Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-03T17:53:45.288Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Grammar and the “timing” of social action: Word order and preference organization in Japanese

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 June 2005

HIROKO TANAKA
HIROKO TANAKA
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex, CO4 3SQ, UK, [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article explores the interconnection between grammar and the performance of preferred and dispreferred responses in Japanese. As is well known, dispreferred format turns are structurally more complex than preferred format turns, regularly delayed, accompanied by prefaces and accounts, mitigated, or made indirect. Owing to the flexibility of Japanese grammar, participants have expanded intra-turn capacity to maximize or minimize compliance with such formats. On one extreme, a dispreferred action can be massively delayed until near the turn-ending through opting for so-called canonical predicate-final word order and minimization of ellipsis. On the other extreme, a preferred action can be expedited to the very opening of a turn through non-canonical predicate-initial word order by taking advantage of word order variability and ellipsis. Such syntactic practices are interactionally managed for calibrating the timing of social action. It emerges that the canonical word order – assumed to be the generically unmarked alternative – is actually optimally tailored for the implementation of marked (dispreferred) responses, as opposed to a non-canonical word order for unmarked (preferred) responses, in the given sequential environment.

Keywords

Conversation analysisgrammar and interactionJapanese grammarpreferenceellipsisword ordercanonical word orderprojectability
Type
Research Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 34 , Issue 3 , July 2005 , pp. 389 - 430
Copyright
© 2005 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Atkinson, J. Maxwell, & Drew, Paul (1979) (eds.). Order in court: The organization of verbal interaction in judicial settings. London: Macmillan.
Atkinson, J. Maxwell, & Heritage, John (1984) (eds.). Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Clancy, Patricia M. (1982). Written and spoken style in Japanese narratives. In Deborah Tannen (ed.), Spoken and written language: Exploring orality and literacy, 55–76. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth, & Selting, Margret (1996) (eds.). Prosody in conversation: Interactional studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Davidson, Judy (1984). Subsequent versions of invitations, offers, requests, and proposals dealing with potential or actual rejection. In Atkinson & Heritage, 102–28.
Davidson, Judy (1990). Modifications of invitations, offers and rejections. In George Psathas (ed.), Interactional competence, 149–80. Washington, DC: University Press of America.
Drew, Paul (1984). Speaker's reportings in invitation sequences. In Atkinson & Heritage, 129–51.
Fox, Barbara. A.; Hayashi, Makoto; & Jasperson, Robert (1996). Resources and repair: A cross-linguistic study of syntax and repair. In Ochs, Schegloff & Thompson, 185–237.
Fujii, Noriko, & Ono, Tsuyoshi (2000). The occurrence and non-occurrence of the Japanese direct object marker o in conversation. Studies in Language 24:1–39.Google Scholar
Fujii, Yoko (1991). Nihongo ni okeru gojun no gyakuten [Reversed word order in Japanese]. Gengo Kenkyu 99:58–81.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Charles (2002). Time in action. Current anthropology 43 (Suppl. August–October 2002, Special issue Repertoires of timekeeping in anthropology): S19–S35.Google Scholar
Hayashi, Makoto (2003). Joint utterance construction in Japanese conversation. Amsterdam: Benjamins.CrossRef
Hayashi, Makoto (2001). Postposition-initiated utterances in Japanese conversation: An interactional account of a grammatical practice. In Selting & Couper-Kuhlen, 317–43.CrossRef
Hayashi, Makoto, & Mori, Junko (1998). Co-construction in Japanese revisited: We do “finish each other's sentences”. In Noriko Akatsuka, Hajime Hoji, Shoichi Iwasaki, Sung-Ock Sohn, & Susan Strauss (eds.), Japanese/Korean linguistics vol. 7, 77–93. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information.
Hayashi, Makoto; Mori, Junko; & Takagi, Tomoyo (2002). Contingent achievement of co-tellership in a Japanese conversation: An analysis of talk, gaze, and gesture. In Cecilia E. Ford et al. (eds.), The language of turn and sequence, 81–122. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Heritage, John (1984a). Garfinkel and ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity.
Heritage, John (1984b). A change-of-state token and aspects of its sequential placement. In Atkinson & Heritage, 299–345.
Heritage, John (1998). Oh-prefaced responses to inquiry. Language in Society 27:291–334.Google Scholar
Hinds, John (1982). Ellipsis in Japanese. Carbondale and Edmonton: Linguistic Research.
Jefferson, Gail (1979). A technique for inviting laughter and its subsequent acceptance/declination. In George Psathas (ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology, 79–96. New York: Irvington.
