Description
This study offers insights into how Japanese anaphoric demonstratives, ko-, so-, and a-, operate in authentic discourse of spoken and written modes. Unlike many previous studies that rely on self-generated data or others that focus only on one of the discourse modes, this study analyzes authentic texts of both spoken and written modes. Moreover, the present study applies an English-based interactive framework which has been used in Japanese second language acquisition studies but not to a Japanese discourse analysis study of this type. Using Strauss' Focus framework, it shows that the ko- and so-series have designated degrees of desired attention that they signal to the audience, while the a-series seems to exhibit characteristics that cannot be explained by the Focus framework. These findings are illustrated through an analysis of referents that each demonstrative form marks and with the guidance of previous studies that describe the rules of anaphoric demonstrative use. Furthermore, they lead to another factor that applies to all three demonstratives that is at work as speakers and writers produce language; the degree of control the speaker/writer exhibits over the referent in question differs in each demonstrative form. The study brings forth the importance and significance of the role of the addressee in shaping the choices made by speakers/writers with regards to anaphoric demonstratives. Furthermore, it suggests useful applications of discourse analysis of this type to teaching Japanese as a second or foreign language, and the necessity to closely examine authentic discourse, as opposed to self-generated dialogues, in characterizing language.
