Discourse Approach to Turn-taking

1.1

Difficulties in Turn-Taking for Japanese Learners

Turn-taking is one of the basic mechanisms in conversation and the nature of turn-

taking is to promote and maintain talk. For smooth turn-taking, the knowledge of both

the linguistic rules and the conversational rules of the target language is required.

Since common attitudes, beliefs, and values are reflected in the way language is used

(Kramsch 1998: 6), conversational rules vary in different cultures and different

languages. In a study comparing turn-taking behavior between Asian and non-Asian

students, Asian students including Japanese, Chinese, and Korean took significantly

fewer self-selected turns than non-Asian students such as Europeans and Latin

Americans (Sato in Chaudron 1988: 105). Comparing Japanese and American cultures

in terms of the relative values given to specific conversational rules, Japanese

speakers value face-protecting rules higher than conversation-protecting rules, while

American speakers value the reverse (Noguchi 1987). Noguchi (1987) supposes that

certain conversational rules intervene to block the linguistic rules. Some nonnative

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speakers fall silent when they should take a turn, although they may have a sufficient

knowledge of the linguistic rules. Culture-specific rules and procedures of turn-taking

such as entering and leaving conversation, taking a turn without appearing rude, and

changing the topic can be very difficult for foreign learners (Cook 1989: 57).

While sociocultural factors should not be ignored, this paper mainly deals with the

procedures of turn-taking, especially focusing on the speaker’s tone choice in turn-

taking in the context of interaction. The fact that form and function do not coincide in

the English intonation system is troublesome for second language learners. They often

lose the timing of when and where to enter conversation. For example, a declarative

form with a falling intonation can function as interrogative as well; therefore, it

signals turn-taking. In Japanese, in comparison, a declarative form can also function

as a question but it always has a rising tone: with a rising tone, the listener recognizes

the speaker’s inquiry (Inoue 1998: 192). Also, a second language learner who is not

familiar with the concept of contextual discourse might utter a sentence with perfect

pronunciation, but fail to achieve the communicative purpose of the sentence. While

previous research deals with intonation and volume as turn-taking signals, many of

these studies do not take contextual information into account. This paper examines

how tone signals turn-taking, with respect to the function of tone choice and the

speaker’s mental process projected on the tone choice. The description of tone

functions is based on the account of the intonation system suggested by Brazil (1994a,

1994b, 1997). He himself comments on intonation as a turn-eliciting signal, which

mainly goes to the speaker’s termination choice (see 2.5.2.(a)).