As a result of globalization, boundaries such as national borders and gender are becoming indistinct. Communities connecting people of various intellectual interest and sporting activity have also evolved, transcending boundaries of region, kin and national borders. We can also say that the world is becoming closer in terms of space and human relations through urbanization and networking. This paper discusses the role of human resources, education, and language in enabling the creation of comfortable communities where people of diverse language backgrounds and cultures can live as neighbors.

This paper analyzed the viewpoints of teachers engaged in writing education in Uzbekistan and Japan on composition writing. Both similarities and differences in viewpoints were identified. After reading essays written by university students, teachers in each country were interviewed regarding their views on what constitutes good composition writing. As a result of the comparative analysis, we found that teachers in both countries thought positively of the writer's compliance with language rules and the development of original opinions and insight. However, differences between the teachers' expectations in terms of text organization were found. For example, Uzbek teachers gave preference to introductions containing detailed information and compositions where the writer's opinion was not expressed in the opening paragraph. On the other hand, Japanese teachers showed a preference for text organization with expression of opinion in the introduction. Differences regarding views on the following aspects of composition writing were also found: arguments which lacked persuasiveness, what was considered an effective argument, statements with religious undertones, and the amount of information contained in a text. The results imply that teachers show a preference for the kind of text they are most familiar with.

Why do we sometimes represent our own utterances and thoughts as if they are someone else's (including of our displaced selves)? This paper investigates discourse functions of this use of hypothetical quotations, and the difference of devices between English and Japanese in representing them.

Through comparative analyses of English and Japanese interactions in texts, the followings were illustrated. Hypothetical quotations are not used to report others' speech or thoughts, but are used to convey attitudes of the speaker such as irony, criticism and empathy. In Japanese novels, hypothetical quotations are made apparent through quotative particles, sometimes accompanied by reporting verbs, helping to clarify attributes of speech and thought, and the speaker's intention. On the other hand, in English, both free indirect discourses and free direct discourses, as well as discourse markers, are found to fulfill functions similar to Japanese hypothetical quotations. In these English cases, no quotative markers are employed and readers are invited to judge whose speech and thought the current speaker exploits, and also to judge the meta-message of the speaker.

In the case of oral interactions, however, where participants presumably share contextual recognition, quotatives are not necessarily needed even in Japanese hypothetical quotations, and thus there was little difference between Japanese and English.

This paper investigates ‘acting’ in conversation. The authors focus on what actors and other participants do together, over the course of a conversation, particularly in the context of chats. Although literature on ‘acting’, which occurs often in everyday conversation exists, studies have tended to focus on what actors achieve through their acting and the joint achievements of actors and other participants has been neglected. Direct report speech (DRS) is similar in form to ‘acting’ and has been argued to be a device specifically used to share attitudes and interests. We felt a need to investigate ‘acting’ as a similar device in face-to-face interaction. This study focuses on Conversation Analysis (CA) of video-taped conversation data to investigate sequences of ‘acting’ followed by speech and actions. The results indicate that during acting procedures, other participants are invited to share attitudes and interests about the preceding utterance with the actor and among themselves. This may convey acute interest and promote affiliative attitudes. Moreover, ‘acting’ encourages other participants to respond affiliatively.

Everyone has had the experience of not being able to find the right word or expression to convey something in his or her thoughts. In this paper, we rely on analyses of an excerpt of a signed interaction to consider how signers solve this problem. In typical interactions, whether signed or spoken, if one encounters difficulty in expressing a thought during an ongoing interaction, he/she tends to temporarily halt the current sequence, move to a separate sequence to address the problem, and then return to the main sequence once the problem is solved. The segment that occurs within the interrupted main sequence is called the ‘repair segment’ in Conversation Analysis (CA). In this paper, based on the premise that repair segments occur in signed interactions as well as in spoken ones, we point out that signers solve word-finding problems in a manner that is specific to signing, through what we call ‘improvisational signing’. We analyzed SMU-annotated data within the framework of the repair sequence as provided by CA. As a result of these analyses, we identified ways in which signers try to combine their native vocabulary in sign language with a non-native component to represent the target object.