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Article published In: Solitude Speech across Languages and Cultures
Edited by Mitsuko Narita Izutsu and Katsunobu Izutsu
[International Journal of Language and Culture 12:1] 2025
► pp. 20–54

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Speaking while thinking

How dialogic is Japanese solitude speech?

 | Fuji Women’s University
 | Hokkaido University of Education
Published online: 5 February 2026
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ijolc.00068.izu
Abstract
Solitude speech has been viewed as dialogic, especially by Western scholars (Bakhtin, M. ([1929] 1984). Problems of Dostoevsky’s poetics. ed. & trans. by C. Emerson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Vygotsky, L. ([1934] 1986). Thought and language. trans. by E. Hanfmann & G. Vakar, rev. & ed. by A. Kozulin. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). This study investigates the prevailing belief by focusing on a ‘self-regulatory’ type of Japanese solitude speech, based on data collected in a sequential multiple-task experiment. It was revealed that Japanese self-regulatory solitude speech shows dialogic traits in terms of lexico-grammatical features and sequential structures. The results contrasted with those of our earlier research on an ‘expressive’ type of solitude speech (Izutsu, M. N., Kim, Y.-T., & Izutsu, K. (2022). Response cries or response statements?: A cross-linguistic analysis of interjectional expressions in Japanese and English. Contrastive Pragmatics, 3(2), 194–221. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), which were found to be monologic for Japanese response cries but comparatively more dialogic in the case of their American English counterparts. This shows that expressive solitude speech is conceived as either monologic or dialogic, depending on cultural beliefs of the speakers, while self-regulatory solitude speech prefers a dialogic conception with less cultural diversity. It is also suggested that such a dialogic perspective is likely to arise from “the demands of thinking” (Nishida, K. ([1911] 1990). An inquiry into the good. trans. by M. Abe & I. Cristopher. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar).
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Japanese people’s response cries
  • 3.Data and methodology
    • 3.1Procedure
    • 3.2Participants and their performances
  • 4.Who or what is the speaker talking to?
  • 5.Dialogic features of solitude speech
    • 5.1Lexico-grammatical features
      • 5.1.1Sentence-final particles
      • 5.1.2Imperatives
      • 5.1.3Interrogatives
    • 5.2Sequential structures
      • 5.2.1Adjacency pairs by single speakers
      • 5.2.2The incomplete realization of adjacency pairs
      • 5.2.3Sequential incompleteness and Vygotsky’s “abbreviation”
  • 6.Japanese solitude speech: A division of labor in monologicity/dialogicity
    • 6.1The cross-cultural diversity of expressive solitude speech
    • 6.2The cross-cultural similarity of self-regulatory solitude speech
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
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