as another middle-aged woman who faces similar issues and concerns as Emiko, and who shares the same perspective toward the kind of event that Emiko is commenting on. Thus, through Yaeko’s co-participant completion with these specific utterance-final elements, as well as Emiko’s acknowledgment (line 15), the two participants manage an interactive accomplishment of alliance as middle-aged women who share the same concerns about their bodies and clothes. The next fragment provides an instance of stance/perspective sharing through co-participant completion with a tag-question-like ending. In fragment (4), Tomoe, who lives in Okinawa, tells the other two participants that, although the Japanese government built many temporary houses in Okinawa for the victims of the 1995 Kobe earthquake as part of their relief efforts, there are very few applicants for those houses (lines 1 and 4–5). In line 7, Tomoe initiates an utterance that is recognizable as an offer of her perspective on why the government’s measure has failed.5 Examine, then, how one of the recipients, Ryoko, accomplishes a co-construction of a shared perspective through co-participant completion.

Activity, participation, and joint utterance construction

(4) [HR 13] Tomoe: okinawa ni:: ippai juutaku tateta n da tte, Okinawa in a.lot house built N CP QT “((The government)) built a lot of ((temporary)) houses in Okinawa, ((newspapers)) say.” 2 Ryoko: [un.] “Uh huh” [ ] 3 Sanae: [((clears throat))] ga(h) n(h)ai t(h)oka 4 Tomoe: demo zenzen oobo but at.all application SP not.exist QT “But there aren’t any applications at all...” it[t(h)e:(h): .hhh]= 5 say:and “...((newspapers)) say.” [ ] 6 Ryoko: [ha:::::::::::::]= “Oh wo:::::::::::::::w” demo ne: yappari okinawa made .hh= 7 Tomoe: =sorya that:TP but FP as.expected Okinawa to “But you know, ((people)) ... to Okinawa” 8→Ryoko: =korehen yan.= can’t.come TAG “can’t come, can ((they)).” 9 Tomoe: =u:::[:::::::]::n. “Ri::::::::ght” [ ] 10 Ryoko: [u::::n.] “Ye::::ah” 1

In line 8, Ryoko delivers a predicate that completes Tomoe’s ongoing utterance in line 7. By deploying the tag-question-like ending yan following the predicate, Ryoko presents her completing utterance as an assertion of her own perspective on the situation that the earthquake victims are facing, and at the same time, she seeks confirmation from Tomoe to bring off the completion as an assertion of a shared stance toward the government’s rather thoughtless measure. In line 9, then, Tomoe produces an acknowledgment token, which confirms Ryoko’s proposal of a shared perspective. Note also that, while Tomoe produces the acknowledgment token, Ryoko also produces the token u::::n at line 10, in overlap with Tomoe’s u::::::::::::n. The use of such an agreement token by Ryoko in this sequential position suggests further evidence that the action that Ryoko engages in at line 8 with her coparticipant completion is not simply stating her anticipation of what Tomoe is

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Chapter 3

going to say, but is displaying her agreement with the perspective that Tomoe is about to present. In other words, Ryoko’s agreement token in line 10 underscores her prior utterance as ‘doing agreeing’ by showing an affiliative stance through co-participant completion. In this subsection, I examined some instances of co-participant completion performed in the context in which the first speaker engages in the activity of presenting his/her stance or perspective on some object or event. Such an activity-context invokes a participation framework which makes it relevant for recipients to agree or disagree with the speaker. Within such a framework for relevant participation, a recipient can employ co-participant completion as a device to interactively achieve ‘shared perspective’ with the speaker. Specifically, I showed that the second speaker’s participatory stance toward achieving shared perspective with the first speaker shapes the grammatical endings of his/her completing utterance in a particular way, i.e., the deployment of utterance-final elements that serve to present the second speaker’s completing utterance as voicing the two participants’ perspectives embedded in it. And when the first speaker confirms the completing utterance, a shared perspective is sequentially and interactively accomplished. In the next subsection, I examine instances in which the second speakers employ co-participant completion to display their empathetic understanding in the context in which the first speaker engages in the telling of his/her personal (past) experience. ..

Differentiated displays of empathetic understanding of another’s experience

Another type of action that co-participant completion is commonly employed to accomplish is displaying an empathetic understanding of another participant’s experience. The activity-context in which this type of co-participant completion is observed is different from that of stance/perspective sharing described above. That is, in the cases of stance/perspective sharing, the first speaker presents (or is about to present) his/her perspective or stance toward the kind of event that, in principle, is available for an independent evaluation by the second speaker. In other words, the two participants have basically equal access to the event toward which a shared stance is negotiated through coparticipant completion. In the cases of displaying an empathetic understanding for another’s experience, on the other hand, the first speaker engages in the activity of telling about his/her personal (past) experience, which in principle is only available to the person who experiences (or experienced) it. What the

Activity, participation, and joint utterance construction

second speaker negotiates in this environment, then, is a display of a ‘vicarious’ understanding of someone else’s specific experience which is essentially unavailable to him/her. Let us examine an instance. Fragment (5) is taken from a larger sequence of talk in which the participants discuss the kinds of people that they see in a sentoo (‘public bathhouse’) in Japan. Prior to the beginning of the fragment, the two male participants (Seiji and Akira) stated that they often see people with tattoos on their back – typically associated with yakuza (Japanese mafia) members. In lines 1–2, then, Harumi, a female participant, starts to talk about her experience regarding women with tattoos on their bodies in public bathhouses. Examine Seiji’s co-participant completion at line 4. (5) [RKK 24] Harumi: demo::: (.) ◦ onna no hito de irezumi no hito female LK person CP tattoo LK person but tte::◦ 2 QT “Bu:::t (.) ◦ women with tattoos ((on their bodies))...” 3 (1.2) 4→Seiji: mita koto nai. saw event not.exist “((you)) have never seen” 5 Harumi: u:::n. “Right.” 1

Harumi’s utterance in lines 1–2 is an initiation of a telling of her personal experience. Among the relevant actions that the recipients can do as a response to such a telling is displaying their understanding of what is being told, and Seiji accomplishes this by employing co-participant completion in line 4. Note here that the personal experience being told is in principle inaccessible to Seiji, especially given that the experience being discussed pertains to the female section of the public bathhouse which is off limits for men (including Seiji). Thus, what Seiji engages in by supplying a predicate that completes Harumi’s utterancein-progress is offering his candidate, empathetic understanding of Harumi’s personal experience, rather than sharing a perspective toward it. Harumi then confirms his candidate understanding in the subsequent turn. This instance shows us another significant difference between a display of empathetic understanding of another’s experience and stance/perspective sharing. The difference concerns the grammatical endings employed in the completing utterance. As discussed in the previous subsection, elements occurring after the predicate in Japanese often indicate the speaker’s attitude or

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stance toward the content of the preceding statement and/or toward the interlocutor(s). And we have seen that the instances of stance/perspective sharing exhibit particular types of grammatical endings occurring after the predicate in the completing utterance. In the instances of displaying empathetic understanding of another’s experience, on the other hand, such stance-displaying grammatical endings are typically lacking. Particularly, the sense of asserting his/her own point of view, which would be conveyed by yo and mon in the instances of stance/perspective sharing discussed above, is systematically absent in instances of empathetic understanding. Thus, in fragment (5), Seiji’s completing utterance is delivered with no utterance-final elements that display the second speaker’s stance. Especially since it lacks utterance-final elements indicating insistence or an assertion of one’s own entitlement to the content of the utterance (e.g., yo and mon), the second speaker’s completing utterance is produced and treated simply as a rendition of what would have been said by the first speaker, which in turn makes relevant a response from the first speaker which confirms or disconfirms that rendition. To put it another way, in contrast to the ‘dual-voiced’ character of the completing utterance in stance/perspective sharing which embeds the voices of both participants in it, the second speaker who engages in a display of empathetic understanding simply ‘animates’ (in Goffman’s 1981b sense) the first speaker’s voice in his/her completing utterance, and subjects it to confirmation or disconfirmation by the first speaker in the next turn. In the next fragment, the tentative character of voicing another participant’s experience for that participant is exhibited through the use of a prosodic resource – rising intonation. In fragment (6), in response to Asami’s question in lines 1 and 4 about a mutual friend’s wedding, Chika, who is the only one among the participants that attended the wedding, describes what it was like (lines 6, 8, 10, 12–13). Examine how Asami, who did not attend the wedding, employs co-participant completion at line 11 to display her candidate understanding of what Chika experienced at the wedding. (6) [KG 12] 1

2 3

Asami: e! .hh yukari chan tte sa::, oh Yukari TL QT FP “Oh! .hh about Yukari,” Chika: un. “Uh huh” (2.0)

Activity, participation, and joint utterance construction

Asami: hirooen mo shita n? wedding.reception also did FP “Did ((she)) have a wedding reception, too?” 5 (.) 6 Chika: ichioo na:: more.or.less FP “((It’s)) li::ke,” 7 (0.5) a[gete:: sonomama] maa= 8 Chika: ashiya kyookai de shiki Ashiya church in ceremony hold:and directly well “...((they)) had ((their)) wedding at Ashiya Church, and directly...” [ ] 9 Asami: [u::::n ( )] “Uh huh ( )” san de: 10 Chika: =hankyuu no ashiya no:: chuukaryoori ya Hankyuu LK Ashiya LK chinese.restaurant TL at “...((after that)) at a Chinese restaurant near Ashiya Station of the Hankyuu Line,” 11→Asami: u:n. [a! hirooen yatta?] oh reception did “Uh huh. Oh! ((they)) had a reception?” [ ] 12 Chika: [maa s h o k u j i] KAI mitaina well banquet like “like ((they had)) something like...” 13 [kanji ka na] impression Q FP “...a banquet.” [ ] 14 Asami: [a:::::::::::::: ] soo na n ka. so CP N Q oh “Oh::::::::::::::::::::::::: Is ((that)) right.” 4

Note that Chika’s description in lines 6, 8, 10, and 12–13 is produced as a response to Asami’s question in lines 1 and 4. Given that the description is provided for Asami, it is relevant for her to indicate receipt (and perhaps understanding) of the information in some way (e.g., with an acknowledgment token, head nods, etc.). Within this framework for relevant participation, then, Asami performs co-participant completion at line 11, through which she presents her candidate understanding of what Chika was going to say about the arrangement of the friend’s wedding. Note that Asami’s completing utterance has no utterance-final elements that indicate that she is asserting her own claim, and that it is delivered in an upward intonation. This grammatical and prosodic composition of Asami’s completing utterance embodies her

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Chapter 3

participatory stance toward the event-in-progress – that is, rather than presenting a ‘dual voiced’ completion with yo ne, mon ne, etc. as in the cases of stance/perspective sharing, Asami is offering her rendition of Chika’s voice in the completing utterance and subjecting it to confirmation or disconfirmation by Chika. As it happens, Chika continues with her utterance while Asami engages in co-participant completion, and in effect disregards, or perhaps indirectly disagrees with, Asami’s candidate understanding. To this, Asami responds with sequence-closing receipt tokens in line 14, i.e., a::::::::::::::: soo na n ka (‘Oh:::::::::::::: is that right.’). Thus far I have discussed how co-participants manage to display their vicarious, empathetic understanding of another’s personal experience that is essentially inaccessible to them. I will now turn to some instances in which coparticipants engage in transforming a telling of an essentially unavailable, ‘particular’ personal experience of another participant into a sharing of an accessible, ‘generic’ experience via co-participant completion. In these instances, the second speaker manages a finely-tuned display of his/her understanding of selective aspects of the first speaker’s experience – aspects that transcend the particularity of individual experiences and that are generic enough to be accessible to others.6 Let us examine the following fragment. In this fragment, Hayao engages in the activity of telling his recipient, Izumi, about what he experienced at their mutual female friend’s wedding. Note that Izumi did not attend the wedding, and has never seen the brother of the mutual friend’s that Hayao talks about in his telling. Therefore, the content of Hayao’s telling – i.e., the striking resemblance that he observed between their mutual female friend and her younger brother at the wedding – is only accessible to Izumi through Hayao’s talk. (7) [TI 14] 1

2

3 4

Hayao: honma sono KUse made sokkuri tte yuu really uhm habit even exactly.same QT say “Really, uhm, the fact that even ((his)) little habits are...” no [wa yappari ne: nakanaka ano::: .hhh] N TP you.know FP rather uhm “...exactly the same ((as his sister’s)) is, you know, like, uhhhm, .hhh” [ ] Izumi: [he:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::. ] “Oh wo:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::w” ne::, Hayao: mitete be.seeing FP “...while seeing ((it))”

Activity, participation, and joint utterance construction

Izumi: u:::n.hh= “Uh huh. hh” 6 Hayao: =m(h)oo: chotto:= EMP a.little “...l(h)ike” 7→Izumi: =waratte shim(h)a(h)u hh hh .hh laugh can’t.help “((you)) can’t help l(h)augh(h)ing hh hh .hh” 5

In lines 1–2, 4, and 6, Hayao reports that even the little habits are almost identical between the two siblings. He bases his telling on his actual experience of having been at the wedding and of having observed the resemblance (cf. mitete ne::, ‘while seeing ((it))’ in line 4, which invokes the past scene of observing the resemblance at the wedding). Izumi then delivers a predicate at line 7 that completes Hayao’s utterance-in-progress, thereby displaying her empathetic understanding of the situation being told about. Recall that Izumi does not have the kind of direct experience that Hayao possesses to draw on when producing this completing utterance. Nonetheless, she accomplishes a delicately maneuvered display of her understanding of a selective aspect of the event being recounted through the use of a particular auxiliary verb form in completing Hayao’s utterance-in-progress. That is, by using the non-past predicate form, waratte shimau (‘can’t help laughing’), rather than the past-tense form, waratte shimatta (‘couldn’t help laughing’), Izumi constructs her completing utterance as an understanding of a generic experience, i.e., how anyone (including herself) would react if he/she were in the same situation. If Izumi had deployed the past-tense form of the predicate, waratte shimatta (‘couldn’t help laughing’), at line 7, it would be heard as an offer of her candidate understanding of Hayao’s past experience, i.e., as “you, Hayao, couldn’t help laughing on that particular occasion in the past when you saw the resemblance.” Thus, while Izumi has only limited access to the particular experience that Hayao had, she nonetheless exhibits access to a generic aspect of the experience that anyone would share if he/she were in the same situation.7 This instance documents a process whereby a world of ‘shared experience’ – experience that transcends the particularity of private experiences and is ‘identical for all practical purposes’ (cf. Schutz 1962; Garfinkel 1967; Heritage 1984) among different individuals – is brought into being through a finely-differentiated display of empathetic understanding via the grammatical design in the completing utterance.8 The next fragment shows a similar process of achieving a shared experience through a delicately engineered co-participant completion. It is taken

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Chapter 3

from the same conversation as fragment (3) above, in which Emiko, a middleaged woman, tells the other participants who are also middle-aged about her experience at a boutique. In this portion of the storytelling, Emiko describes the scene in which she tried on a rather tight-fitting dress in a fitting room. In line 1, she sets up the scene by describing herself as standing in front of a mirror, trying to see, from the back, how the dress fits her. At line 4, one of the recipients of the story, Hanae, produces an utterance that completes Emiko’s scene-setting utterance-in-progress. Examine how Hanae displays her empathetic understanding through co-participant completion. (8) [OBS 4] Emiko: d(h)e! ushiro kara koo yatte mita toki ni wa [SA:], and back from like.this saw time at TP FP “A(h)nd! when ((I)) looked at ((myself)) from the back,” [ ] 2 Hanae: [un.] “Uh huh” 3 Emiko: .hhh a::n [nanka sa:, uhm like FP “.hhh uhm, like,” [ 4→Hanae: [atashi ja nai to [omou n desho?] me CP not QT think N CP “‘((That)) couldn’t be me!’ ((you)) would think, right?” [ ] 5 Yaeko: [ . h h h h h ] hhh! “. h h h h h hhh!” 1

In line 4, Hanae uses the non-past form of the predicate, omou (‘think’), rather than the past-tense form, omotta (‘thought’). Had she chosen omotta, as in atashi ja nai to omotta n desho? (“‘((That)) couldn’t be me!” ((you)) thought, right?’), her utterance would have been heard as an offer of Hanae’s understanding of Emiko’s personal feeling at the moment she looked at herself in the mirror. The use of the non-past form omou (‘think’), on the other hand, creates a sense that Hanae is proposing a generic experience that any middleaged women (including herself) would face in a circumstance like the one that Emiko describes (and thus, the ‘you’ in the English translation is a ‘generic you,’ and does not (solely) refer to the addressee, Emiko). Note also that Hanae uses the first person pronoun atashi, which makes the embedded clause atashi ja nai a direct quote (“‘((That)) couldn’t be me!”’). Compare this with the use of the reflexive pronoun jibun, which would make the embedded clause an indirect quotation, as in jibun ja nai to omotta n desho?

Activity, participation, and joint utterance construction

(‘((You)) thought ((it)) wasn’t you, right?’). The choice of the combination of the past-tense form omotta and an indirect quotation with the reflexive pronoun jibun would make Hanae’s completing utterance even more clearly an indirect quotation of Emiko’s personal feeling at a past moment. The use of the direct quotation with the first person pronoun atashi, on the other hand, adds a sense of ‘immediacy,’ which further adds to the degree of identification that Hanae exhibits towards the generic aspect of Emiko’s concrete experience. Thus, it can be seen that the use of the non-past form, omou, and the first person pronoun atashi in line 4 presents the completing utterance as an empathetic statement about a ‘generic’ exprience for middle-aged women (or at least those who are facing the same problem of body fat), which Hanae, as another middle-aged woman, can anticipate before hearing Emiko say how she felt in the tight-fitting dress in front of a mirror. Hanae then adds the tag-questionlike ending, desho?, thereby subjecting her empathetic statement to a confirmation/agreement by the storyteller to achieve a collaborative construction of a ‘shared experience.’ Thus, although Hanae has no direct access to Emiko’s personal experience at some moment in the past, Hanae’s finely-tuned deployment of an utterance design nonetheless exhibits her empathetic understanding of Emiko’s experience and proposes it to be related to and perhaps shared by middle-aged women in general. Here again, a shared experience is interactively constructed through a delicately differentiated display of understanding via co-participant completion. In this subsection, I examined how the second speakers, in the course of negotiating joint participation in the first speaker’s telling of his/her personal experience, accomplish finely-differentiated displays of their empathetic understanding of the first speaker’s personal experience. We observed that the second speakers’ orientation to the inaccessibility of the first speaker’s personal experience shapes the grammatical (and prosodic) design of their completing utterances, especially in terms of the absence of utterance-final elements that convey the sense of claiming one’s entitlement to the content of the jointly produced utterance. We also observed that, in some instances, co-participants mobilize grammatical and other resources to accomplish the transformation of a telling of a private personal experience into a sharing of the understanding of generic aspects of the experience. The delicately-engineered interactive process observed above might be the participants’ enactment of what Schutz (1962) would call ‘reciprocity of perspectives;’ that is, despite their non-identical experiences and despite their lack of access to the full particularity of one another’s experiences, participants still proceed on the assumption that their experiences

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Chapter 3

are ‘identical for all practical purposes’ and can achieve shared understanding that transcends individuals’ private experiential worlds (cf. also Heritage 1984). In the next subsection, I examine the use of co-participant completion in another type of activity-context in which demonstration of shared understanding can be at issue. ..

Demonstrating shared yet independent knowledge

Co-participant completion may also be used as a device to demonstrate shared, yet independent knowledge of the matter being discussed when the activity that the participants are engaged in makes such a demonstration relevant. What participants negotiate in the instances examined here is neither stances/perspectives nor personal experiences; they deal with some independently knowable matters, e.g., general facts, etc. Among the number of ways in which one can display a possession of knowledge about independently knowable matters, uttering something that another participant was going to say before he/she actually produces it, or saying it together, allows a participant to demonstrate that he/she possesses the knowledge in question independently and to present it as shared knowledge. One activity-context in which such a demonstration of shared, yet independent knowledge can be relevant is seen in the following fragment. Fragment (9) presents an instance in which two participants are making an arrangement for a future get-together on the phone. When participants engage in the activity of negotiating a meeting place, displaying one’s knowledge and recognition of the place being described by another participant becomes a relevant action for the recipient(s). (9) [TK 12] 1

2 3

4

Shin: asoko o: (.) tetete to orite[itta]ra= there O MIM(steps) QT go.down:if “If ((you)) go down ((the stairs)) there,” [ ] Kumi: [u:n.] “Uh huh.” Shin: =SHOOmen NI:,= front in “in front ((of you)),” Kumi: =u:n. “Uh huh.”

Activity, participation, and joint utterance construction

Shin: denwa ga- ano mi[dori] no denwa ga:[:] phone SP uhm green LK phone SP “phones, uhm green phones...” [ ] [ ] 6→Kumi: [aru.] [a]ru aru. exist exist exist “... are there.” “... are there, are there.”

5

Prior to the beginning of fragment (9), Shin suggested meeting somewhere near a train station that both participants are familiar with. At line 1, he then initiates a more detailed description of the location of the meeting place that he is suggesting. When the description focuses on the location of payphones in line 5, the recipient Kumi delivers a predicate (aru ‘exist’) that completes Shin’s utterance-in-progress.9 By anticipatorily completing Shin’s description of the location, Kumi demonstrates her independent knowledge and recognition of the location to Shin. And it is through the process of co-participant completion that such independently possessed knowledge is interactively constructed as shared knowledge. Fragment (10) shows another activity-context in which a display of independent knowledge may be a relevant action – an informing. Studies have shown that, through a variety of practices, participants display their orientation that informings are to be made to parties that are not already informed. For instance, the informing party can use such practices as story prefaces (cf. Sacks 1974) or other pre-announcements (cf. Terasaki 1976) to check whether the prospective telling will be newsworthy to the recipients. When such practices are not employed by the informing party, one of the ways in which the recipients can display their ‘already informed’ status (and thus their not being ‘proper’ recipients) is to demonstrate, through co-participant completion, that they have independent knowledge about the matter about to be told to them. Prior to the beginning of fragment (10), the participants were discussing the financial situation of their mutual friend. That discussion has apparently prompted Kanji’s initiation at line 1 of a telling about another mutual friend, Ms. Mizutani. Such an initiation of a new telling occasions the relevance for the potentially ‘knowing’ participant to display their knowledge of what the ‘news’ is before it is delivered. Thus, at line 3, Muneo engages in co-participant completion and thereby demonstrates that he has independent knowledge of the news that Kanji was about to disclose.

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(10) [TYC 11] Kanji: ato mizutani sa:n nante kekko:::n shita toki ni wa and Mizutani TL TP marriage did time at TP “And, as for Ms. Mizutani, when ((she)) got married,” 2 m[oo is[senman ( ) heh heh already ten.million “already ten million ((yen, she had)). heh heh” [ [ [senman [mo ne:: 3→Muneo: [is:ten.million as.much.as FP “Te:n- million ((yen, she had)), righ::t.” 4 Yurie: [aa kiita kiita. oh heard heard “Oh ((I)) heard ((about it)).” 1

It is also of interest to note that Muneo holds his utterance momentarily after producing the first syllable of the word issenman (‘ten million’) – is:- in line 3, and times the production of the rest of the word with Kanji’s production of the same word. This delicately-maneuvered delivery suggests that, while Muneo engages in demonstrating independent knowledge of the news, he also appears to be orienting to achieving ‘saying the same thing at the same time’ (cf. Jefferson 1973: 51) with Kanji, and thereby presenting it as shared knowledge. In other words, by beginning to articulate the word issenman a split second earlier than Kanji while supplying the remainder of the word in chorus with him, Muneo achieves the delicate dual operation of simultaneously demonstrating independent knowledge and shared knowledge. In this subsection, I examined cases in which co-participant completion is used to demonstrate shared, yet independent knowledge when such a demonstration is relevant. I also noted that it is through the process of co-participant completion that individually possessed knowledge is recontextualized and interactively constructed as shared knowledge. Next, I examine instances in which a ‘teaming-up’ of two participants visà-via a third party is accomplished through co-participant completion. ..

Assisted explaining

So far I have examined cases in which the second speaker who produces the completing utterance is not only an addressed recipient of the first speaker’s ongoing utterance but also directs the completing utterance to the first speaker. The configuration of this type of co-participant completion can be represented by the following diagram:

Activity, participation, and joint utterance construction ongoing utterance

A

completing utterance

B

A = first speaker B = second speaker [addressed recipient of A’s talk]

In this subsection, I discuss instances in which the second speaker who produces the completing utterance is a non-addressed participant, and the completing utterance is directed to a third party who is the addressed recipient of the first speaker’s ongoing utterance.10 Schematically:

AA

ongoing utterance

C

completing utterance

B A = first speaker B = second speaker [non-addressed participant] C = third party [addressed recipient of A’s and B’s talk]

As seen in the diagram above, this type of co-participant completion occurs in multi-party (i.e., more-than-two-party) conversation. And it is used to form a local alignment of two (or more) participants as an ‘interactional team’ vis-àvis a third party. One common activity-context in which such ‘teaming-up’ is observed is one in which some sort of ‘explaining’ takes place. On such occasions, the second speaker uses co-participant completion to accomplish participation in the first speaker’s explaining as a ‘co-explainer,’ addressing the completing utterance to a third-party explainee. I adopt the term ‘assisted explaining’ from Lerner and Takagi (1999) to refer to this use of co-participant completion. Let us examine some instances of interactional teaming-up in assisted explaining. Fragment (11) presents a case in which a husband and wife demonstrate, through co-participant completion, that they are participating in the talk at this particular moment in the interaction as a married couple. As Schegloff (1991, 1992) reminds us, the identities of the participants – whether they

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Chapter 3

are doctors, patients, married couples, baseball players, Protestants, etc. – are not necessarily relevant or consequential to the way they organize their conduct (including talk) in interaction. The following instance shows one specific way in which the category ‘married couple’ is demonstrably consequential for the trajectory and content of the interaction that the participants conduct. Note that, in this conversation, two married couples are talking: Shoko and her husband Muneo, and Yurie and her husband Kanji. The conversation takes place at Yurie and Kanji’s home, and at the beginning of the following segment, Shoko offers a compliment regarding the spoon that was provided for her by the host couple (line 1). Examine how the interaction transpires, especially how Yurie engages in assisted explaining by employing co-participant completion at line 10. (11) [TYC 2] Shoko: .hhh he::: kore kawaii::. wow this cute “.hhh Wo:::w this is cu::te.” 2 (.) 3 Yurie: tch! sore wa togashi san ni::, that TP Togashi TL from “tch! That one, from Mr. Togashi...” 4 (0.4) 5 Muneo: e! “Huh?” 6 Yurie: [u-] “u-” [ ] 7 Shoko: [e!] togashi san tte ano togashi sa::n?= Togashi TL QT that Togashi TL “Huh? Mr. Togashi, ((you)) mean that Mr. Togashi?” 8 Yurie: =ano- a[no togashi san. ] that that Togashi TL “That- that Mr. Togashi.” [ ] 9 Kanji: [( ) kekkon iwa]i ni::, wedding gift as “( ) as a wedding gift,” 10→Yurie: kure[ta n [desu yo. gave N CP FP “((he)) gave ((it to us)).” [ [ 1

Activity, participation, and joint utterance construction

11

Kanji:

12

Shoko:

13

Muneo:

[kure [ta n desu. gave N CP “((he)) gave ((it to us)). [ [he:::::[: kawai:::::i. wow cute “Wo::::::w Cu:::::te.” [ [he:::::::. wow “Wo:::::::w.”

