"DIACHRONICITY AND SYNCHRONICITY OF FOREIGNNESS LANGUAGE MANAGEMENT IN CONTACT SITUATIONS VOL.10" Report on Research Projects No.248

The focus of this research is placed on the two types of responding utterances following a topic opening utterances in the three-party conversations among acquaintances in internal and contact situations. The two responding utterances are; one which is uttered by a non-receiver of the topic opening utterance, and the other one is uttered toward a non-topic opening participantand they are considered from the perspective of a role of the language host. The former is classified into four and the latter classified into three categories by the relationship of the topic opening utterance. As a result, though the amount of the two utterances is few as a whole, the rise of the number by a Japanese native speaker in the contact situations, especially low intermediate level, is found. The two utterances are considered as a language host adjustment by a Japanese native speaker to carry out exchanging information between native and non-native speakers of Japanese. However, in the three party conversations, the two utterances are found in both the internal and contact situations, the adjustment as a language host is acceptable for native speakers. The adjustment in the contact situations can be considered as a variation of adjustment in internal situations of the three party conversations among acquaintances to accomplish information exchange.