Japanese Discourse Particles in Use
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One of the distinctive features of Japanese is the presence of discourse particles. The only way to truly resolve what these particles mean and how they are used is to examine them in use and to study the entire system of many particles. In order to add to the attempt to do this by providing more data for the study of particles, this exploratory study examines a large corpus of naturally occurring telephone conversations in the online CallFriend Japanese corpus and conversations taken from the Japanese TV drama "HERO." This analysis of both naturally occurring and scripted data will lead to further understanding both of actual patterns of particle use by real speakers and the language ideology that informs the usage of language created for a specific purpose. The results suggest that using this method of analysis shows a great deal not only about how particles are used in discourse strategies and in showing a speaker's affective commitment to the conversation but about the semantics involved in their use.