Pragmatic Competence (Mouton Series in Pragmatics)

Pragmatic Competence

≥

Mouton Series in Pragmatics 5 Editor Istvan Kecskes

Editorial Board Reinhard Blutner Universiteit van Amsterdam The Netherlands N. J. Enfield Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics Nijmegen The Netherlands

Ferenc Kiefer Hungarian Academy of Sciences Budapest Hungary Lluı´s Payrato´ University of Barcelona Spain

Raymond W. Gibbs University of California Santa Cruz USA

Franc¸ois Recanati Institut Jean-Nicod Paris France

Laurence R. Horn Yale University USA

John Searle University of California Berkeley USA

Boaz Keysar University of Chicago USA

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York

Deirdre Wilson University College London Great Britain

Pragmatic Competence edited by

Naoko Taguchi

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York

Mouton de Gruyter (formerly Mouton, The Hague) is a Division of Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin.

앝 Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines 앪 of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pragmatic competence / ed. by Naoko Taguchi. p. cm. ⫺ (Mouton series in pragmatics ; 5) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-3-11-021854-1 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Japanese language ⫺ Acquisition. 2. Japanese language ⫺ Study and teaching ⫺ Foreign speakers. 3. Pragmatics. 4. Communicative competence. I. Taguchi, Naoko, 1967⫺ PL524.85.P73 2009 495.615⫺dc22 2009026720

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

ISBN 978-3-11-021854-1 ISSN 1864-6409 쑔 Copyright 2009 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin. All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover design: Martin Zech, Bremen. Printed in Germany.

Contents (Instead of a) Foreword Gabriele Kasper Pragmatic competence in Japanese as a second language: An introduction Naoko Taguchi

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From a! to zo: Japanese pragmatics and its contribution to JSL/JFL pedagogy Dina R. Yoshimi

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Indexing stance in interaction with the Japanese desu/masu and plain forms Kazuto Ishida

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Advanced learners’ honorific styles in emails and telephone calls Keiko Ikeda

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Subjectivity and pragmatic choice in L2 Japanese: Emulating and resisting pragmatic norms Noriko Ishihara and Elaine Tarone

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Requesting in Japanese: The effect of instruction on JFL learners’ pragmatic competence Yumiko Tateyama

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Influence of learning context on L2 pragmatic realization: A comparison between JSL and JFL learners’ compliment responses Takafumi Shimizu

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Refusals in Japanese telephone conversations Megumi Kawate-Mierzejewska Comprehending utterances in Japanese as a foreign language: Formulaicity and literality Akiko Hagiwara

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Comprehension of indirect opinions and refusals in L2 Japanese Naoko Taguchi

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Blended learning for Japanese reactive tokens: Effects of computer-led, instructor-led,and peer-based instruction Takafumi Utashiro and Goh Kawai

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Development of the use of Japanese sentence-final particles through email correspondence Tomomi Kakegawa

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Commentary: The social turn in second language acquisition and Japanese pragmatics research: Reflection on ideologies, methodologies and instructional implications Junko Mori Index

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Contributors to this volume Akiko Hagiwara is currently teaching English to life science majors at Tokyo University of Pharmacy and Life Sciences. She has also taught Japanese in China as well as in Hawaii. Her interests range from pragmatics to corpus linguistics. Keiko Ikeda obtained her Ph.D. in Japanese linguistics from University of Hawai’i at Mānoa in 2007. Her main research areas are sociolinguistics and discourse studies focusing on various dimensions of contemporary Japan. She is currently an Associate Professor at Nagoya University. Kazutoh Ishida is a doctoral student in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. His research interests are in discourse analysis and pedagogy with a focus on pragmatics. His publications include an article in the Journal of Pragmatics and a chapter in Pragmatics in Language Learning, Theory, and Practice. Noriko Ishihara received her Ph. D. in Curriculum and Instruction, Second Languages/Cultures Education from the University of Minnesota, and is currently Associate Professor at Hosei University, Japan. She has taught ESL/EFL and teacher preparation courses in TESOL and instructional pragmatics. Her research interests include pragmatics and identity in language education, pragmatics-focused instruction/assessment, and professional language teacher development. Tomomi Kakegawa currently teaches Japanese at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. She received a Ph. D. in Linguistics from Michigan State University, an MA in Comparative Literature from Pennsylvania State University, and a BA in Teaching Japanese as a Foreign Language from the International Christian University in Tokyo, Japan. Her research interests include second language acquisition, Japanese pedagogy, and syntax of noun phrases. Gabriele Kasper is Professor of Second Language Studies at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. Among her publications are Talk-inInteraction: Multilingual Perspectives (Nguyen and Kasper, 2009), Misunderstanding in Social Life (House, Kasper, and Ross, 2003), Pragmatic Development in a Second Language (Kasper and Rose, 2002),

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and Pragmatics in Language Teaching (Rose and Kasper, 2001). Her past work centered on sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic, and methodological aspects of interlanguage pragmatics. Currently her research focuses on applying conversation analysis to the study of second language interaction and learning and on qualitative research in second language studies. Goh Kawai is an associate professor at Hokkaido University, Research Faculty of Media and Communication. He holds a PhD in information and communication engineering from the University of Tokyo. He integrates language processing technology, linguistics, and pedagogy for the purpose of nonnative language learning (e.g., automated pronunciation learning, computer-mediated communication tools for instructor-led learning, and peer-based asynchronous writing activities). His website is http://www.kawai.com/goh/. Megumi Kawate-Mierzejewska (Ed.D) currently teaches cross-cultural pragmatics and other subjects at Temple University Japan Campus. She is one of the founders of Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT) pragmatics Special Interest Group (SIG) and coordinator of the SIG (2004.11-2009.11). She has published many articles. Her research interests include interlanguage and cross-cultural pragmatics, neurolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and language testing. Junko Mori is Professor of Japanese Language and Linguistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research interests center on the conversation analytic study of talk-in-interaction involving first and second language speakers of Japanese. Her work has appeared in journals such as Applied Linguistics, Journal of Pragmatics, Modern Language Journal, Pragmatics, Research on Language and Social Interaction as well as a number of edited volumes. Takafumi Shimizu (Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics, University of London) is an associate professor in the Faculty of Liberal Arts and the Graduate School of Foreign Studies at Sophia University, Tokyo. His research interests include cross-cultural and interlanguage pragmatics, second language acquisition, and language pedagogy from the viewpoint of teaching pragmatic and discourse aspects of language.

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Elaine Tarone is Distinguished Teaching Professor in Second language Studies, and Director of CARLA (Center for Advanced Research in Language Acquisition) in the Office of International Programs at the University of Minnesota. Her research interests include variation theory in second language acquisition (SLA), the impact of literacy on SLA, and language teacher education. Yumiko Tateyama is an instructor at the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa where she received her Ph.D. Her research interests include interlanguage pragmatics, second language learning and teaching, conversation analysis, and translation and interpretation. She has published studies on the development of JFL learners’ pragmatic competence. Naoko Taguchi is Assistant Professor of Japanese and Second Language Acquisition at Carnegie Mellon University. Being a Fulbright recipient, she completed her Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics at Northern Arizona University. Her research interests include interlanguage pragmatics, second language fluency, and classroom-based research. Takafumi Utashiro is a PhD candidate in Department of Human System Science, Graduate School of Decision Science and Technology at Tokyo Institute of Technology. He taught Japanese in Taiwan. His research interests include computer-assisted language learning, second-language learning and teaching, pragmatics of language learning and teaching specially in JFL/JSL contexts. Dina Rudolph Yoshimi is Associate Professor of Japanese at the University of Hawai’i- Mānoa. A commitment to increasing cross-cultural communication between the United States and Asia guides her research on professor-student interaction at the graduate level in the U.S. and Japan, and her work on developing innovative approaches to classroom foreign language instruction of everyday conversational interaction and pragmatic awareness.

Acknowledgements A long-term project like this makes us appreciate the help we receive from a large number of people without whose kindness, dedication, and support it would be impossible to complete our work. First and foremost, I would like to thank Istvan Kecskes, the editor of the Mouton Series in Pragmatics, and the reviewers commissioned by Mouton de Gruyter, for their thorough feedback and suggestions, which were invaluable in producing this book. I would also like to thank all of the contributors to this volume for their insightful work, cooperation, and their commitment as we worked our way through revisions during internal and external reviews. Special thanks go to Dina Yoshimi and Junko Mori whose sage advice at the initial phase helped me clarify the vision of the volume, and to Gabrielle Kasper for her detailed comments on the book proposal. The idea for this book arose when I was participating in the 17th international conference on Pragmatics and Language Learning in 2007. I thank the organizing committee at University of Hawaii at Manoa for the inspiration. Finally, I wish to express my sincere gratitude to the reviewers of individual manuscripts: Mariana Achugar, Sono Takano Hynes, Yasufumi Iwasaki, Tadayoshi Kaya, Shuai Li, Shoichi Matsumura, Masahiro Takimoto, Camilla Vasquez, Heidi Vellenga, Ruth Wyle, and Dina Yoshimi. I would also like to thank Yan Liu for her assistance with proof-editing. I feel privileged to be associated with these many people whose efforts culminate in the publication of this volume, and I am deeply indebted to all. Naoko Taguchi April 1, 2009 Pittsburgh

(Instead of a) Foreword Gabriele Kasper In the history of interlanguage pragmatics (ILP), research on Japanese has played a prominent role. Following the lead of English as the most commonly studied target language in ILP, Japanese is next in line, and not only because of the sheer volume of the L2 Japanese literature. From its beginnings in the early 1990s, J-ILP has taken a broader and more inclusive view of its objects of interest than the wider domain of ILP. The field at large derived its agenda predominantly from speech act theory and politeness theory, and consequently has been mostly interested in describing how L2 speakers understand, produce, and acquire speech acts in another language. By contrast, J-ILP put special emphasis on the indexical resources that are critical to interaction in Japanese yet difficult to learn and teach. Two categories of indexicals that have attracted sustained attention are interactional particles and honorific speech styles. Aside from its intrinsic value, the research on these objects is instructive from a historical perspective because it generated several “firsts” in ILP. Sawyer’s (1992) study on JSL learners’ use of the interactional particle ne inaugurated a lively research tradition that has since examined how Japanese L2 speakers use the marker, and change their use of it over time, inside and outside of instructional settings. ILP classroom research explores how learners can be helped to understand and produce ne and other interactional particles effectively through instructional intervention. Sawyer’s ne study was also one of the first to investigate L2 pragmatic development longitudinally, preceded only by Schmidt’s seminal research (Schmidt 1983; Schmidt and Frota 1986). In a series of studies, Ohta (1999, 2001a, b) showed how students’ use of ne-marked listener responses evolved in peer interaction over time. These studies advanced our understanding of L2 pragmatic development substantially by showing that despite much individual variation, learners progress through discernible phases as they become progressively interactionally competent in providing third-turn responses. In a study on pragmatic transfer, one of the early key topics in ILP, Yoshimi (1999) explained the learner’s use of ne in conversation with an L1 Japanese speaking peer from the perspective of the learner’s socialization into the discursive practices of L1 English speakers. Most recently, M. Ishida traced the development of ne-marked assessments in microgenetic perspective, over the course of a short peer activity (2006),

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and ontogenetically in diverse contexts over an observation period of several months (2009). Complementing acquisitional records of ne-marked assessments “in the wild” are planned pedagogical interventions for the instructed learning of interactional markers over extended periods of time. Yoshimi (2001) found that after explicit teaching of how to use the interactional markers n desu, n desu kedo and n desu ne in extended conversational tellings, students showed distinct improvement in the overall organization of the activity through these markers, whereas the internal structuring of the tellings remained less successful. Similarly, Kakegawa (this volume) shows that in email exchanges between JFL students and their L1 Japanese keypals, the students use the interactional particles ne, no, yo, and yone more frequently and more accurately after two explicit interventions. Beyond reassuring language educators that interactional markers are teachable and offering models for effective pedagogical action, the studies give us more nuanced insights into which of these objects and their intricate usages are learned faster and more successfully, and where learners continue to struggle despite carefully designed intervention. As all good research, these interventional studies open up new trajectories for more subtle and complex questions to be examined in the work ahead. When Ken Rose and I prepared our edited volume on Pragmatics in Language Teaching (2001), one reviewer complained that our proposal included too many chapters on Japanese. Indeed, of eight chapters on classroom research, four were on JFL (Cook 2001; Ohta 2001; Tateyama 2001; Yoshimi, 2001). We assured the publisher that we had tried very hard to identify data-based studies on instruction in the pragmatics of other target languages, but to no avail. At the end of the last millennium, J-ILP was the Mount Fuji in the landscape of ILP classroom research. But J-ILP also pioneered research on L2 pragmatic development in the environment that is often seen as a counterpart to the language classroom, the in-country sojourn during study abroad. Hashimoto (1993) and Marriott (1993, 1995) found that after study abroad in Japan, Australian high-school students strongly increased their use of plain style over desu/masu style, extending it from interactions with peers to teachers and older adults. Learners’ shift away from L2 sociolinguistic norms towards an overall more informal style –a development not limited to Japanese (Regan 1995)–called into question the popular belief that study abroad is a panacea for the shortcomings of foreign language instruction. As subsequent studies highlighted, although living and studying in-country – by design if not always in practice–offers learners opportunities to participate in a wide range of socially consequential activities, their participation may be constrained not only by

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limited L2 resources but also by identity-implicative pragmatic ideologies. Poststructuralist identity theories, conceptualizing identity as relational, mobile, and discursively co-constructed in social practices, afforded new perspectives on the “indexical order” (Silverstein 2003) generated through the selection and shift of speech styles. Siegal’s (1995, 1996) ethnographic study on the development of sociolinguistic competencies during study abroad in Japan drew attention to the socio-pragmatic ambivalences that female L2 speakers of Japanese faced in ceremonial and asymmetrical institutional speech activities. For these students, the normative requirements for humble and honorific styles were incompatible with their egalitarian ideologies. Two critical outcomes from Siegal’s studies have since become salient topics in L2 pragmatic and discourse socialization research, namely that learners may contest, resist, and on occasion transform L2 pragmatic practices and ideologies, and that their own pragmatic ideologies and discursive practices may undergo revision over time. Together with research on the indexicalities of speech style in L1 socialization (e.g., Cook 1996, 1997), these studies prefigure Cook’s (2008) recent investigation on shifts between plain and desu/masu style as practices to index “modes of self” during dinner table conversations among home-staying students and their host families (Cook 2008). The complex interrelation of indexical orders, ideologies, and identities is a key topic in discursively grounded research on intercultural pragmatics and communication. In this arena, too, studies on interactions between speakers of Japanese as a first and second language initiated new research directions. In two seminal studies, Nishizaka (1995, 1999) examined a radio talk show with non-Japanese students in Japan from the ethnomethodological traditions of conversation analysis (CA) and membership categorization analysis (MCA). Together with recent versions of interactional sociolinguistics and ethnographic microanalysis, these analytical perspectives fuel a research program on “intercultural communication” in which participants’ membership in different cultures is seen as an occasioned interactional accomplishment rather than as a permanent “trait”, a stable identity category pre-existing its discursive co-production. Through their talk, participants assemble such paired contrast categories as nihonjingaijin, each reflexively associated with normatively expected and mutually exclusive predicates. Several studies show how participants in “intercultural” interaction discursively assign, assume, resist, deflect, and subvert membership in cultural and other categories (cf. Cook 2006; Fukuda 2006; Iino 1999, 2006; Mori 2003; Nishizaka 1995, 1999; Suzuki

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2009, Zimmerman 2007). This research urges us to question entrenched beliefs about “culture” and what exactly might be meant by “intercultural”. As such, it has profound implications for JSL/JFL curricula, teaching practices, and training programs for international cooperation and exchange. I have focused this brief discussion of J-ILP’s contribution to ILP on socio-discursive research traditions because it is here, in my reading of the literature, that J-ILP has made its most visible mark. But J-ILP has advanced ILP research on classic SLA themes from psycholinguistic perspectives as well, including pragmatic comprehension, the veteran of ILP topics (Taguchi 2008c), pragmatic transfer (Ikoma and Shimura 1994; Saito and Beecken 1997), negotiation of meaning (McMeekin 2006), and the relative effectiveness of explicit and implicit teaching (Tateyama 2001; Tateyama et al. 1997). While these studies have contributed to bringing ILP research into the SLA mainstream, they also highlight the benefits of incorporating psycholinguistic studies of L2 pragmatic use, learning, and teaching for SLA. Taguchi’s extensive experimental research program on L2 speech act comprehension and production (2002, 2005, 2007a, b, 2008a, b, c) demonstrates in particular the need to systematically anchor tasks for language learning and testing in theories of cognitive processing and pragmatic theory and research. Naoko Taguchi’s volume offers a panoramic view of the diverse topics that emerged in two decades of Japanese interlanguage pragmatics: interactional particles, honorific speech styles, understanding and producing speech acts; identities and ideologies; resisting and adapting L2 pragmatic norms; pragmatic development over time, and the effect of instruction and learning context on learning processes and outcomes. The editor’s introduction effectively locates the volume in the context of interlanguage pragmatics research and previews the following chapters. Dina Yoshimi and Junko Mori frame the reports on empirical studies in the contexts of two sets of relationships. Yoshimi lays out the connections between Japanese pragmatics and L2 Japanese pedagogy in historical perspective, critically scrutinizing the changing ways in which scholarship on the pragmatics of Japanese has informed pedagogical vision and practice. Mori locates J-ILP in current debates reconsidering from socially grounded perspectives what it means to be a second language speaker and learner, and the implications of socio-discursive approaches for researching and teaching the pragmatics of Japanese. Watching from the sidelines how J-ILP developed during the past twenty years has been one of the intellectual pleasures of my academic life.

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This volume documents the state-of-the-art in the field and advances an enriched agenda for J-ILP as it enters its third decade. To the editor and contributors, congratulations to an impressive accomplishment, and to JILP, korekara mo gambatte kudasai.

References Cook, Haruko 1996 Japanese language socialization: Indexing the modes of self. Discourse Processes 22: 171-197. 1997 The role of the Japanese masu form in caregiver-child conversation. Journal of Pragmatics 28: 695-718. 1999 Situational meanings of Japanese social deixis: The mixed use of the masu and plain forms. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 8: 87-110. 2001 Why can’t learners of JFL distinguish polite from impolite speech styles? In: Kenneth R. Rose and Gabriele Kasper (eds.), Pragmatics in Language Teaching, 80-102. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2006 Joint construction of folk beliefs by JFL learners and Japanese host families. In: Margaret A. DuFon and Eton Churchill (eds.), Language Learners in Study Abroad Contexts, 120-150. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. 2008 Socializing Identities Through Speech Style. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Fukuda, Chie 2006 Resistance against being formulated as cultural other: The case of a Chinese student in Japan. Pragmatics 16: 429-456. Hashimoto, Hiroko 1993 Language acquisition of an exchange student within the homestay environment. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 4: 209-224. Iino, Masakazu 1999 Language use and identity in contact situations. In: Lawrence F. Bouton (ed.), Pragmatics and Language Learning Monograph Series, Vol. 9, 129-162. Urbana, IL.: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Division of English as an International Language.

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Norms of interaction in a Japanese homestay setting: Toward two-way flow of linguistic and cultural resources. In: Margaret A. DuFon and Eton Churchill (eds.), Language Learners in Study Abroad Contexts, 151-173. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Ikoma, Tomoko and Akihiko Shimura 1993 Pragmatic transfer in the speech act of refusals in Japanese as a second language. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 5: 105-129. Ishida, Midori 2006 Interactional competence and the use of modal expressions in decision-making activities: CA for understanding microgenesis of pragmatic competence. In: Kathleen BardoviHarlig, César Félix-Brasdefer, and Alwiya S. Omar (eds.), Pragmatics and Language Learning Volume 11, 55-79. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i at Manoa, National Foreign Language Resource Center. 2009 Development of interactional competence: Changes in the use of ne in L2 Japanese during study abroad. In: Hanh thi Nguyen and Gabriele Kasper (eds.), Talk-in-interaction: Multilingual Perspectives, 351-385. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i at Manoa, National Foreign Language Resource Center. Marriott, Helen 1993 Acquiring sociolinguistic competence: Australian secondary students in Japan. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 4: 167-192. 1995 The acquisition of politeness patterns by exchange students in Japan. In: Margaret A. DuFon and Eton Churchill (eds.), Second Language Acquisition in a Study Abroad Context, 197224. Amsterdam: Benjamins. McMeekin, Abby 2006 Negotiation in a Japanese study abroad setting. In: Margaret A. DuFon and Eton Churchill (eds.), Language Learners in Study Abroad Contexts, 31-58. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Mori, Junko 2003 The construction of interculturality: A study of initial encounters between Japanese and American students. Research on Language and Social Interaction 36: 143-184. Nishizaka, Aug 1995 The interactive constitution of interculturality: How to be a Japanese with words. Human Studies 18: 301-326.

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Doing interpreting within interaction: The interactive accomplishments of a “Henna Gaijin” or “Strange Foreigner.” Human Studies 22: 235-251. Ohta, Amy Snyder 1999 Interactional routines and the socialization of interactional style in adult learners of Japanese. Journal of Pragmatics 31(11): 1493–1512. 2001a A longitudinal study of the development of expression of alignment in Japanese as a foreign language. In: Kenneth R. Rose and Gabriele Kasper (eds.), Pragmatics in Language Teaching, 103-120. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2001b Second Language Acquisition Processes in the Classroom: Learning Japanese. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Regan, Vera 1995 The acquisition of sociolinguistic native speech norms: Effects of a year abroad on second language learners of French. In: Barbara F. Freed (ed.), Second Language Acquisition in a Study Abroad Context, 245-267. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Saito, Hidetoshi and Masako Beecken 1997 An approach to instruction of pragmatic aspects: Implications of pragmatic transfer by American learners of Japanese. The Modern Language Journal 81: 363-377. Sawyer, Mark 1992 The development of pragmatics in Japanese as a second language: The sentence-final particle ne. In: Gabriele Kasper (ed.), Pragmatics of Japanese as Native and Target Language, 83-125. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i at Manoa, Second Language Teaching and Curriculum Center. Schmidt, Richard 1983 Interaction, acculturation, and the acquisition of communicative competence: A case study of one adult. In: Nessa Wolfson and Elliot Judd (eds.), Sociolinguistics and Language Acquisition, 137-174. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Schmidt, Richard and Sylvia Nagem Frota 1986 Developing basic conversational ability in a second language: A case study of an adult learner of Portuguese. In: Richard Day (ed.), Talking to Learn: Conversation in Second Language Acquisition, 237-326. New York: Newbury House.

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Siegal, Meryl 1995 Individual differences and study abroad: Women learning Japanese in Japan. In: Barbara F. Freed (ed.), Second Language Acquisition in a Study Abroad Context, 225-244. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 1996 The role of learner subjectivity in second language sociolinguistic competency: Western women learning Japanese. Applied Linguistics 17: 356-382. Silverstein, Michael 2003 Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language and Communication 23 (3-4): 193-229. Suzuki, Asuka 2009 When “gaijin” matters: Theory-building in Japanese multiparty conversation. In: Hanh thi Nguyen and Gabriele Kasper (eds.), Talk-in-interaction: Multilingual Perspectives, 89-109. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i, National Foreign Language Resource Center. Taguchi, Naoko 2002 An application of relevance theory to the analysis of L2 interpretation processes: The comprehension of indirect replies. International Review of Applied Linguistics 40: 151176. 2005 Comprehending implied meaning in English as a second language. Modern Language Journal 89: 543-562. 2007a Development of speed and accuracy in pragmatic comprehension of English as a foreign language. TESOL Quarterly 41: 313-338. 2007b Task difficulty in oral speech act production. Applied Linguistics 28: 113-135. 2008a Cognition, language contact, and development of pragmatic comprehension in a study-abroad context. Language Learning 58: 33-71. 2008b Pragmatic comprehension in Japanese as a foreign language. The Modern Language Journal 92: 558-576. 2008c The role of learning environment in the development of pragmatic comprehension: A comparison of gains between EFL and ESL learners. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 30: 423-452. Tateyama, Yumiko 2001 Explicit and implicit teaching of pragmatic routines: Japanese sumimasen. In: Kenneth R. Rose and Gabriele Kasper (eds.), Pragmatics in Language Teaching, 200-222. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Tateyama, Yumiko, Gabriele Kasper, Lara P. Mui, Hui-Mian Tay and Ong-on Thananart 1997 Explicit and implicit teaching of pragmatic routines. In: Lawrence F. Bouton (ed.), Pragmatics and Language Learning Monograph Series Vol. 8, 163-177. UrbanaChampaign, IL: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Yoshimi, Dina R. 1999 L1 language socialization as a variable in the use of ne by L2 learners of Japanese. Journal of Pragmatics 31(11): 15131525. 2001 Explicit instruction and JFL learner’s use of interactional discourse markers. In: Kenneth R. Rose and Gabriele Kasper (eds.), Pragmatics in Language Teaching, 223-244. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zimmerman, Erica 2007 Constructing Korean and Japanese interculturality in talk: Ethnic membership categorization among users of Japanese. Pragmatics 17: 71-94.

Pragmatic competence in Japanese as a second language: An introduction Naoko Taguchi 1. Introduction Pragmatic competence, broadly defined as the ability to use language appropriately in a social context, has become an object of inquiry in a wide range of disciplines including linguistics, applied linguistics, anthropology, sociology, psychology, communication research, and cross-cultural studies. In the disciplines of applied linguistics and second language acquisition (SLA), the study of pragmatic competence has been driven by several fundamental questions. Those questions include: What does it mean to become pragmatically competent in a second language (L2)? How can we examine pragmatic competence to make inferences of its development among L2 learners? In what ways do research findings inform teaching and assessment of pragmatic competence? These questions suggest that construct definition, empirical methods, and application of research findings to practice are at the centers of pragmatics research in SLA. This book explores these key issues in Japanese as a second language. Ten empirical studies in collection target select pragmatic features of Japanese and investigate the learners’ use of them as an indicator of their pragmatic competence. The target pragmatic features are wide-ranging, among them honorifics, speech style, reactive tokens, sentence-final particles, speech acts of various types, formulaic utterances, and indirect expressions. Each study explicitly prompts the connection between pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics in the Japanese language. Pragmalinguistics refers to the linguistic resources available to perform pragmatic functions, while sociopragmatics refers to the appropriateness of the linguistic resources in a given cultural context (Leech 1983; Thomas 1983). Being pragmatically competent requires both types of knowledge, as well as processing skills that mobilize the knowledge in real time communication. Learners need to have a range of linguistic forms (e.g., grammar and lexis) at their disposal to perform language functions (e.g., greeting). At the same time, they need to understand sociocultural norms and rules that govern the usage of these forms (e.g., what to say to greet

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whom). By documenting the understanding and use of them among learners of Japanese spanning multiple levels and time durations, this book offers insight about the nature and development of pragmatic competence in L2 Japanese, as well as implications for the learning and teaching of Japanese pragmatics. This book has several broader purposes. First, it responds to the intense interest that pragmatic competence has accumulated in the field, corresponding with the recent advancement of internationalization and multiculturalism. The 21st century has brought a swift advance of globalization in countless areas, among them technology, computer science, and business. Responding to such changes, the development of L2 proficiency that could enhance mobility across the international community has been a major goal in second language education. Such proficiency inevitably involves a mastery of sociocultural usage of the language in its communicative context. Because language is a tool to perform social functions and develop interpersonal relationships, pragmatic competence – the ability to convey and interpret meaning appropriately in a social situation – is an important skill to develop in order to become a competent speaker in the international community. The importance of pragmatic competence has been articulated both in theory and practice. On theoretical grounds, in the 1980s and 1990s, drawing on Hymes’ (1972) notion of communicative competence, theoretical models of L2 communicative competence emerged in the field (Bachman 1990; Bachman and Palmer 1996; Canale and Swain 1980). More recently, interactional competence (Young and He 1998; Young 2000) and “symbolic competence” (Kramsch and Whiteside 2008), which focus on the dialogic aspect of communication, have been proposed as an alternative notion to the models of communicative competence. These theoretical models have advanced the field by situating pragmatic and sociolinguistic competence as a distinct, indispensable component within L2 proficiency. At the same time, the models have served as a guiding framework for the empirical investigation of said competence. Ability to perform language functions and knowledge of socially appropriate language use had to be operationalized in some way as a measurable construct, and specific tasks, instruments, and analytical methods were explored to elicit and examine this construct. A bulk of L2 pragmatics research produced in the last few decades exemplifies diverse methodological options, ranging from ethnographic studies that involve

Introduction

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observation of naturalistic interaction to descriptive-quantitative studies that use construct-eliciting instruments. Correspondingly, these models of communicative competence have been applied to practice in second language pedagogy and assessment. Communicative Language Teaching, the Notional-Functional approach, and task-based instruction all include pragmatic and sociocultural aspects as important objectives of instruction (see Richards and Rodgers 2001 for review). Standardized assessment measures such as ACTFL (American Council of Teachers of Foreign Languages, 1999), the Common European Framework (Council of Europe 2001), and the Canadian Language Benchmarks (Pawlikowska-Smith 2002) have also designated pragmatic competence as the target construct of measurement. These trends have fortified the claim that pragmatic competence should be analyzed, taught, and assessed in the course of L2 development. In response to these theoretical, empirical, and practical interests, a number of books and special issues on second language pragmatics have been published over the last few decades. Some are research monographs that document pragmatic performance of particular individuals and groups (Barron 2002; Gass and Neu 1996). Others are edited volumes with specific themes, including: cross-cultural pragmatics (Blum-Kulka, House, and Kasper 1989; Gass and Houck 1999; Kasper and Blum-Kulka 1993; Spencer-Oatey 2000), pragmatic development (Barron and Warga 2007; Kasper and Rose 2002), pragmatics in instructional contexts (BardoviHarlig and Mahan-Taylor 2003; Ishihara and Cohen 2008; LoCastro 2003; Martínez Flor, et al. 2003; Rose and Kasper 2001; Yoshimi and Wang 2007), pragmatic testing, (Hudson, Detmer, and Brown 1994; Röver 2005; Trosborg 1995; Yamashita 1996), and pragmatics in institutional discourse (Bardovi-Harlig and Hartford 2005). Only a few volumes have focused on pragmatics in an L2 other than English (Kasper 1992, 1995; MárquezReiter and Placencia 2004), and among them, Kasper (1992) is the only volume that has addressed pragmatics in L2 Japanese. Hence, there is a need for an updated volume that compiles diverse empirical findings among learners of Japanese, and this book intends to satisfy that need. This book on Japanese pragmatics not only adds to the depth and scope of pragmatics research, but also aims to facilitate the dialogue between the universality and language-specific aspects of pragmatics. The universality of pragmatics has been discussed widely across disciplines. In the field of philosophy, early pragmatics theories–Speech Act Theory (Austin 1962), Seale’s (1969) notion of direct and indirect speech acts, theories of

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politeness (Brown and Levinson 1987; Lakoff 1973; Leech 1983), Grice’s (1975) Cooperative Principles and Sperber and Wilson’s (1995) Relevance Theory – all served as a common framework for examining pragmatic phenomena across languages. Although the universality of these theories is not free from criticisms, because they have been applied to diverse language communities, there is some commonality in the ways that people conceptualize pragmatics. In the fields of developmental psychology, communication pathology, and language acquisition, on the other hand, it is uniformly understood that pragmatic competence is part of human social cognition and develops naturally as linguistic and cognitive abilities mature. Strong evidence comes from neuroscience research that revealed that the right hemisphere is responsible for pragmatic functions, specifically those that involve inferential processing based on discoursal and contextual information (e.g., understanding irony, humor, and metaphors). Research shows that damage to the right hemisphere results in communication disorders and social handicaps (Paradis 1998). Research in linguistic anthropology and language socialization, on the other hand, views acquisition of pragmatic competence as part of the socialization process in which children are enculturated into society and acquire specific manners of communication that reflect beliefs and values in the given culture (Schieffelin and Ochs 1986). These literatures together suggest that pragmatic competence involves both innate and learned capacities, and develops naturally as one gains a full participation and membership in a society. Drawing on Ochs’s (1996) notion of universal cultural principles, Kasper and Rose (2002) provided a list of universal pragmatic principles that comprise implicit knowledge and abilities people use to encode a variety of linguistic and social conventions. Those principles include rituals of conversation such as turn-taking and repair (Goffman 1976), inferencing heuristics and presuppositions (Grice 1975; Holtgraves 2008), routine formulae in recurrent communicative situations (Kecskes 2003; Schmitt 2004), and discursive construction of social identity (Bakhtin 1986). Such knowledge and skills are shared cross-culturally and determine the resources that competent adult speakers draw on while communicating. These universal principles, in turn, serve as a framework applied to examine cross-linguistic variation of pragmatic practice, because linguistic and non-linguistic means to practice those principles, as well as norms and conventions behind the practice, are often found language-specific. Wierzbicka (1991, 1994) argued that characteristics of speaking in a given

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community are the manifestation of a tacit system of cultural rules that reflect a society’s way of speaking. For instance, in North America the speech act of apology presupposes a condition – “I did something bad” – and is uttered when one is at fault. Unlike in North America, in Japan, apology presupposes a condition – “I feel something bad”– and is uttered to show sympathy or reconciliation even when one is not at fault (Wierzbicka 1994). Hence, beyond the linguistic level, there are qualitative differences between Japanese and English apology owing to divergent cultural norms. Consequently, these differences lead to variation in the behavior of apology – when to apologize for what purposes. This is just one example that variation in the way of communication is a portrayal of culture-specific attitudes, assumptions, and norms. For second language learners, it is this considerable cross-linguistic variation in encoding and decoding pragmatic functions that makes pragmatic competence difficult to acquire. Cross-linguistic variation in pragmatic practice has been documented extensively over the last few decades in the areas of contrastive pragmatics, cross-cultural communication, and interlanguage pragmatics (e.g., Blum-Kulka, House, and Kasper 1989; Boxer 2002; Gudykunst and Kim 2004). A myriad of empirical data was collected on the linguistic and non-linguistic forms to realize pragmatic acts, and variation across languages were found in their realization patterns, often intertwined with norms and values in the given culture. These empirical data reiterate that acquisition of pragmatic competence entails gaining knowledge of language-specific linguistic and non-linguistic behaviors, and sociocultural norms and conventions behind the behaviors. This book, dedicated to Japanese pragmatics, contributes to the discussion of pragmatics-specific-to-languages. It presents a range of pragmatic devices involved in the structure and discourse of Japanese language, for instance, how people convey appropriate levels of politeness in Japanese, or what linguistic resources they use to communicate meaning indirectly. The ten empirical papers in this collection describe what Japanese pragmatics entails, linguistically and culturally, and how it could be applied to the analysis of L2 pragmatic competence. To this end, this book will serve scholars who are interested in research in interlanguage pragmatics and second language acquisition specific to languages. With equal emphasis, we hope that this book serves as a resource for teachers, program coordinators, and supervisors involved in Japanese language education, as well as learners of Japanese who wish to gain

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advanced level proficiency. Pragmatic competence has become a keen interest among practitioners involved in the teaching of Japanese, corresponding to a steady increase in the population of Japanese learners around the world and widespread Japanese language institutions serving for the population. In the 1980s, Japanese language became one of the top choices of foreign language education, largely due to Japan’s dramatic economic development and contributions to the international community. As of 2006, Japanese language education is underway in 133 countries other than Japan, and approximately 2.98 million students study Japanese (The Japan Foundation 2008). Compared to the 1979 data, the number of Japanese language institutions increased by 12 times, the number of teachers by 11 times, and the number of students by 23 times. The most notable growth is found in higher education and non-academic institutions. Currently 109 countries offer Japanese language courses as major/minor or electives in universities and colleges. Over the last three years, the number of institutions increased by about 30%, and the number of students and teachers increased by 50%. Non-academic institutions showed even greater increases. The popularity of Japanese language education is largely attributed to political and economic reasons (The Japan Foundation 2008). For instance, in Indonesia, the number of Japanese language students grew 3.2 times over the last three years because nation-wide educational reforms allowed students to choose Japanese as an elective subject in secondary schools. India, on the other hand, marked the second highest growth rate in the number of Japanese language students because of its economic boom and the expansion of Japanese corporations. The recent sharp increase in the number of students in Southeast Asia (e.g., Thailand, Philippines, and Viet Nam) also reflects their need and desire to strengthen economic ties with Japan. Similarly, in China, learning Japanese is advantageous in job placement due to the rapid expansion of Japanese corporations in the country. Students study Japanese for university entrance exams or qualification exams for the purpose of future employment or study abroad in Japan. The popularity of the Japanese language, however, is not limited to utility-based, instrumental factors. Interest in Japanese culture and communication has also contributed to the enthusiasm toward studying Japanese. According to the Japan Foundation (2008), the top three reasons for Japanese study were: to learn about Japanese culture, to be able to communicate using Japanese, and interest in the Japanese language itself.

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At the levels of primary and secondary education, students expressed genuine interest in communicating with Japanese people, developing crosscultural understanding, and engaging in exchange activities with Japan. Recent expansion of Japanese pop culture and cultural borrowing phenomena (e.g., anime, manga, video games, J-pop music, Japanese cuisine) have no doubt contributed to the integrated motivation toward the study of Japanese found among youth. Long-term recognition of Japanese language and culture in the international community, accompanied by the growing population of Japanese language learners in the global society, suggests that this scholarly volume on Japanese pragmatics is a timely addition to the field. We hope that this volume encourages researchers of Japanese to explore central characteristics of the construct of Japanese pragmatic competence, both from language-universal and Japanese-specific standpoints, and to link those to principled methods through which the nature and development of pragmatic competence can be examined. We also hope that the empirical findings presented in this volume are of use for practitioners, encouraging them to explore creative ways to deal with pragmatic issues in their classrooms. Finally, we hope that this volume invites researchers and teachers in other language groups to imagine the uniqueness and commonalities of pragmatic practice inherent to individual languages. An exploration of pragmatic competence within and across language communities will promote a more comprehensive understanding of communicative abilities, and in turn help advance the practice of SLA research and second language education.

2. Scope and content of this book This book has three sections. The first section offers a general overview and historical sketch of the study of Japanese pragmatics and its influence on Japanese pedagogy and curriculum. The overview chapter is followed by ten empirical findings, each dealing with phenomena that are significant in Japanese pragmatics. The ten studies collectively develop a framework of pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics in Japanese, and reveal challenges and opportunities that have to be considered for learners of Japanese. The last section presents a critical reflection on the empirical papers and prompts a discussion of the practice of Japanese pragmatics research. Below I will introduce each contribution in the collection, highlighting initial interconnections and differences.

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In Chapter 2, Dina Yoshimi presents an overview of the literature on Japanese pragmatics. The goal of this survey chapter is two-fold: (1) to highlight the cultural, theoretical, and methodological factors that have been central in shaping the current field of Japanese pragmatics, and (2) to illustrate how Japanese language pedagogy and curriculum development has come to be increasingly ordered by an empirically-grounded understanding of those communicative practices and interactional routines that organize the pragmatics of social interaction in Japanese. Yoshimi’s chapter serves as an introduction to the ten chapters that offer empirical investigations of pragmatic competence among learners of Japanese and present implications of the research findings for pragmatic teaching. The next ten chapters offer empirical investigations of pragmatic competence among learners of Japanese. Chapters 3 through 5 focus on traditional norms of politeness and stance in Japanese as indexed by honorifics and speech styles, and learners’ intentions of emulating or resisting those target pragmatic norms. In Chapter 3, Kazutoh Ishida reports on a longitudinal development of Japanese pragmatic markers of stance, with an instructional component added to the longitudinal design. He investigated the development of six beginner-level learners’ use of Japanese desu/masu and the plain forms that index one’s affective stance. The participants received awareness-raising sessions of stance markers and conversation sessions with Japanese native speakers over the period of two semesters. Analysis of interactions between learners and native speakers showed that some learners expanded the ways in which they expressed their stances with the two forms. Analysis of the reflection sheets, which learners filled out after each conversation session, revealed increased awareness of the native speakers’ use of the forms and contextual features relevant to the selection of the forms. The findings suggest that the pragmatic forms of stance are learnable even at the beginning level through interaction with native-speaker peers. In Chapter 4, Keiko Ikeda examines the learners’ use of honorific speech in emails and telephone conversations, particularly, how advanced L2 learners of Japanese make decisions about using honorific styles in specific contexts. The study involved 15 advanced-level learners of Japanese and 15 native speakers of Japanese. The participants first wrote an email to a native Japanese speaker of two different statuses: (1) an employee at a company at which the participant sought an internship; or (2) a professor in a department in which the participant desired to pursue graduate study. A telephone conversation followed, in which they further

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discussed their interests. The email and telephone conversation data were transcribed and analyzed for the proportion of honorific speech (e.g., exalted and humble styles) employed by the learners in both tasks. The findings revealed that the advanced learners did not make use of honorific forms as much as the native speakers did in the same context. Qualitative analyses revealed that the learners used a variety of linguistic resources in order to project deference and demeanor expected in the task situations. In Chapter 5, Noriko Ishihara and Elaine Tarone provide unique insight by challenging the commonly-held notion of politeness as pragmatic target and focusing on learner subjectivity in emulating and resisting the Japanese norms of politeness. Using the interpretive case study approach, the authors investigated the reason and meaning behind the pragmatic choices made by seven advanced learners of Japanese in a US university. Retrospective interviews and follow-up email correspondence identified instances where learners intentionally either accommodated to or resisted perceived L2 pragmatic norms. The learners largely converged toward L2 norms to emulate the target culture. However, on occasion they intentionally diverged from L2 norms to resist pragmatic norms, particularly in the use of higher-level honorifics and gendered language. Learners’ pragmatic decisions were guided by a subjectivity that had been incorporated into their life experiences and previous learning of Japanese in and outside the classroom. The findings suggest a need for greater sensitivity toward learner subjectivity in pragmatics-focused instruction: how pragmatics might be more aptly taught and evaluated with learner subjectivity in mind. The next three empirical papers feature speech acts of requests, compliments, and refusals. While these speech acts have been widely researched in the interlanguage pragmatics literature, each of the three studies adds a unique angle to the examination of speech acts. Chapter 6 by Yumiko Tateyama targets the speech act of request, focusing on the effect of instruction on the acquisition of request realization patterns. Students in four second-year Japanese classes in an American university participated in the study. Two classes served as an experimental group and the other two served as a control group. The control group received regular instruction that closely followed the textbook lesson on making a request. The experimental group received additional practice that involved consciousness-raising activities, oral communicative practice with native speakers of Japanese, and a video feedback session. Telephone message and role-play tasks measured the effect of instruction. There was a significant instructional effect in both measures. Although there was no

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significant group difference, the experimental group made greater gains than the control group when the interlocutor was a teacher, which suggests that the treatment was effective in raising their awareness about pragmalinguistic forms that index politeness. The findings are suggestive of the positive effect of explicit instruction combined with communicative practice in the development of pragmatic competence. In Chapter 7, Takafumi Shimizu explores the influence of learning context on L2 pragmatic realizations of compliment responses. Participants were 48 learners of Japanese in Japan (JSL) and in the United States (JFL). Data collected employed an oral discourse completion test that consisted of eight compliment situations. The data from the two learner groups, as well as baseline data from 60 native speakers of Japanese (JJ) and American English (AE), was analyzed specifically for the frequency of three compliment response types: positive (acceptance), negative (rejection), and avoidance (deflection), frequency and order of semantic formulas, and characteristics of words/phrases used in the responses. Results revealed a notable contextual influence on compliment responses: while JFL used negative strategy (rejection) most often, JSL used avoidance strategy (deflection) most frequently, approximating the native speaker norm. Follow-up interviews revealed that JFL learners tended to reject compliments based on what they had learned from Japanese textbooks. The findings suggest that the acquisition of pragmatic knowledge is strongly constrained by contextual factors of different sorts: exposure to the target language input and instructional materials. In Chapter 8, Megumi Kawate-Mierzejewska focuses on the organization of refusal sequences in L2 Japanese. Different from the majority of previous studies, the methodology in this study is unique in that it examines naturally occurring request-refusal sequences in telephone conversations. Participants were 20 native speakers of Japanese (JJ) and 20 American learners of Japanese (AJ) at the advanced proficiency level. Forty separate telephone conversations (20 JJ-JJ and 20 JJ-AJ conversations; 10– 15 minutes each) were tape-recorded. In each conversation, the researcher asked participants to tape-record their telephone conversation with friends. When the participant refused the researcher’s request, their refusal strategies were analyzed sequentially. Two important findings were gleaned from the analysis. First, JJs used more formulaic refusal patterns than AJs. Secondly, there were gender differences in refusal realization strategies in both JJ-JJ and JJ-AJ interactions. For instance, more male than female speakers tried to persuade the requester to abandon the request. The

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findings suggest some important areas of pragmatic instruction, including typical refusal sequences in Japanese and gender differences in refusal realizations. While the previous six empirical papers investigate pragmatic competence in production tasks (e.g., role plays, emails, telephone and face-to-face conversation), Chapters 9 and 10 examine the competence in comprehension tasks. In Chapter 9, Akiko Hagiwara investigates learners’ comprehension of non-literal meaning conveyed by conventionalized, routine formulaic expressions. Two groups participated: 60 native speakers of Japanese and 60 learners of intermediate Japanese in a U.S. university. They completed a written multiple-choice questionnaire (k = 12) that asked them to choose the most appropriate interpretation of the target literal and non-literal, formulaic utterances. The greatest differences were found in the interpretation of formulaic utterances, while the groups did not differ as much in the comprehension of literal utterances. The findings suggest that learners have difficulty in comprehending formulaic utterances that native speakers frequently use in daily communication, potentially due to the limited input and opportunities to observe native-speaker patterns in a foreign language environment. Naoko Taguchi’s cross-sectional study in Chapter 10 further explores comprehension of non-literal, indirect meaning. Different from Hagiwara’s study, Taguchi used a listening instrument to examine learners’ inferential ability to comprehend indirect opinions and indirect refusals. Eighty-five students of Japanese in the beginner–, intermediate–, and advanced–levels completed a listening test that measured their ability to comprehend three types of indirect meaning: indirect refusals and indirect opinions of two types (conventional and non-conventional). The conventional indirect opinion items included three pragmalinguistic devices of indirect expressions: indirect sentence endings, adverbs of reservation, and expressions of wondering. Each item had a short dialogue, followed by a multiple-choice question that tested learners’ comprehension. Results showed that indirect refusals were the easiest to comprehend for all levels. Advanced and intermediate-level learners scored significantly higher than the beginner-level learners. Follow-up interviews revealed sources of comprehension difficulties in indirect communication that can be addressed in a classroom. The last two chapters in the empirical collection deal with discourse features that have been commonly examined in the literature of Japanese pragmatics. Using Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL),

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Takafumi Utashiro and Goh Kawai’s Chapter 11 reports on the effectiveness of instructional intervention in the learning of Receptive Tasks (RTs). Participants were 24 learners of Japanese from intermediate to advanced proficiency levels studying Japanese in Japan. They received computer-delivered instruction on different RTs over a period of two weeks. As part of the instruction, learners watched video clips of native speaker conversations, practiced the RTs that appeared in the conversations, and evaluated their use. The instruction was sequenced according to three distinct stages: self-paced, instructor-led, and interaction-based learning. Learning outcome was measured after each stage using receptive and productive tasks, as well as awareness tasks. Results showed that learners made significant gains in the receptive tasks at all stages. They also demonstrated significant improvement in the production tasks after the self-paced and teacher-led learning stages. Awareness of RTs also improved after the instruction, and the gain was retained at a delayed post-test given one week after the instruction. These findings suggest the importance of explicit instruction in the use and awareness of RTs and potential benefits of CALL for pragmatic learning. Chapter 12 by Tomomi Kakegawa is the last chapter in the empirical collection. It is an instructional intervention study that examines the effects of direct teaching on the longitudinal development of sentence final particles (i.e., SFPs). Innovative in this study is the use of computer mediated communication (CMC) as an instructional medium. The participants were 11 students enrolled in a third semester Japanese class in a U.S. university and 17 native speakers of Japanese from a Japanese college. Learners of Japanese exchanged emails with two native speakers weekly for a period of 12 weeks. The learners received two instructional interventions that focused on the use of SFPs, once in the sixth week and the other in the eighth week. The first intervention aimed at raising the learners’ awareness of Japanese native speakers’ use of the SFPs in their emails. The second intervention involved drawing learners’ attention to their own use and non-use of the SFPs. Comparisons of the data between the first and second five-week periods showed learners’ increase in frequency and range of the SFPs produced, and majority of them were used in a productive manner. The findings suggest that CMC combined with explicit instructions is effective in the development of the SFPs. Each of the ten empirical chapters introduced – whether descriptive, quasi-experimental, qualitative, or quantitative – focuses on different features of Japanese pragmatics and examines the ways in which learners

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use their linguistic capacities to achieve the pragmatic targets. What learners can and cannot do and how they approximate more acceptable patterns or fall short of the patterns revealed in each chapter help us understand the nature of pragmatic competence at a given stage, and guide us to foresee the challenges and opportunities that learners face in their development toward the full pragmatic competence. Several instructional studies included in the collection address whether or not instruction could boost the learning in a short period of time by empirically testing the effectiveness of direct teaching in pragmatic development. In Chapter 13, the final chapter in the volume, Junko Mori reviews these empirical studies and discusses their contributions to the understanding of L2 pragmatic competence and its development, as well as to the implications of pragmatic instruction and assessment. At the same time, the chapter reconsiders commonly held assumptions behind many of these crosscultural or interlanguage pragmatic studies. Pragmatics-Specific-to-Japanese, an overarching framework, organizes empirical papers in this volume. However, such a framework begs the question of whether Japanese pragmatics can be reduced to the sets of linguistic systems of indexing social and interpersonal functions (e.g., honorifics, sentence-final particles), as well as other styles and behaviors associated with indirectness or politeness. The mainstream practice of preestablishing a construct, eliciting and examining the construct through measurable tasks, and making inferences on the construct by comparing it to a group of native speakers or learners across levels often simplifies individual and situational factors inherent to the individual’s pragmatic performance. Mori’s chapter addresses these limitations of the reductionist approach to pragmatic research and invites readers to explore new possibilities in conceptualizing and studying pragmatic competence. To this end, Mori presents intriguing prompts for the readers: −

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What does it mean to become pragmatically competent in a second language? What accounts for individual and situational variations in behaviors of members of a speech community who are pragmatically competent? Given the recent trends of transnationalism, how can we distinguish ideological beliefs about members of a particular culture from actual behaviors of the members? How can we examine pragmatic competence to make inferences on its development? Are there any important pragmatic norms and

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−

linguistic forms to be learned, which may not present themselves as obviously as those items that have been investigated? In what ways do research findings inform teaching and assessment of pragmatic competence? Should non-native speakers’ performance be taught and assessed at equal standards as those for native speakers? Would non-native speakers’ mastery of pragmatic norms guarantee their establishment of membership in the target speech community?

By addressing these questions, the concluding chapter attempts to identify remaining issues and the future directions of pragmatics teaching and research in Japanese as a second language. References ACTFL 1999 Austin, John 1962

Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century. Lawrence, KS: Allen Press Inc. How To Do Things With Words. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Bakhtin, Mikhail 1986 Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Austin: University of Texas Press. Bardovi-Harlig, Kathleen and Beverly Hartford (eds.) 2005 Interlanguage Pragmatics: Exploring Institutional Talk. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Bardovi-Harlig, Kathleen and Rebecca Mahan-Taylor (eds.) 2003 Teaching Pragmatics. Washington, DC: US Department of State. Barron, Anne 2002 Acquisition in Interlanguage Pragmatics: Learning How to Do Things with Words in a Study Abroad Context. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Barron, Anne and Muriel Warga 2007 Acquisitional pragmatics: Focus on foreign language learners. Special issue of Intercultural Pragmatics 4 (2). Bachman, Lyle 1990 Fundamental Considerations in Language Testing. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Bachman, Lyle and Adrian Palmer 1996 Language Testing in Practice: Designing and Developing Useful Language Tests. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, Juliane House, and Gabriele Kasper (eds.) 1989 Cross-cultural Pragmatics: Requests and Apologies. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Boxer, Diane 2002 Discourse issues in cross-cultural pragmatics. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 22: 150–167. Brown, Penelope and Stephen Levinson 1987 Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Canale, Michael and Merril Swain 1980 Theoretical aspects of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. Applied Linguistics 1: 1–47. Council of Europe 2001 Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gass, Susan and Noel Houck 1999 Interlanguage Refusals. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Gass, Susan and Joyce Neu (eds.) 1996 Speech Acts Across Cultures. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Goffman, Erving 1976 Replies and responses. Language in Society 5: 254–313. Grice, H. Paul 1975 Logic and conversation. In: Peter Cole and Jerry Morgan (eds.), Syntax and Semantics, 41–58. New York: Academic Press. Gudykunst, William and Young Yun Kim 2004 Communicating with Strangers: An Approach to Intercultural Communication. 3rd ed. CA, Thousand Oaks: Sage Publication. Holtgraves, Thomas 2008 Automatic intention recognition in conversation processing. Journal of Memory and Language 58: 627–645. Hudson, Thom, Emily Detmer and James D. Brown 1995 Developing Prototypic Measures of Cross-Cultural Pragmatics (Technical Report No.7). Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i at Manoa, Second Language Teaching and Curriculum Center. Hymes, Dell 1972 On communicative competence. In: Janet Pride and Janet Holmes (eds.), Sociolinguistics: Selected readings, 269–293. Middlesex, Harmondsworh: Penguin.

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Ishihara, Noriko and Andrew Cohen 2008 Teaching and Learning Pragmatics: Where Language and Culture Meet.Harlow, England: Pearson Education. Japan Foundation 2008 Survey Report on Japanese-Language Education Abroad 2006. Tokyo: The Japan Foundation. Kasper, Gabriele (ed.) 1992 Pragmatics of Japanese as Native and Target Language. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i at Manoa, Second Language Teaching and Curriculum Center. 1995 Pragmatics of Chinese as Native and Target Language. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i at Manoa, Second Language Teaching and Curriculum Center. Kasper, Gabriele and Shoshana Blum-Kulka (eds.) 1993 Interlanguage Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kasper, Gabriele and Kenneth Rose 2002 Pragmatic Development in a Second Language. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Kecskes, Istvan 2003 Situation-Bound Utterances in L1 and L2. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Kramsch, Claire and Anne Whiteside 2008 Language ecology in multilingual settings: Towards a theory of symbolic competence. Applied Linguistics 29: 645–671. Lakoff, George 1973 The Logic of Politeness: or Minding Your P’s and Q’s. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. Leech, Gregory 1983 Principles of Pragmatics. Harlow: Longman. LoCastro, Vivian 2003 An Introduction to Pragmatics: Social Action for Language Teachers. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press. Márquez Reiter, Rosina and Maria Placencia (eds.) 2004 Current Trends in the Pragmatics of Spanish. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Martínez-Flor, Alicia, Ester Usó Juan and Fernández Guerra (eds.) 2003 Pragmatic Competence and Foreign Language Teaching. Castelló de la Plana, Spain: Publications de la Universitat Jaume I. Ochs, Elinor 1996 Linguistic resources for socializing humanity. Rethinking linguistic In: John Gumperz and Stephan Levinson (eds.), Rethinking Linguistic Relativity, 407–437. New York: Cambridge University Press.

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Paradis, Michael 1998 The other side of language: Pragmatic competence. Journal of Neurolinguistics 1(2): 1–10. Pawlikowska-Smith, Grazyna 2000 Canadian Language Benchmarks. Theoretical Framework. Retrieved March, 2003. www.language.ca/pdfs/final_theoreticalframeworks.pdf. Richards, Jack and Theodore Rodgers 2001 Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching. 2d ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Röver, Carston 2005 Testing EFL Pragmatics. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Rose, Kenneth and Gabriele Kasper (eds.) 2001 Pragmatics in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schieffelin, Bambi and Elinor Ochs 1986 Language socialization. Annual Review of Anthropology 15: 163–191. Schmitt, Norbert (eds.) 2004 Formulaic Sequences. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Searle, John 1969 Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Spencer-Oatey, Helen (ed.) 2000 Culturally Speaking: Managing Rapport Across Cultures. London: Continuum. Sperber, Dan and Deirdre Wilson 1995 Relevance: Communication and Cognition. 2d ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thomas, Jenny 1983 Cross-cultural pragmatic failure. Applied Linguistics 4: 91–112. Trosborg, Anne 1995 Interlanguage Pragmatics: Requests, Complaints, and Apologies. New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Wierzbicka, Anna 1991 Cross-cultural Pragmatics: The semantics of Human Interaction. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 1994 “Cultural script”: A semantic approach to cultural analysis and cross-cultural communication. In: Lawrence Bouton and Yamuna Kachru (eds.), Pragmatics and Language Learning Monograph Series Volume 5, 1–24. University of Illinois at UrbanaChampagne.

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Yamashita, Sayoko 1996 Six Measures of JSL Pragmatics (Technical report #14). Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i at Manoa, Second Language Teaching and Curriculum Center. Yong, Richard 2000 Interactional competence: challenges for validity. Paper presented at the Language Testing Research Colloquium. Vancouver, Canada, March. Yong, Richard and Agnes He (eds.) 1998 Talking and Testing: Discourse Approaches of the Assessment of Oral Proficiency. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Yoshimi, Dina and Haidan Wang (eds.) 2007 Selected Papers from Pragmatics in CJK Classrooms: The State of the Art. University of Hawaii at Manoa, National Foreign Language Resource Center

From a! to zo: Japanese pragmatics and its contribution to JSL/JFL pedagogy Dina R. Yoshimi Abstract This chapter provides an overview of the literature on Japanese pragmatics with the goal of a) highlighting the theoretical, and methodological factors that have been central in shaping the current field of Japanese pragmatics, and b) illustrating how research on pragmatics in Japanese language pedagogy and curriculum development has come to be increasingly ordered by an empirically-grounded understanding of those communicative practices and interactional routines that organize the pragmatics of social interaction in Japanese. 1. Introduction1 Although pragmatics may be the new kid on the block in the field of Japanese foreign language (JFL) pedagogy, pragmatic phenomena are hardly new to the JFL classroom.2 Years before pragmatics had even been mentioned in conjunction with Japanese language pedagogy, the instruction and explanation of the pragmatic aspects of Japanese were salient components of JFL textbooks (e.g., Naganuma and Mori 1962; Jorden with Chaplin 1963). Within the first ten chapters of Naganuma and Mori’s (1962) introductory text, for example, there are discussions of polite language use (use of prefix o-, of kudasai and [doozo]~~-te kudasai, and of -san/sensei), resources for discourse cohesion (-te, ga), and variable functions of sentence-final particle ne, to mention but a few of the pragmatic aspects singled out for explanation. In sharp contrast to the highly systematic presentation of the structural and lexical components of the language that comprise the primary instructional focus of the grammarbased “Main Texts,”3 the presentation of these points appears to be opportunistic, and the explanations themselves are infused with an almost commonsensical attitude toward usage. Thus, while complete and accurate knowledge of lexis and grammar were clearly the primary goals of JFL

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instruction in the 1960s and 1970s, the importance of the pragmatic aspects of the language were not overlooked, although their communicative functions may not have been fully understood by practitioners in the field of JFL pedagogy. Notably, a similar treatment of Japanese pragmatic resources is evident in many of the foundational scholarly works in Japanese linguistics from the 1960s and 1970s. Working within the various approaches to linguistic description and analysis of that era, scholars addressed such aspects of Japanese pragmatics as stance marking and speaker perspective (Akatsuka 1978; Kuroda 1973, 1979), honorific morphology and its role in the production of polite language (Martin 1975), discourse organization (Kindaichi 1957/1978), and Japanese deictic phenomena (Kuno 1973; Smith 1979), among others. As was consistent with the standard linguistic research methods of the time, anecdotal observations, or constructed examples with “imagined contexts of usage” derived from native speaker intuitions were, effectively, the sole source of data. These sentence-level examples were thought to be analyzable through introspection (often with the assistance of a native speaker informant), and the phenomenon identified through the research was then accounted for through the economical elegance of a linguistic generalization. Notably, the researcher’s orientation to the pragmatic features of a given linguistic resource often stemmed from the inability of a syntacticallygrounded analysis to fully account for the functions and/or distributions of the given resource(s) in the data. It was through such problem-solving processes that many of the concepts commonly used to explicate Japanese pragmatic phenomena today were first introduced: “(Speaker) empathy” (Kuroda 1979; Lebra 1976; Smith 1979) and “speaker point of view“ (Kuno 1979), indirectness (Ueda 1974), obligatory attention to hierarchical social ordering in linguistic use (Nakane 1970; Martin 1975), etc. A range of pragmatic phenomena also caught the interest of researchers in the social sciences, who discussed a number of social aspects of Japanese pragmatics: The orientation to social hierarchy in everyday interaction (Nakane 1970), the role of empathy (omoiyari) in listener response behaviors (Lebra 1976: 39) and the pervasiveness of obligation and reciprocal dependence in Japanese interaction (Doi [1971]1973), among others (see especially the works in Condon and Saito 1974). Although neither the linguistic research nor the work in the social sciences was framed as research on pragmatics, the diversity of these pragmatics-relevant studies highlights both the ubiquity of these phenomena in Japanese language and social interaction, as

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well as researchers’ orientation to them as having an important role in the effective accomplishment of interpersonal communication in Japanese. In the discussion that follows, I will outline the path by which the field of Japanese pragmatics, and the closely aligned field of JFL pragmatics, emerged from these early endeavors to account for dimensions of Japanese language use that did not “fit” neatly into the dominant structuralist paradigm (nor into the emerging transformationalist paradigm) of the time. While initially, the very salience of these phenomena, and their tendency to resist being shoehorned into strict syntactic and/or semantic analyses gave rise to a number of ad hoc constructs – e.g., empathy, indirectness, speaker perspective –, by the latter half of the 1980s, these pragmatic phenomena and the ad-hoc constructs that had been proposed to account for them, had become the object of regular and concerted linguistic inquiry. Studies of strategic use of honorifics (Hori 1995; Tokunaga 1988) the marking of epistemic stance (Akatsuka 1990; Aoki 1986; Kamio 1979), (in)direct speech (Coulmas 1986), and the use of deictics (Kitagawa 1979; Tsutsui 1990), to name but a few, proliferated, and, increasingly, the term “pragmatics” was used, either as a categorical label for the phenomenon, or as a descriptor of the nature of it. These studies provided the groundwork for JFL pedagogy professionals who had long noticed that these same points posed challenges both for teachers, who struggled to provide adequate explanations of them, as well as for students, who struggled to make use of these linguistic resources in a pragmatically appropriate manner. Several exploratory studies of pragmatic interlanguage (Ishida 2006; Kamada 1990; Maynard 1985) formed a foundation upon which researchers of JFL pragmatics established their nascent field. Although the initial studies remained focused on sentencelevel phenomena, and analyses of these phenomena relied as much on researcher intuition and anecdotal evidence as on examinations of naturally-occurring conversational usage, the studies demonstrated that the domain of JFL pragmatics constituted a rich and fruitful area for research on learner language development (i.e., of pragmatic competence) and a potentially fruitful site for research on effective JFL instruction.

2. The coming of age of Japanese discourse pragmatics research Complementary to this growing line of JFL pragmatic research, a second domain of JFL pragmatic inquiry has developed from an area of Japanese

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pragmatics research that is grounded in a significantly different theoretical foundation and a distinct set of methodological practices. This second area, the domain of discourse pragmatic research, was enabled by developments in data collection capabilities in the 1970s and 1980s (i.e., technological advances in audio and video recording and playback) that gave researchers access to a more stable and complete record of everyday language use. These technological advances, coupled with conceptual breakthroughs in the analysis of pragmatic phenomena at the discourse level over the past two and a half decades, have enabled the growth of a highly prolific and now well-established field of Japanese (discourse) pragmatics. The first studies of Japanese discourse organization based on naturally occurring recorded mundane talk were conducted by John Hinds (Hinds 1976, 1978, 1979, 1982). Hinds, himself greatly influenced by the early work of conversation analysis, was interested in the organizational principles of extended speech, most specifically conversation.4 In his work, he championed the exploration of stretches of talk and writing “beyond the single sentence in isolation” (1979: 156) in an effort to identify patterns in discourse that corresponded both to its linear organization (turn-taking) and its hierarchical organization (as had been documented fairly clearly for narrative by the mid-1970s). In addition to arguing (Hinds 1979, 1982) for various aspects of Japanese conversational organization (i.e., the segment, the paragraph, the triplet), he also undertook to study ellipsis as a discourse level phenomenon in Japanese (Hinds 1980, 1981), a path that many other researchers would soon follow. His paper on Japanese conversational structures (1982) includes the first analyses of non-verbal concomitant actions in Japanese conversational exchange (using videotaped data), and the analysis of conversational overlap, which he found to occur in Japanese conversation in ways that were considerably more prolonged than had been argued to be possible by analysts of English (1982: 322–323). In discussing this latter finding, Hinds took up a line of argumentation (1982: 324) that would be repeated many times by other researchers throughout the 1980s and beyond: He proposed an alternate linguistic account to replace the privileging of Japanese cultural homogeneity as a basis for explicating Japanese discourse phenomena that differed from those found in other languages (most commonly English). Building on the groundwork of Hinds’ pioneering endeavors, pragmatics researchers of the 1980s expanded the boundaries of discourse pragmatics in a number of directions, highlighting, with each new discovery, the importance of a) examining naturally-occurring data beyond the sentence-level, and b) recognizing the central role that speaker

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subjectivity and speaker choice play in the variable use of linguistic resources. Inoue (1984) uses a range of news reports and news features (both spoken and written) to demonstrate that the two most commonly occurring clause conjoining morphemes in her data set, -te and the infinitival ending -i, are neither interchangeable, nor merely stylistic variants, except in a highly restricted set of instances (1984: 85). Her analysis reveals that the morpheme -te has an inherent dimension of speaker subjectivity to it, reflecting the speaker’s perspective regarding the dependence of the two clauses joined by -te. The infinitival ending, on the other hand, does not share this feature. 5 Addressing a far more wellestablished structuralist paradigm, Szatrowski (1987) takes up the question of the function of the tense-aspect forms -ru and -ta in conversational narratives. She frames her study with the following insightful comments: “The question addressed is an ecological one: ‘How do mechanisms like tense and aspect function in Japanese and why?’ By ‘ecological’ I mean the function of forms and how they interact with other components in their environment, i.e., the discourse” (Szatrowski 1987: 409–410). She finds that the forms under study are “implemented variably” by the speakers, with each form serving to enhance either ‘pastness’ or “narrative events,” thereby demonstrating the inadequacy of “morphological distinctions like non-past/past and noncomplete/complete” when the analysis of these resources is directed beyond the sentence level. Szatrowski closes with an observation that will be repeated by discourse pragmatics researchers in subsequent decades; after acknowledging the limitations of her re-analysis, she stands by her data, her methodology, and her analysis, stating, “…the more important question to ask is what strategies do people use to create and interpret their discourse.” In posing this question, she (and the researchers who echo her stance) rejects wholesale the deterministic approach to language use that characterized the dominant linguistic paradigm of the 1960s and 1970s. Even as this shift to naturally-occurring discourse as a more appropriate database for exploring what “real people” do with language was becoming the norm for many in the now-growing field of Japanese pragmatics, so too was this viewpoint being taken up by researchers and practitioners of JFL pedagogy as well. The drawbacks of the overemphasis on formal aspects of sentential grammar that had characterized the linguistic research of the preceding two decades were pointed out by a number of researchers (Maynard 1985; Jorden and Walton 1987; Burt 1991), with Maynard (1985: 217) noting that “the fundamental role of language, i.e., its function

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as a means for communicative interaction” had been overshadowed by sentential grammar to the virtual exclusion of discourse structure, with the result being that “students of a foreign language who have learned how to construct individual grammatical sentences often encounter difficulties when combining sentences to create a meanful [sic] cohesive discourse” (1985: 218). Producing these comments in the context of her contrastive analytic study of discourse organizational principles, Maynard went on to propose that the findings of such a study and others like it (similarly focused on contrastive analysis of discourse cohesion) could have immediate relevance for JFL classroom learning, making it possible “to incorporate the principles of text and discourse strategies into our daily teaching” (1985: 228). While Maynard (1985) does not make any explicit recommendations on how this incorporation of findings from the literature on discourse pragmatic research might best be accomplished, Jorden and Walton (1987) in their bold proposal for the instruction of “truly foreign languages” (such as Japanese and Chinese) outline a set of “best practices” for classroom foreign language instruction that are designed specifically to address the special instructional challenges that arise when the learners’ base language and their target language of study are markedly different, including in the domain of pragmatics. Decrying instructional materials that make use of outdated linguistic explanations, direct translations of English that ignore target language usage, and instructional dialogs that lack pragmatic and sociolinguistic information, Jorden and Walton (1987) propose that the basic unit of learning “must always be a sample discourse” if the student is to learn how target-natives construct conversations in precisely defined situations. There is no way for students to predict transition words, intonations, deletions, and the like without a target-native model” (1987: 123). Yet they do not assume that providing the learner with such a model will resolve all learning challenges. Rather, they propose the additional pedagogical innovation of pairing a “linguistically sophisticated targetnative” who will be responsible for producing “truly authentic language samples” with a “base-native linguist, who shares the students’ mind-set and who knows through personal experience what it means to be a foreigner in the target culture, [and who] plays a vital role in analyzing and explaining, and in making decisions related to situations, pacing, ordering, and levels of difficulty.” This proposal not only predates the now familiar debate on the relative merits of implicit vs. explicit instruction of pragmatics (opting instead for a combination of the two), but also

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recognizes the inherently inter-linguistic nature of JFL pragmatics learning well before “interlanguage pragmatics” had become an established topic in the field of second language studies. The first volume of Jorden with Noda’s (1987) textbook, Japanese: The Spoken Language, which strictly adhered to the principles outlined in Jorden and Walton (1987), was published in the same year, and the publication of the three-volume set was complete by 1990. In a 44-page review of the set, Quinn (1991: 264) praised the work for setting “new standards for foreign language pedagogy“ with its breadth and depth of attention to “modeled, guided use of the language, in culturally coherent contexts” (1991: 249). Yet, at the same time, the pedagogical approach proposed in conjunction with the work – an extensive and unalterable regimen of drills and practice activities designed not only to preclude the production of interlanguage errors, but also to provide learners with a thorough grounding in the grammar, pragmatics, and culture of Japanese – proved to be a breaking point, with many finding the time required for complete and proper coverage of the materials to be too overburdening (Quinn 1991: 263; Makino 1991: 223). Thus, while the book remained a common fixture on the shelves of many linguists owing to its thorough coverage and complete explanations of Japanese language structure and pragmatic usage, its thoroughly inflexible and time-consuming approach to JFL instruction ultimately undercut its potential for effecting precisely the type of dramatic change in the instruction of JFL pragmatics that many JFL researchers and practitioners had been calling for. The 1980s were clearly the watershed decade for both Japanese pragmatics and JFL pedagogy. The latter half of that decade produced both the first book length treatment of the pragmatics of Japanese conversation (Maynard 1989), and the first book length guide for daily language use for JFL learners (Mizutani and Mizutani 1987). Maynard’s work, framed as a study of “self-contextualization” (i.e., what strategies do people use to create a discourse role and an interactional stance for themselves in discourse) makes use of a wide range of data that includes both constructed examples and transcriptions of recordings of naturally occurring talk. Moreover, she continues to push into new domains of pragmatic phenomena, here taking up, among other interactional practices, the nowfamiliar topic of turn-taking in Japanese conversational interaction (cf. Tanaka 1999 and elsewhere). Like Maynard’s (1989) volume, Mizutani and Mizutani’s (1987) guide – which contains explanations of everyday Japanese speaking practices

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associated with verbal politeness, as well as the underlying Japanese cultural attitudes toward such politeness phenomena – may also be taken as an important indicator of a new era in JFL pragmatics. First, manuals on proper use of polite language had long been the domain of native speakers, while foreigners, who, at least from an ideological perspective, were not expected to demonstrate an equivalent level of pragmatic competence in the Japanese social world (Kubota 2008), had not heretofore been burdened with similar concerns. Indeed, a version of Japanese language (nihongo) for the instruction of foreigners had been developed as part of national language policy precisely because foreigners were not culturally obligated to speak the language (kokugo) as native Japanese did (Tai 2003). Yet, in the 1980s, as Japan’s economy boomed and the number of learners of Japanese expanded exponentially, the perception of Japanese as an exotic language spoken by a few academic types was overtaken by the expectation that any foreigner might learn Japanese as a “practical skill with economic utility” (Coulmas 1989: 129). It is within this cultural and historical context that the publication of Mizutani and Mizutani’s (1987) manual on politeness can be viewed as marking the beginning of an upward shift in the expectations for pragmatic competence (especially polite use of language) for JFL learners. At the same time, in introducing their volume, the implicit nature of this shift is made explicit by the authors who state that they “believe that foreigners can understand any subtle point whatever in Japanese and can use it if they so desire; we [the authors] do not believe in a “gaijin Japanese” different from the Japanese of native speakers” (Mizutani and Mizutani 1987: 3).

3. A fork in the road: Japanese pragmatics and JFL pragmatics part company As Japanese pragmatics entered the 1990s, it remained a field energized by the methodological and theoretical shifts that had taken place in the preceding decade, and also ready to push forward into new domains of inquiry. One notable trend was a shift away from a focus on the speaker (e.g., speaker subjectivity, speaker perspective), and toward a broader interest in the joint actions – such as “finishing each other’s sentences” (Hayashi and Mori 1998; Ono and Yoshida 1996) –, and social activities accomplished by two or more participants engaged in everyday social interaction, such as floor management in multi-party interaction (Hayashi

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1996) and negotiating (dis)agreement (Mori 1999). To the tradition of research on discourse cohesion through the study of ellipsis and clauseconjoining was added a new perspective: Research on the use of discourse connectives such as datte and dakara, which were examined from a variety of theoretical perspectives (e.g., Discourse Modality in Maynard 1993; speech act theory in Kubo 1999; Conversation Analysis in Mori 1995). Over the past ten years, research in Japanese pragmatics has broken new ground by challenging the tenability of many longstanding analyses of grammatical morphemes or syntactic patterns as having functions restricted by sentence level grammar (cf. Ono, Thompson, and Suzuki [2000] for a proposal that the distribution of the so-called grammatical morpheme ga, long referred to as a subject marker, is actually conditioned by discoursepragmatic features of interaction; Takagi’s [2002] comprehensive study of the “multilayered resources” available to conversational participants in conjunction with the interpretation of unexpressed referents in spoken discourse, i.e., ellipsis; and Lee and Yonezawa’s [2008] pragmatic account of overt expression of subject pronouns in casual conversations and other slightly formal conversational interactions). In contrast, research in JFL pragmatics took a decidedly different direction at this point in its history. While researchers and practitioners now had a much clearer idea of what they needed to teach (cf. the increased presence and elaboration of cultural notes and usage notes in the textbooks of this decade such as Nakama and Yookoso!), there seemed to be considerable uncertainty regarding how best to teach it. With the communicative revolution sputtering, and the comprehensive approach to “teaching all of it” (i.e., Jorden with Noda 1987) deemed too burdensome for learners in most college-level programs to handle, it is perhaps not surprising that much of JFL research focused on a search for effective instructional approaches to pragmatics. Following work conducted by House (1996), Tateyama et al. (1997) and Tateyama (2001, 2007, 2009) demonstrated that the development of pragmatic competence may be facilitated by explicit instruction of pragmatic routines combined with communicative practice and feedback from the teacher. Similarly, Yoshimi (2001) found that intermediate learners who received explicit instruction on the effective use of discourse markers in the production of extended tellings, showed considerable improvement in the appropriateness of their use of discourse markers as well as in the effectiveness of organizing the oral production of extended tellings.

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Yet, while these studies were able to demonstrate that learners who received explicit instruction were able to outperform their implicitly instructed and/or uninstructed peers under experimental conditions, a set of studies conducted by researchers working within the paradigm of language socialization produced evidence that a considerable amount of pragmatic learning was occurring even in contexts where learners were not being provided with explicit instruction. In a special issue of the Journal of Pragmatics, several researchers applied the framework of language socialization (Schieffelin and Ochs 1986) to their L2 data (Kanagy 1999; Ohta 1999; Yoshimi 1999) in an effort to develop a clearer understanding of the ways in which learner pragmatic development progresses. Across a range of age groups and learning contexts, each demonstrated that pragmatic development may proceed unassisted through learners’ direct participation and/or peripheral participation in regular communicative routines (Kanagy 1999, Ohta 1999), although there is no guarantee that this development will not be negatively impacted by transfer of the learner’s L1 pragmatic preferences (Yoshimi 1999). In addition to providing the opportunity for participation in pragmatic routines, JFL classrooms have also been shown to be rich settings for the implicit socialization of preferred practices and values of the target culture (Falsgraf and Majors 1995).

