Dr. Karatsu’s research addresses topics in the fields of Conversation Analysis, Discourse Analysis, and Sociolinguistics. In particular, she is interested in Narrative Study, Study of Conversational Storytelling, Presentation of Identities/ Selves, Grammar in Interaction, and Teaching Japanese as a Foreign Language. Recently, she conducts research on Instruction and Understanding as well as research on Small Stories in Instructional Interaction. Her research is empirical and qualitative analyses of naturally occurring conversational interaction from multi modal perspective. Her goal is to be inter-disciplinary across Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Sociology, and Social Psychology.
She received her BA in Aesthetics and History of Art (Asian Art History) and BA in Law (Political Science) from Keio University, her MA in Japanese Linguistics from Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, and her PhD in Japanese Linguistics from University of Minnesota. She is an affiliated faculty member in the interdisciplinary graduate program of Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (SLAT).