L2 Interactional Competence and Development
SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION Series Editor: Professor David Singleton, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland This series brings together titles dealing with a variety of aspects of language acquisition and processing in situations where a language or languages other than the native language is involved. Second language is thus interpreted in its broadest possible sense. The volumes included in the series all offer in their different ways, on the one hand, exposition and discussion of empirical fi ndings and, on the other, some degree of theoretical reflection. In this latter connection, no particular theoretical stance is privileged in the series; nor is any relevant perspective – sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic, neurolinguistic, and so on – deemed out of place. The intended readership of the series includes fi nal-year undergraduates working on second language acquisition projects, postgraduate students involved in second language acquisition research and researchers and teachers in general whose interests include a second language acquisition component. Full details of all the books in this series and of all our other publications can be found on http://www.multilingual-matters.com, or by writing to Multilingual Matters, St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK.
SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION Series Editor: David Singleton
L2 Interactional Competence and Development
Edited by
Joan Kelly Hall, John Hellermann and Simona Pekarek Doehler
MULTILINGUAL MATTERS Bristol • Buffalo • Toronto
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. L2 Interactional Competence and Development/Edited by Joan Kelly Hall, John Hellermann and Simona Pekarek Doehler. Second Language Acquistion: 56 Includes bibliographical references 1. Second language acquisition. 2. Conversation analysis. 3. Communicative competence. I. Hall, Joan Kelly. II. Hellermann, John, 1963- III. Doehler, Simona Pekarek. P118.2.L18 2011 407.1–dc222011015599 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN-13: 978-1-84769-406-5 (hbk) ISBN-13: 978-1-84769-405-8 (pbk) Multilingual Matters UK: St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol, BS1 2AW, UK. USA: UTP, 2250 Military Road, Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA. Canada: UTP, 5201 Dufferin Street, North York, Ontario, M3H 5T8, Canada. Copyright © 2011 Joan Kelly Hall, John Hellermann, Simona Pekarek Doehler and the authors of individual chapters. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. The policy of Multilingual Matters/Channel View Publications is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products, made from wood grown in sustainable forests. In the manufacturing process of our books, and to further support our policy, preference is given to printers that have FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody certification. The FSC and/or PEFC logos will appear on those books where full certification has been granted to the printer concerned. Typeset by Techset Composition Ltd, Salisbury, UK. Printed and bound in Great Britain by Short Run Press Ltd.
Contents Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi 1 L2 Interactional Competence and Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 J.K. Hall and S. Pekarek Doehler Part 1:
The Nature of L2 Interactional Competence
2 Enacting Interactional Competence in Gaming Activities: Coproducing Talk with Virtual Others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 A. Piirainen-Marsh 3 Learning as Social Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 F. Sahlström 4 The Social Life of Self-Directed Talk: A Sequential Phenomenon? 66 F. Steinbach Kohler and S.L. Thorne 5 Second Language Interaction for Business and Learning . . . . . . . . 93 G. Theodórsdóttir 6 Responding to Questions and L2 Learner Interactional Competence during Language Proficiency Interviews: A Microanalytic Study with Pedagogical Implications . . . . . . . . . . 117 R.A. Van Compernolle Part 2: Development of L2 Interactional Competence 7 Members’ Methods, Members’ Competencies: Looking for Evidence of Language Learning in Longitudinal Investigations of Other-Initiated Repair . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 J. Hellermann 8 Achieving Recipient Design Longitudinally: Evidence from a Pharmacy Intern in Patient Consultations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 H.T. Nguyen 9 Developing ‘Methods’ for Interaction: A Cross-Sectional Study of Disagreement Sequences in French L2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206 S. Pekarek Doehler and E. Pochon-Berger
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10 Becoming the Teacher: Changing Participant Frameworks in International Teaching Assistant Discourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244 E.F. Rine and J.K. Hall
Contributors Joan Kelly Hall is Professor of Applied Linguistics in the Department of Applied Linguistics at the Pennsylvania State University. Her research focuses on uncovering the interactional resources by which teaching and learning are accomplished in classrooms. She has published in journals such as Applied Linguistics, The Modern Language Journal and Research on Language and Social Interaction. Her books include Teaching and Researching Language and Culture (2nd edn, Pearson, 2011) and Dialogue with Bakhtin on Second and Foreign Language Learning (Lawrence Erlbaum, 2003, with G. Vitanova and L. Marchenkova). John Hellermann has worked at Portland State University (Portland, Oregon, USA) in the Department of Applied Linguistics since 2003. His research has focused on the sequential and prosodic organization of classroom talk and on how mundane social interactions may be seen as sites for language learning. He is the author of Social Actions for Classroom Language Learning (Multilingual Matters, 2008). Fee Steinbach Kohler is completing her PhD on co-construction processes in the L2 classroom, drawing from conversation analysis and sociocultural theory. She is more generally interested in how participants use multiple semiotic resources to coordinate and accomplish social actions and how such analysis feeds into an understanding of learning as socio-cognitive process anchored in participants’ social practices. She was a visiting scholar at the Department of Applied Linguistics, Pennsylvania State University and the ICAR Institute, University of Lyon 2, France between 2007 and 2009. Hanh thi Nguyen is Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics in the TESOL Program at Hawaii Pacific University. Her research interests include the development of interactional competence in the workplace and second language learning, second language socialization, classroom interaction and Vietnamese applied linguistics. Her works have appeared in Applied Linguistics, The Modern Language Journal, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Language and Education, Text and Talk and Communication and Medicine, among others. She is the co-editor of Talk-in-Interaction: Multilingual Perspectives (2009, with Gabriele Kasper) and Pragmatics and Language Learning (Vol. 12) (2010, with Gabriele Kasper, Dina Rudolph Yoshimi and Jim K. Yoshioka). vii
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Simona Pekarek Doehler is Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. She formerly held a Swiss National Science Foundation professorship. Her research, drawing from conversation analysis and interactional linguistics, focuses on second language acquisition (SLA), specifically within the classroom, as well as the relation between grammar and interaction. She investigates how participants use grammar as a resource to accomplish and coordinate social actions and how, in turn, linguistic and communicative resources emerge from social interaction. She is also interested in the conceptual and theoretical implications that emanate from such empirical analysis for our understanding of SLA and, more generally, of language. Arja Piirainen-Marsh is Professor of English in the Department of Languages, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Her current research focuses on the relationship between linguistic choices, structures of interaction and multimodal resources in formal and informal learning environments, in particular the classroom and video-gaming activities. Her publications include papers in the Journal of Pragmatics, Modern Language Journal, Language Policy, Journal of Computer Mediated Communication and Scandinavian Journal of Education Research. Evelyne Pochon-Berger obtained her PhD thesis in 2010 from the University of Neuchâtel. Her doctoral research was concerned with the interactional competence of intermediate classroom learners of French L2, as materalized in the learners’ turn-taking techniques, including verbal, prosodic and gestural resources, as well as their ability to manage interactional coherence. She has been a visiting researcher at the University of Luxemburg, and is now working as a Post-Doc at the Center for Applied Linguistics at the University of Neuchâtel, on the development of L2 interactional competence in non-educational settings. Emily F. Rine is an Instructor in the American English Institute within the Department of Linguistics at the University of Oregon. Her research interests include International Teaching Assistant discourse and curriculum design, conversation analysis for SLA, learner corpus analysis and intercultural pragmatics. She has presented papers at numerous conferences, including the American Association for Applied Linguistics and the International Conference on Pragmatics and Language Learning. Fritjof Sahlström is currently a University Lecturer at the Institute for Behavioral Sciences at the University of Helsinki, Finland. His research has focused on the organization of interaction in educational settings, on developing ways of conceptualizing and studying learning within conversation
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analysis, and on developing research designs and methods for the study of interaction and learning in educational settings. Guðrún Theodórsdóttir teaches Icelandic as a second language at the University of Iceland. She recently completed her PhD study, Conversations in Second Language Icelandic: Language Learning in Real-Life Environment, from the University of Southern Denmark. Her research interests include studying second language use and learning in everyday interaction within the research framework of CA-SLA. She has collected longitudinal data (30 minutes a week for three years) of naturally occurring L2 interaction in everyday settings which she intends to use for future research. These data are partly available for researchers on Talkbank.org. Steven L. Thorne received his PhD from UC Berkeley and currently holds faculty appointments in the Department of World Languages and Literatures at Portland State University and the Department of Applied Linguistics at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. His research has been supported by the Spencer Foundation and the US Department of Education and focuses on uses of new and social media in L2 education, usage-based and socioculturally informed investigations of language learning, and revitalization of ancestral languages. Rémi A. van Compernolle is a PhD candidate in the Department of Applied Linguistics at the Pennsylvania State University. His research interests include second language acquisition and foreign language education, pragmatics and sociolinguistics, and computer-mediated discourse and interaction. His work is primarily informed by sociocognitive and cultural–historical approaches to language and learning. He is author or co-author of numerous journal articles and book chapters and co-editor (with Lawrence Williams) of Computer-mediated Discourse and Interaction in Language Learning and Language Teaching (special issue of Canadian Modern Language Review, to appear in 2012).