4. The coming of age of JFL pragmatics research and JFL pragmatics focused pedagogy More than twenty years after Maynard’s (1985) call for researchers to take up the insights of discourse-level pragmatics research, and with a steady chorus of researchers joining in since that time (Burt 1991; Hayashi 1996; Mori 2005, 2006; Yoshimi 2007), it appears that the field of JFL pragmatics has finally come of age: The enhanced understandings of Japanese pragmatic phenomena that have accrued over the past four decades have begun to inform, in significant ways, our understanding of the relationship between the JFL classroom environment, the instructional activities carried out and materials used therein, and the pragmatic development of the JFL learner. Taking a critical approach to the teaching of “Japanese culture,” Tai (2003) proposes that teachers move away from fixed, ideological representations of Japanese language and culture and strive to explore “the

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dynamics and multiplicity of language phenomena,” starting with “their own familiar speech habits” (2003: 22), and adding in other varieties available from the media or the internet. Kubota (2003) also calls for a reexamination of JFL classroom practices and instructional materials, demonstrating the pernicious effects of instructional materials that present culture as a “simplistic binary opposition of US vs. THEM” (2003: 85), and proposing instructional strategies for avoiding the reinforcement of Nihonjinron-based perspectives that make “a causal link between a cultural practice and cultural perspectives appear logical and plausible” (2003: 83). Still others take up critical stances toward the instruction of gendered language and honorific expressions (Ohara, Saft, and Crookes 2001; Matsumoto and Okamoto 2003; Okamoto and Siegal 2003). These studies address areas of classroom language instruction that have been, and to a considerable extent remain, mired in facile, stereotypical understandings of the relationship between language use and social dimensions of language users and/or communicative settings. From the perspective of Japanese pragmatics, the power of these proposals is their thorough grounding in microanalytic studies of naturally-occurring language from a broad range of users and contexts of usage. Yet, from a JFL pedagogical/pragmatics perspective, the strength of these proposals lies in their validation of the communicative practices and everyday usage of all speakers of Japanese, and the accessibility of this “expertise” through reflective pedagogical activities. More recently, there have been calls for the updating of instructional materials in ways that reflect our state-of-the-art understanding of Japanese language usage at the discourse level. Jones and Ono (2005) note the increased naturalness in textbook dialogs over the past 30 years that has been achieved through more authentic use of subject ellipsis, contracted forms, and sentence-final particles, but bemoan the fact that these dialogues still often fail to reflect “how Japanese is actually used” (2005: 242), providing a list of features that are present in everyday language use, but that are not yet represented in textbook dialogs, and focusing especially on the highly collaborative nature of everyday talk. They conclude by encouraging pedagogical practitioners to provide models of natural discourse, either through the editing and/or development of model dialogs, or through the incorporation of activities that give learners access to audio or video recordings of such models. The ready availability of two such resources – Colligan-Taylor’s (2007) volume of unscripted interviews on topics pertaining to Japanese society

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and culture for the improvement of listening comprehension and speaking skills for intermediate and advanced learners and CALPER’s Learning through Listening Towards Advanced Japanese Proficiency website developed by Mori (2007) – reflect the extent to which the field of JFL pedagogy is increasingly ready to respond to such calls for new instructional initiatives that facilitate the development of learner pragmatic competence. A third source, Maynard’s (2005) situationally and functionally organized collection of authentic talk from a wide variety of sources (e.g., television dramas, variety shows, and talk shows, as well as a broad range of printed versions of talk – comics, novels, published interviews, internet bulletin boards, etc.), is directed specifically at providing intermediate and advanced learners with exposure to authentic ways of producing expressive, emotive and empathetic speech in Japanese to facilitate their ability to “share emotion and empathy in and through the Japanese language” (2005: 15). While these innovations in the area of materials development have drawn on the rich empirically-grounded work of Japanese pragmatics literature and made significant progress in developing a more wellinformed understanding of “what to teach,” there remains the critical question of whether this literature might inform the field in any way regarding “how to teach” pragmatics in the JFL classroom. One such avenue is strongly suggested by Ishida’s (2007, 2009[this volume]) study of the instruction of the desu/masu forms and plain forms to beginning JFL learners. Recognizing that these forms are inherently indexical in nature, Ishida’s explicit instruction component is designed to raise learner awareness of both static and dynamic contextual features that contribute to the speaker’s choice of one form or the other. Ishida finds that the students in his experimental group not only showed higher awareness (compared to the control group students) of the targeted forms during conversation sessions with Japanese native speaking conversation partners, but also that pragmatically motivated shifts between the two forms (a practice that was presented in conjunction with the explicit instruction component) were observed only in the experimental group. The instructional design of two other studies (Iwai 2005, 2007; Yoshimi 2008) which have reported similar development among beginning learners receiving explicit pragmatics-focused instruction regarding appropriate participation in casual conversational interaction suggests that successful learner pragmatic development stems from three features common to the design of the instructional component of each of these studies: 1) Learners

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are provided with a range of resources for accomplishing “the same action in different ways,” 2) learners are provided with information about cooccurring linguistic and contextual features that may arise in the momentto-moment conversational interaction and that might contribute to their choice to select one pragmatic resource or another, and 3) learner exposure to the explicit instruction, practice opportunities and feedback sessions is spread out over an extended period of time (i.e., one to two semesters). These studies suggest that effective pragmatics-focused teaching requires learners to become aware of the complex and probabilistic nature of language use, and, more specifically, about the ways in which choices regarding language use a) reflect speaker attention to miniscule and momentary details of talk (such as a shared laugh or a withheld response token), rather than broadly painted static variables (such as social role or social distance), and b) impact in subtle but significant ways the direction of subsequent talk and the quality of the development of interactional activity with other(s). Such instruction can lead learners to more reflective and more reflexive use of pragmalinguistic resources with more effective sociopragmatic orientations and outcomes. Most of all, these studies have provided refreshing and reassuring evidence that development in JFL pragmatic competence appears to be a tenable goal for beginning learners, provided the learner is given adequate time to raise his/her awareness of the target forms and to identify the variable factors that contribute to usage of these target forms.

5. Conclusion This review of the changes that have taken place in the fields of Japanese pragmatics and JFL pragmatics, respectively, over the past 50 years has demonstrated that there is nothing obvious or intuitive about the analysis of pragmatic aspects of Japanese or the teaching of those phenomena in the JFL classroom. Nonetheless, we may take heart in the tremendous progress that research in the field has yielded over the past five decades, and recognize that, with more of the key pieces of the puzzle falling into place, we are that much closer to developing effective instructional approaches to JFL pragmatics that may lead to significant gains in learner pragmatic competence at earlier stages in the learning process. In addition, we must take to heart the lessons of the studies above, that is, that pragmatic development takes time. Rather than looking for short

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cuts to boosting learner pragmatic development in teacher-selected or curricular-required areas of language use, we must look for ways to provide learners with extended opportunities to engage in processes of authentic communication, both guided and unguided. The reflective and reflexive understandings of L2 pragmatics that learners develop through extended participation in these meaningful social interactions will ultimately contribute to their growing competence and confidence in communicating effectively and appropriately in Japanese.

Notes 1. I am indebted to the many, many researchers and teachers whose published research, scholarly presentations, pedagogical contributions, and personal communications have informed my views of Japanese and JFL pragmatics over the past two decades, but have not been cited herein. I also extend my deepest appreciation to Naoko Taguchi for her patience, humor, and insightful comments. 2. As the overwhelming majority of the studies cited in this chapter are conducted in JFL settings, I will use JFL rather than JSL throughout this work. 3. The particle ne is introduced in conjunction with the following excerpt from the Main Text (Chapter 9): Main Text A: Kongetsu wa nangatsu desu ka? B: Jūgatsu desu. Æ A: Dewa, raigetsu wa jūichigatsu desu ne. B: Sō desu. A: Sengetsu wa nangatsu deshita ka? B: Kugatsu deshita. Gloss (not in textbook) A: What month is this? B: It’s October. Æ A: So, next month is November then. B: That’s right. A: What was last month? B: It was September. 4. Hinds also had an interest in written discourse and conducted a number of groundbreaking studies in that area as well. See Hinkel (2002:31–33) for an overview of this work. 5. All instances of the infinitival -i form were distinguished from uses of -te by virtue of their lack of dependency (i.e., speaker subjectivity) across clauses.

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References Akatsuka, Noriko 1978 Another look at no, koto, and to: Epistemology and complementizer choice in Japanese. In: John Hinds and Irwin Howard (eds.), Problems in Japanese Syntax and Semantics, 178–212. Tokyo: Kaitakusha. Akatsuka, Noriko 1990 On the meaning of daroo. In: Osamu Kamada and Wesley Jacobsen (eds.), On Japanese and How to Teach It, 67–75. Tokyo: The Japan Times. Aoki, Haruo 1986 Evidentials in Japanese. In: Wallace Chafe and Johanna Nichols (eds.), Evidentiality: The Linguistic Coding of Epistemology, 223–238. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Burt, Susan Meredith 1991 Word choice in indirect quotation in Japanese: Some considerations for teaching. International Review of Applied Linguistics 29 (3): 197–212. Colligan-Taylor, Karen 2007 Living Japanese. New Haven: Yale University Press. Condon, John C. and Mitsuko Saito (eds.) 1974 Intercultural Encounters with Japan: Communication-Contact and Conflict. Tokyo: Simul Press. Coulmas, Florian 1986 Direct and indirect speech in Japanese. In: Florian Coulmas (ed.), Direct and Indirect Speech, 161–178. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 1989 The surge of Japanese. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 80: 115–131. Doi, Takeo 1973. The Anatomy of Dependence, translated by John Bester. Tokyo: Kodansha International. Original edition 1971. Falsgraf, Carl and Majors, Diane 1995 Implicit culture in Japanese immersion classroom discourse. Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese 29 (2): 1–21. Hayashi, Makoto and Junko Mori 1998 Co-Construction in Japanese revisited: We do “finish each other’s sentences”. In: Noriko Akatsuka, Hajime Hoji, Shoichi Iwasaki, Sung-Ock Sohn, and Susan Strauss (eds.), Japanese/Korean Linguistics, Volume 7, 77–93. Stanford: CSLI. Hayashi, Reiko 1996 Cognition, Empathy, and Interaction: Floor Management of English and Japanese Conversation. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

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Aspects of Japanese Discourse Structure. Tokyo: Kaitakusha. Conversational structure: An investigation based on Japanese interview discourse. In: John Hinds and Irwin Howard (eds.), Problems in Japanese syntax and semantics, 79–121. Tokyo: Kaitakusha. Organizational patterns in discourse. In: Talmy Givon (ed.), Syntax and Semantics, Volume 12: Discourse and Syntax, 135– 157. New York: Academic Press. Japanese conversational structures. Lingua 57: 301–326. Second Language Writers’ Text: Linguistic and Rhetorical Features. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Subjectlessness and honorifics in Japanese: A case of textual construal. In: Ruqaiya Hasan and Peter H. Fries (eds.), On Subjectand Theme: A Discourse Functional Perspective, 151– 185. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Developing pragmatic fluency in English as a foreign language: Routines and metapragmatic awareness. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 18: 225–252. Some discourse principles and lengthy sentences in Japanese. In Shigeru Miyagawa and Chisato Kitagawa (eds.), Studies in Japanese Language Use, 57–87. Carbondale, IL: Linguistic Research. Learners’ perception and interpretation of contextualization cues in spontaneous Japanese conversation: Back-channel cue uun. Journal of Pragmatics 38: 1943–1981.

Ishida, Kazutoh 2006 How can you be so certain? The use of hearsay evidentials by English-speaking learners of Japanese? Journal of Pragmatics 38 (8): 1281–1304. 2007 Developing understanding of how the desu/masu and plain forms express one’s stance. In: Dina R. Yoshimi and Haidan Wang (eds.), Selected Papers from Pragmatics in the CJK Classroom: The State of the Art, 97–120. Honolulu, HI: NFLRC. Accessed at: http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/CJKProceedings. 2009 Indexing stance in interaction: A pedagogical approach to teaching the pragmatic use of the Japanese plain and desu/masu forms. Ph.D. diss., Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Hawai`i-Mānoa.

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The development of conversational competence among L2 Japanese learners. Paper presented at the 2005 Association of Teachers of Japanese Seminar, Chicago, IL. 2007 Becoming a good conversationalist: Pragmatic development of JFL learners. In: Dina R. Yoshimi and Haidan Wang (eds.), Selected Papers from Pragmatics in the CJK Classroom: The State of the Art, 121–140. Honolulu, HI: NFLRC. Accessed at: http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/CJKProceedings. Jones, Kimberly and Tsuyoshi Ono 2005 Discourse-centered approaches to Japanese Language Pedagogy. Japanese Language and Literature 39 (2): 237–254. Jorden, Eleanor H. with Mari Noda. 1991 Japanese: The Spoken Language, Volumes 1–3. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Original edition 1987. Jorden, Eleanor H. and A. Ronald Walton 1987 Truly Foreign Languages: Instructional challenges. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 490 (1): 110–124. Kamada, Osamu 1990 Reporting messages in Japanese as a second language. In: Osamu Kamada and Wesley Jacobsen (eds.), On Japanese and How to Teach It, 224–245. Tokyo: The Japan Times. Kamio, Akio 1979 On the notion speaker’s territory of information: A functional analysis of certain sentence-final forms in Japanese. In: George Bedell, Eichi Kobayashi, and Masatake Muraki (eds.), Explorations in Linguistics: Papers in Honor of Kazuko Inoue, 213–231. Tokyo: Kenkyusha. Kanagy, Ruth 1999 Interactional routines as a mechanism for L2 acquisition and socialization in an immersion context. Journal of Pragmatics 31 (11): 1467–1492. Kindaichi, Haruhiko 1978 The Japanese Language, translated and annotated by Umeyo Hirano. Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle Company. Original edition 1957. Kitagawa, Chisato 1979 A note on sono and ano. In: George Bedell, Eichi Kobayashi, and Masatake Muraki (eds.), Explorations in Linguistics: Papers in honor of Kazuko Inoue, 232–243. Tokyo: Kenkyusha.

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Kubo, Susumu 1999 Kubota, Ryuko 2003 2008 Kuno, Susumu 1973

On an illocutionary connective datte. In: Ken Turner (ed.), The Semantics/Pragmatics Interface from Different Points of View, 293–315. New York: Elsevier. Critical teaching of Japanese culture. Japanese Language and Literature, 37 (1): 67–87. Critical approaches to teaching Japanese language and culture. In: Junko Mori and Amy Snyder Ohta (eds.), Japanese Applied Linguistics, 327–352. London: Continuum.

The Structure of the Japanese Language. Cambridge, MA. The MIT Press. Kuroda, Shige-Yuki 1973 Where epistemology, style and grammar meet. In: Stephen R. Anderson and Paul Kiparsky (eds.), A Festschrift for Morris Halle, 377–391. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston Inc. 1979 On Japanese passives. In: George Bedell, Eichi Kobayashi, and Masatake Muraki (eds.), Explorations in Linguistics: Papers in honor of Kazuko Inoue, 305–347. Tokyo: Kenkyusha. Lebra, Takie 1976 Japanese Patterns of Behavior. Honolulu: University of Hawai`i Press. Lee, Duck Young and Yoko Yonezawa 2008 The role of the overt expression of first and second person subject in Japanese. Journal of Pragmatics 40 (4): 733–767. Makino, Seiichi 1991 Review: Structuralism with contextualization. Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese 25 (2): 218–223. Martin, Samuel E. 1975 A Reference Grammar of Japanese. New Haven: Yale University Press. Matsumoto, Yoshiko and Shigeko Okamoto 2003 The construction of the Japanese language and culture in teaching Japanese as a foreign language. Japanese Language and Literature 37: 27–48. Maynard, Senko 1984 Contrast between Japanese and English participant identification: Its implications for language teaching. International Review of Applied Linguistics 23 (3): 217–229. 1989 Japanese Conversation: Self-contextualization Through Structure and Interactional Management. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. 1993 Discourse Modality: Subjectivity, Emotion and Voice in the Japanese Language. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

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Expressive Japanese: A Reference Guide to Sharing Emotion and Empathy. Honolulu: University of Hawai`i Press. Mizutani, Osamu and Nobuko Mizutani. 1987 How to be Polite in Japanese. Tokyo: The Japan Times. Mori, Junko 1995 Functions of the connective datte in Japanese conversation. In: Noriko Akatsuka (ed.), Japanese/Korean Linguistics, Volume 4, 77–94. Stanford: CSLI. 1999 Negotiating Agreement and Disagreement in Japanese: Connective Expressions and Turn Construction. Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 2005 Why not why? The teaching of grammar, discourse, and sociolinguistic and cross-cultural perspectives. Japanese Language and Literature 39 (2): 255–290. 2006 The workings of the Japanese token hee in informing sequences: An analysis of sequential context, turn shape, and prosody. Journal of Pragmatics 38: 1175–1205. 2007 Instructor’s Manual: Learning through Listening. CALPER. http://calper.la.psu.edu/learningthroughlistening/inst_manual_en. php. Accessed September 20, 2008. Nakane, Chie 1970 Japanese Society. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ohara, Y., S. Saft, and G. Crookes 2001 Toward a feminist critical pedagogy in a beginning Japanese-asa-foreign-language class. Japanese Language and Literature, 35, 105–133. Ohta, Amy Snyder 1999 Interactional routines and the socialization of interactional style in adult learners of Japanese. Journal of Pragmatics 31 (11): 1493–1512. Ono, Tsuyoshi, Sandra A. Thompson, and Ryoko Suzuki 2000 The pragmatic nature of the so-called subject marker ga in Japanese: Evidence from conversation. Discourse Studies, 2: 55–84. Ono, Tsuyoshi and Eri Yoshida 1996 A Study of Co-Construction in Japanese: We don’t finish each other’s sentences. In: Noriko Akatsuka, Shoichi Iwasaki, and Susan Strauss (eds.), Japanese/Korean Linguistics, Volume 5, 115–130. Stanford: CSLI. Quinn, Charles J. 1991 Review: Giving spoken language its due. Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese 25 (2): 224–267.

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Schieffelin, Bambi and Elinor Ochs 1986 Language socialization. Annual Review of Anthropology 15: 163–191. Siegal, Meryl and Shigeko Okamoto 2003 Toward reconceptualizing the teaching and learning of gendered speech styles in Japanese as a foreign language. Japanese Language and Literature 37: 49–66. Smith, Donald L. 1979 Where this refers to here in English and Japanese. In: Noriko Akatsuka, Shoichi Iwasaki, and Susan Strauss (eds.), Explorations in Linguistics: Papers in Honor of Kazuko Inoue, 494–506. Tokyo: Kenkyusha. Szatrowski, Polly E. 1987 “Pastness” and “Narrative Events” in Japanese conversational narratives. In: Russell S. Tomlin (ed.), Coherence and Grounding in Discourse, 409–433. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Tai, Eika 2003 Rethinking culture, national culture, and Japanese culture. Japanese Language and Literature 37: 1–26. Takagi, Tomoyo 2002 Contextual resources for inferring unexpressed referents in Japanese conversation. Pragmatics 12 (2): 153–182. Tanaka, Hiroko 1999 Turn-taking in Japanese Conversation: A Study in Grammar and Interaction. Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Tateyama, Yumiko, Gabriele. Kasper, L. Mui, H-M. Tay, and O-O. Thananart 1997 Explicit and implicit teaching of pragmatic routines. In: Lawrence Bouton (ed.), Pragmatics and Language Learning, Volume 8, 163–177. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign. Tateyama, Yumiko 2001 Explicit and implicit teaching of pragmatic routines: Japanese sumimasen. In: Kenneth R. Rose and Gabriele Kasper (eds.), Pragmatics in Language Teaching, 200–222. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. 2006 JFL learners’ pragmatic development and classroom interaction examined from a language socialization perspective. In: Dina R. Yoshimi and Haidan Wang (eds.), Selected Papers from Pragmatics in the CJK Classroom: The State of the Art, 181– 202. Honolulu, HI: NFLRC. Accessed at: http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/CJKProceedings. 2009 Learning to request in Japanese through foreign language classroom instruction. Ph.D. diss. Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures. University of Hawai`i-Mānoa.

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Tokunaga, Misato 1988 A paradox in Japanese pragmatics. Papers in Pragmatics 2: 84– 105. Tsutsui, Michio 1990 A study of demonstrative adjectives before anaphoric nouns in Japanese. In: Osamu Kamada and Wesley Jacobsen (eds.)On Japanese and How to Teach It, 121–135. Tokyo: The Japan Times. Ueda, Keiko. 1974 Sixteen ways to avoid saying ‘no’ in Japan. In: John C. Condon and Mitsuko Saito (eds.), Intercultural Encounters with Japan: Communication-Contact and Conflict, 185–192. Tokyo: Simul Press. Yoshimi, Dina Rudolph 1999 L1 language socialization as a variable in the use of ne by L2 learners of Japanese. Journal of Pragmatics 31 (11): 1513–1525. 2001 Explicit instruction and JFL learner’s use of interactional discourse markers. In Kenneth R. Rose and Gabriele Kasper (eds.), Pragmatics in Language Teaching, 223–244. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. 2007 Unlocking the promise of pragmatics. In: Dina R. Yoshimi and Haidan Wang (eds.),Selected Papers from Pragmatics in the CJK Classroom: The State of the Art, 1–4. Honolulu, HI: NFLRC. Accessed at: http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/CJKProceedings. 2008 Learner competence as a resource in the Japanese as a Foreign Language classroom: Issues in oral assessment. In: Junko Mori and Amy Ohta (eds.), Japanese Applied Linguistics: Discourse and Social Perspectives, 301–326. London: Continuum.

Indexing stance in interaction with the Japanese desu/masu and plain forms Kazutoh Ishida

Abstract This longitudinal study investigates pragmatic development of six beginning level Japanese learners focusing on 1) their awareness regarding their understanding about the use of the desu/masu and the plain forms which are markers of one’s affective stance, and 2) their production skills regarding their ability to use the forms to index their stances in interaction. An instructional approach inclusive of awareness-raising sessions and conversation sessions with Japanese native speakers was designed and implemented for two semesters. Analysis of reflection sheets, which learners filled out after each conversation session, reveals an increased awareness in the learners’ understanding of their use of the forms in relation to contextual features surrounding the interactions. Furthermore, discourse analysis of the conversations shows the learners’ expanded use of the forms, that is, selecting forms in relation to a wider range of contextual features and interactional turns.

1. Introduction As Yoshimi (2004) points out, developing effective interactional skills in a foreign language (FL) entails 1) building a knowledge base regarding how linguistic resources in the target language can be used pragmatically to express one’s stance, and 2) activating such knowledge base by utilizing the linguistic resources in interaction in a socially and culturally acceptable manner. According to Ochs (1996: 288), “stance” is “a socially recognized point of view or attitude” and includes epistemic attitudes, e.g., one’s degree of un/certainty about some proposition (Chafe and Nichols 1986), and affective attitudes, e.g., one’s mood, feeling or disposition (Ochs 1996). Displaying stance is a crucial resource in the construction of a range of social personae, including social status, social role, and interpersonal relationship. However, as Ochs (1996) discusses in her Local Culture

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Principle, the ways in which stance is displayed varies from community to community. That is, the ways in which language is used to index stance are closely tied to the local cultural expectations concerning the stance to be displayed. Thus, the challenge for FL learners is to become aware of such local cultural expectations and the kinds of social personae associated with particular stances in order to accurately convey his or her point of view or attitude to other members of that community. The present study focuses on the pragmatic use of Japanese linguistic forms, namely the desu/masu forms and the plain forms, which are sets of endings predominantly used in clause-final position that can contribute to the indexing of one’s affective attitude, including but not limited to one’s stance of being formal or informal.1 The desu/masu forms are generally considered formal speech-level markers whereas the plain forms are considered informal speech-level markers. With regard to the difference between desu and masu, the desu is a copula used with adjectives, nouns and adjectival nouns whereas the masu is an auxiliary verb used in verbal endings. I provide examples taken from the utterances made by native speakers (NSs) of Japanese in the conversation session data collected for the present study to better illustrate the differences between the desu and masu endings and the plain forms.2 (a)

nihon no eiga yori omoshiroi desu Japan LK movie than interesting DM ‘They (American movies) are more interesting than Japanese movies.” (b) hee omoshiori oh interesting ‘Oh, that’s interesting.” (c) amerikan pai toka mimashita. American pie and the like see-DM-PST ‘I saw American Pie and the like.’ (d) watashi ne rasshu awaa tuu o mita yo. I P rush hour two OBJ see-PST FP ‘I saw Rush Hour 2.’

In the first two excerpts, while the speaker comments on something to be interesting in both cases, excerpt (a) is in the desu form as indicated by the copula desu attached to the adjective omoshiroi (interesting), whereas excerpt (b) simply ends with the adjective omoshiroi (interesting) which is

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in its plain form. Excerpts (c) and (d) illustrate the masu form and plain form of a verb respectively. In excerpt (c), mashita, the past tense of masu, is attached to a conjugated form of the verb miru (to see), whereas excerpt (d) ends with mita which is the plain past tense form of miru (to see).3 There has been a tendency among Japanese instructional materials to present these forms as sociolinguistic markers solely in relation to static contextual features, such as one’s social status or age (Matsumoto and Okamoto 2003). However, studies which examined naturally occurring interaction (e.g., Cook 1996a, 1996b, 1999, 2008a, 2008b; Ikuta 1983; Matsumoto 2002; Maynard 1991, 1993; Okamoto 1998, 1999) have identified how NSs of Japanese switch between the two sets of forms in a single interaction by attending to not only static contextual features, but also dynamic ones, such as interpersonal distance and sequential turns in an interaction, to pragmatically express various stances as an interaction unfolds.4 Furthermore, in an unpublished study by Wehr (2001), Japanese NS participants commented that when engaged in interaction, they are attuned to dynamic contextual features such as the addressee‘s behavior and language use which may change during the course of an interaction. Based on such findings, we could argue that the instruction of the desu/masu and plain forms should not be limited to their use in relation to static contextual features but also include dynamic contextual features to enable learners of Japanese to develop contextually-sensitive ways of expressing their stances in interaction. As an approach to enabling FL learners to select linguistic resources to express their stances in ways that are socially acceptable, Yoshimi (2004) proposes that explicit instruction can assist learners in building a knowledge base that is inclusive of information about 1) how linguistic resources in the target language (TL) can index one’s stances in interaction and 2) what the local cultural expectations concerning the stances to be displayed are. In other words, we can say that explicit instruction which is inclusive of providing pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic information relevant to the indexing of stance with TL resources could facilitate the learners’ pragmatic development for expressing their stances in socially acceptable ways.5 In the present study, awareness-raising sessions were implemented as part of the instructional approach to build Japanese learners’ knowledge base regarding the pragmatic use of the desu/masu and plain forms. The sessions were designed for beginning level learners of Japanese and were held over two consecutive semesters in conjunction with a total of eight 10-

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minute conversation sessions with native speakers (NSs) of Japanese. More specifically, the awareness-raising sessions were held prior to each conversation session aiming at building the learners’ knowledge base regarding the contextual features which speakers of Japanese attend to when selecting the forms, and the expectations regarding the stances to be indexed by the forms. In order to examine learners’ pragmatic development in the use of the desu/masu and plain forms, this study examines two sets of data: 1) reflection sheets filled out immediately after each conversation session, and 2) transcripts of the conversation sessions.

2. Pedagogical trends in teching the desu/masu and plain forms Similar to how the use of the desu/masu and plain forms is explained in descriptive studies (e.g., Ide 1982, 1989; Martin 1964; Matsumoto 1988; Niyekawa 1991), many Japanese as a foreign language (JFL) textbooks used in the U.S. introduce the forms as sociolinguistic markers of formality/informality or politeness/non-politeness. Frequently, the authors of the textbooks explain that the use of the forms is dependent on static contextual features, that is, features which do not change during the course of an interaction, such as the relative social status of the interlocutors and in-group and out-group distinctions (Matsumoto and Okamoto 2003). For instance, the authors of Situational Functional Japanese (Tsukuba Language Group 1995: 52), which is used for the Japanese courses in the present study, explain that the desu/masu forms are used in formal style sentences that are used “between speakers whose relationship is rather distant and formal, such as between strangers or between a student and a teacher.” With regard to the plain forms, the authors explain that they are used in casual style sentences which are used “between people who are close, such as family members or good friends (Tsukuba Language Group 1995: 52).”6 Another tendency regarding the instruction of the desu/masu and plain forms is having learners use only one set of forms within a particular situation. Indeed most textbooks do not explicitly explain how one can switch between the desu/masu and plain forms in a single interaction. Learners are simply informed that the desu/masu forms are used to mark formality and the plain forms to mark informality without being introduced to the kinds of contextual features speakers of Japanese attend to when expressing their stances as an interaction unfolds. Taking the eleven lessons

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in Situational Functional Japanese (Tsukuba Language Group 1995) that are covered in this study as an example, there are in fact seven instances in which the speakers in the model dialogues switch from one set of forms to the other. However, no explanations are provided for such shifts and no exercises for learners to practice shifting between the forms are provided in the accompanying drill books (Tsukuba Language Group 1996). Clearly the speakers’ shift between forms as modeled in the textbook cannot be accounted for if the only explanation about the choice of forms provided to the learners is in relation to static contextual features. If learners are not introduced to the ways in which one can select the forms in relation to various contextual features, it is difficult to imagine how they will be able to appreciate the pragmatic functions of these linguistic tools and use them to fully express themselves when participating in interaction in Japanese.Maynard (1992: 41), who recognizes the pragmatic value of switching between the desu/masu and plain forms, fears that too many language classes are devoid of intellectually stimulating resources and argues that “language instructors, especially at the college level, should not be satisfied with the mere training of skills,” and “they should provide opportunities for studying language as an object of analysis.” Findings from Cook’s (2001) study, which is among the few that focus on JFL learners’ receptive skills regarding the pragmatic use of the desu/masu and plain forms, suggest that explicit instruction might be helpful in enhancing learners’ understanding of contextually-sensitive ways of indexing stance with the forms. Drawing on Maynard’s (1992) proposal, Cook’s (2001) findings and also on Schmidt’s (1993: 35) claim that “attention to linguistic forms, functional meanings, and the relevant contextual features is required” for the learning of pragmatics in a second language, I propose that the instruction of the desu/masu and plain forms should not be limited to their use in relation to static contextual features but also introduce to learners how speakers can select one set of forms over the other to index various stances in interaction in relation to dynamic contextual features. In the following sections, I introduce the instructional approach designed for the present study after discussing the level of learners for whom the approach was implemented.

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3. Level of learners Acknowledging that the desu/masu and plain forms index one’s stance at every clause-final position in interaction, I argue that teaching the pragmatic use of these forms cannot and should not be ignored from the beginning level of instruction. However, Kasper (1997) and Kasper and Rose (2002) note that there is a common perception that pragmatics can be taught only from intermediate or advanced level of FL instruction. That is, pragmatics has been given little attention in beginning level FL instruction as well as in pragmatics research. As Kasper and Rose (2002) point out, the question of whether pragmatics is teachable to beginning learners is still an area that needs further investigation. Among the few studies which have investigated beginning level learners are Koike’s (1989) study on comprehension and production of Spanish requests, Wildner-Bassett’s (1994) study on production of German formulaic routines, Tateyama et al. (1997) and Tateyama’s (2001) study on production of Japanese formulaic routines, Iwai’s (2005) study on engaging in small talk in Japanese, and Pearson’s (2006) study on the use of Spanish directives including commands and polite requests. While most of these studies have shown areas in which pragmatic development can occur even from the beginning level of FL instruction, some studies (e.g., Tateyama 2001; Pearson 2006) have shown learners to be resistant to development. For instance, in Pearson’s (2006) instructional intervention study, quantitative and qualitative analyses revealed that there were no clear differences with regard to pragmatic development among the three groups in her study, that is, one that engaged in metapragmatic discussions of Spanish directives, another which viewed videos in addition to engaging in discussions, and a control group which received no explicit instruction.7 Despite such findings, Pearson (2006) does not deny the value of pragmatic instruction at beginning levels. Instead, Pearson (2006: 489) suggests that pragmatic instruction should begin “at the earliest levels of study, as is done with grammar and vocabulary,” because it can provide additional opportunities for learners, especially those in FL learning environments, to comprehend and use L2 pragmatic forms. To further our understanding of how pragmatics can be introduced at the beginning levels of FL instruction, I argue that more research focusing on beginning level learners should be conducted to reveal 1) what aspects of TL use are prone or not prone to the learners’ pragmatic development, and 2) what kind of instructional components are effective or not effective for

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enhancing pragmatic development. Thus, through the present study, I investigate these points by analyzing how beginning level learners enrolled in two consecutive Japanese language courses develop their awareness and production skills regarding the pragmatic use of the desu/masu and plain forms.

4. Instructional approach Based on an understanding that pragmatics-focused explicit instruction could facilitate learners’ pragmatic development in terms of selecting linguistic resources to express their stances in ways that are socially acceptable and mutually identifiable (Yoshimi 2004), an instructional approach was designed for the present study regarding the pragmatic use of the desu/masu and plain forms. Although the ways in which explicit instruction has been implemented in interventional pragmatics studies have varied, the main common feature is provision of metapragmatic information (Kasper and Rose, 2002). In the present study, metapragmatic information about the use of the desu/masu and plain forms was provided through awareness-raising sessions which aimed at building the learners’ knowledge base regarding 1) contextual features which could signal one to select one set of forms over the other in an interaction, and 2) the expected stances to be shown and the forms to be used in first and second time encounters with college students around the same age. The awareness-raising sessions were held before the 10-minute conversation sessions that were arranged with NSs of Japanese four times during each of the two semesters in which the instructional approach was implemented. While the use of the desu/masu and plain forms had been gradually introduced from the first week of the JPN101 course, including grammatical explanations as well as their use in relation to various contextual features, the awareness-raising sessions provided an opportunity for the learners to specifically talk about the use of the forms in conjunction with the conversation sessions they were about to engage in. Approximately 30 minutes were spent before the first conversation sessions of each semester that took place during the seventh week of instruction. Approximately 10 minutes were spent before the three subsequent conversation sessions to remind the learners of what was discussed in the first awareness-raising sessions. In the first sessions, the learners first talked in groups of two or three about the contextual features which could signal

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them to select a particular set of forms and the stances that are expected to be shown in the conversation sessions. After the small group discussions, they shared what they talked about with the whole class. The learners unanimously agreed that they would start out with the desu/masu forms to show their formal stance and interpersonal distance since it was going to be the first time meeting with the NS conversation partners. Through the whole class discussion, the learners also talked about possibilities of shifting between the desu/masu and plain forms. They listed contextual features such as, finding common interests, starting to joke, getting to know the other person better, and noticing the other person’s use of the plain forms, as signals that could allow them to express informality, closeness, and a sense of friendliness with the plain forms. Additionally, the instructor commented during the discussion that switches from the desu/masu forms to the plain forms occur in naturalistic discourse in acknowledgement turns when the utterance is more directed to the speaker him- or herself, as well as in assessment turns when the speaker expresses spontaneous emotion. (See Appendix A for a summary of the explicit instruction components.)8 In order to examine the learners’ pragmatic development, this study focuses on 1) their awareness in terms of their understanding about their use of the desu/masu and plain forms in interaction, and 2) their production skills regarding their ability to use the forms in interaction. More specifically, the learners’ development of awareness was operationalized as their increased understanding of their own use of the forms in the reflection sheets they filled out immediately after each conversation session. The development of their productive skills was operationalized as their expanded use of the forms in interaction. The following research questions guide the study: 1) Does pragmatics-focused explicit instruction regarding the use of the desu/masu and plain forms benefit the learners’ ability to display their awareness of the use of the forms in relation to the contextual features surrounding the interaction? 2) Does pragmatics-focused explicit instruction regarding the use of the desu/masu and plain forms benefit the learners’ ability to use the forms to express their stances in interaction in relation to a wider range of contextual features?

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5. Methodology 5.1. Research site and learner population The instructional approach described above was implemented in two consecutive beginning level Japanese courses, which I refer to as JPN101 and JPN102. The class met four times a week, each session being 50 minutes long, for 16 weeks and was taught by the researcher.9 The assigned textbook was Situational Functional Japanese (Tsukuba Language Group 1995). Since a syllabus that specified goals and objectives for the course had already been developed by faculty members of the program, the instructional approach in this study was implemented within the scope of the institutionally mandated syllabus. The present study focuses on six college students who were part of a larger study (Ishida 2009) in which the instructional approach was implemented. The six were selected since they were the learners among a total of twenty who were enrolled in both JPN101 and JPN102 courses. Their ages ranged from 18 to 22, the average being 19.5 years old. Five out of the six learners had Asian background, of which four were of full or partial Japanese ancestry. Additionally, four out of the six learners had two to three years of Japanese learning experience prior to entering college. Appendix B shows the background information for the six learners, including their pseudonyms, class standing, age, and previous Japanese learning experience. In order to investigate the effect of the proposed instructional approach on the learners’ pragmatic development, data was also collected from learners in control groups taught by other instructors during the same period. There were six learners in the control group for the JPN101 level and seven for the JPN102 level with similar backgrounds to the learners in the experimental group. The two instructors (a male full-time instructor who is a NS of English and a female graduate student who is a NS of Japanese) who taught the courses for the control groups were interviewed after the instruction period, and they confirmed that they did not use class materials to introduce the use of the forms in relation to dynamic contextual features nor engage students in discussions to talk about switching between the two sets of forms in a single interaction.

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5.2. Conversation sessions As Kasper (2000) and Kasper and Rose (2002) point out, while elicited conversations cannot be the same as “authentic discourse” in which the conversations are motivated and structured by the participants’ rather than the researcher’s goals, they can serve as a data collection tool for various research purposes in pragmatics. For instance, conversation tasks have been used to study the use of Japanese sentence final particles (Yoshimi 1999), back channeling (White 1989), and the effects of instruction on the use of English compliments (Billmyer 1990). For the present study, 10-minute elicited conversation sessions with NSs of Japanese were arranged to investigate the development of the learners’ ability to use the forms to express their stances in interaction. For each conversation session, two learners were paired together, and each pair met with two NSs of Japanese per semester. The NSs were college students in the same institution whom the learners had not met prior to the conversation sessions. They were asked to freely engage in conversations with the learners. Two sessions with a one-week interval were arranged at mid-semester with the first group of NS conversation partners, and two more sessions were arranged with the second group of NS conversation partners at the end of the semester. Table 1 illustrates the way in which the conversation sessions were arranged. Table 1. Conversation session arrangements for each student pair JPN101 [Fall] Mid-semester End of semester [Weeks 7 and 8] [Weeks 14 and 15] NS 1 NS 2 Sessions #1 & #2 Sessions #3 & #4

JPN102 [Spring] Mid-semester End of semester [Weeks 7 and 8] [Weeks 13 and 14] NS 3 NS 4 Sessions #1 & #2 Sessions #3 & #4

As shown in Table 1, the learners had a total of eight opportunities to engage in conversations with the NSs over the two semesters. 5.3. Reflection sheets After each conversation session, the learners were asked to reflect on their interaction with the NS partners by filling out reflection sheets. The sheets were used as self-report data to examine the learners’ awareness of the use

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of the forms. Approximately 10–15 minutes were provided immediately after each session for the learners to fill out the sheets since it is crucial to collect valid self-reported data as participants engage in assigned tasks or immediately following the tasks (Ericsson and Simon 1993). Reflection sheets were used to collect self-reported data because the conversation sessions were held simultaneously during class hours and it was not feasible to conduct interviews or think-aloud protocols immediately after the sessions. In the reflection sheets, the learners were asked to write about 1) what aspects of the interaction they had planned to pay attention to, 2) how they felt the conversation session went, 3) what they noticed about the NS’s use of language or behavior, and 4) what they would like to incorporate or try out when/if they met with the same NS again. (See Appendix C for a sample reflection sheet.) 5.4. Data analysis procedures for the reflection sheets and conversation sessions To address the first research question about the learners’ ability to display their understanding of the use of the desu/masu and plain forms in interaction, I specifically focused on 1) the learners’ comments in the reflection sheets addressing the forms they planned to use and, 2) their comments regarding their use of the forms in the conversation sessions. The number of learners who made such comments and the number of reflection sheets in which such comments were made were first counted. Then, the comments were qualitatively analyzed to identify patterns in their responses, for instance, if they became increasingly aware of the use of the forms in relation to specific contextual features or interactional turns over the instruction period. To address the second research question about the learners’ ability to use the forms in interaction, their comments about particular contextual features or interactional turns were analyzed in conjunction with their actual use of the forms in the conversation sessions. The transcribed audiotaped conversation sessions were closely analyzed. In particular, the places where the learners shifted between the two sets of forms were closely examined in relation to the sequential environments and the contextual features of the interaction.

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In order to determine whether or not the pragmatics-focused explicit instruction benefited the learners’ development in terms of their understanding and use of the desu/masu and plain forms, data collected from the control groups were compared to the findings from the experimental group.

6. Results In this section, I will first present the results regarding the learners’ comments about the forms they planned to use in the conversation sessions with the NSs. Then, I will analyze their responses commenting on their use of the forms in the conversation sessions in conjunction with the transcripts of the interactions. 6.1. Comments regarding the learners’ plans to use the forms Overall analysis of the reflection sheets for the experimental and control groups revealed a clear difference in how the learners commented on their plans to use a particular form in the conversation sessions. Table 2 shows the number of learners in the two groups who made comments about the forms they planned to use, and Table 3 shows the number of reflection sheets in which learners made such comments. Table 2. Number of learners who commented on the forms they planned to use Experimental Group [n=6] Control Groups [n=6 for JPN101; n=7 for JPN102]

JPN101 [Fall] 4 (66.7%) 0 (0.0%)

JPN102 [Spring] 6 (100.0%) 2

(28.6%)

Table 3. Number of reflection sheets commenting on the forms the learners planned to use JPN101 [Fall] JPN102 [Spring] Session # #1 #2 #3 #4 total #1 #2 #3 #4 total Experimental Group 2 2 3 1 8 4 6 4 2 16 Control Groups 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 0 0 3

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From Table 2, we can see that while four out of the six learners (66.7%) in the experimental group at the JPN101 stage and all six (100.0%) at the JPN102 stage made comments on the use of the forms they planned to use, none of the control group learners (0.0%) at the JPN101 stage and only two out of the seven (28.6%) at the JPN102 stage did so. A difference found within the experimental group is the number of reflection sheets in which they made comments over the two semesters. As we can see in Table 3, during the JPN101 period, the experimental group learners made such comments in 8 out of the 24 (33.3%) reflection sheets, whereas they made twice as many comments, that is, in 16 out of the 24 sheets (66.7%), during the JPN102 period. Close analysis of the experimental group learners’ responses revealed that the types of comments they made regarding their plans to use a particular form in the conversation sessions changed over time. That is, although two thirds of the learners made such comments during the JPN101 stage, none commented on their use in relation to contextual features, whereas five out of the six learners did so during the JPN102 stage. No such comments were found in the control groups in JPN101 or JPN102. Below are excerpts from the experimental group learners’ reflection sheets. The first was provided by Emma after her third session during JPN102: (1) I decided to stay with the masu form since I was meeting Hide for the first time. I did try to see if I could use the plain form in some parts & if he’d use the plain form at some times.

This excerpt demonstrates Emma’s understanding that she can select the “masu form” by attending to a static contextual feature, that is, the meeting being the first time. Although she commented that she decided to “stay” with the masu form, the second sentence displays her understanding that one can switch to the plain forms in an interaction with an understanding that she can do so if her partner did so. Similar comments were also found in Richard’s following responses that were provided after the second and third conversation sessions during JPN102 respectively: (2) Tried to use mostly formal form until I found a sign that it would be okay to use the plain form. (3) Tried to use formal form until he switched.

Emma’s and Richard’s plans to use the formal form are consistent with the class discussion in which the learners agreed to first use the desu/masu form when meeting their NS partners to index a formal stance. Excerpt (2)

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indicates Richard’s awareness that there are signs he can attend to in order to switch to the plain forms. His comment in excerpt (3) shows that he recognizes that a switch in forms by the NS partner is one such sign.

6.2. Comments regarding the learners’ own use of the forms With regard to the learners’ comments about their use of the forms, we find a pattern similar to what we found in their responses about their plans to use a particular set of forms. That is, analysis of the data revealed clear differences between the experimental and control groups and also between the two instruction periods. Table 4 shows the number of learners in the experimental and control groups who made comments about their use of the forms and Table 5 shows the number of reflection sheets in which learners made such comments. Table 4. Number of learners who commented on their own use of the forms Experimental Group [n=6] Control Groups [n=6 for JPN101; n=7 for JPN102]

JPN101 [Fall] 0 (0.0%) 0 (0.0%)

JPN102 [Spring] 5 (83.3%) 0

(0.0%)

Table 5. Number of reflection sheets commenting on the learners’ own use of the forms JPN101 [Fall] Session # #1 #2 #3 #4 total Experimental Group 0 0 0 0 Control Groups 0 0 0 0

JPN102 [Spring] #1 #2 #3 #4 total 0 3 3 2 3 0 0 0 0 0

11 0

We can see from Tables 4 and 5 that there is a clear difference between the experimental group and the control group as well as between the two instruction periods about the ways in which the learners commented on their own use of the forms. That is, comments on the learners’ own use of the forms were found only among the experimental group learners at the JPN102 stage. Qualitative analysis of the experimental group learners’ comments in the eleven reflection sheets revealed that, although there were some comments in which the learners simply mentioned using a particular set of forms, most of them accounted for their choices. More specifically, five out of the six (83.3%) learners mentioned contextual features that they

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paid attention to or specific interactional turns in which they chose a particular set of forms in eight of the eleven reflection sheets. For instance, Jane commented after her second session in JPN102, “I didn’t really get to say anything in the casual style, except ‘あそう’ [a soo],” which is a phrase typically used in acknowledgement turns. Additionally, Emma mentioned her use of the plain forms in assessment turns. After the third session during JPN102, she commented: (4) I was able to slip in some casual expression. They were only exclamations though, like すごい [sugoi].

One instance where Emma used the expression sugoi in the third session is shown in the following excerpt. (5) H = Hide, E = Emma 1 2 3 4 → 5 6

E: Kyuushuu ni uhm (.) eigo o benkyoo shimashita ka Kyushu at uhm English OBJ study do-DM-PST Q ‘Did you study English in Kyushu?’ H: benkyoo shimashita (1.0) study do-DM-PST ‘I studied.’ E: aa (.) uh how long (0.5) aa uh ‘Uh uh how long?’ H: Eeto desu ne (2.0) juu nen gurai ten years uhm DM P ten years about ‘Uhm for about ten years, ten years.’ E: waa sugoi ((chuckles as saying the word ‘sugoi’)) wow amazing ‘Wow that’s amazing.’ ((chuckles as saying the word ‘amazing’)) H: but still bad ‘But still bad.’

The comment which Emma made with regard to her plans to use a particular set of forms for this session was introduced earlier as excerpt (1): she wrote that she decided to stay with the “masu form” since this was the first time meeting the NS partner. In fact, examination of this particular conversation session reveals that she used the desu/masu forms for most parts of this interaction. In Excerpt (5), we see that Emma asks if Hide studied English in Kyushu in the desu/masu form (line 1) and Hide responds also in the desu/masu form (line 2). Then Emma code-switches and asks her follow-up question in English (line 3). While Hide answers

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Emma’s follow-up question first in Japanese, he also reiterates his reply in English (line 4). In hearing Hide’s response, Emma assesses the information with a colloquial token of surprise “waa” and the evaluation “sugoi” in the plain form. The switch to the plain form when expressing surprise is consistent with the instructor introducing how one can switch to the plain form when expressing one’s spontaneous emotion during the pre-conversation awareness-raising sessions. Additionally, what is notable in this sequence is that the switch to the plain form occurs not only after hearing a surprising piece of information, but also after the question-answer sequence takes place partially in English. After Emma asks a question in English, which is her L1, in line 3, Hide provides an answer in line 4 first in Japanese and then reciprocates the switch to English by reiterating what he said in Japanese. Such code-switching could be due to Hide perceiving difficulty for Emma to carry the whole conversation in Japanese and his way of indexing solidarity with Emma.10 Although switching to the plain form after such code-switching was not discussed in the awareness-raising sessions, the NS partner’s indication of solidarity could have also triggered Emma to switch to the plain form in this particular instance. Other comments regarding the experimental group learners’ own use of the forms included switching to the plain forms when finding signals in the NSs’ behaviors, which was also discussed during the awareness-raising sessions. For example, in the reflection sheet after the second session in JPN102, Christopher wrote that he noticed that his NS conversation partner Mai “seemed quite friendly and also was not hesitant to use plain form” and he himself also used “a bit of plain form.” His switching to the plain forms from the desu/masu forms after the NS partner using the plain form is confirmed through analysis of his conversation session with Mai. Excerpt (6) shows how Christopher used the plain form in a question initiation turn in his conversation with Mai. Christopher had told Mai that he goes shopping at Central Mall that is in K town. The excerpt starts where Mai asks Christopher if he lives in K town. (6) M = Mai, C = Christopher, T = Terry 1 2

M: a K ni sunderu no:? (0.5) ah K town in live Q ‘ah, do you live in K town?’ T (0.5) C: ee::: (.) Uhm T town ‘Uhm I live in T town’

Indexing stance with Japanese desu/masu and plain forms 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 → 14 15 16

M: T. (0.3) T: aa: hai hai ha[i T town T town ah yes yes yes ‘T town, T town ah yes yes yes.’ C: [T K:: chikaku T town K town close ‘T town, it’s close to K town.’ M: u[n un soo soo soo da yo ne: yeah yeah so so so COP FP FP ‘yeah yeah that’s right’ C: [he- (0.7) he‘he-’ C: uu:::n (0.6) uhm ‘Uhm.’ M: basu de iku no, kuruma de iku? (1.1) bus by go Q car by go ‘Do you go by bus? Do you go by car?’ C: aa: (.) basu de: h[he uhm bus by ((chuckle)) ‘Uhm by bus.’ ((chuckle)) M: [basu de iku bus by go ‘You go by bus.’ T: huh (0.4) huh ‘Huh’ C: [uh hh uh ((chuckle)) ‘Uh’ ((chuckle)) M: [so kka so kka (2.6) so FP so FP ‘I see, I see.’ C: (yeah) (0.3) on- ongaku wa: uhm (0.4) (yeah) mu- music TOP uhm ‘(yeah) As for music, uhm’ nan- (0.3) nani o:: ki- (.) kiku no? whawhat OBJ li- listen Q ‘what do you listen to?’ M: ongaku: wa nee: (0.5) uu:n (1.5) nandemo hh hh hh::= Music TOP P uhm anything ((slight laughter)) ‘As for music, I listen to anything.’ ((slight laughter))

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C: =hh hh (0.3) h ((slight laughter)) ((slight laughter))

Prior to this portion, while Mai had been asking questions in both the desu/masu forms and the plain forms, Christopher had only asked questions in the desu/masu forms. In this excerpt, Mai uses the plain forms when asking questions in lines 1 and 8 and in acknowledgement turns in lines 5 and 13. While Christopher had made use of the plain forms in acknowledgement turns earlier in this session and also in response turns (line 4), he had not yet done so when asking questions. However, after Mai acknowledges the fact that Christopher goes to Central Mall by bus in line 13, Christopher initiates a new topic about music after a 2.6-second pause by asking a question using the plain form of the verb listen, i.e., ‘kiku.’ What is notable here is that not only did Christopher use the plain form in a question turn but also that the pattern in which the question was asked resembles that of Mai’s found in lines 1 and 8. That is, both their questions ended with a plain form of a verb with a ‘no,’ which is a final particle used in questions in the casual style. The similarity in the patterns of how the questions are asked suggest that Christopher was attentive to how Mai asked questions in the plain forms and used the pattern himself where he considered it to be appropriate. A similar instance of switching to the plain forms was also found after this sequence in question initiation turns by Terry, the second student interlocutor in this group. That is, Terry, who wrote in his reflection sheet that he tried to switch to the plain forms because he noticed the NS partner’s switch, initiated new topics in two occasions by asking a question using the same pattern (-no?). While only Christopher and Terry used the plain forms in question initiation turns and only Emma used the plain forms in assessment turns, five out of the six learners switched to the plain forms in acknowledgment turns at some point in their interactions during the JPN102 period. No switches to the plain forms were observed in the control groups.

7. Discussion Examination of the learners’ responses in the reflection sheets and the transcripts of the conversation sessions revealed clear differences between the learners who received pragmatics-focused explicit instruction regarding the use of the desu/masu and plain forms and those who did not receive

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such instruction. The results found in Tables 2 through 5 indicate that the experimental group learners displayed higher awareness of their use of the forms in the conversation sessions. Additionally, analysis of the conversation sessions revealed that pragmatic switches of the forms were only observed in the experimental group. These differences found between the two groups support the effectiveness of the present instructional approach. This finding is consistent with interventional pragmatic studies such as Yoshimi (2001) and Iwai’s (2005) that show that explicit instruction with an awareness-raising component and a production component contributed to JFL learners’ pragmatic development. Especially the results from the present study and Iwai’s (2005) study are encouraging since pragmatic development was observed even among beginning level learners. As mentioned earlier, there is a common perception that pragmatic aspects of language can be taught only from intermediate or advanced levels and whether pragmatics is teachable to beginning learners is still an area to be further investigated (Kasper and Rose 2002). The findings from the present study demonstrated that beginning level learners were able to not only comment on their use of the forms in the conversation sessions with the NSs, but also make such comments in relation to various contextual features. Additionally, we found that the experimental group learners switched between the two sets of forms in their conversation sessions to express a wider range of stances in particular moments in the interactions. However, it should be noted that the learners’ pragmatic development in the present study was more evident during the JPN102 stage. For example, while we found some mentions of which set of forms the learners planned to use in the reflection sheets during the JPN101 period, it was only at the JPN102 stage when the experimental group learners could display their pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic knowledge regarding their plans to use a particular set of forms and their actual use during the conversation sessions. More specifically, they demonstrated their pragmalinguistic knowledge about how the desu/masu and plain forms can be selected in relation to various contextual features (e.g., meeting with the NS being the first time, the switch of forms by the NS partners, and specific interactional turns), and also their sociopragmatic knowledge about what stances are expected and acceptable to be shown with the forms in first and second time encounters with college students around their own age. It is not surprising that such display of knowledge was found only at the second semester stage if we consider the challenges which FL learners face

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at the beginning level, including the learning of new vocabulary and grammatical structures. In fact, during JPN101, many learners commented on the reflection sheets that they planned to use the words and grammar that they learned in class and paid attention to the contents of the conversations rather than the forms they were using.11 Thus, it seems that the learners needed to progress in their language learning to some degree in order to attend to and/or talk about the use of the forms in the conversation sessions. However, such findings do not imply that the teaching of pragmatics should be delayed until after the beginning level of instruction. On the contrary, close analysis of the whole learner population of the larger study, including those who were enrolled only in either the JPN101 or JPN102 experimental course, revealed that providing explicit instruction from the JPN101 stage facilitated greater awareness and expanded use of the forms. In other words, these results suggest that development of the learners’ awareness and productive skills regarding the pragmatic use of the desu/masu and plain forms requires opportunities to engage in discussions about the forms and use them in interaction over an extended period of guided and focused instruction.

8. Conclusion In sum, the findings from the present longitudinal study suggest that providing pragmatics-focused explicit instruction for two semesters enabled beginning level learners to display their knowledge in terms of 1) how the desu/masu and plain forms can be selected in relation to various contextual features, and 2) what stances are expected and acceptable to be shown with the forms in the conversation sessions with the NS partners. Analysis of the transcripts of the conversation sessions also revealed the learners’ pragmatic development in terms of their use of the forms in interaction to express their stances in relation to a wider range of contextual features. For future studies, noting the gradual increase in the learners’ pragmatic development over the two semesters, it would be worthwhile to investigate whether providing pragmatics-focused explicit instruction for a longer period of time, for example, over three to four semesters, would further learners’ development regarding their understanding and use of the desu/masu and plain forms.

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Acknowledgements I would like to express my deep appreciation to Dina R. Yoshimi, Naoko Taguchi, and an external reviewer for their constructive and insightful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. Notes 1. Sentence–final particles (e.g., ne, yo) and a limited set of conjunctions (e.g., ga, kedo, kara) can occur after the desu/masu and plain form endings. 2. The following abbreviations are used: COP – ‘copula’; DM – ‘desu/masu’; FP – ‘final particle’; LK – ‘nominal linking particle’; OBJ – ‘object’; P – ‘particle’; PST – ‘past’; Q – ‘question.’ 3. A detailed explanation of the use of the forms and conjugational patterns can be found in Ishida (2009). 4. For instance, Ikuta (1983) was able to account for the switch from the desu/masu forms to the plain forms by an interviewer on a Japanese television program by analyzing the mixed use of the forms in relation to a dynamic contextual feature, that is, interpersonal distance between the interviewer and the interviewee. Another example is Cook (1999) who identified an interviewer switching to the plain forms in summary and/or assessment turns creating a pragmatic effect of sounding fresh and lively. 5. Following Leech (1983) and Thomas (1983), I understand pragmalinguistics to refer to the linguistic forms and resources appropriate to the sociocultural context and sociopragmatics to refer to one’s social perception of what constitutes socioculturally appropriate linguistic behavior. 6. It should be noted that there is an introductory section in Situational Functional Japanese (Tsukuba Language Group 1995: 23) which describes that the choice of forms is not predetermined but changes in accordance with various combinations of factors such as “the formality of the situation in which the conversation takes place, the topic, and even the speaker’s emotional state.” This explanation is insightful since it goes beyond the static sociolinguistic view of the forms. However, further detailed explanation is not provided when the use of the forms are introduced in the text. 7. Pearson (2006) writes that the limited effects of the intervention on the learners’ pragmatic development could be due to factors such as short time of exposure to the target items, the limited range of strategies presented in the lessons, and the learners’ lower level of L2 competence. 8. It should be noted that a few interventional studies such as House (1996),Yoshimi(2001) and Iwai (2005) included a feedback component and demonstrated the overall beneficial effect of explicit instruction on the learners’ pragmatic development. However, in the present study, feedback on the

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learners’ productions in the conversation sessions was not provided since it was not feasible for the researcher to review the recorded conversations and provide feedback to the learners in a timely manner during the instruction period. 9. As my positionality as a researcher and instructor for the courses, I was careful not to inhibit the participants’ learning for the sake of research. That is, the instructional approach and data collection tools were designed in ways that would also be beneficial for the learners’ JFL learning. For example, the reflection sheets were developed not only to collect data but also to provide opportunities for the learners to reflect on the interactions they engaged in. 10. Similar instances of code–switching in which a speaker reiterates information by code–switching to a language better understood by his or her interlocutor to index solidarity have also been found in Seidlitz’s (2003) study on functions of code–switching in classes of German as a FL. 11. One point that should be noted is that four out of the six learners did have prior Japanese learning experience before enrolling in the JPN101 course as explained in the methodology section. However, data collected at the beginning of the JPN101 course through assessment questionnaires (see Ishida [2007, 2009] for details of the instrument) as part of the larger study revealed no patterns that indicate higher awareness of the use of the desu/masu and plain forms by those who had prior Japanese learning experience.

References Billmyer, Kristine 1990 “I really like your lifestyle”: ESL learners learning how to compliment. Penn Working Papers in Educational Linguistics 6: 31– 48. Chafe, Wallace and Johanna Nichols 1986 Evidentiality: The Linguistic Coding of Epistemology. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Cook, Haruko 1996a The Japanese verbal suffixes as indicators of distance and proximity. In: Martin Putz and Rene Dirven (eds.), The Construal of Space in Language and Thought, 3–27. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 1996b Japanese language socialization: Indexing the modes of self. Discourse Processes 22: 171–197. 1999 Situational meanings of Japanese social deixis: The mixed use of the masu and plain forms. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 8 (1): 87– 110.

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Why can’t learners of JFL distinguish polite from impolite speech styles? In: Kenneth R. Rose and Gabriele Kasper (eds.), Pragmatics in Language Teaching, 80–102. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. 2008a Construction of Speech Styles: The case of the Japanese naked plain form. In: Junko Mori and Amy Snyder Ohta (eds.), Japanese Applied Linguistics: Discourse and Social Perspectives, 80–108. London: Continuum. 2008b Socializing Identities through Speech Style: Learners of Japanese as a Foreign Language. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Ericsson, K. Anders and Herbert A. Simon 1993 Protocol Analysis: Verbal Reports as Data. rev. ed. Cambridge: MIT Press. House, Juliane 1996 Developing pragmatic fluency in English as a foreign language. Studies in Second Language and Acquisition 18: 225–252. Ide, Sachiko 1982 Japanese sociolinguistics: Politeness and woman’s language. Lingua 57: 357–385. 1989 Formal forms and discernment: two neglected aspects of universals of linguistic politeness. Multilingua 2/3: 223–248. Ikuta, Shoko 1983 Speech level shift and conversational strategy in Japanese discourse. Language Sciences 5: 37–53. Ishida, Kazutoh 2007 Developing understanding of how the desu/masu and plain forms express one’s stance [HTML document]. In: Dina R. Yoshimi and Haidan Wang (eds.), Selected Papers from Pragmatics in the CJK Classroom: The State of the Art, 97–120. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i, National Foreign Language Resource Center. Available: http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/CJKProceedings/ishida/ishida.pdf. 2009 Indexing stance in interaction: A pedagogical approach to teaching the pragmatic use of the Japanese plain and desu/masu forms. Ph.D. diss., University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. Iwai, Tomoko 2005 The development of conversational competence among L2 Japanese learners. Paper presented at 2005 Association of Teachers of Japanese Seminar, Chicago, IL. Kasper, Gabriele 1997 Can Pragmatic Competence be Taught? (NFLRC NetWork #6), [HTML document]. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i, Second Language Teaching and Curriculum Center. Available: http://www.lll.hawaii.edu/nflrc/NetWorkds/NW6/.

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Data collection in pragmatics research. In: Helen Spencer-Oatey (ed.), Culturally Speaking, 316–341. London: Continuum. Kasper, Gabriele, and Kenneth R. Rose 2002 Pragmatic Development in a Second Language. Malden: Blackwell. Koike, Dale A. 1989 Pragmatic competence and adult L2 acquisition: Speech acts in interlanguage. Modern Language Journal 73: 279–289. Leech, Geoffrey N. 1983 Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman. Martin, Samuel E. 1964 Speech levels in Japan and Korea. In: Dell Hymes (ed.), Language in Culture and Society, 407–415. New York: Harper and Row. Matsumoto, Yoshiko 1988 Reexamination of the universality of face: Politeness phenomena in Japanese. Journal of Pragmatics 12: 403–426. Matsumoto, Yoshiko 2002 Gender identity and the presentation of self in Japanese. In: Sarah Benor, Mary Rose, Devyani Sharma, Julie Seetland and Qing Zhang (eds.), Gendered Practices in Language, 339–354. Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information. Matsumoto, Yoshiko and Shigeko Okamoto 2003 The construction of the Japanese language and culture in teaching Japanese as a foreign language. Japanese Language and Literature 37: 27–48. Maynard, Senko K. 1991 Pragmatics of discourse modality: A case of da and desu/masu forms in Japanese. Journal of Pragmatics 15: 551–582. 1992 Toward the pedagogy of style: Choosing between abrupt and formal verb forms in Japanese. Sekai no Nihongo Kyoiku 2: 27–43. 1993 Discourse Modality: Subjectivity, Emotion and Voice in the Japanese Language. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Niyekawa, Agnes 1991 Minimum Essential Politeness: A Guide to the Japanese Honorific Language. Tokyo: Kodansha International. Ochs, Elinor 1996 Linguistic resources for socializing humanity. In: John Gumperz and Stephen Levinson (eds.), Rethinking Linguistic Relativity, 407–437. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Okamoto, Shigeko 1998 The use and non-use of honorifics in sales talk in Kyoto and Osaka: Are they rude or friendly? In: Noriko Akatsuka, Hajime Hoji, Shoichi Iwasaki, Sung-Ock Sohn and Susan Strauss (eds.), Japanese/Korean Linguistics 7, 141–157. Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information. 1999 Situated politeness: Manipulating honorific and non-honorific expressions in Japanese conversations. Pragmatics 9 (1): 51–74. Pearson, Lynn 2006 Patterns of development in Spanish L2 pragmatic acquisition: An analysis of novice learners’ production of directives. Modern Language Journal 90 (4): 473–495. Schmidt, Richard 1993 Consciousness, learning and interlanguage pragmatics. In: Gabriele Kasper and Shoshana Blum-Kulka (eds.), Interlanguage Pragmatics, 21–42. New York: Oxford University Press. Seidlitz, Lisa M. 2003 Functions of codeswitching in classes of German as a foreign language. Ph. D. diss., University of Texas at Austin. Tateyama, Yumiko 2001 Explicit and implicit teaching of pragmatic routines: Japanese sumimasen. In: Kenneth R. Rose and Gabriele Kasper (eds.), Pragmatics in Language Teaching, 200–222. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Tateyama, Yumiko, Gabriele Kasper, Lara P. Mui, Hui-Mian Tay, and Ong-on Thananart 1997 Explicit and implicit teaching of pragmatic routines. In: Lawrence Bouton (ed.), Pragmatics and Language Learning vol. 8, 163–178. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Thomas, Jenny 1983 Cross-cultural pragmatic failure. Applied Linguistics 4: 91– 112. Tsukuba Language Group 1995 Situational Functional Japanese Volume One: Notes. 2d ed. Tokyo: Bonjinsha. 1996 Situational Functional Japanese Volume One: Drills. 2d ed. Tokyo: Bonjinsha. Wehr, Lauren 2001 Addressee honorifics and discernment: A qualitative analysis of native speaker conceptualizations of the masu and plain verb forms. Unpublished manuscript. White, Sheida 1989 Backchannels across cultures: A study of Americans and Japanese. Language in Society 18: 59–76.

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Wildner-Bassett, Mary 1994 Intercultural pragmatics and proficiency: ‘Polite’ noises for cultural appropriateness. International Review of Applied Linguistics 32: 3– 17. Yoshimi, Dina Rudolph 1999 L1 socialization as a variable in the use of ne by L2 learners of Japanese. Journal of Pragmatics 31: 1513–1525. 2001 Explicit instruction and JFL learner’s use of interactional discourse markers. In: Kenneth R. Rose and Gabriele Kasper (eds.), Pragmatics in Language Teaching, 223–244. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. 2004 Intercultural Diversity and Intracultural Diversity: Helping the Learner to Find a Voice in the L2. Paper presented at the Cultural Diversity and Language Education Conference, Honolulu, Hawai’i.

Appendix A Summary of the Explicit Instruction Components Awareness-raising sessions Week 7 Week 8 Week 13/14 Week 14/15

Discussion before first conversation [30 minutes] Reminder session before second conversation [10 minutes] Reminder session before third conversation [10 minutes] Reminder session before fourth conversation [10 minutes]

Conversation sessions with NSs of Japanese First conversation session [10 minutes] Second conversation session [10 minutes] Third conversation session [10 minutes] Fourth conversation session [10 minutes]

Appendix B Learners’ background information Name

Age

Class standing

Ethnic background

Christophe r Emma

18

freshman

19

sophomore

JapaneseAmerican JapaneseAmerican

Japanese learning experience prior to college 2 years in high school 1 year in junior high school, 2 years in high school

Indexing stance with Japanese desu/masu and plain forms Jane

19

sophomore

Richard

21

junior

Terry

22

junior

Troy

18

sophomore

Japanese, Filipino, Spanish and Chinese Malaysian, Hawaiian and Chinese JapaneseAmerican Caucasian

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3 years in high school 2 years in high school none none

Appendix C CONVERSATION SESSION #1 REFLECTION 1. Write in detail what aspects of interaction, i.e., content as well as language use, you planned to pay attention to in today’s session. 2.

How did the conversation session go today? For example, were you able to do the things you planned for?

3.

Any things you noticed about the Japanese speaker’s use of language or behavior?

4.

What are some things you want to incorporate or try out during your next session with the same Japanese speaker next week?

5.

Other comments?

Advanced learners’ honorific styles in emails and telephone calls Keiko Ikeda

Abstract

This study examined the use of honorific styles by 15 adult advanced learners of Japanese by analyzing their discourse data on two tasks, an email and a telephone conversation task, both of which involved roleplaying situations. The learners were first asked to make contact via email with a native Japanese speaker who was either (i) an employee at a company at which they sought an internship; or (ii) a professor in a department in which they desired to pursue graduate study. A telephone conversation task followed, in which they discussed their interests in the internship or graduate study further. The study analyzed the frequency and types of honorific forms (exalted, humble-1, and humble-2 styles) used by the learners in both tasks. The findings revealed that the advanced learners did not use honorific forms as much as the native speakers did in the same tasks. Qualitative analyses revealed that the learners used a variety of linguistic and non-linguistic resources to project the deference and demeanor expected in the task situations.

1. Introduction This study investigated how adult advanced learners of Japanese managed highly formal interactional contexts that required the use of honorific speech styles (keigo) in Japanese. Skillful use of honorific styles is an important aspect of communicative competence for both learners and native speakers of Japanese. However, mastery of honorific speech styles is a challenge for language learners because honorific styles in Japanese communication are complex both linguistically and socioculturally. Even more daunting is learning to use them appropriately in communication

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tasks embedded in specific socio-cultural settings. Since only a few studies empirically examined Japanese learners’ use of honorific language, we know very little about how well they can manage honorifics in authentic social interaction. To contribute to the existing literature, by adopting quantitative and qualitative methods, this study examined honorific speech style among advanced learners of Japanese.

2. Japanese honorifics: Background 2.1. What are honorifics? The study of keigo dates back to the 19th century and has been the subject of enthusiastic scholarship ever since. In 2007, the Cultural Affairs Council (bunkachoo) in Japan issued a report titled Keigo no Shishin ‘Guidance on Honorifics.’ Keigo, which literally means ‘polite language,’ used to refer to linguistic forms only, but nowadays keigo studies include social behaviors that may or may not involve honorific forms. In this chapter, I treat keigo in a similar vein. Honorifics are not mere linguistic encodings; they reflect social actions that the speakers accomplish with polite language, and honorific forms are part of the polite language that encodes social actions. Since the study of keigo (i.e., polite language) has grown as a rich academic field both in Japan and overseas, I do not have enough space to provide a comprehensive review of the existing literature. Yet, I will preface the present study with some background remarks on the current state of our understanding of keigo. Japanese honorific forms are composed of a set of morpho-syntactic structures and lexicons. Some of the forms are inflectional (e.g. tsukurareru in ‘make/cook’ exalted), some are patterned structures (e.g., o-kiki [verb stem ‘to listen’] ni naru exalted), and some are morphologically independent (e.g., haiju ‘receipt’ humble). There are two major categories of honorifics: (1) “referent honorifics,” which are used for people or things spoken to or about; and (2) “addressee honorifics,” which are used to show respect to the hearer of the utterance (Minami 1974; Comrie 1976; Shibatani 1990). 1 Referent honorifics are divided into two types: subject honorifics (hereafter exalted form, or sonkee-go) and object honorifics (hereafter ‘humble-1’, or kenjoo-go). Similarly, addressee honorifics can be divided into teenee-go (hereafter ‘polite form’) and teechoo-go (hereafter ‘humble-2’). In earlier literature, teechoo-go and kenjoo-go were grouped

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together. However, according to Keigo no Shishin ‘Guidance on Honorifics’ (See table 1), these two types have major differences and thus are treated separately (Bunkachoo ‘Cultural Affairs Council’ 2007). The critical differences between the two reside in (i) to whom the deference is addressed with the style, and (ii) how the deference is projected. Humble-1 (kenjoo-go) is object honorification, meaning that it denotes deference by using the verb forms that “lower” the speaker’s actions, consequently elevating the hearer’s status (e.g., ukagaimasu ‘to visit/come’). Humble-2, on the other hand, denotes deference and formality by using verb forms that specially indicate politeness toward the addressee/hearer. This means that the verb forms do not involve “lowering” the speaker’s actions, as in mairimasu ‘to visit/come.’ For example, when the speaker says to Professor A, B-sensei no tokoro e ukagaimasuHUMBLE-1 ‘I will visit Professor B,’ this statement denotes deference toward Professor B, but when the speakers says to Professor A, B-sensei no tokoro e mairimasuHUMBLE-2 ‘I will visit Professor B,’ then it denotes deference to Professor A (and the social context of the conversation) Honorific expressions in the Japanese language are often understood only to encode (grammatically) relative social status between participants, or between participants and referents (e.g., Brown and Levinson 1987: 276). However, a critical mass of studies now rejects this simplistic view and suggests that Japanese honorific styles are more dynamic in nature. In this view, keigo constructs sociolinguistic speech styles.2 A style is “an implementation of a combination of features from many varieties of language, registers, and performance genres” (e.g., sermon, advice, and proverb) at the speaker’s disposal (Mendoza-Denton 1999: 238). It is composed of certain linguistic forms that can be conventionally associated with a set of topics, participants, channels, or broader social contexts (Labov 1984). However, a style cannot be defined simply by detecting a handful set of linguistic encodings. Cook (2001) suggests that an honorific speech style in Japanese is delineated by various contextualization cues, which are constellations of surface verbal and non-verbal features signaling how the activity should be understood (Gumperz 1982). In Japanese language, what Cook (2001: 83) describes as a “collocation of contextualization cues”—not just a single use of verb form—foregrounds a particular formality and constructs an honorific style. Appropriateness of honorific use is not only judged by how things are said grammatically, but also by when and in what context they are said. Current literature in Japanese sociolinguistics uses terms such as taiguu

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komyunikeeshon ‘communication to treat others’3 or keei hyoogen ‘deferential expressions’4 (National Language Council 2000; Ide 2005; Kabaya et al. 2006) to describe the broader socio-pragmatic dimension of honorifics. Table 1. Classification of honorifics in Japanese (Adopted from National Language Council, 2007:64)

Sonkee-go (Exalted )

Subject honorification. Used to indicate the speaker denotes deference to the referent. (e.g., keeki o meshiagaru ‘[someone] eats cake’

Referent Honorifics Kenjoo-go Humble Type 1 (Humble-1) Teechoo-go Humble Type 2 Addressee (Humble-2)

Object honorification. Used to indicate deference to the recipient of the action by the speaker (e.g., o ukagai suru ‘to make inquiry’)

Used to indicate the deference to the addressee/hearer. (e.g., asu mairimasu. ‘I will show up tomorrow.’ Zonjite orimasu ‘I know’)

Honorifics Teenee-go Polite Form

Used to indicate the deference to the addressee/hearer of the speaker’s utterance. Unlike humble-type 2, only desu / gozaimasu (copula) and -masu verbal forms are included.

Bika-go

Certain words which are considered simply nicer than the

Beautified

alternatives.

Form

(e.g., otsukuri ‘raw fish dish’ for sashimi)

Notes. The examples from Keigo no Shishin ‘Guidance on Honorifics’ are inserted by the author for each type.

2.2. What do people “do” with honorifics? A recent strand in the study of keigo is to determine the theoretical framework that best explains functions of honorifics speech styles in

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Japanese communication. Honorifics are first and foremost understood as linguistic devices that encode politeness. Some have explained honorifics based on Brown and Levinson’s linguistic politeness theory (e.g., Fukada 2002; Fukada and Asato 2004; Fukushima 2000; Usami 2002). The underlying motivation for linguistic politeness is face-work. When we encounter a face-threatening act (hereafter FTA), we employ positive or negative politeness strategies in order to maintain face. Some researchers adopt this theory to account for the use of different levels of honorific speech in Japanese language. Among them, Fukada and Asato (2004) claim that various levels of honorifics are used in order to describe the calculated weight of a “face-threatening act,” as suggested in Brown and Levinson (1987: 62). For instance, when the hearer’s social status is greater than the speaker’s, distance and power are markedly valued, and the overall weight of an FTA becomes greater. As a result, the speaker chooses a more polite (i.e., more upgraded) style from the available honorific levels when performing the FTA. Whether or not the “face-work” is the driving force for all cases of honorifics use has been questioned in the literature (Matsumoto 1988, 2003; Ide 1989, 2005). The critics argue that the use of honorifics is not necessarily directly linked to an individual’s desire to maintain positive or negative face; rather, honorifics are used to satisfy a different level of politeness, one that is orthogonal to linguistic politeness frameworks such as Brown and Levinson’s (1987). For Ide (1989, 2005) and Hills et al. (1986), a socially agreed demeanor called wakimae ‘discernment’ guides speakers to choose a certain honorific style from the available repertoire. According to Ide (1989, 2005), ‘discernment’ contrasts with ‘volition,’ a type of politeness that a speaker employs strategically in order to handle face-threatening acts, which is the core concept of traditional linguistic politeness frameworks (i.e., Brown and Levinson 1978; Leech 1983). The notion of wakimae or ‘discernment’ (i.e., socially agreed norms of language practice) has been reexamined in more recent pragmatics literature. For instance, Haugh (2004) claims that the politeness denoted through Japanese honorifics is better understood as grounded in one’s sense of ‘place.’ A place, as he uses the term, refers to one’s acknowledgement of others as part of a particular group, or acknowledgement of someone’s distinguishing rank, position, or circumstances. Use of “proper” linguistic forms to appropriately describe one’s and others’ place generates security for the participants in interaction, and helps to establish a mutual understanding of a social activity in progress. Honorific language is one

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type of linguistic means that the participants use to communicate each other’s place.

2.3. Social identity and honorifics Besides encoding politeness, many scholars claim that honorifics construct various levels of social identity for the speakers. Ide (2005) suggests that when speakers adhere to socially agreed upon usage of honorific styles, they can present themselves as fully cultivated members of the community. Therefore, speakers’ qualities such as “dignity” and “elegance” can be denoted implicitly through one’s successful deployment of honorific speech styles. Some scholars strongly reject viewing honorifics as sociallyconventionalized language devices. Instead, they emphasize that the speakers’ strategic use of honorifics aids the speakers in the construction of their social selves. In this view, speakers are not passive ‘slaves’ who merely represent the given social context. Rather, they make use of available language devices to construct an identity most suitable to their perceptions of themselves vis-à-vis others. Their construction may or may not reflect what is conventionally expected in the context. By analyzing naturalistic conversation, studies on sociolinguistic styles in different Japanese communities revealed substantial situational and individual variation in the use of honorific styles (e.g., Cook 1996, 2006; Okamoto 1995, 1997). Cook’s (2006) study is one example. She revealed that during an academic consultation session, a student and a professor manipulated the grammatical structures and the sequential organization of talk, and diverted from the expected honorific use to co-construct their identities in the moment-by-moment interaction. These studies emphasize that speakers are active agents who use various honorific styles to make sense of the specific context. Their speech does not merely reflect social status. Honorifics are used to index the participants’ understanding of context, sense of self, and sense of the relationship among them. Based on the previous literature, we can say that Japanese honorifics help construct sociolinguistic styles with which the speakers project and negotiate their mutual understanding of the social contexts in which they operate. Honorifics index more than mere social status; purpose of communication (e.g., phatic communication or mere rituals), relationships among the participants, a sense of place, and

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speaker subjectivity are all part of the intricate social meanings that are constructed through the use of honorific styles.

3. Honorifics and learners of Japanese Within the pedagogical literature on second language (L2) learners of Japanese, use of honorific speech styles has been regarded as an important aspect of socio-pragmatic competence to acquire (Sakamoto 2000; Sugito 2006). Particularly for learners in tertiary level institutions and those who seek employment in private corporations in Japan, acquiring skills to manage honorific styles is essential. Despite this importance, research on L2 learners’ use of honorifics is surprisingly underdeveloped. Some attempts have been made in the past to determine what aspect of honorifics forms is most difficult for learners to acquire. For instance, Miyaoka, Tamaoka, and Wu (2004) examined L2 learners’ honorifics use, solely as linguistic encodings. They administered a written test to 120 Japanese as a second language (JSL) learners from China to measure their knowledge of honorific linguistic forms. Results showed that the knowledge of grammatical particles influenced accurate use of humble expressions. They also found that the knowledge of particles and non-inflected words directly influenced the acquisition of exalted expressions. Other studies investigated L2 learners’ linguistic politeness by directly comparing learners’ honorifics style to that of native speakers of Japanese. Asato (1998) examined the occurrence of honorifics in the speech act of request. Fifty native speakers of Japanese (L1 group) and fifty learners of Japanese (L2 group) completed a Discourse Completion Task (DCT) that contained a series of request-eliciting scenarios of different social situations. The learners’ responses were evaluated by 100 native speaker raters on a 5-point Likert scale. Results indicated that L2 learners differed from L1 speakers in terms of the use of honorifics and indirect strategies for requesting. Asato pointed out that learners’ use of honorifics, even when grammatically acceptable, differed from that of L1 speakers. She also found that L2 learners’ perceptions of DCT situations differed from those of L1 speakers in terms of power, distance, and imposition of the speech act involved. While the learners’ perception of the imposition involved in the DCT situations was appropriate, they displayed a tendency to evaluate their own power higher than that of their hearer’s. They were also sensitive to distance between themselves and the hearer.

