turn allocation in japanese business meetings

252 Pages·2012·29.36 MB·English

by  Emi Murayama

TURN ALLOCATION IN JAPANESE BUSINESS MEETINGS:

EMERGENCE OF INSTITUTIONALITY

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I AT MĀNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE
REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

IN

EAST ASIAN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES (JAPANESE)

MAY 2012

By

Emi Murayama

Dissertation Committee:

Gabriele Kasper, Chair
Haruko M. Cook
Michael Forman
Kimi Kondo-Brown
Yumiko Tateyama
Liam C. Kelley, University Representative

Keywords: conversation analysis, business meeting, turn allocation, institutional talk
© Copyright 2012
by
Emi Murayama
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To my parents
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am deeply indebted to many people for the assistance they provided during the
process of researching and writing this dissertation. Without their support and guidance,
the completion of this dissertation would have been impossible.
First and foremost, I would like to thank the members of my dissertation
committee. Professor Gabriele Kasper has been the best mentor that I could ever ask for.
Her sound guidance and critical feedback made a considerable contribution to this
dissertation. She provided me with tireless support and powerful encouragement. Her
professional and open-minded attitude is truly exemplary. I am grateful that she has been,
and will be, my role model. Professor Haruko M. Cook, from whom I first learned how to
transcribe the Japanese data during my early days in the graduate program, has helped me
a great deal with her insightful comments and invaluable suggestions. I consider it a
privilege to have her on the committee. Professor Kimi Kondo-Brown not only helped me
broaden my perspective on research methodology, but she also continuously supported
my enthusiasm for teaching. Her thoughtful words always cheered me up when I had
trouble balancing work and study. Professor Michael Forman enlightened me in his
linguistic anthropology class during my first year of the doctoral program, and he
continued to inspire me with his fascinating comments and questions even after his
retirement. I feel very grateful for receiving his extended support. Professor Yumiko
Tateyama has been continually supportive from the time she was my fellow senior
student (senpai) as well as co-worker. I always have great respect for not only her caring
personality but also her determination and commitment as a researcher. Last but not least,
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I would like to thank Professor Liam C. Kelley, who kindly agreed to serve on the
committee as the University Representative. He provided me with helpful comments and
encouraging words both during and after my oral defense.
I would also like to extend my sincere gratitude to the many additional mentors I
met at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. Professor Dina R. Yoshimi first introduced
me to conversation analysis, and encouraged me to seek out an opportunity to learn more
about it across the department. Professor Kazue Kanno and Professor John Haig have
provided continuous support since I wrote my master’s thesis. I am also greatly indebted
to Professor Jack Bilmes, who taught me about the essence of conversation analysis. It
was in his classes where I began an examination that became the foundation for this
study.
I am truly thankful to Professor Cohn, who has been incredibly supportive and
patient as the graduate chair of our department. My sincere gratitude also goes to Dean
Kenneth Tokuno of the Graduate Division. Without his understanding, I would not have
had a chance to complete this dissertation. Furthermore, I would like to extend my
deepest thanks to Evelyn Nakanishi at the Department of East Asian Languages and
Literatures. I cannot describe in words how much I owe to her support.
There are countless other people (including my friends, classmates, members of
the CA data session group, and colleagues) who have provided invaluable support,
guidance and friendship. Although the limited space does not allow me to list them all, I
would like to at least acknowledge Rue Burch and Cade Bushnell for their editing
assistance. I am most grateful for their insightful comments and useful suggestions.
Any errors and omissions that remain are of course my own responsibility.
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I would also like to express my gratitude to all of the anonymous members of the
corporate group where I conducted the research. Without their generous cooperation, this
study would never have been possible.
My special thanks go as well to Fergus Poile, who has always stood by me and
supported me emotionally as I struggled to complete this dissertation. In addition to the
emotional support, he also provided me with practical assistance by reading numerous
drafts of this dissertation. I am truly grateful that he believed in me and has encouraged
me everyday.
Finally, I wish to express my deepest appreciation to my parents, Takao and
Hiroko Murayama, who have provided me with tremendous emotional and financial
support throughout my graduate journey. They always trust me and respect my decision. I
feel so fortunate to have such caring and understanding parents. I dedicate this
dissertation to them.
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ABSTRACT

This dissertation uses conversation analysis as a theoretical and methodological
framework to examine the organization of in-house business meetings that are conducted
in Japanese. In particular, this study focuses on how institutionality becomes apparent
within the participants’ interactions. The data consists of six videotaped in-house
meetings: three departmental staff meetings (bukai) and three interdepartmental meetings
(kaigi.) The members’ distinction between the two types of meeting is found to be crucial
in this study. Using video-recordings of the business meetings, this study provides a
detailed description of the participants’ moment-to-moment interactional practices, even
when no verbal interaction is involved.
The first objective of this study is twofold: (a) to investigate how participants
orient to the boundaries that mark the beginnings and endings of meetings, and (b) to
identify what members do (or do not do) during the pre-meeting period. It is common
among the meetings in the data for the chairpersons to mark explicitly both a meeting’s
opening and closing. However, the patterns of premeeting organization differ between the
two types of meetings.
Meetings in institutional settings tend to have a pre-established turn allocation
system. The second objective of the present study is to investigate how precisely a
turn-allocation system is operated in Japanese business meetings, and where the
institutionality of the interaction emerges in that process. Identifying how reporters
acquire their report turns, this study examines turn-allocation patterns specific to the
reporting activities at meetings. It is also shown that the patterns of turn-allocation differ
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between the two types of meetings and that they depend upon the way in which a topic is
provided.
Through close observation of the participants’ interactional practices, including
their gaze and bodily movements, this study highlights the interactional patterns that are
either common to all the in-house business meetings or particular to a type of meeting in
the data. It is hoped that this study will not only yield insights into how meetings are
organized in a Japanese business context, but will also promote a multimodal approach
(as typified by the use of video-recorded data) to research on business interaction in
Japanese.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
LIST OF TRANSCRIPTION SYMBOLS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xii
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS USED IN INTERLINEAR GLOSS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Defining Meeting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.3 Business Meetings as Institutional Interaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.4 Previous Studies on Meetings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.5 Research on Japanese Business Discourse and Meetings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
1.6 Organization of the Dissertation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
CHAPTER 2: DATA, METHODOLOGY, AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS . . . . . . 28
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.2 Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.3 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
2.3.1 Data collection and analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
2.3.2 Reliability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.3.3 Validity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
2.3.4 CA and ethnography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
2.4 Research Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
2.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
CHAPTER 3: SECTION BOUNDARIES: OPENINGS AND CLOSINGS . . . . . . . . 46
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
3.2 Premeeting Activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
3.3 Openings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
3.3.1 Time as a reason to start . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
3.3.2 Marking the onset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
3.3.3 Greeting sequence as a consolidator of attentiveness . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
3.4 Closings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
3.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
CHAPTER 4: TURN ALLOCATION IN BUKAI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
4.2 Turn Allocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
4.3 Allocation of the First Report Turn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
4.4 Nomination of the Second Reporter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
4.5 Proclamation of the Report End: The Use of ijoo desu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
4.6 Nomination of Next Reporter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
4.7 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
CHAPTER 5: AGENDA AND TURN ALLOCATION IN KAIGI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
5.2 Nomination of Pre-Selected Reporters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
5.3 Soliciting Information According to the Agenda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
5.4 Soliciting Opinions: Unplanned Event . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
5.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
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CHAPTER 6: DISCUSION AND CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
APPENDIX: CONSENT FORM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
REFERENCES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221

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