In line 1, Shoko engages in complimenting an object that belongs to the host couple. The initiation of this complimenting activity invokes a participation framework that makes it relevant for compliment-recipients to respond in certain ways. According to Pomerantz (1978), at least in American English conversation, “compliments are very regularly either rejected, downgraded, or only qualifiedly accepted” (p. 80).11 In other words, she suggests that compliments are rarely responded with an outright acceptance, and what is seen in the fragment above appears to conform to her observation based on her examination of English conversational data. That is, in response to Shoko’s compliment, the host couple, Yurie and Kanji, work together to deflect it by attributing the credit to some third party who gave them the complimented object. In line 3, Yurie initiates an utterance in which she mentions the name of the person who apparently gave them the spoon. While Yurie’s utterance remains syntactically incomplete, the visiting couple, Muneo and Shoko, initiate repairs (lines 5 and 7). At line 9, Kanji then resumes the compliment response that Yurie initiated in line 3, with an adverbial phrase, kekkon iwai ni:: (‘as a wedding gift’). It is this utterance of Kanji’s in line 9 that Yurie continues and completes in line 10 with the predicate kureta (‘gave’) followed by utterance-final elements (n desu yo).12 She has thus joined in the compliment response as a co-explainer of who gave them the complimented object. Now, a note on the interactional significance of the use of the predicate kureta (‘gave’) by Yurie in her completing utterance is in order. Japanese has three verbs of giving, i.e., yaru, ageru and kureru, and what Yurie uses in line 10 is the past-tense form of kureru. There is a major distinction between the first two and the last one in terms of usage. This difference is directly related to the recipient of the action of giving being described. That is, when the recipient of the action of giving is the speaker him/herself or someone who belongs to the speaker’s ‘in-group’ (e.g., family members),13 kureru is used. The use of yaru or ageru in such a context would result in an ungrammatical sen-

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Chapter 3

tence. On the other hand, when the recipient of the action of giving is not the speaker or his/her in-group member(s), then, yaru or ageru is used; the use of kureru there would be ungrammatical (cf. Martin 1975; Kuno 1973; Makino & Tsutsui 1986). Based on this grammatical fact, then, we can see that Yurie’s choice of the predicate kureta invokes a certain alignment of participants with respect to the action of giving being described. That is, if Yurie were simply assisting with an explanation of the event that someone gave some object to a person who is not considered a member of Yurie’s in-group, she would use ageta. By using kureta to complete Kanji’s utterance-in-progress, Yurie displays that she is assisting not simply as a bystander who happens to have knowledge about the event being described, but as a co-recipient of the spoon along with Kanji. And since the spoon is contextualized as a ‘wedding gift’ in the talk, what Yurie accomplishes in invoking her and Kanji as co-recipients of the spoon is to demonstrate the local and interactional relevance of their socio-cultural identity as a ‘married couple’ to their conduct in interaction. In other words, co-participant completion is used in this particular local context as a way to do ‘being a married couple’ and participate in the ongoing activity as such. Let us examine another instance of assisted explaining through coparticipant completion. Fragment (12) is taken from the same conversation as fragment (11), and here, Kanji and Yurie are explaining to the other couple their experience of having had trouble renting a wedding dress of the right size for Yurie. (12) [TYC 44] Kanji: saizu: ga: ne::, (.) size SP FP “The ((right)) size, ((you)) know, (.)” 2 ano yappa chicchai kara[::] uhm as.expected small because “uhm, ((you)) see, since ((she))’s small,” [ ] 3 Shoko: [u: ]:::::n. “Uh huh” 4→Yurie: [(na)i: n desu yo::::::.] not.exist N CP FP “isn’t there.” [ ] 5 Kanji: [sentakushi ga::, kagira ]retete. options SP be.limited:and “((our)) options were limited, and,” 1

Activity, participation, and joint utterance construction

In this instance, too, we observe the co-participant’s finely-tuned ‘grammatical work’ for accomplishing the interactional task of assisted explaining. In line 1, Kanji initiates an utterance about the size of wedding dresses by producing a nominal (saizu ‘size’) marked with the subject particle ga. After a micro-pause, he constructs a kara-clause (roughly equivalent to a ‘because’-clause in English), in which he presents Yurie’s small stature as a reason for something. After Shoko’s acknowledgment token in line 3, then, Yurie starts up and participates in the talk-in-progress as a ‘co-explainer’ of the situation under discussion through co-participant completion. She provides a predicate for the subject nominal that Kanji constructed in line 1 (saizu: ga: ne:: + (na)i: n desu yo::::::. ‘There’s no ((right)) size’), and brings Kanji’s utterance-in-progress to completion. It is interesting to compare Yurie’s co-participant completion in line 4 and Kanji’s own completion in line 5 in terms of how these two participants contextualize the grammatical trajectory of the utterance-so-far. As discussed above, Yurie builds her utterance in line 4 as a continuation and completion of Kanji’s utterance in line 1. By doing so, she retroactively contextualizes the kara-clause in line 2 as a clause-internal insertion. To represent this operation schematically: Line 1:

Line 4:

saizu: ga: ne::,

(na)i: n desu yo::::::.

“The ((right)) size, ((you)) know,”

“isn’t there.”

SUBJECT

PREDICATE Line 2: ano yappa chicchai kara::

“uhm, ((you)) see, since ((she))’s small,” CLAUSE-INTERNAL INSERTION

Kanji’s utterance in line 5 produced in overlap with Yurie’s completing utterance, on the other hand, contextualizes the utterance-so-far slightly differently. That is, Kanji’s own completion of his utterance-in-progress only provides a continuance of what he stated in line 2 (ano yappa chicchai kara:: [line 2] + sentakushi ga::, kagiraretete [line 5] ‘Uhm, ((you)) see, since ((she))’s small, ((our)) options were limited, and’), and is structurally disconnected from the

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Chapter 3

utterance in line 1. Thus, Kanji’s completion in line 5 retroactively displays that he has abandoned the subject nominal that he constructed in line 1 (saizu: ga: ne:: ‘The ((right)) size, ((you)) know,’). Schematically: Line 1:

Line 2:

saizu: ga: ne::,

ano yappa chicchai kara::

“The ((right)) size, ((you)) know,”

“uhm, ((you)) see, since ((she))’s small,”

retroactively displays that line 1 has been abandoned

Line 5: sentakushi ga::, kagiraretete.

“((our)) options were limited, and,”

In this instance, then, quite independent of the original speaker’s intention (i.e., the abandonment of the subject nominal in line 1), a co-participant acts on the publicly available structure of the talk that has already been produced, and builds her participation in the ongoing activity as a co-explainer based on that structure. This instance can thus be seen as suggesting that language in interaction does not (simply) reside in the speaker’s mind, but exists between participants, so to speak, as a publicly available, social structure that mediates multiple participants’ action in concert with one another. Before moving to discussion of another subtype of co-participant completion used for assisted explaining, a note on the grammatical endings of the completing utterances observed in fragments (11) and (12) is in order. Here again, we observe that the second speaker’s participatory stance toward the activity-in-progress shapes the grammatical endings of his/her completing utterance in a particular way. Notice that in both fragments (11) and (12), the second speaker deploys the particle yo at the end of her completing utterance (line 10 and line 4 respectively). As stated above with regard to the sequence of yo and ne in the discussion of stance/perspective sharing through co-participant completion (cf. Section 3.2.1), the particle yo indicates the sense of insistence in making one’s own assertion and of claiming his/her entitlement to the content of the utterance that it marks. It was argued there that yo occurring in the second speaker’s completing utterance serves to present his/her own voice in the completing utterance. Note then that, unlike the cases of stance/perspective sharing in which yo co-occurs with another utterance-

Activity, participation, and joint utterance construction

final element, ne, which serves to solicit confirmation or agreement from the addressee, the completing utterances in fragment (11) and (12) only have the particle that presents the speaker’s voice and lacks any utterance-final elements that seeks the addressee’s confirmation. This presents a markedly different situation from the cases discussed above, especially those that involve interactive achievement of shared perspective or shared experience, in which a confirmation of the second speaker’s completing utterance by the first speaker is solicited as an indispensable part of the constitution of the action being performed through co-participant completion. It is important to recall here that, in the cases of assisted explaining, the second speaker participates in the ongoing activity of explaining as a ‘coexplainer,’ i.e., someone who has virtually equal access and entitlement to what is being explained with the first speaker. Also important is the fact that the second speaker addresses his/her completing utterance not to the first speaker whose utterance is being completed, but to a third party who is assumed not to have prior access to the event being explained. Within this participation framework, then, the second speaker is entitled to voice a completing utterance as her own assertion (i.e., with yo), while she does not need to solicit confirmation from the addressee (i.e., with ne). Thus, here again, unlike assisted explaining through co-participant completion in English, we can see how, in Japanese, the participation framework in which completing utterances are produced for achieving assisted explaining has a direct consequence for the grammatical composition of those completing utterances. In the remainder of this subsection, I examine another subtype of coparticipant completion used for assisted explaining. So far we have seen instances in which the co-members of the interactional team formed through co-participant completion have virtually equal access to the event that they explain. There is another subtype of assisted explaining observed in my database. In this type of assisted explaining, the first speaker (A) voices information/experience/etc. that pertains to another co-present participant (B), and directs the utterance to a third party (C). Then, the co-present participant (B) whose information/experience/etc. is being discussed joins the first speaker’s (A) telling by means of co-participant completion. It may be useful to invoke the notions of ‘AB-events’ and ‘B-events’ proposed by Labov and Fanshel (1977) to describe the difference between the two subtypes of assisted explaining. Labov and Fanshel (1977) set up a taxonomy of events that are talked about in interaction in terms of the distribution of knowledge among the participants. Thus, an ‘A-event’ is an event or piece of information to which the speaker (A) has more access than does a co-participant

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Chapter 3

(B) – typically the recipient. A ‘B-event’ is an event or piece information to which a co-participant (B) – again, typically the recipient – has more access than does the speaker (A). An ‘AB-event’ is an event or piece of information to which both the speaker (A) and a co-participant (B) have equal access. Accordingly we can describe the two types of assisted explaining as follows: In the first type of assisted explaining observed in fragments (11) and (12), the first speaker (A) explains an ‘AB-event’ to a third party (C), and the co-participant (B) who has equal access to the event joins the first speaker in the explaining. In the second type being discussed here, on the other hand, the first speaker (A) explains a ‘B-event’ to a third party (C), and the co-participant (B) who has more access to the event joins the first speaker in the explaining. Let us examine an instance of the second type of assisted explaining. In lines 1–2 and 4 in fragment (13), Sanae talks about the co-present participant Ryoko’s past experience of having done some volunteer work for the homeless, but she directs this talk to a third party, Tomoe (not shown in the transcript). At line 5, Ryoko, whose experience is being discussed, comes in with an utterance that completes Sanae’s ongoing utterance, and thereby accomplishes her participation in the talk as a ‘co-explainer.’ (13) [HR 6] Sanae: soo ryoko chan nanka ippai sonna n shite:, =ano:: so Ryoko TL like a.lot such N do:and uhm “Right, Ryoko does that kind of thing a lot,=uhhm” 2 .hhh (0.3) kama:- kamagasaki no:, Kamagasaki LK “.hhh (0.3) in Kama:- Kamagasaki,” 3 Ryoko: u:n. “Uh huh” 4 Sanae: takidashi toka mo[: food.drive etc. also “... a food drive, also,” [ 5→Ryoko: [u::n. [ikkai itta:. once went “Uh huh. ((I)) went to, once.” [ 6 Sanae: [itta n ya tte. went N CP QT “((she)) went to, ((I)) heard.” 1

Labov and Fanshel (1977: 100) point out that when speaker A makes a statement about a ‘B-event,’ it is hearable as an invitation for co-participant B to

Activity, participation, and joint utterance construction

produce an utterance of confirmation.14 To put it in another way, the voicing of words that pertains to a ‘B-event’ by speaker A invokes a participation framework that makes relevant for the ‘author/owner’ of the statement (B) to confirm the words produced by the ‘animator’ (A). In the instance above, Sanae’s voicing of a ‘B-event’ that pertains to Ryoko’s past experience makes it relevant for Ryoko as the author/owner of the statement to provide confirmation of the content of the ongoing telling by the animator, Sanae. Within this framework of relevant participation, Ryoko provides confirmation first through an acknowledgment token (u::n) and then by supplying a completion for Sanae’s utterance-in-progress. Note here that Ryoko is not simply confirming the content of Sanae’s ongoing telling as its author/owner. By providing a completion to Sanae’s utterance and addressing it to Sanae’s addressee, i.e., Tomoe, Ryoko displays her participatory stance toward the activity-in-progress as a ‘co-explainer’ who takes an active part in the explaining toward the third party, rather than simply as an overseeing participant who confirms the words in Sanae’s explaining. Thus, in this instance, co-participant completion is used as a device to demonstrate a local alignment of two participants as an ‘interactional team’ vis-à-vis a third party in the context in which the first speaker voices the experience of the second speaker in the activity of explaining, and thereby invites the second speaker’s co-participation as the owner of the event being explained. In this subsection, I described two types of assisted explaining achieved through co-participant completion that occur in different participation frameworks. The difference pertains to the distribution of knowledge among coexplainers about the matter being explained. The first two instances showed cases in which the co-members of the explaining party participate in the activity of explaining as those who have virtually equal access to the event being relayed to a third party. In the third instance, on the other hand, the first speaker who has less access to the event being explained engages in a ‘B-event’ telling, and thereby invites a co-participant who has more access to the event to participate in the ongoing activity as the author/owner of the telling. In both types, the practice of co-participant completion allows for the interactive construction of a local alliance between two participants vis-à-vis a third party. In the next subsection, I examine instances that show another way in which ‘B-event’ tellings are consequential in the organization of co-participant completion.

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Chapter 3

..

Delivering a response in the form of co-participant completion

In this subsection, I return to a discussion of cases in which the second speaker is an addressed recipient of the first speaker’s ongoing utterance, and the second speaker’s completing utterance is directed to the first speaker (cf. the schematic representation at the beginning of the previous subsection). In 3.2.1–3.2.3 above, we observed instances in which the first speaker talks about something that pertains to him/herself, such as his/her opinion or experience (‘A-event’), or something that is accessible to both the speaker and the recipient (‘AB-event’), and then the second speaker uses co-participant completion to demonstrate his/her understanding, agreement, or shared knowledge regarding the matter being told by the first speaker. What distinguishes the instances examined in this subsection from those examined above is that, here, the first speaker talks about some event to which the addressed recipient has more access and entitlement (‘B-event’). As discussed in the previous subsection, an utterance pertaining to a ‘B-event’ makes co-participation from the participant who is the ‘owner’ of the event being told systematically relevant, typically in the form of confirming the words of the ‘animator.’ In the instances examined here, the ‘owner’ of the event being told is the addressed recipient of the utterance being produced, and he/she performs such relevant coparticipation in the form of completing the animator’s utterance-in-progress. Let us examine some instances. Fragment (14) is taken from a conversation among four female friends in their mid-fifties. Prior to the beginning of this fragment, the participants have been discussing Takie’s daughter and her two small children. Then, in the segment presented below, one of the participants, Akiyo, brings up the topic of the gender of those two children. In line 1, Akiyo checks her understanding of the gender of the older child (ue ‘the one above’), i.e., that the child is female. Takie confirms this in lines 2 and 3. In line 4, Akiyo then moves on to mention the younger child (sono shita ‘the one below’). Examine how Takie supplies the information about the gender of the younger child as a completion to Akiyo’s utterance-in-progress. (14) [KOB 20] 1

2

Akiyo: ue ni wa: oneechan- a[no:]:: ojoochan desho?= above in TP big.sister uhm daughter CP “The one above is a big sister- uh:::m, a daughter, right?” [ ] Takie: [un. ] “Yeah”

Activity, participation, and joint utterance construction

Takie: =un.= “Yeah” 4 Akiyo: =sono shita wa b[occhan] ga dekihat[ta n.] that below TP son SP was.born FP “The one below is a son that was born?” [ ] [ ] 5→Takie: [otoko.] [ un. ] un.= yeah male yeah “Male.” “Yeah, yeah.” 6 Akiyo: =hu::n= “((I)) see.” 3

When Akiyo produces sono shita (‘the one below’ referring to the younger child) and marks it with the topic particle wa in line 4, Takie delivers otoko (‘male’) in line 5, which provides the information about the gender of the younger child, while bringing Akiyo’s ongoing utterance to possible completion (i.e., sono shita wa + otoko = ‘The one below is male’). In this instance, Akiyo’s unfolding ‘B-event’ utterance about Takie’s daughter’s younger child and the sequential context in which it is embedded (i.e., after a confirmationseeking utterance about the gender of the older child in line 1) make it relevant, and also possible, for the addressed recipient Takie to make a mid-turn entry in the form of co-participant completion and fill in the information that Akiyo was going to seek with her ongoing utterance. In the next, rather long fragment, the participants are discussing the future of different kinds of mass media. Prior to the beginning of fragment (15), Yoohei has claimed that newspapers will disappear as a medium of mass communication. In lines 1, 3–4, and 7–8, he supports his claim by stating that the source of information that today’s young people rely on is TV and magazines (Yoohei’s statement in lines 3–4 is corrected by himself in lines 7–8),15 and thereby implying that they do not read newspaper any more. In line 10, Yoohei elaborates what he means by ‘magazines’ by mentioning shuukanshi (‘weekly magazines’). After a rather critical assessment of the young people’s behavior by Yoohei at lines 15–17, the recipient Motoki produces an utterance that is hearable as the beginning of an understanding check, i.e., an utterance designed to check his understanding about what Yoohei has said: sore (‘that’) referring to what Yoohei has said, followed by the topic particle wa, resulting in an utterance that is roughly equivalent to ‘That means’. It is then that Yoohei comes in with an utterance that provides a summary of his claim (that young people read weekly magazines instead of newspapers), while bringing Motoki’s prior utterance to completion. Examine the following fragment.

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Chapter 3

(15) [FH 25] 1

2

3

4

5 6

7

8

9 10

11

12

13 14 15

16

Yoohei: ... nani de JOOHOO eten nowhat by information be.getting FP “... How ((they)) get information...” Motoki: hm[m. ] “Uh huh.” [ ] terebi to Yoohei: [tte] yuttara (1.9) yappari as.expected TV and QT say:if “...if ((you)) ask ((them)), (1.9) ((they)) would probably say ...” shimbun tte iimasu ne newspaper QT say FP “... TV and newspapers.” (0.5) Motoki: ho::[:n.] “Hmmm.” [ ] ya tte Yoohei: [>A ] CHAU CHAU< terebi to za- zasshi oh wrong wrong TV and magazine CP QT “>OH NO NO< TV and ma- magazines...” iimasu ne. say FP “... ((they)) would say.” Motoki: ho:::n.= “Hmmm.” toka:. Yoohei: =mmm. SHUUKANSHI weekly.magazine etc. “Like weekly magazines.” Motoki: shuukanshi.= weekly.magazine “Weekly magazines.” Yoohei: =warito miteru rashii [n desu yo. ] rather be.seeing seem N be FP “((They)) seem to be reading ((them)) pretty often.” [ ] Motoki: [hm::::::m.] “Hmmmmmm.” Motoki: [( )] [ ] .HHH NNEN K(H)EDO Yoohei: [N(H)ANK(H)A] Y(H)OO SHIR(H)A well don’t.know FP but not.really “((I)) d(h)on’t r(h)e(h)ally kn(h)ow, b(h)ut” .hh SONO HITOTACHI NO K(H)ANGAETERU KOTO WA .HHH that people SP be.thinking thing TP “.hh ((I)) d(h)on’t und(h)erst(h)and wh(h)at...”

Activity, participation, and joint utterance construction

Y(H)OKU WAK(H)AR(H)AN(H)AI NDE. .HHH= well don’t.understand because “...th(h)ose p(h)eople are th(h)inking ab(h)out, so .HHH” 18→Motoki: =sore wa [shin-] that TP new“That means new-” [ ] 19→Yoohei: [shin ]bun yoman to newspaper don’t.read while shuukanshi weekly.magazine miteru. 20→ be.seeing “...newspapers ((they)) don’t read while ((they)) read weekly magazines.” 17

An understanding check is by definition a type of utterance that refers to the information to which the addressee has more access, and therefore is a ‘B-event’ utterance. And, as discussed above, the production of such an utterance invokes a participation framework that makes it systematically relevant for the ‘owner’ of the information to co-participate, often in the form of confirming or disconfirming the understanding. In the instance above, the recognizability of the action-in-progress by Motoki’s utterance in line 18 makes it possible for the addressed recipient Yoohei to anticipatorily respond to the understanding check by making a mid-turn entry and continuing and completing Motoki’s utterance-in-progress. By doing so, he fills in the information that Motoki was going to seek confirmation about with his utterance. Now, in the two instances examined so far, there is no overt indication that the first speaker actually prompts the second speaker to complete his/her utterance-in-progress. In fact, in both instances, the first speaker continues his/her utterance (or at least attempts to do so) even after the second speaker initiates the completing utterance. However, there is a class of instances in which the first speaker appears to strategically prompt the second speaker to complete an unfinished utterance produced by the first speaker. In these instances, the first speaker leaves his/her utterance unfinished, typically with a sound stretch on the last syllable produced in continuing intonation, followed by a brief pause. The combination of these practices appears to systematically induce the ‘filling-in’ of the rest of the utterance by the addressed recipient. Here, then, we can see a strategic use of ‘B-event’ utterances to actually prompt the second speaker’s participation in the form of completing the first speaker’s utterance-in-progress.16

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Let us examine some instances. The segment in fragment (16) occurs immediately after one of the participants, Kooji, finishes telling a story about a movie that he saw. In that telling, he describes beautiful green hills in Mongolia as the setting of the movie. In response to Kooji’s telling of the story, the recipient, Hideo, who lives in an arid region where hills are barren, says in line 1, guriin tte yuu no ga pointo ya na: (‘((The fact that they are)) green is the point.’). Examine how the interaction transpires after that, with a particular focus on Kooji’s utterance in line 3 and Hideo’s response in line 5. (16) [FM 16] Hideo: guriin tte yuu no ga pointo ya na:. green QT say N SP point CP FP “((The fact that they are)) green is the point.” 2 Kooji: soo na n ka na::. hh heh heh heh heh heh .HH heh heh so CP N Q FP “((Do you think)) so? hh heh heh heh heh heh .HH heh heh” 3→ kimi n toko wa ima: you LK place TP now “Your place no:w...” 4→ (0.9) 5→Hideo: hage desu wa. bald CP FP “...is bald.” 1

Hearing Hideo’s utterance in line 1 and perhaps recognizing his allusion to the place where he lives as constituting a comparison to the Mongolian green hills, Kooji produces kimi n toko (‘your place’) at line 3, followed by the topic particle wa and the adverb ima (‘now’). Then, the utterance is left incomplete with a sound stretch on the final syllable of ima, followed by silence. These utteranceproductional features as well as the reference to a ‘B-event’ (i.e., kimi n toko ‘your place’) make it recognizable that Kooji’s utterance is built as a ‘prompt’ for Hideo to complete the incomplete utterance and supply the ‘missing’ information that Kooji’s utterance is designed to seek. After the 0.9-second silence in line 4, Hideo then delivers a predicate (hage desu wa ‘is bald’) that brings Kooji’s incomplete utterance to completion, as well as provides the sought-after information. The next fragment, which is a slight extension of fragment (14), provides another instance of a strategic use of a ‘B-event’ utterance. As described above for fragment (14), the participants discuss Takie’s daughter’s two children in the first part of the following fragment (lines 1–7). At line 8, Akiyo begins to talk about another daughter of Takie’s. This other daughter lives closer to Takie

Activity, participation, and joint utterance construction

than the one discussed in lines 1–7, and therefore is referred to by Akiyo as kochira no (adnominal ‘this’ as in ‘this daughter’) at line 8. Examine the construction of Akiyo’s utterance in line 8 and how it is responded to by Takie in line 10. (17) [KOB 20] Akiyo: ue ni wa: oneechan- a[no:]:: ojoochan desho?= above in TP big.sister uhm daughter CP “The one above is a big sister- uh:::m, a daughter, right?” [ ] 2 Takie: [un.] “Yeah” 3 Takie: =un.= “Yeah” 4 Akiyo: =sono shita wa b[occhan] ga dekihat[ta n.] that below TP son SP was.born FP “The one below is a son that was born?” [ ] [ ] 5 Takie: [otoko.] [ un. ] un.= yeah male yeah “Male.” “Yeah, yeah.” 6 Akiyo: =hu::n= “((I)) see.” 7 Takie: =u:[::n.] “Yeah.” [ ] 8→Akiyo: [nde:] kochira no::: this LK and “A:nd thi:::s...” 9 (0.3) 10→Takie: hoo wa onnanoko:, [dake.] side TP girl only “... side has a girl, only.” [ ] 11 Akiyo: [ah! i]ma. oh now “Oh, right now.” 1

After producing nde: kochira no::: (‘A:nd thi:::s,’) with a sound stretch on no in line 8, Akiyo leaves her utterance incomplete, and a 0.3-second silence ensues. These utterance-productional features as well as the reference to a ‘B-event’ (i.e., reference to Takie’s other daughter) make it recognizable that Akiyo’s utterance is built as an invitation for Takie to co-participate then and there by producing a completion to the incomplete utterance, and thereby supplying

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the ‘missing’ information that Akiyo is seeking – information about Takie’s other daughter’s children. Indeed, after the silence in line 9, Takie produces an utterance that continues Akiyo’s incomplete utterance and brings it to completion, supplying in the process the information that the daughter who lives closer to her only has a girl. Finally, let me close this subsection with a discussion of yet another type of co-participant completion employed in the context in which the first speaker engages in a ‘B-event’ telling. The instance examined here shows that, in the face of the first speaker’s ‘B-event’ utterance, the second speaker uses coparticipant completion as a device to issue disconfirmation/correction of the first speaker’s understanding in such a way that it masquerades as a collaboratively constructed statement. The following fragment presents a segment that takes place shortly after the one in fragment (15), in which Yoohei claims that today’s young people get information from TV and weekly magazines, and do not read newspapers any more. In the following segment, Motoki pursues an elaboration concerning ‘weekly magazines,’ which Yoohei has previously claimed are one of the main sources of information for young people. (18) [FH 25] Motoki: shuukan[shi tte]:::: weekly.magazine QT “Weekly magazines ((you mean))...” [u::::::::n.] 2 Yoohei: [u::::::::n.] “Yeah::::.” 3 (1.2) 4 Yoohei: ano shuukan HOOseki toka. uhm Shuukan Hooseki etc. “Uhm, like Shuukan Hooseki.” 5 Motoki: [a::: HHHHHH ] “Oh:: HHHHH” [ ] 6 Yoohei: [sonohen- SO]NOhen ni oitaaru yatsu o miteru. here.and.there at be.left stuff O be.seeing “((They)) are reading the stuff left here and there.” 7→Motoki: shuukan (.) shin[(choo)] Shuukan Shinchoo “Shuukan (.) Shinchoo” [ ] 1

Activity, participation, and joint utterance construction

[G E N ]DAI toka.= Gendai etc. “Gendai, for example.” Motoki: =aa [gendai] na[::.] oh Gendai FP “Oh Gendai.” [ ] [ ] Yoohei: [ha::i.] [mo-] motto sooyuu zokuPPOI yes more such trashy “Yes.” “Mo- more trashy...” [yatsu heh heh heh heh] stuff “...stuff heh heh heh heh” [ ] Motoki: [a sokka. naruhodo ne.] oh right I.see FP “Oh ((that))’s right. ((I)) see.”

