Japanese Questions: Discourse, Context and Language

Japanese Questions: Discourse, Context and Language
Author: Lidia Tanaka
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2014-11-20
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1472577612

Questions and interrogatives in Japanese discourse have attracted considerable interest from grammarians, but the communicative aspect has received little attention. This book fills this gap. Through detailed analyses of formal and informal interactions, this book demonstrates that the inherent multi-functional and polysemous aspect of language can also be observed in the use of questions. What emerges is a sense of the considerable variety of question forms and also an understanding of how questions are used to perform a wide range of social actions. The importance of context is stressed throughout the book; both in guiding the speakers' choices of question types and in helping to create the particular stance that characterizes those interactions. The data used in this book shows that speakers prefer questions that are not canonical. When speakers do use canonical questions, these are overwhelmingly accompanied by some mollifiers. This phenomenon suggests that in Japanese communication the illocutionary force of canonical questions is too strong. To soften the interaction, speakers tend to use other types of interrogative forms such as statements with rising intonation or, at least, to leave questions grammatically unfinished. The findings in this book contribute to the understanding of how Japanese speakers use questions in different communicative interactions and provide new evidence of the gap between prescriptive grammar and actual communication.

Japanese Questions: Discourse, Context and Language

Japanese Questions: Discourse, Context and Language
Author: Lidia Tanaka
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2015-01-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1472577604

Analyzes questions in Japanese formal and informal interactions, showing how varied they are and how they are used to accomplish various social actions.

Questioning and Answering Practices across Contexts and Cultures

Questioning and Answering Practices across Contexts and Cultures
Author: Cornelia Ilie
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2021-07-26
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027259712

This book showcases innovative research about the multi-functional and dynamic interrelatedness of questioning and answering practices in institution- and culture-specific interactions ranging from under-explored to extensively researched ones: South-Korean talk shows, Japanese interviews, Chinese news interviews, police-civilian interactions in the USA, Italian interviews and courtroom examinations, Japanese parliamentary debates and Prime Minister’s Questions in the UK Parliament. Challenging the view that questions are asked with the purpose of seeking information and eliciting answers, these studies open up new research avenues through insightful investigations and critical scrutiny that problematize the question-answer paradigm, through which meanings are conveyed, negotiated and/or contested, and through which relationships are established, maintained and/or challenged. Significant findings show that questioning and answering strategies are shaped by the specific norms and constraints of particular communities of practice, while at the same time they are shaping the very same communities of practice. This book will appeal to interdisciplinary scholars and practitioners across the linguistic, media, political, legal and social sciences.

Rhetorical Questions

Rhetorical Questions
Author: 後藤リサ
Publisher: ひつじ書房
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2018-02-16
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 4894768836

本書は、日本語および英語における修辞疑問文の発話解釈の仕組みを、関連性理論の枠組で探究するものである。従来の修辞疑問文研究の中で典型的に扱われてきた反語タイプの発話例のみならず、非反語タイプの発話例や、さらには弱いレベルで修辞性が伝達され情報要請との境界線があいまいな例、皮肉などの話者態度を伴うことで修辞性が暗に示される例等の非典型例も分析対象とし、包括的な修辞性の認知メカニズムを解明する。 【英語による内容紹介】 Traditional accounts of rhetorical questions have focused on polarity reversal: rhetorical questions conveying assertions opposite in polarity to the propositional content. However, non-polarity-reversed and rhetorically ambiguous interrogatives are also common. In this book, Risa Goto seeks a theoretical approach that can explain this pragmatic ambiguity with respect to rhetoricity. The relevance theoretic view of interrogative and ironical utterances assumes no clear-cut borderline between information-seeking and rhetorical use of interrogative utterances. The cognitive model of irony suggests that recognition of ironicalness necessarily leads to a rhetorical reading. Goto combines these two theoretical frameworks into an entirely new cognitive-pragmatic model of interrogatives, discussing the causal interrelation between rhetoricity and ironicalness and showing that ironical aspects in interrogative utterances can lead to rhetorical readings.

Discourse, Gender and Shifting Identities in Japan

Discourse, Gender and Shifting Identities in Japan
Author: Claire Maree
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2018-02-13
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1351591118

This book is the first in a unique series drawn from an interdisciplinary, longitudinal project entitled ‘Thirty Years of Talk.’ For 30 years, Okano recorded ethnographic interviews and collected data on the language of working class women in Kobe, Japan. This long-range study sketches the transitions in these women's lives and how their language use, discourse and identities change in specific sociocultural contexts as they shift through different stages of their personal and public lives. It is a ground-breaking, ‘real time’ panel study that follows the same individuals and observes the same phenomena at regular intervals over three decades. In this volume the authors examine the changes in the speech of one particular woman, Kanako, as her social identity shifts from high-school girl to mother and fisherman’s wife, and as her relationship with the interviewer develops. They identify changes in linguistic strategies as she negotiates gender/sexuality norms, stylistic features related to the construction of rapport, the use of discourse markers as she gets older, and the interviewer’s information-seeking strategies.

