Negotiating Moves: Problem Presentation and Resolution in Japanese Business Discourse

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Negotiating Moves: Problem Presentation and Resolution in Japanese Business Discourse

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Negotiating Moves: Problem Presentation and Resolution in Japanese Business Discourse

BY Lindsay Amthor Yotsukura College of Arts and Humanities, University of Maryland, USA

2003 ELSEVIER Amsterdam - Boston - London - New York - Oxford - Paris - San Diego San Francisco - Singapore - Tokyo

ELSEVIER SCIENCE Ltd The Boulevard, Langford Lane Kidlington, Oxford OX5 1GB, UK © 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. This work is protected under copyright by Elsevier Science, and the following terms and conditions apply to its use: Photocopying Single photocopies of single chapters may be made for personal use as allowed by national copyright laws. Permission of the Publisher and payment of a fee is required for all other photocopying, including multiple or systematic copying, copying for advertising or promotional purposes, resale, and all forms of document delivery. Special rates are available for educational institutions that wish to make photocopies for non-profit educational classroom use. Permissions may be sought directly from Elsevier's Science & Technology Rights Department in Oxford, UK: phone: (+44) 1865 843830, fax: (+44) 1865 853333, e-mail: [email protected]. You may also complete your request online via the Elsevier Science homepage (http://www.elsevier.com), by selecting 'Customer Support' and then 'Obtaining Permissions'. In the USA, users may clear permissions and make payments through the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, USA; phone: (+1) (978) 7508400, fax: (+1) (978) 7504744, and in the UK through the Copyright Licensing Agency Rapid Clearance Service (CLARCS), 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P OLP, UK; phone: (+44) 207 631 5555; fax: (+44) 207 631 5500. Other countries may have a local reprographic rights agency for payments. Derivative Works Tables of contents may be reproduced for internal circulation, but permission of Elsevier Science is required for external resale or distribution of such material. Permission of the Publisher is required for all other derivative works, including compilations and translations. Electronic Storage or Usage Permission of the Publisher is required to store or use electronically any material contained in this work, including any chapter or part of a chapter. Except as outlined above, no part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the Publisher. Address permissions requests to: Elsevier's Science & Technology Rights Department, at the phone, fax and e-mail addresses noted above. Notice No responsibility is assumed by the Publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions or ideas contained in the material herein. Because of rapid advances in the medical sciences, in particular, independent verification of diagnoses and drug dosages should be made. First edition 2003 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record from the Library of Congress has been applied for. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record from the British Library has been applied for. ISBN: 0-08-044165-3 © The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). Printed in The Netherlands. "Chapter 3, section 3.5, is a modified version of "Topic initiation in Japanese business telephone conversations," which first appeared in Japanese/Korean Linguistics 12 edited by William McCure, © 2003 by CSLI Publications. This modified version of the paper is printed with permission from CSLI Publications. © 2003 by CSLI Publications, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-4115."

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CONTENTS Acknowledgments

xiii

Transcription Conventions and Abbreviations

xvii

List of Figures 1. 1.1 1.2

1.3.

1.4.

1.5. 1.6.

1.7. 1.8.

2. 2.1. 2.2. 2.3.

Introduction Objectives Related linguistic studies on Japanese business discourse and negotiation 1.2.1. Studies on Japanese business discourse 1.2.2. Linguistic studies on negotiation 1.2.3. Studies on negotiating moves in Japanese Motivation for the study 1.3.1. The importance of role relationships 1.3.2. The importance of genre 1.3.3. Initial aims of the investigation Identifying and describing a genre: Japanese business transactional telephone conversations 1.4.1. Sample conversation from Kanto 1.4.2. Sample conversation from Kansai Bakhtin and the notion of speech genres Focal exchange: Problem presentation and resolution 1.6.1. The maeoki as a prefatory move in presenting problems 1.6.2. Working definition of offers 1.6.3. Moves adopted by service providers to offer assistance Specific goals of the study Overview of subsequent chapters

Data and Methodology Introduction Recent methods for data elicitation Rationale for an ethnomethodological approach 2.3.1. Tape-recorded versus hypothetical or recalled data 2.3.2. The importance of telephone conversations 2.4. Data collection methods for this study 2.5. Description of the JBC corpus 2.6. The genre of Japanese business transactional telephone conversations 2.6.1. Defining genre according to Bakhtin (1986)

xxi

1 4 4 5 6 7 8 10 12 12 13 23 33 36 37 37 38 48 50

53 54 57 58 59 60 61 63 63

viii

Contents

2.6.2. Other definitions of genre 2.6.3. Genre, register, and style 2.7. Relevant findings from Conversation Analysis 2.7.1. Adjacency pairs 2.7.2. Preference organization 2.7.3. CA studies in Japanese 2.8. Previous studies on offers in Japanese 2.8.1. Fukushima and Iwata( 1987) 2.8.2. Matoba(1989a,b) 2.9. Concluding remarks 3. 3.1. 3.2. 3.3.

The Structure of Japanese Business Transactional Telephone Conversations Introduction Business transactional calls vs. service encounters Overall structure and identifying register features 3.3.1. Overview of JBC structure 3.3.2. Register features of JBCs 3.3.3. Recipient design and the addressivity of the utterance 3.4. Call openings 3.4.1. Self-identification by both parties 3.4.1.1. Self-identification in response to outside calls 3.4.1.2. Self-identification in response to in-house calls 3.4.1.3. Opening greeting vs. personal greetings 3.4.1.4. The use of most mosi 3.4.1.5. Confirmation of recipient's self-identification 3.4.1.6. Self-identification by caller 3.4.2. Business salutations 3.4.2.1. Inter-organizational salutations 3.4.2.2. In-house salutations 3.4.3. Personal greetings 3.4.4. Summary: "Routine" call openings in JBCs 3.4.5. Switchboard requests 3.4.5.1. Linguistic forms used for switchboard requests 3.4.5.2. Pre-empting the canonical sequential organization 3.4.5.3. Three scenarios in responding to switchboard requests 3.4.5.4. Indicating that someone is not available 3.4.5.5. Offer by the caller to call back 3.4.5.6. Offer by the call recipient to have someone call back 3.4.5.7. Resuming a call after a completed switchboard request 3.5. Transition section 3.5.1. First-topic initiation and the maeoki 3.5.2. Possible elements of a maeoki 3.5.2.1. General maeoki inquiries

65 68 74 75 80 84 84 84 87 89

95 96 97 98 99 102 104 106 106 108 109 110 111 112 115 115 121 122 124 124 127 130 131 134 136 138 140 141 141 142 145

Contents

ix

3.10.

3.5.2.2. More specific maeoki between non-acquaintances 3.5.2.3. More specific maeoki in follow-up calls 3.5.2.4. More specific maeoki between regular business contacts 3.5.2.5. Maeoki as "formulations of place" or person 3.5.3. Maeoki variation according to role relationships 3.5.4. Illustration of Extended Predicate (EP) usage in Kansai problem report maeoki Matter(s) for business discussion Pre-closing devices 3.7.1. Making a pre-closing bid without explicit reference to the prior discourse 3.7.2. Using l-masu no del as a pre-closing device Discussion of other issues or transactions Closings 3.9.1. Reiterating agreed-upon matters 3.9.2. Promising future contact 3.9.3. Requesting or providing identification details 3.9.4. Terminal exchange Concluding remarks

4. 4.1. 4.2. 4.3. 4.4. 4.5. 4.6.

Types of Japanese Business Transactional Telephone Calls Introduction General toiawase inquiries Merchandise orders Shipping confirmations Problem reports Concluding remarks

173 173 180 188 199 200

5.

Problem Presentation and Resolution in Japanese Business Transactional Calls Introduction Problem presentation and resolution in JBCs: Two examples 5.2.1. Reporting that a package did not arrive, without actually saying so 5.2.2. Reporting an incomplete merchandise delivery 5.2.3. Comparing the two calls Interactional asynchrony in JBCs 5.3.1. Reporting an incomplete shipment: The Hahaha no hanasi call 5.3.2. Reporting an incomplete delivery: The Master Electric call Problem reports in English 5.4.1. Reporting a missed delivery 5.4.2. Reporting telephone billing problems 5.4.3. Reporting problematic merchandise or shipments 5.4.4. Additional telephone billing problem examples

203 204 204 213 224 226 228 230 230 230 234 236 237

3.6. 3.7.

3.8. 3.9.

5.1. 5.2.

5.3.

5.4.

146 147 148 151 153 154 156 156 156 158 159 162 163 164 165 167 168

x

Contents

5.5. Problem reporting sequences in English vs. Japanese service encounters 5.5.1. Relational vs. task goals in accounts 5.5.2. Opening sequences in English calls to service institutions 5.5.3. Problem reports by Japanese customers to service institutions 5.5.4. Example of a "reduced" opening in a call by a Japanese customer 5.6. Interactional asynchrony in English: Service recipients' accounts vs. service providers' formulations 5.7 Problem resolution in English vs. Japanese 5.7.1. Using formulations to achieve goal synchrony in English 5.7.2. Using formulations to achieve goal synchrony in Japanese 5.7.2.1. Using the EP (no desu) to create a "common ground" 5.7.2.2. The role of/-masyoo ka?l in formulating service recipients' preferences 5.7.2.3. The role of/-masu n(o) del in formulating service providers' intentions 5.8. Concluding remarks

238 238 239 240 243 245 246 246 247 247 249 250 250

6. Cultural and Sociolinguistic Considerations 6.1. Introduction 6.2. Metalanguage regarding communication in Japanese 6.2.1. Kiandsassi 6.2.2. Omoiyariand kikubari 6.2.3. Ma 6.2.4. Enryo-sassi communication 6.3. Ellipsis and uti/soto deixis 6.4. Japan as a high context culture 6.5. Concluding remarks

255 255 255 257 262 263 264 266 272

7. 7.1. 7.2. 7.3. 7.4. 7.5.

275 279 281 283 285

Conclusions Strategies for reporting problems The function and distribution of moves toward problem resolution Role relationships, genre, and cultural norms Putting genres to use Areas for future research

Appendixes Appendix 1 Appendix 2 Appendix 3 Appendix 4 Appendix 5 Appendix 6

Participating subjects at the Kanto and Kansai sites Transcript of TB #lA-44: Reporting an incomplete shipment Transcript of KI #9-1: Requesting information Transcript of TB #16-22: Inquiring about book availability Transcript of TB #1B-13: Ordering merchandise Transcript of KI # 1 A-11: Confirming a delivery

287 289 299 307 311 315

Contents xi Appendix 7 Appendix 8

Transcript of KI #3B-11: Reporting a missed delivery Transcript of KI #16-6: Reporting an incomplete delivery

325 331

References

339

Author Index

359

Subject Index

363


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In the process of researching, writing, and editing this book, I have become deeply indebted to many colleagues, friends and family members. Their advice, support and kindness has buoyed me through many a rough patch on the road to publishing what originally began as my dissertation. The project would also never have been possible without the generous cooperation of nearly 20 Japanese informants in the greater Tokyo and Osaka areas who agreed to have their incoming and outgoing telephone calls recorded over a period of several months in 1994 and 1995. It is hoped that the description presented on these pages is an accurate reflection of their "talk at work," which may serve as a useful reference for linguists, educators, learners, and business professionals interested in the topic of Japanese business discourse. My dissertation advisors at The Ohio State University have had a significant impact on the perspectives I have adopted here with respect to the analysis of conversational interaction. Through many enlightening discussions, Charles Quinn helped me to better understand the ways in which the notion of genre might be used both as a theoretical framework and as an heuristic for understanding how individuals in a particular speech community perform the various tasks of their everyday lives. He also provided innumerable comments on several drafts of the thesis which I have incorporated in the book as well. Mari Noda shared her invaluable linguistic expertise as to the situated use of the Japanese language, and helped to refine my understanding of the function of the extended predicate (no desu) construction. She also kindly helped to arrange for my affiliation with Keisuke Maruyama at Doshisha Women's University in Japan during my fieldwork there in 1994-95. Mike Geis introduced me to speech act theory, conversation analysis and ethnomethodology, and made insightful comments and criticisms on a paper which later became the foundation for several articles and, ultimately, this book. I would also like to express my gratitude to Yoshiko Matsumoto, who piqued my interest in pragmatics through a course she taught at Ohio State in the fall of 1989, and guided me in the practice of transcription when I served as her graduate assistant. Since her departure for Stanford, she has continued to encourage me in my research over the years, and I gratefully acknowledge her support. Thanks to the generous financial assistance of the Japan-United States Educational Commission (JUSEC), I was able to spend 17 months in Japan collecting data and conducting related research as a Fulbright Graduate Research Fellow. During that time, I benefited greatly from the guidance of Keisuke Maruyama at Doshisha Women's University, who served as my primary supervisor. His assistance was instrumental in making the arrangements for data collection at numerous locations in Kansai and Kanto, and enabled me to assemble a corpus of data which I will no doubt draw upon for many years to come. The many kindnesses he and his family

xiv

Acknowledgments

extended to me and my husband also deeply enriched our stay in Japan. During my visits to Tokyo, Yoshikazu Kawaguchi at Waseda University shared his boundless energy and dedication to the craft of teaching, and gave unstintingly of his time and advice. He also helped me to secure permission for recording at one additional site. The staff of the JUSEC office also helped in countless ways with the arrangements for my residence and research, and I wish to express my thanks in particular to Samuel Shepherd and Mizuho Iwata. This project has also been funded by two grants from the General Research Board of the University of Maryland, College Park. The first grant supported the digitization and additional analysis of my tape-recorded data in the summer of 2000, and the other provided a book subvention for publication by Elsevier Science. The School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures and the Department of Asian and East European Languages and Cultures also granted me a research leave in the fall of 2002. Without these gifts of funding and time, the book would never have come to fruition. My colleagues in the Japanese program have graciously shouldered the burden of extra teaching and administrative responsibilities during my absence for the research leave, and during my maternity leave in 2000 as well. In particular, I wish to thank Gretchen Jones, who kindly agreed to become undergraduate advisor shortly after her arrival on campus, and to Bob Ramsey, who took the job on after Gretchen. Eleanor Kerkham became advisor for the new Citation program which Gretchen proposed, and no doubt also took on committee responsibilities that would otherwise have fallen on my shoulders. Many thanks also go to Eiko Miura, Tomoko Sano, Kazuo Yaginuma, Shinobu Anzai and Etsuko Yamakita, who developed a comprehensive language placement examination and managed course scheduling arrangements during my absence. I am also grateful for the intellectual support of my colleagues in the new Second Language Acquisition and Application program at the University of Maryland. My discussions with Bob Ramsey, Roberta Lavine, Cindy Martin, Kira Gor, Mel Scullen, Alene Moyer, Teresa Cabal Krastel, Manel Lacorte, and Brett Wells have been a source of much inspiration. A few current and former University of Maryland students have played instrumental roles in the compilation of this book. Mieko Kawai has spent literally hundreds of hours transcribing the data and providing useful comments on participant behavior in the process. Kaori Nakamura has assisted with transcription as well, and has conducted a range of searches on the data using concordance software. Ji Oh, Ann Damon, and Mengji Hsieh also made significant contributions in the form of bibliographical searches and the photocopying of numerous articles for reference. Several anonymous reviewers also provided helpful comments on drafts of recent publications as well as my book proposal to Elsevier Science, and I wish to thank them for their time and advice. Portions of chapters 1, 3 and 5 are based on three articles I have published and several conference papers, although much of the material has since been extensively rewritten and rearranged. The first publication appeared as "Bakhtin's speech genres in a Japanese context: Business transactional telephone calls," in Bakhtinian Theory in Japanese Studies (J. Johnson, ed., Edwin Mellen Press, 2001), and the second as "Reporting problems and offering assistance in

Acknowledgments

xv

Japanese business telephone conversations," in Telephone Calls: Unity and Diversity of Conversational Structure across Languages and Cultures (K. K. Luke and T. Pavlidou, eds., John Benjamins, 2002). Section 3.5. of chapter 3 is a modified version of material published as "Topic initiation in Japanese business telephone conversations," in Japanese/Korean Linguistics Vol. 12 (CSLI Publications, 2003). I am grateful to The Edwin Mellen Press, John Benjamins, and CSLI for kindly allowing me to use this material in the book. Comments and suggestions I have received during conference presentations have also helped to shape the book, and I would like to acknowledge in particular those from Susan Ervin-Tripp, Shigeru Miyagawa, Noriko Watanabe, Eleanor Olds Batchelder, Allan Bird, Jill Kleinberg, Jean Renshaw, and Herm Smith. Discussions with Mieko Kawai, Shizuka Lauwereyns, K.K. Luke, Kaori Nakamura, Yuko Okutsu, Yong Yae Park, Soula Pavlidou, Tomoko Sano, and Kathy Winsted have also provided illuminating ideas throughout my research. Any errors or omissions that remain are of course my responsibility. The actual production of this book has proven to be quite a challenge, due to many technical mishaps along the way. I am grateful to John McGhie and Clive Huggan for assistance with Microsoft Word, and to Mark Hurvitz for help with NisusWriter, which is the program I ultimately adopted for word processing. Jimmy McColery at ISI ResearchSoft also assisted with questions I had in regard to the use of EndNote bibliographical software. At Elsevier, Sarah Dates and Julie Neden have patiently responded to countless questions I had regarding formatting and style requirements, and have been extremely understanding as I have worked to complete the manuscript for publication. Without the unflagging support of my friends and family, I would probably have abandoned this project long ago. Deb Simmer, Dolores Ford, Meg Whitlock Clark, and Linda Lebron have come to the rescue on many a trying day. My father and stepmother, Carl and Jackie Amthor, together with my brother Geoff and his wife Emily, have provided constant love, good cheer and moral support. My husband Vince, who has been at my side every step of the way since I embarked on this journey, has helped me to navigate occasional rough seas and keep things in perspective. Together, we have shared in the delight of our two-year-old twins Ken and Sumie, whose bright smiles and exuberance for life have made every day a true blessing.


TRANSCRIPTION CONVENTIONS AND ABBREVIATIONS Excerpts from the data corpus presented in this book have been romanized according to the system adopted in Jorden and Noda (1987), with these exceptions: (a) accent is not marked; (b) no macron appears above syllabic n and nasalized g; (c) in cases in which a slight rise in pitch follows the question particle ka (as opposed to falling intonation), this is indicated with a question mark, rather than the usual check mark or "rising hook"; and (d) a regular question mark has been used following the sentence particle ne when it is uttered with rising intonation, rather than the reversed question mark. Other Japanese words and phrases appearing within the English text, including those in quotations from other sources, have also been romanized in this fashion. However, the Hepburn system has been adopted for the proper names of Japanese people and places in the English text, as well as for the presentation of Japanese reference materials cited in the bibliography, with one significant change due to typographical limitations: long vowels in reference titles are written out rather than being indicated indicated with a macron. Each romanized example from the data corpus is accompanied by both a word-for-word, literal gloss as well as an English translation. In the latter, an attempt was made to remain as faithful as possible to the Japanese while still maintaining a natural English translation. Brackets in the English translations indicate material that would sound odd or be omitted in English, while parentheses indicate material that would sound odd or be omitted in Japanese but is necessary for a smooth English translation. The abbreviations used for grammatical and stylistic information in the word-for-word-glosses were for the most part adapted from Noda (1990) and Bachnik and Quinn (1994); these are summarized on pages xix-xx. In both the text and the transcripts, reference is often made to "distal-" vs. "direct-" style. "Distal-" style, often referred to in the literature as "desul-masu form" or "formal style," is a term used in Jorden with Noda (1987) to indicate a style of speech adopted by conversationalists who maintain a degree of linguistic distance and display a degree of deference and solicitude toward their addressees, such as colleagues or acquaintances, and/or toward the topic of discussion. Distal-style is contrasted with "direct-" style, which refers to a variety of speech usually adopted by conversationalists in more informal contexts, toward close friends or intimates. The use of these styles is not necessarily reciprocal; for example, a superior may address a subordinate using direct-style, but the subordinate would probably adopt distal-style in response. Since the majority of the utterances presented in this book are in distal-style, only utterances which end in direct-style will be marked with the symbol "->" to distinguish them from the distal examples.

xviii


Other transcription notation I have used is adapted from that of Atkinson and Heritage (1984). This includes the use of":" to indicate lengthening of a vowel or consonant; "(hhh)" to mark an audible aspiration of breath, "'hhh" to indicate audible inhalation, and "//" to show the point at which the following utterance by a different speaker begins to overlap with that of the present speaker. "Latching," or utterances which run together with no gap in-between, are indicated by an "=" sign at the end of the first utterance and again at the beginning of the next. Timed pauses of 0.3 seconds or longer are indicated in parentheses. English syllables which were given additional emphasis or stress by a speaker are underlined. Japanese mora and English syllables which were of a higher pitch or loudness appear in CAPS. A summary of these and other transcription symbols appears on page xx. Despite repeated reviews of the data, which was originally in audiotaped form and has subsequently been digitized, some portions of talk remained incomprehensible or unclear to the investigator and native informants who assisted in the transcription process. These sections of the data are indicated with the mark "XX." In the discussions of the data throughout the book, the forms "s/he" and "his/her" have been adopted to avoid sexist usage. For cases in which repeated usage of this sort would have been too cumbersome, one or the other form is used alone. In order to protect the privacy of the individuals who participated in this study, personal and company names, telephone numbers, addresses, and invoice numbers for shipments mentioned in the transcripts have been changed.


TRANSCRIPTION ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS A C KI TB

Answerer (A2 is used after a transfer to a second person) Caller Kansai Imports Tokyo Bookstore

ACK

acknowledgment attention focuser (e.g., ne! or ne? in maeoki utterances) back-channel causative connective particle conditional consultative copula clause particle desiderative extended predicate, or n(o) desu false start gerund goal particle hesitation noise (e.g., ano or eeto) imperative verbal infinitive (stem) instrumental particle imperfective interjection Kansai dialect locative particle negative nominalizer no object particle passive perfective potential provisional question particle quotative particle sentence-final particle subject particle tentative topic particle neutral-polite style (e.g., gozaimasu)

ATF BC

CAU CN CND CNS COP CP DES EP FS GER GL HES IMP INF

INST IPF ITJ KS LOG NEC NOM OBJ PAS PF POT PRV Q QT SP SUB

TENT TOP

xix

xx

Transcription Conventions and Abbreviations •1s 1

Honorific-polite style (e.g., irassyaimasu)

4-

Humble-polite style (e.g., itadakimasu)

->

Direct-style (e.g., iku), when in an utterance final position (The same symbol is also used before line numbers of data that are the focal point of discussion in the text)

[]

Brackets surround Japanese material that would sound odd or be omitted in English.

(())

Double parentheses surround comments supplementing the transcript, e.g., ((laughs)).

()

In English glosses, indicates material that would sound odd or be omitted in Japanese. Within Japanese phrases, indicates optional material, e.g., (itumo) osewa ni natt(e)-(ori)masu.

?

Rising intonation, as in "Ano ne?", "Ikimasu ka?" Falling intonation, as in "Soo datta no yo."

!

Sharp falling intonation, as in "Kyoo wa konaiyo neT

:

Lengthening of the previous vowel or consonant sound. When used after the utterance-final morasw, this indicates that the vowel is not whispered, but rather is given full voicing (e.g., desu:).

(hhh)

Audible aspiration

' hhh

Audible inhalation

(0.3)

Timed pause (here, of 0.3 seconds)

=

Latched utterances

//

Next utterance begins to overlap with current utterance at this point

'

Contracted expression

#

Pragmatically incorrect utterance

*

Ungrammatical utterance

—

Abrubt cutoff of current utterance Indicates stress or emphasis, as in Hello

CAPS

Indicates louder or higher pitch, as in HeLLO

XX

Portion of talk that was incomprehensible or unclear

LIST OF FIGURES Figure

Title

Figure 1

Overall sequential organization of Japanese business transactional telephone conversations

100

Register features of Japanese business transactional telephone conversations

101

Figure 3

Overall maeoki structure: (Possible elements and approximate order)

144

Figure 4

Illustration of extended predicate (EP) usage in Kansai problem report maeoki

155

Figure 2

Page


1

INTRODUCTION

1.1. OBJECTIVES Numerous studies that have examined conflict in United States-Japan relations point to a wealth of cultural differences as potential causes. But these accounts rely heavily on anecdotal evidence to make their claims. This book aims to redress that imbalance. It will provide a crucial empirical foundation for a deeper understanding of Japanese negotiation strategies through the presentation and analysis of negotiating moves actually used by native Japanese speakers to report and resolve problems in authentic business transactions on the telephone. It also offers a new analytical framework that goes beyond conversation analysis, and that may be applied not only to Japanese telephone calls, but also to calls in other languages. In the field of conversation analysis (CA), English telephone conversations have been the object of much investigation as researchers have sought to uncover and describe fundamental rules of turn-taking, overall conversational organization, and ways in which participants sequentially co-construct the roles they adopt within a given conversation (Sacks et aL, 1974; Schegloff, 1988b, 1990, 1995). While many of the initial studies focused on the opening and closing segments of telephone calls (Schegloff, 1972b, 1979; Schegloff and Sacks, 1973; Clark and French, 1981), more recent work has examined the body of conversations in order to analyze participants' negotiation of communicative problems such as "troubles talk" and the "delivery of bad news" (Jefferson, 1988; Jefferson and Lee, 1981, 1992; Maynard, 1992). Research on Japanese telephone conversations has generally followed the lead and direction of the English research, although most studies to date have been limited to analyses of openings and closings (Okamoto, 1990, 1991; Kumatoridani, 1992; Yoshino, 1994; Okamoto and Yoshino, 1995). There are a few notable exceptions to this trend, such as the substantial work by Szatrowski on invitations (Szatrowski, 1986a, b, 1987a, b, 1992a) and sales conversations (Szatrowski, 1992b), and Tanaka's (1999) study on turn-taking.

2 Negotiating Moves In much of the English CA literature, analysts have sought to develop an account of the sequential organization of turn-taking which is presumably "context-free" and independent of cultural and situational factors.1 Researchers have also taken the position that there are certain underlying commonalities to all telephone conversations, such as the need for identification of participants, which are fundamentally linked to the overall structural organization of telephone conversational practice. In the process of developing these insights, CA analysts have explicitly eschewed the use of theory when examining conversational data, arguing that it may unduly prejudice the analyst's perspective and lead to unnecessarily "restricted theoretical agendas" (Heritage, 1995; see also Levinson, 1983; Hopper, 1989). Instead, the field has developed what Heritage calls "a less concise, but more multivalent and multidimensional, perspective on the task of conceptualizing conversational action" (Heritage, 1995:397). Yet it can be argued that there is much to be gained by examining telephone conversations in particular contexts in order to provide a maximally informed, "thick description" (Geertz, 1973) of the ways in which conversational practice might reflect, or at least be consonant with, indigenous cultural beliefs and participant roles. Indeed, research on telephone calls in a variety of languages other than English suggests that although these calls may share the same basic overall structure, they also demonstrate a certain degree of cultural or linguistic variation (Godard, 1977; Sifianou, 1989; Houtkoop-Steenstra, 1991; Pavlidou, 1994, 1998; Luke and Pavlidou, 2002). Moreover, it is possible that certain theoretical applications may reveal additional insights that are useful for the understanding of participant behavior in telephone conversations in different cultures. This book will therefore depart from CA tradition by adopting Bakhtin's (1986) notion of speech genres as an heuristic in order to analyze a variety of telephone conversations which exhibit certain commonalities of compositional structure, style and thematic content. Samples of naturally occurring, unscripted telephone conversations from a corpus of over 540 calls recorded with permission at two commercial locations in the greater Tokyo and Osaka areas of Japan will be presented and discussed in order to highlight the rhetorical strategies which native Japanese speakers who are experienced in a particular genre of negotiation use to effectively convey their intentions and achieve their business goals. These "negotiating moves" illustrate how participants shift from self-identifications and greetings into the actual issue(s) to be negotiated; what discourse strategies and linguistic forms they use in order to present problems, and how they propose and negotiate solutions. Once they have reached a solution, one of the participants may make a "pre-closing" bid (Schegloff and Sacks, 1973). If the other speaker accepts this bid, thereby agreeing that no further topic is to be discussed, the participants move into a closing section, which in business contexts usually includes a reiteration of any agreed-upon solutions and/or promises for future contact, as well as a leave-taking exchange. If the pre-closing bid is not accepted, however, perhaps because there is another, sometimes related topic that one of the speakers wishes to propose, the participants will collaboratively negotiate a shift into this and perhaps yet other topics, until both parties agree that they have concluded their discussions, and move toward closing down the conversation.

Introduction

3

Contrary to the "direct plan" approach said to be advocated by American businessmen (Victor, 1992; see also Graham and Herberger, 1983; Graham, 1985, 1990, 1993; Halmari, 1993), the Japanese speakers in this corpus usually adopt a more indirect style as they initiate the first topic for discussion. Most speakers avoid explicit reference to problems at the outset, and instead move from general to specific terms. To the degree possible, speakers also withhold direct requests for resolution of those problems, with the expectation that the empathic listener will attend to the details being presented and propose a solution without being prompted to do

But conflict can and does arise even among native speakers because co-participants do not always share an equal familiarity with the negotiating moves for a particular kind of transaction. As a result, misalignments develop in which listeners misperceive callers' intentions. This in turn forces callers to be more direct than is perhaps culturally appropriate—a move which threatens the face of both parties to the negotiation. As our analysis of these calls will reveal, resolution of these conflicts can depend upon the listener's ability to "read" and act upon these increasingly explicit cues before the situation escalates to the point of impasse. Throughout the discussions of these interactions, background information regarding the degree of familiarity among participants, points of shared knowledge, and other situational factors will be included in order to demonstrate that context should indeed be taken into account when analyzing this type of data. Particularly in Japan, where group affiliation, degree of familiarity between participants, differences in status, and other factors are often manifested linguistically, such an analysis is essential. In this respect, Bakhtin's notion of speech genres is especially suitable for our purposes: We choose words according to their generic specifications. A speech genre is not a form of language, but a typical form of utterance....In the genre the word acquires a particular typical expression. Genres correspond to typical situations of speech communications, typical themes, and, consequently, also to particular contacts between the meanings of words and actual concrete reality under certain typical circumstances. (Bakhtin, 1986:87) That is, to Bakhtin, this "actual concrete reality" includes the addressees for whom our utterances are intended. The concept of "addressivity" is central to Bakhtin's definition of the utterance in particular and of speech genres more generally. He notes, Both the composition and, particularly, the style of the utterance depend on those to whom the utterance is addressed, how the speaker (or writer) senses and imagines his addressees, and the force of their effect on the utterance. Each speech genre in each area of speech communication has its own typical conception of the addressee, and this defines it as a genre. (Bakhtin, 1986:95)

4

Negotiating Moves

Bakhtin's perspective is therefore one which examines speech as it is situated in the particularities of a given context; to borrow a phrase from Bachnik and Quinn (1994), it is concerned with "situated meaning." As such, it is well suited to the Japanese context.

1.2. RELATED LINGUISTIC STUDIES ON JAPANESE BUSINESS DISCOURSE AND NEGOTIATION In the sections below, I present and briefly discuss several recent works which treat subjects germane to this investigation, namely studies on Japanese business discourse, linguistic analyses of negotiation, and studies of other types of "negotiating moves" in Japanese. Some of the ways in which these studies differ from my own, particularly in terms of their methodological approaches, will be highlighted in the process so as to situate the book in the relevant literature. 1.2.1. Studies on Japanese business discourse Aside from Haru Yamada's (1992) study of Japanese face-to-face business meetings, Tanaka's (1999) analysis of turn-taking in mostly informal Japanese business interactions, and Szatrowski's(1992b) article on the structure of invitations in Japanese sales discourse, there are few studies which examine Japanese business discourse in any detail. Yamada (1992) compares American and Japanese interactional styles in face-to-face, intra-cultural encounters. Using a theoretical model called "cross-talk," she examines differing expectations among Americans vs. Japanese prior to business meetings, topic-management strategies used by participants during those meetings, and quantitative comparisons of turn and back-channel distribution. The primary data consist of two inter-cultural meetings between American and Japanese bank officers, the first conducted in English, and the other in Japanese. A second set of two meetings is used for what Yamada refers to as "back-up" data; both of these meetings were conducted in English and are inter-cultural in nature. This book differs from Yamada's in that it does not take a fully comparative perspective (although in chapter 5 a few examples in English are presented in order to suggest that Americans may adopt differing strategies from their Japanese counterparts when presenting problems on the telephone). Instead, Japanese discourse is examined at a much finer level of detail, and findings are based on a much broader database of over 50 hours of conversation. Tanaka (1999) looks at turn-taking mechanisms in Japanese in an attempt to compare and contrast conversationalists' behavior in that language with the findings reported on English in Sacks et al.'s (1974) seminal paper, as well as in Ford and Thompson's (1996) study of syntactic, interactional and pragmatic completion points in English. The latter study sought to go beyond Sacks et al. 's syntactically based notion of transition relevance places (TRPs) in order to also examine the role of intonation and interaction at these junctures, proposing that participants orient to so-called "complex transition-relevance places" (CTRPs). Following Ford and Thompson's lead, Tanaka incorporates a statistical approach in her analysis, "to gain an overall distributional sense of how syntactic, intonational, and pragmatic resources are mobilised

Introduction

5

for localising TRPs in Japanese conversation through a comparison with Anglo-American English" (Tanaka, 1999:61). Quantitative data are also used to categorize turn-ending types associated with potential TRPs and to suggest that pragmatic completions in particular are highly correlated with points at which speaker-change occurs in Japanese. The present investigation does not analyze turn-taking mechanisms and completion points as the locus of research. Instead, it examines longer stretches of discourse across turns in order to reveal how speakers present and resolve problems in business discourse. Tanaka's data consist of several corpora, some of which are audiotaped, naturally occurring telephone conversations, while others are videotaped face-to-face conversations. The largest corpus is a set of 50 hours of videotaped, informal multi-party interactions, staff meetings, and seminars. Thus Tanaka's analyses are largely based on a set of informal, face-to-face encounters, as opposed to the more formal business telephone conversations which form the basis of this study. 1.2.2. Linguistic studies on negotiation Two important book-length works have appeared recently which examine the concept of negotiation from a linguistic perspective: Firth (1995) and Ehlich and Wagner (1995). Firth's is an edited volume of collected papers on actual and simulated negotiations in various languages; it includes one paper, Jones (1995) on Japanese, which I discuss in more detail in the next section. Ehlich and Wagner's (1995) contribution to the literature is also an edited collection of articles on actual and simulated negotiations which includes a paper relevant to Japanese. This is a case study by Marriott (1995) of a videotaped, 40-minute inter-cultural negotiation in English between an Australian seller and a Japanese buyer. Marriott focuses on topic management within this naturally occurring sample of business discourse, analyzing how the participants develop topics as well as their evaluative behavior regarding those topics. She also examines features which she claims arise from the particular intercultural nature of the interaction. In terms of approach, Marriott draws from several sources, which she notes are more functional or schema-oriented than traditional CA studies. First, she adopts Ventola's systemic perspective from her research on service encounters (Ventola, 1983, 1987), identifying 15 structural elements from greeting through closing for this particular negotiation. Secondly, she borrows Sacks' distinction between boundaried and stepwise topical movement (Atkinson and Heritage, 1984) in order to discuss topic transition, and Gardner's (1985, 1987) distinction between topic maintenance (consisting of continuation, shift, and recycling) versus topic change (reintroduction and full-blown change) in her discussion of topic development. Thirdly, she adopts Neustupny's model of language management in intercultural contact situations (Neustupny, 1985a, 1985b, 1987, 1989) and employs the follow-up interview method with participants in order to capture their evaluative stance toward the interaction.

6 Negotiating Moves Marriott's analysis contrasts with that of this book in large part due to the differing length of the representative interaction to be examined: a 40-minute meeting versus a telephone call averaging one to two minutes. As a result, she conducts a relatively macro-level analysis of the interaction, looking at topic maintenance and topic shift from one topic to another, rather than a more micro-level linguistic analysis of one particular topic. Marriott does, however, acknowledge the need for more intra-linguistic, intra-cultural studies using large samples of naturally occurring business discourse drawn from companies of differing sizes and industry types. This book addresses that need directly through its broad database of calls and interactants. 1.2.3. Studies on negotiating moves in Japanese Very few studies have been published to-date that investigate what I refer to as "negotiating moves" in Japanese. These include Mori's (1999) book-length study on negotiating agreement and disagreement, and Jones' (1995) paper on "masked" negotiation in an office setting. Below I compare and contrast aspects of those two works with the methodology and goals of this book. The focus of Mori's analysis is on connective expressions and turn construction within what she calls "opinion-negotiation sequences." The book draws primarily upon researcher-elicited data, which consist of a set of six audiotaped, casual, multi-party, face-to-face conversations among 18 native Japanese peers in their 20s or early 30s. For five of the six encounters, speakers were asked by the author to record a 20-30 minute conversation at a time and location of their choice; the author also suggested the topic of "Japanese women versus American women" for three out of those five conversations, although speakers apparently strayed to other topics as well. The sixth encounter was recorded with the participants' permission at a party, with no restrictions on topic or specifications for a particular "gathering." Compared to the Japanese business call corpus, therefore, this represents a relatively more informal and less spontaneous (at least in the case of the first five encounters) set of data. Mori's book is closely allied with the research on "interaction and grammar" begun by Ochs, Schegloff and Thompson (Ochs et al., 1996), and more specifically with the CA tradition. After defining "opinion-negotiation sequences," she identifies five Japanese connective expressions, dakara, datte, demo, kara and kedo, and then presents a qualitative, structural analysis of their use in the delivery of agreement and disagreement turns and sequences in the corpus. In the process, she is able to illustrate the ways in which conversationalists employ these connectives in order to provide differing degrees of support for prior speakers' talk. Comparing these findings to those in C A studies of American English conversations, Mori claims that there are parallels between the two which might support "some potentially universal aspects of human interaction" (Mori, 1999:190). Mori notes in her conclusion that her database could be usefully expanded through the addition, among other things, of more formal situations. Moreover, she admits that the scope of analysis could be broadened beyond the shorter segments examined in her study to include, for example, "how a particular way in which a participant initiates a preferring of an opinion or an evaluation

Introduction

1

may affect the subsequent course of negotiation" (Mori, 1999:196). It is hoped that the present book will make a contribution in both respects, in that it examines more formal business discourse, and also analyzes the ways in which a variety of topics and problems are presented and solutions proposed over the longer stretch of an entire conversation. Jones' (1995) chapter examines "masked" conflict in a single face-to-face, informal encounter between two Japanese colleagues at an American university who are discussing a memorandum recently issued by their supervisor about recommended office procedures. Based on the data she obtained through a tape-recorded conversation as well as in interviews with the participants in the interaction, Jones is able to show that despite the fact that one of the interactants is quite angry about the memorandum, the linguistic strategies he employs seem to be aimed at minimizing the appearance of conflict and maintaining harmony with his colleague, whom he approaches as a potential intermediary in the situation. His colleague likewise seems intent on maintaining good office relations with the supervisor while also sympathizing with her male colleague, whom she outranks. In a notable departure from typical CA methodology, Jones cites Moerman (1988) and Bilmes (1992) in order to justify the use of information sources beyond the conversation itself for one's analysis. She notes that, for example, background knowledge about the participants can be useful in gleaning a more complete understanding of the interaction. Such information is critical to the present analysis as well, since I will argue that the degree of experience a particular conversationalist has in discharging his/her role in the interaction influences the effectiveness with which s/he can present and resolve problems. Jones' and my approach also diverge from traditional CA studies in that we do not refrain from making references to the ways in which participant behavior is reflective of certain elements of Japanese culture. The point in doing so is not to rely on such cultural notions as justification for participant actions, nor to argue that this behavior is unique to the Japanese (as some studies in the field would seem to suggest is the motivation for this approach), but rather to acknowledge and discuss certain cultural concepts which are consonant with participant behavior. For Western readers who are unfamiliar with Japanese language and culture, such discussions can enrich their understanding of the cultural milieu in which these conversations take place. This is particularly critical given the relative paucity of CA-related studies about Japanese as compared to those that treat Indo-European languages. This book differs from Jones' paper primarily in that hers is a single-case analysis of an informal face-to-face interaction, whereas mine examines numerous samples of more formal conversations from a broader corpus of more than 540 telephone calls.

1.3. MOTIVATION FOR THE STUDY In this section I will explain the background to this study in terms of the overall motivation for undertaking the investigation, as well as its initial focus.

8

Negotiating Moves

Much of the language we use everyday escapes our notice. As Ludwig Wittgenstein notes in his Philosophical Investigations (1953:50e), The aspects of things that are more important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something because it is always before one's eyes.) The real foundations of his enquiry do not strike a man at all. Unless that fact has at some time struck him. And this means: we fail to be struck by what, once seen, is most striking and powerful. One of the ways in which some of the hidden aspects of language may come to light is through the mistakes that we make, either as native speakers or as learners of another language—that is, when these mistakes are brought to our attention. The present study was in fact motivated by two such mistakes, one made by a bilingual speaker of English and Japanese, and the other by a student of Japanese whose native language is English. By way of introduction to this book, I would like to relate the stories of those two mistakes here. 1.3.1. The importance of role relationships In the summer of 1991,1 served as a Japanese instructor in a language orientation program for American students who were about to study for a year at a Japanese university. The entire staff consisted of a group of five full and part-time native Japanese teachers, as well as a young woman named Etsuko2 who was working as our office assistant. Etsuko had grown up bilingually in the United States; she spoke Japanese at home with her parents, who are both native speakers, but used English at school and with her friends. Etsuko's job description as office assistant included photocopying handouts, helping in the preparation of teaching materials, and running errands to purchase supplies and other items deemed necessary for the smooth operation of the program. One day over lunch, while the staff members were discussing materials preparation for upcoming lessons, several of the instructors indicated a need for some office supplies, and a list was drawn up of these items. Just at that moment in the conversation, another instructor suggested that they also needed some stamps. Etsuko, who was probably already assuming that she would soon go out to purchase the supplies, offered to go buy the stamps as well, saying, (1)

#Katte kite agemasyoo ka?} 4 buy-GER come-GER give to out-group -CNs Q 'Shall (I) go buy (them) for you?'5

Etsuko's mother, who happened to be one of the teachers on our staff, immediately corrected her, saying that the following utterance would be more appropriate in that context:

Introduction (2)

9

Katte mairimasyoo ka? buy-GER come-CNs, Q 4

Shall (I) go buy (them)?'

From my own English base-language perspective, Etsuko's mistake seemed to be perfectly understandable. After all, offering to do someone a favor in English often includes the phrase, 'for you' as an indication of one's willingness to do something of benefit for one's addressee—consider examples such as 'May I get the door for you?' and 'I can have that for you right away.' Moreover, a few of the Japanese textbooks I had used in the past indicated that the donatory verb ageru ('give to out-group') is equivalent to 'for you' when used as an auxiliary in combination with other verbs.6 This is exactly the kind of pattern which Etsuko employed in example (1) above. So why was this usage inappropriate in this context? There were two problems with Etsuko's utterance. The first relates to the pragmatic constraints on the use of the donatory auxiliary pattern, l-te ageru/.1 Japanese speakers frequently employ this donatory auxiliary verb among equals or with subordinates in order to suggest that the action of the main verb is being undertaken as a favor to the addressee. For example, if a group of students is traveling together on a field trip and they want to take a souvenir photograph in front of a famous spot, their teacher might offer to take the picture for them, saying: (3)

Totte ageyoo take-GER give to out-group- CNS->

ka? o

'Shall I take (it) for you?' Taking pictures is not normally something that teachers are obligated or expected to do for their students on a regular basis. In this particular case, however, it is a task the teacher can easily perform which would otherwise be difficult for the students who are to be in the picture to do themselves. Therefore the teacher's use of ageru here to express a favor is pragmatically acceptable. The teacher adopts the direct-style of the auxiliary, ageyoo, because she is addressing her subordinates. If the situation were to change slightly such that one member within the group of students were to offer to take the picture for the others, that student would most likely say: (4)

Boku ga toroo ka? I SUB take-cNs-> Q 'Shall I (be the one to) take (it)?'

As the English gloss indicates, the student is essentially asking if he, rather than another member of the group, should be the one to take the picture. Because he is a member of the group, it would be odd for him to offer the taking of the picture as a favor; this is why he does not use the auxiliary ageru. Rather, he uses the consultative form of the main verb in direct-style as he addresses his peers.

10

Negotiating Moves

When speaking to superiors, Japanese will usually avoid using the auxiliary ageru (or its honorific-polite equivalent, sasiageru) because it can sound condescending. As Alfonso (1966) and Maruyama (1994:154) have noted, the auxiliary makes explicit the idea that the speaker is undertaking something as a favor for the interlocutor. Such an explicit reference is considered to be in poor taste, particularly if the action involves something that the superior is capable of doing by him or herself. Moreover, if the action in question is something which the subordinate is expected to do in any case, the use of the auxiliary incorrectly indexes the current role relationship between the subordinate and the superior. In the case of example (1), Katte kite agemasyoo ka?, since it was part of Etsuko's normal range of duties to run errands, the fact that she was offering to go buy the stamps as a favor to her superiors, using the donatory auxiliary, was pragmatically inappropriate. The second problem with Etsuko's utterance involves the level of politeness which she adopted when addressing her superiors. She extends her offer in (1), Katte kite agemasyoo ka? in distal (formal) and plain (non-polite) style; the utterance indexes (through the morpheme /-mas-/) a certain measure of formality or social distance between Etsuko and her addressees, but lacks the sense of deference toward a superior which is indexed by the humble-polite auxiliary maim in (2), Katte mairimasyoo ka? We might imagine one other alternative response for Etsuko in this situation, and that is as follows. Had the discussion over lunch only involved the matter of buying supplies, without the additional mention of stamps, Etsuko might instead have replied, (5)

Zyaa, katte mairimasu. in that case buy-GER 'In that case, (I)'ll go buy (them).'

By responding in this manner, Etsuko would be able to indicate that she is aware of the needs expressed by the teachers and could assure them of her willingness and intention to complete the errand. These examples illustrate the crucial importance of role relationships among participants to the lexical, syntactic, and pragmatic appropriateness of a given utterance in Japanese. We will explore this issue in more detail in this and subsequent chapters as we consider examples from the data corpus. 1.3.2. The importance of genre The second story I will relate took place in a first-year Japanese class at a small liberal arts college in the United States. Two students, one male and one female, had been selected by the instructor to perform the roles of waiter and customer, respectively, in a service encounter in a restaurant. Prior to this class exercise, the ways in which orders for food and drink are made in Japan had been modeled, discussed, and practiced with the students, and as a result, the students were able to perform this aspect of the interaction easily and naturally, in a manner

Introduction

11

that would have been acceptable to native speakers in Japan. However, when the students were encouraged to continue the interaction beyond the point at which the food was presented to the customer, problems ensued. The student who was playing the role of the waiter, after having left the customer momentarily, returned to the table and inquired: (6)

#Zenbu ikaga desu ka? all how COP-IPF Q 'How about everything?' ((literal translation of the Japanese))

Although his utterance was grammatically correct, in the context of what we might call the "Japanese restaurant service encounter," it was pragmatically inappropriate. Had a native Japanese speaker been playing the role of customer, s/he might have been perplexed as to the point of the waiter's utterance, which in Japanese conveys something to the effect of 'How about (having) everything?' (i.e., in the restaurant, or that is in stock). The student's mistake clearly stems from the fact that while the English utterance, 'How is everything?' is a pragmatically appropriate utterance in a parallel American context, its wordfor-word translation represents an inappropriate move in Japan. In the United States, waiters typically return to the table to check with their customers to make sure that "everything" is to their satisfaction. By doing so, they indirectly offer assistance to their customers; if something is amiss, they will attempt to rectify the situation. However, an inquiry of the same sort would be almost unimaginable in Japan. In most Japanese restaurants and coffee shops (with the exception of more formal establishments), waiters usually do not return to the table after serving food to their customers, except perhaps to pour water. Customers will call out for assistance if there is a problem with the meal, or if they wish to order additional items. Upon completion of the meal, customers are expected to take the bill that has been left on the table and pay at the register, which is usually located near the entrance of the restaurant.8 Comparing these two contexts, it becomes clear that what is said and left unsaid, done and not done, by waiters and customers in Japan and the United States differs significantly. In other words, what we might call the "restaurant service encounter genre" would seem to encompass different verbal and non-verbal behavior in the two cultures, and indeed, the results of a recent series of cross-cultural studies on the restaurant service encounter in Japan vs. the United States bear out this observation (Winsted, 1997a, 1997b). This story underscores the fact that Americans cannot hope to rely on their native English intuitions and merely translate what they would say in the United States into Japanese if they expect to act successfully in the Japanese context. Recognition of the fact that one word or string of words might be used in more than one context is an important step in the right direction. Wittgenstein once noted, "Don't ask for the meaning, ask for the use," and this is advice we might pass on to professionals and students alike as they grapple with a truly foreign language and culture such as Japanese.

12 Negotiating Moves Such an approach reflects a larger, more holistic notion of language as a way of being in a world. Worlds differ from culture to culture and even from one discourse community to another, but they are alike in that they represent "a structure of knowledge that permits an individual to predict behavior, understand intention, and share meaning" (Walker. 2000). 1.3.3. Initial aims of the investigation Based on my observations of the difficulties faced by learners in moving from one world to another—that is, between the United States and Japan, I initially intended to undertake an investigation that would seek to identify the range of forms of offers of assistance in Japanese and the ways in which these might be pragmatically constrained by situational factors such as the age, sex, relative status and roles of participants in a variety of interactions. The social action of offering services in Japanese has not been addressed in much detail in the literature; such an investigation therefore seemed to be warranted. In order to obtain samples of naturally occurring data from different contexts, I decided to record telephone conversations at two different types of organizations in Japan—commercial and educational—in two different geographical locales, namely Kanto and Kansai.9 Because offers of assistance frequently arise spontaneously in service encounters, customer serviceoriented sites were chosen for data collection. (At the educational locations, this meant that the telephone lines through which toiawase 'inquiries' were handled were selected for recording.) Over a period of several months, I was able to collect over 100 hours of conversations from a total of six different organizations. (Details concerning methodology are discussed in chapter 2.) Since many of the audiotape recordings were of relatively formal business or education-related conversations, I also collected over 100 hours of videotape recordings of Japanese television dramas which focus on family life and young people in order to obtain a wider variety of both formal and informal social occasions and interactions. However, after repeated listenings and careful transcription of relevant portions taken from over 50 hours of the audiotaped data from the commercial sites, it became clear that the ways in which participants extended offers in Japanese exhibited a clear pattern within a particular situational and generic10 frame. Based on these findings, I decided to narrow the scope of the investigation in order to focus on business conversations at one Kanto and one Kansai site, as described in the following section.

1.4. IDENTIFYING AND DESCRIBING A GENRE: JAPANESE BUSINESS TRANSACTIONAL TELEPHONE CONVERSATIONS In the data that were transcribed and analyzed for this study, it was found that offers of assistance were especially likely to occur within the context of telephone conversations that involved the initiation, continuation, or completion of business transactions such as the purchase of food, books, airline tickets, and the like. These offers were of three general types: (a) offers

Introduction

13

to have a particular person return a phone call in response to switchboard requests; (b) offers to look into a service problem and (in some cases) call back; and (c) offers to remedy service problems "on the spot." Offers of type (a) tended to occur during the opening section of telephone conversations and overlap in form and function with those found in everyday, nonbusiness calls. They are therefore not taken up in detail in this investigation, but an example is presented in section 1.6.3 below, and a discussion of the structure of switchboard request segments in JBCs is included in chapter 3. Offers of type (b) and (c) occurred during the main body of the conversation, and appear to have been motivated by the reporting of service-related problems by the caller. These types of offers of assistance are the primary focus of this book. In addition to displaying similarities in thematic content, the conversations in which offers were observed also exhibited a remarkable consistency in terms of overall compositional structure and style. For the purpose of illustration, let us consider two such conversations here. Other examples will be discussed and compared in more detail in chapters 3, 4, and 5. 1.4.1. Sample conversation from Kanto In the first conversation, a female member of the Sales Department of Tokyo Books1' calls a book publisher to inquire about an incomplete shipment which she recently received. The complete conversation appears in appendix 2; excerpts are reproduced below and individual utterances are interspersed within the text for ease of reference. The conversation opens as illustrated in (7) below as a male employee of Fukuda Books answers the telephone and provides his company name and section affiliation (Hai, Hukuda syoten hanbai-ka desu), but does not identify himself personally. The caller, in response, identifies herself very generally as 'a book company' (Ano, syoten desu ga). Following this identification, the caller utters the business salutation, osewa ni natte 'masu, which loosely translated means 'Thank you for your continued support/assistance.' The clerk of Fukuda Books simultaneously reciprocates, providing an identical salutation. (7)

Opening to Fukuda Books call [TB # 1A-44] 1

((phone rings))

2 A Hai, Hukuda Syoten hanbai-ka desu:. ACK. Fukuda Books sales section COP-IPF 'Yes, Fukuda Books, Sales Section.'12 3 C Ano,syoten desu HES book company COP-IPF CP 'Uh, (this) is a book company;

14 Negotiating Moves 4 C

osewa assistance

ni natte 'masu:. GL become-GER be-iPF

[thank you for your continued assistance.]' 5 A

Osewa assistance


[Thank you for your continued assistance.'] After this opening exchange, the Tokyo Books employee begins to explain the reason for her call through a prefatory statement or maeoki, as shown in (8) below. Her first utterance Ano desu nee! in line 6 is very brief, but functions to focus the listener's attention on what is to come. Following an acknowledgment by the clerk, the caller explains in line 8 that she would like to have him look into something (Tyotto osirabe itadakitai n desu go), and is given a go-ahead (Hai) to continue. (8)

Reason-for-call [TB # 1 A-44] 6 C Ano desu nee HI HES COP-IPF SP 'Well, you see!' 7 A Hai. BC

'Mhm.' 8 C

Tyotto osirabe itadakitai n desu gajl just looking up^ receive-fr-out-grp-DES-ipp4' EP CP 'It's that (I/we)'d just like to have you look (something) up, but....'

9 A Hai. ACK

'Mhm.' In the next portion of the call, the caller provides a series of details relating to the incomplete shipment. In line 1 0 she mentions the date and the place from which the books were ordered (E:to: si-gatu nizyuusiti no hi ni, sotira DE). The word sotira anaphorically refers to 'that side (of the conversation)' or 'that place (nearer the addressee),' so the caller is using a form of spatial deixis to refer to Fukuda Books, in lieu of a personal referent or name. Then in lines 11-13 she tries to clarify her explanation by pointing out that it is a telephone order to which she has been referring, and adds that she ordered four picture books (e:to desu ne, denwa tyuumon na n desu ga, yon-satu hodo, e-HON o tyuumon sasite itadaita n desu yd).

Introduction (9)

15

Details about the order [TB # 1A-44] IOC

e:to: si-gatu nizyuusiti-niti no hi ni, sotira DE, HES April twenty-seventh CN day GL that place LOG 'Um, on the 27th of April, at your loCATION,'

11C

e:to desu ne, denwa tyuumon na n desu ga, HES COP-IPF ATF telephone order COP-IPF EP CP 'you see, it's that (I/we mean) a telephone order, but....'

12C yon-satu hodo," e-HON o tyuumon four volumes approximately picture books OBJ order 13 C

sasite itadaita n desu yo. do-CAu-GER receive-fr-out-grp-pFvP EP SP 'it's that (I/we) took the liberty of ordering about four picture BOOKS, you know.'

14 A

Hal BC

'Mhm.' The clerk does not respond aside from his acknowledgment in line 14, so in lines 15-18 below, the caller begins to specify the problem, namely that of those four volumes, only three have arrived (YON-satu no uti no, SAN-satu sika tyotto halite kit[e]-orimasen no de). It is noteworthy that although the caller utters the numerals with greater stress and at a higher pitch (represented in CAPS) for additional emphasis, the clerk still merely responds with a continuer (Hai). The caller then starts to ask the clerk if he could find out whether or not the remaining volume had been sent out (is-satu dasite itadaketa ka doo ka, osirabe—). This represents a reformulation of her earlier, more general request for assistance in line 8, Tyotto osirabe itadakitai n desu ga. Before she can finish, however, the clerk interrupts, claiming that he has understood what is being requested of him by saying Kasikomarita (sic) in line 20.14 (10)

Specification of the problem and initial request for assistance [TB #lA-44] 15 C

YON-satu no uti no, SAN-satu sika tyotto haitte four volumes CN among three volumes only just enter-GER

16C

kit[e]orimasen// node, come-GER be-NEG-iPF^ EP-GER 'Of the FOUR volumes, it's just that only THREE volumes have come in, so...'

16

Negotiating Moves

17 A

Hal BC

'Mhm.' 18C

is- satu dasite itadaketa ka// doo ka, one volume send-GER receive-fr-out-grp-POT-pF^ Q how Q

19C

osirabe — looking up^ 'whether or not (you) were able to send us one volume, a look-up...'

20A

Hal BC

Kasikomari//ta. ((sic))

'Mhm.'

'Cert'nly.'

Without any prompting at this juncture, the caller provides her company name, Tookyoo Syoten 'Tokyo Books,' perhaps because she realizes that the clerk will need this information in order to make the appropriate inquiries. The clerk immediately and politely acknowledges this by saying Hai but does not respond otherwise. No offer of assistance is as yet forthcoming, so the caller goes on to specify the title of the missing book, which is Hahaha no hanasi, or 'The Tale of Ha-ha-ha' (DE, ano desu nee, taitoru, yot:TU:: no uti no desu NE! Haitte kite nai mono ga, Hahaha no hanasi: to in taitoru no mono na n desu ga). The clerk confirms that it is one copy that she needs (Go-is-satu de), and asks her to wait a moment. (11)

Company identification and title of missing item given by caller [TB #lA-44] 21 C

ano:, Tookyoo Syoten to moosimasu:. HES Tokyo Books QT be called-iPF^ 'Uh, (this is) Tokyo Books.'

22 A

(1.3) A, Tookyoo Syoten- sama// de. (1.3) ah M(r)s. Tokyo Books CP-GER (1.3 second pause) 'Oh, Ms. Tokyo Books...'

23 C

Hal yes 'Yes.'

24A

Hal BC

'Mhm.'

Introduction

17

25 C DE, ano desu nee, taitoru, yot: TU:: no uti no desu NE! and HES COP-IPF ATF title four units CN among COP-IPF ATF 'AND, you see, (the) title, among (the) FOUR, YOU KNOW!' 26 A

Hai. BC

'Mhm.' 27C

Haitte kite nai mono ga, Hahaha no hanasi:// enter-GER come-GER be-NEG-iPF thing SUB Ha-ha-ha CN tale 'the one that hasn't arrived, The Tale of Ha-ha-ha'

28 A Hai. BC

'Mhm.' 29 C

to in taitoru no mono na n//desu ga, QT be called-ipp title CN thing COP-IPF EP CP 'it's that it's a thing with that title.'

30A

Gois- satu de. (polite prefix) one volume CP-GER 'One copy'

31C

Hai. yes 'Yes.'

32 A Hai. Syoosyoo omati kudasai:.// yes moment waiting^ give-to-in-grp-iMp/|s 'Okay. Please wait a moment.' 33 C

Hai. yes 'Okay.'

After the clerk returns to the phone and apologizes for the delay in line 34, he reconfirms that it is one copy of Hahaha no hanasi to which she is referring (Zya, Hahaha no hanasi o is-satu to iu koto de). The caller acknowledges this with some hesitation, saying A, hai. The clerk then requests the agency number, which is a code used among bookstores for ordering purposes.

18

Negotiating Moves (12)

Confirmation by clerk of item and number of volumes to be ordered, and request for agency number [TB #lA-44] 34 A

Omatase des— itasimasita. causing-waiting^ COP-IPF-FS do-PF^ '[S—Sorry] to have kept you waiting.'

35 C

Hal BC

'Mhm.' 36 A Zya, Hahaha no hanasi o is- satu to in koto de, so ha-ha-ha CN tale OBJ one volume QT be called-iPE thing CP-GER 'So it's a matter of one copy of The Tale of Ha-ha-ha.' 37 C A, hai:. ah yes

'Ah, yes.' 38A Zya, bansen onegai-simasu:. so agency-number beg-iPF1^ 'So please (give me) the agency number.' Judging by the caller's subsequent reaction in lines 39-42 below, it would seem that she interprets the clerk's utterance Zya, bansen onegai-simasu as a move toward re-ordering the missing book. First, she attempts to renegotiate her intentions with the clerk by restating more tentatively, and in very careful, formal language, her question as to whether it is possible the missing book was never sent out (A, ano: sono mae NI: ZENkai tyuumon sita toki ni, ano: ukete itadakemasen desita n desyoo ka.). Yet again, there is no uptake. So she repeats the fact that among the four books ordered, it was The Tale of Ha-ha-ha which did not arrive. Although the clerk does formally acknowledge that she has spoken by saying Haa, haa^ he still does not admit to a disparity in understanding between them, despite the fact that the caller has suprasegmentally highlighted key information providing salient cues to the problem through stress and higher pitch. So the caller moves to explicitly enlist his help to an even greater extent in line 48-49, saying that she had wanted to have him check whether or not the book had been shipped (De dasite itadaketa ka doo ka, osirabe-itadakitakatta n desu ga.). (13)

Clarification of problem and request for assistance by caller [TB#lA-44] 39C A, ano: sono mae NI: ah HES that before GL 'Oh, um, before THAT,'

Introduction 40 A

19

Hal BC

'Mhm.' 41C

ZENkai tyuumon sita toki ni, ano: ukete previous order do-pp time GL HES receive-GER

42 C

itadakemasen desita ndesyoo: ka. receive-NEG-iPp4' CP-PF EP-TENT Q 'at the time of the PREvious order, um, might it have been that we couldn't receive it from you?'

43 C

YON-satu tyuumon siTE: four volumes order do-GER 'having PLACED an order (for) FOUR volumes,'

44 A

Hai. BC

'Mhm.' 45 C sono uti, Hahaha no hanasi dake haitte those among ha-ha-ha CN tale only be included-GER 46 C

konakatta

n desu yo.

COme-NEG-PF EP

SP

'it's that among those, only A Tale of Ha-ha-ha was not included, you know.' 47 A Haa haa. yes yes

'Yes, yes.' 48 C

De dasite itadaketa ka doo ka, and send-GER receive-por-PF^ Q how Q

49 C

osirabe itadakitakatta n//desu ga. looking up'h receive-DES-PF EP CP 'And whether or not (you) were able to send it for us, it's that (I/we) wanted to have you look into it, but....'

Finally the clerk appears to realize the point of her call, for he asks in line 50 if she means 'confirmation' of the shipment (A, kakunin de:su ne?). (The initial 'A ' of his utterance, together with the elongated vowel inde:su, seem to suggest this interpretation.) The caller acknowledges

20 Negotiating Moves the clerk's response, and perhaps due to his subsequent silence in line 52, she offers him the reassurance that if it seems the book has not been sent out, she will place an order for another copy (Sore de, dasite naiyoo desitaRA: moo it-tuu tyuumon itasimasu no DE:}. (14)

Further attempts at clarification by both participants [TB #lA-44] 50A A, kakunin de:su ne? ah confirmation COP-IPF SP 'Oh, you mean confirmation, right?'

51C

Hal Yes. 'Yes.'

52 A ((0.3 second pause)) 53C

Sore de, dasite nai yoo desitaRA:// and then send-GER be-NEG-ipp seem CP-CND 'And then, IF it seems that it hasn't been sent,'

54 A

Hal BC

'Mhm.' 55 C moo it- tuu tyuumon itasimasu no DE:// more one copy order do-ipp^ EP-GER 'it's that (I/we)'ll order one more copy, SO....' This sufficiently clarifies the situation for the clerk, who then offers in lines 56, 57 and 59 to find out whether or not there is a form indicating completion of the delivery (De wa itioo den:pyoo-si — hakkoo-si aru ka doo ka:, sirabemasu no de...). In response, the caller reiterates in line 60 the crucial information that the order was placed on the 27th of April (Hai, si-gatu nizyuusiti-niti ni tyuumon itasimasita). In subsequent turns not reproduced below, the clerk confirms this and then requests the agency number, the agency name, and location information. (15)

Offer of assistance by call recipient [TB #lA-44] 56 A Hai. De wa itioo den:pyoo-si— hakkoosi yes well then anyhow invoice-sheet-FS completion-sheet

Introduction

57A

21

am ka doo ka:,// have-iPF Q how Q 'Yes. Well then anyhow, whether or not there's an invoice sheet—a completion sheet,'

58 C

Hal BC

'Mhm.' 59A sirabemasu

no//DE:

look intO-IPF EP-GER

'it's that (I/we)'ll look into it, SO....' 60 C

Hai, si-gatu nizyuusiti-niti ni tyuumon itasimasita. yes April twenty-seventh GL order do-ppvU 'Yes, (I/we) placed the order on April 27th.'

After a pause while he presumably takes down the information, the clerk attempts an initial pre-closing move in line 73 by checking to be sure that this is all that the caller needs (Izyoo de:). The caller agrees, so the clerk then offers in lines 75-76 to confirm the delivery and call back (E: de wa, ka—kakunin simasite:, odenwa sasite itadakimasu no de). The caller acknowledges this by saying Hai, and then the clerk requests her phone number and name (odenwa-bangoo to onamae onegai-simasu). The caller provides the number (not reproduced below), and then her name (watakusi, Yamada to moosimasu no de). Pre-closing: Checking to see if there are other topics of discussion, restating action to be undertaken, and promise of future contact [TB #lA-44] 73A

74C

(3.3) (3.3 second pause)

Ha:i. Izyoo de: yes all CP-GER

(3.3 second pause)

'Oo-kay. That's all...'

Hai. yes 'Yes.'

75A

Hai. E: de wa, ka—kakunin simasite:, yes HES well then con—confirmation do-GER

22 Negotiating Moves 76A

odenwa sasite itadakimasu no de,// telephone do-CAU-GER receive-ippvU EP-GER 'Yes. Um, well, (I/we)'ll con~confirm(the delivery), and take the liberty of calling (you) back, so....'

77C

Hal BC

'Mhm.' 78A

odenwa-bangoo to// onamae onegai-simasu:. telephone-number and name beg-ipp^ 'Your telephone number and name, please.'

((customer provides in lines 79-82, with clerk's back-channel)) 83C

no watakusi, Yamada to moosimasu no de. CN I Yamada QT be called-iPF^ EP-GER 'and I, (I)'m called Yamada, so....'

In line 84 the clerk indicates he has understood what it is he must do by uttering Kasikomasita (as he also did earlier but rather prematurely in line 20), and thereby moves into the closing of the conversation. The two take their leave of each other through a ritual exchange in which each politely requests favorable treatment by the other party. (17)

Closing the conversation [TB # 1A-44] 84A

Hai, kasikomasita. ((sic)) yes make clear-pp 'Okay, understood.'

85C

Hai, yorosiku// onegai-simasu:: yes well 'Yes, please [take care of it for me].'

86A

Hai, yorosiku onegai-simasu: . Situree simaSU:. yes well beg^F'J' rudeness do-iPF 'Yes, [may things go well.] Good-bye.'

What is perhaps most striking about this conversation is how difficult it is for Ms. Yamada to convey to the clerk what it is she would like him to do —or conversely, how difficult it is for the clerk to understand what it is that she is requesting. The miscommunication would appear to stem from the clerk's mistaken assumption that Yamada is calling to order a book. This is a natural assumption for an employee of the sales section of a publishing company to make;

Introduction

23

indeed, on the same tape from which this conversation was taken, there were numerous other conversations in which Yamada placed calls to other publishers. In these calls, she introduced herself in identical fashion (i.e., merely as asyoten, 'book company'). She then made a brief statement that she was calling to place an order, mentioned the title of the book, and either volunteered or was asked to present the same details about the agency name, number, and her own company name and location. Except for the fact that the title of the books and sometimes the agency name and number differed, these conversations proceeded in an almost verbatim fashion. (Book order calls will be discussed in more detail in chapter 4.) From this observation, we can hypothesize that the people who place and receive these types of calls on a regular basis are not only familiar with the specific vocabulary necessary to achieve their goals—in this case, to place book orders—but also that through experience, the participants in these conversations have built up a set of expectations as to when, how, and what they should say in order to go about their business. Likewise, they have also developed assumptions about what will be asked of them at certain points in a conversation, provided that the conversation involves the type of transaction they are accustomed to handling. This is not to say that conversationalists follow "scripts" verbatim as they negotiate their intentions, but rather that they have a sense for the way a particular genre of interaction might unfold based on prior experience in their professional roles. 1.4.2. Sample conversation from Kansai To underscore this point, let us consider a second call which involves a similar misunderstanding to that of the first. In this conversation (the full text of which appears in appendix 3), a female operations staff member of an import company in Kansai places a call to one of the banks which handles their business. The opening section unfolds in a slightly different fashion from that of the call we have just examined, because the initial recipient is the bank's automated, push-button-activated response system. The system presents the caller with a series of options, from which she selects 'services in Japanese' and then 'customer service.' (18)

Opening of call to bank via automated menu [KI #9-1] 1

((phone rings))

2 A Kotira wa, pinpon bankingu de gozaimasu. this TOP pushbutton banking CP-IPF (+) This is pushbutton banking.' 3 A Nihongo gokiboo no kata \va, kono mama, Japanese wish (+) CN person(s) (+) TOP as is

24

Negotiating Moves 4 A

iti osite kudasai. one push-GER give-to-in-grp-iMp/|s 'Persons wishing (to hear) Japanese, please push one (and remain) as is (on the line).'

5 A ((different voice)) "For services in English, please press '2' now." ((Machine BEEP)) 6 C

((caller pushes button, another BEEP))

7 A Gaikoku kawase reeto, oyobi, kinri no foreign exchange rate(s) as well as interest rate CN 8 A syookai wa, iti. inquiries TOP one 'For foreign exchange rates, as well as inquiries about interest rates, (press) one.' 9 A Kooza account

zandaka no syookai wa ni. balance CN inquiries TOP two

'For account balance inquiries, (press) two.' 10 A Suupaamaneii torihiki wa san. Huakusimirii saabisu wa, yon. Supermoney transactions TOP three facsimile service TOP four 'For Supermoney transactions, three. For facsimile service, four.' 11A Kasutomaa saabisu sutahu to, tyokusetu ohanasi ni naritai customer service staff with directly speak-DES^ 12A kata wa, kyuu o osite kudasai. person(s) TOP nine OBJ push-GER give-to-in-grp-iMP/ts 'For persons wishing to speak directly with customer service staff, please push 9.' 13 C

((pushes button, BEEP sound))

14 A Omati kudasai. Otunagi simasu. waiting't1 give-to-in-grp4MP'ts connect-ipp^ 'Please wait. (I/we) will connect (you).' After a pause while the call is connected, a tantoo or 'person in charge' (not necessarily a supervisor) answers, apologizes for the delay, and identifies herself by name. She then proceeds to ask the caller for certain identification information, i.e., the number and name on the account.

Introduction

25

The particular way in which she requests this information is noteworthy, in that she asks Omoti desitara, kooza bangoo kara, onegai-itasimasu. She is thus directing the caller to begin her business 'from the' identification details. As we will see in other JBC calls discussed in later chapters, most business professionals and many Japanese customers in the corpus normally provided a self-identification without prompting, in response to the call recipient's initial utterance which was also usually a self-identification in the form of a company name. The explicit request for identification information in the present conversation is perhaps due to the automated nature of the call opening, and also to the fact that the call has already been transferred to a particular department of the bank rather than first coming into a general switchboard. In any event after the caller provides the requested information, the representative thanks her for the information, and in response the customer extends a salutation that is similar to that which we saw in the opening of the previous conversation: Osewa ni narimasu '(I) am obliged (to you) for your assistance.' (19)

Request by service representative for identification information [KI#9-1] 15 A

Taihen nagaraku omatase site orimasu, quite lengthy waiting-CAU do-GER be-iPF^

16 A tantoo lida desu:. person in charge lida CP-IPF '(I/we)'ve kept (you) waiting a long time. (I)'m (Ms.) lida, the person in charge.' 17A

Omoti desitara, kooza bangoo kara, onegai-itasimasu. holding^ CP-CND account number from request-iPF^ 'If (you) have (it), please (begin) from (your) account number.'

18C A, hai, e:to kooza bangoo GA, Oh yes HES account number SUB 'Oh yes, um, (the) account number IS' ((caller provides account number in lines 19-21)) 22A

Hai. Onamae itadakemasu ka? ACK name receive-fr-out-grp-iPF-poi^ Q 'Okay. May (I) have your name?'

23 C

Yuugen-gaisya Kansai Yunyuu to moosimasu:. limited corporation Kansai Imports QT be called-iPFvl' 'This is Kansai Imports Co., Ltd.'

26 Negotiating Moves 24 A Arigatoo gozaimasu:.// thank you (+) 'Thank you.' 25 C

Osewa ni narimasu: assistance GL become-ipp ['(I) am obliged (to you) for your assistance.']

The representative then asks the caller in line 26 for the four-digit personal identification number (PIN) for transactional use, which she provides, then thanks her once more and asks her to wait a moment (presumably as she brings up the account information on her computer screen; she can be heard typing in the background). After apologizing for the delay, she acknowledges the caller (Kansai Yunyuu-sama, 'Ms. Kansai Imports'), and in line 34 offers to provide the current balance on the account (Genzai no zandaka de yorosii desu ka?} (20)

Request for PIN number, acknowledgment of caller's identity, and initial offer of assistance by customer service representative [KI#9-1] 26 A Hai, yonketa no denwa torihiki-yoo ACK. four-digit CN telephone transactional use 27A ansyoo-bangoo itadakemasu ka:? PIN number receive-fr-out-grp-iPF-poi^ Q 'Okay, may (I) have your four-digit PIN number for telephone transactions?' 28 C

Hai, yes,

####. ####

'Yes.' ((provides number)) 29A

((noise of typing)) Ha:i. Arigatoo gozaimasu: Syoo syoo omati ACK thank you (+) a moment waiting^

30 A itadakemasu ka:? receive-fr-out-grp-ipF-POT Q 'Oo-kay. Thank you. Could you wait one moment, please?' 31C

Hai. yes 'Yes.'

Introduction

27

32 A Omatase simasita. Kansai-Yunyuu-sama. wait-pF-CAUvl' Ms. Kansai Imports '(Thank you for) waiting. Ms. Kansai Imports.' 33 C

Hal yes 'Yes.'

34 A

Genzai no zandaka de yorosii desu ka?// current CN balance CP-GER fine CP-IPF Q 'Is it all right (to give you) the current balance?'

In response, the caller from Kansai Imports apologizes, and explains that it is in reference to the transaction report form that she would like to make an inquiry (A, gomen nasai, ano: soo zya nakute:, ano: otorihiki hookokusyo tte arimasu yo ne! Sono ken de oukagai sitai n desu keredomo}. Upon hearing this, the customer service offers to handle the matter, saying Ouke itasimasu no Je....(Note that this call represents what is called a toiawase or 'inquiry' in Japanese; we will examine other examples of these types of calls from the corpus in chapter 4.) (21)

Clarification of reason-for-call by caller, and offer to assist by representative [KI #9-1] 35C A, gomen-nasai, ano: soo oh excuse me HES that

zya nakute:, CP-NEG-GER

'Oh, excuse me, um, not that,' 36A

Hal. BC

'Mhm.' 37C

ano:, otorihiki hookokusyo HES transaction report form

tte arimasu yo ne! QT exist-ipp SP ATF

'Um, there's (the thing) called (a) transaction report form, right?' 38 A

Hal yes 'Yes.'

39C

Sono ken de oukagai sitai n desu keredomo.// that matter CP-GER ask-iPF-DES^U EP CP 'It's that (I)'d like to ask about that matter, but....'

28 Negotiating Moves 40 A Hal ACK

Ouke itasimasu no de. receive-IFF 4^ EP-GER

'Okay. It's that (I)'ll handle (it), so.../ In a similar manner to that of the first conversation, the caller relates certain details that will help the customer service representative identify the particular transaction she is inquiring about. First in line 41, she explaines that she is talking about the transaction advice form dated the 24th of November (Hai, e:to zyuuiti-gatu nizyuuyokka-zuke de kite ru bun na n desu keredoMO:). Then she notes that there was a wire transfer appearing within that particular transaction advice form from someone named Mr. Greg Smith (sono naka NI:, e:to, Misutaa Gureggu Sumisu-san tte iu kata kara ohurikomi ga atta n desu go). (22)

Details about the transaction to be discussed [KI #9-1] 41C Hai, e:to zyuuiti-gatu nizyuuyokka-zuke de ACK HES November 24th dated CP-GER 42 C

kite -ru bun na n desu keredoMO: come-iPF-GER be-ipp-> portion CP-IPF EP CP 'Okay, um, it's that it concerns the one that's arrived which is dated November 24th, BUT...'

43 A Hai. ACK

'Mhm.' 44 C sono naka NI:, e:to, Misutaa Gureggu Sumisu-san those among LOC HES Mr. Mr. Greg Smith 'AMONG those, um, Mister Mr. Greg Smith' 45 A Haihai. ACK ACK

'Mhm, mhm.' 46 C tte iu kata kara, ohurikomi ga atta n desu ga QT be-called-> person from wire transfer SUB exist-PF EP CP 'from a person of that name, it's that there was a wire transfer, but' 47 A Hai. BC

'Mhm.'

Introduction

29

The caller then points out her problem in line 48, namely that this person does not appear on her company's list of (customer) names, so she would like to have the bank look up his contact information (tyotto, \vatasi-domo no, ano: meeboo no naka ni, kono kata ga miataranai no de, ano: gorenraku-saki o sirabete itadakitai: n desu ga). In response, the customer service representative seems a bit hesitant as to what details are being requested, because she first gives a rather noncommittal response (A soo desu kd), followed by a tentative formulation of what might be needed (Kotira no kata no, ano: denwa-bangoo desu to kd). So the caller affirms that she is requesting the telephone number, adding more specifically that it is for 'this Mr. Smith' (Denwa-bangoo desu. ..Kono Gureggu Sumisu-san ni kansite desu ne?). (23)

Specification of the problem and request for assistance [KI #9-1] 48 C

tyotto, vaatasi-domo no, ano: meeboo no naka ni, just we CN HES name list CN within LOG

49 C

kono kata ga miataranai no de this person SUB be found-NEG-iPF EP-GER 'it's just that, um, on our name list, this person can't be found, so...'

50A

Hal BC

'Mhm.' 51 C

ano: gorenraku-saki o sirabete HES contact information OBJ look for-GER

52 C

itadakitai:

ndesu ga. EP

CP

'it's that (I/we)'d like to have (you) look up the contact information, but' 53 A A soo desu ka. oh so CP-IPF o 'Oh, is that so.'

54 C

Hal yes 'Yes.'

55 A Kotira no kata no: this CN person CN 'This person's...'


/far/. BC

'Mhm.' 57A

ano: HES

Urn.' 58C

denwabangoo desu to ka, telephone number CP-IPF etc. '(The) telephone number and so forth.'

59A Denwa-bangoo desu ... kono Sumisu-samani kansite desu ne? telephone number COP-IPF this Mr. Smith GL regarding COP-IPF ATF '(The) telephone number...for this Mr. Smith, right?' 60 C Soo desu. so COP-IPF

The participants then shift into the pre-closing section of the call, which in many respects parallels that of the first call. The customer service representative indicates that she has understood what she is being requested to do (Hal, wakarimasita), and promises to call back (E:to sore de wa, orikaesi odenwa sasite itadakimasu no de). It is notable that the structure she adopts for this latter "move" is nearly verbatim to that of the Fukuda Books clerk, who likewise promised a return call by saying odenwa sasite itadakimasu no de. In fact, the l-masu n(o) de/ pattern was observed in many types of calls throughout the corpus at precisely this juncture, and was adopted by service providers in order to promise some sort of future contact (a call or fax) or to offer assistance, for example to look into something for the caller. We will therefore take a closer look at this pattern in section 1.6.3. below as a preface to later discussions. In preparation for the proposed return call, the customer service representative requests the caller's telephone number, which the caller provides together with her name. The representative politely confirms the information, and indicates once more that she has understood what she has been asked to do (Kasikomarimasita). She then restates her own name, which she had mentioned once already near the outset of the call in line 16 (tantoo lida desu). Her use of the perfective lida to moosimasita in line 76 is interesting but not unusual in this context at the end of a customer service call; other speakers in the corpus serving in the same capacity sometimes uttered the same form, rather than adopting the more typical to moosimasu used in selfintroductions and call openings. Loosely translated, the perfective utterance conveys the notion in English of 'lida was your representative today.'

Introduction (24)

31

Pre-closing section [KI #9-1 ] 61A Hai, wakarimasita. ACK become clear-pp 'Okay, I see.' 62 C

Hai. yes 'Yes.'

63 A E:to sore dewa, orikaesi odenwa sasite itadakimasu node, HES well then return phone call do-CAU-GER receive-iPF^ EP-GER 'Urn, well then, it's that (I/we)'ll take the liberty of giving (you) a return phone call, so....' 64 C Hai. Yorosiku onegai-itasimasu:. yes well beg-iPF1^ 'Yes. Please [take care of it for me].' 65 A Odenwabangoo o itadakemasu ka? telephone number OBJ receive-iPF-poi Q 'May (I/we) have your telephone number?' ((Caller provides number and clerk repeats in lines 66-72)) 73 C

Hai. Sasaki to moosimasu. yes oasaKi QT be caiied-iPF^ 'Yes, I'm Sasaki.'

