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This article deals with the relation of linguistic knowledge and interactional expectations in spoken professional discourse, more specifically, academic expert presentations in Japanese and German, L1 and L2. It argues that crucial pragmatic differences between L1 Japanese and L1 German corpus data concern linguistic means which process interactional expectations on the part of the hearer in language specific manners. Because of differing discourse procedures in Japanese and German, as hearers, German and Japanese L1 speakers hold differing expectations toward what a speaker is doing and how s/he is going about it. The significance of these ‘interactional expectations’ is in that they facilitate processes of understanding on the part of the hearer (H) by enabling H to anticipate illocutionary and / or propositional relations between utterances in discourse. After a short discussion of the concept of ‘‘interactional expectations’’ in section 1, the data and research context are described section 2. Drawing on corpus data, some of the characteristics and distinct language specific constructions in L1 Japanese academic expert presentations are outlined and contrasted with L1 German in section 3; in section 4 a comparison of an L1 Japanese example with L2 German by an L1 Japanese speaker reveals ‘‘pragmatic transfer’’ based on differences in the pragmatic patterns of L1 Japanese and L1 German discourses, specifically discussed with regard to aspects of social deixis/politeness. In section 5 supplementary evidence of a general difference between (inter-)actional and propositional organization in Japanese and German academic expert presentations is discussed with regard to fillers / speaker’s exotheses and prefatory actions, and in section 6 modals and connectives as linguistic means organizing discourse structures. In section 7, a conclusion is drawn focusing on the need to reflect on interactional expectations in multilingual settings, in order to enable L1 interactants to link non-L1 like linguistic realizations to actually shared discourse purposes in multlilingual constellations.