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In another study, Enomoto and Marriott (1994) had six native speakers of Japanese assess the deviations from politeness ‘norms’ found in two L2 speakers when they were performing the role of tour guide for Japanese visitors in Australia. The raters first gave a score ranging from 0 (neutral) to -2 (very negative) to select features of L2 performance (e.g., use of subject honorifics, -desu/-masu or gozaimasu style). The raters then explained what they found problematic about the learners’ performance. The most negative evaluations did not come from the “erroneous” use of honorific forms, but concerned the management of speech acts (e.g., apologies, compliments, and requests). These findings imply that the learners’ violation of the sociopragmatic norms, rather than pragmalinguistic misuse, influenced the raters’ evaluation. Another line of research examined how L2 learners’ linguistic politeness develops according to different learning environments (e.g., study abroad contexts, Japanese as a foreign language setting). For example, Marriott (1996) analyzed politeness patterns of eight Australian students of Japanese in secondary schools who spent a year in Japan. Two Japanese interviews conducted at pre- and post-departure were examined in detail for instances of polite language. The participants increasingly used plain style language after a year abroad, and no exalted or humble styles were found in their speech. When performing a role play in which they asked a favor to someone, they used formal speech styles in the opening and closing of the speech act. After a year of study abroad, they began to use Japanese formulaic routines at an appropriate level of politeness. While these previous studies are highly informative, they also leave us with some unresolved issues for further research. One venue of such research is the level of participants. Studies of L2 honorific use have been concentrated on the early stage of language learning (e.g., Enomoto and Marriott 1994; Marriott 1996), and very few studies have explored the honorifics usage among advanced-level speakers of Japanese. When learners’ general language proficiency matures to a certain level, it becomes more difficult to capture learners’ honorific styles because they do not simply make obvious linguistic errors in keigo any longer. Hence, to better understand linguistic politeness at advanced-level, a close, qualitative analysis of the discourse data is necessary in order to understand how advanced learners construct deference and demeanor in their ongoing talk. In addition, future honorifics research should expand the scope of data collection methods. Previous research typically used a DCT to collect data of learners’ honorific language use. This method enabled researchers to

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examine learners’ general knowledge of honorifics; however, because DCT does not involve interaction, aspects of politeness other than honorifics (e.g., discourse patterns, turn constructions, placement and timing of honorifics etc.) are not attended. Hence, qualitative analysis of learners’ honorific styles in interaction is necessary in order to highlight these aspects. In addition, previous studies tended to use a single task with limited set of situational variables when examining L2 honorific use. This is potentially problematic because, as documented in the previous sociolinguistic studies, in both L1 and L2 contexts, linguistic styles are highly susceptible to situational variables. Since ability to style shift according to situation is in part an index of pragmatic competence, it is important to incorporate multiple tasks to examine variability in learners’ honorifics usage across task situations. The present study is an effort to address these gaps in the existing literature. This study combined quantitative and qualitative methods and examined honorific styles exhibited among advanced learners of Japanese over different communicative tasks. The following questions guided the study: (1) To what extent do learners of Japanese make use of honorific forms to express politeness across different communicative situations? (2) What linguistic resources beyond honorific forms do learners use to achieve the appropriate level of politeness?

4. Methodology 4.1. Participants Participants in this study were 15 students of L2 Japanese at a Japanese university. Their language proficiency level (based on Nihongo Nooryoku Shiken) ranged from Levels 1–2, which was considered highly advanced. Levels 1 and 2 cover major honorific uses in Japanese; thus, we can assume that those who passed Level 1 or 2 had learned honorific uses and styles. Their native countries varied: six were from mainland China, three from Taiwan, two from Malaysia, two from Indonesia, one from Sri Lanka, and one from Thailand. Their age also ranged from the mid 20’s to late 30’s. According to the personal information survey, they had studied Japanese for an average of four years, ranging from three to nine years. Most of them

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had stayed in Japan for a minimum of 1.5 years, ranging from 1.5 to 4 years. Fifteen native speakers of Japanese (L1 speakers) at the same university also participated as a comparison group. The L1 speakers’ ages ranged from late 20’s to early 40’s. The gender balance of the L2 and the L1 groups was similar: the L2 group had 6 males and 9 females, whereas the L1 group had 7 males and 8 females.

4.2. Instrumentation and data collection The participants were asked to perform two types of role play tasks, one via email and the other via telephone. They were first asked to make contact via email with Ms./Professor Yamada, a native Japanese speaker who was either (i) an executive-level employee (koohoo buchoo ‘advertising section chief’) at a company called “Intech Nagoya Ltd.,” at which the participants were told to seek an internship; or (ii) a professor in a graduate school at Nagoya Intech (Kooka) University where the participant desired to pursue a Master’s degree. These two settings were created because they were considered to be familiar to the participants.5 Before creating these two role play settings, an informal survey and oral interviews were conducted with L1 and L2 speakers (approximately 20 each) to confirm that both contexts would naturally lead participants to speak formally and show deference to their interlocutor. After an email exchange with Ms./Professor Yamada, the participants completed the telephone task. Email and telephone tasks were considered in sequel, i.e., Ms./Professor Yamada made a phone call upon receiving the email inquiry from the participants. The participants were not informed about the purpose of the study and were asked simply to perform the role of a prospective candidate to the internship program and graduate program. The same native speaker played the role of Yamada and guided the participants to perform a series of activities in the telephone conversations. Each conversation, which lasted approximately 8 to 10 minutes, was recorded and transcribed. The native speaker interlocutor (i.e., Yamada) guided each participant to do the following: 1. Confirm his or her intention to enter the internship or graduate program; 2. Make a quick self-introductory speech to appeal to Yamada; 3. Make further inquiries about the program.

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After the two tasks, the L2 participants were asked to fill out a follow-up survey form, which asked about their general language learning background as well as their impressions about their honorifics management during the two tasks.

4.3. Data Analysis The two sets of data (email texts and telephone conversations) were first examined for the instances of linguistic honorific forms. The default speech style throughout the emails and telephone calls was polite style (-desu/masu speech style). Hence, I examined learners’ use of other three major types of honorifics, namely, exalted form (sonkee-go), humble-1 form (kenjoo-go), and humble-2 form (teechoo-go) (see table 1). These forms were identified in the data, and frequency of each form was tallied. Two types of units of analysis were used in this study: t-unit for email texts, and utterance unit for telephone conversation. A t-unit is defined as “one main clause with all subordinate clauses attached to it” (Hunt, 1965: 20).6 An utterance unit was applied for telephone conversation data because it is considered more sensitive to the interactive nature of spoken communication. In contrast to a t-unit, an utterance unit (i) occurs under one intonation contour; (ii) is bounded by pauses; and/or (iii) constitutes a single semantic unit (Kanno et al. 2008).7 In addition to the frequency count of honorific forms, this study adopted a qualitative, discourse analytic approach (e.g., Brown and Yule 1983; Schiffrin 1987) to examine email texts and telephone conversations. The purpose of the qualitative analysis was to examine how learners used available linguistic resources to conduct the expected social deference and demeanor at an appropriate level of politeness, if they opted out honorifics. The first two email messages sent from the learners to the native speaker addressee, as well as the entire telephone conversation were transcribed and analyzed for notable linguistic features and semantic moves.

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5. Results 5.1. Distribution of honorific forms by L2 learners 5.1.1. Analyses of email messages Table 2 presents the tally of the attested honorific forms and their average frequency per t-unit in email messages. The L1 and L2 group produced similar number of t-units. For the L2 group, the total number of t-units per message ranged from 8 to 25 with a median of 15 and standard deviation (SD) of 4.58.8 For the L1 speaker group, the total number of t-units ranged from 7 to 19, with the median of 13 and SD of 5.17. Table 2. Attested linguistic honorific forms in emails

L2 L1

Exalted M SD 1.05 1.61 2.53 2.45

R 0.06 0.17

Humble1 M SD 2.63 2.38 4.16 2.75

R 0.15 0.29

Humble2 M SD 3.63 2.58 5.58 3.64

R 0.25 0.41

T AVG 14.94 13.42

Notes: Mean(M)=frequency per person, SD=standard deviation, Ratio(R)=average score for frequency use per t-unit (T).

As shown in Table 2, the L2 group used humble-2 style (teechoo-go) more often (0.25/t-unit) than other two types, namely humble-1 style (kenjoo-go, 0.15/t-unit) and exalted style (sonkee-go, 0.06/t-unit). The L1 group used all three honorific forms at a higher rate than the L2 group, and the group difference was statistically significant, t(26)=-2.24, p=0.03, for the exalted style, t(26)=-2.84, p=0.008 for the humble-1 style, and t(26)=-2.92, p=0.007 for the humble-2 style. Because the average number of t-units found in a message was slightly higher in the L2 group than in the L1 group, it seems that the L2 group underused honorific forms in the email messages. Overall, the L2 group defaulted to simple polite style (i.e., desu/-masu style) throughout the email texts, which probably explains their under use of the three honorifics types mentioned above. The L2 group’s infrequent use of exalted style (0.06/t-unit) and frequent use of humble-2 style (0.25/t-unit) deserve attention here. When describing their own conduct toward the addressee, the learners reported using humble-2 style to make their utterances sound formal and deferential, rather than applying exalted style and humble-1 style. An example below illustrates this observation. This learner from China used humble-2 style

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only and did not use exalted style or humble-1 style, although these two styles were perfectly appropriate for the given situation (1) Learner #6 (L6 from mainland China) 1 Saikin wa sotsuron de benkyoo shita meiji jidai no bunkajin recently TP thesis LOC studied Meiji era GEN intellectuals 2 ni tsuite hukaku kyoomi o motsu, sarani daigakuin de benkyoo LOC about deeply interests O have further grad. school LOC study ‘Recently I have a deep interest in Meiji intellectuals which I wrote my thesis on and want to study further in a graduate school.’ 3Æ shitai to omotteorimasuHUMBLE-2 ga. Nagoya kooka daigaku no want QT think but Nagoya Intech University GEN 4Æ hoompeeji o mite, sensei ga nihon bunka, bungaku o senmon homepage O look teacher S Japanese culture literature O specialize 5 to shiteiru koto ga wakarimashita. QT do-PROG NOM S discovered ‘I saw Nagoya Intech University’s homepage and discovered that you specialize in Japanese culture and literature.’

In line 3, we see the use of humble-2 style. In line 5, the exalted style (e.g., go-senmon to nasatteiru ‘specializing’) is appropriate, but she used the plain style instead (senmon to shiteiru). The forms categorized under humble-2 style such as -te orimasu ‘verb-ing (progressive),’ itashimasu ‘do,’ and polite style gozaimasu ‘be’ were notably frequent in the L2 data. The form -te orimasu ‘be verb-ing (progressive)’ was most frequent (67%, 47 out of a total of 70 cases), suggesting that the learners overused this specific form throughout the email messages. Two characteristics of humble-2 style could account for the high frequency in the data. First, linguistic forms of the humble-2 style are often used by speakers to describe themselves (e.g., stating personal opinion, describing their current social activity). Since the email task included many occasions of selfdescription, it is considered natural that the learners used the humble-2 styles frequently to describe themselves. Second reason relates to the function of humble-2 style that it is used by speakers to index their awareness of formality of the social context of interaction. In this study, L2 learners probably used specific humble-2 forms to make their speech sound formal. The findings here suggest that although L2 use of the humble-2 style was still under-represented compared with the L1 data, the L2 group’s

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frequent use of it in the email task indeed reflects their understanding of the social context that required a certain level of politeness and formality.

5.1.2. Analyses of telephone conversations Table 3 displays frequency of honorific forms per utterance unit in telephone conversations. Table 3. Attested linguistic honorific forms in telephone conversations

L2 L1

Exalted M SD 0.6 0.91 1.93 2.73

R 0.02 0.08

Humble1 M SD 1.7 2.08 3.73 1.75

R 0.07 0.17

Humble2 M SD 2.60 1.68 6.06 3.76

R 0.10 0.29

U AVG 27.80 22.67

Notes: Mean(M)=frequency per person, SD=standard deviation, Ratio (R) =average score for frequency use per utterance unit (U).

The total counts of utterance units were similar between the L1 and L2 groups. For the L2 group, it ranged from 15 to 40 (mean=27, SD=6.01), but for the L1group it ranged from 12 to 37 (mean=24, SD=7.65). Despite the similarity in the mean frequency of utterance units, the group differed in the ratio of honorifics per utterance unit. The L2 group used exalted forms very little (ratio=0.02). They also showed a notably low use of the humble1 style (ratio=0.07). Similar to the email task, the use of humble-2 style was relatively higher than other two honorific styles, a ratio of 0.10. The L1 group, on the other hand, showed a higher ratio of all three honorific styles, with the ratio of the humble-2 style being the highest (0.29/utterance unit). T-test results revealed significant group differences, t(28)=-3.07, p=0.004 for the humble-1 style and t(28)=-2.85, p=0.007 for the humble-2 style. However, there was no statistical group difference in the use of the exalted style, t(28)=-1.80, p=0.08. We can see that the L2 group showed an even smaller use of honorifics in the telephone task than in the email task. This implies that the L2 group spoke dominantly in polite style (-desu/-masu predicate endings) and did not use honorific styles in the telephone conversations. Section 6 explains how this under use of honorifics shapes their reification of honorific styles.

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5.1.3. Comparison of conversations

honorifics

between

emails

and

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telephone

In the present study both L1 and L2 groups showed variations in performance across task types (i.e., email and conversation tasks) due to the different communication mode involved. When we look at the mean number of tokens of each honorific style in Tables 2 and 3, we can see that the L2 group produced much fewer honorific forms in the telephone conversation task than in the email task; exalted style was used 1.05/t-unit per person in the email task, while it appeared 0.6/utterance unit per person in the telephone task. Similarly, for humble-1 style, the ratio decreased from 2.63 to 1.7, and for humble-2 style, the ratio of 3.63 in the email task went down to 2.6 in the telephone task. For the L1 group, we also find a decrease of tokens in the exalted style (2.53 to 1.93) and humble-1 style (4.16 to 3.73) from the email task to telephone task. However, for humble-2 style, difference was minimum (5.58 to 6.05).9 What task characteristics caused these differences? The two role play tasks used in this study differed greatly in terms of the cognitive processing load. Because email communication separates each correspondence by time and space, it is far less spontaneous than telephone interaction. For example, in the first email message in this study, the learners were able to take some time to carefully plan what to say in the message, which allowed them to use their knowledge of honorific styles while planning for the message. They were also able to take time to monitor their utterances and re-write their messages. In contrast, the telephone task requires more spontaneous production, and speakers have to adjust their communication to the on-going discourse. They are not able to predict what the other person would ask them to perform, consequently leaving little time to plan utterances. These different task demands could explain more prevalent use of honorific forms in the email task than in the telephone task. In the telephone conversations, the learners probably opted out of using the honorific forms beyond the “default” polite style due to the on-line processing demand. Follow-up interviews with individual learners confirmed these interpretations. In the interview, the learners were asked to reflect on their honorific language use during the two tasks. They reported that the two task settings were distinctively different. One learner said that it took him a long time to choose words and put them in writing in the email task. Another learner said that it was more difficult to speak with honorifics than

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to write with honorifics. Another learner reported that there was not enough time to prepare for the telephone conversation so she was not able to speak with proper honorifics even though she knew which forms were necessary to use. This learner was preoccupied with processing the content of the message; as a result, she was “not able to pay attention to the formality of the language” (translation by the author).

6. Qualitative analysis of learners’ honorific styles As described in Section 5, the learners in this study used far fewer tokens of honorifics than the L1 group. However, a close look at the learners’ performance in the role play tasks revealed a number of linguistic and semantic strategies that they employed to manage the politeness and formality required in the task situations. In this section, I will discuss three of those strategies found in the L2 data which were absent in the L1 data. For each case, I will also discuss potential social and interactional consequences of the use of those strategies in communication.

6.1. Complementing the addressee In the email task, the majority of L1 and L2 participants provided a reason why they contacted Ms./Professor Yamada. In the L2 group data, four learners provided a complement to Yamada about her social accomplishments. As shown in Examples 2 and 3 below, the learners mentioned that they enjoyed reading her research (books and articles). (2) Learner #2 (L2, Taiwan) toshokan de guuzen-ni sensee no hon ni hurete, library LOC by chance teacher GEN book LOC touch-CONT kongo no kenkyuu hookoo ni aimasu node yomimashita. Later GEN research direction LOC suite because read “I just happened to find your book in the library by chance, and read it because it suits my research direction.”

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(3) Learner #3 (L3 from mainland China) Sensee no gokennkyuuEXALTED o haiken sasete- itadakiHUMBLE-1 Teacher GEN research O look-POL do-CONT “I read your research.” muzukashikute, mada takusan wakaranai tokoro o nokoshimashita difficult yet many unclear place O left-POL ga, kekkoo benkyoo ni narimashita. but quite study LOC became “I left many parts which I did not understand, but it was a quite good learning for me.”

As illustrated above, the learners used positive comments in order to show their affiliation to the addressee and to express their sincerity for making an inquiry to Yamada. The learners used complimenting as a politeness strategy in order to mitigate the potential face threat of the upcoming request (i.e., inquiry about graduate school admission). When we examine how they provided the compliment, however, we can see that there are some components that may generate an unwanted effect to the nativespeaker hearer. In Example 2, the learner first points out that she found Professor Yamada’s book “by accident,” and read the book “because it suits her line of research.” The way her complement sounds to the native ear is that the learner contacted Professor Yamada before knowing much about her work. It sounds as if this learner found just one book and made an inquiry about the graduate program. In Example 3, the learner complements Professor Yamada’s work by saying that it was a ‘quite’ good learning for her. This can also be seen as a violation of the polite behavior expected on the student’s role vis-à-vis the unknown professor. Because these compliments are grammatically accurate and produced fluently, this may in fact give a misleading impression about the learners’ intentions to the addressee.

6.2. Use of formulaic expressions Email messages, when used as a medium of formal communication; typically have formulaic openings and closings. In the data examined in

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this study, the sender of the email to Ms./Professor Yamada was expected to frame the email text with an appropriate level of formality. The learners were evidently fully aware of such situational requirements because they made use of formal formulaic openings and closings, as illustrated in Example 4. (4) L2 learner #9 (L9 from Malaysia) osewa ni natte orimasu.HUMBLE-2 care LOC become-PROG ‘I have been in your care. ‘

Although the formulaic phrase, osewa ni natte orimasu, is often used as a formal opening expression in business correspondence in Japan, it is typically used when the speaker (or the speaker’s business) has previous contact with the addressee. Hence, in the given social situation, this expression as an opening greeting to someone unfamiliar is indeed inappropriate, and this instance illustrates the learner’s incomplete understanding of formulaic opening expressions. Several learners also constructed the closing remarks in their own idiosyncratic ways. In Example 5, the learner from China used a direct translation of a typical Chinese closing phrase: (5) Learner #14 (L14 from mainland China) sensee no kenkoo o oinori itashimasuHUMBLE-2 teacher GEN health O pray do ‘I will pray for your health.’

Here, this learner accurately used the humble-2 verb form (oinori itashimasu ‘I will pray’). The same conventional closing remark of ‘wishing the addressee‘s good health’ was in fact found in L1 email messages. See Example 6: (6) Japanese speaker #9 (J9) kisetsu gara gojiaiEXALTED no hodo oinori mooshiagemasuHUMBLE-2 season handle self-caring-POL GEN amount/degree pray do-POL ‘Because of the season, I will pray for your self-caring.’

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Here this L1 speaker used a cluster of honorific expressions, including a formal lexical form (gojiai ‘about self-loving/caring’), an expression of degree hodo, and a humble verbal form, oinori mooshiagemasu ‘I will pray for [it].’ This constellation of polite expressions is often found in a formal letter in Japanese. In the case of the learner #14, however, she used the word kenkoo ‘health,’ without an honorific prefix go-. Besides, the word kenkoo is rather uncommon in a formal closing statement. There is an alternative, conventional word go-kenshoo ‘(your) good health,’ which precedes oinori itashimasu ‘I will pray’ in a formulaic closing remark, but this learner was not able to use this conventionalized word. In summary, as shown in the above examples, similar to L1 speakers, the learners used a positive politeness strategy by expressing their caring for the addressee‘s health in closing. Although this semantic move was appropriate for the given situation, the learners’ expressions were still awkward to native ears simply because of the deviation from the expected formulaic utterances. Formulaic knowledge is not simply a matter of knowing linguistic forms, but involves knowing the mappings between the forms and situations (Coulmas, 1981; Kecskes 2003). The examples above illustrate that the learners were aware of the expected social moves (i.e., ending a message with a phrase wishing for the addressee’s health); yet, they deviated from the exact, correct linguistic means in accomplishing them. The learners attempted to convey the formality by borrowing phrases from other social domains, most likely without a full understanding that these linguistic devices belong to other situations and settings.

6.3. Speaking ‘politely’ with discourse markers nanka and ichioo While the L2 group used honorific forms sparely, this does not mean that they were less polite than the L1 group when speaking. They used other linguistic means to encode appropriate level of politeness and directness. In the telephone conversation data, the L2 speakers frequently employed two discourse markers, nanka and ichioo, as tools for speaking hesitantly, while these markers were rare in the L1 group data. A total of 30 cases of nanka were found in all 15 L2 participants’ data, and 12 cases of ichioo were found in the data. The literal meaning of nanka is ‘some,’ ‘any,’ or ‘something,’ but its pragmatic meaning varies according to the situation. Iio (2006) explains several functions of nanka, including turn initiator, filler, and softener for a

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face-threatening act. The marker nanka in Japanese is used mainly in a casual conversational context, such as conversations among friends or family members. It is also often associated with youth language (Iio 2006). Given these features, nanka is not suitable for the role play situations in this study (e.g., interaction between a prospective student and a professor; interaction between an incoming intern and a company executive). Yet, L2 learners showed a tendency of relying on these markers heavily, probably because they used the markers as a hedging device to mitigate face-threats and to convey politeness. Example 7 below shows a typical use of nanka found in the L2 group data. In this excerpt, the learner introduced himself and explained why he called Professor Yamada.

(7) Learner #7 (L7 from mainland China) 1

2

3

4Æ

5

6Æ 7

L7: ee:: ano (.) haru daigaku o sotsugyoo shite, soko ni HES spring university O graduate do-CONT there LOC ma: ichinenkan gurai HES one yr about ‘Uhm well (.) I graduated from the university, then uh: about a year or so’ shigoto o shite hataraiteite, work O do-CONT work-PROG ‘I was working.’ N: ee right ‘right’ L7: nanka: izen wa benkyoo shite kita naiyoo o moo DM before TP study do-CONT come content O more ‘nanka I am thinking of studying the content a bit more’ chotto benkyoo shiyoo to omotte (.) little study do-intent QT think-CONT ‘which I studied before’ nanka (.) ma: webu saito (.) ma webusaito de iroiro sensee DM HES web site HES website LOC various teacher no koto GEN thing ‘Nanka (.) well: website (.) uh on the web various things about you’

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9Æ

10

11Æ

12

13 14

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N: hai yes ‘yes’ L7: shirabete mitara (.) nanka sugoku kyoomi o motsu yoo ni natteitte, search-CONT tried DM very interest O have like LOC become-CONT ‘I looked for them (.) nanka I became very interested,’ N: hai yes ‘yes’ L7: nanka jibun no jinsee ga, ma: kata(.)meyoo to omoi nagara DM self GEN life S HES solidify-intent QT think while ‘Nanka I was intending to decide the way of my life, N: hai yes ‘yes’ L7: konkai moo chotto benkyoo shiyoo to omo(.)i- (.) masu This time more little study do-intent QT think keredomo, but ‘This time I would like to study some more, but’ dakara konkai wa ma: soo yuu ne, sensee no (.) ma osoodan so this time TP HES so say IP o ma: detekuru ‘so this time uh: like that, I came out’ yoo ni narimashita. like LOC became ‘to seek your advice.’

In this example, the learner uses nanka multiple times throughout his utterance. Nanka appears at the beginning of the utterance when the learner provides new information about himself. For example, in lines 4–5, the learner tells Yamada that he is thinking of studying in the graduate program in which he studied before. In lines 6–7, the learner tells Yamada that he looked up information about Yamada on the Internet. In line 8, he says that he got highly interested in the program. Finally in lines 10–14, he ends his comment by saying that he wanted to consult with Yamada about his future plans of graduate study. The discourse marker nanka here seems to

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function as a turn continuation strategy by enabling the learner to further expand on his turn. It was similar to the turn-initial and in English conversation (Schiffrin 1987). It constructs a conjunction with one’s own previous turn, and signals the hearer that there is more information ahead. Additional function of the marker nanka found in this example is hedging device. In the same context, L1 speakers would probably use an honorific style to convey politeness, for example humble-2 style (e.g., izen benkyoo shite orimashitaHUMBLE-2 naiyoo o moo chotto benkyoo shitai to omoimasu ‘I am thinking of studying the topic I studied before’). However, L2 learners seem to use nanka repeatedly simply to mark modesty and to speak hesitantly. Hesitancy markers are used in our daily communication to avoid sounding too definite, confident, and straightforward. The speaker, who unfolds his or her own personal stories slowly with hesitations, as in Example (7) above, could create a social image that he/she is humble and naïve. Hence, the learners’ use of nanka is strategic in that they use it to construct a favorable social image in the given contexts. Examples 8 and 9 below illustrate learners’ frequent use of another discourse marker of hesitancy, ichioo. The literal meaning of ichioo is ‘for now or ‘tentatively,’ and it indicates a temporary condition. This discourse marker was used as a pragmatic device to soften assertions in the L2 learners’ talk, particularly when they were expressing their plans, desires, and wants. In the present data, ichioo appeared at turn-initial position with other turn-grabbing elements (e.g., ano ‘uhm,’ a hai ‘oh yes’), followed by a statement indicating the speaker’s intention (e.g., ‘I want to enter the program,’ ‘I am very interested [in the program]’). See examples below. (8) Learner #3 (L3 from mainland China) 1

2

3

N: sotsugyoo shitara doo shimasu ka? Graduate do-if what do Q ‘After you graduate, what do you plan to do? L3: sotsugyoo shite kara doo shimasu ka. ((puzzled on the question)) Graduate do-CONT since what do Q ‘After I graduate, what do I do. N: doo shimasu ka? What do Q ‘What do you plan to do?

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L3: ano (.) ichioo insee ((daigakuin)) ni hairitai desu. HES DM graduate student LOC enter-want CP ‘Uhm (.) ichioo I want to enter the graduate program.’

(9) Learner #13 (L13 from Indonesia) 1

2 Æ

N: kenkyuuka no hoo ni (.) mada kanshin wa (.) arimasu ka? department GEN way LOC still interest TP have Q ‘do you still have interests in our department ?’ L13: a (.) hai, ichioo kanshin o motte orimasuHUMBLE-1. Oh yes DM interest O have-POL ‘oh (.) yes, ichioo I still have interests.’

The marker ichioo here does not just signal a sense of hesitancy; it also denotes the speaker’s uncertainty in his or her mind about the information he/she is about to convey. In Japanese, when a speaker uses the adverb ichioo as in ichioo tenisu kurabu ni hairimashita ‘I (tentatively, for now) joined the tennis club,’ it implies that the speaker was somewhat uncertain about joining the tennis club, or the speaker’s decision of joining the tennis club was a temporary one. However, in the present data, the L2 speakers did not use ichioo to convey such uncertainty. Quite the opposite, their assigned stance of ichioo was to strongly emphasize their desire to enter the program (see Examples 8 and 9). As we saw in section 5.1, L2 learners in this study underused honorific forms in their discourse although they knew that they were expected to show deference in the context. This under use seemed to be compensated for with frequent use of nanka and ichioo. The learners’ use of these discourse markers reflects their creative ways to project the deference needed for the context and for their own social roles within it. They used it to construct their social identity as someone humbly speaking to the addressee, who may become their future supervisor. During the follow-up interviews, many learners reported that in the telephone task they first tried to gain processing time to carefully plan what to say, and secondly they used expressions of hesitancy such as chotto ‘a little,’ nanka ‘some’ and ichioo ‘tentatively’ to sound polite in their own terms. An interesting question, which is beyond the scope of this study, is how pervasive the use of hesitancy and other softening expressions are in Japanese

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communication in general and how such input might have had an impact on learners’ understanding of interactional strategies to show deference and demeanor. Although a more systematic follow-up study of these discourse markers is needed in order to confirm the present observations, it is important to note that learners tend to use these markers as linguistic politeness. These discourse markers assist them with conveying appropriate degrees of formality, modesty, deference, and demeanor when the situations require. However, it is also important to note that overuse of these markers may run the risk of generating unexpected negative nuances because the marker nanka could inadvertently convey lack of commitment on their part, and ichioo may imply the speaker’s reluctance and tentativeness toward the projected act.

7. Implications of the findings for pragmatic teaching This study has several implications for pragmatic teaching. First, comparisons of honorifics styles between the two different tasks (i.e., email and telephone tasks) revealed that a successful use of honorifics is potentially affected by task characteristics, suggesting the importance of using a variety of tasks to practice honorific styles in classroom. This study also revealed that the L2 group showed a noticeable decrease in their use of honorific forms in the telephone conversation, and they instead used other linguistic means to project deference and demeanor (e.g., complimenting strategies, and use of nanka and ichioo as expressions of hesitancy). Learners’ creative use of these semantics strategies and linguistic resources should be recognized as a trajectory toward the full mastery of politeness style in L2. However, the learners also need to be cautioned that this creativity may bring about unwanted social meaning if used inappropriately. Analyses of the distribution of honorific forms revealed that in email and telephone conversation tasks, both L1 and L2 speakers applied humble2 style most often, followed by humble-1 style. The exalted style was the least frequent (see Tables 2 and 3). These findings suggest pedagogical implications for the instruction order of honorifics. Polite style (teenee-go) is typically introduced at the beginning level, whereas the introduction of honorifics and plain style (joo-tai or hutsuu-tai) are often introduced much later. For example, in the textbook Minna no Nihongo ‘Japanese for Everyone’ (3A Corporation 1998), exalted and humble styles are

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introduced in Lesson 49 and 50 in volume 2. Many textbooks list exalted and humble-1 equivalents together along with the ‘base’ plain verb forms (e.g., meshiagaru ‘to eat’ for exalted, itadaku ‘to eat’ for humble-1, taberu ‘to eat’ for plain). Humble-2 style (teechoo-go) verb forms such as mairimasu ‘to visit/come,’ itashimasu ‘do’ are not treated in great length in most textbooks. When humble-1 and humble-2 are introduced, the differences between the two are not explained in details. Many verb forms in humble-2 style such as mairimasu ‘to visit/come’ are discussed together with polite copula forms such as gozaimasu ‘be.’ For example, in the textbook Japanese for College Students volume 3 (International Christian University 1998), they remark that these verb forms appear in special contexts such as public announcements or formal speeches. Unless classroom instructors make further remarks on each style, such a description indicated in the textbooks may give students the impression that humble-2 forms are simply used in very limited, highly formal contexts, which was in fact not the case in the present study, as shown in the L1 participants’ frequent use of the humble-2 forms. Although limited in repertoire, the L2 learners also used humble-2 forms more frequently than others, suggesting that these forms are relatively easy for the learners to handle. A pedagogical implication from these findings is that, instead of treating exalted style (sonkee-go) and humble-1 style (kenjoo-go) as the primary instructional target, humble-2 style (teechoo-go) such as -te orimasu ‘verb-ing (progressive),’ mairimasu ‘come,’ and itashimasu ‘do’ should be emphasized more. Moreover, it is probably better to encourage learners to use these forms from the early stage of learning. Selfintroduction to someone in a formal context (e.g., interviews and public speaking) is a common speech event taught even at the beginner level of Japanese language curriculum. Instead of limiting the use of speech styles only to polite -desu/masu style (e.g., Kagaku o benkyoo shite imasu ‘I am studying science’), teachers can encourage learners to use humble-2 style (e.g., Kagaku o benkyoo shite orimasuHUMBLE-2), depending on the situation. Humble-2 forms could equip the speakers with a linguistic means to present themselves as someone with awareness of formality of context and expected social roles. Hence, the forms could assist learners to gain ways to present such speaker’s qualities as “dignity” and “elegance” (Ide 2005). This study also revealed under-development of learners’ knowledge on formulaic expressions. At times the L2 group used non-target like formulaic expressions (e.g., using a phrase used in business correspondence in the first email message to a professor), or used idiosyncratic expressions

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(e.g., “I will pray for your health”) that deviate from target like usage. Formulaic and ritualistic features of verbal and non-verbal patterns are an integral part of an interactional practice. As the speakers participate in actual practice, they gradually develop socio-pragmatic and linguistic knowledge of how to behave appropriately in a social interaction (BardoviHarlig and Dörnyei 1998; Hall 1998). J. K. Hall (1998) argued that pragmatic competence can be achieved only through regular participation in sociolinguistic practice, and such practice guides them to build their knowledge of certain interactional practice. As a pedagogical implication, then, honorifics need to be taught in context. Teachers need to teach specific routine expressions as well as other syntactic and lexical devices as a necessary component of honorific styles, rather than teaching a set of honorific linguistic forms in an isolated manner.

8. Conclusion This study used quantitative and qualitative analyses to examine the rather unexplored aspect of Japanese interlanguage pragmatics - honorifics and provided insights on how learners of Japanese do things with “politeness.” For future research, with a larger participant pool, broader geographic representations of the participants, and a wider variety of social situations to explore, we will further advance our understanding of the linguistic and pragmatic complexities involved in the mastering of honorific styles in L2 Japanese. Honorific styles are the areas of ongoing exploration in sociolinguistic studies in Japanese. With an increasing number of studies that investigate honorifics across speech communities and social situations, we will move closer toward a comprehensive understanding of honorific styles, and such understanding will in return enable us to further understand how the use of honorific styles can empower L2 learners in communication. The goal of language teaching is to equip learners with the target language so that they can engage in communication and present their social identities vis-à-vis others in context. Honorific styles are indeed one such useful resource in Japanese communication.

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Notes 1. Here I follow the most recent canonical classification suggested by the Cultural Affairs Council in Japan (2007) and accepted the sub-divisions of categories (table 1). 2. A “speech style” is not used only for spoken language. Honorific speech is used as well in written communications such as the email correspondences examined in this study. 3. Taiguu communication is a term in which honorific style is understood in terms of speaker’s comprehensive attention to arrange one’s linguistic behavior according to each situation, (speaker) intention, message content, and linguistic form. While keigo ‘polite language’ involves only linguistic forms, taiguu ‘human treatment’ refers to various speech acts involved in human interaction (Sugito 2006). 4. Keei hyoogen is a term officially used in the government’s white paper Gendai shakai ni okeru keei hyoogen [‘Respectful expressions in society today]’, which was proposed at the meeting of the National Language Council in 2000. It discusses how speakers consider who the interlocutors are and their social position and then use linguistic expressions appropriately, based on a feeling of “mutual respect” in communication. 5. A pilot study showed that for undergraduate participants, the internship context was more accessible than the graduate program, while the reverse was true for the L2 speakers, who felt quite unequipped to perform a business-context role play. 6. Young (1995) operationalizes the concept as follows: t-units include a single clause; a matrix plus a subordinate clause; two or more phrases in apposition; and clause fragments produced by ellipsis. Backchannel cues (“mhm,” “yeah”) and discourse boundary markers (“okay,” “thanks,” “good”) do not count as tunits. Young treats false starts as elements of the t-unit that follows (1995:38). 7. Identifying utterance units in L2 speakers’ production requires judgments, as pauses sometimes appear where there is no syntactic or semantic defining unit. In such cases, I treated the third criterion as the determiner for the decision. Overall, however, these three criteria were appropriate for the learners examined in this study. 8. In some studies for English discourse data, co-ordinate clauses are counted as two T-units (e.g., Young, 1995), however, due to a fairly complex use of multiple use of -te (CONT) which is the conjugation of predicates in Japanese language, I did not count this particular feature to determine a t-unit. As a consequence, the actual length of a t-unit in this study varied greatly in total word counts. The below is an example illustrating that several verbs within single subordinate clause were counted as a single t-unit. [Kinoo no ban kara tabete nonde yoku waratte naita ]sub Yesterday of night since eat-CONT drink-CONT often laugh-CONT cried

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Tanaka ga yatto ie ni kaetta.main clause Tanaka S finally home to returned ‘Tanaka [who drank, ate, laughed and cried so much since last night] finally headed home.’ 9. The units used for emails and telephone conversations are different, thus we must be careful in drawing a conclusion simply by the comparison of values in the two. However, it is also worth making a remark that a t-unit in this study was generally a smaller unit than an utterance unit. An average word count per t-unit for L2 group data was 6.21 and 13.09 for per an utterance unit. When the ratio of honorific use per a t-unit ratio (emails) is smaller than the ratio per an utterance unit (telephone conversation), it implies even further that the learners’ use of the style has decreased dramatically between two tasks.

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Cook, Haruko 2001 Why can’t learners of JFL distinguish polite from impolite speech styles? In: Gabriele Kasper and Kenneth Rose (eds.), Pragmatics in Language Teaching, 80–103. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cook, Haruko 2006 Japanese politeness as an interactional achievement: Academic consultation sessions in Japanese universities. Multilingua 25: 269– 291. Cultural Affairs Council (National Language Section) 2007 Keigo no Shishin [Guidance for Honorifics]. Tokyo: Agency of Cultural Affairs. Enomoto, Sanae and Helen Marriott 1994 Investigating evaluative behavior in Japanese tour guiding interaction. Multilingua 13(1/2): 131–161. Fukada, Atsushi 2002 Poraitonesu no shuutoku kenkyuu: Sono genjoo to tenboo, Daini geno to shite no nihongo no shuutoku kenkyuu 5: 97–107. Fukada, Atsushi and Noriko Asato 2004 Universal politeness theory: Application to the use of Japanese honorifics. Journal of Pragmatics 36: 1991–2002. Fukushima, Saeko 2000 Requests and Culture: Politeness in British English and Japanese. New Yark: Peter Lang. Gumperz, John 1982 Discourse Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hall, Joan Kelly 1995 “Aw, Man, Where You Goin?” Classroom Interaction and the Development of L2 Interactional Competence. Issues in Applied Linguistics 6(2): 37–62. Haugh, Michael 2004 Revisiting the conceptualisation of politeness in English and Japanese. Multilingua 23: 85–109. Hill, Beverly, Sachiko Ide, Shoko Ikuta, Akiko Kawasaki, and Tsunao Ogino 1986 Universals of linguistic politeness. Journal of Pragmatics 10: 347– 371. Hunt, Kellogg 1965 Grammatical structures written at three grade levels. NCTE Research report No. 3. Champaign, IL, USA: NCTE. Ide, Sachiko 1989 Formal forms and discernment: Two neglected aspects of universals of linguistic politeness. Multilingua 8: 223–248.

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Ide, Sachiko 2005 How and why honorifics can signify dignity and elegance: The indexcality and reflexivity of linguistic rituals. In: Robin Lakoff and Sachiko Ide (eds.), Broadening the Horizon of Linguistic Politeness, 45–64. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Iio, Makiko 2006 A Study of the Discourse Marker nanka in Junior College Students’ Daily Language. The Toyo Review 38: 67–77. International Christian University 1996 Japanese for College Students: Basic volume 3. Tokyo: Koodansha International. Kabaya, Hiroshi, Yoshikazu Kaguchi, Megumi Sakamoto, Rummi Sei, and Miyako Utsumi 2006 Keigo Hyoogen Kyooiku no Hoohoo [Pedagogical methods for honorific expressions]. Tokyo: Taishuukan. Kanno, Kazue, Tomomi Hasegawa, Keiko Ikeda, Yasuko Ito, and Michael Long 2008 Prior language-learning experience and variation in the linguistic profiles of advanced English-speaking learners of Japanese” In: Donna Brinton, Olga Kagan, and Susan Bauckus (eds.), Heritage Language Acquisition: A New Field Emerging, 165–180. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Kecskes, Istvan 2003 Situation-Bound Utterances in L1 and L2. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Labov, William 1984 Field Methods of the project on linguistic change and variation. In: John Baugh and Joel Scherzer (eds.), Language in Use, 28–53. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Leech, Geoffrey 1983 Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman. Marriott, Helen 1996 The acquisition of politeness patterns by exchange students in Japan. In: Barbara Freed (ed.), Second Language Acquisition in a Study Abroad Context, 197–224. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Matsumoto, Yoshiko 1988 Reexamination of the universality of face: Politeness phenomena in Japanese. Journal of Pragmatics 12: 403–426. Matsumoto, Yoshiko 2003 Discussion note: Reply to Pizziconi. Journal of Pragmatics 35: 1515–1521. Mendoza-Denton, Norma 1999 Style. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 9(1/2): 238–240. .

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Minami, Fujio 1974 Gendai Keigo no Imi Koozoo [The semantic structure of Japanese Honorifics]. Kokugogaku 96: 1–19. Miyaoka, Yayoi, Katsuo Tamaoka, and Yuxin Wu 2004 Influence of grammatical knowledge among native Chinese speakers learning Japanese on their acquisition of honorific expressions. Kenkyuu Ronshuu, Hiroshima Keizai University 27 (2): 35–45. National Language Council 2000 Gendai Shakai ni Okeru Keii Hyoogen [Respectful expressions in the society today]. Tokyo: Agency of Cultural Affairs. Okamoto, Shigeko. 1995 Tasteless Japanese: Less “feminine” speech among young Japanese women. In: Kira Hall and M. Bucholtz (eds.), Gender Articulated: Language and the Socially Constructed Self, 297–325. New York: Routledge. Okamoto, Shigeko 1997 Social context, linguistic ideology, and indexical expressions in Japanese. Journal of Pragmatics 28: 795–817. Sakamoto, Megumi 2000 Keigo kara Keei Hyoogen e [From honorifics to respectful expressions]. Science of Humanity 32: 7–12. Schiffrin, Deborah 1987 Discourse Markers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shibatani, Masayoshi 1990 The Languages of Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sugito, Seiju 2006 Gengo Koodoo ni Okeru “Hairyo” no Shosoo [Various aspects of considerations towards others in linguistic behavior]. Tokyo: Kuroshio. Usami, Mayumi 2002 Discourse Politeness in Japanese Conversation: Some Implications for a Universal Theory of Politeness. Tokyo: Hituzi Syoboo. Young, Richard 1995 Conversational styles in language proficiency interviews. Language Learning 45(1): 3–42.

Appendix Abbreviations in the conversation excerpts CP Copulative verb, variations of the verb to be CONT Gerund form (continuation, e.g., tabete nonde ‘eat and drink’)

100 DM GEN HES IP LOC NEG NOM O PROG QT Q S TP .hh :: –

Keiko Ikeda Discourse Marker Genitive (-no) Hesitation marker (ano, ma) Interactional particle (e.g. ne, no, yo, na) Locative (de, ni,) Negative morpheme Nominalizer (e.g. no, n, koto) Object marker (-o) Progressive aspect Quotation marker (-to, -tte) Question marker (ka and its variants) Subject marker (-ga) Topic Marker (-wa) in breath a column indicates a lengthening of a vowel sound cut off, truncated sound

Subjectivity and pragmatic choice in L2 Japanese: Emulating and resisting pragmatic norms Noriko Ishihara and Elaine Tarone Abstract In most classrooms that teach second/foreign language (L2) pragmatics, the native-speaker model is presented as the target with the assumption that it is the optimal model for learners and that learners willingly conform to native-speaker norms. In fact, several studies have reported learners’ sense of resistance to what they perceive as native speakers’ pragmatic norms (e.g., Kubota 1996; LoCastro 1998; Siegal 1996; Takenoya 1995). The areas of resistance appear to center on both sociopragmatic norms (e.g., cultural ideologies of honorifics) and their pragmalinguistic manifestations (e.g., exalted/humble honorific forms). In many of these past studies, however, the phenomenon of resistance to perceived native-speaker pragmatic norms has been reported only in passing and not in depth. This interpretive case study investigates the link between adult learners’ subjectivity and their pragmatic use in L2 Japanese. The study explores the stated reasons that seven advanced Japanese learners at a US university provided for their pragmatic choices in previously completed tasks (multiple-rejoinder oral DCT and role-play). Retrospective interviews and follow-up email correspondence examined the deliberate pragmatic decisions learners made while requesting, refusing, and responding to compliments in both their L1 and L2. The interviews identified occasions where learners intentionally either accommodated to or resisted perceived L2 pragmatic norms, and probed how they arrived at those decisions. While the participants largely converged toward L2 norms to emulate the target culture, on occasion they intentionally diverged from L2 norms to resist pragmatic uses of, for example, higher-level honorifics or gendered language. Learners’ pragmatic decisions were guided by their subjectivity and intertwined with their life experiences and previous learning and use of Japanese in and outside the classroom. Their agency can be accounted for in terms of speech accommodation theory (Beebe and Giles 1984) which views pragmatic decisions as an enactment of social, psychological, and affective dispositions. The findings can help explain why certain areas of Japanese pragmatic competence may be slow to develop (if at all) for some

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learners. The paper calls for greater sensitivity to learners’ cultures in pragmatics-focused instruction and suggests how pragmatics might be more aptly taught and evaluated with learners’ subjectivity in mind.

1. Introduction In pragmatics research, native-speaking participants’ pragmatic use has been elicited or recorded in natural settings and analyzed in terms of syntactic or semantic formulae, lexicon, politeness, directness, and formality, for example. Second-language (L2) learners’ pragmatic competence has been studied in comparison with these native-speaker baseline data. Research on the effects of formal instruction and pragmaticsfocused instructional techniques also generally use the discourse of this seemingly homogeneous population of the native-speaker as the model for all learners. Learners’ production has been investigated in terms of its approximation to native norms and is often portrayed as awkward, problematic, or even as pragmatic failure if their language differs from that of native speakers. In the classroom learners may be expected to conform to L2 pragmatic norms, thus assimilating to the target culture. Underlying most of these conventions is an assumption that native speakers always provide the best model for L2 learners. However, our awareness of pragmatic norms and social rules is initially acquired as we are socialized into our primary cultural values and behaviors. Our pragmatic awareness tends to remain primarily first-culturebased (Hinkel 2001) particularly in foreign language contexts where exposure to L2 culture is limited. In using the L2, learners may not simply “shake off their own culture and step into another,” as their cultures have shaped them as social beings (Byram and Morgan 1994:43; Dewaele 2005; House 2003). What is more complex is that learners acculturate to L2 norms on some occasions, whereas on others they hold on to their own values and resist certain L2 practices, opting to remain foreign (Paulston 1978; Preston 2000).

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2. Background 2.1. Interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) variability and learner subjectivity Variable language behavior can be described in terms of several related theories, including dynamic systems theory (Larsen-Freeman 1997, 2008; Dornyei 2008), variation theory (Preston 2000; Fasold and Preston 2007; Tarone 2000, 2007), identity theories (Norton 2000; Pavlenko and Blackledge 2004), and Speech Accommodation Theory. Deriving from social psychology, Speech Accommodation Theory (Beebe and Giles 1984; Beebe and Zuengler 1983) takes both cognitive and affective variables into account in explaining the nature of L2 speakers’ variable linguistic behavior. According to Beebe and Giles (1984), L2 speakers’ linguistic repertoires and objectively-defined social categories (e.g., age, gender, and socioeconomic status) alone will not determine their speech behavior; rather, L2 speakers’ “own subjective attitudes, perceptions of situations, cognitive and affective dispositions, and the like may interact to determine their speech outputs” (5). L2 speakers may adjust to L2 norms to communicate effectively or attain social approval on one occasion, or on another they may diverge from L2 norms to accentuate their linguistic differences to maintain their sense of self; these choices are expressions of their agency. The sum of L2 speakers’ instances of convergence and divergence constitute their linguistic repertoire. Speech Accommodation Theory does not define subjectivity as static, and can therefore explain L2 speakers’ varying language production in conjunction with their dynamic subjectivity expressed in interactional discourse. The term subjectivity is virtually synonymous with social identity,1 but is preferred here because it gives more prominence to the emotional, affective factors at play, as well as sociocultural features of the construct under investigation. Subjectivity can be defined as “the conscious and unconscious thoughts and emotions of the individual, her sense of herself and her ways of understanding her relation to the world” (Weedon 1997: 32) - ways such as self-identity, values, beliefs, morals, feelings, and personal principles. One’s subjectivity may undergo a temporary shift in context or a more permanent change, being constructed in social, historical, and political contexts (e.g., Norton 2000, 2001, Norton Peirce 1995; Ochs 1993; Pavlenko and Blackledge 2004; Rampton 1995). One’s repertoire of subjectivity is negotiated and jointly enacted in interactional context (Ochs 1993). Furthermore, learners’ subjectivity and their L2 use reciprocally

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contribute to one another (McGroarty 1998). Learners’ subjectivity makes an impact on the way they elect to present themselves in the L2, while their L2 use in turn indexes their group memberships and individual dispositions. It is this connection between learners’ subjectivity and ILP use that is investigated in depth in this paper.

2.2. Existing research on language use and subjectivity Currently, an increasing number of studies take L2 learners’ subjectivity into account in explaining their language learning and use. For example, Norton Peirce (1995), Norton (2000), and McKay and Wong (1996) show how adult immigrants and adolescents negotiate their dynamic and sometimes contradictory multiple identities in L2 social contexts. Their identities shift over time and affect the way they invest in L2 learning and construct their positioning through the L2. In these studies, the participants’ desire for material or symbolic resources was related to the multiple identities they constructed, negotiated, or imposed in social discourse. Rampton (1987) stresses that being a language learner constitutes a particular status, and learners can strategically deviate from L2 norms to index this unique status, using the L2 in rhetorically and pragmatically effective manners. Several studies of learners’ ILP use report instances of divergence from L2 pragmatic norms caused by learners’ subjectivity. In a case study of female Western learners of Japanese, Siegal (1996) documents that at a certain point in her L2 development, a Hungarian learner avoided using higher level keigo (exalted/humble honorific forms). The learner revealed that she could not “stand” using these forms the way a Japanese woman did and persisted with the polite form instead of adjusting her language in a more nativelike manner. Her pragmatic decision appears to be intertwined with her negative view of gender expectations in Japanese culture, expectations which she chose not to subscribe to. Her resistance to imposed social positioning influenced her pragmatic use. Later as this learner gained opportunities to deliver formal public speeches in the L2, she came to understand the value and function of this honorific language. Perhaps also with the intention of maintaining face as a proficient learner and a novice scholar of Japanese literature, she began to adopt the L2 honorific norms that she formerly resisted. Siegal understands learners who negotiate their

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subjectivity in this way to be “active agents whose use of L2 positions them in a particular place in society” (360). LoCastro (1998) reported on her own resistance to similar pragmatic norms in L2 Japanese. She contended that her own ideological subjectivity founded in a more egalitarian, less-gendered society conflicted with the use of keigo honorifics, indicative of the highly hierarchical social structure of the community. She refused to either acquire new L2 norms or use alreadyacquired pragmatic norms. LoCastro (2001) also describes the reverse situation: Japanese university students’ individual differences in attitude, self-identity, and stated willingness to accommodate to pragmatic norms in L2 English. Speaking in general terms, the learners frequently admitted their perceived need to adhere to L2 norms, while an unidentified number of them expressed resistance to abandoning their own identity, desiring to become members of the L2 community without behaving like English native speakers. Similarly, in her questionnaire study of ESL learners’ behaviors and perceptions of L2 pragmalinguistic norms, Hinkel (1996) found that learners often critically evaluated native-speaker norms and did not prioritize adherence to such norms. LoCastro and Hinkel did not study learners’ actual pragmatic behavior and thus have no evidence of a direct link between learners’ stated resistance and ILP use. Even so, individual differences in subjectivity “may influence and constrain the willingness to adopt NS standards for linguistic action” (LoCastro 2001: 83). Other ILP studies document instances of learners’ resistance, for example, to the use of: in Japanese, a “white lie” (Kubota 1996) and a term of address and reference (Cohen 1997; Ishihara in press b; Jones 2007); in Chinese, terms of address and omission of thanks (Kasper and Zhang 1995); semantically unfamiliar greetings in Indonesian (DuFon 1999); and some uniquely Australian pragmatic formulas (Davis 2007). These learners’ first-culture-shaped identities and values appear to have influenced their ILP use, leading them to flout particular second-culture pragmatic norms in the given contexts. However, most of these cases occurred only incidentally in studies designed to investigate other aspects of ILP. We need more systematic data on pragmatic resistance.

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2.3. The present study: The relationship between learner subjectivity and ILP use Drawing directly on learners’ perspectives, this interpretive case study attempts to explain the relationship between adult learners’ subjectivity and their ILP use, and illuminate learners’ internal negotiation between what they perceived as L2 norms on the one hand and their expression of subjectivity on the other. Objectively-defined factors of individual difference (e.g., age, gender, and input) are known to influence ILP use and development, but we do not really know much about the influence of learners’ subjectivity. What L2 characteristics are learners likely to emulate or resist, and for what reasons? In order to answer these questions, it is best to tap into learners’ knowledge and experience directly. First, we define some key terms and pose a research question. The terms accommodation and resistance refer to learners’ intended (e.g., revealed in interviews) adoption or rejection of perceived L2 norms that they are aware of and linguistically capable of producing, while the terms convergence and divergence refer to their actual language use (e.g., in speaking tasks as well as in life) produced as a result of their accommodation or resistance. The paper addresses the following research question: How do learners explain their deliberate pragmatic choices to accommodate to or resist perceived L2 pragmatic norms? Although learners may unconsciously accommodate to or resist perceived L2 norms, here we investigate only their conscious pragmatic choices, those that they were able to discuss, in order to explore whether there is a stated link between their subjectivity and ILP use. The cases reported below are illustrative of this link and not meant to be an exhaustive account of all learners’ pragmatic choices.

3. Methods 3.1. Participants Seven advanced learners of Japanese, five males and two females in their twenties at a US Midwestern university, participated in the study. Six of them were enrolled in a fourth-year Japanese course; the other was taking a class on Japanese film after three years of Japanese study in the program. They were selected to participate in this study due to previous contact with and exposure to Japanese culture that had presumably raised their

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pragmatic awareness. According to an initial background survey, they had received formal L2 instruction for varying periods of time ranging from two to seven years. All were majoring in Japanese, some along with another major. They had visited, studied, or worked in Japan anywhere from 20 days to two years, being exposed to the culture to varying degrees. Four were Caucasian American (Erika, Steve, Tim, and Larry, all pseudonyms); one (Mark) was of Korean descent who grew up in an American family. Another participant (John) was a native speaker of Chinese from Hong Kong; the other (Ellie) was Japanese American. Their Japanese proficiency was intermediate high according to ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines for Speaking (1999) as informally assessed by their instructor. Additionally, 12 native-speaking Japanese informants, who were visiting the wider university community for a short period of time, performed the Japanese version of elicitation tasks and provided a point of comparison which was used to identify potential instances of learners’ divergence from perceived L2 pragmatic norms. Due to the limitation in space, only three of these cases - Ellie’s, Tim’s, and Mark’s - are reported in this chapter.

3.2. Data collection and analysis procedures Because the process of data collection in this study inevitably involved ongoing interpretation of data already collected by then (see below), a discussion of data collection and analysis procedures is combined here. A central data source in this study is retrospective interviews to tap into learners’ knowledge previously elicited in discourse tasks. First, learners’ language use in requesting, refusing, responding to compliments, and general use of keigo honorifics2 was elicited through 18 items of spoken discourse tasks (role play and oral DCTs with multiple rejoinders, see Appendix). The L2 Japanese and the parallel L1 English versions were created by Ishihara with minor cultural adjustments, piloted by a nativespeaker and three learners of Japanese, revised, and finalized. These L2 and L1 tasks were administered in this order so that transfer from the L1 into the L2 would not be encouraged by the procedure, and took approximately 40 and 30 minutes to complete respectively. The data were audio-taped, transcribed, and qualitatively analyzed as below. In order to explore instances where participants’ identities influenced their ILP use, individual semi-structured retrospective interviews were

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conducted for approximately 50 minutes. All interviews were audio-taped and transcribed for analysis. During the two weeks between the elicitation and interviews, participants’ transcribed responses in Japanese and English were compared individually across the two languages. First, in a search for instances of intended accommodation, the items where participants’ response differed in the two languages were identified, and in interviews participants were asked to explain the discrepancies by reflecting on their ILP use while undertaking the tasks (e.g., In this situation, you said X in Japanese but Y in English. Why did you say X in Japanese?). Occasionally, participants gave such reasons as lack of linguistic knowledge, time, nervousness, and unfamiliarity with L2 pragmatic norms, or could not remember the exact reasons for the responses. These cases were excluded from the analysis to focus exclusively on the learners’ intended adoption of perceived L2 norms. In cases where they in fact indicated an awareness of L2 norms, they were asked whether they emulated such norms in the speech elicitation tasks and authentic situations (e.g., So, did you want to speak the way you thought native Japanese speakers talk? In real life, do you also try to speak like Japanese natives?). Secondly, in seeking cases of deliberate divergence from perceived L2 pragmatic norms, learners’ and native-speaking informants’ language was compared to identify items where learners’ L2 responses differed pragmatically (not grammatically) from those of native speakers. The reasons for these discrepancies were explored in interviews in an attempt to find examples where learners deliberately flouted perceived L2 norms (e.g., What do you think typical speakers of Japanese would say in this situation? [If learners’ response was pragmatically different from the perceived native speaker norm] But you did not respond that way; why not?). As an extension of this interview, follow-up email correspondence was conducted individually with three of the learners (Steve, Tim, and Larry) who appeared to have more insights than were shared in the previous interviews. These email data provided further details of their perception and were used as triangulation to supplement their earlier claims in the face-to-face interviews. Each participant’s case was studied inductively in terms of their subjectivity and pragmatic choice; then, the constant comparative method (Merriam 1998) was utilized to identify themes that cut across participants. Through this cross-case analysis, similar experiences or perspectives emerged as themes, while each participant’s unique subjectivity and perceptions also surfaced (see Ishihara 2006 for further details of the data collection/analysis procedures and the report of the remaining participants’ cases).

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Although the use of elicitation tasks does not yield exactly the same response that occurs in natural settings, for investigating learners’ emic perspectives (such as the subjectivity under investigation in this study) the combination of elicitation tasks and in-depth retrospective interviews can be effective as a way to explore learners’ insider perspectives (Golato 2003). Through elicited tasks we gain comparability among the participants; individual differences can become more evident when they perform identical tasks as employed in this study, taking individual routes to come to respective pragmatic choices. The unfortunate downside of the use of elicited tasks is a lack of consequentiality (Bardovi-Harlig and Hartford 2005) in the interactions and identities that the participants projected for themselves in these imagined contexts. Because learners’ agency can be constrained by the affordances that the context provides, the imagined scenarios may not accurately reflect learners’ authentic language use. Still we believe this situational approach can provide valuable insights into the identities that the learners constructed and enacted for themselves. Compensating for these disadvantages are the interviews described above, that often captured the learners’ recollections of authentic ILP use and their articulation of the reasons motivating their pragmatic choices in those authentic situations.

4. Findings Because the participants had unique backgrounds and experiences, the findings are reported individually below. According to the focus on learners’ accommodation and resistance to perceived L2 pragmatic norms, in this paper relevant examples are selected and described for each of the three selected learners: Ellie, Tim, and Mark. 4.1. Ellie Ellie was the only participant whose heritage was partially Japanese, although she reportedly grew up without much exposure to the language. She studied Japanese for two years and lived in Japan one year as a child and one year as an adult. Ellie seemed completely willing to embrace perceived L2 norms. She often performed speech acts differently in English and Japanese, and was aware of subtle cultural and interactional differences. For example, in refusing a close friend’s invitation to join her

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New Year’s/Thanksgiving dinner, in elicited discourse consisting of four turns, Ellie made a conscious choice to only give a vague reason and apologize in Japanese: (1) Aa, hontoni ikitai. Demone, oshougatuwa mou yoteiga haitterukara tabun ikenaito omou. Gomenne. ‘Oh, I really want to go, but I already have plans for the New Year, so probably I don’t think I can come. I’m sorry.’ (first turn in Japanese)

In contrast, in English she expressed gratitude and provided a more specific excuse: (2) Thanks, it does sound like a lot of fun. Um, unfortunately, Alice’s family invited me over a while ago, and I’ve already said yes to that, so I feel like I should probably… (first turn in English)

She explained that her Japanese friend would be jealous if told who invited her, whereas in English not stating a specific reason or who invited her would be interpreted as keeping a secret and would hurt the friend. The Japanese family would make the occasion formal with a special preparation for a guest and thus she would feel indebted and apologetic, while to her American friend, she would just join the family in a more informal occasion and would feel thankful for the invitation. When asked why she was so attuned to L2 pragmatic norms, Ellie commented: (3) It’s funny because...I had yochien [kindergarten] in Japan, but I was born in Japan...I think I always considered myself half Japanese, not American, because you know, I’m not like nisei [second-generation], well, maybe nisei, but I was born there, and my mom sent me there. So maybe I tried to emulate their culture. (interview)

She also mentioned elsewhere that she did not feel resistant to Japanese norms that were different from American ones because she always considered herself “half Japanese.” She had decided to live in Japan the previous year because she “did not want to just totally ignore that half” of her identity. When she was told while living in Japan that she was just like a Japanese person, she felt very happy and “maybe tried very hard to fit in.” It appears that her bi-cultural identity was being constructed and reinforced as she was acquiring a repertoire of what she saw as Japanese pragmatic norms. Having a pragmatic control of Japanese norms afforded her an option of expressing the Japanese part of her identity within contextual constraints.

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4.2. Tim In the background survey, Tim, a Caucasian American, wrote that he wanted to speak like natives. He had been studying Japanese for 3 years, and lived in Japan for 18 months. He was deeply involved in martial arts and Buddhism, and expressed extremely high aspirations for acculturation to the extent that he “move[d] away from [his] own and adapt[ed] to the Japanese culture and that [his] friends and Japanese family members made [him] feel that Japan was/is [his] home” (email correspondence). In his interview, he shared many narratives about occasions in which he spoke Japanese in American ways in Japan that incurred serious consequences. He once accepted and even upgraded a compliment about his martial arts skills practicing judo with his teacher, who ended up not speaking to Tim for a week. On other occasions, he would physically be “knocked down” when mistaken in his language use in the dojo ‘martial arts studio.’ Understandably, these experiences probably encouraged him to conform to perceived L2 norms. His L2 use showed an absence of direct refusals, opting out of refusals and requests, and frequent overuse of keigo. These traits may be seen as the result of his efforts to emulate what he considered L2 norms. When asked whether he always tried to emulate L2 norms, however, he commented as below regarding the way Japanese males address women: (4) Being an American I have a hard time dealing with the gender relationships of Japanese men and women. My mother is a strong and independent woman who holds a respected position in American culture (she was a congress woman). I was raised that women are equal with men and should be treated as such. When I am with Japanese males, I have been pushed to the limit listening to how they talk about women... Japanese men appear to believe that women are there to be controlled, not to be treated as people. (email correspondence)

However, although in the interview he stated this desire to avoid speaking to women the way he thought many Japanese men did, there was no evidence to support this claim in his elicited language. Tim described other times when he would not adhere to the way he believed Japanese was used by native speakers. Tim recalled loathing and resisting keigo at the initial stage of his language learning. He first encountered keigo in an authentic conversation in Japan when he was beginning to learn Japanese. Yet, he was not motivated to learn it back then for a reason:

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(5) I didn’t know how to use it, and then I would get upset, because we would go out with my friends, and we would bump into like their older friends, and they had to speak keigo to them, and they were kind of treated like little children and I was like, this is, you know, this isn’t proper. And I didn’t learn. (email correspondence)

Although he was “prone to understand what keigo does” and had come to use it at the time of the interview, his inner struggle was apparent: (6) In using keigo, I feel that I am placing a wall between whomever I am addressing, and myself. This wall causes me to feel uncomfortable when speaking and I become unable to fully express myself... in Japanese the level of language difference is so great that it can cause someone to not be heard. (email correspondence)

In two role-play tasks where Tim was inviting an employee to a party in the role of an employer, he diverged from what he described as a normative use of keigo by using an overly polite register employing both exalted and desu/masu polite keigo. (7) (First turn) Ja, …san, paati[no] tokoro, gozonnji desuka? (exalted and polite honorifics) ‘Um, (employee’s name), do you know where the party is?’ (Second turn) Ano konbinino sobade, ano osobayade yarimasunode chotto nanka kaowo semete kaodake dashini irrashatte kudasai. (exalted and polite honorifics) ‘We’ll do it at that buckwheat noodle restaurant near that convenience store. So, um, would you please just drop by at least.’ (Third turn) Ja, demo semete kaowo chotto dashite kudasaiyo. (polite honorifics) ‘Well, but please just drop by for a short while then.’ (elicitation task, Tim)

This pragmatic choice in his behavior is particularly interesting when we consider the fact that he appropriately utilized informal plain forms in other equal-status relationships. This fact demonstrates Tim’s linguistic ability to both use and not use keigo. His review of this segment of his speech in the interview prompted the following reflection: (8) Some of these [traditional group of Japanese] men [I met at dojos] were odd, difficult to be around and at times very rude towards younger people. This caused [me] to feel that some people of the superior status, did not earn this position and should not be addressing anyone in a manner that

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places themselves “superior” or above another on a social scale. When I thought that the superior was not a “good” person and was using their position for personal gain, I grew upset because these social rules were causing someone to be treated unfairly. (email correspondence)

Here we see that Tim had an aversion to the lack or scarcity of keigo in seniors’ speech directed to juniors who are expected to use keigo back to them (the point also demonstrated in Quote #5). Tim acknowledged this L2 norm, perceived it as unfair, and rejected it in his speech. It appears that it was his personal belief (or distaste for a senior “talking down” to others), and not a deficiency in his linguistic ability, that led him to resist this particular L2 norm. Notably, Tim experienced some shifts in his position about perceived L2 pragmatic norms over time. (9) Learning to adapt and understand the reasoning behind Japanese culture has caused me to “change” the way I view the above acts [keigo/gender/status issues].… I have adapted by simply learning that everyone in the world has different ways of doing things and most of them are different than my ways. I have started acting more as a Japanese person would in Japan and learning why I need to. (email correspondence)

Here we see the impact of learning “the reasoning behind the culture” that helped Tim to make some adaptation. It appears that he needed to know not only what natives say (content) and how they say it (form), but also why they say it (the underlying sociopragmatic assumptions).

4.3. Mark Born in Korea, Mark was adopted by an American family at a very early age and did not maintain contact with his birth family. Therefore, he identified American culture as his own. He had been studying Japanese for 6 years, and had spent 5 months in Japan. In the interview, Mark mentioned his “personality” frequently, implying that it guided him to emulate or resist perceived L2 pragmatic norms. Regarding responses to compliments in English and Japanese, he explained that he personally did not “take compliments very well” in either language. He believed that refusing or deflecting compliments was appropriate Japanese behavior and his personality conveniently matched this perceived L2 style. He stated that once he studied Japanese culture, it “perpetuated [his] personality and even beyond that point [he] use[d] the culture to [his] advantage.” Perhaps he

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opted to emulate what he believed to be L2 norms that seemed compatible with his subjectivity. On the other hand, Mark clearly indicated his intention to resist certain L2 pragmatic norms. For instance, in the speaking tasks where he played the role of an employee refusing his boss’s invitation to a get-together due to a scheduled date, he chose to state the exact reason for his refusal in both languages. He stated in the interview that if he were working there for a while, he would be comfortable mentioning it in American culture. He believed that better workers were those who “actually take care of another person such as a family member or a girlfriend” and that the employer should not interfere with the personal matter. Although he stuck to this principle while speaking Japanese in the role-play, he felt apprehensive and waited for his second turn in the role-play to mention the date as an excuse: (10) (prompt):3 [Mark] kun, kondono bounenkaino bashowa wakaruno? ‘Mark, do you know where the year-end party is going to be at?’ Mark: Hai, hai, wakattandesu. Demo, ee, douiga ikuwakeniwa ikanain desukedo. ‘Yes, yes, I knew. But, um, I [just?] can’t make it.’ (prompt): Doushite korenaino? ‘Why can’t you make it?’ Mark: Jitsuwa detoga arun desukedo. ‘Actually, I have a date.’

(continues up to 8 turns) In reviewing this performance during the interview, Mark said he was aware that one’s personal life is often secondary in Japanese culture and that mentioning such a private matter to a boss may not be appropriate. He expressed his apprehension while speaking, and accounted this way for his rejection of the perceived L2 norm: (11) I delayed it [mentioning date]. I delayed it. I didn’t know, how long can I dance around that issue...And, “that’s me” thing...I know even though I have to assimilate a little bit to the culture, I can’t, I don’t wanna give myself up, you know what I mean, it’s like, no, these are my principles. Doesn’t matter, it’s not gonna matter where, where I am because I feel strongly about it. (interview)

Mark also discussed double standards that he felt he maintained while speaking the two languages:

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(12) I’m not... able to perfectly delineate my American side to my Japanese side. It’s of course, you know, they cross, cross over and I have to admit I get sometimes, depend on a situation for, for being under pressure maybe, my fear gets, I probably come up a little bit more, you know …(interview)

Although he is not completely articulate, his statement suggests a complex reconciliation of his dual selves that is situationally constrained. Mark seems to perceive factors like pressure and fear as influencing his ILP use. Although he identifies with both American and Japanese identities that he feels reside within himself, the expression of his American identity in Japanese appears to be restricted by community pressure toward convergence with perceived L2 norms. Particularly in a status-differential situation like that above, Mark is aware of the risk he must run of being negatively perceived if he diverges from L2 norms. There appears to be a complex internal conflict between his occasional desire to resist L2 norms and the potential penalty for doing so.

5. Discussion This section compares emergent themes across the participants to explore their reasons for deliberately accommodating to and resisting perceived L2 pragmatic norms. Learners’ pragmatic choices were guided by their subjectivity, which was intertwined with their life experiences and previous learning of Japanese in and outside the classroom. All participants appeared to largely emulate perceived L2 norms and were able to articulate what they thought was typical speech behavior in Japanese. Interestingly, they often did not explicitly state the link between perceived L2 norms and their pragmatic decisions to echo them until asked. They identified certain behaviors as conforming to Japanese norms but they often stopped there, not volunteering to say explicitly, “so I followed suit.” The link appeared to be assumed as though convergence with perceived L2 norms was taken for granted and occurred by default. All felt that they should follow L2 norms in the host culture as in “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” Mark (as well as two other participants) favored some perceived L2 norms and wanted to “participate” in those practices. Tim (as well as Erika, and Steve) was aware of the expectations from Japanese speakers to conform to L2 norms and elected to meet these expectations despite gut feelings against them. Tim was conscious of the expectations Japanese people had of him regarding his pragmatic use (e.g., keigo and compliment responses) and

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followed what he perceived or was taught to be the norms under social pressure that sometimes took the form of physical punishment in the martial art studio. Perhaps these participants conformed to these perceived norms somewhat grudgingly, being pressured to take on an “imposed identity” (Pavlenko and Blackledge 2004) the community constructed for them. The strongest and most consistent cases of convergence appeared to be with the two speakers of East Asian descent in contact with the L1 cultures, who reported no sense of resistance to perceived L2 pragmatic norms. Ellie considered herself half Japanese and this identity appeared to render her totally accepting of the culture; she asserted that she never felt resistant to L2 pragmatic norms. On the other hand, voices of resistance to L2 norms have emerged as a fairly common theme among four of the seven participants. The areas of resistance appear to center on both sociopragmatic norms (e.g., cultural ideologies of honorifics) and their pragmalinguistic manifestations (e.g., exalted/humble honorific forms). Tim and two others (Steve and Larry) had an aversion to keigo and gendered language that in their perception clearly delineated a social hierarchy and unequal power distribution in the relationship, the same learner reaction documented in Siegal (1996) and LoCastro (1998). Knowing the prevalent tendency in corporate culture to avoid prioritizing private matters, Mark was apprehensive when he chose to deviate from the perceived norm by using a personal excuse for declining a boss’s invitation. What appeared to be common among these cases of resistance (as well as with the cases of willing accommodation) is that learner agency was at work determining learners’ ILP use. There are many nuances to the term agency and its meanings vary across disciplines and theoretical positions. However, in this paper, following LoCastro’s (2003) sociocultural view of the term, agency can be understood to be a self-reliant, independent, or selfdefining capacity to operate with volition and power in a given context to bring about an effect, change, or decision. LoCastro (2003) contends that individuals (therefore, L1 and L2 speakers) “are not passive, but can contest a particular way in which they are socially positioned, seeking to create a new position for themselves” (298). Agency is closely tied to subjectivity, which in the case of pragmatic resistance might largely be associated with first-culture-based values especially if individuals function primarily in the L1 environment or maintain affiliation with that culture. On certain occasions the participants in this study seemed to rely on their beliefs, values, and personal principles (e.g., equality beyond social

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status/gender and balance between public and private lives) in interpreting and using the L2. These learners’ agency may serve an internal screening device, censoring what to accommodate or resist as they express themselves within the contextual restraints. Learners in this study were aware of many perceived discrepancies between L1 and L2 norms and in most cases opened up to emulate native speakers. At the same time, they also seemed to experience an occasional clash between their subjectivity and what they believed was being communicated through certain L2 uses. Sometimes they were also aware of the negative repercussions of diverging from L2 pragmatic norms, yet still opted to express their agency by resisting those norms. On other occasions they conformed to L2 norms rather grudgingly under pressure. Stated differently, learners’ choice of language resulted from their agency and was sometimes a contested field between community pressure and their expression of subjectivity in the interaction. It is also notable that participants’ ILP use was not always stable (as seen in Tim and Mark’s cases); rather, learners as agents appeared to express in interaction with others their (sometimes shifting) understanding and attitude toward L2 pragmatic norms across various times and contexts. Learners’ agency may also affect factors known to influence L2 acquisition, such as social networks and affiliation in the L2 community (cf. Lybeck 2002), which can affect the amount and quality of input and output provided to them in authentic contexts. Subjectivity is likely to influence their investment in L2 learning as well, facilitating or hampering the learning of new L2 pragmatic norms, and encouraging or discouraging continued use of such norms in L2 interactions.

6. Limitations of this study and suggestions for further research Due to the bounded nature of a case study, the findings of this study are not to be generalized to account for learners’ subjectivity in a wider population of L2 learners; to do so would in fact contradict the purpose of the study, which attempts to delineate participants’ individual differences. Continuing to research various learners’ subjectivity in-depth in a longitudinal study would provide a more comprehensive picture of the range of diversity in individual differences and ILP use. More specifically, relevant questions include the role of such factors as age, L2 proficiency, cross-cultural experience, and knowledge of the world that are intertwined with learners’ subjectivity; how might these factors affect learners’ conscious pragmatic

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choice of conforming to or resisting L2 norms, or ability to do so in the first place? As is the case with elicited data, a question remains in this study about the authenticity of the data used. As simulations, speech act performance in role-plays and DCTs does not result in the actual consequences of real-life interactions (Bardovi-Harlig and Hartford 2005). Since this was clear to the participants, they might have felt free from real-life pressure and reacted differently from the way they would have in authentic situations. The interviews and e-mail correspondence helped to resolve this difficulty. The retrospective interviews often included learners’ narratives about their authentic experiences and actual consequences of their ILP decisions in real life. In the interviews, they reflected on their ILP use in those events, and reasons for their particular pragmatic choices. In further studies, ILP use and learners’ subjectivity might be more directly studied in naturally occurring discourse, although this approach has its own problems, not the least of which is the unpredictability of occurrence of the phenomenon under study here.