74 A Sasaki-sama. Ms. Sasaki (+) 'Ms. Sasaki.' 75 C

Hai. yes 'Yes.'

76 A Kasikomarimasita. lida to moosimasita. ^ lida QT be 'Understood. (This) was lida.'

32 Negotiating Moves Finally, as in the first conversation the caller makes a general request that the representative take care of the matter (yorosiku onegai-simasu), and the two take their leave of each other. (25)

Closing section [KI #9-1] 77 C Hai, yorosiku onegai-simasu. yes well

beg-ipp vU

'Yes, may things go well.'

78 A Hai arigatoo gozaimasu:. ACK thank you

(+)

'Okay, thank you.'

79 C Hai, situree simasu. ACK excuse me 'Okay, good-bye.' In this conversation, as we saw in the first, a misunderstanding has arisen regarding the caller's intentions. Here again, the call recipient appears to have made an assumption which she might have developed through experience in her normal range of duties—in this case, that callers to her line are interested in receiving their current account balances. By asking for permission to provide that information—no doubt a service of benefit to the addressee—she also extends an offer of assistance. Although the pattern which the representative adopts, /(X) -te/de yorosii desu ka?l, is comparable to the request for permission in English, 'Is it all right if (I) (do) X?,' it is also frequently used in face-to-face service encounters in Japan to offer assistance. For example, a waiter or waitress can offer to clear the table for a customer by saying, Osage site yorosii desu ka?, 'Is it all right if (I) withdraw (the dishes from the table)?' What the caller from Kansai Imports is inquiring about, however, is a more unusual procedure for the bank; the transaction report forms to which she refers have been developed through a special arrangement between the two organizations. As a result, all of the customer service representatives at this bank are not equally familiar with these documents. Yet once the caller has clarified what she needs, the customer service representative is able to respond appropriately, offering to call back once she has the requested information. While these two conversations would seem to illustrate cases in which participants are initially unfamiliar with what is expected of them, there were also many conversations in the data corpus which demonstrated how smoothly an interaction can proceed between two speakers who are in regular contact with each other, even when a problem is being reported. We will analyze one such example in detail in chapter 5; for reference the full text also appears in appendix 7. Yet despite the differences among these conversations in terms of the participants' familiarity with the service-related problems which callers have experienced, as was suggested earlier, in

Introduction

33

terms of compositional structure, theme, and style the conversations actually exhibit strong similarities. Each call appears to be divided into an opening section, a transition section, a discussion of a business transaction-related matter followed by a promise of future contact and/or an offer of assistance in a pre-closing section, and a closing section which consists of leave-taking rituals. In terms of theme, all calls considered here involve the discussion of business transactions of some sort, either initiated in the past or, as we will see in other calls, to be undertaken in the future. Many of the calls, such as the two presented in this section, specifically involve the reporting of problems in connection with certain business transactions and the offering of assistance toward their resolution. Others are more straightforward toiawase inquiries from customers or businesses, merchandise orders, shipping confirmations, or switchboard requests made prior to a discussion of business matters. As for style, there is consistency among these conversations as well; as illustrated through abbreviated notation in the transcripts, participants address each other using distal-style predicates, and often adopt honorific- and/or humble-polite forms. Contractions, sentence fragments or inverted sentences, which are characteristic of casual-style, are relatively unusual. Taken together, this indicates that speakers in this corpus are adopting a careful, formal style of speech in their conversations (these styles are discussed in more detail in chapter 2). Based on these findings, it was decided that rather than focus exclusively on the forms of the offers in and of themselves, as well as any pragmatic factors that might constrain their use in a broad range of contexts, the present investigation would instead propose that these calls be considered as enactments of a certain genre of activity—namely Japanese business transactional telephone conversations (abbreviated henceforth as JBCs). In this way, we can not only compare and contrast the types of calls within the corpus, but also analyze the ways in which service-related problems are presented, and relate them to the forms and functions of offers of assistance used to resolve those problems within this particular context.

1.5. BAKHTIN AND THE NOTION OF SPEECH GENRES Bakhtin defined speech genres as follows: All the diverse areas of human activity involve the use of language. Quite understandably, the nature and forms of this use are just as diverse as are the areas of human activity....Language is realized in the form of individual concrete utterances (oral and written) by participants in the various areas of human activity. These utterances reflect the specific conditions and goals of each such area not only through their content (thematic) and linguistic style, that is, the selection of the lexical, phraseological, and grammatical resources of the language, but above all, through their compositional structure. All three of these aspects—thematic content, style, and compositional structure—are inseparably linked to the whole of the utterance and are equally determined by the

34 Negotiating Moves specific nature of the particular sphere of communication. Each separate utterance is individual, of course, but each sphere in which language is used develops its own relatively stable types of these utterances. These we may call speech genres. (Bakhtin, 1986:60) In traditional pragmatic terms, an utterance is considered to be the contextualized analogue to the more abstract, theoretical notion of a sentence, although it can also refer to a sentence fragment.17 In this sense of the word, one speaker might produce several utterances over the course of his or her individual turn in a conversation; this is generally the sense in which the term "utterance" will be used in this book as well. To Bakhtin, however, the utterance as a unit of speech communication is best exemplified by what he called "rejoinders of daily dialogue," and he argued that the boundary between one utterance and another was marked by the change in speakers in conversation.18 This notion of rejoinder is essential to Bakhtin's view of language, for he believed that each utterance not only responds to the utterances that precede it, but also anticipates those that follow. In this way, he noted, "Utterances are not indifferent to one another, and are not self-sufficient; they are aware of and mutually reflect one another" (Bakhtin, 1986:91). This perspective on the utterance reflects the way in which words acquire their meanings. In selecting words to express ourselves, we first consider the entirety of our "speech plan"—our intention. Yet despite the fact that each word may have a "neutral" form that appears in a dictionary, Bakhtin claimed that we also make our selections with an eye to how the words have been used in other utterances, particularly those that share thematic, compositional, and stylistic similarities to what it is we are seeking to express. Therefore the meaning of a word "originates at the point of contact between the word and actual reality, under the conditions of that real situation articulated by the individual utterance" (Bakhtin, 1986:88). Looking at the situation more broadly, we see that generic constraints guide us in the ways in which we put words to use as we participate in our daily activities: Genres provide a specific field for future activity, and such activity is never just an "application," "instantiation," or repetition of a pattern. Genres carry the generalizable resources of particular events; but specific actions or utterances must use those resources to accomplish new purposes in each unrepeatable milieu. Each utterance, each use of a genre, demands real work; beginning with the given, something different must be created. (Morson and Emerson, 1990:291, emphasis mine) This "real work" is performed by speakers who are familiar with the generic resources of their language. The way in which speakers acquire this familiarity with genres, Bakhtin argued, is analagous to the way in which they acquire the structures of their native language—not through a conscious study of the rules in a grammar and vocabulary in a dictionary, but rather "from

Introduction

35

concrete utterances that we hear and that we ourselves reproduce in live speech communication with people around us": The forms of language and the typical forms of utterances, that is, speech genres, enter our experience and our consciousness together, and in close connection with one another. To learn to speak means to learn to construct utterances (because we speak in utterances and not in individual sentences, and, of course, not in individual words). (Bakhtin, 1986:78) This observation has significant consequences for second language learning, language pedagogy, and language usage more generally speaking. As Morson and Emerson note, To know a language is to command a repertoire of its speech genres, which means to understand more than "language" in the narrow sense. Each genre implies a set of values, a way of thinking about kinds of experience, and an intuition about the appropriateness of applying the genres in any given context. An enormous amount of unformalized cognitive content is acquired each time we learn a new kind of social activity with its attendant genres, content whose very nature has remained largely unexamined. (Morson and Emerson, 1990:291-292) The explication of this "unformalized cognitive content" is no easy task. But it would seem a worthy endeavor, not only for pedagogical purposes in that we could then identify, describe, and teach various speech genres to students so that they might avoid pitfalls such as those described earlier, but also in the broader interest of narrowing the divide between members of different cultures. Although there may be parallels across languages in terms of the sorts of social activities, activity types (Levinson, 1992), and therefore speech genres in which speakers participate—for example requesting, offering and promising—the way in which these activities "play out" within an individual culture may in fact differ. As we observed in the restaurant example, the mere translation of the words used in one's native language to a parallel situation in a different culture often does not suffice; indeed, it can often confuse. Our approach to the analysis and teaching of speech genres must therefore be a culturally nuanced one. It is hoped that through a thorough examination of conversations such as those to be presented in this book we can come to understand the various ways in which Japanese speakers in certain role relationships in particular situations behave as they seek to achieve certain goals. In other words, by examining speakers' behavior in similar contexts, we might develop a better understanding as to how speakers perform certain activities in a manner that is both linguistically and culturally appropriate. We should also be able to observe through such an investigation what types of beliefs, expectations, and assumptions speakers share through their mutual participation in these activities. Bakhtin suggests that although there are compositional, thematic, and stylistic similarities among texts

36 Negotiating Moves that would seem to exemplify a particular genre, there is always some variation. In the examples discussed in this book, certain situational constraints (such as an automated push-button menu) may dictate slight additions or changes in the structure of a text. Nevertheless, each conversation can represent an instance of a genre, because it still exhibits a certain confluence of structural, thematic, and stylistic features. In this regard, what is particularly attractive about Bakhtin's notion of speech genres from an analytical standpoint is the fact that they allow for—indeed, readily incorporate—a certain degree of flexibility. Speech genres have fuzzy edges; although they represent a potentially infinite number of stable forms of spoken interaction (reflecting the vast heterogeneity of human activity), they ebb and flow over time, for they are inevitably grounded in speakers' own behavior. Swales has noted that "the nature of genres is that they coalesce what is sayable with when and how it is sayable" (Swales, 1990:88). As "what is sayable" changes diachronically, genres too must change. As a result, genres represent "the residue of past behavior, an accretion that shapes, guides, and constrains future behavior" (Morson and Emerson, 1990:290). Genres can also expand and grow by combining with one another. Bakhtin recognized two types of genres—primary and secondary—and he argued that primary genres can "knit together" much like bones and form new, secondary genres (Morson and Emerson, 1990:293). We thus find that groups of utterances, which we might call sub-genres, come together to form larger, overarching genres. This is the idea adopted in this book. Specifically, within the conversations that we will examine, there are recurring instances of problem reports (one type of utterance and sub-genre), as well as offers of assistance (another type of utterance and sub-genre), which co-occur within the larger generic frame of Japanese business telephone conversations, or JBCs.

1.6. FOCAL EXCHANGE: PROBLEM PRESENTATION AND RESOLUTION Within the proposed genre of business telephone conversations, this investigation will primarily be concerned with the analysis of one particular type of exchange (or sub-genre) that involves the reporting of problems. These exchanges may be described generally as follows. First, a customer or intermediary ("service recipient") contacts a company ("service provider") by telephone to report a problem with a service that had been scheduled at a date and time previous to the present telephone conversation. In the examples observed in the data and discussed herein, typically this service entails the shipment of goods such as food or books through parcel delivery companies; however, in some cases, other services were involved, such as the provision of bank statements indicating receipt of wire transfers. The term ''service recipient" rather than "customer" has been selected here as a cover term because two types of calls were observed in the data. In the first, a customer contacts the company from which s/he ordered certain goods (such as food or books) to indicate, for example, that a shipment never arrived. In this type of call, the customer is the service recipient and the company contacted is the service provider. In the second type of call, which represents a follow-up of the first, the company contacted by the customer calls the shipper to report the problem. In this case, the

Introduction

37

company contacted by the customer becomes the service recipient, and the shipper represents the service provider. For clarification, in many cases the terms "caller" and "call recipient" are adopted instead. Note that the majority of the problem report calls in the corpus are interorganizational in nature; relatively few calls were recorded that were initiated by customers with regard to problematic transactions. As such, the focus of the discussion in subsequent chapters, as well as the examples presented, will reflect this distribution of calls. Second, upon hearing the details of the problem, but not necessarily after having been explicitly requested to do so, the service provider responds by offering to take a step toward remedying the problem. Third, depending upon the service provider's ability to resolve the problem immediately, a solution is either proposed or the representative indicates s/he will check into the matter and contact the customer again. 1.6.1. The maeoki as a prefatory move in presenting problems A significant portion of chapter 3 will be given over to a description and classification of the utterances which service recipients use to initially "announce" their reason-for-call to the service provider. In this analysis, I will adopt the term maeoki for these utterances, following Kashiwazaki (1993). Literally speaking, the term means 'place before.' as in 'put down in place ahead of time.' We will note through examples from the corpus that these utterances function much like pre-requests or pre-announcements in other languages, and as such are useful in "maintaining the floor" for the caller, so that s/he may proceed with an explanation of further details about the problematic transaction. A critical element which most of these maeoki utterances have in common is the extended predicate (EP) or n(o) desu construction. Over the course of the next several chapters, we will therefore explore the function and situated use of this deictic form. Since the subjects in this corpus readily employed the pattern in utterances subsequent to the maeoki as part of their exposition of problems, as well as in various moves toward resolution of the problems and in refusals of switchboard requests, the EP will understandably loom large in our analysis of these calls. 1.6.2. Working definition of offers For the purpose of identifying offers within the genre of business telephone conversations, the following working definition was developed and adopted: An offer of assistance may be said to have occurred when a service provider either implicitly or explicitly commits him/herself to satisfying the needs of a service recipient (either by agreeing to do so or by volunteering to do so). These needs may be perceived

38 Negotiating Moves by the service provider, with or without their explicit expression by the service recipient.

1.6.3. Moves adopted by service providers to offer assistance Service providers in the JBC corpus regularly adopted two forms in their moves to offer assistance to service recipients. In this section, I will briefly describe the meaning and function of these forms in order to lay the groundwork for a more detailed discussion in chapters 3, 4, and 5 of their use in particular contexts. The first form observed regularly in the data is the consultative pattern l-(mas)(y)oo ka?/, which we have already observed in excerpts (1), (2), (3) and (4). This pattern, which may occur either in distal-style l-masyool or direct-style l-(y)ool, may be used by a speaker to seek confirmation from the addressee that s/he wishes the speaker to do the service under discussion. Recall in the case of (1), repeated below as (26), that Etsuko was already aware of the need expressed by the teachers for the purchase of certain office supplies, but she was perhaps not certain as to whether or not the teachers expected her to buy the stamps as well. (26)

#Katte kite agemasyoo buy-GER come-GER give to out-group-CNs 'Shall (I) go buy (them) for you?'

ka? Q

Etsuko's mistake, as noted earlier, relates to the pragmatic inappropriateness of the donatory auxiliary ageru. Note, however, that the consultative l-masyoo ka?/ portion of her offer was not incorrect. In fact, the form suggested by her mother in (2), Katte mairimasyoo ka? (repeated below as (27)). maintains this distal consultative ending: (27)

Katte mairimasyoo ka? buy-GER come-CNs, Q 'Shall (I) go buy (them)?'

If Etsuko had been more certain that there was an expectation on the part of the teachers that she should purchase not only the supplies, but the stamps as well, she might have used the declarative alternative presented earlier in (5), repeated below as (28): (28)

Zyaa, katte mairimasu.19 in that case buy-GER 'In that case, (I)'ll go buy (them).'

If, for example, she had purchased stamps in the past and was being requested to do so again, she might have simply stated this in a declarative form. Since the period of time in which she had been serving as office assistant had been quite limited, however, it is possible that she did not yet have a clear sense of the obligations which her role entailed.

Introduction

39

In the case of example (3), Totte ageyoo ka? (shown below as (29)), there were no pre-established role expectations as to who should take the picture. Therefore the teacher's use of both the donatory auxiliary ageru and the l-(y)oo ka?/ consultative pattern was appropriate, in order to seek confirmation from the students that she, and not someone else, should take the picture. (29)

Totte ageyoo ka? take-GER give to out-group- CNS-> Q 'Shall I take (it) for you?'

The use of the l-masyoo ka?/ pattern in the JBCs that have been recorded for this study is consistent with the analysis just presented. Offers to have someone call back, look into a service problem, or resolve a service problem on the spot were made by JBC conversationalists as part of their regular work-related duties. As such, these offer tokens never included donatory auxiliaries. Moreover, in response to "switchboard requests" in which callers asked to speak with someone who was presently unavailable, JBC conversationalists most frequently adopted the l-masyoo ka?! form when offering a return call. By using this pattern, the call recipient can leave the final decision up to the caller, who may either confirm that s/he wishes to have the requested person call back, or indicate that s/he herself will call back at a later time. The call recipient will not use the donatory auxiliary ageru, or the honorific auxiliary sasiagent, because making such offers in response to incoming calls simply constitutes one aspect of their usual responsibilities. Pragmatically speaking, in other words, it would be inappropriate for a call recipient in this situation to present her offer of assistance as a favor to the caller. Note, however, that call recipients do employ the honorific-polite verbal sasiageru 'give-to-out-group' in a non-auxiliary capacity when offering the return call, as in Notihodo orikaesi sasiagemasyoo ka? 'Shall (I/we) give (you) a call back later?' In this context with this usage, there is no nuance of condescension, in contrast to examples discussed earlier with respect to the donatory auxiliary. To illustrate this usage of the l-masyoo ka?! pattern, let us consider example (30), which is taken from the Kansai data. The caller, a male bank employee, has requested to speak with the general manager of Kansai Imports (KI), an international firm located in Kobe. Ms. Sasaki, the female employee of Kansai Imports who takes his call, indicates that the manager is away from her seat at the moment, and offers to (have her) call back: (30)

Offering a return call with -masyoo ka! [KI #1 -10] 1 A

Tadaima seki hazusite 'masite, modotte kite just now seat leave-GER be-GER return-GER come-GER

2 A mat

n desu ga:

be-NEG-IPF EP

CP

'It's that (she)'s away from her desk right now and hasn't returned, but..'

40

Negotiating Moves 3 C A soo desu ka//. Wakarimasita. oh so CP-IPF Q become clear-pp 'Oh, is that so. I see.' 4 A

Hal BC

'Mhm.' ->

5 A

Yorosikereba, kotira no hoc kara, orikaesi: good-pay this CN side from return

6 A odenwa simasyoo ka? telephone call do-iPF-cNs Q 'If (you) like, shall (we/I) call (you) back [from this side]?' 7 C E:to: so:sita:ra: HES in that case 'Um, in that case,' 8 A Hai. BC

'Mhm.' 9 C

Hai. A, dekimasitara, onegai dekimasu desyoo ka. yes oh be able-CND request-iPF-por 4> CP-TENT Q 'Yes. Oh, could (I) ask (you) to do (that)?'

By extending her offer in line 5 by using the consultative orikaesi odenwa simasyoo ka?, Ms. Sasaki defers to the caller's wishes regarding a call back; her use of the provisional form yorosikereba in conjunction with the consultative pattern further underscores the open-ended nature of her utterance. In response, the caller confirms that he would like to receive the return call (A, dekimasitara, onegai dekimasu desyoo ka.). The second form which was observed to occur regularly in offers of assistance in JBCs was the declarative pattern l-masu n(o) del. Consider the following excerpt from another conversation in the Kansai data, in which a male customer has called Kansai Imports and makes a switchboard request to speak with a particular person, but the call recipient indicates that the requested person is unavailable to take his call. The customer offers to call back again later, saying: (31)

Offering a return call with l-masu n(o) de/ [KI #1-7] 1 C A, soo simasitara, mata ano notihodo kakesasite oh so do-CND again HES later call-CAu-GER

Introduction 2 C

41

moraimasu20 n de. get-from-out-group-iPF EP-GER 'Oh, in that case, (I)'11, um, take the liberty of calling again later,

In order to understand why this pattern is appropriate in this context, we must first examine the more general function of the nominal no and its use in what has been called the extended predicate construction. Ray (1989:36) has categorized the various applications of the bound morpheme no in different syntagmatic environments as follows: (32)

Uses of the nominal no in various syntagmatic environments Intra-phrasal: no creates a link between two nouns within a nominal phrase. Intra-clausal: nominalizer no occurs within a clause, e.g., as head in a noun phrase that is subject, direct object, etc. Inter-clausal: nominalizer no participates in establishing the hypotactic relationship obtaining between two clauses. Intra-discourse: nominalizer no is matrix predicate final (sometimes followed by sentence particles), and links the present moment in the discourse to some other information within the discourse, namely the content of the clause it nominalizes.

Let us consider examples that illustrate each of these uses in turn. (33)

Intra-phrasal use of no Hanako no kuruma Hanako car 'Hanako's car'

In its intra-phrasal application, no creates a link between two nouns in the pattern IX no Y/, which may be glossed as 'Y characterized in terms of X.' When no connects two nouns in this way, the product is a noun phrase, hence the 'intra-phrasal' categorization. In the resulting phrase, a particular characteristic, X, is associated or identified with the head noun, Y. In Ray's words, "Y is referred to X." Thus in example (33) above, we have an instance of a particular kind of car—that is, one owned or driven by Hanako.

42 Negotiating Moves (34)

Intra-clausal use of no Iku no wa Tanaka-san dake desu. go-ipp TOP Mr/s. Tanaka only COP-IPF 'It is only Mr/s. Tanaka who will go.'

When no is used intra-clausally, it functions to nominalize a verbal, adjectival, or nominal predicate. In example (34), no nominalizes the verbal predicate iku\ the resulting nominal phrase indicates the action of going. Once this act of going has been nominalized, it may then be referred to. or a comment may be made about it—which is precisely what occurs in the example above. (35)

Inter-clausal use of no (Ray, 1989:81) Ima isogasii no de ato de denwa simasu. now is busy COP-GER later telephone do-ipp 'Being the case that (I)'m busy now, (I)'11 call (you ) later/

The inter-clausal use of no is similar to the intra-clausal use of no in that both involve nominalization. In example (35) above, no is combined with the gerund of the copula, resulting in a hypotactic or dependent relationship between two clauses, /clause 1 no de clause2/. Literally speaking, we may characterize expressions of this type as follows: 'Being that clause 1, clause2.' The first clause is nominalized and subordinated to the second, and the information nominalized in that clause is presented or referred to as a given or presupposed—in other words, something that is non-challengeable—in relation to the superordinate clause that follows (Ray, 1989:66ff, 82ff). What follows in the matrix clause may still be open to discussion. In (35), for example, the speaker is offering to call someone back later, due to the fact that she is busy. It is entirely conceivable that the recipient of this offer might refuse, offering instead to call back at a more convenient time. What she cannot do, however, is refute the information referred to by no—in this case, the fact that the first speaker is busy. (36)

Intra-discourse use of no [KI #5-17] Tadaima hoka no denwa de hanasi -tyuu just now another CN telephone LC speaking in the middle of na

n desu.

COP-IPF EP

'It's that just now (she)'s talking on another line.' This usage of no is what has been called the Extended Predicate (EP) construction (Jorden, 1963; Noda, 1981; Jorden and Noda, 1987) or the I no desu/ construction (Alfonso, 1966; Kuno, 1973). This construction may be described as follows:

Introduction

43

Japanese predicates ending with the indicative inflection (i.e., perfective or imperfective) of verb, adjective, or copula may be extended with a noun no, or, more commonly, with its alternant n. The extended form plus a copula is a special kind of predicate, called the 'extended predicate.' The extended predicate may occur wherever its corresponding non-extended predicate may occur.21 Ray characterizes this use of no as an 'intra-discourse' pattern, because no is sentence-final and there is no case-related or syntactic link between no and any other element within that sentence. Rather, the link exists on the discourse level, such that some information other than that in the NO-nominalized clause is referred to and explained by or commented on with the information in the no clause. (Ray, 1989:9) The "information other than that in the M9-nominalized clause" to which the speaker refers when employing this construction is something that the speaker expects the listener to be able to recover, either from the previous discourse, the immediate context, or perhaps even the following (as yet unspoken) utterance. As both Noda (1981, 1990) and Ray (1989) have emphasized, the underlying function of no, not only in the EP construction but in all of its uses as illustrated above, is one of pointing or referring. In the EP construction, when a speaker uses no, s/he alerts the listener to the fact that s/he is trying to connect some information presently at issue to the immediately preceding discourse or to the larger communicative context. Let us now reconsider example (31), presented below as (37), in light of our discussion regarding the referring function of no. (37)

Offering a return call with l-masu n(o) de/ [KI #1-7] 1 C A, soo simasitara, mata ano notihodo kakesasite oh so do-CND again HES later call-CAU-GER 2 C

moraimasu n de. get-from-out-group-iPF EP-GER 'Oh, in that case, (I)'ll, um, take the liberty of calling again later,

There are (at least) two possible ways of analyzing the use of n(o) in this utterance. One possibility would be to consider it as an example of the inter-clausal application, and to assume that the matrix clause has been elided. However, it can be extremely difficult to say exactly what a speaker might have intended in the following clause. A second possibility would be to classify n(o) as part of the EP construction, followed by the gerund of the copula. This would constitute an intra-discoursal use of no, through which the speaker seeks to connect or relate what immediately precedes n(o) to the larger discourse context. At the moment in which the

44 Negotiating Moves speaker uttered (37), he had just been told that the person he wished to speak with was unavailable. By using the contracted form n in his offer to call back, the speaker can refer deictically to that information, which he assumes his addressee to know, and connect the new information in his offer that he will be calling back later to that larger discourse frame. Such deictic reference also signals to the listener that the speaker is sufficiently confident about the information that he can refer to it and thereby present it as non-challengeable, non-problematic information.22 Stating this more generally, we can say that a speaker who adopts the l-masit n(o) de/ form in an offer of assistance would appear to do so in order to present a grounded assurance to the addressee of his/her willingness and intention to perform the given service. In addition, by using a non-finite form—the gerund—to predicate an offer, a speaker can convey a nuance of open-endedness which would not have been present if the speaker had made a declarative assertion with the form n(o) da. In adopting this gerund form, the speaker essentially assumes that the listener will know what to do, and/or will know how to interpret the utterance. This sense can be conveyed to some degree in English by appending '(and) so....' to the offer—hence the gloss in (37), in which the speaker says, 'Oh, in that case. (I)'11, um, take the liberty of calling again later, so....' In fact, numerous Japanese informants familiar with the data commented that the l-masu n(o) del form in this context provides a "softer" and "less abrupt" ending to the utterance. More generally speaking, the use of the verbal gerund in the manner just described is not at all unusual in Japanese; indeed, gerunds are routinely used in order to conclude an utterance when what they clarify or expand upon is judged by the speaker to be accessible information. Consider, for example, the following segment from a conversation in the Kanto data corpus. The caller, Mr. Kawano of the International Study Center in Saitama Prefecture, has been discussing a possible order he would like to place with Ms. Yamada of Tokyo Books. After some deliberation, he indicates that he will go ahead and fax the information to her on an order form. He then cautions her that this does not yet constitute an actual order, and asks if that is acceptable. Ms. Yamada reassures him that yes, it will be fine, and amplifies her acceptance by referring to the form he will send as an "estimate," rather than an actual order. (38)

Use of the gerund to conclude an utterance which clarifies or amplifies something that is judged by the speaker to be accessible information. [TB #1A-14] 1 C

Zyaa, tyotto tyuumon-syo no syosiki de in that case just order form CN form INST

2 C nagasityaimasu

kedo, kore mada, tyuumon zya nai

go ahead and send-iPF CP

this

still

order

be-NEG-iPF

Introduction 3 C

45

n desu kedo// daizyoobu desu ne:! EP CP all right COP-IPF SP 'Well in that case, (I)'ll just go ahead and send (it) along on (an) order form, but it's that this still isn't (an) order, but that's OK, right?'

4 A A, ii desu yo. oh fine COP-IPF SP 'Oh, that'll be fine, you know.' 5 A Ano: omitumori to iu katati de. HES estimate QT say-ipp form COP-GER 'Um, (it) being in the form of (an) estimate.' The tentative nature of Mr. Kawano's order had already been established over the course of their conversation up to this point, and therefore represents information that is accessible to both speakers. As a result, Ms. Yamada can use the gerund form of the copula in line 5A to clarify her acceptance, noting that the fax, "being the form of an estimate," will be fine. In order to summarize the previous discussion, let us now consider an example from the data which incorporates both the l-(mas)(y)oo ka?l and l-masu n(o) del patterns. The following excerpt is actually a continuation of example (30), in which a male bank employee has called Kansai Imports and has asked to speak with the general manager. (39)

Sequential example of l-masyoo ka?l and l-masu n(o) del [KI #1-10] 1 A

Tadaima seki hazusite 'masite, modotte kite just now seat leave-GER be-GER return-GER come-GER

2 A inai

n desu ga:

be-NEG-IPF EP

CP

'It's that (she)'s away from her desk right now and hasn't returned, but...' 3 C A soo desu ka//. Wakarimasita. oh so COP-IPF Q become clear-pF 'Oh, is that so. I see.' 4 A

Hal BC

'Mhm.'

46

Negotiating Moves 5 A

Yorosikereba, kotira no hoo kara, orikaesi: good-PKv this CN side from return

6 A odenwa simasyoo ka? telephone call do-iPF-CNS Q 'If (you) like, shall (we/I) call (you) back [from this side]?' 7 C E:to: so:sita:ra: HES in that case 'Um, in that case,' 8 A Hai. BC

'Mhm.' 9 C Hai. A, dekimasitara, onegai dekimasu desyoo ka. yes oh be able-CND request-iPF-POT ^ CP-TENT Q 'Yes. Oh, could (I) ask (you) to do (that)?' 10A Hai, e:to, Inaisi-san. yes HES Mr. Inaishi 'Yes, um, Mr. Inaishi.' 11C

Igarasi to moosimasu. Igarashi QT be called-ipp '(I)'mlgarashi.'

12 A A, Igarasi-san. Sumimasen. Situree simasita. oh Mr. Igarashi be sorry-ipp rudeness do-pp Oh, Mr. Igarashi. (I)'m sorry. Excuse me [for what I did].' 13 A Zyaa, anoo: modorimasitara kotira kara well then HES return-CND this side from 14A gorenrakusum yooni itasimasu node: contact-iPF^ in order do-iPF^ EP-GER 'Well then, um, (we/I)'11 see to it that (she) contacts (you) once (she)'s back.' 15C A,, hai. Oh ACK

'Oh, okay.'

Introduction 16 A

47

Hal. ACK.

'Okay.' 17C

Sumimase:n. be sorry '(I)'m sorry [for troubling you].

18 A

Hai. ACK

'Okay.' 19 C

Yorosiku onegai-simasu:. well request-iPF ^ 'Please [take care of it for me].'

Looking at this longer stretch of discourse, we see that Ms. Sasaki, the female Kansai Imports employee, ultimately makes two offers of assistance—the second of which is really a restatement of the first. She makes her initial offer in lines 5-6 (Yorosikereba, kotira no hoo kara, orikaesi: odenwa simasyoo ka?} after telling the caller, Mr. Igarashi, that the manager is away from her desk. Igarashi's only response to this information had been to indicate that he understood (A soo desu ka. Wakarimasita), so Sasaki could not know for sure whether he wanted a return phone call. As a result, Sasaki uses the consultative l-masyoo ka?/ pattern in her offer, leaving open for the moment the possibility that Igarashi might either refuse or indicate that he himself would call back. After Igarashi confirms in lines 7 and 9 that he would indeed like a return call, Sasaki states his name for verification purposes, and Igarashi corrects her. In lines 13-14, Sasaki then rephrases her initial offer, this time presenting it as an assurance that she will see to it that someone in the office (presumably the general manager, but this is not stated explicitly) will contact Igarashi upon the manager's return (Zyaa, ano: modorimasitara kotira kara gorenraku suru yoo ni itasimasu no de). Due to the form l-masu no del, her assurance is grounded in—that is, connected deictically to—the previous discourse frame, which includes the fact that Igarashi had requested to speak with the manager, the fact that the manager was presently away from her desk, and also the information in Sasaki's first offer that she would have someone call Igarashi back. Sasaki's utterance therefore represents more than a mere offer of assistance; through the use of no de it (a) indicates an awareness on Sasaki's part of Igarashi's needs, (b) underscores the connection between the restated offer and the larger discourse frame leading up to that offer, and (c) conveys her willingness and intention to perform this service on his behalf. Finally, by choosing to present her offer in the non-finite l-masu no del form, Sasaki also displays a degree of deference to her customer by leaving her utterance open-ended. Were Igarashi to have a problem with her offer, he could easily indicate this in the immediately ensuing utterance. In actuality, however, Igarashi gratefully accepts Sasaki's offer of assistance, and their conversation comes to a close.

48

Negotiating Moves

1.7. SPECIFIC GOALS OF THE STUDY In undertaking this investigation, I have four specific goals in mind. First and most basically, I seek to determine how the service recipient conveys information regarding the problem to the service provider. Through an examination of the discourse leading up to an offer of assistance, we can uncover the range of moves which service recipients adopt in these situations in order to enlist help from service providers. One of these moves is the way in which service recipients introduce the topic of the problem itself into the conversation, so we will look closely at maeoki "prefatory statements." We might ask, for example, if service recipients initially state the problem and follow that report with an account of the details of the transaction, or do they present the problem in a narrative fashion, recounting the events leading up to the problem chronologically? Do they report the details of the transaction in any particular order? To what degree do they explicitly mention the problem itself (e.g., "The package never arrived") and to what degree do they explicitly request assistance? We cannot take these issues for granted nor assume that there is one "script" which conversationalists will follow in any given situation. As we will see through further examples in the data, the way in which an interaction unfolds may differ depending upon the particulars of the situation. These particulars include the degree to which the participants know each other, the beliefs and expectations of each participant regarding the problem at various points in the interaction, the relative roles of the participants, and so forth. The second goal is to describe the function and, if possible, distribution of the linguistic forms which service providers employ when responding to these reports of problems. Here I am primarily interested in the two patterns just introduced which service providers were observed to use most frequently when offering assistance—the interrogative form l-masyoo ka?l and the declarative form l-masu n(o) del. To what extent might the choice of these forms be a function of the mutual expectations of the participants up to and including that point in time in the conversation? In other words, how might (a) the role relationship between the participants, that is, service provider and service recipient, and (b) the relevance of the preceding discourse, be said to motivate the form of an eventual offer of assistance? My third goal in this investigation relates to the second, and that is to ascertain how these strategies of reporting problems and of offering assistance toward their resolution might be related to (a) the type of genre in which the exchanges appear, namely JBCs, and (b) larger cultural norms and values. My hypothesis is that the expectations that participants bring to these encounters are shaped by roles (such as service provider and service recipient) which are established in and definitive of the genre, and that this may have some influence on the linguistic means employed by the participants. Chapter 3 will therefore be devoted to a description of the genre of business telephone conversations—in particular, the structural and register features of such calls. Regarding the cultural component, as Hymes (1962, 1972, 1974), Gumperz(1982a, 1982b) and others have pointed out, every speech community has certain socially preferred "ways of speaking," and it is likely that the structure of these conversations, as well as the strategies adopted by conversationalists in the reporting of problems and the offering of assistance, will to some degree be consonant with these larger cultural norms.

Introduction

49

Finally, the fourth goal is to present and analyze these interactions as potential resources for linguists, business professionals, and teachers of Japanese in order to provide authentic examples of the conversational moves that native speakers use to report problems and seek assistance in Japanese business telephone conversations. Implicit in this analysis is the assumption that these moves might differ from those typically employed in a similar genre in the non-native Japanese speaker's own speech community, and moreover that by undertaking more situated (and perhaps comparative) studies, we might enable such speakers to become more culturally sensitive to the nuances of Japanese conversation. The voluminous literature contrasting the business negotiation "styles" of Japanese and Americans has little to say on such specifics, possibly because most negotiations are conducted in English or through translators, rather than in Japanese between the principals. While research based on actual or simulated negotiations suggests that there are "linguistic differences" in the moves which Japanese and Americans adopt over the course of a negotiation, analyses to-date have focused on the ways in which offers in the bargaining sense are preferred and responded to in order to achieve optimal outcomes, and also how Japanese vs. American negotiators pose questions, employ the word 'no,' display "aggressive" behavior, respond to silence, and the like (e.g., Van Zandt, 1970; Graham and Herberger, 1983; Graham, 1985; March, 1988; Graham, 1990, 1993). Similarly, the popular press has produced quite a number of books on the topic of "doing business with the Japanese" (e.g., Zimmerman, 1985; De Mente, 1987; Kato and Kato, 1992), but these discuss cultural differences, management strategies, the problem of trade barriers, and so forth but do not examine actual instances of discourse. As such, these studies are thus of limited utility in answering the sorts of questions just posed above. In essence, what we seek to explore here is the genre of everyday negotiation through which Japanese speakers manage the mundane but nonetheless essential responsibilities and problems of their professional lives over the telephone. Publications on Japanese business discourse in the pedagogical field are similarly limited in scope. Language textbooks, perhaps due to space limitations, often provide conversational exemplars that appear to be abstracted from natural encounters; features such as back-channel, hesitation markers, and the use of minor sentences and fragments may be omitted in favor of fully-formed, grammatical sentences (Yotsukura 1997). Yet as the transcripts of actual conversations presented in this study will demonstrate and as studies by Clancy (1982), Mizutani (1983), Ikuta (1988), Maynard (1989), Haru Yamada (1992), Szatrowski (1993), and Kashiwazaki (1993) have shown, such features are essential to successful interactions, for they represent important parameters in the mutually orchestrated dance between speaker and hearer. If a non-native speaker who is unfamiliar with the moves, tempo, and character of the dance attempts a performance with a native speaker, the result can often be clumsy and ill-conceived. This study is therefore an attempt to better identify these elements in one particular genre of interaction.

50

Negotiating Moves

1.8. OVERVIEW OF SUBSEQUENT CHAPTERS In order to provide a maximally informed, "thick description" (Geertz, 1973) of the data in this investigation, it will first be necessary to lay the proper groundwork. Therefore chapter 2 will consist of the following: (1) a review of recent methods for data elicitation and analysis; (2) the rationale for the ethnomethodological approach adopted in the study; (3) a description of the methods used to collect the JBC data; (4) a discussion of the terms genre, style, and register, and a description of the various stylistic choices which Japanese speakers face on an everyday basis in their language; and (5) a summary of some of the major contributions in the field of conversation analysis (CA), followed by a critique of recent studies of offers in Japanese. Once this groundwork has been established, chapter 3 goes on to describe the nature of Japanese business transactional telephone conversations in terms of their overall sequential organization and register features, based on numerous excerpts from the data corpus. In chapter 4 we consider several conversations which illustrate three of the call types which occurred most frequently in the corpus, namely general toiawase inquiries, merchandise (book) orders, and shipping confirmations. Chapter 5 presents two complete conversations from the data in order to analyze the ways in which service recipients report problems and service providers offer assistance toward their resolution. A few English examples from parallel types of calls will also be introduced in order to consider possible cultural and/or linguistic differences in approach. Chapter 6 then concludes the study, and suggests possible areas for future research.

NOTES 1. According to a seminal study by Sacks et al. (1974:699) on this topic, one of the focal questions to be addressed is "What might be extracted as ordered phenomena from our conversational materials which would not turn out to require reference to one or another aspect of situatedness, identities, particularities of content or context?" 2. All personal names, as well as the names of companies and other organizations, have been changed for privacy reasons. 3. As indicated in the key to transcription conventions, the "#" symbol indicates a pragmatically inappropriate utterance; that is, one which is grammatically feasible but situationally inappropriate. 4. 'Out-group' here refers to soto, as opposed to 'in-group,' or uti. The uti/soto dichotomy is a fundamental orientational concept in Japanese society. See Bachnik and Quinn (1994) for a collection of essays which discuss the various ways in which this orientation is expressed in relation to the Japanese self, Japanese society, and through the Japanese language. 5. In the performance of any errand, there are three basic actions involved: going, doing the action of the main verb, and returning (coming back). In English, we express the first two actions, as demonstrated in the English gloss for this example: '(I)'" g° buy (them).' The 'coming back' portion is inferred by the listener. In Japanese, however, the second and third actions in the series are expressed (i.e. doing the action of the main verb and returning), and the initial action of 'going' is left unmentioned. 6. See, for example, Mizutani and Mizutani (1977:270-273).

Introduction

51

7. That is, the gerund form of the main verb, followed by ageru, the donatory auxiliary. 8. The American custom of tipping also does not extend to Japan, although a service charge of 15 percent is sometimes added to the bill. 9. Kanto is the eastern region of Japan centered around Tokyo, and Kansai is the western region centered around Osaka, Kyoto, and Kobe. 10. "Generic" as the adjectival equivalent of "genre." 11. I have adopted the name Tokyo Syoten to represent the site where data was collected in the Kanto area. The word syoten has two interpretations; one is 'bookstore,' while the other is 'book publisher.' The building where Tokyo Syoten is located actually consists of both a bookstore and a publishing house (on separate floors). As will become clear from later data samples, some calls were recorded between bookstore employees and staff in the publishing house; at other times, calls were recorded between publishing staff members. All of these have been classified as "in-house calls." Calls to and from wholesalers, customers, and other clients were also recorded. 12. The word Hai here acknowledges and responds to the telephone ring. In the conversation below as well as in other calls discussed in the book, hai is glossed in a variety of ways depending upon the context. Sometimes it functions as aizuti (back-channel), acknowledging the interlocutor's previous utterance and/or acting as a continuer to urge the other party to go ahead. In this sense it allows the previous speaker to maintain the "floor," so in such cases I have glossed it as 'Mhm.' At other times hai more closely approximates the word 'yes' or 'okay' as an answer to a question or assertive response to the previous turn, so I have glossed it as such. These and other fine distinctions in the use of aizuti in Japanese have been discussed by Maynard(1986, 1988, 1989) among others. 13. The word hodo, which indicates approximation in Japanese, can also imply politeness due to its nonspecificity. See Jorden and Noda (1987:128). 14. The complete form of this humble-polite expression \sKasikomarimasita. It is an utterance commonly used by employees in service encounters when a customer has requested some sort of assistance. The imperfective form kasikomaru literally means 'obey respectfully'; the perfective is used to convey the sense that one has understood what has just been requested. Martin (1994:486) provides a useful English equivalent: 'I understand and will comply (with your request).' 15. Haa is a more formal equivalent of hai, and may be used as an acknowledgement or affirmative reply. Although it sounds much like the ha ofHa-ha-ha no hanasi, there is no semantic connection. 16. Literally the phrase Situree simasu means '(I) will commit a rudeness'; in this context, it refers to the fact that the speaker is about to hang up the phone—a potentially face-threatening act. 17. Bakhtin (1986:60). See, for example, Levinson's (1983:18) definitions of the sentence and the utterance. 18. In this respect, Bakhtin's definition of the utterance resembles Sacks et al. 's (1974) notion of a turn in conversation. 19. Zyaa, katte mairimasu no de is also possible here; the use of no de in such contexts will be discussed further in section 1.6.3. 20. As described by Jorden and Noda (1990:128), the combination /causative gerund + itadakimasul

52

Negotiating Moves

"occurs commonly as a ritualistic, humble-polite statement of the speaker's intention to do something that reflects or assumes the permission (and power) of the person addressed, comparable to English 'I'm going to take the liberty of doing so-and-so' ('I'm going to accept [your] letting me to do so-and-so')." There appears to be dialectical variation in the usage of this pattern, in that speakers in the Kansai region of Japan use the pattern l-sasete moraimasul and its variant l-sasite moraimasul (as in this example) more frequently in such contexts than they would the humble-polite equivalents l-sasete itadakimasul and l-sasite itadakimasul. The latter combinations are more typically used by Kanto speakers. According to a native informant, the combinations using the plain form moraimasu have a rather commercial connotation that is perhaps more common to Kansai, although it is not inconceivable that the combinations using moraimasu could also be used in Kanto. For an example of the more standard use of/-sasite itadakimasul by a Kanto speaker, see example (9), line 13 in this chapter. 21. Noda (1981:1). The copula in Japanese is a cover term for the word desu and its many forms, including the gerund fife and the distal perfective form desita. 22.1 am grateful to Charles Quinn for this observation.

2

DATA AND METHODOLOGY

2.1. INTRODUCTION In the previous chapter, we observed that offers of assistance in the JBC corpus were of primarily three different types: (a) offers to have a particular person return a phone call; (b) offers to look into a service problem and (in some cases) call back; and (c) offers to remedy service problems "on the spot." It was also noted that service providers regularly adopted two particular forms in offering assistance to their clients; these were the consultative pattern l-masyoo ka?l and the declarative statement of grounded assurance, l-masu n(o) del. These forms were judged to be offers because they appeared in contexts in which a service provider either implicitly or explicitly committed him/herself to satisfying the perceived or explicitly expressed needs of a service recipient, either by agreeing to do so or by volunteering to do so. Our evaluation of these forms as offers could not be based solely upon an examination of the utterance(s) through which the service provider indicated s/he would assist the service recipient. Rather, it was also necessary to consider the prior discourse, in order to ascertain the degree to which the service recipient had made his/her needs known, as well as the subsequent discourse, in order to evaluate the service recipient's response. The fact that the data corpus consists of complete, authentic, tape-recorded conversations as opposed to isolated, decontextualized utterances eases this evaluation process considerably. Yet many studies published to date on speech acts such as offers in Japanese and other languages do not draw upon naturally occurring data for their analyses. Instead, they often rely upon discourse completion tests (DCTs), multiple choice questionnaires (MCQs) and other data elicitation techniques which focus on individual utterances rather than longer stretches of discourse.

54

Negotiating Moves

This chapter therefore begins with a review of various perspectives on data elicitation and analysis in order to explain the rationale behind the ethnographic methodology adopted for the present investigation. In the process, we examine the advantages of using tape recorded versus hypothetical or recalled data for discourse analytic research. We also note the significance of telephone conversations in our public and private lives and in the business world. This is followed by a description of the methods used for data collection in this study, including information regarding site locations, set-up for audiotape recordings, and the subject pool. We then compare and contrast the concepts "genre," "register," and "style," and review the various stylistic distinctions which Japanese conversationalists employ in their everyday and business language. A call from the data corpus is then presented as an illustration of some of these distinctions. The last part of the chapter consists of a description of some of the major findings of conversation analysis which are germane to this investigation, and a summary of previous studies on offers in Japanese.

2.2. RECENT METHODS FOR DATA ELICITATION Much of the previous research conducted in the fields of pragmatics and sociolinguistics, including studies on offers in various languages, has relied upon strictly invented examples or data elicited through Discourse Completion Tests (DCTs), multiple choice questionnaires (MCQs), rating scales, experimental procedures, interview procedures, or role-plays. Indeed, the authors of perhaps the largest cross-cultural study on speech acts conducted to date—the Cross Cultural Speech Act Realization Project or CCSARP (Blum-Kulka et al., 1989), which examined requests and apologies made by both native and non-native speakers in a range of 10 to 14 varieties of primarily West European languages—based their conclusions upon data collected through DCT questionnaires. The authors of the CCSARP, in their "Introductory Overview" to the study, characterize their perspective as follows: The view adopted here with regard to speech act theory follows Bierwisch (1980) in anchoring the study of speech acts strongly in the area of linguistic communication. We contend that there is a strong need to complement theoretical studies of speech acts, based primarily on intuited data of isolated utterances, with empirical studies, based on speech acts produced by native speakers in context. It is only through the study of situated speech that we can hope to construe a theory interconnecting communicative functions with the contexts in which they are embedded. (Blum-Kulka et al., 1989:3) Yet despite the authors' apparent support for empirical, situated studies, the CCSARP relies on data from DCTs, which are not entirely "situated" in naturally occurring contexts.

Data and Methodology

55

Much of the reliance upon questionnaires and similar elicitation procedures of course derives from the relative ease with which data may be collected in this fashion, and the deceptive readiness with which answers on questionnaires may be compared for statistical analysis. One alleged virtue of this methodology is that questionnaires can be useful for the "testing of specific hypotheses, comparison of specific populations, easing of analysis and administration, and contextual control" (Rose and Ono, 1995:192). In addition, Rose (1992b:52), citing Wolfson et al. (1989), points out that such questionnaires may also "be used to gather large amounts of data quickly, create initial classifications of formulas and strategies that may occur in natural speech, corroborate results of ethnographic studies, and reveal unexpected variables." Blum-Kulka et al. further note, in defense of their methodology, that ...in CCSARP we were interested in getting a large sample, in seven countries, of two specific speech acts used in the same contexts. This would have been virtually impossible under field conditions. Moreover, we wished to compare speech acts not only cross-culturally, but also within the same language, as produced by native and nonnative speakers. These demands for comparability have ruled out the use of ethnographic methods, invaluable as they are in general for gaining insights into speech behavior. (Blum-Kulka et al., 1989:13) Hill et al. (1986:353) have also defended the use of questionnaires, arguing that "the virtue of authenticity in naturally occurring speech must be weighed against its reflection of speakers' sociolinguistic adaptations to very specific situations." Questionnaires, they note, tend to elicit more "stereotypical" responses, which Hill et al. claim represent "the prototype of the variants occurring in the individual's actual speech" (1986:353, emphasis mine). Blum-Kulka et al. see this as an advantage for their own methodology, claiming that "It is precisely this more stereotyped aspect of speech behavior that we need for cross-cultural comparability" (BlumKulka et al., 1989:13, emphasis mine). These remarks raise several critical questions about goals and methodology. First, if we are endeavoring, through research, to assess the "actual speech" behavior of members of various linguistic communities, can we realistically depend upon data elicitation techniques that merely produce "stereotypical" patterns? As Rose (1992a, 1992b, 1994), Rose and Ono (1995), Kasper and Dahl (1991) and others have argued, questionnaires may not in fact be a valid measure for accurately assessing what native speakers actually "do with words," to borrow Austin's (1962) phrase. More likely, responses on such questionnaires reflect what speakers say they do with words. Most, if not all of these studies follow the lead of the speech act literature, specifically the practice of Austin (1962) and Searle (1969, 1975, 1979c) of relying upon invented examples of single sentences that are usually examined in complete isolation from larger discourse contexts. Searle himself stated that "the characteristic grammatical form of the illocutionary act is the complete sentence" (Searle, 1969:25). The difference in the newer studies is that they employ

56 Negotiating Moves attested examples from native speakers, albeit those elicited through instruments such as DCTs and MCQs which are similarly based on reflective intuition. A major defect is that these DCTs and MCQs elicit reflection, which is not usually one of the live interaction choices that conversationalists face at the spur of the moment, when formulating a response to an interlocutor's previous utterance(s). Given that so many previous studies seem to have relied upon the intuitions and perceptions of native and non-native speakers, it would perhaps be wise at this juncture to briefly consider the appropriateness of this approach for various types of linguistic analysis. Chomsky (1957:13ff. 49-50) was the first to argue that native speaker intuitions in regard to syntactic judgments can serve as a fairly reliable test of the adequacy of a proposed grammar for a given language. Moreover, he claimed that minimal pair tests can be used with native informants in order to determine whether or not two words are phonemically distinct, and that such tests provide "a clear operational criterion for phonemic distinctness in completely non-semantic terms" (Chomsky, 1957:96-7). Finally, semanticians routinely employ entailment judgments in doing semantic research. However, native and non-native speaker intuitions involving pragmatic and sociolinguistic judgments have been shown to be highly inaccurate (Labov, 1966; Blom and Gumperz. 1972; Brouwer et al, 1979; Wolfson et al, 1983; Wolfson et al., 1989). For example, Wolfson et al. (1989) underscore the fact that in the sociolinguistic literature, native speakers' perceptions have been shown to vary markedly from their actual speech behavior. This has been demonstrated in two ways; first, "when native speakers are asked to report what they or others would say in a given speech situation, their responses are often very different from the speech behavior which is actually observed," and second, "native speakers have been shown to be unaware that there is a difference between their perceived speech behavior and their actual speech production" (Wolfson et al., 1989:181). This is probably due in no small part to the fact that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to completely specify all of the features of the context of a particular situation when asking speakers on a questionnaire how they might behave (i.e., what they might say) in that situation. The format of questionnaires only exacerbates the problem, since it tends to elicit "short, decontextualized written segments" rather than the "longer routines typical of actual interaction" (Wolfson et al., 1989:182-3). Another problem that deserves mention here is the fact that DCTs and MCQs have been employed in cross-cultural studies that seek to compare the degree of communicative and/or pragmatic competence of native and non-native speakers. Yet Iwai and Yamada found in the data they collected through a written elicitation procedure as well as role-plays that "both native and non-native speakers responded differently to the two different data collection procedures" (Iwai and Yamada, 1994:44). It is unclear whether these differences could have been attributed to the written vs. oral nature of the instruments themselves, rather than to native vs. non-native competence and/or performance. Nevertheless, it would seem that a speaker's perception of what he or she does or knows could differ from actual behavior, regardless of whether or not s/he is a native speaker. The authors conclude that "researchers should select


57

appropriate procedures according to whom they are collecting data from and why they are examining their speech acts" (Iwai and Yamada, 1994:45). This brings us to a second question that arises from the remarks of Blum-Kulka et al. and Hill et al. which were cited above. The authors of the CCSARP claim that they are interested in comparing stereotypical speech behavior across cultures, but to what end? Their stated "general goal" is "to establish patterns of request and apology realizations under different social constraints across a number of languages and cultures, including both native and nonnative varieties" (Blum-Kulka et al., 1989:12). If those patterns do not stem from situated language-in-use—in the words of Hill et al. (1986:53), if they do not reflect "speakers' sociolinguistic adaptations to very specific situations," then they are necessarily of limited value, for as we argued in chapter 1. language means what it means in context. A third methodological problem is the validity of using the same, or even modified. DCT instrument in cross-cultural investigations. As Olshtain admits in regard to the data on apologies collected in the CCSARP, "culture-specific tendencies may be an artifact of [the] data collection instrument." Olshtain also points out that "we need to develop a better means of collecting mrracultural data" (Olshtain, 1989:171, emphasis mine). Wolfson (1986), for example, has suggested that researchers take a "two-pronged approach" that includes both elicitation and observation.

2.3. RATIONALE FOR AN ETHNOMETHODOLOGICAL APPROACH Given the limitations of the DCT and similar data elicitation methods described above, and particularly since the present investigation is not intended to be cross-cultural in nature but rather focuses on the rhetorical strategies adopted by native Japanese speakers, the decision was made to obtain through an ethnographic approach as much naturally occurring speech as possible in order to ascertain how those speakers actually behave in certain contexts. In fact, the use of naturally-occurring conversation as a data source has been fundamental in more recent research in discourse and conversation analysis, and many scholars such as Wolfson have noted the advantages of this approach in terms of data reliability: Ethnographic field work is the only reliable method of collecting data about the way speech acts function in interaction. Intuitions about speech usage are ... notoriously unreliable, since speakers tend to be aware of the societal norms and are too often misled into believing that these norms represent the actual speech patterns of the community. . . . [D]ata collected by means of tapping into the intuitions of naive native speakers, useful as they may be in pointing to some of the general outlines of differences between norms of different language groups, cannot, in themselves, provide us with the range of possible situations in which specific speech acts may occur or with the distribution of the various forms under investigation. A realistic study of speech use must involve the

58 Negotiating Moves actual observation of speech in use. (Wolfson, 1983:95, emphasis mine) The primary obstacle in conducting such ethnographic field work is what Labov, who advocated the use of one-to-one tape-recorded interviews as the optimal method of obtaining good data for the analysis of the Black English vernacular, has called the "observer's paradox." He describes this as follows: The aim of linguistic research in the community must be to find out how people talk when they are not being systematically observed; yet we can only obtain these data by systematic observation. (Labov, 1972:209) The problem, in other words, is that in the process of systematic observation the investigator may affect the outcome of the results. This is a particularly troublesome matter when the investigator is not a member of the community being studied, and it is a primary motivation for the use of native informants in ethnographic and anthropological research, as well as for the use of DCTs and MCQs in cross-cultural studies, since the questionnaires may be distributed and collected by someone other than the investigator. In order to minimize the negative effects of the observer's paradox in this study, it was decided that the most effective method for collecting the data would be to make audiotape recordings of the telephone conversations of native speakers over a period of several months. Audiotape recordings of telephone conversations have been widely used by researchers in the field of conversation analysis as a means of examining long stretches of discourse. Clearly in the case of research on face-to-face interactions, videotaping is preferable to audiotaping as a method because the latter does not capture mutually visible non-verbal behavior such as head nods, gaze, gestures, and the like. However, when the goal of the research is actually to investigate telephone discourse in and of itself, audiotaping is appropriate because the mode of communication for participants is restricted to the aural/oral channel.

2.3.1. Tape-recorded versus hypothetical or recalled data Tape-recorded data also have several advantages over hypothetical or recalled data, which we will now review. First, barring technical difficulties or privacy considerations, interactions may be examined in their entirety. This is extremely important for the analysis of contextual cues and the co-construction of the interaction as it proceeds through the contributions of all of the participants. Secondly, tape recordings may be reviewed repeatedly, by the investigator or any other persons with whom the recordings are shared. In each such review, the data remain unchanged. Repeated reviews also allow hypotheses to evolve as the data become more familiar.


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Finally, tape recordings are a more reliable source of data than are either hypothetical examples or recalled utterances. As we have seen, what people say they do with words often contradicts their actual performance. Furthermore, utterances recalled in retrospect frequently paraphrase, generalize, or abstract the content and form of interactions, such that finer details, such as back-channel and suprasegmental features, are usually omitted. Without these details, the overall sequential organization and collaborative nature of conversations is less likely to be revealed.

2.3.2. The importance of telephone conversations Hopper (1992) has pointed out the importance of telephone conversations to our public and private everyday lives. The rapid development of superior technology in the last few decades has significantly improved the quality of voice transmission by telephone both domestically and internationally, and the instrument is now an indispensable tool for communication. Its ring is a "summons" which is difficult to ignore, despite the increased use of answering machines and voice mail as screening devices. Moreover, at least until the age of telex, facsimile, and electronic mail transmissions, the telephone's convenience and practicality have been unsurpassed. Referring to telephone speaking as "a primary activity of contemporary living," Hopper points out that: Part of the telephone's practical significance is that it extends occasions for speaking. Using the telephone each of us can speak across distances, across social barriers, across barriers to mobility. Telephone conversation has occupied breadbasket provinces of our semiotic lives. Its acoustic images knead our consciousness. Therefore the consequences of failing to understand the details of telephone speaking grow in importance. To describe telephone conversation is to understand ourselves better. (Hopper, 1992:3-4) Garner (1984:23) has noted the importance of the telephone to business as follows: Telephones are the only equipment that are found in nearly every business. A store may not have typewriters, but it has telephones. An office may not have cash registers, but it has telephones. A factory may have neither typewriters nor cash registers, but it has telephones. It has been estimated that telephones are used at some point in at least 90 percent of all business transactions. Although Garner is referring to telephone use in the United States, it is likely that usage is comparable in Japan, particularly given the current popularity of cellular and PHS (personal handy phone system) phones. Recent statistics on the number of telephone subscribers in Japan published by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) indicate that while there are approximately 12 million business subscribers and 38.6 million household subscribers for general (non-cellular) telephone service, there are roughly 71.6 million cellular and 5.7 million

60 Negotiating Moves PHS subscribers.1 Although the last two figures were not broken down for business versus private use, it is clear that cellular phone service has made significant inroads in the Japanese telecommunications industry and likely represents an important mode of business communication in addition to regular landline phones.

2.4. DATA COLLECTION METHODS FOR THIS STUDY In this section I describe the methods used to collect data for this study. The reader will recall that the initial aim of the investigation was to obtain naturally occurring tokens of offers in a number of contexts and to analyze the ways in which these might be pragmatically constrained by situational factors such as the age, sex, relative status and roles of participants in a variety of interactions. The resulting data corpus is therefore larger and broader in scope than the focus of this book, which looks only at business conversations and not at interactions in other milieu. With the assistance of several native speaker informants, I recorded a total of 100 hours of telephone conversations of staff members employed at three commercial and three educational establishments in the Kanto and Kansai regions of Japan over a period of several months in 1994 and 1995. In each location, one or more portable audiocassette tape recorders were connected directly to incoming telephone lines through the use of a special adapter; this produced extremely clean recordings free of background noise. Tape recorders were placed below employees' desks or otherwise out of sight in order to encourage as much natural language use as possible. Native speaker informants, who were employees of the companies being studied, assisted in the recording process by inserting and replacing tapes when necessary, at times when they would not be observed by participating subjects. At all but one location, recording continued for at least two months, by which time subjects reported that they had forgotten about the presence of the tape recorder.2 Subjects who agreed to participate were told that the recording was for linguistic analysis only and that they would remain anonymous, although certain ethnographic information as to the sex, approximate age, and linguistic background (i.e., where the subjects were born, brought up, whether they had been abroad and for how long) was obtained in most cases. A total of 15 men and 22 women between the ages of 20 and 60 agreed to participate, the majority being in their 20s and 30s.3 If we consider that the recorded conversations are with countless other people from outside organizations and that both incoming and outgoing calls were recorded, the resulting data in fact represent a much more far-reaching population. Since many of the resulting audiotape recordings were of relatively formal, business-related conversations, I also collected over 100 hours of videotape recordings of Japanese television dramas which focus on family life and young people in order to obtain a wider variety of both formal and informal social occasions and interactions. Due to the decision to focus more narrowly on business telephone transactions in this study, however, these data will not be treated here.


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Of the audiotaped corpus, 20 hours of recordings from one Tokyo company and 30 hours from one Kobe company (a total of 541 calls) were examined for occurrences of offers. As the data were collected from each location, I created a log file for each tape which lists an identifying number for the call, tape recorder counter numbers, names and company affiliations of participants, an indication as to caller and call recipient(s), and a summary of the call content. When calls appeared to contain tokens of offers based on the working definition presented in chapter 1, those portions were transcribed and notations made as to the linguistic form of the offer(s). As the focus of the study evolved to include problem reports, additional relevant portions, and in many cases entire conversations, were transcribed. Although I personally undertook most of the initial transcriptions, subsequent drafts and additional transcriptions were completed by native Japanese speakers. Portions of the original audiotapes containing JBCs from the two sites in Tokyo and Kobe were subsequently digitized in February, 2000 at the University of Maryland's Visualization and Presentation Laboratory and burned to CD-ROM format. Brief annotations as to call type and participants have been added to the individual QuickTime files for ease of reference. In order to begin to quantify the descriptive analysis presented herein, a number of concordance searches have been conducted on some subsets of the data corpus, such as the group of problem reports that have been transcribed from the Kansai site. The software used for these searches is MonoConc Pro version 2.0, which was developed by Michael Barlow (2001) and published by Athelstan. It is hoped that once the corpus incorporates grammatical and other tags, further searches may be conducted which will provide a more thoroughly quantitative basis to the qualitative findings discussed here.

2.5. DESCRIPTION OF THE JBC CORPUS The two commercial locations at which data were collected for this investigation are presented in this book under the pseudonyms Tookyoo Syoten ('Tokyo Books,' abbreviated in transcript number references as 'TB') and Kansai Yunyuu ('Kansai Imports,' abbreviated as 'KI'). The Tokyo Books site represents both a publishing house and a bookstore. Permission was granted for the telephone lines of nine employees to be recorded. One of these employees, Ms. Yamada, works in the sales department (eigyoo-bu), and the largest number of calls from this site were recorded from her desk. Other calls were recorded from the bookstore, where three female employees and one male staff manager worked, as well as at the desks of a male editing section chief, a male sales section chief, and two female editing staff members. Kansai Imports is an international company which specializes in the sales of imported and locally obtained goods for a largely non-Japanese clientele. The firm deals in primarily three types of sales: general (non-perishable) grocery items, perishable (e.g., frozen) grocery items, and books and videos. Calls at Kansai Imports were recorded on telephone lines that were designated for eight operations staff members who handle calls to and from suppliers, as well as other business affiliates such as banks, post offices, and the like. Telephone lines designated

62 Negotiating Moves for calls to and from members (in either English or Japanese) were not recorded, because at the time the study was conceived, there was no intention of examining cross-linguistic data. Since the majority of the calls recorded at the Tokyo Books site were obtained through the sales department, and most of the calls from Kansai Imports were also sales- or operations-related, the decision was made in the preparation of this book to focus on these types of calls, in order to work from a corpus of conversations that involved similar issues. Therefore the calls recorded in the editing section are not considered here. Some calls involving bookstore staff are represented here because Yamada was often in touch with these employees with regard to book orders and hold requests. Taken as a group, the conversations analyzed for this book consist of relatively formal, spoken Japanese interactions. Although personal calls to and from employees at the two sites appear in the corpus and are included in the 541-call total, these were excluded from consideration. The focus here is thus on transactional, rather than interactional discourse (Brown and Yule, 1983); that is, on conversations "motivated by a clear pragmatic purpose, e.g., buying or selling, seeking help, or making an appointment" (Fry, 2001:18). As discussed in chapter 1, the study concentrates in particular on inter-organizational calls involving problem reports and their resolution. These conversations differ in many respects from those which Jefferson (1980, 1988; Jefferson and Lee, 1981) has discussed in her investigations of "troubles-talk" in "ordinary settings." Most importantly, with the exception of calls placed by customers, all other conversationalists in these JBCs are institutional employees. None of the participants, including customers, assume the role of "ordinary persons" engaging in everyday conversation with friends or family as the primary purpose of their calls.4 In this regard, the participants also differ from most of those in Park's (2002) study of identification and recognition sequences in Japanese and Korean telephone calls. In that study, the only so-called "official-type calls" are actually those of a hybrid type, between members of households and businesses. Secondly, in the focal exchanges examined for this book, the essential goal of JBC callers is to report and seek resolution of customer service-related problems, rather than to engage in "troubles-telling" in and of itself, or to seek professional advice, as in the case of calls to a radio phone-in program discussed by Collard and Pettinari (1998), calls to various helplines, for example those analyzed by Baker et al. (2001), and the like. Thirdly, in all of the JBCs examined in the data corpus for this book that do not involve calls from customers, each service recipient has engaged in similar talk numerous times, if not with the same service provider, then at least with other providers serving a similar capacity. Taken together, these factors suggest that JBC callers assume a different role (i.e., institutional) and are generally more experienced at making such calls than are ordinary persons who place calls to, for example, emergency services (Jefferson and Lee, 1981; Zimmerman, 1984; Whalen and Zimmerman, 1987; Whalen et al., 1988; Wilson, 1991; Zimmerman, 1992; Tracy, 1997; Drew, 1998).


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Although calls to emergency services have often been characterized in the literature as being "institutional" in nature, they are in fact not conversations among institutional representatives. Rather, they represent a hybrid type of interaction between ordinary citizens and institutional representatives. Tracy (1997) has noted the tension resulting from participants' differing interactional frames in such calls, in which citizen-callers assume a "customer service" frame, and emergency service calltakers speak from a "public service" frame. Similarly, Jefferson and Lee (1981) have pointed out that the convergence of a "troubles-telling" and "service encounter" in such settings can be problematic for participants to manage. We will see in chapter 5 that while JBCs do not share identical tensions, they can and do manifest what Jefferson and Lee (1981) call "interactional asynchrony," due to a different type of mismatch of expectations based on varying levels of experience among service recipients and service providers.

2.6. THE GENRE OF JAPANESE BUSINESS TRANSACTIONAL TELEPHONE CONVERSATIONS As explained in the introductory chapter to this book, Bakhtin's notion of speech genres will be used as an heuristic to explore and explain certain characteristics of a group of interactions chosen for analysis in this study. There are two purposes in doing so. The first is to point out the advantages, for analytical purposes, in grouping spoken texts according to similarities in compositional structure, participant expectations and roles, stylistic conventions, and thematic content. The second is to provide a "thick description" (Geertz, 1973) of a number of conversations as they occur in particular contexts, and which share these characteristics. In the discussion that follows, I will elaborate more fully on Bakhtin's notion of genre, and will also present some perspectives on genre, register, and style that have been suggested by other researchers in order to point out some of the ways in which these notions can enrich our understanding of both conversationalists' behavior and the organization of conversation. Although the scope of the present study will be limited to business transactional telephone conversations, it is hoped that this method of analysis will provide a model for further explorations in related genres, so that ultimately we might compare and contrast verbal behavior across genres.

2.6.1. Defining genre according to Bakhtin (1986) In chapter 1 we briefly discussed Bakhtin's definition of speech genres, noting that they represent the confluence of particular forms of utterances with a particular theme, style(s), and context: A speech genre is not a form of language, but a typical form of utterance....Genres correspond to typical situations of speech communication, typical themes, and, consequently, also to particular contacts between the meanings of words and actual

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Negotiating Moves concrete reality under certain typical (Bakhtin, 1986:87)

circumstances.

The notion of utterance in Bakhtin's definition refers to "a real unit, clearly delimited by the change of speaking subjects, which ends by relinquishing the floor to the other, as if with a silent dixi, perceived by the listeners (as a sign) that the speaker has finished" (Bakhtin, 1986:71-2). As such, it is a complete thought or expression of intention, grounded in actual reality. It differs from the sentence, whose boundaries Bakhtin notes "are never determined by a change of speaking subjects," and moreover "is not correlated directly or personally with the extraverbal context of reality (situation, setting, pre-history) or with the utterances of other speakers" (Bakhtin, 1986:73). The utterance is thus a unit of purposeful speech communication, whereas the sentence is a grammatical unit. Bakhtin conceived of speech genres as organic entities which, in his words, "differentiate and grow as the particular sphere [of social activity] develops and becomes more complex" (Bakhtin, 1986:60). As such, we have noted that they have "fuzzy edges." In a parallel sense, Morson and Emerson note: As individuals and cultures acquire a larger set of activities or a wider compass of experience, their repertoire of genres grows. Taken as a whole, then, a culture's speech genres tend toward heterogeneity [and open-endedness] and form anything but a system. (Morson and Emerson, 1990:292, insert mine) The notion of speech genres thus has significant consequences for the ontogeny and phylogeny of languages.5 An individual's communicative competence is commensurate with his/her knowledge of speech genres, and the linguistic resources of a language at a certain point in time may be characterized by the vast array of speech genres in that language at that time. We observed in the previous chapter that the "real work" of performing genres is done by speakers, and on each occasion or enactment of a generic activity, the intersection of situational factors with the speaker's intentions and goals, as well as thematic content, results in slightly different but nevertheless parallel stylistic choices and unique ("unrepeatable," to Bakhtin) utterances. This process breathes new life into an older form. But the process of enacting these activities or language-games is neither random nor script-like; rather, conversationalists are guided in their performances of speech genres by their previous experiences in those genres, as well as by the generic constraints which accompany them. That is, with increasing experience in a genre of activity, speakers develop intuitions and expectations which help them to perform future enactments on future occasions. These enactments will share certain commonalities of features in terms of structure, theme, and style, yet every enactment of a genre will have its own unique qualities. Over time then, people, and genres, "accumulate experience" (Morson and Emerson, 1990:292).


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2.6.2. Other definitions of genre Martin (1985:250) has defined genres as follows: Genres are how things get done, when language is used to accomplish them. They range from literary to far from literary forms: poems, narratives, expositions, lectures, seminars, recipes, manuals, appointment making, service encounters, news broadcasts, and so on. The term genre is used here to embrace each of the linguistically realized activity types which comprise so much of our culture. At first glance, Martin's emphasis in this definition on accomplishing things through language would seem to parallel Austin's (1962) point about the performative uses of language and Searle's observations about speech acts. However, explaining why an activity is representative of a certain genre is quite a different endeavor from classifying an utterance (in the traditional pragmatic sense of the word) as a particular speech act. To begin with, activities such as those mentioned by Martin consist of much longer stretches of discourse than the single utterance, and each has its own internal structure. As Martin notes, genres and discourse structure are inherently intertwined: All genres have a beginning-middle-end structure of some kind; these structures will be referred to here as schematic structures (equivalent to Hasan's (1977, 1979) generalized text structures). Schematic structure represents the positive contribution genre makes to a text: a way of getting from A to B in the way a given culture accomplishes whatever the genre in question is functioning to do in that culture. (Martin, 1985:251) Martin's definition of genres is not incompatible with Bakhtin's notion of secondary speech genres, (that is, the larger stretches of discourse which incorporate shorter utterances or "primary genres"). Indeed, his definition complements Bakhtin's well for our present purposes. Because it specifies elements of "beginning" "middle" and "end," as well as the notion of "a way of getting from A to B in the way a given culture accomplishes whatever the genre in question is functioning to do in that culture," it provides a very apt description of the "language-game" of JBCs that we seek to explicate. In particular, the idea of "getting from A to B" in a culturally nuanced manner fits well with the focal interaction we will be describing in chapter 5, which is the process of moving from the reporting of a problem to getting that problem closer to its resolution. Ventola (1987:22) has similarly commented on the way in which generic activities involve a stage-like progression:

66 Negotiating Moves [SJocial encounters also have their specific ways of unfolding and...this unfolding may specifically influence the way linguistic patterns are manifested differently at each stage, when the discourse unfolds....We not only recognize social encounter types, but within these types there are also 'typical ways' of unfolding the social activity in question. Thus, our interest is not only in differentiating between the types on the basis of the formal qualities, but also in 'the linguistic progression of the social activity' within one type, i.e., how language is used at each stage when the unfolding of the social process is manifested in instances which belong to the same type of social encounters. (Ventola, 1987:23, emphasis mine) Ventola's definition of genres also brings to light another aspect of genres which we have not yet emphasized, which is the idea that genres are socially sanctioned ways of getting things done. Another point to mention regarding Martin's definition of genre above is that, as he suggests, the structure of a given genre may well reflect the larger culture within which it has developed.6 This aspect of Martin's definition distinguishes his perspective sharply from that of Levinson (1992), whose discussion of "activity types" does not seem to have taken the issue of cultural differences into account (Quinn, 2002). Levinson claims, for example, that "A very good idea of the kind of language usage likely to be found within a given activity can...be predicted simply by knowing what the main function of the activity is seen to be by participants" (Levinson, 1992:98). Yet we have noted how important the role of experience is in both the development of genres themselves and also in the acquisition of genres by members of a given speech community. Mere knowledge of the function of the activity (particularly on one single occasion) is not sufficient in order to acquire the intuitions necessary to perform it. One would think that the way in which speakers go about reaching particular goals in various cultures also might differ, but Levinson argues that "all the details of constraints on language usage within each activity need not be taught to the foreign-language learner, or incorporated into a language-understanding program; it will suffice to specify the general goals and any special unpredictable constraints" (Levinson, 1992:98). However, as we saw in our discussion in chapter 1 of the differences in the restaurant service encounter genre between Japan and the United States, there are both linguistic and non-linguistic aspects to genres which may be culturally based or at least culturally nuanced. Presenting students with a mere cataloguing of "special unpredictable constraints" as they encounter a new genre in a foreign language may not ultimately prove to be a sufficient way of ensuring their pragmatic success in the language. The notion of genre to be adopted here is therefore one which represents more than a set of discrete vocabulary words, phrases, or other features used repeatedly on certain occasions. It is much like Bourdieu's (1990) notion of habitus, or 'lived habit.' By referring to a particular genre in this way, we can move away from the concrete, reified idea of Levinson's "activity types," which would seem to unnecessarily consign behavior to an unchangeable pattern that


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can be readily learned and which can be applied without modification or practice cross-culturally. Instead, we move toward a more flexible approach which would envision genres as sets or groups of behavioral and linguistic dispositions which both native and non-native speakers of a given language acquire through experience, and which can adapt to changes in the environment over time. In other words, this is an organic, dynamic approach, as opposed to one that is static. Considering genre as "lived habit" also allows us to account for the fact that human beings often modify their behavior in subsequent enactments or performances of the same or similar activity. A particular genre thus takes on meaning according to the linguistic and cultural setting in which it is situated, and will also have certain characteristics which reflect the medium or channel through which it is enacted. According to Threadgold (1989:108), "Genres are both 'products' and 'processes'— 'systems' and 'performances.'" He notes: Each time a text is produced, so as to realize and construct a situation-type, it becomes the model for another text and another situation-type. As a model, it functions like a static, finished, product...according to which new texts can be constructed. Once the constructing begins it becomes again a dynamic process, a 'performance' which will inevitably change the model with which it begins. This means that we have to teach the interpersonal and textual characteristic of genres, the probabilistic, dynamic aspects of their performance as well as their schematic structures. (Threadgold 1989:108) In the present investigation, for example, one of the goals is to explore the ways in which Japanese business professionals present problems and seek their resolution on the telephone. We certainly would not and should not expect each and every problem-related conversation to proceed in an identical fashion, or to have a finite set of features which must always be present in order for a given performance of an activity to be judged by the analyst or a member of the base culture as being representative of the genre. Rather, there is likely to be a cluster of features—linguistic, cultural, and channel-related—which, when taken together, would help to identify a given performance as being part of that genre. Some of the characteristics of one genre might of course overlap with those of other genres. For example, a business transactional telephone call will share certain family resemblances with a personal telephone call, such as an opening section which might include self-identification/recognition sequences and greetings, a transitional section into the main topic or topics to be discussed, and a closing section which might include expressions of leave-taking. Nevertheless, there will also be certain aspects of a business call which set it apart from personal calls, such as register features; we will explore these briefly in the next section and in more detail in chapter 3.

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Negotiating Moves

2.6.3. Genre, register, and style We have mentioned that individual enactments of a genre share more or less common compositional or structural characteristics. Part of the reason that a genre has such discourse structure is because it is performed as people pursue goals. In this connection, Bakhtin notes that A particular function (scientific, technical, commentarial, business, everyday) and the particular conditions of speech communication specific for each sphere give rise to particular genres, that is, certain relatively stable thematic, compositional, and stylistic types of utterances. (Bakhtin, 1986:64, emphasis mine) It is primarily this functional aspect of genres and their consequent structure which separate them from registers, which we may define as the varieties of language use specific to certain spheres of speech communication. Recalling the observation cited in chapter 1 by Morson and Emerson (1990:292) about the "enormous amount of unformalized cognitive content" which is associated with every speech genre, we may note that registers lack the sets of values, ways of thinking about kinds of experience, as well as intuitions about preferred moves and situational appropriateness which are all implied by speech genres. Registers also lack an internal discourse structure and dynamic. Couture (1986) has pointed out that "registers impose constraints at the linguistic levels of vocabulary and syntax, whereas genre constraints operate at the level of discourse structure."7 She argues that "unlike register, genre can only be realized in completed texts or texts that can be projected as complete, for a genre does more than specify kinds of codes extant in a group of related texts; it specifies conditions for beginning, continuing, and ending a text.'"* It is precisely these specifications which I seek to describe in the genre of Japanese business transactional telephone conversations, which indeed have distinct openings, developments, and closings. Zwicky and Zwicky (1982:215) have suggested that we might consider registers in terms of a continuum, with certain registers exhibiting paradigmatic associations on one end of that continuum (e.g., baby talk, newspaper headlines and recipes) and more loosely defined registers such as the language of football or politics on the other end. Apart from genres and registers, we may also distinguish styles, which are varieties of language "associated with the relationships between speakers and their interlocutors or audiences: the dimensions of intimacy/distance, casualness/formality, deference/dominance, peremptoriness/ politeness, attention/inattention, and perhaps others" (Zwicky and Zwicky, 1982:214). Zwicky and Zwicky have presented these styles as dimensions, and in many cases in English, at least, utterances do indeed vary widely from one another in terms of the degree to which they illustrate a particular style. That is, some utterances will appear closer to one endpoint or other on a continuum, while others may be classified somewhere in between.9


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In Japanese, there are also some cases in which the difference between two styles can be represented as a continuum; one example is the casual/careful dimension.10 Jorden and Noda (1987:197) have characterized this as follows: Casual speech is marked by the frequent use of fragments without predicates, particular vocabulary items (like n 'yeah'), many contractions, and direct-style inflected forms. Careful speech has fewer fragments without predicates and more major sentences, particular formal vocabulary items, fewer contractions, and more distal-style inflected forms (i.e., -masuldesu forms) at least in sentence-final predicates....Clearly, casual and careful styles are not absolutes: they represent a range from maximally casual to maximally careful, with countless degrees in between. As opposed to such continua, there are also stylistic contrasts in Japanese, in which the choice between one form or the other is paradigmatic and precise. We have in fact already noted several examples of such stylistic contrasts through our ongoing discussion of the Japanese data; one is the contrast between distal- and direct-style (which is sometimes also characterized as "formal/informal" or desul-masu). Distal-style is a term Jorden and Noda (1987) have used in order to indicate a style of speech adopted by speakers who maintain a degree of linguistic distance and display a degree of deference and solicitude toward their addressees (such as colleagues or acquaintances), and/or toward the topic of discussion. Distal-style is contrasted with direct-style, which refers to a variety of speech usually adopted by speakers in more informal contexts, toward close friends or intimates. The use of these styles is not necessarily reciprocal; for example, a superior may address a subordinate using direct-style, but the subordinate would probably adopt distal-style. A second example of a stylistic contrast in Japanese which is influenced by the relationship between the speaker and addressee is the choice between a neutral-polite style or plain utterance. An illustration of this contrast from everyday conversation is the Japanese equivalent for 'Good morning,' which may appear as the distal, neutral-polite, careful-style utterance Ohayoo gozaimasu, or the plain, casual-style utterance Ohayoo. A speaker would use the former to acquaintances, colleagues, and the like, while s/he would adopt the latter among friends. As was the case with the distal/direct style contrast, the speaker-addressee relationship which governs the neutral-polite/plain (or more generally, the polite/plain) contrast is not necessarily reciprocal. It is important to note, however, that it is not always merely the relationship between the speaker and interlocutor which determines a stylistic choice in Japanese. At any point in Japanese conversation, the deictic anchor point is not the Ego or self but rather the uti or in-group, which minimally consists of the speaker. Certain stylistic (and other linguistic) distinctions therefore index utilsoto (in-group/out-group) relationships. One such example is the contrast between honorific-politeness and humble-politeness, which is based on the relationship between the speaker and/or the speaker's uti with the referent of the utterance. As

70 Negotiating Moves Wetzel (1994:83) has noted, "Honorific forms encode an implicit reference to soto or 'out-group,' and humble forms encode an implicit reference to uti or 'in-group.'" One last point which must be emphasized with regard to these styles is the fact that it is not possible to assume a "neutral" stance in Japanese; one must always choose one style or the other within each of the sets of stylistic contrasts (distal/direct, polite/plain, and if polite is chosen, then honorific-polite/humble-polite). According to the choices one makes among these contrasts, one's utterance can then be characterized overall as careful or casual. This means that a given utterance may be assigned more than one stylistic label—as was the case with the distal, neutral-polite, careful-style utterance Ohayoo gozaimasu which we considered above. We can illustrate the honorific/humble-polite contrast, as well as the differences we have now identified among styles, registers, and genres more generally, through the following example from the data corpus. (1)

Example of a JBC call opening [KI #6-6] 1

((phone rings))

2 A Hai, Kansai Yunyuu de gozaimasu:. ACK Kansai Imports COP-IPF (+) 'Yes, Kansai Imports.' 3 C Mosi mosi? hello 'Hello?' 4 A Hai! yes

'Yes!' 5 C A, sumimasen, ano: Watanabe-san wa irassyaimasu desyoo ka. oh be sorry-iPF HES Ms. Watanabe TOP be-iPF^ COP-TENT Q 'Oh, I'm sorry, um, is Ms. Watanabe there?' 6 A Hai, orimasu, syoosyoo omati kudasai= yes be-ipp'i' a little waiting't' give-to-in-grp-iMP/ts -> 'Yes, (she) is, please wait a moment.' 7 C

=Hai. ACK

'Okay.'


