The Japanese Saiban-in system engages ordinary citizens in criminal trials as lay judges alongside professional judges. Within this system, lay and professional judges collaborate to examine the evidence and, when necessary, determine the appropriate punishment in order to reach a verdict. This study explores some realities that professional and lay judges experience in the deliberation, particularly focusing on the sequence in which lay judges express their opinion and are subsequently questioned by a professional judge. The analysis reveals three key differences in orientation between professional and lay judges: 1) their approach to evaluating claims made by the parties to the trial, 2) the relationship between expressed opinions and the reasoning behind them, and 3) the sequencing of discussions during deliberations. Professional judges guide lay judges toward the orientations of the professional judges by asking questions or seeking confirmation. These interactions reflect the professional judges’ strategies for addressing the practical challenges of facilitating deliberations in a mixed-judge panel.

This study analyzes the narratives in English-related interviews of a university student English language learner who has never studied abroad, and aims to clarify the relationship between English education and identity as expressed in the narratives. The narratives of the learner in annual interviews over two years revealed that she was constructing her identity as a person who aspires to communicate with foreigners, while incorporating a pluralistic image of English. This can be considered to reflect the polysemous nature of “communication” and the tendency to emphasize “communication” in the context of English education in Japan.

Based on the method of multimodal conversation analysis, this study focuses on turn-initial Sa, a Japanese interjection, and examines the role it plays in ongoing activities. We examined the development of the activities revealed through the participants’ speech and body movements, the timing at which Sa is produced in relation to the progress of the activities, and the subsequent actions and forms following the use of Sa. Unlike many previous studies that have investigated how turn-initial interjections indicate the relationship between sequences and turns in conversation, this study analyzed a variety of settings including not only speech-centered but also body-centered activities. The analysis showed that in multi-step activities, Sa at the boundary of activities can draw the recipients’ attention and highlight the speaker’s interest and attention to the next development of the activity. Doing so can also elicit others’ attention and participation. The analysis further revealed that, in both institutional and everyday situations, Sa is used by the person in charge of facilitating the activity or a participant imitating the person in charge. This indicates that Sa is a linguistic element that is institutionally and contextually linked to the responsibility and right to facilitate an activity.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced the rapid digitalization of classes and even now, several years later, many educational institutions continue to use online classes as a medium of education. It is likely that remote classes will continue to be used in the future and thus research on practices of online communication is much needed. In this study, turn-taking interactions in online classes were examined by analyzing video data using the method of conversation analysis. More specifically, this paper focuses on students’ use of the unmute function of the online meeting platform Zoom and how its use is understood in situations where the teacher is inviting the next speaker. The analysis showed that the student action of unmuting in certain situations is regarded as an “initiative to take a turn” and elicits a response from the teacher. Furthermore, it was revealed that depending on the sequential circumstances surrounding the unmuting, the student’s attitude and the teacher’s response to the unmuting differ.