American and Japanese topic management strategies in business meetings. (Volumes I and II).

摘要

American and Japanese business conversations are compared, with a focus on topic management strategies. Analysis focuses on the strategies used in topic opening and shifting, point-making, turn-taking, pausing, filled pause and discourse marker systems, and listener support. Following a comparison of strategies used in each of these systems in intracultural American and Japanese business meetings, the use of these strategies in two American-Japanese cross-cultural business meetings is explored.; Topic management strategies used by American and Japanese conversationalists in business meetings are guided by different interactional needs. Using a three-tiered Gumperzian Model of Differences, this study illustrates how each lower level reflects the higher level: Differences in ways of speaking reflect differences in ways of structuring and organizing information, and differences in ways of organization reflect differences in cultural expectations and interactional needs. The analyses therefore demonstrate how the different strategies used by Americans and Japanese in organizing conversational topics reflect differences in interactional expectations and needs, whereby Americans more than Japanese expect and need to maintain independence within the interacting group, but Japanese more than Americans expect and need to maintain nonconfrontation within the interacting group.