An interactional practice of registering expectation discrepancy: the use of the turn-initial token are in Japanese

This conversation analytic study offers an empirical analysis of the Japanese turn-initial interjection are. The interjectional are is said to be pragmatized from its use as a distal demonstrative and has been considered as an expression of a speaker's internal state of being surprised at something. In contrast, this study argues that are is meticulously used for interactional purposes. Through the analysis of video- and audio-recorded noninstitutional conversation data, this study examines how speakers, by utilizing the turn-initial are, signal discrepancy in their expectation, assumption, or prior knowledge to accomplish various interactional tasks. This study does so by documenting are's workings in two different sequential contexts, (i) are-prefaced display of noticing unexpected physical events during embodied activities and (ii) are-prefaced repair initiation as remediation in understanding. This research also examines prosodic features of are and points out a possible correlation between are's prosodic features and are's sequential locations.