Preface The genesis of this volume dates back to the 13th International Association of Applied Linguistics (AILA) World Congress held in Singapore in December, 2002, and specifically, to a meeting of the organizers of two colloquia presented at the Congress. One of the colloquia drew on social theories, such as Vygotskian sociocultural theory, situated learning and language socialization to investigate language learning. The other drew heavily on ethnomethodological conversation analysis to examine language use. Although the theoretical frameworks of the colloquia differed, the studies presented across the colloquia focused on the fundamental role of social interaction and joint activity in second language use and learning. Recognizing their converging perspectives and interests in continuing the discussion with other like-minded scholars, the organizers of the colloquia, Joan Kelly Hall, Simona Pekarek Doelher and Johannes Wagner, met during the Congress and formulated initial plans for a three-day research meeting that Johnannes Wagner agreed to host at the University of Odense in Fall 2004. Twenty scholars were invited to the inaugural meeting of the Conversation Analysis/Sociocultural Theory (CA/SCT) research group. Over the three days, the participants examined empirical data and addressed some crucial theoretical questions such as how to define competence, and what methodological procedures could be used to provide evidence for the socio-interactional basis of second language acquisition. The discussions led to the planning of two colloquia for AILA 2005 and additional meetings. One was held at Portland State University in April 2006 and another was held on Long Beach Island, New Jersey in June 2008. The more recent meetings have focused on group data analysis sessions where problems involved in the analysis of language in use and language acquisition are undertaken collaboratively. The most recent gathering of the group came at the annual meeting of the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) 2009 in Denver, Colorado, where several members participated in a colloquium which addressed the ‘A’ facet of ‘SLA’ (the learning of language and other professional and cultural practices), conceptualizing this as the development of language practices for interactional competence. Several papers from that colloquium are presented in this volume along with those by researchers not in attendance (Sahlström, Theodórsdóttir and van Compernolle). xi
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Many of the ideas presented in this volume have been cultivated through the extended discussions with our peers afforded by these research meetings and through the work they have published. The list of individual research papers and monographs that have been published over the last decade and have influenced the ideas contained in these chapters is too large to mention here, but we note that many of these works are cited in the chapters of this volume. We extend special thanks to the contributors to this volume for their collegiality and inspiration in continuing with what we see as a valuable research program for applied linguistics.
Chapter 1
L2 Interactional Competence and Development J.K. HALL and S. PEKAREK DOEHLER
Introduction Socially grounded investigations of L2 interactions have been a growing focus of research over the last 15 years or so. These studies have documented the variety of interactional resources L2 speakers draw on for sense-making in their social worlds. This expanding body of research has made evident the effectiveness of conversation analysis (CA) as both a theory and method for describing the myriad resources comprising L2 users’ interactional competence (IC). However, still lingering is the question of its effectiveness for understanding how L2 users develop such competence. Contributors to this volume explore answers to this question. Drawing on data from a range of interactional contexts, including classrooms, pharmacy consultations, tutoring sessions and video-game playing, and a range of languages including English, German, French, Danish and Icelandic, the studies use conversation analytic methods to investigate the use and development of the many resources comprising L2 users’ IC.
Interactional Competence The studies in this volume take as axiomatic that interaction is fundamental to social life. In our interactions with others, we set goals and negotiate the procedures used to reach them. At the same time, we constitute and manage our individual identities, our social role relationships, and memberships in our social groups and communities. Central to competent engagement in our interactions is our ability to accomplish meaningful social actions, to respond to c-participants′ previous actions and to make recognizable for others what our actions are and how these relate to their own actions. IC, that is the context-specific constellations of expectations and dispositions about our social worlds that we draw on to navigate our 1
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way through our interactions with others, implies the ability to mutually coordinate our actions. It includes knowledge of social-context-specific communicative events or activity types, their typical goals and trajectories of actions by which the goals are realized and the conventional behaviors by which participant roles and role relationships are accomplished. Also included is the ability to deploy and to recognize context-specific patterns by which turns are taken, actions are organized and practices are ordered. And it includes the prosodic, linguistic, sequential and nonverbal resources conventionally used for producing and interpreting turns and actions, to construct them so that they are recognizable for others, and to repair problems in maintaining shared understanding of the interactional work we and our interlocutors are accomplishing together (Heritage, 2004; Hymes, 1964, 1972; Sacks et al., 1974; Schegloff, 2007; Schegloff et al., 1977). We approach our interactional activities – from everyday practices of talk such as greetings, leave-takings and joking, to more institutional situations, such as doctor–patient interactions, business meetings and instructional lectures – with these context-specific collections of knowledge, expectations, dispositions, orientations and resources, and we draw on them as we monitor ours and each other’s moment-to-moment involvement in the interactions. At each interactional moment we attend to each other’s actions, build interpretations as to what these actions are about and where they are heading, and formulate our own contributions based on our interpretations that move the interaction along, either toward or away from the anticipated outcomes of each preceding move. When we approach a service encounter for example, we have certain expectations about goals and purposes of the encounter, and anticipate the various roles and role relationships we are likely to find. We also have expectations about the sequence of interactional actions that are likely to unfold, and the linguistic and other means for accomplishing them. The utterance ‘Who’s next?,’ for example, calls to mind a set of goals and purposes and of roles and role relationships, which, in this case would be sales clerks and customers. It also calls to mind a certain way of taking turns, and expectations about the actions that likely preceded and will follow this utterance, and how these actions are preferably, expectably organized. At these moments, we use our understandings of and experience in a range of interactional activities to make sense of what is occurring. As the interaction unfolds, we continually reflect upon and revise our understandings of preceding contributions, assess the likely consequences engendered by such moves, and make decisions about how to signal our understandings to the others and to construct appropriate contributions (Goodwin & Goodwin, 1992; Sanders, 1987, 1995). In sum, when we participate in interactions, we draw on an ‘immense stock of sedimented social knowledge’ (Hanks, 1996: 238) and on a set of routinized yet context-sensitive procedures with which we reason our way
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through the moment-to-moment unfoldings of our interactions. This competence is socially grounded in that its components are constructed in interaction and shared with social group members in specific communicative contexts. It is cognitive in that it is part of people’s context-specific structures of expectations. Yet, these structures are not static, mental representations. Rather, their shapes and meanings are dynamic and malleable, tied to their locally situated uses in culturally framed communicative activities.
Disciplinary Foundations Current conceptualizations of IC owe much to two fields for theoretical and empirical inspiration. A first source is American linguistic anthropology, and in particular, the work of Dell Hymes (1962, 1964, 1972). Hymes considered social function to be the source of linguistic form and so conceptualized language as context-embedded social action. He coined the concept communicative competence to refer to the capacity to acquire and use language appropriately. It is this knowledge, Hymes argued, that shapes and gives meaning to linguistic forms. Hymes proposed the concept in response to generativists’ accounts of linguistic competence, which was defined as a historical, universally inscribed, invariant sets of internal principles and conditions for generating the structural components of language systems (Chomsky, 1965, 1966). Hymes considered this view of competence to be inadequate in that it could not account for the other kinds of knowledge individuals use to produce and interpret utterances appropriate to the particular contexts in which they occur. He noted, ‘. . . it is not enough for the child to be able to produce any grammatical utterance. It would have to remain speechless if it could not decide which grammatical utterance here and now, if it could not connect utterances to their contexts of use’ (Hymes, 1964: 110). Such socially constituted knowledge, Hymes argued, is what gives meaning and shape to language forms. Hymes further proposed the ethnography of speaking as both a conceptual framework and method for capturing such knowledge, and specifically, the patterns of language used by sociocultural group members to participate in the communicative events of their communities. Canale and Swain (1980; Canale, 1983) were among the fi rst in applied linguistics to draw on Hymes’s concept of communicative competence for the purposes of curriculum design and evaluation. Their framework contained four components: grammatical, which included knowledge of lexical items and rules of morphology, syntax, semantics and phonology; sociolinguistic, which included knowledge of the rules of language use; strategic, which included knowledge of strategies to overcome communicative problems; and, discourse competence, which dealt with the knowledge needed to participate in literacy activities. Canale and Swain argued that
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choices for what to include in a curriculum for language classrooms should be based on an analysis of the linguistic, sociolinguistic, discourse and strategic components comprising those communicative activities in which L2 learners were interested in becoming competent. The first systematic studies (for a most notable early exception see Hatch, 1978) that shed light on some aspects of communicative competence were undertaken within the framework of Interlanguage Pragmatics. Studies under this rubric focused mainly on describing speech acts such as requests, apologies and complaints, and comparing their uses across various cultural contexts (e.g. Blum-Kulka et al., 1989; Kasper & BlumKulka, 1993; Trosburg, 1994). These and other attempts to operationalize and investigate communicative competence (e.g. Bachmann, 1990, 1996; Celce-Murcia et al., 1995; Nunan, 1989) enhanced applied linguists’ understandings of various facets of communicative competence. However, as Young (2000) and others (He & Young, 1998; Lüdi, 2006; McNamara & Roever, 2006) have noted, they are limited in two respects. First, the various components of communicative competence have, by and large, been treated as static, cognitive properties of individuals, thereby rendering invisible their social foundations. Second, the focus of research has been on competence for speaking and not on competence for interaction. An early exception to this limited view is the 1986 essay by Claire Kramsch, in which she argued that, despite claiming to promote communicative abilities of language learners, the proficiency guidelines of the American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), a US-based organization dedicated to language teaching and learning, were marred in that they emphasized grammatical accuracy over discourse appropriacy and thus took an ‘oversimplified view on human interactions’ (Kramsch, 1986: 367). The focus, she argued, should be shifted to IC, that is the skills and knowledge individuals employ to bring about successful interaction. By the 1990s, calls for more socially grounded, dynamic understandings of and investigations into IC were on the rise (Hall, 1993, 1995, 1999). For example, in her proposal for a more dynamic, sociocultural understanding of interaction, Hall drew on Hymes’ (1972) ethnography of speaking framework to propose a model for the study of interactive practices in language classrooms. Interactive practices, according to Hall, are ‘socioculturally conventionalized configurations of face-to-face interaction by which and within which group members communicate’ (Hall, 1993: 146). Her model consisted of seven components, which, she argued, were to be used as an analytic framework for uncovering the set of conventions by which such practices are constructed by social group members and thus are constitutive of members’ IC. This model was further elaborated upon by Young (2000, 2003). His framework consists of six components: (1) rhetorical script (i.e. knowledge of sequences of speech acts that are conventionally linked to a given type); (2) register (e.g. technical/expert
