Previous studies in sociolinguistics and pragmatics have used various terms that refer to diverse social meanings of language use without sufficient scrutiny of the actual meaning of the terms. This study investigates “aratamari,” one of the essential concepts frequently used in previous research and presents an explicit description of its meaning with the purpose of clarifying research descriptions using the same term. In doing so, the study shows a theoretical direction for a more accurate understanding of the various terms that refer to social meanings in language use. Based on the epistemological perspective of semiotics, the study regards aratamari as an indexical meaning and examines data obtained from the corpus Chunagon and an experiment using the Associative Group Analysis method (Szalay & Maday, 1973). The examination of data leads to the description that aratamari is “a meaning that is given when an event indexes its context as a setting that is established based on institutional and explicit purposes.” The study argues that this description can consistently be applied to a wide range of extensions of, and things that are related to, the word aratamari. It also argues for the effectiveness of the concept of indexicality and the framework of semiotics in understanding various terms used to describe social meanings of language use.

Suggestion is the speech act in which a speaker presents his/her idea to a hearer. By imposing the thought on the hearer, the speaker might step into the hearer’s territory and offend him/her. Shigemitsu (2017) indicates that Japanese and American conversation styles are influenced by their cultural and social backgrounds, which can also influence verbal expressions used for suggestions. Can the same conversation styles be seen in suggestions for mutual consent? Some studies have focused on verbal expressions in Japanese/American interactions. However, interlingual/intercultural comparisons of interactions of people of different ages and positions have not been examined. This paper attempts to clarify the tendencies in usage of verbal expressions for suggestions examining two American English speakers of different ages and positions, between teacher and student, in task-based interaction using the categorizations mentioned in Fujii (2016) (declarative statements, declarative statements with mitigating expressions, declarative questions, and question forms). Then, it compares this new information with the results shown in Shinke (2020), which analyzes Japanese teacher-and-student interactions in the same categorizations, and discusses methods of building cooperation for bidirectional Japanese and American interactions. The analysis shows that situating themselves as if they are entraining themselves, they resonate with each other (Fujii 2012, Fujii and Kim 2014). This can be seen in language behaviors of Japanese teachers and students’ suggestions. On the other hand, not only “situate(ing) themselves separately from the other in the interaction” (Fujii 2012, Fujii and Kim 2014) but also students’ attitudes of concession toward teachers can be seen in American suggestions.