Learners’ perception and interpretation of contextualization cues in spontaneous Japanese conversation: Back-channel cue Uun

Abstract

Research in the field of cross-cultural pragmatics has tended to be based on the investigation of production strategies (i.e., what we say to whom in certain situations), receptive strategies (i.e., what we hear and how we interpret it) have received relatively little attention. This study investigates receptive strategies used by learners of Japanese, focusing on their knowledge of a back-channel cue as it occurs in spontaneous conversation between native speakers of Japanese. It reports on qualitative differences between native speakers and learners of Japanese with regard to the interpretation of the back-channel cue and the social context in which it is used. The data for this study was collected from 11 native speakers and 14 learners of Japanese, using five types of tasks with varying degrees of complexity: semantic differential stimulated recall, stimulated recall, multiple-choice, rating, and ranking.