Diffraction wavelength larger than gap

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‘POLITENESS’ PHENOMENA AND MILD CONFLICTIN JAPANESE CASUAL CONVERSATIONNORIKO KITAMURAA thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirement forthe degree of Doctor of PhilosophyDepartment of Japanese and Korean Studies,Faculty of Arts, University of SydneyJune, 2001
2ABSTRACTCasual conversation is a very common type of interaction in everyday life. However, arelatively small amount of work has actually been done on this type of interaction inlinguistic studies, especially in Japanese. Thus, data for this study is selected fromapproximately 13 hours of taped conversations between close friends who are native speakersof Japanese. The investigation uses a qualitative empirical method of analysing casualconversation.This study uses a modified version of Brown and Levinson’s ‘politeness’ theory(1978, 1987) as a theoretical framework for the data analysis, and focuses on ‘politeness’phenomena and mild conflict in the data.The thesis argues three points. First, during non-goal-oriented interaction, the natureof ‘politeness’ phenomena and ‘face threatening acts’ is different from those in goal-orientedinteraction. Second, according to the ‘politeness’ phenomena found in the data, theinteractants are continuously adjusting the ways they interact in the conversation. Finally,‘positive politeness’ and ‘negative politeness’ phenomena may not be clearly separable ininteraction. ‘Politeness’ phenomena and ‘face threatening acts’ can be seen as two sides ofthe same coin.This thesis contributes to linguistic research in a number of ways. It explores someaspects of the nature of Japanese casual conversation in relation to ‘politeness’ phenomenaand conflict: how the interactants facilitate conversation, how the interactants preventconflict, how conflict occurs, and how the interactants repair conflict. Research of this naturefills a significant gap in Japanese linguistic studies. There has been little work done utilisingthis type of data, involving non-goal-oriented interaction. Furthermore, very few studies havebeen conducted on the way in which close friends converse focusing on ‘politeness’phenomena.