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vocabulary); (3) strategies for taking turns; (4) topic management (e.g. the rights to introduce/change topics and their placement); (5) roles and patterns of participation related to a given practice (i.e. novice–expert role–relations; speaker–hearer); and (6) boundary signaling devices (i.e. opening-, transition- and closing-procedures). While (1) and (2) are general resources valid for any interactive practice, and (5) is part of what has more classically been defi ned as socio-linguistic knowledge, points (3) turn taking, (4) topic management and (6) boundary signaling devices identify concrete interactional dimensions that can be empirically observed as indicators of interactional micro-skills. A second source of inspiration for current conceptualizations of IC is found in CA. CA began in the field of sociology over 40 years ago as an offshoot of ethnomethodology, an approach to the study of social life that considers the nature and source of social order to be fundamentally locally accomplished, and grounded in members’ real-world social practices (Garfi nkel, 1967; Heritage, 1984). Emerging from ethnomethodology’s interests in the empirical study of social order, but asserting a fundamental role for conversation as ‘the primordial site of human sociality’ (Schegloff, 2006: 70), CA narrowed its focus to the study of the organization of social interaction and took as its primary concern ‘the analysis of competence which underlies ordinary social activities’ (Heritage, 2004: 241). The first generation of CA scholars gave its analytic attention to describing the structural character of the ‘methods’ used by social group members to bring about and maintain social order in native speaker conversations. Methods, in the ethnomethodological sense of the term (Garfinkel, 1967), are systematic procedures (of, e.g. turn-taking, repairing, opening or closing conversation) by which members organize their behavior in a mutually understandable way, by which they accomplish intersubjectivity and establish and maintain social order. This body of CA work has made a substantial contribution to our understanding of the fi negrained mechanisms that pervade communicative activities in a range of settings: it has described the mechanisms of turn-taking (Sacks et al., 1974), of conversational openings and closings (Schegloff & Sacks, 1973), of manifestations of disagreement (Pomerantz, 1984), of topic management (Button & Casey, 1985), of the organization of conversational repair (Schegloff et al., 1977) and many more. Researchers with interests in talk in institutional settings have used CA’s analytic apparatus to explore the methods participants use to bring about and maintain social order in institutional talk-in-interaction. Institutional contexts of interest have included, for example, medical settings (e.g. Heritage & Maynard, 2006; Heritage & Stivers, 1999), court proceedings (e.g. Drew, 1992; Galatolo & Drew, 2006) and educational settings (e.g. Heap, 1992; Macbeth, 1994, 2000, 2004; Mehan, 1979). While
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early studies focused primarily on methods instantiated in talk, currently the scope of CA’s analytic focus encompasses other forms of conduct in addition to talk, such as body posture, gesture, eye gaze and other modes of communication used in the accomplishment of communicative activities (e.g. Goodwin, 2000, 2007). Throughout the past 40 years, CA has brought about a detailed understanding of how social interaction is organized on a moment-to-moment basis, identifying the manifold resources participants use to accomplish this organization and, thereby, uncovering the multiple facets of people’s competence for social interaction.
IC and L2 Interaction While some applied the analytic precision of CA to studies of L2 interaction in the late 1980s and early 1990s (e.g. see Bange, 1992; DausendschönGay & Krafft, 1994; De Pietro et al., 1989; Lüdi, 1991) it has been in the last 15 years or so that interest in using CA to study L2 interaction has taken firm hold of the field (e.g. Carroll, 2000; Gardner & Wagner, 2004; Lazaraton, 1997; Markee, 2000; Wong, 2000a, 2000b). This body of work has helped to increase understandings of the detailed workings of second language interactions by illustrating the wide range of interactional resources L2 speakers draw on in their interactions with other L2 speakers. Narrowing interests to L2 learner interactions, researchers in second language acquisition (SLA) have given their attention to describing the kinds of interactional activities L2 learners engage in inside and outside of the classroom and the resources they draw on to do so. Drawn together under the term CA-SLA (or CA-for-SLA), these studies have detailed the resources L2 users employ in various learning activities. For example, Mori (2002) examined the accomplishment of a classroom-based pair activity among learners of Japanese, demonstrating how the instructional design of the task affected the interactional resources learners drew on to complete the task. Markee (2004) analyzed the structural properties of the talk occurring at the boundaries of different L2 classroom interactional activities. Kasper (2004) examined the participant frameworks constructed by a learner of German and a native-speaking peer in an instructional activity held outside of the classroom. Additional studies have investigated the resources used by teachers to create different types of opportunities for student participation in classroom activities (e.g. Hellermann, 2003, 2005; Koshik, 2002; Lee, 2007).
The Development of IC Studies using CA to investigate L2 talk-in-interaction have contributed greatly to understandings of the indispensable presence of L2 users’ IC
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in second language interactions. However, with a few exceptions (e.g. Hellermann, 2008; Cekaite, 2007 for L2, and see Forrester, 2008 and Wootton, 1997 for L1), little is known about the process by which learners develop their L2 IC, nor about the stages this development goes through. Recently, it has been suggested that the development of L2 IC can be understood and studied in terms of a change in participants’ methods for accomplishing L2 talk-in-interaction (Hellermann, 2008; Mondada et al., 2004; Pekarek Doehler, 2010), and that it involves increased local efficacy of speakers’ conduct (Brouwer & Wagner, 2004). Still, the question as to whether CA, given its analytical and conceptual apparatus, is capable of addressing how one becomes interactionally competent in the L2 remains a central concern (cf. Hall, 2004; Kasper, 2006; Markee, 2008; Wagner, 2004). Major challenges for a conversationanalytic approach to development over time include the following (see Pekarek Doehler & Wagner, 2010): (a) How can an emic (participantrelevant) perspective be brought to the data when we analyze not learning processes, but the products of learning, that is more advanced competencies at a given moment in time? Speakers do not necessarily and demonstrably orient to these as object of learning; (b) What are the relevant units of analysis (actions, practices, methods, linguistic items, etc.) that allow documenting change in IC across time, and warrant comparability between interactional conduct at two different moments? (c) How can we differentiate, in the observable change between two moments in time, what is due to development over time, and what is due to a change in local context? These questions outline the extent of the challenge currently encountered by CA-SLA studies that set out to investigate the development of IC.
Contributions to the Volume The chapters presented in this volume are the first collection of studies to tackle directly these concerns. The first section of this volume, The Nature of L2 Interactional Competence, contains five studies documenting specific dimensions of L2 IC (Piirainen-Marsh, Sahlström, Steinbach Kohler & Thorne, Theodórsdóttir, van Compernolle). The studies presented in the second section, Development of L2 Interactional Competence, trace changes in L2 IC over time (Hellermann, Nguyen, Pekarek Doehler & Pochon-Berger, Rine & Hall). The first section opens with Arja Piirainen-Marsh’s study on adolescents’ playing a console-operated video-game. Piirainen-Marsh investigates how the players, whose L1 is Finnish, attend to and display their understanding of the talk produced by the game characters in English. Focusing on the players’ co-producing utterances with the characters, either by means of choral production or anticipatory completion, the study shows how,
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through such co-productions, the players sustain joint attention to the game, build and display alignments with actions and events in the game-world, express their appreciation of the narrative as it unfolds and manage shifts in attention focus and participation framework. The findings shed light on some dimensions of the participants’ L2 IC: co-productions are effective resources for getting a range of locally relevant interactional work done; because they are based on the precise fitting of utterances into the unfolding dialog, they require the participants to monitor multiple semiotic resources, including language, voice, rhythm, subtitles, as well as to closely orient to the unfolding story sequences. By identifying these dimensions of the IC that is required for participating in joint gaming activities, the study also contributes to current investigations into the dynamics of technology-mediated interaction. Fritjof Sahlström presents a study on a multilingual seven-year-old girl (Sara) who, in a series of interactions with her classmate (Hanna), is learning how to count from one to 10 in English. Although based on longitudinal data (the girls were recorded over a period of five school days), the study does not aim at investigating the outcome of their interactions, but sets out to document how the children’s orientation toward learning is inscribed in and observable throughout the moment-to-moment unfolding of their interaction. Through a series of data excerpts, Sahlström shows how Sara and Hanna orient to knowledge asymmetries, to the need to change something in how they count from one to 10, and to their mutual epistemic stances as having changed or being in need of changing. The study documents the children’s interactional competencies in how they manage their orientation to one another’s epistemic stance, which is necessary for their interacting as well as for Sara’s getting to use and practice English number counting. The study also provides evidence for learning as a participant-oriented and participant-relevant activity: it is something that is observably negotiated and treated as such by coparticipants in interaction. Fee Steinbach Kohler and Steve Thorne’s chapter reconceptualizes a phenomenon in talk usually considered in the realm of psycholinguistics – ‘private speech’. Investigating Swiss-German L1 learners of French in a secondary school, the authors show how seemingly self-directed talk maintains characteristics of ‘private speech’ (quieter, with no clear addressee). However, such talk is the result of and fits into an ongoing sequence of talk. Moreover, though seemingly self-directed, such talk may be disattended (especially when it comes out of sequential misalignment) or may be taken up by interlocutors who orient to such talk as an opportunity for collaborative problems solving. The authors show that self-directed talk is an important resource showing the participants’ IC to manage small-group task interaction in the language-learning classroom.
