Ozaki Akito. Requests for clarification in conversation between Japanese and non-Japanese

The Australian National University, Research School of Pacific Studies, 1989. — 216 p. — (Pacific Linguistics: Series B 102).Natural conversations between native and non-native speakers who have a genuine desire to communicate are the ideal data for the study of communicatin strategies. However, it is very difficult to collect a large amount of data of this kind if we wish to incorporate the spoken data of lower level learners. The basic problem is that the communicative output of such speakers in genuine communicative situations is very limited. In addition, the technical problems of recording in such situations are considerable. Due to these limitations our data is derived from interview situations in which foreign speakers were assigned to interview or to be interviewed by native speakers in Japanese. Their task was to elicit or provide information: the focus of attention was on communication rather than on the manipulation of linguistic rules.
Though the roles of interviewer and interviewee were assigned to each participant, role separation was not absolute, and interviewees occasionally directed questions to the interviewers. Our data may thus be best characterised as 'quasi-interview discourse'.
The present study is based upon 55 interviews, of approximately 10 hours total duration. 15 native speakers and 31 foreign speakers of Japanese were involved. Of the 15 native speakers six were male and nine were female, with ages ranging from the early 20s to the 40s, and most of them had extensive experience of interacting with non-native speakers in both English and Japanese. The most actively involved native speaker took part in nine interviews, four times as an interviewer and five times as an interviewee. The least involved native speakers were those who were interviewed just once.