8→Yoohei:

9

10

11

12

In line 1, Motoki prompts an elaboration from Yoohei about shuukanshi (‘weekly magazines’) by using the practice described above: namely, by leaving the utterance incomplete with a sound stretch on the last syllable (shuukanshi tte::::, which is roughly equivalent to ‘Weekly magazines, ((you mean))...’), followed by silence in line 3. Yoohei then names an example of the kind of magazine that young people read (‘Shuukan Hooseki’) in line 4, and characterizes it in line 6 as sono hen ni oitaaru yatsu (‘the stuff left here and there’), i.e., the cheap sort of magazine that is found in eateries, coffee shops, train stations, etc. Then, in line 7 Motoki initiates an utterance that is recognizable as an attempt to check his understanding about what kinds of magazines, according to Yoohei, are being read by young people. Let us examine closely how Yoohei employs co-participant completion in line 8 to disconfirm Motoki’s understanding. At line 7, Motoki first produces shuukan (‘weekly’), which is commonly used as the first part of a two-part magazine title.17 He then pauses briefly, and goes on to say the second part of the magazine title – shinchoo. As it happens, ‘Shuukan Shinchoo’ is a slightly more prestigious magazine than, for instance, ‘Shuukan Hooseki,’ the example that Yoohei gave at line 4 and characterized rather negatively at line 6. As soon as he hears the first part of shinchoo, then, Yoohei comes in and produces GENDAI toka (‘GENDAI, for example’), an utterance that is designed to continue Motoki’s shuukan, and replaces shinchoo.18 Note that, by adding toka (‘for example’) at the end, Yoohei repeats the format of his utterance in line 4, i.e., Shuukan X toka, and thereby brings off the co-

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Chapter 3

constructed utterance (shuukan gendai toka ‘Shuukan Gendai, for example’) as giving another example that belongs to the same genre of magazines – zokuppoi yatsu (‘trashy stuff ’; lines 10–11) – as ‘Shuukan Hooseki.’ Here, co-participant completion is used as an alternative to a next-turn rejection and/or correction (e.g., “No, not Shuukan Shinchoo, they read Shuukan Gendai” and the like). It is used as a means to deliver a disaffiliative response to Motoki’s understanding check in such a fashion that it masquerades as a collaboratively constructed statement that provides another example of ‘trashy’ magazines. In this subsection, I examined instances in which a speaker’s voicing of words that are attributable to the addressee as author/owner (‘B-event’ telling) invokes a participation framework that makes the addressee’s co-participation relevant, and the addressee then accomplishes such relevant participation in the form of co-participant completion. I described two ways in which this form of co-participation is produced by the addressee, i.e., cases in which the addressee co-opts the completion of the speaker’s utterance-in-progress and provides relevant information, and those in which the speaker uses a specific utterance design to prompt the addressee to make a mid-turn entry and provide relevant information. I also described a case in which, in the face of an understanding-check utterance, the addressee mobilizes co-participant completion as a way to deliver disconfirmation/correction masquerading as a collaboratively constructed statement. In the next, final subsection, I examine instances in which co-participant completion is used as a way to convert a dispreferred action-in-progress into a preferred action. ..

Converting a dispreferred action to a preferred action

Conversation analysts have demonstrated (e.g., Pomerantz 1978, 1984a, 1984b; Davidson 1984; Atkinson & Drew 1979; Schegloff, Jefferson, & Sacks 1977; Sacks 1987 [1973]; Jefferson 1987; Mori 1999a; among others) that “there is a ‘bias’ intrinsic to many aspects of the organization of talk which is generally favourable to the maintenance of bonds of solidarity between actors and which promotes the avoidance of conflict” (Heritage 1984: 265), and that the participants have available a variety of systematic practices by which they can organize their conduct to contribute to the maintenance of social solidarity. Thus, when an action that could potentially cause a conflict among the participants (i.e., a so-called dispreferred action) is imminent in a given interactional context, its producer and/or recipient(s) can mobilize such systematic practices to prevent it from being (fully) actualized. In the last subsection, I described one way in

Activity, participation, and joint utterance construction

which the producer of an imminent dispreferred action (i.e., other-correction) mobilized the practice of co-participant completion to present his utterance as a collaboratively constructed statement. In this subsection, I examine some ways in which the recipient of an imminent dispreferred action mobilizes coparticipant completion to preempt the production of the dispreferred action by the prior speaker. Based on data from English conversation, Lerner (1987, 1996b) reports that, in the course of a speaker’s delivery of an utterance that is recognizably embodying an imminent dispreferred action (e.g., disagreement, othercorrection, etc.), the addressee can make a mid-turn entry and co-opt the completion of the first speaker’s utterance-in-progress, and thereby preempt the emerging dispreferred action in mid course. Through this co-optation, Lerner demonstrates, the second speaker can strategically convert an imminent dispreferred action into a collaboratively achieved, preferred action in the same domain of activity (e.g., from disagreement to agreement, from other-correction to self-correction, etc.). The same type of participation through co-participant completion in the same type of interactional context is observed in Japanese conversation as well. The following fragment shows an instance of the conversion of other-repair into self-repair. Schegloff, Jefferson and Sacks (1977) demonstrate a preference for self-repair over other-repair in the organization of repair in English conversation. Though there is no systematic study that has explicated the preference organization in the operation of repair in Japanese, some preliminary inspection of data from Japanese conversation suggests that Schegloff et al.’s (1977) description of the preference for self-repair over other-repair applies to Japanese as well. In fragment (19), an emerging utterance that is recognizable as an imminent other-repair (i.e., a dispreferred action) is converted into a self-repair (i.e., a preferred action) through the practice of co-participant completion. At the beginning of this fragment, the participants are discussing the origins of place names in the Plains in the United States. In lines 1–3, Kooji asks Hideo, who has lived in the United States, for confirmation of his understanding that the word ‘Oklahoma’ came from a Native American language. Instead of directly confirming Kooji’s understanding, Hideo suggests that many place names in the Plains also came from Native American languages (lines 4, 6–7, and 9). He then states that the Plains is an area which many Native Americans have inhabited for a long time (line 9, 11, and 13). While he was moving on to mention something about Nebraska (line 13), Kooji comes in (line 14) and produces an understanding check as to whether the situation is much like

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the situation in Hokkaido in Japan, where there are many place names that came from words in Ainu (an indigenous language of northern Japan). Examine the following fragment and see how the interaction transpires after Kooji’s understanding check in line 14. (19) [FM 23] 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10 11

12

13

Kooji: nan okurahoma tte: (3.0) nanka are ja nakatta what Oklahoma QT like that CP was.not “Doesn’t Oklahoma mean, like, that...” kono INdian no nanchara mitaina imi no uhm Indian LK what-you-call-it like meaning LK “... uhm Isn’t ((it)) a word that means, like, Indian’s ...” (0.5) kotoba chig(h)atta kke? word was.not Q “...what-you-call-it?” Hideo: kororado mo: maa: Colorado also well “Colorado is also, well,” Kooji: aa soo na n? oh so CP N “Oh is ((that)) right?” Hideo: n chuu ka m- mma ne- ano::: zenbu:: (0.5) QT:say Q well uhm all “((I)) mean, well, uhm, all:: (0.5)” zenbu tte koto nai kedo kekkoo= all QT thing not but pretty.much “not all, but, pretty much...” Kooji: =kono hen wa kekkoo soo na n ka= this area TP pretty.much so CP N Q “Is ((it)) that ((the situation)) is pretty much like that around this area [i.e., the Plains]?” Hideo: =ooi yo. sono:: (0.6) motomoto: many FP uhm originally “Quite a bit. Uh::m, (0.6) ((It))’s originally...” Kooji: oo hoo hoo. “Oh, uh huh, uh huh.” Hideo: indian no: Indian LK “... a place where Indians ...” Kooji: [un. ] “Uh huh” [ ] nanka sono:= Hideo: [oru] toko yashi neburasuka mo also like uhm exist place CP:and Nebraska “... live, and Nebraska is also, like, uhm ...”

Activity, participation, and joint utterance construction

Kooji: =hokkaidoo mitaina mon ka. Hokkaido like thing Q “Is ((it that the situation is)) something like Hokkaido?” 15 (1.7) 16→Hideo: nmaa sono hokkaidoo no:= well uhm Hokkaido LK “Well, uhm, Hokkaido’s...” na:.= 17→Kooji: =chimee place.name FP “place names, right?” 18 Hideo: =soo [soo soo soo.] “Right, right, right, right.” [ ] 19 Kooji: [( )] toka: etc. “Like ( )” 20 Hideo: nn soo soo [soo soo.] “Yeah, right right right right.” [ ] 21 Kooji: [nantoka ] betsu toka. etc. “Like, such-and-such betsu.” 14

Notice that Hideo does not immediately respond to Kooji’s understanding check in line 14 as to whether the situation in the Plains in the United States is much like the situation in Hokkaido in Japan. In fact, there is quite a long silence in line 15 following Kooji’s understanding check. As shown by the work on the preference organization in English and Japanese (cf. Pomerantz 1984a; Mori 1999a), such a delay when a response has been made relevant by the prior utterance strongly projects an upcoming dispreferred action. In addition, when Hideo initiates an utterance in line 16, he prefaces it with tokens like nmaa (‘well’) and sono (‘uhm’), which are commonly observed in utterances embodying dispreferred actions. Given these ‘harbingers’ of a dispreferred action, Hideo is hearable as initiating some action other than a direct confirmation of Kooji’s understanding proffered in line 14. I argue that his utterance hokkaidoo no: (the word for Hokkaido followed by the ‘linker’ no, which, just like the English genitive -’s, projects another noun to be produced after it) is hearable as an initiation of other-repair seeking to specify what Kooji means by hokkaidoo mitaina mon (‘situation like Hokkaido’) in his understanding check. I say this because Kooji’s utterance in line 14 is placed after Hideo’s statement about the population of Native Americans in the Plains (lines 9, 11, and 13), and this sequential location makes it equivocal whether the ‘situation like Hokkaido’

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Chapter 3

refers to the population of the native people (i.e., Ainu) in Hokkaido, or the place names in Hokkaido that came from the Ainu language. It is after the stressed and stretched no in hokkaidoo no:, then, that Kooji makes a mid-turn entry and supplies the noun chimee (‘place name’), which completes the projected structure of the form [Noun no + Noun], i.e., [hokkaidoo no + chimee] (‘Hokkaido’s + place names’). By co-opting the completion of Hideo’s utterance-in-progress and supplying the word that specifies what is referred to by hokkaidoo mitaina mon (‘situation like Hokkaido’) himself, Kooji not only preempts the emerging other-repair being produced, but also converts it into a self-repair of his own prior utterance in line 14. Note also that Kooji presents the completion with the utterance-final particle na, which is often used to seek confirmation/acknowledgment from the recipient. In the following turn, Hideo then provides confirmation tokens (soo soo soo soo ‘right right right right’). Through this interactive process, the conversion of an imminent dispreferred action (other-repair) into a preferred action (self-repair) is collaboratively achieved. In the next fragment, in the face of the first speaker’s utterance-inprogress that projects an incipient disagreement, the second speaker employs co-participant completion and anticipatorily voices the projected disagreement himself. By doing so, he provides the first speaker with a next-turn slot for an agreeing response to the proffered completion, so as to convert an imminent disagreement to a collaboratively achieved agreement. Unlike the previous fragment, however, the first speaker in this fragment disregards the second speaker’s attempt to preempt a disagreement by using the practice of ‘delayed completion’ (Lerner 1989), and completes his disagreeing utterance himself. As a result, a preferred action, i.e., agreement, is not collaboratively achieved. The participants shown in this fragment are two male graduate students in economics. In this segment, they are discussing their research methods, particularly the use of statistics. The focus of their discussion is on how many samples they would need to obtain reliable results for their research. Examine how the interaction transpires, with a special focus on Akira’s co-participant completion in line 9 and Seiji’s delayed completion in lines 10–11. (20) [RKK 19] 1 2

Akira: =s:soko de::: (0.7) kyuujuu shiraberu there 90 examine hitsuyoo nai yo na: necessity not.exist FP FP “There’s no need to examine 90 out of them ((=100)), right?”

Activity, participation, and joint utterance construction

(2.5) Akira: sa“sa-” 5 (0.7) 6 Seiji: u:::::::::::::n .hh demo wakannai yo= well but not.know FP “We::::::::::::ll .hh but ((you)) never know” 7 Akira: =[bi- ] “bi-” [ ] 8 Seiji: =[daka]ra:: i- (2.0) doo yuu:: (0.7) so what.kind.of “So:: i- (2.0) what kind of (0.7)” 9→Akira: kentee a:: kekka ga deru ka. test oh result SP come.about Q “test, oh I mean, result will come about.” ↑kentee o:: suru ka tte yuu koto ni 10→Seiji: doo yuu what.kind.of test O do Q QT say thing on 11 yoru yo na::= depend FP FP “((It)) will depend on what kind of test ((you)) do.” 12 Akira: =u::n. “Yeah.” 3 4

In lines 1–2, Akira produces an agreement-seeking utterance about how many samples they would need to obtain reliable results, thus making it relevant for Seiji to offer a response in the next turn. However, Seiji delays his response considerably, first by not initiating talk immediately (lines 3–5), and then by producing a prolonged preface, u:::::::::::::n (‘we:::::::::::::ll’). He then produces a disagreement-implicating connective, demo (‘but’), followed by a qualifier, wakannai yo (‘((you)) never know’), which constitutes a mild disagreement. Akira appears to have heard wakannai yo as a complete response from Seiji to his earlier agreement-seeking utterance, and thus starts to talk on completion of wakannai yo (line 7). On the other hand, Seiji continues on to produce a further utterance (line 8), projecting, with dakara (‘so’), some elaboration on his previous remark wakannai yo. Akira withdraws from the simultaneous talk immediately, thereby letting Seiji continue. However, when Seiji pauses after producing doo yuu (‘what kind of ’), Akira comes in and provides an utterance that completes Seiji’s utterance-in-progress. In his completing utterance, Akira voices the projected elaboration of Seiji’s disagreement on his behalf, and thereby attempts to preempt the disagreement import of the utterance. What Akira constructs using Seiji’s doo yuu (‘what kind of ’) here is the clause doo yuu

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Chapter 3

kekka ga deru ka (‘what kind of result will come about’),19 which is designed to be grammatically connected to wakannai yo (‘((you)) never know’) in Seiji’s earlier utterance. To be more specific, the co-constructed clause is built as a postposed embedded clause for wakannai yo, which serves as the matrix clause, as shown below: Matrix clause

Embedded clause

[wakannai yo] + [doo yuu kekka ga deru ka] (‘((you)) never know’) (‘what kind of result will come about’) We call this embedded clause ‘postposed,’ because, unlike in English, the canonical clause order in a complex sentence in Japanese is [embedded clause] + [matrix clause], as in doo yuu kekka ga deru ka + wakannai yo (‘((You)) never know what kind of result will come about’). Thus, by coconstructing a postposed embedded clause for Seiji’s earlier utterance, and providing him with a next-turn slot for an agreeing response to the completing utterance, Akira preempts the emerging disagreement and attempts a collaborative achievement of agreement. However, unlike the first speaker in fragment (19), Seiji does not produce an agreeing/confirmatory response after the completing utterance proffered by Akira. Instead, he employs ‘delayed completion’ (Lerner 1989), i.e., a practice that speakers use to finish a discontinued utterance after an intervening utterance by another participant. Lerner (1989) notes that delayed completion is used as a device to disregard another participant’s intervening utterance and cancel its sequential import. In the present case, while Akira’s co-participant completion in line 9 makes relevant Seiji’s next-turn receipt – and next-turn agreement, in particular – for a collaborative achievement of the conversion of disagreement into agreement, Seiji’s delayed completion cancels the sequential relevance of his receipt, and reinstitutes a disagreement import of his earlier utterance. And by doing so, he turns the table, so to speak, and provides Akira with a next-turn receipt slot (line 12). Note also that Seiji engages in skillful ‘grammatical work’ to accomplish the interactional work of disregarding Akira’s co-participant completion. As described above, Akira’s co-participant completion contextualizes Seiji’s doo yuu in line 8 as the beginning of the postposed embedded clause for wakannai yo in line 6. In his delayed completion in lines 10–11, however, Seiji recontextualizes doo yuu as the beginning of a new TCU that is grammatically independent of wakannai yo, and thereby simultaneously recontextualizes wakannai yo as a complete grammatical unit. To show this process schematically:

Activity, participation, and joint utterance construction

Line 6

demo wakannai yo (‘But ((you)) never know.’)

Lines 10–11 doo yuu ↑kentee o:: suru ka tte yuu koto ni yoru yo na:: (‘((It)) will depend on what kind of test ((you)) do.’)

Thus, Seiji accomplishes this disregarding of Akira’s co-participant completion not simply by delivering another rendition of completion, but by proposing an alternative grammatical structure for the resulting utterance. In other words, Seiji’s skillful deployment of grammatical resources that accomplishes grammatical recontextualization of earlier talk makes visible his rejection of Akira’s co-participant completion.20 In this instance, then, we observed that, while the second speaker uses coparticipant completion to attempt a conversion of an emerging disagreement into a collaboratively achieved agreement, the first speaker employs delayed completion to decline such collaboration and reinstitute the disagreement import of his original utterance. In this subsection, I examined instances in which, in the face of an emerging dispreferred action, the recipient mobilizes co-participant completion to accomplish a distinct type of participation, i.e., converting an imminent dispreferred action into a preferred action in the same domain of activity. It was noted that such a conversion is achieved not unilaterally but collaboratively; thus, when the first speaker does not collaborate, as in fragment (20), an attempt to convert a dispreferred action into a preferred action through co-participant completion can fail.

. Summary and concluding remarks This chapter took as a point of departure the perspective that speaking in interaction is a form of participation in socially organized activities, and examined co-participant completion in Japanese to explore the relationship between the situated deployment of grammatical forms and the negotiation of delicately maneuvered participation in ongoing courses of activities. By closely analyzing instances of co-participant completion observed in diverse activity-contexts, I showed that the practice of co-participant completion can be mobilized to accomplish a wide range of different social actions depending on what courses of activities are in progress at the moment and what kinds of participatory stances the participants adopt toward the ongoing activities. I also demonstrated how some of the typological features of Japanese grammar can be in-

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Chapter 3

volved in the interactional dynamics observed in the process of achieving those diverse social actions through co-participant completion. Specifically, the following aspects were shown to be relevant: (i) Japanese is a so-called verb-final language, and therefore, what the second speaker does in his/her completing utterance often takes the form of supplying a verb (or other predicate) followed by ‘utterance-final elements’ (e.g., auxiliary verbs, sentence-final particles, etc.) to the first speaker’s emerging utterance, and (ii) the structural slot for deploying utterance-final elements after a verb/predicate in Japanese is a locus where the speaker can express a variety of epistemic and/or interpersonal stances. In many of the instances examined in this chapter, I documented how the second speakers’ finely differentiated participatory stances toward the activities-in-progress shape the forms of the verbs supplied or the forms of utterance-endings, particularly with regard to the presence or absence of certain sentence-final particles, in their completing utterances. For instance, when the first speaker engages in the activity of presenting his/her stance or perspective on some object or event, the second speaker can accomplish activity-relevant participation – i.e., a display of agreement – by employing co-participation completion. In building their completing utterances to achieve such a display of agreement, Japanese speakers exhibit their orientation to the fact that showing ‘agreement’ is more than showing ‘understanding’ by using specific forms of grammatical endings (e.g., yo ne, mon ne, etc.). These grammatical endings indicate that the completing utterance is constructed as not merely voicing the second speaker’s anticipation of what the first speaker was going to say, but as presenting his/her own assertion. In other words, the second speaker’s orientation toward achieving ‘dual-voiced’ shared perspective shapes the grammatical forms at the end of the completing utterances in specific ways. When the activity-in-progress is a telling of a personal experience whose details are essentially inaccessible to participants other than the speaker who experienced it, the recipients of such a telling can nonetheless achieve a display of vicarious understanding of that experience by using co-participant completion. We observed that the second speakers’ orientation to their limited access to the first speaker’s experience is exhibited in the grammatical (and prosodic) design of their completing utterance, which lacks any element that serves to present the content of the jointly constructed utterance as their own assertion (e.g., the particle yo). We also observed that, in some cases, the second speakers use particular verb forms (e.g., non-past-tense form rather than past-tense form) in their completing utterances to achieve a finely-tuned display of their selective alignment with generic aspects of the experience being told.

Activity, participation, and joint utterance construction

Co-participant completion can also be used to demonstrate shared, yet independent possession of some knowledge when such demonstration is made relevant by the activity-in-progress, such as negotiation of a meeting place or news telling. In such activity-contexts, the speaker orients to whether or not the addressee possesses knowledge of what is being told as the activity unfolds, because it has a significant consequence to how the activity is organized. Thus, by completing the first speaker’s utterance-in-progress and thereby saying what he/she is going to say before he/she says it or saying it together, the addressee can accomplish activity-relevant participation. When a participant engages in the activity of explaining something to another participant in multi-party (i.e., more-than-two-party) interaction, a non-addressed participant can employ co-participant completion as a form of participation in the ongoing activity as a ‘co-explainer,’ and thereby build locally achieved social organization among the participants, i.e., the interactional alliance of two (or more) participants as the explaining party vis-à-vis the explainee(s). We observed that this form of participation, i.e., assisted explaining through co-participant completion, can be used as a way of doing ‘being a married couple’ in a certain local context. We also observed that the grammatical ending of the co-explainer’s completing utterance is shaped by his/her participatory stance toward the ongoing activity as someone who has equal access to the event being explained with the first speaker and who is addressing the completing utterance to an uninformed third party. This participatory stance is most clearly displayed with the presence of the particle yo (without being followed by ne, as in the case of ‘stance/perspective sharing’), which serves to present the content of the jointly produced utterance as participant’s own assertion. When a speaker mentions some event that pertains more to the addressee than to the speaker him/herself (‘B-event’), it invokes a participation framework that makes it relevant for the addressee to co-participate in the activity, and such co-participation can be achieved in the form of co-participant completion, through which the addressee provides information that the first speaker is recognizably seeking. In some cases, this form of co-participation is carried out by the second speaker’s co-opting the completion of the first speaker’s ongoing utterance, and in other cases, it is prompted by the first speaker through a particular utterance design that is geared toward inviting co-participant completion by the addressee. I also discussed a case in which, in the face of a ‘B-event’ utterance that displays an incorrect understanding on the speaker’s part, the addressee can employ co-participant completion to accomplish correction/disconfirmation as a collaboratively constructed statement.

