Transformative continuations, (dis)affiliation, and accountability in Japanese interaction

Michael Haugh; Yasuko Obana

doi:10.1515/text-2015-0015

Article

Transformative continuations, (dis)affiliation, and accountability in Japanese interaction

Michael Haugh
Michael Haugh is Associate Professor in Linguistics and International English in the School of Languages and Linguistics at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. His areas of research interest include pragmatics, intercultural communication, and conversation analysis. He is the author of a number of papers and books, including Im/Politeness, Implicatures (2015, Mouton de Gruyter), Pragmatics and the English Language (2014, Palgrave Macmillan, with Jonathan Culpeper), and Understanding Politeness (2013, Cambridge University Press, with Dániel Kádár).
and Yasuko Obana
Yasuko Obana is Professor in Linguistics at Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan, teaching English to undergraduate students and linguistics to postgraduate students. Her research interests are in pragmatics, particularly politeness and anaphora. She is the author of a number of papers and books, including Understanding Japanese (2000, Kurosio).

Published/Copyright: October 8, 2015

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From the journal Text & Talk Volume 35 Issue 5

Abstract

Studies of joint productions have often focused on instances where a recipient anticipates through completions what a speaker might be about to say, or through expansion what that speaker could plausibly go on to say. However, recent work suggests that grammatically fitted continuations may also alter or redirect the projected trajectory of a prior speaker’s turn or utterance. In this paper, building on this prior work, we focus on cases in Japanese interaction where grammatically fitted continuations of one speaker’s turn or utterance by another speaker accomplished through “format tying” (Goodwin and Goodwin 1987) effects some kind of transformation of the action or stance implemented by that prior turn. We term these “transformative continuations,” and propose that while they are invariably disaligning, they may nevertheless implement both affiliative and disaffiliative stances. We propose that an analysis of transformative continuations thus leads us to a consideration of both the degree to which participants may orient to these as (dis)affiliative, as well as the ways in which the respective participants may be held accountable for such instances of joint production.

Keywords: joint production; joint utterance; affiliation; alignment; Japanese; interactional pragmatics; transformative continuation

About the authors

Michael Haugh

Michael Haugh is Associate Professor in Linguistics and International English in the School of Languages and Linguistics at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. His areas of research interest include pragmatics, intercultural communication, and conversation analysis. He is the author of a number of papers and books, including Im/Politeness, Implicatures (2015, Mouton de Gruyter), Pragmatics and the English Language (2014, Palgrave Macmillan, with Jonathan Culpeper), and Understanding Politeness (2013, Cambridge University Press, with Dániel Kádár).

Yasuko Obana

Yasuko Obana is Professor in Linguistics at Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan, teaching English to undergraduate students and linguistics to postgraduate students. Her research interests are in pragmatics, particularly politeness and anaphora. She is the author of a number of papers and books, including Understanding Japanese (2000, Kurosio).

Appendix

Transcription conventions (from Jefferson 2004):

[ ]: overlapping speech
(.): micropause
:: elongation of vowel or consonant sound
.: falling or final intonation
=: latched utterances
underlining: contrastive stress or emphasis
CAPS: markedly louder
hhh: out-breathing
(hh): intra-word aspiration particle
ha he: laugh particles
<words>: talk is markedly slowed or drawn out
( ): blank space in parentheses indicates uncertainty about the transcription
Terms used in morphological gloss:
Cop: copula, da and its conjugated forms
MD: mood marker
Nom: nominative case marker
Nomi: nominalizer
Pass: passive forms, -reru/-rareru
Past: past tense, ta
Polite: “polite” forms, masu and desu
Q: question marker, ka
Quote: quotation from, to and its variations such as -tte, -toiu
TE: the form which bridges between a verb and an auxiliary

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Keywords for this article

joint production; joint utterance; affiliation; alignment; Japanese; interactional pragmatics; transformative continuation