A Study of Regional and Generation Differences in Discourse Pattern
| Project leader | : | INOUE Fumiko Associate Professor, Department of Language Change and Variation, NINJAL |
|---|---|---|
| Project Period | : | November 2010 - October 2013 |
Summary
Discourse patterns are a major topic of discourse analysis, and the variation of discourse patterns is an important topic in pragmatics. In the paper "The development of discourse in the Tokyo Dialect" (Kokugogaku 190), Kukita (1990) observed what kind of connectives and interjections are used in conversation and showed that speakers of the Tokyo dialect tend to insert utterances which express their attitude in the process of discourse, whereas speakers of the Kansai dialect prefer to report a fact objectively. Kukita’s study provides an important insight into how to carry out research on variation in discourse patterns. This project will investigate variation in discourse patterns by comparing data of natural discourse by younger and older Japanese dialect speakers, focusing on the linguistic cues which reflect the type of discourse pattern.
