Sophia Junior College Faculty Journal
Vol.28, 2008, 9-26

Topic Development, Affiliative Mimesis and
L1 Use in a Novice-Novice L2 English Conversation
Timothy Gould

In an effort to gain a deeper understanding of Japanese college students’English conversational abilities, a series of videotaping sessions wereconducted. These sessions were designed to capture examples ofthe subjects’unguided, natural use of English in a non-pedagogicalenvironment. This article is an initial exploratory case study describing
one of these videotaped English L 2 conversations between three
Japanese female college students. Three interactional phenomena are
explicated in detail: the use by the participants of Japanese, their useof new-topic elicitation as a means of terminating long silences, anda communicative strategy based on reflexive mimicry of a precedingutterance.

Introduction
As language teachers, we traditionally use a variety of tests, reports, andpresentations to ascertain the extent to which our students have learned andcan produce（or reproduce）the second language（L2）materials and skills underconsideration. We then use the results of these performance measures to determine
appropriate feedback, which is delivered to the students in the form of grades,
evaluations and constructive criticism. When relevant academic research findings
are incorporated into our teaching methodologies, we perpetuate a virtuous circle
of curricular and pedagogical evolution, which consists essentially of the following
recurrent process: teach → evaluate（ourselves and our students）→ reﬂect/incorporatechange → teach again, and repeat ad inﬁnitum. It is not my intent here to argue formajor changes to this well-established practice, but it seems that there is a certain
lacuna in the composite impression we can glean of our students’L2 abilities basedon this system alone.
This gap I am referring to arises from the difficulties inherent in observing
and assessing students in situ as they attempt to conduct L2 conversations under──Timothy Gould

circumstances where an expert（e.g., teacher or native speaker）participant’s input or
guidance is unavailable. Since the probability of this type of encounter is increasingly
likely in today’s world, it falls upon us to understand what our students are able
and willing to do when they are using English on their own. If we are interested inunderstanding how our students independently deploy their English in practice,
however, then our presence as they endeavor to do it creates some methodological
difﬁculties. Labov（1973）refers to this type of situation as the Observer’s Paradox; adesire to see a thing（a social behavior in this case）in its natural state introduces avariable（the observer）that can fundamentally change the state of the thing underconsideration, rendering questionable any conclusions that might be drawn from theobservation. Accordingly, the net result for language teachers is that our knowledge ofstudents’“real”L2 conduct, upon which we base our teaching practices, may not be as
accurate as we would like.
The goal of the current project, of which this paper is a ﬁrst tentative effort, is
an attempt to remedy to some extent the void this observational difﬁculty has createdby assembling a corpus, or analyzable database, comprised of instances of learners
using their L2s to conduct“natural”conversations. To this end, I conducted, overthe course of an academic semester, a number of video recording sessions of small
informal groups, each group consisting of three self-selected Japanese female college
students. This paper is an initial look at one of those sessions, with descriptivecommentary and some initial analysis concerning the following three salient featuresof the conversation: the participants’use of Japanese, the role of silence in developing
topics, and a type of mimicking which seems to serve as a communication strategy.
To reduce the effects of the observer’s paradox, I left the room while the students
were being videotaped so they could freely structure their interactions without regard
for the types of pedagogical concerns usually associated with classroom exercises. I
attempted to alleviate feelings the students might have that the recording camera
was a proxy for me by assuring the students beforehand that the videotaping was nota test of any type, nor was there any class-related evaluative component whatsoever;they were simply asked to use English for the duration of the 10-minute taping
session – no other instructions or tasks were given.
Let me reiterate that this report is something of a reconnaissance mission, a‘ﬁrst
pass’at data collected from a single videotaping session. By pursuing a case study
approach initially, I have in mind to develop further research questions to guide andinform subsequent work on L2 talk-in-interaction between non-native speakers. Of

