Jun Ohashi

Balancing obligations: Bowing and linguistic features in thanking in Japanese

Abstract This paper investigates how bows (formal lowering of the head or upper body) and linguistic features are integrated into conversational organizations of a thanking episode in Japanese. A role-play based on a real life thanking episode is used for the investigation. A set of role-play data involving 20 native speakers of Japanese is transcribed for both quantitative and qualitative analyses. The data shows that bows are systematically embedded into conversational organizations. The beneficiary bows with key speech formulae that acknowledge his/her debt, and the benefactor reciprocates a bow with ie ie (no, no) which plays down his/her credit. In other words, key speech formulae in balancing debt-credit equilibrium are often accompanied by a bow. The results show that bows are essential and highly predictable body movements in thanking episodes in Japanese, and they are significant in balancing debt-credit for face-maintenance.

Im)politeness and relationality

The chapter illuminates some of the under-explored relational aspects of (Im)politeness in interpersonal pragmatics. It consists of two case studies explicating how conversational participants manifest and interpret relationships in interaction. Specifically, case study 1 illustrates how reciprocity (balancing obligations) as a social norm can be used in interpreting relationality in terms of (Im)politeness. Case study 2 demonstrates how relationality is manifested in mediation interactions, where the participants evoke their interrelated relational ties and relational entitlements in order to achieve their interactional goals. The two case studies in both Japanese and Chinese, in particular, highlight the significance of studying emic concepts of relationality and related concepts, including the ‘balance sheet of obligation’ in Japanese contexts, and ‘relational ties’ and ‘relational entitlements’ in Taiwanese interactions.

Review of Data Elicitation Methods

This chapter will explore the data elicitation methods used in the study of cross-cultural and interlanguage pragmatics, by examining different methods including discourse completion tasks (DCTs) and role-plays. Understanding the characteristics of chosen data elicitation methods is important because they can shape the quality of the data. Data elicitation methods constrain L2 (second language) learners’ performance significantly more than target native speakers due to the learners’ unstable linguistic competence. Therefore, it is important for researchers to have an understanding about L2 learners’ possible deployment of ‘communication strategies’ before interpreting their performance in relation to their L1 (first language) pragmatic transfer. Also researchers need to be informed about L2 learners’ L2 and their sociocultural norms in order to understand the learners’ L2 performance accurately.

Implications of the Studies in Relation to Teaching Japanese Language and Current Debate on Face and Politeness

In what follows, the findings of the studies are drawn on again to shed new light on some of the contemporary issues including teaching Japanese, and the notions of face and politeness. Finally, some specific suggestions will be made concerning the integration of the norm of ‘reciprocity’ and the rules of ‘self-respect’ and ‘considerateness’ into the studies of social interaction.

Revealing Patterns: Descriptive Empirical Norms (Studies 1 and 2)

In this chapter, two data-based studies will be used to explore the Japanese speech act of ‘thanking’. Studies 1 and 2 will investigate Japanese cultural patterns of speech act realisations from different perspectives using different data elicitation methods and research designs. The analysis of both studies will take the respective characteristics and the limitations of the data elicitation methods employed into consideration. Study 1 encompasses the field of cross-cultural pragmatics as well as interlanguage pragmatic transfer, including native speakers of Japanese and English, and also English-speaking learners of Japanese.1 However, as discussed in the previous chapter, the learners’ data will not be compared with any native speaker groups.

What Japanese Native Speakers Actually Do in Thanking Episodes in Naturally Occurring Telephone Conversations

In this chapter, I will investigate naturally occurring telephone conversations based on the assumptions that any natural conversational data sets are artefacts reflecting social norms (certain expected ways of doing things in a given community), intentions, the relationships of the participants at a given time in a specific context, and as they engage in conversation, meaning is negotiated and co-constructed. Face, therefore, becomes more salient in motivating conversational participants to opt for certain social and linguistic behaviours. In other words, ‘face consideration’ can be a prominent determiner of how people interact in real-life speech events. The DCT and the role-play data successfully fulfil their roles in providing us with information regarding how participants perceive the given thanking episodes and how they think they may speak and behave, and as a result some regularities, or ‘norms’, are obtained. Here, the notion of ‘norms’ is considered as empirically grounded common ways of doing things as found in the previous two studies, and norms will be used in this chapter to understand meaning in interaction. The informants did not have to pay much attention to nurturing interpersonal relationships in the previous two studies, as they knew no matter what they say to each other in a make-believe situation, no genuine harm would be done.1