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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]
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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

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