YASUI-DISSERTATION.Pdf

Copyright by Eiko Yasui 2011 The Dissertation Committee for Eiko Yasui Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Negotiating Story Entry: A Micro-analytic Study of Storytelling Projection in English and Japanese Committee: Jürgen Streeck, Supervisor Madeline Maxwell Matthew McGlone Elizabeth Keating Makoto Hayashi Negotiating Story Entry: A Micro-analytic Study of Storytelling Projection in English and Japanese by Eiko Yasui, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2011 Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have been possible without the support and encouragement of a number of people. First of all, I would like to thank all of my dissertation committee members. I owe the deepest gratitude to my advisor, Dr. Jürgen Streeck, for his guidance, support, and encouragement throughout my doctoral career at UT Austin. He was one of the main reasons that I ended up in this program, and I feel honored to have been able to have such a great scholar as my advisor. I truly admire him for his intelligence and creativity as a researcher and beautiful use of language as a writer. He taught me the skill of studying human interaction, guided me on the right path, introduced me to new ideas, and inspired me to work harder. I would like to thank Dr. Madeline Maxwell for providing me with warm and thoughtful comments. She is also among those who have taught me the joy of studying human interaction. It was through the independent study conducted under her supervision that I wrote my very first conversation analytic paper. I am thankful to Dr. Matt McGlone for his encouragement and inspiring inputs. He has broad interests, knowledge, and passions in the areas of communication, psychology, and linguistics, and I thoroughly enjoyed his class. His enthusiasm and intelligence motivated me to go deeper in my thinking process. I wish to thank Dr. Elizabeth Keating for her insightful feedback and support. She has been my role model both as a scholar and educator; I respect her sincere dedication toward her research as well as the encouragement she provides to her students. I am indebted to Dr. Makoto Hayashi for his helpful guidance throughout the entire process of this dissertation. Through numerous e-mail correspondences, meetings, and skype chats, he provided me with invaluable input and taught me the skill of analyzing Japanese iv conversation. I am blessed to have been able to work with one of the pioneering researchers of conversation analysis in Japanese language like him. I am grateful to everyone in the community of the Department of Communication Studies at UT Austin for being extremely supportive. Notably, Dr. Susan Corbin, our graduate coordinator, who constantly helped me keep everything on track through our weekly meetings and I am truly thankful for that. I would like to extend my gratitude to all of my research participants. Without them providing me with a lot of intriguing stories, my dissertation would not have been possible. During my years as a Ph.D. student at UT, I was fortunate enough to meet many wonderful individuals and develop some great friendships with them. It was through the support and encouragement of these people that I was able to keep myself sane at some exceedingly difficult times and enjoy my life as a graduate student. To my friends in the department – Angela Niedermyer, Dina Inman, Borae Jin, and Nancy McCallum – I am sincerely grateful for your friendship from the first day I started the program at UT. A thank you also goes out to my data-session mates/friends, Sae Oshima, Chiho Sunakawa, and Jiwon Han, who provided me with both intellectual and emotional support. Carla Ghanem, Lori Czerwionka, and Justyna Chesy-Parda – I especially thank you all so much for always being there for me and sharing great moments with me. Since I met you, my life as a graduate student became much more enjoyable. I am grateful to Kumiko Kawachi for spending hours and hours talking with me and inspiring me through her great ideas. I would like to thank Scott Brills for being patient with me and providing me with tremendous emotional support and encouragement. Finally, I am grateful to all the other people who have also changed my life in Austin in a very positive way. v Last but not least, my family deserves my deepest gratitude. To my little sister, Yoko, and little brother, Ken-ichiro, I am most grateful to both of you for your cheer. Both of you are always positive and strong, and motivated me to get through difficult times. I am especially thankful to my parents, Shinro and Kimiko Yasui, for always believing in me and providing me with love and support. You have guided me through every important step in my life. You have taught me the importance of making one’s best effort. Without all the lessons I have learned from you two, I was not able to accomplish this journey, and I am truly grateful for that. vi Negotiating Story Entry: A Micro-analytic Study of Storytelling Projection in English and Japanese Publication No._____________ Eiko Yasui, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2011 Supervisor: Jürgen Streeck This dissertation offers a micro-analytic study of the use of language and body during storytelling in American English and Japanese conversations. Specifically, I focus on its beginning and explore how a story is projected. A beginning of an action or activity is where an incipient speaker negotiates the floor with co-participants; they pre- indicate their intention to speak while informing the recipients of how they are expected to listen to the following talk. In particular, storytelling involves a specific need to secure long turn space before it begins since unlike other types of talk, a story usually requires more than an utterance to complete. Drawing on conversation analysis, I investigate how various communicative resources, including language, gesture, gaze, and body posture, manage such negotiation of the floor during entry into a story. This study involves two focuses. First, it examines not only vocal means, but also non-vocal devices. Thus, I explore the linguistic resources employed to project the relationship between a forthcoming telling and ongoing talk. Specifically, I investigate vii how coherence and disjunction are projected differently – some stories are continuous with prior talk while others may start as a new activity. I also investigate the vocal resources for projection of a return to an abandoned story. Specifically, I demonstrate how a continuation and resumption are projected differently. Finally, I investigate the employment of non-vocal devices relevant to the projection of story entry. Secondly, this study takes a cross-linguistic perspective. By examining conversations in two typologically different languages, American English and Japanese, I investigate how linguistic resources are consequential to the way projection is accomplished. Also, since only few studies have been conducted on storytelling in Japanese conversation, I aim to contribute to a better understanding of how the previous findings from English storytelling can be applied to Japanese conversations. Storytelling is an important activity for human social life; telling of what we did, saw, heard about, or know helps us build good relationships with our interactants. This dissertation thus aims to explore how interactants co-construct a site for an important interpersonal activity in everyday interaction. viii Table of Contents List of Figures ....................................................................................................... xii Chapter 1: Introduction ............................................................................................1 1.1 Introduction ............................................................................................1 1.2 Conversational Storytelling ...................................................................4 1.3 Projection: Definition, Dimension, and Resources ................................6 1.4 Cross-Linguistic Perspectives on Talk-in-Interaction ...........................8 1.5 Summary and Organization of the Dissertation ...................................11 Chapter 2: Projection in Everyday Activity: A Review of the Literature ..............14 2.1 Introduction ..........................................................................................14 2.2 Human Interaction: Cognitive Capacities ............................................14 2.3 The Forward-Looking Nature of Interaction: Studies in Neuropsychology, Cognitive Psychology, and Micro-analysis of Interaction ...................16 2.3.1 Internal Mechanisms: Neuropsychological and Cognitive Psychological Perspectives .........................................................18 2.3.2 External Mechanisms: Micro-analytic Perspective ....................19 2.4 Projection .............................................................................................21 2.4.1 Micro-projection .........................................................................22 2.4.1.1 Projection at pre-beginning ..........................................23 2.4.1.2 Projection at turn-beginning .........................................24 2.4.1.3 Projection at mid-turn ...................................................28 2.4.2 Macro-projection .........................................................................36

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