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Guðrún Theodórsdóttir’s analysis shows how a low-level L2 speaker, with the help of her co-participant, exploits a business interaction as a resource for L2 use and learning. The data stem from an encounter in a bakery between Anna, who is learning Icelandic, and a clerk who has Icelandic as his first language. Results show that, in the interaction, the co-habitation of foci on language and an orientation to business is made possible by a distinct division of labor between the participants, the clerk being the prime motor for attending to the business side while Anna enhances the focus on linguistic features of the L2. The data provide evidence for a change, across the few minutes of the encounter, in how the focus on language is managed: at first, Anna’s attending to linguistic features is embedded in other interactional business and only implicitly calls for the participation of the L1 speaker, while toward the end of the interaction Anna becomes ‘bolder’ in her attention to language matters. Anna’s capacity to exploit, in collaboration with the L1 speaker, the interaction as an occasion for learning, while maintaining simultaneous orientation to getting some other interactional business done, can be interpreted as one dimension of her IC in her L2, despite her minimal mastery of the linguistic features of that L2. Rémi A. van Compernolle’s study examines student responses to teacher questions in language proficiency interviews. The data consist of a set of language proficiency interviews between a teacher and intermediate-level US university learners of French L2. The author argues that features such as precision timing or conditional relevance of a response can be indicative of a learner’s IC even if the response is inappropriate in relation to the content of the question asked by the teacher. In a first step, the author shows that by providing responses to questions (i.e. second-pair parts that fit first-pair parts) and doing so at sequentially appropriate moments, students display their IC as interviewees – and they do this independently of whether the content of the response is appropriate to the question or not. The author also suggests that even if they have trouble in understanding, students demonstrate a tendency to respond rather than to initiate repair. In a second step, the study documents how such troubles of understanding a question can trigger potential learning opportunities for the learners, for instance by leading up to word repetitions or clarifications. The chapter concludes by discussing pedagogical implications of these findings and provides suggestions as to how CA can be fruitfully used in language teaching. Chapters in the second section explicitly deal with the development of IC over time. John Hellermann presents a longitudinal investigation of other-initiated repair in a classroom dyad. Following interactions between two adult learners of English across five terms of study (10 weeks), the author identifies both consistency and change in the practices of other-initiated repair.
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While the trouble sources (repairables) remain largely consistent over time (mostly lexical items, pronunciation and grammar, only action-related repair emerges later), the learners deploy different methods of other-repair at different moments in time. Over time, they show an increasingly wider range of repair initiation techniques. In particular, open-class repair initiators emerge at more advanced levels of proficiency, and so do accounts following ‘no’-initiated repair. These fi ndings, Hellermann argues, provide evidence for interactional development in terms of the learners’ changing ability to participate in social interaction, but they also reflect changes in context in more advanced language classrooms. In this sense, the changing practices, according to Hellermann, provide ‘evidence for greater interactional competence of the learners in a (. . .) reflexive way; these practices are part of what makes them more advanced learners but also part of the repertoire of practices necessitated by the communicative context of more advanced language-learning classrooms’ (Hellermann, 2011: 159). Hanh thi Nguyen’s longitudinal case study of a pharmacy intern’s consultations with patients during a two-month internship focuses on advice-giving sequences. Although not concerned with L2 learning in the classic sense, the study deals with the development of a new (here: profession-related) communicative repertoire. The study documents how the intern adapts his counseling over time in order to meet the needs and expectations of the laypersons. The intern’s talk is shown to become less technical (e.g. involving less medical vocabulary), but also more specific in providing more detailed explanations of body-internal phenomena such as allergic reactions. This evidence is interpreted as testifying to the intern’s increased capacity for recipient-designed conduct, as part of his becoming a more proficient professional. A possible explanation of this development is invoked: the author illustrates with excerpts where the intern adapts his explanations on a moment-to-moment basis to the patients’ displayed perspectives and needs. The study provides evidence for interactional development understood in terms of increasingly recipient-designed conduct, and suggests that such development may grow out of the details of mutually oriented interactional activities. Simona Pekarek Doehler and Evelyne Pochon-Berger present a cross-sectional study of disagreement sequences in French L2 classroom interaction. Two groups of students are compared: lower intermediate learners at a lower secondary school, and advanced learners at an upper secondary school. The development of IC is evidenced as implying a diversification of the methods for doing disagreement, allowing for an increased local efficacy of talk. This is reflected both in the turn-construction techniques and the linguistic resources deployed by the students. While the less-proficient learners massively use turn-initial polarity markers for accomplishing disagreements, the more advanced learners develop a range of sequential
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(e.g. yes – but type of turn architecture) and linguistic (e.g. hedges, formattying techniques) means for modulating disagreements as well as postdisagreement accounts for scaffolding these. The results are backed up by a selective comparison with L1 students from the same institutional context. The authors conclude with a discussion of implications of their findings for enhancing understandings of the development of L2 IC as involving the increased ability for context-sensitive conduct. They suggest that diversification of resources and methods, giving place to an increased ability to deal with the preference organization of talk and with projections, are core elements of interactional development over time. Emily Rine and Joan Kelly Hall present a longitudinal case study of one pre-service international teaching assistant’s (ITA) development of ‘teacherlike’ behaviors through his participation in a semester-long ITA training course. Drawing on the concept of participant frameworks (Goffman, 1974, 1981; Goodwin, 2007), the authors argue that the invocation of appropriate participant roles in a given practice is extremely important for participating both competently and recognizably in that practice. Additionally, they argue that becoming interactionally competent, and embodying the social roles to do so, include more than the incorporation of linguistic items into one’s interactional repertoire. It also includes the appropriation of nonverbal actions such as gesture, gaze and body positioning. Findings reveal how the ITA learns to build on and use the interactional resources (both verbal and nonverbal) at his disposal to become more recognizable in the role of teacher over time, thereby indexing his increasing IC in performing the role of an ITA. This is evidenced in his increasing use of teacherspecific actions and spatial and nonverbal orientation to the ‘teacher’ space. Drawing on these fi ndings, the authors conclude with implications for research on using CA to track the development of IC and for ITA pedagogy.
Summary Taken together, the chapters presented in this volume illustrate how CA methods can be fruitfully applied in investigations on L2 IC and its development over time in a variety of contexts. Rather than treating participants in L2 interactions as deficient speakers, they begin with the assumption that those who interact using a second language possess interactional competencies. The studies set out to identify what these competencies are and how they change across time. By doing so, they address some of the difficult and yet unresolved issues that come up when it comes to comparing actions or practices across different moments in time. While contributing to our understanding of the nature of IC in a L2, they also open promising paths as to how its development can be empirically evidenced.
