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Article published In:
Pragmatics
Vol. 33:2 (2023) ► pp.285–312

Overlaps in collaboration adjustments

A cross-genre study of female university students’ interactions in American English and Japanese

ORCID logo | Showa Women’s University
This study examines collaborative utterance overlaps in American English and Japanese interactions between the same participants in two genres, conversation and problem-solving tasks, from the perspective of metacommunication. Quantitative and qualitative analyses indicated that participants’ use of overlap varies in frequency and function by genre. In conversation tasks, speakers of both languages used overlaps to maintain coherence and keep the story on track. In problem-solving tasks, American English overlaps conveyed agreement with or acceptance of the proposed idea, whereas Japanese overlaps in this genre conveyed common understanding. Participants attended to situational adjustment, and the development of collaboration in interactions differed by context and genre depending on the purpose of the conversation and the amount of information shared by participants. These results suggest the importance of teaching students how to use overlaps in both American English and Japanese interactions to enhance their understanding and appreciation of the cultural nuances of collaboration.
Keywords: overlap, collaboration, cross-genre study, cross-cultural communication, Japanese, English as a foreign language, situational adjustment, pragmatic rules
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Definition of genre
    • 1.2Literature review
  • 2.Data and methodology
  • 3.Quantitative analysis
  • 4.Qualitative analysis
    • 4.1The conversation genre
    • 4.2The problem-solving task genre
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 14 November 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.21009.tak
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