This study is an attempt to describe an interactional strategy that psychiatrists use in making decisions for treatment in ongoing outpatient psychiatric consultations in Japan. Using conversation analysis (CA), we compare sequential environments where psychiatrists use two turn designs for proposing a treatment: the inclusive 'we' form (for example 'let's' and 'how about') and the declarative evaluation (for example, 'it might be better'). The inclusive 'we' form is used to create the moment for decision when the sequential environment is ready for decision-making. The declarative evaluation is used to propose a treatment cautiously when the sequential environment is not yet ready for decision-making. Taken together, psychiatrists fit the turn design of a proposal to its sequential environment in such a way as to display their attention to the patients' perspectives. In conclusion, we argue that our finding provides further evidence for the claim made by a growing body of CA research that, unlike the traditional sociological understanding of doctor-patient interaction, doctors do not simply impose their perspectives upon the patients but steer medical encounters to their preferred direction by orienting to the patients' perspectives.

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When a speaker refers to someone or something in talk-in-interaction, s/he may be doing more than simply referring with a reference form. This article examines a type of reference form, "name-quoting descriptor" (e.g., "person named X"), used in Japanese. I show that the name-quoting descriptor is used for claiming the referent's "epistemic distance," i.e., for claiming that the referent is not within the shared territory of knowledge between speaker and recipient, and thereby carries out several interactional tasks in addition to referring. This finding contributes to research on reference practices and epistemics. Data are in Japanese with English translation.The aim of this study is to describe a reference practice used by parties to talk-in-interaction to do something in addition to referring. To that end, I focus on a particular reference form employed by Japanese speakers, which I call the "name-quoting descriptor (NQD)." It is a noun phrase that contains a name, e.g., X tte yuu hito ("person named X"). 1 Using the methodology of conversation analysis, I show that the NQD is used for claiming the referent's "epistemic distance" from the participants and thereby carries out several interactional tasks in addition to referring.When parties to talk-in-interaction implement some action through their talk, this action typically involves references to someone or something in the world. Other than for references to what is copresent, for which body movements are available, referring is chiefly done by selecting one from among many (or rather, an infinite number of) linguistic forms that can correctly refer to the intended referent (Sacks, 1972). How such selection is done is one of the basic questions related to the study of talk-in-interaction. Since mere denotative correctness does not account for such selection, research has to take into consideration how the reference form is used in the interaction, rather than focusing only on its semantics. 1 The translation "person named X" might not always be satisfactory. British usage might favor "person called X" in at least some of the translations.