2015 年 22 巻 1 号 p. 84-96
This article reports field research on project meetings for developing an exhibition
at a science museum. These meetings were held in consecutive weeks over half a year. The
project team, consisting of members with diverse professions, collaborated on construct-
ing a novel exhibition. In the process of construction, problems discovered by a team
member often could not be solved individually. Therefore, members had to launch
collaborative problem-solving by relying upon interactional procedures, wherein one
member described a problem to the others. One of the procedures, which this article
examines, involves the usage of concern-introducing expressions, “kini-naru/suru-no-
wa/ga”(what the topic of concern is), appearing in approximately 30 meetings. These
expressions are examined in terms of their linguistic features. An analysis of sequential
relation of an utterance including this expression to the following utterances illustrates
that these expressions play a role for requesting other members to cope with solving the
problems presented. Finally, factors behind the use of concern-introducing expressions
are discussed in the light of members’professions and function of emotion.