An Introduction to Conversation Analysis

An Introduction to Conversation Analysis
Author: Anthony J. Liddicoat
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 449
Release: 2021-08-26
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1350090654

Conversation is one of the most widespread uses of human language, but what is actually happening when we interact this way? How is conversation structured? How does it function? Answering these questions and more, An Introduction to Conversation Analysis is an essential overview of this topic for students in a wide range of disciplines including sociolinguistics, discourse analysis and sociology. This is the only book you need to learn how to do conversation analysis. Beginning by positioning conversation analysis amongst other methodologies, this book explains the advantages before guiding you step-by-step through how to do conversation analysis and what it reveals about the ways language works in communication. Chapters introduce every aspect of conversation analysis logically and clearly, covering topics such as transcription, turn-taking, sequence organisation, repair, and storytelling. Now fully revised and expanded to take account of recent developments, this third edition includes: - 3 new chapters, covering action formation and epistemics, multimodality and spoken interaction, and written conversation - New topics including online and mobile technology, cross-cultural conversation and medical discourse - A glossary of key terms, brand new exercises and updated lists of further reading - A fully updated companion website, featuring tutorials, audio and video files, and a range of different exercises covering turn taking, organisation and repair

Style Shifting in Japanese

Style Shifting in Japanese
Author: Kimberly Jones
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2008
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027254257

This innovative and interdisciplinary book on style shifting in Japanese brings together a wide range of perspectives and methodologies—including discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, cognitive linguistics, and functional linguistics—to look at a variety of types of style shifting in both spoken and written Japanese discourse. Though diverse in approach, the contributions all reflect the belief that language use is inextricably linked to both context and language structure in mutually constitutive relationships. Topics covered include shifting between "polite" and "plain" styles, the emergence of a "semi-polite" style, speakers' strategic use of gendered styles or regional dialects, shifting between different deictic expressions, and prosodic shifting. This careful and detailed examination advances our understanding of the complex phenomenon of style shifting not only in Japanese, but also more generally, and will be of interest to researchers and students in fields such as linguistics, linguistic anthropology, communication studies, and second language acquisition and teaching.

The Cambridge Handbook of Japanese Linguistics

The Cambridge Handbook of Japanese Linguistics
Author: Yoko Hasegawa
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 1146
Release: 2018-04-19
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1316946525

The linguistic study of Japanese, with its rich syntactic and phonological structure, complex writing system, and diverse sociohistorical context, is a rapidly growing research area. This book, designed to serve as a concise reference for researchers interested in the Japanese language and in typological studies of language in general, explores diverse characteristics of Japanese that are particularly intriguing when compared with English and other European languages. It pays equal attention to the theoretical aspects and empirical phenomena from theory-neutral perspectives, and presents necessary theoretical terms in clear and easy language. It consists of five thematic parts including sound system and lexicon, grammatical foundation and constructions, and pragmatics/sociolinguistics topics, with chapters that survey critical discussions arising in Japanese linguistics. The Cambridge Handbook of Japanese Linguistics will be welcomed by general linguists, and students and scholars working in linguistic typology, Japanese language, Japanese linguistics and Asian Studies.

The Social Life of the Japanese Language

The Social Life of the Japanese Language
Author: Shigeko Okamoto
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2016-08-04
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1316720616

Why are different varieties of the Japanese language used differently in social interaction, and how are they perceived? How do honorifics operate to express diverse affective stances, such as politeness? Why have issues of gendered speech been so central in public discourse, and how are they reflected and refracted in language use as social practice? This book examines Japanese sociolinguistic phenomena from a fascinating new perspective, focusing on the historical construction of language norms and its relationship to actual language use in contemporary Japan. This socio-historically sensitive account stresses the different choices which have shaped Japanese and Western sociolinguistics and how varieties of Japanese, honorifics and politeness, and gendered language have emerged in response to the socio-political landscape in which a modernizing Japan found itself.

Japanese Politicians’ Rhetorical and Indirect Speech

Japanese Politicians’ Rhetorical and Indirect Speech
Author: Ken Kinoshita
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2023-10-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9819942950

This book presents a new approach to the analysis of political psychology, political culture, and communication. Using data from Japanese political interviews and parliamentary deliberations, it reveals how Japanese politicians address their audience. In addition to analyzing the use of verbal political rhetoric, the book shows that nonverbal communication is highly relevant as well. In a context where political leaders are becoming increasingly important, identifying the techniques used by Japanese politicians – especially facial expressions, hand gestures, and other forms of body language – to gain support from the audience, leads us to consider communication practices of political leaders around the world. Politicians adopt different communication styles based on their specific electoral system. The more single-seat constituency political candidates use rhetoric, the greater their chance of appealing to voters. In addition, the use of personal experiences and others' speech quotations function as effective political rhetoric, further attracting the audience’s attention. In short, this book presents a more comprehensive and holistic picture of political “rhetoric” than usually offered by other studies of political communication.