Emerging units and emergent forms of participation within a unit in Japanese interaction

Shifting from a focus on transitions between speakers at turn boundaries, this paper investigates the local, embodied, and situated organization of units inside a turn-constructional unit (TCU), and illustrates one way that systematic practices associated with unit construction enable emergent forms of participation. In Japanese TCUs are segmentally produced through sequentially organized sub-unit components. Speakers strategically make some sub-unit components operative creating spaces for recipients’ actions within the TCU construction. Findings demonstrate the ways in which a range of resources are mobilized to build action within a TCU and how actions shape the trajectory of the emerging TCU.