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References Bachmann, L. (1990) Fundamental Considerations in Language Testing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bachmann, L. (1996) Language Testing in Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bange, P. (1992) A propos de la communication et de l’apprentissage en L2, notamment dans ses formes institutionnelles. [On communication and second language acquisition, in particular in institutional settings.] AILE 1, 53–85. Blum-Kulka, S., House, J. and Kasper, G. (eds) (1989) Cross-Cultural Pragmatics: Requests and Apologies. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Brouwer, C.E. and Wagner, J. (2004) Developmental issues in second language conversation. Journal of Applied Linguistics 1, 29–47. Button, G. and Casey, N. (1985) Topic nomination and topic pursuit. Human Studies 8, 3–55. Canale, M. (1983) From communicative competence to communicative language pedagogy. In C. Richards and R. Schmidt (eds) Language and Communicative Competence (pp. 2–27). New York: Longman. Canale, M. and Swain, M. (1980) Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. Applied Linguistics 1, 1–47. Carroll, D. (2000) Precision timing in novice-to-novice L2 conversations. Issues in Applied Linguistics 11, 67–110. Celce-Murcia, M., Dornyei, Z. and Thurrell, S. (1995) Communicative competence: A pedagogically motivated model with content specification. Issues in Applied Linguistics 6, 5–35. Cekaite, A. (2007) A child’s development of interactional competence in a Swedish L2 classroom. The Modern Language Journal 91, 45–62. Chomsky, N. (1965) Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Chomsky, N. (1966) Topics in the Theory of Generative Grammar. The Hague: Mouton. Dausendschön-Gay, U. and Krafft, U. (1994) Analyse conversationnelle et recherche sur l’acquisition. In B. Py (ed.) L’acquisition d’une langue seconde. Bulletin suisse de linguistique appliquée. [Second Language Acquisition. Swiss Journal of Applied Linguistics.] 59, 127–158. De Pietro, J.-F., Matthey, M. and Py, B. (1989) Acquisition et contrat didactique: Les séquences potentiellement acquisitionnelles dans la conversation exolingue [Acquisition and didactic contract: potentially acquisitional sequences in exolingual conversation]. In D. Weil and H. Fougier (eds) Actes du 3e Colloque Régional de Linguistique [Proceedings of the 3rd Regional Conference in Linguistics] (pp. 99–124). Strasbourg: University of Strasbourg. Drew, P. (1992) Contested evidence in courtroom cross-examination: The case of a trial for rape. In P. Drew and J. Heritage (eds) Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings (pp. 470–520). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Forrester, M.A. (2008) The emergence of self-repair: A case study of one child during the early pre-school years. Research on Language and Social Interaction 41, 99–128. Galatolo, R. and Drew, P. (2006) Narrative expansions as defensive practices in courtroom testimony. Text & Talk 26, 661–698. Gardner, R. and Wagner, J. (eds) (2004) Second Language Conversations. London: Continuum. Garfinkel, H. (1967) Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Goffman, E. (1974) Frame Analysis. New York: Harper Row. Goffman, E. (1981) Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
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Goodwin, C. (2000) Action and embodiment within situated human interaction. Journal of Pragmatics 32, 1489–1522. Goodwin, C. (2007) Participation, stance, and affect in the organization of activities. Discourse and Society 18, 53–73. Goodwin, G. and Goodwin, M.H. (1992) Assessments and the construction of context. In A. Duranti and C. Goodwin (eds) Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon (pp. 147–189). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hall, J.K. (1993) The role of oral practices in the accomplishment of our everyday lives: The sociocultural dimension of interaction with implications for the learning of another language. Applied Linguistics 14, 145–167. Hall, J.K. (1995) (Re)creating our worlds with words: A sociohistorical perspective of face-to-face interaction. Applied Linguistics 16, 206–232. Hall, J.K. (1999) A prosaics of interaction: The development of interactional competence in another language. In E. Hinkel (ed.) Culture in Second Language Teaching and Learning (pp. 137–151). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hall, J.K. (2004) Language learning as an interactional event. The Modern Language Journal 88, 607–611. Hanks, W. (1996) Language and Communicative Practices. Boulder: Westview Press. Hatch, E. (1978) Discourse analysis and second language acquisition. In E. Hatch (ed.) Second Language Acquisition (pp. 401–435). Rowley, MA: Newbury House. He, A.W. and Young, R. (1998) Language proficiency interviews: A discourse approach. In R. Young and A. He (eds) Talking and Testing: Discourse Approaches to the Assessment of Oral Proficiency (pp. 1–24). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Heap, J. (1992) Seeing snubs: An introduction to sequential analysis of classroom interaction. Journal of Classroom Interaction 27, 23–28. Hellermann, J. (2003) The interactive work of prosody in the IRF exchange: Teacher repetition in feedback moves. Language in Society 32, 79–104. Hellermann, J. (2005) Syntactic and prosodic practices for cohesion in series of three part sequences in classroom talk. Research on Language and Social Interaction 38, 105–130. Hellermann, J. (2008) Social Actions for Classroom Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Heritage, J. (1984) Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Heritage, J. (2004) Conversation analysis and institutional talk. In K. Fitch and R.E. Sanders (eds) Handbook of Language and Social Interaction (pp. 103–137). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Heritage, J. and Maynard, D. (2006) Communication in Medical Care: Interaction between Primary Care Physicians and Patients. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heritage, J. and Stivers, T. (1999) Online commentary in acute medical visits: A method of shaping patient expectations. Social Science & Medicine 49, 1501–1517. Hymes, D. (1962) The ethnography of speaking. In T. Gladwin and W.C. Sturtevant (eds) Anthropology and Human Behavior. Washington, DC: Anthropology Society of Washington. Hymes, D. (1964) Formal discussion of a conference paper. In U. Bellugi and R. Brown (eds) The Acquisition of Language. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Hymes, D. (1972) Models of the interaction of language and social life. In J.J. Gumperz and D. Hymes (eds) Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication (pp. 35–71). New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.
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Kasper, G. (2004) Participant orientations in conversation-for-learning. The Modern Language Journal 88, 551–567. Kasper, G. (2006) Beyond repair: Conversation analysis as an approach to SLA. AILA Review 19, 83–99. Kasper, G. and Blum-Kulka, S. (1993) Interlanguage Pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press. Koshik, I. (2002) Designedly incomplete utterances: A pedagogical practice for eliciting knowledge displays in error correction sequences. Research on Language and Social Interaction 35, 277–309. Kramsch, C. (1986) From language proficiency to interactional competence. The Modern Language Journal 70, 366–372. Lazaraton, A. (1997) Preference organization in oral proficiency interviews: The case of language ability assessments. Research on Language and Social Interaction 30, 53–72. Lee, Y-A. (2007) Third turn position in teacher talk: Contingency and the work of teaching. Journal of Pragmatics 39, 180–206. Lüdi, G. (1991) Construire ensemble les mots pour le dire. A propos de l’origine discursive des connaissances lexicales [Co-constructing words for speaking. On the discursive origin of lexical knowledge]. In U. DausendschÖn-Gay, E. Gülich and U. Krafft (eds) Linguistische Interaktionsanalysen [Linguistic Interaction Analyses] (pp. 193–224). Tübingen: Niemeyer. Lüdi, G. (2006) De la compétence linguistique au répertoire plurilingue [From linguistic competence to plurilingual repertoires]. Bulletin VALS/ASLA, 84 (no. spécial: la notion de compétence: études critiques), 172–189. Macbeth, D. (1994) Classroom encounters with the unspeakable: ‘Do you see, Danelle?’. Discourse Processes 17, 311–335. Macbeth, D. (2000) Classrooms as installations. In S. Hester and D. Francis (eds) Local Educational Order (pp. 21–71). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Macbeth, D. (2004) The relevance of repair for classroom correction. Language in Society 33, 703–736. Markee, N. (2000) Conversation Analysis. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Markee, N. (2004) Zones of interactional transition in ESL classes. The Modern Language Journal 88, 583–596. Markee, N. (2008) Toward a learning behavior tracking methodology for CA-for-SLA. Applied Linguistics 29, 1–24. McNamara, T. and Roever, C. (2006) Language Testing: The Social Dimension. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Mehan, H. (1979) Learning Lessons: Social Organization in the Classroom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Mondada, L. and Pekarek Doehler, S. (2004) Second language acquisition as situated practice. The Modern Language Journal 88, 501–518. Mori, J. (2002) Task-design, plan and development of talk-in-interaction: An analysis of a small group activity in a Japanese language classroom. Applied Linguistics 23, 323–347. Nunan, D. (1989) Designing Tasks for the Communicative Classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pomerantz, A. (1984) Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of preferred/dispreferred turn shapes. In J. Atkinson and J. Heritage (eds) Structures of Social Actions (pp. 57–101). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pekarek Doehler, S. (2010) Conceptual changes and methodological challenges: On language and learning from a conversation analytic perspective on SLA. In
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P. Seedhouse, S. Walsh and C. Jenks (eds) Conceptualising Learning in Applied Linguistics (pp. 105–127). Baskingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Pekarek Doehler, S. and Wagner, J. (2010) Analyzing change across time: Conceptual and methodological issues. Paper presented at the International Conference on Conversation Analysis, Mannheim, July 4–8, 2010. Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. and Jefferson, G. (1974) A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language 50, 696–735. Sanders, R.E. (1987) Cognitive Foundations of Calculated Speech. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Sanders, R.E. (1995) A retrospective essay on the consequentiality of communication. In S.J. Sigman (ed.) The Consequentiality of Communication (pp. 216–222). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Schegloff, E. (2006) Interaction: The infrastructure for social institutions, the natural ecological niche for language, and the arena in which culture is enacted. In N.J. Enfield and S. Levinson (eds) Roots of Human Sociality (pp. 70–96). Oxford: Berg. Schegloff, E. (2007) Sequence Organization in Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schegloff, E. and Sacks, H. (1973) Opening up closings. Semiotica 8, 289–327. Schegloff, E.A., Jefferson, G. and Sacks, H. (1977) The preference for self-correction in the organization of repair in conversation. Language 53, 361–381. Trosburg, A. (1994) Interlanguage Pragmatics: Requests, Complaints and Apologies. The Hague: Mouton. Young, R. (2000) Interactional competence: Challenges for validity. Joint Symposium on Interdisciplinary Interfaces with Language Testing. Annual Meeting of the American Association for Applied Linguistics and the Language Testing Research Colloquium, March 11, 2000, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Young, R.F. (2003) Learning to talk the talk and walk the walk: Interactional competence in academic spoken English. North Eastern Illinois University Working Papers in Linguistics 2, 26–44. Wagner, J. (2004) The classroom and beyond. The Modern Language Journal 88 (4), 612–616. Wong, J. (2000a) Delayed next turn repair initiation in native–nonnative speaker English conversation. Applied Linguistics 21, 244–267. Wong, J. (2000b) The token ‘yeah’ in nonnative speaker English conversation. Research on Language and Social Interaction 33, 39–67. Wootton, A.J. (1997) Interaction and the Development of Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Chapter 2
Enacting Interactional Competence in Gaming Activities: Coproducing Talk with Virtual Others A. PIIRAINEN-MARSH
Introduction Although games and gaming have long been recognized as key sites for learning (see e.g. Gee, 2003, 2007; Thorne, 2008; Thorne et al., 2009), detailed studies of situated interactions with specific games are scarce. A small number of studies using ethnography and discourse analysis have described how games provide virtual spaces for developing new social networks, communities and relationships (Cassell & Jenkins, 1999; Steinkuehler, 2006; Steinkuehler & Williams, 2006). Recently, several studies have examined how players coordinate between virtual and real spaces and build social play through practices such as response cries (Aarsand & Aronsson, 2009), code-switching (Piirainen-Marsh, 2010) and otherrepetition and animation of game characters’ turns (Piirainen-Marsh & Tainio, 2009a, 2009b). This chapter aims to contribute to research in this area by examining the players’ joint production of talk with the game characters. Practices of coproduction make visible how the participants attend to and analyse talk that unfolds in the mediated setting, enacting – and also testing – their interactional competences (Gardner & Wagner, 2004; Heritage, 1984; Markee, 2008). The data come from a collection of interactions where Finnish adolescents get together informally to play console-operated video games in one of the players’ homes. The language of the games is English, making the play activity a specific kind of bilingual environment in which the speakers voluntarily engage with a second language while participating in informal social activity. Participation in game-playing requires constant monitoring and analysis of continually evolving situations that the game presents and which unfold through multiple communicative modes. The game’s narrative and choices in game-play are presented through English texts (e.g. text bubbles, 19
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menus, subtitles of dialogue) and talk (voiced dialogue by characters). Building on recent research using conversation analytic methodology to investigate learning contexts and activities (see e.g. Firth & Wagner, 2007; Gardner & Wagner, 2004; Hellermann, 2008; Lerner, 1995; Mondada & Pekarek Doehler, 2004; Sahlström, 2009; Seedhouse, 2004), this chapter describes how the players coordinate their participation through coproducing turns and utterances with the virtual characters. Coproduction of talk is approached as one type of component in the interactional competences through which the players can put available resources to use creatively in order to participate in the technologically mediated social activity. From a conversation analytic viewpoint interactional competences are understood as available in the talk, embodied activity and interactional work that participants do to make sense of each other and to accomplish orderly social interaction while attending to relevant features of the surround (Gardner & Wagner, 2004; Markee, 2008; Mehan, 1982). These competences cover a range of skills including the ability to establish and maintain joint attention to a common task and the coordination of action to accomplish such tasks (Goodwin, 2000, 2007; Nishizaka, 2006). Coproduction of talk with others is a key component of everyday interactional competence. It involves the skilled use of structures available in prior talk as well as interpretation of different semiotic resources (e.g. gesture, gaze, body orientation, objects) in order to display understanding of the activity under way (Bolden, 2003; Lerner, 2002). In the context of gameplaying such displays of understanding require detailed monitoring of and adjustment to the continually changing contexts and situations that the game presents. Carefully timed utterances designed to share in the production of talk by game characters enable the players to sustain joint attentional focus and negotiate their alignments with respect to changing game situations, allowing them to build a shared view of the tasks and activities under way.
