Content area
Abstract
Literality in interpersonal communication has been discussed in language philosophy as well as in psycholinguistics, in which the relationship between what is actually uttered and what is intended has been an issue. The gap between them can be explained in two different ways: one is the conventionality of language use and the other is through inference based on the literal meaning. These two explanations contrast in such a way that the former does not assume that the literal meaning of the utterance necessarily contributes to the generation of its intended meaning, whereas the latter treats the literal meaning as the basis of the inference. Theoretically speaking, it may be possible to categorize non-literal utterances into roughly two types: conventional utterances and non-conventional utterances. For the latter type, if the gap between what is uttered and what is communicated is perceived as small, it can be considered that the utterance is more literal.
The present study examined how both native Japanese speakers and learners of Japanese, who are native speakers of American English, perceive three types of utterances, literal utterances (e.g., Kyoo wa shokuji o gochisooshite-itadaite, doomo arigatoo gozaimashita.), non-literal non-conventional utterances (e.g., Kondo baito-dai haittara, watashi ga gochisoo shimasu ne.), and non-literal conventional utterances (e.g., Gochisoo sama deshita .), using a set of multiple-choice questionnaires asking the participants to choose the most likely interpretation of the utterance. Two groups of university students, 60 native speakers of Japanese and 60 native speakers of American English, who had completed two-years of formal Japanese instruction, participated in the study.
The effect of the language groups, L1 and L2, was statistically significant (p < .0001) and the interaction between the utterance types and language groups was also significant (p = .0052), while the effect of utterance types was not significant (p = .2911). The most obvious difference between native and non-native speakers of Japanese was found when they interpreted non-literal conventional utterances, while the difference was the smallest for literal utterances. These findings suggest that non-native speakers of Japanese are more likely to fail to comprehend conventionally used indirect utterances that native speakers use frequently in daily communication.
