表題番号:2006B-039 日付:2007/06/07
研究課題語学学習者とネイティブ・スピーカーのスピーチアクトに伴うジェスチャーについて
研究者所属(当時) 資格 氏名
(代表者) 文学学術院 教授 N. O. JUNGHEIM
研究成果概要
Wilkins (2003) introduced the idea obligatory cospeech gestures for pointing behavior noting how he caused misunderstandings with Arrernte speakers when he didn't use the obligatory form. In a recent study of Japanese refusals (Jungheim, 2004) the presence of gestures with refusals of an offer also appeared to be obligatory as all participants performed a gesture with their refusals. The purpose of this exploratory study is to examine the extent to which Japanese native speakers feel that gestures are obligatory for the correct interpretation of refusals of an offer. Participants who performed refusals for evaluation were Japanese native speakers (n=17) and learners of Japanese as a second language (n=16). The native speaker interlocutor perspective was taken by two Japanese raters who evaluated the participants� output. Data were collected using 99 randomly ordered video clips of the participants interpreting three silent videos of persons refusing an offer of a drink. In the first stage, raters rated whether the transcripts of each of the responses was a refusal on a scale of 1 to 5. Two months later the same raters rated the videos themselves on a scale of 1-5 for appropriateness. Raters stated their ratings orally to a research assistant along with reasons for their rating. This was followed by post-rating retrospection. The results showed that ratings of the interpretations of the three refusals were consistently lower for the videos than for the transcripts. Interrater reliability was relatively high in the textual mode, but it was low in the video mode. Both raters included comments about gestures in some of their explanations as well as in their retrospections, but there were no instances in which they suggested that the absence of a gesture affected their rating. Results show that even though gestures can be considered part of the formula for refusals of an offer in Japanese, there are other factors that affect an observer's interpretation of intent.