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Topic Development, Affiliative Mimesis and L1 Use in a Novice-Novice L2 English Conversation

course, as I stated at the outset, I am also keenly interested in exploring how a deeper
knowledge of learners’independent use of their L2s might constructively inﬂuence
future teaching practices. These potential pedagogical implications, though they forma core part of the impetus for this research, will by necessity remain speculative untila larger corpus of interaction is available for study and analysis.
In approaching the conversation under consideration here, I have followed
the methodological and transcription conventions of Conversation Analysis（CA）,
a qualitative research methodology based on the work of Harvey Sacks and hiscolleagues（Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974; Sacks, 1992）. One advantage ofusing CA in the early stages of data exploration is that, as an inductive methodology,
it eschews pre-conceived notions of participants ’attributes and promotes, evendemands, an ideological neutral stance（Firth & Wagner, 1998; Liddicoat, 2007; ten
Have, 1999）.
Space does not permit a full articulation of the tenets of CA, but briefly, thepredominant unit of analysis is the turn-at-talk（Sacks et al., 1974; Schegloff &Sacks, 1973）, of which the elemental component is the turn construction unit（TCU）（Schegloff, 2007）. Turns-at-talk can then be organized into larger groups of utterances

known as adjacency pairs, which consist of ﬁrst and second pair parts, the ﬁrst pairpart making relevant, or“sequentially implicating”the second. The movement ofturns betweens participants takes place at transition relevant points（TRP）, and in
conjunction these discourse features provide, through what may be characterized asthe“machinery”of talk-in-interaction（Sacks, 1984）, a means through which orderarises in conversations as an emergent property（Psathas, 1995）. CA has at its core,
then, a desire to identify and understand the underlying knowledge that is deployedby participants as they endeavor to“produce social action”（Silverman, 2005 p.19）.
CA for SLA extends this program to explore interactions which include novice L2
language users.
Conversational order, the product of this machinery, is thus a function of theparticipants’interpretation of and orientation to social actions exhibited by theparticipants themselves（ Liddicoat, 2007 ）. The particular area I am interested
in investigating is how this same machinery operates for novice second language
participants in conversations where there is no model provided by the presence of an
L1 or expert interlocutor. In other words, by looking at how novice speakers structure
an“empty”social space using their L2, we may gain a better understanding of what
they perceive to be iconic, or“real”English conversation. Firth and Wagner（1998）

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Timothy Gould

succinctly capture the rationale motivating the CA for SLA program when they note
that,“the study of foreign language interaction in a variety of natural, social contexts— outside the formal educational environment — must be regarded as centrally

relevant for the study of acquisition”（p. 91）. In the following sections I will detail
three of the features which arose during an L2 English conversation conducted in justthis type of context.

Use of JapaneseIn this section I will discuss the use of Japanese by the participants. Despite myinstructions, consisting of one simple guideline,“speak English,”the ﬁrst utterancesby the participants were spoken in Japanese. They used their native language to
conduct some pre-L2 talk about how they should open the conversation. Excerpt 1
shows the interaction between the three participants, Junko, Asami, and Kaori after I
left the room where the taping session had just begun.
Excerpt 1（lines 1 – 6 are barely audible – whispered）

1 Jun: nani shaberou?
What should we talk about?

2 Asa: jiko shokai . . .
Self introduction . . .

3 Jun: jiko shokai?
Self introduction?

4 Kao: aheh（（burst of laughter））.
5 Asa: kino mita terebi toka.
Something like what we watched on TV yesterday
Why do the participants begin the conversation in Japanese? And why do they
whisper instead of speaking to each other at a normal conversational volume? Thereis evidence, provided moments after this interaction, and throughout the rest of theconversation, that the syntactic and lexical complexity of their English is perfectly
adequate to handle the simple openings they are undertaking to accomplish here.
Immediately after the exchange shown in excerpt 1, Kaori asks Asami about what she
did the previous day, and the reply, I watched Ainori, is delivered using virtually thesame lexical items we see in line 5, except in English. This argues against an account─ 12 ─