7. Pedagogical implications The participants’ ILP use and perspectives on L2 pragmatic norms brought to light in this study call for increased sensitivity on the part of language educators to learners’ subjectivity, and a reconsideration of the role of learner agency in ILP use and development. Since learners’ choice of pragmatic norms is intertwined with their sociocultural backgrounds, language educators should be particularly sensitive to their cultures and the goals they bring into the classroom. As cautioned elsewhere, instruction should provide learners with an awareness of L2 pragmatic norms, yet should not impose those norms on learners (e.g., Judd 1999; Kasper and Rose 2002; Thomas 1983). Learners should be free to produce the L2 in any way they choose, and this choice should be respected in the classroom as long as those learners show that they have receptive pragmatic skills to understand typical pragmatic routines in the L2 community. Teachers may decide to assist learners in making an informed choice by discussing potential consequences of their pragmatic choice in the classroom. Knowing L2 pragmatic norms and likely consequences of pragmatically divergent behavior appears to require some level of cultural literacy on the learners’ part. How can learners arrive at an emic understanding of the

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target culture, and how can formal instruction encourage the development of pragmatic awareness without forcing learners to assimilate to the culture? Grammar–focused instruction may provide a detailed explanation of the structures and simplified or prescribed use of keigo, for example, yet this alone is unlikely to promote learners’ understanding of the reasoning behind the culture (“explanatory pragmatics,” Meier 2003; Richards and Schmidt 1983; Wigglesworth and Yates 2007). For example, from a Japanese cultural perspective, using exalted and humble honorific forms does not necessarily relegate speakers to a subservient position, yet, instruction on L2 form alone is unlikely to communicate this. Teachers need to explain why a certain form is used in the given sociocultural context and what nuances that language use can convey in the target culture. One of the participants, Tim, in fact commented that learning about the “reasoning behind Japanese culture” through a cultural informant led him to a sense of cultural relativism and caused him to embrace L2 norms. However, if learners’ subjectivity is tightly linked to their pragmatic language use, they may resist L2 pragmatic norms even after they have acquired an awareness of the cultural reasoning behind the norms. In such a case, it may be more realistic to teach learners communication strategies for pragmatics (Aston 1993; House 2003; Rampton 1997). These strategies may include interactional negotiation skills, such as clarifying one’s communicative intentions, modifying L1-based utterances to form semantic equivalents more fitting in L2, and repairing deliberately non-normative speech acts by means of metapragmatic explanations. In the teaching of L2 English, especially with the increasing rise of World Englishes, the question of whose norms are to be used and taught has often been raised (e.g., Kachru and Nelson 1996; McKay 2002; Tarone 2005). If communication can be negotiated between speakers engaging in discourse, it may also be possible for the norms being used to be negotiated as well. Speakers, native and nonnative, can utilize communication strategies like those mentioned above to try to approximate a match between the intended meaning (illocution) and the interpretation on the receiver’s end (perlocution). In fact, similar arguments regarding the negotiation of standards or norms have been made in the areas of contrastive rhetoric (e.g., Kubota and Lehner 2004) and pronunciation (e.g., Jenkins 2000). Conventionally, learners’ convergence with L2 pragmatic norms is considered successful L2 development, while divergence is stigmatized as a sign of underdeveloped pragmatic competence. However, learners’

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divergent pragmatic use does not necessarily mean failure to acquire pragmatic competence. Even L1 speakers do not always subscribe to typical pragmatic routines. Just like L1 speakers, L2 learners are entitled to a range of self-expression as independent agents. Learners should be able to produce the L2 in any way they choose to, once they have the knowledge of L2 norms and the risks involved of being negatively perceived when diverging from those norms. Finally, it is important to bear in mind that in authentic situations, there may be a unique set of standards in the L2 community for interpreting learners’ ILP use. Members of the L2 community can make allowances for those they perceive to be learners and therefore, overlook their inappropriate speech behavior. In fact, native speakers can even view certain L2 norms as belonging exclusively to themselves and may not expect L2 speakers to adjust to those norms (Barron 2003; Iino 1996). One participant in this study (Larry) felt that he was “off the hook” because he was Caucasian; since he “never look[ed] Japanese,” he felt less pressured to converge with L2 norms and strategically exploited that status. Issues of race and ethnicity are part of learners’ subjectivity and individual differences and clearly influence their ILP use and its community interpretation. More authentic evaluation of ILP use appears to be called for to assess the social situations where learners are positioned and their interlocutors’ situated reactions, in addition to their actual ILP use (Kasper and Rose 2002).4

8. Conclusion This chapter has shown instances of adult learners’ accommodation and resistance to perceived L2 pragmatic norms and the role of learner agency in a complex interplay between their subjectivity and perceived L2 norms. Participants’ agency was guided by their subjectivity, as they constantly evaluated what L2 norms to emulate or resist. Participants were sometimes attracted to features unique in the L2 and were willing to imitate them. On other occasions they conformed to L2 norms rather grudgingly under pressure from community norms, and on still other occasions, they deliberately flouted certain L2 norms despite knowing there would be potentially negative consequences. We have seen that what appeared to be pragmatic failure on the learners’ part (e.g., lack of keigo) sometimes proved to be due to their choice as agents (e.g., resistance to the status

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differentiation actualized by using keigo). The issue of resistance potentially has considerable implications for ILP use and development, as it may hinder learners’ investment or exposure to language learning opportunities. Research and practice can perhaps be better informed by incorporating learners’ perspectives and investigating the role of their subjectivity as they speak the L2 and participate in the ambient culture. Notes 1. One’s social identity can be defined as “the individual’s knowledge that he belongs to certain social groups together with some emotional and value significance to him of the group membership” (Hogg and Abrams 1988:7). Although this socio–psychological conceptualization of identity is often characterized as structuralist characterizing identity as a static and monolithic entity, we argue that it is in fact neither incompatible with nor polar opposite to a post–structuralist understanding of identity being dynamic, multiple, and shaped in social interaction. 2. These speech act sets were selected due to research–supported differences in realization in English and Japanese (e.g., directness/indirectness in requests, assessment and weighing of the contextual factors in requests, assessment of appropriate reasons for refusals, higher frequency of deflection or rejection of compliments) (see Ishihara 2006 for specific references). Also, the use of keigo adds multiple layers of contextually bound politeness to the general use of Japanese, characterizing a society where seniority and social hierarchy are often salient. 3. Although normally two learners were matched for role–plays, Mark responded to Ishihara in this dialogue due to the odd number of participants in this particular data collection session. 4. Preliminary attempts for classroom–based assessment in consideration of learners’ subjectivity can be found in Ishihara (in press, a).

References Aston, Guy 1993

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Barron, Anne 2003 Acquisition in Interlanguage Pragmatics: Learning How to Do Things with Words in a Study Abroad Context. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Beebe, Leslie. M. and Howard Giles 1984 Speech accommodation theories: A discussion in terms of secondlanguage acquisition. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 46: 5–32.bee Beebe, Leslie. M. and Jane Zuengler 1983 Accommodation theory: An explanation for style shifting in second language dialects. In: Nessa Wolfson and Eliot Judd (eds.), Sociolinguistics and Language Acquisition, 195–213. Rowley, MA: Newbury House Publishers. Byram, Michael and Carol Morgan 1994 Teaching and Learning Language and Culture. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Canagarajah, A. Suresh 1999 Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in English Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cohen, Andrew D 1997 Developing pragmatic ability: Insights from the accelerated study of Japanese. In: Haruko M. Cook, Kyoko Hijirida, and Mildred Tahara (eds.), New Trends and Issues in Teaching Japanese Language and Culture, 133–159. (Technical Report #15.) Honolulu: University of Hawai’i, Second Language Teaching and Curriculum Center. Davis, John McEwan 2007 Resistance to L2 pragmatics in the Australian ESL context. Language Learning 57 (4): 611–649. Dewaele, Jean-Marc 2005 Investigating the psychological and emotional dimensions in instructed language learning: Obstacles and possibilities. Modern Language Journal 89 (3): 367–380. Dornyei, Zoltan 2008 Are individual differences really individual? Plenary address presented at the Annual Conference of American Association for Applied Linguistics Conference, Washington D.C., March 30, 2008. DuFon, Margaret Anne 1999 The acquisition of linguistic politeness in Indonesian as a second language by sojourners in a naturalistic context. Dissertation Abstract International 60: 3985.

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Preston, Dennis R. 2000 Three kinds of sociolinguistics and SLA: A psycholinguistic perspective. In: Bonnie Swierzbin, Frank. Morris, Michael. E. Anderson, Carol. A. Klee, and Elaine Tarone (eds.), Social and Cognitive Factors in SLA: Selected Proceedings of the 1999 Second Language Research Forum. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. Rampton, Ben 1995 Crossing: Language and Ethnicity among Adolescents. Harlow: Longman. 1987 Stylistic variability and not speaking ‘normal’ English: Some postLabovian approaches and their implications for the study of interlanguage. In: Rod Ellis (ed.), Second Language Acquisition in Context, 47–58. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall International. 1997 A sociolinguistic perspective on L2 communication strategies. In: Gabriele Kasper and Eric Kellerman (eds.), Communication Strategies: Psycholinguistic and Sociolinguistic Perspectives, 279– 303. Harlow: Addison Wesley Longman. Richards, Jack. C., and Richard W. Schmidt 1983 Language and Communication. Harlow: Longman. Siegal, Meryl 1996 The role of learner subjectivity in second language sociolinguistic competency: Western women learning Japanese. Applied Linguistics 17 (3): 356–382. Tarone, Elaine E. 2000 Still wrestling with ‘context’ in interlanguage theory. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 20: 182–198. 2005 English for specific purposes and interlanguage pragmatics. In: Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig and Beverly S. Hartford (eds.), Interlanguage Pragmatics: Exploring Institutional Talk, 157–173. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 2007 Sociolinguistic approaches to second language acquisition research, 1997–2007. Modern Language Journal, Focus Issue: Second Language Acquisition Reconceptualized: The Impact of Firth and Wagner (1997), 91 (5): 837–848. Thomas, Jenny 1983 Cross-cultural pragmatic failure. Applied linguistics 4 (2): 91–109. Weedon, Chris 1997 Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory (2d ed.) Malden: Blackwell Publishers. Wigglesworth, Gillian and Lynda Yates 2007 Mitigating difficult requests in the workplace: What learners and teachers need to know. TESOL Quarterly 41 (4): 791–803.

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Appendix Sample Speech Elicitation Tasks (L2 Japanese Samples) 1) You are enrolled in a large class at a major university in Tokyo. A week before one of your course papers is due, you notice that you have three more long papers due the same week. You realize that it is not ever possible to finish them all by their respective due dates and decide to go to one of the instructors, Professor Tanaka, to ask for an extension on the paper for his course. This is your first time talking to him in private. You approach him after the class session is over and say: (60 seconds) あなた: You: 田中先生: でも 前から期日はお知らせしてあったでしょう? Professor Tanaka: ‘But you knew the deadline, didn’t you?’ あなた: You: 2) After class, a classmate of yours, Hiroshi, approaches you and asks you to proofread a short English paper right now because he is going to present in class in two days. You sometimes talk with him before and after that class, and he has helped you with your Japanese. You want to help him, but you have to leave to go to work in five minutes. (45 seconds) ひろし 君: もしよかったら ちょっと今この 短い レポート見てくれないかなぁ。 木曜日に 発表 しなきゃ いけないんだけど まだ よくできてないと 思う んだ。 Hiroshi: ‘If you don’t mind, can you check this short paper over for me just now? I have to give a presentation on Thursday and I’m not sure it’s good enough yet.’ あなた: You: ひろし 君 : そんなに時間どおりに行かないといけないの? Hiroshi: ‘Do you really need to be there on time?’ あなた: You: 3) At your part-time work in a clothing store, your colleague, Takahashi-san, overhears your conversation with a customer. After the customer leaves, he

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approaches you and tells you that your use of keigo, honorific language, sounded so much better now. (30 seconds) 高橋さん: うわー、 敬語 うまくなって びっくりね。 わざと 聞いてた わけじゃないんだけど 、 いまの 人と 話してるの が 聞 こえたの。 Mr. Takahashi: ‘Wow! Your keigo is amazing now. I didn’t mean to, but I just overheard you talk with that guy.’ あなた: You: 高橋さん: いやー、本当に上手だったよ。 Mr. Takahashi: ‘That was really something!’

Requesting in Japanese: The effect of instruction on JFL learners’ pragmatic competence Yumiko Tateyama Abstract This study investigates the effect of instruction on the pragmatic competence of learners of Japanese as a foreign language (JFL), focusing on the speech act of request in Japanese. Students enrolled in four fourthsemester Japanese courses at an American university participated in the study. Two classes (n=24) received expanded pragmatics instruction, while the other two (n=22) received regular instruction. Both groups were given explicit instruction in Japanese requests following the course syllabus, but each received a different instructional package. The expanded instruction group engaged in additional consciousness raising activities, oral communicative practice with native speakers (NSs) of Japanese, and a video feedback session. The regular instruction group closely followed the textbook lesson on making a request. They also had opportunities for oral communicative practice, but these were not related to requests. Effect of instruction was measured through telephone message (TM) and role play (RP) tasks that involved request-making situations. Both measures had two situational types: one talking to a friend and the other talking to a teacher. The data were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. The results revealed a significant instructional effect in both measures as rated by Japanese NSs, although the learners performed significantly better in the RP than in the TM tasks. No significant difference was observed between the two groups. However, there was a tendency that the expanded instruction group made greater gains than the regular instruction group when the interlocutor was a teacher, which suggests that the instruction was effective in raising their awareness about pragmalinguistic forms that index politeness.

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1. Introduction Request is a speech act that has been extensively examined in interlanguage pragmatics research, perhaps because of its frequent occurrence in the target language and the need for second language (L2) learners to function effectively in the target language community (Achiba 2003). Early studies on requests are mostly contrastive, comparing learners’ request making with the first language (L1) and L2 data, which links interlanguage pragmatics strongly to cross-cultural pragmatics (Kasper 1998). A seminal collection of studies on cross-cultural pragmatics by Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper (1989) is a good example. Contrastive pragmatics studies have provided valuable insights into learners’ target language use, positive and negative transfer from their L1 to L2, and developmental problems that learners may face as a result of applying new linguistic code and sociocultural norms in the target language. While the bulk of interlanguage pragmatics research has focused on the nonnative speaker’s use of pragmatic knowledge in comprehension and production (Kasper and Blum-Kulka 1993; Kasper and Rose 2002; Kasper and Schmidt 1996; Schmidt 1993), longitudinal studies that examine L2 learners’ pragmatic development have also appeared (e.g., Achiba 2003; Ellis 1992; Sawyer 1992; Schauer 2006; Schmidt 1983). These studies investigated L2 learners’ pragmatic development in non-interventional settings. At the same time, with a growing interest in teachability of target pragmatic forms and classroom-based research in interlanguage pragmatics (Kasper 2001), studies that examine effects of instruction on L2 learners’ pragmatic development have increased in number. For instance, Alcón (2005), Safont (2003), Salzar (2003), and Takahashi (2001, 2005) investigated the effect of instruction on the development of pragmatic competence of L2 learners of English in making a request. As for Japanese, although there are studies that examined request strategies of L2 learners of Japanese, and compared them with those of NSs of Japanese (e.g., Asato 1998; Kashiwazaki 1991, 1993; Nakahama 1999; Okutsu, 2000), to date no study has investigated the effect of instruction in the acquisition of Japanese request forms. The present study attempts to fill this gap by investigating the effect of instruction on the development of JFL learners’ pragmatic competence in requesting in Japanese.

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2. Background 2.1. Effects of instruction on the development of pragmatic competence In her review of empirical studies on interlanguage pragmatics, BardoviHarlig (2001: 29) argues that learners who do not receive specific instruction in L2 pragmatics have noticeably different L2 pragmatic systems than NSs of the target language in both production and comprehension. The need for instruction in pragmatics learning has been attested in a series of Bouton’s studies on the comprehension of implicature (1988, 1990, 1994). Bouton (1994) demonstrated that exposure to target input was not sufficient and that explicit instruction substantially improved nonnative English speaking international students’ ability to comprehend implicature. In line with Bouton (1994), some studies investigated whether instruction makes a difference at all in teaching pragmatics (e.g., Kakegawa Chapter 10, this volume; Safont 2003; Salzar 2003; Yoshimi 2001). I will review Safont (2003) and Salzar (2003) next, both of which examined instructional effects on Spanish EFL learners’ pragmatic development in English requests, followed by Yoshimi (2001) who investigated JFL learners’ use of Japanese interactional discourse markers in story telling. Safont (2003) examined the effect of instruction on English request modification. Participants of the study were 160 female college students who were divided into either beginning or intermediate level according to the results of a proficiency test. Discourse completion test (DCT) and appropriateness judgment task were administered as pre-test and post-test. The instruction consisted of awareness raising tasks and oral role-play practice. Results showed a significant increase in the participants’ use of modification devices in the post-test, demonstrating the effect of instruction. In particular, a significant increase was observed in the use of attention getters and the use of please, whereas learners’ use of grounders (i.e., providing justification for the request) or expanders (i.e., using more than one linguistic formulation) did not show a considerable growth. Safont concludes that learners seem to resort more often to external modification rather than internal modification. The researcher attributes this to grammatical and syntactic complexities that are involved in internal modification. It would have been helpful if Safont had provided specific examples of the modifications used by learners at different levels of proficiency.

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Salzar (2003) examined effect of instruction on English request strategies. Fourteen Spanish EFL college students participated in the study. The study consisted of three sessions (approximately 20 minutes each) with the first and third sessions used for the pre-test and post-test. DCT and a politeness judgment task were used as measurements. Instructional intervention on the range of request strategies and lexical downgraders was provided during the second session. At the end of the second session, the participants engaged in another set of DCT. Salzar states that the learners demonstrated an increase in the use of different types of request strategies immediately following instruction. For example, there was an increased use of imperatives with mitigation, which showed learners’ awareness of social and contextual factors. However, the effects were not retained at the posttest which was carried out three weeks later. The learners resorted mostly to ability questions when making a request (e.g., can you/could you + verb) and the use of please as a lexical downgrader, just as they did in the pre-test. Salzar suggests that further research be conducted on the impact of a long-term instructional treatment. The next study I review (Yoshimi 2001) is not about requesting per se but the target forms in her study are frequently used in Japanese requests. Yoshimi investigated the effect of explicit instruction and communicative practice on JFL learners’ pragmatic development in the comprehension and production of Japanese interactional discourse markers. The specific target pragmatic features examined were n desu, n desu kedo, and n desu ne that are used in extended telling. Compared to Safont (2003) and Salzar (2003) whose instructional interventions consisted of just one session, Yoshimi’s treatment was much longer, extending over a sixteen-week period. Yoshimi reports that the instruction had an overall beneficial effect on the learners’ use of the target interactional discourse markers and that instruction also helped learners to produce extended discourse. However, she also notes that learners showed little progress in their ability to manage organizational and interactional demands relevant to internal structuring of the story telling such as marking shifts in scene or perspective. Yoshimi contends that the interactional discourse markers in Japanese may constitute a domain of pragmatic competence that is resistant to the effects of instruction, although she also admits the possibility that it was caused by an inadequacy of the instruction. Resistance to learning pragmatics is also reported in House’s (1996) study in which even after a 14-week instruction, the participants (German EFL learners) had difficulty responding appropriately when the conversation partner initiated a conversation.

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While the studies reviewed above mostly examined whether or not instruction makes a difference at all in learning pragmatics, other studies have investigated the effectiveness of different teaching approaches in pragmatic development, particularly explicit and implicit type of instruction. The main feature that distinguishes these two types of instruction is the presence or absence of metapragmatic information designed to make the target pragmatic features salient for learners (Rose 2005). While explicit instruction provides target metapragmatic information, implicit teaching often utilizes input enhancement. Although some previous studies showed effectiveness of implicit instruction (e.g., Fukuya and Zhang 2002; Martinez-Flor and Fukuya 2005; Takimoto 2006), the body of such findings is limited. Other studies demonstrated that explicit instruction was more effective than implicit instruction (e.g., Alcón 2005; House 1996; Koike and Pearson 2005; Takahashi 2001). For example, Alcón (2005) examined the efficacy of instruction in Spanish EFL learners’ knowledge and ability to use request strategies. The participants were 132 high school students who were randomly assigned to one of the three groups: explicit, implicit and control. The students were exposed to the same English excerpts, including requests taken from different episodes of a TV show during 15 lessons stretched over a semester. Each group received a different instruction. While the explicit group engaged in explicit awareness-raising tasks and received metapragmatic feedback, the implicit group was provided with typographical enhancement of request strategies and engaged in implicit awareness-raising tasks. The control group was also exposed to the same video clips, but the instruction focused on general comprehension and production rather than request. Alcón reports that both explicit and implicit groups improved their use and awareness of pragmatically appropriate requests after the instructional period, but the explicit group outperformed the implicit group in their appropriate use of requests in the post-test. Superiority of explicit instruction has been also reported in Rose and Ng Kwai-Fun (2001) and Tateyama et al (1997), particularly with regard to sociopragmatic aspects of the target L2 pragmatics. In sum, as reported in Jeon and Kaya’s (2006) meta-analysis of studies on L2 pragmatics instruction as well as in Kasper (2001), Rose (2005) and Alcón and Martínez-Flor (2008), instructional intervention has a facilitative role in developing L2 learners’ pragmatic competence. The present study was implemented based on this empirical evidence and utilizes an explicit teaching as instructional approach. The next section reviews studies on

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Japanese requests performed by L2 learners and NSs of Japanese.

2.2. Requests and learners of Japanese When L2 learners perform a speech act, several factors play a role. BlumKulka (1991: 263) argues that the realization of requests by L2 learners is achieved through interaction of at least three components: (1) the general pragmatic knowledge; (2) the degree of sensitivity to the target language’s pragmalinguistic constrains; and (3) the degree of accommodation toward the target culture’s socio-cultural norms. That is, in order to successfully communicate in the target language, both pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic knowledge have to be reasonably developed. Pragmalinguistics refers to linguistic resources for conveying communicative acts and interpersonal meanings, while sociopragmatics refers to the social perceptions underlying participants’ interpretation and performance of communicative action (Leech 1983; Thomas 1983; see Kasper 1997 for summary). In terms of pragmalinguistic forms, one of the unique characteristics of Japanese request strategies is the use of donative auxiliary verbs such as kureru (to be given to me/in-group), kudasaru (to be given to me/in-group, honorific), morau (to receive), and itadaku (to receive, humble) that are attached to the gerund form of the main verb.1 They are used as linguistic device to soften the illocutionary force conveyed by the main verb and serve as conventionally indirect strategies to show linguistic politeness. For instance, pen kashite kureru ‘Can you lend me a pen?’ would be more polite than pen kashite ‘Lend me a pen.’ when asking a friend for a pen. And pen o kashite itadakenai deshoo ka ‘Would you be so kind to lend me a pen?’ is even more polite and would be uttered toward a higher-status person or one’s out-group member. In order to use these donative auxiliary verbs appropriately, the speaker needs to understand social and contextual factors that would affect their usage, and this is where sociopragmatics comes into play. Studies that investigate requests performed by L2 learners of Japanese and compared them with those performed by NSs of Japanese provide insights into pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic difficulties that learners encounter when executing a request in L2 Japanese. Kashiwazaki (1991,

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1993) examined how NSs of Japanese and Japanese as a second language (JSL) learners differ in their request strategies in authentic discourse. Kashiwazaki analyzed over 100 authentic conversations between Japanese students and staff members, as well as over 40 exchanges between JSL students and staff members at a foreign student office of a Japanese university. Kashiwazaki reports that, although mentioning a topic and explaining a situation was commonly observed in both NSs’ and JSL learners’ data, the verb -te itadakemasu ka form, such as kagi o kashite itadakemasu ka ‘Could you lend me a key?’, one of the strategies that the NSs used fairly frequently, was not used by the JSL learners. Instead, they opted for the permission form and the declarative form (e.g., kagi o karimasu ‘I will borrow a key.’), among others, which was used by very few NSs of Japanese. Another notable difference between the two groups was that Japanese tended to finish the sentence with the interactional discourse marker, n desu kedo/ga ‘it is that ... but,’ and the verb gerund te form, whereas JSL learners often finished the sentence with desu or masu. For instance, the learner would say onegaishitai koto ga arimasu ‘I have a favor to ask of you,’ when Japanese NSs would say onegaishitai koto ga aru n desu ga ‘I have a favor to ask of you but.’ Kashiwazaki notes that using -n desu ga/kedo at the end of the predicate allows the interlocutor to infer what the requester wants. Thus, not incorporating the interactional discourse markers or supplying words which should have been unsaid negatively affected the interlocutor’s perceptions about the learner request. Similar findings are reported in Asato (1998) who examined honorific language use and indirect strategies in requests that L2 learners and NSs of Japanese provided in a DCT. Asato also notes that NSs made requests less coercive by incorporating mitigating words and expressions such as sumimasen kedo ‘Excuse me but’ into their requests. In addition to mitigating expressions, Lai (2005) and Okutsu (2000) report that NSs of Japanese frequently used a variety of apologetic expressions in their requests. Tateyama (2008) examined how requests were performed by JFL learners of different proficiency levels (low-intermediate to advanced) and NSs of Japanese,2 using telephone message task and role play as measurements. The results show that lower-level learners had more problems with opening and closing moves and the target request strategies than upper-level learners. Some lower-level learners showed their sensitivity to sociopragmatic aspects such as speaking politely to a higherstatus interlocutor but their insufficient pragmalinguistic resources

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prevented them from utilizing context appropriate forms. The upper-level learners were more successful both pragmalinguistically and sociopragmatically in carrying out their requests, but some opted for not using the more appropriate form when they were uncertain about it, as shown in the lack of honorifics use. Even when they tried to use them, their insufficient “process of controlling attention to relevant and appropriate information and integrating those forms in real time” (Bialystok 1993: 48), prevented them from utilizing the appropriate form. That is, learners had difficulty attending to relevant contextual features and selecting the forms that are appropriate in the communicative situation from a range of possible choices. The studies reviewed above point out some of the pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic difficulties that learners encounter when making a request in Japanese. It is an empirical question if instruction helps to alleviate these pragmatic problems that L2 learners of Japanese encounter. The present study attempts to fill this gap and investigates whether instruction makes a difference in learning how to make a request in Japanese that includes pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic considerations. The study employs a quasi-experimental design and compares effectiveness of two types of classroom instruction: a regular grammar-based instruction including some explicit teaching on pragmatics (the regular group) and an expanded pragmatics instruction which incorporates consciousness-raising activities, communicative practice, and feedback on learner performances in addition to explicit teaching (the expanded instruction group).

3. Research questions The present study addresses the following research questions: (1) Is the instructional treatment effective in improving JFL learners’ pragmatic competence in making requests? Do types of instruction make a difference? (2) What are pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic difficulties that learners encounter when performing requests?

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4. Methodology 4.1. Participants Students enrolled in four intact fourth-semester Japanese classes (Japanese 202) at an American university participated in the study. Two classes served as an expanded instruction group (Exp) and two other as a regular instruction group (Reg).3 There were 24 students (13 males and 11 females) in the Exp group and 22 students (11 males and 11 females) in the Reg group. All were native speakers (NSs) of English except for two Koreans and one Chinese in the Exp group and one Korean and one Chinese in the Reg group. Average age was 20.8 for the Exp group and 20.2 for the Reg group. Fourteen students in the Exp group and thirteen students in the Reg group indicated that they had been to Japan for a short visit. Seven students in the Exp group and eleven students in the Reg group indicated that they had a Japanese conversational partner outside of the classroom. In particular, two out of those eleven students in the Reg group noted that they spoke Japanese several times a week with the conversation partner.

4.2. Procedure The present study is part of a larger study in which the effectiveness of instruction was measured by using four instruments: discourse completion tasks (DCTs), telephone message (TM) tasks, role plays (RP), and video clip rating task. Table 1 shows a summary of the procedure for the entire study. The present study reports on the result of the TM tasks, which was administered in Week 6 (pre-test) and Week 14 (post-test) as well as the result of the RPs, which was administered in Week 7 (pre-test) and Week 15 (post-test).

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Table 1. Summary of procedures Week 4 5 6 7 8 10 – 12 13 14 15 16

Instruments Consent Form & Background Information Sheet DCTs (pre-test) TMs (pre-test) RPs (pre-test) Video Rating Task (pre-test) Instruction DCTs (post-test) TMs (post-test) RPs (post-test) Video Rating Task (post-test)

Data collection for the TM and RP tasks took place with each participant at pre-arranged time in a quiet room. After a brief warm-up of talking with the researcher in Japanese, the participant received a situation card for the TMF task (leaving a message for a friend, see Appendix A). 4 Each participant spent a few minutes, reading through the situation card and planning for the task before actually performing the task. After each task, a retrospective interview was conducted to probe into planning, ease and difficulty of the task, and other factors that might have influenced the participant’s performance. The TMT task (leaving a message for a teacher) was conducted in the same manner as TMF. A week later, the participants engaged in two RPs that were follow-up tasks to the TMs they had performed a week earlier. In the first role play task (RPF), the participant asked a favor of a friend and in the second task of a teacher (RPT) (See Tasks A-3, A-4 in Appendix A). A college student (NS of Japanese) played the role of the friend in RPF and the researcher played the role of the teacher in RPT. As they did in the TM tasks, learners had time to prepare for the RP task after receiving a situation card, and a retrospective interview was conducted after each RP. Learner performances in the TM tasks were audio-recorded, and the ones in the RPs were audio- and videorecorded. They were all transcribed by the researcher for further analysis. Retrospective interviews were also audio-recorded and transcribed. After the data collection was over, the participants’ performances in the TMs and RPs were rated by three NSs of Japanese. 5 They rated each performance holistically on a scale of 1 through 7, 1 being “awful” or “unacceptable” and 7 being “wonderful” or “native-like,” taking pragmatic, grammatical and other aspects (e.g., fluency) into consideration (See Appendix C for the rating criteria). Raters were also encouraged to offer comments about

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learner performances. The rationale for using the TM and the RP as measurements is that it is a common cultural practice in our daily life to call a person before actually meeting. Both measurements were used to assess learner ability to perform requests orally on the spot, taking contextual factors described in each task card into consideration. In addition, I was also interested in finding any difference with regard to learner pragmatic competence when engaged in non-interactive task versus face-to-face interaction with the interlocutor. Furthermore, having two types of interlocutors (i.e., friend and teacher) could inform us about how learner pragmatic performance is affected by such contextual factors as power and distance.

4.3. Instruction The instruction occurred at the time a lesson on requests was being covered, following the syllabus design. Tables 2 and 3 show a summary of instruction provided to each group. A total of nine sessions were offered for the lesson, each lasting 50 minutes.6 Learners in the Reg group received regular instruction on request, following closely what was presented in the lesson of the textbook. Explicit teaching was offered on how to make a request, including the use of conventionally indirect forms with donative auxiliary verbs (e.g., V-te morae/itadake masu ka ‘Can/Could you V?’) and formulaic expressions. The instructor also went over other grammatical structures presented in the lesson. The Exp group also received explicit teaching on making a request. In addition, they engaged in consciousnessraising activities, which included watching a video clip of a request making situation and reviewing its transcript, collecting sample conversations in which requests were made, and examining how those conversations were organized.

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Table 2. Summary of instruction - regular instruction group Session 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Content Introduction of new grammatical structures Grammar exercise 1 Grammar exercise 2 Explicit teaching about request forms and routine expressions Communication practice 1 (conv drills in the textbook - requests) Communication practice 2 (conv drills in the textbook - requests) Communication practice 3 (w/NSs of Japanese - expressing opinions) Reading and writing practice In-class oral performance

Table 3. Summary of instruction - expanded instruction group Session Content 1. Introduction of new grammatical structures 2. Consciousness raising1 (requests in English/Japanese; power, status, imposition, etc.; video clip) 3. Consciousness raising 2 (NS demo; analysis of conversations that include requests) 4. Explicit teaching about request forms and routine expressions 5. Communication practice 1 (how to begin & end a conversation requests) 6. Communication practice 2 (leaving a phone message) 7. Communication practice 3 (w/NSs of Japanese - requesting) 8. Reading and writing practice 9. In-class oral performance, written reflection, and one-on-one feedback

The conversations learners collected (both English and Japanese) included a variety of request situations with different interlocutors (e.g., family members, friends, acquaintances, etc.). Based on the learners’ discussion, the instructor highlighted situational and contextual factors that would affect the choice of request strategies. Learners also had an opportunity to observe how NSs made a request to each other in class and engaged in oral communicative practice with them. In the communicative practice, the NSs played different roles (e.g., friend, upperclassman, acquaintance, etc.) and learners had to make a request of them based on the situation described in the task card they were provided with. At the end of the lesson there was a

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one-on-one feedback session with the instructor about each learner’s inclass oral performance on making a request, which had been videorecorded earlier. Learners were also asked to write a self-reflection about their own oral performances. The Reg group also had opportunities for oral communicative practice with NSs of Japanese, but they were not directly related to requests. The learners in the Reg group also performed an inclass oral performance. The instructor evaluated this performance, but unlike the Exp group, there was no individual feedback session.

4.4. Data analysis In order to examine the effectiveness of the instruction provided in this study (Research Question 1), rating scores provided by the three raters for learner performances in the TMs and RPs were tallied, and descriptive statistics were calculated for both pre- and post-tests. Then, a repeatedmeasures four-way ANOVA was performed to see if there were any statistically significant differences between the Exp and Reg groups, between the pre- and post-tests, between the two types of measurements (i.e., TM versus RP), and between the two types of interlocutors (i.e., friend versus teacher). Using Bonferroni correction, alpha level was adjusted to .01, because this study conducted additional statistical analyses that are not reported in this chapter. In order to address Research Question 2, the learner performances in the TM and RP tasks, as well as the retrospective interviews, were qualitatively examined.

5. Results 5.1. Quantitative analysis Tables 4 and 5 show descriptive statistics of TM and RP rating scores and gains each group made from the pre-test to the post-test in each task. As shown in the table, Exp group RP scores improved more than TM scores (0.48 point increase for RPF and 0.63 point increase for RPT; 0.08 point increase for TMF and 0.36 increase for TMT). The Reg group scores improved consistently in all four tasks (0.49 point increase for TMF; 0.36 point increase for TMT; 0.33 point increase for RPF; 0.39 point increase for RPT). In the Exp group, the largest gain observed was in RPT followed by RPF, whereas in the Reg group the largest gain observed was in TMF

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followed by RPT. It should be also noted that the mean rating scores of the Reg group at the pre-test exceeded those of the Exp group in all four tests. In particular, a greater difference was observed in the RPs than in the TMs. Table 4. TM & RP descriptive statistics - expanded instruction group

Mean Min. Max. SD Pre-post gains

TM F pre 2.81 1.67 4.00 0.61

TM F post 2.89 1.67 4.00 0.80 0.08

TM T pre 2.81 2.00 3.67 0.53

TM T post 3.17 1.67 4.33 0.70 0.36

RP F pre 3.03 2.00 4.33 0.58

RP F post 3.51 2.67 4.33 0.48 0.48

RP T pre 3.00 2.00 4.00 0.64

RP T post 3.63 2.67 4.33 0.50 0.63

Note. TM: Telephone Message Task RP: Role Play Task F: Friend T: Teacher Min.: Minimum Max.: Maximum SD: Standard Deviation

Table 5. TM & RP descriptive statistics - regular instruction group

Mean Min. Max. SD Pre-post gains

TM F pre 2.92 2.00 4.33 0.58

TM F post 3.41 2.00 4.33 0.66 0.49

TM T pre 2.85 2.00 4.00 0.57

TM T post 3.21 2.33 4.00 0.50 0.36

RP F pre 3.29 2.33 4.33 0.53

RP F post 3.62 2.33 4.33 0.53 0.33

RP T pre 3.35 2.33 4.00 0.49

RP T post 3.74 2.67 4.67 0.56 0.39

Note. TM: Telephone Message Task RP: Role Play Task F: Friend T: Teacher Min.: Minimum Max.: Maximum SD: Standard Deviation

There was an approximately 0.3 point difference between the groups: RPF Reg pre: 3.29, Exp pre: 3.03; RPT Reg pre: 3.35, Exp pre: 3.00. In the posttest, the Reg group mean rating scores also exceeded those of the Exp group. This time, however, the difference between the two groups in the RP was smaller than that of the pre-test (0.11 point difference for both RPF and RPT). The difference was larger in the TMs, in particular in TMF (Reg post: 3.41, Exp post: 2.89). The difference in TMT between the two groups was rather minimal (Reg post: 3.21, Exp post: 3.17).7 In order to determine whether or not these differences were statistically significant, a four-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed with

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repeated measures. The design involved three within factors, “Task” (2 levels: TM and RP), “INT” or type of Interlocutor (2 levels: friend and teacher), “Time” (2 levels: pre-test and post-test), and one between factor, “Group” (2 levels: Exp and Reg), as the independent variables. The dependent variable was the rating score. There were statistically significant differences within subjects between pre-test and post-test, as indicated by Time, in both TMs and RPs for both groups, F(1,44)=48.461, p<.01. The partial eta-squared value of .524 shows that 52.4% of the withinsubjects variance was accounted for by Time.No interaction effect between Time and Group was observed, F(1, 44)=.002, p>.01. This indicates that the learners performed better in the post-test than the pre-test overall, regardless of type of instruction they received. Figure 1 shows that the learners’ rating scores in both groups improved in the post-test. Regarding between-subjects effects, there was no statistically significant difference between the two groups, F(1, 44)=3.732, p>.01. Thus, it appears that the two different teaching approaches proved equally effective at developing learners’ ability to request in Japanese. 3.6

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3.1

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POS

Figure 1. Overall mean rating scores in pre- and post-tests by Group

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3.8

3.6

3.4

3.2

3.0

TASK TM

2.8 PRE

RP POS

Figure 2. Overall mean rating scores in pre- and post-tests by type of Task

A statistically significant difference was found in Task or between TM and RP, F(1, 44)=36.486, p<.01. This indicates that there was a significant difference in the learners’ performances between the non-interactive TM task and the interactive RP task. The partial eta-squared value of .453 indicates that 45.3% of the within-subjects variance was accounted for by Task. Figure 2 shows overall mean rating scores within subjects by Task in the pre- and post-tests. It shows that the learners performed better overall in the RP than in the TM, in both pre- and post-tests. No interaction effect between Task and Group was observed, F(1, 44)=0.44, p>.01.

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3.

3.

3.

3.

3.

INT 3. Friend

2.

Teacher

Pre

Post

Figure 3. Overall mean rating scores in pre- and post-tests by type of Interlocutor

Regarding the type of interlocutor (i.e., INT or Friend vs. Teacher), no significant effect was found within subjects, F(1, 44)=.453, p>.01, indicating that factors such as power and distance did not play a significant role in learner performances. However, an interaction effect was observed between Friend and Teacher, as shown in Figure 3, although this effect was not statistically significant. In the pre-test, learners performed slightly better overall when the interlocutor was a friend rather than a teacher. In the post-test, they performed better overall when the interlocutor was a teacher rather than a friend.

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3.4

3.3

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GROUP EXP REG

3.0 Friend

Teacher

Figure 4. Overall mean rating scores by type of Interlocutor and Group

No statistically significant interaction effect between INT and Group was observed, F(1, 44)=1.200, p>.01. However, a tendency was observed in which the Exp Group performed better overall when the interlocutor was a teacher rather than a friend, whereas the Reg group performed slightly better overall when the interlocutor was a friend rather than a teacher. This result is shown in Figure 4. Next, I will qualitatively examine learner performances in the TM and RP tasks.

5.2. Qualitative analysis Qualitative analysis of learner performances in the TM and RP tasks showed that learners used more conventionally indirect request strategies and less direct forms in the post-test than in the pre-test. Furthermore, their performances became sequentially well organized as shown in the increased use of supportive moves, alerters and internal modifiers in the

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post-test, particularly when making a request to a higher-status person, although pragmalingustic and sociopragmatic problems still remained. In the following two sections, I will highlight these findings, referring to the specific performances of two learners in their pre- and post-tests.

5.2.1. Telephone message tasks While some learners’ rating scores in the pre- and post-tests differed little or not at all, some others showed more than one point gain in the post-test rating score. For example, Student R19 in the Reg group received a rating score of 2 (very poor) in the TM pre-test. This task consisted of making an appointment to see a teacher regarding a letter of recommendation (see Task A-2 in Appendix A). The following is a transcript of R19’s phone message: Excerpt 1 (R19 TMT: Task A-2, pre-test, rating score 2) 1 moshimoshi sensee, R19 desu. hello teacher R19 CP ‘hello teacher, this is R19. 2 raishuu hima nara (.5) ai aoi ni naritai desu. next week free if me- meet (HNR) want-to CP ‘if you have a free time next week (.5) I would like to se- see ((incorrect honorific form)) you.’ 3 etto (.) denwa o kakete kudasai. uhm phone O make give the favor of ‘uhm (.) please give me a call.’

R19 begins her message with moshimoshi ‘hello,’ a summons commonly used in Japanese telephone conversation. Following an alerter, sensei ‘teacher,’ R19 identifies herself (line 1). Next, she gives a reason for her call, explaining that she would like to see the teacher next week if she has time (line 2). R19 closes her message, requesting the teacher to call her back (line 3). Her request was made using the direct strategy, V-te kudasai ‘please V,’ as shown in denwa o kakete kudasai ‘please give me a call.’ She ends up using the honorific form of au ‘to meet’ instead of the appropriate humble polite form. As R19 noted during the retrospective interview, the message was very short and ended abruptly. She indicated that she wanted to say “I’m applying for a study abroad” in the message but she was not sure how to say ‘to apply’ so she opted for not saying anything about it.8 A common feature observed among many of the participants was

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that they would opt for not saying anything, instead of saying something incorrectly, when they were not sure about the correct form or expression in Japanese. R19 also acknowledged that she often confused honorific and humble polite forms. This was another common feature observed among many participants in this study. R19’s telephone message to the teacher in the post-test was more detailed than her pre-test message, incorporating forms that she had learned during the instruction. She received a rating score of 4 (OK): a two-point increase from her previous message. Excerpt 2 below shows her phone message in the post-test. In this task, R19 had to make an appointment to see the teacher so that she could ask the teacher to check her Japanese in her application letter for a study abroad program.9 Excerpt 2 (R19 TMT: Task B-2, post-test, rating score 4) 1 ohayoo gozaimasu sensee. R19 to omoi- um R19 to ii masu. good morning teacher R19 QT thin- uhm R19 QT say ‘good morning teacher. I thin- R19 uhm I’m called R19.’ 2 anoo ryuugaku (1) e itta ra oobo no tegami o kaite imasu. uhm study abroad to go if application LN letter O write (PRG) ‘uhm if I go to (1) study abroad, I’m writing an application letter.’ 3 um keredo mo (.) oobo no tegami (.) wa nihongo de kaite imasu. uhm but application LN letter TP Japanese in write (PRG) ‘uhm however (.) I’m writing the application letter (.) in Japanese.’ 4 ano nihongo o chekkushite itadakenai deshoo ka. uhm Japanese O check receive the favor of (HMB) (NEG) CP Q ‘uhm would you be so kind to check my Japanese?’ 5 anoo (.) jikan ga atta ra aimashoo. anoo denwa o kakete kudasai. uhm time S exist if meet (VOL) uhm phone call O make give the favor of ‘uhm (.) if you have time, let’s meet. uhm please give me a call.’ 6 tasukarimasu. arigatoo. be saved thanks ‘thank you for your help. thanks.’

In this excerpt R19 begins her message with the appropriate greeting, ohayoo gozaimasu sensei ‘good morning, teacher’ (line 1), which was missing in her earlier message. Next, she identifies herself. She tries to say mooshimasu, the humble polite form of iimasu ‘to be called’ in line 1, but she was not able to recall it correctly so she ended up saying omoi, the stem form of the verb omoimasu ‘to think.’ She immediately realizes that it was not the correct form. Instead of pursuing the correct humble form further, she self-repairs and says iimasu, the form that she is more familiar with.

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Following self-identification, she explains that she is writing an application letter for a study abroad program (lines 2-3), and then makes a request (line 4). She incorporates the conventionally indirect polite request form, verb te itadaku, into her message and says chekkushite itadakenai deshoo ka ‘would you be so kind to check?’ While this utterance was quite appropriate as a request to a higher-status person, her subsequent utterance was more appropriate for speaking with a friend than with a teacher. She says, jikan ga atta ra aimashoo ‘let’s meet if you have time’ (line 5). In the retrospective interview, R19 indicated that she was not sure if this utterance was polite enough. The next utterance, anoo denwa o kakete kudasai ‘uhm please give me a call,’ is interesting because conventionally polite request form for asking the teacher to check her Japanese is followed by this much more direct style utterance. R19 used the exactly same expression, denwa o kakete kudasai ‘please give me a call,’ in a telephone message to her friend (TMF) in the post-test as well as in her telephone message to the teacher (TMT) in the pre-test. It might be the case that this expression had become so automatized that she did not think about modifying it to show politeness toward an interlocutor.10 She concludes the message with tasukarimasu ‘thank you for your help,’ a formulaic expression that was introduced during the instruction, and arigatoo ‘thanks’ (line 6). She tried to express her gratitude ahead of time for the teacher’s help for checking her Japanese with these expressions. However, the use of arigatoo at the end of the message makes her speech sound very casual because the expression is normally used between friends or from a higher-status person to a lowerstatus person. Furthermore, the omission of the formulaic expression, doozo yoroshiku onegaishimasu ‘I hope you will help me,’ which is commonly used as a pre-closing when asking a favor, negatively affected her rating score. Overall, compared to her message in the pre-test, the message in the post-test was much better organized, and it was clear what she wanted the teacher to do.

5.2.2. Role play tasks The RP tasks were presented as a follow-up to the TM tasks performed earlier. Again, while some learners’ rating scores in the pre- and post-tests differed little or not at all, others showed a more than one point gain in the post-test rating score. For example, Student E21 in the Exp group improved his rating scores by almost 2 points. In the pre-test, E21’s rating score in

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RP2 was rather low (rating score 2.33). The following is the transcript of his interaction with the teacher. In this task, E21 asks the teacher to check the application letter he wrote for a study abroad program. Excerpt 3 (RPT: Task B-4, pre-test, rating score 2.33) (E21: Learner, T: Teacher) 1Æ

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E21: ah gomen kudasai. ah excuse me ‘ah excuse me.’ T: ah hai hai. ah yes yes ‘ah yes yes.’ E21: ((walks to the teacher’s desk)) T E21 san aa konnichiwa. E21 Mr ah good afternoon ‘Mr. E21. ah good afternoon.’ E21: ah konnichiwa sensee. ah good afternoon teacher ‘ah good afternoon teacher.’ T: hai. yes ‘yes.’ E21: konnichiwa. good afternoon ‘good afternoon’ T: konnichiwa. good afternoon ‘good afternoon’ no tegami E21: ee(.) tto (2.5) ee (2) tto oobo uhm uhm application LN letter ‘uh(.)m uh(2.5)m (2) application letter’ T: ah hai ah kono aida denwa shite kureta bun desu ne. oh yes FL the other day call do give the favor of portion CP IP ‘oh yes uh that’s what you told me on the phone the other day, right?’ E21: ee (.) eetto NIHONGO o (.) um uhm Japanese O ‘um (.) uhm do you (.)’ T: hai. yes ‘yes.’

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E21: chekku shimasu ka. check do Q ‘check my JAPANESE?’ T: AH watashi ni chekku shite hoshii n desu ne. oh I P check do want N CP IP ‘OH you want me to check your Japanese right?’ T21: hai. yes ‘yes.’ T: ah, soo (.) desu ka. Hai. ryuugaku suru n desu yo ne. yes so CP Q yes study abroad do N CP IP IP ‘oh, I (.) see. Right. you go to study abroad, right? ‘ E21: hai. yes ‘yes’ T: un ii desu ne. yes good CP IP ‘yes it’s nice, isn’t it?’ E21: ee(1.5)tto uhm ‘uhm’ T: kore desu ka. this when till CP Q ‘<when> is this due?’ E21: ah eetto ee ashita ashita desu. ah uhm um tomorrow tomorrow CP ‘oh uhmm it’s tomorrow tomorrow.’ T: ah ashita desu ka. oo::. oh tomorrow CP Q oh ‘oh is it tomorrow? oh…’ E21: hai. yes ‘yes’

E21 begins the interaction by announcing his arrival with gomen kudasai ‘excuse me’ (line 1). The teacher (T) acknowledges E21’s arrival and offers a greeting, konnichiwa ‘good afternoon’ (line 4). E21 returns T’s greeting (line 5) but he initiates the same greeting one more time in line 7. After the teacher responds to his greeting in line 8, E21 brings up the main topic, oobo no tegami ‘application letter,’ following perturbations and micro pauses (line 9). As soon as she hears oobo no tegami ‘application letter,’ T confirms that it is what E21 told her about in the earlier phone message

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(line 10). E21 uses the information question chekku shimasu ka ‘do you check’ as a request (line 13). T offers a repair, AH watashi ni chekku shite hoshii n desu ne ‘OH you want me to check your Japanese right?’ (line 14). T confirms E21’s intention through this repair to which E21 answers affirmatively with hai ‘yes’ (line 15). T acknowledges that E21 will go to study abroad (line 16) and offers an assessment about it saying, un ii desu ne ‘um it’s nice, isn’t it?’ in line 18. A major problem was E21’s incorrect form-function mapping: A yes-no question, V-masu ka, was used as a request form, as shown in chekku shimasu ka ‘do you check?’ in line 13 to ask the teacher to check his Japanese. Learners tend to use information questions as request forms (Kasper and Rose 2002), and E21 is not the exception. However, chekku shimasu ka ‘do you check?’ simply asks whether or not the interlocutor checks the letter, and it does not serve as a request. Request forms that incorporate donative auxiliary verbs such as chekkushite itadakemasen ka ‘could you please check?’ should have been used instead. Furthermore, use of the formulaic expression gomen kudasai ‘excuse me’ in line 1 sounds rather awkward in this situation because the expression is more commonly used when visiting someone’s house or a shop to announce one’s arrival.11 While these are pragmalinguistic problems, a sociopragmatic problem was observed when the learner initiated the greeting konnichiwa ‘good afternoon’ one more time in line 7, despite the fact that he and the teacher already exchanged the greeting in lines 4 and 5. E21 exhibited another sociopragmatic problem when he responded to the teacher’s question about the due date. In line 21, E21 says, ah eetto ee ashita ashita desu. ‘oh uhmm it’s tomorrow tomorrow.’ He repeats ashita ‘tomorrow’ twice, but he did not include any appropriate apologetic expressions to mitigate such a short notice request, which negatively affected his rating score. Not showing concern for a short notice request was observed among several learners, and it was also pointed out by the raters. One of the raters commented that showing concern either verbally or nonverbally (e.g., facial expressions) for a short notice request would affect the perceived politeness level that the learner shows toward the teacher. The same rater explicitly noted that Japanese would expect more apologetic expressions in a situation like this. There was an improvement in E21’s RP performance with the teacher in the post-test, in particular with regard to the opening of the conversation and the appropriate use of a request strategy. Although E21 remained unapologetic for the short notice request, he improved his rating score to 4 in the post-test. An excerpt follows.

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Excerpt 4 (RPT: Task A-4, post-test, rating score 4) (E21: Learner, T: Teacher) 1 E21: sensee teacher ‘teacher’ 2 T: ah E21 san. [ah konnichiwa. ah E21 Mr ah good afternoon ‘ah Mr. E21. ah good afternoon.’ 3Æ E21: [ >konnichiwa< yoroshii deshoo ka. a bit good afternoon good (PL) CP Q ‘<may I> >good afternoon< interrupt you for a second?’ 4 T: ah, doozo. ((offers chair)) ah please ‘yes, please.’ 5 E21: hai. anoo (2) study abroad e ikimasu. yes uhm study abroad P go ‘yes. uhm (2) I’ll go to study abroad.’ 6 T: ah ryuugaku suru n desu yo ne. oh study abroad do N CP IP IP ‘oh you go to study abroad, right?’ 7 E21: [hai. hai. yes yes ‘yes. yes.’ 8 T: [ah soo desu ka. ii desu ne. oh so CP Q good CP IP ‘oh I see. It’s nice, isn’t it?’ 9 E21: anoo suisenjoo [o uhm recommendation letter O ‘uhm letter of recommendation ‘ 10 T: [ee yes ‘yes ‘ 11Æ E21: kaite itadakenai deshoo ka. ((hand over the form to the teacher)) write receive the favor of (HMB)(NEG) CP Q ‘would you be so kind to write it?’ 12 T: ah kore desu ka. ah hai. ((looking over the form)) oh this CP Q oh yes ‘oh is this it? oh yes.’ 13 E21: hai. yes ‘yes.’ 14 T: ah ichinen kan desu ne. ii desu ne. oh one year period CP IP good CP IP ‘oh one year. It’s nice, isn’t it?’

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Yumiko Tateyama E21: hai. anoo:: yes uhm ‘yes. uhm:: ‘ T: kore, itsu made desu ka. this when till CP Q ‘when is this due?’ E21: itsu made anoo (2) anoo (1.5) rainen (.5) rainen desu. when till uhm uhm next year next year CP ‘when. uhm (2) uhm (1.5) next year (.5) it’s next year.’ T: ah puroguramu wa rainen desu ka. oh program TP next year CP Q ‘oh the program is next year? ‘ E21: HAI hai. yes yes ‘YES yes.’ T: suisenjoo wa itsu made. (2) kore itsu made ni dasu n desu ka. recommendation letter TP when till this when by submit N CP Q ‘when is the rec. letter due? (2) by when do you submit this? ‘ E21: OH. anoo ka- raigetsu (2.5) raishuu kinyoobi desu. oh uhm next month next week Friday CP ‘OH. uhm ka- next month (2.5) it’s next Friday.’ T: rai raishuu desu ka. nex- next week CP Q ‘is it next week?’ E21: hai. yes ‘yes.’ T: ah soo dusu ka. ja isshuukan desu ne. oh so CP Q then one week CP IP ‘oh I see. then there is one week, isn’t it?’ E21: hai. yes ‘yes.’ T: wakarimashita. ja, isoide kakimashoo. understood well hurry write ‘I got it. well, I’ll hurry up and write.’ E21: °hai° yes ‘°yes°‘

E21 starts with an alerter sensee ‘teacher,’ and immediately after T acknowledges him (line 2) he asks the teacher’s availability, >konnichiwa< yoroshii deshoo ka. ‘<may I> >good afternoon< interrupt

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you for a second?’ (line 3). This utterance starts at the same time when the teacher offers a greeting ah konnichiwa ‘ah good afternoon’ in line 2. He says chotto ‘a bit’ slowly and utters konninchiwa ‘good afternoon’ rather fast to return the teacher’s greeting before he continues the rest of the formulaic expression yoroshii deshoo ka ‘would it be all right?’ This formulaic expression, commonly used when asking a favor of a higherstatus person, was missing in his pre-test RP. E21 demonstrates his interactional competence by successfully incorporating a greeting into a formulaic expression. Next, E21 explains that he will go to study abroad (line 5), and the teacher’s confirmation (line 6), acknowledgment and assessment (line 8) about it follow. In line 9, E21 brings up the topic, suisenjoo ‘letter of recommendation,’ following his rather hesitant utterance, anoo ‘uhm.’ The teacher offers a backchannel, ee ‘yes,’ in line 10. In line 11, E21 asks the teacher if she could write a letter of recommendation for him, using the conventionally indirect request form, V-te itadakenai deshoo ka ‘Would you be so kind to do V.’ This is quite an improvement from his pre-test RP performance in which he exhibited a form-function mapping problem by using a information question, V-masu ka ‘Do you V?’, for a request. When the teacher asks about the due date in line 16, E21 appropriates itsu made ‘till when’ (line 17), and after perturbations and micropauses, he says that it is next year. The teacher repairs E21’s utterance in line 18 by attaching puroguramu wa ‘the program’ to E21’s utterance rainen desu ‘it is next year,’ which E21 loudy ratifys with HAI ‘YES.’ T self-repairs her initial question with suisenjoo wa itsu made ‘when is the recommendation letter due?’ (line 20). After a twosecond gap with no reply from E21, T repairs her question one more time: kore itsu made ni dasu n desu ka ‘by when do you submit this?’ (line 20). With the change-of-state token OH uttered in a loud voice (line 21), E21 finally shows his understanding of the question. He says raigetsu ‘next month’ but after 2.5 second pauses he self-repairs it with raishuu kinyoobi desu ‘it’s next Friday.’ In the subsequent exchange, the teacher confirms that it is due next week (line 22) and that there is only one week left (line 24). Then, she says she will hurry and write it (line 26). All his responses to these teacher utterances are simply hai ‘yes,’ as shown in lines 23, 25, and 27. No apology was offered for a short notice request. During the retrospective interview, it was found that E21 wanted to explain about the program to the teacher, and one of the things he wanted to mention was that he would be in Japan for one year. It appears that E21 was so occupied with preparation for his next utterance that he did not attend to the question about the due date that the teacher initially asked. However, even when he

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did finally understand the question, he did not offer any apologies for a short notice request. In this regard there was no change from his pre-test performance.

6. Discussion Quantitative analysis showed that both Exp and Reg groups improved their TM and RP rating scores from the pre-test to the post-test, and the increases were statistically significant for both groups. This indicates that both treatments that had been provided as an instructional package to the groups were effective in teaching Japanese requests to the learners in the current study. However, it should be noted that, although there was significant effect of Time, the overall rating score for both RP and TM tasks after instruction were still low (mostly below 4 out of 7). This is probably explained in terms of learners’ overall language proficiency. Although learners improved their request strategies in the post-test, pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic problems still remained, as shown in the qualitative analysis. It appears that one lesson was not sufficient to address all the pragmatic problems that learners encountered. However, the expectation is that, as their proficiency improves, they will be better prepared to cope with those problems that they had difficulty with earlier. There was no statistically significant difference between the two groups regarding the learners’ performances in the TMs and RPs. This suggests that the regular grammar-based instruction combined with explicit teaching on making a request and communicative practice was as effective as the more expanded pragmatics instruction that involved consciousness-raising activities, feedback sessions, and observation of NS models in addition to explicit teaching and communicative practice. Considering the fact that the regular instruction implemented for the present study has been widely practiced at the university where the data were collected, we might be able to say that the findings of the present study are encouraging in terms of the foreign language program evaluation. At the same time, however, we should be cautious in interpreting the findings since other factors might have contributed to the outcome of the present study. One such factor is the fact that learners in the Reg group had more opportunities than those in the Exp group to interact with NSs of Japanese outside of the class, an ideal condition to develop pragmatic competence. Further, the learners’ motivation to study Japanese might have affected the learning outcome. In the background information sheet, more learners in the Reg group than the

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Exp group indicated an interest in Japanese language and culture as their number one reason for taking Japanese course. There was a tendency that Exp group participants performed better when the interlocutor was a teacher than when it was a friend. On the other hand, the Reg group performed slightly better overall when the interlocutor was a friend rather than a teacher. This might suggest that the instruction offered to the Exp Group was effective in raising the learners’ awareness about pragmalinguistic forms that index politeness when talking to a higher-status person. That is, they might have become more aware of such forms through consciousness-raising activities where situational and contextual factors that would affect the choice of request strategies were highlighted. This effect might have contributed to the higher rating scores in the tasks in which the teacher was the interlocutor. A statistically significant within-subjects effect was also found in Task (i.e., TM vs. RP). That is, the participants performed better in RPs than TMs overall in both pre- and post-tests, regardless of the groups they belonged to. It appears that the interlocutor plays an important role in coconstructing the interaction with the learner. As shown in Excerpts 3 and 4, the interlocutor offered repairs to ratify the learner’s requestive intent or candidate understanding. The repairs were recipient-designed and contributed to a successful completion of the task. In the non-interactive TM task, there was no assistance or scaffolding available from the interlocutor, which posed a great challenge for the learners in completing a message. While some learners indicated that they preferred leaving a phone message over performing a role play with an interlocutor because they did not have to worry about attending to what the interlocutor would say and providing an appropriate response, more learners preferred interacting with an interlocutor because of the availability of the feedback. Such preference might have positively influenced the overall better rating scores in the RP tasks. Moreover, the fact that more class time was spent on interacting with the teacher and classmates rather than non-interactive activities such as leaving phone messages might have also contributed to the learners’ better performances in the RPs. Further, the participants’ better performances in the RPs might be also explained in terms of the sequence of outcome measure. That is, performing the TM task first potentially increased learners’ chance to notice target forms (Swain, 1995; Swain and Lapkin, 1995) and had them better prepared for the RP, which was administered a week later. In addition, engaging in the retrospective interview immediately after the TM task might have also contributed to learners’ noticing the gap

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(Schmidt and Frota 1986) and resulted in their better performances in the RP. Qualitative analysis showed that there was an increased use of conventionally indirect request strategies by the learners in the post-test. The excerpts examined above highlighted this point. In particular, significant improvement was shown by E21 who used an information question (i.e., chekku shimasu ka ‘do you check?’) as a request strategy in his pre-test when he incorporated a conventionally indirect request strategy in his post-test.12 In addition to the head act, improvement was also observed in the overall organization of the message (R19) and appropriate opening move with formulaic expressions such as chotto yoroshii deshoo ka (E21). Furthermore, as noted by the raters, more learners offered accounts before actually making a request in the post-test. This contributed to higher rating scores. Both R19 and E21 mentioned that they would go to study abroad before they actually made a request in their post-test. However, none of them incorporated the extended predicate with the interactional discourse marker n desu kedo/ga, a preferred strategy among NSs of Japanese (Kashiwazaki 1991, 1993; Asato 1998), into their accounts. They both ended their sentences with -masu as shown in study abroad e ikimasu ‘I go to study abroad (E21 - Excerpt 4 line 5) and oobo no tegami o kaite imasu ‘I’m writing an application letter.’ (R19 - Excerpt 2 line 2). While some learners successfully incorporated interactional discourse markers into their TM and RP performances, a number of other learners continued to have difficulty doing so, including R19 and E21. Although the learners had been introduced to n desu kedo/ga earlier and its use in request making situations was explicitly mentioned during the instruction for both groups, it might be the case that incorporating it appropriately into oral interaction requires further control of processing (Bialystok 1993) in which learners have to simultaneously attend to other elements such as appropriate request strategies and proper response to an interlocutor’s preceding utterance. This might be the area that resists instruction (Yoshimi 2001). However, as shown in Narita (2008), more focused instruction that makes the difference between the V-masu predicate and the extended predicate with n desu kedo/ga used in requestive situations salient might help to raise learner awareness and improve their request performances. Another notable feature observed in learner performances was insufficient use of apologetic expressions. Both R19 and E21 failed to use such expressions as sumimasen ‘I’m sorry’ and its more formal equivalent

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mooshiwakearimasen. More emphasis on the sociopragmatic information that Japanese prefer to use apologetic expressions in request making situations (Lai 2005; Okutsu 2000) would also help. Finally, as many learners reported, appropriate use of honorific and humble polite forms was very challenging in spoken requests. Learners showed sensitivity to the sociopragmatic aspects of Japanese language when interacting with statusdifferent interlocutors but they had not yet developed sufficient knowledge and control over the appropriate forms, resulting in incorrect usage, as shown in R19’s confusion with honorific and humble polite forms.

7. Conclusion and pedagogical implications The present study examined the effects of instruction in teaching Japanese requests to JFL learners by using telephone message and role play tasks as measurements. The Reg group received regular instruction closely following the textbook lesson on making a request, whereas the Exp group engaged in additional consciousness-raising activities, communication practice with NSs of Japanese, and one-on-one feedback about their oral performances in making a request. The results showed that learners in both groups improved their performances in the post-test. This is consistent with previous research which indicates the effectiveness of instruction in pragmatics learning (Alcón and Martínez-Flor 2008; Kasper 2001; Kasper and Rose 2002; Rose 2005). However, no statistically significant difference was found between the two groups. This might be due to the fact that the differences in the instructional packages provided to each group were not sufficiently different. Or, it might be the case that the Reg group learners, who had more opportunities to interact with NSs of Japanese outside of the classroom, had an advantage in learning pragmatics over the Exp group learners without going through an extensive pragmatics instruction. Further, motivation to study Japanese might have also affected the learning outcome. More research is needed in this respect. In addition, a significant difference in learner performances was found between the non-interactive TM task and the interactive RP task. The relationship between instructional effect and type of outcome measure merits further investigation (Jeon and Kaya 2006; Tateyama 2008). Qualitative analysis showed learner improvement in the use of request strategies and sequential organization of talk, including proper opening and closing moves. It should be noted that some learners received higher rating

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scores because of sequentially well-organized messages or interactions despite the fact that they did not use the most appropriate request form for the head act. This suggests that teaching a sequence for making a request is just as important as teaching various forms for the head act. Focusing more on sequence would also allow us to identify learner pragmatic errors that might be revealed in the course of interaction, such as E21’s repeated exchange of greetings. More focused instruction and communication practice appear to be necessary in order to develop learners’ pragmatic competence with regard to the use of the extended predicate n desu kedo/ga and honorific and humble polite forms when making requests. Further, sociopragmatic information such as the prevalence of apologetic expressions in Japanese requests should be highlighted in order to raise learner awareness. Although no significant difference was found between the groups, the fact that the Exp group had a tendency to perform better with a higherstatus interlocutor than the Reg group suggests that more pragmaticsfocused instruction was effective in raising learner awareness about pragmalinguistic forms that index politeness. In fact, having an opportunity to observe how NSs make a request and to engage in a requestive behavior with them13 might have allowed the learners to notice not only linguistic forms but also their functional meanings and relevant contextual features (Schmidt 1993). Furthermore, the Exp group learners often referred to the organization of the message or the talk when asked how they planned for their performances during their retrospective interviews for the post-test. This probably suggests the effectiveness of teaching pragmatics at the discourse level (Félix-Brasdefer 2006) which allowed learners to think about a sequential organization of the speech act of requesting. It merits further investigation to incorporate the expanded pragmatics instruction with explicit teaching, consciousness-raising and feedback into other lessons throughout the semester to see if it would result in differential effects.

Notes 1. For the distinction between in-group and out-group and the use of donative auxiliary verbs, see Bachnik and Quinn (1994). 2. A total of eight JFL learners and two NSs of Japanese participated in the study. 3. Two JPN202 classes in fall semester (2002) and another two JPN202 classes in spring semester (2003) participated in the study. In each semester, one class

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was randomly assigned as the Exp group and the other as the Reg group. All classes were taught by the same instructor (i.e., the researcher). 4. Two forms (Forms A and B) were prepared, and they were counter-balanced in the pre- and post-tests. The situations in the two forms were slightly different, although the interlocutors (i.e., friend and teacher) stayed the same. Appendix A shows Form A. 5. Prior to actual rating, the raters participated in a training session where I informed that the target speech act was request. They practiced rating a few TM and RP performances collected from learners who did not participate in the present study. They offered comments and discussed differences in their rating scores. At the end of the training session, almost complete agreement was achieved among the raters. 6. As a quasi-experimental study, it would have been useful if a control group which did not receive any instruction on requests were added. Unfortunately, institutional constraints did not allow additional classes to be added as a control group. 7. The interrater reliability (Alpha) for the TM task was moderately high at .7524, whereas reliability for the RP task was lower at .6950. It appears that the raters were influenced by the presence of the interlocutor, even though they were told to focus on learner performances. 8. The participants were told that they could ask questions on lexical items before they began the task but R19 apparently did not ask any. 9. As explained in the Methodology section, the situations for the pre- and posttests were counter-balanced. In other words, both situations required the learner to make a request of the same interlocutor but the context in which the request was made was slightly different. 10. Unfortunately, this was not confirmed with R19 during the interview. It would be an interesting inquiry to see if learners develop their own version of routine expressions. 11. There was a lesson about visiting a Japanese person’s house at the beginning of the semester. E21 might have transferred what he had learned in that lesson into this situation. 12. While information questions and direct strategies were prevalent among many learners in the pre-test, a significant increase in the number of conventionally indirect strategies was found in the post-test TMs, RPs and DCTs. See Tateyama (2008) for details. 13. See Tateyama and Kasper (2008).

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Swain, Merrill 1995 Three functions of output in second language learning. In: Guy Cook and Barbara Seidlhofer (eds.), Principle and Practice in Applied Linguistics, 125–144. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Swain, Merrill and Sharon Lapkin 1995 Problems in output and the cognitive processes they generate: A step towards second language learning. Applied Linguistics 16(3): 371– 391. Takahashi, Satomi 2001 The role of input enhancement in developing interlanguage pragmatic competence. In: Kenneth R. Rose and Gabriele Kasper (eds.), Pragmatics in Language Teaching, 171–199. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2005 Noticing in task performance and learning outcomes: A qualitative analysis of instructional effects in interlanguage pragmatics. System 33: 437–461. Takimoto, Masahiro 2006 The effects of explicit feedback on the development of pragmatic proficiency. Language Teaching Research 10: 393–417. Tateyama, Yumiko 2008 Learning to request in Japanese through foreign language classroom instruction. Ph.D. diss., University of Hawai’i at Manoa. Tateyama, Yumiko and Gabriele Kasper 2008 Talking with a classroom guest: Opportunities for learning Japanese pragmatics. In: Eva Alcón Soler and Alicia Martínez-Flor (eds.), Investigating Pragmatics in Foreign Language Learning, Teaching and Testing, 45–71. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Tateyama, Yumiko, Gabriele Kasper, Lala P. Mui, Hui-Mian Tay, and Ong-on Thananart 1997 Explicit and implicit teaching of pragmatic routines. In: Lawrence F. Bouton (ed.), Pragmatics and Language Learning, Monograph Series Vol. 8, 163–177. Urbana-Champaign, IL:University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Thomas, Jenny 1983 Cross-cultural pragmatic failure. Applied Linguistics 4: 91–112. Yoshimi, Dina R. 2001 Explicit instruction and JLF learners’ use of interactional discourse markers. In: Kenneth R. Rose and Gabriele Kasper (eds.), Pragmatics in Language Teaching, 223–244. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Influence of learning context on L2 pragmatic realization: A comparison between JSL and JFL learners’ compliment responses Takafumi Shimizu Abstract This study explored the influence of the learning context on second language (L2) pragmatic realizations by investigating the production of compliment responses by 48 American learners of Japanese as a second language (JSL) and as a foreign language (JFL). The data elicited through an oral discourse completion test were analyzed at three levels: compliment response strategies; patterns of semantic formulas; and lexical/phrasal characteristics. The quantitative and qualitative analyses showed that the JSL learners came out ahead over the JFL learners in using the target-like avoidance strategy in compliment responses, and that the JFL learners were apt to emphasize negation in their responses at all three levels. Follow-up interviews revealed that the JFL learners’ tendency of negation might have come from their Japanese textbooks, which emphasize that explicit denial is an ideal means to respond to compliments in Japanese culture (i.e., transfer of training). On the other hand, through interaction with native speakers of Japanese, the JSL learners seemed to have opportunities to modify their knowledge gained from textbooks.

1. Introduction A growing number of studies have investigated the effects of learning contexts on L2 learners’ pragmatic competence. Some studies revealed the superiority of second language (SL) contexts over foreign language (FL) contexts for pragmatic development (e.g., Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei 1998; Barron 2003; Churchill 2001; Cole and Anderson 2001; House 1996; Kitao 1990; Matsumura 2001, 2003; Schauer 2006; Takahashi and Beebe 1987).1 Others reported that SL contexts are not always advantageous for L2 pragmatic development (e.g., Barron 2007; Kondo 1997; Marriott 1995; Niezgoda and Röver 2001; Rodriguez 2001). Yet another line of studies

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showed that pragmatic development does occur naturally in an FL context in which classroom environment is the primary source of target language contact (e.g., Ohta 2001). As shown in these studies, although interest in learning context and pragmatic development has grown rapidly, empirical findings regarding its effect on pragmatic competence are still mixed. In addition, most previous studies are confined to English as a foreign or second language, and very few studies to date have examined the relationship between learning context and pragmatic competence in languages other than English. To the best of my knowledge, Marriott (1995) and Ohta (2001) are the only studies that targeted L2 Japanese, and there has been no investigation on learners’ compliment responses in relation to learning context. In order to fill this gap, the present study examined the effect of two different learning contexts, namely JSL and JFL, on L2 pragmatic realization of compliment responses. An oral discourse completion test (ODCT) involving compliment situations was administered to JSL and JFL learners, as well as to native speakers of Japanese (JJ) and native speakers of American English (AE). Data were analyzed for response strategies, semantic formulas, and lexical/phrasal characteristics. Follow-up interviews were conducted to reveal sources of group differences.

2. Background: Compliment responses Although majority previous studies examined compliment responses in English (e.g., Herbert 1986, 1989, 1990; Holmes 1986; Knapp, Hopper, and Bell 1984; Pomerantz 1978; Wolfson 1989, 1990), a small number of studies also analyzed compliment responses in Japanese, revealing their characteristic features in semantic patterns and strategies (e.g., Baba 1999; Barnlund and Araki 1985; Daikuhara 1986; Jones 1998; Ohno 2005; Saito and Beecken 1997; Terao 1996; Yokota 1986). These Japanese studies share a view that compliment responses are broadly classified into three strategy types: Positive (acceptance); Negative (denial); and Avoidance (neither of the above) (See Table 1 shown on pages 6–7 for examples). These studies revealed that native English speakers are more inclined to rely on the Positive strategy (acceptance) than native Japanese speakers, and that English speakers seldom use the Negative strategy (denial). Yokota (1986), for instance, administered a discourse completion test (DCT) to 21 native speakers of American English, 20 native speakers of

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Japanese, and 19 American learners of Japanese. The results revealed that speakers of American English used Positive strategy most frequently (68%), followed by Avoidance (24%), and Negative (8%). In contrast, Japanese speakers used Avoidance most frequently (59%), followed by Positive (21%) and Negative (20%). In another study, Saito and Beecken (1997) examined a total of 300 compliment response data obtained from closed role-plays administered to 10 native speakers of Japanese, 10 native speakers of American English, and 10 advanced American learners of Japanese. They found that the frequency of Positive strategy in the native Japanese speaker data was much higher (57%) than in Yokota’s data, but it was still far smaller compared to that of their native English speaker counterpart (94%). Similar to Yokota’s study, Saito and Beecken found that avoidance strategy was more frequent in the Japanese data (28%) than in the English data (6%). Hence, these studies did not support the popular stereotype that the Japanese usually reject compliments to show modesty (c.f., Tohsaku 1994) because the Negative response (denial) was the least popular type of compliment response.2 Positive and Avoidance strategies were, on the contrary, predominant among Japanese speakers. Compared to native speakers of English, the proportion of the Avoidance strategy was much larger in the native Japanese data. Concerning L2 learner data, these previous studies yielded somewhat contrasting patterns in their compliment response strategies. Yokota (1986) reported that American learners of Japanese used Avoidance most frequently (41%), whereas Saito and Beecken (1997) found that Avoidance was the least popular strategy in their L2 Japanese data (14%). Interestingly, the participants’ residence experience in Japan differed between these studies, suggesting a possible effect of the learning context on compliment response patterns. In Yokota’s (1986) study, upon data collection, 18 out of 19 participants had lived in Japan for more than one year (the longest of 13 years), while in Saito and Beecken’s (1997) study, only one out of 10 American participants had a living experience in Japan. Hence, it seems that JSL learners made more profound progress than JFL learners in their acquisition of Avoidance response, approximating the target language patterns. Although these findings are suggestive, no previous research has investigated the influence of learning context on the acquisition of compliment responses in L2 Japanese by directly comparing learners’ performance between a second and foreign language setting.3 Hence, future research is necessary in this area, and the present study is an effort in this goal. This study examined whether or not JSL learners are

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more target-like than JFL learners in their realization of the speech act of compliment responses in L2 Japanese.

3. Methodology 3.1. Participants The participants in this study consisted of four groups: 30 native Japanese speakers (JJ); 30 native American English speakers (AE); 24 American learners of Japanese who had a living experience in Japan for more than six months (JSL); and 24 American learners of Japanese who had spent almost no time in Japan (JFL). The four participant groups were similar in age, gender balance, social status, and educational background. They were all university undergraduate/graduate students between 18 and 27 years old. The average age was 20.3 in JJ, 20.2 in AE, 22.5 in JSL, and 21.1 in JFL. Each group had 50% male and 50% female students. The JJ data were collected in Japan and the AE data were collected in the U.S. To avoid a possible pragmatic transfer from other proficient languages, only the monolingual speakers were selected for the native speaker groups (i.e., JJ and AE). All JFL participants were enrolled in a third- or fourth-year-level Japanese language course at two private universities and a state university in the U.S. The JSL group consisted of students in a third-year-level course at a private university in Japan, and students in a third- or fourth-year-level course in the same U.S. universities as JFLs’ after returning from Japan. The JSL learners had in average 1.6 years of living experience in Japan, ranging from 0.5 to three years. 3.2. Instrumentation An oral discourse completion test (ODCT) was used in this study instead of written DCT because a written instrument has several disadvantages.4 First, written responses may not be as spontaneous as spoken responses because participants can take time to plan carefully or revise their responses. Second, a written instrument may cause “writing fatigue,” which may prevent the participants from writing down what they would exactly say in natural speech (Robinson 1992). Third, the pressure of writing correctly can force participants to alter a part or the whole of their response. For

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example, if they do not remember the correct spelling of a word, they might give up on the word and use a different word to express meaning. Oral DCT can partially overcome these disadvantages of written DCT, by eliciting impromptu “oral” responses from the participants who are requested to respond spontaneously as if they were engaged in a conversational interaction. The eight ODCT situations differed according to three situational variables: (a) “social distance” between the interlocutors, where the complimenter and the recipient either know each other (-distance) or do not know each other (+distance); (b) their “relative social power,” where the complimenter and the recipient are either equal status (-dominance), or the complimenter is higher status (+dominance); and (c) “self-evaluation,” where the recipient’s own evaluation on the object of a compliment is either congruent (+evaluation) or incongruent (-evaluation) with the compliment. In this study, the object of compliment was possession, appearance, and achievement based on the previous literature (e.g., Barnlund and Araki 1985; Daikuhara 1986; Herbert 1991; Holmes 1986; Manes 1983; Manes and Wolfson 1981; Wolfson 1983) (see Appendix for sample ODCT situations). The ODCT was administered individually in a random order of the situations. The situations and actual compliments given were pre-recorded. JJ and AE groups completed the ODCT in their L1s, while the JSL and JFL participants completed it in their L2 Japanese. In conducting the ODCT, the participants were instructed to give their immediate responses in the same language as the recorded complimenter’s language, as if they had been engaged in a conversation with him/her. They were given the option of opting out if they felt that no verbal response was necessary (c.f., Bonikowska 1988). The responses by the participants were tape-recorded. After the ODCT, informal individual interviews were conducted with JSL and JFL participants. The researcher asked the participants about their perceived norms on compliment responses in L1 and L2, and their learning experiences of the L2 norms. 3.3. Data analysis The participants’ oral compliment responses were transcribed (i.e., 108 participants x eight situations = 864 responses). An Initial Sentence Analysis (ISA) and Semantic Formula Analysis (SFA) were conducted following the previous literature (e.g., Saito and Beeken 1997). ISA focuses

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exclusively on the initial sentence of each compliment response, rather than on all the sentences that appeared in the response. According to Saito and Beecken (1997), this method is useful because a compliment response includes at least one utterance, and the initial utterance usually takes on a critical strategic role in shaping the illocution of the entire response. In addition to the ISA, SFA was also conducted on the entire compliment response. SFA, which was also used in Saito and Beecken (1997), involved analyzing the order of semantic formulas to find patterns of utterance structures in compliment responses.5 Based on the classification framework used in the past studies (e.g., Baba 1999; Chen 1993; Herbert 1990; Holmes 1986; Jones 1998; Pomerantz 1978; Saito and Beecken 1997; Yokota 1986), 16 types of semantic formulas, which covered the entire corpus of the data in this study, were identified and categorized (see Table 1). Following the previous studies, in conducting ISA, the initial sentence of each response was classified into three response strategies: Positive; Avoidance; and Negative (see Table 1). The frequency percentage of each response strategy was calculated in relation to the total responses in order to discern the general tendencies of compliment response patterns for each participant group. SFA examined the order of semantic formulas in each compliment response. It enabled us to see how L2 learners manage the relationships with the interlocutors in the sequences of his/her utterances (Beebe, Takahashi, and Uliss-Weltz 1990). In the present study, the 16 types of semantic formulas were used to conduct an SFA. Each compliment response was analyzed in terms of the sequence of semantic formulas contained. For example, when a participant responded to a compliment on the dish he/she cooked by saying “Thanks. I didn’t think it was going to turn out so well. But, I’m glad you like it,” it was coded as [Gratitude][Disagreement]-[Expressing Gladness] (i.e., “G-DA-EG” in abbreviation). In addition to ISA and SFA analyses, qualitative analysis was conducted in order to reveal characteristics in word choices and expressions involved in compliment responses.

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Table 1. List of semantic formulas Strategy Positive

Avoidance

Negative

Semantic Formula Gratitude Agreement Expressing Gladness Upgrade

Abb.

Example

G A EG

Return

R

Joke

J

Explanation

E

Credit Shift

CS

Question Topic Shift

Q TS

Downgrade

DG

Offer Pause Disagreement

O P DA

Arigatoo gozaimasu. ‘Thank you.’ Soo nan desu yo. ‘That’s right.’ Soo itte moraeru to ureshii desu. ‘I am glad that you said so.’ Sugoi ki ni itte irun desu yo.(‘I like this very much.’ You did good at your job today, too. (No examples were found in Japanese data.) Ame no naka aruku yori wa ii desho? ‘It is better than walking in the rain, isn’t it?’ Zutto hoshikute kattan desu yo. ‘I bought it because I had wanted one for a long time.’ Ojisan ni katte morattan da. ‘My uncle bought it for me.’ Soo desu ka? ‘Do you think so?’ Tonikaku hayaku haitte ne. Ame ga futteiru kara ne. ‘Anyway, come in quickly because it’s raining.’ Daibu mae no nan desu kedo. ‘It’s pretty old.’ Agemasu. ‘Take it.’ (no verbal response) Sonna koto nai desu yo. ‘It’s not really like that’. Sumimasen. ‘I’m sorry.’