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

Chapter 3

Finally, we observed that, when a speaker delivers an utterance that is recognizably embodying an imminent dispreferred action (e.g., disagreement, other-correction, etc.), the addressee can employ co-participant completion to preempt the utterance-in-progress and transform the emerging dispreferred action into a collaboratively achieved, preferred action in the same domain of activity (e.g., from disagreement to agreement, from other-correction to selfcorrection). In many aspects of the organization of talk-in-interaction, there is a general bias toward the avoidance of conflict among members of society, and when a disaffiliative form of participation is imminent, there is a systematic preference for ‘getting around it.’ By co-opting the completion of a disaffiliative utterance and providing the next turn slot for the first speaker’s acceptance of the completing utterance, the second speaker can offer an opportunity for the collaborative achievement of transformation from a disaffiliative move to an affiliative one (although, as shown above, the opportunity can be rejected by the first speaker). The goal of this chapter has been to provide concrete demonstrations of the ‘activity-implication’ of grammar in interaction, i.e., grammar’s intimate engagement with the social action that the participants perform as a form of participation in socially organized activities in interaction. Each utterance is a form of participation in the situated activity that the participants engage in at the moment, and its grammatical structuring informs co-participants of how it advances (or redirects, terminates, etc.) the ongoing activity. Instances of achieving activity-relevant participation through co-participant completion, then, offer a conspicuous documentation of how the grammatical structuring of an ongoing utterance provides a resource for co-participants to organize their next action and accomplish activity-relevant participation that fits into the grammatical trajectory of another speaker’s action-in-progress. Also, as the foregoing analyses demonstrated, the details of the grammatical structuring of the jointly produced utterance that results from co-participant completion are the outcome of the delicately maneuvered participation in the ongoing activity by the second speaker. In this sense, what we observed in this chapter suggests that grammar is both a resource for, and an outcome of, an interactional achievement of concerted action by multiple participants. Or, we might go one step further and argue that “[g]rammar is not only a resource for interaction and not only an outcome of interaction, it is part of the essence of interaction itself ” (Schegloff, Ochs, & Thompson 1996: 38). I hope that the present chapter has provided some testimony for this statement.

Chapter 4

Grammar and opportunities for joint turn construction

In this chapter, I continue exploring co-participant completion in Japanese conversation by focusing the analysis on opportunities for co-participant completion, i.e., what kinds of features of talk-in-interaction are oriented to and utilized by co-participants as resources providing opportunities to deliver appropriate completion for another’s utterance-in-progress.1 Building on earlier work in conversation analysis on co-participant completion and on turn projection (e.g., Lerner 1987, 1991, 1996a; Lerner & Takagi 1999; Schegloff 1987; Tanaka 1999a, 2000a; Fox, Hayashi, & Jasperson 1996), the present chapter first explores how divergent organizations of grammar (or syntax – these two terms will be used interchangeably in this chapter) in different languages may be interactionally consequential for the projection of an emergent turn-shape and for the provision of opportunities for the joint construction of unfolding grammatical units. It then examines how other features of talk-in-interaction, in particular, some recognizable configurations of talk that emerge in local sequential context, can also be interactionally salient for providing opportunities for co-participant completion. The chapter aims to reveal temporality and projectability as crucial aspects of grammar in interaction by investigating how the temporally unfolding grammatical structuring of an emerging utterance projects changing opportunities of interactional participation. The goal of the chapter, then, is to explore the implications of cross-linguistic differences in grammatical organization in divergent languages for the projectability of unfolding turn-shapes and for the provision of opportunities for socially coordinated participation in utterance construction by multiple parties.

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Chapter 4

. Introduction: Projectability of unfolding turn-shapes as a resource for joint turn construction In conversation and talk-in-interaction more generally, participants routinely accomplish finely-tuned coordination with one another with split-second precision in the real-time progression of interaction (cf. Kendon 1967, 1970; Jefferson 1973, 1983; Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson 1974; C. Goodwin 1979, 1980, 1981; M. Goodwin 1980; C. Goodwin & M. Goodwin 1987; Lerner 1987, 1991, 1996a, 2002; Schegloff 2000; Streeck 1995; Erickson & Schultz 1982; Heath 1986, 1992; among many others).2 One central resource that provides for such close coordination among multiple individuals is the feature of projectability in human conduct, the feature that ‘projects’ or foreshadows the future trajectory of the action underway before its entire course has been fully disclosed. Participants regularly orient to such projections in the course of another’s ongoing action, and use them as a resource to organize their own conduct in concert with the other’s action-in-progress. For instance, studies on the organization of turn-taking (which is one prevalent form of coordination between the speaking party and the nonspeaking party to interaction) have demonstrated that the projectability of points of possible turn completion prior to their actual occurrence provides for the achievement of precisely-timed, orderly transition of speakership (cf. Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson 1974; Jefferson 1973; Wilson & Zimmerman 1986; Ford & Thompson 1996; Ford, Fox, & Thompson 1996; Tanaka 1999a, 2000a). Research has also shown that various practices employed in the vicinity of possible turn completion points – such as ‘terminal overlap’ (Jefferson 1983) and ‘rush-through’ (Schegloff 1982) – are organized vis-à-vis a projection of an imminent occurrence of possible completion of the current turn. Completion points of turns are not the only concern to which projections are oriented for the achievement of socially coordinated participation in interaction. There is evidence that participants in talk-in-interaction analyze the internal organization of an emerging utterance as it is produced, and use that analysis to make a projection about what will be said in the next phase of utterance construction. Such a projection may then be drawn on to act on the emerging course of an utterance in ways relevant to the activity in which the participants are engaged. As discussed in Chapter 3, for instance, C. Goodwin and M. Goodwin (1987) explicate the processes by which recipients make a projection about the unfolding course of an assessment utterance, and use that projection to concurrently participate in the assessment activity underway. Their study shows how the syntactic and prosodic structuring of an unfolding

Grammar and opportunities for joint turn construction

utterance as well as the accompanying non-vocal conduct are oriented to and utilized by participants as a resource that provides heightened opportunities for joint participation in an ongoing activity. In another line of research pertaining to joint turn construction in English, Lerner (1987, 1991, 1996a, 1996b, 2002) also demonstrates that participants make use of a wide range of resources emerging in the developing course of talk to project unfolding turn-shapes and organize their co-participation in the joint construction of emergent grammatical units. These studies show that the projectability of the unfolding course of an utterance furnishes a central resource for the organization of coordinated participation in the ongoing interaction in the midst of a single turn at talk. A number of recent studies have begun to elucidate how turn projection is accomplished through a vast array of interactionally relevant resources in a range of different aspects of the organization of talk-in-interaction (cf. Local & Kelly 1986; Local, Kelly, & Wells 1986; Local, Wells, & Sebba 1985; Selting 1996a, 1996b, 2000; Ford & Thompson 1996; Ford, Fox, & Thompson 1996; Fox 1995; Streeck & Hartge 1992; Streeck 1995; Tanaka 1999a, 2000a). The present chapter aims to contribute to this body of research through an examination of ways in which co-participant completion is fashioned in Japanese conversation. It investigates the projectability of emergent turn shapes as a central resource for co-participants to achieve concurrent participation in another participant’s ongoing turn construction. In particular, the chapter explores how cross-linguistic differences in syntactic organization, or “syntactic practices” (Fox, Hayashi, & Jasperson 1996), may be consequential for furnishing opportunities for socially coordinated turn construction. That is, if syntax is one major resource for turn construction and for the projectability of unfolding turn-shapes, it is possible that divergent (morpho-)syntactic resources of different languages – e.g. different word order, different morphological marking, etc. – may have a significant consequence for how projections are achieved and for how joint action within a turn at talk is organized (cf. Schegloff, Ochs, & Thompson 1996; Fox, Hayashi, & Jasperson 1996; Tanaka 1999a, 2000a; Lerner & Takagi 1999). The present chapter attempts to explore that possibility. The analysis developed below builds on past conversation-analytic studies of interactional phenomena in English and Japanese from cross-linguistic perspectives (e.g., Ford & Mori 1994; Fox, Hayashi, & Jasperson 1996; Mori 1999a; Tanaka 1999a, 2000a; Saft 1996; Park 1997; Lerner & Takagi 1999; among others). Of particular relevance to the discussion in this chapter are the studies by Tanaka (1999a, 2000a) and Fox, Hayashi, and Jasperson (1996). Their studies investigated potential relationships between turn projection and the disparate





Chapter 4

syntactic practices between English and Japanese, and suggested that, while English syntax appears to allow for “early projection” of possible turn-shapes towards the beginning of a turn constructional unit (TCU), a number of features of Japanese syntax tend to result in incremental turn construction, which provides “limited mid-turn projectability” (Tanaka 1999a, 2000a) and systematically delays the projection of turn-shapes until quite late in the construction of a TCU. Building on their research, the first part of this chapter (Section 4.2) aims to account for some characteristic ways in which co-participant completion is performed in Japanese conversation based on a description of ‘delayed syntactic projectability’ in Japanese. In the second part of the chapter (Section 4.3), I then suggest that the tendency for a later syntactic projectability of turn-shapes in Japanese does not necessarily present problems for participants to achieve joint utterance construction. I show that participants may orient to other interactionally relevant features of talk in the local sequential context to project possible organizations for what is to follow within an unfolding turn at talk and accomplish coordinated participation in ongoing turn construction. The discussion focuses on some recognizable configurations of talk emerging in the local sequential context that are demonstrably oriented to by participants as a resource for co-participant completion. The relevance of non-vocal, visual conduct to the achievement of joint utterance construction in Japanese conversation will be addressed in Chapter 5.

. Delayed syntactic projectability in Japanese I begin this section by presenting some observations about characteristic ways in which co-participant completion is achieved in Japanese conversation (Section 4.2.1). The observations are subsequently accounted for with a discussion of syntactic practices that are characteristically observed in conversational Japanese (Section 4.2.2). With the basic workings of those syntactic practices laid out, then, another characteristic pattern observed in Japanese coparticipant completion is examined briefly (Section 4.2.3). It is shown that the observed pattern is an orderly product of the syntactic/turn-constructional practices employed by Japanese participants. The section concludes with a brief summary (Section 4.2.4).

Grammar and opportunities for joint turn construction

..

Observation: Co-participant completion is routinely delayed in Japanese

This subsection presents the observation that, at least in the data examined for the present study, a co-participant’s delivery of a completion for another participant’s utterance-in-progress appears to be routinely ‘delayed’ in Japanese conversation. This observation is based on inspection of two types of coparticipant completion: (i) those instances in which two-part, multi-clausal sentential units are co-constructed, and (ii) those in which mono-clause sentential units are co-constructed. I discuss the first type of instances in Section 4.2.1.1 and the second type in Section 4.2.1.2. ... Co-participant completion of two-part, multi-clausal sentential units: Temporal Displacement of the final component This subsection examines instances of co-participant completion that involve the co-construction of multi-clausal sentential units like [X-tara + Y] (‘[If /When X + then Y]’) and [X-kara + Y] (‘[Because X + Y]’). I first review Lerner’s (1987, 1991, 1996a) work pertaining to this type of co-participant completion in English conversation. I then present a number of instances from my database in which a co-participant delivers the second component of a multi-clausal unit initiated by another participant in Japanese conversation. Juxtaposing the instances from English and Japanese conversation, I note a potential characteristic in the way in which co-participant completion of multiclausal sentential units is accomplished in Japanese conversation. That is, at least in my data, co-participants’ delivery of the second part of these multiclausal units is routinely delayed – delayed in the sense that the delivery of completion is regularly preceded by an intra-turn pause and/or some sorts of ‘filled’ pauses. In his study of co-participant completion in English conversation, Lerner (1987, 1991, 1996a) proposes that participants have available turn-constructional formats, termed “compound turn-constructional units (compound TCUs),” that provide an opportunity for a co-participant to deliver an anticipated completion of another participant’s utterance-in-progress. Lerner argues that, during the course of their realization within their sequential and interactional contexts, such two-part formats can project a ‘place’ and a ‘form’ for co-participant completion. Thus, according to Lerner and Takagi (1999): A compound TCU projects in its course, and prior to the onset of a final component, that a two-part unit is underway. This type of TCU is composed of the following features. Roughly, it is designed in a manner that shows the current





Chapter 4

component of the TCU to be a preliminary component and it foreshows both a place where a final component could begin and a form that such a final component can take. This can then provide an opportunity (but not a mandate) for a co-participant to contribute the anticipated final component. (p. 53; emphasis in original)

While Lerner stresses that, as an interactional structure, a compound TCU can be constituted from a range of interactionally relevant resources in any aspect of the organization of talk-in-interaction,3 the most conspicuous instances that he provides are those compound units that are constituted mainly by the syntactic structure of the TCU, and in particular, those with multi-clausal formats such as [If X + then Y], [When X + then Y], etc. The following are some instances: [If X + then Y] (1) Rich: Carol:

if you bring it intuh them ih don’t cost you nothing

(2) Sparky: David:

An if you and Cheryl got together you don’t have enough

(Lerner 1991: 445) (Lerner 1996a: 243)

[When X + then Y] (3) Dan: Roger:

when the group reconvenes in two weeks= =they’re gunna issue strait jackets (Lerner 1991: 445)

[Once X + then Y] (4) Beth: Alan:

Once you cut the button hole open you can’t use the button holer.

(Lerner 1996a: 241)

Japanese conversational participants also have available two-part, multi-clausal turn-constructional formats like the ones in English. The following instance displays the co-construction of a multi-clausal unit equivalent to [Because X + Y]: the [X-kara + Y] format. Note that, as described in Chapter 2, the so-called ‘dependent’ or ‘subordinate’ clause in Japanese is marked with a clause-final ‘conjunctive’ particle. The conjunctive particle kara which appears at the end of the preliminary component is presented in boldface in fragment (5).

Grammar and opportunities for joint turn construction

[X-kara + Y] (5) [KG 13] ((The participants are talking about trying to make things fit into a suitcase.)) Chika: katsuobushi tte na:: hukuro panpan ya kara [::,] dried.bonito QT FP package puffy CP because “Dried bonito flakes, because ((their)) packages are so puffed up,” [ ] 2 Kyoko: [u::]::n. “Uh huh” 3 Chika: .hhh moo-= EMP “.hhh like,” wa na:. 4→Asami: =chicchaku narahen small become:not FP FP “((They)) wouldn’t get smaller, would ((they))?” 1

In this instance, the preliminary component in Chika’s utterance in line 1 is marked with the clause-final conjunctive particle kara. After an acknowledgment token by a recipient, Kyoko, in line 2 and an inbreath and small bits of talk by Chika in line 3, another recipient, Asami, delivers a final component in line 4 that is fitted to Chika’s preliminary component. Now, examining the instances of co-participant completion involving multi-clausal units collected from the database for the present study, I find a recurrent pattern observed in the way in which the ‘final component’ is produced. That is, when a co-participant chooses to anticipatorily produce the final component of a multi-clausal unit initiated by another participant, the delivery of the final component is regularly delayed – delayed in the sense that the final component is not initiated immediately on completion of the preliminary component. In other words, we recurrently observe a lapse of time, typically in the form of silence and/or some types of ‘filled pauses,’ between the completion of the preliminary component and the initiation of the final component. To represent it schematically, the following pattern is observed in all the instances of co-participant completion involving multi-clausal units in my Japanese data: Speaker A: [preliminary component] + ((lapse of time – pauses and/or ‘filled’ pauses)) Speaker B: [final component] Thus, in the present data collection, we do not see cases like fragments (1)–(4) in English above, in which the final component of a multi-clausal format is

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Chapter 4

produced by the second speaker immediately following the completion of the preliminary component by the first speaker. Here are some additional instances that exhibit the pattern just described. In each of the following transcripts, the lines marked with the ‘a’-arrows present the ‘preliminary component’ and the ‘b’-arrows indicate the lines in which a co-participant contributes the anticipated final component. The conjunctive particles serving as the ‘preliminary-component markers’ are presented in boldface in the transcripts. Notice that, in each of the instances below, there are intervening lines (marked by the arrows with an asterisk) between the preliminary component (the ‘a’-arrowed lines) and the final component (the ‘b’-arrowed lines) that indicate some passage of time between the productions of the two components. [X-tara + Y]

([If /When X + then Y])

(6) [TYC 16] ((The participants are discussing whether non-union members can get a discount on accommodations at a hotel affiliated with the union. Kanji, a union member, explains the union’s rules and the actual situation.)) 1 Muneo: 2

3 4 Kanji:

5 6

7 Muneo:

8 Shoko:

(.) sono hen wa kumiai no hoo mo betsuni::: union LK side also particularly that area TP mushi shite kureru n da yo ne::. ignore do give.the.favor N CP FP FP “The union will ignore that sort of thing, right?” (0.2) nnm nanka maa:: m:minoga- su::(hh) m(h)it(h)ai:. like well let.pass seem “nnm well seems like ((they)) let ((it)) pass::.” .hh maa honrai wa kumiai in to sono kazoku: well principle TP union member and that family ga aru rashii n de[su [tte yuu seegen] QT say restriction SP exist seem N CP kedo::] although “.hh Well, in principle, there seems to be the restriction that ((the discount)) applies only to union members and their families , but...” [ ] [ ] )] [tch! ( “tch! ( )” [ ] [a:::::::.] “Oh::::::.”

Grammar and opportunities for joint turn construction a

9→Kanji: .hh anmari komakai chekku made shi[tetara:= too.much detailed check even do:if “.hh if ((they)) check in too much detail,” [ [( ) “( )”

10 Muneo: ∗

11→Muneo: =u:::n. “Uh huh.” ∗ 12→Yurie: [u:::::n. “Uh huh.” [ ∗ 13→Kanji: [nanka::: “li:::ke,” b 14→Muneo: gisugisu shi[chau shi ne.] MIM(stiff) do and FP “((the relationship among the employees)) will become awkward, right?” [ ] 15 Kanji:

[u:::::::::n.] “Yeah”

[X-kara + Y] ([Because X + Y]) (7) [KMI 7] ((Eiji has been explaining how he ended up using his waapuro (‘word processor,’ which is very much equivalent to an electronic typewriter), even after taking a ‘how-to’ class for using a more advanced machine – a computer. Leave aside Mika’s co-participant completion at line 3 for the moment.)) 1 Eiji:

2

3 Mika:

4 Eiji:

aa yuu no wa yappari koo soren:: n- de that say N TP as.expected like that in naratte:: learn .hh sono ato ne:: [jibun de koo:::] that after FP self by like “((When you have done)) that kind of thing (=taking a ‘how-to’ class for computers), after that, [by yourself...]” [ ] [jibun de sawara]na na:.= self by touch.not FP “((you)) have to use ((computers)) by yourself.” .hh iroiro: tsukau:: kikai ga aREba::, various use chance SP exist:if “.hh if ((you)) have various opportunities to use ((computers)),”

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Chapter 4

5

a

6→ a

7→ ∗

8→Mika: ∗

9→ b

10→Mika:

b

11→

12

koo iroiro: hatten shite iku n daroo like various develop do go N CP ked (H )om(h)o:: although “like, ((your skills)) will probably develop, but...” .hhh nanse koo:: hhh temoto ni:: nakatta anyhow like hand at didn’t.exist “.hhh because ((I)) didn’t have ((a computer)) ...” mon da kara: thing CP because “... at hand,” u:n. “Uh huh.” (0.4) aisuru waapuro ni:: beloved word.processor on “((you)) ended up not breaking off ((your)) attachment...” [(ne)] oborete shimat[eta wake drown ended.up reason FP “...to ((your)) beloved word processor, then.” [ [ ] [◦ .hhhhh◦

Eiji:

“◦ .hhhhh◦

[S O ]O : desu ne so CP FP “That’s right.”

[X-kedo + Y] ([Though X + Y]) (8) [OBS 6] ((Emiko, a middle-aged woman, has been telling her experience at a fashion boutique to the other participants, who are also middle-aged. Prior to the beginning of the fragment, Emiko said that a store clerk recommended a dress with a belt around the waist, which in Emiko’s opinion does not look good on a middle-aged woman’s ‘lumpy’ body.)) a

1→Emiko: are wa ne:, hoso:kutte NE:, (0.3) that TP FP thin:and FP a

2→

ano uwazee ga atte:,= uhm height SP exist:and “Although, in that ((sort of dress)), if ((you)) were thin and (0.3) uhm, tall, and”

Grammar and opportunities for joint turn construction

Yaeko: =so[o da yo ne:, so CP FP FP “That’s right.” [

3

a

4→Emiko:

[zentai ga:,= whole SP “((your)) whole body...” 5 Yaeko: =soo soo. so so “Right, right.” a 6→Emiko: u- ano: hosoi kara↑, .hh beruto shitemo uhm thin because belt do:even.if a

7→

su[teki na n] da kedo:= nice CP N CP although “... were thin, ((you)) would look nice even if ((you)) wore a belt,” [ ] 8 Yaeko: [u::n u:n.] “Uh huh, uh huh.” ∗ 9→Hanae: =u:n. “Uh huh.” ∗ 10→Emiko: ((TSK))hn. “((TSK)) hn” b

11→Yaeko: obasan no ne, middle-aged.woman LK FP b

12→

[bokon bo[kon ga ne, mata yokee]= MIM(lumpy) MIM SP FP also extra “middle-aged women will only get...” [ [ ]

Emiko: [obasan no[bokon bokon shita no ga middle-aged.woman LK MIM MIM is N SP sa:,]= FP “middle-aged women’s lumpy ((body)) will...”

13

b

14→Yaeko: =bokon b(h)ok(h)on te [hitotsu huechau dake= MIM MIM QT one increase only “... another lump on ((their)) lumpy ((bodies))...” [ 15

Emiko: b

16→Yaeko: =[da mon ne(hh). CP thing FP “... won’t they?”

[so. “Right.”

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Chapter 4

17

Hanae: =[(ikani)mo ne::: heh heh heh indeed FP “Indeed. heh heh heh”

In each of the instances above, the final component is not produced immediately on completion of the preliminary component. The onset of the final component is temporally displaced with some lapse of time between the two components. How can we account for this recurrently observed ‘delay’ in a co-participant’s delivery of the final component? And what does it suggest about the role of syntactic practices in projecting unfolding turn-shapes and in providing opportunities for co-participant completion? Before addressing these questions, I register another observation about characteristic ways in which co-participant completion is accomplished in Japanese conversation. In the next subsection, I consider instances in which participants co-construct mono-clausal sentential units and note that, there as well, a co-participant’s delivery of a completion is fashioned in a delayed manner. ... Co-participant completion of mono-clausal sentential units: Prevalence of ‘terminal item completion’ In many, if not most, of the instances of co-participant completion of monoclausal sentential units in my database (34 out of 47 cases), we observe a recurrent pattern that co-participants deliver a completion for another participant’s utterance-in-progress quite late in the course of that utterance. That is, they ‘wait’ until the vicinity of a possible end-point of an ongoing utterance before proceeding to deliver a completion fitted to the utterance-so-far. Lerner (1996a) terms this practice ‘terminal item completion,’ i.e., a practice whereby a co-participant produces the projected final item or two of the unfolding grammatical unit being constructed by another participant. Since Japanese typically displays predicate-final word order (cf. Chapter 2), terminal item completion often takes the form of producing a verb, a predicate adjective, or a predicate noun, that is fitted to the unfolding structure of another’s sentential unit. The following fragments present characteristic instances. (Note that, although these instances contain multi-clausal structures with tara and kedo, co-participants do not display their orientation to or utilize the compoundness in those multiclausal structures as a primary resource for co-participant completion. Rather, they are seen to be orienting to the co-construction of the ‘main’ clause in

Grammar and opportunities for joint turn construction

such multi-clausal structures. Therefore, these instances are considered here as instances of co-participant completion of mono-clausal units.) i. Delivering a final verb (9) [TK 12] ((Note that, although the English translation of line 6 presents an adverb (there), what Kumi produces is a verb (aru ‘exist’) which completes Shin’s ongoing utterance.)) 1

Shin:

2

Kumi:

3

Shin:

4

Kumi:

5

Shin:

6→Kumi:

asoko o: (.) tetete to orite[itta]ra= there O MIM(steps) QT go.down:if “If ((you)) go down ((the stairs)) there,” [ ] [u:n.] “Uh huh.” =SHOOmen NI:,= front in “in front ((of you)),” =u:n. “Uh huh.” denwa ga- ano mi[dori] no denwa ga:[:] phone SP uhm green LK phone SP “phones, uhm green phones are...” [ ] [ ] [a]ru aru. [aru.] exist exist exist “...there.” “there, there.”

ii. Delivering a final predicate noun (10) [TI 15] 1

2 3

4

5

Hayao: ...yuuko san no oTOOsan mo::, Yuuko TL LK father also “... Yuko’s father is also,” Izumi: ◦ u::n.◦ “◦ Uh huh◦ ” Hayao: ano::: (0.3) nan te yuu n, (0.2) uhm what QT say N “uh:::m (0.3) what do ((you)) call ((it)) (0.2)” KAIgyoo’i ja nai kedo::, medical.practioner CP not although “though ((he)) is not a medical practioner,” Izumi: u:n.= “Uh huh.”



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Chapter 4

Hayao: =ano HANDAI NO: (.) ano::: uhm U.of.Osaka LK uhm “uhm, University of Okasa’s (.) uh:::m,” 7 iryoo tanki: (.) DAIgakubu? medical junior college “medical junior (.) college?” 8 Izumi: U::n.= “UH huh.” 9 Hayao: =te yuu no?=.hhh are no:: QT say N that LK “Is ((that)) what ((you)) call ((it))?=.hhh that ((college))’s...” 10 nanka [kyooju o y ]atteru [hito ra]shikute sa. like professor O is.doing person seem FP “...like, a professor, ((it)) seems like.” [ ] [ ] 11→Izumi: [kyooju ka.] [.hhhhhhh] professor Q “a professor.” 6

iii. Delivering a final predicate adjective (11) [FMJ 23] 1

Hideo:

2

3→Kooji:

okurahoma tte:: eego de hatsuon shitara: Oklahoma QT English in pronuncation do:when “((The word)) ‘Oklahoma,’ when ((you)) pronounce ((it)) in English,” zenzen nihongo no okurahoma to [(chi-)] totally Japanese LK Oklahoma from di“((it))’s totally, from Japanese ‘okurahoma,’ (di-)” [ ] nen na [ chau ] different FP FP “different, isn’t it?”