11

8 A A, situree desu ga, dotira-sama desu// ka. oh rudeness COP-IPF CP which person (+) COP-IPF Q 'Oh, excuse (me), but who is this?' 9 C Hai, ano Nakayama to moosimasu. yes HES Nakayama QT be called-iPFsl' 'Yes, um, (I)'m Nakayama.' 10 A Hai, syoosyoo omati kudasai//mase ACK a little waiting^ give-to-in-grp-iMp'h 'Okay, please wait a moment.' In the opening section of this example, a female operations staff member of Kansai Imports answers the telephone and identifies herself by giving her company affiliation (Hai, Kansai Yunyuu de gozaimasu); the caller merely says Mosi mosi? 'Hello?' in response. Each of these utterances incorporate register features which also function as contextualization cues (Gumperz, 1982a). The first utterance signals a formal, possibly business-related conversation, while the second would immediately signal to the call recipient that the caller may not be phoning in the capacity of a representative from an outside organization, but rather is placing a personal call. Since the caller has not provided a company affiliation, it is not possible (nor pragmatically appropriate) for the call recipient to utter a business salutation, so she simply provides a go-ahead (Hai!) in line 4. The caller then asks politely if Ms. Watanabe is in (Watanabe-san irassyaimasu desyoo ka). The predicate of her utterance (irassyaimasu desyoo ka) displays an extremely careful style which is often adopted in business and very formal contexts, and includes two distal-style elements: irassyaimasu and desyoo (the tentative form of the copula). The caller's selection of the honorific-polite verbal irassyaimasu, in lieu of the plain-style imasu, also indexes her relationship at this moment to the referent—Watanabe—rather than to the addressee. As noted earlier, the honorific form encodes an implicit reference to soto, the out-group, so the caller is indicating a group division between herself and Watanabe. In line 6, the call recipient indicates that Watanabe is in by saying Hai, orimasu. Orimasu is the humble-polite equivalent of imasu, so by adopting this form, the call recipient is referring to Watanabe as a member of her own uti. But in her next utterance, syoosyoo omati kudasai, she has shifted her reference to the caller, in order to ask that she wait a moment. She thus adopts the honorific-polite style for this utterance, thereby indexing a group division between herself and the caller. The call recipient is also maintaining a certain degree of social distance between herself and the caller through her use of the distal-style (indicated by the morpheme /-mas-/ in orimasu). In line 8, seemingly as an afterthought, or perhaps due to the fact that the caller still has not introduced herself, the call recipient prompts her to do so by saying A, situree desu ga, dotira-sama desu ka. The polite way in which she utters this is typical of formal encounters,

72 Negotiating Moves both on the telephone and face-to-face; the form dotira-sama, which literally means 'a person from which place,' is less specific and thereby considered more polite than either donata or dare 'who.' Moreover, the prefatory remark Situree desu ga seeks to minimize the negative face threat inherent in the inquiry. As we will see in a different example in chapter 3, this query is sometimes abbreviated to Situree desu ga.... The result (another register feature, this time of business conversations) is somewhat comparable in both tone and function to the phrases 'And you are...?' and 'And this is...?' which appear to have gained some currency in English-speaking business contexts of late. In line 9, the caller finally identifies herself by her last name, rather than by company affiliation alone or company affiliation plus her name. Because she herself is the referent of this utterance, she adopts the humble-polite moosimasu, and because she is addressing a member of the out-group whom she does not know well, she maintains the distal -masu ending for the predicate (Nakayama to moosimasu). There are two other observations we may make here regarding the style of these participants' utterances. The first concerns the call recipient's use of the distal, neutral-polite form de gozaimasu in line 2. In picking up the telephone, the call recipient does not know with whom s/he will be speaking during the first moments of the conversation; the caller could potentially be a friend, subordinate, superior, or stranger. As a result, this particular conversationalist chooses the neutral-polite form for her response, thereby adopting a careful-style overall. The other likely alternative here would be the plain-style equivalent of the copula (desu). In either case, the choice of style (neutral-polite or plain) is influenced by the relationship of the speaker to his/her (potential) addressee, much in the same way that one chooses between distal and direct-style utterances. The second stylistic observation concerns the call recipient's last utterance in line 10 (Hai, syoosyoo omati kudasaimase). If we compare her request for the caller to wait at this juncture with her request in line 6 (syoosyoo omati kudasai), we note that the speaker has added the distal imperative morpheme l-masei to the later utterance. There are various possible reasons for this, but it is likely that this was motivated by the fact that the utterance in line 10 constitutes part of the outer frame of this conversation. Often the initiating and concluding utterances in a conversation will be more formal and ritual in nature than those within the body of that conversation. The contrast is most striking when participants are well-acquainted, such that there may be a shift within the opening section from distal to direct-style forms, as well as a possible shift from polite to plain forms, followed by a return to distal and polite forms at the close of the call. This brings us to the other purpose for presenting the conversation in (1), and that is to summarize the differences between styles, registers and genres. First, we have seen that stylistic choices in Japanese do not just reflect the relationship or social distance between a speaker and his/her addressee.1' In the case of the honorific/humble polite contrast, for example, what is germane to the choice is the relationship between the speaker and the referent of the utterance at the moment.12 Example (1) illustrates how references to the same person were made by


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different participants in the conversation using different styles; the caller (an out-group member to employees of Kansai Imports) refers to Watanabe (an employee of Kansai Imports) using honorific-polite style, while the call recipient (an employee of Kansai Imports) uses humble-polite style to refer to her colleague. In the case of the distal/direct and the neutral-polite/plain contrasts, however, the selection is dictated by the degree of distance which the speaker chooses to place between him/herself and the addressee. Secondly, we have claimed that registers represent a variety of language use. Had the caller introduced herself as a representative or service provider of a company, she and the call recipient at Kansai Imports would most likely have exchanged salutations (e.g., Osewa ni natte imasu). This particular utterance constitutes a contextualization cue in telephone and face-to-face business conversations, and we will see numerous examples of its use in later examples from the JBC corpus. Halliday's notion of the Context of Situation (CoS) can be useful here in order to represent the confluence of situational factors affecting the register(s) used in a particular interaction.1" As described by Halliday and Hasan (1985), CoS consists of the following three features: (a) The FIELD of discourse, which addresses the questions, "What social action is taking place?" and "How does where we are (i.e., the physical location of the participants) impact on what social action is taking place?" (b) The TENOR of discourse, which addresses the questions, "Is there a socially defined role relationship that applies to the participants while they are engaged in this social action?" and "What is the interpersonal relationship between the participants?" (c) The MODE of discourse, which addresses the questions "Does the social action appear in written or spoken form?" and "What channel is used to communicate the social action?" Examples of channel are telephone, letter, face-to-face communication, and so forth. If we consider the three CoS factors with respect to the conversation in (1), for example, we may conclude that the FIELD is a situation that, at least in the opening section we have presented, involves the social action of requesting to speak with another person. Moreover, the fact that the caller says Mosi most? in her first utterance suggests that this will be a personal, rather than business conversation, and this will have an impact on the register features used throughout the call (for example, the participants do not exchange business salutations in the opening section, as they might in a business conversation). As for the TENOR of the discourse, these participants do not have a regular role relationship with each other (e.g., service provider and service recipient); all that we may say is that they

74 Negotiating Moves are presently speaking to each other as call recipient and caller, and further that the caller's goals are personal (to speak with an acquaintance) rather than business-related (e.g., to report a transaction-related problem). In addition, it is likely that the participants do not know each other, since the call recipient asks the caller to identify herself in line 8. This influences the style of the conversation; the participants choose distal-style, polite predicates, which when taken together convey the impression of a careful- (as opposed to casual-) style conversation. Finally, in terms of the MODE of the discourse, this is clearly a spoken conversation, which takes place through the medium or channel of the telephone. This has certain consequences for the amount of information which must be specified verbally, instead of through non-verbal gestures or actions as would be the case in face-to-face conversations. While Halliday's CoS features are useful in presenting variables which influence the register and even style of a conversation, there are other factors which we must take into consideration together with these features in order to determine the genre of a conversation. These include thematic content, overall structure, and participant expectations and values which are shaped through the role relationships obtaining in the conversation. Genre is thus the most broad, overarching category which subsumes that of register and style.

2.7. RELEVANT FINDINGS FROM CONVERSATION ANALYSIS In the previous section, we have reviewed the distinctions between genre, register and style in preparation for our analysis of JBCs in subsequent chapters. Since the analysis is also in many ways rooted in the practices of conversation analysis, in this section I present some of the major findings of research in that field. Some examples from the JBC corpus are also included here as illustrations. Ethnomethodologists and conversation analysts take as their focus of investigation "action-ininteraction."14 Researchers in conversation analysis (hereafter, CA) claim that mundane, everyday interactions can serve as a revealing source of the ways in which members of a given society contribute to, or more precisely, co-construct15 social structure through their talk with each other.16 These procedures, CA analysts argue, can be identified and even described as a set of rules—for example, rules for sequencing and turn-taking in conversation (Sacks et al., 1974). As Garfinkel (1967:1) notes, "the activities whereby members produce and manage the settings of organised everyday affairs are identical with members' procedures for making those settings 'account-able.'" By "account-able," Garfinkel meant "observable-and-reportable, i.e., available to members as situated practices of looking-and-telling" (Garfinkel, 1967:1). As a consequence of this perspective—by examining conversational sequences in telephone conversations, for example—conversation analysts have succeeded in identifying and describing two different types of actions. The first type is what we might call "discourse actions," that is, procedures such as "openings" and "closings" (Schegloff, 1972b, 1979; Schegloff and Sacks, 1973; Button, 1987, 1990), sequence expansion (Jefferson and Schenkein, 1978; Schegloff, 1980, 1988a, 1990), and turn expansion (Zimmerman, 1984; Schegloff, 1991). Much of the


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research on openings and closings followed Goffman's (1971) seminal work on ritual exchanges, such as greetings. The second type involves actions within sequences, such as announcements, requests, and offers (e.g., Davidson, 1984), as well as the pre-announcements, pre-requests, pre-offers which may precede and hint at them (Terasaki, 1976; Schegloff, 1980, 1988b). Thus as Heritage (1984:245) notes, ''it is sequences and turns-within-sequences which are the primary units of analysis for CA research." Two important CA contributions in this regard are the notions of adjacency pairs and preference organization. Let us consider each of these here briefly, because they will be useful to our later discussion of the compositional structure of JBCs and the flexible nature of speech genres, which can accommodate the addition of certain insertion sequences without risking their structural integrity. Also, the concept of conditional relevance in connection with preference organization is helpful not only in identifying the range of possible second parts for a particular sequence, but also in identifying speaker expectations—a skill which is arguably useful for non-native speakers to develop in Japanese.

2.7.1. Adjacency pairs Conversation analysts observed that one of the basic units of conversation is a pairing of utterances, such as question—answer, request—acceptance/refusal, offer—acceptance/refusal, and the like. Schegloff and Sacks (1973) called these adjacency pairs, and characterized them as follows:17 (2)

Adjacency pairs are sequences of two utterances that are: (i) (ii) (iii) (iv)

adjacent produced by different speakers ordered as a first part and a second part [and] typed, so that a particular first part requires a particular second (or range of second parts)—e.g., offers require acceptances or rejections, greetings require greetings, and so on.

Schegloff and Sacks (1973) further stipulated that speakers enact these pairs according to the following rule: "Having produced a first part of some pair, current speaker must stop speaking, and next speaker must produce at that point a second part to the same pair" (Levinson, 1983:304). However, within a given adjacency pair, analysts also noted that one or more of what they called insertion sequences could intervene; the insertion sequence itself usually consists of a pair of utterances. For example, in a sequence recorded by Merritt (1976b) in her study of English service encounters, a customer's request for a bottle of beer elicits a question, which must be answered before a reply can be given to the original question:

76


Merritt 1976b:333 A: B: A: B:

May I have a bottle of Mich? Are you twenty one? No No

((Ql)) ((Q2)) ((A2)) ((Al))

Such insertion sequences were found to involve discussions of preliminary matters that needed to be settled before a second (or "next") speaker could issue a response to the original first part of the adjacency pair. Yet in some conversations, analysts discovered that responses to the initial first parts were never actually made; instead, conversationalists would provide an explanation (known as an "account" in CA) for the failure to respond. In order to explain this variation in response behavior, Levinson (1983:306) has suggested that the strict requirements which Sacks and Schegloff proposed for adjacency be replaced by the more flexible notion of conditional relevance, which was first formulated by Sacks and developed further by Schegloff (1972b). Conditional relevance refers to the fact that within adjacency pairs, once a first part is uttered, the second part is not only immediately relevant but also expectable. As Levinson (1983:306) puts it, "what binds the parts of adjacency pairs together is not a formation rule of the sort that would specify that a question must receive an answer if it is to count as a well-formed discourse, but the setting up of specific expectations which have to be attended to." By speaking of expectations that are set up by first parts, rather than of required second parts, we can then successfully include conversations in which, for example, an account is substituted for an expected second pair part. We may also shift our focus from an analysis of parts alone to an analysis that also takes participant expectations into consideration. These CA findings regarding adjacency pairs have useful applications to our study of JBCs. As we saw briefly in chapter 1 and will explore in more detail in chapter 3, the structure of JBCs can be analyzed as a series of sections, within which there are often paired sequences of utterances. For example, during the opening section of a call, almost without exception, both the caller and the call recipient will exchange self-identifications, minimally providing a company affiliation, but also sometimes a section name and/or surname. This is typically followed by an exchange of salutations, in which the participants acknowledge the ongoing business relationship between their two companies. Through experience in participating in this genre of activity, business conversationalists have learned to "present" themselves verbally in this way, to the point that they have developed expectations that others in such circumstances will do the same. An example of such an opening segment may be seen in the following excerpt, taken from the Kanto data: (4)

"Canonical" JBC call opening with switchboard request [KI #5-17] (includes exchange of self-identifications and business salutations) 1

((phone rings))


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2 A Hai, Kansai Yunyuu de gozaimasu. ACK Kansai Imports COP-IPF (+) 'Yes, Kansai Imports.' 3 C

Kantoo-ginkoo no Kawabe de gozaimasu: Kanto bank CM Kawabe COP-IPF (+) '(This) is Kawabe of Kanto Bank.'

4 A Itumo osewa ni natte orimasu: always assistance GL become-GER be-ippvl' ['Thank you for your continued assistance.'] 5 C

Osewa ni narimasu:. assistance GL become-ipp ['(I) am obliged (to you) for your assistance.']

6 C

Saitoo-san irassyaimasu desyoo ka. Mr/s. Saito be-iPF^ COP-TENT Q 'Is Ms. Saito (there)?'

7 A Hai, omati kudasai. yes waiting^ give-to-in-grp-iMpT" 'Yes, please wait (a moment).' 8 C

Hai, sumimasen. yes be sorry -IPF 'Okay, (thank you).'

On occasion, however, there may be situational factors or constraints such that an immediately relevant and expectable first or second part may not be forthcoming. Precisely this kind of situation developed in the conversation discussed in the previous chapter between Ms. Sasaki of Kansai Imports and Ms. lida, the customer service representative of Worldwide Bank. The opening of the call is reproduced below, and the full text appears in appendix 3. (5)

Opening of call to bank via automated menu [KI #9-1] 1

((phone rings))

2 A Kotira \va, pinpon bankingu de gozaimasu. this TOP pushbutton banking COP-IPF (+) 'This is pushbutton banking.'

78 Negotiating Moves 3 A Nihongo gokiboo no kata wa, kono mama, Japanese wish (+) CN person(s) (+) TOP as is 4 A iti osite kudasai. one push-GER give-to-in-grp-iMp/Ts 'Persons wishing (to hear) Japanese, please push one (and remain) as is (on the line).' 5 A ((different voice)) "For services in English, please press *T now." ((Machine BEEP)) 6 C ((caller pushes button, another BEEP)) 7 A Gaikoku kawase reeto, oyobi, kinri no foreign exchange rate(s) as well as interest rate CN 8 A syookai wa, iti. inquiries TOP one 'For foreign exchange rates, as well as inquiries about interest rates, (press) one.' 9 A Kooza account


'For account balance inquiries, (press) two.' 10 A Suupaamaneii torihiki wa san. Huakusimirii saabisu wa, yon. Supermoney transactions TOP three facsimile service TOP four 'For Supermoney transactions, three. For facsimile service, four.' 11 A Kasutomaa saabisu sutahu to, tyokusetu ohanasi ni naritai customer service staff with directly speak-DEs'h 12 A kata wa, kyuu o osite kudasai. person(s)TOP nine OBJ push-GER give-to-in-grp-iMp^ 'For persons wishing to speak directly with customer service staff, please push 9.' 13 C ((pushes button, BEEP sound)) 14 A Omati kudasai. Otunagi simasu. waiting^ give-to-in-grpHMp^ connect-IPF^ 'Please wait. (I/we) will connect (you).'


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Excerpts (4) and (5) are similar in that they each represent call openings in which a caller makes a switchboard request, and the call recipient agrees to transfer the call to the appropriate party. The two examples differ, however, in how these actions are collaboratively achieved or "co-constructed." First and most obviously, the call recipient in (4) is human, whereas the recipient in (5) is the bank's automated push-button response system. Secondly, in the "canonical" opening in excerpt (4) the caller responds to the call recipient's company affiliation (Kansai Yunyuu de gozaimasu) by reciprocating with his self-identification, Kantoo-ginkoo no Kawabe de gozaimasu. In example (5), however, the caller does not provide a self-identification following the bank's automated self-identification, Kotira wa, pinpon bankingu de gozaimasu. Instead, the caller is instructed via recorded "utterances" how to select her preferred language of service and how to indicate the general reason-for-call. The caller's self-identification is thus significantly delayed until line 23, shown in the next segment of the call below: (6)

Request by service representative for identification information ISA Taihen nagaraku omatase site orimasu, quite lengthy waiting-CAU do-GER be-iPFsU 16 A tantoo lida desu:. person in charge lida CP-IPF '(I/we)'ve kept (you) waiting a long time. (I)'m (Ms.) lida, the person in charge.' 17 A Omoti desitara, kooza bangoo kara, onegai-itasimasu. holding^ COP-CND account number from request-ippvU "If (you) have (it), please (begin) from (your) account number.' 18 C A, hai, e:to kooza bangoo GA, Oh yes HES account number SUB 'Oh yes, um, (the) account number IS' ((caller provides account number in lines 19-21)) 22A

Hai. Onamae itadakemasu ka? ACK name receive-iPF-poi^ Q 'Okay. May (I) have your name?'

23 C

Yuugen-gaisya Kansai Yunyuu to moosimasu:. limited corporation Kansai Imports QT be 'This is Kansai Imports Co., Ltd.'

80 Negotiating Moves 24 A Arigatoo gozaimasu:.// thank you (+) 'Thank you.' 25 C

Osewa ni narimasu: assistance GL become-ipp ['(I) am obliged (to you) for your assistance.']

The reason for this delay is as follows. After the call recipient identifies herself in line 16 (tantoo lida desn), she also immediately requests the caller's account number in line 17 (Omoti desitara, kooza bangoo kara, onegai-itasimasu) and then, in line 22, requests her name (Onamae itadakemasu ka?). Thus it is not until line 23 that Sasaki provides her self-identification. Recalling our earlier discussion, the utterances which intervene between lida's self-identification in line 2 and Sasaki's self-identification in line 23 can be seen as a series of insertion sequences. This type of interactional organization in which an expectable second part is delayed while the answering party requests certain requisite information is quite common in other types of organizational discourse, such as calls to emergency services. The set of insertion sequences has been referred to as an "interrogative series" (Zimmerman, 1984). What is notable in this particular conversation, due to the automated nature of the opening, is that the caller has not yet had a chance to indicate a specific reason for her call, aside from pushing the button for customer service. Thus whereas the usual purpose of one or more insertion sequences is to treat various "contingencies" related to a "base" or initial question posed in a prior turn (Schegloff, 1972b), here there is no explicit "question" posed at the outset. Nevertheless, the "interrogative series" adopted by this customer service representative probably serves as an institutional filter of sorts, enabling her to bring up the customer's information on her computer and better respond to the projected question or reason-for-call which the representative might anticipate will follow in a subsequent turn.

2.7.2. Preference organization Another benefit that results from incorporating the notions of conditional relevance and speaker expectations in an analysis of adjacency pairs is the fact that we can then better account for the range of possible second parts that may occur in response to a given first part. Moreover, from a pedagogical perspective, identifying such speaker expectations can be useful because these are precisely what second language learners need to develop in order to perform in a pragmatically appropriate manner, especially for a truly foreign language such as Japanese. Let us consider offers as an example. If a speaker makes an offer, the addressee may accept, refuse, protest mildly or strongly, or merely acknowledge the offer in passing (the last response might occur if the offer concerned something that was perhaps already anticipated or expected). Conversation analysts have noted that among these options, there will be at least one type of preferred and one type of dispreferred response.


81

The notion of preference, it should be stressed, relates not to the psychological desires of speakers or hearers but rather to the linguistic notion of markedness. That is, preferred responses are those which occur in turns that are unmarked or relatively simple in structure, as compared to dispreferred responses, which occur in turns that are marked by features such as delays, prefaces, accounts, hedges, and the like. In the case of offers, an acceptance is considered to be a preferred response, whereas a refusal would be a dispreferred response. Preference organization also helps to account for the fact that speakers will use what conversation analysts call pre-sequences, such as pre-requests or pre-offers, in order to avoid receiving dispreferred responses. For example, by first asking about someone's availability before extending an invitation, a speaker can find out whether or not that person is likely to be able to participate in the activity. If the person will not be available, the first speaker can either revise the invitation to accommodate the other person's schedule, or decide against making the invitation entirely. We will see in subsequent chapters that pre-sequences figure in the presentation of problems in JBCs, since the initial maeoki uttered by callers often functions as a "pre-request" to elicit the call recipient's permission and/or attention before proceeding with further details. Taken together, these observations about adjacency pairs and preference organization have enabled conversational analysts to account for recurring patterns in conversation. For example, in refusing a request, invitation, or offer, conversationalists typically employ utterances marked with the dispreferred features mentioned above; in contrast, when accepting a request, invitation, or offer, conversationalists tend to adopt an unmarked format. Moreover, conversationalists tend to modify their stances on-line, so to speak, in response to dispreferred feedback from their addressees. That is, by including inducements, subsequent versions of first parts, and so forth, conversationalists often try to obtain preferred responses from their addressees. Davidson (1984) found this to be the case among conversationalists of American English when making offers and invitations, for example. However Szatrowski (1993) has found that this tendency does not extend to Japanese, at least in the case of invitations. Before closing this section, it is worth noting that the way in which offers are treated in CA differs fundamentally from the way in which they have been treated in speech act theory.18 As we have seen in CA, offers are usually analyzed as possible first parts in adjacency sequences, to be followed by, for example, an acceptance or other response. Therefore offers would appear to be considered as actions that initiate a sequence of interaction. In speech act theory, in contrast, offers have been seen as response items, uttered on the basis of the perceived or expressed needs of an interlocutor. There is something to be gained from both accounts. On the one hand, it cannot be denied that the person who extends an offer must have some basis for doing so. On the other hand, it is frequently the case that a response such as an acceptance or refusal will follow an offer (although it is not necessary for a response to occur in order for the offer to be made successfully). Therefore in order to adequately account for the behavior of conversationalists in making offers, it will be necessary to include the observations of both speech act-theorists and conversation analysts in any future theory.

82 Negotiating Moves We may illustrate this point with an example from the JBC data, which is an extended version of excerpt (4) above. (7)

Switchboard request with subsequent offer by caller to call back later [KI #5-17] 1

((phone rings))

2 A Hai, Kansai Yunyuu de gozaimasu. ACK Kansai Imports CP-IPF (+) 'Yes, Kansai Imports.' 3 C Kantoo-ginkoo no Kawabe de gozaimasu::. Kanto bank CN Kawabe COP-IPF (+) '(This) is Kawabe of Kanto Bank.' 4 A Itumo osewa ni natte orimasu::. always assistance GL become-GER be-ippvU ['Thank you for your continued assistance.'] 5 C

Osewa ni narimasu:. assistance GL become-ipp ['(I) am obliged (to you) for your assistance.']

6 C Saitoo-san irassyaimasu desyoo ka. Mr/s. Saito be-iPF^ COP-TENT Q 'Is Ms. Saito (there)?' 7 A Hai, omati kudasai. yes waiting^ give-to-in-grp-iMP/ts 8 C Hai, sumimasen. yes be sorryHPF 'Okay, (thank you).' ((caller is put on hold for 6 seconds)) 9 A Mosi most:. hello 'Hello.'

Data and Methodology IOC

83

Hal yes 'Yes.'

11 A A, 'hhh moosiwake nai n desu keredoMO: oh 'hhh excuse have-NEG-iPF EP CP 'Oh,lihh it's that (I)'m sorry, BUT' 12 C

Ee. BC

'Mhm.' 13 A tadaima hoka no denwa de hanasi -tyuu just now another CN telephone LC speaking in the middle of 14 C

no// COP-1PF

n desu:. EP

'it's that just now (she)'s talking on another line.' 15 C A soo desu ka. oh so COP-IPF Q 'Oh, is that so.' 16 A Hai. yes

'Yes.' 17 C E:// BC

'Mhm.' I S A Ano:, owari -sidai odenwa sasiagemasyoo ka? HES finishing upon telephone give-to-out-group-CNS^ Q 'Um, shall (we) give you a call back as soon as (she) has finished?' 19 C

Ee, most yorosikereba.. yes if good-PKv 'Yes. if (that) would be all right (with you).'

In line 6 of this segment, the caller asks to speak with Ms. Saito (Saito-san irassyaimasu desyoo ka.). The call recipient is apparently under the impression that Saito is available, for she asks the caller to wait and puts him on hold as though she will connect the call. However, in

84 Negotiating Moves line 9 she comes back to the phone and in lines 11,13 and 14 explains that Saito is talking on another line (A, 'hhh moosiwake nai n desu keredoMO: tadaima hoka no denwa de hanasi-tyuu na n desu:). The caller simply acknowledges what the call recipient has told her by saying A soo desu ka. followed by a continuer in line 17, so the call recipient offers to have Saito call back when she is finished (Ano: owari-sidai odenwa sasiagemasyoo ka?). The caller then indicates his provisional acceptance of her offer in line 19 (Ee, mosi yorosikereba.). In this situation it would be difficult to take a purely CA stance and say that the secretary's offer in line 18 was an initiating sequence. Once again, Bakhtin's remarks on the responsive nature of the utterance are germane to our discussion; the secretary was clearly responding to the caller's earlier request to speak with Saito, as well as to the fact that he did not propose an alternate solution to the situation (by offering to call back himself). Yet once the secretary has uttered her offer, this is not the end of the story either; she must await the caller's response to ensure that her solution is acceptable to him.

2.7.3. CA studies in Japanese Many recent CA studies in Japanese have examined openings and closings in telephone conversations (Okamoto, 1990, 1991; Kumatoridani, 1992; Yoshino, 1994; Okamoto and Yoshino, 1995). Most focus on the sequential organization of utterances within openings and closings, and in particular, the fact that openings and closings are characterized by the use of adjacency pairs such as "summons—response" and "greeting—greeting." In chapter 3 we will explore in more detail how openings and closings unfold in various types of JBCs. One goal in doing so is to explain their sequential organization in CA fashion. A second goal is to indicate what type of language is used in these exchanges and how conversationalists "co-construct" their interactions on the telephone. As noted in chapter 1, there are a few significant exceptions in the Japanese CA literature which go beyond a narrow focus on boundaries and turn-taking to look at longer stretches of discourse. These include the substantial work conducted by Szatrowski on invitations (1986a, b, 1987a, b, 1992a, 1993) and sales conversations (1992b), as well as various studies on conflict resolution and negotiation such as Noda(1990) and Jones (1990, 1995). Yet despite a recent surge in the number of such conversation-analytic investigations, to my knowledge none have been conducted which deal with the subject of offers in Japanese. Those studies which have examined offers in Japanese are based on DCTs and/or MCQs, and are reviewed below.

2.8. PREVIOUS STUDIES ON OFFERS IN JAPANESE 2.8.1. Fukushima and Iwata (1987) This study examines requests and offers made by native speakers of English and Japanese; the portion devoted to offers focuses on hospitality-oriented offers of food and drink. The findings


85

are therefore of limited applicability to the present investigation, but will be included here in order to illustrate the way in which questionnaires have been used to analyze offers in Japanese. Using Discourse Completion Test (DCT) questionnaires to collect their data, the authors compared results from two groups of English native speakers with those of Japanese native speakers. Fourteen of the English-speaking subjects were living in Japan at the time of the study, and 14 were living in the United States. As for the Japanese speakers, all 18 were living in Japan. On the DCT, the authors asked subjects to write down what they would say in the following situations: (8)

Contexts provided for DCTs in Fukushima and Iwata (1987) (1)

Suppose you invite your friends to your apartment or your house. You noticed that your friends were still standing. You offer them seats.

(2)

Suppose you are a good cook and cooked beef stew for your friends. You serve it to them.

(3)

Suppose you noticed that your friends have not tasted your beef stew yet. You offer it again.

(4)

Suppose you baked cookies. You give them to your friends.19

As is clear from the contexts provided, the focus of the study was on interactions among status-equals. Interestingly, however, despite these instructions the authors found that 10 of the 18 Japanese subjects made clear distinctions in strategies and expressions, depending upon the degree of closeness they perceived with their friends. Respondents appear to have provided these distinctions voluntarily, rather than being asked to do so, for the authors note that subjects "wrote two or more different expressions: to close friends casual expressions, and to acquaintances a little more formal expressions." Native English-speakers made fewer such distinctions. Japanese respondents also were more likely to include prefatory remarks of an apologetic or self-deprecatory nature to "acquaintances," as opposed to close friends. The authors attributed this to modesty in the interest of being polite. More specifically, the authors argued that Japanese speakers were employing the "Modesty Maxim" proposed by Leech (1983:132), i.e., "Minimize praise of self and "Maximize dispraise of self." For example, in situation (1) when offering a friend a seat, two Japanese respondents apologized first about not having noticed that a friend was standing, and said:

86


Offering a friend a seat Ara ki ga kikanakute gomen-nasai. Doozo. oh notice-NEG-GER be sorry please 'Oh, (I)'m sorry (for) not noticing. Please (have a seat).'

In situation (2) when offering the stew, ten of the Japanese subjects prefaced their offer with expressions such as: (10)

Offering stew Oisii ka doo ka \vakaranai kedo. delicious Q how Q be clear-NEG-> CP '(I) don't know if (it)'s good or not, but...(please have some).'

Finally in situation (3), when asked to urge friends to try the stew, many subjects used one of the following phrases: (11)

Urging friends to try one's stew (a)

Hon no sukosi desu ga.... mere CN little COP-IPF CP 'It's just a little, but...(would you like some?)'

(b)

Okuti ni au to yoi no desu ga... mouth GL suit good EP CP 'It's that it would be good if (it) suited (you), but...(would you like some?)'

Fukushima and Iwata do not address the fact that subjects adopted the distal form of the copula (desu} in this context, although they were said to be addressing their friends. We might speculate that such formality arises from the ritualistic nature of the situation, in which the speaker assumes the role of hostess to her guests. As for any similarities between English and Japanese responses, the authors found that all subjects used set phrases frequently, such as Doozo ('please' or 'go ahead') in Japanese, or 'Please have/take a seat' in English for the first situation. The authors seem to have concluded that these were 'set' phrases based on the fact that they recurred frequently as responses. The authors also compared responses between the two groups of English speakers, and found that there was a slight tendency within the group living in the United States to use expressions which were interpreted as lessening the perceived distance between speaker and addressee. For example, in situation (2), one speaker said 'This will probably be the best stew you've had in


87

your life.' In situation (3), another said, 'You'd better eat. If you don't, you don't know what you're missing.' The primary shortcoming of this study is that the methodology and results are presented in an extremely vague fashion, such that it is impossible to tell why (and how) only the Japanese subjects drew distinctions between levels of social distance in their responses. It is possible, for example, that there might have been three different versions of the questionnaire, each of which specified a level of perceived distance (e.g., conversation among friends, to a superior, to a subordinate); however, only the version describing conversation among friends appears in the appendix to the study. Without a more precise description of these aspects of the study, it is difficult to draw any conclusions from the findings reported therein. Nevertheless, the results are interesting in that Japanese respondents did in fact draw such distinctions. If we recall the discussion in chapter 1 about the variety of linguistic forms of offers available to Japanese speakers depending upon the relative role relationship obtaining between them (e.g., Katie agemasyoo ka? versus Katie mairimasyoo ka? and so forth), the importance of specifying such roles in a questionnaire on the one hand, and considering such roles when interpreting data on the other, becomes even clearer.

2.8.2. Matoba(1989a, 1989b) In a study that was based entirely upon data elicited through questionnaires, Matoba sought to determine the perceived degree of politeness (teineisa) employed in speaker-oriented (hanasitetyuusiri) versus addressee-oriented (kikite-tyuusiri) offers in Japanese and German. An example for each type of utterance in Japanese appears below. (12)

Speaker-oriented offer Agemasu yo. give-to-out group SP '(I)'ll give (you) (this).'

(13)

Addressee-oriented offer Omoti holding^

kudasai. give-to-in-group-iMP ^

'Please take (this).' In addition to the speaker- versus addressee-oriented offer distinction, Matoba further classifies offers according to the following three categories:

88


Possible types of offers (a) (b) (c)

temporary shift of possession of an object permanent shift in possession of an object offers "in the broad sense"

Offers of type (c), i.e., those "in the broad sense," are not treated in his study. Instead, the focus is on the offering of things in two differing contexts: (a) lending an umbrella to someone who is visiting one's house, presuming that it has started to rain; and (b) giving one's own book as a present to someone. Matoba distributed two separate questionnaires for his study to 160 Japanese students (105 females, 55 males) who were between the ages of 18 and 23. The first questionnaire asked students what they would say in the two contexts just described; students were asked to provide answers which would be appropriate if the addressee were (a) a college professor; (b) a school senpai (an older student); and (c) a close friend. This enabled the investigator to consider the degree to which linguistic form might vary depending upon differing social distance between speaker and addressee, based on their relative roles. The second questionnaire consisted of two sections. The first asked students to indicate, in the book-offer context, what they would say if (a) they were to assume a very formal attitude or stance, and (b) a very relaxed attitude.20 They were then to assign a value of 5 for their (a) type answers, and a value of 1 for their (b) type answers—that is, in order to establish endpoints on a scale of 1 to 5. In the second section, students were asked to locate each of 18 separate utterances (provided by the investigator) within those two endpoints on the scale, according to the perceived formality of each. This list of utterances included both speaker-oriented and addressee-oriented offers. Matoba's hypothesis was that addressee-oriented offers would be considered more polite in both Japanese and in German; however, the results seemed to suggest that this was the case only for Japanese. Specifically, Matoba found that in the permanent transfer of a book contexts for which formal (aratamattd) behavior was called for in the first questionnaire, addressee-oriented utterances were preferred.21 In the case of temporary transfer of the umbrella, regardless of the level of formality, addressee-oriented utterances were preferred.22 In both cases in German, the opposite results were found. Based on the results to the first part of the study, Matoba observed that just because addresseeoriented offers were preferred does not mean that we can say they are more polite. However, he noted it might be possible to argue that given the low number of speaker-oriented responses in Japanese, regardless of the context, these were considered by respondents to be relatively impolite or inappropriate. He also speculated that since addressee-oriented forms allow conversationalists to avoid referring explicitly to the act of giving or lending, they might minimize the perceived burden on the addressee, thereby rendering them more polite.23


89

Results for the second part of the study were not reported in Matoba (1989a) and will not be treated here.24 What is interesting to note in regard to this part of his investigation, however, is that two of the speaker-oriented utterances included in the list for the subjects' evaluation are similar in syntactic form to those which have already been introduced in the context of Japanese business telephone calls—namely l-masu n(o) del and l-(mas)(y)oo ka?l. Matoba classified the former pattern within the category of permanent shift of possession, and the latter within temporary shift of possession. We might hypothesize that there is a fundamentally different assumption or motivation underlying the use of these forms which correlates with the differences in context specified in Matoba's study. In fact, we will find that the distribution of these two patterns of offers differs in JBC contexts as well. Matoba's study has a number of limitations relating to methodological issues and research design. First, the questionnaire given to students is quite complex in terms of what type of response is to be given and how evaluations are to be made. This probably only exacerbates the already potentially artificial nature of data collected through questionnaires. Moreover, given the limited specification of context in the elicitation instrument, we should be cautious when considering the reported results. Also, the fact that the basic unit of investigation is the single utterance suggests that we are looking at an abstracted, possibly simplified version of what actually happens in naturally occurring conversation. One final limitation is that the study does not address offers of assistance, so that the findings are therefore of somewhat limited applicability to the present investigation.

2.9. CONCLUDING REMARKS In the beginning of this chapter, we reviewed various methods for data elicitation and presented the rationale for using an ethnographic methodology in this study, arguing that the use of tape recordings of telephone conversations enables the investigator to minimize the effects of the "observer's paradox," allows us to examine and repeatedly review conversations in their entirety in precisely the same form on each occasion, and provides a source of data which reflects the finer details of conversational interactions such as back-channel features which are usually absent in recalled or hypothetical examples. Moreover, recorded data are not the product of speaker reflection, but are rather the actual utterances produced by speakers in particular contexts on particular occasions. Finally, telephone conversations represent a significant aspect of speakers' everyday lives, particularly in the world of business. Following a summary of the details relating to data collection, a more detailed account of Bakhtin's notion of speech genres was presented and considered in conjunction with several other definitions of genre which have been proposed by other scholars. We noted that Bakhtin's definition of genre depends upon his definition of the utterance as a complete thought or expression of intention, grounded in reality and bounded by a change in speakers. These utterances or primary genres are dynamic entities which can adapt to changes in speaker behavior within a given activity and as such have fuzzy edges. Moreover, due to the vast number of activities in a given culture, the number of primary genres in a given language is

90 Negotiating Moves potentially infinite. As speakers combine utterances within conversational exchanges for particular purposes, complex genres emerge which reflect speaker goals and exhibit a particular constellation of thematic content, stylistic choices, and compositional structure. In the present study, we are proposing that the texts under consideration represent one such complex genre which we may call Japanese business transactional telephone conversations (abbreviated herein to "Japanese business conversations" or JBCs), and within that genre we have identified two sub-genres, namely problem reports and offers of assistance. In chapter 4 we will also consider tokens of toiawase inquiries, merchandise orders, and shipping confirmations, which represent other common call types in the corpus. Martin's (1985) definition of genre, which refers to "a way of getting from A to B in the way a given culture accomplishes whatever the genre in question is functioning to do in that culture," was contrasted with Levinson's (1992) notion of activity types, and it was argued that the latter's focus on the mere function of a given activity overlooks the fact that there are certain linguistic and non-linguistic aspects to genres which may be culturally-based or at least culturally influenced. Moreover, it does not account for important factors such as the intuitions and expectations which speakers develop through experience in performing a given genre of activity. Our proposed approach therefore considers genre to be a form of habitus or 'lived habit,' a set of linguistic dispositions which both native and non-native speakers of a given language acquire through experience and which can adapt to changes in the environment over time. As such, a genre is far more than the sum of its parts (i.e., more than a discrete set of vocabulary words, phrases, or other features used repeatedly on certain occasions). Each enactment of a genre will take on the color of the particular linguistic and cultural context in which it is performed, which means that every individual performance of a genre is unique. In this chapter we also compared the notions of genre, register, and style with reference to a sample conversation from the corpus in order to illustrate the differences among these concepts. Genres were shown to have a particular functional purpose and discourse structure not shared by registers, which are a particular variety of language with constraints in terms of vocabulary and syntax. A given register may appear in a variety of genres (for example, the language of football could appear in a casual conversation or in a sports broadcast), but need not represent a complete text. Styles, on the other hand, are varieties of language which are associated with relationships among speakers. Examples which were considered in Japanese in relation to the data for this study are the higher-order continua of careful/casual and masculine/feminine styles, as well as the paradigmatic contrasts of distal/direct and polite/plain styles. It was also noted that the determination of humble- versus honorific-polite style in Japanese hinges on the utilsoto deictic anchor point, a notion which differs fundamentally from the distinction of self/other in Indo-European languages. Toward the end of the chapter we reviewed a number of contributions from the field of conversation analysis (CA), including the notions of adjacency pairs and preference organization. We noted how the second part of an adjacency pair is "expectable" but on occasion absent and "noticeable," due to the particulars of the situation. Also, we observed that insertion sequences may intervene within a given adjacency pair, and that a series of such sequences, called an

"interrogative series," has been identified in certain genres of calls such as calls to emergency services. Finally, we concluded the chapter with a summary of the studies which have been conducted on offers in Japanese. Although none of these involve offers in business contexts, some of the findings are nonetheless relevant to the present study. For example, Fukushima and Iwata (1987) noted the importance of role relationship and degree of intimacy between participants in terms of the linguistic forms used when offering food, drink and the like in hospitality-related encounters. Matoba's (1989a, 1989b) studies are also useful in that they identified two of the same patterns found in the JBC data for offers of assistance, namely l-(mas)(y)oo ka?l and l-masu n(o) del. We will revisit both of these issues in subsequent chapters as we analyze calls from the Kanto and Kansai sites.

NOTES 1. Statistics Bureau/Statistical Research and Training Institute (2002). Monthly Statistics of Japan, October 2002. Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications, Tokyo. 2. Hopper (1992:225, fin 8) cites Wiemann (1981) in support of the claim that "People quickly forget they are being recorded." 3. Of this group, 14 women and 3 men represent the subjects who agreed to be recorded at the Tokyo and Kobe companies described in this book. See Appendices A and B for a list of these participants, their job descriptions, and biographical information. Actual names have been changed to protect the identity of these participants. 4. Between close colleagues, there were occasions in which a call opened or closed with more personal discussions, but in the set of calls analyzed for this book, the reason-for-call was strictly transactional in nature. 5. Charles Quinn, personal communication. 6. Martin and Rothery (1986:243) have put this another way, stating that genre "refers to the staged purposeful social processes through which a culture is realized in a language." 7. As paraphrased in Swales (1990:41). 8. Couture (1986:82, emphasis mine). A "text" in this sense simply refers to a bounded stretch of connected linguistic activity. 9. It is not clear from Zwicky and Zwicky's (1982) discussion of styles whether or not they are attempting to claim that their characterization applies to all languages universally, or just to English. 10. Other examples are the gentle/blunt and feminine/masculine dimensions. Although these two dimensions may be analyzed separately, "feminine" and "masculine" actually represent the maximal endpoints of a continuum which subsumes the gentle/blunt dimension.

92

Negotiating Moves

11. The situation in Japanese therefore contradicts Zwicky and Zwicky's (1982:214) generalization regarding stylistic continua. 12. Because English has few, if any cases in which the relationship between the speaker and the referent (as opposed to the addressee) is grammatically encoded, this aspect of the politeness system in Japanese often presents problems for English native speakers. 13. As Halliday and Hasan (1985) have pointed out, the term 'Context of Situation' was actually first coined by Malinowski (1923) and was then developed more fully by other scholars such as Firth and Hymes. 14. According to Heritage (1989:21), conversation analysis developed as a "distinctive research stream of the wider intellectual programme of ethnomethodology." Heritage dates the "public existence" of conversation analysis "either from the publication of Schegloff (1968) or from the earlier widespread circulation of Sacks' unpublished lectures (Sacks, 1964-72)" (Heritage, 1989:37n). Various papers in the field of conversation analysis may be found in the following collections: Atkinson and Heritage (1984), Button and Lee (1987), and Schenkein (1978), as well as the studies published in the special double issue of Sociological Inquiry (1980) edited by Zimmerman and West, and in the special issue of Human Studies (1986) edited by Button, Drew, and Heritage. Research in conversation analysis as it applies to institutional contexts has appeared in Atkinson (1984), Atkinson and Drew (1979), Maynard (1984), and Drew and Heritage (1992), among other sources. 15. For a discussion of the notion of "co-construction," see Jacoby and Ochs (1995), Schegloff (1995). and other papers in the journal Research on Language and Social Interaction, volume 23 number 3, which is devoted to this topic. 16. From Schegloff's perspective, "in many respects, the fundamental or primordial scene of social life is that of direct interaction between members of a social species, typically ones who are physically co-present. For humans, talking in interaction appears to be a distinctive form of this primary constituent of social life, and ordinary conversation is very likely the basic form of organization for talk-in-interaction. Conversational interaction may then be thought of as a form of social organization through which the work of the constitutive institutions of societies gets done....It is, so to speak, sociological bedrock" (Schegloff, 1995:186-7). 17. As paraphrased in Levinson (1983:303-4). 18. Yotsukura (1997) includes a detailed comparison of how offers have been analyzed from a speech act-theoretic versus conversation-analytic perspective. 19. Fukushima and Iwata (1987:46-7). Only an English version of the DCT was provided in an appendix of the paper, so it was not possible to ascertain how these situations were described in Japanese. Aside from this list of situations, the only other information provided was the directions: "What would you say under the following situations?" 20. In Japanese, "mottomo aratamatta taido de iru toki ni tukau hyoogen," and "mottomo kirakuna taido de iru toki ni tukau hyoogen" respectively. 21. To a professor, 37.4% of the subjects chose speaker-oriented utterances, whereas 56.5% chose addressee-oriented utterances. To asenpai, 'one's senior (in a group),' 41% adopted speaker-oriented moves, while 25.5% gave addressee-oriented responses. Finally, to a close friend, 80.5% of the subjects preferred speaker-oriented utterances, as compared to 9.1% who preferred addressee-oriented utterances. Examples of speaker-oriented utterances included: Kono hon, sasiagetai to omou n desu ga.... ('It's that


93

I'd like to give you this book, but.../ using a humble-polite verbal, distal-style, and the extended predicate), Kono hon, sasiagemasu no de... (Til give you this book, so...,' using a humble-polite verbal and distal-style with the gerund form of the EP), and Kono hon, ageru yo (Til give you this book," using a plain, direct-style verbal without the EP). Examples of addressee-oriented utterances included: Kono hon, omoti ni natte kamaimasenyo('\ don't mind if you take this book,' using an honorific-polite verbal and distal-style), Kono hon, omoti kudasai ('Please have this book' using the imperative request form of an honorific-polite verbal), and Kono hon, motte te mo ii wayo ('It's fine if you take this book,' using a plain, direct-style verbal). 22. To a professor, 9.8% of the subjects used speaker-oriented utterances, while 85.3% chose addresseeoriented utterances. To asenpai, 9.4% adopted speaker-oriented moves, while 68.1% gave addresseeoriented responses. Finally, to a close friend, 19.5% of the subjects preferred speaker-oriented utterances, as compared to 70.4% who preferred addressee-oriented utterances. Speaker-oriented utterances in the case of temporary transfer included: Kono kasa, okasi simasyoo ka? ("Shall I lend you this umbrella?' using the consultative, distal-style form of a humble-polite verbal), Kono kasa, kasite agemasu yo (Til lend you this umbrella,' using the gerund of a plain verbal together with the distal-style form of the plain donatory auxiliary), and Kono kasa, kasite ageru (Til lend you this umbrella,' using the gerund of a plain verbal together with the direct-style form of the plain donatory auxiliary). Addressee-oriented utterances included: Kono kasa, omoti ni narimasen ka? ('Won't you take this umbrella?' using an honorific-polite form in distal-style), and Kono kasa, tukaimasu ka? ('Will you use this umbrella?' using a plain, distal-style verbal.) 23. Matoba bases his discussion of politeness on Leech's (1983) maxims of politeness. This will not be discussed here because it is beyond the scope of this investigation. 24. The results I discuss here are a synthesis of the findings in two reports, the longer and potentially more useful of which is in German (Matoba, 1989b). This summary is somewhat limited by my reading knowledge of German. However, since a copy of the Japanese questionnaire appeared in the appendix to the (1989b) study, I have been able to describe the methodology and some of the content of the investigation here.


3

THE STRUCTURE OF JAPANESE BUSINESS TRANSACTIONAL TELEPHONE CONVERSATIONS

3.1. INTRODUCTION In this chapter, I describe the overall sequential organization of Japanese business transactional telephone conversations (JBCs hereafter). This description will include a detailed account of the compositional structure of these conversations in terms of a series of steps within larger sections. In the process of describing these steps, I will also point out certain stylistic and register features of JBCs, such as the ways in which speakers express self-identifications and salutations. It is through the overall confluence of these structural, stylistic, and register features, in addition to the presence of certain thematic content (i.e., discussion of business transactions) that we may identify a call as a member of this genre, although it is not necessary for every feature to be present in order for a call to represent the genre. Moreover, certain register features that will be identified may also appear in non-business (e.g., personal) conversations. We can therefore postulate a more general ''telephone register" which subsumes the more specific "business transactional telephone register" that I describe here. This point leads to another, mentioned briefly in chapter 1 but worth reiterating here, which is that the genre described herein, Japanese business transactional telephone conversations, represents a sub-genre of a larger generic category, namely everyday Japanese telephone conversations. There will of course be many similarities in compositional structure, register and even style between the two; however, there are also important differences, which I will point out over the course of the analysis below. The entire discussion will be supported with numerous contextualized examples from the Kanto and Kansai data corpus. Business-related calls in the corpus may generally be divided into two types: (1) in-house business discussions, and (2) transaction-oriented business conversations between either individual (non-commercial) customers or commercial service-recipients, and service-providers. Commercial service recipients are defined here as companies that have requested or are about

96 Negotiating Moves to request goods or services, often on behalf of their customers. As noted earlier, this study is primarily concerned with calls of the second type. Issues discussed in the first type, in-house calls, included details of the initiation, maintenance, and/or conclusion of business transactions with customers and other service providers, as well as arrangements for meetings, publications, and other ongoing cooperative projects that are not necessarily transaction-related. Other conversations touched upon in-house preparations for shipments, such as the production of labels, packing of boxes, and the like. Calls of the second type between customers or commercial service recipients and service providers included: (a)

"switchboard requests" for a different person;

(b)

general toiawase inquiries regarding prices, availability, and other aspects of goods and services;

(c)

orders of goods such as books and food;

(d)

status updates concerning backordered goods;

(e)

confirmations of the delivery of goods (which sometimes proved to be a form of problem reporting);

(f)

reports of problems concerning the delivery of goods and the provision of services such as bank statements;

(g)

requests for (re)shipment or pickup of goods; and

(h)

inquiries regarding payments for goods and services, credits for returned shipments, and problems with account balances.

While most of these varieties calls will be discussed to some degree over the course of this and the next two chapters, I will treat those of type (a), (b), (c), (e) and (f) in more detail. I consider these as a subset of the larger group of possible business transactions that may be handled by telephone, and propose that each might constitute a sub-genre unto itself.

3.2. BUSINESS TRANSACTIONAL CALLS vs. SERVICE ENCOUNTERS In discussing business transactional telephone conversations as a genre, I am proposing to identify what some might consider to be a rather narrow discourse community, that of Japanese callers and call recipients who interact on the telephone in order to initiate, maintain, and/or conclude matters relating to business transactions such as the purchase of food, books, airline tickets, and the like. Yet the genre of business transactional telephone conversations clearly shares certain elements with the type of interactions found in the larger genre of service

The Structure of Japanese Business Telephone Calls 97 encounters, since the latter represent transactions between customers and service providers involving goods and services provided at locations such as post offices, banks, travel agencies, or train station ticket windows.' There are also fundamental differences between the two types of encounter. First, although the mode of interaction in both cases is oral, the channel of interaction differs; that is, speakers in JBCs interact via the telephone, whereas those in service encounters meet face-to-face.2 This has significant consequences for the way in which the interaction unfolds. For example, in the case of service encounters a customer may initiate a transaction by attracting a clerk's attention, either by approaching a clerk in person and/or by requesting assistance verbally. Alternatively, a clerk may offer assistance in a verbal bid for service,3 or may indicate his/her availability for service through eye contact with the customer. In JBCs, however, the customer or service recipient must initiate the transaction by placing a telephone call to the service provider, and will also sometimes specify the person or department s/he wishes to contact, if known. In service encounters, the customer can often accomplish this selection process non-verbally, merely by walking up to the particular window at a bank or post office that handles the type of transaction s/he wishes to initiate.4 Similarly, in face-to-face service encounters a customer can sometimes indicate the purpose of his/her visit nonverbally, for example through the proffering of a cash withdrawal slip at a bank teller window or a claim ticket for pictures at a film processing shop. Sugito and Sawaki (1977) have pointed out that Japanese customers can complete rudimentary shopping tasks such as the purchase of cigarettes, newspapers, or even groceries without uttering a single word.3 Upon completion of the transaction, customers also need not respond to a clerk's utterance of thanks.6 Taken together, this indicates that many elements of a service encounter, but particularly the opening and closing, may be realized non-verbally. In business transactions on the telephone, however, these are almost always given verbal expression. The primary goal of this chapter is therefore to examine the beginnings, middles, and ends of actual telephone calls from the corpus in order to identify structural similarities among these calls and to point out the particular verbal means which customers/service recipients and service providers employ as they interact. One final way in which business telephone transactions differ from face-to-face service encounters is that speakers cannot rely on non-verbal cues such as head nods and head shakes from their interlocutors for feedback throughout the conversation. We might therefore predict that verbal aizuti ('back-channel') cues assume a more important role in telephone discourse, and indeed, we will see in the JBCs which I discuss in this and the next two chapters that participants actively and mutually elicit and produce aizuti.

3.3. OVERALL STRUCTURE AND IDENTIFYING REGISTER FEATURES Most of the business transactional telephone conversations examined for this study were found to have four distinct sections, which I will first outline and then describe in more detail below. The reader is encouraged to refer to Figures 1 and 2 while following this description. Figure 1

98 Negotiating Moves on page 100 summarizes the overall structure of JBCs; optional steps or moves are indicated in parentheses. Figure 2 on page 101 identifies register features observed in the JBC corpus that set these calls apart from Japanese personal calls and/or calls in other languages.

3.3.1. Overview of JBC structure The overall JBC sequential organization can be summarized as follows. First, conversations begin with an opening section that may include an opening greeting, a self-identification by one or both parties, a request for confirmation of self-identification, salutations acknowledging the ongoing business relationship between the two companies, an exchange of "personal greetings," and, in some cases, a "switchboard request" by the caller to speak with a different person. Such a request is often followed by an indication that the requested person is not available; if so, the call recipient may offer to have someone call back, or the caller may offer to call back again later. The participants will then usually move into a closing section of the conversation in which they take their leave of each other. However, if the requested person is available, the call recipient transfers the call to a different person, and there may be a recursion to the selfidentification, greetings, and/or saluation steps. The second section is a transition section, which the caller sometimes initiates with an attention focuser and then states the general nature of the business transaction that s/he would like to discuss. I will refer to this general prefatory statement as the maeoki, after Kashiwazaki (1993). The third section consists of the actual discussion of one or more business transactions. It is in this section that problem reports and moves toward their resolution appear. (Technically speaking, of course, when the problem report is the first or only issue under discussion, such a report begins in the transition section with the maeoki.) As the discussion of a particular transaction draws to a close, one of the two participants may utter what Schegloff and Sacks (1973) have termed a "possible pre-closing device." In English, speakers commonly use "Okay" (with falling or rising intonation), "We-ell,..." or other similar utterances at this juncture as a pre-closing bid. In JBCs, we find that Hai performs a similar function, as well as several other utterances that are likewise not specifically tied to the content of the previous discourse. Another strategy which JBC conversationalists use to propose a "shutting down" of the conversation is to restate matters agreed upon in the previous topic talk, in such a way that they are presented as something the speaker will do in the future. A linguistic "device" often used to accomplish this is the l-masu n(o) de/ pattern which was discussed in chapter 1 with respect to offers. If this "possible pre-closing" bid is not accepted by the interlocutor, perhaps because s/he wishes to move on to a different or related matter of business, there may be a recursion to the transition, discussion, and pre-closing stages of the call. However, if a pre-closing bid is "accepted" by the interlocutor, then it, together with the accepting response, can be analyzed as the initial exchange in the closing section of the conversation.

The Structure of Japanese Business Telephone Calls

99

The fourth and final section, namely the call closing, may begin as just outlined through a simple exchange of 'okays' using Hai or the like; through a restatement of agreed upon matters; or perhaps through a promise of future contact in connection with business discussed earlier in the conversation. There also may be a request for self-identification, usually if one or both of the parties have not provided their names in the opening section of the call. Alternatively, a participant may volunteer a self-identification, either because s/he has not produced one at a prior point, or as a convenient restatement for the addressee's future reference. The conversation then concludes with leave-taking by both parties. The overall structure of JBCs clearly shares numerous family resemblances with Japanese personal telephone conversations, and with telephone conversations in other languages. Some of these similarities are due to the medium or channel through which the conversation takes place. The opening section is one illustration of this. Because the participants in these various types of JBC calls are not engaged in a face-to-face interaction in which they might recognize each other non-verbally, i.e., on sight, at least one party may produce or request a verbal self-identification, often prior to any exchange of greetings.7 (In contrast, in many everyday telephone conversations, especially in English, participants display mutual recognition through greetings and the like, as opposed to producing self-identifications as a matter of course.) Moreover, whereas in a face-to-face encounters participants may indicate with whom they wish to speak by addressing that person directly, on the telephone a caller must interact with the initial call recipient, whoever that may be, and then if necessary may request to speak with a different party—that is, perform a switchboard request.8 If so, a second exchange of greetings and self-identification(s)/recognition sequences between the caller and the requested person may follow the initial exchange.

3.3.2. Register features of JBCs On the other hand, what often distinguishes JBCs from Japanese personal telephone conversations and conversations in other languages are utterances that I call "register features," since they constitute a certain variety of language that is used among speakers in this specific business context. Figure 2 on page 101 provides a summary of such features that appeared regularly in the data corpus for this study. These include an opening greeting, a categorial or "group" self-identification, an exchange of business salutations, particular phrases indicating an employee is not available, formal terms of address, requests for self-identification, and call-final identification-related utterances. Many of these types of utterances may of course appear in other contexts in Japan (for example, in face-to-face interactions) as well as in calls in other languages, but following Bakhtin, I would argue that it is the confluence of many of these features, within the overall call framework outlined above, that suggests a given call may be considered a JBC.

100 Negotiating Moves I.

Opening 1.

(Opening greeting and) Self-identification by both parties, often followed in caller's case by kedo or ga (Exchange of personal greetings) (Request for confirmation of self-identification)

2.

Exchange of business salutations

3.

(Switchboard request to speak with different person) (Indication that requested person is not available) (Offer to have requested person call back) (Offer by caller to call again later) (Transfer to requested person) (Recursion to self-identification, greetings, and/or salutation steps)

II.

Transition to discussion of business transaction(s) 4.

Attention focuser

5.

General statement of business matter to be discussed, usually framed through the EP (= maeoki)

6.

Clause particle (kedo or ga}, which may be given greater stress and higher pitch in order to signal a transition relevance place (TRP)

III.

Discussion of business transaction(s)

IV.

Summary of agreed-upon matters (pre-closing bid) 7.

Summary/restatement of matter(s) agreed upon within the conversation (Recursion to Section II and/or III) (Promise of future contact)

V.

Closing 8.

(Request for identification details such as phone number, agency code)

9.

(Request for name of one or both parties) (Self-identification by one or both parties)

10.

Leave-taking

Figure 1:

Overall sequential organization of Japanese business transactional telephone conversations (Optional portions appear in parentheses)

The Structure of Japanese Business Telephone Calls (1)

(Opening greeting and) Self-identification by call recipient For outside calls:

(Ohayoo gozaimasu.) [company name] de gozaimasu Idesu [last name] desu

For in-house calls: (2)

(3)

Self-identification by caller Unfamiliar caller:

[company name] no [branch/location name] no [last name] to moosimasu ga...

Familiar caller:

[company name] no [last name] desu ga...

Salutations To out-group interlocutors:

To in-group interlocutors:

Osewa ni natt(e)-(ori)masu. Osewa ni narimasu. Osewasama desu. Otukaresama desu.

(4)

Expressions (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f)

(5)

Terms of address (a) [last name]-sama (b) [company name]-sama

(6)

Business terminology (examples) (a) denpyoo bangoo (b) kanryoo (c) bansen (d) hannyuu

(7)

Inquiry regarding addressee's identity (a) Situree desu kedo....

(8)

Self-identification in pre-closing section (a) [last name] to moosimasu/moosimasita (no de). (b) [last name] desu (no de). Figure 2:

used to indicate that employees are not available gaisyutu site orimasu seki hazusite 'ru n desu ke(re)do(mo)... sekkyaku-tyuu (na n) desu (ga)... hoka no denwa de hanasi-tyuu (na n) desu mada syussya site (i)nai n desu ke(re)do(mo)... oyasumi o itadaite (i)masu

Register features of Japanese business transactional telephone conversations

101

102

Negotiating Moves

3.3.3. Recipient design and the addressivity of the utterance It is important to note here that such register features are useful not only to analysts evaluating the type of call, but also to conversationalists participating in the call itself. As Schegloff (1986:122) notes, for example, "The use of a self-identification or self-formulation as a response form [to the telephone ring] is most conventionally understood as a 'business' or 'office' form. This convention can operate so robustly that just hearing a different answer-form can suggest to a caller that a wrong number has been reached." He cites the following example from Jefferson's research as an illustration: (1)

Call to wrong number that was intended to reach an office (Approximate transcript) 1 2 A 3 C 4 A 5 C 6 A 7 C 8 A 9 C IOC

((phone rings)) Hello? 'HeLLQ'!" Yeah. 'Hello/ Wuh —Is this 657-6850? No, this is 657-6855. Oh. Well, you have a very lovely voice. Why thank you. Am I supposed to be a business firm? Yes, that's right, that's exactly right. I'm calling my office. They never answer with 'hello.'

A similar example from the JBC corpus illustrates how a lack of initial company identification by the call recipient during the opening of a business call can result in a confirmation request for the call recipient's identity: (2)

Request for confirmation of call recipient's identity [KI#11-07] 1

((phone rings))

2 A Mosi mosi. hello 'Hello.' 3 C A, mosi mosi. hello 'Hello.'

4 A Hai. yes 'Yes.'

The Structure of Japanese Business Telephone Calls ->

103

5 C Matida-san desu KA? Mr. Machida CP-IPF Q 'Is (this) Mr. Machida?' 6 A Soo desu. so CP-IPF 'That's right.' 7 C

Kansai Yunyuu no Watanabe desu. Kansai Imports CN Watanabe CP-IPF '(This) is Watanabe of Kansai Imports.'

8 A A, doo mo osewa ni narimasu oh in many ways assistance GL become-iPF 'Oh, in many ways [(I) am obliged (to you) for your assistance.]' 9 C

Osewa ni narimasu. Gomen-nasai idoo -tyuu ni. assistance GL become-iPF excuse me moving middle LOC '[(I) am obliged (to you) for your assistance.] Excuse me (for calling) in the middle of (your) move.'

Schegloff (1986:123) points out that using a self-identification as a response form therefore "appears to be related to an orientation by answerers of the phone to the caller's interest in, and monitoring for, confirmation of having reached the right destination.'" As a result, whereas in everyday calls an answer-form of 'Hello' in English (or mosimosi in Japanese) is often adopted in order to provide a voice sample for recognition by the caller, in business contexts, answerers are aware of the critical importance to potential callers that they receive an indication as to whether they have reached the intended destination of their call, so a company selfidentification is preferred. Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson (1974:727) coined the term "recipient design" to describe such distinctions, noting that "the talk by a party in a conversation is constructed or designed in ways which display an orientation and sensitivity to the particular other(s) who are the coparticipants." They found that recipient design applied not only to word choice, but also to "topic selection, admissibility and ordering of sequences, options and obligations for starting and terminating conversations, etc." and claimed that the concept "is a major basis for that variability of actual conversations glossed by the notion 'context-sensitive.'" This notion of recipient design is essentially what Bakhtin has referred to as the "addressivity" of the utterance, which we discussed briefly in chapter 1 but which bears repeating here: Both the composition and, particularly, the style of the utterance depend on those to whom the utterance is addressed, how the speaker (or writer) senses and imagines his addressees, and the

104

Negotiating Moves force of their effect on the utterance. Each speech genre in each area of speech communication has its own typical conception of the addressee, and this defines it as a genre. (Bakhtin, 1986:95)9

I point this out not to take issue with the notion of recipient design which is central to CA, but rather to show that Bakhtinian theory actually dovetails nicely with the findings and perspectives of CA, and may be used in a complementary fashion.

3.4. CALL OPENINGS Japanese business transactional telephone conversations may be partially identified by their opening sections—that is, by the ways in which participants identify themselves, greet each other, exchange salutations, and so forth. In this section, we will examine the steps that speakers typically follow in the opening segments of these conversations. Before doing so, however, as a point of comparison let us consider the set of "core sequences" which Schegloff has identified for ordinary or "routine" telephone calls in American English. These are as follows: (3)

Core sequences in American English call openings (Schegloff, 1986) (a) (b) (c) (d)

The summons—answer sequence The identification (and/or recognition) sequence The greeting sequence The 'how are you' sequences

The first sequence, summons—answer, functions as a means for conversationalists to confirm that the "channel of communication," i.e., the telephone line, is clear and that there is indeed a person ready and able to respond to the summoning ring of the telephone. The second sequence stems from the basic need in non-face-to-face encounters to identify and display recognition of the parties engaged in the conversation. In everyday American English conversations, Schegloff and others have demonstrated that there appears to be a strong interactional preference for recognition over identification. As a result, utterances which provide "voice samples" for recognition (such as "hello") are more common than self-identifications. The third sequence, greetings, serves "to put the parties into what Goffman (1963:100) has called a ritual state of ratified mutual participation, and in doing so may accomplish other work for the interaction and its parties as well" (Schegloff, 1986:118). The fourth set of sequences overlaps somewhat in purpose with the greeting sequence, but goes one step further in that it explicitly provides an opportunity for one party's "state of being" to become the topic of conversation.


105

The following English conversation will serve as an illustration of these four sequences: (4)

Sample ordinary English call (Schegloff, 1986:115)

1 2 R 3 C 4 R 5 C 6 R 7 C 8 R 9 R 9 C 10R

((phone rings)) Hello::, H'llo, Clara? Yeh, Hi. Bernie. Hi B_ernie. How're you. I'm awright, How're you. Okay:? Good.

Schegloff refers to these types of openings as "routine" in the sense that they are the default case when nothing out of the ordinary happens to change their usual sequential organization. This of course does not and should not imply that conversationalists participating in these ''routine" segments are merely following some sort of script. Rather, as Schegloff argues, such segments should be seen as carefully articulated "achievements," collaboratively produced by co-participants who face a number of possible options at each turn in conjunction with the issues at hand in the discourse context. Zimmerman has made a similar case for calls to emergency services, which he has analyzed as a subset of the larger genre of "service calls": The overall organization of the calls and their contextual features...along with their observed similarity to 'service calls' in general, is viewed as the contingent accomplishment of unnoticed but nevertheless skilled work by callers and service personnel. That is, the calls' evident orderliness is not the product of following a known-in-common prespecified format or plan. Rather, the organization emerges as the working through of issues—both internal to the discourse and resident in the affairs to which the discourse is addressed—using culturally distributed procedures as ordinary and pervasive means of getting on with and getting through the call. (Zimmerman, 1984:211, emphasis mine) Zimmerman's words are reminiscent of a quote cited earlier in chapter 1 by Morson and Emerson with regard to Bakhtin's notion of speech genres: Genres provide a specific field for future activity, and such activity is never just an "application," "instantiation," or repetition of a pattern. Genres carry the generalizable resources of particular

106

Negotiating Moves events; but specific actions or utterances must use those resources to accomplish new purposes in each unrepeatable milieu. Each utterance, each use of a genre, demands real work; beginning with the given, something different must be created. (Morson and Emerson, 1990:291, emphasis mine)

Here again, we observe a point in common between CA perspectives and Bakhtinian theory. The "core sequences" proposed by Schegloff may be seen as the "generalizable resources of particular events," the primary genres of which larger secondary genres such as JBCs are crafted. What I would like to emphasize in particular from Zimmerman's observations is his allusion to "culturally distributed procedures." It is precisely these procedures which 1 seek to outline and describe in this book. Clearly there will be parallels with ordinary conversations in Japanese and in other languages. But it is hoped that the findings here will be of particular interest to non-native speakers of Japanese—business professionals, linguists, and laypersons alike—who are perhaps as yet unfamiliar with the ways in which these resources are put to various purposes in the Japanese business context. In the description of JBC call openings below, we will find that most of the core sequences outlined by Schegloff have parallels in the Japanese data. What is most noticeably absent are the fourth 'how are you' sequences. However, as Schegloff (1986), Button and Casey (1984), Hopper et al. (1990) and others have observed, in certain contexts, due to the contingencies of the moment, sometimes one or more of these sequences may be "pre-empted" in order to move more quickly to the "anchor position," which normally follows the core sequences and consists of the reason-for-call. Thus in calls to emergency services, for example, neither greetings nor "how-are-you's" are exchanged. Instead, an opening/identification sequence which combines elements of the summons—answer sequence and the identification/recognition sequence is followed immediately by the caller's "complaint" or request for assistance vis a vis the emergency. As a result of this pre-empting of sequences, the opening segment appears "reduced" with respect to the "routine" or canonical structure proposed by Schegloff.

3.4.1. Self-identification by both parties In the JBC corpus, call recipients always spoke first in response to the summons of the telephone ring, and typically opened the call with some form of self-identification.10 However, the actual form of that self-identification differed according to whether the call came in on an outside line, or from within the call recipient's organization. 3.4.1.1. Self-identification in response to outside calls. When responding to outside calls, the minimal form of self-identification by the call recipient is the name of the company, usually according to the pattern /[company name] de gozaimasu/, as in excerpt (5). Sometimes the plain imperfective copula desu is substituted for the neutral-polite form de gozaimasu.


107

Initial segment of a call from an outside organization [KI #11-14] 1

((phone rings))

2 A Hai, Kansai ACK Kansai

Yunyuu de gozaimasu. Imports COP-IPF (+)

'Yes, Kansai Imports.' 3 C

Hai, e:, Nitibei Toraberu Saabisu ACK HES Japan-U.S. Travel Service to moosimasu keredoMO: QT be called-ipp, CP 'Yes, um, (I)'m (with a company) called U.S.-Japan Travel Service, BUT../

Call recipients at the Kanto and Kansai sites used this form of company-affiliation-as-selfidentification most regularly, so it will be treated here as a common register feature of business conversations. It is important to note, however, that this type of "group" or categorial identification is neither limited to business telephone conversations nor to business circles more generally, but rather appears throughout Japanese society, for example through school, club, and other affiliations. As a result, the presence of this categorial self-identification patterns/owe would not serve to identify a business transactional telephone conversation. Rather, its use in conjunction with other features described herein is what constitutes business-type usage. Often in calls with outside organizations, the call recipient will also provide more specific information such as the section name or the company's branch location, as well as his/her own last name as part of the self-identification. The call recipient announces this modifying information in decreasing order of scale, that is, from company name to section/branch name to the individual's name, according to the patterns in (6a) and (6b) below. As we will see later in an actual example, the connective no is sometimes dropped, especially between the company name and the section/location information. (6a)

Self-identification pattern by outside call recipients (p/ow-style) [company]

(no) [section/location] (no) [last name] desu CN

CN

COP-IPF

'(This) is [last name] (of) [section/location] (of) [company].' (6b)

Self-identification pattern by outside call recipients (neutral-polite) [company] (no)[section/location] (no) [last name] de gozaimasu CN

CN

COP-IPF (+)

'(This) is [last name] (of) [section/location] (of) [company].'

108 Negotiating Moves Thus, for example, an employee named Sato of the Ginza branch of Kanto Bank might introduce himself in one of the following ways: (7)

Illustrations of self-identification patterns by outside call recipients (a)

Kantoo ginkoo no Ginza siten no Satoo de gozaimasu Kanto bank CN Ginza branch CN Sato COP-IPF (+) '(This) is Sato of the Ginza branch of Kanto Bank.'

(b)

Kantoo ginkoo no Satoo de gozaimasu Kanto bank CN Sato COP-IPF (+) '(This) is Sato of Kanto Bank.'

(c)

Kantoo ginkoo de gozaimasu Kanto bank COP-IPF (+) '(This) is Kanto Bank.'

The order in which these elements are presented is consonant with Nakane's (1972) observation that the Japanese tend to emphasize situational position rather than individual attributes in a given frame: [WJhen a Japanese "faces the outside" (confronts another person) and affixes some position to himself socially he is inclined to give precedence to institution over kind of occupation.... In group identification, a frame such as a 'company' or 'association' is of primary importance; the attribute of the individual is a secondary matter....Such group consciousness and orientation fosters the strength of an institution, and the institutional unit (such as the school or company) is in fact the basis of Japanese social organization. (Nakane, 1972:2-3, emphasis mine)11 Of course English speakers may also identify themselves in business calls with a similar format, for example 'Sales Department, John Brown,' but especially in face-to-face conversations, the categorial identification is perhaps more common in Japanese than in English. 3.4.1.2. Self-identification in response to in-house calls. The qualification "faces the outside" is important to our discussion here, for call recipients in this corpus adopted different opening strategies when taking calls from fellow (i.e., uti or 'in-group') employees. That is, in-house calls are handled somewhat differently from outside calls. Call recipients might respond to a special ring indicating an incoming call on an inside line with Mosi mosi ('Hello') or Hal ('Yes'), and/or might identify themselves by last name only (e.g., (Hal,) Satoo desu).12 In this sense, in-house calls more closely resemble personal telephone calls, in which the call recipient may answer saying (Hai,) mosi mosi, or (Hai,) [last name] desu/de gozaimasu ga.... Compare (8), in which a staff member of the Sales Department of a Tokyo book publishing company


109

receives a call from an outside organization, with (9), in which the same speaker receives a call on an inside line from a colleague in the bookstore of her own company: (8)

Initial segment of call from an outside organization [TB#1 B-34] 1

((phone rings))

2 A Hai, Tookyoo Syoten de gozaimasu ACK Tokyo Books COP-IPF(+) 'Tokyo Books.' 3 C A, hhh e:eto:, Ee-bii-sii Kyooiku Kyookai oh 'hhh HES ABC education association 4 C

to moosimasu QT be called-ipp 4>

keredoMO CP

'Oh,'hhh um, (I)'m (with a group) called ABC Educational Association, BUT' (9)

Initial segment of call from within an organization [TB#1 A-13] 1

((phone rings))

2 A Hai, Yamada desu ACK Yamada COP-IPF '(This) is Yamada.' 3 C

Omise desu store COP-IPF '(This) is (the) (book)store.'

These two examples demonstrate that varying forms of self-identification patterns in JBCs index the uti/soto or 'inside' vs. 'outside' distinction in Japanese (see Bachnik and Quinn, 1994 for other examples of this type of indexicality). This is not to say that similar distinctions are not made in other languages. Schegloff (1972b:352) has noted, for example, that intercom calls in English are usually answered with a 'yeah' or a 'yes,' in contrast to other response forms used with incoming outside calls. All of these examples reflect the concepts of recipient design and addressivity discussed earlier. 3.4.1.3. Opening greeting vs. personal greetings. If the call occurs in the morning, the recipient may also precede the self-identification with an opening greeting, such as Ohayoo gozaimasu 'Good morning.' Some call recipients at a shipping company contacted by Kansai Imports used Arigatoo gozaimasu 'Thank you (for your call/your patronage)' as an opening greeting. In either case, the JBC call recipients' usage of the sequence /opening greeting + categorial

110 Negotiating Moves self-identification/ contrasts with behavior of call recipients in personal telephone conversations, since in the latter context, such opening greetings and categorial self-identifications might seem rather formal and inappropriate.13 In addition to or apart from this initial greeting, a separate exchange of personal greetings may occur later in the conversation after the participants have identified themselves. I use the term "personal greeting" for these because such an exchange frequently occurs in everyday, personal calls as well. We will discuss personal greetings in more detail in section 3.4.3, but for now example (10) below will serve as an illustration of both types of greeting: (10)

Opening greeting and self-identification by call recipient and caller; exchange of personal greetings [KI#5-2] 1

((phone rings))

2 A

Ohayoo gozaimasu:. Kansai Yunyuu de gozaimasu:. early (+) Kansai Imports COP-IPF(+) 'Good morning. Kansai Imports.'

3 C A, Nomura Syookai Nakagawa desu kedomo. oh Nomura company Nakagawa COP-IPF CP 'Oh, (this) is Nakagawa (of) (the) Nomura Company, but....' 4 A A, osewa// ni natte 'masu oh assistance GL becoming be-ip? ['Oh, thank you for your continued assistance.'] 5 C

Ohayoo gozaimasu:. early (+) 'Good morning.'

6 A Ohayoo gozaimasu:. early (+) 'Good morning.' 3.4.1.4. The use of mosi most. As demonstrated in the excerpts above as well as in most examples throughout this book, there appears to be a strong interactional preference in JBCs for the exchange of self-identifications as the opening moves for call recipient and caller. At least as far as call recipient behavior is concerned, this would appear to parallel the usage in English institutional calls of an 'office answer-form' (Schegloff, 1986) and may also be consistent with a possible interactional preference in Japanese everyday calls for self-identification over recognition.14 However, it contrasts with the apparent interactional preference for an exchange of "hello's" at the outset of everyday American English calls. Nevertheless, despite the overall


111

interactional preference for self-identification in JBCs, there were some cases in which mosimosi was used by callers and/or call recipients, as illustrated in (11); see also example (2) above. (11)

Use of most mosi by caller in JBC [KI #11-2] 1

((phone rings))

2 A Hai, Kansai Yunyuu de gozaimasu:. ACK Kansai Imports COP-IPF (+) 'Yes, Kansai Imports.' 3 C

Mosi mosi? hello 'Hello?'

4 A Mosi mosi:. hello 'Hello.' 5 C E: Sannomiya yuubinkyoku no Ooisi to iimasu. HES Sannomiya post office CN Oishi QT be called-ipp 6 C Doo mo osewa ni narimasu. in many ways assistance GL become-iPF 'Um, (I)'m called Oishi of the Sannomiya Post Office. In many ways, [(I/we) are obliged (to you) for your patronage.]' 7 A Kotira koso:. this side precisely ['Precisely the reverse.'] ((This utterance conveys the sense that to the contrary of what the caller just said, it is 'this side,' i.e., the speaker, who is indebted to the caller.)) 3.4.1.5. Confirmation of recipient's self-identification. If for some reason the caller needs clarification of the party s/he has reached (for example, if the self-identification was difficult to hear, if the caller wants to confirm that s/he is speaking with a particular person, or if mosi mosi was used in lieu of a company identification), the caller may request confirmation of the recipient's company affiliation or identity, as in (12). Another example appears in excerpt (2) above. (12)

Request for confirmation of self-identification [KI# 16-6] 1

((phone rings))

112 Negotiating Moves 2 A Mosi most, XX desu ((spoken quietly; name is inaudible)) hello XX COP-IPF 'Hello, (this) is XX.' 3 C A, mosi mosi, oh hello 'Oh, hello?' 4 A

Hal. yes 'Yes.'

