Unagi-sentences in Japanese and mutual knowledge

This paper examines the so-called ’Unagi-sentence‘ in Japanese. So far, it has been taken for granted that the Unagi-sentence is incomplete syntactically and/or semantically. Because its structure apparently neither provides a fully-fledged semantic meaning, nor furnishes a plausible syntactic pattern (such as ‘subject-predicate‘), a number of previous works have considered the Unagi-sentence to be elliptic, and consequently reconstructed it as a complete sentence or established intermediate structures to account for its grammatical form. Other researchers have not used elliptic solutions, but sought to discover logical connections between the parts of the Unagi-sentence themselves. As a result, fixing their entire attention on the internal structure of the Unagi-sentence, these researchers inevitably needed to establish hypothetical constructs in order to explain the structure of the Unagi-sentence. The present author believes that the Unagi-sentence is neither incomplete nor a result of some hypothetical processes. The Unagi-sentence stands on its own as a complete utterance. It is basically an NP utterance which can be expanded to the form NP1 wa + NP2 da and its variations. The occurrence of the Unagi-sentence depends heavily on a presupposed context and its pragmatic features, without which the Unagi-sentence cannot exist. It is these features that the present article seeks to elucidate.

Cultural aspects of classroom effectiveness: Overseas-educated students in Australian classrooms

Teachers who are new to the country often find themselves as 'the stranger' in their own classroom. Languages education is one area where such overseas-educated teachers are common. The study reported here investigated what cultural factors might influence the classroom performance of such teachers. The early classroom experience of beginning Japanese native speaker teachers and trainees was examined to this end.

The play of identities in Cypriot-Australian family storytelling

This article adopts a microanalytic approach to examine storytelling as a co-construction by family members in a Cypriot-Australian family. Previous studies on family storytelling have focused on the various roles of family members in storytelling with a means of studying family socialization (Miller et al., 1990; Ochs & Taylor, 1992; Blum-Kulka, 1997). These studies used critical discourse analysis, socioculturel theories, performance and pragmatic approaches to storytelling. This article offers a distinctive approach to family storytelling by examining the discourse and social identities that family members display during the storytelling. The data originate in a study that involves interviews with three generations of Greek-Australian and Cypriot-Australian women regarding their relationships with each other. In this paper we investigate the contributions of the father and the daughters in the course of the mother's turn at storytelling. The first part of the analysis focuses on the husband's discourse identities as a contributor, initiator and elicitor of his wife's storytelling. During the storytelling we also observe the production and exchange of different social identities between the husband and the mother, such as the 'unwilling suitor', the 'embarrassed schoolgirl' or the 'forceful but teasing husband'. The second part describes how the daughters take part in their mother's storytelling, producing a variety of identities such as the 'impatient mother', the 'complaining', 'happy', or 'good' mothers and daughters. These investigations succinctly illustrate how narratives become a resource for members' 'display' and 'play' of identities. Copyright ©2002, John Benjamins B.V.

Myth, moment and the challenge of identities: Stories from Australians of Indigenous and Chinese ancestry

There has been a long history of contact between Indigenous and Chinese people in north-eastern Australia. This is evidenced in contemporary communities by the significant presence of mixed-heritage individuals of Indigenous and Chinese ancestry. This paper employs the stories of 10 such individuals to examine their incorporation of 'otherculture' ancestries into identity constructs. In doing so, the paper sheds light on how identities are narrated at the intersection of 'myth' and 'moment', and how challenge evokes transformation and discontinuity. Three broad identity responses emerge from the data: affirmation of singular constructs; questioning and contemplation; and pluralist embracing of both cultures. Historical and contemporary discourses feature prominently, covertly and overtly restricting potential identifications. Mutuality and hegemonic rivalry are found to underpin the narration of relations between the two marginalised and racialised groups.