Topic Development, Affiliative Mimesis and L1 Use in a Novice-Novice L2 English Conversation

claiming the use of Japanese may be compensation for an inability to adequately
express the proposition in English.
The Japanese utterances appear to serve two distinct functions during the courseof this conversation. First, the Japanese clearly delineates two social spaces, English
and Japanese, and seems to provide a frame（Goffman, 1974）within which theEnglish conversation is conducted. Tannen（2006）describes frames as providing theinterpretive means through which participants in a social context gain“a sense of what
activity is being engaged in, [and] how speakers mean what they say”
（p. 334）. Lantolf（2008）refers to frames as,“a set of shared expectations on the part of the participants

as to what the interaction ought to entail”（p. 90）. In the conversation here, a distinct
separation exists between the initial Japanese and subsequent English utterances, andthere is a sense that the three participants are involved in a social situation that they
are not conﬁdent to navigate. Under this interpretation, they do not possess a working
frame for“English conversation with other L1 Japanese speakers.”As a result, they
compensate by creating an ad hoc frame, the novice use of which may account for someof the subsequent non-humor induced laughter that occurs. Watching the video, the L1
Japanese framing of the English conversation delineates an almost physical space, as
if the participants are counting“1,2,3, jump!”before entering a cold pool. Illustrationof this comes in line 4 of excerpt 1, where Kaori emits a burst of laughter that is
not a response to humor – it comes after both of the other participants suggest selfintroductions as a possible opening topic. I surmise that this type of laughter token,
which Kaori especially uses throughout the conversation, is a normative attempt torelieve the tension resulting from their uncertainty about how to proceed without an
operative English frame within which to construct the interaction.
In addition to providing a mutually familiar and accessible frame, Japaneseis also used to negotiate the“ business ”of conducting and commenting on theconversation itself. The type of information conveyed by Japanese is markedly
different from that exchanged via English, with English communicating topicalutterances（e.g., What did you do? Where did you go? And their responses）andJapanese providing an alternate channel through which meta-conversational
information is carried. An example is provided in Excerpt 2.
Excerpt 2

1 Kao: I（1.8）want to speak French too.
2 Asa: doshiyo watashi shitsumon zenzen shitenai.

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Timothy Gould

What should I do? I haven’t asked any questions at all.

3 Asa: （1.0）e::to what did - （0.6）did you eat this morning?
In line 2, Asami is fretting because she feels she has not done her share to
support the conversation thus far. Her question in line 2 is rhetorical, and refers
not to the topic that came before it（countries visited）, nor to her subsequent newtopic initiating question in line 3（Button & Casey, 1984; Button & Casey, 1985）,
but to the conversation as a whole, and an assessment of her performance in it. This
clear distinction between English and Japanese is even more striking consideringthat whenever Japanese occurs throughout the videotaping session, it is voiced in a
subdued whisper. So meta-conversational information is not only carried in a different
language, it is also conveyed at a different volume, where it literally operates on a“sub”
-channel. The participants’unspoken agreement and mutual orientation to

Japanese, and the whispered volume level, indicates that their need to use the L2
sub-channel trumps, at least at the outset, the directive to speak English.
The content of the Japanese opening segment is informative in another respect.
Since the participants have not been provided with a topic or task to orient to, theirdeliberations allow us to infer how they think an English conversation should start.
They reveal, albeit in Japanese, what they think an English conversation consists
of. Additionally, their consideration of the self-introduction as a legitimate potential
opening subject is pragmatically intriguing. As members of the same English class,these students are well known to each other, and additionally, they have self-selected
to group together for this conversation. Their choice to open with a self-introduction
indicates that they may consider this situation a“task,”despite my attempts toconvince them otherwise.
Another perspective is that the participants use Japanese strategically to cocreate, and sustain throughout the videotaping session, an“escape hatch”, or safe
haven of sorts, which, when necessary, provides a private interactional resource.
This resource is available when L2 conversational difficulties arise, and it allows
for effective communication and repair of troubles before returning to the“public”
channel of English. Under this view, the sub-channel, operating at an almost
inaudible level, allows the participants to exchange information outside the English
interactional space deﬁned by the instructions. In other words, if they began speaking
Japanese at normal conversational levels, it could be construed as blatantly ﬂouting
the one simple rule governing the conversation: speak English.
A further possibility is that these students, when they use their L1, may be─ 14 ─

