Repairing Tales from Japan: Changes Over Time in Personal Narratives

Timothy J. Riney

doi:10.2478/v10015-011-0022-0

Authors

Timothy J. Riney International Christian University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.2478/v10015-011-0022-0

Keywords:

Japanese, pragmatics, personal narrative, repairs, intelligibility

Abstract

At two different times, Time 1 and Time 2, 13 participants in Japan (8 Japanese and 5 Americans) were asked to spontaneously respond in English to this prompt: “Tell me about one of the most exciting or dangerous moments in your life.” The Japanese responded during their first and fourth years of college, which involved an interval of 42 months. The Americans were native speakers of English and responded earlier and later in their one year study abroad program in Japanese language and culture. Three questions addressed by this paper were the following: (a) What types of topics and narrative structures characterize these 26 stories? (b) What types of speaker-initiated repairs appear, and are the repairs the same or different at Time 1 and Time 2? (c) How are the repairs related to different listener (American, Japanese, Filipino, and Taiwanese) assessments of the intelligibility of the narratives?

Author Biography

Timothy J. Riney, International Christian University

Timothy J. Riney is a Professor in the Department of Language Sciences at International Christian University in Tokyo, where he teaches courses for the Linguistics Major. He has previously published articles in Language Learning, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Multilingua, and Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development.

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