Jefferson, Gail; Sacks, Harvey; & Schegloff, Emanuel A. (1987). Notes on laughter in the pursuit of intimacy. In Graham Button & J. R. E. Lee (eds.), Talk and social organization, 152–205. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Kuno, Susumu (1973). The structure of the Japanese language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Lerner, Gene H. (1991). On the syntax of sentences-in-progress. Language in Society 20:441–58.Google Scholar
Lerner, Gene H. (1996a). On the “semi-permeable” character of grammatical units in conversation: Conditional entry into the turn-space of another speaker. In Ochs, Schegloff & Thompson, 238–76.
Lerner, Gene H. (1996b). Finding “face” in the preference structures of talk-in-interaction. Social Psychology Quarterly 59:303–21.Google Scholar
Lerner, Gene H., & Takagi, Tomoyo (1999). On the place of linguistic resources in the organization of talk-in-interaction: A co-investigation of English and Japanese grammatical practices. Journal of Pragmatics 31:49–75.Google Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRef
Martin, Samuel (1975). A reference grammar of Japanese. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Matsumoto, Kazuko (1995). Fragmentation in conversational Japanese: A case study. Journal of the Japan Association of Language Teachers 17:238–53.Google Scholar
Mori, Junko (1994). Functions of the connective datte in Japanese conversation. In Noriko Akatsuka (ed.), Japanese/Korean linguistics, vol. 4, 147–63. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University.
Mori, Junko (1999). Negotiating agreement and disagreement in Japanese: Connective expressions and turn construction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRef
Ochs, Elinor; Schegloff, Emanuel A.; & Thompson, Sandra A. (1996) (eds.). Interaction and grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ono, Tsuyoshi; Thompson, Sandra A.; & Suzuki, Ryoko (2000). The pragmatic nature of the so-called subject marker ga in Japanese: Evidence from conversation. Discourse Studies 2:55–84.Google Scholar
Ono, Tsuyoshi, & Suzuki, Ryoko (1992). Word order variability in Japanese conversation: Motivation and grammaticization. Text 12:429–45.Google Scholar
Pomerantz, Anita (1978). Compliment responses: Notes on the co-operation of multiple constraints. In J. Schenkein (ed.), Studies in the organization of conversational interaction, 79–112. New York: Academic Press.CrossRef
Pomerantz, Anita (1984a). Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of preferred/dispreferred turn shapes. In Atkinson & Heritage, 57–101.
Pomerantz, Anita (1984b). Pursuing a response. In Atkinson & Heritage, 152–63.
Sacks, Harvey (1987). On the preference for agreement and contiguity in sequences in conversation. In Graham Button & J. R. E. Lee (eds.), Talk and social organization, 56–69. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Schegloff, Emanuel A. (1988). On an actual virtual servo-mechanism for guessing bad news: A single case conjecture. Social Problems 35:442–57.Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A.; Jefferson, Gail; & Sacks, Harvey (1977). The preference for self-correction in the organization of repair for conversation. Language 53:361–82.Google Scholar
Selting, Margret, & Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth (2001) (eds.). Studies in interactional linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Shibatani, Masayoshi (1990). The languages of Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Simon, M. E. (1989). An analysis of the postposing construction in Japanese. Dissertation, University of Michigan.
Szatrowski, Polly (1993). Nihongo no danwa no koozoo bunseki: Kan'yuu no strategy no koosatsu [The structural analysis of Japanese discourse: An investigation of invitation strategies]. Tokyo: Kurosio.
Tanaka, Hiroko (1999a). Turn-taking in Japanese conversation: A study in grammar and interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Tanaka, Hiroko (1999b). Grammar and social interaction in Japanese and Anglo-American English: The display of context, social identity and social relation. Human Studies 22:363–95.Google Scholar
Tanaka, Hiroko (2000a). Turn-projection in Japanese talk-in-interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction 33:1–38.Google Scholar
Tanaka, Hiroko (2000b). The particle Ne as a turn-management device in Japanese conversation. Journal of Pragmatics 32:1135–76.Google Scholar
Tanaka, Hiroko (2001a). Adverbials for turn projection in Japanese: Toward a demystification of the “telepathic” mode of communication. Language in Society 30:559–87.Google Scholar
Tanaka, Hiroko (2001b). The implementation of possible cognitive shifts in Japanese conversation: Complementizers as pivotal devices. In Selting & Couper-Kuhlen, 81–109.
Tanaka, Hiroko (2004). Prosody for marking transition-relevance places in Japanese conversation: The case of turns unmarked by utterance-final objects. In Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen & Cecilia E. Ford (eds.), Sound patterns in interaction: Cross-linguistic studies from conversation, 63–96. Amsterdam: Benjamins.CrossRef