Practices for the Joint Production of Talk: Turn Completion and Turn Sharing In everyday talk, joint production of talk builds on the possibility of shared understanding between copresent participants. Like copresent speakers who fit their talk together to display that they know ‘what’s on each other’s mind’ (Sacks, 1992: 147), players as recipients of talk in the mediated setting can fit their utterances together with game characters’ turns to show that they recognize or are able to project how the turn is completed. As demonstrated by previous studies (Lerner, 1989, 1991, 1996, 2002, 2004), recipients of talk can accomplish conditional entry into talk in a number of ways including choral coproduction or utterances or pre-emptive or anticipatory completion of a turn in progress. Choral
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coproduction refers to utterances designed to produce a turn component in unison, sharing a turn through ‘voicing the same words in the same way at the same time’ (Lerner, 2002: 226–227). Anticipatory or pre-emptive completions involve taking over and completing a turn in progress. These partially distinct but related practices are a powerful way of displaying understanding of turns in progress as they involve careful monitoring of the syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and sequential aspects of unfolding talk. Co-construction of talk can be used to accomplish a number of different types of conversational action including demonstrating agreement, pre-empting disagreement, coproducing explanations or heckling a storyteller (Lerner, 1996, 2002). The practices are sensitive to the interactional environments in which they are produced and contribute to the courses of action in which they are embedded. Recent studies also demonstrate how speakers use multiple semiotic resources, for instance, visual features of the surround, gesture, posture and gaze direction to coordinate their contributions and to collaboratively accomplish turns or utterances (Bolden, 2003; Lerner, 2002; see also Goodwin, 2000, 2003, 2007). This chapter examines how participants engaged in a technologically mediated gaming activity make use of semiotic resources at their disposal in order to accomplish entry into talk produced by virtual others (the game characters). Most of the cases analyzed in this chapter involve turn sharing, that is, choral production of utterances with virtual, and sometimes with copresent, participants. Players draw on both visual and vocal resources in the surround and recognizably attempt to match the words, voicing and tempo of the game character’s talk to produce utterances in unison with the game character whose talk they attend to. Occasionally they also project how a turn may be completed through anticipatory completion. Unlike everyday talk, interaction with virtual others does not allow for collaborative turn sequences, that is, sequences where the first speaker – in this case the virtual character – accepts, confirms or rejects the proffered completion (Lerner, 1996, 2004). The game dialogue generally takes its course regardless of the players’ activities (although on occasion players are able to silence the dialogue). The pace of the dialogue is relatively slow, allowing space for the players to enter into talk. Further, in addition to voiced dialogue, written subtitles displayed on the screen serve as important resources that the players can make use of in designing their talk while adjusting to evolving situations in the game. The dialogue offers not only clues about the game’s narrative and plot, but also linguistic, pragmatic, textual, vocal and visual resources that players can draw upon in responding to a specific scene. It also provides an inbuilt mechanism for feedback. The player can examine the adequacy of his version of the character’s utterance by monitoring the progress of the dialogue. Crucially, turn sharing and candidate completions of game characters’ turns are produced to be heard by copresent participants allowing them to monitor each other’s
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behaviors and build their own alignments toward the courses of action under way. In what follows I examine instances where players coproduce utterances with virtual characters to explore what kinds of locally available resources the players draw upon in order to accomplish entry into the game’s narrative or dialogue, and how turn-sharing and candidate completions are used; that is, what are the interactional circumstances that occasion co-construction and what kinds of functions it may serve. The analysis suggests that the joint accomplishment of an utterance or turn unit serves as the players’ resource for sustaining joint attention to the game and building specific alignments with actions and events in the game world.
Data The empirical data for this study come from a larger collection of interactions (ca. 15 hours) in which two to four Finnish adolescents (aged 6–14) are engaged in playing console-operated video games.1 The data were recorded with two video cameras, one focused on the players, and the other on the video screen, to enable detailed analysis of the different modalities shaping interaction. The data analyzed for this chapter comprises gaming sessions that took place between two 13-year-old boys at the home of one of the players. The boys are involved in playing Final Fantasy X, a Japanese fantasy role game translated into English.2 The game involves several playable characters (i.e. characters controllable by the player), as well as a number of nonplayable ones. The players navigate the playable characters through different areas and locations in the game world, where they interact with a number of other characters and objects, seeking information, purchasing equipment or gaining other available special features that help them succeed in action and battle scenes. The plot is set in a fantasy world (‘Spira’) and centers around a group of adventurers passing through various adventures in order to defend their world against an evil force, ‘Sin’. The game unfolds in English: the players’ choices are guided by English texts, which appear on the screen in the form of menus, lists of options and lines of narrative and dialogue, which give information about the plot and guide the players’ choices when managing the trajectory of the game. In Final Fantasy X the narrative is also presented by voice-over actors. As the characters speak, lines of dialogue appear on the screen as subtitles, timed to occur simultaneously as the line is spoken. While scenes with extended dialogue do not offer many opportunities for intensive game-play, they have an important role in giving the players clues about the characters and the plot. The players’ first language, and the main language of interaction in the data, is Finnish. Both have studied English as a foreign language for approximately four years. One of the players (P) has learnt English as a
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second language also through an extended stay (one year) in an Englishspeaking country (US). However, the participants cannot be simply categorized as foreign language learners. As recent sociolinguistic research on new media and peer interaction show, gaming activities form one of the key sites where members in societies where English is a foreign or second language come into contact with and appropriate English as a communicative resource (see e.g. Androutsopoulos, 2006; Leppänen, 2007). The participants in this study, like most Finnish adolescents, have regular and considerable contact with English through popular culture and media, which has an influence on their repertoire of resources. Recent studies using both quantitative and qualitative methods (e.g. interviews, ethnographic observation) show that social media and gaming are appreciated by both young people and their parents for the opportunities they present for learning English (e.g. Noppari et al., 2008). The physical setting is a living room, where the boys are seated side by side on a sofa, facing the video screen and their bodies aligned toward the screen. The seating arrangement enables a shared visual and cognitive focus on the game as the central cognitive artifact (Hutchins, 1999, 2006; see also Goodwin, 2000, 2006) which the players orient to in their own actions. The interactions were transcribed using the conventions of conversation analysis paying attention to both the verbal and relevant nonverbal actions of the players.3 The transcript shows both unfolding game dialogue and the players’ interaction with each other. In the excerpts below, players are indicated with their initials in upper case (P = Pete and K = Kapa). For clarity, the game characters’ turns are marked with their initials in lower case (e.g. t = Tidus, w = Wakka, y = Yuna). The representation of nonverbal activity and visual information that is displayed on the screen is necessarily selective. An attempt has been made to transcribe in some detail the players’ embodied activities that occur simultaneously with their own utterances or during unfolding game narrative, when relevant to the courses of action in focus.