UG

Expressing ER Regret Expressing EE Jitsu wa hazukashii kedo. ‘Actually, I’m Embarrassment embarrassed.’ Notes. The semantic strategies are based on Baba (1999), Chen (1993), Herbert (1990), Holmes (1986), Jones (1998), Pomerantz (1978), Saito and Beecken (1997), and Yokota (1986). Abb. denotes abbreviation of the name of semantic formulas.

4. Results 4.1. Compliment response strategies Table 2 summarizes the result of ISA.6 The JJ and AE groups showed the same order of frequency of the three response strategies; Positive strategy

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(e.g., Arigatoo gozaimasu, meaning ‘Thank you’) was the most frequent, followed by Avoidance and Negative strategies. Although Positive strategy made up more than 80% of the AE data, it accounted for less than 50% in the JJ data. Avoidance strategy constituted almost 40% of the JJ data, while it occupied 15% in the AE data. A chi-square test revealed a significant difference between the two groups, χ2 (2) = 57.1, p < .01, for all three response strategies. (See Table 3 for the results of the residual analysis.) 7 Table 2. Distribution of three response strategies Positive Avoidance Negative

JJ 116 (48.3%) 93 (38.8%) 31 (12.9%)

AE 195 (81.3%) 35 (14.6%) 10 (4.1%)

JSL 40 (20.8%) 86 (44.8%) 66 (34.4%)

JFL 46 (24.0%) 34 (17.7%) 112 (58.3%)

Table 3. Analysis of adjusted residuals: JJ and AE JJ AE

Positive -7.55** 7.55**

Avoidance 5.99** -5.99**

Negative 3.43** -3.43**

** p < .01

Concerning the L2 data, there was a significant difference between the JSL and JFL groups in the percentage distribution of the three response strategies, χ2 (2) = 34.84, p < .01. Avoidance strategy was most frequent in the JSL data (44.8%), while the JFL group used it least frequently (17.7%). The JFL participants instead used Negative strategy most frequently (58.3%). As summarized in Table 4, the residual analyses showed that the differences in Avoidance and Negative strategies were statistically significant. Table 4. Analysis of adjusted residuals: JSL and JFL JSL JFL

Positive -0.73 0.73

Avoidance 5.73** -5.73**

Negative 4.71** -4.71**

** p < .01

Comparisons between the L2 learner data and native speaker data (JJ) revealed that both L2 groups (JSL and JFL) failed to approximate the target language patterns. Chi-square analyses revealed significant group differences between JSL and JJ, χ2 (2) = 45.15 (p < .01), and between JFL and JJ, χ2 (2) = 99.43 (p < .01). Although both JSL and JFL groups showed

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similar patterns in their use of Positive strategy, they under-used this strategy compared to the native Japanese speaker group. Frequencies of Positive strategy in JSL data (20.8%) and JFL data (24.0%) were less than half of those in JJ data (48.3%). On the other hand, the frequency of Negative strategy in the JSL data (34.4%) and JFL data (58.3%) was almost three to five times greater than those in JJ data (12.9%). Significant L2 group differences were found in the use of Avoidance and Negative strategies, with more JSL participants approximating native speaker patterns. The residual analyses supported these interpretations, as summarized in Tables 4, 5 and 6. Table 5. Analysis of adjusted residuals: JJ and JSL

JJ JSL

Positive 5.91** -5.91**

Avoidance -1.27 1.27

Negative -5.31** 5.31**

** p < .01 Table 6. Analysis of adjusted residuals: JJ and JFL

JJ JFL

Positive 5.20** -5.20**

Avoidance -4.77** 4.77**

Negative -9.97** 9.97**

** p < .01

4.2. Sequence patterns of semantic formulas The order of semantic formulas in each compliment response was analyzed, and the frequency of each sequence pattern was tallied. Table 7 displays the sequences of semantic formulas that occurred at least four times for each response strategy.

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Table 7. Frequent sequence patterns of semantic formulas JJ

AE

Positive G A G-DG A-CS UG G-UG G-CS others G G-E G-CS G-DG G-TS G-EG G-DA G-UG others G G-E G-CS

67 8 6 5 4 4 4 18 59 28 25 12 9 7 7 4 44 14 6 4

Avoidance Q Q-G Q-DA Q-DG CS

22 19 12 11 7

Others Q-DG Q-G

22 7 4

others Q Q-DG CS P Q-DA

24 13 11 6 6 5

Negative DA

24

others

7

others 10 DA 29 DA-DG 11 DA-G 4 DA-TS 4 DA-ER 4 ER-DG 4 others 16 others 45 others 10 JFL G 19 Q-DA 6 DA 58 A-G 5 Q-G 5 DA-DG 20 G-DA 4 Q-DG 5 DA-ER 4 A-CS 4 ER-DG 4 others 14 others 18 others 26 Notes. G: Gratitude. A: Agreement. EG: Expressing Gladness. UG: Upgrade. R: Return. J: Joke. E: Explanation. CF: Credit Shift. Q: Question. TS: Topic Shift. DG: Downgrade. O: Offer. P: Pause. DA: Disagreement. ER: Expressing Regret. EE: Expressing Embarrassment. The numbers denote frequency of occurrence. Only patterns that occurred at least four times are included here. “Others” means the total of all the other patterns in the same compliment response type, which are not listed individually. JSL

The only significant differences between the JSL and JFL groups were in the sequences of Avoidance and Negative strategies. In the Avoidance strategy, the simple Q (Question) pattern appeared often in the JJ and JSL

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data, but it was rare in AE and JFL data (Table 7). Example (1) below from a female JSL learner illustrates the use of this strategy. (1) Complimenter: Recipient (JSL):

Un, kore oishii desu ne! ‘Mm...This is good!’ A, soo desu ka. ‘Oh, do you think so?’

In the Negative strategy, as shown in Table 7, JJs used the simple DA (Disagreement) pattern more often than the two L2 groups; 77.4% (24 out of 31) of the JJs’ negative responses were simple DA, while 43.9% (29 out of 66) of JSLs’ and 51.8% (58 out of 112) of JFLs’ negative responses involved simple DA. See example (2) below from a male JJ data: (2) Complimenter: Recipient (JJ):

Un, kore oishii desu ne! ‘Mm...This is good!’ Sonna koto nai desu yo. ‘It’s not really like that.’

The main reason for this under-representation of simple DA in L2 data was the frequent use of the DA-DG (Disagreement-Downgrade) pattern. The DA-DG was the second most frequent pattern for both JSL and JFL groups, but in the JJ data, only two instances of this pattern were found. Example (3) from a male JFL illustrates the L2 use of the DA-DG sequence: (3) Complimenter: Recipient (JFL):

Kore sugoku ii kuruma desu ne! ‘This is a nice car!’ Iie, warui desu yo. Furui to omoimasu yo. ‘No, it’s bad. I think it’s old.’

As shown in the previous example, the learner first explicitly denied the given compliment by saying “no,” and then, he added a negative comment about his car (“It’s old.”) to further minimize the value of the car and reject the compliment.

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4.3. Lexical/phrasal characteristics of complement responses Analyses of lexis and phrasal expressions that appeared in each compliment response revealed an interesting pattern in the use of negative wordings in complement responses. When JJs used the semantic formula of DA (Disagreement), they typically used sonna koto (wa) nai (‘it’s not really like that’) as shown in example (2) above. Both JSL and JFL groups used this expression, but they also preferred more direct negation expressions such as chigau (‘that’s wrong’), soo janai (‘that’s not right’), or tondemo nai (‘heavens no’) as shown in the examples (4) through (6) below. These expressions never appeared in the JJs’ responses: (4) Complimenter:

Recipient (JSL):

(5) Complimenter: Recipient (JFL):

(6) Complimenter: Recipient (JSL):

Yoku toreteru nee. Puro mitai! ‘All the photos are really beautiful. It’s like they were done by a professional!’ Ie ie, chigau, chigau. ‘No no. That’s wrong.’ Kore sugoku ii kuruma desu ne! ‘This is a nice car!’ Uun, soo ja nai kedo. Jitsu wa chotto furui moderu desu yo. ‘Well, that’s not right. Actually, it’s an old model.’ Un, kore oishii desu ne! ‘Mm...This is good!’ Iya iya, tondemo nai desu kedo. Doomo arigatoo gozaimashita. ‘No no, not at all. But, thanks all the same.’

As a denial strategy, L2 learners also frequently used an antonym of the positive word used in the given compliment, for example, warui (‘bad’) to ii (‘good’), and mazui (‘tastes bad’) to oishii (‘tastes good’), as shown in the examples (7) and (8). Use of antonyms was particularly noticeable in the JFL data. For instance, warui (‘bad’) and mazui (‘tastes bad’) appeared nine and six times respectively in the JFL data, but it appeared only once in the JSL data. It never appeared in the JJ data.

Influence of learning context on L2 pragmatics (7) Complimenter: Recipient (JFL):

(8) Complimenter: Recipient (JFL):

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Kore sugoku ii kuruma desu ne! ‘This is a nice car!’ Iie, warui desu yo. Furui to omoimasu yo. ‘No, it’s bad. I think it’s old.’ Un, kore oishii desu ne! ‘Mm...This is good!’ A, ie, totemo mazui desu. Shigoto wa anmari narete imasen. ‘Oh, no. It tastes bad very much. I am not accustomed to my new job.’

In example (7), when responding to the compliment about a car, the JFL learner used the word warui (‘bad’), the antonym of ii (‘good’), rather than negating the word ii (i.e., yokunai or ‘not good’) to convey negation. Similarly, in example (8), to reject the compliment about the dish she cooked, the JFL learner used the word mazui (‘tastes bad’), the antonym of oishii (‘tastes good’), rather than using the negative form of oishii (i.e., oishikunai or ‘doesn’t taste good’). An antonym of the positive word in the given compliment often sounds too blunt to native speakers of Japanese. For example in the same situation as example (8) above, JJ tended to use softer expressions such as anmari umaku tsukurenakattan desu (‘I could not cook it very well’). In addition to the differences described above, the types of negation words appeared in the Negative strategy differed significantly among JJ, JSL, and JFL groups. First, JJs rarely used direct negation words in Japanese (e.g., iya, iie, and ie ie), which are equivalent to English “no” in their responses to compliments (six times in a total of 240 responses). In contrast, JFLs and JSLs frequently used the Japanese equivalents of a direct “no” (28 out of 192 times in JSL and 64 out of 192 times in JFL data). Here again, JFLs seem to have diverged further from JJs compared to JSLs in their compliment response behaviors. They also used different types of negation words. The JJ group only used a light colloquial negation iya (‘no’) (six times), as shown in example (9). In contrast, as shown in examples (10) through (12), JSLs and JFLs tended to use stronger variants of “no,” such as iie (30 times), ie ie (11 times), iya iya (three times), iie iie (twice), and ie ie, ie ie (twice). These negation words were never used by JJs. Hence, it seems that American learners of Japanese not only rejected

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compliments more frequently, but also negated them with stronger negation words than native speakers of Japanese. (9) Complimenter: Recipient (JJ):

(10) Complimenter: Recipient (JFL):

(11) Complimenter: Recipient (JSL):

(12) Complimenter: Recipient (JSL):

Kore sugoku ii kuruma desu ne! ‘This is a nice car!’ Iya, sonna koto nai de. ‘No, it’s not really like that.’ Un, kore oishii desu ne! ‘Mm...This is good!’ Iie, oishikunai desu yo. ‘No, this doesn’t taste good.’ Kore sugoku ii kuruma desu ne! ‘This is a nice car!’ Iie iie. Tottemo furui kuruma desu yo. ‘No, it’s a very old car.’ Sore suteki na doresu desu ne! ‘What a nice dress!’ Ie ie, ie ie. Kono doresu wa furui desu. ‘No, no, no. This dress is old.’

In addition, the JSL and JFL groups differed in the range of the negation words they employed. JSLs used seven different kinds of negation words in relatively similar frequency: iya (three times), ie (four times), iie (six times), ie ie (eight times,) iya iya (three times), iie iie (two times), and ie ie, ie ie (two times). The JFL group, on the contrary, demonstrated a strong reliance on two specific words, iie (27 times) and its shorter version ie (36 times).

5. Summary of the findings and discussion This study revealed that the distribution patterns of the three compliment response strategies differed between L1 and L2 groups, as well as between the two L2 groups. JJs and JFLs differed in the frequency of all three response strategies, while JJs and JSLs differed in the frequency of Positive and Negative strategies, but not in the Avoidance strategy. The two L2 groups, on the other hand, differed in the use of Avoidance and Negative

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strategies; JSL participants used Avoidance more often than Negative, while JFL participants used Negative more often than Avoidance. Hence, there are two important findings from the present study: (a) only JSL participants were similar to native Japanese speakers in the frequent use of Avoidance strategy; and (b) although both JSL and JFL participants differed from native Japanese speakers in their use of Positive and Negative strategies, the JSL group was still closer to the native speakers than the JFL group in terms of the small proportion of the Negative strategy. These results suggested that JSL participants produced more target-like compliment responses, which are characterized by the frequent use of Avoidance strategy and limited use of Negative strategy. This study also revealed group differences at the level of the sequence patterns of semantic formulas in compliment responses. Both JSL and JFL groups frequently used the Disagreement-Downgrade sequence, as well as simple Disagreement in the Negative response strategy, whereas JJs rarely used this pattern. In the Disagreement-Downgrade pattern, after rejecting the compliment, the speaker adds another comment to further downgrade the value of the object of the compliment (see example [3]). As a result, the degree of negation is usually more intensified in the DisagreementDowngrade pattern than in the simple Disagreement. Therefore, American learners of Japanese in this study tended to deny compliments more strongly than native Japanese speakers. Another important finding is that asking a simple question as an Avoidance strategy was frequent in the JJ and JSL data, but not in the JFL data. Thus, it seems that the JSL group better demonstrated the ability to use the simple Question pattern, the target-like compliment response. The strong negation tendency in compliment responses found in the L2 data is further supported by the qualitative analysis of lexical and phrasal features involved in the responses. Compared to native speakers of Japanese, American learners of Japanese had a tendency toward using stronger negation words and phrases in negation responses, for instance, chigau (‘that’s wrong’), soo janai (‘that’s not right’), and tondemo nai (‘heavens no’). Native speakers never used these expressions; instead, they routinely used a softer negation word, sonna koto (wa) nai (‘it’s not really like that’). In addition, native speakers and L2 learners differed in their choice of the Japanese negation word of “no.” JJs used a slight negation iya, but JSLs and JFLs used stronger variants of “no,” such as iie, ie ie, iya iya, iie iie and ie ie, ie ie.

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Despite these notable differences, when the two learner groups are compared, the JSL group was found more target-like than the JFL group in their lexical choice, particularly in the Negative response strategy. First, unlike JFLs, JSLs hardly used an antonym of the positive word contained in the given compliment, such as warui (‘bad’) to ii (‘good’), and mazui (‘tastes bad’) to oishii (‘tastes good’). JJs never used these antonyms, perhaps because the degree of rejection against the positive word is too strong. Second, concerning the frequency of the negation word “no,” JSL participants were also closer to native Japanese speakers than JFL group: JSLs used the negation word “no” less frequently than JFLs. Given that “no” indicates a direct negation of what the complimenter said, here again the JFL learners’ rejections to compliments are perceived stronger than they actually intend. In the present study, American learners of Japanese tended to reject compliments more often and more strongly than native Japanese speakers at all levels of response strategies, semantic formulas, and types of vocabulary in compliment responses. L1 transfer alone cannot sufficiently account for these divergences from the target language norms, because their L2 Japanese responses differed greatly from the base-line native English speaker responses. Since native English speakers rarely used Negative strategy (4.1%), a notably high frequency of this response strategy by American JSL (34.4%) and JFL learners (58.3%) indicates that American learners of Japanese did not draw on their L1 pragmatic norm when they responded to given compliments in L2 Japanese. Saito and Beecken (1997) provided a possible explanation for the L2 learner’s inclination to Negative responses - transfer of training. Classroom instruction often puts too much emphasis on the importance of observing the modesty maxim in the Japanese culture; as a result, learners may overuse the Negative strategy, because they consider that strong, explicit denial is an ideal means to respond to compliments in the target language interactions. Supporting this interpretation, Saito and Beecken (1997) examined six Japanese language textbooks used widely in U.S. universities and found that all six textbooks regarded rejection as an ideal response to a compliment in Japanese. The main textbooks and course packs which the JFL participants in the present study used introduced rejection as the most appropriate response strategy in Japanese compliments and provided normative expressions used in such a strategy. Two of the three Japanese language programs in which the participants were enrolled used textbooks Yookoso!, Japanese: The

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Spoken Language, and An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese, which were among the six textbooks analyzed in Saito and Beeken’s (1997) study.8 These textbooks introduce expressions for a Negative response strategy only, such as iie, mattaku dame nan desu (‘no, I am no good at all’) and iie, madamada desu (‘no, I am not good yet’). Some JFL participants in this study used an original course packet, which contained a section focusing on giving and receiving compliments. Similar to commercially available textbooks, the course packet introduced expressions of humbling oneself as a target compliment response to emulate, for example iie, madamada desu (‘I am not good yet’), tondemo arimasen (‘heavens, no’), and taishitakoto arimasen (‘it’s nothing worthy of your praise’). The following conversation examples are from the textbooks used by the participants in this study. All these textbook excerpts use Negative strategy as a target compliment response strategy to master. Excerpt (1) Kawamura: Yamaguchi-san wa e ga joozu desu ne. ‘Ms. Yamaguchi, you are skilled at drawing, aren’t you?’ Yamaguchi: Iie. Mattaku dame nan desu yo. ‘Oh, no. I am no good at all.’ (Yookoso! An Invitation to Contemporary Japanese, Tohsaku 1994: 345) Excerpt (2) J: Goshujinsama wa, nihongo ga ojoozu de irasshaimasu nee. ‘Your husband is very proficient in Japanese, isn’t he!’ J’: Ieie. Benkyoo-shite orimasu kara, sukoshi wa dekimasu ga.. ‘No, no. He’s studying so he can handle it a little (at least), but..’ (Japanese: The Spoken Language: Part 1, Jorden and Noda 1987: 306) Excerpt (3) Kato: Joozu desu nee. ‘You are proficient (in Japanese).’ Tom: Iie, madamada desu. ‘No, I am not good yet.’ (An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese, Miura and McGloin 1994: 6) The explanations on how to respond to compliments in Japanese, which accompanied these sample dialogues, also seem to underscore the

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importance of rejecting compliments in Japanese culture. See the introductory explanation: It is usually difficult for Japanese to say no, but there are a few situations where Japanese say no immediately. One of those situations is receiving praise. When praised, whether for one’s skills, a possession, a family member, or another in-group person, a Japanese first denies the praise or mentions something negative. No, I’m still learning, No, it’s a cheap item, No, my son is not talented. It is considered rude and unsophisticated to accept praise right away or to boast about one’s own skills or talent (or that of an in-group member), even if that skill is self-evident. Predictably, the person making the compliment offers further praise, which is again denied. After two or three exchanges of this kind, the person being praised finally accepts the praise somewhat reluctantly. (Yookoso! An Invitation to Contemporary Japanese, Tohsaku 1994: 289 [emphasis mine])

As suggested in these textbook examples, it is probable that, through classroom instruction, L2 participants in this study learned that rejection is the sole appropriate means of responding to compliments in Japanese interactions. In follow-up interviews, some of the JFL participants indeed reported the influence of classroom learning on their hypothesis construction of compliment response in Japanese. One JFL learner reported: “I think it is a good thing that they teach us in class that in Japan it’s more important to downgrade yourself, ‘cause I think a lot of people, if they didn’t know that would be going over there and saying ‘oh, thanks’ or doomo arigatoo (‘thank you very much’) immediately, would that be considered rude, I guess.”

Another JFL learner said: “In Japanese, based on what my teachers said, the more polite thing to do is to kind of humble oneself or one’s family, or in-group friends, and just, you know, nicely modestly deny the compliments.”

One JFL participant responded with Negative strategy in all eight ODCT situations. The follow-up interview excerpt between the learner and researcher below illustrates the significant influence that the classroom instruction had on her inclination toward rejection strategy in compliment responses in Japanese.

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Participant: (Talking about how people should respond to compliments in English interactions) …You know, you know you’re appreciative of the compliment, so you’re like “Hey thanks!” Researcher: But you never used that word in Japanese. You said dame desu (‘It’s no good’) or.. Participant: That’s what I’ve been taught. Is that not right? Researcher: In class? Participant: Yeah. Researcher: I see. So, in class you’re taught you never say arigatoo gozaimasu (‘thank you’) to compliments in Japanese? Participant: Hai, hai (‘Yes, taught’). It’s not right?

The participant added: “Usually as someone gives me a compliment, like they say, ‘Oh, your Japanese is good,’ I’d say, Iie, warui desu (‘No, it’s bad’), and they say it again and again! And sometimes I’d say ‘Thank you.’”

This participant studied with one of the textbooks cited above. She seemed to adhere to an exaggerated Japanese cultural norm of compliment response behavior that she leaned from the textbook, namely, multiple rejections against repeated compliments. (See the last two sentences in the excerpt from this textbook shown on page 17.) Words and phrases which L2 learner participants used in the Negative response strategy also appear in the textbooks they used. For instance, iie, which is frequently used by L2 learners (especially JFL learners) but never used by native Japanese speakers, was the only compliment response word introduced as an equivalent for English “no” in two textbooks.9 Strong negation phrases in rejection responses, such as tondemoarimasen (‘heavens, no’) and dame desu (‘it’s no good’), also appear in the model dialogues in the above cited textbooks. On the other hand, some JSL participants reported their observation in the Japanese community that native speakers of Japanese actually use Positive and Avoidance strategies more frequently than they were taught in class. One JSL participant said: “Ano, ‘iya iya iya’ to soo ieba, ano aite wa chotto waratchau. ‘E, nande kenson suru no?’ toka. Tabun ano Nihon, ano oshierareta no wa ano Nihon-jin wa amari ‘arigatoo’ toka iwanai kara, soo iu, ano soo homereba chotto komaru kara, tabun, ano omotta yori ‘arigatoo’ wa iu to omoun desu kedo, Nihongo de.”

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[When I said “No no no,” the complimenter laughed at me saying “Why do you humble yourself?” Since I was taught that the Japanese people hardly say “thank you,” I was a bit puzzled when praised. Perhaps people more often say “thank you” in Japanese than I thought.]

The following interview data from another JSL learner also demonstrated that Avoidance strategy was learned through her observation of native speakers’ actual compliment giving and receiving behaviors: Participant: You know, wherever I was in Japan, I would try not, maybe not to respond directly to a compliment. It was usually easer just to like kind of turn aside the subject away to something else. Researcher: How did you learn that? Where and how did you learn … in Japan? Participant: Yeah. Researcher: Your friend told you or you …? Participant: I think just from watching.

All JSL participants in this study received formal Japanese instruction in FL contexts. Hence, as supported by the interview excerpt above, the JSL participants in this study probably learned target-like pragmatic strategies in Japan through interactions with native speakers of Japanese in the target language community. Through observation and exposure to the target patterns, as well as authentic interaction and feedback from native-speaking peers, they were probably able to modify or revise their knowledge of target-like compliment response behavior constructed via textbooks and classroom learning before they went to Japan. In contrast, the JFL learners in this study probably had limited opportunities to obtain appropriate input to confirm or revise their hypothesis through interactions with native speakers, as suggested in the previous literature (c.f., Schmidt 1993, 1995). Having little opportunity to observe how Japanese people respond to compliments in authentic interactions, they seemed to be continuously over-influenced by a stereotypical idea enforced through textbooks that the Japanese people almost always negate compliments.

6. Implications of the findings for pragmatic teaching The findings of the present study suggest the possibility of transfer of training in L2 pragmatic performance. The study revealed that blind adaptation of dialogue examples and explanations from textbooks is

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potentially problematic. Teachers should be encouraged to refer to empirically-based pragmatic analyses in order to provide students with more reliable information about target pragmatic features. This is essential because teachers’ intuitions may not always confirm the actual practice of speech acts in authentic interactions. Classroom instruction based on empirical data is important especially for learners in a foreign language environment, because, as shown in this study, foreign language learners seem to have little opportunity to engage in authentic interaction and revise their hypothesis about the target pragmatic norms formed through transfer of training. The present study revealed the target-like patterns and L2 learners’ tendencies of compliment responses in Japanese at three levels: compliment response strategies; sequence patterns of semantic formulas; and lexical/phrasal characteristics. The findings provide some implications for classroom teaching materials. First, at the level of compliment response strategies, classroom materials should introduce Positive and Avoidance strategies, in addition to already pervasive Negative strategy, and emphasize that, depending on context, native speakers of Japanese use Positive and Avoidance strategies more frequently than the Negative. At the level of sequence patterns of semantic formulas, teaching materials should inform students about more and less prominent patterns in the target language community. On this point, the present findings suggest that simple Question and simple Disagreement should be taught as distinct patterns of Avoidance and Negative responses in Japanese. In addition, students should be told that the Disagreement-Downgrade pattern (which was common among L2 learner participants in this study) is rare among native speakers of Japanese. Finally, representative lexical and phrasal features of compliment responses in Japanese should be addressed as well. For example, materials should mention that when rejecting a compliment, native speakers of Japanese: (a) prefer a light colloquial negation iya (‘no’) to its formal and stronger equivalent iie, which is introduced as a typical negation word in textbooks; (b) routinely use a softer negation phrase, sonna koto (wa) nai (‘it’s not really like that’), instead of stronger variations, such as chigau (‘that’s wrong’), soo janai (‘that’s not right’), tondemo nai (‘heavens no’) and mattaku dame da (‘I am no good at all’); and (c) hardly use an antonym of the positive word contained in the given compliment, such as warui (‘bad’) to ii (‘good’), and mazui (‘tastes bad’) to oishii (‘tastes good’). Teaching materials which incorporate these practical

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information can help students learn more target-like compliment response patterns when interacting in L2 Japanese.

7. Limitations of the study and implications for future research Past studies on interlanguage speech acts pointed out that negative transfer is not the only cognitive process that is responsible for learners’ failures in performing target language speech acts (e.g., Blum-Kulka 1982; Olshtain and Cohen 1989; Saito and Beeken 1997; Schmidt 1983). This study provides empirical evidence for the existence of other factors that could hinder pragmatic development, namely transfer of training. The observed differences between the JSL and JFL groups suggest that learners in a second language environment might be better equipped to modify their premature hypotheses acquired from textbooks through their interaction with native speakers while living in the target language community. Based on the limitations of the present study, I will present several implications for future research. The major limitation of this study lies in the authenticity of the data samples. Although this study examined oral responses, they might not accurately reflect features of actual verbal interactions as they were collected with a DCT instrument. Future research investigating the sequences of compliment-compliment response in naturally occurring speech is necessary to confirm the empirical findings gleaned from this study. Another limitation relates to the lack of objective assessment of proficiency among the L2 participants in this study. The L2 data were collected from students who were studying at several different universities. Although all of them were enrolled in either third- or forth-year level Japanese language courses at the time of data collection, the actual levels of the courses and the pace of learning might differ among the universities. Furthermore, this study did not use a general proficiency test to confirm that both groups are equal in their Japanese language abilities. Thus, the differences observed in the compliment response strategies between the JSL and JFL groups could be, to some extent, a reflection of the differences in proficiency between the two groups. Also, since one-third of the JSL group were from different universities from the JFL group and did not receive the same Japanese instruction before their sojourns, it is possible that some JSL participants learned the target-like Avoidance strategy in their home institution in the U.S. before their departure to Japan. In order to overcome those limitations, future research should compare two groups of

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learners who are similar in proficiency, based on objective proficiency measures, and classroom learning experiences, but who differ solely in their sojourns abroad. Additionally, because this study did not address the developmental process of target-like compliment behaviors, future longitudinal research is necessary to illuminate how JSL learners practice or modify their hypotheses, which are correctly or incorrectly formed through classroom instruction. Finally, in order to explain the detailed mechanisms of transfer of training, a close investigation on how target pragmatic features are actually taught and practiced in classroom settings is necessary. Future empirical effort of this sort will help advance our understanding of pragmatic development in relation to learning context and classroom instruction. Notes 1. The definition of SL (second language) and FL (foreign language) are often not clear-cut in literature. In this study, SL means “a nonnative language in the environment in which that language is spoken” and FL means “a nonnative language in the environment of one’s native language” (Gass and Selinker 2001: 5). SL contexts typically involve the “study abroad context” (Collentine and Freed 2004: 156), which “combines formal classroom study with interaction in the target language community” (Taguchi 2008: 424). On the other hand, FL contexts consist of the “at home” instructional environment (Collentine and Freed 2004: 155), where “input and interaction opportunities are usually limited to the classroom” (Taguchi 2008: 424). 2. Daikuhara (1986) did not distinguish Avoidance and Negative strategies. She reported that 95% of her data fell into “self praise avoidance” strategy, which included both Avoidance and Negative. 3. Other speech acts including apologies, refusals, requests, and suggestions, along with other pragmatic features such as pragmatic routines, discourse markers, and speech styles, have been investigated by cross-sectional studies that compared pragmatic performance or awareness between SL and FL contexts (e.g., Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei 1998; House 1996; Kitao 1990; Niezgoda and Röver 2001; Schauer 2006; Takahashi and Beebe 1987) and longitudinal studies that examined impact of sojourns abroad on pragmatic development (e.g., Barron 2003, 2006, 2007; Churchill 2001; Cole and Anderson 2001; Hoffman-Hicks 1999; Kondo 1997; Marriott 1995; Matsumura 2001, 2003; Regan 1995, 1996; Rodriguez 2001; Schauer 2004). The findings from the majority cross-sectional studies appear to comply with a general assumption that SL settings are more advantageous for acquisition of L2 pragmatics. Yet, recent longitudinal studies suggested that “living in a L2 community is no panacea for pragmatic development” (Taguchi 2008: 427);

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effects of study-abroad had more to do with some pragmatic aspects than others, and both contextual and learner-related factors (e.g., learners’ agency and proficiency) affect pragmatic development regardless of learning contexts (Taguchi 2008). 4. Contrary to its popularity in cross-cultural and interlanguage pragmatics research, DCT (discourse completion test) has also been a much criticized means of elicitation (Kasper and Dahl 1991). Several studies show that speech act samples collected by DCTs may not accurately represent actual language use in some important aspects (Beebe and Cummings 1996; Bodman and Eisenstein 1988; Hartford and Bardovi-Harlig 1992; Yuan 2001). According to Beebe and Cummings (1996: 80), for example, DCTs do not accurately reflect natural speech “with respect to: (1) Actual wording used in real interaction; (2) The range of formulas and strategies used; (3) The length of response or the number of turns it takes to fulfill the function; (4) The depth of emotion that in turn qualitatively affects the tone, content, and form of linguistic performance; (5) The number of repetitions and elaborations that occur; and (6) The actual rate of occurrence of speech act.” These findings, however, do not necessarily mean that DCTs are totally unable to elicit speech act data. On choosing a data collection methodology, the strengths and weaknesses of each method must be considered, and “naturalness is only one of many criteria for good data” (Beebe and Cummings 1996: 67). As Cohen (1996: 25) points out, in spite of the limitations mentioned above, DCTs are still “an effective means of gathering a large amount of data quickly, creating an initial classification of semantic formulas, and ascertaining the structure of speech act(s) under consideration.” 5. Semantic formula is a unit of communication which “consists of a word, phrase, or sentence which meets a particular semantic criterion or strategy, and any one or more of these can be used to perform the act in question” (Olshtain and Cohen 1983: 20). 6. Due to the space limit, this paper discusses only the general tendencies of group differences and does not go any further into the influence of three situational variables (i.e., social distance, relative social power, and selfevaluation) on the participants’ choice of compliment response strategies. Among the three variables, notable group differences were found with selfevaluation. When the compliment given was not congruent with their own selfevaluation on its object (i.e., -evaluation), all four groups used significantly less Positive response strategy. JJs, AEs, and JSLs increased Avoidance and Negative strategies when they had negative self-evaluation, while JFLs increased Negative strategies, but decreased Avoidance strategies. This was another interesting finding which may support the argument that JFLs have a stronger inclination than JSLs toward Negative response strategy in L2 Japanese. Detailed analyses and discussions of the interaction among situational variables, compliment response strategies, and different learning contexts will be carried out in subsequent studies.

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7. Residual analysis is a method of judging, when the result of a chi-square test is significant, in which cells of the summary sheet have made a contribution to this significance (Tanaka and Yamagiwa 1992: 262-263). The significance of the residuals is tested according to the following criteria: │residual│> 1.65 → p < .10 │residual│> 1.96 → p < .05 │residual│> 2.58 → p < .01 8. At the time of data collection, the JFL participants were enrolled in a third- or fourth-year-level Japanese language course in which they were using learning materials focusing on advanced level reading and writing skills. Since these materials did not include oral aspects of language use, such as complimentresponse exchange, this study instead analyzed the textbooks used by the JFL participants in their first- and second-year-level course, which mainly focused oral communication skills. 9. The other textbook introduces other negation words, such as ie, ieie, iya, besides iie.

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The social dynamics of native and nonnative variation in complimenting behavior. In: Miriam R. Eisenstein (ed.), The Dynamic Interlanguage: Empirical Studies in Second Language Variation, 219–236. New York: Plenum. 1990 Intercultural communication and analysis of conversation. Penn Working Papers in Educational Linguistics 6: 1–20. Yokota, Atsuko 1986 Homerareta toki no hentoo ni okeru bokokugo kara no shakaigengogakuteki ten’i [Sociolinguistic transfer from the native language in the responses to compliments]. Nihongo Kyooiku [Journal of Japanese Language Teaching] 58: 203–223. Yuan, Yi 2001 An inquiry into empirical pragmatics data–gathering methods: Written DCTs, oral DCTs, field notes, and natural conversations. Journal of Pragmatics 33: 271–292.

Appendix: ODCT items (Only the English version ODCT for male participants is included here due to the limitations of space. Three other versions, English for females, Japanese for males, and Japanese for females, were also used.) Situation 1 (+dominance:+distance:+evaluation) The article you wrote for the school newspaper, which you yourself think was well written, is much talked about on campus recently. One day on campus, you come across your professor talking about your article with another professor whom you do not know. Your professor introduces you as the writer of that article to the other professor. The other professor says: “So, you wrote that article! It was really impressive!” Situation 2 (+dominance:+distance:-evaluation) You are invited to a party held by the company that you work for part-time. You have no necktie for formal occasions, and you have no choice but wear your father’s tie, which is really out of fashion. At the party, you see your boss talking with a manager from another company whom you have met only once before, so you decide to join them. While you are talking, the manager notices your tie and says: “By the way, what a nice tie!” Situation 3 (+dominance:–distance:+evaluation) Your uncle gave you an expensive watch as a souvenir of his trip to Europe. It was what you have longed for. Wearing it, you come to the office where you work part–time. Your boss, who you know well, notices your new watch and says: “That’s a nice watch!”

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Situation 4 (+dominance:–distance:–evaluation) You have attended a seminar for two years and have built a good relationship with the professor. Today, you gave a class presentation of your research project for the seminar. But, since your part–time job has taken up most of your time, you could not devote enough hours to research, and the result was far from satisfactory. After class, your professor sees you and says: “That was a great presentation!” Situation 5 (-dominance:+distance:+evaluation) Recently you bought a brand-new BMW which you had longed for. On a rainy day, while you are driving it near the campus, you see your college friend walking without an umbrella, chatting with another student whom you do not know. You decide to give them a ride. Getting on your car, your friend’s friend says: “This is a nice car!” Situation 6 (-dominance:+distance:-evaluation) You started to work as a part-time cook at a restaurant today. You cooked meal for the employees, but it did not come out well because you were nervous under the pressure of its being your first day. A part-time waiter, who also started to work today, takes one bite of your dish and says: “Mm...This is good!” Situation 7 (-dominance:-distance:+evaluation) You like taking photographs. Since you took a lot of good photos on a recent trip, you are thinking of applying for a photo contest. Now, you are showing your photos to your close friend at college asking his advice on which piece you should enter in the contest. After looking at all photographs, your friend says: “All the photos are really beautiful. It’s like they were done by a professional!” Situation 8 (-dominance:-distance:-evaluation) You got a haircut yesterday. You went to a new barber who cut your hair much shorter than you had expected, which you really do not like. Now you come to class and find your friend there. You decide to sit next to him. Just as you sit down, your friend says: “Hey, you had your hair cut? Looks nice!

Refusals in Japanese telephone conversations Megumi Kawate-Mierzejewska Abstract This study examined naturalistic request-refusal sequences among 20 Japanese speakers of Japanese (JJs) and 20 American English speakers of Japanese (AJs). Individual participants completed a 10–15 minute telephone conversation with the primary researcher in which they were asked to tape-record their future conversations. Refusals to the researcher’s request that occurred in the telephone conversations were analyzed. The transcribed conversation data were divided into “stages” by first identifying the requester’s initiation (i.e., request for tape-recoding) and then by coding refusal strategies used at each stage. The results showed that the AJs employed a wider variety of refusal strategies than the JJs. Post hoc analyses revealed some gender differences in refusal realization strategies in both JJ-JJ and JJ-AJ interactions. The findings suggest some important areas of pragmatic instruction, including typical refusal sequences in Japanese and gender differences in refusal realizations.

1. Introduction It is generally accepted that there are many refusal strategies in the Japanese speaking community. A classic book on Japanese refusals by Ueda (1972) claimed that there are 16 ways to say “no” indirectly in Japanese. Of all the strategies, even when just focusing on expressions at the sentence level, formulaic refusal expressions such as chotto (literally meaning ‘a little’), muzukashii (literally meaning ‘It’s difficult’), and kangaeteokimasu, or kentooshimasu (literally meaning ‘We’ll think about it’), for example, are found difficult for native speakers of American English to understand and infer refusal intentions encoded in the expressions, if they do not have knowledge about Japanese linguistic conventions and cultural practice (Kawate-Mierzejewska 1995). Such Japanese-specific expressions can be a source of misunderstanding. More specifically, muzukashii (‘It’s difficult’), for example, may have different connotations between Japanese and English. Japanese speakers

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tend to use this particular utterance as a refusal expression, whereas English speakers say “it’s difficult” when there is still some possibility to deal with the issue raised, though it may be literally difficult to handle the issue (Adler 1997). Another formulaic expression, kangaeteokimasu, or kentooshimasu (literally meaning ‘We’ll think about it’) also could cause cultural misunderstandings because English speakers tend to use this expression literally, meaning that they will put some thoughts into the issue, while Japanese speakers use it as a refusal expression, without the literal intention to think about the issue at hand (Kawate-Mierzejewska 1995; Uozumi 1994). In addition to these routine refusal expressions (i.e., the basic units), it is also important to think about sequential organization of refusals, namely where in the flow of conversation refusal strategies are used and how they are used. Kawate-Mierzejewska (2001), for instance, analyzed naturalistic request-refusal sequences to discover the differences and similarities in the use of refusal strategies between native speakers of Japanese and American English. She reported that the Japanese speakers tended to repeat the same excuse in the sequence of conversation, whereas English speakers provided an excuse and explained it in detail. It appears that Japanese speakers tend to employ a spiral organization when responding to a request and even to a question (Sakamoto and Sakamoto 2004), while English speakers tend to answer to the point. These differences in sequential organization of discourse could also cause some misunderstandings between two parties who have different language and cultural backgrounds. Building on previous work, this study investigates similarities and differences among Japanese speakers and learners of Japanese living in Japan vis-à-vis the interactive nature of refusal strategies. Moreover, since it is often claimed that there may be male-female differences in the politeness and directness levels in terms of the rhetorical organization of utterances to reach a speaker’s goal (Barletta 2007; Ide 1991; Lakoff 2004; McConnell-Ginet 2004; Tannen 2001), I will examine the differences and similarities between men and women in the refusal realizations both intraand inter-culturally.

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2. Background 2.1. Definitions of refusals A refusal is a speech act “by which a speaker denies to engage in an action proposed by the interlocutor” (Chen, Ye, and Zhang 1995: 121). When refusing a request, for example, refusal realization strategies (or refusal strategies) consist of (a) semantic formulas such as Statement of Regret, Excuse, Statement of Alternative, Avoidance, and the like (Beebe, Takahashi, and Uliss-Welts 1990), all employed to attempt to turn down someone’s requests and; (b) delaying responses by using strategies such as Request for Information. Refusal interactions, which are used interchangeably with requestrefusal interactions in this paper, consist of both initiations/re-initiations and refusal realization strategies as responses to them. On the other hand, a refusal sequence, which is used interchangeably with a refusal sequential organization, is a combination of semantic formulae employed by the requestee in conversational discourse. The interactive nature of refusal strategies analyzed in this paper could indicate either refusal sequences or refusal interactions, or both refusal sequences and refusal interactions, depending on the context.

2.2. Previous work on refusals in Japanese A number of previous studies investigated native Japanese speakers’ use of refusal strategies, revealing normative patterns of refusal sequences in Japanese (Ito 2006; Moriyama 1990; Murai 2005; Takai 2002). Moriyama (1990), for example, administered a discourse completion test (DCT) and examined refusal strategies employed by undergraduate Japanese students. The results showed that participants frequently employed direct No-type refusal strategy (i.e., Honest and Direct Strategy) when interacting with a familiar/status-equal partner, whereas they did not use this direct strategy as often when interacting with unfamiliar/equal or status-lower partners. When interacting with a familiar party, male participants considered status differences in the use of the No-type strategy; however, they tended to employ the No-type strategy equally frequently when interacting with an unfamiliar party regardless of social dominance. On the other hand, familiar/equal seemed to be the only situation in which female participants used the No-type strategy.

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In another study, Takai (2002) investigated preferences of directness in making refusals and requests in Japanese by using a series of questions that aimed to reveal participants’ preferences of the directness level. The study found that Japanese speakers tended to use direct strategies when communicating with people in their own group (uchi), whereas they appeared to use indirect strategies when dealing with outsiders (soto). Moreover, the study found a significant gender differences in the use of Flattery, although the author did not explains the differences in the paper. Several other studies examined interactive nature of refusal sequences (e.g., Hayashi 1999; Muranaka 2000; Shin 2007; Szatrowski 1993). Hayashi (1999) investigated patterns of refusal sequences produced by Japanese when they had to cancel a meeting with a professor over the phone. Hayashi reported that Japanese tended to make a short and simple Excuse followed by Explanation of why the student could not make it to the meeting. Some Japanese employed jitsu wa (‘as a matter of fact’) to indicate that something unexpected would follow and to prepare the listener for the upcoming refusal. Muranaka (2000) analyzed refusal sequences in conversation among native Japanese speakers and found that Excuse was repeated only when a hearer was a friend. When a hearer had a higher status than a speaker, a refusal occurred without detailed explanation or excuse. Shin (2007), on the other hand, examined Excuses used in response to a request by Japanese when they do not have any specific reasons. Two female friends were asked to talk over the mobile phone. Telephone conversations were recorded and transcribed. Shin reported that the requestee (female) tended to ask for more information about a request in order to find some specific reasons to refuse the request. They also tended to repeat the request to hint at the possibility of refusal, and special strategies such as Alternative and Encouragement were used when the requestee tried to mitigate the potential face-threat and maintain favorable personal relationship. These studies described above emphasize the importance of status, familiarity, gender, and details in the use of refusal strategies in Japanese language. Moreover, studies that investigated refusal sequences convince us that it is important to investigate refusal sequential organizations because refusing a request requires many turns.

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2.3. Previous work on refusals in interlanguage pragmatics In the field of interlanguage pragmatics, a number of previous studies investigated refusal speech act in a second language (L2) (e.g., Beebe, Takahashi, and Uliss-Weltz 1990; Fujiwara 2004; Fujiura 2007; Ikoma and Shimura 1993; Ikeda 2007; Kim 2005; Kumagai 2005; Oyazu 2007; Shimura 1993, 1998). In the field of L2 Japanese, Ikoma and Shimura (1993) replicated Beebe et al.’s (1990) study to investigate whether or not pragmatic transfer exists in American JFL learners’ refusals. Their 30 participants: ten native Japanese speakers speaking Japanese (JJs), ten American English speakers speaking Japanese (AJs), and ten American English speakers speaking English (AEs) were asked to fill out a DCT consisting of 12 scenarios: three requests, three invitations, three offers, and three suggestions. They found pragmatic transfer in the frequency of semantic formulas employed by AJs. For example, AEs and AJs employed direct refusals such as dekimasen (‘I can’t’) and iie (‘no’) more frequently than JJs did, whereas JJs often used Incomplete Utterances such as asu wa chotto (‘As for tomorrow . . .’). Using the data from Ikoma and Shimura’s (1993) study, Shimura (1993, 1998) examined the use of Incomplete Utterances in refusals. The findings showed that (a) JJs employed Incomplete Utterances twice as often as AJs did; (b) JJs employed a wide variety of Incomplete Utterances, whereas AJs seemed to have a limited variety; and (c) AJs tend to transfer their L1 norms when making a refusal. Using a DCT, Ikeda (2007) also investigated refusal strategies employed by AJs. The findings revealed that AJs did not use any specific strategies to maintain rapport with their superiors when making a refusal, whereas JJs used a variety of supporting strategies such as Promise of Future Acceptance, and Wish statements to maintain a good relationship with their superiors. In another study, using telephone conversations, Kumagai (2005) investigated refusal strategies among native speakers of French studying Japanese language (FJs) in Japan. Fifteen refusal JJ-FJ interactions, along with interactions among Japanese native speakers and French native speakers, were recorded and analyzed based on a modified coding framework originally developed by Beebe, Takahashi, and Uliss-Weltz (1990). Kumagai found that FJs tend to use direct refusals such as dekinai (‘I cannot do it’) and iyada (‘I do not want to do it’) in their first response to the initial request. Moreover, she reported that FJs tended to use those direct refusal expressions without any follow-up strategies such as providing comments and information, while JJs tended to avoid using direct

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expressions but used indirect strategies such as providing negative comments. Moreover, although one of the strategies, “alternative,” was used by both JFs and JJs, FJs tended to use this strategy to shift responsibility to someone else, whereas JJs tried to take a responsibility on their own. A number of other studies focusing on refusals have been conducted on nonnative speakers of Japanese of Asian backgrounds (Fujiura 2007; Kim 2005; Kumai 1992; Oyazu 2007). Based on the data gathered through a DCT, Fujiura (2007) found that native speakers of Korean studying Japanese (KJs) used more indirect strategies than JJs did. Oyazu (2007) investigated the recognition of indirect refusal strategies by JJs and native speakers of Vietnamese studying Japanese (VJs) by having them identify refusal strategies in role-plays. Oyazu found that JJs tended to focus on the sequence of the refusal and identify refusal intentions according to the flow of conversation, whereas VJs tended to judge each utterance independently to decide whether it involved a refusal intent or not. These findings indicate that there are some differences in the use of refusal strategies between native speakers of Japanese and L2 learners of Japanese language. It appears that many of those differences are related to the issue of directness. For example, Korean learners of Japanese tend to employ more indirect strategies than native Japanese speakers; as a result, they appear less direct than American learners of Japanese. In summary, a number of previous studies investigated the differences and similarities in the use of refusal realization strategies among native speakers of Japanese, as well as between non-native speakers and native speakers of Japanese. Many of these studies, however, have analyzed initial refusal responses to the requests, and only a few (e.g., Hayashi 1999, Kumagai 2005; Muranaka 2000; Shin 2007; Szatrowski 1993) have emphasized refusal sequential organization in conversational discourse. Moreover, a majority of these studies used DCTs with artificially created scenarios, and very few have examined request-refusal sequences in authentic interactions. Investigation into refusal sequences in naturalistic discourse among learners of Japanese is even scarcer. Therefore, it is important to analyze naturalistic request-refusal interactions in second language (L2) Japanese in order to reveal the state of interlanguage pragmatics development in their constructions of refusal sequences. For such analysis, telephone conversations are a potentially useful data source. A number of previous studies analyzed a variety of discourse sequences and organizations in telephone conversations (Antonopoulou and

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Sifianou 2003; Economidou-Kogetsidis 2005, Huth 2006; Knuf 2003; Park 2002; Pavlidou 2002; Sifianou 2002; Su 2009; Teleghani-Nikazm 2002; Yotsukura 2002). For example, Huth (2006) analyzed compliment-response sequences among native speakers of American English learning German language in telephone conversations. Huth first taught German compliment-response sequences to the learners and collected ten conversations among the learners. Huth found that teaching complimentresponse sequences may be effective to raise learners’ awareness of the cultural-specific complimenting behavior, but they appear to have some problems with negotiating cross-cultural differences between American English and German compliment-response sequences in their conversations. In another study, Yotsukura (2002) investigated business telephone conversations in Japanese, focusing on sequences consisting of customers’ reporting problems and customer service workers’ offering support. A total of 541 calls in Japanese were recorded and transcribed. Analysis revealed a clear sequential pattern: a customer’s reporting a problem followed by a custom service worker’s summarizing the problem discussed, and/or offering or ensuring assistance. These studies showed that telephone conversations provide promising data when investigating the sequences of speech acts in a naturalistic setting. Although very few studies have analyzed refusals in telephone conversations, the findings suggest that telephone conversations could provide useful data where request-refusal sequences are projected in an authentic context.

3. Purpose of the study This study investigated request-refusal interactions and the sequences of refusal realization strategies between native Japanese speakers speaking Japanese (JJs) and native American English speakers speaking Japanese (AJs) in naturalistic telephone conversations. The study was guided by the question: What are the differences and similarities between JJs and AJs in request-refusal interactions in telephone conversations?

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4. Methods 4.1. Participants There were a total of 40 participants in the study: ten male JJs, ten female JJs, ten male AJs, and ten female AJs. They had a variety of occupations, including English instructors, school teachers, office workers, housewives, businessmen, medical doctors, and graduate students. All of the AJs had lived in Japan for over 10 years at the time of the study. The AJs’ Japanese proficiency level was considered advanced, and they had no difficulty communicating with native speakers of Japanese in their daily lives. Almost all AJs reported that they had achieved the first level proficiency (the most advanced level) on the Japanese Language Proficiency test (nihon-go nooryoku kentei) administrated by the Association of International Education and the Japan Foundation (Hayashi 1986). The 20 JJs who participated in the study had never lived in a foreign country or in an English-speaking community although they had all traveled abroad to the United States and to countries in Western Europe for short periods. All of them had studied English for at least eight years. 4.2. Procedures The researcher (JJ) tape-recorded 40 separate telephone conversations with two different groups of participants: conversations with a JJ participant (JJJJ interactions) and conversations with an AJ participant (JJ-AJ interactions). Permission for tape-recording was gained from the participants before starting to tape-record their telephone conversations. One or both of the following requests were made in each phone call: (a) to tape-record telephone conversations with the participant’s friends for the researcher, and (b) to introduce to the researcher some of the participant’s friends who might be willing to tape-record their own telephone conversations with their friends. Participants were told that the researcher was interested in telephone conversations in Japanese, and they did not know that she was in fact interested in their responses to her requests. The relative social dominance and distance of the two parties involved in each telephone conversation was equal and familiar in the sense that all the participants were friends of the researcher’s acquaintances. Each telephone conversation lasted for 10 to 15 minutes. The conversation consisted of several sections. First was an opening section (e.g., a ritual greeting, a brief self-introduction, and a reconfirmation of the

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interlocutor’s permission for tape-recording the conversation), which was followed by an inquiry about each participant’s personal and language learning background, the interlocutor’s occupation, the language she or he uses in daily conversation, and a personal history of the interlocutor’s experiences in foreign countries. After that, the first request (i.e., requesting the participant to tape record a conversation) and responses to the request (refusal) occurred, and this was followed by the second request and responses to the second request (only when the first request was turned down). The last section included comments and suggestions made by the participants during the conversation and a closing section (e.g., thanking).

4.3. Data analysis 4.3.1. Analytical framework In analyzing and interpreting the present data, the Discourse Analysis approach (DA) used in Tsui’s (1994) work and some of the rules of conversational organization such as a turn-taking system were adapted in order to determine units of analysis that contain underlying actions in the utterances to identify acts. In identifying units of analysis, each transcribed conversation was divided into stages based on the criteria developed by Szatrowski (1993) and Tsui (1994). Units of analysis were defined as minimal meaningful analytical units of request-refusal interactions. In the present study, the interactions often consisted of a series of Initiation/Re-initiation and refusal realization strategies as in a sequence of Initiation (initial request)➞Response➞Re-initiation (Re-request)➞Response➞Re-initiation ➞ Response➞Acknowledgement. Thus, conversational exchanges were treated as sequences of initiation/re-initiations and responses similar to the framework proposed by Tsui (1994). After determining the meaningful analytical units, each initiation/reinitiation and response sequence was examined turn by turn in context in order to identify the functions of the utterances and acts. Each act was then further categorized into different types of initiations (including reinitiations) based on the linguistic context and responses (refusal realization strategies) based on semantic formulas. Following this, different types of responses and the sequential organization of request-refusal interactions were analyzed and examined.

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4.3.2. Coding framework The coding schema of the requester’s initiations and re-initiations was developed based on the classification of requests developed by Okamoto (1991), requestive hints developed by Weizman (1988, 1993), and initiating acts developed by Tsui (1994) (Appendix A). The coding schema of refusal strategies was developed based on three criteria: (a) classification of refusals developed by previous studies (e.g., Beebe et al 1990; Ifert and Roloff 1996; Kawate-Mierzejewska 2001); (b) semantic formulas used in acceptances developed by Kawate-Mierzejewska 2004a); and (c) delaying devices found in the previous studies (e.g., Clancy, Thompson, Suzuki, and Tao 1996; Gass and Houck 1999; Szatrowski 1993) (see Appendix B for the complete coding schema).

4.3.3. Intercoder reliability Four female native speakers of Japanese coded the data (cf. KawateMierzejewska 2004b). The kappa statistic K (cf. Siegel and Castellan 1988) was used to determine inter-coder reliability. The results of the coding of initiations/re-initiations indicated that there was moderate agreement among the coders (K = .690), and that the agreement was significant (z = 31.724, p < .01). Moreover, the results indicated strong agreement among the coders (K = .860) and that the agreement was statistically significant (z = 36.565, p < .01).

5. Results 5.1. Request-refusal interactions produced by Japanese and American participants This section focuses on sequential organization of refusal realization strategies used in the request-refusal interactions because previous studies showed that differences in initiation patterns did not influence refusal realization strategies that followed (e.g., Kawate-Mierzejewska 2006). Table 1 shows simplified versions of refusal sequences consisting of individual refusal realization strategies. The telephone interactions were divided into different patterns of refusal sequences based on the first and last strategy used in the sequence to describe patterns of refusal sequences.

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For instance, when excuses appeared in both the first and the last stages, the sequence was considered an Excuse type. In the Delay-Excuse type, Delay was used in the first stage and Excuse was used in the last stage. Strategies between the first and last responses in Table 1 were the ones that always appeared for each type. Strategies between the first and last responses in the Delay-Excuse type of Table 1, for example, were the ones that were employed by all four participants. Those strategies illustrate differences in the use of refusal sequences between JJs and AJs. The following example illustrates the Delay-Excuse type (see Appendix C for transcription conventions). Example 1 below illustrates the request-refusal sequences between the Speaker A, JJ requester, and Speaker B, AJ requestee. Here, JJ made a phone call to AJ and asked if she could tape record AJ’s telephone conversation. The AJ delays his response to the initiation made in the Implicative request type in stage one. In stage 2, the AJ gives an excuse to turn down the request, which was made in the Conventional request form as JJ’s re-initiation. In the final stage, Excuse, which follows RQC (request for confirmation), is used as the last refusal strategy in the interactions. Example 1 Stage 1 A: … odenwa o sasete itadaita n desu keredo mo. Å--Implicative request (last part) ‘So I called you, but…’ B: hai (falling intonation with aggravation). teepu de toru. Å-- Delay ‘I see. Recording?’ (omitted) Stage 2 A: teepu ni totte itadaku wake ni wa ikimasen deshoo ka. Å-- Conventional Request ‘I wonder if you could tape-record your telephone conversation with your friend.’ B: un demo saikin son’na ni denwa de hanasanai kara. Å-- Excuse ‘um but lately I don’t often talk over the phone, so.’ (omitted) Last stage A: anoo anmari denwa wa shimasen (.1) ka. Å--Request for Confirmation (RQC) ‘well, you don’t make phone calls, yeah?’ B: shinai desu ne. (continued) mukashi wa nanka nan jikan mo hanashite imashita kedo ima wa moo soo yuu hito ga nai node. Å--Excuse ‘No. I used to make a long conversation over the phone, but I now don’t have anybody who I can think of.’

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As shown in Table 1, the JJs in this study used five different types of refusal sequences: Excuse, Delay-Excuse, Delay-Alternative, DelayApology, and Delay-Promise. The AJs employed seven different types: Excuse, Delay-Excuse, Delay-AVO (post) (Avoidance [Postponement]), AVO-Excuse, AVO-AVO (post), Acceptance-Excuse, and Posi./Excuse (Positive Indication but Excuse)-AVO (post). Thus, only two types were common between the JJs and AJs: Excuse type (2 out of 20 [2/20] and 3/20 respectively), and Delay-Excuse type (10/20 and 6/20 respectively). Table 1. Different types of refusal sequences used by JJs and AJs Types Sequences

Cases

JJs Excuse Delay-Excuse

Excuse-Delay-Excuse-Excuse Delay-Excuse-Excuse Delay-Delay-Excuse-Excuse Delay-Alternative Delay-Excuse-Alternative Delay-Apology Delay-Apology Delay -(Delay)-Excuse-Apology Delay-Promise Delay-Future Promise

2 4 6 2 2 3 1

Sub-total 20 __________________________________________________________________________ AJs Excuse

Excuse-Excuse-Excuse Excuse-Excuse-Delay-Excuse Excuse-Excuse-Excuse-Posi./Excuse Delay-Excuse Delay-Excuse-Excuse Delay-Delay-Excuse-Excuse Delay-AVO (post) Delay-(Excuse)-AVO (post) AVO-Excuse AVO-Delay-Excuse AVO-Delay-Excuse- Posi./Excuse AVO-AVO (post) AVO-Delay-Excuse-AVO (post) AVO-Delay-AVO (post) Acceptance-Excuse Accept-Delay-Excuse Accept-Delay-Excuse-Future Possibility Posi./Excuse-AVO (post) Posi./Excuse-AVO (post)

1 1 1 4 2 3 2 1 1 1 1 1* 1

Sub-total 20 ______________________________________________________________________ Notes. * This sequence was categorized as the Acceptance-Delay-Excuse type though the l last strategy used in the sequence was Future Possibility.

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The sequences of the Excuse type were, however, different between the JJs and AJs. The JJs employed similar sequences of the Excuse type, whereas the AJs used three slightly different sequences. Moreover, one of the sequences of the Excuse type used by one AJ ended with Positive Indication but Excuse (Posi./Excuse). With respect to the Delay-Excuse type, two slightly different sub-sequences were found: Delay-ExcuseExcuse and Delay-Delay-Excuse-Excuse. The JJs, however, used the latter sequence, Delay-Delay-Excuse-Excuse, more frequently than DelayExcuse-Excuse (6/20 vs. 4/20 respectively). The AJs showed the opposite patterns (2/20 vs. 4/20 respectively). Hence, the JJs tended to delay their response longer over multiple turns before providing an excuse to convey their refusal intention. In contrast, AJs were more proactive, by indicating explicitly why they could not comply with the request. Table 1 also shows that the AVO-Excuse type used by the AJs consisted of two slightly different sub-sequences: AVO-Delay-Excuse (2/3) and AVO-Delay-Excuse-Posi./Excuse (1/3). The AVO-AVO (post) type also consisted of two slightly different sub-sequences, AVO-Delay-ExcuseAVO (post) (1/2) and AVO-Delay-AVO (post) (1/2) as did the AcceptanceExcuse type, which was made up of Acceptance-Delay-Excuse type and Acceptance-Delay-Excuse-Future Possibility type. In summary, the AJs used seven different types consisting of thirteen different sequences, while the JJs used five different types consisting of seven different sequences. Thus, the AJs exhibited a wider variety of refusal sequences than the JJs did. It is also interesting to note that the two parties shared only two types. When each refusal type was examined in detail, it was found that some AJs used the Acceptance-Excuse type in which Acceptance used in Stage 1 literally indicates possibility of compliance, whereas this strategy type did not appear in the JJ data. The following example illustrates the AcceptanceExcuse type. Here, Speaker A is JJ requester, and Speaker B is AJ requestee. Example 2 Stage 1 A: teepu ni totte kudasaru kata wa irassharanai ka to omoimashite sagashite orimashite. Å--Implicative request (last part) ‘I am looking for someone who is kind to tape–record her telephone conversation with her friend, and’

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B: aa soo desu ka (omitted) jaa watashi dare ka teepu shite mo ii shi. Å--Acceptance ‘okay, then I can tape-record, and’ (omitted) Last Stage A: are arimasu ne. kono anoo (1.0) player mitaina no. Å--Request for Confirmation (RQC) ‘You have it, right? I mean (1.0) tape-recorder.’ B: (omitted) anoo dakara koe ga rokuon dekinai n desu yo ne. Å--Excuse ‘Mmm so voice cannot be recorded.’ A: soo desu ka. ‘I see.’ B: ee. soto kara koo anoo rokuon suru no wa are anoo dekinai n desu kedo nee. Å--Excuse ‘Uh huh. Mmm my tape recorder doesn’t pick up outside sounds though (so, I can’t record conversations, I think.)’

As shown above, in Stage 1, Speaker B accepts a request made in the Implicative request type (initiation) by using Acceptance. However, in the last stage after Request for confirmation, the strategy Excuse, which was followed by another Excuse, appeared as the refusal strategy.

5.2. Post hoc analysis of refusal interactions between male and female participants A post hoc analysis was conducted to glean potential gender differences in refusal realization sequences. Because considerable amount of previous literature disclosed gender differences in Japanese communication (Ide 1991, 2004; Matsumoto 2004; Wardhaugh and Tanaka 1994), analysis of refusal patterns by gender was considered an important issue to explore in the present data. Table 2 shows different types of refusal patterns used by the four different participant groups, namely the JJ male participants, JJ female participants, AJ male participants, and AJ female participants. The JJ female participants used three different refusal patterns: DelayExcuse (6/10), Delay-Apology (3/10), and Excuse (1/10). These patterns were also employed by the JJ male participants (4/10, 2/10 and 1/10, respectively), although they also used two additional strategies: DelayPromise (1/10: others) and Delay-Alternative (2/10). Moreover, whenever Delay was used as the first response, the JJ female participants employed either Excuse or Apology as their last response, whereas the JJ male participants exhibited a slightly wider variety of strategies in their last responses. Thus, it seems that the JJ male and JJ female participants used

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quite similar strategies, although the JJ male participants used a wider variety of refusal patterns. Table 2. Different types of refusal patterns used by the four groups J Ms JJ Fs AJ Ms AJ Fs Total Excuse type 1 1 3 0 5 Delay-Excuse type 4 6 4 2 16 Delay-Alternative type 2 0 0 0 2 Delay-Apology type 2 3 0 0 5 Delay-Promise type 1 0 0 0 1 Delay-AVO (post) type 0 0 0 3 3 AVO-Excuse type 0 0 3 0 3 AVO-AVO (post) type 0 0 0 2 2 Acceptance-Excuse type 0 0 0 2 2 Posi./Excuse-AVO (post) type 0 0 0 1 1 Total 10 10 10 10 40 _________________________________________________________________ Notes. M = male participants. F = female participants

With respect to the AJs, the AJ male participants used three different patterns: Excuse (3/10), Delay-Excuse (4/10), and AVO (Avoidance)Excuse (3/10). As for the AJ female participants, they used five different patterns: Delay-Excuse (2/10), Delay-AVO (post) (Postponement) (3/10), AVO-AVO (Post) (2/10), Acceptance-Excuse (2/10), and Posi./Excuse (positive indication but excuse)-AVO (Post) (1/10) (see Table 2). Thus, only the Delay-Excuse pattern was shared between the AJ male and female participants. When using Delay as their first response, the AJ male participants used Excuse as their last response, whereas the AJ female participants used either Excuse or AVO (Post). Moreover, when using AVO as their first response, the AJ male participants employed Excuse, whereas the AJ female participants employed AVO (Post) as their last response. Hence, there seems some gender difference in AJs’ use of the refusal patterns. When gender differences and similarities were investigated crossculturally, it was found that the patterns employed by the AJ female participants were different from other three groups except for the use of Delay-Excuse. For example, both the JJ male and AJ female participants used the five different patterns of refusal sequences, but only one type, Delay-Excuse, was common. As shown in Table 2, both JJ female and AJ male participants used three different patterns, and two patterns (i.e.,

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Excuse and Delay-Excuse) were common. Hence, the Delay-Excuse type seems to be a universal pattern of request-refusal sequence regardless gender and language groups.

6. Discussion This study examined the differences and similarities between JJs and AJs in request-refusal interactions in telephone conversations. The AJs in this study employed seven different types of refusal sequences, consisting of thirteen different refusal sub-sequences, while the JJs used six different types consisting of seven different refusal sub-sequences. The two groups shared only two refusal sequence types, the Excuse type and the DelayExcuse type, although the strategies used in each type, particularly in the Excuse type, had different sequences. Thus, the refusal sequences produced by the JJs appeared more formulaic than those of the AJs; they mostly used a combination of Delay and Excuse, while AJs also used a combination of Excuse and Posi./Excuse and only Excuse. Previous studies (Gass and Houck 1999; Janney and Arndt 1992; Nattinger and DeCarrico 1992) claimed that members of the same language speaking community employ similar approaches when trying to maintain face in social interaction. Kasper (1997), referring to the work of Nattinger and DeCarrico (1992), stated that members of the same speech community share “the same strategies of indirection and repertoire of pragmatic formulae to perform recurrent activities routinely” (347). In this study, coming from the same Japanese speaking community, JJs probably demonstrated similar approaches when making refusals. That is, their refusal patterns demonstrated shared sociocultural and pragmatic knowledge in performing a speech act of refusal of this kind. As a result, they tended to employ similar strategies, as well as combinations and sequences of the strategies, which could be labeled as formulaic routines. Knowledge of formulaic routines can be useful when performing a highly face threatening act such as a refusal. If people in a society know the formulaic patterns of refusal sequences, they can operate under the shared expectation that the illocutionary force is understood through conventionalized discourse patterns without undue time and effort, or lengthy negotiation of meaning. In this study, compared with the JJs, the AJs demonstrated a greater variation in their refusal patterns, suggesting that nonnative speakers may have limited knowledge of formulaic discourse patterns and conventional expressions involved in speech acts.

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The present findings, then, lend support to the recent literature on the importance of routines, formulae, situationally-bound utterances, and conventional expressions in pragmatic learning (e.g., Bardovi-Harlig 2006; Kecskes 2003; Roever 2005). The AJs’ use of the Acceptance-Excuse type, on the other hand, appears to represent their interlanguage state of refusal realization. Since the AJs in this study were not familiar with the Japanese formulaic routines of refusal sequence, they probably tried to deal with the situation by using a variety of semantic moves to convey refusal intentions. Gass and Houck (1999) suggest that using a wide variety of strategies is a pragmatic communication strategy when non-native speakers encounter facethreatening situations. The use of Acceptance strategy by AJs found in this study seems to a type of pragmatic device. It represents typical Disagreement interactions that begin with Agreement and end with Disagreement (i.e., indications of Disagreement commence along the sequence) (Houtkoop-Steenstra 1987). The respondent initially uses an expression of Agreement or partial Agreement and then employs utterances indicating disagreement along the sequence (Sacks 1973). This pattern was observed in the present data wherein some AJ participants first employed Agreement (a positive response) and then used expressions of refusal intent. Post hoc analyses revealed that gender affected the range and sequences of refusal strategies. The JJ male participants used a slightly wider variety of patterns (five patterns) than the JJ female participants (three patterns), and they shared three patterns (Delay-Excuse, Delay-Apology, and ExcuseExcuse). The AJ male and female participants used almost the same number of patterns; however, they shared only one pattern (Delay-Excuse). All four participant groups used the Delay-Excuse type when the first Excuse was made. Hence, Delay might be a common strategy used prior to the first Excuse regardless gender and languages. It was also found that the AJ female participants produced the greatest variety of refusal patterns. Further research is needed to determine the full extent of their variation.

7. Implications of the finding for pragmatic teaching and future research The present study revealed that the AJs used a wider variety of refusal interactions consisting of different refusal realization strategies, but the refusal sequences produced by the JJs were more formulaic than those of

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the AJs. The findings imply that the AJs in this study, despite their high proficiency and extended living experience in Japan, did not have the same level of pragmalinguistic knowledge in this particular refusal situation as the JJs. They tried to make up for their lack of knowledge by producing a wide variety of refusal sequences and making a refusal more elaborate than needed. As for the JJs, their performance appeared formulaic because they exhibited relatively uniform, patterned approaches by relying on shared sociocultural norms. These findings offer some implications for teaching Japanese. The refusal sequences and patterns in naturalistic conversations gleaned from this study could be adapted for classroom instruction. The study provides teachers with the means to analyze refusal interactions in conversational discourse, to examine variations, and to teach prototypical request-refusal interactions by using a variety of simulations. For example, teachers could teach common patterns of refusal sequences in class (i.e., Delay-Excuse, Delay–Apology, and Excuse types) found in the JJ data. Moreover, it is also important for teachers to know about learners’ perspectives on requestrefusal interactions. Some learners may not want to change their style of refusal even if they know that their style is somewhat different from that of native speakers in the target language. As found in this study, AJ females exhibited different patterns of refusals compared with other participants. It is possible that they preferred using their L1-based refusal style although, after living in Japan for over 10 years, they knew that the style are markedly different from those used in the L2 community. Further research is necessary to discover learners’ preferences toward certain refusal strategies and reasoning behind their preferences. Finally, based on the limitations of the present study, I would like to propose several implications for future research. One limitation is the small sample size. Further research should expand the sample size in order to confirm the generalizability of the findings. Another limitation is that, since the data were gathered through telephone interactions, non-verbal features of the conversation were not examined. Future research should analyze non-verbal aspects in face-to-face authentic refusal interactions. Moreover, different social dominance and distance could be investigated, along with the content of excuses used as refusals. Future studies with a male requester are worth pursuing to reveal potential impact of gender on refusal patterns. Finally, qualitative analyses of participants’ perspectives involved in their choice of particular refusal strategies are important areas to explore.

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8. Conclusion This study revealed differences and similarities of Japanese refusal interactions between JJs and AJs. The results indicate that (a) JJs used a wide variety of refusal sequential organizations whereas JJs used the formulaic patterns of refusal sequences, (b) both AJs and JJs used the Delay-Excuse type though they used it slightly differently in their refusal sequential interactions, and (c) there seems to be no representative pattern used by each group. Thus, the study raised two crucial issues: (a) it is necessary to investigate a speech act of refusal in naturalistic conversational discourse (refusal sequential organizations); and (b) it is important to investigate individual variation in refusal patterns (e.g., gender differences in refusals). The present findings could benefit Japanese language teachers who are interested in empowering their students with the knowledge of appropriate and effective refusal strategies in Japanese, as well as researchers who are interested in conducting further studies on refusal interactions in Japanese and other languages.

Acknowledgements I would like to thank Dr. Naoko Taguchi for her time spent in reading, editing, and commenting on the present work. I would also like to thank Dr. Marshall Childs for his time spent in proofreading, Drs. Gabriele Kasper, Tim Greer, Sayoko Yamashita, and Seiji Fukazawa, and Professor Fumihiro Aoyama for their support. Finally, I would like to extend my deepest appreciation to the participants in the study and reviewers of the manuscript.

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Appendix A: Classifications of semantic formulas of requester’s initiations 1. 2. 3.

Implicative Request (implying requests such as hints, …odenwa o sasete itadaitan desu kedo mo … [lit. A telephone call was made, but…]) Conventional Request (consisting of conventional forms of formulaic expressions for requests, e.g., ~te itadakemasen ka [Could you~?] Request for Elicitation of Refusal Reason (Information) (RQIF)

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Request for Confirmation of Refusal Used (to make sure if the possibility of accepting is not there) (RQC) Tokens Similar to Forms of Backchannel Cues (TBC) used as negotiations Further Explanation of the request initially made Topic Switch Other (e.g., request for future promise)

Appendix B: Classifications of refusal realization strategies 1. 2. 3.

4. 5.

6. 7.

8.

9.

Wish (e.g., kyooryokudekireba ii n da kedo [I wish I could support you.]) Apology (e.g., kanben shite kudasai yo [Please forgive me.]) Excuse including Reason and Explanation a. Unwillingness (e.g., denwa nigate de [Talking over the phone is not my favorite.]) b. Imposition (e.g., iyaa isogashikute nee [Well, I’ve been busy …]) c. Inability (e.g., teepu rekoodaa ga nai kara [I don’t have a tape recorder, so …] (c.f., Ifert and Roloff, 1996: 42–43) d. Negative Responses to the Requester’s Re–initiations (e.g., ee soo nan desu yo [ yes] as a response to the requester’s request for confirmation) e. Others (combinations, and using the third person as a source of excuse) (e.g., tomodachi no kimochi ga wakaranai kara [I am not sure if my friend likes your idea or not, so …] Statement of Alternative (e.g., tomodachi ni kiite mimasu yo [I’ll ask my friend if she can help you out]) Attempt to Dissuade Interlocutor a. Criticism of the Request (e.g., muzukashi soo desu nee [it sounds difficult, doesn’t it?]; chotto tsumaranai [It looks a little boring]); Negative Opinions/Comments b. Objective Observation (e.g., botsukooshoo ka naa… [Your negotiation seems to have failed…]) Possibility of Future Acceptance (e.g., hima ni natta ra otetsudai dekiru kedo I will be able to help you out when I become free, but …]) Promise of Future Acceptance (e.g., sono toki wa go–kyooryoku sasete itadakimasu [I will definitely help you out next time when you ask me a favor]) Avoidance (AVO) a. Topic Switch b. Hedging (e.g., uu::n doo ka naa [mmm, I’m not sure...]) c. Postponement (post) (e.g., tsuma ni kiite mimasu [I’ll ask my wife about this matter]) d. Use of chotto [a little] as an independent turn e. Silence Positive Indication a. Positive Indication, but (Incomplete utterance)

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b. Positive Indication but Excuse (Posi./Excuse) (Complete utterance; including a complete excuse with positive indication) c. Positive Indication (positive in general but giving no details)(ambiguous response) 10. Acceptance a. Acceptance, but … (Incomplete utterance) b. Acceptance but Excuse c. Acceptance (Acceptance in general but giving no details)(ritual acceptance) 11. Other (Unintelligible utterance) 12. Delaying Responses (Delay) a. Request for Information (RQIF) b. Request for Clarification (RQCL) c. Resumptive Openers (indicating the state of thinking by using backchannel cues) (e.g., ha::: ha::: ha::: [I see:: hmm mmm]) appearing after the requester’s initiations/re–initiations (c.f., Gass and Houck 1999; Szatrowski 1993) d. Reactive Expressions (e.g., ee:: maa ne maa [hmm well m well, I am thinking]; soo desu nee [well, let me think …]) used as independent turns. e. Repetition (e.g., repeating a part of request) f. Combination

Appendix C: Transcription conventions (c.f., Jefferson 1984) a. b. c. d. e.

:::: – . … ?

Lengthened syllable Connection between a noun and a counter Falling intonation incomplete ending Raising intonation

Comprehending utterances in Japanese as a foreign language: Formulaicity and literality Akiko Hagiwara

Abstract This study examined how native speakers of Japanese and intermediate– level learners of Japanese as a foreign language comprehend three types of utterances in Japanese: literal utterances, formulaic utterances, and nonliteral non–formulaic utterances. The instruments were three versions of 12–item multiple–choice questionnaires asking participants to choose the most appropriate interpretation of the target utterance. Participants were two groups of university students: 60 native speakers of Japanese and 60 native speakers of American English who had completed two years of formal Japanese study. Results revealed the greatest between–group difference in the interpretation of formulaic utterances, while the difference was the smallest for the comprehension of literal utterances, suggesting that Japanese learners were more likely to misinterpret common formulaic utterances than the other two utterance types. The findings are discussed in light of theories of pragmatic comprehension and current research on the role of formulaicity in second language acquisition and use (e.g., Schmitt 2004).

1. Introduction Indirectness is one of the features that characterize the Japanese language, at least according to folk beliefs. In indirect communication, there is a mismatch between the literal meaning and the intended meaning of an utterance. Various theories have been proposed to explain the gap between the literal and intended meaning in comprehension. Grice (1975) claims that non-literal meanings become available through inference based on the literal meaning and contextual cues. Hence, access to the literal meaning (i.e., what is said) is obligatory when comprehending non-literal meaning (i.e., what is implied). More recently, however, Gibbs (1994) argues that

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the intended meanings of non-literal utterances trade on the conventionality of language; that is, the literal meaning of an utterance plays no or a limited role in comprehension. Gibbs’s account then explains how the hearer processes formulaic sequences - a type of indirect, non-literal expressions. Formulaicity and conventionality are in close relationship. Formulaic sequences can be any type of conventionally used word strings. Because formulaic sequences have more processing advantages than novel utterances (Wray 2002), they are widely used across languages. The present study addresses only the formulaic sequences that are pragmatically significant in communication. According to Kecskes (2007), formulaic sequences are placed on a continuum based on their functionality of use. Pragmatically significant formulaic utterances are placed on the right side of the continuum and are categorized as situation-bound utterances. As Kecskes notes, “the more we move toward the right on the functional continuum the wider the gap seems to become between compositional meaning and actual situational meaning” (2007: 193). Because of this gap, comprehension of pragmatic type formulaic sequences is challenging for second language learners (L2 learners) (Kecskes 2003). Learners need to have knowledge of situation-bound formulaic sequences to be able to recognize them in conversation. Failure to recognize them makes the comprehension difficult because they have to go through inferencing based on logical reasoning. Comprehension of formulaic sequences requires at least two types of knowledge: pragmalinguistic knowledge of the sequences (i.e., identifying formulaic sequences in the mind) and knowledge of situational and social conventions of language use (i.e., identifying the conventional relationship between formulaic utterances and social situations). Compared to L2 learners living in the target language community, learners in a foreign language environment might be disadvantaged in acquiring sufficient knowledge of formulaic utterances due to limited exposure to authentic input (Bouton 1994a). Despite these claims, empirical findings related to comprehension of indirect, formulaic meaning are far limited in L2 Japanese (Taguchi, Chapter 10, this volume). This study intended to fill this gap in the existing literature: it developed an original instrument and investigated how L2 learners of Japanese in a foreign language environment comprehend formulaic and non-formulaic utterances.