-^ 5 A Et:to: sotira wa Masutaa Denki desyoo ka. HES that side TOP Master Electric COP-TENT Q 'Um, might this be Master Electric?' 6 C

Hai, soo desu yes so COP-IPF

'Yes, it is.' 3.4.1.6. Self-identification by caller. In response to the call recipient's self-identification, most although not all callers in the corpus reciprocated with their own self-identification. (On occasion, an opening greeting such as Konniti wa was used instead, for example.) Generally speaking, callers in the corpus adopted the same elements in their self-identifications as did call recipients. That is, they minimally provided a categorial identification as to company affiliation, together with, in some cases, a section or location name and/or a surname. (13)

Self-identification patterns adopted by outside callers (a)

Kantoo ginkoo no Ginza siten no Satoo de gozaimasu Kanto bank CN Ginza branch CN Sato COP-IPF (+) '(This) is Sato of the Ginza branch of Kanto Bank.'

(b)

Kantoo ginkoo no Satoo de gozaimasu Kanto bank CN Sato COP-IPF (+) '(This) is Sato of Kanto Bank.'

(c)

Kantoo ginkoo de gozaimasu Kanto bank COP-IPF (+) '(This) is Kanto Bank.'


113

Moreover, both callers and call recipients frequently drop the connective no between the elements [company-section] and [last name] when uttering these self-identifications. The resulting string of information functions much like a name, as in the example Nomura Syookai Nakagawa desu kedomo which appeared earlier in excerpt (10), line 3C, and is repeated below: (14)

Opening greeting and self-identification by call recipient, caller [KI#5-2] 1

((phone rings))

2 A

Ohayoo gozaimasu:. Kansai Yunyuu de gozaimasu:. early (+) Kansai Imports COP-IPF (+) 'Good morning. Kansai Imports.'

-^ 3 C A, Nomura Syookai Nakagawa desu kedomo. oh Nomura company Nakagawa COP-IPF CP 'Oh, (this) is Nakagawa (of) (the) Nomura Company, but....' However, callers and call recipients diverge in terms of the predicates they adopt for their self-identifications, as shown in patterns (15) and (16): (15)

Self-identification pattern used by callers (plain-style) [company] (no) [sec./location] (no) [last name] desu CN

CN

kefre)do(mo)

COP-IPF CP

"(This) is [last name] (of) [section/location] (of) [company], but....' (16)

Self-identification pattern used by outside callers (humble-polite) [company] (wo)[sec./location] (no) [last name] to moosimasu CN

CN

ga...

QT be called-ippvU CP

'(I)'m called [last name] (of) [section/location] (of) [company], but....' That is, callers will typically identify themselves using a form of the copula plus a clause particle (e.g., desu keredomo...) as in (15), or with a sequence that combines the quotative particle to, the distal-style form of the humble-polite verbal moosu ('to be called'), and a clause particle (e.g., to moosimasu ga...) as in (16). Callers usually employ the second of these two options when they are unfamiliar with the call recipient or are calling for the first time. In this way, the utterance functions not only as a self-identification but also as a self-introduction.15 The caller's selection of the /-to moosimasu/ form therefore represents a contextualization cue for the call recipient that indexes the degree of familiarity in their relationship; this in turn helps the call recipient to respond in a style appropriate to that relationship.

114

Negotiating Moves

In both patterns illustrated in (15) and (16), the addition of a clause particle (e.g., ga or keredomo) provides a pause during which the call recipient may respond, usually with brief aizuti that accomplishes one or more of the following: (a) it indicates that the recipient is listening; (b) it acknowledges the caller's previous utterance; and (c) it encourages the caller to continue. Park (2002) has also found in her research on Japanese telephone conversations that kedo following a self-identification can function to reserve the next turn space for the caller, so that he or she may provide the reason-for-call or a switchboard request, as shown in the following example: (17)

Japanese kedo after self-identification and prior to reason-for-call in ordinary conversation (Park, 2002, conversation between T&I)16 1

((phone rings))

2 I

Hai, Isii desu yes Ishii COP-IPF 'Hello, (this) is Ishii.'

3 T

A most mosi=ano Tanaka desu kedo Atuko-san wa imasu ka? oh hello HES Tanaka COP-IPF CP Ms. Atsuko TOP be-ipp Q 'Oh hello. Um (this) is Tanaka kedo Is Atsuko there?'

4 I

//a/yes 'Yes.'

Some of the data in Park's corpus also consist of what she refers to as "official-type calls" placed by businesses to households. As pointed out earlier, these are really actually hybrid calls in that only one party represents an institution. Nevertheless, in the case of kedo usage following self-identifications, Park found similar results to those observed in ordinary conversations: (18)

Japanese kedo after self-identification and prior to reason-for-call in "official-type" conversation (Park, 2002, conversation between T&A) 1

((phone rings))

2 T

Most most hello 'Hello.'


115

3 A Mosi most hello 'Hello.'

4 T

Hal yes 'Yes.'

->

5 A Ano: Hutamataga no gozyokai na n desu kedomo HES Futamataga CN gojokai COP-IPF EP kedo 'Urn. (This) is gojokai ((an insurance-like organization in which people pay a certain amount of 'premium' for such services as weddings and funerals)) at Futamataga kedo'

6 T

Hal yes 'Yes.'

7 A

Otakusama no hoo de wa mada ohairi de wa nai desyoo ka. you (+) CN side LOG TOP yet enter COP-NEG-IPF COP-TENT Q 'Have you joined yet?'

We will see in the next section that the sequential organization of JBCs differs slightly, since an exchange of business salutations intervenes between the pair of self-identifications and the reason-for-call. Note that in the call above, no such exchange occurs.

3.4.2. Business salutations One of the distinctive register features of JBCs is the exchange of business salutations. This represents the third adjacency pair or "core sequence" (Schegloff. 1986) in the opening of a JBC call, appearing after the summons—answer and self-identification sequences. As such, it occupies the same position as the greeting sequence in ordinary American English calls. In the JBC corpus, two different types of salutations were observed, depending upon whether the calls were between members of different organizations, or between colleagues in the same company. 3.4.2.1. Inter-organizational salutations. Salutations exchanged in inter-organizational calls were typically of the form (Itumo) osewa ni natte (or)imasu or Osewa ni narimasu. Excerpt (19) illustrates both patterns:

116


"Canonical" JBS call opening [KI#5-17] (includes exchange of self-IDs and business salutations) 1

((phone rings))

2 A Hal, Kansai Yunyuu de gozaimasu. ACK Kansai Imports COP-IPF (+) 'Yes, Kansai Imports.' 3 C

Kantoo-ginkoo no Kawabe de gozaimasu::. Kanto bank CN Kawabe COP-IPF (+) '(This) is Kawabe of Kanto Bank.'

-> 4 A Itumo osewa ni natte orimasu::. always assistance GL become-GER be-ipp^ ['Thank you for your continued assistance.'] -^ 5 C

Osewa ni narimasu:. assistance GL become-ipF ['(I) am obliged (to you) for your assistance.']

Linguistically speaking, there is a difference between the two salutations in lines 4 and 5 which, if interpreted literally, suggests a different perspective on the relationship between the two parties, and/or a difference in how they potentially view the topic(s) to be discussed. That is, when a speaker opts to use a l-t(e) (ori)masu/ form of this salutation, e.g., (Itumo) osewa ni natte orimasu or (Itumo) osewa ni natte (i)masu, s/he acknowledges and expresses gratitude for the ongoing relationship between her company and that of the interlocutor, in essence saying 'Thank you for your continued assistance/patronage.'17 On the other hand, when using the imperfective form Osewa ni narimasu, a speaker simultaneously acknowledges that s/he has an imminent need for some form of assistance or perhaps information, and also expresses gratitude in advance for that help, literally saying '(I) will become obliged (to you) for your assistance.' It would thus seem appropriate if callers were to use Osewa ni narimasu regularly (since presumably they have a reason for calling that potentially obliges them in some way to the call recipient), and if call recipients were to use (Itumo) osewa ni natt(e)-(ori)masu with callers they recognize as regular business acquaintances. However, the behavior of conversationalists in the JBC corpus does not fall into such a simple, neat pattern. Some participants adopt the form Osewa ni natt(e)-(ori)masu even when they are in contact with an interlocutor for the first time. However, in the case of problem report calls, it is not likely to be the first time that a caller has contacted the call recipient's company, regardless of whether or not the two speakers of the moment are acquainted with each other. So many such "deviant cases" can actually be explained.18


117

The exact translation for and interpretation of osewa in the phrase Osewa ni natt(e)-(ori)masu will also depend upon the nature of the relationship between the two companies or organizations. In (19) above, the caller represents one of the banks whose services Kansai Imports depends upon regularly. In that case, the call recipient would most likely be acknowledging that bank's 'assistance,' rather than 'patronage.' On the other hand, in example (20) below, the caller is a periodic customer of Tokyo Books; therefore the call recipient is probably acknowledging the caller's continued 'patronage.' Note that in this excerpt, both caller and call recipient opt for the humble-polite form of the salutation, substituting orimasu for the plain form imasu. Exchange of salutations that index an ongoing business relationship [TB#1A-14] ((This portion follows a transfer from the previous call recipient)) 1 A Most most, odenwa kawarimasita. hello phone change-pr 'Hello. [(I)'ve (ex)changed (phones with someone else).]' 2 C

Mosi mosi. Saitama-ken no Kokusai Kensyuu hello Saitama prefecture CN International Study

3 C Sentaa no Kawano to Center CN Kawano QT

moosimasu//

'Hello. (I)'m called Kawano of (the) International Study Center of Saitama Prefecture.' 4 A

Osewa ni natt'orimasu assistance GL become-GER be-iPFvi' ['Thank you for your continued patronage.']

5 C

Osewa ni natte orimasu. assistance GL become-GER be-ippsl/ ['Thank you for your continued assistance.']

6 C

E:to mata kotosi mo desu ne: HES again this year also COP-IPF ATF 'Um, again this year also, you see,'

7 C

Hal. BC

'Mhm.'

118 Negotiating Moves -> 8 A ano: Eigo kyoozai no hoo hes English language teaching materials CN alternative ->

9 A hattyuu sitai to omou n desu ga, place order-ipp-DEs QT think EP CP 'um, it's that (I) think (we)'d like to place an order for English language teaching materials, but....'

Since Mr. Kawano indicates in lines 6 and 8-9 that his organization is once again interested in ordering some English language teaching materials, we can be sure that he or some other representative has contacted Tokyo Books regarding orders on some previous occasion. Mr. Kawano's salutation in line 5 is therefore appropriate, confirming as it does the existing, ongoing relationship between the two organizations. Alternatively, it is of course possible that Mr. Kawano could have said Osewa ni narimasu in order to emphasize the fact that he would be requesting the call recipient's assistance in this call, as evidenced in his maeoki in lines 6-9 (E:to, mata kotosi mo desu ne: ano: Eigo kyoozai no hoo hatyuu sitai to omou n desu ga). However, underscoring the ongoing business relationship through the use of the phrase Osewa ni natte orimasu has its advantages; it establishes Mr. Kawano and/or his organization as a regular customer of the book company. It is perhaps for this reason that there appears to be a recent trend toward nearly formulaic usage of the l-t(e) (ori)masul form of the salutation by callers.19 This practice is similar to the use of the phrase Xga (itumo) osewa natt(e)-(ori)masu ('X is (always) obliged to you for your help') in face-to-face personal introductions, where X is a family member of the speaker. For example, a mother, upon meeting her daughter's teacher for the first time, might say Musume ga itumo osewa ni natte orimasu ('My daughter is always obliged to you for your help.'). Although the mother and the teacher are meeting for the first time, the mother's utterance acknowledges the ongoing relationship between her daughter and the teacher, as well as the larger relationship between her family and the daughter's school. Another shift in usage observed in the data is the fact that numerous call recipients will use the imperfective osewa ni narimasu, rather than the more usual osewa ni natt(e)-(ori)masu, as a salutation. The following excerpt from a call to Kansai Imports by the company's regular local banker serves as an illustration. It also nicely demonstrates the "full" format of a caller's self-identification in line 3. (21)

Opening of call by banker to Kansai Imports [KI #1-7] 1

((phone rings))

2 A Kansai Yunyuu de gozaimasu. Kansai Imports COP-IPF (+) 'Kansai Imports.'


119

-^ 3 C A, e: Kansai-ginkoo no Sannomiya-siten no Igarasi desu GA: oh HES Kansai bank CN Sannomiya branch CN Igarashi COP-IPF CP 'Oh, uh, (this) is Igarashi of the Sannomiya branch of Kansai Bank, BUT,' -^ 4 A A, hai, osewa// ni narimasu:. oh yes assistance GL become-ipp Oh, yes, ['(I) am obliged (to you) for your assistance.'] 5 C

Osewa ni natte 'masu:. assistance GL become-GER be-iPF ['Thank you for your continued patronage.']

While it is conceivable, as already noted, that either the caller or the call recipient might use osewa ni natt(e)-(ori)masu to refer to an ongoing relationship, literally speaking it is odd for the recipient to use the phrase osewa ni narimasu as this one does in line 4 in order to indicate a need for assistance or information at the outset of the call. Such usage could be understandable, however, if the recipient is presently receiving a return call that s/he had at some previous point in time requested from the caller and/or his/her company. In any event, this kind of non-literal usage of the salutations may have arisen over time because speakers unconsciously blur the traditional distinction between the two phrases. Given that in actual practice these expressions are often used interchangeably. I have thus translated Osewa ni narimasu as '(I) am obliged (to you) for your assistance/patronage' in order to convey its likely intended meaning. Some speakers employed another related business salutation: osewasama desu. This expression employs the honorific-polite pattern lo + (verbal stem/noun) + desu/ and as such it does not carry the l-t(e) (i)rul aspectual marking. Instead, aspect is determined through the utterance context. Makino and Tsutsui (1995) provide the following examples of this honorific pattern in other contexts: (22)

Examples of the pattern lo + (verbal stem/noun) + desu/ (a)

Okyakusama ga moo sugu okaeri guests (+) SUB more soon leaving't

desu. COP-IPF

'(The) guests are leaving soon.' (b)

Ima nani o oyomi desu ka? now what OBJ reading^ COP-IPF Q 'What are (you) reading now?'

(c)

Kopii wa moo osumi desu ka? copying TOP already finishing^ COP-IPF Q 'Have you already finished copying?'

120 Negotiating Moves Thus in the case of osewasama desu, depending upon the context the expression could be interpreted as 'Thank you for your patronage/assistance' in the past, in an ongoing sense, or in a future-oriented sense in terms of what the recipient of the phrase might do on behalf of the speaker. One final exception to the description of the "routine" exchange of salutations provided here is the fact that some conversationalists do not reciprocate with the "second part" of this adjacency pair. As example (23) demonstrates, a speaker may employ an individual salutation to acknowledge the other party's self-identification, in lieu of simply responding with 'Hai.' Based on a review of business salutations in the JBC data, although the absence of the second part of the pair is technically "marked" with respect to the canonical opening format, it does not always appear to be "noticeable" in terms how conversationalists respond to it. In some cases, for example, the salutations are not reciprocal because there is not an ongoing business relationship established between the participants, for example in toiawase "cold call" inquiries. On other occasions, an interlocutor may reply with a different greeting instead of the salutation, as shown below: (23)

Business salutation (non-reciprocal) [KI#5-2] 1

((phone rings))

2 A

Ohayoo gozaimasu:. Kansai Yunyuu de gozaimasu:. early (+) Kansai Imports COP-IPF (+) 'Good morning. Kansai Imports.'

3 C A, Nomura Syookai Nakagawa desu kedomo. oh Nomura company Nakagawa COP-IPF CP 'Oh, (this) is Nakagawa (of) (the) Nomura Company, but....' -^ 4 A A, osewa// ni natte 'masu oh assistance GL becoming be-ipp ['Oh, thank you for your continued assistance.'] 5 C


6 A Ohayoo gozaimasu:. early (+) 'Good morning.' Of all of the register features listed in Figure 2 on page 101, these salutations are perhaps the most indicative of the fact that the call is business-related. Such salutations would be out of place in a Japanese personal telephone call. Moreover, as the square brackets around the


121

English translations for these salutations suggest, such expressions would probably not appear in parallel business contexts in English, either. Before moving on to discuss in-house salutations, we should return to the question of the function of kedo in call openings. As mentioned previously. Park (2002) has demonstrated in everyday and hybrid "official-type calls" that callers use kedo in utterance-final position with self-identifications in order to save the next turn space for the reason-for-call. She has also pointed out that kedo can have the "function of projecting the following main action." What is interesting in JBCs is that kedo and other clause particles such as ga appear to assume a similar function in terms of saving the next turn space for the current speaker and projecting the likely next action by that speaker, but since business salutations intervene between self-introductions and reason-for-call, kedo functions as a way of projecting the imminent onset of those salutations rather than the reason-for-call. This becomes especially clear when we examine the timing of the exchange of salutations; often following a caller's /self-introduction + kedo/, both caller and call recipient will launch simultaneously into the exchange of salutations, producing overlapping talk. 3.4.2.2. In-house salutations. While the salutations discussed above pertain to inter-organizational calls, conversationalists in the Kanto corpus adopted a different salutation for in-house calls, namely Otukaresama desu (literally, 'You must be tired.'). Both caller and call recipient may express this reciprocally, as shown below: (24)

Exchange of salutations, in-house call [TB#1A-13] 1

((phone rings))

2 A

Hai, Yamada desu. ACK Yamada COP-IPF '(This) is Yamada.'

3 C

Omise desu. = store COP-IPF '(This) is (the) (book)store.'

-^

4 A

=Otukare -sama desu. = tired person COP-IPF ['You (must) be tired.']

-^

5 C

=Otukare -sama desu. tired person COP-IPF ['You (must) be tired.']

The English equivalent 'You must be tired' sounds awkward in this context; indeed, this seems to be another register feature in JBCs much like the business salutations that does not have a

122

Negotiating Moves

literal English counterpart. The Japanese phrase is also commonly used in face-to-face workplace interactions as a ritual greeting to acknowledge the efforts of fellow employees.20 As Jorden and Noda (1988:125) have noted, "in a society of hard work, once described as 'a nation of workaholics,' being tired is often regarded as one proof of serious endeavor." The phrase therefore has a positive connotation. The perfective equivalent, otukaresama desita, is an expression typically used upon the completion of a task, or at the end of a workday as a farewell expression to colleagues leaving the office.21 It should be noted that I am using the term "in-house" in this book to refer not only to calls under one roof, but also more generally speaking to calls between participants who are part of the same in-group, or uti. For example, when a member of a particular company (= one type of uti) is away from the office on business and phones in to get his/her messages or to indicate when s/he might return to the office, the call recipient at the company may use otukaresama desu as a salutation during the opening section of the call. Taken together, the inter-organizational and in-house forms of business salutations reveal yet another indexing of the uti/soto distinction by certain speakers. That is, while the Kanto conversationalists use the ritual phrases osewa ni narimasu and (itumo) osewa ni natt(e)-(ori)masu when interacting with individuals on the outside (soto), they employ otukaresama desu with individuals who are members of their own organization (uti).22

3.4.3. Personal greetings As mentioned earlier, conversationalists in the JBC corpus used greetings related to the time of day, such as Ohayoo gozaimasu 'Good morning,' in two places in call openings; at the outset of the call prior to the call recipient's self-identification, and following the self-identification of the caller, as illustrated in the following example: (25)

Opening greeting and self-identification by call recipient, caller; exchange of personal greetings [KI#5-2] 1

-> 2 A

((phone rings)) Ohayoo gozaimasu:. Kansai Yunyuu de gozaimasu:. early (+) Kansai Imports COP-IPF(+) 'Good morning. Kansai Imports.'

3 C A, Nomura Syookai Nakagawa desu kedomo. oh Nomura company Nakagawa COP-IPF CP 'Oh, (this) is Nakagawa (of) (the) Nomura Company, but....'


123

4 A A, osewa// ni natte 'masu oh assistance GL becoming be-ip? ['Oh, thank you for your continued assistance.'] ->

5 C


-^ 6 A Ohayoo gozaimasu:. early (+) 'Good morning.' In order to more clearly distinguish between greetings of the type that appear in line 2 versus those which appear in lines 5 and 6 of this excerpt, I refer to the latter as personal greetings, since they could occur in ordinary calls of a more personal nature. For example, if a caller were to phone a friend at work, that friend might still answer the phone as in line 2, using the distal-style Ohayoo gozaimasu because this neutral-polite form is appropriate as an opening greeting to any and all callers. However, in lines 5 and 6, the two friends would most likely adopt the more familiar, direct-style form Ohayoo instead. The form of self-identification used by the caller would likely change as well to a more informal equivalent. In some cases in the JBC data, personal greetings were not offered reciprocally. For example, some callers occasionally uttered Konniti wa 'Good afternoon' in response to the call recipient's self-identification. (In the following example, note that the caller uttered lines 3-5 without pausing; typographical limitations prevented presentation of these "latched" utterances on a single line.) (26)

Opening segment with personal greeting by caller only [KI #3-9] 1

((phone rings))

2 A XX XX

-gaisya de:su. company COP-IPF

'XX Co-ompany.' 3 C

Osewa ni narimasu: = assistance GL become-ipp ['(I) am obliged (to you) for your assistance.']

4 C

=Kansai Yunyuu no Aikawa desu.= Kansai Imports CN Aikawa COP-IPF 'Kansai Imports, Aikawa.'

124 Negotiating Moves ->

5 C

=Konniti// wa. this day TOP 'Good afternoon.'

6 A Hai, osewa ni narimasu:. ACK assistance GL become-ipp ['(I) am obliged (to you) for your assistance.']

$.4.4. Summary: "Routine" call openings in JBCs We have observed in our discussion about opening sequences in JBCs that as compared to "routine" ordinary calls in English, for the most part there are parallel tasks for conversationalists to accomplish, namely responding to the summons of the telephone ring, ascertaining participant identities, and establishing a "ritual state of ratified mutual participation" (Goffman, 1963:100). We also noted that in strictly business-related calls in the JBC corpus, no precise equivalent for the fourth "how-are you" sequences were observed, in that there was no question—answer, question—answer sequence of adjacency pairs of the sort seen in everyday English 'how are you?' exchanges. However, one could view the optional exchange of declarative Ohayoo gozaimasu phrases in JBCs as a second set of greetings following the exchange of business salutations. The primary difference with the canonical 'how-are-you' sequence discussed by Schegloff then would be that in Japanese, the ritual exchange of statements does not technically allow for variable responses (aside from stylistic variants such as Ohayoo). As a result, it is less likely that the "state of being" of one of the conversationalists would become the topic of discussion in the immediately following "anchor position" or first topic slot. We can summarize our discussion in the previous sections by outlining the core sequences for canonical or "routine" JBC opening segments as follows: (27)

"Routine" call opening sequences in JBCs (a) (b) (c) (d)

Summons—answer (with optional opening greeting) Exchange of self-identifications Exchange of business salutations (= "Greeting" sequence) Exchange of personal greetings (optional; in lieu of how-are-you's)

3.4.5. Switchboard requests Switchboard requests have been categorized by Schegloff and others as one type of first topic initiation, under the general heading of "reason-for-call." This is partly because from the point of view of sequential organization, switchboard requests usually occupy the same "anchor position" as other reasons-for-calls. That is, they normally follow the set of core sequences in a call opening. Compare the English examples (28) and (29), in which a switchboard request or


125

other reason-for-call appears in line 11 after the summons—answer, identification/recognition, greeting, and 'how-are-you' sequences: (28)

Switchboard request (Schegloff, 1986:115, #123)

1

((phone rings)) Hello::, H'llo, Clara? Yeh, Hi. Bernie. Hi Bernie. How're you. I'm awright, How're you. 9 C Okay:? 10A Good. 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

A C A C A C A

11C

(29)

->

First topic 'Laura there?' Other reason-for-call as first topic (Schegloff, 1986:115, #247a)

1 2 A 3 C 4 A 5 C 6 A 7 C 8 A 9 C 10A

((phone rings)) Hallo, Hello, Jim? Yeah, 'S Bonnie. Hi, Hi, how are yuh. Fine, how're you. Oh, okay I guess Oh okay.

11C

First topic ; Uhm (0.2) what are you doing New Year's Eve?'

A similar sequential organization obtains with switchboard requests and other reasons-for-calls in the JBC data. Compare (30) and (31), where the anchor position appears in line 6 for both calls, following the summons—answer, self-identification, and business salutation sequences: (30)

Opening with switchboard request [TB#lB-34] 1

((phone rings))

126 Negotiating Moves 2 A Hai, Tookyoo Syoten de gozaimasu. ACK Tokyo Books COP-IPF (+) 'Yes, Tokyo Books.' 3 C A, Wih e:to:, Ee-bii-sii Kyooiku Kyookai oh'hhh umm ABC education association to moosimasu keredomo QT be called-ipp^ CP 'Oh,'hhh um, (I)'m (with a group) called ABC Educational Association, but' 4 C

Osewa ni natte orimasu::. assistance GL become-GER be-ipp^ ['Thank you for your continued assistance.']

5 A

Osewa -sama desu:. assistance person (+) COP-IPF ['Thank you for your assistance.']

6 C

'hhh Yamada-san irassyaimasu ka. 'hhh Ms. Yamada be-iPFT* Q 'hhh Is Ms. Yamada (there)?'

7 A A, -watakusi desu ga. oh I COP-IPF CP 'Oh, it is I, but....' (31)

Opening with other reason-for-call [TB #lA-26] 1

((phone rings))

2 A Hai, Tookyoo Syoten de gozaimasu. ACK Tokyo Books COP-IPF (+) 'Yes, Tokyo Books.' 3 C

Tsunoda Syuppan Hanbaito moosimasu = Tsunoda publishing sales QT be called-iPF 4> '(I)'m (with a company) called Tsunoda Publishers and Distributors.'


127

4 A =Osewa ni natte orimasu::.= assistance GL become-GER be-ippsp ['Thank you for your continued assistance.'] 5 C

=Osewa ni natte orimasu::.= assistance GL become-GER ['Thank you for your continued patronage.']

-> 6 C

=Ano: syoseki ni tuite oukagai-sitai koto ga HES book concerning inquire-iPF-DES^ matter SUB aru n desu keredomo, have-ipp EP CP 'Urn, it's that there's a matter (I)'d like to inquire about regarding books, but...'

7 A A, hai, hai doozo! oh ACK yes please (go ahead) 'Oh, okay, yes please go ahead!' For expositional purposes in outlining the structure of JBCs, I will include switchboard requests in this section on call openings and treat other reasons-for-calls in a separate, subsequent section on the transition to the matter of business. I choose to do so partly because the "flow" of the conversation after a switchboard request differs significantly from that which follows other types of reason- for-call. Offers for a return call, for example, often appear after switchboard requests that have been refused, but would not appear after most other reasons-for-calls. Moreover in JBCs, the initial prefatory statement describing the general reason-for-call, which I refer to in this book as a maeoki, usually differs markedly in linguistic structure from that of switchboard requests. For example, the maeoki in excerpt (31) above is the relatively complex utterance Ano: syoseki ni tuite oukagai-sitai koto ga aru n desu keredomo, whereas the switchboard request in line (6) of excerpt (30), Yamada-san irassyaimasu ka? represents a more straightforward pattern. Thus I will first discuss various aspects of switchboard requests below, and then move on to a detailed discussion of the function and form of maeoki in JBCs. 3.4.5.1. Linguistic forms used for switchboard requests. In this section I will briefly summarize the linguistic forms or patterns employed by JBC conversationalists when making switchboard requests. This review is the result of concordance searches conducted on the data and is therefore representative of the corpus. By far the most common expression adopted by callers when making a switchboard request was a combination of the requested person's name with the suffix -son or title such as -butyoo ('department chief), followed by an honorific-polite equivalent of the verbal iru 'be,' such as irassyaru or oide ni naru.

128

Negotiating Moves

The switchboard request presented in excerpt (30) and repeated below as (32) is one example. The caller uses the honorific-polite verbal, irassyaru, which conveys respect with regard to the person being requested. (32)

Switchboard request [TB #18-34] 6 C

'hhh Yamada-san irassyaimasu ka. hhh Ms. Yamada be-ipp'T* Q 'hhh Is Ms. Yamada in?'

A similar example appears below; this time the caller uses aide ni naru: (33)

Switchboard request using aide ni naru [TB #18-5] 7 C Hirano-san oide ni narimasu ka? Mr. Hirano be-iNF'h GL become-iMP Q 'Is Mr. Hirano in?'

Kansai speakers frequently substituted the dialectal form oraremasu ka? (or simply oraremasu?) in their switchboard requests. The following is an illustration of such usage: (34)

Kansai speaker's switchboard request [KI #1-1] 5 C

Yamamoto-san oraremasu ka? Ms. Yamamoto be-PAS-iPF-icsT* Q 'Is Ms. Yamamoto in?'

Variations on these "basic" honorific-polite patterns were also observed. For example, speakers sometimes mitigated their requests by adding an apology and/or the tentative form of the copula (desyoo), as shown in the next three examples: (35)

Switchboard request with irassyaru and tentative desyoo [TB #lB-7] 7 C

Osore irimasu ga, Tanizaki-san irassyaimasu desyoo ka. excuse me CP Mr. Tanizaki be-iPF't" COP-TENT-IPF Q 'Excuse me, but might Mr. Tanizaki be in?'

(36)

Switchboard request with oide (honorific stem) and tentative desyoo [KI#9-10] 5 C

Huziwara-butyoo oide desyoo ka? department chief Fujiwara be-iNft^ COP-TENT Q 'Might Department Chief Fujiwara be in?'


129

Switchboard request with orareru and tentative desyoo [KI #9-6] 7 C

Gaikoku gyoomu -ka NO:, Kawabe-san oraremasu foreign transactions section CN Mr. Kawabe be-PAS-iPF-Ksf" desyoo

ka.

COP-TENT

Q

'Might Mr. Kawabe of the Foreign TransACTions section, be in?' The other fundamental strategy adopted by callers for their switchboard requests was to use a pattern incorporating the humble-polite form onegai-simasu to ask for a particular person: (38)

Switchboard request with onegai-simasu [TB #16-9] 6 C

Ano, Takeda-syatyoo onegai-simasu. HES company president Takeda beg-iPF^ 'Um, President Takeda, please.'

As was the case with the honorific verbals, a number of variations on this basic humble-polite form appeared as well. For example, instead of using simasu, speakers substituted the potential form dekimasu to convey the sense of 'May I request....?' or 'May I have....?, as in (39): (39)

Switchboard request withonegai-dekimasu [KI #13-18] 6 C

Eetto::, hassoo no Kaneda-san onegai-dekimasu ka? HES dispatch CN Mr. Kaneda beg-ipp-poivp Q 'Umm, may (I) have Mr. Kaneda of the Dispatch section, please?'

Callers also frequently used the desiderative form onegai-sitai in conjunction with the extended predicate (EP) and a following clause particle, as illustrated in (40): (40)

Switchboard request with onegai-sitai plus the EP [KI #11-11] 7 C

Huzi\vara-butyoo-san onegai-sitai n desu ga Ms. Department Chief Fujiwara beg-DES-ipp EP CP 'It's that (I)'d like to request Ms. Department Chief Fujiwara, but...'

With the exception of the Kansai forms using oraremasu, there did not appear to be any regional difference in terms of the usage of these switchboard request patterns. For the most part there also did not appear to be many distinctions in usage according to differing role relationships, e.g., in calls by subordinates requesting superiors vs. calls between equals. This is probably because all of the forms described above already express deference through either honorific or humble-polite forms. However, status differences did appear in a few in-house calls, for example in (41) when a superior made a switchboard request for a subordinate:

130


Switchboard request by superior for subordinate (and to a subordinate) [TB #18-2] 4 C

Tanabe-kun imasu ka:? Tanabe (familiar) be-iPF Q 'Is Tanabe in?'

The caller's utterance indexes the superior—subordinate relationship in two ways. First, the caller refers to Tanabe-kun rather than Tanabe-san. Japanese speakers use the -kun suffix in a variety of contexts when referring to male (and sometimes female) equals and subordinates by their first or last names. The sense of familiarity conveyed in Japanese by the suffix is difficult to translate into English, but it is somewhat akin the way in which American superiors in a company will sometimes refer to subordinates solely by their last name. The other way in which the caller's utterance indexes his relationship with Tanabe (and his addressee, a subordinate) is through the use of the plain, distal form imasu rather than the honorific irassyaru or oide ni naru. Other switchboard requests in the corpus placed in similar contexts sometimes included the direct form iru instead. 3.4.5.2. Pre-empting the canonical sequential organization. Before moving on to discuss the ways in which call recipients may respond to these switchboard requests, we should note that on occasion conversationalists do not observe the canonical order of sequences leading up to a switchboard request, and instead issue one at a point preceding the anchor position, as in this example: (42)

"Deviant" case call opening with early switchboard request [TB #lA-24] 1

((phone rings))

2 A

Hai, Tookyoo Syoten de gozaimasu. ACK Tokyo Books COP-IPF 'Yes, Tokyo Books.'

3 C A, osore iremasu ga:, = oh excuse me-ipp CP 'Oh, excuse me, but' 4 A

=Hai? yes? 'Yes?'

The Structure of Japanese Business Telephone Calls 5 C

131

Simanaka Masako-san irassyaimasu ka? = Ms. Masako Shimanaka be-ipp^ Q 'Is Ms. Masako Shimanaka in?'

6 A =(hhh) Moosiwake gozaimasen, gaisyutu site ru n desu ga. (hhh) excuse have-NEG-ipp (+) be out-GER EP CP '(hhh) (I)'m very sorry, it's that (she)'s out, but...' In this conversation, the caller provides neither a self-identification nor a business salutation, and instead launches immediately into a switchboard request. This seemingly "deviant" case can be explained, however, if we consider the circumstances of the call. Apparently the caller had received a rather urgent message from Ms. Shimanaka about an advertisement the caller had intended to place in a Tokyo Books publication. According to the caller, Shimanaka indicated in her message that Tokyo Books had not yet received the draft of the advertisement, so she was wondering what had happened to it and requested a call back. The caller was flustered because she consequently realized she had not actually sent out the draft, and was now calling Tokyo Books from the post office, where she was about to mail the requested material. It is therefore possible that given the situation, the caller may have handled the switchboard request in a different manner than she might have in other circumstances. This excerpt thus illustrates how the "contingencies of the moment" can pre-empt the expected sequences in a call opening, and how a conversationalist (in this case, the caller) can bring up first topic matters such as a switchboard request prior to the usual anchor position. It also demonstrates the fact that despite such short-circuiting of normal "routines," conversationalists are clearly flexible and articulate enough to adapt to such changing circumstances, and are not simply performing in "auto-pilot" mode, according to a pre-determined "script." 3.4.5.3. Three scenarios in responding to switchboard requests. After a caller has made a switchboard request to speak with someone, we can imagine three scenarios that might develop. First, it may be that the call recipient is actually the requested person, and the caller has simply not recognized his/her voice: (43)

Opening with switchboard request [TB #18-34] 1

((phone rings))

2 A Hai, Tookyoo Syoten de gozaimasu. ACK Tokyo Books COP-IPF (+) 'Yes, Tokyo Books.' 3 C A, hhh e:to:, Ee-bii-sii Kyooiku Kyookai oh'hhh umm ABC education association

132

Negotiating Moves to moosimasu keredomo QT be called-ipp 4> CP 'Oh,'hhh um, (I)'m (with a group) called ABC Educational Association, but' 4 C

Osewa ni natte orimasu::. assistance GL become-GER be-ippvl' ['Thank you for your continued assistance.']

5 A

Osewa -sama desu:. assistance person (+) COP-IPF ['Thank you for your assistance.']

6 C

hhh Yamada-san irassyaimasn 'hhh Ms. Yamada

ka.

'hhh Is Ms. Yamada (there)?' ->

7 A A, watakusi desu ga. oh I COP-IPF CP 'Oh, it is I, but....'

In such situations, a response such as Yamada' s in line 7, A, watakusi desu ga, is appropriate. The second scenario involves a move toward granting of the switchboard request by the call recipient, either because s/he knows that the requested person is available, or is at least under the impression that s/he is. Excerpt (44) is an example: (44)

Granting a switchboard request [KI #2B- 1 5] 1

((phone rings))

2 A Kobe Unyu desu:. Kobe shipping COP-IPF 'Kobe Shipping.' 3 C Most most:, Kansai Yunyuu desu keredomo:. hello Kansai Imports COP-IPF CP 'Hello, (this) is Kansai Imports, but...' 4 A Itumo osewa// ni narimasu. always assistance GL become- IFF ['(I) am always obliged (to you) for your patronage.']

The Structure of Japanese Business Telephone Calls 5 C

133

Osewa ni natte orimasu. assistance GL become-GER be-iPF^ ['Thank you for your continued assistance.']

6 C Etto:, hassoo NO, Yoneda-san oraremasu HES dispatch CN Mr. Yoneda be-pAS-iPF-Kst" Q 'Um, is Mr. Yoneda of (the) DISpatch (section) in?' -> 7 A Hai, syoosyoo omati kudasai. yes a little (+) waiting^ give-to-in-grp-iMp/ts 'Yes, please wait a moment.' ((brief pause)) 8 A A, suimasen, tadaima denwa- tyuu na n desu kedomo. oh be sorry-iPF right now phone in the middle COP-IPF EP CP 'Oh, (I)'m sorry, right now he's in the middle of a call, but...' 9 C A, soo desu ka. oh so COP-IPF Q 'Oh, is that right.' 10A Hai, ...a, owarimasita. yes oh finish-pp 'Yes, ... oh, (he)'s finished.' 11C A, ovcarimasita? oh finish-PF 'Oh, (he)'s finished?' ->

12 A

Omati kudasai. waiting^ give-to-in-grp-iMp/|s 'Please wait a moment.'

In this example, the call recipient initially puts the caller on hold so that she can transfer the call, only to discover that Yoneda is on another line. As the call recipient explains this to the caller, Yoneda wraps up the call, so the call recipient is ultimately able to grant the request, using a similar form in line 12 (Omati kudasai) to the one she initially used in line 7 (Hai, syoosyoo omati kudasai). The third possible scenario is one in which the call recipient either knows the requested person is unavailable, or at least suggests that this is the case (for call screening purposes, for example).

134


Refusing a switchboard request [KI #11 -08] 1

((phone rings))

2 A Hai, Kansai Yunyuu de gozaimasu. ACK Kansai Imports COP-IPF (+) 'Yes, Kansai Imports.' 3 C A, sumimasen, Wakayama tuusin desu kedomo. oh be sorry-iPF Wakayama communications COP-IPF CP 'Oh, I'm sorry, (This) is Wakayama Communications, but...' 4 A Osewa ni narimasu= assistance GL become-ipp ['(We are/I am) obliged (to you) for your assistance.'] 5 C

=Osewa ni narimasu= assistance GL become-iPF ['(We are/I am) obliged (to you) for your assistance.']

6 C

=Ano, Huziwara-san, oraremasu ka? HES Ms. Fujiwara be-pAS-iPF-KS^ Q 'Is Ms. Fujiwara in?'

->

7 A A, sumimasen. Ima tyotto seki hazusite orimasu ga. oh be sorry-ipp now a little seat vacate-GER be-ippvl' CP 'Oh, (I)'m sorry. Now (she)'s away from (her )desk for a moment, but...' 8 C A, soo desu ka. oh so COP-IPF Q 'Oh, is that right.'

Tokens of such "refused" switchboard requests occurred very frequently in the corpus, so in the next section, we will consider the forms which call recipients used to express those refusals. 3.4.5.4. Indicating that someone is not available. As one might imagine, there are quite a number of reasons as to why a particular employee might not be able to come to the phone. Consequently, call recipients used a wide variety of forms to indicate that the requested person was unavailable at the moment. The most common of these are presented in (46) below. Although (a) may also be used in non-business calls, the remainder are used exclusively in business or other institutional contexts, and therefore represent additional identifying register features of JBCs.


135

Expressions JBC call recipients used to indicate that an employee is not available (a)

gaisyutu site -orimasu be out-iPF ^ '(s/he) is out (e.g., of the office)'

(b)

seki hazusite -ru ndesukeredomo... seat vacate-GER be-ipp EP CP 'it's that (s/he) has left (his/her) seat'

(c)

sekkyaku -tyuu na n desu ga: meeting customers in the middle of COP-IPF EP CP 'it's just that (she)'s busy meeting customers, but...'

(d)

hoka no denwa de hanasi -tyuu another CN telephone INST speaking in the middle of na n desu:. COP-IPF EP 'it's that (s/he) is talking on another telephone (line)'

(e)

mada syussya site 'nai n desu keredomo not yet go/come to office do-GER be-NEG-iPF EP CP 'it's that (s/he) has not yet arrived at (the) office, but....'

(f)

oyasumi o itadaite 'masu vacation OBJ receive-GER^ be-iPF '[s/he]'s on vacation'

As indicated in examples (b), (c), (d) and (e), JBC conversationalists conclude many of these expressions with the EP construction and/or a clause particle such as ga or ke(re)do(mo). We can understand why speakers employ the EP so frequently by considering the discourse context more closely. First, we know that each of the utterances in (46) typically follows a request by a caller to speak with someone. Thus the situational context of the moment is that the caller is wondering whether or not that person is available. After this request, the call recipient may put the caller on hold in order to locate the requested person, or perhaps s/he may already know that the person is unavailable. When the initial call recipient returns to the line (or never leaves the line, as the case may be), this signals to the caller that the requested person is not available. We note, however, that the call recipient does not state this information explicitly. Rather, she recharacterizes the situation by providing the reason for that person's unavailability. By juxtaposing this new information against the larger situational frame which includes all of the details we have just described, the call recipient essentially draws the caller's attention to the

136

Negotiating Moves

connection between the two and suggests that the caller should be able to interpret, or access, this newly reframed situation. The role of n(d) in such utterances, as Noda (1990:24) has pointed out, is to encode the existence of the larger frame and demand interpretation of the (new) characterization within it. She calls this function "double-framing," after Bateson (1972). Noda provides two useful analogies for the double-framing function of the EP, noting that it is similar to the opening of a window on a computer screen or the enlargement of a sub-section of a map (Noda, 1990:27). In both situations, the newly opened or enlarged focal section remains juxtaposed against a larger backdrop, be it the windows which were opened previously on the computer desktop, or the larger area on the map in which the blown-up portion is located. What the two analogies have in common is the fact that a new perspective on a situation has been afforded by the double framing effect. As for why speakers conclude so many of the phrases in (46) with a clause particle such as ga or ke(re)do(mo), in contrast to the use of ke (re)do (mo) andga following self-identifications, the clause particles here do not appear to save the next call space for the current speaker. Rather, by using a clause particle the recipient of the call can leave her utterance open-ended and may also provide a pause during which the caller can respond. In CA terms, this juncture represents a transition relevance place or TRP, where the caller may opt to, but is not obligated to, take a turn in the conversation. 3.4.5.5. Offer by the caller to call back. Once the call recipient has indicated that the requested person is not available, the caller may offer to call back later. Consider excerpt (47) below, which illustrates a complete opening exchange, including the core sequences of summons—response, self-identifications, and business salutations, followed by a switchboard request in anchor position in line 6, and an offer by the caller to call back later. The recipient of this call is Ms. Sasaki, an operations staff member at Kansai Imports; the caller is Mr. Igarashi of the local branch of Kobe Bank, which handles some of Kansai Imports' banking needs. (47)

Opening exchange with switchboard request; caller offers to call back [KI#l-7] 1

((phone rings))

2 A Kansai Yunyuu de gozaimasu. Kansai Imports COP-IPF (+) 'Kansai Imports.' 3 C

E: Kobe Ginkoo no Sannomiya-siten no Igarasi desu GA: HES Kobe Bank CN Sannomiya branch CN Igarashi COP-IPF CP '(This) is Igarashi of the Sannomiya branch of Kobe Bank, BUT...'

The Structure of Japanese Business Telephone Calls 137 4 A A, hai, osewa ni narimasu:. oh yes assistance GL become-ipf Oh yes, ['(We are/I am) obliged (to you) for your assistance.'] 5 C

Osewa ni natte orimasu. assistance GL become-GER b ['Thank you for your continued patronage.']

6 C E:to Huziwara-butyoo irassyaimasu desyoo ka. HES Department chief Fujiwara be-iPF't" COP-TENT Q 'Is Department Chief Fujiwara in?' 7 A Sumimasen, ima tyotto sekkyaku -tyuu be sorry 4PF now just meeting customers in the middle of 8 A no ndesuga COP-IPF EP CP '(I)'m sorry, it's just that (she)'s busy meeting customers now, but...' 9 C A, soo desu ka. oh so COP-IPF Q 'Oh, is that so.' 10A Hai. yes

'Yes.' ->1 1 C A, soo simasitara, mata ano notihodo kakesasite oh so do-iPF-CN again HES later call-GER-CAU ->12 C moraimasu n de24 get-fr-out-grp-ipp EP-GER 'Oh in that case, (I) '11, urn, take the liberty of calling again later.' 13 A A, hai, sumimasen.//Yorosiku onegai- simasu. OH ACK be sorry-ipp WELL beg-iPF vU 'Oh okay, (thank you). Please [do so].' 14C Hai, sumimasen. ACK be sorry-ipp 'Okay, (thank you).'

138

Negotiating Moves

Igarashi indicates that he will call back through what appears to be a statement of intention: soo simasitara, mata ano notihodo kakesasite moraimasu n de. However, the fact that Sasaki responds by saying A, hai, sumimasen suggests that she is interpreting his statement as an offer or a promise, indicating her gratitude in return. Let us consider Igarashi's utterance in more detail. The use of the gerund form of the extended predicate, n(o) de, is extremely common in this context in JBCs. As has been argued throughout this analysis, the contracted form n of the nominal no functions to nominalize the information that precedes it, connect it to the larger discourse frame, and point or refer to that connection as a something that is shared or sharable. In order to ascertain precisely what the larger discourse frame is for Igarashi's utterance, we must back up a few lines in the conversation to Igarashi's request to speak with Fujiwara in line 6 (E:to, Hujiwara-butyoo irassyaimasu ka?), and to Sasaki's response in line 7-8 (Sumimasen, ima tyotto sekkyaku-tyuu na n desu ga). By using the EP when she states that Fujiwara is busy meeting customers, Sasaki draws a connection for the caller between this newly reported fact and the present situation, i.e., that Fujiwara has not come to the phone (and Sasaki has returned to the line instead). But the question as to what Igarashi will do about this is left open for discussion. At first, Igarashi merely takes in the information, responding A soo desu ka. In response in line 10, Sasaki could conceivably have offered to have Fujiwara return Igarashi's call, but she does not. So once again Igarashi is left with the option of what to do. He is under no obligation to call back, of course, since he was the one to initiate the call in the first place. But given the fact that Sasaki has not yet taken the initiative to offer a return call, it seems likely that Igarashi will have to make a decision—which he does in line 11-12. Using the gerund form of the extended predicate, he states that he will take the liberty of calling back again later (A, soo simasitara mata:notihodo kakesasite moraimasu n de:.). He presents this new information to Sasaki against the larger ground of the preceding discourse, which now includes the fact that Fujiwara cannot come to the phone. Announced in this fashion, his offer to call back provides reassurance to Sasaki that the situation has been resolved. Sasaki thanks him and requests that he do so, and Igarashi thanks her in return. 3.4.5.6. Offer by the call recipient to have someone call back. Another alternative after a switchboard request has been denied is for the call recipient to offer a return call. In the corpus, JBC conversationalists frequently expressed this type of offer by using a humble-polite verbal in the consultative form, such as Ano: owari-sidai odenwa sasiagemasyoo ka? in (48) below. In the opening of this conversation (part of which was presented earlier), the caller, Mr. Kawabe of Kanto Bank, has asked to speak with Ms. Saito of Kansai Imports. Thinking she was available, the call recipient has put the caller on hold, but she returns to the phone in line 10: (48)

Offer by call recipient to call back [KI #5-17] 10 A Most most:. hello 'Hello.'

The Structure of Japanese Business Telephone Calls 11C

139

Hal yes 'Yes.'

12 A A, 'hhh moosiwake nai n desu keredoMO:. oh 'hhh excuse have-NEG-iPF EP CP 'Oh/hhh it's that (I)'m sorry, BUT' 13C

Ee. BC

'Mhm.' 14 A

tadaima hoka no denwa de hanasi -tyuu right now other CN phone LOC speaking in the middle of

ISA

no// n desu. COP-IPF EP 'it's that just now (she)'s talking on another line.'

16C A soo desu ka. oh so COP-IPF Q 'Oh, is that right.' 17A

Hal yes 'Yes.'

18C

E:= BC

'Mhm.' -^

19A =Ano: owari -sidai odenwa sasiagemasyoo ka? HES finishing upon phone give-to-out-grp-CNS^ Q 'Urn, shall (we) give you a call back as soon as (she) has finished?' 20 C

Ee, most yorosikereba. yes if good-pRv 'Yes, if (that) would be all right (with you).'

By using the humble-polite form sasiagemasyoo ka? in her offer, the call recipient suggests that someone in her immediate in-group (uti)—not necessarily the call recipient herself—will return the call. While this is likely to be the requested person, it is important to note that this is

140 Negotiating Moves not overtly specified, as might be the case, for example, in an English equivalent such as 'Shall I have her call you back?' In other words, in Japanese it is not necessary for the speaker to use a causative form of the verb in order to indicate the sense of Til have (him/her) call (you) back.' There are cases in Japanese, of course, in which speakers do employ the causative form, but such an explicit rendering of the situation is really unnecessary. This was borne out by the relatively infrequent appearance of causative forms such as orikaesi sasemasyoo ka? in this context in the data. 3.4.5.7. Resuming a call after a completed switchboard request. In the second scenario outlined earlier, if a switchboard request is granted and the call transferred, the requested person will come to the phone and announce his presence on the line, as illustrated in the following examples. Usually this new call recipient will identify him or herself by name; the company affiliation would be redundant at this point. In excerpt (50), the recipient actually does not provide a self-identification, presumably because the caller is returning her call and may also recognize her voice. (49)

Resuming a call after it has been transferred, with self-identification [TB #4B-6] 1 A Most mosi. hello 'Hello.'

2 C Hal yes

'Yes.' 3 A

Odenwa ka\varimasita= phone change-pp ['(I)'ve (ex)changed phones (with someone else).']

4 C =A:—, =

ah

'Oh,— 5 A -Horie desu. Horie COP-IPF 'It's Horie.'


141

Resuming a call after it has been transferred, without selfidentification [KI #2B-15] 1 A Mosi most. hello 'Hello.' 2 C Mosi mosi. hello 'Hello.' 3 A

Hal yes 'Yes.'

4 C

Kansai Yunyuu no Satoo desu:. Kansai Imports CN Sato COP-IPF 'It's Sato of Kansai Imports.'

5 A A, doo mo suimasen. oh in many ways thank you 'Oh, thank you very much (for your return call) 6 C Ano: sakihodo odenwa itadaita ken HES a little while ago phone receive-fr-out-grp-pF^ matter 7 C

na

n desu keDO:

COP-IPF

EP

CP

'Um, it's that (I'm calling about) the matter of the call (I/we) received a little while ago, but...'

3.5. TRANSITION SECTION 3.5.1. First-topic initiation and the maeoki Once callers reach the person with whom they wish to speak, they will initiate a transition to the first (and sometimes only) topic of business. In nearly every inter-organizational call, as well as in many in-house business discussions and personal conversations, callers accomplished this transition by providing an initial, general reason-for-call through a prefatory statement or question, which I will call a maeoki after Kashiwazaki (1993). As the subsequent discussion will demonstrate, maeoki are similar in function to pre-sequences such as "pre-announcements"

142 Negotiating Moves and "pre-requests" in ordinary English conversations as described by Terasaki (1976), Schegloff(1979, 1980, 1988b), Levinson (1983) and others. That is, they serve to ascertain whether certain conditions exist that are favorable for a potential "next action." In the case of JBCs, such conditions might be the availability of the call recipient to enter into a conversation of some length, the call recipient's familiarity with a particular business transaction mentioned in the maeoki, and so forth. In many ways maeoki also parallel the prefaces speakers use in narratives such as stories or jokes, in that they alert listeners to the fact that the usual conversational turn organization will be "suspended" and that the current speaker is thereby asserting the right to a multi-turn utterance. What is especially notable about these transitional utterances in the JBC corpus is that regardless of the call type (that is, whether it was a toiawase inquiry, merchandise order, shipping confirmation, or problem report), each maeoki typically exhibited a similar discourse structure. In the following section, I describe these maeoki in terms of a series of possible components arranged in their approximate order of occurrence. These are also summarized in figure 3 on page 142.

3.5.2. Possible elements of a maeoki First, callers sometimes begin their maeoki with a hesitation marker such as ano or eeto ('um' or 'ah'), and may follow this with the attention-focusing particle ne, possibly uttered with exclamatory or interrogative intonation (i.e., ne! or ne?).25 This initiates the transition from the opening of the call to the first topic of business. Often callers also include an apology such as moosiwake gozaimasen (literally, 'I have no excuse') and/or mitigating device such as tyotto ('just' or 'a little'). Consider the following examples, which illustrate the "opening" of a maeoki (line numbers are taken from the complete transcript):26 (51)

Maeoki from a book order call [TB # 1B-24] 11C Ano, tyotto oukagai-sitai n desu keredomo HES just inquire-DEs-iPFvl'EP CP 'Um, it's that I'd just like to ask (you) a question, but....

(52)

Maeoki from a call regarding tickets for travel [KI #3-4] 30C

Tyotto NE, onegai ga aru n desu ga, just ATF request SUB have-iPF EP CP

32C

moosiwake nai n XX ((spoken too softly to hear)) excuse have-NEG-ipp-> EP 'You see, it's just that (I)'ve got a request (to ask of you) but, it's that it's inexcusable....'


143

Maeoki from a problem report [TB #1A-44] 5 C Ano desu HES

7 C

nee!

COP-IFF ATF

Tyotto osirabe itadakitai n desu ga, just looking't receive-fr-out-grp-DEs-iPF EP cp 'Um, well you see! It's that (I)'d just like to have (you) look (something) up for me, but....'

Next, as illustrated in these examples, a caller may issue a polite, rather formulaic pre-request such as oukagai-sitai ('I'd like to ask a question') or onegai ga aru ('I have a request'), followed by the extended predicate (EP) and a clause particle such as kedo or ga. What is fascinating about such pre-requests is that they often preface what turn out to be reports of problematic transactions or shipments; such was the case with the maeoki in (53), Ano desu nee! Tyotto osirabe itadakitai n desu ga. Thus, rather than mentioning any hint of trouble at the outset, many callers begin their problem reports with a ''masked" (Jones, 1990) introduction. While it is possible to interpret such indirectness as perhaps being motivated by a desire on the part of business professionals to maintain positive ties with their regular clients and other contacts, this strategy was actually often adopted not only by employees at the two commercial sites, their suppliers and shippers, but also occasionally by some customers. In other maeoki, there is a more explicit indication of the reason-for-call than there was in the relatively formulaic utterances just described. These types of maeoki may begin with a temporal marker of a general nature (such as sakihodo 'a little while ago' or kono aida 'the other day'), or with a more specific one (such as kinoo 'yesterday,' kayoobi 'Tuesday,' or a particular date such aszyuugatu no zyuu-hati-niti 'October 18th'). In some cases callers will also indirectly index the fact that they have an ongoing relationship with the call recipient's company by using a temporal marker such as mata 'again' or itumo 'always.' This is in addition to the ritual exchange of business salutations that occur in the opening of the call. In the next portion of these more specific maeoki, callers introduce the item of business to be discussed. Sometimes they do this indirectly by referring to the channel through which a previous transaction, discussion, or contact took place—that is, by phone (denvva), fax (huakusimirilhuakkusu) or letter (otegami). At other times, they mention more specifically what is at issue, such as tyuumon 'order,' nimotu 'package,' haitatu 'delivery,' and so forth. Despite the fact that many of these transaction-related words are nominals, callers often add a nominalizing phrase such as to iu koto, no ken, no koto, or no bun, and then frame the entire reason-for-call using the no desu (EP) pattern. Callers then typically conclude their maeoki as in the earlier examples, with a clause particle such as ke(re)do(mo) or, less frequently, ga, which leaves the statement open-ended, provides an opportunity for aizuti (back-channel) feedback from the addressee, and reserves the next turn space for the caller (Park, 2002).


Apology and/or mitigating device sumimasen, moosiwake nai (n desu ga) tyotto, syoosyoo, nanka

(2)

Hesitation marker ano, eeto

(3)

Attention-focusing sentence particle ne!

(4)

ne?

ne,

Formulaic pre-request (followed by #7-8) oukagai-sitai, okiki-sitai

(5)

Temporal marker General: sakihodo, kono aida More specific: kinoo, kayoobi, nizyuu-siti-niti ni Indexing business relationship: mala, itumo, nan-kai ka

(6)

Reference to item of business/issue (no) denwa, h(u)akusu, tyuumon, nimotu, haitatu etc.

(7)

Nominalizer and/or no desu (extended predicate/EP) construction: to iu koto, no ken, no koto, no bun, or simply no by itself (na) n desu (may be used alone or in addition to other nominalizers above)

(8)

Clause particle ke(re)do(mo) or, less frequently, ga

Figure 3: Overall maeoki structure: (Possible elements and approximate order)


145

Callers' use of the EP in these and the more general, formulaic maeoki is frequent and significant. As explained earlier, the EP functions deictically to tie what immediately precedes the EP (in this case, the content of the maeoki) to the present situation (here, the fact that the caller has just contacted the call recipient) as well as to the larger discourse context (Noda, 1981, 1990; Ray, 1989). The resulting message which a caller conveys can be roughly translated as 'The reason I called is that [content of the maeoki], but....' It is important to note here that the exact interpretation of the EP will vary from one situation to another because the details of those situations differ. In other words, when the EP "encodes the existence of [the] background frame and demands interpretation of the [newly double framed] characterization within it" (Noda, 1990:24), the shifts in the background frame from one moment to another in a conversation mean that the resulting interpretation will necessarily shift as well. Thus at the juncture we are now considering, namely a transition from the opening of the conversation to the first topic of business, the speaker's "present situation" is that of explaining the reason for the call. Although the information marked by n(o) in that explanation may be new to the listener, the EP functions to mark it as information that is non-problematic. Moreover, the connection between that information and the discourse context may now be considered to be shared between two participants. In this way, the EP serves to broaden the "common ground" between them.27 Let us now take a moment to consider several examples of these different types of maeoki from the corpus. In the sections below, I have grouped them according to degree of specificity and degree of familiarity between interlocutors, and have also included an indication as to the types of calls (in terms of content) in which they appear. 3.5.2.1. General maeoki inquiries. The first group of maeoki (Type 1) consists of general inquiries used as a prefatory request or pre-announcement. Typically these appeared in two types of interactions: (a) toiawase-type "cold calls" in which the caller had no previous relationship with the company s/he was trying to reach (as in (54) below); or (b) "masked" problem reports, as illustrated in (55). (54)

Maeoki from a toiawase-typz "cold call" [KI#8-12] 5 C

Sumimasen, tyotto oukagai-sitai n desu keredomo be sorry4PF just inquire-DEs-ippvU EP CP '(I)'m sorry, it's just that (I)'d like to make an inquiry, but....'

(55)

Maeoki from a problem report by a customer [KI #7-3] 3 C A, sumimasen, tyotto okiki-sitai oh be sorry-iPF just

koto

ga aru

ask-DES-ipp^ matter SUB be (inanimate)-iPF


n desu keredomo EP CP 'Oh, (I)'m sorry, it's just that there's something (I)'d like to ask (about), but....'

In these relatively general maeoki, the fact that the speaker is calling is already known and available to both participants; this represents the "present situation." What is not known is the reason for the call. Once this has been presented in the discourse, however, this information becomes part of the public domain, so to speak, such that henceforth it may be referred to for other purposes if necessary. 3.5.2.2. More specific maeoki between non-acquaintances. A related group (Type 2) includes maeoki that exhibit a similar overall structure to those in the first group. However, these maeoki are slightly more explicit in that the callers who employ them are requesting a particular item such as a catalog (example (56) below) or service (example (57)). Often these maeoki appeared in "cold calls" placed by customers or employees who had no prior relationship with the company they were contacting. (56)

Maeoki from a toiawase-type "cold call" [KI#l-2] 3 C A, sumimasen, ano, katarogu, okutte itadakitai oh be sorry-ipp HES catalog send-GER receive-fr-out-grp-DES-iPF 4 C n desu kedo. EP CP 'Oh, (I)'m sorry, um, it's that (I)'d like to have (you) send (me) a catalog, but...'

An interesting subset of these Type 2 calls in the JBC corpus are the many book orders placed by a sales employee of Tokyo Books (Ms. Yamada). In these calls, she refrained from identifying herself by name or providing her company affiliation during the opening of the call, and instead introduced herself rather anonymously as Syoten desu ga....'This is a book company, but....' Caller and call recipient then exchanged business salutations, followed by the caller's maeoki. Example (57) below illustrates the opening of such a call followed by a maeoki: (57)

Maeoki from a book order [TB #1B-14] 1 A Hai, Kuroda-syuppan de gozaimasu. ACK Kuroda publishing COP-IPF (+) 'Yes, Kuroda Publishing.' 2 C Ano, syoten desu ga, = HES book company COP-IPF CP 'Um, (this) is a book company, but,'

The Structure of Japanese Business Telephone Calls 147 3 C

=osewa assistance

ni natte -orimasu:.= GL become-GER be-iPF^

['Thank you for your continued assistance.'] 4 A =A, hai, osewa -sama de gozaimasu. oh yes assistance person (+) COP-IPF (+) 'Oh yes, thank you for (your) assistance.' -> 5 C Ano: tyuumon it- ten onegai-sitai n desu keredomo HES order one item beg-DES-ippvP EP CP 'Um, it's that (I)'d like to request an order, but. 3.5.2.3. More specific maeoki in follow-up calls. Type 3 maeoki are similar to those of Type 2 in that they are of a more specific nature than the formulaic pre-requests of Type 1. However, Type 3 maeoki appeared in calls between speakers who had shared at least one previous encounter on the telephone, or who were already engaged in an ongoing business relationship. Some of these maeoki refer to a previous conversation (as in examples (58) and (59)), while others begin to bring up matters to be discussed in the present call (as in (60) and (61)). In terms of call content, many of these maeoki preceded problem reports, while others prefaced inter- or intra-organizational business discussions, which sometimes involved problematic situations. (58)

Maeoki from a follow-up call regarding a shipping problem [KI #6-5] 13 C Ano: sakihodo no ken na n desu ga HES a little while ago CN matter COP-IPF EP CP "Um, it's that (it's about) the matter (we discussed) a little while ago, but....'

(59)

Maeoki from a discussion of directions for C's visit to A's company [KI #11-14] IOC

Senzitu no odenwa itadaita ken na n desu ga other day CN phone receive-pps!/ matter COP-IPF FP CP 'It's that (I)'m (calling about) the matter of the telephone call (I) received the other day, but....'

(60)

Maeoki from a problem discussion with a supplier [KI # 1 -15 ] 13 C Ano neE: tyotto moosiwake nai HES ATF just excuse have-NEG-iPF->

n desu kedo EP CP

148 Negotiating Moves 15 C mata onegai -goto na n desu kedo again request thing COP-IPF EP CP 'Um you see, it's just that it's inexcusable but again it's that it's something (I have to) request (of you), but....' (61)

Maeoki from a problem report by a shipping company [KI #5A-7] 8 C Ano ne! Kinoo: tyotto: huakusu itadaita nee! HES ATF yesterday just fax receive-ppvU SP/ATF 'Um you see! Yesterday, well, (I/we) received your fax, you know!'28

In these follow-up calls, the information presented by the caller in the maeoki may in fact already be shared because the two participants have discussed the matter in a previous conversation. In such cases the caller, anticipating that the recipient will be able to recall that information, is refraining it as a topic for today's conversation. 3.5.2.4. More specific maeoki between regular business contacts. Type 4 maeoki contain even more specific references to business transactions than those in Type 3. and appear in calls between regular business acquaintances. Because the interlocutors are in frequent contact with each other, it is possible for callers to make a fairly explicit reference to a transaction, with the expectation that the call recipient will understand what is being brought up for discussion. Callers make these maeoki more explicit in a variety of ways. First, rather than only including a general temporal marker such as sakihodo 'a little while ago' or kono aida 'the other day,' callers may also include a particular day of the week or date, as seen in (62), (63), and (64) below. Second, as is also clear from these examples, callers may specify the type of transaction or business to be discussed, such as tyuumon 'order,' hassoo 'dispatch,' nimotu 'package,' and so forth. (62)

Maeoki from a follow-up call by a wholesaler regarding a book order problem [TB #1A-61] 6 C Ano sakihodo desu nee, si-gatu no nizyuu-iti-niti HES a little while ago COP-IPF ATF April CN 21st 7 C

tyuumon no bun no ken order CN portion CN matter 'Um, a little while ago, you see, the matter of the portion of the April 21st order'


1 49

Maeoki from a problem report to a shipper (follow-up to an order) [KI #5A-4] 7 C Eeto, gomen-nasai, kono aida no kayoobi ni hassoo sita hes excuse me-iMp the other day CN Tuesday LOG dispatch do-pp 8 C

bun no nimotu no kakunin o tyotto: portion CN package CN confirmation OBJ just

9 C

onegai-sitai

n desu keDO EP

CP

'Um, excuse me, it's that (I)'d like to just, confirm a package dispatched as part of the order on Tuesday the other day, but. . . .' Third, many callers in follow-up calls may use the maeoki to indicate what sort of assistance they will be requesting. Often they do so by using the desiderative l-tail form as in (63) above, or through the l-te hosiil pattern as in (64): (64)

Maeoki from a problem report to a shipper (follow-up to a "generaltype" order) [KI#1-11] 11C

Eeto:, ippan de kakunin site hosii no ga HES general LOC confirmation do-GER desire NOM SUB aru n desu kedomo be (inanimate)-ipp EP CP 'Um, it's that there's something (I)'d like to have (you) confirm in the general (side/type of the orders), but....'

On occasion, callers will also mention the specific item or category of item(s), for example the type of food or books that they would like to discuss: (65)

Maeoki from a problem report to a shipper (follow-up to an order) [KI#3B-11] 14C

Eeto desu ne? Kono mae, ano: e:: ohuisu kara okutta, HES COP-IPF ATF the other day HES HES office from send-PF

16C

bukku no bun nan desu kedoMO: book CN portion COP-IPF EP CP 'Um you see? The other day, um, ah, it's that (I'm calling about) the book portion (of an order) sent from the office, BUT. . . .'

150


Maeoki from a toicrwase inquiry about bagels, which the caller had inquired about previously [KI #3B-12] 8 C E:to, beeguru-pan no ken na n desu keredoMO HES bagel bread CN matter COP-IPF EP CP 'Um, it's that (I'm calling about) the matter of bagels, BUT....'

(67)

Maeoki from an in-house problem report regarding an order previously placed by the call recipient [TB #lA-7] 5 C Sumimasen, Kankokugoyaku na n desu kedo. be sorryHPF Korean language translation COP-IPF EP CP '(I)'m sorry, it's that (I'm calling about) the Korean language translation, but....'

A fourth way in which callers provide more specifics is to mention the name of the person(s) involved in a particular transaction: (68)

Maeoki from a follow-up call and shipping request [KI #5A-18] 15 C E:to kesa denwa itadaita P-san no koto desu kedomo HES this morning phone receive-ppvU Mr. P CN matter COP-IPF CP 'Um, it's (about) the matter of Mr. P (that you inquired about in) this morning's call, but....'

(69)

Maeoki from a follow-up call to a previous problem report [KI #8-7] 5 C A, ano: sakihodo no: J-san no: nimotu no ken oh HES a little while ago CN Mr. J CN package CN matter 6 C

na

n desu keredoMO

COP-IPF EP

CP

'Oh, um, it's that (I'm calling about) the matter of Mr. J's package of the other day, BUT....' Finally, some callers use a more specific maeoki in order to report on something they have done on behalf of the call recipient and/or the call recipient's company, as in (70) below, or else to indicate something that will be or can be done for them, as in (71). These types of maeoki were especially common in intra-organizational calls, but were also observed in some interorganizational conversations.


151

Maeoki from an in-house call following up on something the call recipient had asked the caller to do for him [TB #lB-36] 12 C Ano: desu HES

ne!

COP-IPF ATF

'Um, you see!' 16C29 Ima, anoo, syuuhon onegai-sita risuto o now HES compiled books beg-PF^ list OBJ 17 C

nagasita n desu keredoMO, fax-pF (lit., let flow) EP CP 'Now, urn, it's that (I) now faxed the compiled requested list of books, BUT....'

(71)

Maeoki from a follow-up call by a book wholesaler [TB #1B-40] 5 C Aa aa, ... suimasen! ah oh be sorry-IPF 'Ah, oh, .... (I)'m sorry!' 7 C

E:to! ano:, ni -satu, maniaimasu n del HES HES two volumes be on time-iPF EP-GER 'Um, uh, it's that (I/we)'ll be on time (with the) two volumes, so...!'

To summarize, then, the more specific "Type 4" maeoki discussed in this section have in common the fact that they are all taken from follow-up calls between regular business contacts, many of whom are particularly well-acquainted, as in the in-house call in (70). Through some of these maeoki, callers are introducing relatively straightforward toiawase inquiries or are essentially reporting or updating information for the call recipient, as in (71). In other examples we have considered, callers are prefacing problem reports. Yet while these callers are being more specific than were callers who employed the relatively more general Type 3 maeoki, the maeoki they adopt in this Type 4 group are nonetheless not so explicit as to reveal the true nature of the problem to be discussed. Rather, through this type of maeoki, the caller provides some specifics such as the date of a shipment, the name of a customer, the transaction category or food type, or the nature of the assistance to be requested. In subsequent turns, as we will see in our in-depth discussion of problem reports in chapter 5, the caller provides additional information. But at this transitional stage in the call when moving from the opening into the matter of business, well-acquainted callers who are about to present a problem to the call recipient usually do not bring that problem immediately to the fore. 3.5.2.5. Maeoki as "formulations of place" or person. The last group of maeoki we will consider are those I will call "formulations of place" or "formulations of person" after

152

Negotiating Moves

Schegloff (1972a). These sorts of maeoki typically appear in intra-company calls, calls from customers, or sometimes in follow-up calls related to problem reports. The point of these "formulations" is to describe, in a way that will make sense to the call recipient, where the caller is located at the moment or who the caller is with respect to the call recipient's company, and how that information relates to the fact that the caller is now contacting the call recipient's company. A few examples will serve as illustrations: (72)

Maeoki from a call between colleagues, one of whom (the caller) is presently out of the office on an errand [KI #5A-3] 7 C

Watasi ne, ima ginkoo ni yotte -n -nen keDO: I ATF now bank LOG drop by-GER be-ipp-KS EP-KS-> CP 'Y'know I, it's that I've dropped by the bank now, BUT.. ..'30

The caller in this first example is the butyoo (department head) at Kansai Imports. While out on an errand, she has stopped by the bank to arrange for a payment of funds (hurikomi) on the following day, and is presently contacting Kansai Imports to ask one of her subordinates to go withdraw some money from their postal savings account in preparation for that payment. She therefore begins her "story" by explaining where she is "now" (ima). This "place formulation" functions to set the stage for the more specific information she will provide in subsequent utterances. Note that the EP plays a critical role here, deictically underscoring the connection for the listener between the information immediately preceding the EP (i.e., the fact that the caller has stopped by the bank) and the larger discourse context, which is the fact that the butyoo is calling from a location out of the office. Thus the full import of what she is saying here is something to the effect of "Y'know the reason why I'm calling you is that I've stopped by the bank, BUT....' The call recipient might already be aware, or perhaps might remember once the caller utters this maeoki, that there is a hurikomi to be effected the following day. Even if this is not the case, however, by presenting her location at the bank, the caller helps the call recipient to project what the caller's next action (and utterance) might be. The following two examples represent "formulations of person," and are taken from calls by customers to Kansai Imports. (73)

Maeoki from a customer who had just contacted KI about a problematic shipment a few moments prior to this call [KI #1-17] 3 C Mo' ik -kai suimasen, = more one time be sorry-ipp 'One mo' time, (I)'m sorry,' 5 C

=Ima denwa sita mono now phone do-pp person

na n desu kedomo. COP-IPF EP CP

'It's that (I)'m the person (who) called (you) now, but....'


153

In this example, which follows the call recipient's self-identification, the caller immediately issues an apology, and then explains that she is the person who contacted the call recipient 'now,' i.e., a few moments ago. Essentially the caller is picking up the conversation where she left off, so her "formulation of person" helps the call recipient to connect the fact that she had called shortly before with the fact that she is now on the line again. As with most of the previous maeoki examples, the caller here uses the EP for its "double-framing" effect in order to zoom in on the new information being provided. (74)

Maeoki from a customer about to make a problem report [KI #13-13] 14C Eeto desu ne, ano:, nan-kaika oodaa site -ru HES COP-IPF ATF HES many times order do-GER be-iPF n desu kedomo EP

CP

'Um you see, uh, it's that (I)'ve ordered many times (from you),

Example (74) is similar to (73) in that a customer is presenting a recharacterization of who she is vis a vis the call recipient (and/or her company) through a maeoki. During the opening of this call, the caller had explained that she was a "member" of Kansai Imports (the term used for customers), and had also provided her membership number and full name. Then through her maeoki in line 14, the caller reframes or reformulates who she is, or more specifically what she represents to the call recipient's company. That is, she is not "just any old member," so to speak, but rather someone who has placed "many orders"—in short, a regular customer. She provides this information as a prefatory remark before later informing the call recipient in a multi-turn sequence of the problem, namely that three shipments of the same books had been sent to her by mistake.

3.5.3. Maeoki variation according to role relationships and topic In sum, then, callers in this corpus appear to vary the degree of specificity of their maeoki according to at least three factors: (1) the degree of familiarity between caller and call recipient in terms of whether there is already an ongoing business relationship between them; (2) the extent to which the call recipient can be expected to know about the topic to be discussed (i.e., whether this represents a "cold call" or not); and (3) the degree to which the topic is of a potentially face-threatening nature to the call recipient and/or that company. For example, when a caller is about to make a toiawase inquiry to a company with which she has no prior contact, or at least not an established business relationship, she is likely to adopt a Type 1 general utterance such as Sumimasen, tyotto oukagai sitai n desu keredomo. Similarly, in the case of book orders, catalog requests, and the like between non-acquaintances, callers appear to use Type 2 maeoki on a regular basis. However, in conversations between professionals who are in frequent contact about business transactions, callers often employ more specific maeoki

154 Negotiating Moves such as those of Type 3 or 4. By mentioning one or more salient details about a particular transaction in these maeoki, in conjunction with the EP, callers can focus the recipient's attention on what is likely to be the "first topic" for discussion. Especially if the call recipient is someone with whom the caller interacts regularly by phone, it is possible for a caller to assume that the recipient can and will make a connection between the details presented in the maeoki and the larger discourse context—which not only includes the fact that the caller has just contacted the recipient, but also, more broadly speaking, the "prior text" between these conversationalists, which would include any and all previous conversations, faxes, and other correspondence. As mentioned earlier, the EP has an essential deictic function here, and its importance is underscored by the frequency with which callers employ it in their maeoki. When the topic to be discussed involves a problematic, potentially face-threatening issue, many Japanese callers adopt a formulaic Type 1 maeoki such as Tyotto oukagai-sitai n desu ga ['It's that (I)'d just like to inquire (about something) but....'] or a slightly more specific Type 4 utterance such as Eeto:, ippan de kakunin site hosii no ga aru n desu kedomo ['Um, it's that there's something (I)'d like to have you confirm in the general (side/type of the orders), but....']. In this way, callers initially "mask" (Jones 1995) problem reports in the guise of shipping confirmations or more general requests. In subsequent turns (which we will explore in more detail in chapter 5), callers then provide more specific but salient details such as shipping origin and destination information or an invoice/tracking number, through which a co-participant experienced in this genre of call and perhaps also acquainted with the particular shipment can surmise that the topic involves a potentially problematic transaction. 3.5.4. Illustration of Extended Predicate (EP) usage in Kansai problem report maeoki Given that so many of the maeoki discussed above incorporate a form of the extended predicate (EP), it may be useful at this juncture to provide an illustration of EP usage obtained through concordance searches conducted on the data corpus. For this example, a search was conducted on 44 maeoki utterances which have been transcribed to date from problem reports and follow-up discussions in the Kansai Imports data. These include maeoki in calls placed by both customers and business professionals. It should be noted that this is only one subset of the larger set of problem-report maeoki; there are more problem reports in the Kansai corpus that have been logged but not yet transcribed, and the Kanto data are also not included here. Moreover, some recordings began after the call opening and therefore cannot be used for maeoki analysis. Despite these caveats, however, the results should be helpful in showing a subset of EP usage pertaining to a particular context (i.e., problem reports) from the larger corpus. The purpose of the search was thus to locate all tokens of the extended predicate in this set of data. An initial search for the string ln(o) desu/ yielded partially imperfect results, in that it also picked up tokens of the attention-focusing phrase lano desu ne(e)l. It also did not pick up tokens in direct-style (i.e., ln(o) da/, so a separate search was conducted, yielding one additional maeoki. The composite results as generated by the concordance software are shown on the next page in figure 4, and illustrate the linguistic context in which the EP appeared.

The Structure of Japanese Business Telephone Calls File#

Maeoki excerpt including Info] da/ or/n(o) desul

KI 01-11: KI 01-15: KI 01-15: KI 01-25: KI 02-05: KI 02-09: KI 02-14: KI 02-15: KI 02-17: KI 02-18: KI 03-09: KI 03-11: KI 05-04: KI 05-16: KI 05-20: KI 05-20: KI 06-10: KI 08-06: KI 13-13: KI 13-19: KI 13-20: KI 15-02: KI 15-12: KI 15-13: KI 15 -17: KI 16-02: KI 16-11: KI 16-16: KI 16-16: KI 20-05: KI 01 -04

... ippan de kakunin site hosii no ga aru[[n desu]] kedomo ... Ano neE:, tyotto moosiwake nai ffn desu]] kedo ... moosiwake nai n desu kedo mata onegai-goto naffn desu]] kedo ... kyoo no NE: syukka no yatu naffn desu]] kedo ... toranzuakusyon adobaisu na[[n desu]] keredoMO ... syoohin de, ii desu ka, tyotto toiawase na [[n desu]] kedo ... Tyotto oukagai-site ru [[n desu]] keDO ... Ano: sakihodo odenwa itadaita ken na ffn desu]] keDO ... kotira no hoo wa kesa no gozen, kesa onegai-sita[[n desu]] kedo ... sakihodo nooki no koto de otoiawase ga attaffn desu]] kedo ... E:to, kayoobi da to omou [[n desu]] keredomo ... ohuisu kara okutta, bukku no bun na [[n desu]] kedoMO ... nimotu no kakunin o tyotto: onegai-sitai ffn desu]] keDO ... hitotu:, tyotto kore, daibu mae ni naruffn desu]] kedoMO ... Ano: zyu--kyonen no zyuunigatu na [[n desu]] keDO ... nel Ano nootobukkupasokon o katta [[n desu]] keredoMO ... Ano, keesu no gotyuumon na[[n desu]] keredomo ... ikken, takuhai de kakunin onegai-sitai ffn desu]] keredomo ... eeto desu ne, ano:, nan-kai ka oodaa si tern ffn desu]] kedomo ... on- onegai-simasite, kyoo todokimasita ffn desu]] kedomo ... no koto de: tyotto ota- otazune-sitai [[n desu]] kedo ... ano: haitau sitee o: sita bun na[[n desu]] kedomo ... no de kakunin site itadakitai no ga aru[[n desu]]keredoMO ... tyotto kakunin site itadakitai no aru [[n desu]] kedo ... A no desu ne, sakihodo no I-san no ken na [[n desu]] keDO ... in no wa sono uti okurarete kuru to omou [[n desu]] keredoMO ... K-XX? no huakusu na ffn desu]] keDO ... kingaku no kakunin no koto de den\va sita [[n desu]] keDO ... Ano: desu ne, e:, kyanpeen no ken naffn desu]] keredomo ... koto de: hhh denwa haitte te ta [[n desu]] keredomo ... -son ga NE, todokete kureta [[n da]] keDO

KI KI KI KI

... zyuuitiigatu kokonoka hassoo no kazu o siritai [[n desu]] ga ...A, ano, sakihodo no ken na [[n desu]] ga ... todoite masite, tyotto otazune sitaiffn desu]]ga ... toransuhuoomaa O: ano: tyuumon site ta ([n desu]] GA

05-09: 06-05: 11-15: 16-06:

KI 02-03: KI 09-14:

... tyotto ne:, Ikken mata, ano ziko na[[n desu]]yo ... hontai o tunagu keeburu ga nai[[n desu]] yo

Figure 4: Illustration of EP usage in Kansai problem report maeoki

155

15 6 Negotiating Moves Note that only a portion of the utterance to the "left" of the search string is normally presented as the result of a concordance search. For ease of reading, I have provided complete words in cases in which they were cut off by the software's search function. A total of 37 tokens of the EP appeared in this set of 44 maeoki. Interestingly, the EP actually occurred twice within two maeoki, since these were multi-turn utterances (KI #1-15 and KI#5-20). Thus technically speaking, 35 rather than 37 of 44 maeoki (79%) contained one of more tokens of the EP. As the list graphically demonstrates, callers who used the EP in their maeoki did so predominantly in conjunction with the clause particle ke(re)domo', in fact, this combination occurred in 31 out of 36 EP tokens (86%). The next most common combination was the EP followed by clause particle ga, in 4 tokens (11%). Finally and somewhat surprisingly, there were also 2 tokens of the EP followed by the assertive sentence particle yo (6%). 3.6. MATTER(S) FOR BUSINESS DISCUSSION After indicating a shift from the opening of the call through their transitional maeoki utterances such as those illustrated in Figure 4, callers will move into the main point(s) of business. To illustrate how conversationalists achieve this in JBCs, we will briefly consider examples of three types of calls in the next chapter: (a) general toiawase inquiries, (b) merchandise orders (e.g., book orders), and (c) shipping confirmations. Problem reports will be the subject of a more detailed discussion in chapter 5.

