This paper looks at multilingual signs and what these signs have to tell us about multilingualism in Japan in general. Working with a larger sample of signs collected in central Tokyo, it is shown how these signs can be read to reflect larger transformations in Japanese society and its linguistic make-up at large. Four interrelated factors are identified as indicative of these transformations: (1) favourable attitudes toward foreign languages, (2) official internationalization policies, (3) growing ethnicisation in some areas, and (4) a recent interest in Korean culture and language.

This paper looks at compliance-gaining interaction in a Japanese elderly care facility from a conversation analytical point of view. Focus is on the various ways compliance is sought for by the caring staff with getting the residents out of bed and starting the daily morning care procedures. Three extracts are discussed in detail. The analysis shows how the residents in all three cases display clear signs of resistance to get up, but finally have to submit to the planned course of actions pursued by the care workers. A closer look at how this is played out in interaction suggests that the residents' compliance is enforced rather than gained. © John Benjamins Publishing Company.

本稿は,日本の高齢者介護施設における承諾獲得に関するやりとりを会話分析的見地から考察する.入居者を起床させ,モーニングケア活動を開始するために,介護職員がさまざまな方法を駆使して入居者の承諾獲得を試みている点に注目し, 2つの抜粋例を詳細に分析する.ここで明らかになるのは,抜粋例に登場する入居者が,起床に対して抵抗のサインをはっきりと示しつつも,最終的には介護職員に促されて,所定の活動手順に従っていく過程である.これらの行為が両者間のやりとりの中でどのように達成されていくかをより深く考察することを通して,入居者は起床を承諾しているというよりもむしろ,半ば強要させられているのではないか,と示唆する.

This paper looks at communication between staff and residents in a Japanese elderly care facility. It discusses the role of politeness in this special type of health care setting from a cross-cultural perspective. Starting with a review of previous literature on the topic, some basic characteristics of communication between staff and residents in nursing homes are outlined. The overall conditions that apply in the caring context with regard to linguistic politeness are described on the basis of Brown and Levinson's framework. The main part of the paper presents speech data from a Japanese nursing home, analyzed in direct comparison with data from other cultural contexts. In so doing, an attempt is made to outline some common communicative,features in institutional elderly care. The summarizing discussion focuses on the question of whether the special conditions of institutional elderly care may indeed generate very similar types of communication across different cultural settings.