Systematicity in linguistic feature selection: Repair sequences and subsequent accommodation
-
George O’Neal
George O’Neal is Associate Professor in the Common Literacy Center at Niigata University (Niigata, Japan). His research interests encompass applied phonetics and phonology, accommodation phenomena, statistics, and conversation analysis. His research has appeared in the
Journal of Pragmatics ,Asian Englishes , theJournal of Second Language Pronunciation , theChinese Journal of Applied Linguistics , andPragmatics & Society . He received his PhD from Waseda University (Tokyo, Japan) in 2019.
Abstract
This study examines linguistic feature selection and its relationship with repair sequences in a longitudinal corpus of Japanese–Filipino business ELF interactions. In the corpus, Japanese employees communicate once a month with Filipino employees via computer software to confirm infrastructure status at a Filipino company’s factories. Comparative constructions frequently appear in the corpus because of the nature of the interactions, but the kinds and frequencies of comparative constructions change month to month. This study demonstrates that early in the corpus, the speakers utilized a multitude of comparative constructions, but after 12 months, the speakers have settled on one preferred comparative construction. Furthermore, the preferred construction emerged from repair sequences, which suggests that repair is significantly related to linguistic feature selection. Accordingly, this study hypothesizes that repair sequences do far more than just resolve an interactional problem; repaired linguistic features are more likely to be selected again the next time a similar linguistic feature is relevant to the progression of the interaction.
要旨
本研究では、日本人とフィリピン人との国際通用語としての英語の相互行為の縦断的なコーパスにおける言語特徴の選択と修復連鎖の関係を考察する。コーパスにおいて、フィリピンでの工場のインフラ状況を確認するために、日本人の社員とフィリピン人の社員は毎月１回コンピューターを通じて話し合う。ビジネスの目的を果たすために比較構文はコーパスに頻繁に現れるが、比較構文の種類や頻度などは毎月変わる。本研究は、コーパスの前半に話者は多数の比較構文を使用したが、コーパスの後半となると、一つの優先的な比較構文を採用したと言える。しかも、優先的な比較構文は修復連鎖から出現した事実は、国際通用語としての英語における言語特徴の選択は修復と関係していることを示唆している。したがって、本研究は、修復連鎖は相互行為の問題を解決するだけではなく、修復された言語特徴が後でまた選択される可能性を高くする効果もあると仮説する。
About the author
George O’Neal is Associate Professor in the Common Literacy Center at Niigata University (Niigata, Japan). His research interests encompass applied phonetics and phonology, accommodation phenomena, statistics, and conversation analysis. His research has appeared in the Journal of Pragmatics, Asian Englishes, the Journal of Second Language Pronunciation, the Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics, and Pragmatics & Society. He received his PhD from Waseda University (Tokyo, Japan) in 2019.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the anonymous reviewer and the editor for a large number of thoughtful comments. I would also like to thank Leah Gilner for commenting on an earlier version of this article and Yumi Matsumoto for introducing me to Søren Eskildsen’s research, which became the catalyst for this study. This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP19K13220.
Appendix: transcription conventions
- word=
a latched utterance in which no discernable gap exists between the utterances
- wo:
lengthened sound
- (.)
a silence of less than one tenth of a second
- (0.2)
a timed silence (two tenths of a second)
- ((word))
a translation of the speech or a description of a non-linguistic event
- {word}
simultaneous speech
- °word°
word said more quietly than the surrounding words
- $word$
word said while giggling or laughing
- <word>
word that is said slower than the surrounding words
- >word<
word that is said faster than the surrounding words
- word-
sudden cut off of speech
- .hhh
breathing in
- hahaha
laughter
- word?
high rising intonation
- word,
slightly rising intonation
- word.
falling intonation
- word↑
high rising volume
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© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Communication strategies and co-construction of meaning in ELF: Drawing on “Multilingual Resource Pools”
- Systematicity in linguistic feature selection: Repair sequences and subsequent accommodation
- Becoming BELF users: the learning process of business users of English and its conceptualization
- The practicality of ELF-informed teaching: Attitudes and perceptions of Chinese business English teachers
- “It’s more fashionable to speak it badly”: indexicality and metasemiotic awareness among users of English from the Spanish-speaking world
- Commentary
- Doing justice to ELF in ELT: comments on Toh (2016)
- Book Reviews
- Sifakis, Nicos C. Natasha Tsantila: English as a Lingua Franca for EFL Contexts (New Perspectives on Language and Education)
- Martínez-Rubió, Xavier: Contextualising English as a Lingua Franca: From Data to Insights
- Turner, Joan: On Writtenness: The Cultural Politics of Academic Writing
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Communication strategies and co-construction of meaning in ELF: Drawing on “Multilingual Resource Pools”
- Systematicity in linguistic feature selection: Repair sequences and subsequent accommodation
- Becoming BELF users: the learning process of business users of English and its conceptualization
- The practicality of ELF-informed teaching: Attitudes and perceptions of Chinese business English teachers
- “It’s more fashionable to speak it badly”: indexicality and metasemiotic awareness among users of English from the Spanish-speaking world
- Commentary
- Doing justice to ELF in ELT: comments on Toh (2016)
- Book Reviews
- Sifakis, Nicos C. Natasha Tsantila: English as a Lingua Franca for EFL Contexts (New Perspectives on Language and Education)
- Martínez-Rubió, Xavier: Contextualising English as a Lingua Franca: From Data to Insights
- Turner, Joan: On Writtenness: The Cultural Politics of Academic Writing