In each of the instances above, co-participant completion of a mono-clausal unit is accomplished by producing the last few items of another participant’s utterance-in-progress, i.e., producing an utterance-completing predicate (verb, predicate noun, or predicate adjective) with or without some final particles following it. These instances thus indicate that, in the majority of cases of monoclausal co-participant completion in my data corpus, a co-participant’s delivery of a completion is fashioned in a ‘delayed’ manner – delayed in the sense that it is not until another participant’s ongoing utterance reaches the vicinity of a possible completion point that co-participant completion is initiated and accomplished.

Grammar and opportunities for joint turn construction

What does this observed prevalence of ‘terminal item completion’ suggest about the projectability of unfolding turn-shapes as a resource for coparticipant completion? In the next subsection, I will address this question, together with the questions I posed at the end of Section 4.2.1.1, with a discussion of syntactic practices in Japanese. .. Account: Syntactic practices of Japanese result in delayed projectability This subsection aims to account for the observed ‘delay’ in co-participant completion by examining some syntactic practices characteristically observed in Japanese conversation and contrasting them with syntactic practices in English conversation. Of particular relevance to our discussion are the following three syntactic practices of Japanese: (i) postpositional marking of grammatical relations, (ii) flexible word order especially toward the beginning of a turn, and (iii) prevalence of unexpressed syntactic constituents (so-called ‘ellipsis’). I argue that, while English syntax and turn constructional practices appear to facilitate “early projection” of possible syntactic trajectories of unfolding utterances, Japanese syntactic practices tend to result in “delayed projectability” of the syntactic organization of emerging utterances (cf. also Fox, Hayashi, & Jasperson 1996; Tanaka 1999a, 2000a). It is then suggested that such delayed projectability at least partially shapes the characteristic ways in which co-participant completion in Japanese is performed – i.e., a late delivery of a completion for another’s utterance. In Section 4.2.2.1, I contrast the postpositioning of ‘preliminary-component markers’ in multi-clausal units in Japanese as opposed to the prepositioning of such markers in English, and discuss how the postpositional structure of Japanese syntax might contribute to the observed delay in co-participants’ delivery of the final component. In Section 4.2.2.2, I explicate how syntactic practices of Japanese tend to result in ‘incremental turn construction,’ which provides only a limited projectability of unfolding syntactic trajectories until quite late in a turn. I then suggest that incremental turn construction and limited mid-turn projectability contribute to the relative frequency of terminal item completion in Japanese. ... The postpositioning of preliminary-component markers in Japanese In English, preliminary component markers such as if and when are positioned at the beginning of the preliminary component. In Japanese, on the other hand, markers indicating the preliminary component are postpositioned,





Chapter 4

i.e., they are placed at the end of the preliminary component. This difference in the positioning of the preliminary component marker is illustrated in the following constructed examples, in which preliminary components are within square brackets and preliminary-component markers are in boldface. (12) i. [If it rains tomorrow,] let’s watch a video at home. ii. [ashita ame ga hut-tara] uchi de bideo o miyoo. tomorrow rain SP fall-if home at video O let’s.watch “If it rains tomorrow, let’s watch a video at home.”

In view of the temporal unfolding of real-time interaction, this differential positioning of the preliminary-component marker in the two languages can be quite consequential for the way in which multi-clausal units furnish an opportunity for co-participant completion. In English, the prepositioning of preliminary-component markers appears to make an ‘early projection’ of the unit-type underway rather straightforward. That is, the component-initial marking allows co-participants to recognize, at the beginning of a multi-clausal unit, that the preliminary component of a compound unit is in progress, and alerts them to the completion of the current component as being the place for the final component to begin.4 Thus, the clause-initial placement of the preliminary-component markers provides a resource for co-participants to project the syntactic organization of the unfolding compound unit early in a turn, organize their conduct vis-à-vis that projection, and deliver the final component immediately on completion of the preliminary component, as seen in fragments (1) through (4) above.5 In Japanese, on the other hand, preliminary-component markers like tara, kara, and kedo are positioned at the end of the preliminary component, and retroactively indicate the preceding clause as the preliminary component of a compound unit.6 This postpositional structure of preliminary-component marking appears to result in a relatively ‘delayed’ projectability of the unit-type underway. That is, in the course of the production of a clause that is eventually constructed as a preliminary component, there is no syntactic indication available, until the end of the clause, for co-participants to foresee that a compound unit is in progress. Since co-participants are not alerted, until the end of the clause, to the completion of the current clause as being the place for a final component to begin, it may engender some lapse of time before coparticipants proceed to deliver a final component that fits the ‘just-so-marked’ preliminary component produced by another participant.7 Of course, we must be cautious about making such a direct link between syntactic structure and participants’ cognitive processing – there may well be other reasons in the in-

Grammar and opportunities for joint turn construction

teractional context for not immediately producing a final component on completion of another participant’s preliminary component. Nonetheless, it appears that the unavailability of preliminary-component marking until the end of such a component can be among the factors that contribute systematically to the commonly observed delays in the delivery of the final component in the co-participant completion of multi-clausal units in Japanese.8 The early vs. late indication of ‘preliminariness’ between English and Japanese multi-clausal units in fact points to a larger difference between the two languages in the way projections of unfolding turn-shapes are generally achieved. In the next subsection, I describe further differences in the syntactic practices between English and Japanese, and discuss how syntactic practices of Japanese furnish only a limited projectability of the unfolding syntactic trajectory of an utterance-in-progress until the proximity of the terminal boundary of a turn. I then suggest that the limited mid-turn projectability due to syntactic practices of Japanese contributes to the relative frequency of terminal item completion in Japanese conversation. ... Incremental turn construction and limited mid-turn projectability in Japanese As noted in Chapter 2, Japanese sentences exhibit a fair degree of flexibility in the ordering of syntactic constituents (e.g., subject nominal, direct object nominal, adverb, etc.), “(e)xcept for the very rigid constraint that verbs must appear in the sentence-final positions” (Kuno 1973: 3). Thus, Martin (1975: 35) states that: ... so long as you put the predicate ... at the end, where it belongs in a wellplanned sentence, you are free to present each of the build-up phrases early or late as you see fit.

I also noted in Chapter 2 that so-called ‘ellipsis’ of syntactic constituents is frequent in Japanese sentences. As illustrated with examples in Chapter 2, nominals like the subject and the direct object, and even the verb, may be left unexpressed when the speaker supposes that they are understood and ‘recoverable’ in the local context, or that it is not important to express them. Now, compare these syntactic practices observed in Japanese to those in English. English typically exhibits fairly rigid word order (at least with regard to the ‘core’ syntactic elements such as the subject, the direct object, and the verb), and ellipsis of constituents is far less common in English than in Japanese. By virtue of the relatively less flexible word order and the common presence of overtly expressed syntactic constituents, then, recipients of temporally unfold-





Chapter 4

ing utterances in real-time interaction in English appear, in principle, to have greater resources available than Japanese counterparts to predict the possible syntactic organization of an emerging utterance. For instance, in English, as soon as recipients hear the subject nominal, they can ordinarily predict that a verb will be produced fairly soon, if not as the next item. And as soon as they hear the verb, they can reasonably predict what is likely to follow the verb: certain kinds of verbs are typically followed by direct objects, while others typically project so-called ‘embedded clauses,’ etc. In other words, the syntactic practices in English seem to afford participants a possibility of an early projection of unfolding turn-shapes from the beginning of a turn. Indeed, Schegloff (1987) argues that turn-beginnings are an important place for turn projection and an important structural place in English conversation: One important feature of turn construction...and the units that turn construction employs (e.g. lexical, phrasal, clausal, sentential constructions) is that they project, from their beginnings, aspects of their planned shape and type. ... For example, question projection: obviously enough, starting a turn with a ‘wh-word’, though it doesn’t necessarily entail that ‘a question’ is going to be constructed, powerfully projects that possibility for the turn’s development, with potential consequent constraints on next turn. Or: beginnings can project ‘quotation formats’; starting a turn with ‘He says’ projects the strong possibility of quotation as the type of turn to be developed... Or: a beginning like ‘I don’t think’ can project, in certain sequential environments, ‘disagreement’ as a turn type for its turn. ... Again: turn beginnings are important because they are an important place for turn projection, and, given the importance of turn projection to turn-taking, they are important structural places in conversation. (pp. 71–72; emphasis added)

Now, if word order before the final predicate is quite flexible in Japanese as stated above, and if elements identifiable from the local context are often unexpressed, it is conceivable that the presence of some constituent at the beginning of a turn provides relatively little information as to how the turn will develop structurally in the temporal unfolding of interaction, except (perhaps) that some kind of predicate will eventually be produced towards the end of the TCU-in-progress. For instance, from the presence of a nominal marked with the topic marker wa at the beginning of a turn, a recipient is not necessarily able to predict what kind of syntactic element is going to be produced next.9 Thus, while syntactic practices in clause construction in English appear to facilitate an early projection of unfolding turn-shapes, Japanese syntactic practices, especially towards the beginning of a TCU, do not appear to provide such a straightforward resource for participants to foresee the possible syn-

Grammar and opportunities for joint turn construction

tactic trajectory of the emerging TCU (Tanaka 1999a, 2000a; Fox, Hayashi, & Jasperson 1996). Due to this ‘delayed syntactic projectability,’ then, in order to anticipate the structural unfolding of an ongoing utterance, Japanese participants may need to ‘wait and see’ how the utterance develops incrementally, i.e., in a ‘bit-by-bit’ fashion, until the incremental bits of turn-constructional elements cumulatively enhance the projectability of the trajectory of the rest of the emerging utterance. More on this point in a moment. Another syntactic practice of Japanese that plays an important role in the process of incremental turn construction and cumulative enhancement of projectability is the postpositional marking of grammatical relations. Postpositional particles are placed after words, phrases, or clauses, and indicate the grammatical relationship of the preceding elements to the rest of the sentence (cf. Chapter 2). In her illuminating analysis of the situated utility of these postpositional particles in Japanese talk-in-interaction, Tanaka (1999a: 155ff.) describes how the deployment of these postpositional particles creates a “binomial relationship” between the preceding element that a particle marks and a further component projected by that particle. For instance, the particle ga typically marks the preceding nominal as the subject and creates a prospective relationship to a projected predicate component; i.e., projects a predicate to occur at some later point.10 And the particle no (which is often regarded as equivalent to the ‘apostrophe s’ in English, as in John’s car) creates a prospective and retrospective relationship between the preceding nominal and another nominal component projected to occur after it. Consider the following illustration, in which the particles in question are in boldface, and the arrows represent the ‘binomial relationships’ that the particles create. ga → (i) can mark the preceding nominal as a subject; (ii) can project a predicate. (13) [OBS 10] marks as subject Yaeko:

projects a predicate

ATASHI GA >DOOSHITE< MINISUKAATO HAKERU N YO(hh), I SP how miniskirt can.wear N FP “HOW CAN I WEAR A MINISKIRT(hh)!!”





Chapter 4

no → (i) equivalent to ‘apostrophe s’; (ii) can project another nominal. (14) [TYC 18] links a nominal to another nominal Muneo:

katsuo Katsuo

no ’s

links a nominal to another nominal

otoosan father

no: (0.3) ojisan ’s uncle

dearu:: (0.4) CP

links a nominal to another nominal norisuke:: (.) no: (0.3) kodomo: Norisuke ’s child “Katsuo’s father’s (0.3) uncle, (0.4) Norisuke (.) ’s (0.3) child”

In view of the temporal progression of real-time interaction, the fact that these particles are postpositional has consequences for the projectability of unfolding turn-shapes. That is, when a nominal is produced in an emerging utterance, its status and what it projects may, in principle, be equivocal until a postpositional particle retroactively indicates its grammatical relation and projects a further component.11 This equivocality due to the postpositional structure of grammatical marking in Japanese might then contribute to ‘delayed projectability’ even within the production of ‘incremental bits.’ Furthermore, it is important to note that nominals marked with these particles typically project “only one further component which will be produced at ‘some point’ during the current TCU” and “do not necessarily project the temporal sequence in which a turn may develop, nor the eventual shape of an emerging turn” (Tanaka 1999a: 178; emphasis in original). In other words, the particle ga, for instance, projects a predicate component to occur at ‘some point’ in the future course of the turn, but does not necessarily project when it will be produced, and what will be produced if something other than a predicate is produced before the predicate. This, then, results in what Tanaka (1999a, 2000a) and Fox, Hayashi, and Jasperson (1996) suggest as a characteristic way of turn construction in Japanese talkin-interaction: that is, an emerging turn is constructed incrementally, where each increment provides only limited projectability for the future course of the

Grammar and opportunities for joint turn construction

turn, while a sequence of increments are knitted together with the ‘binomial relationships’ created by the postpositional particles and cumulatively enhance projectability as the turn progresses. I suggest that the preceding discussion of the syntactic practices in Japanese accounts for the observed prevalence of terminal item completion in the present database. That is, with the relatively flexible word order especially towards the beginning of a TCU, frequent ‘ellipsis’ or unexpressed constituents, and incremental projection with postpositional particles, Japanese syntactic practices appear to furnish a systematic basis for delayed projectability of unfolding turn-shapes. The participants may need to wait and see how each increment within an emerging turn contributes to the progressive expansion of resources for projectability of the future course of the turn. The accumulation of such incrementally provided resources towards the end of the turn, then, enhances projectability enough to provide an opportunity for a co-participant to deliver the projected final item or two. Let me illustrate the process of this cumulative enhancement of projectability in an unfolding turn with a schematic representation of the utterances in fragment (11). In this diagram, the particles providing for incremental projection are in boldface, and the changing width of the arrow represents progressively enhanced projectability as the utterance proceeds toward completion. (15) [FMJ 23] Hideo:

okurahoma tte:: Oklahoma QT (“As for ‘Oklahoma’”) eego de hatsuon shitara: English in pronuncation do:when (“when ((you)) pronounce ((it)) in English,”) zenzen totally (“totally”) nihongo no okurahoma to Japanese LK Oklahoma from (“from Japanese ‘okurahoma’”)

Kooji:

chau nen na different FP FP (“different, isn’t it?”)

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

Chapter 4

Each increment in the above diagram contributes to the accumulation of projectability towards the end of the turn. The cumulative effect, then, appears to reach the ‘threshold level,’ so to speak, and provide the co-participant with an opportunity to provide the final predicate, chau nen na (‘different, isn’t it?’) on completion of the postpositional particle to (‘from’ as in ‘different from X’) at the end of the last increment of the first speaker’s talk. Again, of course, we must be cautious about making a direct link between syntactic organization and participants’ cognitive processing; it is always possible that other reasons exist for not immediately proceeding to contribute a completion for another’s ongoing utterance even if the projectability of the unfolding turn-shape becomes available earlier in the turn. Nonetheless, the observations presented above about possible connections between syntactic practices and projectability in Japanese and the preponderance of this pattern in the data appear compelling enough to be included as a factor that contributes systematically to the relative frequency of late initiation of co-participant completion in Japanese conversation. In this subsection, I provided possible accounts of the observed ‘delay’ in co-participant completion in Japanese discussed in Section 4.2.1 with an exploration of the relationship between syntactic practices and projectability of unfolding turn-shapes in English and Japanese conversation. I argued that, while English syntax appears to allow for an ‘early projection’ of the syntactic trajectory of an emerging utterance, Japanese syntactic practices tend to result in ‘delayed projectability.’ I then suggested that such delayed projectability at least partially contributes to a later delivery of co-participant completion observed in Japanese conversation. In the next subsection, I examine yet another characteristic pattern observed in co-participant completion in Japanese. Drawing on the discussion of incremental turn construction and limited mid-turn projectability in Japanese presented in this subsection, I demonstrate that the observed pattern is an orderly product of the syntactic/turn-constructional practices employed by Japanese participants. ..

A further pattern: An acknowledgment token prefaces co-participant completion

This subsection examines yet another recurrent pattern observed in Japanese co-participant completion, which, as far as I am aware, has not been reported in the work on co-participant completion in English. The pattern to be examined is the following: in Japanese, co-participant completion is sometimes de-

Grammar and opportunities for joint turn construction

livered after the production of an acknowledgment token by the same speaker. In fragments (16)–(18) below, a co-participant delivers what is designed to be a continuation of another participant’s utterance-in-progress after producing the acknowledgment token u::n. (16) [KOB 16] ((Takie is telling the others about her aged mother, who puts things away in the wrong place.)) 1

Takie:

2

Akiyo:

3

Kaori:

4

Takie:

5

Akiyo:

6→Kaori:

7

Takie:

ano wadansu no NE:, uhm Japanese.chest.of.drawers LK FP “Uhm in the drawers,” [u::n.] “Uh huh” [ ] [u::n.] “Uh huh” kimono no ue ni ne:, kimono FP top on FP “...on top of kimono,” [u::n. ] “Uh huh” [ ] [u::n.] taoru toka= towel etc. “Uh huh. A towel or something=” =kutsushita ga haittetari ne:, socks SP be.put:and FP “=socks are found, and so on”

(17) [HR 6] ((Sanae is telling a third participant about the volunteer work that Ryoko has done. Kamagasaki is the name of a place where there are many homeless people.)) 1

Sanae:

2

3

Ryoko:

soo ryoko chan nanka ippai sonna n shite:,=ano:: so Ryoko TL like a.lot such N do:and uhm “Right, Ryoko does that kind of thing a lot,=uhhm” .hhh (0.3) kama:- kamagasaki no:, Kamagasaki LK “.hhh (0.3) in Kama:- Kamagasaki,” u:n. “Uh huh”

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Chapter 4

4

Sanae:

5→Ryoko:

6

Sanae:

takidashi toka mo[: food.drive etc. also “... a food drive, also,” [ [u::n. [ikkai itta:. once went “Uh huh. ((I)) went to, once.” [ [itta n ya tte. went N CP QT “((she)) went to, ((I)) heard.”

(18) [KG 12] Asami: e! .hh yukari chan tte sa::, oh Yukari TL QT FP “Oh! .hh about Yukari,” 2 Chika: un. “Uh huh” 3 (2.0) mo shita n? 4 Asami: hirooen wedding.reception also did FP “Did ((she)) have a wedding reception, too?” 5 (.) 6 Chika: ichioo na:: more.or.less FP “((It’s)) li::ke,” 7 (0.5) 8 Chika: ashiya kyookai de shiki a[gete:: sonomama] maa= Ashiya church in ceremony hold:and directly well “...((they)) had ((their)) wedding at Ashiya Church, and directly...” [ ] 9 Asami: [u::::n ( )] “Uh huh ( )” san de: 10 Chika: =hankyuu no ashiya no:: chuukaryoori ya Hankyuu LK Ashiya LK chinese.restaurant TL at “...((after that)) at a Chinese restaurant near Ashiya Station of the Hankyuu Line,” 11→Asami: u:n. [a! hirooen yatta?] oh reception did “Uh huh. Oh! ((they)) had a reception?” [ ] 12 Chika: [maa s h o k u j i] KAI mitaina well banquet like “like ((they had)) something like...” 1

Grammar and opportunities for joint turn construction

13

14

[kanji ka na] impression Q FP “...a banquet.” [ ] Asami: [a::::::::::::::] soo na n ka. so CP N Q oh “Oh::::::::::::::::::::::::: Is ((that)) right.”

In each of the fragments above, the arrowed line presents an acknowledgment token (u::n) followed by an utterance designed as a continuation of another participant’s utterance-in-progress. For English, it has been suggested that an utterance that is built to be a co-participant completion of another participant’s ongoing utterance is “typically characterized by the absence of a transition that would address the relation of the turn to a prior one and display the speaker’s understanding of it (“Yeah”, “Oh”, prosodic contrasts, etc.)” (Falk 1980: 511; emphasis in original). The very absence of such responsive markers (or any other special tying device), it has been argued, is a design feature of co-participant completion in English that allows the completing utterance to be heard as a continuation of the prior speaker’s utterance-in-progress rather than an independent next turn of its own (cf. Lerner 1987: Ch. 4; Schegloff 1996a: 73–77) Japanese turn constructional practices, on the other hand, appear to provide a systematic basis for the presence of such tokens that display a coparticipant’s acknowledgment of another participant’s utterance-so-far before the delivery of co-participant completion. In their account of incremental turn construction in Japanese conversation, Fox, Hayashi and Jasperson (1996) discuss the practice often known as aizuchi, i.e., frequent interspersing of acknowledgment tokens by recipients, from the perspective of turn projection and turn-taking: [I]f we are correct that the beginnings of TCUs in Japanese do not provide the recipient with much information about how the utterance is going to proceed, then it makes sense for speakers to produce relatively short PPUs [‘Pausebounded Phrasal Units’ proposed by Maynard (1989), which are bits of talk surrounded by pauses – MH] whose interactional implications the recipient can acknowledge or question as the speaker works on a larger turn (exactly what happens with multi-TCU turns in English). This allows the recipient to acknowledge small pieces without having to know exactly where the speaker is going with the full turn... (Fox, Hayashi, & Jasperson 1996: 212)

Thus, the picture that these authors suggest is that the speaker constructs a turn incrementally without disclosing much about its future course, while the recip-



 Chapter 4

ient registers his/her acknowledgment of incremental bits and limited projections they provide, by interspersing aizuchi tokens during the course of the ongoing turn. The following fragment presents an instance of the recipient’s aizuchi interwoven with the speaker’s incrementally constructed turn. Note that this fragment is not an instance of co-participant completion; it is meant to illustrate the frequent interspersing of aizuchi tokens in Japanese conversation. Examine the arrowed lines. (19) [TI 1] 1

Hayao:

2→Izumi: 3

Hayao:

4→Izumi: 5

Hayao:

6→Izumi: 7

Hayao:

8→Izumi:

ano ne:? uhm FP “Listen,” un.= “Uh huh” =ashita::: [no::]: (.) koto na n ya kedo:[::,] tomorrow LK thing CP N CP but “Tomorrow::::::’s (.) matter ((this)) is about, but” [ ] [ ] [hai.] [aha]i:.= “Yes” “Oh yes” =chotto: iku mae ni:,= a.liitle go before “....before ((we)) go ((to the party)),” =u:n.= “Uh huh” =chotto: yoritai:: toko ga atte sa:.= a.little want.to.stop.by place SP exist:and FP “...there’s a place ((I)) want to stop by, and” =A! .h hai hai. “Oh! .h yes yes.”

Now, if we examine fragments (16)–(18), we find that the co-participant who eventually delivers co-participant completion (or an attempt thereof) has also been engaged in the practice of interspersing acknowledgment tokens in the developing course of another participant’s utterance-in-progress, until the moment at which she produces co-participant completion (note acknowledgment tokens by Kaori in lines 3 and 6 in (16), by Ryoko in lines 3 and 5 in (17), and by Asami in lines 9 and 11 in (18)). What this seems to suggest from the perspective laid out by Fox, Hayashi, and Jasperson (1996) above, then, is something of the following sort: the co-participant engages in the ‘recipient activity’ in acknowledging turn increments and their limited projections along the course of another participant’s ongoing utterance, and at the arrowed line, the cumu-

Grammar and opportunities for joint turn construction 

lative effect of incremental projections by the utterance-so-far may reach the ‘threshold level,’ and provides an opportunity for co-participant completion. The co-participant then produces what is designed to be a continuation (and a completion in (17) and (18)) of another participant’s ongoing utterance. Fragment (18) is particularly telling in this regard. After producing the acknowledgment token in line 11, Asami prefaces her candidate completion with a realization marker, a! (‘oh!’) and thereby displays publicly that the accumulation of incremental projections has reached a ‘threshold,’ and has led her to deliver her candidate understanding of what the speaker, Chika, is going to say. If we consider how TCUs in English conversation are typically constructed, it is evident why this type of ‘post-acknowledgment-token delivery’ of coparticipant completion is not observed in English. For instance, a mono-clausal TCU in English is constructed in a more ‘tightly-knit’ fashion (cf. Fox, Hayashi, & Jasperson 1996), and is not typically interspersed with intra-turn acknowledgment tokens by recipients. In other words, an English mono-clausal TCU tends to be produced as a ‘chunk,’ perhaps within a single intonation contour. Thus, if one is to deliver an utterance that is hearable as a completion of another’s mono-clausal TCU-in-progress, the precise placement of the completing utterance vis-à-vis the other’s unfolding utterance (i.e., temporal contiguity) as well as the structural coherence that bridges the utterances across two participants (i.e., structural contiguity) become crucial in its design feature. In other words, the completing utterance must begin with an element that is designedly a continuation of another’s utterance-so-far, and must be placed at the moment at which it continues that utterance-so-far. Therefore, producing an acknowledgment token prior to an attempt of co-participant completion would lead a co-participant to miss the opportunity, since, during the production of such a token, the other’s utterance continues to unfold and its structural configuration continues to evolve, which would then hinder both temporal contiguity and structural contiguity across the two speakers’ utterances. This can be at least one explanation of why we do not observe in English the type of co-participant completion seen in fragments (16)–(18) above. In Japanese, on the other hand, turns are incrementally constructed, and the temporal progression of an ongoing turn is routinely halted (albeit briefly) when a co-participant produces an acknowledgment token. Thus, the presence of an acknowledgment token prior to the delivery of co-participant completion does not necessarily impede structural contiguity, though temporal continuity is slightly displaced. In other words, due to incremental turn construction by the speaker and the accompanying interspersing of aizuchi by the recipient(s), the opportunity space for co-participant completion may be expandable

 Chapter 4

at least for the duration of an acknowledgment token in Japanese conversation. This then allows for the possibility of initiating co-participant completion after producing a token that acknowledges another participant’s utterance-so-far. In this subsection, I examined ‘post-acknowledgment-token delivery’ of co-participant completion. This practice has not been reported in the work of co-participant completion in English, and yet, it is commonly observed in Japanese conversation. I argued that it is an orderly product of the characteristic way in which turns are constructed in Japanese conversation. That is, incremental turn construction by the speaker and the accompanying interspersing of aizuchi by recipient(s) provide for the possibility of a recipient’s initiation of co-participant completion after producing an acknowledgment token. .. Summary of the section In this section, I started with the observation that a co-participant’s delivery of a completion for another participant’s utterance-in-progress is routinely delayed in Japanese conversation. I then accounted for this observation based on a discussion of the relationship between syntactic practices and projectability of unfolding turn-shapes. In particular, I argued that a number of syntactic practices observed in Japanese conversation tend to result in delayed syntactic projectability, and suggested that the deployment of those syntactic practices contributes to the observed delay in the delivery of co-participant completion. Finally, I discussed the practice of delivering co-participant completion after producing an acknowledgment token, and showed that it is an orderly product of syntactic/turn-constructional practices employed by participants in Japanese conversation. I have noted in this section that syntax may not serve as a robust guide for projections of unfolding turn-shapes in Japanese conversation. This does not mean, however, that Japanese conversationalists are deprived of resources for socially coordinated participation in talk-in-interaction and in co-participant completion in particular. In the next section, I examine a range of ‘recognizable configurations’ of talk in local sequential contexts that furnish resources for projecting the developing course of an unfolding utterance.