Topic Development, Affiliative Mimesis and L1 Use in a Novice-Novice L2 English Conversationemulating behavior they witness in English classes conducted by Japanese teachers.
The language used to conduct pedagogy, talk about language, and evaluate student
performance, may be Japanese, while English usage may be restricted to producing
examples of the things talked about and conducted in the L1. This would produce
precisely the behavior we see in this conversation. This group of students, then, andthe teachers they are modeling, conduct class or interactional“business”in Japanese,and then proceed with English, which they continue with until they require the“meta-channel”again.

The ﬁnal possibility I will explore here to account for the use of Japanese in thisconversation hinges on the notion of“face”（Brown & Levinson, 1987）. By speaking
Japanese at the outset of the interaction, there is no chance, or risk, that one student
will appear“ better ”or more skillful by assuming that the default language ofinteraction will be English. By organizing themselves initially with the help of their
Japanese, and agreeing on how to start, they can assume, or perpetuate the“unreality”
or“fakeness”of this new and unfamiliar social/conversational environment. In otherwords, by starting in Japanese, they have removed the risk inherent in“reality”
from the environment and freed themselves to speak English, at whatever level,
without risking face. This freedom may allow them to speak English without fear ofdiminishing themselves or exposing the others to embarrassment.

Turn Development and Silence
L1 conversations, in any language, flow from speaker to speaker and topic to
topic, with participants structuring current turns in light of what has come before（Atkinson & Heritage, 1984）. In any conversation, then,“a turn’s talk will be heard

as directed to a prior turn’s talk”（Sacks et al., 1974 p. 728）
. In this section I willcomment on the topical movement of the conversation at hand, focusing on how
participants use, or fail to use resources made available to them by the sequential
implications of prior turns.
Upon completing the negotiations detailed above about how they should start
the conversation, Junko, who also initiated the Japanese framing event with nani
shaberou, begins speaking English when she utters good morning. As shown inExcerpt 3, the other participants all join in this greeting.
Concerning CA transcription conventions: the numbers in parentheses indicate,in seconds and tenths of seconds, the duration of a pause or silence. If the pause─ 15 ─

Timothy Gould

occurs during a speaker’s production of an utterance, that speaker“owns”the silence
and the pause length number will appear in the current speaker’s line of transcription
as part of her turn. When the pause happens between turns, or after the second pairpart, and there are no“open”implications, the pause length number is transcribed on
its own line, where it is owned by all the participants to the conversation.
Excerpt 3（2.2）

1 Jun: good morning.
2 Kao: good morning（（burst of laughter））
3 Asa: good morning（（slight laugh））（5.5）

4 Kao: what did you do yesterday?
（1.3）

5 Asa: I watchedu:（0.7）un Ainori.
Kaori and Asami both orient to Junko’s opening, evidenced by their repetition ofit, which they do while laughing. Again we have a laughter token that is not the resultof humor intended by Junko. In this case, the laughter may be a response to Junko’sdecision to ﬂout the maxim of relevance（Grice, 1975）. On the day of this taping, thestudents had already been in contact with each other for some time, so the opening
move of“greeting,”while appropriate in the newly opened English frame, may seem
pragmatically strange to the other participants – hence the laughter. This issue oflaughter is important and requires additional analysis, but the feature with which I
am concerned here is the 5.5-second silence after Asami’s good morning in line 3.
This extremely long silence（Jefferson, 1989）is notable in that it illustrates
how the participants, in their opening utterances, do not provide a topical opening
for further turns, or, in CA terms, they fail to“project a range of possible‘nexts’”（Heritage & Atkinson, 1984）. The English part of the conversation is thus stillborn,

resulting in the 5.5 second unfilled pause that belongs to the entire group. Kaoriﬁnally recovers and attempts a second start when she utters the ﬁrst pair part of thequestion What did you do yesterday? in line 4. This question implicates a second pairpart, which is provided by Asami in line 5 when she explains what she watched on
television.
To summarize, excerpt 3 illustrates an instance of a long silence following a