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2. Background 2.1. Comprehension of indirect utterances Utterance comprehension is a result of a joint action between the speaker and hearer who commit to communicating ideas and who share common ground (i.e., mutual knowledge) (Clark 1996). In an attempt to explain the process of utterance comprehension, Grice (1975, 1989) argues that the hearer comprehends the intended meaning of an utterance (‘what is implicated’) through a type of logical reasoning (i.e., conversational logic) based on the meaning of the utterance (‘what is said’) and the context in which it generates. A fundamental question remained in Grice’s theory, however, is what consists of ‘what is said’- the starting point of inference or the first meaning generated in the hearer’s mind. This question has been recently taken up by Giora (2003) in her Graded Salience Hypothesis (GSH). Giora argues that the starting point of inference is the most salient meaning of the utterance. Salient meaning is not necessarily the literal meaning. In the case of formulaic sequences, for example, conventional meaning can be activated as salient meaning at the initial stage of comprehension. After accessing the salient meaning, the intended meaning is inferred based on the contextual cues. In other words, if the context supports the initial salient meaning, it becomes the final interpretation. In GSH, saliency, not the concept of literality, explains the initial meaning of an utterance that one accesses. While Grice’s theory can explain comprehension of indirect utterances, it does not account for various types of conventionality involved in comprehension. GSH, on the other hand, can explain both the Gricean-type inference process and the direct access model (Gibbs 1994) that draws on form-based conventionality. Conventionality can be categorized into two types: convention of language and convention of usage (Morgan 1991). Convention of language refers to the relation between linguistic form and meaning (e.g., the idiomatic expression ‘kick the bucket’ meaning ‘to die’), while convention of usage refers to the relation between language and situation (e.g., saying ‘thank you’ in response to a compliment in U.S. culture). According to Morgan, conventions of usage can lead to conventions of language through a diachronic change. For instance, greeting expressions can be understood without recourse to their original propositional content after repeated use of them in similar situations. As a result, greeting expressions become

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formulaic, and the relationship between their original, literal meaning and the conventional meaning becomes blurry. When comprehending an utterance, multiple salient meanings, including literal meaning, are automatically activated at the initial stage. Meanings that do not fit the context of utterance are suppressed at a later stage, leaving only the meaning that matches its context. According to GSH, convention of language is integrated into the first phase of comprehension, and convention of usage may be integrated at the later phase of inference. If none of the immediate meanings fit well in the context, further inference, such as implementation of conversational logic, is required to arrive at the final meaning. Formulaic sequences are not literal, but they are not necessarily indirect because many formulaic sequences, particularly frequent ones, are processed quickly as chunks and therefore are salient (Gibbs 2002). For L2 learners, however, comprehension of formulaic sequences may be challenging particularly when they lack knowledge of formulaic sequences (i.e., convention of language) or knowledge of social conventions associated with the sequences (i.e., convention of usage) (Underwood, Schmitt and Galpin 2004; Wray 2002). As a result, they may comprehend formulaic utterances differently than L1 speakers. If a formulaic sequence is familiar to L2 learners, both the conventional meaning and its literal meaning can be activated at the same time just like L1 speakers. But if they fail to recognize the social context where the formulaic sequence occurs, their final interpretation may be different than that of L1 speakers. In summary, GHS can predict two sources of misinterpretation in L2: the failure to recognize conventional expressions caused by an entry of salient meaning different from target meaning, and the failure of inference caused by a lack of knowledge of socio-cultural conventions.

2.2. Studies on L2 learners’ comprehension of pragmatic meaning A number of studies have examined L2 pragmatic comprehension, looking into various issues such as the effect of implicature types on comprehension, developmental patterns of comprehension, and the role of conventionality in comprehension. Some studies revealed that pragmatic comprehension develops naturally over time, and others revealed specific factors that influence the process and development of pragmatic comprehension (e.g., Bouton 1988, 1989, 1990, 1992, 1994a, 1994b;

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Holtgraves 2007; Lee 2002; Taguchi 2007, 2008; Yamanaka 2003). For example, Lee’s (2002) study examined L2 comprehension of two types of implicatures: particularized implicatures and generalized implicatures. The results showed that although advanced-level Korean learners of English had no trouble comprehending generalized implicatures (i.e., Pope implicatures), they interpreted particularized implicatures (e.g., irony) quite differently than native speakers of English. The findings suggest that, although convention of language is learnable over time, L2 learners may not totally conform to the cultural conventions of particularized implicatures. In another study, Holtgraves (2007) examined an online activation of speech acts for both L1 and L2 English speakers. He found that L1 speakers recognized conversational speech acts automatically, but L2 learners did not. The length of time spent studying English had an effect on the recognition speed of speech acts, suggesting that that, for L2 learners, the degree of saliency of conventionalized speech act sequences becomes stronger over time as they are exposed to the target language input. Taguchi’s studies (2007, 2008) revealed the facilitative effect of conventionality in L2 comprehension. She used a computer-based listening task having participants to listen to a series of short conversations and answer yes/no questions that checked comprehension of indirect utterances. She examined L2 comprehension of indirect refusals and indirect opinions by measuring accuracy and speed of comprehension. She found that Japanese learners of English were more accurate and took a shorter time to comprehend indirect refusals than indirect opinions due to the conventionality involved. Indirect refusals included a routine pattern of discourse (i.e., giving a reason for refusal), but indirect opinions did not; as a result, they required more extensive inferencing than indirect refusals. These studies suggest that conventionality greatly affects the comprehension of indirect utterances. As long as learners know the L2 specific conventions of language, or the conventions are shared between L1 and L2, as in the case of common fixed speech acts, they can comprehend the intended meaning with ease. However, when conventions are culturespecific or unfamiliar to L2 learners (e.g., Pope questions and irony), comprehension becomes difficult and takes time. The issue of conventionality has been further explored in more recent studies that examined L2 comprehension of formulaic expressions (e.g., routines, idioms, conventional expressions) (Bardovi-Harlig 2007; Conklin and Schmitt 2008; Kecskes 2003; Schmitt 2004). Conklin and Schmitt

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(2008) compared L1 and L2 speakers of English for their comprehension speed of three types of formulaic expressions: idiomatic formulaic sequences (e.g., ‘take the bull by the horns’ meaning ‘attack a problem’), literal formulaic sequences (e.g., ‘take the bull by the horns’ meaning ‘wrestle an animal’), and non-formulaic sequences. The study provided evidence that not only L1 speakers but also L2 speakers take advantage of formulaic sequences when they comprehend meaning in L2 English. In another study, Bardovi-Harlig (2007) examined learners’ recognition and production of formulas in L2 English. She identified different patterns of errors across different proficiency levels. Learners were more skilled at recognizing formulas than producing them. Learners at higher proficiencylevel produced less idiosyncratic formulas than those at lower-proficiency levels and thus better approximated native speaker patterns. In summary, a growing number of recent studies have examined L2 learners’ ability to comprehend conventional formulaic utterances as well as non-conventional, non-formulaic utterances. However, these studies are mostly confined to L2 English, and very few studies have examined the ability in L2 Japanese. The present study intends to fill the gap by investigating comprehension ability of formulaic and non-formulaic utterances in Japanese as a foreign language.

3. Research Questions The previous literature identified three factors that influence comprehension of utterances: directness, formulaicity, and literality. Based on these factors, utterances can be divided into three types: literal utterances, formulaic utterances, and non-literal non-formulaic utterances. This study empirically tested L2 Japanese learners’ comprehension of these three types of utterances. The two research questions below guided the investigation: (1) Do L2 learners of Japanese comprehend the intended meaning of three types of utterances (literal, formulaic, and non-literal non-formulaic) in a way similar to L1 speakers of Japanese? (2) Does the utterance type influence comprehension for L1 and L2 speakers of Japanese?

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4. Methodology 4.1. Participants Participants were 60 native speakers of Japanese (L1 speakers) and 60 intermediate-level learners of Japanese (L2 learners). The L1 speaker group had 35 female and 25 male students in Tokyo University of Pharmacy and Life Sciences (age range: 18–25). They were enrolled in undergraduate courses of English as a foreign language. None of them were returnees from overseas. The L2 learner group had 31 female and 29 male speakers of L1 English enrolled in high-intermediate Japanese language courses in major universities in the U.S. (age range: 18–30). They had completed about two years of college-level Japanese courses. They were recruited from three U.S. universities: University of Washington, University of Hawai’i at Manoa, and Michigan State University. None of them had spent an extended period of time (longer than 6 months) in Japan.

4.2. Instrumentation and procedures 4.2.1. Preliminary studies This study investigated L1 and L2 comprehension of literal and non-literal utterances in Japanese by using a questionnaire instrument that contained a set of situational scenarios and multiple-choice questions with four answer options. Five preliminary studies were conducted to develop the multiplechoice questionnaire. The goal of Preliminary Study 1 was to collect non-literal utterances from naturally occurring interactions observed in Japan. I took field notes and recorded conversations that involved non-literal utterances (formulaic or non-formulaic). From this bank of data, I chose 12 scenarios based on the simplicity of the conversational situation and created test items accordingly. Each item contained a brief description of the situation and a non-literal utterance, either formulaic or non-formulaic. I also added a literal equivalent of the non-literal utterance. These three utterance types later served as option sentences in the multiple-choice items. Below is an example item (See appendix for more samples):

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Scenario: A company employee, Sakuma, decides to have lunch with Nakamura and Saito, who are her colleagues and good friends. The three of them are talking about which restaurant to go to. Nakamura says, “How about tempura?” Sakuma replies: Literal equivalent: Soo nee. Demo tenpura wa chotto aburappoi kara, kyoo wa betsu no mono ga ii wa! (‘Let’s see. Tempura is a bit greasy. I would rather have something else today!’) Formulaic utterance: Tenpura wa chotto… (‘Tempura is a bit...’) Non-literal non-formulaic utterance: Kyoo wa sapparishita mono ga tabetai wa! (‘I would like to eat something plain today!’)

The purpose of Preliminary Study 2 was to expand the pool of the literal and non-literal utterances used in the multiple-choice items, and also to check the plausibility of the utterances. Five Japanese undergraduate students who were enrolled in Tokyo University of Pharmacy and Life Sciences participated in the study. They completed two tasks in Japanese: an interpretation task and a discourse completion task (DCT). The interpretation task contained the 12 scenarios as well as literal and nonliteral utterances drawn from Preliminary Study 1. The participants were instructed to read each scenario and write interpretations of the non-literal utterances. The interpretations were analyzed to confirm consistency in interpretations. The DCT part asked the participants to write what they would say in the same scenario, instead of the literal and non-literal utterances given. DCT responses were sorted based on the formulaicity of the utterances and used to develop option sentences for the multiple-choice items.

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The purpose of Preliminary Study 3 was two-fold: to check the difficulty level of the language used in the scenarios and to collect L2 learners’ interpretations of the formulaic and non-formulaic non-literal utterances. Seventeen L2 learners who were enrolled in the Japanese language program at University of Hawai’i at Manoa participated in the study. Out of a total of 24 items drawn from Preliminary Study 1 (i.e., 12 scenarios with two types of non-literal utterances for each), three versions of questionnaire with eight scenarios each were prepared. The participants read the scenarios and supplied their interpretations of target formulaic and non-literal non-formulaic utterances. They also wrote utterances that they thought were equivalent to the target utterances. The interpretations that the L2 participants provided were tallied, along with the interpretations that the L1 participants provided in Preliminary Study 2. These interpretations were used to develop option sentences for the multiple-choice items in the main study. Preliminary Study 4 was a pilot study that used the first version of the multiple-choice questionnaire. The participants were eight L2 learners of Japanese (all native speakers of English) from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and eighteen Japanese students from Tokyo University of Pharmacy and Life Sciences. The primary purpose of this study was to evaluate the questionnaire from the participants’ viewpoints. It was essential that the language in the scenarios was clear and concise so that any misinterpretations of the scenario were avoided. Each item in the questionnaire consisted of a scenario, target utterance, and four options (i.e., possible interpretations of the target utterance). They were asked to choose the most appropriate interpretation for the target utterance. They were also instructed to comment on any unclear parts, including wordings and ambiguous expressions, on the questionnaire. Retrospective interviews were conducted to see whether L2 learners were able to recognize the nonliteral formulaic utterances. None of the participants failed to recognize the formulaic expressions used in this study, although they were not able to interpret them perfectly. Necessary revisions were made after the study, mostly in the wordings of the scenarios. The interpretation that most L1 participants chose was later used as the “correct” interpretation of the target utterance. Preliminary Study 5 was conducted to find out whether native speakers of Japanese perceived three types of utterances differently in terms of their directness levels. Participants were 30 native speakers of Japanese from Tokyo University of Pharmacy and Life Sciences. They completed a

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questionnaire with 12 scenarios each containing a paragraph describing a situation followed by three types of target utterances (i.e., literal, formulaic, non-literal non-formulaic) and the “correct” interpretation of the target utterance identified in Preliminary Study 4. A nine-point Likert scale was placed under each utterance, and the participants were asked to judge the directness level of the utterance from 1 (sutoreeto ‘very straightforward’) to 9 (enkyoku ‘very indirect‘). Repeated-measures ANOVA revealed a significant effect of utterance type, F(2)=67.155, p<.0001. The directness rating showed that literal utterances were perceived as the most direct (M=2.950, SD=.825), followed by formulaic utterances (M=4.544, SD=1.145). Non-literal non-formulaic utterances were perceived as the most indirect by native speakers of Japanese (M=6.022, SD=1.164).

4.2.2. The multiple-choice questionnaire Based on the five preliminary studies, three versions of 12-item multiplechoice questionnaire (MCQ) were prepared for the main study. Each item consisted of a scenario, one of the three types of target utterances (i.e., literal, formulaic, non-literal non-formulaic), and four choices of interpretation of the target utterance. Each version of the MCQ contained four items of non-literal non-formulaic utterances, four items of formulaic utterances, and four items of literal utterances. All the kanji (Chinese characters) that appeared in the questionnaire had furigana (phonetic alphabet superscripts). A short glossary of the words that might be unfamiliar to the participants was attached to the questionnaire to help L2 participants with vocabulary. The participants were asked to read scenarios and choose the most relevant interpretation of the target utterance from four choices of interpretations, as shown in the example below (see appendix for more examples). Example (The entire questionnaire was written in Japanese.) Direction: Read the following passage and the utterance, and choose the item that best describes the intention or the meaning of the utterance. Scenario sample: asking about one’s senior’s not coming to a party

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The members of a seminar at the university are going to a casual drinking party tomorrow. Yamashita intends to go with Saito. While the two are talking about the party Tanaka shows up. He is a senior member of the same seminar. When they ask whether Tanaka is going to the party, he replies that he is not going. The two of them then say: Tanaka senpai, ashita baito na n desu ka? (‘Do you have a part-time job tomorrow?’) a. They are asking the reason why Tanaka is not coming. b. They are criticizing Tanaka for not coming to the party. c. They are disappointed that Tanaka is not coming. d. They sympathize with Tanaka for not being able to come because he is too busy.

The participants were instructed to complete the MCQ either at home or in class. No time limit was set to account for individual differences in reading speed. Different from response-time studies, in this study, it was important that the participants had sufficient time to comprehend the scenario, the target utterances, and the four answer choices. L2 participants were told that they could consult dictionaries when necessary, but they were not supposed to discuss interpretations with other participants or teachers.

4.3. Data analysis Data were first categorized according to the questionnaire versions and participant groups, and then comprehension of each utterance type (literal, formulaic, and non-literal non-formulaic) was analyzed separately and compared between L1 and L2 groups. One point was given per correct choice of interpretation (a total of 4 points per utterance type in each questionnaire). Two-way repeated-measures ANOVA was used to examine the effect of participant group and utterance type on comprehension. The accuracy score for each utterance type was the dependent variable, and the participant group (L1 and L2) and utterance type were independent variables. For follow-up analyses, multiple comparison tests (Toothaker

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1991) were conducted to compare the comprehension between L1 and L2 participants for each utterance type. The alpha level was set at .05.

5. Results The three versions of the MCQ was scored based on the correct interpretation of the target utterances. As shown in Table 1, not surprisingly, L1speakers scored consistently higher than L2 learners in all MCQs. The data were further analyzed for each utterance type. As shown in Table 2, two participant groups scored quite differently according to the utterance type. The average score for formulaic utterances was the highest for the L1 group (M=3.25, SD=0.628), but it was the lowest for the L2 group (M=2.167, SD=1.122). The average score for literal utterances was the lowest for the L1 group (M=2.667, SD=0.951), but it was the highest for the L2 group (M=2.367, SD=1.164). The average score for non-literal non-formulaic utterances fell between the other two types of utterances for both L1 (M=2.900, SD=0.858) and L2 (M=2.350, SD=1.039) groups. Table 1. Overall results by MCQ versions and participant group Group (MCQ) L1 (v1) L1 (v2) L1 (v3) L2 (v1) L2 (v2) L2 (v3)

n 20 20 20 20 20 20

M (k=12) 8.60 9.30 8.55 6.65 7.00 7.00

SD 1.429 1.301 0.998 1.663 2.513 2.406

Score % 71.67% 77.50% 71.25% 55.41% 58.33% 58.33%

Table 2. Results by utterance type for L1 and L2 groups Utterance type L1 group (Literal) (Formulaic) (Non-literal non-formulaic) L2 group (Literal) 60 (Formulaic) (Non-literal non-formulaic)

N

M (k=4)

SD

Score %

60 60 60

2.667 3.250 2.900

.951 .628 .858

66.67% 81.25% 72.50%

2.367 60 60

1.164 2.167 2.350

59.17% 1.122 1.039

54.17% 58.75%

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Table 3 summarizes the results of the two-way repeated-measures ANOVA. While the effect of utterance type on comprehension was not statistically significant, F(2, 236)=1.241, p<.05, the effect of participant group was statistically significant, F(1, 118)=34.714, p<.05. The multiple comparison test revealed that the L1 and L2 groups differed significantly in their comprehension of formulaic utterances, t=6.071, p<.05. However, there was no significant group difference on comprehension of non-literal non-formulaic utterances (t=3.083, p>.05) or literal utterances (t=1.682, p>.05). There was a significant interaction effect between the utterance type and participant group, F(2,1)=5.376, p<.05. Table 3. Results of two-way ANOVA with repeated measures DF Groups 1 Participants 118 Utterance type 2 U Types * Groups 2 Types * Participants 236

SS 37.378 127.056 2.217 9.606 210.844

MS 37.378 1.077 1.108 4.803 .893

F-value 34.714 1.241 5.376

p-value <.0001 .2911(n.s.) .0052

Table 4. MCP results for three types of utterances between L1 and L2 groups Utterance type Literal Formulaic Non-literal non-formulaic *p<.05

DF 118 118 118

MD .300 1.083 .550

t-value 1.682 6.071* 3.083

In summary, for L1 speakers of Japanese, formulaic utterances were interpreted in a more conventional manner, resulting in more uniform responses than other two types of utterances. In contrast, L2 participants had the lowest comprehension score for formulaic utterances. There was no notable difference between literal utterances and non-literal non-formulaic utterances in L2 comprehension. Between-group difference in comprehension was statistically significant, and also the interaction between participant group and utterance type was statistically significant.

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6. Discussion According to GSH (Giora 2003), saliency of utterance meaning depends on the hearer’s experiences with the utterance. For example, saliency in L1 speakers’ minds probably reflects the conventionality of the utterance established in the speech community, whereas salience for L2 learners in a foreign language environment may largely result from their experiences with textbook examples and classroom interactions. Although particular formulaic sequences may mean different things depending on context, if one of the meanings is predominantly used in the speech community, it becomes the most salient meaning for people in the community. In addition, because grammatical decoding takes place rather rapidly, literal meaning of the utterance becomes activated and salient as well. GSH assumes that access to salient meanings precedes processing contextual information. Based on these claims, the findings of the present study are interpreted. The widest gap between L1 and L2 Japanese speakers was found in their interpretation of formulaic utterances. Preliminary studies showed that those formulaic sequences were familiar chunks for L2 learners, confirming that both L1 speakers and L2 learners share conventional meanings of these utterances. Contrary to this expectation, in the main study, the two groups showed different interpretation patterns. One possible explanation is that the salient, conventional meaning was qualitatively different between L1 and L2 speakers. Saliency evolves over time through experiences: the more frequently one encounters the formula in a specific context, the more salient it becomes in the mind (Kecskes 2006). For L2 learners in a foreign language environment, like those studied here, experiences are largely limited to classroom interactions and textbook examples; as a result, they do not have access to a wide range of experiences that present different layers of meaning of formulaic utterances. For example, in Japanese language classrooms, the utterance gochisoosama deshita (‘Thank you for the meal’) is typically taught as a formulaic phrase used at the end of a meal to express appreciation to the provider of the meal (i.e., god, heaven, the sun, farmers). However, the questionnaire item used in this study encoded different meaning- thanking an elderly person for paying the bill (see the methodology section). As a result, many L2 learners drew a wrong inference and comprehended it as an expression to signal the end of the meal. In fact, one of the L2 participants in Preliminary Study 4 reported that she did not know that this utterance

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could be used to show gratitude to the person who paid the bill at a restaurant, particularly because paying the bill was not mentioned in the situational scenario. For her, this utterance had only one meaning - end-ofthe-meal signal, and the additional pragmatic meaning of thanking someone for paying for the meal was not accessed at all. On the contrary, in L1 community, this utterance frequently occurs as a thanking expression to the person who pays the bill, and thus the meaning was salient and accessible to the L1 speakers in this study. This example shows that the most salient meaning was different between L1 and L2 speakers, consequently affecting their comprehension processes. Another factor that affects comprehension of formulaic utterances is the socio-cultural knowledge that shapes the context. In the questionnaire contextual information was given in the scenario, but not all the underlying cultural factors were explained in the scenario. Quite likely, cultural conventions shared among the people in the given speech community affect the perception of the context. For instance, in the above example, it is possible that, being in a foreign language environment, L2 learners may not have had the knowledge of the Japanese social convention that elders take care of a bill after a meal. Therefore, even when the contextual interpretation kicked in, they failed to draw a native-like interpretation of the utterance. Knowledge of pragmalinguistic convention is another factor that could affect comprehension of formulaic sequences. This was found in the questionnaire item that asked about the interpretation of the formulaic utterance arigatoo gozaimasu ‘thank you.’ In the scenario, a person tells a man to stop smoking, a kind of unsolicited personal advice, and the man replies, ‘Thank you for your advice’ (arigatoo gozaimasu). The correct interpretation of the reply is a sarcastic one, ‘stop nagging.’ Although L1 speakers interpreted the sarcasm correctly, many L2 learners interpreted the utterance as genuine appreciation, which is the most common, salient function of arigatoo gozaimasu in the Japanese community. In this study, L2 learners relied on the salient meaning (literal meaning) and chose it as the intended meaning. On the contrary, L1 speakers picked up the nonconventional use of the politeness marker gozaimasu (honorific form) between interlocutors in a close relationship. Because of the overly polite expression used in this informal situation, the phrase arigatoo gozaimasu generated an implicature (i.e., sarcasm). If the man had just said arigatoo, without the polite verb ending of gozaimasu, the L1 speakers’ interpretation might have been different. Hence, in this particular case, L2

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learners’ misinterpretation seemed to have resulted from their lack of knowledge of pragmalinguistic convention (i.e., polite honorifics forms). It is also possible that L2 learners of Japanese have a stereotypical view of Japanese as always being polite; as a result, they might have overlooked the overly polite expression (i.e., gozaimasu), resulting in misinterpretation. In this study, the gap between L1 and L2 comprehension was the smallest in the literal utterances. Preliminary Study 5 verified perceived differences in the level of directness among the three utterance types in native speaker ratings. Literal utterances were perceived as the most direct among the three types, followed by formulaic utterances. Non-literal nonformulaic utterances were perceived as the least direct. Based on this result, it was expected that literal utterances would produce the most accurate and uniform choice of interpretation, while non-literal non-formulaic utterances would result in the least accurate and uniform choice of interpretation among the L1 speakers. Contrary to this expectation, in the main study, L1 participants scored the lowest in literal comprehension. One possible explanation is that in authentic conversations, literal and straightforward utterances are not often the preferred way of expressing ideas. As reported in previous studies (e.g., Wray 2002), a large part of oral communication rely on formulaic sequences. Therefore, it is possible that the L1 participants in this study perceived these literal utterances as an unconventional, unnatural way of speaking, consequently making unnecessary inferences. As for the non-literal non-formulaic utterances, the difference between L1 and L2 participants was marginal, yielding no statistical significance. Because the most salient meaning in these utterances is their compositional meaning, comprehension is achieved after a working out (inferential) process. Although previous research (Bouton 1988, Lee 2002) suggested a difficulty involved in the comprehension of Gricean implicatures (i.e., nonliteral non-formulaic utterances) (Bouton 1988; Lee 2002), this study did not indicate this tendency. Instead, the results revealed that L2 learners were able to infer the meaning of non-literal non-formulaic utterances equally well as L1 speakers, suggesting that L2 learners were able to use general cognitive mechanisms of inferencing when they interpreted nonliteral, non-formulaic utterances in Japanese. In summary, this study tested comprehension of three types of utterances in L2 Japanese. Formulaic utterances were found to be most difficult for L2 learners to comprehend because they require not only pragmalinguistic knowledge of forms and sociopragmatic knowledge of

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conventions, but also profound experiences of use in the target speech community.

7. Implications of the findings for pragmatic teaching This study offers several implications for pragmatic teaching. The first implication relates to the strategies of general inferencing when comprehending non-literal meaning. Although inferencing is a complex cognitive task, L2 learners can still infer the intention of speech by utilizing available resources. Hence, it is the language teacher’s task to find and organize resources that the learners can rely on when they make inferences of non-literal utterances. Those resources include general inferencing mechanisms that the learners intuitively use in their first language. By teaching the mechanisms of conversational logic through awareness-raising tasks, learners will be able to critically analyze frequently occurring indirect utterances in conversation. Through such activities learners gain more exposure to different patterns of indirect utterances, and Gricean theory can be used as an analytical tool to categorize them. By using a general analytical tool, learners will be able to organize pragmatic information more clearly, thereby enhancing comprehension skills in the target language. The second implication relates to the learning of formulaic sequences. The present study showed that formulaic language can be a stumbling block for L2 learners, suggesting the need for explicit instruction on formulaic utterances. If meaning is comprehended purely based on universal logic or cognitive mechanisms shared among people in the world, learning a foreign language would simply mean acquiring the system of lexicon and the structures of the target language, and the rest would be taken care of through the general inferencing mechanism acquired in their first language. However, the present findings indicate that this may not be the case among learners in a foreign language context. Because formulaic utterances are fundamentally conventional, acquiring the conventions, both social and linguistic, is the result of repeated exposure to the target input since conventions are not rule-driven but empirically generated in a given speech community. Hence, for foreign language learners who have limited contact with the target language community, formulaic utterances should be taught explicitly.

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The last implication relates to conventionality in utterance comprehension. Although formulaic utterances occupy a major part of conventional language use, conventionality can be extended to the features beyond utterance-level, including discourse organization of specific speech events. A conventionalized pattern of discourse sequence often appears in a particular speech act. For example, a compliment is followed by a response to the compliment, and an invitation is followed by acceptance or rejection with an excuse. Some formulaic utterances used in this study also follow these normative patterns of discourse (e.g., saying gochisoosama after being treated to a meal). Classroom instructors can draw learners’ attention to these conventionalized sequences of discourse, in addition to the utterance-level conventionality.

8. Conclusion The present study showed that L1 and L2 speakers of Japanese comprehend three types of literal and non-literal utterances differently. L2 learners in this study, who were studying Japanese in a foreign language context, were able to comprehend literal and non-literal non-formulaic utterances as equally well as L1 speakers, but they had difficulty with comprehending formulaic utterances. Utterance comprehension involves various types of knowledge that are related to linguistic and non-linguistic conventions. Rule-governed aspects of a language can be learned in a foreign language context, but knowledge of conventions may be difficult to acquire without extensive exposure to target language input. In a foreign language context, teachers’ assistance and intervention are particularly important in this regard. Hence, it is crucial for teachers of Japanese to understand the underlying mechanisms of utterance comprehension, particularly formulaicity and conventionality involved in comprehension, and apply the knowledge to their classroom teaching.

Acknowledgement I would like to express my gratitude to all the reviewers of this paper, especially Dr. Naoko Taguchi, Dr. Istvan Kecskes and an anonymous reviewer, for their valuable comments and insightful suggestions. Also, I would like to thank all the teachers and participants of this study.

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References Bardovi-Harlig, Kathleen 2007 Recognition and production of formulas in L2 pragmatics. In: Zhaohong Han (ed.), Understanding Second Language Process, 205–222. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Bouton, Lawrence F. 1988 A cross-cultural study of ability to interpret implicatures in English. World Englishes 7 (2): 183–196. 1989 So they got the message, but how did they get it? IDEAL 4: 119– 148. 1990 The effective use of implicature in English: Why and how it should be taught in the ESL classroom. In: Lawrence F. Bouton and Yamuna Kachru (eds.), Pragmatics and Language Learning Monograph Series volume 1, 43–52, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois: Division of English as an International Language. 1992 The interpretation of implicatures in English by NNS: Does it come automatically - without being explicitly taught? In: Lawrence F. Bouton and Yamuna Kachru (eds.), Pragmatics and Language Learning Monograph series volume 3, 183–197. UrbanaChampaign, Illinois: Division of English as an International Language. 1994a Can NNS skill in interpreting implicature in American English be improved through explicit instruction? - A pilot study. In: Lawrence F. Bouton and Yamuna Kachru (eds.), Pragmatics and Language Learning. Monograph Series volume 5, 88–109. Urbana-Champaign, Illinois: Division of English as an International Language. 1994b Conversational implicature in a second language: Learned slowly when not deliberately taught. Journal of Pragmatics 32: 157–167. Clark, Herbert H. 1996 Using Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Conklin, Kathy and Norbert Schmitt 2008 Formulaic sequences: Are they processed more quickly than nonformulaic language by native and nonnative speakers? Applied Linguistics 29 (1): 72–89. Gibbs, Raymond W., Jr. 1982 A critical examination of the contribution of literal meaning to understanding non-literal discourse. Text 2: 9–27. 1985 On the process of understanding idioms. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 14: 465–472. 1986 Skating on thin ice: Literal meaning and understanding idioms in conversation. Discourse Processes 9: 17–30.

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1994 2002

The Poetics of Mind: Figurative Thought, Language, and Understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. A new look at literal meaning in understanding what is said and implicated. Journal of Pragmatics 34 (4): 457–486.

Giora, Rachel 2003 On Our Mind: Salience, Context, and Figurative Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Grice, H. Paul 1975 Logic and conversation. In: Peter Cole and Jerry L. Morgan (eds.), Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts, 41–59. New York: Academic Press. 1989 Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Holtgraves, Thomas 2007 Second language learners and speech act comprehension. Language Learning 57: 595–610. Kecskes, Istvan 2003 Situation-Bound Utterances in L1 and L2. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 2006 On my mind: thoughts about salience, context and figurative language from a second language perspective. Second Language Research 22 (2): 219–237. 2007 Formulaic language in English Lingua Franca. In: Istvan Kecskes and Laurence R. Horn (eds.), Explorations in Pragmatics, 191–218. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Lee, Jin Sook 2002 Interpreting conversational implicatures: A study of Korean learners of English. The Korea TESOL Journal 5 (1): 1–26. Morgan, Jerry L. 1991 Two types of convention in indirect speech acts. In: Steven Davis (ed.), Pragmatics: A Reader, 242–253. New York: Oxford University Press. Schmitt, Norbert 2004 Formulaic sequences in action: An introduction. In: Norbert Schmitt (ed.), Formulaic Sequences: Acquisition, Processing and Use, 1–22. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Taguchi, Naoko 2007 Development of speed and accuracy in pragmatic comprehension in English as a foreign language. TESOL Quarterly 41 (2): 313–338. 2008 Cognition, language contact, and the development of pragmatic comprehension in a study-abroad context. Language Learning 58 (1): 33–71.

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Toothaker, Larry E. 1991 Multiple Comparisons for Researchers. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, Inc. Underwood, Geoffrey, Norbert Schmitt and Adam Galpin 2004 The eyes have it: An eye-movement study into the processing of formulaic sequences. In: Norbert Schmitt (ed.), Formulaic Sequences: Acquisition, Processing and Use, 153–172. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Wray, Alison 2002 Formulaic Language and the Lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Yamanaka, Janice E. 2003 Effects of proficiency and length of residence on the pragmatic comprehension of Japanese ESL learners. Second Language Studies 22 (1): 107–175.

Appendix Sample scenarios and three types of utterances with four choices of interpretations used in the study (The actual questionnaire was written entirely in Japanese except the instruction.) Directions: Read the following passage and the utterance, and choose the item that best describes the intention or the meaning of the utterance. Sample 1 Scenario: Receiving comments about one’s outfit at a workplace Ms. Honda works for a big company in Tokyo. She graduated from university in Hawaii and found a job in Tokyo. Her firm has no dress code. However, as in other companies in Japan, male employees usually wear suits, while female counterparts dress in plain colored suits. Today, her manager saw her and said: (one of the following utterances) Literal: Moosukoshi jimina fuku o kitekite kudasai? (‘Could you choose clothing with a slightly plain look?’) Formulaic: Kyoo no fuku wa chotto… (‘Today’s clothing is …’) Non-literal non-formulaic: Kyoo no fuku wa tottemo ‘hawaii’ desu ne. (‘Hawaiian attire today!’)

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a. The Hawaiian dress suits Honda, so she should stay the way she is. b. The manager wants Ms. Honda to wear something flashier. c. The manager is troubled by the fact that Ms. Honda does not have Japanese common sense. d. The manager wants Ms. Honda to wear plain suits. Sample 2 Scenario: Showing gratitude after dinner in an informal situation Masako is a third year university student. She went out for dinner with her cousin, Hanako. It had been a long time since the two had gone out together. Hanako has been working at a big company since she graduated from university three years ago. The two of them discussed various matters about work and university. After dinner, Masako said to Hanako: (target utterance: one of the three utterances below appeared in each question item) Literal: Kyoowa shokuji o gochisooshite itadaite, doomo arigatoo gozaimashita. (‘I appreciate that you treated me to dinner tonight.’) Formulaic: Gochisoosama deshita. (‘Thank you for the dinner.’) Non-literal

non-formulaic:

Kondo

baito-dai

haittara,

watashi

ga

gochisooshimasu ne.’ (‘When I get paid for my part-time job next time, I will invite you out for dinner.’) a. It’s an expression of gratitude for Hanako’s paying the bill for dinner. b. It’s an expression of gratitude for Hanako’s listening to Masako’s stories. c. It’s a ritual expression after dinner. d. It’s an expression of request for Hanako to pay the bill for dinner.

Comprehension of indirect opinions and refusals in L2 Japanese1 Naoko Taguchi Abstract This cross-sectional study examined the inferential ability to comprehend indirect speakers’ intentions in Japanese as a foreign language. Eighty-four college students who were learning Japanese at the beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels completed a computerized listening test that measured their ability to comprehend three types of indirect meaning: indirect refusals, conventional indirect opinions, and non-conventional indirect opinions. Each item had a short dialogue with a reply at the end did not provide a direct answer to the question. Results showed that refusal items were the easiest to comprehend, followed by conventional and nonconventional indirect opinion items. Advanced and intermediate students scored significantly higher than the beginner-level students. Follow-up interviews revealed the reasons for difficulty for less proficient students (e.g., limited linguistic and cultural knowledge).

1. Introduction Pragmatic comprehension refers to the ability to comprehend meaning beyond what is literally said (Vershueren 1999). Speakers have the option of expressing themselves in a variety of forms, both directly and indirectly. Pragmatic competence entails the ability to recognize speakers’ intentions conveyed in a variety of conventional and non-conventional forms and to make accurate inferences of their communicative intentions. A body of studies has examined comprehension of non-literal meaning in second language (L2). Findings revealed that general proficiency affects L2 learners’ ability to infer indirect meaning (Bouton 1992, 1994; Cook and Liddicoat 2002; Garcia 2004; Röver 2005; Koike 1996; Taguchi 2005, 2007, 2008a). Types of indirect meaning also affect comprehension; conventional implicatures are easier and faster to comprehend than nonconventional ones if the conventions are familiar to learners or shared between L1 (first language) and L2 (Cook and Liddicoat 2002; Garcia

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2004; Koike 1994; Takahashi and Roitblat 1994; Taguchi 2002, 2005, 2007, 2008a, 2008b). Although these previous studies established a well-formed analysis of the nature of pragmatic comprehension, the findings are concentrated in the target language of English, and very few studies have examined other target languages, including Japanese (Hagiwara, Chapter 9, this volume). This is a serious neglect because, although indirect communication exists across languages, the linguistic and non-linguistic forms to convey indirectness, and the domains where the indirectness applies, vary from culture to culture, often intertwined with norms and values in society. Hence, learners’ ability to comprehend indirect, non-literal utterances should be investigated over different target languages in order to expand the generalizability of the previous findings. The present study is an effort in this goal. Previous literature found that the Japanese language, particularly its spoken form, makes indirect expressions possible through a variety of syntactic and lexical features including ellipsis, open-ended statements, and hedging. An important aspect of Japanese communicative competence involves the ability to use the knowledge of these conventions to interpret meaning. In this study three pragmalinguistic features of indirectness were adapted from previous literature: adverbs of reservation, expressions of wondering, and indirect sentence endings (epistemic sentence ending markers used as hedging). These features were incorporated into short dialogues as conventional ways to express negative opinions indirectly. Japanese learners’ comprehension of the opinions and other indirect utterances were compared across different proficiency levels.

2. Background In the 1970s and 1980s, a bulk of research examined features of Japanese communication, in part due to Japan’s dramatic development as a world economic power and the visibility that Japan gained in the international community. These literatures revealed a number of syntactic and lexical devices that contribute to indirect communication style of Japanese. Those features include indirect sentence endings (epistemic sentence ending markers used as hedging), subject and verb omission, ellipses, incomplete sentences, and keigo (honorific systems) (Barnland 1989; Clancy 1986; Davies and Ikeno 2002; Furukawa 2001; Gudykunst and Nishida 1993; Imai 1981; Klopf 1991; Kusakabe 1994; Maynard 1997, 1998; Miike 2003;

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Miller 1994; Mizutani 1981, 1985; Mizutani and Mizutani 1987, 1988; Okazaki 1993). These features form part of Japanese pragmalinguistics, namely linguistic forms used to perform speech functions (Thomas 1983). Knowledge of sociopragmatics, on the other hand, refers to the understanding of social norms that govern the use of linguistic forms and informs us of when to be indirect with which pragmalinguistic means. We rely on both types of knowledge in our successful comprehension of indirect meaning. The present study adapted three pragmalinguistic features of indirect expressions identified in the previous literature: adverbs of reservation, expressions of wondering, and indirect sentence endings. Previous literature documented a range of fixed phrases and adverbs as common strategies to express reservations (Imai 1981; Mizutani 1985; Mizutani and Mizutani 1987, 1988). For example, quantifier adverbs such as amari ‘not very’, chotto ‘a little’, and doomo ‘in all ways’ by themselves convey negative implications. The other pragmalinguistic features adapted in this study were indirect sentence endings when showing disagreements. Japanese has a tendency to mark opinions with epistemic sentence-ending markers such as kana ‘I wonder’, kamoshirenai ‘maybe’, and to iu kiga ‘I feel like’ (Furukawa 2001; Kusakabe 1994; Miller 1994; Mizutani 1985). They function as hedging and are used to avoid explicit remarks. These markers appear in speech acts of indirect requests (e.g., Korede daijyobu kana, meaning ‘I wonder if it’s all right.’) or refusals (e.g., Muri kamo shirenai meaning ‘It might be impossible.’). The last pragmalinguistic feature adapted in this study is a questioning strategy as expressions of disagreement. When a question is made of the prior speaker’s opinion, it often serves as an expression of disagreement (Fukukawa 2001; Kusakabe 1994). For example, in response to the statement that Japanese education is getting better, one can challenge it by asking Yoku naru? ‘Is it going to be good?’. Table 1 summarizes the three linguistic features. These pragmalinguistic features reflect conventions of Japanese language because illocutionary meaning is conveyed through fixed lexical items or syntactic forms. An important aspect of Japanese communicative competence in part involves the knowledge of these conventions, and the ability to use the knowledge to interpret speakers’ intentions.

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Table 1. Linguistics forms used to create conventional indirect opinion items Lexical and syntactic forms

Example

Degree adverbs that indicate reservation: chotto ‘a little,’ doomo ‘not very,’ and amari ‘not very’

A: Frorida wa doo desu ka? ‘How do you like Florida?’ B: Frorida wa chott. ‘Florida is a little.’

Making a question out of the Prior speaker’s opinion to Indicate reservation

A: Frorida wa ii desu ne. ‘Florida is nice.’ B: Soo kana. ‘I wonder.’

Indirect sentence ending -toiu-kiga ‘I have a feeling about’

A: Frorida wa doo desuka? ‘How do you like Florida?’ B: Chotto atsu sugiru kana toiu kiga ‘I have a feeling that it’s a little too hot.’ Notes. The linguistic forms are based on Furukawa, 2001; Imai (1981); Kusakabe (1994); Miller (1994); Mizutani (1981); Mizutani and Mizutani (1987, 1988).

In addition to these linguistic forms of conventions, the present study adapted two additional forms of indirect communication that have been widely examined in L2 comprehension research. One is indirect speech act of refusals, wherein refusal intentions are conveyed by giving an excuse (e.g., saying “I’m busy” when refusing someone’s invitation to a party.). When refusing someone’s invitation, request, or suggestion, it is customary that one provides a reason for refusal. Different from linguistic conventions, indirect refusals of this type relies on conventions of discourse sequence - implied meaning is conveyed through predictable discourse patterns, not through fixed linguistic forms. The third form of indirect communication adapted in this study is nonconventional implicatures - indirect opinion statements that do not involve conventional linguistic features or discourse patterns. They are more idiosyncratic and less stable across contexts than other conventional forms. See the example below: A: How was your presentation? B: It’s over, so it’s OK.

In this example, an open set of expressions is possible as B’s reply. When expressing negative opinion of the presentation, options regarding how to express them are wide open. As a result, more extensive inferential

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processing is required to derive meaning because the listener needs to process a greater number of contextual cues. The three forms of indirect communication adapted in this study represent varying degrees of conventional speech and transparency of meaning, which result in different amounts of processing effort required for meaning decoding. As Sperber and Wilson (1991, 1995) argued, implicatures vary in their degree of strength; some implicatures are strongly conveyed, while others are weakly understood, due to the number of contextual cues that must be processed for comprehension. The greater the number of cues to be processed, the more extensive the search for meaning becomes, resulting in greater processing effort. Comprehension involves a simultaneous calculation of three layers of meaning: the conventional meaning based on the structure of language or language use patterns, the intended meaning based on the context involving the speaker and the listener, and the pragmatic meaning based on norms of how language is normally used. Comprehension difficulty is based on the degree of processing effort in each of these three layers. When implicatures convey conventional meaning, that is, when speaker intentions are linguistically coded or embedded within predictable, fixed patterns of discourse, the listener may not attend to many contextual cues, consequently reducing the processing effort. Greater processing effort is required when there is a more extensive search for meaning, stemming from a greater number of contextual cues to be understood. Previous research on L2 pragmatic comprehension largely confirmed the effect of varied indirect forms on comprehension (Bouton 1992, 1994; Cook and Liddicoat 2002; Garcia 2004; Röver 2005; Taguchi 2002, 2005, 2007, 2008a, 2008b), all of which are in L2 English. Findings from these studies revealed that indirect meaning conveyed through conventional forms is easier to comprehend, once the conventions are learned, or they are shared between L1 and L2. Non-conventional implicatures, on the other hand, are difficult to comprehend because they require extensive inferential processing. As their proficiency develops, learners can comprehend a range of conventional and non-conventional indirect forms. For example, Taguchi (2008b) examined the development of the comprehension of indirect refusals and indirect opinions among learners of English in a foreign and second language context. Twenty-four items of each type were computerized in a listening test, and the degree of comprehension development was examined over time based on two attributes: accuracy of comprehension (scores on the listening test) and speed of comprehension

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(response time). The data revealed that comprehension was faster and more accurate for indirect refusals than for indirect opinions, and the degree of development was greater for refusals than it was for opinions. Because the generalizations gleaned from previous studies are unattested in Japanese, this study replicated previous studies in L2 Japanese. Three pragmalinguistic features of indirectness described above were incorporated into short dialogues as conventional means of disagreement, and learners’ comprehension of indirect replies, as well as other indirect utterances, were compared across different proficiency levels. In addition, this study conducted retrospective verbal interviews to gain insight about the proficiency influence on the comprehension processes and reasons for difficulty involved in comprehension.

3. Research Questions The present study was guided by two research questions: (1) Are there differences among Japanese learners of different proficiency levels in their accurate comprehension ability of indirect meaning? (2) Are there differences among Japanese learners of different proficiency levels in their comprehension processing of indirect meaning?

4. Methodology 4.1. Participants The participants were 84 learners of Japanese as a foreign language (JFL learners) enrolled in a Japanese language program at a university in the U.S. Three different proficiency levels, based on the level and length of study, were formed: 30 second-semester Elementary Japanese students (EJ), 33 fourth-semester Intermediate Japanese students (IJ), and 21 sixthsemester Advanced Japanese students (AJ). The EJ group had 14 males and 16 females, ranging in age from 18 to 39 with an average age of 21.43. They averaged 1.0 years of formal Japanese study. None of them had lived in Japan previously. About 60% of the group were native English speakers, 23% native Chinese speakers, and the reminder Korean and Spanish. The IJ group had 14 males and 19 females, ranging in age from 18 to 26 with an average age of 21.06. They averaged 2.4 years of formal Japanese study.

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Only one student had lived in Japan previously. About 50% were native English speakers, 27% native Chinese, and the rest were Korean and Thai. The AJ group had 14 males and 7 females, ranging in age from 19 to 25 with an average age of 21.14. They averaged 3.6 years of formal Japanese study. About 70% were native English speakers, 10% native Chinese, and the rest Koreans. Four students had lived in Japan for one to four months.

4.2. Instrumentation: Japanese pragmatic listening test (J-PLT) The Japanese pragmatic listening test (J-PLT) was developed to assess JFL learners’ comprehension of indirect meaning. The test had 12 filler items and 36 experimental items. Each item contained a short dialogue in Japanese. At the end of the experimental dialogues, an indirect reply to the speaker’s question appeared. Each dialogue was followed by multiplechoice questions with four answer options. The question asked participants to choose the statement that is correct based on the content of the dialogue. In the experimental items, the correct statement was the target indirect meaning. The answer options were given in English, as there were various levels of Japanese reading ability across the learner groups. See Table 2 for sample items.2 The experimental items had three types: indirect refusals (12 items), conventional indirect opinions (12 items), and non-conventional indirect opinions (12 items). The conventional indirect opinions were the items that included the three target pragmalinguistic features described in the previous section (i.e., adverbs of reservation, indirect sentence endings, and questioning). Indirect refusals provided a reason for refusal without explicit negative markers such as ‘No’ or ‘I can’t.’ Non-conventional indirect opinions conveyed opinions indirectly without using conventional pragmalinguistic features. An example of this is saying ‘It’s difficult to write an essay in Japanese.’ as a negative review of the quality of an essay. Here, linguistic options for expressing the opinion are more idiosyncratic and freer than other conventional forms. When developing the J-PLT, a written survey was administered to 22 adult native Japanese speakers in Japan. The survey asked them to report the instances of indirect communication that they had experienced or observed. Thirty-five cases were reported, and the three types of linguistic forms used for the conventional indirect forms were identified in the cases and used to write items. The survey data was also used to write nonconventional indirect opinion items. Indirect refusal items were written

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based on previous studies (e.g., Taguchi 2005). The draft items were piloted with two native speakers with Japanese linguistics background. Both achieved 98% accuracy. Several items were revised based on their feedback. The length of the conversations was kept relatively similar to control impact on short-term memory. Most vocabulary and grammar were drawn from the Elementary Japanese course packet used in the target institution to reduce the extraneous effect of the learners’ vocabulary and grammar knowledge. The J-PLT was computerized using the software Revolution for Macintosh (Runtime Revolution Ltd. 1997) and piloted with 30 native speakers of Japanese (16 males and 14 females). The purpose of the pilot test was to confirm their comprehension accuracy. Native speaker comprehension was found nearly perfect in accuracy for all item categories. Two problematic items were revised based on the results, and the accuracy of those items was confirmed with the same native speaker participants. In the main study, the internal consistency reliability estimate, using Cronbach’s alpha, was 0.91 for the entire test. Table 2. Sample test items Indirect refusal Smith:

Satoo san genki desu ka? Ima jikan arimasu ka? (Ms. Sato, how are you? Do you have time now?) Sato: Ah Sumisu-san, doo shitan desu ka? (Oh, Mr. Smith, what’s up?) Smith: Ee onegai ga arun desu ga. Kore nihongo no essei nandesu ga, boku no nihongo chekku shite moraemasen ka? (Well, I have a favor to ask you. This is an essay I wrote for the Japanese class. Could you please check my Japanese?) Sato: Korekara compyutaa no jugyoo ga hachiji made arun desu. (I have a computer class from now till eight thirty.) Question: Which statement is correct? 1 The woman is going to check the man’s Japanese. 2 The woman is taking a Japanese computer class. 3 The woman can’t write Japanese essays. 4 The woman can’t check the man’s Japanese now. Conventional indirect opinion Smith: Satoo san konnichiwa. (Hello, Mr. Sato.)

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Table 2. (Continued) Sato: Smisu san konnichiwa. Haruyasumi wa doo deshita ka? Dokoka ni iki mashita ka? (Hello, Mr. Smith. How was your spring break? Did you go somewhere?) Smith: Ee boku wa Frorida no hoo ni isshuukan hodo iki mashita. Otooto to imooto ga irun desu. (Yes, I went to Florida for a week. I have a brother and sister there.) Sato: Aa soo desu ka. Yokatta desu ka, Frorida wa. (Oh, really. Was Florida good?) Smith: Boku wa Frorida wa amari. (For me, Florida is amari.) 1 The man didn’t like Florida very much. 2 The man enjoyed Florida very much. 3 The man doesn’t know much about Florida. 4 The man has an older sister in Florida. Non-conventional indirect opinion Sato:

Smisu san, genki desu ka? Ima nihongo no jugyoo desu ka? (Mr. Smith, how are you? Do you have a Japanese class now?) Smith: Hai kyoo mo kanji no testo ga arun desu. (Yes. I have another kanji test today.) Sato: Taihen desu ne. Tokorode senshuu no nihongo no clasu no prezenteeshon wa doodeshita ka? Yokatta desu ka? (That’s too bad. By the way, how was your presentation last week for the Japanese class? Did it go well?) Smith: Sore wa moo owatta kara iidesu yo. (It’s over, so that’s all right.) 1 The man’s presentation was not so good. 2 The man’s presentation was very interesting. 3 The man’s presentation is not over yet. 4 The man’s presentation and quiz are on the same day. Notes. The conversations were played in Japanese. Directions and option sentences were given in English. It is customary to use san when addressing someone.

4.3. Introspective verbal interviews Learners’ pragmatic comprehension process was investigated by introspective verbal reporting (asking learners to report their thoughts upon completing a task). After the J-PLT, a total of 15 participants (5 EJ, IJ, and

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AJ students) were selected randomly and asked to participate in the followup interviews with the researcher. Twelve items from the J-PLT (four from each item type) were administered randomly, and the learners were asked to choose the correct answer. The verbal reporting session started immediately after the learners chose answers. I asked questions such as: ‘Why did you choose the answer?’ and ‘What were you thinking when you chose the answer?’ The interview sessions, each lasting 20–30 minutes, were recorded with a digital voice recorder and transcribed for further analysis.

4.4. Data collection procedures J-PLT was administered using Macintosh computers in a computer lab on campus. After sitting in front of a computer, the learners put on headsets and read instructions on the screen in English. Before starting the test items, they practiced two items. Immediately following each conversation, a multiple-choice question appeared on the computer screen. They chose the most appropriate response by pressing the corresponding number on the keyboard. Once they chose the answer, the computer automatically took them to the next item. Approximately one week after the administration of J-PLT, a total of 15 students participated in follow-up introspective verbal interviews.

4.5. Data analysis The first research question asked the effect of general proficiency on learners’ comprehension ability of indirect meaning. Proficiency was operationalized as the level and length of Japanese study (i.e., EJ, IJ, and AJ), while comprehension ability was operationalized as accuracy of three item types (an interval scale between 0 and 12 for each item type). Distributions of the score data were inspected for the underlying assumptions of normality. Then, one-way ANOVA was used to see whether or not the groups differed in comprehension accuracy for each item type. The second research question addressed the processes involved in pragmatic comprehension across learner groups. Introspective verbal reports from 15 learners (five from each level) were transcribed and analyzed qualitatively for the instances of the proficiency effect on comprehension process and factors that caused comprehension difficulty.

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5. Results 5.1. Differences in comprehension accuracy across proficiency levels The first research question asked whether L2 proficiency affected comprehension ability of indirect meaning. Table 3 displays descriptive statistics of the accuracy scores for EJ, IJ, and AJ groups. There was a variation in accuracy scores across item types regardless of proficiency levels, Comprehension of indirect refusals was the easiest, followed by non-conventional indirect opinions. Conventional opinions were the most difficult to comprehend. Table 3. Descriptive statistics for comprehension scores Group EJ

K

Mean

SD

Min.

Max

Total Indirect refusals Conv. indirect opinions Non-conv. indirect opinions

36 12 12 12

20.57 8.50 5.90 6.17

6.02 2.46 2.25 2.26

9.00 4.00 2.00 1.00

32.00 12.00 11.00 10.00

36 12 12 12

27.79 10.70 8.03 9.06

4.72 1.51 2.23 1.87

14.00 5.00 2.00 5.00

34.00 12.00 11.00 12.00

IJ Total Indirect refusals Conv. indirect opinions Non-conv. indirect opinions

AJ Total 36 29.71 5.00 16.00 35.00 Indirect refusals 12 11.14 1.20 8.00 12.00 Conv. indirect opinions 12 8.71 2.51 4.00 12.00 Non-conv. indirect opinions 12 9.86 2.03 4.00 12.00 _____________________________________________________________ Notes. K = number of items. One point was given per correct answer.

The ANOVA results revealed significant differences in accuracy scores amongst the proficiency groups for all item types: F = 16.21, p < .05, for indirect refusals, F = 10.95, p < .05, for conventional indirect opinions, and F = 24.22, p < .05, for non-conventional indirect opinions. However, post hoc analyses using the Scheffe’s test revealed no significant difference in

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accuracy scores between IJ and AJ groups for all item types, while the comprehension in the EJ group was significantly lower than IJ and AJ groups.

5.2. Differences in comprehension process across proficiency levels Follow-up introspective verbal interviews were conducted to examine learners’ comprehension processes. A total of 180 verbal reports from 15 learners (12 items per learner; 15 learners in total) were examined qualitatively for possible proficiency effects on the process of pragmatic comprehension, and for the factors that made comprehension difficult.

5.2.1. Proficiency influence in the comprehension process The verbal reports revealed that the comprehension difficulty for the EJ group largely stemmed from their limited listening ability. In 31 out of 60 verbal reports, the EJ learners mentioned that they could not understand the words, phrases, or situations in the conversations. The number of such instances in the IJ and AJ groups was notably low, 9 and 6, respectively. There were also numerous instances in which the EJ group comprehended a phrase wrong and misunderstood the intended meaning. As shown below, the learner mistakenly heard ookii- kana (‘I wonder if it’s big’) as ookikunai (‘not big’), probably due to the phonological similarity between the two. It is also possible that she did not know the particle -kana that indicates uncertainty or reservation. (1) EJ learner #2 Item 19 (The woman asks the man about his opinion of her drawing, and he responds, Chotto kuruma ga ookii kana toiu kiga meaning ‘I got a feeling that the car might be a little too big.’) “They are talking about the picture. I’m not sure if they are in the library or there is a picture of library in the frame. I think I heard the picture is not that big, so I don’t think it’s negative. I don’t remember what he said at the end.”

Basic comprehension ability seemed to have played the most prominent role in pragmatic comprehension because the EJ learners did not have any problem with understanding the illocutionary force of indirect refusals

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when they could comprehend the target utterances. Below an EJ learner was able to recall and repeat the target refusal utterance word-for-word. (2) EJ learner #10 Item 37 (The man asks the woman if she wants to go to the movie, and she replies, Ashita bijinesu no testo ga arunde meaning ‘I have a business test tomorrow.’) “She has a business test tomorrow, so she can’t go to the movie. She said Ashita bujinesu no testo ga arunde.”

These analyses illustrate that literal comprehension is a prerequisite in L2 inferential process. Without understanding the meaning of the target sentences, it is difficult to draw inferences of the speaker’s intended meaning behind the sentences. Another instance of proficiency effect was observed in the more advanced learners’ explicit knowledge of pragmalinguistic rules. IJ and AJ learners were able to pick up specific phrases, expressions, and grammatical markings used to convey indirect meaning and verbally articulate the pragmatic functions of them, while such instances were rare in the EJ students’ verbal reports. A good example of such is the case of Doo deshoo ne, an expression of wondering used to show disagreement. While the EJ learners took it literally as a sincere question, several IJ and AJ students were able to point out the function of this rhetorical question as a polite disagreement: (3) IJ learner #15 Item 13 (The man asks the woman if it is a good idea to major in Japanese, and she replies, Mejiaa wa doo deshoo ne, meaning ‘I wonder about the major.’) “Doo deshoo. I remember we talked about it in the language and culture class. It shows reservation of opinion. In English we would say ‘I don’t know about it,’ if it’s negative. She doesn’t think Japanese major is a good idea.”

A similar example is the questioning strategy of Soo desu ka? that indicates disagreement. Six AJ and IJ students were able to distinguish the two usages of this expression: Soo desu ka with falling intonation showing

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acknowledgement and Soo desu ka with rising intonation showing disagreement. They picked up on the rising intonation of this expression and successfully comprehended the negative intention attached to it. In contrast, no EJ students were able to verbalize these rules. (4) AJ learner #5 Item 8 (The man says that Boston has better museums than New York, and the woman responds, Soo desu ka?) “She did not say she likes Boston museums better. Soo desu ka with falling intonation is ‘I see.’ With rising intonation it’s a question. I guess it’s a sort of disagreement here.”

Another example is the adverb chotto, a mitigating modifier of negative meaning. A greater number of IJ and AJ students were able to elaborate on the pragmalinguistic rule of chotto in Japanese communication. As shown below, the IJ learner distinguished the literal meaning of chotto (‘a little’) from the conventional, negative implication that this lexical item conveys, and used the knowledge to draw inferences. (5) IJ learner #13 Item 24 (The man asks the woman if she wants to stay for the dinner, and she responds, Chotto osoinde (meaning ‘It’s a bit late so.’) “Chotto is polite refusal. I think I learned it from my teachers. Whenever I say something not right, they say Ma chotto in class. So it’s not negative, but it’s polite negative. It’s not like I really disagree with you, but it’s more like ‘well’ to me, chotto is ‘well’ in English. It’s the same like, ‘Do you like this picture?’ and you say, ‘Well.’ It’s a polite way to say it’s not so good, but saying it nicely. Chotto is supposed to be ‘a little,’ so I picked that up when people say things like that, or when sensei says, Chotto . . . kamo shirenai ne, meaning ‘I don’t know about that.’ So I picked that up from her.”

5.2.2. Difficulty areas in the comprehension process Interestingly, although IJ and AJ earners tended to notice pragmalinguistic features and were able to explain their functions, there were cases where they over-interpreted the negative connotation of verb + shimau, and as a result, they were confused with the meaning of an utterance that included

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the shimau expression even when it conveyed positive intention. Shimau is an auxiliary verb used with the te-form of a verb and indicates the completion of an action (e.g., Tabete shimau meaning ‘I have eaten.’) (Makino and Tsutsui 2004). Depending on the context, it also implies the agent’s regret over something that he or she should not have done. This usage of regret was introduced in the EJ textbook, so all three levels of learners were familiar with this pragmatic usage. In this study, more IJ and AJ students were bound to the meaning of regret in -shimau. As a result, it ironically caused comprehension difficulty in a context where no such negative meaning was attached to this auxiliary verb: (6) IJ learner #15 Item 16 (The man asks the woman if she watched the TV show last night, and she responds, Owari made waratte shimaimashita, meaning ‘I laughed till the end.’) “I don’t know if it was a good laughter or bad laughter, because shimau, Doesn’t it indicate regret? . . . I picked up shimau, and that’s why I’m confused . . . I think I learned it in the elementary level. Nonde shimatta, ‘I drank all of it.’ (in the textbook dialogue) But I’ve heard it in non-negative meaning and I don’t know if it’s rare. She didn’t sound upset, but I’m not sure.”

Two AJ learners, on the other hand, demonstrated their knowledge that the implication of regret related to shimau is context-dependent and is not always negative. (7) AJ learner #8 “She said -shimatta, but it’s a kind of joke. It’s the same with waratta (‘I laughed.’).”

Another conventional, pragmalinguistic feature that was difficult for learners of all levels was the quantifier adverb doomo ‘in all ways’ that conveys negative implication. This adverb is similar in usage with amari ‘not very’ and chotto ‘a little’, and functions as a mitigating device when expressing reservations or negative feelings. Only one AJ learner reported the pragmatic function of the use of this adverb. Due to the phonological similarity, several learners confused it with doo omou ‘how I think’, with doo as meaning ‘how’ and omou as meaning ‘think.’ Still, more IJ and AJ were able to draw negative inference of the target utterance by using the speaker’s hesitant intonation as a cue:

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(8) AJ learner #4 Item 23 (The woman asks the man if he likes the teacher in the business class, and he replies, Ano sensei wa doomo, meaning ‘That teacher is not very.’) “He doesn’t like the teacher, but he doesn’t want to speak ill of him. He wants to convey negative feeling about the teacher. . . . She said Doo omou kana (‘I don’t know what I think’). The tone sounded hesitant.”

Another factor that caused comprehension difficulty was a lack of cultural knowledge. In item 19, the woman asks the man how he liked the party, and he replies, nomi sugite shimai mashita yo (‘I drank too much.’). The focal question was whether or not the man enjoyed the party. While 100% of native speakers of Japanese (n=30) chose the correct statement (‘The man enjoyed the party.’) at the pilot test, only 30% of the JSL learners got this item right. In the verbal reports, nine learners wondered whether drinking too much is a good thing or a bad thing, usually by referring to their own experiences: (9) Item 10 AJ learner #9 “It depends on individuals if drinking too much is enjoyable or not enjoyable. For me, too much drinking is not enjoyable.”

The excerpt (10) below, on the other hand, illustrates the learner’s understanding of the social function of drinking in Japan and how it is used to maintain favorable relationships. In her explanation, the learner used the phrase ‘nomi-nu-cation,’ which is a Japanese English term that combines the Japanese verb nomu ‘to drink’ and English noun ‘communication.’ The phrase indicates that in Japan communication often takes place in the context of drinking. (10) Item 10 IJ learner #15 “I don’t know what it means when we drink too much. In America, I don’t drink, but if you drink too much it’s not fun because you’re intoxicated, but I know about a common drinking practice in Japan. ‘Nomi-nu-cation?’”

In summary, qualitative analyses of verbal reports revealed individual differences during the task of inferencing. Learners of different proficiency levels faced different challenges. Less proficient learners were more bound to lower-level comprehension processes (i.e., utterance-level comprehension), and their limited understanding of the linguistic

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information often lead to the comprehension difficulty of speaker’s force behind the utterances. More proficient learners, on the other hand, were skilled enough to comprehend linguistic cues, but not all pragmalinguistic features were familiar to them. Nonetheless, proficiency advantage was evident in their increasing level of analytical ability of pragmalinguistic features, as exemplified in their explicit mention and explanation of pragmatic rules in the verbal reports.

6. Discussion An important aspect of communicative competence in Japanese involves knowledge of pragmalinguistic conventions and their sociopragmatic norms, as well as the ability to use the knowledge to interpret speakers’ intentions. The present study examined this ability among college students enrolled in the elementary, intermediate, and advanced Japanese courses. Findings revealed a distinct relationship between general proficiency (determined by level and length of study) and accurate comprehension of implicit, non-literal utterances. Regardless of the degree of conventionality, or the difficulty levels across item types, higher proficiency learners were often better in comprehending implied meaning than lower proficiency learners. However, the proficiency difference was observed only between EJ and the other two levels (IJ and AJ) with no comparison between the intermediate and advanced levels. The findings imply that, once learners have reached the threshold level of linguistic ability, differences in the inferential ability might not be so large across adjacent levels of proficiency. Once the linguistic part of the challenge is controlled, learners seem to be able to transfer their L1-based inferential skill to L2, and successfully seek relevance of the indirect information. This interpretation, in part, explains why indirect refusals were the easiest to comprehend. Both in Japanese and English, giving a reason for refusal is a common strategy. Since linguistic and non-linguistic conventions encoded in indirect refusals are more routinized and familiar to L2 learners, comprehension of indirect refusals is less demanding because it does not require extensive inferencing. Learners can understand the refusal intention based on the shared conventions of language use, without processing a great number of contextual cues. In this study, because the pragmatic aspect of refusal comprehension was relatively easy to handle, what differentiated among the three JFL groups was general listening ability. Since the vocabulary, grammar, speed, and the length of

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conversation in the J-PLT was adjusted to the EJ level, the IJ and AJ learners did not differ largely in their performance, given that both groups had above the EJ level of listening ability. What remained difficult for the IJ and AJ learners was the comprehension of the other two item types (conventional and nonconventional indirect opinions). Although their comprehension was better than that of EJ learners, suggesting proficiency advantage, they were not fully accurate in their comprehension of these two item types. The difficulty seemed to stem from the lack of knowledge of some pragmalinguistic features encoded in the conventional indirect opinions. In this study, conventionality was encoded through specific lexical and grammatical forms, such as adverbs of negative implications (e.g., chotto) and indirect sentence endings (e.g., N/Adj/V + kana to iu kiga). These conventional features are considered to assist comprehension because they directly mark meaning and are understood almost as formulaic (Sperber and Wilson 1995; Verschueren 1999). When implicatures convey conventional meaning - that is, when speaker intentions are linguistically coded or embedded within predictable patterns of discourse - the listener may not attend to many contextual cues, consequently reducing the processing effort. However, the learners in this study had the most difficulty when comprehending conventional opinions, which revealed their lack of knowledge of some of those conventional forms and sociocultural norms behind the forms. As revealed in the introspective verbal reports, the pragmalinguistic forms that the IJ and AJ learners were not familiar with included quantifying adverbs (i.e., doomo) and the questioning strategy for disagreement (e.g., Saying Doo deshou ne or ‘Is that so?’ to express disagreement), which was sometimes mistaken as a sincere question. Although the learners relied on other strategies (e.g., tone of voice) to compensate for the lack of pragmalinguistic knowledge, unfamiliarity of the forms seemed to have posed a challenge during comprehension. Similarly, the auxiliary verb of -shimau caused confusion among several learners because they did not have firm-grounded knowledge about the sociopragmatic usage of this form. Although they were aware of a typical implication of this grammatical form (i.e., expression of regret), they did not know that the function is context-dependent and changes across situations. Similar to the conventional opinions, this study found non-conventional opinions to be more difficult than refusals, and this tendency was similar

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across proficiency levels. Different from conventional indirect opinions, non-conventional items used in this study did not involve any pragmalinguistic markers at lexical and syntactic levels. A greater processing effort was required when comprehending these implicatures because meaning was not attached to a specific linguistic expression, nor was it stable across instances of language use or users. Since these implicatures involved an open set of interpretations, the learners had to go through a series of inferential stages. They had to process a large number of contextual cues, both in a bottom-up and top-down manner. They also had to access a wide range of possible interpretations and compare the interpretations, and finally select the most plausible interpretation. The verbal protocols revealed a variety of contextual cues used by the learners in comprehension, including para-linguistic cues (e.g., intonation, hesitation), experiences and observations, and gained cultural knowledge from textbooks and other sources. Some of those cues (e.g., tone of voice) were effective in assisting learners to understand the intention that they could not comprehend. Some cues, however, did not assist comprehension. For example, in item 19 (‘I drank too much.’), the strategy of relying on ones’ own experience yielded a split result; six learners thought that the utterance conveyed positive meaning (the correct meaning), while nine mentioned negative connotation, basing their decision on the norm from their own culture. Misinterpretation occurred when the social practice encoded in the target utterance was culture-specific and thus required another level of cultural understanding. These findings reinforce the notion that the construct of pragmatic competence is in part sociocultural in nature. Sociocultural functions are often difficult to perform in L2 because the mappings of forms, functions, and contexts are culture specific and vary across languages. Sociopragmatic norms are not salient or directly observable for L2 learners in a foreign language environment, making it difficult to understand cultural perceptions of particular social behaviors. The present findings provided an example of such a case and emphasized that the knowledge of social conventions (how social behavior is structured in a society) forms an important aspect of L2 pragmatic learning.

7. Limitations of the study and implications for future research This study is limited because of its small sample size, and moreover, because of the mixed L1 backgrounds of the participant group (L1 English,

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Chinese, Koreans, Spanish and Thai). Since each proficiency group did not have a sizable number of same L1 groups, it was impossible to statistically examine comprehension differences across different L1s. Future research should address this issue because different native language background is likely to affect comprehension of pragmatic meaning in a second language, as shown in previous studies (e.g., Bouton 1994). In addition, although this study used the level and length of Japanese study as an indicator of proficiency, an independent proficiency measure in the form of standardized exams or teachers’ ratings will be useful to precisely assess the effect of proficiency on comprehension. Another limitation of this study relates to instrument development. The listening instrument was developed based on previous literature and selfreport data from Japanese native speaker informants. Because self-report data does not truly represent the actual behavior of the individuals, it should be combined with additional methods such as observation and field notes to enhance the authenticity and validity of the items (Hagiwara, Chapter 9, this volume).

8. Implications for pragmatic teaching The present study offers several pedagogical implications. First, the clear proficiency advantage in the inferential comprehension suggests that basic listening skill is an important area to attend in a classroom. Pragmatic comprehension involves understanding various linguistic and non-linguistic cues, and using them as evidence toward the correct interpretation of speaker’s intention. Without understanding the key words involved in the target utterance, comprehending the force behind the utterance is extremely difficult, if not impossible. Listening skills need to be trained in a classroom so that learners can easily apply their L1-based inferential mechanisms to L2 comprehension. This study adapted three target pragmalinguistic features of indirect communication (adverbs of reservation, expressions of wondering, and indirect sentence endings). Among them, the first two were found particularly troublesome even for the higher-level learners and thus require attention in the classroom. In addition, it should be noted that even among the items of the same function, some were more salient for learners than others. For example, more learners were aware of the function of the adverb chotto, but very few students knew the pragmatic meaning of the adverb doomo, and thus deserve attention in class. Similarly, instructors should

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pay attention to classroom materials for the type of pragmatic input available to learners. It is possible that the adverb chotto is frequent over different discourse contexts, while the adverb doomo appears in a restricted usage (e.g., in doomo arigato, meaning ‘Thank you very much.’). Because this study incorporated only a few pragmatic features, future research should explore a range of pragmalinguistic features that need to be addressed in order to develop learners’ competence in indirect communication. Analysis of textbook dialogues and naturalistic conversation is a promising method in that direction. When teaching less conventional, idiosyncratic implicatures (e.g., nonconventional opinions), the instructional focus should be placed on the overall analysis of linguistic and contextual features used to derive intended meaning. Global listening strategies can be taught to the students by having them pay attention to para-linguistic cues (e.g., intonation, tone of voice, pause length) and background knowledge. Personal experience is another useful resource to draw on. However, because certain experiences are considered culture-specific, different ways to interpret particular social practice need to be addressed in instruction. Such practice will help exercise students’ inferential skills, and at the same time it will promote their awareness of sociocultural norms and rules that underlie certain social practice. Finally, this study controlled the amount and difficulty level of input by using artificially created dialogues. In more flexible instructional settings, however, authentic conversations from a variety of sources (e.g., movies, dramas, naturalistic dialogues) can be brought to the class so that students can analyze patterns of communication and situational variables that contribute the patterns. For instance, the previous literature argued that, compared with other cultures, Japanese culture has a stronger distinction between uchi ‘inside’ and soto ‘outside’, which consequently affect communication pattern. This cultural generalization can be discussed critically in class by looking at conversation excerpts from uchi and soto members (e.g., family vs. strangers) for the instances of direct and indirect communication. Situational variables such as setting, topic, interlocutor relationship, and mode of communication can be cross-examined with the linguistic forms so that students can infer what levels of indirectness is required in what situations, and how they are performed linguistically.

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9. Conclusion An important aspect of pragmatic competence in Japanese involves the knowledge of pragmalinguistic forms and sociopragmatic norms, as well as the ability to use the knowledge to interpret speakers’ intentions. Although pragmalinguistic features appear routinely in communication, L2 learners may not have abundant opportunities to observe native speaker patterns and practice the patterns in authentic interaction. Because classroom experience shapes much of their pragmatic learning in a foreign language context, an indispensable part of instructors’ jobs are to ensure that pragmatic learning comprises part of language learning. More future research is needed to expand our understanding of pragmalinguistic forms and sociopragmatic norms that govern indirectness in Japanese communication that could inform our classroom instruction.

Notes 1. A portion of the data reported here appeared in Taguchi (2008c). 2. Some of the linguistic forms used in the instrument are multi-functional in that their meanings vary according to paralinguistic features (e.g., intonation) and conversational contexts. For example, intonation plays a heavy role in disambiguating So desu ka? It signals disagreement with raising intonation, but it functions as mere confirmation with falling intonation. The adverb chotto indicates reservation or disagreement in an incomplete sentence such as Ano hito wa chotto (That person is.). However, it conveys the literal meaning “a little” in a complete sentence such as Kore wa chotto muzukashii (This is a little difficult.). Hence, while developing the instrument, great care was taken to ensure that the items convey the intended meaning of negative opinions. Accuracy in interpretation of the intended meaning was confirmed in the pilot study with 30 native speakers.

References Barnlund, Dean 1989 Communicative Styles of Japanese and Americans. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth publishers.

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Bouton, Larry 1992 The interpretation of implicature in English by NNS: Does it come automatically without being explicitly taught? In: Larry Bouton (ed.), Pragmatics and Language Learning Monograph Series vol. 5, 64–77. Urbana-Champagne, IL: University of Illinois at UrbanaChampagne. 1994 Can NNS skill in interpreting implicature in American English be improved through explicit instruction?: A pilot study. In: Larry Bouton (ed.), Pragmatics and Language Learning Monograph Series vol. 5, 88–108. Urbana-Champagne, IL: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne. Clancy, Patricia 1986 The acquisition of communicative style in Japanese. In Bambi Schieffelin and Elinor Ochs (eds.), Language Socialization Across Cultures, 213–250. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cook, Misty and Tony Liddicoat 2002 The development of comprehension in interlanguage pragmatics: The case of request strategies in English. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 25: 19–39. Davies, Roger and Osamu Ikeno 2002 The Japanese Mind. Tokyo: Tuttle Publishing. Furukawa, Koji 2001 American JSL learners’ strategies in stating opinions. Unpublished MA thesis. University of Oregon. Garcia, Paula 2004 Developmental differences in speech act recognition: A pragmatic awareness study. Language Awareness 13: 96–115. Gudykunst, William and Tsukasa Nishida 1993 Interpersonal and intergroup communication in Japan and the United States. In: William Gudykunst (ed.), Communication in Japan and the United States, 149–214. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Imai, Masaaki 1981 Sixteen Ways to Avoid Saying No. Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Shinbun. Klopf, Donald 1991 Japanese communication practices: Recent comparative research. Communication Quarterly 39: 130–143. Koike, Dale 1996 Transfer of pragmatic competence and suggestions in Spanish foreign language learning. In: Susan Gass and Joyce Neu (eds.), Speech Acts Across Cultures: Challenges to Communication in a Second Language, 257–281. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

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Kusakabe, Madoka 1994 Japanese argumentation: A new perspective. Unpublished MA thesis. University of Oregon. Makino, Shoichi and Michio Tsutsui 2004 A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar. Tokyo: The Japan Times. Maynard, Senko 1997 Japanese Communication: Language and Thought in Context. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Maynard, Senko 1998 Principles of Japanese Discourse: A Handbook. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Miike, Yoshitaka 2003 Japanese enryo-sasshi communication and the psychology of amae: Reconsideration and reconceptualization. Keio Communication Review 25: 93–115. Miller, Laura 1994 Japanese and American indirectness. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 5: 37–55. Mizutani, Nobuko 1985 Nichibei Hikaku Hanashikotoba no Bunpoo [Japanese-U.S. comparison: Spoken grammar]. Tokyo: Kuroshio. Mizutani, Osamu 1981 Japanese: The Spoken Language in Japanese Life. Tokyo: Japan Times. Mizutani, Osamu and Nobuko Mizutani 1987 How to be Polite in Japanese. Tokyo: Japan Times. 1988 Gaikoku Jin no Gimon ni Kotaeru Nihongo Nooto 1 [Japanese notebook for foreigners’ questions 1]. Tokyo: Japan Times. Okazaki, Shoko 1993 Stating opinions in Japanese: listener-dependent strategies. In: Alatis James (ed.), Strategic Interaction and Japanese Acquisition, 69–95. Washington: Georgetown University Press. Röver, Carston 2005 Testing EFL Pragmatics. Frankfurt: Gunter Narr. Runtime revolution Ltd., author 1997 Scotland, UK: Runtime Revolution Ltd. Sperber, Dan and Dan Wilson 1991 Loose talk. In: Steven Davis (ed.), Pragmatics: A Reader, 540–550. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sperber, Dan and Dan Wilson 1995 Relevance: Communication and Cognition. 2d ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Taguchi, Naoko 2002 An application of relevance theory to the analysis of L2 interpretation processes: The comprehension of indirect replies. International Review of Applied Linguistics 40: 151–176. 2005 Comprehending implied meaning in English as a second language. Modern Language Journal 89: 543–562. 2007 Development of speed and accuracy in pragmatic comprehension of English as a foreign language. TESOL Quarterly 41: 313–338. 2008a Cognition, language contact, and development of pragmatic comprehension in a study-abroad context. Language Learning 58: 33–71. 2008b The role of learning environment in the development of pragmatic comprehension: A comparison of gains between EFL and ESL learners. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 30: 423–452 2008c Pragmatic comprehension in Japanese as a foreign language. Modern Language Journal 92: 558–576. Takahashi, Satomi and Roitblat, Herbert 1994 Comprehension process of second language indirect requests. Applied Psycholinguistics 15: 475–506. Thomas, Jenny 1983 Cross-cultural pragmatic failure. Applied Linguistics 4: 91–109. Verschueren, Jef 1999 Understanding Pragmatics. London: Arnold.

