Reactive Tokens and Gender in Japanese Conversation

Foreign Language Teaching Association Reactive Tokens and Gender in Japanese Conversation （日本語の会話における反応符とジェンダー）

October 17th, 2003 Chie SAKUTA - 作田千絵, M1, LIS

1. Introduction - Reexamination – does gender of the interlocutor affect the use of Reactive Tokens?

2. Reactive Tokens (RTs) “A short utterance produced by an interlocutor who is playing a listener’s role during the other interlocutor’s speakership” (Clancy et al., 1996: 356) - Previous studies - Definition and classification: Backchannel (BC) Resumptive Opener (RO) Backchanneling-type RT Speaker Backchannel (SB) * Reflective Backchannel (RB)* Examples: (BC) aa. ee. un. hoo. Reactive Expression (RE) (RE) soo(ka). hai. ne. Repetition (RP) uso. Collaborative Finish (CF) *Modifications to accommodate RT characteristics found in Japanese

3. Aim of Study - Reexamination of Furo’s study; quantitative/qualitative - Adjustments – size of data, method in measuring frequency, statistical examination

4. Data - Dyadic casual conversation between same-gender interlocutors; - 10 minutes × 14 pairs (3 male, 5 female – Sakuta / 3 male, 3 female – Fujii, 1995-97)

5. Method - Frequency – for each interlocutor, rather than in each conversation; calculated in terms of Intonation Units

-1- - Statistical examination – the Mann-Whitney U-test (non-parametric) ★ Cf: Figure 1. 6. Results - Quantitative Wide variance in frequency; little difference found between genders ★ Cf: Figure 2. Average frequency: all male interlocutors – 26.5%, all female – 25.6% Support from a statistical point of view: null hypothesis not rejected - Qualitative Various forms used, no overall tendency caused by gender - Comparison with a (possible) different factor - An interesting use of RTs (possibly gender-specific?)

7. Implications - Gender difference in RT use: doubtful (frequency, categorical distribution, forms) - Limitations of my inquiry - Possible inplications

< Source of linguistic data > Fujii, Seiko (1995-97) The Spoken Japanese Corpus: Dyadic casual conversations by young adults. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

< References > Clancy, Patricia M., Sandra A. Thompson, Ryoko Suzuki, Hongyin Tao. 1996. The conversational use of reactive tokens in English, Japanese, and Mandarin. In Journal of Pragmatics 26, 355- 387. Amsterdam: Swets and Zeitlinger.

Furo, Hiroko. 2000. Listening responses in Japanese and US English: gender and social interaction. In Bonnie Swierzbin, Frank Morris, Michael E. Anderson, Carol A. Klee and Elaine Tarone (eds.), Social and Cognitive Factors in Second Language Acquisition, 445-457. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.

Kita, Sotaro. 1999. Japanese ideology of conversation and its structural manifestations: a study of aiduchi and head nods. In Jef Verschueren (ed.), Language and Ideology: Selected Papers from the 6th International Pragmatics Conference, 262-269. Antwerp: International Pragmatics

-2- Association.

Pilkington, Jane. 1992. 'Don't try to make out that I'm nice!': the different strategies women and men use when gossiping. In Wellingon Working Papers in Linguistics 5, 37-60. (Reproduced in Coates, Jennifer (ed.), 1998. Language and Gender: A Reader, 254-269. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.)

Figure 1.

U = min (Um, Uf)

Um = Nm Nf + Nm (Nm+1) / 2 – Rm

Uf = Nm Nf + Nf (Nf+1) / 2 – Rf

Where,

Nm = the number of elements (i.e. of interlocutors) in category M (= 12)

Nf = the number of elements in category F (= 16) And

Rm = the sum of the ranks in data set M

Rf = the sum of the ranks in data set F

Figure 2. Frequencies of Reactive Tokens and their sub-categories

-3- fr e qu e n cy 60.0% CF RP RE

50.0% RB SB RO 40.0% BC

a b a b a b a b a b a b a b a b a b a b a b a b a b a b 1 1 2 2 3 3 1 1 2 2 3 3 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 5 5 1 1 2 2 3 3 F F F F F F F F F F M M M M M M M M M M M M F F F F F F J J J J J J J J J J J J m ale in t er locu t or s fem ale