Organizing Participation in Social Game Play Like all use of technical equipment, managing a video game involves complex inferential and sequential work through which the user interacts with the technology (Arminen, 2005). The game provides the material and semiotic structure which players orient to in their activities. In order to operate the game and make progress with the game’s trajectory, the players must attend to multiple, temporally unfolding semiotic resources (e.g. animation, visual design, talk, text and sound) to make sense of what is going on (Goodwin, 2000, 2007). The players are continually making inferences about the possibilities for action that are available at any particular point in the structure of the game. Their moment-by-moment orientations to
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unfolding objects of interaction are made public through their verbal and nonverbal actions, through which they ‘recontextualise the sense of ongoing action’ (Arminen, 2005: 201). Players organize their participation through a range of actions which are achieved in a reflexively indexical way as they adjust to the continually changing contexts that a particular game presents (Mondada, forthcoming). When two or more players are playing a video game, at least two different participation frameworks are relevant (Goodwin & Goodwin, 1992a; Raudaskoski, 2003): the one between the player(s) and the game and the one between the copresent participants. Through talk and embodied activity, the participants display their changing alignments with respect to ongoing activities. In these data, turns addressed to the coparticipant (e.g. comments about a particular scene or event) are mostly (although not exclusively) in Finnish. Turns which accomplish shifts in the type of activity and participation framework, recurrently deploy codeswitching. The players also occasionally address their turns (in English or Finnish) directly to the game characters as a way of responding to a specific event or action in the game world. Recent studies of gaming interactions highlight the way that some vocal, embodied and verbal practices make public the players’ cognitive and affective orientation to unfolding events in the game world. Aarsand and Aronsson (2009), for example, show that response cries are used as interactional resources through which players sustain joint attention. In gaming interactions involving young players, other related practices have been found: repetition and animation of game characters’ talk, sound making, humming along the music and code-switching serve to display the players’ heightened involvement with specific events (Aarsand & Aronsson, 2009; Piirainen-Marsh & Tainio, 2009a, 2009b). Excerpt 2.1 illustrates how the player (P) is monitoring the progress of the dialogue while he is simultaneously attending to other matters and collaboratively completes a game character’s turn in progress to display his orientation to the scene. The excerpt occurs approximately three minutes from the beginning of a game session, at a point where the players have been quietly viewing a narrative scene, which unfolds at a slow pace. The display shows four of the main characters traveling in a boat, passing an underwater city (Machina City). The narrative unfolds through a jointly accomplished story-telling activity occasioned by talk about ‘machinas’ (special equipment available for use in battle). The character Lulu initiates a story about a war, telling how the use of ‘machinas’ led to destruction by the evil force Sin. In lines 1–3, two other characters participate in the telling: Wakka adds to the story and Tidus asks a question, which is answered first by Yuna and then Lulu. In line 5, the player (P) enters the collaborative activity by repeating the beginning of Yuna’s prior turn in overlap with Lulu. In line 6, Lulu continues her turn, which is designed to bring the
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story to a close. At this point, P uses the one second pause in the middle of the turn unit as an opportunity to enter into talk (line 7). Excerpt 2.1 (characters: w = Wakka, t = Tidus, y = Yuna, l = Lulu) 1 w but the war did not stop, 2 t ↑wh-↑ what happened then. 3 y Sin came and it destroyed the cities and their machina 4 l [the war en]ded 5 P [<Sin came>] ((touching his face)) ((glances at screen; then gaze down)) 6 l and our re↑wa:rd (1) [↑was Sin.]
7
P→
8
w
[↑was Sin.]
so Sin’s our punishment for lettin’ things get out of hand eh
The timing of P’s entry into talk is closely fitted to the progress of the dialogue: it occurs at an opportunity space and matches the slow pace of talk by game characters. Both of P’s utterances (lines 5 and 7) also closely follow the prosody (high pitch) and voice quality (soft voice) of the game characters. Interestingly, for most of the time P’s gaze is not focused on the screen. He only momentarily glances toward it while simultaneously attending to something else: he touches his nose and puts his hand in his pocket to fi nd
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a tissue. However, the brief glances to the screen allow him to see the written lines of dialogue that appear on the screen as the characters speak. The interplay of visual and vocal resources enables the player to enter into talk and share in the production of an utterance, and hence be involved in the story-telling activity.
The Interplay of Co-available Resources Previous studies of turn-sharing and anticipatory completions have highlighted a variety of turn-constructional resources that make it possible for the recipient of a current talk to complete that talk (Bolden, 2003; Lerner, 1991, 1996, 2004). These include compound turn-constructional units (e.g. formats such as if X-then Y or when X-then Y), quotations, parenthetical inserts, list structures and turn final elements, which recipients often project in order to offer candidate completions. In conversation between copresent participants, recipients use the syntax of the turn in progress, as well as semantic and pragmatic cues to project what it takes to complete an utterance. The gaming activity provides additional resources that enable the players to foresee the turn’s construction and accomplish coproduction. The most important of these are the vocal (voice over) and visual representation (emerging subtitles) of the dialogue. In the following, I examine how players draw on these and other co-available resources, such as knowledge built through prior occasions of game play, in accomplishing choral or anticipatory completions. The availability of the text as visual representation of the dialogue allows the players to recognize parts of the turn constructional unit (TCU) in progress, or a whole TCU and use these to anticipate how the turn is completed. This is highlighted by Excerpt 2.2, where the player brings to completion a turn that is seen on the screen, but not heard in full. At certain points in the game, the players can make choices which silence the dialogue in order to proceed faster to the next scene. The fact that the players make such choices shows that they are familiar with the game and its possibilities; and that they do not treat the information provided by the dialogue as crucial to the activity under way. Skipping parts of the dialogue also seems to indicate the players’ preference for more active gameplay (e.g. battle scenes). Yet the players may orient to the dialogue in progress, as shown in Excerpt 2.2. In Excerpt 2.2 both players are closely attending to the unfolding scene, which shows the main character, Tidus, meeting two other characters in order to buy equipment. One of the characters is O’Aka, a nonplayable character who is a traveling merchant prone to cheating his customers. Tidus stops to talk to the characters telling them he is need of ‘some stuff’ and also comments on the high price of things. The lines of dialogue are displayed on the screen, but not voiced: the player silences them to move forward. In this excerpt the active player (P) controls
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O’Aka’s voiced turns by using his control to cut them short, but draws on the written lines of dialogue displayed on the screen as resources to bring one of the turns to completion himself (line 4). Excerpt 2.2 (character: o = O’Aka) 1 2 3
o K o
monopoly’s a great thing (.) things are sellin’ no matter what the pri(hh[hh)] [oo]ps sorry- =
4 5
P→
= I [↓forgot,] ((chooses got any weapons))
6
K
[(hh hh hh)] (0.5) go’ any weapons,
At the beginning of the excerpt, O’Aka is heard speaking: he responds to Tidus’s complaint on the prices by referring to his monopoly over items which allows him to charge whatever price he chooses (line 1). However, the player (P) uses his control to cut his turn short (line 1). The co-player (K) appreciates the cutoff turn with quiet laughter. In line 3, the player (P) again cuts short O’Aka’s utterance, which is displayed on the screen in full. The player then brings the turn to completion himself (line 4). P’s verbal participation is enabled by the line of text visible on the screen. The texts emerge on the screen in rapid succession. In this case, a menu appears on the screen while O’Aka’s line is still visible, providing further visual
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resources. The menu presents the players with a choice: the player needs to decide whether to ask for weapons, items or to leave the scene. P immediately selects the first option and the co-player (K) acknowledges his choice by reading it aloud (line 5). The interplay of vocal and textual resources enables the players to enter into talk at opportunity spaces that occur mid-turn in the characters’ speech and animate the completion of the turn simultaneously or even before the game character. In the following example, K enters into talk during a pause in the character’s utterance and initiates the next TCU (already available on the screen) just before the character continues. This results in overlap, with K whispering the end of the turn (indicated with * * in the transcript), and withdrawing from talk so that the character’s turn is completed in the clear. Excerpt 2.3 (se = Seymour) 1 P se halus ne kai:kki (.) Cruseiderit eestä po:is. et se pystys tota:. = he wanted a:ll those (.) Crusaders out of the w:ay so he could li:ke, = 2 se = anyone else (0.3) [would be expected] to show [their sorrow] 3 P [et sillä ei ois ketään,] [°vastassa.° ] so he would have no-one °against him° 4 K °hmm (1.5) that is quite true° = 5 se = but you are a summoner 6 K → @↑you [are Spira’s *hope*@ 7 se [you are Spira’s hope
8
P
°oo hiljaa Seymour. ° °be quiet Seymour. °
K orients to the game characters’ talk already at line 4 with his response which seems to comment on the character Seymour’s (se) utterance in line 2. In line 6, K voices the second TCU in the character Seymour’s turn demonstrating his orientation to the unfolding text. Production features of his utterance show that his completion is designed to imitate the
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character’s speech. The utterance is produced in slightly higher pitch than K’s prior talk and it is fitted to the rhythm of the turn in progress. The excerpts described above illustrate how different local resources are brought to play in accomplishing turn-sharing. However, players have at their disposal resources that go beyond the local context. They may, for example, invoke expertise gained through prior experience of playing the same game to accomplish an anticipatory completion of a game character’s turn. Excerpt 2.4 shows how a player viewing a narrative scene uses the syntactic structure of the game character’s unfolding turn and his own prior knowledge about the scene to project a continuation which brings the turn into completion and advances the story the turn is embedded in. In this case, the projected utterance is not yet visible for the player, but emerges on the screen after he has entered into talk. This enables the player to compare his candidate completion to the form that the turn takes in the character’s narrative. Excerpt 2.4 (m = Maechen) 1 m [finally] the travelle:rs were able to cross: in safety. 2 (1) Bilghen was building that towe::r over the::re, ((soft voice)) 3 (0.8) 4 K → when the powerful lightning struck him. ((soft voice)) 5 m when he was struck and kill:ed by >lightning< . ((soft voice)) 6 K melkein $oikein?$ hhh almost $ right $ hhh The player’s candidate completion provides the latter part of a compound turn-constructional unit (a subordinate ‘when’-clause) which advances the story that the character Maechen is telling. K thus assumes the role of co-teller, displaying this footing shift also through his voice: he adjusts the rhythm of his speech to the slow pace of the dialogue and uses a soft voice imitating the teller’s voice quality. While the candidate completion successfully projects the lexical content of the projected unit, its syntactic form is different from the character’s utterance that is heard and also displayed on the screen after K’s turn. K orients to this discrepancy in his actions: in line 6 he evaluates his own prior completion as ‘almost right’ in a laughing voice (line 6). This excerpt evidences that the players orient to the unfolding game dialogue as an opportunity to not only display, but also test their interactional competence. The examples described above highlight the interplay of different resources in accomplishing co-construction through turn-sharing and anticipatory completion. While the subtitles displayed on the screen provide crucial linguistic resources for building utterances fitted to the unfolding narrative or dialogue, the players also closely attend to the
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rhythm of the dialogue as well as the voices of the characters in timing their entry into talk and bringing their utterances off as choral completions. Anticipatory completion of an utterance in progress, on the other hand, involves knowledge that goes beyond the locally available resources, providing opportunities for testing one’s interactional competence.
