Short Responding Action Formats Deployed to Achieve Affiliation in Japanese Young People's Responses to Tellings on Facebook
Abstract
The paper reports the results of the analysis of responding actions to tellings on Facebook performed by Japanese young people. In particular, it focuses on the ways that the recipients of tellings on Facebook achieve affiliation with the tellers by means of four short responding action formats: response cries, emphatic assessments, interpretive formulations, and 'me-too' stories.
In doing so, the study contributes to the body of research on the conversational patterns in Japanese talk-in-interaction, as they are born out of the social and interactional needs of the co-participants in interaction, the specific features of the Japanese language, and the environment. On a more general level, the study also contributes to the research on affiliation in talk-in-interaction and verbal interaction on Facebook.
In addition, owing to the fact that the discussed data come from the environment where the interaction is typically not spontaneous and hence the co-participants have time to consider the form of their responses, the performative, strategic, and intersubjective nature of affective stance display is emphasized.