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Topic Development, Affiliative Mimesis and L1 Use in a Novice-Novice L2 English Conversation

terminal non-implicating sequence. Under these circumstances, the conversational
ﬂoor is clear and open for new topics, but since there are no open implications, there
is no clear indication as to who should take the next turn. Kaori ultimately takes
responsibility to restart the conversation with her line 4 question about yesterday’sactivities and thus ends the silence and opens a potential new topic. Long silences
followed by a new-topic nominating utterance（Button & Casey, 1985 ）, are not,however, found only under circumstances where previous utterances fail to implicate
further turns. There are a number of times during the conversation where patently
open topics are not taken up or continued by the participants. Excerpt 4 illustrates
one of these cases. The topic leading up to this excerpt has focused on how thestudents are going to spend their Christmas holidays. Junko initially opened the
topic and Kaori offered that she would be going to Canada for seven days, and thenKaori asked where Asami was planning to go“during winter vacation,”leading to thefollowing excerpt.
Excerpt 4（5.4）

1 Asa: un I will go to:（1.4）Karuizawa.
2 Jun: u:::n.
3 Asa: o:::.
4 Jun: mmmm.
5 Asa: un.
6 Asa: how about you?
7 Jun: I will go to（2.4）grandfather’s house.
8（25.0）9 Asa: （whispered Japanese – unhearable）.
10 Jun: （whispered Japanese – unhearable）.
11 Asa: wakaranai.
I don’ t know

12 Asa: do shiyo.
What should I do?

13 Jun: Have you（0.4）ever（.）been（.）to（1.7）another country?
14 Asa: yes I ha（ve）– yes I have.
First, note that although Asami ’s line 1 utterance concerning her trip to─ 17 ─

Timothy Gould

Karuizawa elicits some minimal discourse marker assessments（Schiffrin, 1987）,
there are no additional turns initiated by the other participants which capitalize onthat comment as a potential area for topic development. Asami responds to Junko’sweak assessments（in lines 2 and 4）, which she may feel responsible for, then asks
Junko the first pair part question in line 6, which implies“Where are you going?”
Junko accepts the question and responds in line 7 that she will go to her grandfather’shouse. This response is followed by a silence of twenty-five seconds, which is anastronomical duration in conversational time（Jefferson, 1989）.
Consider that Jefferson（1989）, in her initial analysis of conversational silence,comments that there is an“ interactional‘ metric ’in which‘ approximately one
second ’operates, where that metric has as one artefact, a‘ standard maximum
tolerance’for silence of more or less one second”（p. 170）. This means that in most
L1 conversations（Jefferson considered English and Dutch）, participants will usuallyterminate silences after a duration of about one second. Jefferson does detail someinstances of silence that are longer than one second, but they usually correspond totimes when participants are focused on non-conversational tasks, such as looking at amap. The striking feature of excerpt 4, however, is that the twenty-ﬁve second silenceoccurs despite two“open”topics –“Karuizawa”and“grandfather’s house”– neitherof which initiate any conversational activity while the silence is endured. The weak
non-verbal assessments of Asami’s trip to Karuizawa in lines 2-5 have certainly not
exhausted that topic, nor were any assessments offered in response to Junko’s line7 utterance about going to her grandfather’s house. What interactional imperativeis operating here that renders such a long silence preferable to picking up anddeveloping one of the available open topics?
Termination of this silence comes as the participants engage in a whispered
exchange in Japanese, where Asami attempts to work out a way to“escape”thetension of the long silence. This anxiety is evident from her Japanese comments inlines 11 and 12. Surprisingly, the next topic, initiated by Junko’s question in Line

13 about Asami’s foreign travels, results in the well developed sequence of adjacency
pairs shown in Excerpt 5.
Excerpt 5

1

Jun:

where?

