In Pursuit of Alignment and Affiliation: The Practice of Anchoring Shared Knowledge in Japanese Conversation

ABSTRACT

Conversational interactants rely on each other to cooperate with ongoing actions and activities both structurally (alignment) and affectively (affiliation). They monitor one another’s cooperative behaviors to detect any (potential) problems in alignment and affiliation. The present study describes one interactional strategy Japanese speakers use to deal with detected problems in three nonmain sequences (i.e., side, preexpansion, and postexpansion sequences). In the practice I call anchoring shared knowledge, the action (or activity) initiator uses the utterance-final desho to request ratification of shared knowledge from the recipient. Positioning of this request relative to the main action makes the desho-speaker’s action interpretable to the recipient as seeking alignment to and affiliation with the main action. The study demonstrates (a) the interactants’ constant attention to alignment and affiliation, (b) their orientation to the relevance of local practices to the main action or activity, and (c) the complex interrelationships between epistemics, actions, and social relations.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the editor for their valuable comments and suggestions on the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Desho(o) is often described as the polite form variant of the epistemic modal daro(o) in Japanese (e.g., Maynard, 1990; Miyake, 1995; Mizutani & Mizutani, 1987), but this usage of desho(o) is not attested in natural conversational data (see Kaneyasu, 2020). The “o” in the parentheses represents the elongation of the final vowel sound. For readability and brevity, I simply use desho in the rest of the text. In the excerpts, the vowel elongation is represented by the colon (desho:).

2. See Kaneyasu (2020) for the use of desho in responsive turns.

3. The remaining desho utterances (20 tokens) were used to elicit information (Pomerantz, 1980).

4. The abbreviations used in the interlinear gloss are as follows: ASP = aspect; COP = copula; FP = final particle; INJ = interjection; LP = linking particle; MOD = modal; NEG = negative; NML = nominalizer; OP = direct object particle; POL = polite; PSS = passive; QT = quotative particle; SP = subject particle; TAG = tag question; VOL = volitional.

5. Although call recipients must have agreed to the recording before speaking with the callers, some callers ask for the call recipients’ permission at the beginning of their conversation.

6. Some participants discussed at length the purpose of the recording and whether they wanted to take part in the study at the beginning of their conversation.

7. Azusa uses desho: in her response to Mariko’s proposal. As stated earlier, this paper focuses on the use of desho in initiating turns, thus this desho: is not part of the current analysis.