Permalink : http://hdl.handle.net/2115/53597

This study focuses on some situations in which 3-4 participants performed conversational activities,and analyzes scenes during which an activity based on the locations of the participants and things on that occasion began to take shape following a one-word utterance. Analyses from a perspective of ecological psychology revealed the following. 1)The participants are situated (restricted/empowered) with the surrounding condition that consists of things and persons. They must adjust their actions to its changes even if the actions are independent of the conversation which progresses in parallel. 2) At the beginning of some of the actions,one-word utterances are observed,which can be triggers to enable our rediscovery of the surrounding conditions suited to each of those actions. 3) This particular kind of utterance can also contribute to the resolution of cognitive confusion caused by the crossing of two activities. The significance of these findings is discussed in terms of concepts on pragmatics, especially‘pragmatic acts’as advocated by J.L. Mey who correlated a concept ‘affordance’in ecological psychology to arguments about speech acts in pragmatics.