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In-Depth Information
Fig. 1.
Snapshot of the interlocutor on the front left shrugging his shoulders after uttering
it's
just a....
Fig. 2.
Front view of the interlocutor shrugging his shoulders
2.2 Interview and Questionnaire
The interview study was conducted in international contexts at two locations, Japan
and Sweden. In Japan, the subjects were university students and residents at a
residence hall for foreign students and scholars in Kyoto, and the test took place in a
quiet corner of the common lounge. The 14 subjects were mostly exchange students
who had come to Japan to study their particular discipline, and for many, this was
their first experience of living abroad. Half of them were just over 20 years of age (7
subjects out of 14), but two older scholars also took part in the experiment. A
summary of the subjects' nationality and background is given in Table 1.
In Sweden the subjects were students in an English language communication
program at the University of Gothenburg, and the test was part of their course
assignment. The subjects were immigrants, exchange students, and native Swedish
students, and their experience abroad varied. There were 27 subjects in their 20's, and
they represented a wide variety of nationalities. The nationality distribution is given in
Table 2.
Considering the subjects' nationality and experience abroad, we tried to select the
participants so that there would be subjects from both Eastern and Western cultures,
and the numbers are rather equal considering European vs. Asian participants in