Blended learning for Japanese reactive tokens: Effects of computer-led, instructor-led, and peerbased instruction Takafumi Utashiro and Goh Kawai Abstract Reactive tokens (i.e., RTs, often called “back-channeling,” or aizuchi) are indispensable in Japanese face-to-face interaction, and thus merit explicit instruction. Yet, little research has proposed or evaluated specific instructional courseware that teaches these important pragmatic features. To fill this gap, the present study designed and developed an instructional courseware to teach RTs. We first classified target RTs and designed an instructional syllabus that incorporated them. The syllabus was then ® implemented through DiscourseWare , an original Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) courseware package designed to teach RTs, combined with more traditional instructor-led and peer-based instruction. We then conducted an experiment to evaluate the effectiveness of the instruction. Results suggest that the instruction was effective in developing learners’ ability to recognize and produce RTs appropriately in naturalistic conversation.

1. Introduction In conversation, listeners do not simply receive the speaker’s message; they actively contribute to the conversation by producing short verbal and nonverbal responses. The responses are called back-channeling, aizuchi, or reactive tokens (RTs). By using them, listeners signal the speaker that they are attentive and supportive of his/her message. RTs are universal features of interaction, but their forms and use differ considerably across languages and cultures (Clancy et al. 1996; Maynard 1986; Miller 1991). Previous research found that Japanese speakers use RTs quite frequently compared with other language groups (e.g., LoCastro 1987; Maynard 1993; White 1989). For instance, Maynard (1993) reported that Japanese native speakers used twice as many audio and visual RTs than English native speakers in

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conversation. Ryu (1987), Yang (1999), and Clancy et al. (1996) also showed that RTs are more frequent in Japanese conversation than in Chinese conversation. In addition to frequency, timing of RTs also exhibits specific characteristic in Japanese conversation. Kim (1994) and Miller (1991) found that Japanese RTs overlap more often with interlocutor’s utterances than in Korean and English conversations. In addition, Miller (1991) found that Japanese native speakers tend to use the same RTs repeatedly, while English native speakers tend to use a variety of RTs. A challenge for second/foreign language learners of Japanese (JSL/JFL) is to master those culture-specific forms of RTs and timing of their usage in realtime conversation. Because the mastery of Japanese RTs does not come easily (e.g., Mukai 1999), explicit instruction is beneficial in facilitating the mastery (Saita 2001). One promising venue of such instruction is CALL. This study examined the effect of CALL-based instruction, combined with other traditional classroom instruction, on the learning of Japanese RTs. Participants were 24 learners of Japanese at intermediate and advanced levels. They received a combination of human-led and computerdelivered instruction on different types of RTs over a period of two weeks. The instruction promoted a “blended learning experience,” by sequencing learning according to three distinct stages: self-paced, instructor-led and peer-based learning. During the instruction, the learners watched video clips of native speaker conversations, identified the RTs in the conversations and practiced them, and analyzed their use. The conversations included different situational variables (e.g., settings, interlocutor relationships, conversation topics) to highlight appropriate usage of RTs in context. Learning outcome was measured through a series of recognition and productive tasks. The learners demonstrated significant gains in the recognition tasks at all stages. They also demonstrated significant improvement in the production tasks after the self-paced and teacher-led learning stages, and the gains were retained at a delayed posttest administered one week after the instruction. Findings suggest positive influence of explicit instruction in the use of RTs and potential benefit of the blended-learning experience that combines classroom-based and CALL-based instruction for pragmatic learning.

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2. Background Over the last decade CALL as a field has grown rapidly by adapting a variety of recent technologies such as speech processing (e.g., speech recognition, audio-visual speech synthesis), mobile devices (e.g., PDAs, cell phones, handheld game machines, portable media players), interactive telecommunication (e.g., video conferencing, chat, interactive web sites), and natural language processing. In the field of Japanese language pedagogy, recent development of CALL has been concentrated on the use of NLP (i.e., natural language parsing via morpho-syntactic analyses), mainly in the areas of reading and writing instruction. The following overview of current CALL systems in Japanese, however, suggests the potential use of CALL in pragmatic teaching. One of the well-known CALL systems developed recently is called Robo-Sensei (“robot teacher”) (Nagata 2008). Robo-Sensei is a web-based system for writing instruction. In Robo-Sensei, students of Japanese write unconstrained sentences, which are then analyzed and commented on by the automated system. Robo-Sensei recognizes synonyms and word order, and can analyze a wide range of Japanese input and offer feedback. Yoshihashi, Fu, and Nishina’s (2007) program is another example of CALL-based instruction. They developed a computerized tool that assists writing instruction in Japanese. Taking learners’ proficiency levels into consideration, the system exposes learners to a sizable number of sentences that are adjusted to their comprehension abilities. The sentences are taken from a corpus of newspaper articles and literature works. Lexical items and syntactical structures in the corpus are rated for their estimated difficulty levels based on the degree of parsing complexity involved. The system automatically finds sentences at the appropriate level of complexity according to learners’ skill levels. Kawamura (2000), on the other hand, developed a computerized reading support system called Reading Tutor in Japanese. Learners can paste sentences into Reading Tutor, and the tutor assists learners’ comprehension of the sentences by displaying pronunciation and meaning of individual words. The system has a database of reading materials suitable for learners at novice and intermediate levels (Kawamura and Kitamura 2001). Similar to Reading Tutor, the program Asunaro developed by Nishina et al. (2003) parses sentences in Japanese texts and displays pronunciation, meaning and syntactic structures of individual sentences. As described above, a growing number of CALL programs and courseware have been adapted to Japanese language instruction, mainly

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owing to the recent work of NLP. However, very little work has been done in adapting NLP to the analysis of sociolinguistic and pragmatic aspects of language use, consequently limiting the development of CALL materials to reading and writing instructions. CALL engineers should adapt findings from interlanguage pragmatics research in order to identify important target pragmatic features and develop CALL instructional materials accordingly. One can find such an example in Japanese reactive tokens (RTs). Previous research on Japanese RTs showed that, as their general proficiency develops, JSL/JFL learners generally increase the types and tokens of the RTs that they can produce (Kubota 2000; Murata 2000). Kubota (2000), for instance, analyzed the use of RTs by Japanese learners (5 novice and 5 advanced) and Japanese college students (6 men and 6 women), who had a conversation for 10 minutes with Japanese native speakers they had just met. Frequency, forms and production timing of RTs were analyzed. Frequency of non-verbal RTs (e.g., head movements) and verbal RTs combined was similar between novice and advanced learners. However, frequency of verbal RTs alone was the smallest for the novice group and the largest for the native speaker group (novice 59.0%, advanced 81.6%, and native 78.9%). Hence, compared with novice learners, RT usage of advanced learners was closer to that of native speakers. Murata (2000) analyzed conversations among Japanese learners of highnovice, low- and mid-intermediate, and advanced proficiency levels. Two types of conversations between the researcher and learners were analyzed: 30-minute, unconstrained-topic conversations, and 7-minute telephone conversations about apartment hunting. Murata found that RTs depicting emotion and attitude were used most often by advanced learners, although the use of such RTs did not necessarily increase in response to proficiency. Other studies showed that, even at advanced-level, learners’ use of RTs did not conform to native speaker usage. Advanced learners continued to err in repetition, paraphrasing, and completion of utterances in conversation (Mukai 1999; Watanabe 1994; Yang 2001). Proficiency and exposure to the target language alone are insufficient in acquiring the knowledge and functions of the RTs and promoting the productive use of the RTs (Yoshimoto 2001). Mukai’s (1999) study, for instance, compared the use of RTs in face-to-face casual conversations between a learner and a native speaker, as well as between two native speakers. Participants were 5 advanced learners of Japanese (all native speakers of English) and 15 Japanese native speakers. Although learners produced RTs as often as native speakers, they overused acknowledgement RTs, and under-used attitude-depicting RTs. These findings should inform CALL system

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designers so that they can identify the precise challenges that learners of Japanese face with RTs and design effective instructional systems that help overcome such challenges. Over the last few decades researchers and practitioners have emphasized the need for formal, explicit instruction of RTs (Mizutani 1988). Yet, there has been little research and practice in actual instruction and material development, let alone empirical evaluation of the instruction. Published textbooks typically spare a few pages to explain RTs and provide some simple, structured exercises (Tomisaka 2005), and RTs are seldom taught in a format of systematic curriculum or courseware. In addition, although the interactive nature of CALL is potentially useful for teaching RTs that involve a variety of verbal and non-verbal features (e.g., aizuchi, repetition, paraphrase and nodding), previous research has rarely adapted CALL to the teaching of RTs. One reason for this neglected effort might be the difficulty of material development. Presenting naturally-occurring RTs with audio-visual output is challenging for several reasons. First, showing target RTs as they occur in real-life conversation requires training of Japanese native speakers to act out the target RTs as naturally as possible. They have to memorize the timing, pitch, and prosody of target RTs in conjunction with conversation scripts, in order to reproduce them as naturally as possible. Another challenge is locating appropriate materials. Extracting target RTs from TV dramas and movies is not easy because such materials are often too complicated and confounded by background music, noise and other sound effects. They are also embedded in a context that is difficult to understand, and do not always display non-verbal features (e.g., facial expressions) that accompany RTs. Despite these challenges, there are some studies that implemented CALL in teaching RTs. For example, Ward et al. (2007) developed a computer system in which L2 learners of Arabic practiced different types of RTs by producing them with pre-recorded utterances. The system analyzes the timing and frequency of the RTs produced by the learners, and provides corrective feedback. Another example is Saita et al.’s (2003) research - the only study that dealt with Japanese RTs. Saita’s system displays RTs occurring in natural conversation and explains how their meanings vary according to prosodic patterns. Their system includes a practice section where learners produce RTs during video playback. Because their system does not have automatic speech recognition, the students’ productions are not evaluated. Another limitation of Saita et al.’s research is that they did

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not develop an instructional syllabus nor evaluate the effectiveness of their program on the learning of RTs. Given the dearth of systematic instructional materials of Japanese RTs, in this paper, we propose a CALL environment that aims to enhance JSL/JFL learners’ understanding of the forms and functions of RTs, as well as to help develop their ability to use RTs in a spontaneous conversation. Our teaching materials used DiscourseWare, an original CALL system to teach RTs. The remainder of this paper describes the design of the DiscourseWare and evaluates its effectiveness in the learning of Japanese RTs, when combined with traditional, classroom-based instruction methods.

3. Instructional syllabus When designing a courseware, we considered three components of learning: (1) the target instruction materials (i.e., forms and functions of RTs), (2) the learner proficiency (i.e., proficiency levels and skills to be acquired across levels) and (3) delivery of instruction (i.e., a medium through which instruction is given, for instance, instructors, peers, and technology). The sections below explain each component in detail. 3.1. Target instruction materials According to Liu (2003), RTs have six categories: repetition; paraphrases (reinforcements); collaborative finishes (predictive completions); laughter; head movements (nods); and aizuchi. Horiguchi (1988) proposed the term aizuchi-shi instead of aizuchi. In the present study, we adopted all these categories except aizuchi-shi, which we consider as a form of backchannel. In terms of non-verbal RTs, Kendon (1977) pointed out the importance of gaze direction in organizing face-to-face interaction. Maynard (1993) also noted that head movements control conversation. Concerning the relationship between RTs and social settings, Miyazaki (2007) identified a group of RTs that occur in formal and informal conversations. When classifying the RTs in this study, we draw on these terminologies and categorizations established in the previous studies. Table 1 displays the classifications of the target RTs incorporated into the instructional syllabus. The classification was based on three criteria: (1) RT categories are mutually exclusive, (2) RTs include both verbal and non-

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verbal RTs, and (3) RTs are sequenced according to their familiarity, difficulty and politeness/formality levels. These criteria were applied because (1) mutually exclusive classification of language forms clarify educational goals, (2) non-verbal RTs such as nodding play an important role in interaction (Maynard 1987), and (3) RTs are sensitive to situational factors (e.g., relationship among interlocutors, setting, and formality of conversation) (Miyazaki 2007). Table 1. Reactive token categories types

forms back channel

monosyllabic polysyllabic

repetition linguistic paraphrase

verbal RTs

predictive completion

paralinguistic

laughter inhalation exhalation tongue-click throat-clear

Gaze nonverbal RTs

head movement (e.g. nod) facial expression shoulder movement hand movement

with sound without sound

examples ha,

so,

eeh,

ahh,

mm,

un

naruhodo, honto, hai, uso, soudesuka A: kare ha sushi ga daisuki nandeshoune．(He likes sushi very much, doesn’t he?) B: deshoune．(doesn’t he?) A: kare ha gakkoude hataraite rundakedo. (He works at a school and…) B: sensei． (teacher) A: watashi no shusshinn ha Hokkaido nandakedo kanojono shusshinmo (I was born and raised in Hokkaido and she was also…) B: Hokkaido (Hokkaido) haha, hehe, fufu shuu fuu chi-chi mm-hh-mm gazing at the primary speaker or other conversation participants shaking head vertically and horizontally smiles, frowns raising shoulders, holding arms tapping desks, clicking fingers, clapping hands, holding hands cupping chin in hand, covering mouth with hand, scratching head, thumbs-up

Table 2 displays examples of RTs categorized by politeness and formality levels, based on Kubota (2000). Polite and formal RTs include hai, haa, ee, soudesuka (‘Yes, I understand,’ or ‘I see.’), and RTs of neutral level of politeness and formality include nn, aa, sou. Informal, less polite equivalents include mm, oh, honto, uso, and maji. We decided to include

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both formal and informal RTs in the syllabus because they occur in conversation frequently, and misusing them may lead to a serious pragmatic failure (e.g., using informal RTs to a supervisor). Extending Kubota’s classifications, we added some non-verbal RTs. Table 2. RTs according to politeness and formality levels formality/politeness High Low

RT forms verbal hai, eeh, soudesuka mm, oh, honto, uso, maji, hee

non-verbal smiling, nodding thumbs-up

3.2. Learner proficiency Table 3 displays the instructional syllabus developed in this study. When deciding on the sequence of the RTs, we considered a variety of factors, including RT types, learner proficiency, and formality and difficulty levels of individual RTs. The five principles below served as guidelines. Criteria (3), (4), and (5) determined the order and level of instruction: (1) RTs were divided into six categories: back-channeling, repetition, paraphrasing, predictive completion and gestures (non-verbal expressions). (2) Learner proficiency had three levels: beginner, intermediate and advanced, all based on the number of formal instruction hours (i.e., 300, 600, and 900 hours for beginning, intermediate and advanced level, respectively). These criteria followed the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) guidelines (Japan Educational Exchanges and Services 2007). (3) Different types of RTs were introduced according to learners’ proficiency levels. Beginner-level learners were considered ready for the RTs that involve universal gestures (e.g., nodding, shaking heads), while intermediate learners were considered ready for mastering appropriate timing of those gestures. Intermediate and advanced-level learners were expected to acquire RTs that require listening skills (e.g., repetition, paraphrasing). Advanced-level learners who have sufficient listening and speaking skills were considered ready for predictive completion RTs (i.e., predicting the speaker’s upcoming phrases and completing the speaker’s utterance by producing the phrases). Advanced-level learners

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were also considered ready for mastering prosody features (i.e., intonation patterns of RTs), as well as for using verbal and non-verbal RTs in a synchronized manner (i.e., coordinating gestures and verbal RTs). (4) RTs that occur frequently in naturalistic Japanese interaction received priority and were introduced from the beginner-level. Those frequent RTs were identified based on previous literature that analyzed face-to-face conversations in Japanese (e.g., Utashiro, Yanagisawa, and Akahori 2008). (5) RTs with high levels of politeness and formality were introduced from the beginner-level to conform to the order of pragmatic importance. Intermediate and advanced-level learners were taught production timing of the RTs and situational variations associated with individual RTs.

See Table 3 below for the simplified RT syllabus. The RTs in bold letters formed target RTs included in the experiment. objectives, and “I” refers to instruction method.

“O” in the table refers to

Table 3. RT Syllabus (simplified) RT types /proficiency

beginning

(RT) ee, soudesuka, hai, ahh (O) recognize and produce polite/formal, general-purpose RT forms backchannel (I) explanation of forms and functions of RTs by instructor and CALL materials, understanding conversation situation, fill-in-the-blank - withRT questions, and role plays. RT types /proficiency

beginning

intermediate (RT) naruhodo, mm, oh, soh, hee (O) comprehend and produce informal RT forms (I) explanation of forms and functions of RTs by instructor and CALL materials, understanding conversation situation, fill-in-the-blank-withRT questions, and role plays. intermediate

advanced (RT) eeh, ah, mm, soudesuka (O) comprehend and produce various lexical and prosodic RT forms (I) explanation of forms and functions of RTs by instructor and CALL materials, fillin-the-blank-with-RT questions, and role plays. advanced

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Table 3. (Continued) (RT) repetition (O) recognize and produce repetitions (I) explaining oral repetitions with videos, explanation of oral repetitions by instructor, fill-in-theblank-with-oral repetition questions, and role plays.

repetition

(RT) paraphrasing (O) recognize paraphrase (I) explanation of oral paraphrase by instructor with videos.

paraphrase

(RT) predictive completion (O) comprehend and produce predictive completion (I) explanation of usage of oral predictive completion with videos by instructor, fill-in-theblank-with-oralcompletion questions, and role plays.

predictive completion

gestures

(RT) paraphrasing (O) produce paraphrases (I) fill-in-the-blank with oral-paraphrase questions and role plays.

(RT) nodding (O) understand polite, general-purpose nodding (I) explanation of usage of nodding by instructor with videos.

(RT) timing and frequency of nodding (O) perform polite, general-purpose nodding at appropriate timing (I) explanation of usage of nodding by instructor with videos, practice of nodding at appropriate timing with videos.

(RT) nodding and RTs co-occurring nodding (O) understand and perform nodding combined with RTs in various contexts (I) explanation of usage of nodding and RTs by instructor with videos and practice of nodding and RTs at appropriate timing with videos.

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3.3. Delivery of instruction At the instruction stage, we arranged a blended learning experience that consisted of three learning phases: instructor-led learning, peer-based learning, and self-paced learning. The first two took place in a classroom with an instructor and peer classmates, while the self-paced learning was implemented individually with DiscourseWare. Instructor-led learning had four main stages: (1) review of self-paced learning, (2) video quizzes, (3) explanations of the RTs with examples, and (4) a paper-based fill-in-the-blank quiz. Learners watched video segments of short dialogues and listened to the instructor’s explanations about the RTs that appeared in the videos. While explaining the RTs, the instructor directed learners’ attention to the contextual features associated with the RTs (e.g., interlocutor relationships, settings and politeness levels) by asking questions such as “Who is talking to whom?” and “What is the conversation situation?” In the paper-based fill-in-the-blank quiz, learners were asked to select appropriate RTs according to the context of the dialogues. Peer-based learning, on the other hand, consisted of a series of role-plays. The instructor provided situational scenarios, and the learners in pairs took turns in the role of speaker and listener and performed role-plays using RTs. Self-paced learning was promoted through DiscourseWare for three purposes: (1) to help learners to understand conversational situations, (2) to teach learners forms and functions of RTs and (3) to engage learners with production practice of RTs. DiscourseWare first explained situational features such as settings, interlocutor relationships and topics. Then, the computer program explained various RTs depicted in video clips of conversations between Japanese native speakers. Finally, the program gave audio-visual fill-in-the-blank quizzes that assessed learners’ understanding of appropriate RTs in context. The learners watched a videotaped dialogue in which the speakers’ RTs were muted and masked. The learners were then asked to choose appropriate RTs for the muted part. Figure 1 presents a screenshot of the fill-in-the-blank quiz. The learners were allowed to listen to the video clips and four audio-recorded RT choices as often as they wanted by clicking icons on the computer screen. Figure 2 is a screenshot of the video clip. The speaker is on the left, and the listener is on the right, both were face-to-face during interaction. This image was captured by placing two video cameras at opposing angles between the speaker and listener.

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Click here to play each RT choice.

Figure 1. Screen shot of a multiple-choice quiz in DiscourseWare

speaker

listener

Audio–visual RTs are muted and masked. Speaker’s audio and visual are

Figure 2. Screen shot of a video clip with an RT masked and muted

In summary, the learning sequences with DiscourseWare were as follows. (1) Learners start the instruction by clicking the logo of DiscourseWare. (2)

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The initial screen explains the functions and use of RTs in Japanese conversations, and then guides learners to the audio-visual fill-in-the-blank quiz section that contains four questions. (3) DiscourseWare then displays a setting of a short video clip to be played in the next page. (4) Learners move on to the video clip and the instruction of the audio-visual fill-in-theblank quiz (Figure 1). (5) By clicking the “play” button, learners start the video clip of native speaker conversation. (6) After watching the video clip, learners select the most appropriate RT to fill in the muted part in the conversation. They listen to four audio RT choices by clicking the corresponding icon. (7) Correct RT is displayed. (8) When clicking the “explanation” icon, learners can read the explanation of why the given RT is correct. Explanations for other choices are also provided, and the learners have an option to watch the video clip again. (9) The script of the video clip is displayed. Learners can listen to the audio of the video clip while reading the script. (10) Learners can proceed to the next quiz by clicking the next icon.

4. Evaluation of instruction We evaluated the effectiveness of the teaching method as a whole, rather than decomposing the effects of instructor-led, peer-based and computerbased learning, because we first wanted to determine whether RTs are teachable, and the teaching method was viable. However, we acknowledge the limitation of the study that it precluded measuring the individual contributions of instructor-led, peer-based and computer-based learning. An instructional experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of the teaching method. The section below describes participants, design and procedures of the experimental study, results of the study and interpretations of the findings. 4.1. Participants Twenty-four intermediate and advanced level learners of Japanese participated in this study (see 3.2 for the definition of proficiency). They were all enrolled in a Japanese language course at a university or language school located in Japan. Their total length of stay in Japan ranged from 6 to 60 months. There were 21 Chinese speakers, one Russian speaker, one Polish speaker and one Mongolian speaker.

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4.2. Experimental design and procedures Four RTs: ee, soudesuka, mm, and naruhodo (beginning and intermediate levels of difficulty; shown in bold-faced type in Table 2) formed the instructional targets in the experiment. They were taught through a blended learning instruction involving self-paced, peer-based and instructor-led learning, each lasting about 10, 15 and 20 minutes respectively (see 3.3 for the details of the instruction methods). Each RT was taught with the same number of video clips, explanations and fill-in-the-blank questions. Table 4 summarizes the flow of the experiment. Table 4. Flow chart of the instructional experiment stage 1

2

3

method

activities 1-1 Students receive situational explanations. self-paced learning 1-2 Students view video clips. (DiscourseWare) 1-3 Students answer four audio-visual fill-in-theblank quizzes and go over the answers. 2-1 Review 2-2 Students view video clips. instructor-led 2-3 Students discuss and select the choice. learning 2-4 Students listen to the instructor’s explanation. 2-5 Students do fill-in-the-blank questions and go over answers. 3-1 Instructor explains the activity. peer-based learning 3-2 Students receive situational explanation. 3-3 Students role play situations in pairs.

To measure learning outcome, posttests were conducted immediately after self-paced and instructor-led/peer-based learning. The posttest contained a recognition test and a production test. In the recognition test, learners watched four video clips of short conversations (about 20 seconds in duration), each featuring one of the four target RTs (i.e., ee, soudesuka, mm, and naruhodo). After watching each video clip, the learners were asked to write the meaning of the RT that appeared in the conversation. There were four separate recognition tests, each containing four questions (a total of 16 questions). The learners were told to finish all questions in about 10 minutes. At the pilot stage, two instructors with over five years’ of teaching experience affirmed that the recognition test items in each stage were in equivalent difficulty. Learners’ written responses (i.e., meaning of RTs) were scored based on a pre-determined set of key words. For instance,

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meanings for ee and mm were judged correct when they included key words such as comprehension, understanding or paying attention. Learners received one point per correct answer (full marks of 4 points per test; a total of 16 points). The production test involved a one-on-one interview between individual learners and a native speaker of Japanese who was initially unfamiliar to the learners. Two native speakers who had experience with foreign language teaching participated in the interviews and conversed with the learners. The purpose of the interview was to elicit RTs from the learners to examine their use. During the interviews, the learners asked questions for the Japanese native speakers. The native speakers spent two to three minutes responding to the questions. The RTs produced by the learners while listening to the responses were analyzed. The entire interview sessions were videotaped. In order to elicit RTs naturally, we wanted the learners to listen to the native Japanese speakers with genuine interest. However, the learners’ interests spanned a wide range, and their language proficiency levels alone told us nothing about their ability to understand particular topics in the production test. Hence, the types of topics in the interviews were monitored carefully so that the learners could understand the conversation and produce RTs spontaneously in response to the topics. To facilitate the interview process, in the interviews at pretest and posttest1 (steps 1 and 3 in Table 4), we provided learners with some benign questions to ask, such as “Where are you from?” and “What is your hobby?” which were expected to serve as ice-breakers and help build rapport between the learner and native speaker interviewer. Later, in the interviews at posttests 2 and 3 (steps 5 and 7 in Table 4), we allowed learners to choose their own questions. Selfselected, “free question” style was considered effective at later interview sessions because native speaker interviewers would exhaust the types of personal topics that they could use to stimulate the conversation. The difference in topics and question styles (i.e., prepared questions or selfselected questions) between pretest/posttest 1 and posttest 2/posttest 3 did not appear to have a large effect on the learners’ RT production, because for each test the roles of the native speaker being the primary speaker and the learner being the primary listener were the same. In addition, learners were exposed to unknown information at both interview sessions. After an interval of one week, the learners completed another pair of recognition and production tests as a delayed post test. The learners’ production was evaluated by two native speakers of Japanese who participated in the interviews. They assessed learners’

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performance on a seven-point rating scale for the eight criteria listed in Table 5. These criteria were considered to reflect learners’ effective use of the RTs, which was inferred from appropriate timing, frequency, and context of the RT use. Criterion 1 in Table 7 evaluated learners’ overall listening behavior. Criterion 2 assessed learners’ comprehension ability. Criteria 4, 5, 6, and 7 dealt with learners’ use of verbal RTs. Criteria 3 and 8 dealt with learners’ ability to use non-verbal RTs. Inter-rater reliability was confirmed based on the ratings of ten interviews that were randomly selected. Pearson correlation was satisfactory, yielding r = 0.80 (p < 0.01). In this study, we did not use a control group where learners receive no instruction because (a) we felt such a condition was unfair to members in the control group, and (b) we thought that we could not totally control nonRT condition for the control group because the participants would have substantial exposure to Japanese RTs anyway through their general language training and living experience in Japan. Table 5. Production skills evaluation criteria evaluated skill areas (1) The student maintained comfortable atmosphere. (2) The student demonstrated good comprehension ability. (3) The student demonstrated adequate eye contact. (4) The student used RTs appropriately in context. (5) The student used audio RTs at appropriate timing. (6) The student used a variety of RTs. (7) The student used verbal RTs with appropriate frequency. (8) The student nodded with appropriate frequency. Note. Each of these skills was evaluated based on a seven-point scale.

4.3. Results 4.3.1. Recognition test results Figure 3 displays the mean scores of the recognition tests. One-way repeated-measures ANOVA revealed significant difference between tests, F(3, 69)=31.64, p <.01. Table 6 summarizes multiple comparisons results.

Blended learning for Japanese reactive tokens ●

mean score

291

95% confidence intervals

100

mean score (range 0–100)

89.6

89.6

80 69.8 60 40

42.7

20 0 pre

post1

post2

post3

n=24

Figure 3. Recognition test mean scores

Table 6. Multiple comparison results of recognition tests tests compared (A) test (mean) pre (42.7) post1 (69.8) post2 (89.6) *p<0.05, **p<0.01 n=24

(B) test (mean) post1 (69.8) post2 (89.6) post3 (89.6) post2 (89.6) post3 (89.6) post3 (89.6)

differences in mean(B-A) 27.0** 46.9** 46.9** 19.8* 19.8* 0.0

The study revealed three important findings: (1) there was a significant difference between pretest and posttest1 conducted immediately after the self-paced learning, (2) there was a significant difference between posttest1 and posttest2 conduced immediately after the instructor-led and peer-based learning, and (3) scores progressively improved from pretest to posttest1, and from posttest1 to posttest2. Hence, the combination of self-paced, peerbased, and instructor-led learning enhanced the learning of the RTs measured by the recognition tests. While the differences between posttest2 and posttest3 were not statistically significant, there was a significant difference between pretest and posttest3 (delayed posttest). These results

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imply that the ability to recognize meanings and functions of the target RTs was retained after one week of inactivity.

4.3.2. Production test results Table 7 displays the results of the one-way repeated-measures ANOVA for each of the eight production skill criterion (See Table 5). There were significant differences in all evaluated aspects except criterion 3 (i.e., eye contact). Table 7. ANOVA comparisons of mean scores of the production tests evaluated production skill criteria 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

ANOVA results among mean scores of pretest, posttest 1, posttest 2, and posttest 3 F(3, 69)=15.06, p<.01 F(3, 69)=07.31, p<.01 F(3, 69)=00.39, p>.05 F(3, 69)=09.52, p<.01 F(3, 69)=07.17, p<.01 F(3, 69)=05.64, p<.01 F(3, 69)=09.66, p<.01 F(3, 69)=03.01, p<.05

Multiple comparison results are summarized in Table 8. Each paired test in Table 8 shows significant differences in production skill criterion 1, which improved as a result of the self-paced learning implemented through DiscourseWare. Significant differences between posttest1 and posttest2 in production skill criteria 1, 2 and 7 suggest that these skill areas improved as a result of peer-based and instructor-led learning. Significant differences between pretest and posttest2 on the production skill criteria 1, 2, 4, 5, 6 and 7 suggest that the blended learning experience, namely the combination of self-paced, peer-based, and instructor-led learning, helped improve these skills. Scores on the same skill areas were significantly different between pretest and posttest3, suggesting that skill improvement through blended learning was retained after one week of inactivity.

2.750

2.375

2.625 2.041

2.541

3.750

student maintained 3 The adequate eye contact. The student used RTs 4 appropriately in context. The student used verbal 5 RTs at appropriate timing. The student used a variety of RTs.

The student used verbal 7 RTs with appropriate frequency. The studen t nodded with 8 appropriate frequency. * p < .05, **p < .01

n =24

2.875

The student 2 demonstrated good comprehension ability.

6

2.583

pre

student maintained 1 The comfortable atmosphere.

production skill criteria

3.791

2.708

2.416

3.083

2.958

2.958

3.291

3.250

pos t1

3.583

3.291

2.666

3.458

3.125

2.916

3.708

3.625

pos t2

mean scores

4.250

3.625

2.875

3.625

3.541

2.916

3.750

3.875

post3

0.041

0.167

0.375

0.458

0.583

0.208

0.416

0.667*

post1 -pre

Table 8. Multiple comparison results of productive skill tests

-0.208

0.583**

0.250

0.375

0.167

-0.042

0.417*

0.375*

0.667*

0.334

0.209

0.167

0.416

0.000

0.042

0.250

-0.167

0.750**

0.625**

0.833**

0.750**

0.166**

0.833**

1.042**

differences in mean post2 post3 post2 -post1 -post2 -pre

0.500

1.084**

0.834*

1.000**

1.166**

0.166

0.875*

1.292**

post3 -pre

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4.4. Discussion

The present study is suggestive of a positive effect of explicit instruction in the learning of select RTs. The effect was somewhat robust, showing the retention of the learned knowledge at a delayed posttest given one week later. Hence, it is possible that the awareness of RTs promoted through a

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series of instruction phases helped learners to recognize important functions of RTs and encouraged them to use RTs in their conversations with native speakers. This interpretation seems to be supported by learners’ comments. After the instruction, some learners reported that they increasingly became aware that RTs are valuable interactional devices in Japanese conversation. Others reported that they started paying attention to Japanese listening behavior after the experiment. These comments indicate that a brief but focused instruction could encourage learners to actively observe, interpret, and practice RTs. Being in the target language environment, the learners were probably able to apply their knowledge of RTs to their daily interactions with Japanese native speakers. Pretest vs. posttest1 comparisons suggest that the self-paced learning implemented through DiscourseWare helped to develop learners’ ability to select and use a variety of RTs at appropriate timing. Posttest1 vs. posttest2 results indicate no improvement in production skill criteria 4 and 6 (i.e., situational appropriateness and variety). This can be explained by the nature of the teacher-led instruction that focused on four RTs. It is possible that, after the instruction, learners became to overuse the target RTs that were explicitly taught, consequently limiting the use of other RTs. Posttest2 vs. posttest3 results showed improvement in production skill criterion 8 (i.e., nodding), although this skill was not the target of the instruction. Pretest vs. posttest2 results indicate that the major gain appears to lie in the blended learning, namely a combination of self-paced, peer-based, and instructor-led learning. However, exactly what combination of the instruction methods is most effective is a topic for future research.

5. Implications for pragmatic teaching and future research This study showed that DiscourseWare could serve as a useful instructional tool because learners can view RTs in a contextualized manner, and rich verbal and non-verbal information conveyed through audio-visual media from computers could facilitate learners’ comprehension of conversations. However, not all learners equally gained in their understanding of RTs. Hence, text-based explanations in a format of independent learning may not be fully adequate to equip all learners with knowledge of RTs. Pragmalinguistic knowledge of RTs (i.e., forms, frequency, timing), as well as sociopragmatic knowledge of RTs (i.e., which forms to use in what situations), should be emphasized and practiced more in the course of instruction.

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Some learners reported that they wanted to learn the exact timing in producing RTs in interaction. Others reported that they wanted to learn the relationship between intonation of RTs and meaning conveyed through different intonation patterns. Because we did not explicitly teach production timing or prosody of RTs, these comments indicate a need of such learning experiences in future research. Development of DiscourseWare required considerable amount of time and effort; we had to write conversation scripts according to learners’ levels, recruit and train actors, record conversations, and edit the audiovisual materials. Equipment requirements included a recording studio, two digital video cameras, a uni-directional microphone and video editing software. These technical demands are likely to overwhelm most teachers working alone or in small teams. A solution could be pooling courseware among several instructors or sites, and developing semi-automated production tools. There are several areas to improve in our instructional syllabus of RTs First, we need to determine teaching sequences and develop materials for the RTs that we excluded from our instruction this time (e.g., repetition, predictive completion and non-verbal RTs). Second, because we examined the combined effect of self-paced, instructor-led and peer-based learning for a limited range of the RTs, future research should investigate what combination of instructional methods is most effective by using a control group.

6. Conclusion In this study, we proposed an RT classification that organizes a variety of verbal and non-verbal RTs, and then proposed an instructional syllabus of the RTs that reflect learners’ levels and order of instruction. We implemented the syllabus through a blended learning method that combined instructor-led, peer-based, and self-paced learning. We evaluated the effectiveness of the instruction. Results implied that the blended learning that we adopted helped to develop learners’ ability to use RTs and retained the ability for at least one week. The instruction of RTs also seemed to have increased pragmatic awareness toward RTs. However, because of the short instruction period and limited number of target RTs used in this study, the present findings cannot be generalized to other situations. The effects of instruction need to be further investigated with a wider range of RTs, over different learning environments and with a larger number of participants. In

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addition, teaching methods of prosody of RTs and non-verbal RTs need to be explored in the future. Also needed empirical investigations on more comprehensive RT classifications, the cause-and-effect relationship between RT usage and successful interaction.

Acknowledgements We would like to express our deep appreciation to Naoko Taguchi, and external reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions on a draft of this chapter.

References Clancy, Patricia, Thompson Sandra, Suzuki Ryoko, and Tao Hongyin 1996 The conversational use of reactive tokens in English, Japanese, and Mandarin. Journal of Pragmatics 26: 355–387. Horiguchi, Sumiko 1988 Komyunikeshon niokeru kikiteno gengokodo [Listener’s verbal behavior in communication]. Journal of Japanese Language Teaching 64: 13–26. Japan Educational Exchanges and Services, the Japan Foundation 2007 The Japanese–language proficiency test summary of the results Retrieved July 15, 2008 from the World Wide: http://www.jees.or.jp /jlpt/pdf/2007/jlpt_result_2007_all_scr.pdf Kawamura, Yoshiko 2000 Internet jidai ni taioushita dokkaikyouiku

新世紀之日語教学研究国際会議論文集 台湾 東呉大学

[Instructional Methods for reading Japanese according to internet age]: 347–365. Kawamura, Yoshiko and Kitamura Tatsuya 2001 Development of a Japanese Reading Resource Bank using Internet. Japanese-Language Education around the Globe 6: 241–255. Kendon, Adam 1977 Some functions of gaze-direction in two-person conversation. In: Adam Kendon (ed.), Studies in the Behavior of Social Interaction, 13–51. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

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Nichi kan ryogengo niokeru aizuchi no taishou kenkyu. -Denwa no kaiwa wo chushin ni [Contrastive study on Japanese and Korean aizuchi -focusing on telephone conversation]. Heisei 6-nendo Nihongo Kyoiku Gakkai Shunki Taikai Youkoushu: 85–90. Kubota, Ayako 2000 Nihongo gakushusha no aizutchi no shutoku -nihonjin tono shotaimen ni okeru kaiwa shiryou wo motoni [Acquisition of Aizuchi by Japanese language learners -based on conversation data at the first meet with Japanese native speaker]. Nanzan Nihongo Kyoiku 7: 76–114. LoCastro, Virginia 1987 Aizuchi: A Japanese conversational routine, In: Larry E. Smith (ed.), Discourse Across Cultures: Strategies in World Englishes, 100–113. New York: Prentice Hall. Liu, Chuantzu 2003 Existing research of backchannels for learners of Japanese. The state of the Art in Second Language Acquisition and Instruction Research -2003 Version: 148–161. Maynard, Senko K. 1986 On back-channel behavior in Japanese and English casual conversation. Linguistics 24: 1079–1108. 1987 Interactional functions of a nonverbal sign: Head movement in Japanese dyadic casual conversation. Journal of Pragmatics 11 (5): 589–606. 1993 Conversation Analysis. Tokyo: Kurosio Publishers. Miller, Laura 1991 Verbal listening behavior in conversations between Japanese and Americans. In: Jan Blommaert and Verschueren Jef (eds.), The Pragmatics of Intercultural and International Communication: Selected Papers of the International Pragmatics Conference, Antwerp, August, 17–22, 1987 and the Ghent Symposium on Intercultural Communication, 111–130. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: J. Benjamins. Miyazaki, Sachie 2007 Japanese Women’s Listening Behavior in Face-to-Face Conversation -The Use of Reactive Tokens and Nods. Tokyo: Hituzi Syobo Publishing. Mizutani, Nobuko 1988 Aizuchi ron [A theory of Aizuchi]. Nihongogaku 7 (13): 4–11.

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Mukai, Chiharu 1999 The use of back-channels by advanced learners of Japanese: Its qualitative and quantitative aspects. Japanese-Language Education Around the Globe 9: 197–219. Murata, Akiko 2000 An Analysis of Learners’ Aizuchi: From ‘Continuer’ to ‘Turntaking’. Japanese-Language Education Around the Globe 10: 241– 260. Nagata, Noriko 2008 Shizen gengoshori ni motozuita atarashii Robo-Sensei on-line kyoukasho [On-line textbook new Robo-Sensei based on natural language processing]. Paper presented at the ICPLJ. Nishina, Kikuko, Okumura Manabu, Yagi Yutaka, Sawaya Takashi, Totsugi Norihisa, Fu’s lab., Dai Nippon Printing Co. Ltd., Sugimoto Shigeki, Fu Ryan and Abekawa Takeshi 2003 A call system for Japanese language equipped with interfaces of multi-functions -Development of ASUNARO-. A study about highdegree application of multimedia for reform of higher education. Final report of study supported by Grant-in-aid scientific research particular area 2002 (A) 120: 81–84. Ryu, Kenka 1987 Denwa deno aizuchi hindono chunichi hikaku [Comparison of frequency of aizuchi on telephone conversations between Japanese and Chinese]. Gengo 16 (1): 93–97. Saita, Izumi 2001 Aizuchi to warikomi. -Ibunka communication jono mondai ga shojiyasui bamen, jokyo wo megutte [Aizuchi and cut in -focusing on a situation and setting where a problem concerning cross-cultural communication often occurs]. A study on two-way distance learning system of Japanese language. Research outcome report. Final report of study supported by Grant-in-aid scientific research 1999–2000 (C) (2): 9–21. Saita, Izumi, Kawazoe Yoshiyuki, Hirata Naoya, Ogawara Yoshiro, Takahashi Akiko, Iguchi Yasushi and Kamiyama Hiroshi 2003 Aizuchi (back-channeling): A key to smooth conversation. Final deliverable supported by Grant-in-aid scientific research particular area 2000–2002 (A) Multimedia software for learning Japanese. Retrieved May 15, 2009, from the World Wide Web: http://www. sal.tohoku.ac.jp/nik/aizuchi/ Tomisaka, Yoko 2005 Nameraka Nihongo Kaiwa [fluent Japanese conversation]. Tokyo: ALC.

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Utashiro, Takafumi, Yanagisawa Masayoshi and Akahori Kanji 2008 Extracting and classifying Japanese reactive tokens based on textual information from face-to-face conversation corpus. Paper presented at the ICPLJ6. Ward, Nigel G, Escalante Rafael, Bayyari Yaffa Al and Solorio Thamar 2007 Learning to Show You’re Listening. Computer Assisted Language Learning 20: 385–407. Watanabe, Emiko 1994 An analysis of learners’ aizuchi -On the verbal aizuchi used in telephone conversation-. Journal of Japanese language teaching 82: 110–122. White, Sheida 1989 Backchannels across cultures: A study of Americans and Japanese. Language in Society 18: 59–76. Yang, Jing 1999 Chu nichi ryogengo no aizuchi ni kansuru ichi kousatsu -hindo to sono shuhen [A study on Chinese and Japanese aizuchi -Frequency and its context]. Ningen Bunka Kenkyu Nenpou 23: 28–38. 2001 A study of backchannels used by Chinese learners of Japanese in telephone conversations: A functional comparison with native speakers of Japanese. Journal of Japanese Language Teaching 111: 46–55. Yoshihashi, Kenji, Fu Liang and Nishina Kikuko 2007 Displaying example sentences adequate to learners’ level. Paper presented at the CASTEL/J in Hawaii. Yoshimoto, Yuko 2001 A study of the acquisition of back-channels by resettled Vietnamese refugees: From the view point of developing discourse. Journal of Japanese Language Teaching 110: 92–100.

Development of the use of Japanese sentence-final particles through email correspondence Tomomi Kakegawa Abstract This longitudinal study examined the effects of instructional interventions on the development of Japanese as a foreign language learners’ use of sentence-final particles (i.e., ne, yo, no and yone) via email correspondence with native speakers. The participants were 11 students enrolled in a third semester Japanese class in an American university and 17 native speakers of Japanese. Each student exchanged emails with two native speakers for 12 weeks and received two pedagogical interventions on the use of sentence-final particles, one in the sixth week and the other in the eighth week. The data from the pre-intervention period was compared with that from the post-intervention period to examine students’ development in the use of sentence-final particles. The results suggest that the combination of email exchange and discrete instructional intervention has a positive impact on the learning of sentence-final particles.

1. Introduction Japanese speakers use various sentence final particles (SFPs) to convey the interactional attitude of the speakers. For learners of Japanese, SFPs are important pragmatic features to acquire because the frequent use of SFPs contributes to intensifying the level of involvement among conversation participants (Maynard 1989). Approximately 35% of sentences in Maynard’s conversation data included SFPs. Despite their importance, previous research show that Japanese SFPs are difficult for learners to acquire even after living in Japan for an extended period of time (e.g., Masuda 2007; Sawyer 1992; Shibahara 2002). These findings emphasize the need of explicit instruction on the acquisition of SFPs. From the perspective of language socialization, on the other hand, Yoshimi (1999) argues that the difference in the epistemic dimensions of communication between learners’ first language (L1) and their target language (L2) affects

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their production of SFPs. This intricacy associated with SFPs further reinforces that a contextualized, focused instruction is necessary in order to facilitate learners’ acquisition of SFPs. This study examined the effects of pedagogical interventions on Japanese as a foreign language (JFL) learners’ use of four SFPs: ne, yo, no (including no +copula), and yone, through their email exchanges with native speakers (NSs).1 These particles were selected because they have been examined in a number of previous studies (e.g., Cook 1990, 1992; Katagiri 2007; Lee 2007; McGloin 1984; Mizutani 1997; Tsuchihashi 1983), and because they occur frequently in naturalistic conversation. According to Ogawa’s (1997) analysis of conversation data from Japanese native speakers (NSs) (65 female and 64 male), yo was used most frequently, followed by no. The particle ne came in third and yone fourth in female speech. In male speech, ne came in fourth, and yone was the fifth. According to Makino and Tsutsui (1986), these SFPs have specific functions in conversation: ne indicates the speaker’s request for confirmation or agreement from the hearer about some shared knowledge; yo indicates the speaker’s strong conviction or assertion about something that is assumed to be known only to the speaker; no (da) indicates that the speaker is explaining or asking for an explanation about some information shared with the hearer; and yone is used when the speaker wishes to mitigate the force of his/her assertion by talking as if the content of the sentence were also known to the hearer. The present study investigated JFL learners’ acquisition of these common SFPs. Over a period of 12 weeks, JFL learners corresponded with NSs via email. During this period, they received two instructional interventions that focused on the use of SFPs. The study compared learners’ use of SFPs between the pre and post-instruction phases in terms of the frequency and accuracy of use, as well as qualitative changes in use.

2. Background 2.1. Literature in the acquisition of SFPs Previous observational and cross-sectional studies showed that, although SFPs are introduced to JFL learners relatively early in their course of study, actual mastery of SFPs occurs only at a later stage (Iwai 2007; Masuda 2007; Ohta 1990, 2001; Sawyer 1992; Shibahara 2002; Tominami and

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Nakamura 2004; Yoshimi 1999). For instance, Ohta’s (2001) longitudinal study of two JFL learners in a university found that one of the learners became able to use the particle ne after one year of study, but only with a limited range of Japanese expressions. Other studies revealed that even learners in an immersion setting do not necessarily develop the use of SFPs beyond formulaic use (Sawyer 1992; Shibahara 2002; Yoshimi 1999). For instance, Sawyer (1992) reported that, after one year of study in Japan, only one out of eleven learners demonstrated the ability to use ne across different conversational contexts. Similarly, Shibahara (2002) found that, after nine months of study in Japan, two out of six learners still underused ne in their conversation. Since ne appears most frequently in naturalistic conversations (Maynard 1993; Cook 1992), it is potentially the most salient SFP for learners living in the target language environment. If the most salient and frequent particle ne is late acquired, the chance of acquiring other less salient SFPs through mere exposure is probably lower. These findings together suggest a need for instructional intervention for the acquisition of SFPs.

2.2. Instructional intervention studies in interlanguage pragmatics Despite this strong need for teaching SFPs, very few studies have tested whether or not explicit instruction is actually effective for the learning of SFPs, or what types of instructions are most effective. A few exceptions are Iwai (cited in Iwai 2007) and Yoshimi (2001). Iwai investigated beginning level JFL learners’ use of eight conversational strategies: discourse marker n desu, listener responses, evaluative comments, return questions, expansions, follow-up questions, topic initiation, and repair strategies. The participants received instruction on the target discourse strategies over a semester via awareness raising tasks, explicit explanation, communicative practice, and feedback. The analysis of videotaped learner-native speaker conversations showed that, although learners improved in the use of some of the conversational strategies, they did not show much improvement in the use of n desu. Yoshimi (2001), on the other hand, investigated the effects of explicit instruction on five third-year JFL learners’ use of discourse markers n desu, n desu kedo, and n desu ne. Learners received explicit instructions that consisted of metapragmatic explanations, exposure to native speaker models, planning of extended discourse, communicative practice, and corrective feedback. The analysis of the pre- and posttest

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storytelling tasks revealed that the experimental group’s mean frequency of the discourse markers was .02 in the pretest, but it increased to .39 in the posttest. In contrast, the control group’s mean frequency was .02 in the pretest, and it was zero in the posttest. On the issue of the effectiveness of instruction in interlanguage pragmatics, Jeon and Kaya’s (2006) meta-analysis of instructional studies revealed that “direct instruction made a notable difference over no instruction on interlanguage pragmatic development” (165). Corresponding to this claim, over the last few decades, a number of instructional methods and techniques have been proposed and implemented in the field of SLA (e.g., Cohen and Shively 2007; Martinez-Flor and Fukuya 2005; Pearson 2006; Rose and Ng 2001; Takahashi 2001; Takimoto 2008; Tateyama 2001, Chapter 6, this volume). Among them, CMC (computer-mediated communication) is a promising new medium of instruction with several strengths (Belz 2007, 2008). For one, researchers can create an authentic communicative context by having learners engage in electronic dialogues with NSs. In addition, use of computers also allows researchers to track learners’ production with the input of NSs. The NS input also serves as a model to which researchers can draw learners’ attention. Using CMC to their advantage, a series of studies were conducted by Belz and her colleagues to document learners’ pragmatic development and the effects of instructional interventions on the development (Belz and Kinginger 2003; Belz and Vyatkina 2005; Vyatkina and Belz 2006). These studies demonstrated the advantage of using telecollaborative projects in teaching a range of pragmatic features, including apology speech acts, address forms, German da-compound use, and German modal particles. For example, in Vyatkina and Belz’s (2006) study, sixteen intermediate learners of German engaged in a semester long telecollaborative project with German NSs via email and written chat on cultural issues. Their communication was compiled in a corpus, and the researchers analyzed their use of modal particles. Their analysis revealed that NSs used modal particles frequently, while learners rarely used them. Based on these results, the researchers conducted a three-week pedagogical intervention that consisted of three instructional modules. The first module focused on raising learners’ awareness toward the modal particles. The learners were shown excerpts from NSs’ messages in which modals were emphasized in bold, but no explicit explanation was given at this stage. The second module included explicit meta-pragmatic and syntactic explanations of the modal particles. The learners also examined and discussed modal particle

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usage in NSs’ messages. In the third module, learners’ own appropriate and inappropriate uses of modal particles were discussed in order to fine-tune their use. Although there were individual variations, a majority of learners increased the frequency and accuracy of modal particle use after the pedagogical intervention and developed a better meta-pragmatic understanding of the particles. The present study adapted the design of Vyatkina and Belz’s (2006) study to the teaching of Japanese SFPs. Although Japanese SFPs are primarily a feature of spoken discourse (Maynard 1989), they also appear frequently in email communication and serve important pragmatic functions (Fukuzumi 2001). For example, Chae’s (2005) study found that refusal email messages with no SFPs were received unfavorably by her Japanese participants because they sounded too businesslike, distant, and cold. Her study indicates that SFPs serve an important pragmatic function not only in spoken discourse but also in email communication. In addition, compared with spoken communication, email communication is potentially advantageous in teaching pragmatic features because of the increased saliency of the target features. This advantage is particularly important for phonologically reduced pragmatic forms such as SFPs (e.g., n in n desu [SFP no + copula] form). Sykes’ (2005) study lends support to this claim. She found that L2 Spanish learners (n=9) who received communicative practice in refusal strategies via written chat outperformed those who received the same practice via face-to-face communication, as measured by a posttest involving face-to-face communication. She concluded that the written chat contributed to the learners’ development because of its reduced communicative pressure, abundant time to plan utterances, and multimodal processing. Chat (either written or oral) may be more preferable than email for developing the ability to communicate spontaneously, but it has practical disadvantages (e.g., time difference between the NSs’ and JFL learners’ location). Hence, email can be a useful alternative to chat for pragmatic learning. Email allows for authentic and meaningful communication between learners and NSs that afford plentiful opportunities to practice pragmatic features, regardless of geographical distance. The present study was designed to test this potential effectiveness of email communication when teaching and learning SFPs.

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3. Research questions Following the design of Vyatkina and Belz’s (2006) study, this study investigated whether pedagogical interventions (PIs) through CMC are effective in the teaching of Japanese SFPs. The following two research questions guided the investigation: 1) How do the PIs embedded in the course of CMC affect JFL learners’ use of SFPs in terms of frequency and range? 2) Does the PI promote learners’ accurate and productive (non-formulaic) use of SFPs? What are the sources of errors observed in learners’ use of SFPs?

4. Methodology 4.1. Study design and participants Data were collected from a 12-week email correspondence between JFL learners and NSs of Japanese. Each JFL learner was assigned to two Japanese email partners (keypals) and was told to communicate once a week with them in Japanese outside of the class. The email messages were subsequently compiled and analyzed by the researcher. During the 12-week period, the course instructor conducted two PIs that focused on the use of SFPs in their email correspondences. The PIs targeted four SFPs: ne, yo, no (no+copula), and yone. The participants in the JFL learner group were 11 American students of Japanese (three female and eight male students) enrolled in a third semester Japanese course (pre-intermediate level) in 2007 at a public university in the United States. The length of prior Japanese study varied from one to four years. There was one bilingual speaker of Chinese and English, and the rest were monolingual English speakers. They ranged from 18 to 22 in age. The course instructor was the researcher herself, who is a native speaker of Japanese and, at the time when the study was conducted, had taught Japanese for four years at the institution. The participants in the NS group were 17 Japanese students (all female students) enrolled in the Teaching Japanese as a Foreign Language course at a junior college in Tokyo. They ranged from 18 to 21 years of age.

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4.2. Pedagogical interventions and materials Table 1 summarizes the instruction intervention. During the first five weeks (i.e., pre-intervention period), the learners and NSs corresponded via email without any instruction on the target SFPs. The learners wrote six to eleven messages during that period. After the five-week period, the first PI took place. The first PI included consciousness-raising of the SFPs and explicit metapragmatic explanations of the SFPs. The instruction was given on computer without using handouts. All information was projected on a large screen at the front of the classroom. During the first PI, the instructor presented raw counts of the target SFPs that appeared in the NSs’ email messages in order to emphasize the frequent use of the SFPs. The instructor then explained the important role that SFPs play in informal discourse, as well as basic functions and grammatical features of each SFP. After that, the class read several excerpts of NS’s email messages in which individual SFPs were highlighted with different colors. They also reviewed functions of each SFP in sample sentences. In addition to the SFPs, the functions of sentence endings n desu ne, n desu ka and n desu yone were discussed. The students were not evaluated on the content or accuracy of the sentences in their email messages, but they were encouraged to pay attention to appropriate use of the SFPs when reading NSs’ email messages, as well as when writing their own messages. The first PI lasted approximately 20 minutes out of a 50-minute class period. After the first PI, the learners had two weeks to correspond with their keypals. They produced one to five messages during the two weeks. The second PI took place two weeks after the first PI, as illustrated in Table 1. The second PI served as a feedback session in which the instructor drew learners’ attention to their use of the SFPs in the email messages. After briefly reviewing the basic functions of SFPs, the class read learners’ email excerpts that contained both appropriate and inappropriate uses of SFPs. For the inappropriate cases, the class discussed why those usages were not appropriate and how they could be improved. The instructor also pointed out several sentences in which SFPs were missing, and the class discussed which SFPs should be used in the sentences. The second PI lasted 15 minutes of the class period. After the second PI, the learners continued with their email correspondence for five more weeks, and wrote from 2 to 10 messages.

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Table 1. Timeline for the pedagogical interventions stage Pre-PI

date Period 1 (P1) 1st PI

Period 2 (P2) Post-PI 2nd PI

Period 3 (P3)

October 5 to November 4, 2007 November 5

semester week week 5 ~ week9

PI focus N/A Awareness raising toward NS use of SFPs (20 min.)

November 5 to 18, 2007 November 19

week 10 ~ week11

November 19 to December 22, 2007

week12 ~ week16

Feedback on learner use of SFPs (15 min.)

4.3. Data collection and analysis Over the course of 12 weeks, the data were compiled from email messages produced by the 11 JFL learners (a total of 90 email messages in the pre-PI period and 94 messages in the post-PI period) and by the 17 NSs (a total of 47 messages in the pre-PI period and 59 messages in the post-PI period). Each message was labeled with its writer and the date it was written. The SFPs that appeared in the messages were counted, and the frequency and use of each SFP by learners and NSs was analyzed and compared. For the learner group, the frequency, accuracy, and range of the SFPs were compared between the pre- and the post-intervention periods to examine the overall development. Learners’ productive and erroneous use of the SFPs was also analyzed qualitatively. Learners’ use of the SFPs was considered productive when they used the SFPs in non-formulaic phrases and expressions. In Maynard’s (1989) study of informal conversations, only about 50% of SFPs appeared at the end of syntactic clauses, while the rest appeared at the end of the units smaller than a clause. In the email messages examined in this study, however, SFPs appeared only at the end of clauses, both in learner and NS data.2 Therefore, the frequency of SFPs was analyzed per clause-unit, by dividing the number of SFPs by the number of clauses (both dependent and independent clauses). Greetings and other formulaic phrases were counted as one clause. Since each JFL learner had two keypals, some

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messages were identical because sometimes learners sent the same message to both keypals. Both messages were included in my data.3

5. Results and discussions 5.1. Analysis of research question one: Frequency and range of SFPs The first research question asked whether or not the PIs conducted during the 12-week course of email correspondences had any effect on the frequency and range of the SFPs produced by the learners. The results show that both frequency and range of the SFPs increased in the post-PI period. Table 2 summarizes the frequency of each SFP per clause-unit in pre and post-PI periods. The learners used ne and no only about half as frequently as the NSs in the pre-PI period. The learners’ frequency of ne was .031/clause, while NSs’ frequency was .056/clause. The learners’ frequency of no was .018/clause, while NSs’ frequency was .032/clause. Table 2. Overall frequency of SFP use in pre and post-PI periods SFPs

Pre-PI NS (n=17)

learner (n=11)

Post-PI NS (n=17)

learner (n=11)

ne

0.056

0.031

0.101

0.086

yo

0.025

0.042

0.052

0.132

no

0.032

0.018

0.051

0.041

yone

0.006

0

0.005

0.005

Total

0.119

0.091

0.209

0.265

Note. The number in each column is derived by dividing the total occurrence of SFPs by the total number of clauses.

Learners’ use of individual SFPs increased in the post-PI period (Table 2). Frequency of ne and no more than doubled, increasing from .031 to .086 (ne) and from .018 to .041 (no) per clause, although the rate was still lower than that of NSs. Learners’ use of yo more than tripled in the post-PI period, from .042 to .132/clause. This was clearly the case of overuse, since the NS frequency was about half. The particle yone was never used by the learners in the pre-intervention period, but it appeared at the rate of .005/clause in the post-intervention period, which was as frequent as NS use. The aggregate frequency of all the SFPs showed that learners used

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SFPs more frequently (.265 per clause) than NSs (.209 per clause) in the post-PI period, but this is partially due to the overuse of yo. Weekly analysis of the frequency of learners’ SFPs illustrates an abrupt change corresponding to the PIs (Figure 1). Nine to 21 learners’ messages and six to 15 NSs’ messages produced each week were analyzed. The frequency of the learners’ SFPs increased dramatically after the first intervention, which took place at the beginning of the tenth week of the semester (marked with a dark line). Frequency of SFP use in JFL data peaked after the second intervention given at the beginning of the twelfth week of the semester (marked by a dotted line), and it remained higher than that of the NSs’ for the rest of the semester.

Figure 1. The frequency of SFP use by week

In the pre-PI period, although the learners were exposed to NSs’ use of SFPs through their email communication, they did not use SFPs as frequently as NSs, showing only a slight increase in frequency from Week 5 to Week 8. However, during Week 10 of the semester, after the first PI, frequency of SFPs showed an abrupt increase, to the level that it surpassed that of NSs. One might think that this change occurred because the learners became more familiar and less formal with their keypals after five weeks of correspondence; as a result, they used more SFPs in their email in order to create a more casual and conversational tone in writing. However, such an interpretation does not explain the abruptness of the increase. In addition, the number of emails exchanged between learners and their keypals in those five weeks differs greatly (three to six messages). Given the different

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number of email messages produced among learners, it is not feasible to conclude that all learners similarly developed friendly relationship with their keypals at the same time in Week 10. Furthermore, the learners’ SFP increased dramatically again in Week 12 after the second PI, which makes it difficult to attribute the increase to the gained solidarity and familiarity. A more reasonable interpretation for the abrupt increase, then, is the direct effect of the pedagogical intervention.4 Figure 2 displays the frequency count of the SFPs for each of the eleven learners at the pre- and post-PI stages. All learners increased their use of SFPs dramatically in the post PI period. The following section discusses learners’ use of individual SFPs.

Figure 2. Individual learners’ SFP use in pre and post-intervention periods.

5.1.1. Frequency analysis of the particle NE The SFP ne is used to express the speaker’s request for confirmation or agreement (Makino and Tsutsui 1986). In the pre-intervention period, nine out of the 11 learners (82%) used ne, while 10 out of the 17 NSs (59%) used ne in their messages (see Figure 3). The NSs’ aggregate frequency of ne is higher than that of learners’ in that period (Table 2). This means that the 59% of NSs who used ne used it much more frequently than the 82% of learners who used it. Three out of the 10 NSs used ne in their first message, and six used it for the first time in their second message, indicating that majority NSs used ne from the very beginning phase of their

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correspondence. In contrast, two out of the nine learners started using ne in their first message, four in their third message, and three in their fourth, fifth, and sixth messages, respectively. Hence, the data show that the learners’ use of ne was not only limited in terms of overall frequency, but also late-emerged. However, after the pedagogical intervention, all learners used ne and used it more frequently than in the pre-intervention period.

Figure 3. Frequency of use of the particle NE by individuals. Figure 3. Frequency of use of the particle NE by individuals.

5.1.2. Frequency analysis of the particle YO The SFP yo is used to express the speaker’s strong assertion (Makino and Tsutsui 1986). Based on the aggregate frequency, learners used yo more frequently than the NSs in both pre and post-intervention periods (see Table 2). This may be because one learner (LN12) used yo excessively throughout the correspondence period. When this participant is excluded from the data, the frequency count of yo per clause becomes .022 in the pre-PI and .054 in the post-PI, approximating NSs’ frequency. When individual learners’ use of yo is analyzed, more learners used yo compared with NSs. Ten out of the 11 learners (91%) used yo in the pre-intervention period, while only seven out of the 17 NSs (41%) used yo in the same period. The same 10 learners used yo in the post-intervention period. Only 11 out of the 17 NSs (65%) used it during the same period. Six NSs never used yo in the entire period. Most of them tended to write short messages in polite form, and except for ne, they did not use SFPs, suggesting a low level of familiarity with their keypals. Because the use of yo may give an utterance a ‘pushy’ tone (Masuoka 1991; Saji 1991), one is less likely to

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use it in formal style communications. Yet, since some NSs who did not use yo still used other SFPs frequently, more detailed analysis is necessary for the patterns of yo. Table 3. Frequency of yo by individuals

LN1 LN2 LN3 LN4 LN5 LN7 LN8 LN10 LN12 LN13 LN15

learner (n=11) Pre-PI Post-PI 0.017 0.036 0.022 0.029 0.045 0.100 0.029 0.066 0 0 0.020 0.052 0.018 0.020 0.045 0.071 0.108 0.462 0.014 0.071 0.006 0.092

NS1 NS2 NS4 NS6 NS7 NS8 NS16 NS17 NS19 NS20 NS21 NS23 NS26 NS27 NS28 NS29 NS30

NS (n=17) Pre-PI 0 0.039 0.021 0 0 0 0 0.119 0 0 0.036 0.111 0.060 0.000 0.018 0.000 0.000

Post-PI 0 0.026 0.015 0.029 0 0 0 0.136 0 0.158 0.040 0.200 0.035 0.000 0.143 0.036 0.197

Note. Frequency of yo = total number of yo used in each period / number of clauses produced in each period.

Compared to NSs’ use of yo, the learners in my study showed a tendency to overuse yo. NSs’ mean frequency of yo was .025 per clause in the preintervention period, as shown in Table 3. Four out of the 11 learners (LN3, 4, 10, 12) exceeded this rate. In the post-intervention period, NSs’ frequency of yo was .052, and six learners (LN3, 4,10,12,13,15) used yo more frequently than NSs. The increase in the frequency of yo from pre- to post-PI suggests that the PIs caused this overuse. However, it should be pointed out that most learners used yo accurately. There were only a few cases (eight out of 301) where yo was mistakenly used when ne or other SFPs should have been used. The results suggest that the learners’ overuse was not due to an improperly over-generalized application of yo. Rather, the learners probably overused it because yo was easier for learners to use than ne since it does not have to take into consideration what the listener

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knows (Tominami and Nakamura 2004). Nonetheless, the potentially negative ‘pushy’ tone associated with the use of yo should be emphasized in the PIs in future studies so that learners do not sound too assertive, especially because the NS keypals did not use yo as frequently. 5.1.3. Frequency analysis of the particle NO The particle no appears when the speaker is explaining something or asking for an explanation (Makino and Tsutsui 1986). The SFP no was used by six out of the 11 learners (54.5%) in the pre-intervention period (Table 4). At the post-intervention, the number of learners who used no increased to nine (81.8%). More importantly, four out of the five learners who did not use no in the pre-PI period were able to use it in the post-PI period, suggesting the effect of the intervention on the learners’ development.5 The mean frequency of NSs’ no was .051/clause in the post-intervention period. Of the nine learners who used no in the post-intervention period, four (LN1, 2, 5, and 10) used it more frequently, beyond the NSs’ mean. In contrast to Iwai’s study (cited in Iwai 2007), which did not find much improvement in the learners’ use of n desu after explicit instructions, my study found a large increase in the learners’ use of no (including n desu) after the instruction. This difference might be attributed to a number of factors including: learners’ proficiency level, the number of instructional targets, and the medium of communication. The learners in my study were enrolled in a third semester Japanese course, while Iwai’s participants were enrolled in a second semester course. The proficiency level of my participants’ was probably higher than that of Iwai’s participants; as a result, my participants were better able to take advantage of the instruction of the n desu structure. In addition, while n desu was one of the eight target features in Iwai’s instruction, n desu was one of the four target features in my instruction. Hence, it is possible that the learners in my study were able to pay more attention to the n desu form. Finally, the difference in the medium of communication probably played a significant role in promoting the learners’ understanding of the form and function of the n desu structure. Iwai’s study used face-to-face oral communication, while my study used written email communication. Different from oral input that is transient in nature, the permanent nature of written input in this study probably helped the learners to notice the target structures more easily.

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Table 4. Frequency of no by individuals learner (n=11) Pre-PI LN1 0 LN2 0.084 LN3 0.015 LN4 0 LN5 0 LN7 0 LN8 0.009 LN10 0.008 LN12 0.014 LN13 0.014 LN15 0

Post-PI 0.057 0.088 0 0.051 0.167 0 0.040 0.095 0.031 0.050 0.029

NS (n=17) Pre-PI NS1 0 NS2 0.026 NS4 0.043 NS6 0.043 NS7 0 NS8 0 NS16 0.101 NS17 0.024 NS19 0 NS20 0 NS21 0.036 NS23 0 NS26 0.020 NS27 0 NS28 0.036 NS29 0.024 NS30 0.048

Post-PI 0.020 0 0.045 0.110 0 0 0.043 0.091 0 0.263 0 0 0.014 0.023 0.143 0 0.152

Note. Frequency of no = total number of no used in each period / number of clauses produced in each period

5.1.4. Frequency analysis of the particle YONE The particle yone is used to mitigate the force of the speaker’s assertion “by talking as if the content of the sentence were also known to the hearer” (Makino and Tsutsui 1986: 545). No learner used yone in the preintervention period. This was expected since yone was never introduced to them in their previous Japanese classes. Three NSs used yone during the same pre-intervention period, but their JFL learner keypals did not learn it from the messages. Yet, in the post-intervention period, six learners became able to use yone. This suggests a strong impact of the PI on learners’ production of yone in their email messages. Of the six learners who used yone in the post intervention period, one had a NS keypal who was a frequent yone user, and another one had two NS keypals who occasionally used yone in their messages. On the other hand, among the five learners who did not use yone at all, four learners had NS keypals who did not use

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yone at all. My sample size is too small to establish any causal relationship; however, the findings suggest that, in addition to the explicit instruction, NS keypals’ frequency of yone use might have had an impact on learners’ production of yone in their subsequent messages.

5.1.5. Analysis of the range of SFPs The learners used a greater variety of SFPs in the post-PI period than in the pre-PI period, as shown in Table 5; seven out of the eleven learners expanded their repertoire of SFPs. Except for one learner (LN2) who predominantly used no, most learners mainly used ne and yo at a similar rate in the pre-PI period. The SFP particle no was used only a few times by a handful of learners before the PIs. In contrast, nine out of 11 learners used three or four different SFPs in the post-PI period. Among those learners, five learners (LN1, 2, 8, 10 and 13) used no as much as or more than they used ne or yo in the post-PI period. The findings suggest that the learners developed a better command of different kinds of SFPs after the PIs. To summarize, the present findings indicate that the PIs positively affected the JFL learners’ frequency of the target SFP, as well as range of SFPs. For example, the learners who did not use ne in the pre-intervention period became able to use it in the post-intervention period. The same applies to the particle yo because there was only one learner did not show any improvement with yo. The rest of the learners became able to use this particle more frequently after the intervention. The PI was also effective in increasing the number of learners who used no and the overall frequency of its use in the post-intervention period. In addition, six out of eleven learners started using yone in the post-intervention period even though they had never used it in the pre-intervention period. Table 5. SFPs used by individual learners (raw count) Pre-PI

Post-PI

learner (n=11) LN1 LN2

total ne (3) ne (1)

yo (2) yo (6)

5 no (23)

30

total ne (20) ne (1)

yo (5) yo (4)

no (9) no (12)

yone (2)

36 17

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Development of use of sentence-final particles Table 5. (Continued) ne yo LN3 (2) (3) ne yo LN4 (21) (7)

no (1)

6 28 0

LN5 LN7 LN8 LN10 LN12 LN13 LN15

ne (5) yo (2) ne (3) ne (15) ne (5) ne (3)

yo (4) no (1) yo (6) yo (45) yo (1) yo (1)

9 3 no (1) no (4) no (1)

10 64 7 4

ne (5) ne (29) ne (2) ne (4) ne (5) ne (2) ne (51) ne (8) ne (19)

yo (5) yo (17) no (2) yo (7) yo (4) yo (3) yo (151) yo (10) yo (17)

10 no (13)

59 4

yone (1) no (5) no (4) no (9) no (7) no (5)

12 yone (2)

16 9

yone (1) yone (1) yone (2)

212 26 43

5.2. Analysis of research question two: Qualitative analysis of SFP use. 5.2.1. Analysis of accuracy The second research question investigated the effect of the PI in the accurate use of the target SFPs. The data shows that the accuracy of use generally improved over time. Accuracy was determined by this author’s acceptability judgments.6 The use of SFPs was considered accurate if it did not contain any of the following errors: 1) The choice of SFP was inappropriate for the context; 2) Conjugation of the preceding predicate was erroneous; and 3) Gender appropriateness in the use of the particles was not observed, e.g., kirei ne (It’s pretty NE - commonly used by female) vs. kirei da ne (It’s pretty DA NE - used by both male and female). Table 6 displays the accuracy rate of the SFP use. The accuracy rate was calculated by dividing total accurate SFP uses by total attempted SFP uses.

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Table 6. Learners’ accuracy rate of SFPs SFPs ne

P1 56.9% (33/58) 96.1% (74/77) 72.7% (24/33) n/a

P2 P3 57.1% 73.6% (32/56) (67/91) yo 88.3% 97% (53/60) (159/164) no 48.4% 76.9% (15/31) (30/39) yone 16.7% 33.3% (1/6) (1/3) Notes. P1=period before the first PI, P2=period after the first intervention and before the second intervention, P3=period after the second intervention. The percentage is the rate of accurate uses over the total uses. The numbers in the parentheses show raw counts of accurate uses over total attempted uses. N/a indicates that no SFP was used in that period.

Tables 7 and 8 summarize the change in individual learners’ accuracy rate for each SFP from the pre-PI period (P1) to the period after the first PI (P2) and the period after the second PI (P3). As a group, the learners’ accuracy rate of ne changed very little after the first PI (see P1 and P2 in Table 6), but showed a slight increase in P3 (after two interventions). The accuracy rate of yo and no decreased after the first PI (in P2) but increased after the second PI (in P3). There was no analyzable data of yone in P1, because no learner used it. The accuracy rate of yone increased from P2 to P3. After the second intervention (P3), the learners achieved the highest accuracy rate with yo, the second highest rate with no, followed closely by ne with the third highest accuracy rate. The particle yone showed the lowest accuracy rate. Looking at individual learners, there was a tendency for the accuracy rate to drop from P1 to P2, but then to rise again in P3. As shown in Table 7, among the eight learners who used ne in all three periods, four learners (LN1, 3, 10, and 15) showed this pattern of change.7 Similarly, three (LN 4, 7, and 15) of the seven learners who used yo in all three periods showed this pattern. As shown in Table 8, of the five learners who used no in all three periods, two learners (LN 2 and 13) demonstrated the same pattern of change. The decreased accuracy rate in P2 may be related to the sudden increase in the frequency of the SFPs after the first PI. Many learners used SFPs much more frequently after the first PI. However, as suggested by the low accuracy rate, they had not yet formed a solid understanding of the functions and structures of the SFPs. The second PI drew the learners’

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attention to their own erroneous use of SFPs. This may have fine-tuned their SFP use, thereby contributing to the increase in the accuracy rate in P3. In summary, the PIs moderately assisted learners’ accurate use of SFPs. In contrast to the abrupt gain in the frequency of SFP uses after the PIs, the findings suggest that development of accurate use of SFPs takes a longer time, and hence a longer and more frequent intervention might be necessary. Table 7. Accuracy rate by individuals: The cases of SFP ne and yo

NE learner (n=11) LN1 LN2 LN3 LN4 LN5 LN7 LN8 LN10

P1 100% (3/3) 100% (1/1) 100% (2/2) 47.6% (10/21) n/a 60% (3/5) n/a 100% (3/3)

YO P2 50% (5/10) n/a 66.7% (2/3) 44.4% (4/9) 0% (0/2) 100% (2/2) 40% (2/5) 0% (0/1)

P3 83.3% (10/12) 0% (0/1) 100% (2/2) 90% (18/20) n/a

P1 50% (1/2) 100% (6/6) 100% (3/3) 100% (7/7) n/a

P2 n/a

50% (1/2) n/a

100% (2/2) 100% (2/2) 66.7% (4/6)

60% (3/5) 66.7% (2/3) 100% (1/1)

100% (1/1)

n/a 100% (1/1) 88.9% (8/9) n/a

P3 100% (5/5) 100% (4/4) 100% (4/4) 100% (8/8) n/a 100% (2/2) n/a

50% (1/2) 97.6% (120/123 LN12 26.7% 58.8% 54.3% 100% 100% ) (4/15) (10/17) (19/35) (45/45) (28/28) LN13 80% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% (4/5) (4/4) (4/4) (1/1) (8/8) (2/2) 100% 40% 92.9% LN15 100% 66.7% 85.7% (1/1) (2/5) (13/14) (3/3) (2/3) (12/14) Notes. P1=period before the first PI, P2=period after the first intervention but before the second intervention, P3=period after the second intervention. %= the rate of accurate uses over the total uses. The numbers in the parentheses show raw counts of accurate uses over total uses. N/a indicates that the learner did not use the SFP during that period.

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Table 8. Accuracy rate by individuals: The cases of no and yone NO learner (n=11) LN1

P1

YONE P2 30% (3/10) 66.7% (2/3)

P3 100% (1/1) 88.9% (8/9)

P1

n/a

n/a 58.3% (7/12) 100% (2/2)

LN3

n/a 87% (20/23) 100% (1/1)

LN4

n/a

0% (0/1)

LN5

n/a

n/a

LN7

n/a 100% (1/1) 100% (1/1) 0% (0/6) 100% (1/1)

n/a 40% (2/5) 100% (1/1) 57.1% (4/7) 75% (3/4)

LN2

P3

n/a

P2 0% (0/2)

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a 0% (0/1) 0% (0/2)

n/a

n/a

n/a n/a n/a 0% LN8 (0/1) n/a n/a 100% LN10 (3/3) n/a n/a n/a 100% 100% LN12 (2/2) n/a (1/1) n/a 100% 100% LN13 (3/3) n/a n/a (1/1) 66.7% LN15 n/a n/a (4/6) n/a n/a 0% (0/2) Notes. P1=period before the first PI, P2=period after the first intervention but before the second intervention, P3=period after the second intervention. %= the rate of accurate uses over the total uses. The numbers in the parentheses show raw counts of accurate uses over total uses. N/a indicates that the learner did not use the SFP during that period.

5.2.2. Analysis of the non-formulaic use of SFPs: The case of NE Although previous studies showed that learners did not develop a productive (non-formulaic) use of ne for an extended period of time (Sawyer 1992; Shibahara 2002; Yoshimi 1999), in the present study some learners increased their productive use of ne immediately after the PIs. To illustrate, in the pre-intervention stage, LN1 used ne only in the formulaic expression mata ne ‘See you.’ However, she started to use ne in nonformulaic phrases after the first PI. Five out of her 10 uses of ne were productive, meaning that she used ne in a non-formulaic phrase, although they were all inaccurate. Those errors were mainly caused by using ne

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when expressing information that was not shared between the learner and her keypal, as shown in the example (1): (1) LN1 (11/10/2007, after 1st PI)8 Nakaniwa de hon o yonde Courtyard at book Acc read kedo saikin sumuini narimashita but recetly cold became ‘I like reading books in the courtyard but NE.’

koto ga sukida Nmlz Nom like ne. NE it has become cold these days

The use of ne here is inappropriate because her keypal who was in Japan was not experiencing the same weather change in the U.S. area where LN1 lived. After the second PI, four of the 12 uses of ne by LN1 were productive, and two of them were accurate. Although errors remained in the learner’s production, the nature of the errors showed a qualitative change. The errors showed LN1’s enhanced understanding of the function of ne, as shown in the example (2): (2) LN1 (12/1/2007, after 2nd PI) Tokyo no hoteru ni hatarakimasu Tokyo Gen hotel at work ‘You will work at a hotel in Tokyo NE. Great.’

ne. NE

Sugoi. great

This excerpt was LN1’s response to her keypal’s message about her job. Since the keypal had told that she was going to work at a hotel in Tokyo after graduation, this was already shared information between LN1 and her keypal. Hence, the choice of the particle ne was appropriate in this situation. However, there was a mistake in the form because the learner attached ne to the masu-form of the verb (i.e., hatarakimasu ‘work’), not to the n desu form of the verb. The n desu ne sentence ending is appropriate here because it is usually used to rephrase and reconfirm what the other person has said. Because she was recasting what her keypal had told her, the appropriate sentence should be Tokyo no hoteru de hataraku n desu ne ‘You will work at a hotel in Tokyo, right?,’ with the sentence ending n desu ne, not ne alone. Although the use of ne in (2) was not grammatically perfect, it shows a qualitative improvement from the error in (1), because in (2) the learner applied ne appropriately to mark shared information.