3.7. PRE-CLOSING DEVICES JBC conversationalists employ a range of devices which signal that they might be considering a "shut down" of the current topic, and potentially thereby, a closing of the conversation. Some of these devices or pre-closing "bids" make no reference to the previous topic(s) under discussion, while others in one way or another make use of "topic talk" to move toward closing. Let us consider a few examples taken from the JBC corpus.

3.7.1. Making a pre-closing bid without explicit reference to the prior discourse As Schegloff and Sacks (1973) have observed in their research on ordinary calls in American English, often conversationalists will utter what constitutes a "possible pre-closing" move by uttering words such as 'We-ell,' ' 21A Hai, wakarimasita. yes become clear-pp 'Okay, certainly.' 22 C Hai, sumimasen. yes thank you 'Okay, thank you.' Note the use of hai by both speakers, which is rather comparable to the use of 'okay' by conversationalists in parallel junctures in American English telephone calls. In either language, conversationalists use these types of utterances to reinforce the agreement(s) they have reached and to collaboratively indicate that there is no other issue they wish to discuss. In this example, the call recipient indicates her understanding of what she is to do for the caller, and the caller thanks her (literally by apologizing) in response. His affirmative reply thus functions as an acceptance of the call recipient's pre-closing bid. So what was originally extended as a "possible" pre-closing device becomes, in retrospect, a successful one. According to Schegloff and Sacks (1973:309), once such a bid is accepted, the bid and the response are then analyzable as an adjacency pair representing the initial sequence of the closing section of the conversation.

3.7.2. Using l-masu n(o) del as a pre-closing device Another very common way in which JBC conversationalists moved toward closing down a conversation was through the use of the pattern l-masu n(o) del in order to reiterate the speaker's understanding of an agreement collaboratively reached by both parties at a previous point in the conversation. Sometimes these utterances followed an initial exchange of 'okays' of the sort illustrated in the preceding section. Consider this example, taken from a problem report call: (77)

Pre-closing: Checking to see if there are other topics of discussion, and restating action to be undertaken [TB #1A-44] 75A

76C


Ha:i. hyoo de: yes all COP-GER

(3.3 second pause)


Hal yes 'Yes.'

77A Hai. E: de wa,

ka—kakunin

simasite:,

yes HES well then con—confirmation do-GER

The Structure of Japanese Business Telephone Calls 78A

159

odenwa sasite itadakimasu no de,// telephone C!O 43 A Zya tyaka tyaka to yattyaimasu// no de ne, hai. well then with alacrity do completely (colloquial)-iPF EP-GER SP yes 'Well then, it's that (I)'ll wrap it up snappily so you see, okay.' -> 44C

Ha:i, onegai-simasn. yes beg-iPF^ 'Oo-kay, please do.' ((phone is hung up))


163

Often the closing section takes on an more extended form than a simple terminal exchange, since it may include a variety of elements, such as the reiteration of agreed-upon matters, promises of future contact, the provision of identification details and/or dates and times related to a promised future contact. Below we will consider some examples of each of these types of exchanges.

3.9.1. Reiterating agreed-upon matters As discussed in section 3.7.2, conversationalists may use the l-masu n(o) del pattern to recharacterize or reframe their understanding of what has been agreed to in the previous discourse, and present that understanding as a reassuring statement of intention to their interlocutor. As such, the utterance can also function as a pre-closing bid. When these bids are successful, they represent the first utterance in the closing section of the conversation. One example of such a restatement is line 43 in excerpt (79) above; another is shown in (80) below as part of a slightly longer closing section. Prior to this in-house call, Ms. Yamada of the Sales Department of Tokyo Books had contacted the firm's bookstore to find out if two copies of the Korean translation of a particular book might be available. A clerk from the bookstore then returned her call and reported that there were two copies in stock, but they were slightly waterlogged. Yamada asked the clerk to bring them by her office, and offered to take a look at them and evaluate their condition. After some further discussion as to the nature of the water damage, the end of the call proceeded as follows: (80)

Reiterating agreed-upon matters [TB #lA-7] 30A A, zyaa, itioo mawasite -moraemasu?' = oh well then for now pass along-GER receive-fr-out-grp-poi 'Oh, well then could (I) have (you) pass it along (to me) for now?' =Soo desu ne!= so COP-IPF SP

32 A =Sore de handan simasu no de = then evaluation do-ipp EP-GER 'It's that then (I)'11 evaluate it, so....' 33 C

=Hai! Onegai-simasu. = yes beg-iPF^ 'Okay! Please do.'

164 Negotiating Moves 34 A =Hai! Onegai simasu. Situree simasu. = yes beg-ipp^ rudeness do-iPF 'Okay! Please (send it along). Good-bye. 35C

=Situree simasu. rudeness do^F 'Good-bye.'

3.9.2. Promising future contact Closings in JBCs also frequently include promises of future contact, usually by phone or fax. Sometimes these promises are in addition to reiterations of agreed upon matters; in other cases, the promises themselves reformulate an offer for a return call or a fax made earlier in the conversation. In the conversation from which the excerpt below was taken, a shipper had contacted Kansai Imports to notify them that a package that was to have arrived the day of the call had been delayed. Prior to this excerpt, the shipper had offered to arrange things so that the package would arrive the following day. Below in line 68, he restates his offer (in this case, using the plain l-masul form without the EP: ano: asita ni wa kakuzitu ni tukuyoo ni itasimasu). He then promises to get in touch with the call recipient by fax should he receive any additional information about the flight carrying the package (De, ano: [shipper X] no dore de okutta ka to iu no mo tyotto wakarimasitara, ano: huakkusu de gorenraku itasimasu no de.) (80)

Reiterating agreed-upon matters [KI #6-5] 63 C

Tyotto nanka iti -niti okurete -ta yoo desu ne, just somehow one day be delayed-GER be-PF seem COP-IPF SP

64 C mukoo no hoo de. overseas CN side LOG 'Somehow it just seems to have been delayed, you see, on the overseas side.' 65 A A, a soo desu ka. oh oh so COP-IPF Q 'Oh, oh, is that right.'

66 C

Hal yes 'Yes.'

The Structure of Japanese Business Telephone Calls 67 A

165

Wakarimasita. be clear-PF

68 C Hai, ano: asita niwa kakuzituni tuku yoo ni itasimasu:. yes HES tomorrow GL TOP certain GL arrive so as to do-ipp^ 'Yes, urn (I)'ll see to it that it arrives for certain by tomorrow.' 69 A A, arigatoo gozaimasu. oh thank you (+) 'Oh, thank you.' 70 C

De, ano:[shipper X] no dore de okutta ka to iu and HES CN which one INST send-pp Q QT say-iPF

71 C

no mo tyotto wakarimasitara, ano: huakkusu de NOM also a little be clear-cND HES fax INST

72 C gorenraku itasimasu no de contact do-iPF 4* EP-GER 'And, um, if (I) get any information on which (flight) (X shipper) sent it, um, it's that (I)'11 contact you, so....' 73 A A, arigatoo gozaimasu. oh thank you (+) 'Oh, thank you.'

3.9.3. Requesting or providing identification details Over the course of a given conversation, if one or the other party never provided a selfidentification, a conversationalist might request a person's name by using a conventionalized prompt, Situree desu kedo..., 'It is rude (of me to ask), but... (what is your name)?' The following is an example of one such closing observed in the data. (81)

Requesting someone's name [KI # 16-6] 69C

Hai, situree desu kedo: ACK rudeness COP-IPF CP 'Okay, it's rude (of me to ask), but, ... (what is your name)?'

166 Negotiating Moves 70A A, Masutaa Denki, Hasimoto desu:. oh Master Electric Hashimoto COP-IPF 'Oh, (I)'m Hashimoto (of) Master Electric.' 71C

Hasimoto-san desu ne?//Hai, yorosiku//onegai-simasu:. Mr. Hashimoto COP-IPF SP ACK well beg-ipp vU 'Mr. Hashimoto, right? Okay, please [take care of it for me].'

72 A Hai! Yorosiku onegai-simasu yes well beg-iPF sp 'Okay! May things go well.' In Japanese, the elliptic utterance Situree desu kedo... has been used to such a great extent in both face-to-face and telephone interactions that most participants, when prompted in this way, will provide a self-introduction as in (81) above without hesitation. The prompt is somewhat akin to the slightly more explicit English utterance 'And you are...?' which has become a stock phrase in American business contexts. However, the English utterance tends to appear at the beginning rather than at the end of conversations (for example, a receptionist may use the phrase in response to a switchboard request by an as yet unidentified caller). Another alternative which was observed frequently in the JBC corpus was for one or both participants to volunteer their name(s), in some cases because they had not yet done so, or in others because they wished to reiterate the information for the interlocutor's convenience. The latter type of exchange occurred in the excerpt below, which is taken from a conversation in which the caller had asked the call recipient to send a case of delivery-date stickers to her company, and the call recipient promised to do so. (Kansai Imports used these stickers to inform the shipper as to the type of delivery service for a given package, e.g., "next-day service," "three-day service," and so forth.) Note that the closing section also includes a segment in which the call recipient requests the caller's telephone number for future reference. (82)

Providing one's name and phone number [KI #2A-6] ISA

Odenwa-BAngoo, nen no tame//onegai-dekimasu? phone number just in case beg-iPF-poivP 'Just in case, may I request your phone number?'

16C Hai hai. Iti ni san no, yes yes one two three CN

'Yes, sure, (it's) 123-' 17 A

Hai. ACK

'Mhm.'

The Structure of Japanese Business Telephone Calls 18C

167

Rokunana hati kyuudesu:. six seven eight nine COP-IPF '6789.'

19A Rokunana hati kyuu. Yosida desu:. six seven eight nine Yoshida COP-IPF '6789. I'm Yoshida.' 20C

Watanabe to moosimasita. WatanabeQT be called-ppvl' '(The representative you spoke with today was) called Watanabe'

21A

Hal yes 'Okay.'

22C

Hai,//onegai-simasu::. yes beg-ippvl' 'Okay, please (take care of my request).'

23 A Hai, arigatoo gozaimasu:. yes thank you (+) 'Okay, thank you (for your call).'

3.9.4. Terminal exchange CA researchers use the phrase "terminal exchange" to indicate the final adjacency pair sequence in a conversation, in which conversationalists take their leave of each other and "terminate" the turn-taking mechanisms normally in operation over the course of the call (Schegloff and Sacks, 1973). We have already seen several illustrations of these exchanges in the examples discussed above. Here I will provide one additional excerpt which includes the utterance Doo mo. Depending upon the context, this expression can be used in a variety of ways in Japanese. For example, one might use it in face-to-face interactions to acknowledge a colleague with a passing greeting when meeting up in the hallway. In (83) below, it might be interpreted as both a farewell and an expression of thanks. (83)

Terminal exchange [KI #6-5] 76 C

Doo mo, situree itasimasu, doo mo. thanks rudeness do-ipp^ good-bye 'Thanks, excuse me, good-bye.'

168 Negotiating Moves 77 A

Situree simasu. Doo mo. rudeness dcHPF good-bye. 'Excuse me. Good-bye.'

3.10. CONCLUDING REMARKS From opening to closing, we have now considered the sequential organization of Japanese business transactional telephone calls. Within each section of these calls, we have observed that conversationalists employ particular stylistic and/or register features that essentially function as contextualization cues (Gumperz, 1982a). These cues aid listeners in their interpretation of the previous utterance, project possible next actions, help them to gauge their relationship with the interlocutor on a moment-by-moment basis, and enable them to respond in a manner appropriate to that relationship. A significant degree of optionality is included in the structure of the interaction as a whole, allowing for speaker choice and preference, and accommodating potential problems, such as a requested person's being unavailable. Certain aspects of the interaction may be repeated, such as self-identifications, while others such as personal greetings may be left out. One or more speakers may extend offers of assistance, and business matters of various sorts may be brought up for discussion. Yet due to the inherent flexibility of the genre as a whole, its integrity is not at risk should some of these elements be missing. The fact that speakers will minimally progress through the opening and closing stages gives shape to the interaction and signals that each call is one instantiation, or one unique text, exemplifying the JBC genre.

NOTES 1. For a discussion of the use of directive speech acts in these types of encounters in Japan, see Sukle(1994). The number of studies regarding service encounters in Japanese is generally limited: see for example Sugito and Sawaki (1977, described below); Tsuda (1984), which compares sales talk in both Japan and the United States; and N. Yamada (1992), which compares sales talk in Japanese by native and non-native speakers in Australia. Szatrowski (1992a, 1992b, 1993) has analyzed the use of invitations within sales-related conversations on the telephone, but these conversations are not customerinitiated service encounters. The literature concerning service encounters in English is more substantial; see Merritt(1976a, 1976b); Coupland (1983); Ventola(1983, 1984, 1987), and Kipers (1986). 2. The terms "mode" and "channel" are adopted from Halliday and Hasan (1976). 3. Examples of service bids are 'May I help you?' in English, and irassyaimase in Japanese. However, the latter is sometimes used more generally as a welcome when customers enter a store, as opposed to a specific bid for service in one-on-one encounters. 4. As we saw in the call to Worldwide Bank in the previous chapter, it is possible to accomplish this selection non-verbally on the telephone if an automated push-button menu is available. 5. Note that this might not be true in the case of transactions at a neighborhood market, where the


169

participants are likely to be well-acquainted and would therefore probably engage in some sort of conversation. See Sukle (1994). 6. Since this is not always the custom in the United States, Japanese non-native speakers whose base language is American English often find that adjusting to this practice takes a conscious effort. 7. See Schegloff (1968, 1979) and Park (2002) for further discussion on the subject of self-identification and recognition in everyday and institutional conversations. 8. Although callers to various institutions these days in the United States face an increased likelihood of first reaching a computerized voice menu from which they must make a selection, in the Japanese data collected for this study, there were only a handful of such calls. 9. Although the publication date for Bakhtin's work on speech genres is 1986, this is for the translated version; his original work was written in 1952-53. 10. This finding was observed with notable regularity throughout the data corpus. Hashiuchi (1985) found in an ethnographic study conducted in 1983 that in 47.7% of calls placed to residences, call recipients spoke first, whereas in 34.2% of the calls, callers spoke first, and in 18.1% of the calls, both participants spoke simultaneously. However, Hashiuchi's findings may be due to the particular nature of the data elicitation methods adopted for his study, in that the calls being recorded were requests bycallers for the call recipients' support of a special mayoral candidate. 11. Nakane (1972) appears to treat the reference point of a particular speaker's uti as something that is established and unchanging. However, as Bachnik and Quinn (1994) and Wetzel (1994) have noted, the reference point is constantly shifting, depending upon when, where, to whom, and of whom that person is speaking. 12. Call recipients would also likely utter the same self-identification after being notified by a colleague that s/he has a call from a fellow employee. 13. Although the same structure of opening greeting obtains in English-speaking business contexts, the type of greeting used appears to be far more flexible. That is, greetings related to any time of day, rather than just the morning, are acceptable. For example, call recipients may answer the telephone by saying, 'Good afternoon [or Good evening]. ABC Communications.' Garner (1984:104) notes that 'Hello' is also acceptable in business offices, "but the preferred greetings are the more formal good morning, good afternoon, and good evening." Such flexible usage contrasts markedly with what was observed in the Japanese data for this study, where there were few cases in which a call recipient answered the phone by saying Konniti wa ('good afternoon') or Konban wa ('good evening'). 14. Park (2002) includes examples in her everyday Japanese call data of both most most and (Hai,) (name) de(gozaima)su by call recipients. She appears to conclude that there may be a slight interactional preference among Japanese everyday interactants for self-identification over recognition. Additional research is necessary in this context to evaluate usage more conclusively. 15. An example of this type of self-identification by the caller appears in excerpt (5), line 4. The plain form iimasu instead of the humble-polite moosimasu was also observed in the data as part of callers' self-identifications/introductions, as in example (11). 16. While the content of this conversation remains the same as it appears in Park (2002), I have adopted my own typographical format and transcription conventions for consistency's sake.

170 Negotiating Moves 17. The parentheses in phrases such as osewa ni natt(e)-(ori)masu are intended to show that other, sometimes contracted forms are used instead, e.g., osewa ni natte imasu or osewa ni natt 'masu. 18. Another possible interpretation here is that a business caller who contacts a company for the first time but who uses a form of osewa ni natt(e)-(ori)masu rather than the imperfective osewa ni narimasu is "simulating intimacy" for strategic purposes later in the call (Hopper et al., 1990). 19. I am grateful to Professor Suzuko Nishihara for bringing this to my attention. This type of usage indeed occurred repeatedly in the data. 20. In example 24, the two participants are colleagues of approximately equal status. However, the same call recipient (Yamada) also used the same salutation Otukaresama desu to her superiors in other in-house conversations recorded at the Kanto site. 21. See McClure (2000:276). A similar phrase, gokuroosama (desita), 'thanks for your trouble(s)' is typically used "to thank a subordinate for effort expended in behalf of the speaker, or to comment politely to equals or superiors on their toils, performed for themselves or for others" (Jorden and Noda, 1988:125). 22. It is possible that the custom of using Otukaresama desu as an in-house salutation is limited to the Tokyo Books site; the phrase was not used by subjects at the Kansai site in similar contexts. Further research at other locations is therefore necessary to make a conclusive evaluation as to more general conversational practice with regard to this expression. 23. Note that the caller's use of oraremasu ka? in her switchboard request is an instance of Kansai dialect. While speakers in the Kansai portion of the corpus appeared to use "standard Japanese" in much of their discourse, dialectal use was common in switchboard requests such as this one. However, it was noted that a few suppliers who worked with Kansai Imports used dialectal forms more regularly. 24. This is the same utterance which we considered earlier in our discussion of forms of offers in chapter 1; here it is being presented in the full discourse context. 25. Ne is usually classified as a "sentence particle" or "final particle" since it often concludes a full sentence in Japanese. However, in the case ofmaeoki transitional utterances it appears to have a more specific function, namely that of focusing the attention of the listener on what the speaker is about to say. Since in the case ofmaeoki, ne often follows a single hesitation marker such as ano (as in Ano ne! 'Well you see!'), I have marked such tokens in the word-for-word gloss segment of the transcripts as "ATF" for "attention-focuser," rather than "SP" for "sentence particle." Technically both uses of ne could be categorized as "utterance-final," but I have employed these transcription distinctions to emphasize the attention-focusing function of ne in maeoki. 26. In some cases, the line number is significantly higher than seen in previous examples of reason-forcall/maeoki; this is because there has often been a switchboard request or other discussion prior to the maeoki. Also, as in examples 52 and 53, aizuti by the call recipient intervenes between multi-turn maeoki. 21. Charles Quinn (personal communication) has pointed out that this manner of presentation of new information as though it was already given information, through the use of the extended predicate, functions in the discourse as the introduction of an 'instant fact.' 28.1 have translated tyotto here as 'well' in order to convey its mitigating force, and also to avoid a full English gloss that conveys the sense of a fax 'just received' (as in 'just now received').


171

29. After the caller began her maeoki in line 12C, the call recipient (whom she knows well) initiated a short joking interlude (not transcribed here), hence the gap in numbering. 30. As is evident from the dialectal forms appearing in this example, the caller is a native of the Kansai (specifically, Kobe) area. While dialectal forms did not often appear in the other four types of maeoki introduced, they did sometimes appear in the "formulations of place" or "formulations of person" type maeoki such as this one, which prefaced intra-company calls between colleagues who normally conversed in Kansai dialect. 31. See Kumatoridani (1992) for a detailed discussion of these cues in casual Japanese conversations between friends.


4

TYPES OF JAPANESE BUSINESS TRANSACTIONAL TELEPHONE CALLS

4.1. INTRODUCTION Now that we have taken a detailed look at the sequential organization of JBCs and some illustrations of the individual utterances which conversationalists use in call openings, transitional sections, pre-closing bids and closing sections, we can take a step back and compare participant behavior across a number of call types or sub-genres that were frequently observed in the corpus. Therefore in this chapter and the next, we will consider the following types of calls: (1) general toiawase inquiries, (2) merchandise orders, (3) shipping confirmations, and (4) problem reports. The first three types are the focus of this chapter, since they have in common the fact that the caller usually provides a maeoki at the outset of the transition section which indicates the purpose of the call. This was not often the case in problem reports, so we will treat these as a separate group in chapter 5, comparing two examples of such calls from the Kansai Imports recordings.

4.2. GENERAL TOIAWASE INQUIRIES In the JBC corpus, many calls were identified which involved inquiries of a general sort by customers or commercial service recipients to service providers. For example, Kansai Imports customers sometimes contacted the company to inquire about the availability, price, or specific features of items in the company catalog, or with questions about order and shipping policies. Customers of Tokyo Books often made similar inquiries, and also asked about the requirements for various categories of discounts. Representatives of Kansai Imports and Tokyo Books also placed general inquiry-type calls, usually to their suppliers and other regular contacts in order to ascertain the availability of merchandise or services. Such routine inquiries are known as toiawase in Japanese, so I have adopted the term here for these types of calls.

1 74 Negotiating Moves Recall that we have already considered one example of a toiawase call in chapter 1, through the conversation in which Ms. Sasaki of Kansai Imports requests contact information for a customer whose name is on a "transaction advice" form they had recently obtained from a bank. (See appendix 3 for the full text of that call.) Below we will examine another toiawase call, which was placed by Ms. Yamada of the Sales Department of Tokyo Books to one of the wholesalers which her company regularly contacts when purchasing books for their bookstore and mail-order customers. (The complete text of this call appears in appendix 4.) The following segment represents the opening of the conversation. (1)

Opening of a toiawase inquiry [TB # 1 B-22] 1

((phone rings))

2 A Sasaki Syoten desu. Sasaki Books COP-IPF 'Sasaki Books.' 3 C A ano, syoten desu ga,.= oh HES book company COP-IPF CP 'Oh, um, (I)'m (with a) book company, but 4 C

=osewa ni natte orimasu::.= assistance GL become-GER [thank you for your continued assistance.]'

5 A

=Hai.= ACK

'Mhm.' 6 C =Ano desu ne, zaiko no kakunin o it -ten onegai-sitai HES COP-IPF ATF stock CN confirmation OBJ one item beg-ipp-DESvl' 7 C n desu ga, yorosii desu ka? EP CP good (+) COP-IPF Q 'Um, well you see, it's that (I)'d like to request confirmation of (your) stock of one item, but is it all right (to ask)?' 8 A Hai, doozo. yes please (go ahead) 'Yes, please go ahead!' The call recipient opens the call with his company identification in line 2 (Sasaki Syoten desu), and Yamada responds with a more generic and anonymous form, simply noting that she is

Types of JBCs

175

(with) a book company (A, ano syoten desu go). She also extends a business salutation, osewa ni natte orimasu. In this particular conversation, the call recipient does not provide a reciprocal salutation, perhaps because he does not yet know the identity of the caller. In other parallel calls, however, some call recipients did reply in kind. For example, in the many toiawase and book order calls which Yamada placed that appear in the corpus, she typically introduced herself as a syoten and then provided a salutation, which many call recipients returned. Interestingly, it was revealed in another call not discussed here that by providing the categorial identification, syoten 'book company,' callers such as Yamada may present themselves as members of a particular group of clients who are eligible for a discount on purchases. The call recipient's return salutation in such cases therefore may be one way of displaying recognition of the caller as a member of that group. Alternatively, the caller's generic company identification may enable the call recipient to project a likely reason-for-call, such as a toiawase, book order, or even a problem report from a client with whom they have an established business relationship. But even if neither of these applies, as we noted in chapter 3 the exchange of salutations has become a typical ritual between business professionals, so it may simply be that the conversationalists who utter them do so as a matter of course, without making distinctions between regular contacts and those with whom they have no prior relationship. In line 6, which we have previously noted is the "default" anchor position for the reason-for-call in JBCs, Yamada begins the transition into the matter of business through a maeoki that starts with the attention-focusing utterance Ano desu ne. She then indicates why she is calling, namely that she would like to have the clerk confirm their stock for an item, and frames her utterance with the EP (zaiko no kakunin o it-ten onegai-sitai n desu go). The maeoki she presents thus conforms to the general pattern we outlined in chapter 3 for these types of utterances. What is different in this transition section from the examples we have seen so far is the fact that Yamada also adds a permission request in line l,yorosii desu ka? This kind of caller behavior was regularly observed in toiawase and shipping confirmation calls in the corpus, on the part of both non-commercial and commercial service recipients. It was also occasionally observed in merchandise orders. Such permission requests may be motivated by a variety of situational factors, for example the need to ascertain whether the call recipient is prepared to handle such a request. In the case of shipping confirmations, at least, it is usually necessary for the call recipient to look up a tracking number on the computer, so callers familiar with this routine will make such a "pre-request" in order to inquire whether the call recipient is ready for that number. Another possible rationale for such a permission request might be that a different representative of the company being contacted is the person who handles the type of inquiry being proposed. In fact, in many of these types of calls it was found that after the caller presented his or her maeoki, the call recipient would ask the caller to wait for a moment and would then transfer the call to another person or department at their company. In the present call, however, the representative is clearly willing to take the caller's inquiry, since he responds affirmatively by say ing Hai, doozo in line 8.

176 Negotiating Moves In the next portion of the conversation, Yamada provides the publisher's name and title of the book she is inquiring about, and the clerk repeats the title. Without prompting, Yamada then specifies how many copies she would like, and requests that the clerk look into it (Hai, kotira, zyus-satu na n desu ga mite itadakemasu ka?}. Here again Yamada employs the EP, which functions to recharacterize or reformulate her earlier, more general request as a more specific one for ten volumes. The clerk reiterates the number alone (zyuu) and then asks her to wait a moment. (2)

Specifying a stock availability request [TB #18-22] 9 C E: Sansee-doo NO, HES Sanseido CN 'Urn, from SanSEIDO' 10 A

Hai. ACK

'Mhm.' 11C

((book title))

12 A

((repeats book title))

13 C

Hai, kotira zyus-satu na n desu ga// yes this one (+) ten volumes COP-IPF EP CP

14C

mite itadakemasu ka? see-GER receive-iPF-POTvP Q 'Yes, it's that it's ten volumes (I/we need of) this one, but could (I) have you look (into it)?'

ISA Zyuu. Tyotto omati kudasa:i. ten a little waiting^ give-to-in-grp-iMp^ 'Ten. Please wait a minute.' ((puts caller on hold)) After the clerk returns to the phone, he indicates that they have no inventory of the item, saying Kore \va zaiko uti ni oite nai desu ne! His usage of the term uti here is interesting but not unusual; while uti in some contexts refers to the 'inside' of something, in this case it represents the company itself, so the clerk is setting up an implicit contrast between his own firm and others elsewhere (that might have the books in stock). Yamada then repeats part of his utterance and concludes it with the EP, essentially summing up the results of her inquiry (A, oite nai n desu ka!). In response, the clerk confirms this characterization of the situation by saying Hai:

Types of JBCs (3)

177

Indicating the results of an inventory search [TB #18-22) ISA

Kore wa zaiko uti ni oite nai desu ne! this one TOP stock inside LOC be on-hand-GER be-NEG-iPF COP-IPF SP 'As for this one, we don't have it in stock, you see!'

19C

A, oite nai ndesuka!// oh be on-hand -GER be-NEG-iPF EP Q 'Oh, (so) it's that (you) don't have it!'

20 A

Hai. yes 'Yes.'

The ball is now in the caller's court, so to speak, and if Yamada were to have other requests, she might make them at this juncture in the conversation. She apparently does not, however, so she makes a "pre-closing bid" as shown in (4) by indicating she has understood the situation (A, wakarimasita). She also thanks the clerk for his assistance and apologizes for troubling him, saying Doo mo sumimasen desu. The clerk accepts her bid for a close to the conversation by replying Hai, doo mo, hai, and the caller takes her leave, saying situree itasimasu. (4)

Closing of a toiawase call 21C

[TB # 1B-22]

A wakarimasita. Doo mo suimasen desu: = oh be clear-pp thanks be sorry-iPF COP-IPF 'Oh, I see. Thanks, (I)'m sorry (to trouble you).

22 A

=Hai doo mo, hai. = yes thanks yes 'Okay, thanks, okay.'

22 C

=situree itasimasu:. rudeness do-jpFsl' 'Good-bye.'

Toiawase calls placed by other commercial service recipients and customers unfolded in a similar manner to this conversation, with callers presenting an initial, general maeoki followed by a more specific one in a later turn in order to explain their reason-for-call. In the opening segment of a different call presented in (5) on the next page, a representative from a publishing and distribution company contacts Tokyo Books to inquire about the price of one of their books. Note that here too the caller utters a permission request after her initial maeoki, before further specifying the purpose of her call.

178


Maeokifrom a commercial service recipient's toiawase about book prices [TB#lA-26] 5 C Ano: syoseki ni tuite oukagai sitai koto ga ant HES books concerning inquire-DES-iPF^ matter SUB be-ipp n desu keredomo EP

CP

'Um, it's that there's a matter (I)'d like to inquire about concerning books, but....' 6 A A, hai, hai doozo! oh ACK yes please (go ahead) "Oh, okay, yes please go ahead!' 8 C

Yorosii desu ka? good (+) COP-IPF Q 'Is it all right (to ask)?'

9 A Hai. yes 'Yes.' IOC

Ano: [book title] tte iu syoseki NO: HES QT say-iPF book CN 'Urn, for a book called [BOOK TITLE],'

11A Ee. yes 'Yes.' 12C

teika to hontai teika oukagai sitai n desu keredomo. price and base price inquire-DEs-iPF^ EP CP 'It's that (I)'d like to ask the (total) price' and base price, but....'

In another example from the data presented in (6) on the next page, a customer explains that he would like to place an order for English language-teaching materials. As we noted previously in chapter 3, by using the phrases mata 'again' and kotosi mo 'this year also,' the caller presents himself as a regular customer of the company. His utterance is therefore an example of a "formulation of person" type maeoki. The customer then recharacterizes his initial request by indicating that he would like to confirm something, and asks about the requirements for a

Types of JBCs

179

discount on purchases. As in the other multi-turn maeoki we have considered in this chapter, the caller uses the EP for these successive approximations of his reason-for-call. (6)

Maeoki from a customer's toiawase about discounts on book purchases [TB #1 A-14] 8 C E.tomata kotosi mo desu nee: = HES again this year also COP-IPF ATF 'Um, again this year also, you see,' 9 A

Hal yes 'Yes.'

IOC

ano: Eigo kyoozai no hoo hes English language teaching materials CN alternative hattyuu sitai to omou n desu ga, place order-iPF-DES QT think EP CP 'um, it's that (I) think (I/we)'d like to place an order for English language teaching materials, but....'

11A

Hal yes 'Yes.'

12C

tyotto kakunin sasete itadakitai ndesukedone? just confirm do-cAu-GER receive-DES-iPF EP CP SP 'it's just that (I)'d like to take the liberty of confirming (something), but you see?'

13 A

Hal BC

'Mhm.' 14C

Tookyoo-syoten-san tte ano: ikura-ka izyoo, tairyoo ni Tokyo Books (+) QT HES some amount above large quantity GL tyuumon sum to, zyuppaassento waribiki ni narimasita kke. order do-ipp QT ten percent discount GL become-PF Q (colloq.) 'with Tokyo Books, was it that if you order above some amount, in a large quantity, there's a 10 percent discount?'

180 Negotiating Moves These examples as well as other toiawase not shown here demonstrate that customers and commercial service recipients alike frame a variety of reasons-for-call in a consistent manner. In straightforward inventory confirmation requests, callers such as Yamada can make their needs known in a single turn maeoki. In more detailed inquiries, callers employ a multi-turn maeoki. In either case, the explanations are typically framed by the EP, and callers will frequently incorporate a permission request before proceeding beyond the initial, general reason-for-call. Of course, depending upon the nature of the toiawase, the remainder of the call is sometimes more complex than the basic example discussed at the outset of this chapter. For example, the call recipient may initiate an "interrogative series" of insertion sequences in order to obtain additional information necessary to respond to the customer's inquiry. In other cases, the caller may volunteer information such as a membership number, product number, or the like which serves the same purpose. But these calls are alike in that customers share a common overall purpose for the call (to obtain information), and they present that reason in a strikingly similar fashion.

4.3. MERCHANDISE ORDERS The next type of call we will consider are merchandise orders. In the Tokyo Books recordings, there are a few examples of book order calls placed by customers as well as at least 25 tokens of book orders and hold requests made by Ms. Yamada to book publishers, wholesalers, the company's own bookstore, and their warehouses. In the Kansai Imports data, orders placed by customers came in on a different line from those being recorded for this study, so these are not represented in the corpus. However, there were a few calls in which Kansai Imports representatives contacted their regular shippers in order to request supplies such as boxes, labels, and the like. The conversations presented below are taken from the group of calls placed by Ms. Yamada at Tokyo Books. While one could claim that any similarities in this subset of the data arise from the fact that they involve only one caller, it should be emphasized that these calls involve a wide range of call recipients. Some were book wholesalers with whom Tokyo Books had a previously established business relationship. Others were companies that Yamada was contacting for the first time. Yet others were in-house Tokyo Books employees, located in the same building as Yamada or at a location removed from her office. As we will see, while there is an underlying similarity to these calls, there are also some interesting variations due to "local" considerations and the nature of the caller-call recipient relationship. The first example we will consider represents one of the most common sorts of calls in the Tokyo Books data, namely one in which Ms. Yamada contacts a publisher to place a book order (the complete text appears in appendix 5): (7)

Opening of a book order call to a publisher [TB #1B-13] 1

((phone rings))

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181

2 A X-syuppan -sya de gozaimasu. X Publishing Company COP-IPF (+) 'X Publishers.' 3 C

Syoten desu ga,.= book company COP-IPF CP '(I)'m (with a) book company, but

4 C

=osewa ni natte orimasu::.= assistance GL become-GER [thank you for your continued assistance.]'

5 A

Osewa -sama de gozaimasu. assistance person (+) COP-IPF (+) ['Thank you for your patronage.']

6 C

Tyuumon it -ten onegai-sitai n desu keredomo. order one item beg-iPF-DESvl' EP CP 'It's that (I)'d like to request an order for one item, but....'

7 A

Hal, doozo. yes please (go ahead) 'Yes, please go ahead!'

8 C

E: taitoru ga [title name]. HES title SUB 'Urn, (the) title (is) [title name].'

As we saw earlier in the inventory confirmation example, Yamada identifies herself only as "a book company." In contrast to that call, however, she and the call recipient exchange business salutations. Then in line 6—again, the usual anchor position—she presents her maeoki: Tyuumon it-ten onegai-sitai n desu keredomo. In other calls of the same type which Yamada placed to publishers and wholesalers whom she contacted regularly, she varied her maeoki only slightly, perhaps adding a hesitation marker or specifying the type of order, i.e., hon no tyuumon, 'a book order' vs. e-hon no tyuumon 'a picture book order.' On occasion she also adopted a different, non-EP form of the predicate, such as onegai-itasimasu rather than the desiderative onegai-sitai n desu ga which she used above. Then following the call recipient's go-ahead (such as Hai, doozo in line 7 of the excerpt above), she either provided the title of the book she wanted to order, or specified the number of volumes before going on to indicate the title. Aside from these small changes and the expected variation in titles and number of volumes requested, however, these calls proceeded in an almost identical fashion.

182 Negotiating Moves However, if we consider the following segment from a call in which Yamada was contacting a particular firm with whom she did not have a regular business relationship, we may observe some of the adjustments she makes to her "exposition" based on these differing circumstances: (8)

Opening of call to a service provider with whom the caller does not have an established relationship [TB #18-37] 1

((phone rings))

2 A

T-syuppan hanbai desu. T-publishers and distributors COP-IFF T-Publishers and Distributors.'

3 C Ano, kotira syoten de Tookyoo Syoten to HES this side book company COP-GER Tokyo Books QT moosimasu: osewa// ni natte orimasu:. be called-iPF 4" assistance GL become-GER be-ipp 4> 'Um, this [side of the conversation] is a book company, and (we)'re called Tokyo Books. [Thank you for your continued assistance.]' 4 A Hail Osewa (ni) narimasu. yes assistance GL become-iPF 'Yes! [ 'Obliged to you for your patronage.]' 5 C Ano desu ne, onsya de dasarete orimasu syoseki o HES COP-IPF ATF your company INST publish-pAS be-iPF (+) books OBJ 6 C

desu ne, tyuumon sasete itadakitai COP-IPF ATF order do-CAU-GER receive-DES-ipp^

7 C

n desu keredoMO EP CP 'Um, well you see, a book published by your company you see, it's that (I)'d like to take the liberty of ordering it, BUT.../

8 A

Hail yes 'Yes!'

9 C yorosii

desyoo

ka.

good (+) COP-TENT Q

'Would it be all right?'

10 A Eeto kotira no hoo, ... hazimete desyoo ka. hes this side first time COP-TENT Q 'Um, might it be....the first time (you're ordering from) us?' 11C

Hai? A, nido-me desu. pardon? oh second time COP-IPF 'Pardon? Oh, it's the second time.'

After the call recipient opens the call with a statement as to her department and company affiliation, in an unusual move Yamada identifies herself not only as a book company, but more specifically by her own company name (Ano, kotira syoten de Tookyoo Syoten to moosimasu). By completing the utterance with the predicate to moosimasu, rather than with desu as is typical of her other routine book order calls, Yamada also signals to the call recipient that this is perhaps the first time she has contacted that recipient and/or that company—in short, she performs a self-introduction, rather than simply a self-identification. But despite her acknowledgment that this is not a call between regular business acquaintances, Yamada nonetheless extends the ritual business salutation osewa ni natte orimasu, and the call recipient reciprocates with the slightly reduced form osewa narimasu. Yamada then begins her transitional maeoki utterance with the attention-focusing phrase ano desu ne, and explains that she would like to order a book published by the call recipient's company (pnsya de dasarete orimasu syoseki o desu ne, tyuumon sasete itadakitai n desu keredoMO). The tone she adopts here is quite formal, especially as compared to her other calls in this group of data. For example, she uses the phrase onsya for 'your [esteemed] company' and substitutes tyuumon sasete itadakitai for her more usual tyuumon onegai-sitai', the phrase dasarete orimasu also incorporates a neutral-polite ending.2 In response to her maeoki, the call recipient provides a continuer (Hai!), probably with the expectation that Yamada would then identify the specific book that she would like to order. This is in fact what Yamada did at the same juncture in the first book order call presented in example (7) above, as well in many other similar calls in the corpus. Here, however, Yamada responds to the continuer with a tentative permission request: Yorosii desyoo ka. The call recipient, hearing this in addition to the other formal language which Yamada adopts, appears to have surmised that Yamada is not a regular customer, for she asks Eeto kotira no hoo, ...hazimete desyoo ka 'Um, might it be...the first time (you're ordering from) us?' Yamada seems somewhat taken aback by the question, replying initially with the utterance Hai? which in this context is akin to 'Pardon?' in English. She then admits that it is her second time. This call opening illustrates the interactional import and consequences of a shift in linguistic usage on the part of the caller. By using the stylistic distinctions available to her in Japanese, Yamada can present herself in a different way than she would in more routine calls to regular business acquaintances. The call recipient's question to Yamada about whether she was a first-time customer also functions to display her recognition of those signals. Clearly these

184 Negotiating Moves conversationalists are working collaboratively to co-construct their present reality—that is, to work out the details as to their role-relationship of the moment. Returning now to the initial book order call that was presented in (7), in a subsequent segment of the call we can observe a collaborative effort between the conversationalists of another sort. Recall that Yamada had just specified the title of the book she wished to order. On hearing this, the call recipient responds as follows: (9)

Discussing prices [TB #1B-13] 9 A

Teika no hoo, owakari ni narimasu ka: ? price CN alternatives be clear-ipft* Q 'Are you aware of the price choices?'

IOC A, anoo, osiete itadakemasu ka? oh HES tell-GER receive-iPF-por*!' Q 'Oh, um, could you tell me?' 11A Eto, nana -sen -en TO, hes seven thousand yen and 'Um, ¥7000 AND, 12C

Hal ACK

'Mhm.' 13 A sen nihyaku sanzyuu-roku -en TO, one thousand two hundred thirty -six yen and '¥1236 AND, 14C

Hal ACK

'Mhm.' ISA

mini-ban no roppyaku nizyuu-en to,= mini version CN six hundred twenty yen and

16 A

=san-ten aru ndesuga. three items be-ipp EP CP 'the ¥620 mini-version, it's that there are three of them, but....'

Types of JBCs

185

17C A, soo desu ka=. oh so COP-IPF Q 'Oh, is that right.' 1 8C

=Zya, sen nihyaku sanzyuu roku -en no mono o, well one thousand two hundred thirty-six yen CN thing OBJ

19C

is -satu onegai-itasimasu:. one volume b Well then, (I)'d like one volume of the one (that is) ¥1236.'

At first glance (to the reader) and perhaps on first hearing to a layperson unfamiliar with such transactions, a question such as Teika no hoo, owakari ni narimasu ka? in line 9 might seem puzzling. While one might not expect a caller in Yamada's situation to know the prices for a book she is ordering, judging by other book order and toiawase calls in the corpus, it is usually the service recipient or customer who initiates a query about price (as in the toiawase example in (5) above) rather than the call recipient. But as the subsequent interaction in (9) makes clear, the reason behind the call recipient's question is the fact that there are various versions of the book, with corresponding differences in price. In a sense, then, the service provider is extending an offer of assistance by asking if the caller is aware of the price choices. Yamada accepts the offer by asking the call recipient to inform her of those options, which she does in lines 11-16, concluding the utterance with the EP and a clause particle (san-ten am n desu go). This leaves her explanation is open-ended; it is not necessary for the call recipient to explicitly ask Yamada which book she would like to order. In response, Yamada requests the book priced at ¥1236. What follows is a typical wrap-up to a call between Yamada and a book supplier. First, the clerk indicates she has understood the content of the order by saying Hal, wakarimasita, and thereby provides what could be interpreted as a pre-closing bid. However, she does not wait for Yamada to reply, and instead continues without a pause to request the bansen or 'agency code' which bookstores use to refer to the intermediaries who process these orders. (Recall that the Fukuda Books clerk also used this term in the conversation we considered in chapter 1.) Yamada obviously knows from experience what is expected of her here, for in lines 21-33 she provides that number as well as the name of the Tokyo ward in which her company is located, together with her company name, all at a rapid clip. The call recipient responds to each of these elements with back-channel aizuti, which serve as go-ahead signals for Yamada to continue. In line 33, Yamada also performs a ritual well-known to Japanese speakers, which consists of explaining the Chinese characters (kanzi) which are used to write her (actual) company name. (10)

Requesting identification details [TB #18-13] 20 A Hal, wakarimasita. Bansen onegai-itasimasu yes beclear-pp agency code beg-ipp^ 'Okay, understood. (The) agency code, please.'

1 86 Negotiating Moves 21 C Hai. [Agency name] de:, yes INST 'Okay, (it's) through [agency name],' 22 A Hai. ACK

'Mhm.' ((in lines 23-27, Yamada provides the number in three parts, with the clerk confirming each in turn)) 2 9 C Sinzyuku-ku. . Shinjuku ward 'Shinjuku [ward].' 30 A Sinzyuku-ku, hai. Shinjuku ward yes ' Shinj uku [Ward] , okay . ' 3 1C

Tookyoo Syoten to moosimasu, Tokyo Books QT be called-ipp 4> '(I)'m (with a company) called Tokyo Books.'

32 A Hai. ACK

'Mhm.' 33 C

((caller then explains the way to write the kanzi characters in her company name, i.e., in the original name, which is withheld here))

In line 34 below, the clerk again says Hai, wakarimasita, which she likely intends as a pre-closing bid this time because she leaves room for Yamada to respond. Instead of accepting the bid, however, Yamada initiates an insertion sequence in which she requests that the book be sent to 'Yamada's attention' (De, Tookyoo Syoten no Yamada-ate ni site moraemasu ka?). The call recipient confirms the name, and Yamada acknowledges and affirms her confirmation by saying Hai in line 38. (11)

Attempting to close the call [TB #1B-13] 34 A Hai, \vakarimasita. yes be clear-pp 'Okay, understood.'

Types of JBCs 35C

De, Tookyoo Syoten no Yamada-ate ni site and Tokyo Books CN Yamada addressed to do-GER

36 C

moraemasu ka:? receive-fr-out-grp^F-POT Q

187

'And, could (I) have you address it to Yamada of Tokyo Books?' 37 A

Yamada-sama desu ne!= Ms. Yamada (+) COP-IPF SP 'It's Ms. Yamada, right!'

38 C

=Hai. yes 'Yes.'

In line 39, the call recipient issues a third pre-closing bid of Hai, wakarimasita, and in response Yamada inserts yet another question, asking when the package is likely to arrive (Hannyuu nan-niti ni narimasu desyoo?). After providing the answer (Eeto, suiyoobi ni narimasu). without a following pause the clerk introduces herself, saying Yamazaki to moosimasu. Yamada acknowledges the self-identification with Hai, but does not reciprocate because her earlier request to send the package to her attention functions as an indirect self-identification. Once all of these identifying details have at last been settled, the two take their leave of each other in lines 42 and 43. (12)

Closing a book order call [TB #18-13] 39A

Hai, \vakarimasita. yes be clear-pp 'Okay, understood.'

40C

Hannyuu nan -niti ni narimasu// desyoo? incoming shipment what day GL become-ipp COP-TENT 'What might the shipment arrival date be?'

41A Eeto, suiyoobi ni narimasu, Yamazaki to moosimasu. HES Wednesday GL become Yamazaki QT be called-ippvl/ 'Um, it'll be on Wednesday, (I)'m called Yamazaki.' 42 C

Hai. Zya yorosiku onegai-itasimasu, situree// itasima:su. ACK well then well beg-ippvl/ rudeness d 'Okay. Well then, please do (this for me). Good-bye.'

188

Negotiating Moves 43 A Arigatoo gozaimasita. thank you (+) 'Thank you.'

Of course, not every merchandise order in the corpus included such an extended pre-closing and closing section. In-house calls placed by Yamada to her colleagues at the bookstore, for example, were often simpler because they consisted of a hold request such as torioki onegai-sitai n desu ga and an indication of the title(s) and number of copies she wanted put aside for a customer. Calls placed by customers did not usually involve the bansen codes discussed earlier, but they might instead include an "interrogative series" of questions and answers initiated by the call recipient about the customer's address, telephone number, fax number, and so forth. Despite these adjustments that reflect situational particulars, however, the overall sequential organization of these calls was similar. In addition, within the inter-organizational merchandise orders, conversationalists clearly displayed their knowledge of register-specific terms such as bansen, hannyuu, and the like by using them on a regular basis, and service recipients also demonstrated their understanding of how to perform this sub-genre of call by frequently volunteering the information needed by service providers to accommodate their requests.

4.4. SHIPPING CONFIRMATIONS In this section, we shift our discussion to a group of calls that were superficially straightforward in their opening and transition sections, but which usually developed into more complicated discussions. The example we will consider from this group is a call from a Kansai Imports representative to a company called Kobe Shipping. A bit of background information is in order here, since these shipping confirmations appeared frequently in the Kansai data. In contrast, few such calls have been found in the Tokyo Books recordings. One example that did appear in that group has already been discussed in chapter 1, namely the "Ha-ha-ha no hanasi" conversation between Ms. Yamada and the clerk at Fukuda Books. However, Yamada did not explicitly present that call as a "shipping confirmation" in her maeoki; instead, she simply said she wanted to have the clerk look into something for her (tyotto osirabe itadakitai n desu ga). As has been mentioned previously, Kansai Imports is an international company that imports food, books, and general merchandise from the United States to Japan for primarily non-Japanese customers. Kobe Shipping is one of two companies in the Kansai area that regularly provide regional delivery services for Kansai Imports; their business is comparable to that of United Parcel Service (UPS) in the United States.3 As often happens with deliveries in the United States, customers may not be home when a delivery attempt is made. In such situations, Kobe Shipping typically leaves a delivery notice for the customer, but since their service is not bilingual, the message is written in Japanese. Many Kansai Imports customers cannot read Japanese well enough to understand these notices, so they often contact Kansai Imports, rather than Kobe Shipping directly, to report or in many cases complain that they did not receive their merchandise. As a result, Kansai Imports then

Types of JBCs

189

must act as an intermediary on behalf of the customer in order to arrange for Kobe Shipping to make another delivery. This type of situation transpired quite frequently; according to the staff at Kansai Imports, delivery-related problems occurred at least once a day. (This figure also includes arrangements for pick-up of damaged or otherwise problematic merchandise to be returned.) Two members of the operations staff at Kansai Imports regularly contacted Kobe Shipping with regard to these delivery arrangements. One is Ms. Watanabe, who appears in the call to be discussed here. The other representative is Ms. Yamamoto, who appears in the problem report calls to be discussed in the next chapter. At Kobe Shipping, there are three or four clerks in the dispatch section who typically handle these calls. In the following conversation, however, since the recording began after Watanabe had made a switchboard request, and the requested person never provides his name, it is not possible to clearly ascertain his identity. (13)

Opening of a shipping confirmation call [KI # 1 A-11 ] 1

((recording begins after call is transferred to A))

2 A Most most:. hello 'Hello/ 3 C Mosi most: = hello 'Hello.' 4 A =Hai, oden\va//kawarimasita:. yes phone change-PF 'Yes, [(I)'ve (ex)changed (phones with someone else).]' 5 C A, osewa ni natte 'masu:. = oh assistance GL become-GER be-iPF 'Oh, [thank you for your continued assistance.]' 6 C

=Kansai Yunyuu no Watanabe to moosimasu:. = Kansai Imports CN Watanabe QT be called-ippvp '(I)'m called Watanabe of Kansai Imports.'

7 A

=A, (osewa ni) natte 'masu:. oh assistance GL become-GER be-iPF 'Oh, [thank you for your continued patronage.]'


Osewa ni natte 'masu:. assistance GL become-GER be-iPF ['Thank you for your continued assistance.']

9 A Hal BC

'Mhm.' The call begins with what should now be a familiar routine to the reader. The call recipient uses Mosi mosi to indicate his presence on the line after being called to the phone, and Watanabe mirrors his utterance. Then the call recipient announces that he has 'changed phones with someone else' (Hai, odenwa kawarimasita), and Watanabe responds with a ritual business salutation and a self-identification/introduction. The call recipient gives a reciprocal salutation, which, in an unusual variation on the typical routine, is followed by a second, repeated utterance of the same salutation by Watanabe. Finally, the call recipient's back-channel utterance (Hai) in line 9 functions as a "passing move," displaying his understanding that Watanabe likely has some business to discuss. In the next segment of the conversation, Watanabe provides a single-turn maeoki utterance: Eeto, ippan de kakunin site hosii no ga am n desu kedomo. The ippan de phrase refers to the 'general,' non-perishable grocery items side of Kansai Imports' business, as opposed to their other two divisions which deal with perishable grocery items and books and videos. Watanabe thus presents her maeoki as a confirmation request regarding this side of the business. The clerk quickly encourages her to go ahead through his latched utterance A, doozo: in line 12, but Watanabe nonetheless produces a permission request, which the clerk accepts by saying Hai. The rapid-fire exchange of their latched utterances suggests that these participants are familiar with the type of interaction in which they are engaged, and that such shipping confirmations are therefore a "routine" procedure for these conversationalists. IOC

Eeto:, ippan de kakunin site hosii no ga HES general LOC confirmation do-GER desire MOM SUB

11 C aru n desu kedomo: = be (inanimate)-ipp EP CP 'Um, it's that there's something (I)'d like to have (you) confirm in the general (side/type of the orders), but....' 12 A

—A, doozo:.= oh please (go ahead) 'Oh, please go ahead.'

Types of JBCs 13 C =Ii

desu

191

ka:?=

gOOd COP-IPF Q

'Is it all right (to ask)?' 14 A

=Hai:. yes 'Yes.'

In subsequent lines not reproduced here (but shown in the complete transcript of the call in appendix 6), without any kind of prompt from the clerk's side. Watanabe provides the denpyoobangoo or tracking number which the shipping company uses to trace shipments. Watanabe breaks down the 10-digit number into manageable chunks of three or four digits at a time, and the clerk repeats each group in turn. Once he has the complete number, he asks Watanabe to wait a moment, and apparently enters the number into his computer, since the noise of keyboard punching is audible in the background. When he comes back onto the line, he announces he will confirm the number, and as he does so Watanabe corrects one of the digits. It is interesting to note here that although Watanabe is actually the one who mistakenly uttered the wrong number, it is the clerk who apologizes for the miscommunication. Finally he tracks down the shipment, for he returns to the phone and explains that on the 14th the package apparently went out on a truck for delivery from the shipper's Osaka office (Ee:tto, kotira no hoo zyuu-yokka no hi desu NE, anoo Oosaka-siten no hoo de haitatu motidasi: kakatte orimasu kedoMO:). He breaks up these and subsequent explanations into a series of shorter phrases, each of which he concludes with either the attention-focusing phrase /desu nel, the gerund (-te/-de) form, or the /EP + clause particle/ pattern we have observed so many times before in a wide variety ofmaeoki and related topic-developing utterances. He also utters the final mora of each of these concluding forms at a higher pitch and with additional stress in order to signal the end of each of these phrases. In response, Watanabe simultaneously displays a recognition of these junctures, acknowledges the information he is giving her, and provides a continuer through her collaborative aizuti ('back-channel') utterances. (14)

Explaining the status of a delivery [TB # 1 A-11 ] 38 A Ee:tto, kotira no hoo zyuu-yokka no hi desu HES

this

CN side 14th

'Urn, (on) this end, (on) the 14th, you see,' 39 C

=Hai:. ACK

'Mhm.'

NE,=

CN day COP-IPF ATF

192 Negotiating Moves 40 A anoo Oosaka-siten no hoo de haitatu motidasi: HES Osaka office CN side INST delivery take out-iNF 41A

kakatte orimasu be showing-IFF ^ CP

kedoMO:

'um, we're showing it's been taken out for delivery via the Osaka office, BUT' 42C

A, hai.//De— oh yes and 'Oh, yes. And—'

43A Hal, tabun iti -do: moti:dasi:TE, nanka huzai yes probably one time take out-GER somehow not there 44 A ka nanka de moti:kaette 'ru nzyanaikana or something COP-GER bring back-GER be-ipp EP-NEG-> Q SP 45 A to omou n desu kedoMO, QT think EP CP 'Yes, I think (they) probably took it out once (for delivery) and, given that (the customer) wasn't there or something, (I)'m wondering if it isn't that they've brought it back, BUT....' 46 C

-A soo desu ka. oh so COP-IPF Q 'Oh, really.'

47A

haitatu no kanryoo no hoo wa natte'masen no DE:.= delivery CN completion CN side TOP become-GER be-NEG-iPF EP-GER 'it's that (we're showing) there's no completion of delivery, SO....'

48 C

=A soo desu ka.= oh so COP-IPF Q 'Oh, really.'

49 A

=Hai:. yes 'Yes.'

In response to the clerk's comment in lines 40 and 41 that the package was taken out for delivery on the 14th, Watanabe not only provides aizuti but also makes a bid for a turn in the conversation, saying De— 'And—.' She breaks off her utterance abruptly, however, when she

Types of JBCs

193

sees that the clerk has more to say. In lines 43-45 he speculates that the driver probably took the package out for delivery, but on discovering that the customer was not at home 'or something' (e.g., did not hear the doorbell or could not come to the door), he thinks that the driver might have brought the package back (tabun iti-do: moti:dasi:TE, nanka huzai ka nan ka de moti:kaette 'ru n zya nai ka na to omou n desu kedoMO). Watanabe merely responds by saying A, soo desu ka 'Oh, really' without any uptake, and the clerk continues with his explanation, finally noting that there is no indication of a completed delivery (haitatu no kanryoo no hoo wa natte 'masen no DE:). In response, Watanabe again says A soo desu ka, and the clerk confirms the situation by saying Hai, thereby providing Watanabe with an opportunity to take the floor. She does so in line 50 by first acknowledging her understanding of the situation (Wakarimasita). Then she provides a series of utterances which essentially reframes or recharacterizes what has happened, but which also provides a rationale for the instructions she is about to give him with regard to the package. Structurally these utterances are similar, in that she concludes almost all of them with the gerund form of the EP (no de), which evokes the sense in English of 'Given that (X)...' or "It's that (X). so....' She also suprasegmentally highlights the last mora of her first two utterances in order to elicit aizuti from the clerk as she continues with her explanation (..noDE). (15)

50 C

Reframing the situation in preparation for a request for assistance

Wakarimasita. Anoo, haitatu-sitee[bi] ga sakuzitu desita no DE be clear-pF HES set delivery (date) SUB yesterday COP-PF EP-GER 'I see. Um, given that the day it was to be delivered was YEsterday,'

51 A =A, hai:. oh yes

'Ah, yes.' 52 C

de: kyoo: moo zyuugo-niti ni natte simaimasita no DE:,= and today already 1 5th GL end up being-pp EP-GER 'and today it's already [ended up being] the 15th, SO,'

53 A

=A, hai:.= oh yes

'Ah, yes.' 54 C

=huzai de mo kekkoo desu no— doa no tokoro ni not there COP-GER even fine (+) COP-IPF EP door CN area GL

194

Negotiating Moves 55 C

oite itte hosii to iu koto de. leave-GER go-ona desire QT say-ipp matter COP-GER 'even if they're not there, that's fine—they said they wanted (the shipper) to leave it near the door,'

56A A soo desu ka:.= oh so COP-IPF Q

'Oh, I see.' 57C

=senpoo kara renraku hairimasita no de. other party from contact come in-pp EP-GER 'it's that the information came in from the customer, so'

58A A soo desu ka.= oh so COP-IPF Q 'Oh, really.' 59C =Ee. yes

'Yes.' 60 A

Hal ACK

'Okay.' In this explanation, Watanabe first points out that the projected delivery date which had been set for the package was the previous day (Anoo, haitatu-sitee[bi] get sakuzitu desita no DE). She then uses the EP to underscore the fact that today is 'already' the 15th (de: kyoo: moo zyuugo-niti ni natte simaimasita no DE:}. Her next move is particularly interesting in that it indirectly reports a request made by the customer (who is not explicitly mentioned until line 57) as to how to handle the delivery. The instructions are that the driver is to leave the package near the door, even if (the customer) is not at home: huzai de mo kekkoo desu no— doa no tokoro ni oite itte hosii to iu koto de}. The clerk responds to this information by saying A soo desu ka:, and Watanabe immediately continues by explaining that this information came in from the customer, or literally speaking, 'the other party': senpoo kara renraku hairimasita no de. Again, the clerk responds with A soo desu ka but no further uptake, and the two then acknowledge their understanding of what has been said thus far, using Ee and Hai. In lines 61-62, Watanabe resumes the discussion by reiterating her request that the shipper leave the package for the customer, explaining that her company would take full responsibility for their doing so. (Her reformulation of her earlier, more indirect request for this action may have become necessary because the clerk had not yet made a move toward indicating he would

Types of JBCs

195

follow up on the matter.) The clerk then acknowledges Watanabe's instructions a bit more explicitly by saying Hai, wakarimasita in line 63, and goes on to discuss what needs to be done in order for his company to fulfill Watanabe's request: (16)

Negotiating delivery arrangements [KI # 1 A-11 ]

->

61C Anoo kotira no sekinin de:, anoo, HES this side CN responsibility COP-GER HES

->

62C

oil' oite itadakemasu ka:? leave-GER do for future USC-POT-GER Q 'Urn, with our taking responsibility, um, could (we) have you leave it?'

63 A A, wakarimasita:.= oh, be clear-pp 'Oh, understood.' 64 C

=Hai. ACK

'Okay.' -> 65 A Itioo, anoo:, anoo:, (so)sita(ra) doo siyoo ka na, itioo, for now HES HES (so) do-cND how do-CNS-> Q SP for now -^

66 A maa genkan no mae ni de mo:, ano, well entryway CN front LOC COP-GER also HES

-> 67 A huzai-renraku: arimasuyo ne? = absence notice be-iPF SP SP 'For now, um, ah, in that case I wonder what we should do, for now, well, in the front of the entryway or something, um, you know there's (those) absence notices, right?' 68 C

=Hai. yes 'Yes.'

-> 69A sonobun anoo:, hanko osite moratte:,= that portion HES stamp push-GER receive-GER 'have (them) stamp that (with their personal seal), and'

196

Negotiating Moves 70 C

=Hai. ACK

'Okay.' ->

71A

anoo:, hatte morattara:,// hes stick-GER receive-CND 'um, if you'll have them stick it (on the door),'

->

72 A anoo, oit' okimasu: n DE. HES leave-GER do for future use-ipp F.P-GER 'um, it's that (we)'ll leave it for (them), SO...,' 73C A, soo destine! oh so COP-IPF SP 'Oh, right!' 74 A

=Hai. yes 'Yes.'

The clerk initially displays some hesitation and uncertainty as to how best to handle the situation (Itioo, anoo:, ano:, (so)sita(ra) doo siyoo ka na, itioo), and then proposes a solution, which involves the delivery notice slips (huzai-renraku) used by shippers when customers have missed a delivery. Tentatively he begins to suggest 'in the front of the entryway or something' (maa genkan no mae ni demo:}, but then shifts gears and checks to be sure that Watanabe knows about the existence of the delivery slips (ano, huzai-renraku: arimasuyo ne?). Once she acknowledges this, he goes on to request that she have (the customer) stamp the form with his or her hanko or 'personal seal' (used in Japan in lieu of a signature in such situations), and explains that if (the customer) would leave the form for them (e.g., in the front of the entryway or on the door), they would leave the package there (sono bun anoo: hanko osite moratte:, ano:, hatte morattara:, anoo, oit 'okimasu n DE) The number of hesitation markers which the clerk incorporates in these utterances, together with other discourse markers such as maa and itioo, conveys a non-threatening, unassertive tone to his explanation overall. In response, Watanabe enthusiastically agrees with his suggestion, saying^, soo desu ne! and indicates her understanding of what the shipper has just asked her to do by saying Wakarimasita. By way of summarizing the previous discussion, she promises to tell the customer to handle the situation 'in that way,' in other words, in the manner proposed by the clerk (sono yoo ni suru yoo ni s(o) yuutte okimasu no DE:). She concludes this utterance by using the gerund of the EP, and gives it the same kind of suprasegmental highlighting that both conversationalists had used in previous utterances. Both what she is saying here and how she delivers that information linguistically function together as a pre-closing bid to the conversation, and the clerk accepts this with an apology for troubling her (Hai, sumimasen ga:). Watanabe quickly inserts another

Types of JBCs

197

request, however, asking that he also put in a word to the driver 'over there' about the situation (Anoo, mukoo no doraibaa no kata ni mo itioo hito-koto itt'oite itadakemasu ka?). The clerk agrees to do so, and through an exchange of Hai's the conversationalists acknowledge that they have concluded their discussion. (17)

Wrapping up the discussion [KI # 1 A-11 ]

->

75 C

Wakarimasita, sonoyoo ni suruyoo ni be clear-PR that way GL do in such a way GL

-^

76 C

s(o) yuutte okimasu noDE: = that say-GER do for future use-IFF EP-GER 'Got it, it's that I'll tell (them) that, to do it in that way, SO....'

77A

=Hai, sumimasen ga:.= ACK be sorry-ipp CP 'Okay, (I)'m sorry (to trouble you), but....'

78 C

-Anoo, mukoo no doraibaa no kata ni mo itioo hes over there CN driver CN person (+) GL also for time being

79C

hito-koto itt' oite itadakemasu ka?= one thing say-GER do for future USC-GER receive-por IFF Q 'Um, could (we) have you put in a word for the time being to the driver over there, too?'

80A

=A, \vakarimasita=. oh be clear-pF 'Oh, understood.'

81C

=Hai. ACK

'Okay.' 82A

Hai=. ACK

'Okay.' The final portion of the closing to the call consists of a series of ritual utterances, in which Watanabe requests that things go well (Yorosiku onegai-simasu), the clerk expresses his thanks for her assistance in making the requested arrangements (Hai, doo mo), and the two take their leave of each other (Situree simasu).


Terminal exchange [KI # 1 A-11 ] 83 C

=Yorosiku onegai-// simasu:. well beg-ippvl' ['May things go well.']

84A

Hal, doo mo:. Situree//simasu:. yes thanks rudeness do-ipp 'Yes, thanks. Good-bye.'

85 C

Situree simasu: rudeness do-iPF 'Good-bye.'

Clearly the conversation we have just considered represents a more delicate interaction than the toiawase inquiries and merchandise orders we discussed earlier in this chapter. Let us briefly recap the moves which these participants use to present and resolve what ultimately turns out to have been a delivery problem. First, the caller provides her reason-for-call using terms that might suggest a straightforward matter of business, namely a 'confirmation' of a general merchandise order (Eeto:, ippan de kakunin site hosii no ga aru n desu kedomo:). She knows from experience with similar calls that the shipper will need the tracking number to trace the shipment, so after asking for and receiving permission to proceed, she provides the number. In the process of confirming that number, the clerk discovers an inconsistency between what he has heard and what the caller had said, but he is the one to apologize. After locating the relevant information on his computer, the clerk reports the status of the shipment, but in a way that does not immediately present the "bottom line," i.e.. that the shipment is as yet incomplete. Rather, he takes a narrative approach, explaining that he is 'showing' on his computer that the package in question went out on a truck for delivery, but that, perhaps due to the customer's absence or some related reason, the driver may have brought the package back to the shipping company. Only then does he acknowledge to the caller the official status of the delivery. In a rather similarly indirect fashion, the caller then responds by explaining that since 'yesterday' was the designated shipping date and since it is 'already' the 15th, i.e.. a (full) day later, it would be fine if the shipper were to leave the package near the door, even if the customer isn't home... since the customer had contacted her company with this information. Here again, some critical information—in this case the fact that the customer had authorized Kansai Imports to have the package left in his/her absence—has been withheld until the end of the explanation. From a certain perspective, this might appear to be a rather "inefficient" and perhaps "ineffective" rhetorical strategy, since one might consider that the main informational point to be conveyed on the shipper's part is that the delivery is still incomplete, and on the caller's part that the customer had asked her to arrange for a re-delivery. However, based on a review of a number of similar calls in the corpus which were placed for the same purpose (ostensibly to "confirm" a delivery), it appears that the usual strategy adopted by conversationalists such as these who

Types of JBCs

199

are engaged in a regular business relationship with each other is not to present these details at the outset, but rather to explain the background to the situation instead. This approach clearly has interactional advantages, in that it does not place blame on one or the other conversationalist or their respective companies. The next segment of the conversation likewise demonstrates a concern for interactional consequences, when the clerk asks Watanabe to have the customer stamp the delivery notice with a hanko and post it near the door so that the shipper can leave the package. Although the conversationalists would probably not recognize this as such, what they essentially are engaged in is an everyday negotiation of the details necessary for the fulfillment of a service request. While the stakes may not be as high as those in formal negotiations of the sort conducted between diplomatic or corporate representatives from two different countries, the need to proceed cautiously is nonetheless understandable. Ultimately in this case, the participants are able to co-construct a successful outcome for what had developed into a problematic situation.

4.5. PROBLEM REPORTS We thus see that shipping confirmations of the sort presented in the previous section may function as problem reports. Whether or not the caller intended to "disguise" her call as a shipping confirmation is neither clear nor necessarily relevant. The point here is that taken together, the moves that Watanabe adopts in presenting her reason-for-call and in providing instructions for a re-delivery, and the moves which the clerk employs in responding to her shipping confirmation request, reflect a sequential organization in which problematic and/or face-threatening information is downplayed rather than being presented "up-front." In the next chapter, we will consider two more examples of calls in'which a service recipient contacts a service provider in order to investigate a problematic situation. In these conversations, the initial maeoki utterances which the callers provide neither explicitly request the assistance of the service provider nor specify some sort of problem. Rather, they initiate a narrative in which the caller provides salient details such as the type and number of goods involved, a reference to the date of the transaction in question, and in one call, the tracking number of a package. The maeoki utterances in these problem report calls thus contrast with the maeoki in the shipping confirmation we have just considered (Eeto, ippan de kakunin site hosii no ga aru n desu kedomo) and with that of the Hahaha no hanasi conversation discussed in chapter 1 (Ano desu nee! Tyotto osirabe itadakitai n desu ga). Both of these strategies, namely the general request for assistance and the narrative-launching maeoki, were observed with notable regularity in the JBC corpus in calls by customers and commercial service recipients to service providers (Yotsukura, forthcoming). Of the calls that have been transcribed, there were only two conversations in which JBC conversationalists explicitly mentioned a problem at the outset of the call. In both of these conversations, the callers announced that an 'accident' (ziko) had occurred such that a shipment of goods had been damaged. Given the urgent nature of this particular kind of problem, such a shift in caller strategy from the more usual indirect approach seems understandable.

200 Negotiating Moves While it is certainly possible that the behavior of JBC conversationalists in this corpus may not reflect that of service recipients and service providers more generally throughout Japan, based on the large number of calls involving problematic transactions in the data, this behavior does appear to represent interactional patterns for these particular communities of speakers. In the next chapter, after considering the two problem reports from Kansai Imports, we will consider a few examples of problem reports in English in order to suggest that the strategies adopted in somewhat parallel circumstances in that language, at least by some speakers, are more direct in nature.

4.6. CONCLUDING REMARKS In the JBC corpus, some of the most easily identifiable calls were those of the types cited in this chapter. The reason for this is that the maeoki for each tended to reflect a similar pattern. For example, the purpose of the toiawase inquiries was to obtain information, such as prices, specifications on items in a catalog, contact information for a particular person, and so forth. Another sub-group of toiawase calls are stock or inventory inquiries, such as the one placed by Ms. Yamada which is discussed here. Despite the variation in the specific kind of information sought, however, the form of the maeoki used to initially request that information was usually of a general nature, particularly in cold calls where there was no prior relationship between the caller and call recipient. Some were very broad, such as tyotto oukagai sitai n desu ga (literally, 'I'd like to make an inquiry'), whereas others specified the general class of information, such zaiko no kakunin o it-ten onegai-sitai n desu ga ('I'd like to request confirmation of your stock of one item, but'). In a later turn, callers would then provide more specifics as to the kind of information they were seeking. Another feature of toiawase calls that we observed, which is shared with shipping confirmations and also, on occasion, with merchandise orders, is the permission request. We pointed out that the purpose of this request was to ascertain whether the call recipient was ready to accommodate a toiawase kind of call, either in terms of the time it might require or in terms of access to a computer or database to check on the information being requested. Once the caller received permission from the call recipient to proceed, we found that some callers such as Ms. Yamada who make stock confirmations on a regular basis would provide various information over a series of turns in order to specify what they were looking for, without any prompting from the call recipient. Merchandise orders (e.g., book orders) unfolded in a similar fashion, except that the maeoki varied very little, with the caller simply specifying tyuumon 'order' or perhaps hon no tyuumon as an indication of the nature of the transaction being sought, as in Tyuumon it-ten onegai sitai n desu keredomo. Where there were significant shifts in the maeoki presentation, such as a shift in style to a more formal register, we observed that these were "noticeable" by clerks receiving such calls and might be commented upon through questions about the caller's order history with the company. We also pointed out that these stylistic distinctions, as well as the ways in which callers present themselves (e.g., syoten desu ga) help the parties in the conversation to

Types ofJBCs

201

achieve a proper alignment at the outset of the call in terms of their role relationship so that they can then proceed with the business being specified by the caller. In cases in which identities were not made clear at the outset through a self-identification or company affiliation, they were typically revealed at the ends of calls, through an "interrogative series" of questions whose purpose was to ascertain particulars for processing the book or other merchandise order. Shipping confirmations, although clearly presented as such at the outset, proved to be what we might call a "masked" form of problem report (after Jones, 1995), since these calls were usually prompted by contact from a customer who claimed to have missed a delivery. Kansai Imports staff members who dealt with such problems on a regular basis were aware that such situations did not always turn out to be a matter of the shipper having returned a package to the shipping company. For example, sometimes a package had been left with a neighbor, who had signed for it, but the package recipient was unaware of this. So for Kansai Imports to present the call at the outset as a problem report, saying that a package had not been delivered, would be problematic on an interactional level—hence the convenience of a neutral request such as a shipping confirmation. (Of course, the very fact that a caller makes such a confirmation request may nonetheless signal to the service provider that there could be a potential problem with a delivery.) We noted that the way in which these shipping calls developed displayed a tendency for "critical" information to be held back if it was of a potentially negative or face-threatening nature. Thus Watanabe did not inform the shipper at the outset of her call that she was contacting him on behalf of a customer. Likewise, although the shipping clerk was able to determine the status of the order on his computer, he did not convey that actual news until a later point in the call, after his explanation as to what likely had happened to the package. These conversations therefore seem to require a great deal of care and interactional "work" on the part of the service provider and the service recipient, in order to maintain good relations essential to their ongoing business. In the next chapter we will consider two examples of Japanese problem reports which relate to shipping issues. We will also compare several contrasting samples of calls in both English and Japanese from non-commercial customers making problem reports to customer service representatives. We will see that these problems similarly demand the attention of both participants in order to keep the call "on-track."

NOTES 1. The distinction being made here is between a 'total price' that includes a three percent national consumption tax, and the 'base' or 'pre-tax' price. 2. A non-commercial customer of Tokyo Books produced a similar but slightly less formal maeoki in a different call: Ee, sotira kara, sotira-sama ano, dasite orimasu:, eeto kyoozai o: koonyuu sitai n desu keredoMO,yorosiidesuka:? [TB #lB-44]

202

Negotiating Moves

3. In Japan, this service is referred to as either takuhaibin or takkyuubin, 'residential delivery.' The latter term was originally used exclusively as part of one of the more well-known companies' name (Kuroneko Yamato no takkyuubin), but the term has become a common noun, much like "Xerox" in American English.

5

PROBLEM PRESENTATION AND RESOLUTION IN JAPANESE BUSINESS TRANSACTIONAL CALLS

5.1. INTRODUCTION In chapter 4, we considered three of the types of conversations which are most representative of the JBC corpus, namely general toiawase inquiries, merchandise orders, and shipping confirmations. The first two types are relatively straightforward in nature and we observed that the participants in the calls presented were clearly familiar with the usual procedures for these types of interactions. Although the shipping confirmation example was also relatively straightforward at the outset, it became more complicated later in the call as the participants negotiated arrangements for a re-delivery. We concluded that maeoki utterances which suggest that a call may involve a "shipping confirmation" may be used for inquiries into a problematic situation, so that potentially face-threatening details may be withheld until later in the call. In this chapter, I will present and describe two conversations from the data corpus which illustrate other ways in which service professionals present problems and collaboratively seek their resolution. Each description will be preceded by an explanation of the nature of the relationship between the participants involved in the interaction. (For ease of reference, the full text for these conversations appears in appendixes 7 and 8.) The critical role of the extended predicate (EP) as a device in producing formulations (Heritage and Watson, 1979) will also be noted in the context of these calls. The first example illustrates a case in which a service provider and service recipient display what Graham (1985) has described as "interactional synchrony," working smoothly together to take care of an incomplete delivery. The second example demonstrates how speakers who are not in regular contact with each other through a service provider/service recipient role relationship may encounter difficulties in their communication. Their interaction displays tensions similar to those which Jefferson and Lee (1981) have described as "interactional asynchrony" in the "convergence of a 'troublestelling' and a 'service encounter.'"

204

Negotiating Moves

Following this discussion, we will move on to consider a few examples of problem reports in English from similar contexts, in that they represent calls by customers to commercial service providers. One of these conversations was recorded at Kansai Imports, and is one of the few business-related English calls in the corpus (most of the others were personal calls from friends of Kansai Imports operations staff members, since customer inquiries and orders in English usually came in to a "members-only" line that was not recorded for the study). Additional examples are taken from an investigation by lacobucci (1990) which examines reports about billing problems by customers to customer service representatives at an American telephone company. Two prescriptive examples from an English business etiquette manual for customer service representatives will also be presented as a point of comparison. We will then consider possible differences in problem reporting strategies among the Japanese and English speakers in these calls, and will propose that there may be a certain degree of culture-specificity in the form and content of accounts (Scott and Lyman, 1968; Buttny, 1993). We will also examine lacobucci's (1990) findings with respect to the use of formulations by American service providers in ascertaining and responding to callers' reports of problems, as well as her suggestion that there is often an asymmetrical disparity in the understanding and use of "acculturated practices" between customers and service providers in such service encounters on the telephone. Finally, we close the chapter with a summary of the negotiating moves which Japanese speakers employ in resolving problems. We first reiterate the importance of the EP to formulations in a variety of contexts in problem presentation and resolution. Next, we illustrate how service providers employ the consultative l-masyoo ka?l form in formulating service recipient preferences. Lastly, we observe how service providers use the l-masu n(o) del form as a statement of grounded assurance in order to display their willingness and intention to undertake steps toward resolving the problem for the service recipient.

5.2. PROBLEM PRESENTATION AND RESOLUTION IN JBCs: Two EXAMPLES 5.2.1. Reporting that a package did not arrive, without actually saying so This conversation is an interaction between representatives of Kansai Imports and Kansai Shipping who have a previously established business relationship. As was pointed out in chapter 4, two particular Kansai Imports representatives are in charge of contacting their usual shipping companies on behalf of non-Japanese speaking customers in order to make inquiries about incomplete deliveries. One of those representatives is Ms. Watanabe, who appeared in the shipping confirmation call in the previous chapter. The other representative is Ms. Yamamoto, who appears in this conversation. In the opening segment below, Yamamoto makes a switchboard request to speak with Mr. Kaneda, one of the employees whom she contacts regularly in Kobe Shipping's dispatch division.

Problem Presentation and Resolution in JBCs

205

This particular conversation concerns a shipment of books that was made on the 16th of November, from the Kansai Imports office to a customer. Prior to this conversation, the customer had contacted Kansai Imports to indicate that the shipment had not yet arrived. (7)

Opening of a problem report call [KI #3B-11] 1

((phone rings))

2 A Kobe Unyu desu. Kobe Shipping COP-IPF 'Kobe Shipping.' 3 C

=Kotira, Kansai Yunyuu no Yamamoto desu. = this Kansai Imports CN Yamamoto COP-IPF 'This (is) Yamamoto of Kansai Imports.'

4 A

=Hai, osewa// ni natt' orimasu:. yes assistance GL become-GER be-iPF sU ['Thank you for your continued patronage.']

5 C Doo mo, osewa ni natte orimasu:. in many ways assistance GL become be-ipp vU 'In many ways, [thank you for your continued assistance.]' 6 C E:to:, hassoo no Kaneda-san, onegai-dekimasu ka? HES dispatch CN Mr. Kaneda beg-iPF-poi^ o 'Um, may (I) have (Mr.) Kaneda of (the) dispatch (section)?' 7 A Hai, syoosyoo omati kudasai= yes a little waiting^ give-to-in-group-iPF^ 'Yes, please wait a moment.' 8 C

=Hai. ack 'Okay.' ((call recipient puts caller on hold))

9 A2 A, mosimosi. oh hello 'Oh, hello?'

206 Negotiating Moves IOC A, mosi most?//Kotira, Kansai Yunyuu no Yamamoto desu:. oh hello this Kansai Imports CN Yamamoto COP-IPF 'Oh, hello? This is (Ms.) Yamamoto of Kansai Imports.' 11A2 Kawarimasita. change-pp ['(I)'ve (ex)changed (phones with someone else).'] 12C

Doo mo,// osewa ni narimasu:. in many ways assistance GL become-ipp 'In many ways, [(I) am obliged (to you) for your assistance.]'

13A2 Osewa ni narimasu:. assistance GL become-iPF ['(I) am obliged (to you) for your patronage.'] The call begins in a manner which we have seen is typical for JBCs, with an initial exchange of company identification/self-identifications, followed by business salutations. Yamamoto makes her switchboard request in line 6 (E:to, hassoo no Kaneda-san, onegai-dekimasu ka?), and Kaneda comes to the phone in line 9. After another exchange of identifications and salutations, Yamamoto then presents her initial maeoki, as follows: (8)

Initial maeoki in a problem report [KI #3B-11 ] 14C

E:to desu ne? Kono mae, ano: e:: ohuisu kara okutta, HES COP-IPF ATF the other day HES HES office from send-pp

15C

BUkku no bun na n desu kedoMO: book(s) CN portion COP^F EP CP 'Um, you know, it's that (I'm calling about) um, (a) BOok order (we) sent from (the) office the other day, BUT...'

