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Article published In:
Pragmatics
Vol. 30:4 (2020) ► pp.509–531

Pragmatic functions of I think in computer-mediated, cross-cultural communication between Taiwanese and Japanese undergraduate students

ORCID logo | Yuan Ze University
| The University of Hong Kong
| Yuan Ze University

This study explores the functions of I think in synchronous, computer-mediated cross-cultural communication of Japanese and Taiwanese university students. The data used in this study were collected from the Cross-Cultural Distance Learning corpus, which contains transcriptions of recorded synchronous spoken and written interactions between Taiwanese and Japanese university students. To examine the functions of I think, occurrences of the phrase were screened, analyzed, and categorized based on collocation pattern, discourse context, and sequentiality. The Taiwanese students showed a greater tendency to use the various functions of I think in discourse than the Japanese students, who rarely used its functions in their online cross-cultural communication. The results suggest that their respective perceived conversation strategies may be a significant cause of variation in the frequency of use of I think functions.

Keywords: stance marker, I think , pragmatic functions, cross-cultural comparison, computer-mediated communication
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Pragmatic functions of I think
  • 3.Methodology
    • Criteria for analyzing I think
      • Collocation patterns
      • Discourse contexts
      • Sequentiality
  • 4.Findings
    • 4.1Overall frequency of I think
    • 4.2Comparison of distribution of I think
      • 4.2.1Evaluative ‘I think’
      • 4.2.2Emphatic ‘I think’
      • 4.2.3Tentative ‘I think’
      • 4.2.4Discursive ‘I think’
      • 4.2.5Mitigating ‘I think’
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 19 November 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.18029.dia
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