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LN15 also demonstrated a non-formulaic use of ne after the PIs. Before the first PI, he used ne three times, but two of them were in the formulaic phrase mata ne ‘see you again.’ After the second PI, he used ne 14 times, six in the phrase mata ne and two in another formulaic expression to ii desu ne ‘I hope you can.’ The remaining six uses of ne were non-formulaic and five of them were accurate.

5.2.3. Analysis of learner errors One type of error in the use of ne may have resulted from learners’ different understanding of shared information, as shown below: (3) LN10 (11/16/2007, after 1st PI) Nihongo de kaku no ga amari Japanese in write Nmlz Nom very ‘I’m not very good at writing in Japanese NE.’

hetada ne. poor NE

The SFP ne is used when the information expressed in the utterance is shared between the speaker and the hearer (Kamio 1994). Therefore, the particle ne in (3) is not appropriate since the information I’m not good at writing in Japanese is new information for his keypal. However, since his keypal had been reading the learners’ emails, the learner might have thought that his keypal knew that his writing skill was not good, as evident in his email messages. If that was the case, the learner correctly applied the functional rule of ne, which was explained in the first PI, although the actual use was non-native like. This type of error lends support to Yoshimi’s (1999) discussion; the learners’ errors might result from different ways in which English and Japanese speakers construct the sharedness of information. English speakers may consider information provided by the other person to be familiar and shared immediately after the information is given to them, while Japanese speakers do not consider such information to be shared until they spend a longer time communicating the same information (Kamio 1994). Most common errors with the particle yo had to do with male learners’ use of yo with adjectival verbs. When the noun phrase or root of an adjectival verb is followed by yo (i.e. kirei yo ‘it’s pretty YO’), the resulting expression sounds feminine, and is inappropriate for a male speaker to use. Another common error was caused by the conjugation of the predicate preceding yo, as in kiitemo ii da yo (You may ask + copula YO)

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(LN10, 12/5/2007) and oishii da yo (It’s tasty + copula YO) (LN7, 11/17/2007). Despite these errors, there were only eight out of 301 cases where the use of yo was completely unacceptable (i.e., cases where other SFPs were required instead of yo). Although overall number of the errors was small, four out of 10 learners who used yo made such mistakes as shown in the example (4). In response to keypal’s message that she had been sick, the learner wrote: (4) LN10 (10/27/2007, before 1st PI) Zannendesu yo. Odaijini. Regretable YO Take care ‘That’s regrettable YO. Take care.’

In this case, zannendesu ne ‘regrettable NE’, would have been more appropriate because he is commenting on his keypal’s condition and aligning himself with the keypal. This learner used yo three times in the post-PI period: two were accurate and one had a conjugation error. LN15 made errors similar to (4) four times. In his case, three out of his four erroneous uses of yo were followed by an exclamation mark, suggesting that he incorrectly generalized yo as an emphatic marker. These learners’ errors with yone revealed some shortcomings of the instructional materials in this study. Based on the NS’s use of yone found in their email messages, the first PI explained two main uses of yone: (5) a. Based on the information provided by the other person, use yone to comment on something as if the other person is in complete agreement with you (e.g., Watashi mo ima furansugo o yatteimasu. Furansugo wa totemo tanoshiidesu yone. ‘I’m studying French too. French is very fun YONE’). b. When used in ‘~n desu yone?,’ yone conveys the meaning of ‘if I remember correctly, did you say that + clause?’. By using yone, the speaker seeks confirmation on the information so that he/she can introduce a related topic.

LN1’s use of yone after the first PI might be due to the overgeneralization of the rule (5a). Replying to the email from her keypal who talked about how busy she was during the previous week, LN1 wrote:

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Tomomi Kakegawa (6) LN1 (11/9/2007, after 1st PI) Sen shuumatsu wa totemo isogashikatta Last weekend Top very was busy ‘Last weekend was busy YONE.’

yone. YONE

Although both LN1 and her keypal were busy during the weekend, the use of yone here is not appropriate because LN1 was busy in her own life, and her keypal was busy in hers, and thus the experiences during ‘last weekend’ that LN1 was referring to were not shared between the learner and her keypal. The same utterance would be appropriate if they both participated in the same event during the weekend and were talking about how busy they were during the event. This error seems to reflect an insufficient explanation given in the first PI. However, after the second PI, two learners (LN13 and 15) used yone appropriately; neither of them used yone in relation to their own past experience, independent from their keypals.’ Yet, learners’ errors still remained at the linguistic level. LN15 appropriately used yone twice to seek confirmation, following instruction (5b), but failed to use the n desu form before yone in both cases. See example (7): (7) LN15 (12/1/2007, after 2nd PI) Rainen no haru ni sotsugyooshimasu Next year Gen spring in graduate ‘You will graduate next spring YONE.’

yone. YONE

His keypal had told him that she would graduate next spring, and he was reconfirming the information. Therefore, he should have used n desu yone rather than yone in (7). LN15’s errors suggest that he identified the appropriate context to use yone (i.e., confirmation of shared information) and added the SFP yone to his utterance in the right place. However, he failed to apply other linguistic requirements (i.e., adding n desu before yone). In summary, learners’ SFP use showed qualitative changes over time, demonstrating target-like understanding of the use and functions of each SFP. However, linguistic errors still remained in the formulation of the phrases and sentences with the SFPs.

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6. Pedagogical implications As pointed out in previous research, one of the challenges of pragmatic teaching in a foreign language context is the lack of authentic materials that involve target pragmatic features (Vyatkina and Belz 2006). In addition, classroom interactions are often not conducive to the practice of target pragmatic features. The results of this study offer several implications for the pragmatic teaching of SFPs that address these potential limitations of the foreign language context in pragmatic learning. First, the teaching method implemented here (i.e., CMC) could provide learners with vital access to authentic material in a safe and cost-effective manner. When combined with explicit instructions, it facilitates the learning of target pragmatic features. Mere exposure to the target features is not enough to promote learners’ use of SFPs, as shown in the learners’ sporadic use of SFPs during the pre-PI period, despite their frequent occurrences in the NS emails in the same period. Hence, this study lends support to the previous claims that explicit learning and awareness raising are indispensable in the acquisition of pragmatic forms (Sawyer 1992; Shibahara 2002; Masuda 2007). The present findings clearly showed that explicit instruction coupled with communication practice with NSs via email was effective in promoting learners’ use of SFPs. In addition, as demonstrated in this study, usage examples from email communication that learners had engaged in served as a source of appropriate pedagogical materials. For example, by analyzing learners’ and NSs’ uses of ne, learners were able to understand how ne occurs in authentic communication, and how they sometimes misuse it. A common dictionary description of ne as a tag question marker or a marker of shared information often leads to usage errors. An important point is that the learners must consider how the information came to be shared when using ne. For example, ne may be used if the information is shared because the speaker is making a generic statement (e.g., Sushi wa oishii desu ne ‘Sushi is delicious NE’), or because the speaker and the hearer shared an experience (e.g., Ano sushi wa oishikatta desu ne. ‘That sushi was delicious NE’). However, if the information came to be shared because the hearer reported it to the speaker previously, specific sentence endings such as n desu ne (NO copula NE) or n desu yone (NO copula YONE) must be used. Without authentic examples gained through email exchanges, these functional details are probably difficult for the learners to grasp.

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Explicit teacher-led teaching implemented as pedagogical interventions in this study is particularly important when learning pragmatic features via electronic communication. In Belz and Kinginger’s (2003) study, NS keypals pointed out learners’ erroneous forms of target pragmatic features (i.e., German pronouns) in their emails and chat communications, and this NSs’ assistance helped learners’ to form correct understanding of the German pronoun systems. In the present study, however, although some Japanese keypals corrected the JFL learners’ grammatical errors in their emails, none of them explicitly pointed out their errors with SFPs. Since SFPs do not affect the proposition of a sentence (Saji 1956), it may be difficult for linguistically untrained NSs to pinpoint the problem even if the sentences do not sound quite right in a given context with the misused SFPs. These observations further reinforce the importance of teacher-led classroom instruction to improve learners’ use of SFPs. Another implication is the positive effect of written communication for the learning of pragmatic features that are primarily a characteristic of spoken discourse. This claim was also made in Sykes’ (2005) study of L2 Spanish learners. For learners with low language proficiency, it might be challenging to consider all the sociopragmatic factors related to the proper use of SFPs in spontaneous, face-to-face conversation. In email exchanges, however, learners have more time to plan; they can re-read their keypal’s messages, consider their propositions carefully, and package information accordingly when responding to the messages. Confirming this claim, in the present study, even quiet learners were found actively engaged in email exchanges and were anxious to try out the SFPs that they learned in class. Another advantage of email over face-to-face communication is that the written mode of communication provides a visible cue for phonetically less salient pragmatic features such as SFPs, especially the particle no. In the case of phonologically reduced form n followed by copula da or desu, it may be particularly hard for learners to pick up these SFPs in spontaneous oral communication. Written communication, on the other hand, makes these reduced linguistic forms more noticeable, consequently facilitating acquisition. Whether instruction based on email communication is effective in promoting SFPs in oral communication is a subject for future investigation. The degree of impact of the PIs, however, varied greatly across individual learners. Some improved greatly both in frequency and accuracy of SFP use, but others improved very little. To address these individual differences, a written feedback to individual learners and/or a one-to-one

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counseling session may be useful to gain insight about different developmental pace among individuals. This could be done as a third PI session. In the present study, at the end of the semester, the instructor sent email feedback to the learners whose errors or non-use of SFPs indicated a serious misunderstanding of the SFPs. Future research should implement a more extended version of an individual feedback session to address the individual differences gleaned in this study. Finally, the length of communication practice that lasted over 12 weeks allowed the learners to observe the changes in NSs’ use of language and their communication style. Some learners noticed that their keypal shifted their use of language gradually toward more casual style. Each learner had two NS keypals, and sometimes one keypal used casual style of communication, while the other used more formal style. Observation of these different NS styles can be useful in helping learners to reflect on NS norms and to acknowledge variation in stylistic preferences across NSs. Some learners in this study informally reported that when they started using more casual style and more SFPs, they were happy to notice similar changes in their keypals’ messages. The learners also expressed disappointment when their keypals’ messages did not show a notable change after they tried to encode a friendly, casual tone in message via SFPs. These sentiments expressed by the learners indicate that, over time, they became more conscious about how they communicate in L2 Japanese through the explicit instructions on SFPs and authentic email communication with Japanese NSs.

7. Limitations of the study and implications for future research There are several limitations in the present study. One obvious limitation is the small sample size and lack of a control group. Future research with a larger sample size and control group data will more thoroughly address the effectiveness of instruction. Another limitation is that the instruction given on the SFPs may not have been sufficient to yield robust learning. Because only 15 to 20 minutes of class time were spent during each PI, it is possible that the learners did not have enough time to digest the materials, as shown in the number of usage errors that remained after the PIs. In addition, there is no guarantee that the learning demonstrated in email messages will transfer to spoken communication since no spoken test was conducted. Lastly, the present study did not address the long-term effect of the PIs

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because it did not include a delayed posttest. These shortcomings in this study should be remedied in the future research to see if the promising effect of CMC-based instruction revealed in this study is robust in terms of the retention of learned pragmatic knowledge and transferability of the knowledge to different skill areas.

8. Conclusion Despite the limitations mentioned above, I tentatively conclude that, although there were individual variations, pedagogical intervention embedded in the course of email communications yielded a positive outcome in pragmatic learning. Majority learners became able to use SFPs more frequently and somewhat more accurately after the instruction, and they also increased the range of SFPs to use in their email messages. Qualitative analysis revealed that some learners’ use of the particle ne became more productive (non formulaic), and learners’ errors reflected some qualitative changes toward the mastery of SFPs after the instruction. Although SFPs are frequent in naturalistic communications, exposure to native speaker data alone does not facilitate learners’ acquisition of these important pragmatic features. What seems facilitative is the combination of explicit instruction, exposure to input, and authentic communicative practice. I hope that the results of this study encourage teachers of Japanese to use learner-native speaker interactions available via CMC in their teaching of SFPs and other pragmatic features. Notes 1. The sentence final particle no may be followed by a copula da in plain form and desu in polite form, resulting in no da (and its variant n da) and no desu (and its variant n desu), respectively. I included all variations in my analysis of the SFP no. 2. Spoken language is more fragmented than written language (Maynard 1989). Because email messages are a written narrative, they are less fragmented than spoken language. This may be one of the reasons why SFPs appeared only at the end of syntactic clauses in my data. 3. Eleven out of the 184 learner messages analyzed for this study, consisting primarily of the first self–introduction messages, belong to this category. Those messages were kept in this analysis because there were many other messages

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5.

6.

7. 8.

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that contained both copied sentences and novel ones. If all copied sentences were excluded from the analysis, the frequency rate of SFPs/clause could be misleadingly increased. The corresponding abrupt increase in NS frequency from Week 10 to 11 might suggest that the learners’ increased use of SFPs prompted a more familiar tone of writing from their NS keypals, resulting in the increase of NS frequency of SFP use. As shown in Table 2, NSs’ frequency of SFP use is also higher in the post–PI period than in the pre–PI period. This might suggest that NSs used SFPs more frequently after they became more familiar with their keypals. Therefore, one might suspect that the increase in learners’ frequency of SFP use in the post–PI was also caused by an increased familiarity toward their keypals. However, while the NSs’ frequency of total SFP use nearly doubled from the pre to post– PI period, the learners’ use almost tripled. Considering that even learners who were in an immersion setting for periods of nine to 12 months did not show a notable increase in their use of SFPs (Sawyer 1992; Shibahara 2002), it is unlikely that a once–a–week email correspondence could increase learners’ SFP use so dramatically, even if gradual familiarity with keypals contributed to the increased use of SFPs. Nonetheless, in a future study, a control group should be included in the design of the study to see how learners’ frequency of SFP use changes through email exchanges alone, without PIs. Inter–rater reliability was checked by having another native Japanese speaker judge accuracy for 20% of the data. The percentage of agreement was 90%. The use of SFPs was considered accurate when both raters agreed on the judgment. Accuracy rate was not available for some learners because they did not use target SFPs in certain periods. The following abbreviations were used in glosses: Nom = nominative, Acc = accusative, Gen = genitive, Nmlz = nominalizer, Top = topic marker

References Belz, Julie A. 2008 The role of computer mediation in the instruction and development of L2 pragmatic competence. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 27: 45–75. 2007 Teaching and learning L2 pragmatics in computer-mediated environments. Workshop conducted at the 17th International Conference on Pragmatics and Language Learning, Honolulu, Hawaii.

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At the intersection of telecollaboration, learner corpus research, and L2 pragmatics: Considerations for language program direction. In: Julie A. Belz and Steven L. Thorne (eds.), Internet-Mediated Intercultural Foreign Language Education, 207–246. Boston: Heinle and Heinle. Belz, Julie A. and Celeste Kinginger 2003 Discourse options and the development of pragmatic competence by classroom learners of German: The case of address forms. Language Learning 53 (4): 591–647. Belz, Julie A. and Nina Vyatkina 2005 Learner corpus analysis and the development of L2 pragmatic competence in networked intercultural language study: the case of German modal particles. The Canadian Modern Language Review 62 (1): 17–48. Chae, Yun Ju 2005 Nihongo bogowasha no e–meru ni okeru kotowari–taigu komyunikeshon no kantenkara [Analysis of rejection in Japanese native speakers’ email communication]. Bulletin of Graduate School of Japanese Applied Linguistics 7: 95–108. Cohen, Andrew and Rachell Shively 2007 Acquisition of requests and apologies in Spanish and French: Impact of study abroad and strategy–building intervention. Modern Language Journal 91: 181–212. Cook, Haruko Minegishi 1992 Meaning of non–referential indexes: A case study of the Japanese sentence–final particle ne. Text 12 (4): 507–539. 1990 An indexical account of the Japanese sentence–final particle no. Discourse Processes 13: 401–439. Fukuzumi, Yukako 2001 Kokugogaku kenshuhan repoto–Denshi meru no kotoba: Intanettomeru ni okeru shujoshi no seisa ni tsuite [Japanese study report– Language of email: Regarding gender differences shown in the use of sentence final particles in internet mail]. Retrieved from http://www.f.waseda.jp/uenok/kenkyu/fukuzumi.html Iwai, Tomoko 2007 Becoming a good conversationalist: Pragmatic development of JFL learners. In Selected Papers from Pragmatics in the CJK Classroom: The State of the Art, Dina R. Yoshimi and Haidan Wang (eds.), Retrieved from http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/CJKProceedings/iwai/iwai.html

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Jeon, Eun Hee and Tadayoshi Kaya 2006 Effects of L2 instruction on interlanguage pragmatic development. In: John M. Norris and Lourdes Ortega (eds.), Synthesizing Research on Language Learning and Teaching, 165–211. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Kamio, Akio 1994 The theory of territory of information: the case of Japanese. Journal of Pragmatics 21: 67–100. Katagiri, Yasuhiro 2007 Dialogue functions of Japanese sentence-final particles yo and ne. Journal of Pragmatics 39: 1313–1323. Lee, Duck-Young 2007 Involvement and the Japanese interactive particles ne and yo. Journal of Pragmatics 39: 363–388. Makino, Seiichi and Michio Tsutsui 1986 Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar. Tokyo: The Japan Times. Martinez-Flor, Alicia and Yoshinori Fukuya 2005 The effects of instruction on learners’ production of appropriate and accurate suggestions. System 33: 463–480. Masuda, Kyoko 2007 Use of Japanese sentence-final particles in peer conversation. Paper presented at the 17th International Conference on Pragmatics and Language Learning, Honolulu, Hawaii. Masuoka, Takashi 1991 Modariti no Bunpo [Grammar of modality]. Tokyo: Kuroshio Shuppan. Maynard, Senko 1993 Discourse Modality: Subjectivity, Emotion, and Voice in the Japanese Language. Philadelphia: Benjamins. 1989 Japanese Conversation: Self-Contextualization through Structure and Interactional Management. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. McGloin, Naomi Hanaoka 1984 Some politeness strategies in Japanese. In: Susumu Miyagawa and Chisato Kitagawa (eds.), Studies in Japanese Language Use, 127– 145. Carbondale, IL: Linguistic Research, Inc. Mizutani, Nobuko 1997 Kinoo Shinjuku e eiga o mi ni ikimashita ne [You went to see a movie in Shinjuku yesterday, right?]. In: Meiji Shoin (ed.), Nihongo Goyoo Bunseki [Japanese pragmatics], 81–89. Tokyo: Mieiji Shoin.

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Ogawa, Sayuri 1997 Gendai no wakamono kaiwa ni okeru bunmatsu hyogen no danjosa [Male-female differences in the sentence final expressions in present day youth conversations]. In: Koide Fumiko Sensei Taishoku Kinen Henshu Iinkai (ed.), Nihongo Kyoiku Ronbunshu [Selected papers in Japanese language education], 205–220. Tokyo: Bonjinsha. Ohta, Amy Snyder 2001 A longitudinal study of the development of expression of alignment in Japanese as a foreign language. In: Kenneth R. Rose and Gabriele Kasper (eds.), Pragmatics and Language Teaching, 103–120. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1990 Activity, affect, and stance: sentential particles in the discourse of Japanese as a foreign language classroom. Ph.D. diss., Department of Applied Linguistics, University of California at Los Angeles. Pearson, Lynn 2006 Patterns of development in Spanish L2 pragmatic acquisition: An analysis of novice learners’ production of directives. Modern Language Journal 90: 473–495. Rose, Kenneth R. and Connie Ng Kwai-fun 2001 Inductive and deductive teaching of compliments and compliment responses. In: Kenneth R. Rose and Gabriele Kasper (eds.), Pragmatics in Language Teaching, 145–170. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Saji, Keizo 1991 Nihongo no Bunpoo no Kenkyuu [Investigation of Japanese grammar]. Tokyo: Hitsuji Shoboo. 1956 Shuujoshi no kinoo [Functions of sentence final particles]. Kokugokokubun 26 (7): 461–469. Sawyer, Mark 1992 The development of pragmatics in Japanese as a second language: The sentence-final particle ne. In: Gabriele Kasper (ed.), Pragmatics of Japanese as Native and Target Language, 83–125. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i at Manoa, Second Language Teaching and Curriculum Center. Shibahara, Tomoko 2002 Analysis of acquisition of ne: A case study in the long-term Japanese teacher training program 2000–2001. Urawa Bulletin 12: 19–34. Sykes, Julie M 2005 Synchronous CMC and pragmatic development: Effects of oral and written chat. CALICO Journal 33 (3): 399–431.

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Takahashi, Satomi 2001 The role of input enhancement in developing interlanguage pragmatic competence. In: Kenneth R. Rose and Gabriele Kasper (eds.), Pragmatics in Language Teaching, 171–199. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Takimoto, Masahiro 2008 The effects of input-based tasks on the development of learners’ pragmatic proficiency. Applied Linguistics. Advance Access published January 28, 2008, doi:0.1093/applin/amm049 Tateyama, Yumiko 2001 Explicit and implicit teaching of pragmatic routines. In: Kenneth R. Rose and Gabriele Kasper (eds.), Pragmatics and Language Teaching, 200–222. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tominami, Miki and Wataru Nakamura 2004 The cross-sectional study of acquisition of Japanese sentence final particles by Korean learners: an error analysis. Paper presented at the 6th Annual Conference of the Japanese Society for Languages, Nagoya, Japan. Vyatkina, Nina and Julie A. Belz 2006 A learner corpus-driven intervention for the development of L2 pragmatic competence. Pragmatics and Language Learning 11: 315–357. Yoshimi, Dina Rudolph 2001 Explicit instruction and JFL learner’s use of interactional discourse markers. In: Kenneth R. Rose and Gabriele Kasper (eds.), Pragmatics and Language Teaching, 223–244. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1999 L1 language socialization as a variable in the use of ne by L2 learners of Japanese. Journal of Pragmatics 31: 1513–1525.

Commentary: The social turn in second language acquisition and Japanese pragmatics research: Reflection on ideologies, methodologies and instructional implications

Junko Mori Abstract This chapter reviews the development of Japanese interlanguage pragmatics research in the last two decades, represented by the current collection of studies. The review is informed by ongoing controversies in the field of second language acquisition (SLA) and applied linguistics research. By introducing non-essentialist, poststructuralist perspectives underscored in the recent social turn in SLA, this chapter reflects on theoretical assumptions, research designs, and instructional implications commonly observed among the studies in this volume; it also suggests some alternative approaches to be explored in the future.

1. Introduction The last two decades have seen a rapid development in studies on second language (L2) speakers’ pragmatic competence (e.g., Kasper and BlumKulka 1993; Gass and Houck 1999; Spencer-Oatey 2000; Rose and Kasper 2001; Kasper and Rose 2002; Bardovi-Harlig and Hartford 2005). Along with this development, a growing number of studies that examine L2 speakers of Japanese have also appeared in journals and edited volumes. But, to my knowledge, the current volume is the first book that devotes its entire attention to pragmatic competence of L2 speakers of Japanese. In the early nineties, Yoshinaga, et al (1992) compiled a bibliography of studies on Japanese pragmatics. In the bibliography, consisting of two hundred forty some books and articles, however, we find less than twenty studies examining L2 speakers’ data. The collection of empirical studies

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featured in this volume demonstrates that the field has accomplished a major leap since then both in terms of the quantity and quality of studies. These studies investigate pragmatic features ranging from speech style, honorifics, sentence final particles, to various types of speech acts, formulaic routines, and indirect expressions observed in L2 data. They also discuss, either as their primary focuses or secondary implications, what kinds of instructional materials or methods, may enhance or hinder learners’ development of pragmatic competence. This systematic review of instructional methods also offers a much-needed contribution for the advancement of Japanese language education. Appreciating how far the field has come during the last two decades, one naturally begins to wonder what its future will look like two decades from now. While there is no crystal ball that provides a vivid picture of the field’s future, some recent controversies in second language acquisition (SLA) and applied linguistics research that surround the study of L2 pragmatics may offer some clue for predicting the trajectory of future developments. This concluding chapter explores possible directions for future research by reviewing the studies featured in the volume vis-à-vis the recent debates concerning the conceptualization of L2 learning and the methodological frameworks for the investigation of its process. Prior to the delivery of prognostications, however, disclosure of this prophetess’s background is in order, because it affects the lens through which the review of the field is undertaken. My training in Japanese linguistics and conversation analysis and my experience as a classroom teacher of Japanese as a foreign language inform my review and appreciation of the contributions made by the studies in this volume. My research can be viewed as centering around the study of pragmatics, because pragmatics can be broadly defined as ‘‘the study of the relation of signs to interpreters’’ (Morris 1938: 6) or “a theory of human behavior (linguistic and otherwise) which explicitly depends on, and is conditioned by, the contexts of the users” (Mey 2004: 28). Further, Levinson’s (1983) textbook on pragmatics dedicates one entire chapter to conversation analysis, the analytical framework primarily that has been central to my research. On the other hand, I have considered myself as an outsider to the development of interlangauge pragmatics research. As summarized by Kecskes et al (2005), this branch of pragmatics has been developed with a special tie with SLA research, or more specifically the “interlanguage hypothesis” (Selinker 1972), and some of the theoretical assumptions and research methodologies associated with this tradition have alienated me

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from the core of this research domain. The recent waves of debates promoting a paradigm shift, or what Block (2003) calls “the social turn,” in SLA research, however, seem to have begun to affect how L2 speakers’ pragmatic competence is conceptualized and how it is studied. With such a possible alteration or expansion of the field, I can now envision myself contributing to the advancement of understanding of L2 pragmatic competence, or what should probably be called “multilingual pragmatic competence,” and its development. It is from this standpoint that I will engage in the following reflection on three interrelated topics: namely, theoretical assumptions, research designs, and instructional implications commonly seen in the current collection of studies as well as studies of interlanguage pragmatics in general.

2. Ideologies of native speaker and cultural homogeneity As mentioned earlier, interlangauge pragmatics research has developed as a subfield of research on pragmatics, heavily influenced by SLA research as well as comparative cross-cultural studies. Both of these research traditions tend to have pursued their investigation based on the assumptions of essentialist, contrastive categories such as native speakers versus nonnative speakers, or Japanese versus Americans. Consequently, interlanguage pragmatics research, which examines nonnative speakers’ use and acquisition of linguistic action patterns in L2, tends to have treated nonnative speakers to be “deficient communicators” (cf. Firth and Wagner 1997) who have not yet mastered forms and practices that are specific to the target culture. This tendency is also evident in the current collection of studies (with a notable exception of Ishihara and Tarone, who question the stability of “native speaker” model and “target culture”). The expressions such as “the ability to use language appropriately in a social context” (Taguchi), “culturally, socially acceptable” (Ishida), “awkward to the native ears” (Ikeda) insinuate the assumption of native speaker authority, or at least the existence of restrictive norms commonly shared among members of the speech community that determine the appropriateness, acceptability, or awkwardness of L2 speakers’ language use.

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2.1. Native speaker fallacy But what does it mean to be a native speaker? Probably, the most widely acknowledged criterion for identifying native speakers is what Davis (1995: 156) calls “the bio-developmental definition.” That is, the first language that an individual learns to speak becomes his or her native language. In other words, to be a native speaker of a language, one has to be born to, and spend childhood in, a community where the language is spoken. But does this mean that those who learned the same language during their childhood share the same level or type of language expertise, including the ability to judge the appropriateness, acceptability, or awkwardness of a particular linguistic or non-linguistic practice in a given context? This assumption of an idealized native speaker has been increasingly challenged in SLA research (e.g., Canagarajah 1999; Cook 1999, 2002; Davis 1995; Firth and Wagner 1997, 2007; Jenkins 2007; Kramsch 1993, 1997; Kumaravadivelu 2008; Pennycook 1994; Rampton 1990, 2006). For instance, Kramsch (1997:255 ) states: “The native speaker is in fact an imaginary construct—a canonically literate monolingual middle-class member of a largely fictional national community whose citizens share a belief in a common history and a common destiny… And this ideal corresponds less and less to reality.” That is, among native speakers of a given language, one can find a variety of speakers who come from different sorts of regional, educational, professional, or generational backgrounds, all of which influence the speakers’ linguistic repertoires and their judgment concerning the others’ behaviors. Thus, being a native speaker does not always guarantee that the individual is capable of functioning in a competent manner in various social situations, or has the identical standard for judging what is appropriate in a given circumstance. For an immediate example, as a native speaker of Japanese by the definition introduced above, I still struggle at times to figure out “the most appropriate” use of honorifics and discourse strategies when encountering a new social situation. My performance may be judged as awkward or not appropriate by another native speaker, who adheres to a different kind or level of expectation. Indeed, my mother who, from my point of view, has a rather old-fashioned view of what counts as “proper,” still corrects my use of honorific expressions in email correspondence with her. My contemporaries, on the other hand, seem to share a view that email is a unique medium of communication where the expectation for the level of honorifics use differ from letter writing or face-to-face interaction.

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Further, with the rapid progress of globalization, the population that embraces a bilingual or multilingual upbringing is on a constant rise, and this trend applies to the speakers of Japanese language as well. According to the statistics released from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the number of Japanese nationals residing oversea was over one million (1,085,671) in 2007, a record high and more than 24% increase from 2002. In the meantime, the statistics released from the Immigration Bureau of Japan indicates that the number of registered foreigners was over two million (2,152,973) in 2007, also a record high and 16% increase from 2002. Although this number is still only 1.69% of Japan’s total population, for the country whose homogeneity has often been a point of reference, this can be taken as a significant shift. As a result, there are an increasing number of children of these foreign workers, who are raised in bilingual or multilingual settings in Japan (cf. Kanno 2008). It is unlikely that this trend will cease in the near future. Facing a looming demographic crisis that includes growing proportion of elderly population, Japan indeed has to open its doors to an influx of foreign workers to meet its needs. How will this ongoing change in the demography of Japanese speakers affect the native speaker authority or norms and patterns that have been believed to be specific to Japanese culture? This is a question that concerns not only researchers of pragmatics, but also Japanese speakers themselves, as they encounter increasing opportunities for participating in what has traditionally been labeled as “native versus non-native” or “intercultural” interactions. Imagine, for instance, elderly Japanese who have never traveled abroad needing assistance from non-Japanese nurses and caretakers. How do they come to an understanding, or how do they gauge each other’s conduct? To consider this issue further, let us turn to the recent developments in research on intercultural communication.

2.2. Recent trend in intercultural communication research Recent studies in intercultural communication (e.g., Higgins 2007; Kecskes 2007; Koole and ten Thijeb 2001; Meeuwis 1994; Mori 2003; Sarangi 1994; Verschueren 2008, as well as a series of articles published in recent volumes of Intercultural Pragmatics) underscore that intercultural communication should be studied as just one form of communication, where the participants explore and create ways to accomplish mutual understanding. While earlier studies in this area tend to have focused on

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cases where the participants’ cultural differences become a cause of misunderstandings or communication breakdowns, these recent studies emphasize that intercultural communication becomes possible because of the participants’ ability to search for, or negotiate, common grounds or shared resources to establish understanding. In situations where parties engaged in communication are apparently from different cultural backgrounds, it is possible that neither party holds the other to the standards typically set for members of their own linguistic and cultural community. Both parties may attempt to interpret the others’ behaviors based on what they know of the others’ culture, or create a whole new milieu, or the third space (cf. Bhabha 1994; Kramsch 1993), where revision, negotiation, and renewal of practices, norms and values would likely occur. Sunaoshi (2005), for instance, analyzes videorecorded interactions between Japanese technical supporters and American workers on the production floor and illustrates how the participants creatively utilize available communication resources and co-construct meaning despite their severely limited knowledge of each other’s language and sociolinguistic norms. This newer trend in intercultural communication research prompt reevaluation of the static and essentialist understanding of culture as well as the evaluation of L2 speakers’ performance based on monolingual standards, which have provided major influences upon interlanguage pragmatics research. While the picture painted in the previous paragraph may be seen as a rather idealistic outlook, what is also true is that “the ability to ‘behave like someone else’ is no guarantee that one will be more easily accepted by the group who speaks the language, nor that mutual understanding will emerge,” as noted by Kramsch (1993: 181). Since pragmatics is “the study of language from the point of view of users” (Crystal 1997: 301), it is imperative to consider how each individual’s subjectivity comes into play when making choices in interaction (see Ishihara and Tarone’s chapter in this volume) and how participants of intercultural interaction construct, ascribe to, or resist their various identities - either those concerning their cultural background, or native or non-native statues, or something else - through their interaction. Thus, from a non-essentialist point of view, “intercultural speakers’ deliberate cultural alternation needs to be regarded as evincing not cultural ‘transfer’ or ignorance of a second culture but as a clear sign of the intercultural competence they posses,” as suggested by House (2008: 16). An anecdote illustrating such a deliberate alternation can be introduced from my experience of attending a meeting for foreign executive women

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working in Tokyo. In this support group discussion, experienced women executives recommended to younger members the timely alteration of languages and styles (i.e., Japanese and English) as a strategy for successful intercultural business negotiation. That is, while Japanese may be used to establish and enhance social relationship, when it comes to the point of finalizing a deal, their advice was to stick to English even if one considers her Japanese language proficiency to be fairly advanced. I attended this meeting as part of my preparation for a new course on Business Japanese language. Realizing that such practices are recommended among foreign businesswomen working in Japan, I wondered what should be taught in the new course since business Japanese textbooks for L2 speakers that I had seen all presented dialogs and exercises based on monolingual, native speaker standards. The renewed understanding of “native speaker,” “culture,” and “intercultural communication,” inevitably prompts the reevaluation of research designs as well as instructional methods. The topics introduced in this section will be pursued further as we discuss research methodologies and teaching and learning of pragmatics.

3. Consideration of alternative approaches: Who, what, and how? Bardovi-Harlig and Hartford (2005:1) describe the dilemma felt by researchers of interlanguage pragmatics as follows: Discussions of research design in interlanguage pragmatics reveal a tension between the desire for highly controlled production tasks that yield comparable language samples and the desire to integrate the investigation of authentic discourse into studies of interlanguage pragmatics. In spite of the interest the field has expressed in authentic discourse, controlled elicitation tasks still dominate data collection.

The tendency to lean toward controlled elicitation techniques despite the desire to seek authenticity is observed in the current collection of studies as well. Role-play is the most commonly adopted elicitation tasks in this collection; other techniques adopted include oral discourse completion tasks (DCT) and experiments for testing comprehension or recognition of meanings. The data elicited by these methods were then compared between native speakers and non-native speakers, different levels of learners, JFL and JSL learners, or groups that received different types of instructions.

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The preferred data collection method involving controlled elicitation tasks is another indication of the strong influence of psycholinguistic models of studies that has been seen in interlanguage pragmatics research to date. As discussed earlier, increasing presence of social, cultural, and critical perspectives in SLA research, however, will likely shift the balance between the effort to establish researchable constructs that can generate generalizable findings, on the one hand, and the plea to foreground individual users, and social, cultural, and political contexts that influence their pragmatic decisions in real world, on the other. The following subsections will consider possible alternative approaches concerning the recruitment and treatment of research participants, the selection of target forms and practices, and the processes of data collection.

3.2. Research participants As discussed earlier, the influence of monolingual, native speaker model is apparent in the commonly adopted research designs in this volume as well as interlanguage pragmatics research in general. Further, research participants are often classified into groups based on their L2 training background and treated as a “faceless” member of a group into which they are categorized. Although several studies note individual differences observed among members of the same group, they do not necessarily pursue this issue much further. The tendency in these comparative studies is to link features observed in the data of each group to the preselected characterization of the participants’ such as native or nonnative speakers, JSL or JFL learners, despite that other types of identities and other types of situational factors possibly influenced their pragmatic choices. Another notable feature common across the studies included in this volume is that the participants in these studies were primarily students who were receiving classroom instruction in higher education and thereby readily classified as “L2 learners.” This may be due to the fact these researchers are motivated to produce some pedagogical implications for higher education, or that this population of L2 speakers is most accessible participants available for these researchers. However, Yoshimi’s chapter reminded us of the fact that a considerable amount of pragmatic learning could occur even in contexts where learners do not receive explicit instruction. Likewise, based on the results of his comparative studies between JFL and JSL learners, Shimizu speculates that JSL learners have learned some pragmatic strategies through frequent

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interactions with L1 speakers of Japanese in the target language community. Similarly, Ishihara and Tarone suggest that L2 speakers’ experiences outside of the classroom could significantly influence their pragmatic decisions. These findings underscore the importance of studying the processes in which these L2 speakers’ experiences outside of the classroom contribute to their learning of L2 pragmatics. Further, given that L2 Japanese speakers have become increasingly diverse, the recruitment of a wider range of research participants, including younger children or adults who do not have access to instructional settings, would be necessary for the growth of the field. Indeed, the database skewed toward students in higher education is not unique to Japanese interlanguage pragmatics research. That SLA research in general has focused too much on L2 learners engaged in a formal learning program is a point of critique raised by Firth and Wagner (1997, 2007), who call for the broadening of the traditional SLA database.

3.2. Focal forms and practices The linguistic forms and pragmatic actions examined by the studies in this volume range from speech styles, honorifics, sentence final particles, reactive tokens, requests, refusals, compliment responses. The selection of these focal items for investigation, however, evidently reflects disciplinary histories. That is, the forms such as speech styles, honorifics, sentence final particles, or reactive tokens are the items most extensively studied by Japanese linguists who specialize in pragmatics and discourse analysis as unique features of Japanese language. The selection of practices such as requests, refusals, and compliment responses originates in the tradition of interlanguage pragmatics research where speech act theory (Austin 1962; Searle 1969) and politeness theories (Brown and Levinson 1987; Lakoff 1973; Leech 1983) have been influential. While the studies in this volume all contribute to the understanding of L2 speakers’ performance concerning these pre-selected forms and practices observed in assigned tasks, how these focal items and phenomena are selected and examined can be another object of reflection. In interlanguage pragmatics research, the findings of previous pragmatic or discourse analytic studies based on L2 discourse or prescriptive explanations presented in reference books are often taken for granted when discussing the use of particular linguistic items. However, it should be noted that these findings and explanations have remained, and will remain,

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to be the target of investigation and contestation in their own right. Newer studies, adopting different theoretical and methodological frameworks, continuously refine or revise what has been suggested by previous studies. Journals such as Journal of Pragmatics, Language in Society, Multilingua, Pragmatics, or Research on Language in Social Interaction, constantly feature innovative studies that present in pragmatic research or reexamine linguistic and non-linguistic phenomena observed in interaction involving L1 or L2 Japanese speakers. For instance, an emerging body of studies in interactional linguistics, the convergence of conversation analysis, discourse functional linguistics, linguistic anthropology have investigated items such as sentence-final particles or reactive tokens based on close observation of audio as well as video recorded interactions (e.g., Hayashi, in press; Hayashi and Yoon, forthcoming; Mori 2006; Morita 2005; Saft 2007; Shimotani 2007; Tanaka 2000). These studies attend to ongoing social activities and sequential contexts where particular linguistic forms are used, as well as prosodic features and non-verbal conduct associated with the use of these forms. By doing so, they have demonstrated how the deployment of a particular linguistic item should be understood contingent upon the moment-bymoment unfolding of talk-in-interaction and in conjunction with other types of multimodal semiotic resources available for interactional participants. The outcomes of these recent studies have not yet been fully incorporated into studies of talks involving L2 speakers, but I believe that these studies have much to offer for L2 pragmatics research as well. Likewise, the reconceptualization of the notion of politeness is also a current topic in the broader field of pragmatics. That is, while earlier theories of politeness proposed structuralist and speaker-centered models of politeness and have maintained major impacts upon interlanguage pragmatics research, proponents of the conceptualization of politeness as a discursive phenomenon have gained a momentum in recent years (e.g., Arundale 1999; Eelen 2001; Kasper 2006; Locher 2004, 2006; Watts 2003). They question the approach in which theoretical politeness models are imposed upon the analysis of linguistic data, or in other words, etic (researcher-generated), categorical judgments of what count as ‘polite’ versus ‘impolite,’ or ‘appropriate’ versus ‘inappropriate.’ Instead, they propose to explore emic (participant-relevant) perspectives, or how participants themselves discursively construct and negotiate their own understanding of politeness through interaction. Kasper (2006:224) sums up this new approach as it follows: “Rather than viewing social contexts as

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static givens and politeness as residing in actions and linguistic resources as a stable property, poststructuralist perspectives emphasize the mutually constitutive roles of agency and social structure in situated, concrete activities.” This poststructuralist approach toward the understanding of politeness thus questions the legitimacy of pre-assigning significance to particular linguistic forms or actions without taking situated nature of language use into consideration.1 The close attention to parallel developments in a broader field of pragmatics research is critical for the advancement of research on L2 pragmatics. Not only should researchers of L2 pragmatics continue to be informed by recent studies of L1 pragmatics on forms and practices of their interest, but also they should maintain an open mind in considering what types of forms and practices would be worthy of investigation. The judgment as to which forms and practices are challenging to L2 speakers and therefore should be investigated or instructed, has been primarily based on researchers’ and educators’ introspection, or L2 speakers’ performance observed in testing or experimental settings. However, the selection of focal items should not be bound by existing literature in the field. “Unmotivated” observation of naturally occurring interaction among L1 or L2 speakers, promoted by the analytical framework of conversation analysis, may yield some interesting findings as to what could potentially be a consequential practice for L2 speakers to acquire.2 This discussion will be continued in the next subsection where data collection and analysis procedures will be discussed further.

3.3. Beyond elicitation techniques The reflection on who should be included as research participants, how they should be treated, and what kind of linguistic forms and practices should be investigated, naturally lead us to the discussion of what kind of data should be collected and how the data should be analyzed. As mentioned earlier, elicitation techniques such as DCT or role-play have been popular methods. However, as acknowledged by the researchers themselves, performances elicited in such controlled, experimental or quasi-experimental settings may not represent those observed in real world settings. This is because it is not clear to what extent tasks arranged for elicitation approximate authentic situations, and moreover, because what the participants do in these ‘lab’ settings has no social consequentiality for

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their lives outside of the lab (Bardovi-Harlig and Hartford 2005; Ishihara and Tarone, this volume). Namely, while choices made by speakers in real world situations can lead to a certain consequence in their future relationship with the others, or their position in a given community, imaginary participants and situations presented in task instructions do not guarantee the same level of involvement and investment on the part of research participants. In order to compensate for the disadvantages of elicitation techniques, Ishihara and Tarone employed retrospective interviews. Following the completion of role-play and oral DCT tasks, the interviews were conducted to solicit the research participants’ recollection of authentic language use and their explanation of motivations behind their choices in the authentic situations recollected. While these interviews provide richer data for understanding the participants’ subjectivity that guided their pragmatic choices, it is still questionable whether or not the accounts provided by them during the interviews can be taken at their face value. In an ironic way, these interviews can be considered “authentic data” worthy of analysis, not only concerning the contents of the participants’ responses, but also concerning the manners in which the researchers and the researched (who possibly create a context of intercultural communication) co-construct narratives (e.g., Baker 2004; Kasper 2008; Pavelenko 2007). It is not clear from their description of data collection procedure as to who served as an interviewer in this research. However, the perceived cultural affiliation of the interviewer, the perceived relationship between the interviewer and interviewee, and the manners in which the interviewers’ questions and responses are designed and delivered, could have all contributed to the pragmatic decisions that the research participants made in crafting their answers. Kawate-Mierzeiewska, on the other hand, arranged the data collection procedure in an attempt to collect more naturalistic data. That is, she recorded telephone conversations asking participants for their cooperation in data collection without telling them that the focus of the analysis indeed was how they formulate their refusals in the very telephone conversation she initiated. Since there was no task instruction in this case, and the participants were under the impression that these telephone conversations were real life situations, the data collected through this method can be considered more “authentic” than those collected through DCT or role-play tasks. However, Kawate-Mierzeiewska employs an analytical procedure typical of comparative studies, and the analysis focuses on the factors of the participants’ native language and gender. Although her research

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participants included “English instructors, school teachers, office workers, housewives, businessmen, medical doctors, and graduate students,” these professional backgrounds were not taken into consideration. Further, although she states, “the relative social dominance and distance of the two parties involved in each telephone conversation was equal and familiar in the sense that all the participants were friends of the researcher’s acquaintances,” the terms such as “friends” and “acquaintances” can subsume a wide range of relationships, especially considering how the relationship might have been viewed from the perspective of the research participants. And the participants’ perception of the relationship could have also influenced their pragmatic choices. By embracing poststructuralist perspectives introduced earlier, one could analyze this same data set differently, accounting for “the mutually constitutive roles of agency and social structure.” The chapter by Kakegawa presents another type of naturalistic data, which are situated in instructional contexts. She analyzed email correspondence between JFL learners and native speakers of Japanese, considering how pedagogical interventions provided during the course of the 12-week session might have affected the students’ use of sentence final particles. This study shows an example of how “authentic” materials can be introduced into classroom instruction and how action research can be conducted to investigate the effect of pedagogical interventions. Given that this email correspondence was arranged as part of class activities, the research participants might have been more invested into this activity compared to the cases of DCT or role-play. However, to what extent these students treat this “assigned” email correspondence to be part of their reallife interaction could vary from a student to a student. Some may establish friendship with native speakers through such correspondence, while the others may treat it simply as part of the course requirement. Depending on how these students engage in this activity, how these students experience and remember the use of sentence final particles could also differ. In order to capture L2 speakers’ language use in situations where their pragmatic choices have real-life consequences upon their existence in a society - whether concerning their academic, personal, or professional lives, the collection of authentic, naturally occurring discourse is indispensable. Of course, such data can be rather messy; it is not easy to control or predict what kinds of activities, forms, or practices will transpire, and therefore it is difficult to use such data for comparing two groups, or for tracing learners’ developments over time.3 When examining naturally

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occurring interactions, we need to adopt different kinds of research paradigms and address different types of questions. Researchers may not be able to zero in on particular pre-determined forms and practices when examining naturally occurring discourse. But through the application of qualitative, micro-analytical methods, they may discover innovative uses of forms, different ways of accomplishing mutual understanding, practices that are treated as problematic by the participants themselves, different types of identities negotiated in and through talk, and so on. Such findings will offer pictures of language and its learners and users that are complementary to what has been offered by studies based on data gathered through carefully controlled elicitation techniques. As part of limitations of her research design, Kakegawa notes that her study does not account for the long-term effect of pedagogical interventions provided during one semester. Further, as mentioned earlier, several authors also refer to learning taking place without explicit instruction, or outside of the classroom. These reflections point to the necessity for undertaking extensive longitudinal studies of L2 speakers’ development that cover a longer period of time and a range of their experiences, as has been discussed by a number of researchers (e.g., Brouwer and Wagner 2004; Hall 2004; Kasper 2009; Kramsch 2002; Markee and Kasper 2004; Yoshimi in this volume, to name a few). They advocate the necessity of examining thick longitudinal data that present not just samples of L2 speakers’ language use concerning particular actions, forms, or practices, but also their situated identities, subjectivity and agency behind their pragmatic choices. In this type of research, language learning should be conceptualized as a process of language socialization (Ochs 1990; Schieffelin and Ochs 1986) or situated learning of communities of practices (Lave and Wenger 1991; Wenger 1998) rather than as the mastery of certain elements of the target language.

4. Teaching and learning of pragmatics in and out of the classroom As discussed in previous sections, pragmatics involves the study of language use, affected by dynamic intersections of various factors concerning users’ agency, their perception of norms and constraints in a given community that apply to a give moment of interaction, and their understanding of their interlocutors’ linguistic, social, or cultural backgrounds that may result in different types of expectations. How can we teach such a complex subject in second or foreign language classrooms?

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Perhaps there is no one who disagrees with the idea that pragmatics should be taught in context, but the question of what kinds of contexts, and what levels of details, should be, or could be, introduced in classroom always presents a challenge for language teaching professionals. Several studies in this volume (Ishida, Ikeda, and Shimizu, and Ishihara and Tarone) demonstrate that oversimplified, stereotypical descriptions of forms, styles, and strategies provided in textbooks do not accurately represent real-life language use, and may even direct students to some distorted understanding of expected behaviors. Some students may also resist pragmatic norms presented in such a restrictive manner. These findings suggest that the teaching of pragmatics should be viewed not as a delivery of prescriptive rules, but as a process of raising students’ consciousness or awareness regarding complexities of language and culture through their engagement in mediated observation and reflection. Kubota (2003), for instance, proposes the following four concepts, “the Four D’s,” when discussing critical approaches to teaching culture: (1) descriptive rather than prescriptive understandings of culture; (2) diversity within culture, which addresses notions such as diaspora and hybridity; (3) the dynamic or shifting nature of culture, which allows one to interpret cultural practices, products, and perspectives in historical contexts; and (4) the discursive construction of culture - a notion that our knowledge about culture is invested by discourses, which requires us to understand plurality of meaning as well as power and politics behind cultural definitions. (p. 75)

These concepts, I think, are helpful for classroom teachers, as well as their students, to reevaluate their practices in teaching and learning of pragmatics. Indeed, chapters by Ishihara and Tarone and by Shimizu indicate that the students participated in their research, who have had exposure to Japanese language speaking communities outside of classroom, had exercised, through their first hand experiences, their critical reflection on prescriptive, static understandings of culture presented in textbooks. A point of consideration for teachers, then, is to how to effectively bridge students’ experiences inside and outside of the classroom. To this end, the expansion of database discussed earlier becomes critical. Jacoby and McNamara (1999), for instance, report a mismatch observed between ESL speakers’ performance in a standardized test and evaluation of their communicative ability provided by their supervisors at workplace.

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“Indigenous assessments” performed within a professional community entail the existence of field-specific discourse practices that may weigh more than what can be tested by a generic test. The interviews that I conducted with two of my former students who were working in Japan also made it evident that their experiences in language use and the criteria upon which their language proficiency was evaluated differed significantly from workplace to workplace. Although both of them received similar training in college and attained the same level of proficiency by the end of graduation (at least form the point of view of a classroom instructor), one reported that his colleagues told him that he does not know Japanese, while the other said that he found his colleagues and clients to be rather generous with his errors. Much higher level of sophistication in the use of honorifics, for instance, seemed to be expected for the former who was assigned to a public relations section whereas the use of honorifics was not perceived as important as the knowledge of technical terms for the latter who worked as a sales engineer. This episode confirms that language learning does not end with formal instruction, but requires a life long commitment of continuous learning; it also suggests that the limitation of one-size-fits-all type of curriculums, especially for advanced level learners. Instructional implications discussed in this volume may be most applicable to typical generic language courses offered in higher education, where most of the research participants were situated. But the exploration of L2 speakers outside of formal instructional settings can also serve as an opportunity to reevaluate commonly adopted methods and contents of instruction. The diversification of curricula to meet the needs of different types of learners situated in different types of communities, and engaging in different types of activities, presents itself as an agenda for those who are involved in Japanese language education (cf. Noda 2005).

5. Concluding remarks This chapter discussed the outcomes of this volume and possible future directions, largely from the perspectives inspired by the recent social turn in SLA research. To this end, the chapter posed the following questions, reflecting on our current practices as researchers and educators: –

How stable is the native speaker standard against which we often judge non-native speakers’ performance? How can the heterogeneity among native speakers be accounted for in our research and teaching?

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–

–

–

–

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Do the participants in interacultural communications hold their coparticipants from different cultural background against the same standard that they expect of the members of the same speech community? Or would L2 speaker’s mastery of pragmatic norms guarantee their establishment of membership in the new speech community? How do the participants of intercultural communications achieve mutual understanding by activating, seeking, and creating shared resources despite their limited knowledge of each other’s language and sociolinguistic norms? How do L2 speakers’ agency, identity, or desire for assimilation or resistance toward expected cultural norms, play a role in their language socialization and acquisition of pragmatic competence? Are there any other important pragmatic norms and linguistic forms to be acquired, which may not present themselves as obviously as those items that have been investigated? How could we enhance the expansion of our database to include a wider range of L2 speakers engaging in different types of social activities taking place outside of the classroom or lab settings?

These questions, I think, will keep us examining what has been taken for granted and exploring possible alternative approaches in our future research and education. While I mostly played devil’s advocate, it is not my intention to suggest that traditional approaches in interlanguage pragmatics research need to be abandoned. Rather, my hope is that this introduction of competing theoretical and methodological frameworks will benefit the growth of the field. By maintaining a dialectical relationship among different traditions of research, or by “letting all the flowers bloom!” (Lantolf 1996), studies of pragmatics involving both L1 and L2 speakers of Japanese will flourish in the future. Considering how much the field accomplished during the past twenty years, potentials for further developments in the next twenty years are abundant.

Notes 1. Cook (2006) and Geyer (2008), for instance, provide examples of how these perspectives can be applied to the study of Japanese discourse. 2. Mori (forthcoming) exemplifies one of such efforts. The study examines the

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Japanese speakers’ use of the distal demonstrative pronoun are as a placeholder. That is, in cases when the speakers cannot immediately produce a vocabulary item that should be part of an utterance, they can substitute it with the pronoun are and execute an action. The use of this practice enables the speakers to perform an action such as delivering a disagreement, joining a conversation, and so on, in a timely manner. The data suggest that L2 speakers with extensive exposure to daily interaction taking place in Japanese speaking communities seem to acquire this practice even without explicit instruction. 3. However, Bardovi–Harlig and Hartford (2005), for instance, propose the usefulness of institutional talk to find a middle ground. Hellerman (2008) and Nguyen (2003) also present a model of studies that trace learners’ developments over time by using naturally occurring data collected in institutional settings.

References Arundale, Robert B. 1999 An alternative model and ideology of communication for an alternative politeness theory. Pragmatics 9: 119–153. Austin, John 1962 How to Do Things with Words. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Baker, Carolyn 2004 Membership categorization and interview accounts. In: David Silverman (ed.), Qualitative Research: Theory, Method, and Practice 2d ed., 162–176. London: Sage. Bardovi-Harlig, Kathleen and Beverly Hartford (eds.) 2005 Interlanguage Pragmatics: Exploring Institutional Talk. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Bhabha, Homi K. 1994 The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Block, David 2003 The Social Turn in Second Language Acquisition. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Brouwer, Catherine and Johannes Wagner 2004 Developmental issues in second language conversation. Journal of Applied Linguistics 1: 29–47. Brown, Penelope and Stephen Levinson 1987 Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Canagarajah, Suresh A. 1999 Interrogating the “native speaker fallacy”: Non-linguistic roots, non-pedagogical results. In: George Braine (ed.), Non-native Educators in English Language Teaching, 77–92. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum. Cook, Haruko M. 2006 Japanese politeness as an interactional achievement: Academic consultation sessions in Japanese universities. Multilingua 25: 269– 291. Cook, Vivian 1999 Going beyond the native speaker in language teaching. TESOL Quarterly 33/2: 185–209. Cook, Vivian (ed.) 2002 Portraits of the L2 User. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Crystal, David (ed.) 1997 The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. New York: Cambridge University Press. Davies, Alan 1995 Proficiency or the native speaker: What are we trying to achieve in ELT? In: Guy Cook and Barbara Seidlhofer (eds.), Principles and Practice in Applied Linguistics, 145–157. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Eelen, Gino 2001 A Critique of Politeness Theories. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing. Firth, Alan and Johanness Wagner 1997 On discourse, communication and (some) fundamental concepts in SLA research. Modern Language Journal 81: 285–300. Firth, Alan and Johanness Wagner 2007 Second/foreign language learning as a social accomplishment: Elaborations on a reconceptualized SLA. Modern Language Journal 91: 800–819. Gass, Susan and Noel Houck 1999 Interlanguage Refusals. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Geyer, Naomi F. 2008 Discourse and Politeness: Ambivalent Face in Japanese. London: Continuum. Hall, Joan K. 2004 Language learning as an interactional achievement. Modern Language Journal 88: 607–612. Hayashi, Makoto In Press Marking a ‘noticing of departure’ in talk: Eh-prefaced turns in Japanese conversation. Journal of Pragmatics.

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Hayashi, Makoto and Kyung-eun Yoon In press Negotiating boundaries in talk. In: Jack Sidnell (ed.), Conversation Analysis: Comparative Perspectives. Cambridge University Press. Hellermann, John 2008 Social Actions for Classroom Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Higgins, Christina (ed.) 2007 Special Issue: A closer look at cultural difference: ‘Interculturality’ in talk-in-interaction. Pragmatics 17 (1). House, Juliane 2008 What is an ‘intercultural speaker’? In: Eva Alcón Soler and Maria Pilar Safont Jordà (eds.), Intercultural Language Use and Language Learning, 7–21. New York: Springer. Jacoby, Sally and Tim McNamara 1999 Locating competence. English for Specific Purposes 18: 213–241. Jenkins, Jennifer 2007 English as a Lingua Franca: Attitude and Identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kanno, Yasuko 2008 Language and Education in Japan: Unequal Access to Bilingualism. Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Kasper, Gabriele 2006 Introduction. Multilingua 25: 243–248. 2008 Discourse and socially shared cognition. In: Jasone cenoz and Nancy H. Hornberger (eds.), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2d ed., Vol. 6: Knowledge about Language,1–19. London: Springer. 2009 Locating cognition in second language interaction and learning: Inside the skull or in public view? International Review of Applied Linguistics and Language Teaching 47 (1): 11–36. Kasper, Gabriele and Shoshana Blum-Kulka (eds.) 1993 Interlanguage Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kasper, Gabriele and Kenneth Rose 2002 Pragmatic Development in a Second Language. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Kecskes, Istvan 2007 Formulaic language in English lingua franca. In: Istvan Kecskes and Laurence R. Horn (eds.), Explorations in Pragmatics, 191–218. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Kecskes, Istvan, Dan E. Davidson and Richard Brecht 2005 The foreign language perspective. Intercultural Pragmatics 2(4): 361–368.

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Koole, Tom and Jan D. ten Thijeb 2001 The reconstruction of intercultural discourse: Methodological considerations. Journal of Pragmatics 33: 571–587. Kramsch, Claire 1993 Context and Culture in Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1997 The privilege of the nonnative speaker. Publication of the Modern Language Association 112: 359–369. Kramsch, Claire (ed.) 2002 Language Acquisition and Language Socialization. London: Continuum. Kubota, Ryuko 2003 Critical teaching of Japanese culture. Japanese Language and Literature 37: 67–87. Kumaravadivelu, B. 2008 Cultural Globalization and Language Education. New Haven; London: Yale University Press. Lakoff, Robin T. 1973 The logic of politeness or minding your p’s and q’s. Chicago Linguistics Society 9: 292–305. Lantolf, James P. 1996 Second language theory building: Letting all the flowers bloom! Language Learning 46: 713–749. Lave, Jean and Etienne Wenger 1991 Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Leech, Gregory 1983 Principles of Pragmatics. Harlow: Longman. Levinson, Stephen C. 1983 Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Locher, Miriam A. 2004 Power and Politeness in Action: Disagreements in Oral Communication. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Locher, Miriam A. 2006 Polite behavior within relational work: Discursive approach to politeness. Multilingua 25: 249–267. Markee, Numa and Gabriele Kasper 2004 Classroom talks: An introduction. Modern Language Journal 88: 491–500. Meeuwis, Michael (ed.) 1994 Critical perspectives on intercultural communication. Pragmatics 4 (3).

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Mey, Jacob L. 2004 Between culture and pragmatics: Scylla and Charybdis? The precarious condition of intercultural pragmatics. Intercultural Pragmatics 1(1): 27–48. Mori, Junko 2003 The construction of interculturality: A study of initial encounters between Japanese and American students. Research on Language and Social Interaction 36: 143–184. 2006 The workings of the Japanese token hee in informing sequences: An analysis of sequential context, turn shape, and prosody. Journal of Pragmatics 38: 1175–1205. In press Learning language in real time: A case study of the Japanese demonstrative pronoun are in word search sequences. Pragmatics and Language Learning Volume 12. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Morita, Emi 2005 Negotiation of Contingent Talk: The Japanese Interactional Particles Ne and Sa. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Morris, Charles H. 1938 Foundations of the Theory of Signs. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Nguyen, Hahn. T. 2003 The Development of Communication Skills in the Practice of Patient Consultation among Pharmacy Students. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Noda, Hisashi (ed.) 2005 Komyunikeeshon no tame no Nihongo Kyooiku Bunpoo [Japanese Language Pedagogical Grammar for Communication]. Tokyo: Kuroshio. Ochs, Elinor 1990 Indexicality and socialization. In: James W. Stigler, Richard A. Shweder, and Gilbert S. Herdt (eds.), Cultural Psychology, 287–308. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pavlenko, Aneta 2007 Autobiographic narratives as data in applied linguistics. Applied Linguistics 28: 163–188. Pennycook, Alastair 1994 The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language. London; New York: Longman. Rampton, Ben 1990 Displacing the “native speaker”: Expertise, affiliation and inheritance. ELT Journal 44/2: 97–101.

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Language in Late Modernity: Interaction in an Urban School. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rose, Kenneth and Gabriele Kasper (eds.) 2001 Pragmatics in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Saft, Scott 2007 Exploring aizuchi as resources in Japanese social interaction: The case of a political discussion program. Journal of Pragmatics 39: 1290–1312. Sarangi, Srikant 1994 Intercultural or not? Beyond celebration of cultural differences in miscommunication analysis. Pragmatics 4/3: 409–429. Schieffelin, Bambi B. and Elinor Ochs 1986 Language Socialization across Cultures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Searle, John 1969 Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Selinker, Larry 1972 Interlanguage. International Review of Applied Linguistics and Language Teaching 10: 209–231. Shimotani, Maki 2007 A claim-of-reanalysis token e?/e- within the sequence structure of other repair in Japanese conversation. In: Naomi McGloin and Junko Mori (eds.), Japanese/Korean Linguistics, Volume 15, 121–134. Stanford: CSLI. Spencer-Oatey, Helen (ed.) 2000 Culturally Speaking: Managing Rapport Across Cultures. London: Continuum. Sunaoshi, Yukako 2005 Historical context and intercultural communication: Interactions between Japanese and American factory workers in the American South. Language in Society 34: 185–217. Tanaka, Hiroko 2000 The particle ne as a turn-management device in Japanese conversation. Journal of Pragmatics 32: 1135–1176. Verschueren, Jef 2008 Intercultural communication and the challenges of migration. Language and Intercultural Communication 8: 21–35. Watts, Richard J. 2003 Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Wenger, Etienne 1998 Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Yoshinaga, Naoko, Naoko Maeshiba, and Satomi Takahashi 1992 Bibliography on Japanese Pragmatics. In: Gabriele Kasper (ed.), Pragmatics of Japanese as Native and Target Language, 1–26. Honolulu: Second Language Teaching and Curriculum Center.

Index Aa soo desu ka, 257 ability, inferential, 11, 249, 265 accommodation, 101, 106, 108, 109, 116, 120, 121, 123, 134 action, joint, 26, 229 addressee, 43, 70, 72, 79, 80, 84, 85, 86, 91, 96 agency, 101, 103, 109, 116, 118, 120, 125, 189, 345, 347, 348, 351 agreement tokens, 41, 56, 57, 79, 80, 82, 87, 88, 90, 95, 114, 121, 149– 154, 183, 184, 200, 207, 209, 212, 225, 226, 281-283, 288, 308 aizuchi, 275, 279, 280, 297–299, 357 alignment, 332 analysis, initial sentence, 171 residual, 174 semantic formula, 171 avoidance, 168, 169, 172–176, 180, 181, 185, 186, 188–190, 201, 210, 213, 226 awareness, 8, 9, 12, 30, 31, 34, 41, 43, 46, 47, 48, 50, 53, 56, 58, 60, 62, 81, 93, 96, 102, 106, 108, 118, 119, 123, 129, 131–133, 156, 157, 159, 162, 164, 189, 191, 193, 194, 195, 205, 243, 269, 271, 293, 295, 303, 304, 325, 349 awareness-raising, 8, 41, 43, 47, 56, 59, 133, 243 back-channeling, 275, 282, 298 behavior, listening, 290, 294, 297 chi-square test, 173, 190 code-switching, 56

communication, 1, 2, 4–6, 11, 12, 17, 21, 31, 69, 71, 72, 74, 79, 82– 85, 89, 91, 94, 119, 123, 126, 158, 159, 162, 189, 190, 194, 196, 212, 215, 219, 221, 222, 224, 227, 228, 242, 250, 252, 253, 255, 262, 264, 269–272, 296, 298, 301, 304, 305, 310, 314, 325–327, 330, 338–341, 346, 352, 353, 355, 357 communication, indirect, 11, 224, 227, 250, 252, 253, 255, 268, 269 intercultural, 339–341, 346, 351, 355, 357 competence, communicative, 2, 3, 15, 69, 195, 250, 251, 265 interactional, 2, 154 pragmatic, 1–5, 7–10, 12, 13, 21, 26, 27, 30, 31, 75, 77, 93, 102, 119, 123, 124, 129–133, 136, 138, 156, 159, 162–164, 167, 192, 193, 196, 267, 269, 271, 329, 330, 332–337, 351 competence, second language pragmatic, 5, 13, 329, 330, 333, 337 symbolic, 2, 16 compliment response(s), 10, 115, 123, 167, 168, 169, 171, 172, 180, 181, 184, 186, 192, 193, 332, 343 avoidance, 10, 121 negative, 10, 106, 114, 121, 181– 185, 244, 330 positive, 10, 168, 220, 226, 244 comprehension, 10, 11, 29, 46, 130– 133, 195, 227–233, 237–239, 241–244, 246, 247, 249–268, 271, 273, 277, 289, 290, 294, 341

360

Index

Computer Assisted Language Learning, 11, 275–277, 279, 280, 283, 299 Computer Mediated Communication, 12, 304–306, 325, 327, 328, 332 context, foreign language, 102 learning, 10, 28, 167, 169, 188– 190 contextual feature, 8, 30, 41, 43-45, 47, 48, 49, 51, 53, 54, 59–61, 136, 159, 269, 285 continuers, 41, 56, 57, 79, 80, 82, 87, 88, 90, 95, 114, 121, 149, 150–154, 183, 184, 200, 207, 209, 212, 225, 226, 281–283, 288, 308 conventionality, 228–231, 240, 243, 244, 265, 266 convergence, 103, 106, 115, 119, 344 conversation, 4, 8, 10, 15, 22, 25, 30, 34, 36–38, 41–43, 47, 48, 50– 53, 55, 56, 58–61, 66, 67, 69, 71, 74, 78, 79, 82, 83, 87, 89, 92, 95, 99, 111, 127, 132, 137, 140, 146, 152, 162, 171, 182, 196, 199, 200, 202, 204, 206, 207, 209, 212, 217, 219, 220–224, 228, 243–246, 258, 266, 269, 275– 285, 287–289, 294–303, 326, 331, 336, 344–346, 352, 353, 357 analysis, 22, 336, 344, 345 discourse structure, 24 naturalistic, 74, 216, 217, 269, 275, 302, 303 telephone, 8, 10, 69, 78, 79, 81– 83, 87, 92, 95, 146, 199, 203– 206, 209, 212, 214, 220–224, 278, 297, 298, 299, 346 deictics, 21

discourse, connectives, dakara, 26, 89, 212 datte, 26, 35, 36 organization, 20, 22, 24, 244 divergence, 103–108, 119 doozo, 19, 148, 152 ellipsis, subject, 29 emic perspectives, 109 engagement, 349 errors, 25, 76, 159, 232, 306, 317, 320–328, 350 expressions, direct, 203 formulaic, 11, 85, 93, 139, 157, 225, 231, 235 indirect, 1, 11, 250, 251, 336 face-threatening act, 73, 87, 223 face-work, 73 formality, 44, 61, 71, 81–85, 87, 91, 93, 102, 281, 282, 283 forms, contracted, 29 formulaic utterances, literal, 235 non-literal, 235 formulaicity, 227, 232, 234, 244 formulas, semantic, 10, 167, 168, 172, 173, 175, 180, 181, 186, 189, 201, 203, 207, 208, 224 functions, interpersonal, 13 social, 2 ga, 19, 27, 37, 61, 80, 84, 88, 95, 99, 135, 147, 148, 157, 159, 173, 182, 183, 209, 212, 223, 225, 234, 248, 256, 257, 260, 261, 281, 298, 321, 322

Index Graded Salience Hypothesis, 229 greeting, 1, 86, 148, 150, 151, 154, 206, 229 honorific style, exalted, 8, 69, 70, 75, 76, 79–82, 92, 101, 104, 112, 116, 119 honorific(s), 1, 8, 9, 13, 21, 34, 64– 80, 82, 83, 89, 91–94, 96, 97, 99, 101, 105, 107, 112, 116, 136, 242, 336, 338, 343, 350 san, 19, 112, 127, 149, 152, 182, 256, 257 sensei, 19, 71, 80, 146, 148, 262, 264, 281 identity, 64, 74, 103, 105, 110, 115, 116, 121, 125, 351 social, 4, 74, 91, 103, 121, 125 immersion, 33, 35, 303, 329 implicatures, 161, 231, 242, 245, 246, 249, 252, 253, 266, 267, 269 indirectness, 13, 20, 21, 121, 250, 254, 269, 270, 272 informality, 44, 48 instruction, 3, 9–12, 19, 24–31, 38, 39, 43–51, 54, 58, 60, 61, 66, 92, 102, 107, 118, 123, 129–133, 136, 137, 139–142, 147, 148, 155–165, 182–186, 188, 195, 199, 216, 247, 269, 270, 275– 277, 279, 280, 282–290, 294, 295, 302–304, 306, 314, 324– 331, 333, 342, 346, 347, 350 explicit, 9, 12, 24, 27, 30, 43, 45– 48, 51, 58, 60, 61, 129, 131–133, 162, 243, 245, 271, 275, 276, 279, 293, 301, 303, 314, 315, 325, 327, 328, 342, 348, 352 JFL, 20, 21, 25 instructional effects, 131, 165 interaction, face-to-face, 138, 275, 280, 338 social, 8, 19, 20, 26, 31, 70, 93,

361

121, 214, 357 interlanguage, 5, 9, 13, 21, 24, 25, 64, 65, 93, 121, 126, 130, 131, 162–165, 187, 189, 192–195, 202–204, 215, 220, 271, 278, 303, 304, 330, 332, 335–337, 340–344, 351 intervention(s), instructional, 11, 12, 46, 132, 133, 301–304 pedagogical, 301, 302, 305, 307, 325, 347, 348 Japanese, as a foreign language, 10, 19, 21, 23–32, 34, 36–39, 44, 45, 59, 62, 64, 66, 76, 96, 129–136, 158, 160, 167–171, 174–190, 203, 227, 232, 249, 254, 255, 265, 273, 276, 278, 280, 301–308, 310, 315, 316, 326, 330–333, 336, 341, 342, 347 as a second language, 1, 3, 10, 14, 17, 19, 32, 35, 75, 94, 101, 105, 123, 134, 164–171, 174– 181, 185, 187, 188, 190, 232, 242, 254, 264, 271, 276, 278, 280, 332, 341, 342 keigo, 69, 70, 71, 72, 76, 94, 104, 105, 107, 111–113, 115, 116, 118, 120, 121, 127, 128, 250 kudasai, 19, 112, 146–151, 225, 247 learning, blended, 276, 285, 288, 292, 294, 295 pragmatic, 12, 28, 215, 267, 270, 276, 305, 325, 328, 342 listener responses, 303 literality, 227, 229, 232 markers, discourse, 27, 39, 66, 87, 91, 131,

362

Index

132, 135, 157, 189, 303, 333 pragmatic, 8 marking, epistemic stance, 21 meaning, illocutionary, 251 implied, 252, 265, 273 indirect, 11, 249, 251, 253–255, 258, 259, 261 literal, 11, 87, 90, 227, 229, 230, 240, 241, 243, 245, 249, 262, 270 non-literal, 11, 227, 243, 249 memory, 256 miscommunication, 357 narrative, 22, 23, 328 native speaker fallacy, 353 norms, 101, 105 omoiyari (empathy), 20 opinions, indirect, 11, 231, 249, 253, 255, 259, 266 oral discourse completion test, 10, 167, 168, 170 particles, sentence-final, 1, 12, 13, 29, 301– 310, 312, 313, 316–318, 320, 323, 324–329, 331, 344 ne, 19, 32, 39, 42, 55, 57, 61, 66, 89, 99, 132, 149–153, 164, 173, 176–179, 182, 209, 212, 226, 247, 248, 252, 257, 261, 262, 266, 301–303, 306, 307, 309, 311–313, 316–323, 325, 328, 330–333, 357 yo, 42, 57, 61, 99, 150, 152, 172, 173, 177–179, 182, 212, 225, 257, 264, 301, 302, 306, 309, 312, 313, 316–319, 322, 323, 331 yone, 301, 302, 306, 307, 309, 315–319, 323–325 pedagogy, 3, 7, 19, 21, 23, 25, 28,

29, 34, 37, 63, 64, 125, 277 approaches, notional-functional, 3 Japanese language, 7, 19, 277 JFL, 19, 20, 21, 23, 25, 29 perspectives, poststructuralist, 335, 345, 347 politeness, 3, 5, 8, 9, 13, 25, 44, 63, 65, 71–77, 79, 81, 83–87, 89, 91, 92, 94, 96–98, 102, 121, 122, 129, 132, 134, 148, 151, 156, 159, 163, 191, 193, 194, 200, 218, 220, 241, 281–283, 285, 331, 343–345, 352, 353, 355 practice, communities of, 348 pragmalinguistic(s) 1, 7, 61, 251 knowledge, 59, 216, 228, 242, 266 pragmatic(s) choice, 9, 101, 106, 108, 109, 112, 115, 117, 118, 123, 342, 346, 347, 348 development, 3, 12, 28, 30, 31, 38, 41, 43, 44, 46, 47, 48, 49, 59, 60, 61, 130–133, 162, 167, 187– 189, 194, 195, 304, 330, 332 routines, 27, 28, 38, 65, 118, 119, 165, 189, 333 discourse, 21, 22 interlanguage, 5, 9, 13, 21, 24, 25, 64, 65, 93, 121, 126, 130, 131, 162–165, 187, 189, 192, 193, 194, 195, 202–204, 215, 220, 271, 278, 303, 304, 330, 332, 335–337, 340–344, 351 Japanese, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11–13, 19– 23, 25, 26, 29–31, 38, 331, 335 second language, 2, 31, 122, 131, 133, 189, 218, 245, 329, 336, 343–345 pragmatics-focused teaching, 9, 30, 31, 102, 159 prefix, o-, 19 principles, universal, 4

Index proficiency, second language, 2, 117, 194, 259 pronunciation, 119, 124, 277 reactive tokens, 1, 11, 218, 275, 276, 278–291, 293–296, 299, 343, 344 recasts, 162, 321 referent, 70, 72 refusal(s) realization strategies, 10, 199, 201, 204, 205, 207, 208, 216, 225 sequences, 10, 199–202, 204, 205, 208–211, 214–217 sequential organization, 201, 202, 204, 217 direct, 111, 203 gender differences in, 217 indirect, 11, 231, 249, 252, 253, 255, 259, 260, 265 repair, 4, 151, 303, 357 other, 357 self, 148, 154 repetition, 278, 279, 280, 281, 282, 284, 295 scaffolding, 156 social interaction, Japanese, 357 social ordering, 20 heirarchical, 20 socialization, language, 4, 27, 38, 39, 62, 125, 194, 301, 333, 348, 351 sociopragmatics, 1, 7, 61, 134, 251 soo desu ne, 225, 226 speaker(s), point of view, 20 advanced-level, 76 Speech Act Theory, 1, 3, 9, 76, 94, 109, 119, 162, 186, 187, 189, 205, 215, 231, 246, 251, 304, 336 speech acts, compliments, 9, 10, 50, 76, 85, 101, 107, 113, 121, 163, 167, 169, 171, 179–184, 186, 191, 192, 193, 196, 332

363

direct, 3, 12, 21, 24, 28, 86, 105, 111, 146, 148, 160, 177, 179, 181, 201–204, 229, 236, 242, 249, 269, 304, 311, 349 indirect, 1, 3, 11, 33, 75, 134, 135, 139, 146, 148, 154, 157, 160, 202–204, 224, 227–231, 236, 243, 246, 249–261, 265, 266, 268, 269, 273, 336 speech acts, refusals, 9, 11, 111, 121, 189, 191, 199–205, 208, 214, 216– 219, 223, 224, 231, 249, 251, 252, 254, 255, 259, 260, 265, 266, 343, 346 requests, 9, 46, 76, 111, 121, 124, 126, 129–136, 138–140, 155, 158–162, 189, 193, 195, 201– 204, 206, 208, 219, 225, 251, 273, 330, 343 stance, 8, 20, 21, 23, 25, 34, 41–46, 48, 53, 63, 91, 332 affective, 8, 41 desu/masu, 8, 30, 32, 34, 41–48, 51, 53, 55, 56, 58–65, 72, 76, 79, 80, 82, 89, 90, 93, 112, 132, 135, 139, 146, 147, 149–154, 157, 159, 172, 173, 176–179, 182– 185, 209, 212, 225, 226, 237, 247, 252, 256, 257, 261, 262, 270, 303, 305, 307, 314, 321–328 plain forms, 8, 30, 34, 41–48, 51, 53, 55–63, 112 markers, 8 strategies, refusal, 10, 114, 199-205, 207–217, 220, 222, 224, 225, 231, 249, 252, 255, 256, 261, 262, 265, 305 subjectivity, 9, 23, 26, 32, 74, 101, 103–105, 106, 108, 109, 113, 115–121, 124, 126, 340, 346, 348 subjectivity, learner, 9, 103, 105, 124, 126 syllabus, 49, 129, 139, 275, 280,

364

Index

282, 283, 295 te, 19, 23, 32, 81, 93, 95, 135, 139, 146, 148, 154, 225, 263 teaching, direct, 12 pragmatic, 8, 91, 186, 216, 243, 268, 277, 294, 325 third space, 340 training, transfer of, 167, 182, 186– 188

utterance, 48, 70, 72, 79, 81, 82, 89, 95, 148, 154, 157, 171, 200, 204, 226–230, 232–244, 247, 248, 261–264, 267, 268, 282, 312, 322, 324, 352 utterance, formulaic, 1, 11, 86, 227, 228, 230, 232–236, 238–244 variability, 77, 103, 122, 126 wakimae (discernment), 73