16A2 Hai= BC

'Mhm.' Using the attention-focuser E:to desu ne? Yamamoto creates a break between the opening section and the main business portion of the call. She then gives a preliminary indication of the matter she wishes to discuss, setting the current (preliminary) frame through her use of the EP. As we have seen in previous chapters, the EP establishes this information as immediately relevant, because the nominal no, contracted here to n, deictically connects the information just preceding the EP (i.e., the fact that books were sent from the office the other day) to the speaker's present situation (her making the call). The utterance as a whole thus functions as the


207

background for her call and as a frame for the upcoming discourse. Kaneda then responds to Yamamoto's utterance with a continuer (Hai) in line 16. Yamamoto then proceeds with her explanation, this time providing more specific information as to the exact date of the book shipment (zyuuiti-gatu zyuuroku-niti: okutta bun na n desu kedoMO). Here again she concludes her utterance with the EP, reframing and thereby recharacterizing the nature of the information she has presented in the discourse thus far. Note that she repeats the verbal okutta 'sent,' which she also used in her initial maeoki, possibly in order to emphasize that the shipment went out, but does not yet seem to have reached its destination: (9)

Reframing of information through the EP [KI #3B- 1 1 ] 1 7 C ^zyuuiti-gatu zyuuroku-niti: = November 1 6th '(on) November 16th' 18A2 =Hai, hai. Yes yes 'Yes, yes.' 19C okutta bun na// ndesukedoMO: send-pp portion COP-IPF EP CP 'it's that (I'm talking about) part of the order sent (on that date), BUT'

In response, Kaneda confirms this new information about dates —which is critical to the identification of any delivery —with Yamamoto, who then adds that the shipment went out via takuhai 'residential delivery': ( 1 0)

Confirming date information [KI #38-11]

20 A2 Zyuuiti-gatu desu ka? November COP-IPF Q 'Is it November?' 21 C

Hai. yes 'Yes.'

22 A2 Zyuuroku, hai! sixteen ACK '(the) 16(th), okay!'

208

Negotiating Moves 23 C Hal E:: takuhai DE: yes HES residential delivery INST 'Yes, um, by residential DELIVERY(service).'

24 A2 Hal BC

'Mhm.' Next. Yamamoto volunteers additional information which she anticipates that Kaneda will need in order to resolve the problem (which still remains unmentioned); this is the tracking number. Recall that in the shipping confirmation call we discussed in the last chapter, Ms. Watanabe likewise volunteered this information. (11)

Providing a tracking number [KI #3 B -11 ] 25 C

e: nanbaa ga iti ni san NO: HES number SUB one two three CN 'Um, (the) number (is) one two three DASH'

26A2 Hal BC

'Mhm.' 27 C yon go rokuNO: four five six CN 'four five six DASH'

28 A2 Hal BC

'Mhm.' 29 C nana hati kyuu kyuu. seven eight nine nine 'seven eight nine nine.' 30A2 nana hati kyuu kyuu! seven eight nine nine 'seven eight nine nine!'

31C

Hal yes 'Yes.'


209

The fact that Yamamoto provides the tracking number without being prompted to do so, as well as the fact that she simply refers to it as the nanbaa ('number'), rather than the more technical or register-specific term denpyoo nanbaa or denpyoo bangoo (literally, 'voucher' or 'chit' number), suggests that in this particular situation further specification is unnecessary. Through prior encounters of a similar nature, the two participants have become sufficiently familiar with this routine that they need not employ more explicit language to clarify what they are talking about. Putting it another way, experience with the genre enables participants to "short-circuit" portions of their talk. This familiarity is confirmed with Kaneda's response in line 32 below, in which he asks if it (i.e., the shipment which Yamamoto has identified) has not arrived. In essence, he has surmised the nature of the unmentioned problem, and is asking if that is why Yamamoto has called: (12)

Seeking to identify the unmentioned problem [KI #3B-11] 32A2 Mityaku desu ka? not yet arrived COP-IPF Q 'It's not yet arrived?' 33 C

(0.3) E:to mityaku rasii// ndesu:. HES not yet arrived seems EP (0.3 second pause) 'Um, it's that it seems (it)'s not yet arrived.'

34A2 Mityaku= not yet arrived 'not yet arrived.' 35 C

=Hai. yes 'Yes.'

36A2 Tyotto matte kudasai//, yo. a little wait-GER give-to-in-group-ipp't* SP 'Wait a minute, okay?' 37C

Hai. ack 'Okay.'

Yamamoto, no doubt hesitant to place the blame on Kobe Shipping prematurely, responds in line 33 by saying that it seems that the package has not arrived (E:to mityaku rasii n desu:}. By using the evidential rasii, which marks information obtained through aural or visual input, together with the EP, Yamamoto recasts what Kaneda has suggested in a new light (i.e., a new

210

Negotiating Moves

frame). In other words, rather than acknowledge that the problem is indeed that the package has not yet arrived, Yamamoto instead suggests a different interpretation, namely that 'it's that it seems (perhaps based on information provided through a call from the customer) that the package has not yet arrived.' Yamamoto's use of the evidential here clearly stems from interactional motivations. Up until this point in the conversation, she has been able to avoid committing what Brown and Levinson (1987) have called a face-threatening act (FTA) by not explicitly mentioning that there was a problem with the shipment. When Kaneda guesses the nature of the problem, Yamamoto attempts to mitigate the face threat by using the evidential. Indeed, she may not actually know for certain that the delivery was incomplete; it could be, for example, that Kobe Shipping left the package with a neighbor, and the customer was unaware of this. Genuine lack of certainty on Yamamoto's part is therefore another possible reason behind her use ofrasii in this utterance. Nevertheless, Kaneda interrupts in line 34 to confirm that what Yamamoto's query refers to is a case of mityaku, something that 'hasn't arrived.' Yamamoto acknowledges this minimally in line 35, saying only hai, and Kaneda puts her on hold, presumably to check on the shipment via his computer. Returning to the phone about 40 seconds later, Kaneda reports what he has found, as follows: (13)

Results of checking into the problem [KI #33-11] 41A2 E: HES

nizyuuiti-niti desu 21st

ne!

COP-1PF ATF

'um, (on) the 21st, you see,' 42 C

Hai! BC

'Mhm!' 43 A2 kanryoo \va nee, dete oru n desu yo. completion TOP ATF show up be-ipp(+) EP SP 'it's that (we)'re showing completion (of delivery), you know.' ((on the computer)) 44 C

Dete 'masu ka? = show up-GER be-iPF Q '(It)'s showing up?'

45 A2 =Dete 'masu. show up-GER be-iPF '(It)'s showing up.'


211

46 C Nizyuuiti-niti ni. = 11 St

LOC

'on (the) 21st' 47 A2 =Nizyuuiti-niti, hai. 21st yes

'(on the) 21st, yes.' In lines 41 and 43, Kaneda says that their system is showing 'completion (of delivery)' on the 21st (E: nizyuuiti-niti desu ne! Kanryoo wa nee, dete oru n desuyo). Note that his use ofdete oru here demonstrates his familiarity with register-specific vocabulary,1 and that he conveys the new information through the EP, thus reframing or recharacterizing information that Yamamoto had given him earlier. Yamamoto then seeks confirmation that the completion of delivery is 'showing up' for the 21st through two short utterances: Dete 'masu ka? and Nizyuuiti-niti ni, and Kaneda affirms that information in his responses. If we now take a moment to consider the conversation as it has proceeded thus far, we may observe that the participants are actually interactively co-constructing a picture of reality through a series of frames. It is as though one snapshot is presented, followed by another taken at a slightly different angle (reflecting different surroundings, or context), followed by another, and so forth. The EP, or more specifically, the nominal no (or n) functions to point to elements in the context that are essential to these angles and anchors them to the present situation, that is, the discourse situation at the time of the utterance containing the EP. That situation may of course shift from moment to moment, as we have observed in this conversation as new information is presented in a step-by-step manner by the two participants. But the purpose of employing the EP is nonetheless constant, despite the changes in situation or context. In short, the EP functions as a device for presenting what Heritage and Watson (1979), after Garfinkel and Sacks (1970), have called "formulations." Formulations function as "glosses" or "recastings" of previous talk, elements of the discourse context, and understandings held in common between conversationalists. As such, they provide a picture of the "gist" or the "upshot" of the present situation, and conversationalists use them for the "practical management of sense"— i.e., as a way of demonstrating their comprehension of the current talk and/or situation (lacobucci, 1990:93). What is particularly notable with respect to our discussion here regarding problem reports is that formulations have been found to occur frequently in "troublestalk" in which the participants need to confirm or disconfirm what is being presented by a speaker as something problematic (lacobucci, 1990:93; Heritage and Watson, 1979). Returning now to the ongoing conversation, we see that in line 48, Yamamoto haltingly asks Kaneda if he knows who signed for the package (E:to, sain ... wakarimasu ka?}. Before she can even finish her utterance, Kaneda cuts in and offers to obtain the signature for her:


Request for information and ensuing offer of assistance [KI #3B-11] 48C

E:to, sain...// wakarimasu ka? HES signature be clear-ipp Q 'Um, is it clear (whose) signature (was used to accept the delivery)?'

49 A, Sain torimasyoo ka? signature take-ens Q 'Shall (I/we) get (the) signature?' Yamamoto's question is based on her knowledge of company procedure in such situations. Once Kobe Shipping has completed a delivery and has obtained a signature from a customer, neighbor, or other responsible party, on request they will fax a copy of the signature release form to Kansai Imports as proof that the package was indeed delivered. Note that Yamamoto does not explicitly request that Kaneda fax the signature, however; she only asks if it is clear who signed the form (sain ... wakarimasu ka?). When Kaneda takes the initiative in line 49 and offers to obtain the signature for her, he uses the consultative l-masyoo ka?/ pattern, which we discussed earlier in chapter 1 in the context of offers for return telephone calls. This is an interrogative form, and as such it provides the interlocutor—in this case, Yamamoto—with the opportunity to refuse. The fact that Kaneda has selected this form suggests that perhaps he is unsure whether or not his offer will be acceptable to Yamamoto. In a parallel situation in English, one might ask, 'Would you like me to get the signature for you?' In Japanese, however, it is not pragmatically acceptable to ask about the needs and desires of one's interlocutor (Hoshino, 1991), so the l-masyoo ka?I form is preferable here. As it turns out, Yamamoto accepts Kaneda's offer by politely asking if she could have him get the signature (Hai, onegai-dekimasu ka?), and he agrees to do so by saying Hai, wakarimasita. (15)

Acceptance of Kaneda's offer [KI #3B-11] 50C

Hai. Onegai-dekimasu ka? = Yes beg-iPF-POT^ Q 'Yes. Could (I) ask (you to do that)?'

51A2 =Hai, wakarimasita. = yes become clear-pp 'Yes, understood.' 52 C

=Onegai-simasu:.= beg-iPF'J' ['Please do so.']


213

53A2 =Kiite okimasu nde: ask-GER do for future USC-IPF EP-GER 'It's that (I/we)'11 ask about (it), so....' 54C

Doo mo. thanks 'Thanks.'

55A2 Hal yes 'Sure.' In line 52, it is possible that Yamamoto might have raised further concerns about the matter, or perhaps inquired about other shipments. Instead, however, she reiterates her request, this time in the plain, non-potential form onegai-simasu. In doing so, she is able to bring closure to the discussion. Kaneda senses this and responds with a pre-closing bid, restating what it is that he will do: Kiite okimasu n de ('It's that (I/we)'ll ask about it, so...'). Given that this is a new characterization of his offer of service, it is not surprising that he concludes it with the gerund form of the EP. The effect of his doing so is at once to (a) state his intention and express his willingness to look into the matter for Yamamoto, (b) reassure her that she need not worry (since he will take care of it), and (c) move toward "shutting down" the conversation. Yamamoto thanks him for his assistance in line 54 with a simple Doo mo. and the conversation ends with Kaneda's acknowledgment (Hai) in line 55.

5.2.2. Reporting an incomplete merchandise delivery The caller in the second example we will now consider is also Ms. Yamamoto of Kansai Imports. Prior to this interaction, Kansai Imports had placed an order for five transformers from a small electrical appliance shop in Osaka named Masutaa Denki ('Master Electric'). On the Saturday preceding the day this call was made, a representative from Master Electric delivered three of the transformers to Kansai Imports; for some unidentified reason, the other two were missing. Yamamoto therefore places this call in order to inquire about the situation. Master Electric is not a company that Kansai Imports deals with regularly. We note in the opening segment of the call that Yamamoto does not make a switchboard request to speak with anyone in particular, and instead she addresses the (unidentified) person who answers the phone: (16)

Opening of the problem report [KI # 16-6] 1

((phone rings))

214

Negotiating Moves 2 A Mosi most, [Masutaa Denki] desu. ((said very quietly)) hello [Master Electric] COP-IPF 'Hello, (this) is [Master Electric].' 3 C A, most most? oh hello 'Oh, hello?' 4 A

Hal yes

'Yes' 5 C Et:to: sotira wa: Masutaa Denki desyoo ka. HES that side TOP Master Electric COP-TENT Q 'Um, would this be Master Electric?' 6 A Hai, soo desu:. yes so COP-IPF 'Yes, (that)'s right.' 7 C A, 'hhh ano desu Oh

nee,

HES COP-IPF ATF

'Oh, 'hhh well you see,' 8 C

Et:to: kotira Kansai Yunyuu to iimasu keredoMO:, HES this side Kansai Imports QT be called-ipp CP 'Um, this is Kansai Imports but,'

9 A Kansai Unyu?

((Call recipient mispronounces the real name of C's company; the Japanese transcript here conveys a similar mistake for "Kansai Yunyuu "))

Kansai Shipping 'Kansai Shipping?' IOC

YU im-

11A Kansai Yunyuu. Kansai Imports 'Kansai Imports.'


12C

215

Hal yes 'Yes.'

13 A

Hal ACK

'Okay.' The opening of this call differs markedly from that of the first conversation in this chapter, as well as from those we have seen in other opening excerpts. To begin with, the female clerk at Master Electric who answers the telephone prefaces her company identification with Mosi most ('Hello'), which as we have noted is quite unusual in JBCs. That is, typically call recipients will say Hai or extend an opening greeting, rather than use mosi most at the outset of a call. Furthermore, the clerk does not speak loudly enough for Yamamoto to hear her, so Yamamoto must confirm that she has reached the correct company (Et:to: sotira wa: Masutaa Denki desyoo kd). Upon receiving confirmation that it is indeed Master Electric, Yamamoto utters what could be the beginning of a maeoki, using the attention-focusing phrase Ano desu ne in line 7, but then provides her company identification (Ef.to: kotira Kansai Yunyuu to iimasu keredoMO) instead of a reason-for-call. The clerk does not appear to recognize the name "Kansai Yunyuu" for when she repeats it in her reply, she pronounces it as "Kansai Unyu" instead. Yamamoto corrects her very tersely by providing only the correct syllable, "Fw." The clerk responds in line 11 by giving the correct name, Kansai Yunyuu, and Yamamoto acknowledges this by saying Hai in line 12. Clearly there is no established business relationship between these participants, as underscored by the fact that neither of them extends a business salutation by way of greeting. In a "routine" JBC call, we have found that conversationalists in regular contact are able to handle the issues of self-identification, business salutations, and initial reason-for-call in the span of six short utterances. Yet here it has taken these participants 12 utterances (or roughly six turns each) merely to establish their respective corporate identities. Moreover, the clerk at Master Electric seems to be relatively unfamiliar with the behavior typical of conversations in the JBC genre, since in addition to leaving out a salutation, her subsequent utterances are merely a series of acknowledgments, nothing more. As a result, the first part of the conversation proceeds in a rather awkward fashion, and by line 10 Yamamoto reveals some irritation with the situation in her terse correction, which does not include a predicate of any sort, be it distal- or direct-style. After Yamamoto has been able to clarify for the clerk what company she represents, beginning in line 14 she introduces her reason-for-call. She speaks very slowly and deliberately, based on the difficulty she had in communicating with the clerk during the opening of the conversation:


Transition to matter of business [KI #16-6] 14C Ano: kon'aida toransuhuoomaa O: ((said slowly)) HES the other day transformers OBJ 'Um, (the) other day, transFORMERS' 15 A

Hal ACK

'Mhm.' 16C

ano: tyuumon site 'ta n desu GA: ((said slowly)) HES order make-GER be-PF EP CP 'Um, (it)'s that (we) ordered (some), BUT...'

17A

Hal ACK

'Mhm.' 18C

E:to: MIttu doYOObi ni motte kite itadaite we? ((slowly)) HES three Saturday LOG bring-GER receive-GER, ATF 'Um, (we) had (you) bring three on Saturday, you see?'

19 A

Hal ACK

'Mhm.' 20 C De: nokori no hutatu o, e: kinoo ((said slowly)) and remainder CN two OBJ HES yesterday 21C

motte kuRU tte iwarete ta n desu keDO: ((said slowly)) bring-ipp QT be told-GER be-PF EP CP 'And (it)'s that (we)'d been told that the remaining two, um, (you)'d bring (them), BUT...'

22 A

Hal yes

'Yes'

23 C konakatta

n desu kedo.

COme-NEG-PF EP

CP

'it's that (they) didn't come, but....'


217

24 A A, tyotto omati kudaSAi. oh a little waiting give to in'Oh, please wait a MOment.' Yamamoto begins her narrative of the problem with a general explanation that she ordered transformers the other day (Ano: kon 'aida toransuhuoomaa o:, ano: tyuumon site 'ta n desu GA). Then after acknowledging that three were brought (by Master Electric) on Saturday (E:to: MIttu doYOObi ni motte kite itadaite ne?), she points out that they had been told the remaining two would be brought to them 'yesterday' (De: nokori no hutatu o, e: kinoo motte kuRU tte iwarete ta n desu keDO:). By ending this clause with the contrastive particle kedo, Yamamoto tries to imply that the situation is other than might have been expected—that is, the other two never arrived. Moreover, the order in which she provides the elements of her description is marked linguistically. While an unmarked or "default" sequence in this situation would be to mention the day (doyoobi) first and then the number of items (mittu), Yamamoto reverses the order. By placing the number at the outset of her utterance, she is able to emphasize its importance. Given that the nature of the problem which she is trying to relate revolves around the fact that three rather than five transformers were delivered, such a marked order is not surprising; indeed, it is an important contextualization cue which she sends to her listener regarding her intended message. But the clerk continues to respond merely with back-channel Hai acknowledgments, and makes no offer of assistance, so Yamamoto is forced to state explicitly that the transformers did not come (konakatta n desu kedo). This is a face-threatening act (FTA). In Brown and Levinson's (1987) terms, the caller has gone "bald on record" and stated matter-of-factly (albeit with a kedo 'but,' which leaves the sentence open-ended), that the supplier did not provide the promised service. The clerk, after hearing this information, asks Yamamoto to wait a moment. The second stage of the interaction begins in line 26, when a different, male clerk appears on the line, and Yamamoto introduces herself again (this time with more success): (18)

Yamamoto's self-introduction to the second clerk [KI #16-6] 26 A, Mosi most? hello 'Hello?' 27C

A, most mosi?= oh hello 'Oh, hello?'

28A2 =A doo mo, odenwa kawari//masita. oh hello telephone change-PF 'Oh hello, [(I)'ve exchanged phones (with someone).]'

218

Negotiating Moves 29C

A doo mo, kotira Kansai Yunyuu no Yamamoto oh thanks this side Kansai Imports CN Yamamoto

30C

to moosimasu GA:= QT be called-ipp CP 'Oh, thank you. This is Yamamoto of Kansai Imports, BUT...'

31A2 =Hai. yes 'Yes.' While neither participant displays a recognition of the other as a regular business acquaintance through a business salutation, this time Yamamoto is able to convey her company name as well as her own name without any misunderstanding. Because Yamamoto cannot be sure that the information she provided to the first clerk has been relayed to the second clerk, she explains the problem for a second time, as shown in (19). Here she constructs a narrative that is remarkably similar in structure to the first, by distributing the essential information—i.e., temporal reference, item in question, number ordered and so forth—over a series of phrases ending with conjunctive particles that are given additional stress and higher pitch, which prompts aizuti from the clerk. Moreover, she starts out with a general statement about having ordered the transformers, and then moves on to specify the number of units that were actually delivered: (19)

Re-presenting the problem to a second clerk [KI #16-6] 32 C

'hhh Ano: kono aida toransuhuoomaa O: HES the other day transformers OBJ 'hhh Uh, the other day, transFORMERS'

33A2 (0.3) 34C

oodaa sita ndesu keredoMO: order do-pp EP CP '(it)'s that (we) ordered (some), BUT...'

35A2 Hal ACK

'Mhm.' 36C

(1.0) E: doyoobi ni:, mittu— nanka itutu oodaa siTE:, HES Saturday LOG three-ps somehow five order do-GER 'Um, on Saturday, three—somehow, having ordered FIVE,'


219

37 C ano: saisyo itutu haitatu surareru ((sic))2 to iwarete 'to HES first five deliver *do-PAS-iPF QT tell-PAS-GER be-pp

38C ndesuGA: = EP

CP

'um, it's that first, (we) were told (that) you would deliver five, BUT' However, her second explanation does differ in a few significant ways from the first. For example, although she begins to explain in line 36 that on Saturday, three [transformers arrived] (E: doyoobi ni:, mittu—) in an utterance reminiscent of what she had said earlier to the first clerk in line 18 (E:to: Mittu doYOObi ni motte kite itadaite ne?\ the sequencing of elements is different. That is, the more recent of her two utterances reflects the default, unmarked sentential order in which a temporal marker precedes the topic, as well as any specification of number. Moreover, we note that Yamamoto appears to stop herself just after having said E: doyoobi ni:, mittu— and adopts a different approach to her explanation, using a hedge (nankd) as a softener or filler before adding they had ordered five transformers.3 Part of her rationale for changing her approach here may be that the unmarked sequence in the earlier part of her utterance (E: doyoobi ni:, mittu} did not sufficiently emphasize the problem, namely that there is a discrepancy in the number of transformers ordered vs. the number received. To emphasize this point even further, she moves quickly to provide yet another recharacterization of the situation in lines 37-38, this time using the EP (ano: saisyo itutu haitatu surareru to iwarete 'to n desu GA). As she did in her first explanation, she concludes this utterance with the conjunctive particle ga, seeking to imply a situation contrary to expectation. The clerk either perceives the contrast which Yamamoto is trying to convey, or has already been apprised of the details by the first clerk, because in line 39 he comes forward in a contiguous or "latched" utterance in order to present what he perceives may be the problem: (20)

Perceiving the problem [KI # 16-6] 39A2 =A, mittu sika nakatta// desu ne? oh three only be-NEG-pp COP-IPF SP 'Oh, there were only three, right?'

As shown in (21) on the next page, Yamamoto responds with a hearty agreement of his assessment of the situation, saying Ee, ee, ee, and then goes on to explain that the delivery was made on Saturday, and they had been told that the remaining two transformers would come on Thursday (De doyoobi haitatu site itadaiTE: De nokori no hutatu ga nanka mokuYOObi ni kimasu tte iwarete 'to n desu keredomo). The clerk seems well aware of the portion of her explanation concerning the Saturday delivery, for he responds to it by saying Hai, hai, hai, hai in line 41, yet he gives a rather non-committal response in line 44 (A, soo desu kd) after she has completed her utterance. But when Yamamoto provides no further details, he offers to check into the situation, saying Tyotto sirabemasu wa nee! By using a declarative form for his offer,

220

Negotiating Moves

the clerk would seem to be acknowledging some responsibility for doing something about the situation; in other words, he is taking a stand on the issue rather than adopting, for example, the more tentative, open-ended and consultative l-masyoo ka?l pattern.4 (21) 40 C

Moving toward resolution of the problem [KI #16-6] Ee, ee, ee. De doyoobi haitatu site itadaiTE:= yes yes yes then Saturday delivery do-GER receive-GER^ 'Yes, yes, yes. Then Saturday, having had (you) deliver (the three),'

41A 2 -Hai, hai, hai, hai. yes yes yes yes 'Yes, yes, yes, yes.' 42C

De nokori no hutatu ga nanka mokuYOObi ni kimasu and remainder CN two SUB somehow Thursday LOG come-iPF

43 C

tie iwarete 'ta n// desu keredomo. QT be told-pp be-pp EP CP 'And (it)'s that (the) other two, somehow, we were told (they) would come on Thursday, but....'

44 A2 A soo desu ka. ((Kansai intonation)) oh so COP-IPF Q 'Oh, is that right.' 45 C Hai. yes

'Yes.' 46A2 Tyotto, sirabemasu \va nee! a little look into-ipp SP-KS SP '(I)T1 just look into it, you know, okay?' For the next minute or so, the clerk consults with one or more of his colleagues; since he has not put Yamamoto on hold but rather appears to have simply covered the receiver with his hand, he can be heard mentioning the model number of the transformer that was apparently ordered: 'MF 500 UU.' When he returns to the phone in line 47, he says that given what Yamamoto has told him, he will look into the matter, and offers to call back (Sositara ano ima sirabemasite tyotto, odenwa sasiagemasyo ka?)* Yamamoto accepts (or perhaps merely acknowledges) the offer by saying A soo desu ka in line 51.

Problem Presentation and Resolution in JBCs (22)

221

Offering assistance [KI #16-6] 47 A2 Mosi mosi! hello 'Hello?' 48 C

Hai! = yes 'Yes!'

49 A2 =Sositara ano ima sirabemasite in that case HES now look into-GER 50 A, tyotto, odenwa sasiagemasyo// ka?= ((Kansai intonation)) just telephone give to out-grp-CNS^ Q 'In that case um, shall I look into (it) now and just give (you) a call?' 51C A soo desu// ka. oh so COP-IPF Q 'Oh, is (that) so.' The clerk then goes on to confirm precisely what he will be 'looking into' through a series of formulations. Summarizing his understanding of what she has told him thus far, he checks that it is in fact two more transformers she needs (Kore, ato: ni-ko: goiriyoo desu ne?). Yamamoto replies by saying that if possible they would like (a total of) three transformers: Ano: dekitara, ne? San-ko ni site itadakitai n desu keDO. The clerk confirms this information once through an initial formulation (Moo san-ko, ne?), and then reconfirms it in a longer reformulation that reviews the specifications for the type of transformer that Kansai Imports had ordered, and also notes that there is now an additional transformer being added to the original two, bringing the total to three (Zyaa, emu effu gohyaku yuu yuu gohyaku watto no toransu O, ato ni-ko no bun wa moo ik-ko tuika, san-ko to iu koto desu ne?). (23)

Confirming the final order [KI #16-6] 52 A2 Kore, ato: ni-ko: goiriyoo desu ne? these remaining two-items need (+) COP-IPF SP 'You need two more of these, right?' 53 C Ano: dekitara, ne?= HES be possible-CND ATF 'Um, if possible, you see?'

222 Negotiating Moves 54 A2 Hai. BC

'Mhm.' 55C

=San-ko ni site itadakitai ndesu//keDO: three GL do-GER receive-DES^ EP CP (It)'s that (we)'d like to have you make it three, but....'

56A2 A soo desu ka.= oh so COP-IPF Q 'Oh, is that so.' 57C

=Hai.= yes 'Yes.'

58A2 =Moo san-ko, ne? more three-items SP 'Three more, right?'

59 C Hai. yes

'Yes.' 60 A2 Zyaa, emu effu gohyaku yuuyuu well then M F 500 U U 61A2 gohyaku watto no toransu O: 500 watt CN transformers ((abbreviated)) OBJ 'Well then, MF 500-UU 500-watt transformers,'

62 C Hai. ACK

'Mhm.' 63 A2 ato ni -ko no bun wa moo ik-ko tuika, remaining two items CN portion TOP more one-item in addition 64A2 san-ko to in koto desu ne? three-items QT say-ipp matter COP-IPF SP 'adding one (to) (the) remaining two, so it's three, right?'


223

Note here that the device the clerk uses for the first two formulations is the confirmation-seeking particle ne; in the third he uses the phrase to in koto, which can be roughly glossed as 'So it's that...' or 'So it's a matter of....' Recall also that we pointed out in the context of Yamamoto's first problem report that the EP is another device which is very frequently employed when "doing formulations" in Japanese. We should emphasize that such usage is not limited to problem reports, for we have already seen the EP used to similar effect in other (non-problemreporting) maeoki utterances, in refusals of switchboard requests (e.g., tadaima sekkyaku-tyuu na n desu ga....'~) and in offers of assistance which restate matters agreed upon at an earlier point in a call (e.g., sirabemasite, odenwa sasiagemasu no de...). Following an exchange of 'okays,' through which Yamamoto and the clerk signal to each other that they have settled the order under discussion, Yamamoto requests a return phone call, despite the fact that the clerk had already offered to call back at an earlier point in the conversation. In response, the clerk restates and reassures her of his intention to do so, by way of signalling a close to the call: Hai, sirabete:, odenwa sasiagemasu:. Once these matters have been settled, the participants move into the closing section of the call: (24)

Confirming the request for a return phone call [KI #16-6] 67C

=Ano: orikaesi, zyaa, odenwa itadakemasu// ka? HES return call in that case telephone receive-ippvU Q 'Um, in that case, could (we) receive a call back?'

68 A2 Hai, sirabete:, odenwa sasiagema//su:. yes look into-GER telephone give to out-group-iPF ^ 'Yes, we'll look into it and (we/I)'ll call (you).' (25)

Closing the conversation [KI #16-6] 69 C Hai, situree desu ke//do: ACK rudeness COP-IPF CP 'Okay, excuse me, but....' 70 A2 A, Masutaa Denki, Hashimoto desu:. = oh Master Electric Hashimoto COP-IPF 'Oh, (I)'m Hashimoto, Master Electric.' 71C

=Hashimoto-san desu ne= Mr. Hashimoto COP-IPF SP 'It's Mr. Hashimoto, right?'

224

Negotiating Moves 72 A2 =Hai! yes 'Yes!' 73 C Hat, yorosiku// onegai-simasu:. ACK well

be

'Okay, please [take care of it for me].' 74 A2 Yorosiku onegai-simasu. well beg -IFF ^ 'May things go well.' Note that Yamamoto's inquiry about the clerk's name would not have been necessary had Hashimoto provided it when he first picked up the phone. Knowing that she may need this information later, however, Yamamoto uses the ritual request form Situree desu kedo... to prompt a self-identification, and then the two take their leave of each other in lines 73 and 74.

5.2.3. Comparing the two calls Structurally speaking, the two conversations we have just considered share a similar sequential organization, in that they consist of an opening section, a transition to and discussion of a matter of business, a pre-closing bid in which the business matter agreed upon in the previous section is restated or summarized, and a closing section in which the participants take their leave of each other. The conversations thus illustrate the generic structure of JBCs that was outlined in chapter 3. Moreover, there are similarities between the two conversations in terms of the way in which the caller/service recipient (Yamamoto) initially presents the problematic transaction, as well as in the moves through which two of the call recipients/service providers extend offers of assistance in response. Let us first consider the opening segments of the calls. In both conversations, Yamamoto begins by providing a preliminary indication as to the timing and nature of the transaction to be discussed; this functions as the maeoki, or transitional utterance from the opening of the call to the matter of business. The temporal marker she introduces in each maeoki is a general one—kono mae and kon 'aida. As for the type of transaction, she characterizes the first one in her conversation with Kaneda of Kobe Shipping as 'a book order that (we) sent from the office' (ohuisu kara okutta, BUkku no bun na n desu kedoMO); in the call with Master Electric, she indicates that her company had ordered transformers (toransuhuoomaa O: ano: tyuumon site 'ta n desu GA). She concludes the predicates of both maeoki utterances with the EP followed by a conjunctive particle (In desu kedoMOl and In desu GA:/, respectively). The n portion of the EP in both maeoki utterances functions to anchor the information being presented about the transaction to the present discourse situation, namely


225

that the service recipient is contacting the service provider by telephone. Furthermore, by uttering the final mora of these conjunctive particles at a higher pitch and with greater stress, she indicates to her interlocutors that she has concluded this initial description but likely has more to say, thereby signalling that this is an appropriate juncture for the call recipient to respond with aizuti. Both call recipients indeed reply by saying Hai, and do not attempt to take the floor. Following her maeoki, Yamamoto moves on to the second stage of her problem reports in order to provide more specific details. Since these calls involve two unrelated transactions, it is only natural that the type of information to be reported in each differs somewhat. In the first case, what Yamamoto mentions next is the exact dispatch date of the shipment, followed by the EP. In the second conversation, she states the number of items and the day they were delivered, followed by an attention focuser (ne?). We also pointed out that the order in which she mentions these details in the second call is linguistically marked, in that it reverses the usual sequence of /date + (item or topic, which are not mentioned in this case) + number of items + predicate/. In the third stage of reporting, Yamamoto states in the first call that the means of shipment was takuhai, or residential delivery (as opposed to commercial), and then gives the service provider the tracking number, which he repeats. In the second conversation, Yamamoto mentions they were told that the service provider would bring the two remaining transformers 'yesterday.' She frames the predicate of the latter utterance with the EP and a conjunctive particle. At this point, the service provider in the first conversation (Kaneda) perceives that the problem may be an incomplete delivery (mityaku). It is possible that Yamamoto's mention of the tracking number (which is a common register feature of business conversations and therefore a contextualization cue) sufficiently hints at the problem, since incomplete shipments had occurred before in Kansai Import's transactions with Kobe Shipping. In Yamamoto's first version of the problem report in her call to Master Electric, however, she is forced to continue her description of the problem and actually specify that the transformers never came (konakatta n desu kedo}. It is only after she has described the situation explicitly that the female clerk puts her on hold to look into the situation. Note that this is reminiscent of the situation we observed between Ms. Yamada and the clerk at Fukuda Books in chapter 1, when it became necessary for Yamada to provide increasingly explicit descriptions of the problematic book shipment she had received in order to obtain assistance from the clerk. The relative delay in the reactions of these clerks at Master Electric and Fukuda Books may be at least partially attributable to the fact that they did not have an ongoing business relationship with the caller's company. Thus such a problematic situation may have been without precedent. If we consider the second half of these two calls, in which Kaneda and Hashimoto (the second, male clerk) offer assistance, we see that in both cases once the service provider becomes aware of the problem, he extends an initial offer of assistance using the l-masyoo ka?l form, which

226

Negotiating Moves

Yamamoto responds to affirmatively. The service provider then restates his offer at a later point in the conversation, adopting either the plain declarative (l-masul) form or the declarative plus the gerund of the EP (l-masu no del) in order to reassure the service recipient of his willingness and intention to undertake the service under discussion. Let us now take a closer look at Yamamoto's explanation of the problem to the second Master Electric clerk, in order to consider some of the differing ways in which conversationalists may participate in the same generic activity. Recall that the initial (female) call recipient at Master Electric, perhaps due to a lack of experience or a lack of knowledge about encounters such as this one, had barely responded to Yamamoto's inquiries and explanation of the problem. Once the second clerk takes over, however, the interaction proceeds much more smoothly. In Yamamoto's second, nearly identical report, she presents the information about the missing transformers in a series of phrases marked by the EP, providing successive but more specific recharacterizations or (re)formulations of the situation. In her maeoki, she gives a general indication of the date (kono aidd) and the nature of the transaction, namely that Kansai Imports had ordered some transformers (Ano: kono aida toransuhuoomaa O: oodaa sita n desu keredoMO:). In the second stage of her exposition, she makes a false start of sorts by first indicating the day (doyoobi ni) and the number of items actually delivered (mittu), and then changes her mind, stating instead that they had ordered five (transformers) and were told at first that Master Electric would deliver five (nanka itutu oodaa siTE:, ano: saisyo itutu haitatu surareru to iwarete 'ta n desu GA). She frames this information with the EP and a conjunctive particle. At this point, the clerk perceives the problem before it becomes necessary for Yamamoto to spell it out fully (as she had been forced to do in her first report). As a result, Yamamoto avoids making a potentially face threatening utterance to her interlocutor (Brown and Levinson, 1987). The perceptiveness on the part of this clerk echoes that of Kaneda in the first problem report call. The quick "uptake" displayed by these two service providers likely hinges in part on an understanding of role, obligation, and expectations pertaining to the situation at hand. Moreover, it is probably a product of experience, shaped over time. Through their participation in recurring encounters such as this one, speakers such as the two male clerks and Yamamoto acquire a particular "feel for the game" in this genre of call, based on the types of problems that tend to arise in their respective businesses. They also share a mutual concern for maintaining and protecting an ongoing business relationship. Thus once they have developed reliable intuitions as to what type of verbal behavior is effective in achieving their business goals, it becomes possible for them to respond in these situations in a natural and appropriate fashion that is more accommodating and considerate of the interlocutor. In short, these speakers know how to effectively perform this genre of conversational activity.

5.3. INTERACTIONAL ASYNCHRONY IN JBCs Another way we might describe the smooth interaction between these speakers is to use the phrase "interactional synchrony," which Graham (1980, 1985) has defined in the context of


227

international business negotiations as "the unconscious coordination of verbal and nonverbal behaviors of two or more participants in a conversation" (Graham, 1985:90). In contrast, the conversation between Yamamoto and the first clerk at Master Electric, as well as the "Hahaha no hanasi" conversation between Yamada of Tokyo Books and the clerk at Fukuda Books, would seem to manifest what Jefferson and Lee (1981:402) have described as "interactional asychrony": Interactional 'Asynchrony' involves, roughly, that coparticipants can be characterized as improperly aligned by reference to the categories provided for by and crucial to the orderly progression of a sequence. In their discussion of a variety of excerpts from both everyday conversations and a few institutional calls, Jefferson and Lee distinguish "troubles-telling encounters" from service encounters in several ways. First, they note that whereas the "focal object" in a service encounter is "the problem and its properties," in a troubles-telling encounter, the focal object is "the teller and his experiences" (Jefferson and Lee, 1981:411). Secondly, they point out that while advice-giving is seen as a "proper component" of service encounters, it may not be a welcome element in "troubles-telling" encounters, in which the troubles-teller is seeking "emotional reciprocity" (Jefferson and Lee, 1981:421). This latter distinction accounts for the frequent rejection of advice by troubles-tellers when it is provided in non-service-encounter contexts. Thirdly, they observe that whereas "affiliations" are normally viewed as appropriate responses by "troublesrecipients" in everyday troubles-tellings, such utterances normally would be seen as out of place or "soft" in service encounters, in which the "ubiquitous, perhaps definitive" responses on the part of advice-givers are "Uh-huh" and "I see" (Jefferson and Lee, 1981:418). Jefferson and Lee also identify a number of situations in which there appears to be a "convergence" between a troubles-telling encounter and a service encounter, which results in a misalignment between the participants. On the one hand, the troubles-teller is focused on relating her troubles and experiences as a. person, whereas the advice-giver or service provider is primarily concerned with the "problem and its properties" and the "despatching of a task" (Jefferson and Lee, 1981:416). In such cases, the advice-giver has an "essential interest" in the "problem and its properties," but displays an "essential indifference" to the troubles-teller and her personal/emotional concerns. Although there are not precise parallels in our Japanese examples (which are clearly service encounters as opposed to troubles-tellings or a convergence of the two), we may observe similar tensions between the callers and call recipients. That is, both callers, i.e., Yamada and Yamamoto, attempt to draw the call recipient's attention to particular aspects of the problem they are reporting, but these "expositions" are met with "essential indifference" by the call recipients.

228 Negotiating Moves 5.3.1. Reporting an incomplete shipment: TheHahaha no hanasi call In the case of the Hahaha no hanasi conversation (shown in appendix 2), Yamada seeks assistance from the Fukuda Books clerk in order to ascertain whether a book she had ordered was dispatched or not. Recall that she presents her maeoki as a request for confirmation or a 'look-up': Ano desu nee! Tyotto osirabe itadakitai n desu ga 'Well, you see! It's that (I/we)'d just like to have you look (something) up, but. In subsequent turns, Yamada explains when and how she had placed her order (e:to: si-gatu nizyuusiti-niti no hi ni, sotira DE, e:to desu ne, denwa tyuumon na n desu ga), and points out that she had requested four books (yon-satu hodo, e-HON o tyuumon sasite-itadaita n desu yo). Of those four, she notes that she had only received three (yon-satu no uti no, SAN-satu sika tyotto haitte kite orimasen no de). At this point, the clerk might have stepped forward and offered to check into what happened to the missing fourth book, but he does not. So Yamada begins to make an explicit request that he do so (is-satu dasite itadaketa ka doo ka, osirabe—). Before she can finish, however, he cuts her off, suggesting that he has understood what she has asked him to do (Kasikomaritd). Yamada then volunteers additional information which she surmises may be of use to the clerk in looking up the problem, namely her company name and the title of the missing book. The clerk then confirms that it was one copy she had requested, and goes to check. When the clerk returns to the phone, however, it appears that he has checked on the availability of the book, rather than on the particulars of the original shipment, for he provides a formulation in line 36 to confirm his understanding of the situation: (26)

Misalignment or asynchrony between call recipient and caller's understanding of the "task" to be performed [TB #1A-44] 34 A Omatase des— itasimasita. causing -waiting^ COP-IPF-FS do-PF^ '[S—Sorry] to have kept you waiting.' 35 C

Hal BC

'Mhm.' -^ 36 A Zya, Hahaha no hanasi o is- satu to in koto de, so ha-ha-ha CN tale OBJ one volume QT be called-ipp thing CP-GER 'So it's a matter of one copy of The Tale of Ha-ha-ha.' 37C

A, hai:. ah yes

'Ah, yes.'


-^

38A

229

Zya, bansen onegai-simasu:. so agency-number beg-ipp 4> 'So please (give me) the agency number.'

39C

A, ano: sono mae NI: ah HES that before GL 'Oh, um, before THAT,'

40 A

Hal BC

'Mhm.' 41C

ZENkai tyuumon sita toki ni, ano: ukete previous order do-p? time GL HES receive-GER

42 C

itadakemasen desita ndesyoo: ka. receive-NEG-iPF^ CP-PF EP-TENT Q 'at the time of the PREvious order, um, might it have been that we couldn't receive it from you?'

Yamada hesitantly acknowledges the formulation by saying^, hai, but when the clerk requests the bansen or 'agency number,' which as we saw in chapter 4 is the standard code used for processing book orders through intermediaries, Yamada realizes that the clerk is responding to her request for confirmation as though it were a request to re-order the book. We suggested in our earlier analysis of the call in chapter 1 that the clerk's familiarity with his role as "order-taker," but relative unfamiliarity in the role of what we might call "problem-report recipient" (in light of Jefferson and Lee's discussion), has resulted in an "essential indifference" on his part to the particulars of her request. In other words, in his role as service provider in encounters which are normally focused on merchandise orders, his primary responsibility or task goal is to check on the availability of items and make arrangements for their shipment, the latter of which may be accomplished through an interrogative series of questions about the agency code, agency name, name of the bookstore placing the order, and so forth. Yamada, on the other hand, has a great deal of experience in ordering books as well as in placing calls to inquire about problematic situations regarding those orders, so she is able to recognize when the call has gone "off-track." Over a subsequent series of turns oriented at "re-aligning" the task goals of caller and call recipient, she uses the EP to redirect the clerk's attention to what it is she is requesting of him. Finally the clerk displays an understanding of her original intentions through his utterance in line 50, A, kakunin de:su ne? and Yamada then reassures him that if it turns out that the book has not been sent out, she will order another copy. Here at last, then, the participants have collaboratively achieved a re-alignment, and the remainder of the call "runs off in a manner typical of book order calls.

230 Negotiating Moves 5.3.2. Reporting an incomplete delivery: The Master Electric call The second Japanese problem report between Yamamoto and the female clerk at Master Electric likewise represents an example in which the call recipient/service provider displays "essential indifference" to the caller's request for assistance (see appendix 8 for the text of the call). Here, however, it is not a matter of a misunderstanding between the two conversationalists. Rather, the clerk simply does not appear to respond in a manner appropriate for a "problem-report recipient." First, as we noted previously, at the opening of the call she answers with Most mosi. produces a company identification in a very quiet voice, and does not exchange the usual salutations, which we have noted are often extended even in the absence of a regular business relationship. Then she fails to recognize the caller's company name, which in some respects is understandable since Kansai Imports is not a regular client of Master Electric. But Yamamoto may have had an expectation—based on the fact that Kansai Imports had recently placed an order and was awaiting the balance of a shipment—that her company name would be recognized by the staff at this small company. Finally, as Yamamoto provides a series of increasingly specific utterances describing the "problem and its properties," she receives no "uptake" whatsoever, but rather mere acknowledgment tokens from the clerk. (The clerk uttered these acknowledgments with a flat, non-committal intonation which would seem to convey suprasegmentally what Jefferson and Lee (1981:411) have called "an utterly bland, continuing attention." While Yamamoto probably was not anticipating or seeking an "affiliation" in response, given the recent nature of the order she again might have expected some sort of display of recognition on the part of the call recipient about the order in question. However, the clerk's only response aside from her acknowledgments is to put the caller on hold to find someone else who can manage the problem. While this does ultimately resolve the problem, in that the second clerk (Hashimoto) is more familiar with the transaction and is much better "aligned" with Yamamoto in their interaction, the tension which develops between the two initial participants is evident in Yamamoto's terse correction in response to the clerk's mispronunciation of her company name, and in her deliberate, slow enunciation in her account of the problem.

5.4. PROBLEM REPORTS IN ENGLISH Now let us turn to some examples of problem reports in English, in order to provide a point of comparison with the Japanese calls we discussed in the previous section. While I have not yet been able to collect a sufficient number of problem reports in English to form the basis for a truly contrastive study, I hope that the examples I present here might represent the beginning of a larger, cross-linguistic, cross-cultural comparison of the ways in which problems are presented and their resolutions negotiated in the two languages. 5.4.1. Reporting a missed delivery The first example is taken from the JBC data, and is the only one of its kind in the corpus; as was noted previously, most business-related English calls at Kansai Imports came in on a


231

"member line" which was not recorded for this study. There were no English calls recorded at Tokyo Books. In the call below, a female American customer calls Kansai Imports to report a problem regarding a shipment she had expected to receive that day: (27)

English problem report to Kansai Imports [KI #8-5] 1

((phone rings))

2A

Hai, Kansai Yunyuu desu:. ACK Kansai Imports COP-IPF 'Yes, Kansai Imports.'

3C 4A 5C 6C 7A 8C 9A 10 C 11 A 12 C 13 A 14 C 15 A

A, yes, do you speak English? Yes. Yes, um: someone tried to deliver something today, euh: we were home but we didn't hear the doorbell. Right. Um, can: an' I had asked to have them leave it. Uh-huh// uh-huh. Um: but they didn't. Oh, sorry 'bout that!// That's ok, it was just one box. Okay. So, how can we have it delivered, then. Okay, lemme ask your membership number first?

The opening of the call (lines 2-4) is notably different from the openings we have discussed in the Japanese data. We note that the customer does not provide her name, affiliation, membership number, or any other self-identifying information, but instead launches immediately into a narrative account (Scott and Lyman, 1968) of what happened. Neither party provides any salutations, either, but this is expectable because the caller is an individual (non-commercial) customer rather than an organization that does regular business with Kansai Imports. In line 5, the caller does hesitate by saying 'Um' before beginning her account of the problem, but otherwise there is no indication of a transitional section or other preliminaries which might alert the clerk that the caller is about to make an account (e.g., in Japanese, attention-focusing utterances such as Ano desu ne! as well as the use of the EP, which is another indirect way of leading the listener to the "right" or intended construal of the present situation). The caller does recount the information about the missed delivery in a chronological fashion, as we observed to be the case in the Master Electric problem report discussed earlier. But unlike her Japanese counterparts, the English-speaking caller does not volunteer any identifying information about the shipment itself (such as the type of product she expected to be delivered

232 Negotiating Moves or the date she placed the order) which might assist the clerk in remedying the problem. Moreover, in saying 'we were home but we didn't hear the doorbell' (line 6), and 'I had asked to have them leave it...um: but they didn't' (lines 8 and 10), the customer appears to be indicating rather directly that (a) she is not responsible for the problem, and (b) the shipper is responsible. As Scott and Lyman (1968) have noted, this is typical of accounts, which serve to justify or explain personal circumstances related to some sort of trouble which the speaker or another party has experienced. The only mitigating part of this caller's account is her hesitation, 'um,' at the beginning of line 10, and her reassuring response to the clerk's apology in line 12 ('That's ok, it was just one box.'). Although such behavior might be considered fairly hesitant for an American English telephone call, if an English speaker were to attempt the same type of account in Japanese without modification, it would probably leave an unfavorable impression on the listener (in much the same way that the student waiter described in chapter 1 might make a Japanese customer uneasy if he were to say Zenbu ikaga desu kal in a restaurant service encounter). It may be useful to point out here that Kotani (1999) has found that Japanese and Americans employ different accounting strategies in inter-cultural conversations in the United States. Further, Scott and Lyman (1968:46) have claimed that accounts are "standardized within cultures," arguing that "the types of accounts appropriate to each speech community differ in form and content" (Scott and Lyman, 1968:62).6 Buttny (1993) likewise claims that "accounts offer a valuable site for uncovering a culture's taken-for-granted assumptions and folk logic of right actions." We will explore other ways in which certain Japanese linguistic patterns might be consistent with such "folk logic" when we examine some metalinguistic expressions regarding communication in Japanese in the next chapter. For now, however, we may note that further research is obviously necessary in order to better evaluate the patterns of interaction operative in both inter- and intra-cultural problem report calls such as the ones presented in this book. Returning now to the Kansai Imports example, we observe in line 8 that the customer begins to issue what appears to be a request ('Um, can:'), but changes Her mind and waits to do so until line 14 ('So, how can we have it delivered, then'). The customer is thus explicitly requesting assistance in order to resolve the problem. This type of behayior was sometimes observed in the Japanese data, but would typically occur later in the call. Consider the following Japanese example, which appeared in a call placed by a customer of Tokjyo Books: (28)

Request by Japanese customer for assistance in a problem report [TB #18-34] 49C Desu kara sore desu ne! therefore that COP-IPF ATF 'So those, you see,'

Problem Presentation and Resolution in JBCs 50A

233

Hai.= ACK

'Mhm.' 51C maa, kookan: u: site itadakitai well exchange HES do-GER receive-ipp-DESvl' n desu keredoMO: EP

CP

'well, it's that (I/we)'d like to have (you) exchange them, but....' Prior to this excerpt, the caller had already provided his company affiliation and exchanged business salutations with the call recipient (Ms. Yamada) during the opening section of the call, and only then went on to provide an account of the problem. He began that account with an initial, general utterance that he had received a shipment (Ano: noohin itadakimasite ne!). After that, he initiated a multi-turn explanation of the problem (ma—naiyoo ga desu ne! tyotto, matigatt—okurat:te kita mono ga aru mon desu kara), which was that the package contained some items which had mistakenly been sent to him. Note that he prefaced each of these utterances with a hesitation marker or mitigating device: Ano: in the first, ma(a) 'well' in the second, and tyotto 'just' in the third. Moreover, since the customer had already provided his company identification, Yamada was able to readily offer assistance, asking him to wait a moment so that she could 'bring up the list' on her computer of the items he had ordered (E:, tyotto matte kudasai, ne? Risuto ima odasi simasu no DE). Once Yamada had the list in front of her, the customer proceeded to relate further details about what he had ordered, how many volumes, and what the incorrectly shipped items were. None of this required any prompting; the customer initiated all of the information from his 'side' of the conversation. Comparing these two calls, we may make the following observations. First, the sequential organization of problem reporting is different, in that the English-speaking caller does not provide her name or membership number first, but instead announces the problem at the outset of the call. The reverse seems to be true in Japanese; as we have seen in many of the JBC examples, self-identification at the outset of the call appears to be the norm, both for individual (non-commercial) customers and commercial service recipients. Secondly, after the American caller has initiated her problem report, the service representative must prompt her for her membership number. This parallels the findings in the literature on calls to emergency services, which have documented the regular use of an "interrogative series" initiated by the call recipient in order to obtain identification and location information from the caller. Given the urgent nature of those types of conversations, it is understandable that callers would begin with a description of the 'problem,' i.e., the emergency. Yet it may be that the same prompting is sometimes necessary in English problem reports placed to commercial organizations on an everyday basis as well; further research is again necessary to fully explore

234

Negotiating Moves

this possibility.7 Finally, we may note that the English-speaking caller employed relatively fewer hesitation markers, mitigating devices, and transitional utterances prior to initiating her problem report than did the Japanese caller.

5.4.2. Reporting telephone billing problems Few studies in the literature on English telephone service encounters specifically address the issue of problem reports to commercial service institutions. Phillips and Riley (2000), for example, do discuss the sequential organization of business telephone conversation openings, but their observations are based on calls that are perhaps best described as general inquiries, in the sense of the toiawase calls which we discussed in chapter 4. Aside from Jefferson and Lee's (1981) paper which was already mentioned above, I was able to find only one other study, lacobucci (1990), that includes data which parallel the kinds of problem reports found in the JBC corpus. Below I will present a few examples and some of the findings from her investigation. lacobucci examines calls placed by customers to an American telephone company regarding billing problems they were seeking to have resolved. The data for the study consisted of 40 calls which were part of a larger corpus of conversations recorded "by the company for in-house analysis" (lacobucci, 1990:86). Apparently neither the call recipients nor callers were aware that these conversations were being recorded. (Note that this study was published in 1990, so the data collection likely pre-dates many of the recent laws in the United States governing such recording.) Consider the following excerpts from lacobucci's data: (29)

(lacobucci, 1990:89) (R=customer service representative)

1 R [Company Name] billing. This is Mark. May I help you? -> 2 C Yes. I would like to ask about an adjustment for my bill please. 3 R Okay. What is your phone number? (30)


1 R Okay, what can I do for you? -> 2 C We got a few phone calls we never riade. 3 R Okay. What are the dates of the calls" (31)


1 R Okay, how can I help you? -> 2 C On the current bill there are some phone numbers that I haven't been able to identify. I wonder if I could talk to somebody to tell me who they went to.

Problem Presentation and Resolution in JBCs 3 R

235

Okay. If you give the dates and places called I can go ahead and try to figure out which ones you are talking about.

First, a few caveats are in order about these examples. lacobucci does not specify whether or not the billing problem calls were first routed through a general switchboard, be it an automated one (as we saw in the Worldwide Bank call in chapter 1 of this book), or through an operator. If they were indeed routed through some central location, it is likely that the callers would have been able to specify some aspect of their reason-for-call through a switchboard request, and thereby reach a specific department or section, e.g., 'billing' as in (28). Alternatively, it is possible that the callers dialed a customer service-specific number, but again, this is not explained in the paper. Moreover, in (29) and (30), it appears that there may have been some previous talk between the conversationalists at the outset of these calls, as evidenced by the fact that the call recipients begin their turns with the acknowledgment token 'Okay.' It may well be, then, that the call recipient and perhaps even the caller have identified themselves at a point prior to the excerpts shown. In contrast, in (28) it is at least clear that the call recipient's section identification '[Company Name] billing' represents the inital utterance on his part. These caveats aside, we may observe that all three excerpts have the following features in common. First, the call recipient invites the caller to present a reason-for-call with an explicit offer of assistance, e.g., 'May I help you?' in line 1. Second, the caller responds directly with that reason-for-call in line 2, i.e., in the customer's first turn (of these excerpts). Note that these callers do not employ any hesitation markers or other utterance-initial mitigating or transitional devices which might minimize the force of their requests/complaints. Instead, they get right to the point. This is consistent with our observations regarding the English problem report to Kansai Imports discussed earlier. But while these American callers to the telephone company did not preface their problem reports with hesitation markers or utterance-initial mitigating devices, we should note that the callers in (28) and (30) did incorporate other strategies which likely function to minimize the face threat of their requests to the call recipient. In fact, these utterances seem relatively polite in comparison to the blunt statement made by the second caller in (29). The first caller uses the forms 'would like to' and 'please,' and the third caller provides a hedge by indicating that 'there are some numbers that I haven't been able to identify.' This allows for the possibility that the call recipient or someone else might be able to this for him. He also prefaces his subsequent request for such assistance with the phrase "I wonder if I could....' Thus while these two English speaking callers employ different linguistic strategies within their problem reports as compared to those used by Japanese callers, the underlying motivation for those strategies may be similar. The fourth feature in common among these excerpts from lacobucci's study is the fact that the customers do not volunteer any identifying information, such as their telephone number or dates of the problematic calls, to assist the clerk in remedying the problem. Instead, it is necessary for the representative in (28) to prompt the customer for his phone number, and in (29) and (30) the representative must ask for the dates of the calls in question. Recall that in

236 Negotiating Moves many of the Japanese calls we have considered over the past few chapters, experienced service recipients volunteered information which they perceived might be relevant for the service provider.

5.4.3. Reporting problematic merchandise or shipments Given these observations, let us now consider two additional examples of English problem reports. These appeared in a manual which describes recommended telephone techniques for customer service personnel who handle customer complaints in American companies. As such, we note that they may not represent naturally-occurring data. However, they are included here as examples of prescriptive attitudes toward proper verbal behavior in English in such contexts. (32)

Simulated example of an English problem report (Garner, 1984) (R=Receptionist, C=Caller) 1 R Good morning, Sims Products. May I help you? 2 C May I speak to the president, please? 3 R I'm sorry, Mr. Sims is not available right now. Can someone else help you? 4 C I want to talk to him about some trouble I'm having with my toaster. 5 R I'm sure Ms. Green, our Appliance Sales Manager, can help you right away. Just a moment and I'll connect you.

The secretary's opening in line 1 exhibits similar characteristics (greeting and self-identification) to the examples we have considered from the JBC corpus. Note, however, that it also includes the same type of explicit offer of service as in the calls cited by lacobucci, i.e., 'May I help you?' This type of offer was observed only once in the Japanese corpus, and was uttered by a customer service representative at Kanto Bank. Her utterance, Honzitu wa dono yoo ni itasimasu kal may be translated as 'How shall (I/we) help (you) today?' As was the case in the other English examples, the customer in (32) does not provide a self-identification, but rather makes an immediate switchboard request for the president of the company. Following the receptionist's response that the president is not available and upon hearing her offer to transfer him to someone else, without any transition or hesitation the caller states his reason-for-call rather explicitly in line 4: 'I want to talk to him about some trouble I'm having with my toaster.' This enables the receptionist to transfer the call to an appropriate representative, whose name she provides for the customer. A second example from this customer service manual is even more extreme in its directness. In the opening of this call (not reproduced here), the customer requests to speak with the same 'Mr. Sims' about a different problem. The receptionist then attempts to "screen" the call by inquiring about the problem, as shown in the excerpt on the following page:

Problem Presentation and Resolution in JBCs (33)

237

Second simulated example of an English problem report (Garner, 1984) (R=Receptionist, C=Caller) R C

What sort of problem are you having? Well, I need to talk to him right away. You people shipped us 3000 of these things, and they don't fit our product. What's more, we only ordered 300.1 want him to know about this kind of efficiency.

Obviously this type of call may not represent the norm in English problem-reporting situations; the manual refers to such callers as "those 'I-must-go-to-the-top' callers." Yet other manuals such as Farrell (1994) have similarly noted the tendency of some American callers to adopt a direct strategy so that they may get beyond "protective screens" set up by customer service representatives to "save their supervisor's time, obtain information from you, or block your call entirely" (Farrell, 1994:73). Moreover, the caller's complaint in (33) does echo certain characteristics we observed in the English call recorded at Kansai Imports in (27), and in the relatively more blunt problem report call to the telephone company appearing in (29). That is, there is an explicit placement of blame or responsibility on the service provider ('you people shipped us 3000 of these things, and they don't fit our product'). Moreover, the customer tries to avoid responsibility for the problem by stating, 'we only ordered 300.' Again, this is said to be typical of accounts.

5.4.4. Additional telephone billing problem examples lacobucci's study includes these additional, authentic examples, which are similar to those in the previous section in their directness. These are naturally-occurring examples, however. (34) ->

(lacobucci, 1990:89) (R=customer service representative) 1 C 2 R

(35)

->

My phone was shut off (2.0) I'd like to know why. Okay, have you verified this with repair ma'am? (lacobucci, 1990:92) (R=customer service representative)

1 R You don't know who that call belongs to? 2 C What do you mean, I don't know who that call belongs to? I've got a bunch of things here I don't know who it belongs to. I think there's some problem somewhere with your computer, or (.) with my line.8

(36)

(lacobucci, 1990:95) (R=customer service representative) 1 R

Okay, how may I help you.

238 Negotiating Moves -> 2 C Well, I just received my bill, and there is a call on here (.) looks like I made it from Cleveland, Ohio, and I did not, for thirty seven dollars and fifty cents.

5.5. PROBLEM REPORTING SEQUENCES IN ENGLISH vs. JAPANESE SERVICE ENCOUNTERS Based on this admittedly limited set of data, it does seem that the "moves" adopted by the American callers in presenting their problem reports may be more direct and to the point as compared to the maeoki we have considered from Japanese problem reports in this and other chapters. If we consider these utterances within their respective sequential contexts, some of the apparent contrasts in the features of the reasons-for-call in American English vs. Japanese may actually be partially explained, however. That is, the maeoki utterances by Japanese callers in problem reports as well as in other types of calls in the JBC corpus typically occur in the "anchor position" after the conversationalists have completed what is usually a "routine" opening sequence, namely the exchange of company and/or self-identifications and, in the case of calls from commercial service recipients, an exchange of business salutations. Thus it is the caller in Japanese who typically initiates the next adjacency pair after the opening sequence. In other words, the caller's maeoki represents the opening move of a new sequence, and as such it understandably incorporates more linguistic devices intended to signal the onset of what represents a transitional phase in the conversation. In contrast, in the English conversations we have discussed, the customer service representative announces a shift to the matter of business through an explicit offer of service such as 'How can I help you?' The service recipient's reason-for-call thus represents the second part of an adjacency pair as opposed to the first. As a result, it may be less critical that the caller preface his or her account with mitigating devices, hesitation markers, and so on. 5.5.1. Relational vs. task goals in accounts I would now like to return to a discussion of lacobucci's study in order to highlight some of her analyses with respect to the accounts being presented by callers, and the formulations used by call recipients to respond to caller inquiries. lacobucci points out that accounts have traditionally been viewed as "face-work devices," aimed at achieving relational as opposed to task-oriented goals (e.g., Blatz, 1972; Blumstein, 1974; Goffman, 1971; Shields, 1979).9 However, more recent studies have suggested that "social actors" seek both relational (viz., face) and task wants as concurrent but separate goals (O'Keefe and Shepherd, 1987; O'Keefe, 1988) that may be addressed during the same turn in the discourse (lacobucci, 1990:87). But lacobucci also notes Goffman's (1967) observation that face-work is not necessarily a goal in and of itself, despite its integral and essential nature hi interactions. She also cites Fisher's (1980) suggestion that previous attempts by scholars to distinguish between relation and task as separate dimensions may be problematic. lacobucci thus proposes that:


239

[A]n equally possible explanation of the customers' use of accounts in presenting troubles to representatives is that rather than having multiple goals, customers have only one overarching goal which is task-oriented and which is generally the complement of the company representatives' goal, namely to solve the customers' trouble, though within the structure provided by the company. The customers' strategy could be understood as including the use of accounts to establish injury, innocence, etc., to justify remediation as the outcome of work on the task, not primarily in response to the face-threat posed by the billing trouble. From this perspective, seemingly relation-oriented talk would occur reflecting the customers' understanding of how to go about achieving the task-goal, even though this understanding differs from that of the company representative. (lacobucci, 1990:88, emphasis mine) What lacobucci appears to be describing here would seem to parallel some of the kinds of "interactional asynchrony" which Jefferson and Lee (1981) identified with respect to service encounters, although lacobucci uses the term "trouble" for customer concerns whereas Jefferson and Lee reserve that term for everyday tellings.

5.5.2. Opening sequences in English calls to service institutions I will return to this notion of asynchrony shortly, but first I would also like to note lacobucci's claim, citing Whalen and Zimmerman (1987), that "the opening sequence of a telephone call to a service institution constrains the caller's first turn to a first topic or 'reason for call.'" Whalen and Zimmerman have made this observation based on calls placed in English to emergency services and other institutions. Regarding the sequential organization of these calls, I fully agree with their point that there is a "reduction" in the opening sequence due to the routine absence of "recognitionals, greetings and 'howareyous" as well as the feature of "prebeginnings" through which callers pre-select the intended type of call recipient/help-provider by choosing an appropriate number and dialing it prior to the conversation. As a result, the typical format of a call to an emergency service parallels the excerpts we have considered from lacobucci's data. For example: (37)

(Whalen and Zimmerman, 1987:174 , example MCE/219/12/simplified) [D = Dispatcher] 01D 02C 03 D 04C 05 D

Mid-City Emergency Um yeah (.) somebody jus' vandalized my car, What's your address. Thirty three twenty two: Elm. Is this uh house or an apartment

240 Negotiating Moves 06 C 07 D 08 C 09 D IOC 11D 12C 13D 14C

Ihtstuh house Uh-your las' name. Minsky, How do you spell it. M. I.N. S. K. Y. Wull sen' somebody out to see you. Than' you. Umhmbye. Bye.

However, I would argue based on my analysis of the JBC corpus, which includes calls by customers and commercial service recipients alike to two different types of institutions, that the sequential organization appears to differ in a significant way in Japanese. That is, whereas in the English "institutional" (emergency and non-emergency) encounters discussed by Whalen and Zimmerman (1987), Zimmerman (1984) and others there is a "summons/ answer/acknowledgment sequence" followed by the reason-for-call in the caller's first turn, in Japanese openings in the JBC data, the reason-for-cail appears at a later point, and therefore does not usually represent a direct response to an 'office form' or 'institutional form' of identification. Rather, there is typically a more extended opening sequence following the call recipient's identification which would likely, in the case of "cold calls" by customers, at least include a self-identification or "formulation of person" maeoki by that customer and an acknowledgment by the call recipient, followed by the reason-for-call.

5.5.3. Problem reports by Japanese customers to service institutions To illustrate these points, let us consider the following example, in which a Japanese acquaintance of an American customer contacts Kansai Imports about a damaged shipment. The call has been transferred from another line at the company; recording begins when the call is picked up by an operations staff member. (38)

Problem report by Japanese acquaintance of an American customer [KI #01A-4] 1

((call is transferred from another line; phone rings))

2 C10 A, ano NE:, Oh HES ATF

'Oh, you SEE,' 3 A Hal yes 'Yes.'

Problem Presentation and Resolution in JBCs 4 C Ano: (name ofcity)-si NO, hes -city of 'urn, of X-CITY,' 5 A

Hai. ACK

'Mhm.' 6 C ano:: eetto, Buraian Sumisu na n desu keredoMO, HES HES Brian Smith COP-IPF EP CP 'Um, ah, it's that (I'm calling about) Brian Smith, BUT. 7 A Hai.//Konniti wa:. yes good-day 'Yes. Hello.' 8 C

ota—otaku kara NE, you(+) from ATF 'You see, from YOU (all)'

9 A Hai. BC

'Mhm.' IOC

nankaare, ano, mizu desu KA? like that thing HES water COP-IPF Q 'like, that, you know, um, is it WATER?'

11A

Hai. BC

'Mhm.' 12C

are ga todoiTE, that thing SUB be delivered-GER 'that arrived AND'

13 A Eeto, gomen-na(sai)= HES excuse me 'Um, excuse—'

241

242 Negotiating Moves 14 C =saisyo, (shipper name)-san ga NE!~ first Mr. (shipper) SUB ATF 'first, the shipper, you SEE!' 15 A Haihai. ACK ACK

'Mhm, mhm.' 16C todokete kureta nda keDO, deliver-GER give-to-in-grp-pp EP-IPF-> CP 'it's that (he/they) delivered (it), BUT...' 17 A Hai. ACK

'Mhm.' 18C

mizu ga moru tte iu no. water SUB leak-iPF-^ QT say-iPF-> EP-IPF 'it's that (Brian)'s saying the water leaks.'

19C Sonde akete mitaraBA, and then open-GER SCC-CND-PRV 'And then once we opened it and took a LOOK (inside),' 20A Hai. ACK.

'Mhm.' 21C ano: ip -pan hutaga site nakatta waYO! HES one -bottle lid SUB be fastened-GER be-NEG-PF SP SP 'um, one bottle, the lid wasn't fastened, you KNOW!' 22 A Aa, soo desu ka::. oh so cop4PF q 'Oh,re:ally!' Despite the rather urgent tone which this caller assumes in her problem report (note that she is actually the first to speak, in line 2, after the call is transferred) the caller nonetheless provides some preliminary utterances in the form of an attention-focuser (A, ano NE:), a geographical point of reference (Ano:(name ofcity)-si NO) and the name of the customer on whose behalf she is calling (ano:: eetto, Buraian Sumisu na n desu keredoMO). The city name together with the customer's name function as a formulation of place and person simultaneously, much like


243

the /company affiliation + name/ self-identification sequences we saw in other JBC calls by commercial service recipients. In line 8, in response to the call recipient's acknowledgment and greeting, she begins her account of the problem in a semi-chronological fashion. First she indicates where the package originated (ota—otaku kara NE), what the package contained (nanka are, ano, mizu desu KA?), and the fact that it was delivered (are ga todoiTE). At this point in line 13 the call recipient tries to cut in, possibly to ask for the customer's member number, but the caller resumes her account, noting the name of the shipper and the fact that the company had delivered the shipment. Then she at last comes to the problem in line 18. namely that the customer said that water was leaking from the package. She also goes on to explain that they opened up the box and found that the lid was not fastened. The call recipient then responds with an affiliation of sorts, A soo desu ka:.

5.5.4. Example of a "reduced" opening in a call by a Japanese customer As was noted earlier, only one service representative in the JBC corpus was observed to explicitly "invite" a maeoki at the outset of a call through an explicit offer of assistance. In the absence of such offers, very few callers presented a reason-for-call in their first turns. The following call is one of the exceptions (the first portion is reproduced in (39) below). Note the hesitation and apology which precede the maeoki in line 3 (the caller's first utterance), as well as the permission request in line 5. The call also nicely illustrates a Japanese "interrogative series" that occurs in cases in which a representative requests an address (i.e., when the customer does not volunteer the information). The address is given in the order of largest geographical area to smallest geographical area, followed by the customer's name (this customer forgot to mention the postal code at the outset and was prompted for it later in the call). Also observe the representative's question regarding how to write the customer's name; as we noted in an earlier book order call, this relates to the need to explain which Chinese characters (kanzi) are used in the writing of one's own name or company affiliation in Japanese. (39)

Call from customer requesting a catalog [KI #1A-2] ((Opening segment through address and name details)) 1 C

((phone rings))

2 A Hai, Kansai Yunyuu desu. yes Kansai Imports 'Yes, Kansai Imports.' 3 C A, sumimasen. Ano, katarogu, okutte oh be sorry-iPF HES catalog

itadakitai

n desu kedo. =

send-GER receive-DES-ipp EP

CP

'Oh, excuse me. Urn, it's that I'd like to order a catalog, but....'

244

Negotiating Moves

4 A

=Hai. Etto. = ACK

HES

'Okay. Urn....' 5 C

Yorosii desu ka? good (+) COP-IPF Q 'Is it all right (to request one now?)'

6 A

Hai, de wa, gozyuusyo itadakemasu ka? yes well then address (+) receive-POT-iPF Q 'Yes, well then, may I have your address?'

7 C

Hai, (prefecture name)-ken, (county name)-gun ACK -Prefecture -County 'Okay, X-Prefecture, X-County,' ((in lines 8-18 the rest of the address is given and confirmed))

19C

Hai. Suzuki: yes 'Yes. Suzuki:'

20 A

Suzuki, hai, ACK

'Suzuki, okay,' 21C

Hitomi to iimasu. QT be called-ipp 'Hitomi is my name.'

22 A

Hitomi-san. Ms. Hitomi (Suzuki) 'Ms. Hitomi (Suzuki).'

23 C

Hai. yes 'Yes.'

24C

...tto, Hitomi-san \va, donoyoo ni okaki simasu ka? HES Ms. Hitomi TOP in what manner write-ippvl/ Q 'Um, as for Ms. Hitomi, how shall I write it?'


245

5.6. INTERACTIONAL ASYNCHRONY IN ENGLISH: SERVICE RECIPIENTS' ACCOUNTS vs. SERVICE PROVIDERS' FORMULATIONS In her study investigating billing problem calls to an American telephone company, lacobucci points out that while a great deal of analytical attention has been focused on the opening sequences of telephone conversations in order to ascertain how "caller and answerer align their respective identities" during those segments (lacobucci, 1990:90), little research has been conducted with respect to the development of what she terms "non-alignment" or "coordination problems" between the conversationalists at later points in the call as the service provider and service recipient negotiate solutions to the caller's reported troubles. In short, what she is referring to here is a matter of asynchrony. lacobucci suggests that non-alignments may develop in situations in which the caller/servicerecipient, who is not an "acculturated member of the telephone service community," must collaborate with the service provider, who is well-versed in institutional practices and policies, in order to achieve his/her task-goals. Using Goffman's (1967) concepts and terminology regarding identity management and its influence on interactional outcomes, lacobucci (1990:90) notes that the institutional representative presents the "company line," which establishes the situation and represents the point of reference to which the service recipient must "align his/her action." Accounts are thus a way for customers to justify their problems in the interest of receiving validation of their worth and achieving their goals. Much in the same way that Jefferson and Lee (1981) noted that it would be inappropriate or "soft" for a service encounter representative to offer affiliations—in other words, sympathetic or empathetic utterances—in response to troubles-tellings or problem reports, lacobucci likewise notes that "the company representative presents a wholly task-oriented posture, most typically a uniform bureaucratic presentation which rigidly sets the tone for the interactional protocol" (lacobucci, 1990:91). Customers, on the other hand, think that they should provide seemingly relevant information in order to either "prove innocence" or "develop a case for justification," working under the assumption that someone must be accountable for their problems. To illustrate this, she provides this example: (40)

(lacobucci, 1990:91) (R=customer service representative) 1 C

I've got a bill of a hundred and seventy one dollars and some change, and my oldest has to go into the hospital (.) and I won't have the money until the ninth and I will be in on the ninth to pay the whole thing, (untimed gap) 2 R This will be until March the ninth? 3 C Yes. 4 R Okay, and this will be for the full amount of one hundred seventy one dollars and forty one cents?

246 Negotiating Moves 5 C Yes, that's correct. 6 R Okay, that would be fine. I'll go and make the arrangements for you to make that payment on March the ninth. Despite the customer's rather detailed account of her reason-for-call, the representative responds only to the factual, date-oriented information about the payment, formulating or recasting what she has heard from the caller in order to confirm her own, and also the caller's, understanding of what is being collaboratively negotiated. In her first two formulations in lines 2 and 4, she uses an interrogative form to seek confirmation from the service recipient about how best to resolve the situation. Finally, however, once she has ascertained and also displayed the details of their understanding, she agrees to assist the service recipient and states, using a declarative form of an offer, that she will go take care of the arrangements for the payment. Her utterance thus functions as a statement conveying her willingness and intention to help the service .recipient. lacobucci also notes that this final, declarative form in the sequence of successive formulations signals to the caller that s/he may go ahead and introduce other problematic calls if there are any more to discuss.

5.7. PROBLEM RESOLUTION IN ENGLISH vs. JAPANESE 5.7.1. Using formulations to achieve goal synchrony in English There are a number of devices which may be used in English to present formulations; the following are a few examples from lacobucci's data: (41)

Examples of English formulations in billing problem reports (lacobucci, 1990: 93-95) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

So all these numbers are unrecognisable then? Oh, so you thought the call was coming TO you. Okay, do you want listings that will tell you who they belong to then? Okay, would you like credit for these calls then? Okay, what I can do is to have it investigated for you, and in the meanwhile, let me deduct it, okay? Okay, let me go ahead and send you the listing. Okay, hold on for just a moment. I'll go ahead and give your credit and let you know what you need to deduct.

Similar features we may observe among some of these utterances are (1) the use of 'so' as an utterance-initial signal of a formulation as an imminent "next-action"; (2) the use of 'okay' as an acknowledgment of the service recipient's previous utterance, and as a way of introducing the formulation; (3) the use of interrogative utterances inquiring about the call recipient's preferences or goals, e.g., 'do you want...?' and 'would you like...?'; and (3) the use of the


247

phrase 'let me...' in order to specify what it is the service provider will undertake in terms of assistance.

5.7.2. Using formulations to achieve goal synchrony in Japanese If we now compare the moves and devices we have identified over the course of this book which Japanese service recipients use to report problems and Japanese service providers use to offer assistance, we note there are significant parallels in terms of the form and function of these formulations in Japanese with those just presented in English. 5.7.2.1. Using the EP (no desu) to create a "common ground. " We have noted very frequently in previous chapters how essential the EP or n(o) desu construction is to the negotiation of meaning and intention in the JBC calls presented here. Noda (1981, 1990) has proposed that one of the underlying functions of this form is one of achieving linguistic "common ground" in the sense of the Japanese term nemawasi. Nema\vasi is a compound of two Japanese words, ne ('root') and mawasi ('wrap around'). The expression originated as a gardening term meaning 'spadework,' which referred to the pruning back of the root ball of a tree one or two years prior to its transplanting. The completion of this 'preparation work' or 'groundwork' in advance makes it possible to transfer the root ball without injuring the tree. The word nemawasi is now also used in the business world to refer to the 'groundwork' that precedes formal decision making in Japan. By obtaining the consensus of all parties involved prior to the conclusion of an issue, a common ground is established among those involved which helps to maintain harmony. As an illustration, let us now consider the sequences containing the EP from the call we discussed earlier between Ms. Yamamoto of Kansai Imports and Mr. Kaneda of Kobe Shipping: (42)

Sequences containing EP in KI #3B-11 14C

E:to desu ne? Kono mae, ano: e:: ohuisu kara okutta, HES COP-IPF ATF the other day HES HES office from send-pp

15C

BUkku no bun na n desu kedoMO: book(s) CN portion COP4PF EP CP 'Urn, you know, it's that (I'm calling about) um, (a) BOok order (we) sent from (the) office the other day, BUT...'

17 C =zyuuiti-gatu zyuuroku-niti: = November 16th '(on) November 16th'

248 Negotiating Moves 19C okutta bun no// ndesukedoMO: send-pp portion COP-IPF EP CP 'it's that (I'm talking about) part of the order sent (on that date), BUT' 33C (0.3) E:to mityaku rasii/l ndesu:. HES not yet arrived seems EP (0.3 second pause) 'Um, it's that it seems (it)'s not yet arrived.' 41A2 E: nizyuuiti-niti desu nel HES

21st

COP-IPF ATF

'um, (on) the 21st, you see,' 43 A2 kanryoo \va nee, dete oru n desu yo. completion TOP ATF show up be-ipp(+) EP SP 'it's that (we)'re showing completion (of delivery), you know.' ((on the computer)) 53A2 =Kiite okimasu n de: ask-GER do for future use-iPF EP-GER 'It's that (I/we)'ll ask about (it), so....' Essentially what we have here is an outline of most of the critical elements and moves in the call. In the first sequence (lines 14-15), Yamamoto provides the initial formulation of the situation through her maeoki about the books having been sent from her office the other day (kono mae, ano: e:: ohuisu kara okutta, BUkku no bun na n desu kedoMO). This is followed shortly thereafter by her reformulation in lines 17 and 19, which incorporates a more specific date (the 16th): zyuuiti-gatu zyuuroku-niti: okutta bun na n desu kedoMO. Next, we see Yamamoto's response to, or recharacterization of, Kaneda's inquiry as to whether the package didn't arrive: E:to mityaku rasii n desu. ThenkKaneda reformulates that proposed understanding of the situation with the new news in lines-4kand 43 that the computer is showing completion of delivery on the 21st: E: nizyuuiti-niti deswne! kanryoo wa nee, dete oru n desu yo. Finally, we have the "last word" in the discussion,' in which Kaneda offers to look into getting a copy of the signature release form, which Yamamot&;had requested: Kiite okimasu n de. Recall that often the EP functions to mark ;any information that appears just before it in the utterance as given and nonchallengeable, even though that information may appear to be "news" to the interlocutor. The EP also anchors that information to the larger discourse context. It is through these two functions that the EP serves to broaden the 'common ground' between the participants. One of the most common glosses used in English for the EP is a cleft construction: 'it's that....' The EP is thus often described as having an underlying function of explanation. As we have seen, formulations are a type of explanation; 1ljey serve to display the speaker's undertanding of the present discourse situation.


