Differences of situating Self in the place/ba of interaction between the Japanese and American English speakers

This paper first presents culturally determined principles for interaction in which mutual consent is established in Japanese and American English, specifically focusing on the linguistic behavior of proposing ideas and co-constructing a story. Then, based on the results obtained, this study explicates that the differences between Japanese and American interactions originate in how self is situated in the place or ba of interaction. A problem-solving task of a cross-linguistic video corpus, the ‘Mister O Corpus’, is used in the study. The results reveal that the American participants present themselves in a direct manner and in an independent way, whereas the Japanese participants’ interaction is more inter-relational and interdependent. Thus, the Americans situate themselves separately from the other in the interaction, where a oneself-vs.-the-other facing relationship can be observed. On the other hand, the Japanese participants situate themselves as if they are entraining themselves, and they resonate each other. The boundary of self disappears and merges as if self and other had one mind. Then, it is argued that the way of situating and relating oneself with the other in the place of interaction in Japanese can be interpreted by a frame of thinking of ‘ba’. Lastly, referential shifting from the first person pronoun to the second person pronoun in Japanese is presented as another pragmatic and interactional phenomenon that can be explicated by the idea of ba.