Grammar and opportunities for joint turn construction 

. Local configurations of talk in the immediate sequential context as resources for co-participant completion In this section, I look into a variety of local configurations of talk in immediate sequential contexts that are oriented to and utilized by participants as resources for co-participant completion. I show that a range of interactionally relevant aspects of local sequential contexts are mobilized to enhance the projectability of unfolding turn-shapes and provide heightened opportunities for socially coordinated participation in joint turn construction.12 Turns in real-life social interaction are never produced in an interactional vacuum, but are always embedded in some sequential/interactional context. It is expectable, then, that interactional contingencies in the local context can inform the syntactic organization of an unfolding turn at talk (cf. Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson 1974; Schegloff 1979, 1996a). Thus, when some recognizable configurations emerge in the local sequential context of talk, they can be mobilized to serve as a guide for projecting the unfolding course of an ongoing utterance. In this section, I examine several types of such locally emergent, recognizable configurations of talk in the immediate sequential context in which an unfolding utterance is embedded, and show how these local configurations are oriented to and utilized by participants as resources that provide opportunities for co-participant completion. The following discussion is not meant to provide an exhaustive list of recognizable configurations of talk that are usable as a resource for co-participant completion. Rather, it is meant to offer some samples that illustrate how the sequential context can inform the syntactic trajectory of an utterance-in-progress and enhance the projectability of unfolding turn-shapes. ..

Repeated turn-constructional formats

In conversation, it is rather common that a part or the whole of an utterance is repeated by the same speaker or by another participant for one reason or another in the local context of talk (cf. Jefferson 1972; Schegloff 1979, 1987, 1996b; Schegloff, Jefferson, & Sacks 1977; Tannen 1989). It is perhaps not surprising, then, that recipients of the current turn sometimes orient to the recurrence of the same utterance format produced before to make a projection about what is going to be said next in the course of the ongoing turn. The following fragments present two common environments in which utterance formats are repeated; one involves self-correction, and the other involves a word search. In these fragments, a recipient of an ongoing turn orients to and utilizes the re-

 Chapter 4

currence of the utterance format just produced in the immediate context as a resource that provides opportunities for co-participant completion.

Self-correction In fragment (20), the same turn-constructional format is repeated in close proximity due to the operation of self-repair. In Motoki’s utterances in lines 1 and 4 (at the ‘a’-arrows), the format [X] hodo mainichi detete (‘((Things)) that come out as often as [X]’), is repeated while TEREBI (‘television’) in line 1 is replaced with shinbun (‘newspaper’) in line 4. When Motoki, in line 4, reaches the final word of the repeated utterance that he produced in line 1, the recipient, Yoohei, joins in and produces the word detete (‘come out and’) at the same time with Motoki (at the ‘b’-arrow at line 5), and goes on to complete the utterance begun by Motoki. (20) [FH 24] a

1→Motoki: demo TEREBI hodo: mai[nich]i: detete: but TV as.much.as every.day come.out:and “But ((things that)) come out as often as TV, and,” [ ] 2 Yoohei: [hai.] “Yes.” Yoohei: hai. “Yes.”

3 a

4→Motoki: a: gomen. shinbun hodo mainichi oh sorry newspaper as.much.as every.day [detete:] come.out:and “Oh sorry. ((Things that)) come out as often as newspapers, and” [ ] b

5→Yoohei: [DETETE:] come.out:and joohoo ga (bi)SSHiri tsumatta mono wa[::] 6 information SP tightly full.of thing TP “Come out ((as often as newspapers)) and carry as much information...” [ ] 7

[m:]m

Motoki:

tte QT

Grammar and opportunities for joint turn construction 

8

9

yuu ka maa= say Q well “M:m, well, I mean,” Yoohei: =ima n tokoro NAI n desu yo ne:::: now LK place not.exist N CP FP FP “...as newspapers don’t exist at this moment, right?”

The emerging trajectory of Motoki’s utterance-in-progress in line 4, shinbun hodo mainichi, makes visible its structural parallel to his prior utterance in line 1, and shows that the current utterance (line 4) is a re-doing of the prior one (line 1).13 This structural tie with the prior utterance, then, reflexively furnishes the recipient with a resource to anticipate the next item due at the moment at which the speaker’s ongoing utterance reaches the final item of the repeated utterance format. Here, a recognizable structural parallel that has emerged in the local trajectory of talk due to self-correction evidently provides an opportunity to co-participate in ongoing utterance construction.

Word searches The next fragment presents another instance in which a recurrence of a turnconstructional format appears to be oriented to as a resource providing an opportunity for joint turn construction. In this instance, the same format is repeated in the process of a word search. (21) [KOB 16] ((Prior to the beginning of the fragment (cf. fragment (16) above), Takie has been telling the others about her aged mother, who puts things away in the wrong place.)) Takie: kutsushita ga socks SP [to]ka ne:,] tondemo[nai toko kara detekitari 2 unbelievable place from come.out:and etc. FP “Socks come out of unbelievable places, and so on,” [ [ ] ] ] 3→Kaori: [.hh ah! so:re:: wa:: are chigau: oh that TP that TAG “.hh Oh! That is ((because of)) that, isn’t it?” [ ] 4 Akiyo: [a!] “Oh!” 5 (0.7) 1

 Chapter 4

Akiyo: aa s[oo:.] oh so “Oh, is that so.” [ ] 7 Takie: [u:::] [::n.] “Yeah::::.” [ ] 8→Shiho: [sore] wa:- (0.4) ( ) that TP “That i:s- (0.4) ( )” 9 Takie: nande yaro. why CP “Why is ((that))?” 10→Shiho: demo sore wa: moo (.) o[:- toshi: no:] are chigau= but that TP EMP age that TAG LK “But that i:s, y’know, (.) ((because of)) the age thing, isn’t it?” [ ] 11→Kaori: [otoshi ya wa:] age CP FP “((because of)) age.” 6

At line 3, one of the recipients of Takie’s telling, Kaori, attempts to offer a possible account of Takie’s mother’s behavior. However, Kaori does not provide an explicit predicate; instead, she produces the demonstrative pronoun are (‘that’) in the position in which a more explicit predicate would be produced. The demonstrative are is routinely used as a ‘place-holder’ or ‘dummy term’ in word searches (cf. Chapter 5; see also Kitano 1999; Fox, Hayashi, & Jasperson 1996), which indicates to recipients that a word for which the demonstrative is holding a place is currently not forthcoming and is being searched for.14 While Kaori fails to supply the searched-for word, another recipient, Shiho, initiates an utterance in line 8 using the same format as Kaori’s at line 3, i.e., sore wa (‘That is’). The ‘recycling’ of the same turn-constructional format here makes Shiho’s utterance hearable as an attempt to pick up on Kaori’s action in line 3, i.e., to offer an account of Takie’s mother’s behavior. However, Shiho, too, fails to provide a predicate, at least right away (see the cut-off and the pause in line 8). Then, Takie takes the opportunity and explicitly asks for an account of her mother’s behavior (line 9). In response, Shiho once again recycles the turn-constructional format, sore wa, in line 10. The structural parallel between Kaori’s utterance in line 3 and Shiho’s in line 10 (via line 8), then, makes it recognizable that the slot after sore wa is the place for a predicate that would provide an account of Takie’s mother’s behavior. In other words, the recognizable structure, [sore wa] + [X], where

Grammar and opportunities for joint turn construction 

[X] is the place for the predicate, has been established in the local trajectory of talk through the structural parallel between lines 3 and 10. And following some indications of hesitation (moo15 and a micro-pause) following sore wa in Shiho’s utterance in line 10, Kaori comes in and produces a predicate (otoshi ya wa ‘((because of)) age’) that provides an account of Takie’s mother’s behavior. Through the temporal placement of this predicate vis-à-vis the emerging syntactic structure of Shiho’s utterance, Kaori displays her orientation to the structural parallel between Shiho’s unfolding utterance and her own preceding utterance in line 3 as a resource that provides an opportunity to produce the predicate that she did not provide earlier. Repeated turn-constructional formats are but one type of local configuration of talk that is exploited in the accomplishment of co-participant completion. Next, I examine what might be termed ‘rhetorical formats’ that emerge in the local sequential context, and explicate how they are mobilized as a resource for enhancing the projectability of unfolding turn-shapes. ..

Emergent ‘rhetorical’ formats

Recognizable configurations may sometimes emerge through the ‘rhetorical’ organization of a longer stretch of talk in the local sequential context.16 Among such ‘rhetorical’ formats, two types of configurations – ‘contrast’ and ‘list’ – are commonly involved in providing for the achievement of co-participant completion (cf. Lerner 1987, 1991 for discussions of ‘contrast’ and ‘list’ as a resource for co-participant completion in English).

Contrast Fragment (22) presents an instance in which a locally emergent ‘contrast’ format in the unfolding course of talk furnishes a resource for co-participant completion. (22) [KOB 3] ((Akiyo has invited her friends to her newly remodeled house, where the conversation from which the following fragment is taken occurs. In this fragment, one of the guests, Kaori, asks Akiyo about what she remodeled in the kitchen.)) 1

2

Kaori: odaidoko mo kaeta yuuteta n chau no? kitchen also changed was.saying N TAG FP “Weren’t ((you)) saying ((you)) had changed the kitchen, too?” Akiyo: un =kaeta no wa yuka: to tenjoo to ne:? yeah changed N TP floor and ceiling and FP “Yeah.=What ((I)) changed was the floor, the ceiling, ...”

 Chapter 4

Kaori: u:::[::n.] “Uh huh” [ ] 4 Akiyo: [ano:]:::: kurosu TO:, [are] dake de:, uhm wall.paper and that only CP “Uh:::::m, the wall paper, and that one only, and” [ ] 5 Kaori: [un.] “Uh huh” 6 Kaori: u:::n. “Uh huh” no guriin no [hukuro]todana wa= 7 Akiyo: ano:: ue uhm above LK green LK cabinet TP “Uh::m, the green cabinet above is...” [ ] 8 Kaori: [u:::n. ] “Uh huh” 9→Akiyo: =mukashi no [mama.] past LK same “...the same as before.” [ ] 10→Kaori: [m a n]m a.= same “...before.” 3

In response to Kaori’s questions in line 1, Akiyo first mentions the parts of the kitchen that she has changed – the floor, the ceiling, the wall paper, and ‘that one’ at which she points with her finger. Note that Akiyo marks this list of the changed items with dake (‘only’) towards the end of line 4. Thus, when Akiyo, in line 7, goes on to mention ue no guriin no hukurotodana (‘the green cabinet above’), it is recognizable from the local trajectory of the talk that what is being mentioned are parts which Akiyo did not change in the process of remodeling the kitchen. Note also that the stressed postpositional particle wa at the end of line 7, which marks the nominal ue no guriin no hukurotodana (‘the green cabinet above’), is often described as ‘contrastive wa.’ It indicates that the preceding nominal is in a contrastive relationship with something mentioned in the prior context (as if saying, “As opposed to that one, this one is...”). Thus, this locally emergent contrast format, as well as the formulaic nature of the phrase mukashi no ma(n)ma (‘the same as before’), evidently helps co-participants anticipate the exact course in which the current utterance is proceeding, and provides an opportunity to accomplish terminal item completion.17

Grammar and opportunities for joint turn construction 

List Fragment (23), taken from the same conversation as the previous one, offers an instance in which a list format emerges in the local trajectory of talk and is oriented to as a resource that provides an opportunity for co-participating in joint turn construction. (23) [KOB 11] ((Prior to the beginning of the fragment, Takie told other participants that her married daughter used Takie’s house as if it were a convenient storage place for bulky things.)) 1

Takie:

2

Akiyo:

3

Takie:

4

5

6→Kaori:

7

Takie:

nikai [no moo:::]:: rokujoo no heya haittara, 2nd.floor LK EMP 6.tatami LK room enter:when “When ((you)) enter the six-tatami room on the second floor,” [ ] [hehh hehh] “hehh hehh” .hhh boooon tto kurisumasu tsurii no okkii no MIM(bulk) QT Christmas tree LK big N “.hhh boooon! a big Christmas tree...” oitearu wa NE::, is.left FP FP “...is left there,” .hhh honna koo ohinasan NE::, and like hina.doll FP “.hhh and, like, the hina dolls...” oitearu [(wa)] is.left FP “are left there.” [ ] [uhun] oitearu wa de. yeah is.left FP CP “Yeah. Are left there.”

In line 1, Takie starts to describe what she would see when she enters a particular room on the second floor of her house. In lines 3–4, Takie mentions that a big Christmas tree that her daughter brought from her home has been left in the room. In line 5, she then mentions ohinasan, a set of traditional Japanese dolls that are displayed in the home on Girl’s Day in Japan. The reference to the hina dolls is followed by an emphatic, turn-medial production of the particle ne, which is often used to solicit some sort of acknowledgment from recipients (cf. Tanaka 1999a, 2000b). It is at this moment that Kaori produces oitearu wa (‘is left there’; line 6), the same predicate as the one used by Takie in her prior utterance in lines 3–4. In re-producing this predicate and placing it after ohi-

 Chapter 4

nasan, Kaori demonstrates her understanding that ohinasan is the second item on the list of things that Takie’s daughter has left in the room, and achieves co-participation in constructing a locally emergent list structure. Kaori’s coparticipant completion, thus, makes visible a list format in which the predicate serves as a ‘list frame’ and is held constant, while the element prior to the predicate presents listed items: List Item

List Frame

kurisumasu tsurii no ookii no ‘a big Christmas tree’

oitearu wa ‘is left there’

ohinasan ‘hina-dolls’

oitearu wa ‘are left there’

Here, a locally emergent list format provides a recipient with enhanced projectability to accomplish socially coordinated participation in utterance construction. The next fragment also features a list format. In this case, however, a co-participant achieving joint utterance construction provides not only a list frame to make an emergent list format visible, as in (23), but also an item that, together with the list frame, is recognizable as a further increment to the list being constructed. (24) [TYC 9] ((Prior to the beginning of the fragment, the participants (two married couples) were talking about an ‘allowance,’ which, in this conversation, refers to the amount of money that a husband can use freely without consulting his wife. In line 1, Shoko, the wife of one couple, asks the others what the ‘allowance’ is spent on.)) 1

2 3

4

5

Shoko: okozukai ni nani ga hukumareru no:? allowance in what SP included FP “What is included in the ‘allowance’?” (0.3) Kanji: ya! tatoeba jibun de:: soto de well for.example self by outside nomikui eating.drinking “Well, for example, ((it covers cost for)) eating out by yourself, and...” shitari toka::, ato hon o kattari toka::, do:and etc. and book O buy:and etc. “...buying books, and,” (.)

Grammar and opportunities for joint turn construction

Muneo: u:[::n. “Yeah.” [ 7 Kanji: [nanka shiidii o kattari toka::= like CD O buy:and etc. “like, buying CDs, and” 8→Yurie: =pachinko ittari toka::hh ((*Japanese pachinko* go:and etc. pinball-like game)) “going to play pachinko, and” 9 (0.3) 10 Kanji: [u(hh):::n. “Y(hh)eah” [ 11 Yurie: [huhhhhhhhh huhh huhh “huhhhhhhh huhh huhh” 6

By way of answering Shoko’s question in line 1, Kanji, the husband of the other couple, constructs a list of activities for which he (and perhaps other husbands) would use the ‘allowance.’ Note that Kanji uses the same grammatical format when mentioning each activity that he lists – the -tari ending of the verb, followed by toka (see lines 3–4 and 7): jibun de soto de nomikui shitari toka ‘eating out by yourself, among others’ hon o kattari toka ‘buying books, among others’ shiidii o kattari toka ‘buying CDs, among others’ The -tari ending of the verb is a grammatical device to enumerate different activities, and toka gives the sense that the item is but one example among many others. It is these features of list construction that Kanji’s wife, Yurie, orients to when she produces her utterance in line 8: pachinko ittari toka (‘going to play pachinko, among others’). She presents a new item, pachinko (a type of pinball game), while framing it with the format -tari toka, which Kanji has been using to construct the list of activities. By making a retrospective link to the preceding list of items through recycling the same list frame while supplying a new item embedded in it, Yurie contextualizes her utterance as an increment to the list being developed in the local trajectory of talk. Here, then, Yurie mobilizes the whole of the [list item] + [list frame] structure in organizing her participation in co-constructing an answer with Kanji to Shoko’s question in line 1. In this subsection, I investigated two types of ‘rhetorical’ formats – contrast and list – that emerge in the local context of talk, and examined how these formats are oriented to and mobilized in accomplishing co-participant completion. In the next subsection, I explore instances in which the local trajectory





Chapter 4

of talk exhibits some indication that a certain type of social action is going to be implemented. Such a projection of imminent social action that is about to be implemented by an ongoing utterance, then, enhances the projectability of the unfolding course of that utterance, and thus provides an opportunity to achieve co-participant completion. ..

Recognizable courses of action

There are certain types of social actions that typically follow a characteristic course of realization when they are produced in social interaction. For instance, it has been noted that ‘dispreferred actions’ such as refusals of requests or invitations, disagreements to assessments, etc., are often delivered in a characteristic fashion, e.g., with a pause before delivery, with prefaces like uh, well, or their equivalents, and/or with other markers of hesitation such as self-editing (cf. Pomerantz 1978, 1984a; Levinson 1983; Heritage 1984; for Japanese conversation, see Mori 1999a). The observable features in the delivery of these actions can enhance the recognizability of the action-in-progress, and may sometimes be oriented to as a resource for organizing responsive action on their recipients’ part (e.g., Davidson 1984; Pomerantz 1984b; Mori 1999a). Inspection of the data for the present study reveals that these characteristic features in the unfolding courses of certain types of actions can also be oriented to and mobilized in the achievement of co-participant completion. Here, I investigate two action environments – accounts and assessments – in which recognizable courses of realization provide for the organization of co-participant completion in Japanese conversation.

Accounts Accounts are given in a range of different interactional contexts in everyday talk.18 For instance, they often accompany an utterance that delivers a ‘dispreferred action,’ e.g., a declination of an invitation or a request. Another describable environment in which an account is recurrently offered is after a description of some state of affairs. That is, we routinely observe utterances in which some state of affairs is described and then, an account of that described state is provided (cf. Schegloff 1996a: 68; Ford 1993; Mori 1999a; Ford & Mori 1994). The format of such utterances may be formulated as [state description] + [account]. In the following fragment, which was also discussed in Chapter 3, the recognizable course of action in the form of [state description] + [account] appears to furnish the recipient with a resource to anticipate a completion of the

Grammar and opportunities for joint turn construction

speaker’s ongoing utterance. In this fragment, the participants are discussing temporary housing for the victims of the Kobe earthquake in 1995. (25) [HR 13] (slightly simplified) Tomoe: okinawa ni:: ippai juutaku tateta n da tte, Okinawa in a.lot house built N CP QT “((The government)) built a lot of ((temporary)) houses in Okinawa, ((newspapers)) say.” 2 Ryoko: [ un. ] “Uh huh” [ ] 3 Sanae: [((clears throat))] ga(h) n(h)ai t(h)oka 4 Tomoe: demo zenzen oobo but at.all application SP not.exist QT “But there aren’t any applications at all...” 5 it[t(h)e:(h): .hhh]= say:and “...((newspapers)) say.” [ ] 6 Ryoko: [ha:::::::::::: ]= “Oh wo:::::::::::::w” demo ne: yappari okinawa made .hh= 7 Tomoe: =sorya that:TP but FP as.expected Okinawa to “But you know, ((people)) ... to Okinawa” yan.= 8→Ryoko: =korehen can’t.come TAG “can’t come, can ((they)).” 9 Tomoe: =u:::[:::::::]::n. “Ri::::::::ght” [ ] 10 Ryoko: [u::::n.] “Ye::::ah” 1

In line 1, Tomoe, who lives in Okinawa, mentions that the government has built temporary housing facilities in Okinawa, which is some 1,000 miles away from Kobe. In line 4, she goes on to state that there are no applications for these temporary houses. After these ‘state descriptions’ are received by the recipient Ryoko with a news-receipt token, ha:::::::::: (roughly equivalent to ‘Oh wo::w’), Tomoe initiates an utterance in line 7 with sorya (a contracted form of sore ‘that’ followed by the topic particle wa), thereby displaying that her current utterance ties back to her prior ‘state descriptions.’ This is followed by a contrastive connective, demo (‘but’), which prefaces some counter-statement to be presented, and yappari (‘as ((you)) expect’), which marks the situation

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Chapter 4

being described as conforming to some commonsensical knowledge or expectation. The string of these items, sorya + demo + yappari, strongly projects an utterance in which the speaker presents a commonsensically understandable, fairly obvious account of why the government’s rather thoughtless measure has failed and led to an unfortunate situation mentioned in the ‘state descriptions.’ Thus, the recognizable course of the [state description] + [account] format as well as the internal development of the utterance implementing the account provide a powerful resource for the recipient Ryoko to anticipate the final, crucial item in the unfolding course of Tomoe’s utterance – the predicate korehen (‘can’t come’).

Assessments (embedded within an account) It has been shown, at least for English, that assessment utterances have highly recognizable structures and that such structures are utilized by multiple participants as a resource for organizing concurrent assessment activities (cf. M. Goodwin 1980; Pomerantz 1984a; C. Goodwin & M. Goodwin 1987, 1992b). The following fragment appears to show that, in Japanese, too, the internal organization of an assessment utterance provides for the organization of coordinated participation in joint turn construction. In the instance provided below, an assessment utterance is also embedded within an account in the [state description] + [account] format. Thus, we observe that the recognizable structures of two types of actions (‘account’ and ‘assessment’) concomitantly enhance the projectability of the unfolding course of an ongoing utterance. Fragment (26) presents a part of the participants’ discussion of various hikidemono, gifts that are given away by the bride and groom to guests at weddings in Japan. The participants have been recounting what hikidemono they received at various friends’ weddings, and at line 1, Kyoko starts to tell the others about what she received at the wedding of her friend Akko chan. (26) [KG 18] 1

2

3

Kyoko: nanka atashi mo MAE NA:: like I also before FP “Me, too. Like, one time...” da[re n toki ya-] nanka akko chan toki ka::, who LK time CP like Akko TL time Q “...Whose was ((that))-, like at Akko chan’s ((wedding)),” [ ] Chika: [u::::::::::n.] “Uh huh”

Grammar and opportunities for joint turn construction

Chika: u::::n.= “Uh huh” 5 Kyoko: =ni: >nanka< (0.5) obon:? at like tray “like (0.5) a tray?” 6 Asami: u:[:::n.] “Uh huh” [ ] 7 Chika: [u::::][:::n.] “Uh huh” [ ] KIN no: obon 8 Kyoko: [konna] like.this gold LK tray “A gold(en) tray like this” 9 Chika: E::::[::] “WHAT?!” [ ] 10 Asami: [KI]N:?] gold “GOLD?” [ ] 11 Kyoko: [ k i n]p u n : mitaina? .hh gold.powder like “Like, ((decorated with)) gold powder?” ◦ datte [(datte::) ] 12 sonnan asoko MEccha because EMP there terribly because “◦ because, I mean, they are awfully....( ’cause)” [ ] 13→Chika: [kane kake]ru money spend “extravagant...” 14 mon na::. N FP “... aren’t ((they))?” 4

At line 8, Kyoko mentions that she received kin no obon (‘gold(en) tray’), and this announcement is met with displays of surprise by the two recipients, Chika and Asami, in lines 9 and 10 respectively. In line 11, Kyoko modifies the description of the gift slightly, perhaps to avoid a potential misunderstanding; i.e., it was not a tray made of gold, but one that was decorated with gold powder. These descriptions of the hikidemono in lines 5, 8, and 11, are followed by an utterance begun with the causal connective datte (roughly equivalent to ‘because’), which is often deployed to initiate an account-giving (cf. Maynard 1993; Ford & Mori 1994; Mori 1994, 1999a). Kyoko then produces an





Chapter 4

anaphoric expression, sonnan, referring to the prior ‘state description’ (and/or the recipients’ reactions to it).19 Following this ‘back-linking’ of the current utterance to the prior context, Kyoko makes reference to her friend Akko chan’s family with the word asoko (which literally means ‘that place,’ and is often used to refer to a social group, such as a family, school, company, etc.). Having established what/who the current utterance is about, then, she produces an adverbial intensifier, MEccha (‘terribly’). Much like the English so and really as in It was so good or That was really sad, intensifiers such as meccha, sugoi (‘awfully’) and the like are recurrently used before mentioning a predicate expressing an assessment of an object, a person, a situation, etc. It is at the completion of the intensifier MEccha, then, that one of the recipients, Chika, delivers a predicate that assesses the family’s wealth, a stance based on their financial behavior, and thereby brings Kyoko’s utterance-inprogress to completion. Here, it appears that the recognizable course of Kyoko’s account-giving for why she received an unusually expensive gift at a friend’s wedding, as well as the recognizable structure in the internal development of an assessment utterance, enhance the projectability of the unfolding course of her utterance in line 12. Thus, like the previous instance, this one also demonstrates that the projected action context within which an utterance emerges provides co-participants with heightened opportunities for co-participant completion. In sum, the instances examined in this section demonstrated that a range of recognizable configurations of talk in the local sequential context can be oriented to and mobilized as a resource for co-participant completion. In view of the possibility of limited syntactic projectability discussed in the previous section, the examination in this section has suggested that Japanese conversationalists are not necessarily left in a disadvantaged position with regard to the projection of unfolding turn-shapes as a resource for joint turn construction. Instead, we observed that the participants have available a range of resources in the local sequential context that enhance the projectability of the unfolding trajectory of an emerging utterance and which can be usable for the accomplishment of co-participant completion.