2Asa:w – where?

（1.3）

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Topic Development, Affiliative Mimesis and L1 Use in a Novice-Novice L2 English Conversation

3

Jun:

w – where.

4

Asa:

un ah e:to I went to Australia.

5

Jun:

o:n.

6

Kao:

how – how long have you been there?

7

Asa:

u:n I have been two weeks.

（1.1）

8

Kao:

un.

9

Jun:

o:.

10

Kao:

to study?

11

Asa:

yes and homestay.

（1.9）

12

Kao:

o:h.

13

Kao:

when?

14

Asa: （1.1）a（2.0）（laughs）u:n I was junior high school student.

15

Jun:

o:h.

（20.7）The turns in excerpt five present a continuation of the utterances transcribedin excerpt four. After Junko and Kaori learn that Asami has traveled abroad, they
begin an intense information gathering session, asking Asami“when,”“where,”“how long,”and“why”about her Australian homestay visit. This inquisitive ﬂurryof conversational activity is in stark contrast to the preceding and subsequentinteractions. Another long silence, this time lasting almost 21 seconds, begins
immediately after Junko’s weak assessment in line 15. These long silences can befound throughout the conversation, always followed by direct questions which elicit
entirely new topics, or in one case return to a previous topic. The longest between
turn silence found in this conversation is 42.8 seconds. The question, asked by Asami,
which terminates this long silence is,“When is your birthday?”Again, the question
arises, why is silence preferable to taking up open topics? Regardless of the answer,
this problem seems open to pedagogical intervention.
A full analysis of the interactional function of these long silences remains to be
fully articulated, but the behavior in question hinges partly on the value of turns-attalk for these participants. Specifically,“turn-avoidance”seems to be an operating
principle guiding this talk-in-interaction, rather than“ turn-acquisition. ”In L 1
conversations, turns are valuable resources which are allocated and exploited by─ 19 ─

Timothy Gould

participants within the scope of the relevant conversational conventions. During theinteraction under consideration here, however, the participants seem to be playing agame of conversational“hot potato,”where the object is to end one’s turn as quickly as
possible. Under this metaphor, the long silences that occur between turns provide aninteractional“safe zone”where no speciﬁc participant is responsible for contributing
an utterance, thereby accounting for the extreme pause durations. An illustration isfound in excerpt 5, line 14, when Asami laughs as she responds to Junko’s question
about when she（Asami）visited Austalia. It is apparent when watching the video that
Asami is uncomfortable with the excessive attention being paid to her by the other twoparticipants, and under this low turn value interpretation, her laugh is an expressionof her discomfort at having so many turns in quick succession. Further illustrationof this turn avoidance principle appears throughout the conversation in the form of
minimal responses, such as in excerpt 4, line 14, where Asami responds to Junko’squestion about whether she has been abroad with the minimal“Yes, I have.”Further
research will attempt to determine if this operating principle is prevalent among L2
conversants in general, or if this conversation represents a deviant case. In any event,turn avoidance, whether in light of face concerns or other reasons, is another area
where pedagogical intervention may successfully improve L2 conversational ability.

Reflexive Affiliative Mimesis
In their investigation of non-native/non-native speaker conversations, Varonisand Gass（1985）include“echoing”as one type of indicator deployed by interlocutors
to“signal that an utterance has triggered a non-understanding.”Echoes are usuallyuttered with a rising or falling intonation and they serve as repair initiators which
pinpoint for the recipient the word or phrase causing the learner’s comprehension
problem. Below are some examples Varonis and Gass provide to illustrate thisphenomenon.
Examples of indicators（ Varonis & Gass 1985, p. 76）
a. Echo
Rising intonation
ULS: What is your name?

