| The present study analyzes the reactive token eh in Japanese conversational discourse by taking into account the discourse-functional and conversation analytic-approaches. In the study of linguistics, this token has been widely understood as a so-called "interjection" and analyzed to express the speaker's affect such as surprise. Yet, the actual usage of eh in naturally occurring conversation shows various situated roles as a "reactive token" (Clancy et al. 1996) other than expressions of affect. In the present study, through examining a wide variety of the uses of eh in naturally occurring conversation, I aim to explore the nature of this token and investigate how it plays roles in various conversational contexts and situations.;In order to better understand the nature of this token, I analyze the actual usage of eh in conversation by accounting for cognitive and interactional motivations as well as the prosodic characteristics of eh. More specifically, by taking into account the concept of the flow of "consciousness" (Chafe 1994), I first analyze cognitive phenomena that are assumed to underlie the use of eh, and explore the shared properties of various situated uses of eh in naturally occurring conversation. In addition, by considering that everyday social interaction reflects the uses of eh in various local contexts (Sacks et al. 1974), I carefully examine sequential environments and contexts in which the token eh occurs as well as actions accomplished by the use of eh, and investigate the various situated roles of eh in conversation. Furthermore, through analyzing recurrently used prosodic characteristics of eh in particular sequential environments and contexts, (Couper-Kuhlen and Selting 1996; Couper-Kuhlen and Ford 2004), I consider how the prosody of eh plays roles in naturally occurring conversation and how it is associated with the producer's cognitive states, interactional stances, as well as affect.;Through these careful observations and analyses, I explore how the generic sense of eh is particularized in sequentially different environments and contexts, and elucidate the ways in which the use of eh serves to indicate the producer's cognitive processing, interactional stance and affects in various local contexts. |
