Abstract
In many languages, some turn formats are highly fixed and closely associated with specific interactional contexts, and thus function as formulas for particular actions. In Japanese, one of the recurring turn formats for referring to a problem found in the surrounding situation or other’s conduct is a clause ending with the contrastive particle kedo ‘but’. Based on close examination of examples from naturally-occurring conversations using the analytic framework of Interactional Linguistics, this article illustrates that the format with kedo is used to assign a deontic authority concerning an observed problem to the recipient and thereby leaving to the recipient a decision about how the problem should be dealt with and by whom. This shows a clear contrast with the turn format ending with yo, which is used to inform the recipients of what the speaker knows as a problem, and thereby to ask the hearers to register it.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 17KT0061, 20K13007, and 20H05630. I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful and constructive comments on earlier versions of this paper. I also appreciate Daniel Gallagher and David Dalsky for their editorial assistance. Hiroko Nishida helped me to access the string quartet data cited as Excerpt 2. Finally, much gratitude goes to the editing team of this Special Issue (Reijirou Shibasaki, Tomoyuki Tsuchiya, Ryoko Suzuki, and Tsuyoshi Ono) for their careful support in preparing and finalizing this paper.
Appendix: Transcription symbols
- ,
-
continuing intonation
- .
-
terminal intonation (falling)
- ?
-
rising intonation
- ¿
-
slightly rising intonation
- _
-
level intonation
- [ ]
-
overlapping speech
- ( )
-
uncertain hearing
- (.)
-
micro pause
- (2.1)
-
long pause and its length in seconds
- :
-
lengthening
- -
-
truncated speech
- =
-
latching (no gap between two lines)
- huh
-
laughter or laughing quality
- h
-
hearable exhalation
- (h)
-
laughter produced with a lexical item
- º
-
soft voice
- ___
-
loud voice
- < >
-
slowed down speech
- > <
-
accelerated speech
- $ $
-
smiley voice
- (( ))
-
situational or non-verbal information
- +
-
the moment when the corresponding figure captures
- *
-
the moment when the transcribed bodily behavior starts
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© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Editorial
- Editors’ Notes
- Guest Editor’s notes
- Articles
- Formulaicity and formulaic expressions in Japanese: an introduction
- Formulaicity and contexts: a multimodal analysis of the Japanese utterance-final tteyuu
- Sequential positions and interactional functions of negative epistemic constructions in Japanese conversation
- Kedo-ending turn format as a formula for a problem statement with a deontic implication
- The utterance-final tari site construction in interaction: a general extender as a play stance marker
- Verb repetition as a template for reactive tokens in Japanese everyday talk
- Formulaicity of fictional quotative ga itteta and its functions in Japanese social media posts
- Commas as a constructional resource: the use of a comma in a formulaic expression in Japanese social media texts
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Editorial
- Editors’ Notes
- Guest Editor’s notes
- Articles
- Formulaicity and formulaic expressions in Japanese: an introduction
- Formulaicity and contexts: a multimodal analysis of the Japanese utterance-final tteyuu
- Sequential positions and interactional functions of negative epistemic constructions in Japanese conversation
- Kedo-ending turn format as a formula for a problem statement with a deontic implication
- The utterance-final tari site construction in interaction: a general extender as a play stance marker
- Verb repetition as a template for reactive tokens in Japanese everyday talk
- Formulaicity of fictional quotative ga itteta and its functions in Japanese social media posts
- Commas as a constructional resource: the use of a comma in a formulaic expression in Japanese social media texts