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Paper short abstract

This paper analyzes the sentence-final particle sa within Relevance Theory. It argues that sa encodes procedural meaning that attributes an utterance’s explicature to shared general beliefs, yielding obviousness and detachment, and explains its incompatibility with evidentials and copula.

Paper long abstract

This paper adopts Relevance Theory (Sperber & Wilson, 1995) as its theoretical framework and aims to account for the semantic and grammatical properties of the Japanese sentence-final particle (SFP) sa. It assumes that SFPs encode procedural meaning and contribute to utterance interpretation. On this basis, the paper proposes that sa functions as a marker that attributes the explicature of an utterance to what may be called “general beliefs.”

In this paper, general beliefs are understood as a socially shared body of reflective beliefs, drawing on Sperber’s (1997) distinction between intuitive and reflective beliefs. Attributing an utterance to such beliefs allows the speaker to shift responsibility for the explicature away from the individual self and present it as grounded in shared knowledge. This strategy is assumed to be motivated by the speaker’s attempt to overcome the hearer’s epistemic vigilance (Sperber et al., 2010), facilitating acceptance of the explicature.

Under this analysis, the semantic properties traditionally associated with sa, such as obviousness and detachment (National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics, 1951), can be systematically explained. By attributing the explicature to general beliefs, sa presents the proposition as obvious or taken for granted, while signaling reduced speaker commitment. This dual effect gives rise to the detached or observational nuance characteristic of sa.

Furthermore, the paper argues that this attributional analysis provides a unified explanation for two well-established grammatical facts documented by the Japanese Descriptive Grammar Research Group (2003). First, sa is known not to co-occur with evidential modality expressions such as yō da and rashii. Second, sa cannot appear with the copula in nominal predicate sentences. These restrictions are treated not as independent constraints, but as consequences of the attributional function of sa. Since evidential expressions likewise involve attribution, their co-occurrence with sa results in a mismatch in attributional function. Similarly, the attributional use of sa is assumed to be blocked by constraints that the copula imposes on propositional attitudes. In this analysis, the copula in nominal predicate sentences is assumed to restrict the range of propositional attitudes available in utterance interpretation, making the attributional function of sa unavailable in such environments.

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Paper short abstract

This presentation traces recurring pragmatic patterns in press-conference interaction, showing how speakers use role-specific linguistic resources to delimit accountability, manage stance, and regulate topic accessibility in situ.

Paper long abstract

This presentation offers an interactional-pragmatic analysis of Japanese political press conferences, focusing on how institutional roles are indexed and managed through language. It draws on press conference transcripts by Sanae Takaichi from May to September 2024, a period marked by role overlap, during which she simultaneously served as a cabinet minister while positioning herself as an ambitious figure within the ruling party. This configuration provides a particularly revealing context for examining how institutional positioning shapes linguistic choice as interaction unfolds.

Adopting a functional-pragmatic discourse perspective, the presentation concentrates on recurrent linguistic patterns rather than isolated statements or ideological claims. Central attention is given to role indexicality and to how it structures stance-taking and epistemic authority. One recurring pattern involves frame-indexing expressions that define the press conference as a bounded interactional space (ba 場), thereby limiting topic eligibility and setting clear expectations about what counts as an appropriate contribution. Another concerns explicit role self-reference (for example, speaking “as a minister”), which recalibrates footing and narrows epistemic scope, allowing speakers to suspend personal stance without issuing a direct refusal.

Pragmatic deflection is further realised through speaker de-centering strategies, including the delegation of epistemic authority to higher institutional actors and the use of depersonalised grammatical constructions. These practices shift responsibility away from the individual speaker and anchor accountability in institutional hierarchy rather than personal intention. Across the corpus, such strategies consistently neutralise affect and constrain evaluative stance, making it possible to handle potentially contentious issues within the limits of institutional interaction.

Rather than treating these practices as evasive, the presentation shows that pragmatic deflection operates as a regularised interactional mechanism grounded in role-specific language use. Institutional constraints emerge not simply as external pressures on speech, but as effects that are produced and sustained through patterned pragmatic choices. In this sense, agency is not suppressed by institutional language, but reconfigured through disciplined footing and carefully managed stance-taking.

