Abstract
The purpose of this paper is twofold: to propose an ecological perspective on sociolinguistic phenomena (an Ecology of Language and Communication), and to give an outline of the framework through a brief analysis of the processes in which address terms are organized as resources for Contextualization in English and Japanese. A case study will demonstrate that address terms are employed as devices for participation framing, face risk management, and conversational synchrony, in the processes of Contextualization. It will be emphasized that these devices should be examined as part of the repertoire which is afforded and constrained by the communicative environment of the two respective languages and their communicative conventions.
