Temporal aspects of Japanese and Australian conversation

Abstract

Recent years have seen a proliferation of cross-cultural studies in many areas, but the cross-cultural study of actual face-to-face interactions has been paid lip service only. Within the study of face-to-face interaction, conversations have received most attention. Although no proper framework is generally accepted, some features of conversations are by now quite well documented, at least for English-speaking persons. In any conversation, irrespective of its purpose, contents, length, outcome or language used, participants typically alternate as speaker and listener. This provides a natural orderliness to the behavior of the participants that can be described and measured. It remains an important task to include speakers of languages other than English into our investigations of conversational behavior. The present investigation is concerned with the general question of how the use of language employed for conversation affects the organization of it The thesis is organized in three main parts. The first part consists of two chapters. In the first chapter a general framework and the methodological approaches in the study of face-to-face interactions are outlined. Broad areas of special importance- in comparing communication cross-culturally are discussed. Because what actually happens during an encounter is crucial, our focus is on observable behavior. Following the lead of interaction theory, we adopt a framework to describe what occurs in interaction in universal operations, namely temporal patterning. Concepts such as communication, interaction and movement as well as methodological approaches, traditionally employed in the area are discussed…