Doing “introducing a new topic”: features of topic shift in Japanese group discussions.
| Author: | Morimoto, Ikuyo |
| Abstract: | |
| This study examines group discussions among Japanese undergraduates who were asked to reach a consensus on a debated social issue. The focus is on topic shift during a discussion, and our analysis describes one of the procedures used by Japanese speakers to introduce a new topic. Sacks (1992) argued that a general feature of topical organization in conversation is a movement from topic to topic, not by a topic-close followed by a topic beginning, but by a stepwise move that involves what is being introduced to what has just been talked about. In our data, however, some cases showed that a speaker seems to introduce a new topic that is disjunctive from the prior one. Through a detailed examination of such cases, we found that such topic shifting recurrently takes the following steps: 1) a speaker ends his/her turn and nobody picks up the current topic, 2) a noticeable long pause follows, and, 3) then the next speaker introduces a new topic with such a so-called filler as "etto" (similar to well in English) at the beginning of the turn. These steps suggest the following two points. First, speakers do not abruptly introduce a new topic. Instead, they start a new topic when the current topic appears completely exhausted. Second, speakers use a procedure that shows what they are introducing is disjunctive from what has just been said. Previous studies indicated that "etto" is a marker that shows that the speaker is disengaging from the exchange with the coparticipants, as in searching for a word. This characteristic is exploited to show that the new topic being introducing is disjunctive from the prior one by placing "etto" in front of it. In conclusion, these points reveal an orientation to a stepwise transition of a topic in group discussions, as Sacks proposed. If a speaker tries to introduce a new topic, s/he has to specifically do “introducing a new topic”. Without this, the speaker faces a problem: what s/he is introducing might be understood not as a new topic but as relevant to the current topic. "Etto" allows a speaker to accomplish such a topic shift, even though it resembles a trivial thing or a mere “filler”. |
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