初対面の会話における発話の重なりの効果

概要

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Interruptions and overlaps in dyadic conversations have been often taken as a means of displaying one's power over the other in the socio-psychological literature. Although this view has been supported in empirical studies, it looks only at one aspect of the phenomena. Interlocutors may also use overlaps and interruptions for the opposite purpose, that is, to indicate their interest in and sympathy with the topic taken up by the speaker. In this paper, I would like to show overlaps and interruptions are used in Japanese dyadic conversations of unacquainted persons in order to show the hearer's interests in or knowledge about the topic being talked about and to make psychological distance between the hearer and the speaker closer. To do this, I first define overlaps and interruptions, which have been often used without clear distinction, and identify three categories of overlapped talk: overlaps, interruptions, and latch-like switches of turns. In addition to these three categories, I introduce a concept of overlapped listener's responses into this analysis. With these analytical devices, I look at the data of Japanese conversations of two persons who meet for the first time. Three types of overlapped talk as well as overlapped listener's responses were effectively used in the data to display the participants' mutual interest and knowledge of the topic in progress and as a result of this, participants' psychological distance became closer.