. Summary and concluding remarks The foregoing investigation of the opportunity for co-participant completion has highlighted several interactionally salient aspects of talk-in-interaction that are utilized by participants to accomplish joint turn construction. The following is a summary and discussion of key points raised in this chapter.

Grammar and opportunities for joint turn construction

The first part of the chapter explored potential connections between syntax and the projectability of unfolding turn-shapes as a resource for accomplishing co-participant completion. I began by presenting the observation that, at least in my data, co-participant completion is performed in a relatively ‘delayed’ manner in Japanese. This observation was based on the following two recurrent patterns: (i) in instances of co-participant completion of multi-clausal compound units, a co-participant’s delivery of the final component is regularly preceded by an intra-turn pause and/or some sorts of ‘filled’ pauses, and (ii) in instances of co-participant completion of mono-clausal units, a co-participant’s delivery of a completion often takes the form of providing a final item or two of another participant’s utterance-in-progress. I then offered an account for the observed delay in co-participant completion in Japanese by comparing syntactic practices of English and Japanese and exploring the implications of their differences for the projectability of the temporally unfolding trajectories of emerging utterances. Building on previous research on syntax and turn projection, I suggested that, while turn beginnings in English tend to syntactically project the type of turn being produced, thereby allowing participants to foresee, early in the turn, the possible organization of an emerging utterance, turn beginnings in Japanese tend not to have elements that project the syntactic trajectory of what is to follow in an unfolding utterance, which appears to result in ‘delayed’ projectability (relative to English) of emerging turn-shapes. Thus, for the delay in the delivery of a final component of a multi-clausal compound unit, I argued that, while the syntactic practice of component-initial marking of the preliminary component in English appears to provide for an early projection of an emerging compound structure, the unavailability of such an early (syntactic) indication of a compound unit underway in Japanese appears to systematically delay a projection of the unfolding unit-type, and may thus hinder a precisely-timed delivery of the final component. For the prevalence of terminal item completion in the cases of monoclausal co-participant completion, I first examined such syntactic practices of Japanese as relatively flexible word order towards the beginning of a TCU, common ‘ellipsis’ of syntactic constituents, and the postpositional markings of grammatical relations. I then argued that the prevalence of terminal item completion in Japanese may be due, at least in part, to the delayed projectability of unfolding turn-shapes resulting from the practice of incremental turn construction. That is, a turn is constructed incrementally, in which each increment provides limited projectability for the future course of the emerging turn, while a series of such increments cumulatively enhance projectability towards





Chapter 4

the end of the turn and provide for the delivery of the final item or two by a co-participant. While I do not intend to suggest that syntax has a determinate relation to participants’ behavior, the cross-linguistic differences in syntactic practices between English and Japanese appear compelling enough to entertain the foregoing argument at least as a possibility (cf. also Tanaka 1999a, 2000a; Ford & Mori 1994; Lerner & Takagi 1999; Fox, Hayashi, & Jasperson 1996 for similar arguments). In the second part of the chapter, I attempted to show that limited and delayed syntactic projectability in Japanese suggested in the first part of the chapter does not necessarily provide Japanese conversationalists with problems with regard to the projection of unfolding turn-shapes as a resource for joint turn construction. The examination of a variety of recognizable configurations of talk emerging in the local sequential context demonstrated that participants orient to and mobilize those configurations as a resource that enhances the projectability of unfolding turn-shapes and provides an opportunity for coparticipant completion. The investigation of the opportunity of co-participant completion presented in this chapter thus afforded a glimpse of how divergent syntactic practices in different languages might have consequences for the way in which joint action is accomplished within a turn at talk. What we saw here is syntax, or grammar, as real-time behavior of participants, whose emerging structure in the temporal unfolding of social interaction shapes differential possibilities of coordinated action by co-participants. In this view of grammar, temporality figures as a central aspect of its workings as a crucial part of human social conduct in interaction. That is, by studying the grammatical structuring of an utterance as a real-time unfolding of changing opportunities for interactional participation, we can gain insight into how grammatical structure is deeply intertwined with interactional contingencies in which it figures, and how cross-linguistic, typological differences of grammatical structure are implicated in the way interaction is conducted in different linguistic and cultural communities. From this perspective, then, it will be interesting to examine interactional materials from a wider range of typologically different languages and compare ways in which co-participant completion is performed in those languages. By situating linguistic typology in temporally unfolding, real-life social interaction of the speakers of such languages, we can learn a great deal more about how divergent grammatical structures might be consequential for the way in which an unfolding utterance manifests changing possibilities of concerted action by multiple parties to interaction. Still today, the work in linguistic typology is

Grammar and opportunities for joint turn construction

based mostly on examination of atemporal linguistic structure characteristic in idealized and invented sentences, and has not revealed much about how typological differences in grammatical structure in different languages can be interactionally significant. I hope that the present chapter, along with previous work on interactional phenomena from cross-linguistic perspectives, has served as an encouragement for the study of grammar in situ and in real time in a much broader range of languages and cultures.



Chapter 5

Language and the body as resources for socially coordinated participation in situated activities

The present study approaches the act of talking in interaction as a form of participation, and the preceding chapters have explored a number of aspects of Japanese speakers’ participation in situated activities through joint utterance construction with a focus on participants’ vocal conduct. In this chapter, I explore yet another aspect of talking in interaction as a form of participation – i.e., its thoroughly embodied nature – by examining how participants’ bodily conduct can be relevant to the achievement of joint utterance construction. Once we view talking in interaction as a form of participation in everyday activities of the participants that are situated in actual, indigenous settings, it is not difficult to see that language is only one of the diverse semiotic resources that participants make use of to jointly build the coherent events in which they participate. And such a perspective enables us to investigate those diverse phenomena occurring in interaction – e.g., talk, gaze, gesture, body orientation, material objects in the surround, etc. – in an analytically integrated manner by treating them as integral parts of the constitution of the actions that the participants assemble to achieve relevant participation in an ongoing interaction. In what follows, I examine in detail the processes by which language and participants’ bodily conduct mutually contextualize one another to build temporally-unfolding frameworks of co-participation, and explore how participants orient to and utilize such frameworks of co-participation as a resource to accomplish joint utterance construction. Through this examination, I aim to show that ‘turns at talk’ are not simply ‘opportunities to produce strips of speech,’ but that they consist of a multi-modal package for the production of action (and collaborative action) that makes use of a range of different modalities, e.g., grammatical structure, sequential organization, organization of gaze and gesture, spatial frameworks, etc., in conjunction with one other.

 Chapter 5

. Language and the body as temporally unfolding, public resources for social organization The relationship between language and the body has been studied from a number of different perspectives.1 Some researchers investigate bodily conduct, particularly gesture, in terms of how it correlates with the psychological functioning of a single speaker’s mind in the process of speech production (e.g., Freedman 1977; Butterworth & Beattie 1978; McNeill 1985, 1992; Feyereisen & de Lannoy 1991; Goldin-Meadow, Wein, & Chang 1992; Kita 1993; among others). In this type of research, the link between language and the body is viewed primarily as a psychological/cognitive one. That is, bodily conduct is analyzed as an externalization or a by-product of fundamentally private, psychological phenomena of language processing in an individual’s mind. Others are concerned with the role of bodily behavior in organizing the social co-presence of multiple participants in everyday encounters (e.g., Erickson 1975; Erickson & Shultz 1981, 1982; Scheflen 1964, 1973, 1974; Kendon 1973, 1977, 1990; McDormott, Gospodinoff, & Aron 1978; Dore & McDormott 1982; Streeck 1983). This line of work, which is sometimes referred to as ‘context analysis,’ seeks to investigate how participants draw from repertoires of behavioral practices (talk, gesture, orientation, posture, etc.) to organize occasions of interaction. In this approach, multiple parties’ bodies are viewed as resources for jointly creating, sustaining, and altering the spatial-orientational arrangement through which participants routinely achieve behavioral coordination in interaction. Note, however, that, though it investigates language as an important part of its analysis, work in context analysis tends to focus “less on the content of the talk than on the methods by which participants achieve the conditions under which talk is made possible as a concerted activity” (Streeck 1984: 116–167). More recently, work has emerged that investigates the intricate relationship between language and the body by paying close attention to both the sequential organization of talk and the role of bodily conduct in the organization of social interaction (e.g., C. Goodwin 1979, 1980, 1981, 1984, 1986, 1987, 1996a, 1996b, 1997, 2000a, 2000b; M. Goodwin 1980, 1983; C. Goodwin & M. Goodwin 1992a, 1992b; M. Goodwin & C. Goodwin 1986; Heath 1986, 1992; Schegloff 1984a, 1998; Streeck 1983, 1984, 1988, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996; Streeck & Hartge 1992; LeBaron & Streeck 2000; Jarmon 1996; Ford & Fox 1996; Ford, Fox, & Thompson 1996).2 Based on the close examination of participants’ vocal and visual conduct situated within specific activities in interaction, these studies show how the temporally unfolding stream of speech,

Language and the body as resources

changing body and gaze orientation, and deployment of gesture mutually contextualize each other, and also how they provide a resource for participants to organize relevant action in concert with one another within the ongoing activity. In this line of work, then, the relationship between language and the body is examined in terms of the process of mutual contextualization which provides public resources for social organization within the temporal progression of interaction. The analysis developed in this chapter pursues this last line of work. Taking as a point of departure the perspective of vocal and visual conduct as essentially public social phenomena rather than private psychological ones, the present chapter explores the embodied production of talk and other bodily conduct as resources for joint utterance construction within situated activities in Japanese conversation.3 Inspired most notably by the work of Charles Goodwin (e.g., Goodwin 1996b, 2000a, 2000b) and Adam Kendon (e.g., Kendon 1990, 1992), I address the following questions in the analyses developed in this chapter: 1. How participants, using language and bodily conduct, inform one another of the contextual frame in terms of which their current actions should be interpreted, and; 2. How they use that contextual frame as a resource to produce, using language and bodily conduct, specific forms of action that are linked in fine detail to the actions of their co-participants. To answer these questions, I first analyze some of the instances of coparticipant completion examined in the previous chapters as well as some new instances with particular attention to the temporal unfolding of participants’ talk and bodily conduct (Section 5.2). I demonstrate how participants’ talk and bodily conduct mutually contextualize one another to provide temporallyunfolding frameworks of participation, and how participants utilize them as a resource to accomplish co-participant completion. Then, in the second half of the chapter (Section 5.2), I focus my analysis on instances of ‘word searches’ in Japanese, in which we observe that a particular type of linguistic practice – the use of distal demonstrative pronouns as place-holders – is recurrently employed in conjunction with bodily practices, and is utilized as a resource for collaborative participation in word searches. By examining the relationship between language and the body in cases of co-participant completion and word searches, this chapter provides a demonstration of how the temporally unfolding deployment of vocal and visual conduct provides a public, interactive resource for multiple parties to accomplish joint utterance construction in Japanese conversation.



 Chapter 5

. Language and the body in co-participant completion In this section, I examine a number of instances of co-participant completion (some already discussed in the previous chapters) with a particular focus on showing the relevance of bodily conduct to joint utterance construction. In these instances, the first speaker engages in the activity of describing some object or event for the recipients, and the second speaker co-participates in the first speaker’s description by jointly producing a part of it, and thereby demonstrates his/her ongoing understanding of the emerging course of the description activity. In the following analyses, I explicate how the unfolding deployment of participants’ vocal and non-vocal conduct progressively shapes visible frameworks of co-participation, and how recipients make use of such frameworks of participation as a resource to accomplish the co-construction of an unfolding utterance. Let us begin with some instances that have already been examined from different perspectives in previous chapters. Fragment (1) below was examined in Chapter 4 in terms of the relevance of ‘list construction’ to the achievement of co-participant completion (see Section 4.3.2 in Chapter 4). It will be reexamined here based on the perspective that talk and bodily conduct progressively shape frameworks of relevant participation in each moment, and provide a resource for recipients to demonstrate their ongoing understanding of a description in progress. Prior to the beginning of fragment (1), Takie told the other participants that her married daughter would bring bulky things from her home and leave them in Takie’s house as if it were a convenient storage place. In fragment (1), then, Takie begins to describe the appearance of the room in which such large objects are left. I will present the whole transcript first, and will then examine in detail how the moment-to-moment unfolding of the speaker’s and recipients’ vocal and visual conduct progressively shapes frameworks of participation, and eventually provides a heightened moment for one of the recipients, Kaori, to accomplish her co-participation in the ongoing description at line 6.

Language and the body as resources

(1) [KOB 11] (slightly simplified)

Figure 5.1 Fragment (1) 1

Takie:

2

3

4

5→Kaori:

6

Takie:

nikai no moo::::: rokujoo no heya haittara, 2nd.floor LK EMP 6.tatami LK room enter:when “When ((you)) enter the six-tatami room on the second floor,” .hhh boooon tto kurisumasu tsurii no okkii no MIM(bulk) QT Christmas tree LK big N “.hhh boooon! a big Christmas tree...” oitearu wa NE::, is.left FP FP “...is left there,” .hhh honna koo ohinasan NE::, and like hina.doll FP “.hhh and, like, the hina dolls...” oitearu [(wa)] is.left FP “are left there.” [ ] [uhun] oitearu wa de. yeah is.left FP CP “Yeah. Are left there.”

After invoking a narrated scene of entering a room on the second floor of her house at line 1, Takie produces the mimetic word boooon (which typically expresses a large volume or extent of some object or event) accompanied by a gesture with her arms extended upwards (cf. Figure 5.2).

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 Chapter 5

2 Takie: .hhh boooon tto kurisumasu tsurii no okkii no MIM(bulk) QT Christmas tree LK big N “.hhh boooon! a big Christmas tree...”

Now, it is recurrently observed that a speaker who has produced an illustrative gesture brings his/her gaze to the recipients to see whether and how the gesture is attended to by the recipients (cf. Streeck 1988; C. Goodwin, forthcoming-b). Streeck (1988) points out that this type of gaze shift typically occurs when the speaker completes the ‘speech affiliate,’ i.e., vocal counterpart, which the gesture has projected. In the present case, Takie brings her gaze to one of the recipients, Shiho, when she completes the noun phrase kurisumasu tsurii no ookii no (‘a big Christmas tree’), which the gesture has projected and which, at the same time, retroactively ‘fills in’ the specific referent of the gesture (cf. Figure 5.3). Note however that, when Takie’s gaze reaches Shiho, she does not find a gazing recipient; Shiho is looking down. Generally, a speaker finding him/herself addressing a non-gazing recipient treats this occurrence as problematic, and some type of remedial action is often implemented (cf. C. Goodwin 1981). Lack of recipients’ gaze can be treated as even more problematic when the speaker’s conduct addressed to the recipients involves not only talk but also gesture, because, in order for gesture to be taken into account as a meaningful part of the ongoing interaction, it must, in the first place, be seen by the recipients. Thus, while external analysts can see in Figure 5.2 that Shiho was indeed gazing at Takie’s gesture when it was produced, for the speaker herself to find lack of reciprocating gaze from a recipient at the moment she checks to see whether and how the gesture is attended to by the recipient can prompt remedial action. Such an analysis is consistent with Takie’s subsequent vocal and visual conduct. That is, on seeing Shiho not displaying orientation to her, Takie shifts her gaze toward the other recipient, Kaori. When her gaze reaches Kaori dur-

Language and the body as resources 

ing the production of the clause-final predicate oitearu wa (‘is left’) in line 3, Takie finds reciprocating gaze from that recipient (cf. Figure 5.4). Thus, towards the end of the unfolding clause boooon to kurisumasu tsurii no okkii no oitearu wa (‘boooon! a big Christmas tree is left there’), Takie and Kaori collaboratively create a framework of participation in which Takie aligns herself as the addressing speaker and Kaori displays herself as an attentive recipient.

3 Takie: oitearu wa NE::, is.left FP FP “...is left there,”

Having established this participation framework, then, Takie solicits an upgraded display of acknowledgment of the ongoing description from the gazing recipient by producing an ‘acknowledgment-soliciting’ particle, ne (cf. Tanaka 2000b), accompanied by a concurrent head-nod. To this, Kaori reciprocates a head-nod, and thereby visibly marks her involvement in the ongoing activity and helps sustain the framework of participation proposed by Takie (cf. Figure 5.5). Thus, the moment-to-moment unfolding of the talk and bodily conduct of the two participants progressively aligns them into speaker and addressed recipient, and collaboratively establishes a specific participation framework. Takie then proceeds to mention another item in the list of bulky things that her daughter has left in the room that Takie is describing. That the ohinasan (a set of dolls) in line 4 is the second item in the list is made visible partly by Takie’s gesture with her arms extended upwards (cf. Figure 5.6), which shows some degree of formal resemblance to the earlier one that accompanied the talk about the first item, a Christmas tree (cf. Figure 5.2). Notice in Figure 5.6 below that, through her gaze orientation, Takie maintains the participation framework which aligns Kaori as the primary recipient of her talk and gesture.

 Chapter 5

Within this participation framework, Takie again invites a display of involvement in the ongoing description from the recipient by deploying the particle ne and a concurrent head-nod (cf. Figure 5.7). This time, however, the invitation is not placed in clause-final position, as it was the previous time (i.e., at the end of line 3), but at clause-internal position (line 4) – more specifically, after the mention of the second item (ohinasan), and before a clause-ending predicate. Through her talk and bodily conduct, then, Takie has made relevant some kind of display by the recipient of her involvement in the speaker’s ongoing description.

4 Takie: .hhh honna koo ohinasan NE::, and like hina.doll FP “.hhh and, like, the hina dolls...”

Thus, at the end of line 4, the unfolding deployment of Takie’s vocal and visual conduct within the framework of mutual orientation with Kaori provides the addressee with a heightened moment to participate in the description in mid-course, and to demonstrate her understanding of the future course of the activity by supplying an utterance that completes Takie’s unfolding utterance. The utterance supplied by Kaori is the predicate used earlier by Takie at line 4, i.e., oitearu wa (‘is left’). As described in Chapter 4, by recycling the ‘list frame’ used earlier, Kaori demonstrates her understanding that ohinasan in line 4 is produced as a second item in the list of bulky objects that Takie’s daughter has left in Takie’s house. This instance shows how the temporally unfolding talk and bodily conduct of the participants can progressively shape relevant forms of co-participation in an emerging description sequence. The participants attend closely to the unfolding course of one another’s conduct to constantly negotiate frameworks of relevant participation in terms of which they organize their actions vis-à-vis

Language and the body as resources 

one another. A recipient of a description can then draw on the visible structure in the speaker’s unfolding conduct, and use it as a resource to co-participate in the ongoing description. The next instance was also examined earlier in terms of the relevance of ‘multi-clausal turn-constructional units’ to the achievement of co-participant completion (see Section 4.2.1.1 in Chapter 4). Here it will be re-examined to show how the speaker’s ‘embodied enactment’ can make visible how to construe the described event in a relevant way, and how such a visible guide provides what might be called a ‘visual projection’ of what is going to be described next. It will be shown that a recipient utilizes such a visual projection to demonstrate their understanding of the description in progress. Fragment (2) presents a part of a telling sequence by Chika about her recent trip to Tokyo for a friend’s wedding. In this telling, Chika, who received quite a few gifts at the wedding, describes how she tried to make her baggage as small as possible by getting rid of unnecessary gift boxes, etc. In the segment in fragment (2), she mentions packages of katsuobushi (‘dried bonito flakes’), a rather common type of gift in Japan, and describes how it was impossible to make them any smaller since the sealed plastic packages are puffed up with air. The focus of analysis here is on how Chika’s talk and concurrent embodied enactment of the description provide a heightened moment for Asami to demonstrate her ongoing understanding of the description in progress in line 4. (2) [KG 13]

Figure 5.8 Fragment (2) 1

Chika: katsuobushi tte na:: hukuro panpan ya kara [::,] dried.bonito QT FP package puffy CP because “Dried bonito flakes, because ((their)) packages are so puffed up,”

 Chapter 5

[ 2

]

Kyoko: [u::]::n. “Uh huh”

Chika: .hhh moo-= EMP “.hhh like,” 4→Asami: =chicchaku narahen wa na:. small become:not FP FP “((They)) wouldn’t get smaller, would ((they))?” 3

Let us first examine how the significance of the speaker’s hand movements to the unfolding description is interactively established. In his work on an interactive organization by which participants in conversation make gesticulation significant to their talk, Streeck (1988) demonstrates that speakers initiating a gesture commonly bring their gaze to their hands at the onset of gesticulation, and thereby indicate to the recipients that the forthcoming movements of the hands will be in some way relevant to the understanding of their emerging talk. In the present case, as Chika produces katsuobushi (‘dried bonito flakes’) at the beginning of line 1, she brings her gaze to her hands, which are placed in front of her chest (cf. Figure 5.9), thus showing the recipients that they should attend to the prospective hand movements as a relevant element in the unfolding description. As she proceeds to produce the noun hukuro (‘package’), her hands are opened and aligned with each other in front of her chest with the palms facing inside (cf. Figure 5.10). After establishing this hand configuration, Chika then synchronizes two small repetitive hand movements (cf. Figure 5.11 – ‘clapping’ movements without the touching of the palms) with the two syllables in the mimetic word that she vocally produces, i.e., panpan, which, when occurring as a descriptor of an item like a ‘package,’ expresses the swell in the shape of the object.

Language and the body as resources

Figure 5.11 ...panpan...

The way Chika’s gesture visually formulates the dried-bonito package and its ‘puffiness’ highlights a certain, crucial aspect of the event being described which the linguistic part of the description does not express. That is, while there can be a number of different ways to describe a dried-bonito package and its puffiness, her gesture specifically depicts a person compressing the object with the hands, and this embodied enactment makes visible to the recipients how, among many available possibilities, they should construe the specific relevance of the puffiness of the package to the unfolding course of the event being narrated. In other words, in and through the deployment of her bodily performance of the act of compressing, the speaker visibly situates the puffiness of the dried-bonito package within the narrated effort of making her baggage as small as possible, and demonstrates how the puffiness matters on the particu-



 Chapter 5

lar occasion being described. Thus, the semantic content of linguistic items and the configuration of embodied performance mutually elaborate each other in making visible a specific way in which the described object is consequential for the understanding of the narrated scene in the ongoing description (cf. McNeill 1992). When Chika completes the kara-clause (roughly equivalent to a becauseclause) in line 1 and moves on to produce a projected ‘consequence’ clause at line 3, she once again withdraws her gaze from the addressee and brings it to her own hands. By doing so, she indicates to the recipients the relevance of the hand movements to the understanding of the emerging talk. Then, while uttering the adverb moo (which expresses some vague sense of helplessness), Chika deploys a gesture similar to the one produced with panpan. This time, however, Chika first brings her palms further apart, and then, when bringing them closer, she visually demonstrates some sort of ‘resistance’ in doing so (cf. Figure 5.12).

3

Chika:

4→Asami:

.hhh moo-= EMP “.hhh like,” =chicchaku narahen wa na: . small become:not FP FP “((They)) wouldn’t get smaller, would ((they))?”

