A Study on Turn-taking of Malay Malaysian Speakers

This thesis is a comparative analysis on how speakers of two languages, namely native Malay language speakers and native Japanese language speakers, take turns in their respective conversations. From the data analysed in this study, it is observed that Malay Malaysian language speakers mostly take turns without both back channels and discourse markers（92% of all the turns in Malaysian conversations are taken without both ways mentioned above.）. On the other hand, according to Chin（2005） in case of Japanese speakers, 57% of turns are taken by using either back-channels or discourse markers. Other Japanese researchers such as Mukai（1999） and Hajikano （1998）mention tendency of Japanese to use backchannels and discourse markers to take turns. From this study, it can be concluded that there are significant differences between ways of taking turns by Japanese speakers and Malay Malaysian speakers