249

Noda (1981) and Ray (1989) have emphasized that it is actually the nominal no (or its alternant«) which alerts the listener to the fact that the speaker is trying to relate the new information marked by the EP to the immediately preceding discourse or the larger communicative context. By using n(o), the speaker can therefore recharacterize the immediate discourse situation. Noda (1990:95) notes, The use of the extended predicate nurtures ... solidarity by encoding the speaker's re-characterization of a specific situation shared by other conversation participants. It is a strategy like others that Brown and Levinson include in 'positive politeness.'...The extended predicate is used as a strategy of nemawasi when it is used with an immediately following clause particle ga, ke(re)do, or ke(re)domo, all of which have the same basic function of making the preceding proposition open-ended. Of the examples presented in (42), we note that it is the earlier sequences in the call which incorporate both the EP and the clause particle, namely Yamamoto's opening statements about the apparent incomplete delivery. As the situation becomes increasingly clear over the course of the conversation, the markings on the EP shift from open-ended clause particles to no marking (mityaku rasii n desii) to the use of the sentence particle yo, which signals new information. Finally, we have Kaneda's offer in line 53 which, although it does not include a clause particle, is nonetheless open-ended due to its utterance-final gerund form. Noda's (1990) discussion of nemawasi and the extended predicate is primarily concerned with conflict situations that are characterized by 'attack' and 'defense' discourse; her data samples are taken from student conversations, a Diet (Japanese parliament) session, and an academic symposium. However, her analysis is also applicable to the reporting and resolution of problems in business transactional telephone calls, because such reports are potential sources of conflict between service recipients and service providers. Indeed, nemawasi is a strategy which the Japanese are likely to employ in any negotiation, not just those involving conflict. 5.7.2.2. The role of /-masyoo ka?/ in formulating service recipients' preferences. We noted in section 5.7.1. that a common strategy in the English calls at the telephone company was for the representative to first use an interrogative form to propose an initial, tentative formulation of the service recipient's needs or goals vis a vis the billing problem, and if this were accepted by the service recipient, the representative would then follow this with a more definitive formulation in the declarative form. We find exactly the same pattern in the behavior of many of the service providers in the JBC data. That is, if a service provider has some information that needs to be confirmed with the service recipient prior to the service provider's undertaking some form of assistance regarding a problem, the service provider will use the consultative /-masyoo ka?/ form for his initial offer of service. One example of this is Kaneda's offer Sain... torimasyoo ka? in his conversation with Yamamoto. Since he is not yet sure whether Yamamoto wants him to actually get the

250 Negotiating Moves signature for her, he checks with her first. Then, once she has confirmed his tentative assessment that this would be an appropriate "move" for him to undertake, he restates his intention to inquire about the signature in his subsequent utterance, Kiite okimasu n de:. Another use of the l-masyoo ka?l pattern we have observed in the data is for offers of a return call during the opening segment of conversations. The underlying function of the form is nonetheless constant, in that it serves to ascertain the preferences of the interlocutor with respect to the return call in a tentative, consultative fashion. 5.7.2.3. The role of /-masu n(o) de/ in formulating service providers' intentions. We noted in the previous section that service providers in the JBC corpus will employ the /-masu n(o) del form in a sequential fashion, after the l-masyoo ka?l form. Their purpose in making a second offer of assistance this way is usually to reiterate an earlier suggestion of service, or to reassure the service recipient that the service provider will take care of the matter under discussion. We have also observed yet another function of the /-masu n(o) de/ form, and that is its use as a possible pre-closing bid. Since the pattern is employed to restate previously agreed-upon matters, it can signal the speaker's willingness to end the discussion of current topic(s), and move toward the close of the conversation. Should the interlocutor have another issue or topic to raise at that juncture, we have seen that the conversationalists will co-construct a transition into that new topic, rather than move into the closing section of the call. It is interesting in this regard that lacobucci has identified a similar function for the declarative English formulation utterances in her data (e.g., 'Okay, let me go ahead and send you the listing'), in that they can signal that "the customer is free to introduce a new problem" in the next turn (lacobucci, 1990:94). It was also found in the JBC corpus that it is not always necessary for a service provider to first produce a tentative formulation prior to making a definitive offer of assistance. In these cases, the service provider might already have obtained a sufficient indication from the service recipient or other sources as to what sort of remedy would be appropriate. The ensuing offer of service would then likely take either the simple declarative form ending in /-masu/, or the declarative followed by the EP gerund form, /-masu n(o) del. The latter form would be preferred if the service provider is attempting to reformulate his understanding of the present discourse situation.

5.8. CONCLUDING REMARKS In this chapter, we initially considered two problem reports in Japanese. The first was presented as an example of "interactional synchrony" in that the participants, Yamamoto of Kansai Imports and Kaneda of Kobe Shipping, display an understanding of each other's intentions and needs through their talk. We noted that Yamamoto uses the EP to frame her maeoki and subsequent utterances as she presents new information as recastings or formulations of the present situation to be viewed as nonchallengeable by Kaneda. Kaneda, in turn, responds by perceiving the possible problem before it becomes necessary for Yamamoto to state it explicitly. He also offers assistance in resolving the question of the signature—first in a tentative fashion with the l-masyoo ka?l form, and again after Yamamoto has concurred, in a statement of grounded assurance with the /-masu n del form.


251

In contrast, the second call between Yamamoto and two clerks at Master Electric would seem to reflect some of the tensions indicative of what Jefferson and Lee (1981) have called "interactional asynchrony." Various features of the initial call recipient's talk were identified as being atypical of the types of utterances adopted by conversationalists such as Yamamoto and Kaneda who have a better feel for their roles in such problem-reporting situations. The seeming "essential indifference" of the first Master Electric clerk to Yamamoto's attempts to provide an account of the problem in order to resolve a delivery issue contrasts with the behavior of the second clerk, Hashimoto. Like Kaneda, Hashimoto is able to perceive (or perhaps has been informed of) the discrepancy in the transformer order vs. what has been delivered, and through his talk he demonstrates an appropriate "essential interest" in the "problem and its properties" as they are presented by Yamamoto. Although he is unable to resolve the problem on the spot, he does offer, initially through a l-masyoo ka?l utterance, to look into the matter and call Yamamoto back. He then displays his familiarity with the moves appropriate to a clerk in this context by carefully confirming the number of transformers which Yamamoto still needs. He accomplishes this through a series of formulations and reformulations to demonstrate his understanding of the situation. Collaboratively, then, these two conversationalists are able to achieve a mutually satisfactory resolution to a problematic situation, and Hashimoto signals an end to their discussion with a restatement of his offer of assistance, this time in the plain declarative l-masul form. We also reconsidered the call by Ms. Yamada of Tokyo Books to the clerk at Fukuda Books, which had been discussed initially in chapter 1 (the "Hahaha no hanasi" call). This call has many parallels with the Master Electric call, in that the participants initially find themselves in a misaligned position, with the clerk attempting to place an order for the missing book, and Yamada trying to redirect his attention to the request for a "look-up" on an incomplete shipment which she had initially provided in her maeoki at the outset of the call. Ultimately, again through a series of formulations concluded with the EP, Yamada is able to clarify her intentions for the clerk. Once they have re-aligned their identities and task responsibilities, the clerk is able to assist by offering to look into the matter, in this case through two sequential utterances, both in the l-masu no del form. Finally, we examined a number of problem report calls in English with some contrasting examples in Japanese in order to raise several issues for future research. First, in the English calls it appears that service recipients present their reasons-for-call immediately following an explicit offer of assistance by the service provider, parallelling the sequential organization that has been demonstrated in English calls to emergency services, as well as to certain other "service institutions." In contrast, Japanese customers and commercial service recipients alike presented self-identifications and other information prior to proceeding with an account of their problems. As a result, "reduced" openings of the sort observed by Whalen and Zimmerman (1987) and others were noted to be the exception in Japanese, at least in calls in this corpus. Another apparent difference between call openings in the two languages is the fact that the maeoki is a sequence-initial utterance, rather than a response to an explicit offer of service. In fact, we noted that such explicit offers of service were extremely rare in the JBC corpus.

252 Negotiating Moves A brief discussion of accounts, primarily with respect to their use by English-speaking callers, revealed that there is perhaps a tendency for English conversationalists to present their problems in a more direct fashion, with fewer hesitation markers, preliminary statements, and other softeners. It was acknowledged, however, that other strategies were possibly employed by the English callers to achieve face-work goals. In view of findings by Buttny (1993) and Scott and Lyman (1968), we suggested that the way in which speakers produce and manage accounts may differ cross-culturally and cross-linguistically, and that further exploration of these sorts of interactions would be helpful in order to better identify any contrasting approaches. In the last part of the chapter, we discussed formulations in English and Japanese, and found that at least in terms of function and also often in terms of form, there are parallels between the two languages. In particular, the sequencing of an interrogative formulation followed by a declarative formulation, which lacobucci (1990) observed in the speech of English-speaking service providers attempting to resolve customer problems, echoed a similar pattern observed on a regular basis in the JBC corpus, with the l-masyoo ka?l form being used intially to propose a tentative offer of service, followed by an offer in the declarative l-masu no del form to reiterate an intention to assist the caller. We also underscored the ubiquitous nature and critical deictic function of the extended predicate (EP) in these calls.

NOTES 1. It is likely that similar language would appear in other types of service encounters as well—for example, travel agency service encounters, in which agents indicate that they are 'showing' availability for various flights. See Geis (1995:45) for a discussion of such register features in American English travel agency encounters. 2. Yamamoto probably intended to say sareru here, adopting a passive form as an honorific-polite utterance in referring to the shipper. 3. See Maynard (1989:30-31) on the use ofnanka as a filler. She argues that such fillers "can create an atmosphere in which the speaker shows some hesitancy and less certainty about his or her message content, and, therefore, gives an impression of being less imposing" (Maynard, 1989:31). 4. In standard Japanese, the sentence particle wa is usually uttered by women to convey a mild assertive tone, but in Kansai it is used by both sexes for similar effect. 5. The Isasiagemasyo ka?l portion was uttered with the slightly flat intonation common among Kobe speakers; note also the shortened vowel in sasiagemasyo. 6. Hymes (1974:51) has defined "speech community" as "a community sharing knowledge of rules for the conduct and interpretation of speech." 7. In a recent discussion about this issue with Noriko Watanabe, we considered the possibility that there are perhaps culturally-nuanced notions of what constitutes "rhetorical" or "narrative efficiency" in these customer service contexts. Japanese callers might volunteer identifying details at the outset of the call, thinking that this would be a considerate or helpful gesture to the customer service representative, yet they might also begin an account of the problem in a general way, only later moving to specifics. The


253

latter rhetorical pattern would be consistent with other such patterns in Japanese, such as the order usually observed in self-introductions of company name/section name/surname, and in addresses of postal code/(country name)/prefectural name/county or city name/street address/addressee's name. (A partial illustration of the way in which addresses are "announced" appears in example 39 in this chapter.) With respect to calls in English, Eleanor Olds Batchelder has suggested to me that some American callers might think it "pushy" to provide one's account or membership number during the opening of a call, thinking that the customer service representative might not yet be ready to take down those details. She also proposed that differences in corporate training practices might partially account for the varying ways in which customer service representatives respond to and request such identifying information in Japan vs. the United States. 8. The symbol (.) in this and the next example from lacobucci indicates a brief pause. 9. The distinction between relation-oriented and task-oriented talk to which lacobucci refers parallels that of interactional vs. transactional discourse (Brown and Yule, 1983) which was mentioned earlier in this book. 10. Note that this is one call in which the caller spoke first; however, the call was transferred from another line.


6

CULTURAL AND SOCIOLINGUISTIC CONSIDERATIONS

6.1. INTRODUCTION At several points in our analysis of JBC calls we have noted ways in which conversationalists appear to behave in a manner that is perhaps consonant with larger cultural norms and values which are positively viewed in Japan. In this chapter, we will consider some of the metalanguage used by speakers of Japanese to describe what some scholars have described as socially preferred means of communication. We will also briefly examine how ellipsis and uti/soto deixis function in Japanese. Finally, we will discuss Hall's (1976) characterization of Japan as a "high context culture" and explore some of the ways in which this notion may apply to JBCs. The purpose of this chapter is to present and reflect upon some of the notions said to be collectively shared by Japanese native speakers, in particular for the benefit of readers who may not be familiar with these concepts. It should be emphasized that the objective is not to claim that these notions have a causal effect on linguistic behavior, nor that the concepts described below are necessarily "unique" to Japanese culture or to the Japanese language. Rather, it may be that the existence of these "folk terms" to some degree influence the beliefs and expectations that many Japanese conversationalists bring to their interactions, and these in turn may partially affect the way in which certain encounters unfold.

6.2. METALANGUAGE REGARDING COMMUNICATION IN JAPANESE 6.2.1. Ki and sassi There are numerous commonly used phrases in Japanese which have a positive connotation and are used to describe the perceptiveness of an individual in interactional situations. Many of

256 Negotiating Moves these include or are related to the term sassi, which is equivalent to 'judgment,' 'understanding' or 'comprehension.' For example, describing a person as sassi ga ii, 'being considerate' or 'sympathetic' is very complimentary. As Ishii (1984:55) notes, "in Japanese society, a person who is good at.. .perceiving intuitively another person's thoughts and feelings is highly appreciated for having what is called sassi competence."1 The verb sassuru, which can be glossed as 'catch on to (the meaning),' 'sympathize with,' or 'feel for,' also appears in a related expression mime no uti o sassuru, meaning 'read (a person's) mind (or thoughts).' The verb satti sum, which shares the same initial Chinese character (§||) with sassi and sassuru, is equivalent to 'perceive,' 'observe,' or 'sense.' One other term with a similar meaning but unrelated morphology is osihakaru, 'enter into (a person's) feelings.' The term ki, which may be glossed as 'energy,' 'spirit,' or 'mind,' also figures in numerous metalinguistic or folk expressions. Rosenberger( 1994:110, fn. 6) describes ki as follows:2 The basic spiritual energy is called ki which in its original meaning in China and Japan conveyed the idea of a power of the universe that inhered in people's bodies as well as other objects. In contemporary Japan, Japanese use ki in relation to a person to describe an energy that is of the spirit or the heart, rather than the body or universe. The ki reaches out and meets with the ki of other people, and is easily influenced by the environment. The phrases ki ga kiku, 'have good judgment,' ki o kikasu and ki o kikaseru, 'consider voluntarily,' are used as indications of approval. The verb kiku means 'take effect,' or 'operate,' so these phrases convey the sense that a person's ki is 'taking effect.' The phrase ki o tukau, literally to 'use ki,' describes a person who is alert and solicitous of others' needs. In contrast with these expressions of positively valued traits, there are also corresponding expressions with negative connotations. For example, describing a person as sassi ga warui (literally, the 'sassi is bad') suggests that s/he is 'inconsiderate' or 'unsympathetic.' Saying that hito no kimoti ni taisuru sassi ga nai indicates that a person 'lacks consideration for the feelings of others.' The label ki ga kikanai (literally, the 'ki does not take effect') describes someone who is 'dull, awkward, unrefined.' A ki no tukanai hito is 'a person whose ki is not effective' — in other words, a 'thoughtless, inconsiderate person.' Tsuruta et al. have suggested that the notions of osihakaru and ki o kikaseru are visible in the expression of offers of assistance (zyoryoku no moosiide) in Japanese: In various aspects of interpersonal relationships in Japanese society, perceiving what is in the mind of the other person and behaving accordingly, without a word to the other person, is generally considered to be a good thing. In particular, this tendency is revealed most strikingly in offers of assistance [zyoryoku no moosiide}, which are usually made on behalf of the other person; sensing the immediate needs of the other person and taking these

Cultural and Sociolinguistic Considerations

257

as a cue for one's own behavior [ki o kikaseru koto] is valued highly in [Japanese] society. Although to some extent this may be pushy [tasyoo no osituke], such actions are interpreted as demonstrations of empathy [omoiyari} (Tsuruta et al., 1988:138, my translation). 6.2.2. Omoiyari and kikubari In speaking of the positive value accorded to offers of assistance in Japanese, Tsuruta (in the quotation above) refers to the notion of omoiyari. Omoiyari, 'empathy,' is a noun form of the verb omoiyaru, which may be glossed as 'guess,' 'sympathize,' or 'put oneself in someone's shoes.' Both words are actually compounds, based on the noun omoi 'thought' or 'feeling,' and the verbyaru 'give,' or 'do (for someone).' In effect, then, a person who demonstrates omoiyari is one who gives thought or consideration for the feelings of others. Lebra(1976) describes the concept of omoiyari as follows: the ability and willingness to feel what others are feeling, to vicariously experience the pleasure or pain that they are undergoing, and to help them satisfy their wishes. Kindness or benevolence becomes omoiyari only if it is derived from such sensitivity to the recipient's feelings. The ideal inomoiyari is for Ego to enter into Alter's kokoro, 'heart,' and to absorb all information about Alter's feelings without being told verbally (Lebra, 1976:38, emphasis mine). Lebra's point that the ideal situation is one in which a listener will "absorb all information...without being told verbally" echoes Tsuruta's remarks, and emphasizes the degree to which Japanese listeners are expected to perceive and act upon their interactants' feelings and needs. Lebra also claims that omoiyari is expressed in conversation when the speaker does not complete a sentence but leaves it open-ended in such a way that the listener will take it over' before the former clearly expresses his will or opinion. This is possible because, in Japanese, the verb expressing the speaker's will comes at the end of the sentence. By letting a sentence trail off before coming to the verb, the speaker can avoid expressing and imposing his ideas before knowing the listener's response (Lebra, 1976:38-9, emphasis mine). In support of her argument, Lebra paraphrases a remark by Seidensticker that "the Japanese attach importance to nouns and pronouns perhaps because they mistrust the definitiveness of verbs" (Lebra, 1976:39). Clearly this is an overstatement; Japanese of course regularly employ

258 Negotiating Moves verbs to predicate their utterances. However, as we have observed in numerous excerpts from the data, much of Japanese conversation is indeed characterized by minor sentences which contain noun phrases, often followed by particles but without a predicating verb. This is the open-endedness to which Lebra refers. Smith (1983:57) cites a similar quotation from Reischauer (1977:136), who claims that the Japanese "have a genuine mistrust of verbal skills, thinking that these tend to show superficiality in contrast to inner, less articulate feelings that are communicated by innuendo or by non-verbal means." According to Smith, "This means that many messages are not only minimal but actually obscure as well, so that the success of communication depends as much on the sensitivity of the recipient as on the quality of the message sent. Indeed, failure of communication, which is not uncommon, is generally blamed on the receiver. It follows, therefore, that the more experiences sender and receiver have shared in repeated encounters, the greater the likelihood of successful communication (Smith, 1983:57). While Reischauer's statement, like Seidensticker's, overstates the case considerably, Smith's comments about the importance of mutual, "repeated encounters" in the role relationship of "sender and receiver" parallel the points which have been made in this book about the relationship between established role relationships and smooth interactions in JBCs. Szatrowski (1992a) has suggested that omoiyari is a strategy used by Japanese participants in invitation sequences in order to show compassion or sympathy. This occurs "when the invitee, whose goal may be to refuse, leaves the possibility of acceptance open while developing the conversation in the direction of a refusal, thus showing sympathy and compassion for the inviter" (Szatrowski, 1992a:l). Another strategy which Szatrowski argues that Japanese speakers adopt in the context of invitations is that of kikubari: which literally means to distribute ki, energy or attention or showing consideration. I have observed this strategy when an inviter shows sensitivity for the invitee. An example is when an inviter makes it easier for the invitee to refuse after the invitee has indicated the potential for refusal (Szatrowski, 1992a:l). Speakers may also demonstrate the same strategies of sensitivity and consideration for others in the expression of offers. For example, Nishihara (1994) has observed that the way hosts and hostesses offer food and drink to guests differs significantly in Japan and the United States. She notes that a Japanese host(ess) will usually anticipate a guest's needs and provide refreshment immediately, without inquiring about the guest's preferences: ...in both Japanese homes and companies, drinks are often served to visitors. In the summer this would be cold barley tea [mugitya], in the other seasons green tea [otya] would be commonly offered. It is rare that the guest be asked, "What would you like to drink?"


259

The host serves drinks without allowing the guest the chance to accept or refuse. This no doubt comes from the good intentions of the host who anticipates the situation, feeling that someone coming from outside must surely be thirsty or would like to relax a bit with some refreshment before getting down to business. In an American home or company there would most likely be no sudden appearance of drinks. If there is no secretary assuming the role of tea-server, there is no likelihood that drinks would be served without asking the guest's preference. Here, too, is evident the difference in communication between Japan, where one attempts to anticipate the other's wishes and respond to them before resorting to words, and America, where one responds after ascertaining another's wishes through words. Looking at it from the point of view of a Japanese, if one asks "May I get you something?" you can't expect a guest to reply "Yes, please." It would end up with the guest being reserved and responding, "No thank you, I don't need anything. Please don't go to any trouble." This is however, an expression showing concern that the guest is thirsty and should have something to drink. An American would say that it is rude to just serve arbitrarily without even asking what your guest would prefer. If drinks are served, it is proper to do so after finding out what they want. To Japanese on the other hand, being pressed to make decisions—hot or cold, coffee or tea, sugar or no sugar, if so how much, how about cream, or would you prefer lemon, and so on—especially when paying a courtesy call, is very trying. It would be much kinder to have someone make the decision for you. Here we have a critical difference in communication patterns (Nishihara, 1994:6). Doi (1973:13) has made similar observations about the expectation in Japan that hosts will show sensitivity to their guests' needs. He recalls his difficulty in coming to terms with the English phrase 'help yourself as an expression of goodwill; to him, the phrase seemed to imply that 'nobody else will help you.' He goes on to point out that The Japanese sensibility would demand host should show sensitivity in detecting should himself 'help' his guests. To leave the house to 'help himself would seem consideration.

that, in entertaining, a what was required and a guest unfamiliar with excessively lacking in

Rabinowitz (1993:96) has noted in her study of offers in American English, however, that the American offer to 'help yourself is not only uttered in contexts in which the addressee might be expected to fend for him/herself. Rabinowitz found, for example, that a hostess might utter

260 Negotiating Moves the phrase 'help yourself as she extends a platter of food to a guest. Moreover, although Rabinowitz' overall findings suggest that some of the most frequently occurring linguistic forms of offers in English are those which literally inquire as to the addressee's wants, needs, or feelings (and therefore, we note, contrast with Japanese forms), most of these offers were in fact what she calls "spontaneous" offers—that is, those in which the offerer had already perceived that someone might have wanted something or was in need of assistance.4 Consider the following examples from her data (Rabinowitz, 1993:106-109): (7)

Offer uttered by a hostess to visitors who have just complained that their child, also visiting with them, seems ill: 'I have Benadryl, if you need [it].'

(8)

Offer uttered by a salesclerk to a customer who has just paid for a small writing pad: 'You want a bag?'

(9)

Offer uttered by a customer with a shopping cart who was about to enter a narrow aisle in a small fish store where a worker was sweeping the floor: 'I can come around, if you like.'

(10)

Offer uttered by a hostess to a visitor who has just admired her flowers: 'You can take some home, if you want.'

(11)

Offer uttered by a guest to a hostess, who is setting out plates on the table: 'Do you need some help?'

Clearly, then, there are parallels in American English behavior which suggest that verbal offers of assistance are often prompted by the perceptiveness of the speaker, rather than as a response to an explicit request by the interlocutor. Nishihara and Doi probably do not intend to suggest that the Japanese are "unique" in responding to perceived needs. Rather, it would seem they are trying to emphasize the fact that perhaps relatively more often in Japan, such offers are not given verbal expression. Thus the host who perceives that a guest may be thirsty simply acts on this perception and presents an appropriate beverage for the guest, rather than asking about the guest's preferences. There are, of course, numerous verbal expressions through which a Japanese speaker may provide options to the interlocutor when making an offer, and we have already observed some of them in the data for this study. For example, prefacing an offer with the phrase, mosi


261

yo(rosi)kereba conveys some of the sense of 'if you like' in English. Although the Japanese phrase literally means 'if (it) would be good,' by using the polite formyorosii, rather than the plain form //', a speaker can convey the sense that 'be good' is in reference to the addressee. Another option would be for the speaker to employ the consultative form !-(mas)(y)oo ka?l 'Shall I....?' in the offer. As we have seen, by doing so a speaker leaves the responsibility for the final decision up to the addressee. Yet the fact that either of these patterns may be used still does not mean that it is permissible at any time in Japanese to ask about the needs and desires of the addressee. As Hoshino (1991) has noted, asking if someone 'wants' something by using the form /.. .(-te) hosiil is pragmatically constrained in Japanese (for example, it is inappropriate when used toward superiors). Thus if a student wants to offer a copy of something to her teacher, instead of asking (12)

# Sensee, kono kopii hosii desu ka? Teacher this copy desire COP-IPF Q 'Do you want (to have) this copy?'

the student should instead say (13)

Kopii simasyoo ka?5 COpy

do-IPF-CNS Q

'Shall I copy this?' As Hoshino explains, Asking the superior hearer to explicate his wants is understood as [a] lack of omoiyari ('empathy') and should be avoided in the ritual situation. Instead of asking the hearer to be his beneficiary, when the speaker should detect the hearer's desire, the speaker can suggest to perform the relevant action. -Masyoo is the distalstyle consultative (Jorden and Noda, 1987:175) and suggests the speaker's willingness to do the things mentioned (Hoshino, 1991:52, emphasis mine). By 'ritual situation,' Hoshino (following Lebra 1976) means the context ofomote ('front') and soto ('outside, external, public'), as opposed to situations that are ura ('back') and/or uti ('inside, internal, private'), i.e., hidden from public view.5 This is precisely the sort of situation described above in the quotations by Nishihara and Doi, as well as in the examples of English offers cited by Rabinowitz. The distinction here, as Nishihara and Doi point out, is the fact that in polite, public situations in Japan, the expectation is that people will do things for others and anticipate their needs in advance; one shouldn't have to ask what those needs might be. This has significant consequences; as Mari Noda has suggested (personal communication), the verbal expression of an offer can therefore run counter to a cultural norm.

262 Negotiating Moves If this is the case, then when and why would a pattern such as l-(mas)(y)oo ka?l be used in Japanese? As Hoshino observes in the quotation above, this form can indicate a speaker's willingness to do a certain activity. Also, in situations in which it is impossible or inappropriate for a speaker to surmise what action should be taken (as we have seen in situations involving offers for a return call, for example), a speaker is usually better off leaving the responsibility for the final decision up to the addressee. But we have also noted in the JBC data that there are cases in which a service provider will extend an offer in the l-masu n(o) del pattern without first inquiring, through a l-masyoo ka?l type offer, about the service recipient's needs. This is possible because, sequentially speaking, the l-masu n(o) del offers typically occur near the close of calls, by way of restating the matters agreed upon in the previous discourse. As such, these offers represent a statement of intention and willingness to assist, since at this point in the conversation the participants have already collaboratively determined the needs of the service recipient. 6.2.3. Ma In addition to the high value placed on sensitivity to others' needs in Japan, there is also an emphasis on the ebb and flow of what is called ma, a term which may be glossed variously as 'space,' 'room,' or 'interval.' Here again, there are many phrases which the Japanese employ that help to reveal the nature of this folk concept. Some phrases have a positive connotation, such as ma ni au; this means literally to 'meet the interval,' and refers to being on time. (Recall that this was employed in one of the maeoki presented in chapter 3: E:to! Ano: ni-satu maniaimasu n def). Other phrases involving ma are negative. For example, the phrase ma ga nukeru indicates that something is 'out of tune.' The intransitive verb nukeru means 'remove (oneself, itself),' so that the phrase ma ga nukeru literally means 'an (appropriate) space or interval removes itself; this can result in a maladroit situation. Likewise, if a person refers to him/herself by saying ma ga warui, that person feels awkward, out of sync, or unlucky. For the Japanese, therefore, the maintenance or support of ma, in its proper place, would appear to be important. The notion of ma figures prominently in the Japanese traditional arts, especially in the Noh theater.7 As described in the Daizirin (a dictionary of the Japanese language), this type of ma refers to the space in time created between beats or between steps or moves in a performance. It can also refer to the sense of rhythm and tempo used in turning on stage.8 A related notion, ma o toru, literally means 'take ma.'9 This is a situation in which one performer leaves another performer some room (ma o toru), with the expectation that the other performer will come forward to take up or fill in the ma in response (ma ni an). When these moves are performed well—that is, when the two performers are 'in-sync' and their timing is well-coordinated, the phrase ma no torikata ga umai (literally, 'the taking of ma is skilled') may be used to praise their performance. As we have seen in examples from the data, a strikingly similar kind of 'in-sync performance' may be observed among Japanese speakers in conversation. That is, speakers will leave 'space'


263

for their listeners to interpret what they are saying, with the expectation that listeners will 'read between the lines,' perceive the import of their utterances and respond appropriately. One way in which speakers may leave such a space is through a lack of specification of certain information; this phenomenon has been referred to as ellipsis and will be discussed in section 6.3 below. 6.2.4. Enryo-sassi communication Ishii (1984) has referred to this delicate balance of give and take between speaker and listener in Japanese as enryo-sassi communication. According to Ishii, speakers avoid expressing their thoughts and feelings directly through enryo, or 'modesty,' yet sensitive listeners are able to interpret the messages through sassi, 'consideration' or 'anticipation.' Ishii argues that enryo-sassi communication is "one of the basic principles underlying Japanese interpersonal relations" (Ishii, 1984:49). The findings of a study by Okazaki (1993) support this observation. Okazaki examined the conversational behavior of Americans and Japanese when stating opinions, and found that while the Americans were more likely to express their opinions clearly and at the outset of a conversational turn, the Japanese preferred to adopt what she calls "listener-dependent strategies." For example, when asked the question, 'What do you think about [X]?' many Japanese subjects tended to avoid stating their opinions immediately, and would instead provide a great deal of background information, from which listeners were expected to draw their own conclusions. Okazaki claims that this reflects a more general tendency in Japanese conversational structure, which is "to put a long introductory comment about a topic before the thesis statement."10 She notes, moreover, that when and if the thesis statement is uttered, it is usually deemphasized paralinguistically, i.e., it is given weaker stress and may be spoken quietly." Okazaki concludes that "in Japanese conversation, a speaker's point is frequently missing on the surface. Listeners are expected to be sensitive enough to interpret the point and understand where the conversation is headed by the way the speakers use contextualization cues" (Okazaki, 1993:71). In the case of problem-reporting sequences in Japanese, we have observed that sometimes even the problem itself will not be explicitly expressed, yet the interlocutor can still 'read between the lines' and perceive what was intended (as illustrated in the conversations between Yamamoto and Kaneda and between Yamamoto and Hashimoto, discussed in chapter 5 and presented in appendixes 7 and 8). This is not done through sheer guess-work. Rather, the larger generic frame—transacting business in Japanese on the telephone—together with certain register features, contextualization cues, and the fact that the participants have experienced similar interactions in the past, aids in the interpretation of a given speaker's utterance and signals to the participants what interpretation(s) would be likely in that context.

264 Negotiating Moves

6.3. ELLIPSIS AND UTI/SOTO DEIXIS Hinds (1982) has referred to missing elements in Japanese conversation as a form of ellipsis: Conversational interactants require fewer overt clues in the form of spoken words to carry on successful communication. ... [T]he high incidence of elliptical utterances forces the addressee to be much more receptive to subtle and transitory clues.... [T]he typical Japanese interactant is sensitive to conversational interaction to a greater degree than the American counterpart (Hinds, 1982:70). Monane (1981) has argued that there are two different categories of ellipsis in the languages of the world, including Japanese; she refers to these as "syntactic" and "informational" ellipsis. An example of syntactic ellipsis in Japanese is the omission of the subject; Martin (1975:185) has noted that "The frequency with which a subject is NOT explicitly stated—even as a subdued theme—may be as high as 74 percent of the sentences in a discourse, though it is lower in expository material such as news programs."12 Such ellipsis is possible because the unmentioned information may be recovered from contextual cues and prior text. Consider the following example from the Kanto data corpus, in which a male caller to Tokyo Books has been asking about the possibility of receiving an estimate for an order of books. Ms. Yamada, who takes his call, responds: (14)

Promising to take care of an estimate for a customer [TB #1 A-14] 1 A:

Zyaa, ano: ima ka—ima kara nagasite itadakereba: well HES nowps now from send-GER receive-iPF-POT-pRvJ/ 'Well, um, from no—from now, if (you) could send (us) (a fax),'

2 C:

Ee. BC

'Mhm.' 3 A:

sugu ni, omitumorisyo otukuri itasimasu immediately estimate make-ippvU '(we) will immediately make (an) estimate,'

4 C:

A soo desu oh so COP-IPF

ka. Q

'Oh, is that so.' 5 A:

de waribiki mo sasite itadakimasu no de and discount also do-iPF-CAU-GER receive-iPF vp EP-GER 'and (we)'ll also take the liberty of (giving you a) discount, so....'


265

6 C: A, naruhodo. oh indeed 'Oh, really.' Note that in each of Yamada's utterances, the grammatical subjects—that is, the equivalents of 'you' (anata) and 'we' (watasi-domo)—are not specified.13 This is due to several contextual factors. First, in a telephone conversation such as this that is limited to two participants, any requests or questions which one speaker utters are generally addressed to the other party (or the company that s/he represents) on the telephone. If more specification were necessary—for example if the request concerned a third party who may or may not be present—that information would of course be specified, unless reference to that third person could be expected to be understood because of recent focus or mention in the discourse. In this conversation, however, the only participants involved are the caller and Yamada, so it is already clear for whom the request is intended. Secondly, Yamada's use of the pattern l-te itadakimasul, that is, the gerund of the main verb followed by the distal-style, humble-polite auxiliary meaning 'receive', illustrates how Japanese verbals of giving and receiving may be used to index uti/soto relations in Japanese. In traditional pragmatic terms, this usage would be seen as an example of social deixis, which Levinson (1983:63) has described as "the encoding of social distinctions that are relevant to participant roles, particularly aspects of the social relationship holding between the speaker and the addressee(s) or speaker and some referent." However, while the deictic anchor point for IndoEuropean languages may be the speaker, for Japanese it is the uti, which Wetzel (1994) has aptly termed 'a movable self.' Minimally the uti includes the speaker, but depending upon the speaker's viewpoint of the moment, it can also include members of the speaker's in-group—the makeup of which is constantly shifting. In the case of (14), Yamada is probably not referring to herself, but rather to her immediate department (Sales) or perhaps even to the company as a whole—hence the English gloss for her request, 'Well...if (you) could send (us) a fax....' Thus while linguists studying Indo-European languages are primarily concerned with the notion of person, and subsequently also with syntactic ellipsis and the anaphoric function of pronouns, Wetzel (1994:79ff) has argued that for Japanese, the issue instead is uti/soto social deixis. By examining the many linguistic manifestations of the uti/soto dichotomy, we can develop a better understanding of "the complex interrelationship between language and its sociocultural setting" in Japanese. In terms of the present study, an analysis of uti/soto deixis can help to clarify the role relationships obtaining among speakers in conversations such as (14), which to an untrained Western eye might appear to lack a specification of person. As Wetzel (1994:84) notes, "Uti makes the link between language and social organization explicit." The second kind of ellipsis which Monane discusses is informational ellipsis. This involves the omission of prepositional information. For example, in the utterance Otya ga hairimasita kedo.... ('The tea is ready, but....'), what is missing is an explicit invitation to the addressee (such as nomi ni irassyatte kudasai, 'please come and have some.') Monane argues that in Japanese, informational ellipsis

266 Negotiating Moves enables the speaker to fulfill certain obligations and expectations that Japanese culture demands. Informational Ellipsis enables the speaker, particularly, to fulfill a basic Japanese cultural directive: Do not express overtly, in certain cultural situations, certain kinds of information. Signal these only, utilizing particular linguistic cues. Allow the unexpressed units of information and their meanings to be cognitively constructed by the listener through the listener's understanding, within these cultural contexts, of these particular linguistic cues and of the culturally-based meanings which they signal.14 In the example given above, Otya ga hairimasita kedo..., the "linguistic cue" is the clause particle kedo ('but'), which signals to the (culturally aware) listener that the information which might have followed (nomi ni irassyatte kudasai) has been omitted. Monane notes that when informational ellipsis occurs in complex sentences, "it is the subordinate clause plus a linguistic cue that is overtly expressed. The main clause, with its direct message, is the construction that Japanese culture prescribes should be ellipted" (Monane, 1981:10). Despite the lack of overtly specified information in such examples, Japanese native speakers (and well-trained learners) have no difficulty in recovering the speaker's intent. In the case of Otya ga hairimasita kedo..., the listener would interpret the utterance as an invitation or offer to have some tea. (Learners who are not acquainted with this type of ellipsis in Japanese might encounter more difficulty in comprehension, however.) Note also that several of the examples of offers cited in the discussion of Fukushima and Iwata's (1987) study in chapter 2 represent informational ellipsis. Whether or not the lack of complete specification in Japanese conversation actually constitutes ellipsis is a question deserving of more scholarly attention. Although this is beyond the scope of this study, I would note that labeling such behavior as "ellipsis" would seem to derive from a Western/Romance language perspective. To speak of "ellipsis" is to suggest that something which should have been specified has been omitted; this may be misleading if in fact the "something" was not necessary in the first place.15 For example, while in English the explicit marking/indication of the subject of a sentence is usually grammatically necessary,16 in Japanese, this is not the case. As we have seen, in many situations, the subject need not be specified because it is recoverable from context. Moreover, certain socially deictic information is encoded in Japanese verbal forms such as the humble- and honorific-polite, which would indicate to a listener familiar with the language whether the speaker is referring to him/herself (and/or an in-group member), or to an out-group member.

6.4. JAPAN AS A HIGH CONTEXT CULTURE Taken together, the folk metalanguage and discourse moves that we have discussed in this chapter provide valuable insights into the shared expectations of the Japanese regarding the give-and-take of conversation. As a speaker, one is expected to assume a stance of reserve, or


267

enryo, in making one's needs, desires and opinions known to others; yet as a listener, one is expected to be attuned to the various messages that are perhaps stated indirectly or not at all in the speech and behavior of others. Hall (1976:91) uses the term "high-context" to characterize this type of interaction, noting that "a high-context (HC) communication or message is one in which most of the information is either in the physical context or internalized in the person, while very little is in the coded, explicit, transmitted part of the message." More specifically, he notes: When talking about something that they have on their minds, a high-context individual will expect his interlocutor to know what's bothering him, so that he doesn't have to be specific. The result is that he will talk around and around the point, in effect putting all the pieces in place except the crucial one. Placing it properly—this keystone—is the role of his interlocutor. To do this for him is an insult and a violation of his individuality. (Hall, 1976:113) This description echoes that of Lebra given earlier regarding omoiyari in Japanese communication. Although Hall and Lebra may have been referring here to informal face-to-face interactions, the behavior we have observed in JBCs appears consistent with this analysis as well. For example, when a service recipient finds it necessary to contact a service provider about a problem—perhaps regarding the incomplete delivery of her company's goods to a customer—the service recipient may be reluctant to verbalize the specific nature of the problem, at least at the outset of the conversation. To do so would be face-threatening to her interlocutor,17 because it would explicitly indicate that the service provider had failed in its duties as a company. In such situations callers will also often avoid making explicit requests for assistance or resolution of the problem. Such specificity is seen as unnecessary; instead, the preferred means by which such problems appear to be communicated is by a sequential, multi-stage presentation of details involved in the transaction—for example, the dispatch date of the shipment, the customer's name, the place from and/or to which the packages were to be sent, and so forth. Particularly if the business relationship between the service recipient and the service provider is well established—and it is indeed common for Japanese businesses to rely, for example, upon one or two shipping services rather than several—-the knowledge and experience already shared by the participants regarding such transactions represent an important ground against which any new information is understood. The burden then rests upon the shoulders of the service provider to confirm that there is a problem and to indicate that s/he (and/or members of the company) will take steps toward remedying it. If the service recipient has explained the nature of the problem sufficiently and the person with whom s/he is speaking is capable of handling the problem (i.e., that person does not need to transfer the call to another colleague or section of the company), an offer of assistance in this context will often take the form of a statement, rather than a question. Essentially the service provider, perceiving the problem and aware of his/her role relationship to the service recipient,

268 Negotiating Moves promises to see to it that the matter is taken care of, without asking whether or not that is what the service recipient would like the service provider to do. This is one example of the "keystone" to which Hall referred in the passage quoted earlier; it is the main point which the service recipient anticipates will be perceived. Since the service recipient expects the service provider to fill in what is implied, the declarative stance in the service provider's ensuing offer, which appears to give the service recipient no options, is not considered pushy or ositukegamasii.™ The impact of an offer made in the declarative form can be softened through the use of n(o) de, the gerund of the EP. As we have seen, the EP essentially functions to subordinate the proposition in the preceding clause and connect it to the larger discourse context. A speaker who uses the EP assumes that this connection between the subordinate clause and the present discourse situation is something that is shared or sharable with the interlocutor—in other words, it is something accessible or retrievable by both participants. By using the EP, a speaker also leaves the sentence open-ended, and defers its final interpretation to the addressee. McGloin (1980:141) has argued that similar subordination of a proposition with n(o) desu kedo "has the function of giving background information," and she claims that as a result the utterance is more polite than the same utterance used without n(o) desu kedo. However, Noda (1990) and Takatsu (1991) have challenged McGloin's analysis, saying that kedo itself, rather than n(o) desu, is what signals that something more will be forthcoming in the discourse.19 Takatsu further argues that: When the addressee hears N(O) DESU, s/he receives the signal that the speaker is linking the present statement to what the addressee has just been talking about.... It is not a matter of presenting new information as if it were known, as McGloin suggests, but of introducing information which is linked to what has preceded it. What is presented as 'known' is not the proposition embraced by NO DA itself..., but the particular element of the context which makes that proposition relevant and serves to anchor it within the discourse as a whole (Takatsu, 1991:172). The result, Takatsu contends, is that the use of n(o) desu "gives cohesion to the discourse": in that it draws attention to the link between the proposition embraced by it and the context in which this proposition appears. It indicates that the whole proposition is referring either to the preceding utterance(s) in the conversation or to the situation in which the conversation takes place. In other words, it provides cohesion with either the linguistic or the extra-linguistic context. NO DA provides cohesion not only to the previous statement or to the situation of the utterance but also, in a sense, between the speaker and the addressee. The speaker requests the addressee's

Cultural and Sociolinguistic Considerations cooperation in the interpretation (Takatsu, 1991:168, emphasis mine).

of

the

269

utterance

Takatsu's point (italicized portion) about the collaborative nature of the n(o) desu construction is consistent with the emphasis placed throughout this book on the interactive way in which service recipients and service providers negotiate the presentation of problems and their resolution. In this regard, it may be useful to recall an example from the data that we considered earlier in chapter 1. For reference, the conversation is presented again below as (15): (15)

Discourse cohesion through the use of the form l-masu no del 1 A

2 A

Tadaima seki hazusite 'masite, modotte kite just now seat leave-GER be-GER return-GER come-GER inai

n desu ga:

be-NEG-IPF EP

CP

'It's that (she)'s away from her desk right now and hasn't returned, but...' 3 C A soo desu ka//. Wakarimasita. oh so COP-IPF Q become clear-pp 'Oh, is that so. I see.' 4 A

Hai. BC

'Mhm.' ->

5 A

Yorosikereba, kotira no hoo kara, orikaesi: good-pRV this CN side from return

->

6 A odenwa simasyoo ka? telephone call do-ipp-CNs Q 'If (you) like, shall (we/I) call (you) back [from this side]?' 7 C E:to: so:sita:ra: HES in that case 'Urn, in that case,' 8 A Hai. BC

'Mhm.'

270 Negotiating Moves 9 C Hal A, dekimasitara, onegai-dekimasu desyoo ka. yes oh be able-CND request-iPF-por <J/ CP-TENT Q 'Yes. Oh, could (I) ask (you) to do (that)?' 10 A Hai, e:to, Inaisi-san. yes HES Mr. Inaishi 'Yes, um, Mr. Inaishi.' 11C Igarasi to moosimasu. Igarashi QT be called-ipp '(I)'m Igarashi.' 12 A A, Igarasi-san. Sumimasen. Situree simasita. oh Mr. Igarashi be sorry-iPF rudeness do-pp Oh, Mr. Igarashi. (I)'m sorry. Excuse me [for what I did]. ->

ISA Zyaa, anoo: modorimasitara kotira kara well then HES return-CND this side from

-> 14 A gorenraku sum yooni itasimasu node: in order do-iPF^ EP-GER 'Well then, um, (we/I) '11 see to it that (she) contacts (you) once (she)'s back.' 15C A, hai. Oh ACK

'Oh, okay.' Here we see that an operations staff member at Kansai Imports, Ms. Sasaki, uses the form l-masu no del in order to provide an offer of grounded assurance that she would see to it that someone in her office would contact the caller. Noda's analysis ofn(o) desu is even more specific than Takatsu's, arguing that the "underlying single function of the noun no seems to be that of pointing or referring" (Noda, 1981 :2 1-2). She notes that the sentence Haruko ga katta no desu has two possible interpretations, as follows: (16)

Haruko ga katta no desu. Haruko SUB buy-pp COP-IPF (a) [Some thing/object X] is the one that Haruko has bought.' (b) 'It's that Haruko has bought X.'


271

In the first interpretation, no refers to what Hanako has bought, while in the second, it refers to the 'situation ofHaruko 's buying something'' (Noda 1981:22, italics mine). It is this latter usage ofn(o) desu which Noda calls the extended predicate interpretation, and it is this interpretation which I have argued applies to the use of no in offers of assistance in Japanese. Thus, when a service provider, after listening to a service recipient's account of the details of the problem, indicates that s/he will look into it by saying, for example, o sirabe itasimasu no de, the use of no here functions to point to the account of the problem provided in the previous discourse. It also refers to the unstated but implied request for assistance made by the service recipient. In other words, the service provider is not only indicating that s/he (or someone in the office) will check into the matter, but also that they are doing so in response to the immediately preceding situation as presented in the discourse. Takatsu (1991:173) has also argued that the use of n(o) desu is particularly common in the expression of intentions or desires, noting that "if NO DA is deleted, the utterance sounds as if the intention or desire is being asserted one-sidedly, and as if no account is being taken of the addressee." As an illustration of this point, she provides the following examples: (17)

Contrasting use/non-use of n(o) desu when expressing intention or desire (a)

Ano, tyotto, miti o otazune sitai N(O) DESU ga, HES just way OBJ inquire-iPF-DES^ EP CP Nyuukassuru byooin wa dotira no hoogaku desyoo ka. Newcastle hospital TOP which CN direction COP-TENT Q 'Excuse me, it's that I'd like to ask the way, but in which direction would Newcastle Hospital be?'

(b)?? Ano, tyotto, miti o otazune sitai desu ga,.... HES just way OBJ inquire-ipp-DESvP COP-IPF CP (c)?? Ano, tyotto, miti o otazune suru N DESU ga, HES just way OBJ inquire-iPF^ EP CP (d)

Ano, tyotto, miti o otazune simasu ga, HES just way OBJ inquire-ippvU CP

Taken together with Noda's analysis, we see that the use of no can reassure the addressee that the speaker is aware of the addressee's feelings. We have seen that offers in such contexts may be responses to perceived, rather than explicitly expressed, needs and desires of a service recipient who has encountered a problem (but who may be refraining from complaining about it overtly). This is one example of what Ishii called enryo-sassi communication. When the service provider extends an offer using the pattern

272 Negotiating Moves l-masu n(o) del, we have a similar situation, in that the offerer is refraining from explicitly stating something, and anticipates that her interlocutor will fill in the rest. As Takatsu (1991:174-5) observes: It is in this way that NO DA provides cohesion not only with the previous statement or the situation of the utterance but also, in a sense, between the speaker and the addressee. The speaker requests the addressee's cooperation in the interpretation of the utterance. It is as if to say, "You know, and I know, why I say this. I don't need to spell it out to you." This too is an example of what Hall termed "high-context" communication. In contrast, if the service provider is unsure as to whether or not the service recipient is •requesting a particular service, or if he is referring to something that is not recoverable (i.e., mentioned or assumed) in the immediately preceding discourse, the offer may take the form of a question (e.g., l-masyoo ka?/). What is particularly notable when we examine JBCs is the relative infrequence with which service providers use the interrogative l-masyoo ka?/ pattern in offering assistance, aside from cases in which they are offering a return call. This perhaps reflects the expectations that the participants bring to the conversation. Service recipients may well assume that service providers, when made aware of a problem, will see to its resolution, because the shared interests of the two parties depend upon continued successful interactions and transactions.

6.5. CONCLUDING REMARKS We have observed in this chapter that the nature of communication in Japanese appears to be highly contextualized, incorporating uti/soto deixis and responding to expectations grounded in a variety of folk metalinguistic notions, including omoiyari, kikubari, and enryo-sassi communicative strategies. It should therefore come as no surprise that Americans accustomed to a more explicit means of communication (that is, "low-context" communication) often find interactions with the Japanese to be perplexing. A common complaint by American listeners is that they cannot ascertain the "point" of a Japanese speaker's discourse. This problem becomes particularly acute on the telephone, when cues that might have been evident in the physical context in face-to-face interactions are no longer accessible. Maruyama (1990) reports that students of Japanese as a second language who obtained jobs in Japan upon completion of their language studies often encountered difficulties understanding the true intention of their interlocutors, as well as the overall structure of Japanese discourse. Many indicated that they wished they might have been given more guidance in these areas through their instruction. It would therefore appear that more detailed, contextually-situated accounts of the nature of Japanese discourse are in order if we are to successfully train our students, as well as business professionals, to participate effectively in interactions with native Japanese speakers. The focus


273

in this study on the presentation of problems and offering of assistance in business transactional telephone conversations is an attempt toward this goal. It is important to note, however, that our findings regarding language use in one particular context with certain types of participants may not extend to other particular contexts with different participants. Indeed, if communication in a high context culture is as contextually dependent as Hall suggests, we might expect different conventions of language-in-use to obtain in different situations.

NOTES 1. See Kobayashi (1980:217) on this point. Another way of describing this sort of perceptive behavior is to say that someone can gyookan o yomu, or 'read between the lines.' Of course this is a common phrase in English as well, although it is perhaps used more frequently in that language as a suggestion rather than as a complimentary description of someone's behavior. 2. For an excellent discussion of the importance ofki to the Japanese sense of self and relations with others, see Rosenberger(1992). 3. This, in essence, is a definition of ma o torn, a phrase which I discuss in more detail in the next section. 4. Rabinowitz contrasts "spontaneous offers" with "elicited offers," and explains that the latter are based on hints or explicit mentions of need by the interlocutor. 5. Another, perhaps preferable alternative here would be to say Kopii itasimasyoo ka?, using the humble-polite form of the verbal. 6. See Lebra (1976:112) for a discussion of various types of Japanese interpersonal relationships, which she characterizes according to a combination of the uti/soto and omote/ura orientations. In addition to ritualistic situations (soto and omote), she suggests intimate (uti and ura) and anomic (soto and urd) situations. The situations presented in this investigation within the genre of JBCs generally fall within the ritualistic (soto and omote) category. See also Noda (1990:118-140). 7. I am grateful to Charles and Shelley Fenno Quinn for pointing this out to me, as well as for their suggestions regarding the translations for many of the concepts discussed in this section. I hope that what I have presented here is faithful to their original explanations. 8. "Haku to haku (doosa to doosa) no aida no zikan-teki kcmkaku. Tenzite, rizumu ya tenpo no i ni mo motirareru" (Matsumura, 1988:2257). 9. Note that this does not refer to ma being removed, as was the case in the earlier example ma ga nukeru. Rather, ma o torn is the "taking up" by one actor of a pause or space in the performance. 10. Okazaki (1993:78). In support of this claim, Okazaki cites Inagaki (1988), who "points out that it is a characteristic of the Japanese to open their speech, for example, with expressions of humility, apology, excuses, and/or a course of action rather than a main point" (Okazaki 1993:78). She also cites a previous study of her own (Okazaki, 1987) which examined the behavior of English-Japanese bilinguals, in which she argued that "Japanese speakers provide several opportunities for their listeners to build up a shared background of information by providing preliminary information including socio-cultural knowledge, context-bound suppositions, and goals of communication that interlocutors must hold in common in order to understand the points of the messages and to proceed smoothly" (Okazaki, 1987).

274 Negotiating Moves Yet all of these claims are extremely general. A more cautious approach would be to situate such claims in particular contexts or to limit them to particular conversational genres, where appropriate. Szatrowski, as we have seen, has discussed the notions of omoiyari and kikubari in the context of invitations. Likewise, in this study, the observations being made with respect to sociocultural beliefs and attitudes are restricted to the genre of business transactional telephone conversations, and more specifically, to the reporting and resolution of problems in that context. 11. Gumperz, Kaltman, and O'Connor (1984) observed similar behavior among South Asians in the presentation of background and new information, but contrasting behavior among Americans. According to the authors of that study, "[South Asians] frequently lead up to a main point by first presenting background information spoken at a high pitch with rhythmic stress, then shift to lower-pitched, less emphatic speech to make their main point. Americans generally do the reverse. That is, they signal their main point with emphatic rhythmic stress and deemphasize the background information, usually by shifting to lower pitch" (as cited in Okazaki, 1993:73). A study by Young (1982) also found that Chinese speakers tend to present background information about a topic prior to arriving at the main point of their message. This tendency appears to apply not only to the presentation of information in, for example, business meetings, but also in the presentation of requests. 12. Similar figures appear in Clancy (1980:133). According to Wetzel (1994:78-9), Clancy found that "Japanese speakers used ellipsis in 73 percent of the places where a nominal was possible, compared to 20 percent in English." 13. Hinds and Monane would seem to suggest that the lack of specification of such subjects indicates ellipsis. Note, however, that to say there is ellipsis suggests that there is evidence supporting the existence of such subjects in the first place—an issue which is open to debate. 14. Monane points out that informational ellipsis of course also occurs in English, as in the case of the utterance "She is a very pretty girl, but...." What has been elided here is the speaker's negative evaluation of the girl, which the speaker expects the listener to understand. 15. Clancy (1982:65) has noted that in narratives, "by far the most common form of reference for previously mentioned characters in Japanese is ellipsis, i.e., complete omission"; this tendency was particularly pronounced in spoken, as opposed to written narratives. Clancy found that the resulting potential ambiguity to the listener "in many cases...was either quickly resolved by the nature of the events being recounted, or else was not important enough to concern the listener, but there were times when the listener did interrupt the speaker to clarify reference" (Clancy, 1982:65-6). See also Kataoka (1989) and Wetzel (1984). 16. There are a few counterexamples, however, such as 'Hope you can come!' and 'Glad you could make it' (Charles Quinn, personal communication.). 17. In the sense of "institutional, status-based" face, as suggested by Harris (1984, cited in Brown and Levinson 1987). 18. The reader will recall the quote from Tsurutaef al. (1988) above regarding the notion ki o kikaseru koto and the fact that acting upon one's perceptions is not considered pushy. 19. This supports Monane's (1981) observation that clause particles such as kedo serve as contextualization cues which signal to the listener that something has been omitted. Park's (2002) findings are consistent with this as well.

7

CONCLUSIONS

In the opening chapter of this book, I described four specific goals for this study. I would now like to reconsider those goals in light of the analysis presented in the previous chapters. (When citing particular conversations in support of these conclusions, where possible I have provided the relevant appendix numbers for ease of reference.)

7.1. STRATEGIES FOR REPORTING PROBLEMS First, I asked how service recipients report problems to service providers. More specifically, I inquired whether (a) service recipients initially state the problem and follow that report with an account of the details of the transaction, or if (b) they present the problem in a narrative fashion, recounting the events leading up to the problem chronologically. I also wondered if (c) service recipients reported the details of the transaction in any particular order. Finally, I asked (d) to what degree do service recipients explicitly mention the problem itself (e.g., 'The package never arrived,') and (e) to what degree do they explicitly request assistance. I predicted that the way in which a given interaction might unfold would likely differ depending upon the particulars of the situation, such as the degree to which the participants know each other, the beliefs and expectations of each participant regarding the problem at various points in the interaction, and the relative roles of the participants. Perhaps the simplest way to answer the first, most general question of how service recipients present problems is to say "not directly." Based on the examples we have considered over the course of the investigation, we may make the following more specific observations. In regard to question (a), few service recipients appear to make an explicit reference to the problem at the very outset of the call. Rather, in the initial opening section, commercial service recipients identify themselves at least through a company affiliation, and then offer a business salutation if there is an established relationship between the two organizations. (Non-commercial

276 Negotiating Moves service recipients, i.e., general customers, typically provide their names and perhaps an identifying membership number, if relevant, but rarely offer salutations.) Then in a transitional section, the service recipient provides a general utterance (maeoki) describing the purpose of the call, often beginning the utterance with an attention-focusing phrase such as Ano desu ne. These maeoki utterances range from general requests for assistance (e.g., Tyotto osirabe itadakitai n desu ga...) to a general reference to the item(s) or service(s) to be discussed (e.g., A, ano: sakihodo no: J-san no: nimotu no ken na n desu keredoMO). Almost without exception, service recipients conclude their maeoki with the EP, which enables them to suggest to the listener a connection between the information contained in the maeoki itself and the fact that they have just contacted the service provider. In this way, service recipients may indicate the general reason-for-call, and also prepare their listeners for the next move in their problem presentation. The type of maeoki that service recipients select also seems to be related to the degree of familiarity or knowledge which the service provider may be expected to have regarding the product or service at issue. In "cold call" cases in which the service provider might not be well acquainted with the matter, service recipients often begin with a more general maeoki (such as Tyotto oukagai sitai n desu ga...). Another alternative which service recipients adopt in such situations is a chronological approach in which they begin by narrating the sequence of events that led to the problem. Thus in the second problem report discussed in chapter 5 (that appears in appendix 8), Ms. Yamamoto starts by describing the fact that her company had ordered some transformers (Ano:,kon 'aida toransuhuoomaa O: ano: tyuumon site 'ta n desu GA:). As for conversations in which the service recipient and service provider are in regular contact with each other and the participants are therefore more familiar with the products and services involved, the service recipient will typically provide a more specific maeoki. In the conversation appearing in appendix 7, for example, when Yamamoto uses a relative clause to state, 'it's about the books that were sent from the office the other day...' (Kono mae, ano: e:: ohuisu kara okutta, bukku no bun na n desu kedomo...}, she not only explains the reason for her call, but also sends a clue to the service provider, Mr. Kaneda, that the new information for him to note is the approximate date of the shipment: kono mae. This is because the remainder of the information—that books were sent from her office—is presented as given information through the relative clause structure of her utterance. In other words, Yamamoto presumes that Kaneda is already aware that some books had been sent out. She can make this assumption because she and Kaneda are in daily contact with each other regarding such shipments. We also noted that maeoki utterances can vary depending upon whether they represent the first conversation with regard to a particular transaction, or are introducing a follow-up call. Follow-up maeoki are usually more specific in nature and often include either general temporal references such as sakihodo or kon' aida, or specific dates of calls or transactions. The means by which a previous contact was made is sometimes included as well, e.g., tegami 'letter,' huakkusu 'fax,' or odenwa 'telephone (call).' Finally, we observed that another way in which callers can provide background information in maeoki utterances is to provide a "formulation of place" or "formulation of person" which helps the caller to point out how his/her current location or significance to the company relates to the present phone call.

Conclusions

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The second point, relating to question (b), is that generally speaking service recipients seem to present the details of a problem in a chronological fashion, but the length of such accounts varies markedly. In a problem report call between a service recipient from ABC Educational Association and Ms. Yamada of Tokyo Books, for example, the service recipient begins by pointing out that he received a delivery of goods (E:to, noo— ano, noohin itadakimasite ne!\ and then points out that some items had been sent to him by mistake (Sore de:: ma—naiyoo ga desu ne! tyotto, matigatt— okurat:te kita mono ga aru mon desu kard). Yet in his second utterance he has only identified one aspect of the problem; in subsequent turns he actually backs up to describe what exactly it was he ordered in the first place, and only then describes the incorrect merchandise. Thus despite a rather early indication that something was amiss, the service recipient did not explicitly state the complete nature of the problem until he had first provided other significant background details about the shipment. Note also that he makes several attempts to mitigate the face threat of his second and third utterances, saying ma(a) ('well') and tyotto ('just'). In the JBC corpus there are also some problem-reporting sequences in which the service recipient begins with a relatively more general maeoki, and then proceeds to relate the details in a rather lengthy chronological fashion. The "Ha-ha-ha no hanasf example in appendix 2 between Ms. Yamada of Tokyo Books and the male clerk at Fukuda Books is one such case. After announcing in her maeoki that she would like to have the clerk look into something for her (Tyotto osirabe itadakitai n desu ga....}, Yamada explains over the course of several turns that on the 27th of April, from the book wholesaler, via a telephone order, she requested four picture books. She then notes that of these four, only three have come in. This is the crux of the problem. Although she explicitly tells the clerk that she would like to have him look into whether the fourth book was sent out, he at first misinterprets her query as a request to actually (re)order that book. It thus becomes necessary for Yamada to state both the problem and her request for assistance a second time. We concluded that the clerk's misunderstanding probably arose from expectations he had developed through his daily work, which involves taking orders from booksellers such as Yamada's company. We also pointed out that these two conversationalists do not have a previously established business relationship. In contrast, in conversations between service recipients and service providers who are in regular contact (as in the examples in appendixes 6 and 7), such explicit, chronological accounts do not seem to be as essential in communicating the main details of the problem. Rather, service recipients merely convey the pertinent details which they presume those service providers will need—dates, tracking numbers, customer names, and the like. These are usually reported as fragments, without complete predicates. This has implications for our fourth question (d) about the degree to which a problem might be stated explicitly. Given a cluster of salient cues, such as a dispatch date, mention of home delivery, and a tracking number, shipping clerks such as Kaneda at Kobe Shipping whose business it is to arrange for deliveries and take care of incomplete shipments for Kansai Imports can perceive the problem in a situation before it is stated. Thus between speakers who are experienced in the genre of JBCs, and particularly in the sub-genres of problem reporting and offering assistance, knowing more about a situation makes it possible to say less.

278 Negotiating Moves One of the features which calls between unacquainted conversationalists and regular business contacts had in common was the fact that participants regularly used suprasegmental cues to highlight certain junctures in their narratives in order to invite aizuti (back-channel) utterances from their interlocutors. Speakers commonly placed additional emphasis on the final mora of gerund forms, clause particles, and the attention-focusing particle ne through higher pitch and greater stress, signalling that the juncture was, in conversation-analytic terms, a transitionrelevance place or TRP. We also noted, however, that the maeoki utterance functions as a "pre-request" or "pre-announcement" which hints to the listener that the speaker has more to say in subsequent utterances. As a result, most interlocutors did not attempt to take the floor at these junctures, and instead typically replied with Hai as an acknowledgment and/or continuer. As for the third question (c), which inquired whether service recipients report the details of the transaction in any particular order, we observed that the first stage of the report almost without exception consists of a maeoki in which the service recipient gives a general indication as to when the transaction (as opposed to the problem) occurred and what it involved (i.e., the type of goods, such as books). The second stage of reporting includes more specific details, but the order in which these are mentioned seems to be dictated by the actual nature of the transaction. Since this varies widely, the sequence in which the details are mentioned changes accordingly. However,-we did note that key items are often placed in a salient (marked) position syntactically and are sometimes given additional stress and higher pitch, as in Yamamoto's utterance, E:to: Mttu doyOObi ni motte-kite-itadaite ne?. Such strategies serve as important contextualization cues which aid the service provider in his/her interpretation of the problem. Finally, we come to the fourth and fifth questions [(d) and (e)] as to how explicitly service recipients mention the problem itself, and how explicitly they request assistance. We have already noted that conversationalists' familiarity with the JBC genre and with the more specific sub-genres of problem reporting and offering assistance, coupled with specific knowledge about the types of problems that can occur with particular products or services in a particular business, enable certain service recipients to highlight the salient points related to a problem in a way that will be easily identifiable to service providers. This in turn makes it possible for service providers to perceive that problem prior to its explicit mention by the service recipient. The converse of this also proves to be true. That is, in cases in which service providers are most familiar with one kind of transaction (e.g., book ordering), expectations which they have built up through experience about how to behave sometimes prompt them to misunderstand (or unintentionally ignore) the salient contextualization cues which the service recipient took pains to provide (viz., the conversations shown in appendixes 2 and 8). This illustrates a phenomenon which Gumperz(1982a:132) has identified as follows: When all participants understand and notice the relevant cues, interpretive processes are then taken for granted and tend to go unnoticed. However, when a listener does not react to a cue or is unaware of its function, interpretations may differ and misunderstanding may occur. It is important to note that when this happens and when a difference in interpretation is brought to

Conclusions

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a participant's attention, it tends to be seen in attitudinal terms... .Miscommunication of this type, in other words, is regarded as a social faux pas and leads to misjudgments of the speaker's intent; it is not likely to be identified as a mere linguistic error. One such case of miscommunication was the second example we considered in chapter 5, in which Ms. Yamamoto, through no fault of her own, was forced to rather baldly state the problem about the transformer shipment in order to elicit some form of assistance from a seemingly inexperienced clerk who was attempting to handle the problem in the opening of the call. When given another chance to relate her story to the second clerk, however, Yamamoto hesitated to make the same (face-threatening) point outright, and instead relied on the cooperation and collaboration of the clerk, who may have experienced similar situations in the past and was thus able to ascertain the nature of the problem. Such reliance on the perceptiveness of an interlocutor and a shared understanding of how business is conducted in such situations was also operative in the first example considered in chapter 5 between Yamamoto and Kaneda. With both Kaneda and Hashimoto (the second clerk in the second call), it was not necessary for Yamamoto to explicitly request assistance in regard to a problematic transaction. If we consider these results from the data together with the discussion of the cultural notions such as enryo-sassi communication in chapter 6, it becomes clear that at least in the business contexts we have considered in this investigation, in which speakers maintain a certain degree of social distance (indexed through distal-style predicates) and in which the continuation of the relationship between service provider and service recipient is paramount, the avoidance of explicit statements of problems and requests for assistance would appear to be a preferred discourse strategy. However, in more casual circumstances in which a business relationship is not at stake, the same speakers might adopt a more assertive stance. Similarly, it may be that customers, whom we have also classified as one type of "service recipient" but who are less "acculturated" in business practices (lacobucci, 1990), may be more direct than commercial service recipients in their expositions of transactional problems. Further research and collection of such examples is necessary in order to fully explore this possibility.

7.2. THE FUNCTION AND DISTRIBUTION OF MOVES TOWARD PROBLEM RESOLUTION The second goal I proposed was to ascertain the function and distribution of linguistic forms which service providers employ when responding to these reports of problems. I also inquired how the role relationship between the participants, namely service recipient and service provider, and the relevance of the preceding discourse might be said to motivate the form of an offer of assistance. In situations in which service providers sought to offer assistance toward the resolution of a problem, instances of the l-masyoo ka?l and l-masu n(o) del patterns were observed; indeed, both forms sometimes occurred within the same encounter. The difference in distribution between the forms would seem to be most fundamentally related to the degree of knowledge

280 Negotiating Moves the speaker has in regard to the problem being reported. Service providers appear to adopt the l-masyoo ka?l pattern in situations in which they are seeking confirmation from the service recipient about the proposed service, either because there is insufficient information to judge what sort of behavior would be appropriate (due to an unfamiliarity with the genre or the transaction itself), or because they wish to leave the decision up to the service recipient as to whether or not they should perform the proposed service (as is often the case in offers for return telephone calls). As for the declarative l-masu n(o) del pattern, through the intra-discourse function of no (which we discussed in chapter 1), service providers use this form to link the information marked with n(o) in order to associate, refer, or even explain the present discourse situation with that n(o)-marked information. In the process, service providers are able to reassure service recipients of their willingness and intention to perform a particular service. The pattern is typically used in situations in which the service provider already has a reasonably clear idea, based on the previous discourse and/or the service provider's experience with such transactions, as to the nature of the problem being described by the service recipient. This explains why l-masu n(o) del type offers appear so frequently just prior to the close of JBCs, when service providers wish to summarize their understanding of what they are to do for service recipients. These utterances can thus also function as pre-closing bids to signal a willingness to end the discussion of the present topic and move toward a mutual "shutting-down" of the conversation. In our discussions of the /-masu n(o) del pattern, we also noted that generally speaking, gerund forms enable speakers to conclude an utterance when what is being clarified or expanded upon is judged by the speaker to be accessible information. In situations in which service providers are attempting to resolve service-related problems, what is being clarified is the speaker's implicit or explicit offer of assistance. Thus, if a service provider first explicitly offers assistance using the l-masyoo ka?l form, and then goes on to use the l-masu n(o) del pattern at a later point in the conversation, the point in doing so is to expand upon or recharacterize the earlier offer, and thereby reassure the service recipient of his or her willingness and intention to perform the proposed service (as illustrated in the conversation in appendix 7). The n(o) in the service provider's move toward assistance functions to ground the new characterization of the situation in the larger discourse context, which includes the earlier offer. In this way, the service provider can point to the connection between the two and suggest to the service recipient that this is something recoverable and sharable. At other times, a service provider may extend an offer in the l-masu n(o) del form without first offering assistance through the l-masyoo ka?l pattern. Such utterances may function both to implicitly present an offer and also to reassure the service recipient of the service provider's willingness and intention to undertake the service on the service recipient's behalf. Usually in these cases the service recipient has already demonstrated sufficient evidence of a need for assistance, either by giving numerous details and/or by explicitly requesting that assistance. Thus, when the service provider uses the l-masu n(o) del form to present an offer, n(o) anchors the offer deictically in the larger discourse frame, which includes the service recipient's explanation of the details (and request for assistance, if there had been one). In other words, without actually explicitly saying so, the service provider can convey the sense that s/he is aware of the problem, and then reassure the service recipient of his/her intention to remedy the

Conclusions

281

situation. In the conversation appearing in appendix 2, for example, when the clerk at Fukuda Books says De wa itioo den:pyoo-si — hakkoo-si aru ka doo ka: sirabemasu no de, he is essentially saying '(It's that I'm aware of the problem,) so in that case I will check to see whether or not there's an invoice sheet—a completion sheet.' In assuring the service recipient that he will do so, he is also acknowledging his role as service provider in the situation.

7.3. ROLE RELATIONSHIPS, GENRE, AND CULTURAL NORMS The third goal I established for this investigation relates to the first two, and that is to ascertain how these strategies of reporting problems and of offering assistance might be consonant with (a) the type of genre in which the exchanges appear, namely business transactional telephone conversations, and (b) larger cultural norms and values. I suggested that the expectations which participants bring to these encounters are likely to be shaped by roles (such as service provider and service recipient) which are established in and definitive of the genre, and that this might influence the linguistic means employed by the participants. This indeed appears to be the case. As we noted in section 7.1. above, what emerged as a preferred strategy in reporting problems was for service recipients to provide a general statement regarding the nature of the transaction involved, including a general indication of the time when that transaction was initiated, in the form of a maeoki. Following this initial utterance, further details are added in a stage-like fashion, with pertinent information (determined by the nature of the transaction) presented in such a way that their importance may be perceived by the service provider (i.e., as contextualization cues). We also noted that the knowledge and experience which a service recipient has in his/her role and with respect to a particular product or service translates into a relatively more skilled performance of JBCs. Thus, the greater the service provider's familiarity with a particular transaction, the role of service provider in terms of expected linguistic behavior, and the genre of JBCs as a whole, the more capable s/he could be in responding adequately and efficiently to the presentation of the problem made by the service recipient. In an ideal situation in which service recipient and service provider are well acquainted with their roles and JBC transactions, it would neither be necessary for the service recipient to explicitly state the problem nor to request assistance. This is because, in such an ideal situation, the service provider would perceive the nature of the problem and offer and/or reassure the service recipient of his/her willingness and intention to resolve the problem, or at least take steps toward resolving the problem. This "ideal" is not unattainable, however; it was precisely the situation we observed in the conversation in appendix 7. We noted in section 7.2. that there were two linguistic means by which the service provider could offer assistance: the l-masyoo ka?/ and l-masu n(o) del patterns. In situations in which the service provider was either less sure of his/her role or less acquainted with the problem (due to insufficient information from the service recipient or a general lack of experience in this genre of activity), the service provider was more likely to use the l-masyoo ka?/ form, but might later reiterate that offer in the same conversation by using the l-masu n(o) del pattern once the necessary details had been specified, or once the service recipient had indicated that

282 Negotiating Moves s/he did in fact want the service provider to undertake the (tentatively) proposed service. Ultimately, however, it appears to be the latter form which is preferred, based on the fact that service providers repeatedly adopted this pattern in the pre-closing juncture of many JBCs. This makes sense because it assures the service recipient that the problem will soon be resolved, and it functions as a natural move toward "easing out" of that topic and moving toward closing. Another way of looking at the preferred strategy we have outlined is to propose that these conversationalists seek to avert a potential situation in which the service recipient might have to threaten the face of the service provider by going 'bald on record' and stating that there had been a service-related problem. This strategy is of course not unique to Japanese; studies of requests in other languages, including English, have suggested that offers are one way of reverting the negative face threats posed by requests. However, our discussion in chapter 6 has suggested that perceptiveness and consideration of the addressee are highly valued in Japanese culture, and are reflected in metalinguistic folk terms such as enryo-sassi, omoiyari, and kikubari. The behavior we have observed in the conversations collected for this study provides evidence that JBC conversationalists usually communicate in a manner that is consonant with these values. It is important to note that we are not taking a deterministic position here, but are rather suggesting that the negotiating moves adopted by JBC participants are "in sync" with these positively-viewed cultural traits. Additional studies may indeed show that the behavior of JBC conversationalists is consistent with cultural and linguistic norms in other countries and communities as well. Certain characteristics of problem reports in Japanese do seem at variance with the behavior we observed in a small number of parallel conversations in English, however. For example, the fact that most JBC problem reports begin with a very general statement as to the date and nature of the transaction, followed by a stage-like process through which details of the transaction are mentioned appears to be different from the English reports in which callers brought up the exact nature of the problem at an earlier point in the conversation, often before they had provided a self-identification or other details such as an account or membership number that might assist the service provider in resolving the problem. We have also observed that speakers' behavior in the context of business transactional telephone calls makes use of other linguistic and textual elements of Japanese which are not found in English. The positional coordinates ofuti/soto are clearly indexed in the usage of the honorificand humble-polite verbals, as well as through the system of giving and receiving verbals. As noted in chapter 2, these forms are essential to the JBC genre, in which speakers generally adopt a careful style of speech. We have also seen that the extended predicate is a critical element in numerous aspects of these conversations, including the explanations of people's whereabouts in response to switchboard requests, in the maeoki used for transitions to the discussion of business, and in the l-masu n(o) del statement of grounded assurance that a service provider uses to offer assistance. Finally, the preference for specifying only what is necessary and not evident or recoverable from context or previous encounters is evidenced in both the restraint exercised by speakers who are reporting problems, and by those who are offering to assist in the resolution of those problems.

Conclusions

283

7.4. PUTTING GENRES TO USE The fourth goal pertains to a desire on my part to provide situated, culturally appropriate exemplars of JBCs which might serve as resources for linguists, business professionals, and language instructors. Ultimately the best judges of whether or not I have met this objective will be Japanese native speakers who have experience in this genre of telephone call. But by way of concluding my remarks here, I would like to relate an interesting anecdote which one of the Kansai Imports informants shared with me during my fieldwork in Japan. As was noted in chapter 2, there were no instances of merchandise orders placed by customers in the Kansai Imports data because the designated "member lines" were not recorded. Through a conversation one day with an American customer service staff member, however, I learned that at one point in time the company had received a string of calls placed by native Japanese speakers—in English—requesting catalogs. What was fascinating about these calls was the fact that nearly every single call began in an identical fashion, with the caller saying 'I would like to obtain a catalog....' The native English speakers who staffed the "member" lines at Kansai Imports were puzzled, not only by the striking similarity among the calls, but also because in American English, at least, this seemed a rather formal way of stating the reason-for-call. What they soon learned was that Kansai Imports had recently been featured in a promotional story by a magazine that publicizes mail-order "bargains" available from retailers both in Japan and abroad. The story apparently included a "script" for native Japanese speakers to use when calling these companies. The script included the "lines" for both caller and call recipient, and began something like this: 1 A

'[Company identification]. May I help you?'

2 C

'Yes, I would like to obtain a catalog from your company....'

In one of these calls to Kansai Imports, the Japanese caller apparently got confused between the "lines" intended for the company representative vs. the caller, because the caller started out by saying 'May I help you?' In response, the quick-thinking, native-English speaking Kansai Imports staffer apparently responded, 'No, may IhdpyouT The episode is an amusing reminder that although the business calls we make on an everyday basis for a variety of purposes—be it merchandise orders, general inquiries, shipping confirmations or even problem reports—may appear to unfold in a similar fashion that is typical of what I have called the "transactional call genre," as conversationalists we do not all adopt the same "script." This underscores three points that are fundamental to the concept of genre. The first point is one we have noted already, which is the fact that genres have "fuzzy edges" which accommodate certain variations in form, style, and even structure without jeopardizing the integrity and effectiveness of the genre itself. Thus even though this caller's maeoki or reason-for-call was stated in rather formal language, she was nonetheless able to achieve her intentions. In contrast, in the example related in chapter 1 about the Japanese restaurant role play, the utterance Zenbu ikaga desu ka? was described as being inappropriate to that particular genre of service encounter

284 Negotiating Moves in Japan. Yet the English equivalent, 'How is everything?' is eminently suitable in a parallel context in the United States. In fact, the absence of this utterance in a particular enactment of the American "restaurant service encounter genre" may be recognized by some customers as significant and could have actual consequences. Winsted (1997a, 1997b) has demonstrated through her empirical research on this particular genre of service encounter in Japan vs. the United States that customers have certain expectations as to what constitutes appropriate "behavior" on the part of waiters. For example, if a waiter does not return to the table in order to ensure that 'everything' is to the customer's satisfaction, the customer may feel that the waiter had not shown sufficient solicitude and was therefore perhaps "lacking" in some respects. Particularly if the customer had encountered some problem with the meal and had difficulties conveying this due to the waiter's seeming failure to perform his regular "duties," the customer might even decide to leave a lesser tip in order to express his or her dissatisfaction with the service received. Thus the outcome of the performance of the genre may be negatively affected by the absence of an utterance or behavior which is viewed as being emblematic or critical to the overall structure of the encounter. The converse may also be true, in the sense that the noticeable presence of an inappropriate utterance or behavior might possibly "derail" the performance of a particular genre. In the Zenbu ikaga desu ka? example, I suggested that Japanese native speakers might be baffled by the waiter's intention in producing such an utterance: The likely outcome in such a situation is an uneasy feeling on the part of Japanese speakers ofiwakan, or a 'sense of incompatibility' with the genre. The second point here about genres relates to the first, and that is this: through our familiarity with the various genres we employ in our daily lives, we are able to recognize instances in which our fellow conversationalists are performing a particular genre, based on a confluence of cues that include register features (e.g., the use of particular technical terms or other specialized vocabulary or phrases), structural features (such as the "canonical" sequences of a telephone call opening), stylistic features (for example the use of careful-style speech in JBCs) and/or thematic features (e.g., topical continuity and consistency). Thus when an employee at a book publishing company receives a call in which the caller identifies herself as a syoten 'bookstore,' provides a business salutation, and then states Tyuumon it-ten onegai-sitai n desu ga..., it is likely that the employee will recognize the call as a merchandise order being placed by one of the company's regular clients who is entitled to a wholesale discount—that is, assuming that the publishing firm employee has experience in taking these sorts of calls. We noted in chapter 4 that it is also possible for experienced "order-takers" to identify first-time or inexperienced clients, based on cues such as the stylistic features of the caller's maeoki utterance (e.g., Onsya de dasarete orimasu syoseki o desu ne, tyuumon sasete itadakitai n desu keredoMO). Moreover, even though a seemingly similar-sounding maeoki such as Ee, sotira kara, sotira-sama ano, dasite orimasu:, eeto kyoozai o: koonyuu sitai n desu keredoMO, yorosii desu ka:? might suggest that the caller is not a regular client, unless the caller has also provided some sort of company or self-identification (such as Syoten desu ga) during the opening of the call, it is likely that further interactional "work" will be required on the part of both conversationalists in order to ascertain whether the caller is a non-commercial customer, or a commercial service recipient. Each of these moves thus plays a critical role in signalling caller identity, ascertaining

Conclusions

285

the relevant role relationship between caller and call recipient, negotiating intention, enlisting assistance, and achieving a mutually satisfactory outcome vis a vis the stated reason-for-call. This brings us to the third and final point about genres. Just as our experience in a particular genre among a particular community of speakers allows us to make judgments as to what constitutes an instantiation of that genre, it is also our experience in these genres which enables us to perform them. Thus the mere fact of a person's being a native speaker of a language does not insure that he or she may competently handle all of the genres of that language, in either spoken or written form. Competent performance is "commensurate with experience," so it is necessary for both native and non-native speakers of a given language to actually practice how to go about doing business transactional calls, reading technical journals, writing business letters, giving speeches, and so forth in order to truly achieve pragmatic competence in each of those genres, in that language. It is therefore hoped that this study will provide authentic models for native and non-native speakers of Japanese who have an interest in the performance of business transactional telephone calls, be it from an analytical, academic, or professional perspective.

7.5. AREAS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH There are several possible areas for future research which could build upon the findings presented in this investigation in order to provide a more comprehensive foundation for a comparative perspective on the issues raised here. Given that this book focuses predominantly on interorganizational business conversations between commercial service recipients and service providers in Japanese (due to the relatively smaller number of calls from customers in the corpus, both in English and Japanese), it would be useful to develop new corpora (or locate existing ones, if they are available) which contain a large number of calls of the following types: (a) calls between customers and service providers in Japanese; (b) calls between customers and service providers in English; and (c) calls between commercial service recipients and service providers in English. Within these subgroups, it would also be helpful if there were a variety of call tokens such that, for example, the format of toiawase inquiries, merchandise orders, shipping confirmations, and problem reports might be compared more fully according to the language being spoken and the role relationship between caller and call recipient. The problem of course, particularly with regard to obtaining data in English, is that of securing permission either to record calls or to be allowed to view transcripts or hear recordings which have already been created in these sorts of customer-service environments. As many readers are probably well aware, in the United States one often hears a recording at the outset of calls placed to service providers that states, "This call may be recorded for quality control purposes." There is a significant market in the business world at the moment for firms which specialize in what is sometimes referred to as "Customer Relations Management"; these companies often work on a consulting basis with a variety of organizations in order to improve the "interface" between customers and service representatives. Ideally if the "corpora" produced through such recordings were made available to linguists for analysis, all parties involved

286 Negotiating Moves might benefit. However, at present the legal restrictions surrounding such recordings and any transcripts that have resulted appear to be rather formidable. Another fruitful area of investigation would be to compare the negotiating moves adopted by participants in face-to-face service encounters in Japanese and English with those observed in telephone calls. For example, it might be possible as an observer (after obtaining permission) to collect samples of interactions at a package delivery service office in order to ascertain (a) how conversationalists interact in such an environment with regard to customer complaints and problems, and (b) how and why their behavior differs, if at all, from that of conversationalists on the telephone. One other potential area for related research might be to consider online methods through which customers register complaints with delivery companies and service providers. E-mail messages and website bulletin boards are just two areas in which the data are already in written form, which eases the transcription burden on the analyst. At least in the United States, customers are often urged on company websites and print circulars to contact companies via e-mail, rather than opting for the more traditional route of calling the company on the telephone. As these new communicative methods flourish, new genres of "talk" will develop which may share many features of telephone calls, but that will also clearly have their own distinct characteristics.