120 S: My name?
ULS: yeah─ 20 ─

Topic Development, Affiliative Mimesis and L1 Use in a Novice-Novice L2 English Conversation

Falling intonation

140 S: But he work with uh uh institution
140 J: institution
140 S: Do you know that?
In the conversation under discussion here, a communication strategy is exhibited,
predominantly by Asami, which is similar to“ echoing,”but appears on closer
inspection to be an independent phenomenon, which I will call“reﬂexive afﬁliative
mimesis.”By this term I mean to describe an interaction where one participant
automatically repeats, or mimics the final element of an utterance produced byanother participant in a previous turn, This repetition, unlike echoing, however,does not signal a misunderstanding. Rather, in an overeager attempt to display
understanding, or afﬁliation, this behavior seems designed to increase the harmony ofa particular social context by feigning normalcy. Below I will describe, using examples
from the same conversation, further instances of this interactive behavior. The ﬁrst
instance occurs near the beginning of the conversation, shown below as excerpt 6. To
help elucidate the following comments, I have aligned the utterances in lines 3 – 6 ina way that roughly displays their timing relative to each other.
Excerpt 61

Asa:

I watchedu:（0.7）un Ainori.

（1.0）

2

Kao:

u::n（（laughs））.

3

Jun:

o::h

4 → Asa:
5Jun:

6 → Asa:o::ho（h）! me too!
me （t oo）!

The discourse marker“oh”has a number of conversational functions. It is often
used as a change of state token（Schiffrin, Tannen, & Hamilton, 2001）, which meansthat its utterance signals receipt by a hearer of some new information.“Oh”can also
be used as backchannel or assessment device that operates to provide a means for alistener to display attentiveness to another speaker without having to take the ﬂoor
for a bona ﬁde turn. In line 3, Junko utters a backchannel“oh,”in the same vein as
Kaori’
s‘u::n’in line 2, but in line 5 it suddenly becomes a change of state‘oh!’as─ 21 ─

Timothy Gould

she realizes that she has watched the same television show as Asami. Although it isinteresting to note how Junko’s assessment changed as she realized that she had seen
the same show, an event that would have happened only the previous day, my focus
here is on Asami’s utterances in lines 4 and 6. Since Asami originally mentioned that
she watched“Ainori,”her“o::h”in line 4 is markedly out of place in this context, as it
is an assessment of her own comment. A pragmatically appropriate utterance would
state or imply“Yes, it’s true,”or a comment directly relevant to lines 2 and 3. Asami’sutterance in line 4, however, has the same intonational contour as Junko’s “o::h”
in line 3, making it an exact replica – the effect of which is that she appears to beassessing her own line 1 comment, ﬂouting the Gricean maxim of relevance（Grice,1975）.
When Junko realizes that she has watched the same program as Asami, andrevises her assessment accordingly, Asami instantly mimics Junko’s new assessment,
again producing a response with the identical intonational contour as Junko ’sme too! in line 5 . In this case, however, there are lexical and contextual clues
that Asami’s line 6 is a reflexive response rather than an echo deployed to signalt! also compounds the pragmaticmisunderstanding. Asami’s exclamation of me （oo）
oddity of her line 4 utterance. In line 6 Asami conveys, on a literal interpretation, thenotion that she, too（along with Junko）, has just realized that she（Asami）watched
the television program that only moments earlier she informed the other participantsthat she had watched. This cannot truly be the case, and the other participants do
not take it as such, so an alternative explanation must be offered to account for thisbehavior.
As a ﬁrst attempt at providing this explanation, I suggest that Asami is deploying
a communicative strategy designed to feign fluency. As I have displayed with thechronological alignment above, line 6 is uttered instantly upon Junko’s completionof line 5 – so quickly that the pronoun“ me, ”which correctly refers in line 5 toJunko, is now used by Asami to refer to herself, creating a pragmatically untenableproposition. From an interactional perspective, however, abstracting away from thecontent, line 6 appears to be a ﬂuent and appropriate response. In other words, as acommunication strategy, Asami’s behavior perpetuates the interaction effectively, it
looks like a“real”response, and the other participants treat it as such; it is only uponclose analysis that it appears anomalous. Excerpt 7 and 8 provide additional examplesof the afﬁliative“me too”element of this strategy.
In excerpt 7, lines 1 and 2, Asami says that she wants to go to Italy and France.