If we were to look at this gesture without taking into account the sequential location in which it is placed, its meaning could be quite opaque. The cooccurring talk, moo, if taken in isolation, is not in itself descriptive, as it does not have much semantic content except perhaps for some sense of helplessness. It is its sequential placement both in terms of talk and gesture, i.e., after Chika’s

Language and the body as resources

talk at line 1 (‘Dried bonito flakes, because ((their)) packages are so puffed up,’), and after the compressing gesture in Figure 5.11, that makes the meaning of the gesture in Figure 5.12 transparent on this particular occasion. The fact that the gesture’s meaning is transparent not only to the analyst but also to the participants is displayed by one of the recipients’ participation in the coconstruction of the unfolding utterance in the description in progress. Asami, who has been attending to the sequential unfolding of Chika’s talk and gesture throughout the segment in fragment (2) (cf. Figures 5.9–5.12), produces an utterance in line 4 which not only fits the unfolding syntactic framework of Chika’s talk, i.e., [X-kara + Y] (‘Because X + Y’), but also provides a verbal rendition of the bodily experience that Chika’s gesture in Figure 5.12 makes visible, that is, a person not being able to compress the package any further. Indeed, Asami’s entry with her utterance in line 4 is precisely targeted at the moment at which Chika’s gesturing hands stop on their way to get closer, thereby depicting the experience of ‘resistance.’ A number of studies have shown that many iconic or illustrative gestures precede their speech affiliates (cf. McNeill 1979; Kendon 1980, 1983; Schegloff 1984a; Streeck 1988). While these studies discuss the placement of gesture relative to the affiliated units of talk within a single speaker, the present case suggests that such a recurrent pattern of the prepositioning of gesture to talk can be mobilized as a resource to accomplish the configuration of [gesture + speech affiliate] across speakers. Indeed, Schegloff (1984a) talks of the pre-positioned gesture as providing a “projection space” in which an upcoming speech affiliate is “in play.” Asami’s contribution in line 4 can, then, be seen as a socially coordinated entry utilizing the projection space provided by the pre-positioned gesture. In this instance, we observed that the mutual contextualization of talk and embodied enactment provides a resource for recipients to construe the narrated scene in a specific way that is relevant to the event being described. The unfolding deployment of vocal and visual conduct progressively makes visible and projects the emerging course of the description in progress. Recipients can then draw on such a vocal and visual projection as a resource for the organization of their coordinated participation in the ongoing description through which they demonstrate their relevant understanding of the activity in progress. The next fragment also shows that the speaker’s embodied enactment of the narrated scene provides a visual projection for the unfolding course of a description in progress. In this instance, the speaker’s talk and bodily conduct transform the amorphous space on the surface of a table in front of him into a visible locus of action, and make visible the temporally unfolding structure of

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 Chapter 5

the described event in that physical space. One of the recipients then orients to the visible structure in both the talk and the gesturally constructed space as a resource to organize his co-participation in the ongoing description. Here, unlike the previous two instances, the recipient accomplishes his co-participation in the unfolding activity not only by producing an utterance that fits into the emerging course of talk, but also by producing bodily conduct that conforms to the unfolding structure of the speaker’s bodily conduct. Fragment (3) presents a part of a description sequence in which Atsuo, an employee at a gas company, tells the other two participants about how to lay gas pipes underground. His description concerns how an innovative type of gas pipe made of plastic is more flexible than more conventional metal pipes, and therefore does not require the digging of a large area of land to install it. In lines 1 and 3–4 in fragment (3), Atsuo states that, since the plastic pipe is flexible, all one has to do to install it is to dig a hole at a certain location and another at another location and push the pipe through an underground tunnel between the two holes. The focus of the present analysis is the way in which one of the recipients, Ikuro, demonstrates his understanding of the ongoing description both vocally and visually at line 8. (3) [TG 3]

Figure 5.13 Fragment (3) 1

Atsuo:

2

Ikuro:

3

Atsuo:

◦ de ano hen MAgaru nde aru teedo◦ and that part bend because certain extent “And because that part ((of the plastic pipe)) bends, ◦ to a certain extent◦ ,” u:::n.= “Uh huh” =koko to koko ni ana hotte::, (0.3) here and here at hole dig:and “((you)) dig holes here and here, and (0.3)”

Language and the body as resources

4

5

Ikuro:

6

Atsuo:

7

8→Ikuro:

9

Ikuro:

de: kokka too- tooshite:, and from.here put.through “... and from here , ((you)) put ((it)) through, and” aa aa aa [aa aa. ] oh oh oh oh oh “Oh:::: I see.” [ ] [koo ch]otto zutsu magaru kara like little by bend because “Like, because ((it)) bends little by little,” koo, [(.) GUWAAA tto koo:: (.)] [oshikon]deitte:, like MIM QT like push.through:and “like, (.) ((you)) push ((it)) through like GUWAAA, and,” [ ] [ ] [shu shu shu shu shu:::::] [tto ( )] MIM QT “Like shu shu shu shu shu::::” a::::::::::::::. oh “Oh::::::::”

Let us first examine how, through the moment-to-moment deployment of language and the body, Atsuo transforms the physical space on the surface of the table in front of him into a locus of action within the ongoing description. After completing his utterance in line 1 in mutual gaze with the addressed recipient Ikuro (cf. Figure 5.14), Atsuo brings his gaze down to his hands, which he has placed on the table in front of him. As discussed above, such a gaze shift, i.e., when withdrawn from a co-participant and brought to one’s own hands, serves a purpose similar to ‘pointing,’ and invites the co-participant to orient to and take into account the emerging hand movements as a meaningful and relevant part of the subsequent action (cf. Streeck 1988). Atsuo’s gaze shift is soon accompanied by the vocal production of the deictic term koko (‘here’) at the beginning of line 3. Deictic terms are another class of devices that are recurrently used to draw co-participants’ orientation to some aspect of the physical surroundings in which interaction takes place (cf. C. Goodwin 1983, 1986, 1999). Thus, the combination of the gaze shift to the hands and the deployment of the deictic term koko proposes a framework of participation which invites a specific form of co-participation by the recipient – i.e., attending to the spatial domain in which the speaker’s hands are located. And indeed, the addressee Ikuro brings his gaze to Atsuo’s hand, which is moving as if it were drawing a circle on the table during the production of the first koko (‘here’) at the beginning of line 3 (cf. Figure 5.15).

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 Chapter 5

◦ aru 1 Atsuo: de ano hen MAgaru nde teedo◦ and that part bend because certain extent “And because that part ((of the plastic pipe)) bends, ◦ to a certain extent◦ ,” 2 Ikuro: u:::n.= “Uh huh”

3 Atsuo: =koko to koko ni ana hotte::, (0.3) here and here at hole dig:and “((you)) dig holes here and here, and (0.3)”

Having established the framework of attention to his hands as a meaningful part of the subsequent interaction, Atsuo progressively transforms the physical space on the surface of the table into a locus of relevant action in the unfolding course of his description through a sequence of hand movements. After pointing at a proximate area on the surface of the table (cf. Figure 5.15) while producing the first koko (‘here’) in line 3, Atsuo extends the other arm and points at an area farther away (cf. Figure 5.16) while producing the second koko (‘here’) in line 3. Through this sequence of hand movements as well as the co-

Language and the body as resources

occurring talk in line 3, Atsuo makes visible the use of the space on the surface of the table as an invoked ‘narrated space,’ i.e., a space in which the movements of the speaker’s body are to be seen as representations of the unfolding course of the narrated events. In this case, the narrated event of digging a hole first at one location and then at another location is invoked in the narrated space on the surface of the table through the movements and spatial configuration of Atsuo’s hands. At line 4, Atsuo then proceeds to ‘superimpose’ further hand movements onto the narrated space constructed in line 3. When he says, de: kokka (‘and from here’), at the beginning of line 4, Atsuo brings his right hand up with the index finger pointing toward the ‘proximate hole’ that he marked with his gesture in Figure 5.15 (cf. Figure 5.17). Then, while he produces the verb tooshite (‘push through’), he starts to push the pointing finger outward in the direction of the ‘farther hole’ that he marked with the left hand (cf. Figure 5.18). These hand movements, thus, visibly use the spatial configuration established through the earlier gestures (i.e., the locations of the two invoked ‘holes’) as a point of reference, and superimpose a further operation onto it while contextualizing the operation through a vocal description.

4 Atsuo: de: kokka too- tooshite:, and from.here put.through:and “... and from here , ((you)) put ((it)) through, and” 5 Ikuro: aa aa aa [aa aa.] oh oh oh oh oh “Oh:::: I see.”

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 Chapter 5

As he makes the hand movements in line 4, Atsuo brings his gaze toward Ikuro (cf. Figure 5.18). As discussed above, a speaker who has made a gesture often brings his/her gaze from the hands to a co-participant to see how the gesture is being attended to and treated by the co-participant. In the present case, when Atsuo’s gaze reaches him, the addressed recipient Ikuro vocally acknowledges the ongoing description with the utterance aa aa aa aa aa (‘Oh::: I see’) in line 5. Then, while maintaining the spatial configuration of the hands in the narrated space and thereby displaying its continued relevance to the ongoing description as a locus of meaningful action, Atsuo constructs a clause marked with kara (‘because’) in line 6, which projects a forthcoming ‘consequence’ clause. Having completed this ‘preliminary component’ in mutual gaze with Ikuro (cf. Figure 5.19), Atsuo again withdraws his gaze from the addressee and brings it to the narrated space on the table (cf. Figure 5.20). While doing so, he

Language and the body as resources 

produces a cataphoric deictic term, koo (which roughly means ‘like this’). Koo is regularly placed prior to the descriptive element in an utterance, and often serves as an ‘preface’ to an illustrative gesture (cf. Streeck 1988, 1993, 1994). Indeed, in the present case, while producing koo and bringing his gaze to the narrated space, Atsuo retracts the right hand (cf. Figure 5.20), which projects a forthcoming re-enactment of the movement of the pipe going through a tunnel. The production of koo (‘like this’) and the preparatory movement of the hand then draw the recipient Ikuro’s gaze towards the speaker’s hand (cf. Figure 5.20). These features in the unfolding deployment of vocal and visual conduct by Atsuo provide a strong projection, at the beginning of line 7, of the emerging structures in the ongoing description. That is, the unfolding structure of the talk, i.e., the completion of a preliminary component, projects a forthcoming ‘consequence’ component, while the preparatory actions done through the gesture-prefatory deictic term koo, the shift of gaze to the narrated space on the table, and a retraction of the right hand, project the imminent deployment of a hand movement recognizable as a re-doing of the ‘pipe gesture.’ It is at this moment that the recipient Ikuro deploys vocal and visual conduct that is linked in fine detail with the projected course of Atsuo’s conduct in the ongoing description. Immediately after the gesture-prefatory koo in Atsuo’s utterance, Ikuro precisely coordinates the initiation of his version of the pipe gesture (cf. Figures 5.21–5.22). His left hand travels from his left to right through a ‘wavy’ trajectory. As he moves his hand this way, Ikuro vocally produces a mimetic expression, shu shu shu shu shu:::::, which often represents a noise made by some kind of friction. Embedded within the narrated scene invoked through Atsuo’s talk and body movements, the ‘wavy’ movement of Ikuro’s hand and the vocally produced mimetic expression that accompanies it are recognizable as depicting the pliant gas pipe navigating through a rough underground tunnel.

 Chapter 5 7 Atsuo: koo, [(.) GUWAAA tto koo:: (.)] [oshikon]deitte:, like MIM QT like push.through:and “like, (.) ((you)) push ((it)) through like GUWAAA, and,” [ ] [ ] 8→Ikuro: [shu shu shu shu shu:::::] [tto ( )] MIM QT “Like shu shu shu shu shu::::”

Note also that Ikuro’s utterance in line 8, shu shu shu shu shu::::: tto, is presented as a manner adverb of the form [mimetics (shu shu shu shu shu:::::) + quotative particle (tto)].4 If we look at Atsuo’s utterance-in-progress in line 7 carefully, we can see that Ikuro’s utterance in line 8 in fact fits into the developing syntactic trajectory of Atsuo’s utterance. Consider the following representation of the two participants’ overlapping utterances in lines 7 and 8.

Language and the body as resources

As seen above, Atsuo’s utterance in line 7 after the initial koo consists of a manner adverb (mimetics GUWAAA + quotative tto) followed by a verb (oshikonde), with the deictic koo placed in between. Ikuro’s utterance in line 8, which is produced after the initial koo in line 7, provides a manner adverb of the form [mimetics + quotative], i.e., shu shu shu shu shu::::: tto. Ikuro does not produce a verb after the manner adverb and leaves his utterance syntactically incomplete. However, the structural parallel observed between the utterances in lines 7 and 8 makes it evident that Ikuro’s utterance is designed to fit into the emerging syntactic trajectory of Atsuo’s utterance-in-progress. Thus, shu shu shu shu shu::::: tto in line 8 is not simply a vocal version of the depicted movement of the pliant gas pipe, but is also designed as a syntactically projected next element in the ongoing description. In line 8, then, Ikuro demonstrates his precise understanding of Atsuo’s ongoing description by building both vocal and visual actions that fit into, and advance, the unfolding course of the activity in progress. In this piece of data, we observed another case in which the speaker’s embodied enactment of the narrated event provides vocal and visual projection of the unfolding course of an ongoing description. This instance demonstrated how a speaker can use talk and bodily conduct to transform the physical space on the surface of a table into a locus of action, and make visible the temporally unfolding structure of the ongoing description. The visible structures in both the talk and the gesturally constructed space can then be utilized by the addressee as a projective resource to precisely coordinate vocal and visual conduct with the projected action of the speaker. The next, final fragment examined in this section presents an instance in which a recipient deploys vocal and visual conduct to retroactively contextual-

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 Chapter 5

ize the speaker’s prior conduct, while contributing to the further progression of the description in progress. In fragment (4), the participants are discussing Mr. Meyer, an American employee at Kanji’s and Muneo’s company who often “admonishes” other people for their behavior. In line 1, Yurie produces a question asking if anyone in the company would dare to admonish Mr. Meyer for his behavior. The other participants subsequently respond to this question in a variety of ways. The analysis focuses on Kanji’s response, which stretches over lines 5–6 and 8–9, and Yurie’s co-participation at lines 9 and 11. (4) [TYC 21]

Figure 5.23 Fragment (4) 1

2 3

4

5

Yurie: demo maiyaa san o chuuisuru hito ga iru n deshoo but Meyer Mr. O admonish person SP exist N CP ka. Q

.hhh “But is there anyone who would admonish Mr. Meyer? .hhh” Muneo: ya:[:: inai na::.] no not.exist FP “No, there isn’t.” [ ] Shoko: [moo (.) shuukyoo][joo no riyuu to yuu] well religious LK reason QT say “Well (.) for religious reasons” [ ] Kanji: [y a a t a b u n : ] daremo well probably no.one “Well, probably no one would...”

Language and the body as resources 

6

7

Muneo:

8

Kanji:

9

10

Yurie:

11

Shoko:

12

Kanji:

13→Yurie:

14

Kanji:

15→Yurie:

chuui[shinai yaroo=datte:: (.) ima made:: .hh ]= not.admonish will because now till “...admonish ((him))=because (.) so far .hh ...” [ ]= [u:n nna shuukyoojoo no riyuu dashi na::.]= yeah religious LK reason CP:and FP “Yeah ((it))’s for religious reasons.” =choonekutai tsukete bow.tie wear “... whether ((he)) came ((to work))...” [k(h)oy (h)oo g (h)a:: hhhahhh an(hh)o::: na:::= come but uhm FP “...wearing a bow tie, or hhhahhh uh::::m, right?” [ [HHUHH! s(H )oo s(H )o[o s(H )oo hehh hehh hehh so so so “HHUHH! R(h)ight, r(h)ight, r(h)ight hehh hehh hehh” [ [hh ahh hahh hahh hahh “hh ahh hahh hahh hahh” =.hh [sugoi ()] amazing “.hh amazing ( )” [ ] [nanka rahu]na:: koo se[etaa(hah):= like casual like sweater(hah) “Like a casual uhm sweater...” [ [soo soo. so so “Right right.” =tt(h)e y (h)uu ka::. QT say Q “... or something.”

Let us examine how Kanji organizes his talk and bodily conduct in lines 5–6 and 8–9. First, when Kanji initiates his utterance, he shifts his posture from a position in which he rests his elbow on the table (cf. Figure 5.24) to one in which his upper body is straight up (cf. Figure 5.25; Kanji behind Yurie). This postural shift as well as the initiation of an utterance vocally and visibly propose a new participation framework in which Kanji aligns himself as the speaker. Yurie and Shoko then collaborate in the building of the new participation framework by bringing their gaze to Kanji (cf. Figure 5.25). Thus,

 Chapter 5

the coordination of the multiple parties’ vocal and visual conduct establishes a spatial-orientational arrangement in which Kanji positions himself within the visual focus of at least two of the co-participants. The establishment of this orientational framework will become significant for Kanji’s subsequent conduct, as will be shown below.

Figure 5.25 ...tabun: daremo

The initial unit in Kanji’s utterance is formulated as a negative response to Yurie’s question, i.e., yaa tabun: daremo chuui shinai yaroo (‘Well, probably no

Language and the body as resources

one would admonish ((him))’) in lines 5–6. On completion of this unit, Kanji quickly latches the next unit onto it with the connective datte:: (‘because’), which regularly projects an upcoming account-giving (cf. Mori 1999a). In the projected account, then, he launches into a description of some ‘abnormal’ clothes that Mr. Meyer wore to work in the past, for which he presumably was not admonished even under the rather strict corporate dress code in Japan. The utterance that Kanji sets out to construct, i.e., ima made:: .hh choonekutai tsukete k(h)oy(h)oo g(h)a:: (‘so far, .hh whether ((he)) came ((to work)) wearing a bow tie, or’) in lines 6 and 8–9, projects the following syntactic format: [Clause X-oo ga Clause Y-oo ga ] ⇒ Clause Z ‘Whether event X occurs or event Y occurs, proposition Z holds.’ e.g. Ame ga huroo ga + yuki ga huroo ga ⇒ kare wa maiasa jogingu o suru. ‘Whether it rains or

it snows,

he jogs every morning.’

Within this projected format, Kanji’s utterance only provides the very first component, i.e., [Clause X-oo ga]. Thus, when Kanji completes this first component with the conjunctive particle g(h)a in the middle of line 9, the next component in the syntactic format, i.e., [Clause Y-oo ga], is strongly projected. Notice also that Kanji intersperses laugh tokens in the latter part of the first component. This enhances the projectability of the kind of event to be described in the second component. That is, ‘coming to work wearing a bow tie’ is presented as an ‘out-of-the-ordinary’ and laughable behavior which Mr. Meyer has gotten away with without being admonished so far. Thus, it is strongly projected that the next component is to contain another ‘out-of-the-ordinary’ and laughable behavior that Mr. Meyer has gotten away with. Given these projective resources in the midst of an unfolding description, the recipients face the speaker with heightened anticipation of the forthcoming second component. What they see at the moment at which Kanji completes the first component, however, is not an immediate vocal production of the second component, but laughter and the delaying item an(hh)o::: (‘uh(hh):::m’), the latter of which is accompanied by the hand movement presented in Figures 5.27–5.28 below. Although the precise ‘meaning’ of this hand movement is not available without being contextualized by a speech affiliate, an argument can be made, based on Kanji’s prior bodily conduct, for the possibility that it might be designed as some kind of gestural representation of the projected sec-

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 Chapter 5

ond component. It can be argued as follows: first, by establishing the spatialorientational framework in which he is positioned within the visual focus of other participants while initiating his talk in line 5 (cf. Figure 5.25 above), Kanji has set up a preparatory arrangement in which his body movement is to be seen by the co-participants and thus taken into account as meaningful behavior by them. Second, after establishing this spatial-orientational framework, Kanji deploys a gesture in the vicinity of the front part of his neck when he mentioned choonekutai (‘bow tie’) in line 8 (cf. Figure 5.26 below). In other words, he has shown his recipients that that part of his body is used as a locus for bodily representation of the items being described, i.e., ‘abnormal’ clothes that Mr. Meyer has worn to work. These prior bodily actions provide a context in which Kanji’s hand movement in Figures 5.27–5.28 can be seen by recipients as some kind of representation of a next item in the list of clothes that have been worn by Mr. Meyer. As it happens, however, when Kanji completes the hand movement, instead of vocally producing the second component in the list-in-progress, Kanji solicits an acknowledgment from the recipients with the particle na::: (roughly equivalent to ‘right?’).

8 Kanji: =choonekutai tsukete bow.tie wear “... whether ((he)) came ((to work))...”

Language and the body as resources 

It is after this acknowledgment-soliciting na::: that one of the recipients, Yurie deploys talk and gesture in such a way that displays ‘connectedness’ to Kanji’s prior talk and gesture and thereby accomplishes the co-construction of the projected second component. First, Yurie provides the descriptor rahuna:: (‘casual’) after nanka (‘(something) like’) in line 13. While this descriptor syntactically projects a forthcoming ‘modified noun’ that will specify the object being described, it points to a general semantic category that is consistent with the item provided earlier by Kanji for the first component, i.e., choonekutai (‘bow tie’). That is, at least in the Japanese corporate world in which wearing a rather conservative suit is considered the norm for men, a bow tie is on the ‘casual’ side in that it is too playful and fanciful. Thus, Yurie’s descriptor rahuna:: frames the forthcoming mention of an object in a way that is compatible with the projection made earlier about the item to be mentioned in the second component.

 Chapter 5

Then, Yurie produces the ‘gesture-prefatory’ cataphoric deictic koo, and starts to lift her hands from rest position. When her hands reach the front side of her shoulders (cf. Figure 5.29), Yurie utters the word seetaa (‘sweater’). This word contextualizes the concurrent gesture and provides a reference to the object which is represented by the gesture. In addition, by making a gesture that has a recognizable formal similarity to Kanji’s earlier gesture (cf. Figure 5.27), Yurie accomplishes a gestural tying of her ongoing conduct to Kanji’s prior conduct. Through the gestural tying and the vocalization of seetaa (‘sweater’), she retroactively contextualizes Kanji’s earlier gesture in line 9, which was made when the second component in the list-in-progress was due, but which was not accompanied by a speech affiliate, as a representation of a ‘casual sweater.’ At the same time, Yurie contextualizes her own action as the collaborative construction of the projected second component in the unfolding description.

13→Yurie:[nanka rahu]na:: koo se[etaa(hah):= like casual like sweater(hah) “Like a casual uhm sweater...” [ 14 Kanji: [soo soo. so so “Right right.”

In this instance, then, talk and bodily conduct are mobilized in yet another way to accomplish socially coordinated participation in an ongoing description. Here, a recognizable isomorphism between the speaker’s and recipient’s gestures allows the recipient to retroactively contextualize the speaker’s earlier gesture through gestural tying, and thereby makes visible the recipient’s conduct as a co-construction of the speaker’s description in progress.

Language and the body as resources 

In this section, I examined a number of ways in which language and the body are implicated in the interactive achievement of joint utterance construction in description sequences. The analysis showed how the participants’ vocal and visual conduct emerging through time mutually contextualize each other in the temporal unfolding of a description, and progressively shape the contextual frame in terms of which their current and subsequent actions are to be interpreted. Recipients of the ongoing description then utilize such a publicly visible contextual frame and its temporally unfolding structure as a resource to produce, at the appropriate moment, specific forms of action that are linked in fine detail to the speaker’s conduct-in-progress and thereby demonstrate their congruent understanding of the activity in progress. The analysis underscores the importance of both vocal and visual conduct for projectability as a crucial resource for the co-production of relevant action by multiple parties. It also suggests that participating in interaction is essentially a multi-modal phenomenon. Talking in interaction is not simply producing grammatical strings in speech, but is a package of embodied action that makes use of a range of different modalities, e.g., grammatical structure, sequential organization, organization of gaze and gesture, spatial-orientational frameworks, etc., in conjunction with each other. From this perspective, language in interaction is inextricably embedded within this multi-modal package of embodied action, and along with other conduct, it serves a crucial role in shaping temporally unfolding, changing possibilities for relevant participation by multiple parties in social interaction. In the next section, I examine the intricate relationship between language and the body in a specific activity-context, i.e., word searches in Japanese conversation. The analysis demonstrates how the moment-to-moment deployment of vocal and visual conduct contributes to the interactive organization of multiple participants’ coordinated participation in the word-search activity. . Language and the body in word searches When a participant in interaction displays ostensible trouble in producing a next element of talk when it is due and initiates a word search, it often develops into a multi-party activity in which others’ co-participation in the search becomes systematically relevant (cf. Sacks 1992, I: 321; M. Goodwin 1983; M. Goodwin & C. Goodwin 1986; Lerner 1996a). One regularly observed form of such co-participation by others is supplying candidate items for the searched-for next element of talk. The activity of searching for a word can thus

 Chapter 5

provide a temporally unfolding arena for joint construction of utterances-inprogress. In this section, I examine interactive processes through which participants in Japanese conversation attend closely to one another’s vocal and visual conduct to organize relevant participation in the ongoing word-search activity and accomplish the co-construction of an utterance-in-progress. In Section 5.3.1, I first discuss several kinds of vocal and visual practices that are commonly observed during word searches in Japanese conversation, and show how speakers deploy some of those practices to invite or not invite others’ co-participation in word searches-in-progress. Section 5.3.2 then introduces and describes one linguistic practice that is recurrently employed by Japanese speakers during word searches and which does not appear to be available to English speakers, i.e., the use of distal demonstrative pronouns as place-holders for the searched-for items. I argue that the deployment of such a demonstrative pronoun serves as what Charles Goodwin (1996a) calls a ‘prospective indexical.’ In Section 5.3.3, then, I present a single case analysis that brings together the issues addressed in Sections 5.3.1 and 5.3.2. To be more specific, I discuss an instance in which a speaker produces a distal demonstrative pronoun as a place-holder and indexes a particular search domain, while simultaneously deploying a gesture which enhances the projectability and specifiability of the searched-for item. ..

Initial observations of language and the body in word searches in Japanese

Just as in English (cf. Schegloff, Jefferson, & Sacks 1977: 367), word searches in Japanese are typically initiated with some indication of trouble by the speaker in producing a next item due in an ongoing utterance, such as sound stretches, word cut-offs, intra-turn pauses, etc. These speech perturbations may co-occur with, or be followed by, several recognizable features in the speaker’s talk and bodily conduct, such as: a. ‘delaying devices’ like ano: (‘uhm’), nanka (‘like’), etc.; b. self-addressed questions for recollection like nan da(tta) kke (‘What is/was it’), etc.; c. orientational shifts, typically aversions of gaze away from the addressee (cf. M. Goodwin & C. Goodwin 1986 for word searches in English); d. a variety of manual and facial gestures, including iconic gestures that represent some aspect of the searched-for item, as well as a characteristic ‘thinking face’ (cf. M. Goodwin & C. Goodwin 1986 for word searches in English).

Language and the body as resources

These behaviors are not simply the external manifestations of cognitive processes in the speakers’ private minds. Rather, the very fact that they are deployed in front of other participants has significant interactional consequences (cf. M. Goodwin & C. Goodwin 1986; C. Goodwin 1987; M. Goodwin 1983; Lerner 1996a). Specifically, these publicly observable displays of trouble in producing a next item that is due mark a shift in the activity that participants engage in at the moment, from whatever has been going on (e.g., storytelling) to one in which a solution to the word-finding trouble is pursued. This shift in activity invokes a different participation framework, in which collaborative participation by recipients in the solution of the speaker’s word-finding trouble might become relevant. Consider fragment (5), in which the participants are discussing taking a sauna. In line 1, Akira makes the assessment that Seiji copes with hot temperatures well, and solicits agreement from Seiji. While not agreeing with the assessment entirely (line 3), Seiji does agree that he takes a sauna every once in a while (line 5). In line 7, Seiji displays some indications that he is having trouble finding a next element of talk, which marks an initiation of a word search activity. Our focus is on how he organizes his involvement in a word search through a variety of vocal and visual practices, and how the addressed recipient, Akira, coordinates his participation in the search in line 11 with the unfolding course of Seiji’s conduct. (5) [RKK 28] 1

2 3

4

5

6

Akira: seiji san atsui no kekkoo tokui da na: Seiji TL hot N rather good.at CP FP “Seiji, ((you)) can take hot temperature pretty well, can’t ((you)).” (0.6) kedo:]::, Seiji: iya soo demo [nai well so PT not but “Well, not really, but...” [ ] Harumi: [ii ne:::.] good FP “Good ((for you)).” Seiji: hairu koto mo aru ne.= take event also exist FP “((I)) take ((a sauna)) sometimes.” Akira: =[(a::!)] oh “(Oh::!)” [ ]

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Chapter 5

7

8 9

10

Seiji: =[>nanka]:< hijooni:: (.) nani: like extremely what “>Li:kea! doozoOh! Pleasetookyuu-ANIMEKKU ]SU < “>ANIMEKKUSU