Self-addressed questions as fixed expressions for epistemic stance marking in Japanese conversation

Abstract

Speakers in conversation do not always produce utterances smoothly. Among the various ways of deferring utterance production, this chapter focuses on three kinds of self-addressed questions (SAQs) in Japanese conversation: nan-daroo ‘what would it be,’ nan-te-yuu-no ‘what do you call it,’ and nan-da-kke ‘what was it again.’ Through quantitative analyses, we argue that the SAQs should be treated as fixed expressions for marking the epistemic stance of the speaker. We then qualitatively examine how these SAQs are used in conversation and discuss that the use of the different types of SAQs, each of which indicates a specific type of trouble, contributes to the management of progressivity of the interaction and intersubjectivity between participants.