Talking about children with in-laws: Negotiation of membership and epistemic status in Japanese family conversation
Tomoko Endo
What the paper says
Talking about children in an extended-family setting can sometimes be challenging in Japanese culture due to the highly developed system of grammatical marking for epistemic stance. Parents of a child typically hold epistemic authority regarding the child, which makes non-parent participants cautious about how they speak. At the same time, asserting oneself as more knowledgeable, especially in front of older parents-in-law, may be perceived as face-threatening. Drawing on videotaped, naturally occurring conversations, this study investigates how participants position themselves when engaging in talk about children. By analyzing conversations among participants with both intra- and intergenerational relationships, this study demonstrates how grammatical resources, membership category, and the participation framework contribute to the negotiation of family relations and epistemic status.
Evidence weight
Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40
| F · citation impact | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
| M · momentum | 0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07 |
| V · venue signal | 0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03 |
| R · text relevance † | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.