This presentation aims to contribute to research on Japanese pragmatics and institutional discourse, illustrating how political accountability and authority are negotiated through everyday linguistic practice in highly regulated interactional settings.

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Paper short abstract

This study investigates how L2 Japanese learners manage epistemic authority, using L1 and L2 English as comparative baselines. It explores whether they orient toward relative epistemic rights, language-specific conventions, or communication habits from L1.

Paper long abstract

Research in interactional sociolinguistics suggests that social norms affect how speakers chose to exhibit knowledge or expertise (Kamio, 1994, 1997; Stivers et al., 2011). Conversation participants track ‘epistemic authority’ (the socially sanctioned right to claim knowledge) because knowledge impacts the social standing of everyone involved (Heritage & Raymond, 2005). While this authority is often explicitly signaled through linguistic markers, it is also ‘granted’ by virtue of deference to social roles or social categories based on seniority or specialized experience.

In our previous research on L2 Japanese, indeed we found that stance-marking can be variously felicitous depending on whether participants’ mutual epistemic positions are appropriately calibrated. We proposed that social friction could arise not from a speaker asserting their own knowledge, but from displaying that knowledge inappropriately relative to others. Even when a speaker has subjective authority (or a legitimate claim to information), unmitigated display of knowledge may suggest 'intersubjective epistemic primacy' (or a higher degree of knowledge) over the other conversation participants. Since L2 speakers often find themselves in a socially asymmetrical position when discussing matters pertaining to the target language or culture with L1 speakers – by definition endowed with more extensive expertise – if they fail to signal their relative knowledge position, L2 users can unintentionally come across as categorical or patronizing during discussions.

Based on these observations, we set out to examine learners’ management of epistemic authority through their use of modal markers (including to omou; I think, tabun; maybe), and other discourse markers, by comparing English speakers’ L2 Japanese with Japanese speakers’ L2 English in interactions with interlocutors of varying status (L1 vs L2 users, teachers vs peers). The present study aims to fill a double research gap: while epistemic stance-taking has been examined in pedagogic tasks in L2 English (e.g. Jakonen & Morton, 2015; Kääntä, 2014, among others) equivalent data for L2 Japanese learners is missing. Moreover, research currently lacks cross-linguistic studies that evaluate whether the marking of a speaker's epistemic stance is shaped by participants’ orientation to relative epistemic rights, language-specific conventions, or the transfer of communication conventions from L1.

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Paper short abstract

Through the analysis of actual talk, focusing on the design, sequential placement, and functions of direct speech constructions in Japanese conversational interactions, the paper explains what makes their use such a popular and powerful resource for affective stance display in Japanese.

Paper long abstract

In the course of informal conversational interactions, Japanese speakers readily transition into direct speech and back, using a range of direct speech constructions that allow them to enact not only their own and other people’s past utterances, but also imagined speech, thoughts, emotions, and attitudes attributed to the self as well as others. By using direct speech, speakers ‘show’ rather than ‘tell’ their co-participants what happened, might (have) happen(ed), happens, is happening, or what they think will happen, while simultaneously position their co-participants as an interpreting audience to the enactments, tasked with picking up on the affective stances that the speakers thereby display, making use of all semiotic resources.

In this paper, we will consider the speakers’ use of direct speech constructions in the process of recounting past events. Using extracts from actual conversational interactions, we will examine the formats that direct speech constructions in Japanese conversational interactions may take as well as their sequential placement, actions they are used to perform, and effects they have on the ongoing interaction. Through the analysis, we will uncover and describe the major characteristics that make direct speech constructions such a useful and popular resource for affective stance display in Japanese.

The theoretical and methodological framework this study adopts is anchored in Interactional Linguistics. The paper is based on the analysis of the author’s own collection of recordings of spontaneous face-to-face conversational interactions between Japanese young adult friends, various everyday conversations from the Corpus of Everyday Japanese Conversations (CEJS), and telephone conversations from the TalkBank Japanese CallFriend and CallHome corpora.