APPENDIX 1 PARTICIPATING SUBJECTS AT THE KANTO AND KANSAI SITES A.

Kanto site (Tookyoo Syoten, 'Tokyo Books')

(1) (2) (3-5) (6) (7) (8) (9)

Female sales operations staff member, age 25, native of Tokyo Male bookstore staff manager, age 25-35, native of Tokyo Three female bookstore staff members, age 22-25 Male editing section head, age 31, native of Tokyo Male sales section head, age 31, native of Tokyo Female editing staff member, age 25, native of Yamagata Female editing staff member, age 26, native of Saitama

B.

Kansai site (Kansai Unyuu, 'Kansai Imports')

(1)

Female general manager/operations department head {butyoo}, age 33, born in Kobe, grew up Higashinada-ku, spent three years in England. [#2-8 are all operations staff members]

(2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)

(8)

Female, age 32, born and brought up in Kobe, no time abroad. Female, age 27-28, born and brought up in Kobe. Speaks virtually no English. Female, age 27, born and brought up in Kobe, spent 1 year in the United States (Hawaii and Washington) at age 25 on a church program. Female, age 25, born and brought up in Akashi, spent one year in Vancouver. Female, age 23, born in Osaka, brought up in Kobe, spent 1 month on homestay in high school, then one year in college, both in Australia. Female, age 23, born and brought up in Kobe. Parents are native Chinese but have lived in Kobe for at least as many years. Subject went to a school specifically for Chinese in Japan, but has spent no time in China. Also worked previously for a prominent hotel in Kobe, and underwent fairly rigorous "politeness" training for the job. Female, approximately age 26, non-native of Kansai, has spent some time in Singapore.


APPENDIX 2 TRANSCRIPT OF TB #lA-44: REPORTING AN INCOMPLETE SHIPMENT 1

((phone rings))

2 A Hai, Hukuda Syoten hanbai-ka desu:. ACK Fukuda Books sales section COP-IPF 'Yes, Fukuda Books, Sales Section.' 3 C Ano,syoten desu gajl HES book company COP-IPF CP 'Uh, (this) is a book company; 4 C

osewa assistance


[thank you for your continued assistance.]' 5 A

Osewa assistance

ni natte 'masu:. GL become-GER be-ipp

['Thank you for your continued assistance.'] 6 C Ano desu nee HI HES COP-IPF

SP

'Well, you see!' 7 A

Hai. BC

'Mhm.' 8 C

Tyotto osirabe itadakitai n desu go,// just looking up^ receive-fr-out-grp-DEs-ipp^ EP CP 'It's that (I/we)'d just like to have you look (something) up, but.

9 A Hai. ACK

'Mhm.'

290 Appendix 2 IOC

e:to: si-gatu nizyuusiti-niti no hi ni, sotira DE, HES April twenty-seventh CN day GL that place LOC 'Urn, on the 27th of April, at your loCATION,'

11C

e:to desu ne, denwa tyuumon na n desu ga, HES COP-IPF ATF telephone order COP-IPF EP CP 'you see, it's that (I/we mean) a telephone order, but....'

12C yon-satu hodo, e-HON o tyuumon four volumes approximately picture books OBJ order 1 3 C sasite itadaita n desu yo. do-CAU-GER receive-fr-out-grp-PF^ EP SP 'it's that (I/we) took the liberty of ordering about four picture BOOKS, you know.'

14 A

Hal BC

'Mhm.' 15C

YON-satu no uti no, SAN-satu sika tyotto haitte four volumes CN among three volumes only just enter-GER

16C

kit[e]orimasen// node, come-GER be-NEG-ippvU EP-GER 'Of the FOUR volumes, it's just that only THREE volumes have come in, so...'

17 A

Hal BC

'Mhm.' 18C

is- satu dasite itadaketa ka// doo ka, one volume send-GER receive-fr-out-grp-POT-ppvl' Q how Q

19C

osirabe — looking up'h 'whether or not (you) were able to send us one volume, a look-up.

20 A Hal BC 'Mhm.'

Kasikomari//ta. ((sic)) 'Cert'nly.'

Appendix 2 21 C

ano:, Tookyoo Syoten to moosimasu:. HES Tokyo Books QT be called-iPFvl' 'Uh, (this is) Tokyo Books.'

22 A (1.3) A, Tookyoo Syoten-sama// de. (1.3) ah M(r)s. Tokyo Books CP-GER (1.3 second pause) 'Oh, Ms. Tokyo Books...' 23 C Hai. yes

'Yes.' 24 A Hai. BC

'Mhm.' 25 C

DE, ano desu nee, taitoru, yot:TU:: no uti no desu NE! and HES COP^F ATF title four units CN among COP^F ATF 'AND, you see, (the) title, among (the) FOUR, YOU KNOW!'

26 A Hai. BC

'Mhm.' 27C

Haitte kite nai mono ga, Hahaha no hanasi:// enter-GER come-GER be-NEG-ipp thing SUB Ha-ha-ha CN tale 'the one that hasn't arrived, The Tale of Ha-ha-ha'

28 A Hai. BC

'Mhm.' 29 C

to iu taitoru no mono na n//desu ga, QT be called-ipp title CN thing COP-IPF EP CP 'it's that it's a thing with that title.'

30A Gois- satu de. (polite prefix) one volume CP-GER 'One copy'

291

292 Appendix 2 31C

Hai. yes 'Yes.'

32 A Hai. Syoosyoo omati kudasai:.// yes moment waiting^ give-to-in-grp-iMP^ 'Okay. Please wait a moment.' 33 C

Hai. yes 'Okay.' ((clerk puts caller on hold))

34 A

Omatase des— itasimasita. causing-waiting^ COP-IPF-FS do-ppvl' '[S-Sorry] to have kept you waiting.'

35 C

Hai. BC

'Mhm.' 36 A Zya, Hahaha no hanasi o is- satu to iu koto de, so ha-ha-ha CN tale OBJ one volume QT be called-iPF thing CP-GER 'So it's a matter of one copy of The Tale of Ha-ha-ha.' 37 C A, hai:. ah yes

'Ah, yes.' 38A Zya, bansen onegai-simasu:. so agency-number beg-iPF^ 'So please (give me) the agency number.' 39C

A, ano: sono mae NI: ah HES that before GL 'Oh, um, before THAT,'

40 A Hai. BC

'Mhm.'

Appendix 2

293

41 C ZENkai tyuumon sita toki ni, ano: ukete previous order do-pp time GL HES receive- GER 42 C

itadakemasen

desita ndesyoo: ka. CP-PF

EP-TENT

Q

'at the time of the PREvious order, um. might it have been that we couldn't receive it from you?' 43 C

YON-satu tyuumon siTE: four volumes order do-GER 'having PLACED an order (for) FOUR volumes,'

44 A

Hal BC

'Mhm.' 45 C

sono uti, Hahaha no hanasi dake haitte those among ha-ha-ha CN tale only be included-GER

46 C konakatta

n desu yo.

COme-NEG-PF EP

SP

'it's that among those, only ,4 Tale of Ha-ha-ha was not included, you know.' 47 A

Haahaa. yes yes

'Yes, yes.' 48 C

De dasite itadaketa ka doo ka, and send-GER receive-poi-pp^ Q how Q

49 C

osirabe itadakitakatta n// desu ga. looking up^ receive-DEs-PF EP CP 'And whether or not (you) were able to send it for us, it's that (I/we) wanted to have you look into it, but....'

50 A A, kakunin de:su ne? ah confirmation COP-IPF SP 'Oh, you mean confirmation, right?'

294 Appendix 2 51C

Hal Yes. 'Yes.'

52A

((0.3 second pause))

53 C Sore de, dasite nai yoo desitaRA:// and then send-GER be-NEG-ipp seem CP-CND 'And then, IF it seems that it hasn't been sent,' 54A

Hal BC

'Mhm.' 55 C

moo it- tun tyuumon itasimasu no DE:// more one copy order do-iPF^ EP-GER 'it's that (I/we)'ll order one more copy, SO....'

56 A Hal De wa itioo den:pyoo-si— hakkoosi yes well then anyhow invoice-sheet-FS completion-sheet 57A

aru ka doo ka:,// have-ipp Q how Q 'Yes. Well then anyhow, whether or not there's an invoice sheet—a completion sheet,'

58 C

Hal BC

'Mhm.' 59A sirabemasu no//DE: look into-iPF EP-GER 'it's that (I/we)'ll look into it, SO....' 60 C Hai, si-gatu nizyuusiti-niti ni tyuumon itasimasita. yes April twenty-seventh GL order do-PF^ 'Yes, (I/we) placed the order on April 27th.' 61A Si-gatu no nizyuu:: ? April CN twenty 'April twenty...?'

Appendix 2 295 62 C

Nana-niti//desu.

seventh

COP-IPF

'Seventh' 63 A Nana.

seven 'Seven.' 64 C

Hai.=

yes

'Yes.' 65 A =Hai.(1.0) De, ano bansen

ACK

to

otori-tugi://sosite basyo.

and HES agency number and agency

then place

'Okay. (1.0) And, um, the agency number and the agency, then the address.' 66 C A, e:to de: Suzuki-syoten DE: =

oh HES and Suzuki Books COP-GER 'Oh, um, and it's Suzuki Books, and' 67 A Hal BC

'Mhm.' 68 C Hai, iti no iti ni san ACK one CN one two three

'Okay, one dash one two three.' 69A

Hai. BC

'Mhm.' 70 C Hai, koodo ga rokunana hati kyuu desu. ACK code SUB six seven eight nine COP-IPF 'Okay, the code is 6789.' 71A Rokunana hati kyuu six seven eight nine '6789.

296 Appendix 2 72 C Hai, NO:, Sinzyuku-ku Tookyoo Syoten de gozaimasu. yes 'Yes, OF Tokyo Books in Shinjuku Ward.' 73A

74C


Ha:i. Izyoo de: yes all CP-GER

(3.3 second pause)


Hai. yes 'Yes.'

75 A

Hai. E: de wa, ka—kakunin simasite:, yes HES well then con-confirmation do-GER

76A

odenwa sasite itadakimasu no de,// telephone do-CAU-GER receive-ippsp EP-GER 'Yes. Um, well, (I/we)'11 con—confirm(the delivery), and take the liberty of calling (you) back, so....'

77C

Hai. BC

'Mhm.' 78A

odenwa-bangoo to// onamae onegai-simasu:. telephone-number and name beg-ipp^ 'Your telephone number and name, please.'

79 C Hai. yes

'Yes.' 80 A Hai. BC

'Mhm.' 81C

Iti ni san yon One two three four '1234'

E: san yon goo goo HES three four five five

'Um, 3455.'

Appendix 2 297 82 C

Hal BC

'Mhm.' 83C

no watakusi, Yamada to moosimasu no de. CN I Yamada QT be called-iPF ^ EP-GER 'and I, (I)'m called Yamada. so....'

84A

Hai, kasikomasita. ((sic)) yes make clear-pp 'Okay, understood.'

85C

Hai, yorosiku// onegai-simasu:: yes well beg-iPFvU 'Yes, please [take care of it for me]."

86A

Hai, yorosiku onegai-simasu:. Situree simaSU:. yes well beg-iPFsU rudeness do-ipp 'Yes, [may things go well.] Good-bye.'


APPENDIX 3 TRANSCRIPT OF KI #9-1: REQUESTING INFORMATION 1

((phone rings))

2 A Kotira wa, pinpon bankingu de gozaimasu. this TOP pushbutton banking CP-IPF(+) This is pushbutton banking.' 3 A Nihongo gokiboo no kata wa, kono mama, Japanese wish CN person(s) TOP as is 4 A

iti osite kudasai. one push-GER give-to-in-grp-iM?^ 'Persons wishing (to hear) Japanese, please push one (and remain) as is (on the line).'

5 A ((different voice)) "For services in English, please press '2' now." ((Machine BEEP)) 6 C

((caller pushes button, another BEEP))

7 A Gaikoku kawase reeto, oyobi, kinri no foreign exchange rate(s) as well as interest rate CN 8 A syookai wa, iti. inquiries TOP one 'For foreign exchange rates, as well as inquiries about interest rates, (press) one.' 9 A Kooza account


'For account balance inquiries, (press) two.' 10 A Suupaamaneii torihiki wa san. Huakusimirii saabisu wa, yon. Supermoney transactions TOP three facsimile service TOP four 'For Supermoney transactions, three. For facsimile service, four.' 11A Kasutomaa saabisu sutahu to, tyokusetu ohanasi ni naritai customer service staff with directly speak-DEsT"

300 Appendix 3 12 A kata \va, kyuu o osite kudasai. person(s) TOP nine OBJ push-GER give-to-in-grp-iMp'1s 'For persons wishing to speak directly with customer service staff, please push 9.' 13 C

((pushes button, BEEP sound))

14 A

Omati kudasai. Otunagi simasu. waiting^ give-to-in-grp^p/Ts connect -ippvl' 'Please wait. (I/we) will connect (you).'

15 A

Taihen nagaraku omatase quite

lengthy

site

orimasu,

waiting-CAU do-GER be-ipp^

16 A tantoo lida desu:. person in charge lida CP-IPF '(I/we)'ve kept (you) waiting a long time. (I)'m (Ms.) lida, the person in charge.' 17A

Omoti desitara, kooza bangoo kara, onegai-itasimasu. holding^ CP-CND account number from request-ippvU 'If (you) have (it), please (begin) from (your) account number.'

18C A, hai, e:to kooza bangoo GA, Oh yes HES account number SUB 'Oh yes, urn, (the) account number IS' ((caller provides account number in lines 19-21)) 22A

Hai. Onamae itadakemasu ka? ACK name receive—iPF-poT^ Q 'Okay. May (I) have your name?'

23 C

Yuugen-gaisya Kansai Yunyuu to moosimasu:. limited corporation Kansai Imports QT be 'This is Kansai Imports Co., Ltd.'

24A Arigatoo gozaimasu:.// thank you (+) 'Thank you.'

Appendix 3 301 25 C

Osewa ni narimasu: assistance GL become-ipp ['(I) will become obliged (to you) for your assistance.']

26 A Hai, yonketa no denwa torihiki-yoo ACK four-digit CN telephone transactional use 27A ansyoo-bangoo itadakemasu ka:? PIN number receive-iPF-por^ Q 'Okay, may (I) have your four-digit PIN number for telephone transactions?' 28 C

Hai, yes

####. ####

'Yes.' ((provides number)) 29 A ((noise of typing)) Ha:i. Arigatoo gozaimasu: Syoo syoo omati ACK thank you (+) a moment waiting1^ 30 A

itadakemasu ka:? receive-iPF-poi Q 'Oo-kay. Thank you. Could you wait one moment, please?'

31C

Hai. yes 'Yes.'

32A

Omatase simasita. Kansai-Yunyuu-sama. wait-pp-CAU'sl' Ms. Kansai Imports '(Thank you for) waiting. Ms. Kansai Imports.'

33 C

Hal yes 'Yes.'

34 A

Genzai no zandaka de yorosii desu ka?// current CN balance CP-GER fine CP-IPF Q 'Is it all right (to give you) the current balance?'

35C A, gomen-nasai, ano: soo oh excuse me HES that 'Oh, excuse me, um, not that,'

zyanakute:, CP-NEG-GER

302 Appendix 3 36A Hai. BC

'Mhm.' 37C ano:, otorihiki hookokusyo tte arimasu yo ne! HES transaction report form QT exist-ipp SP ATF 'Um, there's (the thing) called (a) transaction report form, right?' 38 A Hal yes

'Yes.' 39C

Sonoken de oukagai sitai n desu keredomo.// that matter CP-GER ask-iPF-DES^ EP CP 'It's that (I)'d like to ask about that matter, but....'

40 A Hal ACK

Ouke itasimasu no de. receive-iPF^ EP-GER

'Okay. It's that (I)'ll handle (it), so....' 41C Hai, e:to zyuuiti-gatu nizyuuyokka-zuke de ACK HES November 24th dated CP-GER 42 C

kite -ru bun na n desu keredoMO: come-iPF-GER be-iPF-> portion CP-IPF EP CP 'Okay, um, it's that it concerns the one that's arrived which is dated November 24th, BUT...'

43 A Hai. ACK

'Mhm.' 44 C sono naka NI:, e:to, Misutaa Gureggu Sumisu-san those among LOC HES Mr. Mr. Greg Smith 'AMONG those, um, Mister Mr. Greg Smith' 45 A Haihai. ACK ACK

'Mhm, mhm.'

Appendix 3 303 46 C tte iu kata kara, ohurikomi ga atta n desu ga QT be-called-> person from wire transfer SUB exist-PF EP CP 'from a person of that name, it's that there was a wire transfer, but' 47A Hai. BC

'Mhm.' 48 C tyotto, watasi-domo no, ano: meeboo no naka ni, just we CN HES name list CN within LOC 49C

kono kata ga miataranai node this person sub be found-NEG-iPF EP-GER 'it's just that, urn, on our name list, this person can't be found, so...'

50A Hai. BC

'Mhm.' 51C ano: gorenraku-saki o sirabeteitadakitai: HES contact information OBJ look for-GER receive—iPF-DES^ 52 C n desu ga. EP

CP

'it's that (I/we)'d like to have (you) look up the contact information, but' 53 A A soo desu ka. oh so CP-IPF Q 'Oh, is that so.' 54 C Hai. yes

'Yes.' 55 A Kotira no kata no: this CN person CN 'This person's...' 56 C Hai. BC

'Mhm.'

304 Appendix 3 57 A ano: HES

Um.' 58C

denwabangoo desu to ka, telephone number CP-IPF etc. '(The) telephone number and so forth.'

59 A Demva-bangoo desu ... kono Sumisu-sama ni kansite desu ne? telephone number CP-IPF this Mr. Smith GL regarding CP-IPF ATF '(The) telephone number.,..for this Mr. Smith, right?' 60 C Soo desu. so CP-IPF 'That's right.' 61A Hai, wakarimasita. ACK become clear-pp 'Okay, I see.' 62 C

Hai. yes 'Yes.'

63 A E:to sore de wa, orikaesi odenwa sasite itadakimasu no de, HES well then return telephone do-CAU-GER receive-ippvU EP-GER 'Um, well then, it's that (I/we)'11 take the liberty of giving (you) a return phone call, so....' 64 C

Hai. Yorosiku onegai-itasimasu:. yes well beg-iPF ^ 'Yes. Please [take care of it for me].'

65 A

Odenwabangoo o itadakemasu ka? telephone number OBJ receive—IPF-POT Q 'May (I/we) have your telephone number?'

((Caller provides number and clerk repeats in lines 66-72))

Appendix 3 305 73 C

Hal Sasaki to moosimasu. yes Sasaki QT be call 'Yes, I'm Sasaki.'

74 A

Sasaki-sama. Ms. Sasaki (+) 'Ms. Sasaki.'

75 C

Hal yes 'Yes.'

76 A Kasikomarimasita. lida to moosimasita. obey-pp^ lida QT be 'Understood. (This) was lida.' 77 C

Hai, yorosiku onegai-simasu. yes well beg-iPF ^ 'Yes, may things go well.'

78 A Hai arigatoo gozaimasu:. ACK thank you (+) 'Okay, thank you.' 79 C Hai, situree simasu. ACK. excuse me 'Okay, good-bye.'


APPENDIX 4 TRANSCRIPT OF TB #16-22: INQUIRING ABOUT BOOK AVAILABILITY 1

((phone rings))

2 A Sasaki Syoten desu. Sasaki Books COP-IPF 'Sasaki Books.' 3 C A ano, syoten desu ga,.= oh HES book company COP-IPF CP 'Oh, um, (I)'m (with a) book company, but 4 C

=ose\va ni natte orimasu::.= assistance GL become-GER [thank you for your continued assistance.]'

5 A =Hal = ACK

'Mhm.' 6 C

=Ano desu ne, zaiko no kakunin o it -ten onegai-sitai HES COP-IPF ATF stock CN confirmation OBJ one item beg-i

7 C n desu ga, yorosii desu ka? EP CP good (+) COP-IPF Q 'Um, well you see, it's that (I)'d like to request confirmation of (your) stock of one item, but is it all right (to ask)?' 8 A Hai, doozo. yes please (go ahead) 'Yes, please go ahead!' 9 C E: Sansee-doo NO, HES Sanseido CN 'Um, from SanSEIDO'

308 Appendix 4 10 A

Hai. ACK

'Mhm.' 11C

((book title))

12 A

((repeats book title))

13 C

Hai, kotira zyus-satu na n desu ga// yes this one (+) ten volumes COP-IPF EP CP

14C

mite itadakemasu ka? see-GER receive-fr-out-grp-iPF-poivl' Q 'Yes, it's that (I/we need) ten volumes (of) this one, but could (I) have you look (into it)?'

ISA Zyuu. Tyotto omati kudasa:i. ten a little waitingf" give-to-in-grp-iMP^ 'Ten. Please wait a minute.' ((puts caller on hold)) 16 A

Mosimosi? hello 'Hello?'

17C

Hai! yes 'Yes!'

ISA Kore wa zaiko uti ni oite nai desu ne! this one TOP stock inside LOG be on-hand-GER be-NEG-iPF COP-IPF SP 'As for this one, we don't have it in stock, you see!' 19C A, oite nai ndesuka!// oh be on-hand -GER be-NEG-iPF EP Q 'Oh, (so) it's that (you) don't have it!' 20 A Hai. yes

'Yes.'

Appendix 4 21C A \vakarimasita. Doo mo suimasen desu: = oh be clear-PF thanks be sorry-IFF COP-IPF 'Oh, I see. Thanks, (I)'m sorry (to trouble you). 22 A

=Hai doo mo, hai. = yes thanks yes 'Okay, thanks, okay.'

22 C

=situree itasimasu:. rudeness 'Good-bye.'

309


APPENDIX 5 TRANSCRIPT orTB #1B-13: ORDERING MERCHANDISE 1

((phone rings))

2 A X-syuppan -sya de gozaimasu. X Publishing Company COP-IPF (+) 'X Publishers.' 3 C Syoten desu ga,.= book company COP-IPF CP '(I)'m (with a) book company, but 4 C

=osewa ni natte orimasu::.= assistance GL become-GER be-iPFsL" [thank you for your continued assistance.]'

5 A

Osewa -sama de gozaimasu. assistance person (+) COP-IPF (+) ['Thank you for your patronage.']

6 C

Tyuumon it -ten onegai-sitai n desu keredomo. order one item beg-iPF-DES1^ EP CP 'It's that (I)'d like to request an order for one item, but.

7 A Hai, doozo. yes please (go ahead) 'Yes, please go ahead!' 8 C E: taitoru ga [title name]. HES title SUB 'Um, (the) title is [title name].' 9 A

Teika no hoo, owakari ni narimasu ka: ? price CN alternatives be clear-ipp^ Q 'Are you aware of the price choices?'

312

Appendix 5 IOC

A, anoo, osiete itadakemasu ka? oh HES tell-GER receive-fr-out-grp-iPF-POT^ Q 'Oh, um, could you tell me?'

1 1 A Eto, nana -sen -en TO, hes seven thousand yen and 'Um, ¥7000 AND,

12C

Hai. ACK

'Mhm.' ISA

sen nihyaku sanzyuu-roku -en TO, one thousand two hundred thirty -six yen and '¥1236 AND,

14C Hai. ACK

'Mhm.' 15 A

mini-ban no roppyaku nizyuu -en to,= mini version CN six hundred twenty yen and

16 A

=san-ten am ndesuga. three items be-ipp EP CP 'the ¥620 mini-version, it's that there are three of them, but....'

17C

A, soo desu ka=. oh so COP-IPF Q 'Oh, is that right.

1 8C

=Zya, sen nihyaku sanzyuu roku -en no mono o, well one thousand two hundred thirty -six yen CN thing OBJ

19C

is -satu onegai-itasimasu:. one volume b Well then, (I)'d like one volume of the one (that is) ¥1236.'

20 A Hai, wakarimasita. Bansen onegai-itasimasu yes be clear-pp agency code beg-iPF ^ 'Okay, understood. (The) agency code, please.'

Appendix 5 313 21C

Hai. [Agency name] de:, yes INST 'Okay, (it's) through [agency name],'

22 A Hai. ACK

'Mhm.' 23 C ((gives first part of number)) 24A

Hai. ACK

'Mhm.' 25 C

((gives second part of number))

26 A Hai. ACK

'Mhm.' 27 C ((gives last part of number))

28 A Hai. ACK

'Mhm.' 29 C

Sinzyuku-ku.. Shinjuku ward 'Shinjuku [Ward].'

30 A Sinzyuku-ku, hai. Shinjuku ward yes 'Shinjuku [Ward], okay.' 31C

Tookyoo Syoten to moosimasu, Tokyo Books QT be called-iPF^ '(I)'m (with a company) called Tokyo Books.'

32 A

Hai. ACK

'Mhm.'

314 Appendix 5 33 C

((caller then explains the way to write the kanzi characters in her company name, i.e. in the original name, which is withheld here))

34A

Hai, wakarimasita. yes be clear-pp 'Okay, understood.'

35C

De, Tookyoo Syoten no Yamada-ate ni site and Tokyo Books CN Yamada addressed to do-GER

36 C

moraemasu ka:? receive-fr-out-grp-iPF-por Q 'And, could (I) have you address it to Yamada of Tokyo Books?'

37 A

Yamada-sama desu ne!= Ms. Yamada (+) COP-IPF SP 'It's Ms. Yamada, right!'

38 C

=Hai. yes 'Yes.'

39A Hai, wakarimasita. yes be clear-pp 'Okay, understood.' 40C

Hannyuu nan -niti ni narimasu// desyoo? incoming shipment what day GL become-ipp COP-TENT 'What might the shipment arrival date be?'

41A Eeto, suiyoobi ni narimasu, Yamazaki to moosimasu. HES Wednesday GL become Yamazaki QT be called-ipp^ 'Um, it'll be on Wednesday, (I)'m called Yamazaki.' 42 C

Hai. Zya yorosiku onegai-itasimasu, situree// itasima:su. ACK well then well beg-iPF^ rudeness do-ippvl/ 'Okay. Well then, please do (this for me). Good-bye.'

43 A Arigatoo gozaimasita. thank you (+) 'Thank you.'

APPENDIX 6 TRANSCRIPT OF KI #1 A-11: CONFIRMING A DELIVERY 1

((recording begins after call is transferred to A))

2 A Most most:. hello 'Hello.' 3 C Mosi most: = hello 'Hello.' 4 A =Hai, odenwa//kawarimasita:. yes phone change-pr 'Yes, [(I)'ve (ex)changed phones (with someone else).]' 5 C A, osewa ni natte 'masu:. = oh assistance GL become-GER be-IFF 'Oh, [thank you for your continued assistance.]' 6 C

=Kansai Yunyuu no Watanabe to moosimasu:. = Kansai Imports CN Watanabe QT be called-ipp^ '(I)'m called Watanabe of Kansai Imports.'

7 A

=A, (osewa ni) natte 'masu:. oh assistance GL become-GER be-IFF 'Oh, [thank you for your continued patronage.]'

8 C

9 A

Osewa ni natte 'masu:. assistance GL become-GER be-iPF ['Thank you for your continued assistance.'] Hal ACK

'Mhm.'

316 Appendix 6 IOC

Eeto:, ippan de kakunin HES

11C

site

hosii no ga

general LOG confirmation do-GER desire NOM SUB

aru n desu kedomo: = be (inanimate)-iPF EP CP 'Um, it's that there's something (I)'d like to have (you) confirm in the general (side/type of the orders), but....'

12 A =A, doozo:.= oh please (go ahead) 'Oh, please go ahead.' 13 C

=H desu ka:?= good COP-IPF Q 'Is it all right (to ask)?'

14 A

=Hai:. yes 'Yes.'

15 C Iti nil san. one two three 'One two three.'

16 A Iti nii san, hai. one two three yes 'One two three, yes.' 17C

Kyuu nii hati. nine two eight 'Nine two eight.'

ISA Kyuu nii hati, hai. nine two eight yes 'Nine two eight, yes' 19C Iti nii san goo desu:. one two three five COP-IPF 'One two three five.'

Appendix 6

317

20A Iti nil san goo desu ne? = one two three five COP-IPF SP 'One two three five, right?' 21C

=Hai:. yes 'Yes.'

22 A Hai, syoosyoo omati kudasa:ai.= yes a little waiting^ give-to-in-grp^ 'Okay, please wait a moment.' 23 C

=Hai:. yes 'Yes.' ((pause and sound of typing on computer keyboard while he checks))

24 A A, MOsi mosi:. = oh hello 'Oh, HEllo.' 25 C

=Mosi mosi. hello 'Hello.'

26A

Anoo: moo iti -do bangoo no hoo kakunin simasu ne?= HES more one time number CN alternative confirm do-iPF SP 'Um, (I)'ll confirm the number one more time, ok?'

27 C

=Hai:. yes 'Yes.'

28 A Iti nii san NO: one two three CN

'One two three DASH' 29 C

Hai:. ACK

'Mhm.'

318 Appendix 6 30A

Kyuu nil hati NO nine two eight CN 'Nine two eight DASH'

31C

Kyuu nii SAN desu nine two three COP-IPF 'It's nine two THREE.'

32A A, kyuu nii san desu ka? oh nine two three COP-IPF Q 'Oh, it's nine two three?' 33 C

Hai:. yes

'Yes.' 34 A Sumimasen! be sorry-iPF '(I)'m sorry!' ((pause while he checks on the computer again)) 35 A

((said quietly as though to himself)) Sorya NAi wa na! that one be-NEG-iPF sp SP 'That one we DON'T have, do we!'

36A

A, mosi most:. — oh hello 'Oh, hello.'

37 C

Hai:. yes

'Yes.' 38 A Ee:tto, kotira no hoo zyuu-yokka no hi desu NE,= HES this CN side 14th CN day COP-IPF ATF 'Um, (on) this end, (on) the 14th, you see,' 39 C

=Hai:. ACK.

'Mhm.'

Appendix 6 319 40 A anoo Oosaka-siten no hoo de haitatu motidasi: HES Osaka office CN side INST delivery take out-iNF 41A kakatte orimasu be showing-IFF 4^ CP

kedoMO:

'um, we're showing it's been taken out for delivery via the Osaka office, BUT' 42C

A, hai.//De~. oh yes and 'Oh, yes. And—'

43 A Hai, tabun iti -do: moti:dasi:TE, nanka huzai yes probably one time take out-GER somehow not there 44 A ka nan ka de moti:kaette 'ru n zya nai ka na or something COP-GER bring back-GER be-iPF EP-NEG-> Q SP 45 A to omou n desu kedoMO, = QT think EP CP 'Yes, I think (they) probably took it out once (for delivery) and, given that (the customer) wasn't there or something, (I)'m wondering if it isn't that they've brought it back, BUT....' 46 C

=A soo desu ka. oh so COP-IPF Q 'Oh, really.'

47 A

haitatu no kanryoo no hoo wa natte 'masen no DE:. = delivery CN completion CN side TOP become-GER be-NEG-ipF EP-GER 'it's that (we're showing) there's no completion of delivery, SO....

48C

=A soo desu ka.= oh so COP-IPF Q 'Oh, really.'

49 A

=Hai:. yes 'Yes.'

320 Appendix 6 50 C

Wakarimasita. Anoo, haitatu-siteifbi] ga sakuzitu desita no DE= be clear-pp HES set delivery (date) SUB yesterday COP-PF EP-GER 'I see. Um, given that the day it was to be delivered was YEsterday,

51A =A, hai:. oh yes

'Ah, yes.' 52C

de: kyoo: moo zyuugo-niti ni natte simaimasita no DE:,= and today already 15th GL end up being-pp EP-GER 'and today it's already [ended up being] the 15th, SO,'

53 A =A, hai:.= oh yes

'Ah, yes.' 54 C

=huzai de mo kekkoo desu - n doa no tokoro ni not there COP-GER even fine (+) COP-IPF EP door CN area GL

55C

oite itte hosii to iu koto de. leave-GER go-GER desire QT say-ipp matter COP-GER 'even if they're not there, that's fine, they said they wanted (the shipper) to leave it near the door,'

56A A soo desu ka:.= oh so COP-IPF Q

'Oh, I see.' 57 C

=senpoo kara renraku hairimasita no de. other party from contact come in-PF EP-GER 'it's that the information came in from the customer, so'

58A A soo desu ka.= oh so COP-IPF Q 'Oh, really.' 59 C =Ee. yes

'Yes.'

Appendix 6 321 60 A

Hal ACK

'Okay.' 61C Anoo kotira no sekinin de:, anoo, HES this side CN responsibility COP-GER HES 62 C oil' oite itadakemasu ka:? leave-GER do for future USC-POT-GER receive-fr-out-grp-Poi-iPF Q 'Um, we'll take responsibility, um, could (we) have you leave it ?' 63 A A, \\>akarimasita:.= oh, be clear-pp 'Oh, understood.' 64 C

=Hal ACK

'Okay.' 65 A Itioo, anoo:, anoo:, (so)sita(ra) doo siyoo ka na, itioo, for now HES HES (so) do-CND how do-CNS-> Q SP for now 66 A maa genkan no mae ni demo:, ano, well entryway CN front LOC even if HES 67 A huzai -renraku: arimasu yo ne?, = absence notice be-iPF SP SP 'For now, um, ah, in that case I wonder what we should do, for now, well, even if it's in the front of the entryway, um, you know there's (those) absence notices, right?' 68 C

=Hal yes 'Yes.'

69 A sono bun anoo:, hanko osite moratte:,= that portion HES stamp push-GER receive-fr-out-grp-GER 'having had (them) stamp that (with their personal seal), and' 70 C

=Hal ACK

'Okay.'

322

Appendix 6

71A

anoo:, hatte morattara:,// hes stick-GER receive-fr-out-grp-GER 'um, if you'll have them stick it (on the door),'

72A

anoo, oil' okimasu: n DE. HES leave-GER do for future use-IFF EP-GER 'um, it's that (we)'ll leave it for (them), SO....,'

73 C A, soo desu ne! oh so COP-IPF SP 'Oh, right!' 74 A

=Hai. yes 'Yes.'

75 C

Wakarimasita, sonoyoo ni suruyoo ni be clear-pp that way GL do in such a way GL

76 C

s(o) yuutte okimasu no DE:,= that say-GER do for future USC-IPF EP-GER 'Got it, it's that I'll tell (them) that, to do it in that way, SO....'

77A

=Hai, sumimasen ga:.= ACK be sorry-ipp CP 'Okay, (I)'m sorry (to trouble you), but....'

78 C

-Anoo, mukoo no doraibaano kata ni mo itioo hes over there CN driver CN person (+) GL also for time being

79 C

hito-koto itt' oite itadakemasu ka? = one thing say-GER do for future USC-GER receive-fr-out-grp-poi IPF Q 'Um, could (we) have you put in a word for the time being to the driver over there, too?'

80 A

=A, wakarimasita=. oh be clear-pF 'Oh, understood.'

81C

=Hai. ACK

'Okay.'

Appendix 6 323 82 A Hai=. ACK

'Okay.' 83 C

=Yorosiku onegai-// simasu:. well beg-ippvl' ['May things go well.']

84 A Hai, doo mo:. Situree// simasu: yes thanks rudeness do-ipp 'Yes, thanks. Good-bye.' 85 C Situree simasu: rudeness 'Good-bye.'


APPENDIX 7 TRANSCRIPT OFKI #3B-11: REPORTING A MISSED DELIVERY 1

((phone rings))

2 A Kobe Unyu desu. Kobe Shipping COP-IPF 'Kobe Shipping.' 3 C =Kotira, Kansai Yunyuu no Yamamoto desu. = this Kansai Imports CN Yamamoto COP-IPF 'This (is) Yamamoto of Kansai Imports.' 4 A =Hai, osewa// ni natt' orimasu:. yes assistance GL become-GER be-ipp 4['Thank you for your continued patronage.'] 5 C Doo mo, osewa ni natte orimasu:. in many ways assistance GL become be-ipp 4* 'In many ways, [thank you for your continued assistance.]' 6 C E:to:, hassoo no Kaneda-san, onegai-dekimasu ka? HES dispatch CN Mr. Kaneda beg-ipF-poi4' Q 'Um, may (I) have (Mr.) Kaneda of (the) dispatch (section)?' 7 A Hat, syoosyoo omati kudasai= yes a little waiting^ give-to-in-group-iPF^ 'Yes, please wait a moment.' 8 C

=Hai. ACK

'Okay.' ((call recipient puts caller on hold)) 9 A2 A, mosi most. oh hello 'Oh, hello?'

326 Appendix 7 IOC A, mosi mosi?//Kotira, Kansai Yunyuu no Yamamoto desu:. oh hello this Kansai Imports CN Yamamoto COP-IPF 'Oh, hello? This is (Ms.) Yamamoto of Kansai Imports.' 11A2 Kawarimasita. change-pp ['(I)'ve (ex)changed (phones with someone else).'] 12 C Doo mo,// osewa ni narimasu:. in many ways assistance GL become-ipp 'In many ways, [(I) am obliged (to you) for your assistance.]' 13A2 Osewa ni narimasu:. assistance GL become-iPF ['(I) am obliged (to you) for your patronage.'] 14C E:to desu ne? Kono mae, ano: e:: ohuisu kara okutta, HES COP-IPF ATF the other day HES HES office from send-PF 15C

BUkku no bun na n desu kedoMO: book(s) CN portion COP^PF EP CP 'Um, you know, it's that (I'm calling about) um, (a) BOok order (we) sent from (the) office the other day, BUT...'

16A2 Hai= BC

'Mhm.' 17 C =zyuuiti-gatu zyuuroku-niti: = November 16th '(on) November 16th' 18A2 =Hai, hai. Yes yes 'Yes, yes.' 19C okutta bun na// ndesukedoMO: send-PF portion COP-IPF EP CP 'it's that (I'm talking about the) part of the order sent (on that date), BUT'

Appendix 7 327 20 A2 Zyuuiti-gatu desu ka? November COP-IPF Q 'Is it November?' 21C

Hai. yes 'Yes.'

22 A2 Zyuuroku, hail sixteen ACK '(the) 16(th), okay!' 23 C Hai. E:: takuhai DE: yes HES residential delivery INST 'Yes, um, by residential DELIVERY(service). 24 A2 Hai. BC

'Mhm.' 25 C e: nanbaa ga iti ni san NO: HES number SUB one two three CN 'Um, (the) number (is) one two three DASH' 26 A2 Hai. BC

'Mhm.' 27 C yon go rokuNO: four five six CN 'four five six DASH' 28 A2 Hai. BC

'Mhm.' 29 C nana hati kyuu kyuu. seven eight nine nine 'seven eight nine nine.'

328 Appendix 7 30A2 nana hati kyuu kyuu! seven eight nine nine 'seven eight nine nine!'

31C

Hal yes 'Yes.'

32A2 Mityaku desu ka? not yet arrived COP-IFF Q 'It's not yet arrived?' 33 C

(0.3) E:to mityaku rasii// ndesu:. HES not yet arrived seems EP (0.3 second pause) 'Um, it's that it seems (it)'s not yet arrived.

34A2 Mityaku= not yet arrived 'not yet arrived.' 35 C

=Hai. yes 'Yes.'

36A2 Tyotto matte kudasai//, yo. a little wait-GER give-to-in-group-ipF'Tv SP 'Wait a minute, okay?' 37C

Hal ACK

'Okay.' ((call recipient puts caller on hold)) 38A2 Mosimosi? hello 'Yes.' 39 C A, mosi mo si,//hail oh hello yes 'Oh yes, hello!'

Appendix 7 329 40A2 Sumimasen. be sorry^F '(I)'m sorry (for the wait).' 41A2 E: HES

nizyuu-itiniti desu 21st

ne!

COP-IPF ATF

'urn, (on) the 21st, you see,' 42 C

Hail BC

'Mhm!' 43 A2 kanryoo wa nee, dete oru n desu yo. completion TOP ATF show up be-ipp(+) EP SP 'it's that (we)'re showing completion (of delivery), you know.' ((on the computer)) 44 C

Dete 'masu ka?= show up-GER be-iPF Q '(It)'s showing up?'

45 A2 =Dete 'masu. show up-GER be-ipp '(It)'s showing up.' 46 C Nizyuu-itiniti ni.= 21st LOG 'on (the) 21st'

47A2 =Nizyuu-itiniti, hai. 21 st yes

'(on the) 21st, yes.' 48 C

E:to, sain...// \vakarimasuha? HES signature be clear-iPF Q 'Um, is it clear (whose) signature (was used to accept the delivery)?'

49 A2 Sain torimasyoo ka? signature take-CNs Q 'Shall (I/we) get (the) signature?'

330 Appendix 7 50 C Hai. Onegai dekimasu ka? = Yes beg^F-pOT4' Q 'Yes. Could (I) ask (you to do that)?' 51A2 =Hai, wakarimasita.= yes become clear-pp 'Yes, understood.' 52 C =Onegai simasu:. = ['Please do so.'] 53A2 =Kiite okimasu nde: ask-GER do for future USC-IPF EP-GER 'It's that (I/we)'ll ask about (it), so.... 54 C Doomo. thanks 'Thanks.' 55 A2 Hai. yes

'Sure.'

APPENDIX 8 TRANSCRIPT OF KI #16-6: REPORTING AN INCOMPLETE DELIVERY 1

((phone rings))

2 A Mosi most, [Masutaa Denki] desu. ((said very quietly)) hello [Master Electric] COP-IPF 'Hello, (this) is [Master Electric].' 3 C A, most most? oh hello 'Oh, hello?' 4 A

Hal yes

'Yes' 5 C Et:to: sotira wa: Masutaa Denki desyoo ka. HES that side TOP Master Electric COP-TENT Q 'Urn, would this be Master Electric?' 6 A Hai, soo desu:. yes so COP-IPF 'Yes, (that)'s right.' 7 C A , hhh ano desu nee, Oh

HES COP-IPF ATF

'Oh, 'hhh well you see,' 8 C Et:to: kotira Kansai Yunyuu to iimasu keredoMO:, HES this side Kansai Imports QT be called-ipp CP 'Urn, this is Kansai Imports but,' 9 A Kansai Unyu?

((Call recipient mispronounces the real name of C's company; the Japanese transcript here conveys a similar mistake for "Kansai Yunyuu"))

Kansai Shipping 'Kansai Shipping?'

332 Appendix 8 IOC

YU im

'IM.' 11A Kansai Yunyuu. Kansai Imports 'Kansai Imports.' 12 C

Hal yes 'Yes.'

13 A

Hal ACK

'Okay.' 14C Ano: kon'aida toransuhuoomaa O: ((said slowly)) HES the other day transformers OBJ 'Urn, (the) other day, transFORMERS' 15 A

Hal ACK

'Mhm.' 16C

ano: tyuumon site 'to n desu GA: ((said slowly)) HES order make-GER be-PF EP CP 'Um, (it)'s that (we) ordered (some), BUT...'

17A

Hal ACK

'Mhm.' 18C

E:to: MIttu doYOObi ni motte kite itadaite we? ((slowly)) HES three Saturday LOG bring-GER receive-GER^ ATF 'Um, (we) had (you) bring three on Saturday, you see?'

19 A

Hal ACK

'Mhm.'

Appendix 8 333 20C

De: nokori no hutatu o, e: kinoo ((said slowly)) and remainder CN two OBJ HES yesterday

21C

motte kuRU tte iwarete ta n desu keDO: ((said slowly)) bring-ipp QT be told-GER be-pp EP cp 'And (it)'s that (we)'d been told that the remaining two, um, (you)'d bring (them), but...'

22 A Hat. ACK

'Okay' 23 C

konakatta

n desu kedo.

COme-NEG-PF EP

CP

'it's that (they) didn't come, but....' 24A A, tyotto omati kudaSAi. oh a little waiting give to in-group-iMp^ 'Oh, please wait a MOment.' 25 C

Hai. ACK

'Okay.' ((call recipient puts caller on hold)) 26 A2 Mosi most? hello 'Hello?' 27 C A, mosi mosi? = oh hello 'Oh, hello?' 28A2 =A doo mo, odenwa kawari//masita. oh hello telephone change-pp 'Oh hello, [(I)'ve exchanged phones (with someone).]' 29C

A doo mo, kotira Kansai Yunyuu no Yamamoto oh thanks this side Kansai Imports CN Yamamoto

334 Appendix 8 30C

to moosimasu GA:= QT be called-ipp CP 'Oh, thank you. This is Yamamoto of Kansai Imports, BUT...'

31 A, =Hai. yes 'Yes.' 32 C

'hhh Ano: kono aida toransuhuoomaa O: HES the other day transformers OBJ ' 'hhh Uh, the other day, transFORMERS'

33 A2 (0.3)

34 C oodaa sita n desu keredoMO: order do-pp EP CP '(It)'s that (we) ordered (some), BUT...' 35A2 Hal ACK

'Mhm.' 36C

(1.0) E: doyoobi ni:, mittu— nanka itutu oodaa siTE:, HES Saturday LOG three-FS somehow five order do-GER 'Um, on Saturday, three—somehow, having ordered FIVE,'

37C ano: saisyo itutu haitatu surareru ((sic)) to iwarete 'ta HES first five deliver *do-pAS-ipp QT tell-PAS-GER be-pp 38 C ndesuGA: = EP

CP

'um, it's that first, (we) were told (that) five would be delivered, BUT' 39A2 =A, mittu sika nakatta// desu ne? oh three only be-NEG-pF COP-IPF SP 'Oh, there were only three, right?' 40 C Ee, ee, ee. De doyoobi haitatu site itadaiTE:= yes yes yes then Saturday delivery do-GER receive-GER^ 'Yes, yes, yes. Then Saturday, having had (you) deliver (the three),

Appendix 8 335 41A2 =Hai, hai, hai, hai. yes yes yes yes

'Yes, yes, yes, yes.' 42 C De nokori no hutatu ga nanka mokuYOObini kimasu and remainder CN two SUB somehow Thursday LOG come-iPF 43 C

tte iwarete 'ta n//desu keredomo. QT be told-PF be-PF EP CP 'And (it)'s that (the) other two, somehow, we were told (they) would come on Thursday, but....'

44 A2 A soo desu ka. ((Kansai intonation)) oh so COP-IPF Q 'Oh, is that right.' 45 C Hai. yes

'Yes.' 46A2 Tyotto, sirabemasu wa nee! a little look into-iPF SP-KS SP '(I)'ll just look into it, you know, okay?' ((call recipient partially covers the phone receiver and speaks to a colleague for 15 seconds; can be heard mentioning the "MF 500 UU transformer" that is discussed below)) 47 A2 Mosi most! hello 'Hello?' 48 C Hai! = yes

'Yes!' 49A2 =Sositara ano ima sirabemasite in that case HES now look into-GER 50 A2 tyotto, odenwa sasiagemasyo// ka?= ((Kansai intonation)) just telephone give to out-grp-CNs^ Q 'In that case um, shall I look into (it) now and just give (you) a call?'

336 Appendix 8 51C A soo desu// ka. oh so COP-IPF Q 'Oh, is (that) so.' 52A2 Kore, ato: ni-ko: goiriyoo desu ne? these remaining two-items need (+) COP-IPF SP 'You need two more of these, right?' 53C Ano: dekitara, ne? = HES be possible-cND ATF 'Um, if possible, you see?' 54A2 Hal BC

'Mhm.' 55 C

=San-ko ni site itadakitai n desu// keDO: three GL do-GER receive-DEsvl' EP CP (It)'s that (we)'d like to have you make it three, but.

56A2 A soo desu ka.= oh so COP-IPF Q 'Oh, is that so.' 57C

=Hal = yes 'Yes.'

58A2 =Moo san-ko, ne? more three-items SP 'Three more, right?' 59C

Hal yes

'Yes.' 60 A2 Zyaa, emu effu gohyaku yuuyuu well then M F 500 U U

Appendix 8 61A2 gohyaku watto no toransu O: 500 watt CN transformers ((abbreviated)) OBJ 'Well then, MF 500, UU 500-watt transformers,' 62 C

Hal ACK

'Mhm.' 63A2 ato ni -ko no bun wa moo ik-ko tuika, remaining two items CN portion TOP more one-item in addition 64 A2 san-ko to in koto desu ne? three-items QT say-iPF matter COP-IFF SP 'adding one (to) (the) remaining two, so it's three, right?' 65 C

Hai! yes 'Yes!'

66A2 Hai, wakarimasita! = ACK become clear-pp 'Okay, understood.' 67C

=Ano: orikaesi, zyaa, odenwa itadakemasu// ka? HES return call in that case telephone receive-iPF^ Q 'Um, in that case, could (we) receive a call back?'

68 A2 Hai, sirabete:, odenwa sasiagema//su:. yes look into-GER telephone give to out-group-iPF^ 'Yes, we'll look into it and (we/I)'ll call (you).' 69C

Hai, situree desu ke/ido: ACK rudeness COP-IPF CP 'Okay, excuse me, but....'

70 A2 A, Masutaa Denki, Hashimoto desu:, — oh Master Electric Hashimoto COP-IPF 'Oh, (I)'m Hashimoto, Master Electric.'

337

338 Appendix 8 71 C

=Hashimoto-san desu ne = Mr. Hashimoto COP-IPF SP 'It's Mr. Hashimoto, right?'

72 A2 =Hai! yes 'Yes!' 73 C Hai, yorosiku// onegai-simasu:. ACK well beg-iPF 4> 'Okay, please [take care of it for me]. 74 A2 Yorosiku onegai-simasu. well 'May things go well.'

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AUTHOR INDEX Alfonso, Anthony, 10. 42 Atkinson. J. Maxwell. 5, 92 Austin. John L., 55, 65 Bachnik, Jane M. 4, 50, 109, 169 Baker, Carolyn. 62 Bakhtin, Mikhail M.. 2-4. 33-36, 51. 63-65. 68,84.89.99. 103-106, 169 Barlow. Michael, 61 Bateson, Gregory, 136 Bierwisch, Manfred. 54 Bilmes, Jack, 7 Blatz. C. V.. 238 Blom, Jan-Petter. 56 Blum-Kulka, Shoshana. 54-55. 57 Blumstein. P. W., 238 Bourdieu, Pierre. 66 Brouwer, Dede, 56 Brown, Gillian. 62, 253 Brown. Penelope, 210. 217. 226. 249, 274 Buttny. Richard, 204, 232, 252 Button. Graham. 74, 92. 106 Casey, Neil J., 106 Chomsky. Noam, 56 Clancy. Patricia M.. 49. 274 Clark. Herbert H., 1 Collard, Lucy. 62 Coupland, Nikolas, 168 Couture, Barbara, 68, 91 Dahl. Merete, 55 Davidson, Judy, 75, 81 De Mente. Boye, 49 Doi, Takeo, 259-261 Drew, Paul, 62, 92 Ehlich, Konrad, 5 Emerson. Caryl, 34-36, 64. *, 105-106

Farrell, Thomas J., 237 Firth. Alan. 5 Firth, J. R., 92 Fisher, B. A.. 238 Ford. Cecilia E.. 4 French, J. Wade. 1 Fry, John Stephen, 62 Fukushima, Saeko. 84-86. 91-92. 266 Gardner, Roderick. 5 Garfmkel. Harold. 74. 211 Garner. Patricia A., 59, 169. 236-237 Geertz. Clifford. 2, 50. 63 Geis. Michael L.. 252 Godard. Daniele. 2 Goffman. Erving. 75, 104. 124. 238, 245 Graham, John L.. 3. 49. 203, 226-227 Gumperz, John J., 48. 56. 71. 168, 274. 278 Hall, Edward, 255, 267-268. 272-273 Halliday, M. A. K.. 73-74. 92. 168 Halmari, Helena, 3 Harris. R.. 274 Hasan. Ruqaiya, 65. 73. 92. 168 Hashiuchi, Takeshi, 169 Herberger, R.. 3. 49 Heritage. John. 2. 5. 75. 92. 203, 211 Hill. Beverly, 55, 57 Hinds. John. 264. 274 Hopper, Robert. 2, 59. 91. 106. 170 Hoshino, Takane. 212. 261-262 Houtkoop-Steenstra, Hanneke, 2 Hymes, Dell, 48, 92, 252 Ikuta, Shoko, 49 Inagaki, Y., 273 Ishii, Satoshi, 256. 263,271 Iwai, Chiaki. 56-57 Iwata. Yuko, 84-86. 91-92. 266

360

Author Index

Jacoby. Sally, 92 Jefferson, Gail, 1, 62-63, 74, 102-103, 203, 227, 229-230. 234, 239, 245, 251 Jones, Kimberly, 5-7, 84, 143, 154, 201 Jorden. Eleanor Harz, 42. 51. 69. 122. 170. 261 Kaltman, Hannah, 274 Kashiwazaki, Hideko. 37, 49, 98, 141 Kasper, Gabriele, 55 Kataoka, Yukio, 274 Kato, Hiroki. 49 Kato, Joan S., 49 Kipers, Pam, 168 Kobayashi, Kaoru, 273 Kotani, Mariko, 232 Kumatoridani, Tetsuo, 1, 84. 171 Kuno, Susumu, 42 Labov, William, 56, 58 Lebra, Takie Sugiyama, 257-258. 261. 267. 273 Lee, John R. E., 1. 62-63, 92-93, 203, 227, 229-230,234,239,245.251 Leech, Geoffrey N.. 85, 93 Levinson, Stephen C, 2, 35, 51, 66. 75-76. 90. 92, 142. 210, 217, 226, 249, 265. 274 Luke. Kang Kwong, 2 Lyman. Stanford M., 204, 231-232, 252 Makino, Seiichi, 119 Malinowski, Bronislaw, 92 March, Robert M., 49 Marriott, Helen, 5-6 Martin, James R.. 65-66, 90-91 Martin, Samuel E., 51, 264 Maruyama, Keisuke, 10, 272 Matoba, Kazuma, 87-89, 91, 93 Matsumura, Akira, 273 Maynard, Douglas, 1, 92 Maynard, Senko K., 49, 51, 252 McClure, William Tsuvoshi, 170

McGloin, Naomi Hanaoka. 268 Merritt. Marilyn, 75-76. 168 Mizutani, Nobuko. 49-50 Mizutani, Osamu. 50 Moerman. Michael, 7 Monane, Tazuko Ajiro. 264-266, 274 Mori, Junko, 6-7 Morson. Gary Saul. 34-36, 64, 68. 105-106 Nakane. Chie, 108. 169 Neustupny, Jiri V., 5 Nishihara, Suzuko. 170. 258-261 Noda, Mari, 42-43. 51-52. 69. 84. 122. 136, 145, 170. 247, 249. 261. 268. 270-271. 273 O'Connor, Mary, 274 O'Keefe. B. J.. 238 Ochs, Elinor, 6, 92 Okamoto, Noriko, 1. 84 Okazaki, Shoko, 263. 273-274 Olshtain. Elite, 57 Ono, Reiko, 55 Park. Yong-Yae. 62. 114. 121. 143. 169. 274 Pavlidou. Theodossia-Soula. 2 Pettinari, Catherine Johnson. 62 Phillips, Diana. 234 Quinn, Charles J.. 4. 50. 52. 66. 91. 109. 169-170,273-274 Quinn, Shelley Fenno. 273 Rabinowitz, Josephine Feldmark. 259-261. 273 Ray, Yuko Tetsukawa. 41-43. 145. 249 Reischauer, Edwin O., 258 Riley, Philip C.. 234 Rose, Kenneth R.. 55 Rosenberger, Nancy R.. 256, 273 Rothery, Joan, 91

Author Index

Sacks. Harvey, 1-2, 4-5. 50-51, 74-76. 92, 98. 103. 156. 158, 167,211 Sawaki, Motoei, 97, 168 Schegloff, Emanuel A., 1-2, 6. 74-76, 80, 92. 98. 102-106. 109-110, 115, 124-125. 142, 152, 156. 158, 167, 169 Schenkein. Jim. 74, 92 Scott. Marvin B.. 204, 231-232, 252 Searle. John R., 55. 65 Shepherd, G. J., 238 Shields, N. M, 238 Sifianou. Maria, 2 Smith. Robert J., 258 Sugito, Seiju, 97. 168 Sukle, Robert J., 168-169 Swales, John, 36.91 Szatrowski. Polly. 1, 4, 49, 81. 84. 168. 258.274 Takatsu, Tamie, 268-272 Tanaka. Hiroko. 1, 4-5 Terasaki, Alene K., 75, 142 Thompson. Sandra A.. 4, 6 Threadgold, Terry, 67 Tracy, Karen. 62-63 Tsuda, Aoi. 168 Tsuruta. Yoko. 256-257, 274 Tsutsui, Michio. 119 Van Zandt. H. F., 49 Ventola. Eija, 5, 65-66. 168 Victor, David, 3 Wagner, Johannes. 5 Walker. Galal, 12 Watson. D. R., 203, 211 West. Candace, 92 Wetzel. Patricia J., 70, 169, 265, 274 Whalen, Jack, 62 Whalen, Marilyn, 62, 239-240, 251 Wiemann, John M., 91 Wilson. Thomas P., 62

361

Winsted. Kathryn Frazer. 11. 284 Wittgenstein, Ludvvig. 8,11 Wolfson, Nessa, 55-58 Yamada. Haru. 4, 49 Yamada, Lynne. 56-57 Yamada. Nobuko. 168 Yoshino, Aya. 1, 84 Yotsukura, Lindsay Amthor. 49. 92. 199 Young, Linda Wai Ling. 274 Yule. George. 62. 253 Zimmerman. Don H.. 62. 74. 80, 92. 105-106.239-240,251 Zimmerman. Mark, 49 Zwicky. Ann D., 68. 91-92 Zwicky. Arnold M.. 68. 91-92


SUBJECT INDEX accounts. 48. 76. 81. 204. 230-233. 237239. 243. 245-246. 251-252. 271. 275. 277. See also reason-for-call. maeoki definition of. 232 English vs. Japanese. 232. 238, 252 acknowledgments. 14-15.26-27. 183.213. 215. 217. 230. 235. 240. 243. 246. 278 activity types. 35. 65-67, 90 adjacency pairs. 75-77, 80-81, 84, 90-91. 115. 120, 124, 158, 167-168.238 aizuti('back-channel"). 51. 97, 114, 143. 170. 185-186, 190-193,218-219, 225. 278. See also back-channel assessments. 219, 250 attention-focusing phrases, 98, 100. 142. 154. 161, 170. 175. 183. 191.206, 215, 231. 242. 276. See also ne back-channel. 4, 49, 51. 59, 89. 97. 185. 190. 191 -192. 217. 278. See also aiiuti business discourse studies of, 4-7 textbooks. 49 canonical opening sequence, 76-77, 79, 106, 116, 120, 124.284 structure deviations from, 130-131 clause particles, 100. 113-114, 121. 129, 135-136. 143-144. 155-156, 161. 185, 191-192. 249, 266. 274, 278 closing sections, in related genres of call, 67. 173 in service encounters. 98 of JBCs. 22, 32-33. 68, 97-100,

156-159. 162-168. 177. 187-188. 197-198,223-224.250.282 studies of. 1-2. 74-75. 84 co-construction. 1. 58. 74, 79. 84. 92, 159, 184, 199.211.250 conflict. 1.3.7 resolution and negotiation, 84, 249 contextualization cues, 71, 73, 113. 168. 217.225.263.274.278.281 continuers. 15.51,84, 183, 191.207.278 conversation analysis (CA), 1-2. 5-7. 50. 54,57-58,74-84.90-91.92 data collection methods. 12. 50. 51, 53-62. 85.87.89. 169. 180.234,283. 285-286. See also discourse completion tests, multiple choice questionnaires declarative form of offers. 38. 40. 44, 48. 53. 219-220. 226. 246, 249-252. 268, 280 deixis, 14, 37, 44. 47, 69-71. 90. 145. 152, 154, 206, 252, 255. 264-266. 272. 280. See also indexicality. uti/soto discourse analysis. 54. 57-58 discourse cohesion. 268-270 discourse community, 12, 96 discourse completion tests (DCTs). 53-58. 84-85. 92. See also data collection methods discourse markers. 196 ellipsis, 43, 166, 255, 263. 264-266. 274 enryo-sassi communication. 263, 271-272, 279,282 ethnomethodological studies, 50. 57-58. 74. 92 ethnomethodology, 92 evidential, 209-210

364

Subject Index

expectations, and adjacency pairs, 75-76, 80 and genre, 35, 48, 64, 74, 76, 90. 226, 281 and role, 38-39. 48, 74, 281 mismatch of, 63. 277-278 regarding interactions, 23. 48. 275 shared cultural, 35, 48, 255, 259. 266-267. 272, 284 extended predicate (EP or n(o) desu construction). See also n(o) de description of, 41-44 discussion of the underlying function of. 268-272 mmaeokL 37. 100, 143-145, 152-156, 161. 175-176. 179-181, 191. 206-207, 223, 224, 250, 276, in offers, 93, 159, 185,223,226 in pre-closing bids, 196, 213. in re-alignment sequences, 229, 231. 251. See also misalignment, nonalignment in recharacterizations and formulations. 159. 176. 193-4.203-204,209-211, 219.223,226,247-250.251 in switchboard requests, 129, in switchboard request refusals, 135-136, 138,223 use when presenting new information as given. 170 face threat, 72, 153. 154, 199. 201, 203. 210. 226, 235, 267, 277, 279, 282 face threatening act (FTA), 51, 72, 210, 217,226 fillers. 219, 252 folk logic, 232 metalinguistic expressions, 232, 255256, 262, 266, 272, 282 formulations. 15, 29-30, 164, 194. 221-223. 229, 251-252. See also extended predicate

definition of, 211 in English, 204, 238, 245-247. 250. 252 in troubles-talk. 211 of place or person, 102. 151-153. 171, 178.240.242-243.276 l-masit n(o) del in, 248-250. 252 l-masyoo ka?l in. 249-250. 252 ne in, 221-223 E P i n , 159. 176. 178-179.203-204.223. 226. 247-249. 250-252 use of/o in koto in. 161, 221. 228-229 generic activity, 64-66. 226 category. 95 constraints. 34, 64 definition of. 51 frame, 12, 36, 263 resources. 34-35. 64 specifications, 3-4 structure. 65-66. 224 genre(s). See also speech genres acquisition and experience in using. 23. 34-35. 64-68. 76. 90. 154. 198. 209. 226, 229. 236. 258. 263. 267. 277-281.283-285 and diachronic change. 36 and sub-genre. 36. 90 as habitus ('lived habit"). 66-67. 90 compositional, thematic, and stylistic features of. 2-3. 13. 33-36. 63-74. 75.76,90,95-171.224-226. 283-285 culturally nuanced approach to. 2-3, 7. 11-12,35,48-50,64-67,89-91. 105-106. 204. 230. 232. 252. 274. 279.281-283 dynamic approach to. 67-8. 75, 89-90 importance of, 10-12. 35 intuitions and expectations in using, 11. 23, 35, 48, 63-64, 66. 68. 74. 75-76. 80, 90, 148, 226, 255, 266-267. 272. 275,277-278,281,284

Subject Index Martin's definition of, 65-66. 90. 91 of interaction. 23, 49 of negotiation. 2 performance of, 34-35. 49, 64, 66-68. 80, 90. 131, 188. 226, 281, 284-285 primary and secondary. 36. 65, 89-90. 106 restaurant service encounter. 11, 66. 232. 284 social activity and, 35, 64. 66 speech. See speech genres travel agency service encounter, 252 unformalized cognitive content of, 35, 68 vs. activity types, 35, 65-66, 90 vs. speech acts, 53, 57-58. 65 gerund form. 51.52. 93, 191, 193, 196, 213,226.250.265,278 and non-challengeability, 42-45, 138, 268, 280 and open-endedness, 44, 159, 249, 268 greetings, 2, 5, 67, 75, 84, 98-100, 104, 106, 115, 122, 169,215,239,243. See also salutation, business opening, 98-101, 109-110, 112-113. 120. 122-124, 169,215,236 passing, 167 personal, 98, 100, 109-110, 120, 122-125, 168 ritual. 122 habitus 0lived habit'), 90 hedges. 81.219, 235 hesitation markers, 17, 49, 142, 144, 161, 170, 181. 196,232-236,238,243, 252 high context culture, 255. 266-268, 272-21'3 identification sequences. 2, 13, 16, 24-26, 62, 67, 76-77, 79-80, 98-102. 104. 106-109, 111-115. 118-125. 131. 136. 140-141, 163. 165-166. 174-175. 183. 185-187. 190.

365

identification sequences (cont.) 200-201. 206, 215. 230. 233. 235. 236, 238. 240, 242-243. 251, 283. 284-285. See also self-identification, institutional affiliation indexicality, 10,69,71, 109, 113, 117. 122. 130. 143-144. 265, 279, 282. See also deixis, uti/soto inquiries. 12. 24. 27, 33. 50. 78. 90, 96, 120. 142. 145-146. 150, 151. 153, 156. 173-180. 198-199,200, 203-204. 234. 238, 283. 285.See also toiawase institutional affiliation. 13, 16. 23, 25. 61. 71-72. 73. 74-76,79, 101-103. 106-113, 140. 146, 174-176. 181-183. 185-186. 200-201, 206, 215, 218. 228. 230. 231. 233. 234-235. 238. 240. 243. 253, 275, 283, 284-285..Vt^ also identification sequences, self-identification calls, 110, 169,227.240 context, 92, 134 filter. 80 form of identification. See institutional affiliation face, 274 practice, 245 role. 62-63 intention, 2-3, 10, 12, 34, 52. 64, 89. 223. 229. 246, 259. 272. 278. 283 use of the extended predicate/Y^cV Je.su construction to express. 44. 47, 138. 161, 163,204.213,226,247. 250-252, 262, 271-272, 208-281 negotiating, 2-3. 18, 23, 32, 247. 250. 285 interaction. 4. 6. 97. 104, 168 action-in-, 74 actual vs. simulated. 49. 56-59. 89 and experience, 2, 7. 10-11. 23. 32. 35. 62, 64, 66-68. 76. 90. 154, 185, 198,

366

Subject Index

and experience (conl.) 209, 226, 229. 236, 258, 263, 167. 277-285 and role relationship, 8-10, 73-74, 87-89, 129, 153-154, 200-201. 203. 258,265,275,281-282 face-to-face, 4-7, 32. 58, 72-74, 97. 99. 104, 109, 118, 122, 166-167.267, 272, 286 genre of, 23. 36. 48-49, 96, 145, 190, 198.203 high-context. 266-268 situational factors in. 2-3, 12, 60. 64, 73-74.77-80, 175,275 talk-in-, 92 interactional asynchrony, 63, 203, 226-230, 239. 245-246,251 consequences, 183, 199, 261, 284 discourse, 62, 253 frame, 63 motivations, 210, 235 preference, 48, 68, 88, 92-93, 103-104, 110-111, 168-169,204,212,246, 249-250, 255. 258-260. 263. 267. 273,279.281-282 synchrony, 203. 226. 246-250. "work," 201,284 interrogative form of offers, 48, 212, 246, 249, 252, 272 interrogative series. 80. 91. 180, 188. 201, 229,233, 243 intuition and entailment judgments, 56 and phonemic judgments, 56 and pragmatic and sociolinguistic judgments, 56-57 and syntactic judgments, 56 iwakan ('feeling of incompatibility"), 284 Japanese business transactional telephone conversations (JBCs), 12-33,36, 61-63, 68,95-171, 173-202,

Kansai data, features of. 107. 109. 128-129. 153. 154-155. 157. 170. 171. 173. 180. 188-189 data collection sites, 12. 60-62. See also Kansai Imports, dialect, 52, 128-129, 157. 170. 171, 220-221.252 geographical area of. 51 Kansai Imports, operational and personnel aspects of. 61-62. 166. 180. 188-189. 190. 201. 204. 212. 213.225.230-231. 283 Kanto data sites. 12, 51. 60-62. See also Tokyo Books data, features of, 52, 121-122. 170. 173 geographical area of, 51 & ('feeling'), 255-257, 273, 274 kikubari ('showing consideration'), 257-258, 272, 274. 282 latched utterances, 123, 190. 219 leave-taking. 2. 33, 67, 99-100, 162. See also terminal exchange ma (-interval'), 262-263, 273 maeoki ("prefatory statements"). 14. 141-156, 170, 177-184, 188, 191. 199-201. 206-207, 262. 276-284. See also accounts, reason-for-call and Kansai dialect. 171 and role relationship. 145-154 and topic initiation. 48, 100. 141-142. 147. 153-154. 162. 188. 190-191. 199-200.203,228 as formulations of place or person. 151-153, 171, 178,240,276 definition and function of. 37, 199. 276

Subject Index in merchandise orders. 181-184. 200 in problem reports. 145, 188, 199-200. 201. 203. 206--207. 228, 238, 243. 248-251,275-279.282 in shipping confirmations. 188-191. 199, 201 mtoiawase inquiries, 177-180, 200 sequential position of. 238, 251 structure of, 127, 142-144, 161, 175. 181. 183,200,224.243.276 use as pre-requests, 81 use as pre-sequence, 37, 117-118. 141-142, 145,278 use of EP in, 37, 100, 145, 154-156, 175. 179,206-207,223-224, 248-251,276,282 markedness. 81 marked utterance, 81, 120, 217, 225, 278 unmarked utterance, 81,217,219 l(mas)(y)oo ka?l consultative form, 8-10, 38-40, 45-48, 53, 83-84, 87, 89, 93, 138-140,204,212,220,225, 249-252,261-262,272-273, 279-281 merchandise orders, 33, 50, 90, 96, 142, 156, 173, 175, 180-188, 198,200, 203, 229, 283-285 metalinguistic expressions, 232, 255-256, 266, 272, 288 misalignment, 3. 227-230. See also nonalignment, extended predicate in re-alignment sequences mitigating device. 128, 142, 144, 170,210. 232-235,238,277 mosi most, after call is transferred, 190 in business calls, 110-112, 215-216, 230 in in-house business calls, 108 in everyday, personal calls, 71, 73, 103, 108, 169 multiple choice questionnaires (MCQs), 53-54, 56, 58, 84. See a/jo data collection methods

367

n(o) de. See also extended predicate (EP) gerund of the extended predicate. 43-44. 93.138,159-160. 193, 196,213. 226,248-252,268.280-281 inter-clausal use, 42 n(o) desu construction. See extended predicate (EP) narrative. 48. 65. 142. 198-199,217-219, 231.252.274,275-278. ne. See also attention-focusing phrase use as an attention focuser (ATF). 142, 144. 154. 161, 170. 175, 183.206. 215.225.231,242.276,278 negotiation genre of, 2 masked. 6-7. 143, 145.201 moves in. 1-4. 6-7. 37-38, 48-49. 98. 100, 110. 162. 194-195, 198-199. 204.224-226.228-230,238, 247-252. 266-273. 279-282. 284-286 studies of, 4-7. 49. 84 nominal no uses of, 41-44 non-alignment, 245 offers l-(mas)(y)oo ka?l form of, 8-10. 38-40, 45-48. 53. 83-84. 87, 89. 93, 138-140.204.212.220.225. 249-252,261-262.272-273. 279-281 l-masit n(o) del form of. 20-21. 27, 30, 40-48,51,53.89,91,93,98. 138, 158-159, 161. 163-165, 196,204, 213, 223, 226. 233, 248-252. 262, 269-272. 279-282 definition of, in this study, 37-38 of assistance, 11-13, 16, 20-23, 26, 29-33, 36-37. 38-47, 48-49, 53. 89-91, 97. 159, 168, 185. 203-204, 212-213,219-226,233,235.243. 247-252, 256-257, 260, 267,

368

Subject Index

of assistance (cont.) 271-272,277-282 studies of, in English, 259-260, 273 in Japanese, 54, 84-89, 91 to call back, 13,21,30,32,39-47, 53,83-84,98, 100, 127, 136-138, 159, 164,220,223.250.262,272 omoiyari ("empathy"), 257-258. 261. 267. 272, 274. 282 opening sections in English, 231-238, 239-240, 253 in related genres of call, 67 offers in. 13. 136-140.250 of JBC calls, 13-14, 23-27, 30. 33, 68 70-74.76-80.97-140, 142-143, 145-146. 151, 153. 168, 174-176, 177-178, 181-184, 188-190, 204-206,213-215,224.230. 232-233, 238,240-244, 249,253, 275-276, 284 of service encounters, 97 "reduced;' 106, 243-244, 251, studies of, 1, 74-75, 84. 234. 239, 245 politeness, 51, 68. See also style honorific-, 69-70 humble-, 69-70 Japanese system of, 92 Leech's maxims of. 93 levels of. 10 perceived degree of, 87 positive, 249 pre-announcements, 37, 75, 141, 145, 278 pre-closing bids, 2. 21, 30-31, 33, 98. 100-101, 156-163, 173. 177. 185-188, 196,213.224.250. 280-282 pre-offers, 75, 81 pre-requests, 37, 75, 81, 142-144. 147, 175, 278 pre-sequences, 81, 141 predicate, 41-44, 69, 71, 113, 181,183,

215.224-225.258.277 distal-style, 33. 72. 74. 279 extended. See extended predicate (EP) polite. 74 preference organization. 75. 80-81, 90 problem reports. in English. 204. 211. 230-240. 245-246. 251-252,282.285 in Japanese. 13-21. 23-29, 36-37. 61-62. 90.96.98. 116. 142-156, 158. 173. 175, 189. 199-201.203-212. 213-220, 223-226. 230. 232. 238, 240-243. 250-251. 275-279. 282. 285 masked, 143, 145,201 promise, 196, 268 of future contact, 2, 21. 30. 33. 99-100. 138, 159, 163-164 reason-for-call, 14, 27. 37, 79-80. 91. 106. 114-115, 121, 124-127, 141. 143. 170, 175, 177, 179-180. 198-199, 215, 235-236, 238. 240, 243, 246, 276, 283, 285. See also accounts, maeoki recharacterizations. 135, 153. 219. 226, 248-249, 280 recipient design. 102-104. 109. See also utterance, addressh ity of recognition sequences, 62. 67. 99. 103-104, 106, 110,125. 169. 175. 183.218. 239 reframing, 136, 148, 153, 163. 193. 207. 211 register and situational factors, 73-74 definition of. 68 features of JBCs, 48. 50. 67. 71-74. 95. 97-99, 101, 107, 115. 120-121. 134. 168,188,209,211,225,263 features of travel agency encounters. 252 telephone, 95

Subject Index vs. genre. 68, 70.11, 74. 90 vs. style. 68, 70. 72, 74, 90, 200 Zwicky and Zwicky's definition of. 68 requests for assistance, 3. 15, 18, 22. 29,48. 51, 175, 197,267-268,276,279 for identification details, 17, 20-21, 25, 30, 80, 99, 159, 166, 174, 229, 243 for permission, 32, 175, 177, 180, 183, 190,200.243 hold. 62, 180 inventory confirmation. 180 shipping. 96. 154. 185 studies of. 54. 75, 84, 282 switchboard. 13. 33. 37, 39, 40, 47, 73. 76.79.82.84,96, 124-125. 127131. 134. 170223,282 ritual, 22, 33. 52, 72, 75, 86. 104, 122, 124. 143, 175, 183, 185. 190, 197.224. 261,273 role relationship, 8-10, 35. 48, 73-74. 87, 91. 129-130, 153-154,201,203. 258.265.267.279,281.285 role-plays. 54, 56. 283 routine, 124, 131. 209. See also canonical call, 104. 183,215 inquiries. 173, 175. 183 opening sequence. 105-106, 120. 124.

190,215,238,239 salutations. See also greetings business. 13.25.71.73.76,95. 98-101, 104, 115-122. 124-125. 131, 136, 143. 146, 170. 175, 181, 183, 190,206,215,218,230-231, 233, 238, 275-276, 284 sassi ('understanding'), 255-256, 263, 271-272,279,282 self-identification, 2, 25, 67, 76-77, 79-80, 95,98-104, 106-116, 118, 120-125, 131, 136. 140-141, 153, 165-166, 169, 183, 187,190,201,206,215, 224, 233, 236. 238, 240, 243, 251.

369

282, 284. See also identification sequence self-introduction. 30, 113. 121, 166. 183, 217,253 sequential organization. 2, 50, 59. 84. 95. 98, 100. 105. 115. 124-125, 168, 173. 188, 199,224,233-234. 239-240,251 pre-empting the usual. 130 service encounter, 5. 10-12, 32. 51. 63. 65-66. 75. 96-97. 168. 204. 232. 234,238.252,283-284.286 vs. troubles-telling. 203, 227. 239. 245 service provider definition of. 36-37 service recipient definition of. 36-37 shipping confirmation. 33. 50. 90, 96. 142. 154. 156. 173, 175, 188-201. 203-204.208.283.285 speech act(s) classification of. 65 cross-cultural comparison of. 54-55. 57 function of. 57 samples of, 55, 57 studies on. 53-55. 168 theory. 54-55, 65, 81.92 speech community , 48-49. 57-58. 66. 232. 285 Hymes' definition of. 252 speech genres. 2-3. 33-36. 63. See also genre and utterance meaning. 3. 34 Bakhtin's definition of, 3. 33-35, 63-64 consequences for ontogeny and phylogeny of languages. 64 fuzzy edges of, 36, 64 style. See also politeness careful. 18. 33. 69-72. 74. 90, 282. 284 casual, 6, 33, 68-70, 74, 85, 90, 171 direct, 9, 38, 69-70. 72-73. 90. 93. 123. 130, 154. 157,25

370

Subject Index

distal, 10, 33, 38, 52, 69-74, 86, 90, 93, 113, 123, 130,215.261,265,279 honorific-polite, 10, 33, 39, 69-73, 90. 93, 119, 127-130,252,266.282 humble-polite, 10, 33, 51-52, 69-73. 90. 93, 113, 117, 129, 138-139. 169, 265-266. 273. 282 neutral-polite, 69-70, 72-73. 106-107. 123,183 suprasegmental features. 59. 230 suprasegmental highlighting, 18, 193. 196. 230. 278 higher pitch, 18.278 stress, 18.278 telephone conversations business, 5-6, 12-13. 23. 25. 33. 36-37. 48-50, 60, 63, 67-68. 72-73. 76. 89-90,95-168, 170. 173-201. 203-252, 275-285 hybrid, 62-63, 114, 121 importance of, 54. 59-60. 89 in-house. 51. 95-96, 101, 108. 121-122. 129, 141. 150-151. 162-163. 170. 180. 188 everyday/ordinary. 13, 62, 92. 95. 99, 103-106. 110. 114-115, 121. 123-124, 156, 162, 169.227,239 personal. 62, 67. 71. 73-74, 91. 95, 98-99, 108, 110, 120, 123. 141,204 to/from outside organizations, 60. 71, 101, 106-109, 112-113 temporal reference, 143-144, 148,218-219. 224, 276 terminal exchange, 162-163, 167, 198. See also leave-taking timing, 121,262 toiawase ('general inquiries'), 12, 27, 33, 50,90,96, 120, 142, 145-146, 150-151, 153, 155-156, 173-180. 185, 198, 200. 203, 234. 285. See also inquiries

Tokyo Books. operational and personnel aspects of. 51,61-62, 146. 173-174. 180 transactional discourse. 62, 91, 253 transcription, 12. 33, 49-50, 61, 154. 169, 170,285-286 transition relevance place (TRP), 4-5. 100. 136.278 transitional section. 33. 67. 98. 100, 127, 141-142. 145. 151. 156. 159. 161-162. 170. 173. 175, 183. 188. 216. 224. 231. 234-236. 238. 250. 276. 282 trouble(s), 143. 232, 236. 239 -talk, 1,62,211 -telling, 62-63, 203, 227, 245. See also problem reports turn-taking, 1-2, 4-5. 51, 74-75. 80. 84. 105. 114. 121, 136. 142-143. 167. 192,215.250.263 uptake. 18. 193-194,226,230 uti/soto ('inside/outside'), 50, 69-71. 90. 108-109. 122, 169. 176.255,261, 264-265. 272-273, 282 deixis. 255. 264-265, 272, 282 utterance. 3. 53-54. 65, 89 addressivity of, 102-103..SVt' also recipient design and role relationship. 10. 72-73. 113. 118-119. 130 meaning and speech genres. 33-36. 63-65, 68. 72. 89-90. 99, 104. 106 Bakhtin's definition of, 3. 34-36. 51, 63-65, 68, 84, 89-90 Levinson's definition of, 51 pragmatic appropriateness of, 11, 50 traditional pragmatic definition of, 34

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