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Topic Development, Affiliative Mimesis and L1 Use in a Novice-Novice L2 English Conversation

Then in line 8 she makes another implausible reference when she agrees with Junko,
who, when asked the same question by Kaori in line 6, utters“me too,”which is,of course, referring to Asami’s line 1 statement. Although most of the examples ofmimesis are found in Asami’s utterances, there is another case, shown in Excerpt 8,
which is uttered by Junko in line 4. Here Junko says that she watched a television
program, and then when Asami observes that she also watched the same program,
Junko agrees. Evidence that this is a reﬂexive response is again provided by Junko’sreplication of Asami’s line 3 intonation contour. If Junko had intended to change thepronoun of this utterance to comment on her and Asami’s similar viewing habits andutter“You too?”in line 4, there should be a rising intonation at the end of line 4.
Excerpt 7

1

Asa:

2

u:n（1.8）<I want to go>（1.2）e:t（o）（0.9）>Italia<（1.5）
and France.

3

Jun:

o:n.

4

Asa:

un.

5

Kao:

a::h.

6

Kao:

how a（bout）
（you）
.

7

Jun:

me too.

8 → Asa:me too.

Excerpt 81Jun:（1.7）mezamashite.

23（2.1）this morning（2.0）I - （8.7） I - （2.5） I watchedAsa:

4 → Jun:ha::i（0.6）me too.
me too.

The following excerpt includes three additional cases of mimesis, which I
comment on below.
Excerpt 9

1

Kao: （1.2）u::（2.0）I（1.8）u:::n（0.5）I was headache（0.9）so（1.3）I - （3.5）I went to（0.8）bed early.

2
3

Jun:

0.

4

Jun:

（1.5）that’s too bad.

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Timothy Gould

5 → Asa:that’s too bad.

6

e::（1.6）u::n（.）did you eat（（pause includes laughter））（2.0）din –Asa:dinner

7

Asa:

（ ）.

（2.5）

8

Jun:

I ate（2.8）shogayaki?.

（0.8）

9 → Asa:¥shoga（yaki）¥.

10 Kao:hhh hhh.

11 Jun:（4.0）last dinner.

12 Asa:last dinner.

Brieﬂy, in line 5, Asami’s gaze is directed at Junko, not Kaori when she utters“ That ’s too bad. ”Junko, in line 4 , is providing an assessment of Kaori ’s line 1comment, while appropriately gazing at Kaori. This shows that although Asami’sline 5 utterance has the“shape”of an assessment, it is not directed towards its logicalrecipient, which indicates that it is serving an interactional function, namely as thecommunication strategy which I have described as afﬁliative mimesis. In line 9, Kaori
repeats the Japanese word shogayaki, which, as a native speaker of Japanese, sheobviously knows（the yen signs in the transcript indicate a slight rising intonation）.
Nevertheless she repeats it, again pointing to this repetition as a reﬂexive behavior
rather than as confirmation or an indicator of non-understanding. There are manyfurther issues relevant to this strategy and its prevalence in other L2 conversations
that must be addressed in future research. In this section, however, I have provided anumber of illustrative examples of this mimetic phenomenon and attempted to lay thegroundwork for an initial analysis which might begin to account for it.

Conclusion
In this paper I have detailed, with an eye towards future research, an initialcase study investigation into a single L2 English conversation by three Japanese
female college students. Although there are numerous potential areas available for
exploration, even in this short conversation, I focused on the following interactional
phenomena: the use by the participants of Japanese, their use of new-topic elicitation
rather than returning to or recycling“old”topics as a means of terminating long─ 24 ─

Topic Development, Affiliative Mimesis and L1 Use in a Novice-Novice L2 English Conversation

silences, and a communicative strategy that I termed“reﬂexive afﬁliative mimesis.”
All of the analyses here are tentative, but point to productive areas for future work.

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