The Use of Completions: Building Alignment Shifts in attentional focus and participation framework Coproduction of utterances in unison with game characters is one resource through which the players can reorganize the participation framework of the moment by adjusting their own position with respect to the game as the focus of shared activity. At different stages of play one or both of the players sometimes disengage from the game and occupy themselves with other activities. Excerpt 2.5 illustrates how the players’ turns make public their orientations to ongoing events and accomplish a shift from one type of activity to another. The excerpt shows how the player switches from talk addressed to a participant in the physical setting to interaction with the game, deploying collaborative completion as one resource. The player (P) momentarily shifts his attention away from the game in order to briefly engage with his mother (S), who is in another room. He then reestablishes his orientation to the progressivity of the game through shifting his body and gaze toward the screen and producing the final element of the game character’s turn in unison with the character (j) (line 10). Excerpt 2.5. (t = Tidus, j = Sir Jecht) 1 P ÄI:T[I:,] MO:[M,
2 3
t S
[wh]y not today °niih,° ((from a distance)) °yea,°
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4
P
PISTÄ SAU[NA PÄÄLLE] PUT THE SAU[NA ON]
5 6
j P
7
S
[why do today] what you can leave for tomorrow = HÄH? HUH? o↑n jo, it’s on already,
8
P
9
j
10
P→
ai? se on jo oh? it’s on already there he goes again (0.8) [cry:ing.]
[cry:ing.]
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Just prior to this excerpt the players have been viewing a narrative scene involving several characters. Narrative scenes in general do not involve active game-play, and so players frequently engage in game-related talk or other activities. In this excerpt, P shifts his attention away from the game in order to ask his mother to switch the sauna on (lines 1–4). He displays his disengagement from the gaming activity through his body as well as talk, and remains oriented to the competing interaction with his mother until he has heard his mother’s response (line 7). The turn in line 8 accomplishes a receipt of the mother’s answer. At the same time, the player shifts back into engagement with the game through his body: he turns around and shifts his gaze back toward the screen indicating his renewed attention to the ongoing dialogue. Continuing to gaze directly at the screen, he then produces the final element of a turn currently in progress in the dialogue (line 10), bringing it to completion. In doing this action, he draws on multiple co-available semiotic resources: the line of dialogue, which is visible on the screen, and the character’s verbal utterance, which is produced in a slow pace, with a long pause prior to the final element. While attending to the text on the screen, the player does more than simply read aloud the final word. His completion is carefully timed to accomplish entry into talk during the opportunity space provided by the pause, leading to overlap with the game character’s speech. It has the characteristics of an affiliating utterance (Lerner, 2004): it is built to be contiguous with the first part of the TCU in progress; it is designed to sound like the character’s speech (note the stretching of the vowel sound); and it displays an orientation to the progressivity of talk, bringing the turn to completion in unison with the character. The following example shows how the players coordinate their attentional focus while managing a simultaneously occurring activity during a narrative scene. A coproduced completion (lines 6–7) of a game character’s utterance by both players allows them to realign themselves after focusing on a material object and to display joint attention to the unfolding scene. Excerpt 2.6 (character: t = Tidus) ((K holds a key ring with light in his hand; P’s gaze is directed at the key ring)) 1 t = I thought I sens[ed my old man in there] 2 K [kato tulee violettia. ] [look it turns purple ((K switches on light on key ring; both players’ gaze at key ring)) 3
t
somewhere (1)
Enacting Interactional Competence in Gaming Activities
4
5 6 7 8
33
or maybe it was just Sin’s toxin
(2 s) t P→ K→
((K drops key ring in P’s hand)) playing [tricks on my mind ] (1) uhuh [°playing on my mind°] [° ( ) mind ° ]
In this excerpt the competing activity involves handling a small key ring with a light on it. At the start of the excerpt the key ring is held by K, and both players are focused on it. In partial overlap with a game character’s turn, K calls P’s attention to the key ring switching its light on (line 2). Both players then focus on the object instead of the unfolding game scene. After handling the key ring for a while, K passes it over to P and drops it in his hand (line 5). While handling the object, both players momentarily attend to the unfolding dialogue: P’s gaze is directed toward the screen at line 4, enabling him to see the line of dialogue which the character voices in lines 4 and 6. At lines 6–8 both players glance at the screen and attend to the unfolding turn verbally by jointly completing the character’s utterance. Through a coordinated entry into talk in progress as well as alignment of their bodies, the players display a shared focus on the unfolding scene.
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As these excerpts illustrate, coproducing utterances in unison with game characters is one resource through which the players can realign themselves in relation to ongoing action in the game during or after one or both of them have been engaged in a competing activity. The visual and vocal resources available at specific moments in the game’s trajectory provide lexical, syntactic and prosodic resources that players can draw on to accomplish a successful choral completion of a turn in progress. The verbal co-construction of an unfolding line in dialogue, along with gaze and alignment of the body, signals the speaker’s orientation to the game as the central focus of their activities also to the co-participant. Displaying affective stance Previous research (Lerner, 1989, 1996, 2004) shows how joint completion of turns in progress enables recipients of talk to accomplish both affiliative and disaffi liative actions. In these data, coproduction of talk in the form of turn completion has an important function in displaying the player’s stance toward the unfolding game scenes or situations. Completions contribute to courses of action through which the players construct the meaning of the game’s narrative and events for themselves through verbal commentary, assessments and different types of recipient action. Often the units that players draw upon in their utterances are idiomatic constructions or clauses that carry an important function in the dialogue or emerge as meaningful for the players. In Excerpt 2.7 the players are viewing a narrative scene in which a female character (s = Shelinda) comments on news she has heard about Yuna, another female character, intending to marry. The recipient and the main protagonist in the game, Tidus, is not happy about this news. In the excerpt, one of the players (K) uses a turn-final, affect-laden exclamation to bring the turn to completion in unison with Shelinda. Excerpt 2.7 (s = Shelinda) ((Shelinda reports to Tidus about having heard about Yuna getting married to master Seymour. Tidus challenges this.)) 1 s hey (1) it will not do to joke about a thing like that 2 K °(vinkuintiaani) ° (1) °ei se hiilannukaan° = (whinging indian) (1) °it didn’t heal° 3 s = Maester Seymour and Lady Yuna ↑h[ow wonderful ] 4 K [@↑how wonderful@] ((high voice)) ((tips back head; shakes head))
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While seemingly forwarding the turn’s progress, the player’s utterance (line 4) does not seem affiliative; rather, prosodic features and nonverbal activity suggest that it displays a critical stance toward the character’s speech. In order to produce the completion, the player changes his voice and adopts a high pitch, hearably imitating the voice of the female character. At the same time he tips his head back slightly and does several small head shakes. These together create the impact of mimicry (see CouperKuhlen, 1996), which serves to display a critical stance. Mimicking the character thus accomplishes mockery: doing the action in a nonserious, but competent way and at the same time displaying a negative stance toward it (Sacks, 1992). In the following example, the player (K) completes the character Yuna’s utterance by uttering the directive in the character’s turn. Again, production features of the player’s utterance suggest that the completion serves to display affect: the player uses creaky voice and extends the vowel sound (u:p) in a manner that can be heard as exaggerating certain features of the character’s speech. The anticipatory completion occurs within a larger assessment activity in which the players jointly appreciate the character, in particular the fact that he is about to talk in this scene. After an initial comment anticipating what is going to happen in the scene, the players evaluate a central character through a series of assessments (Goodwin & Goodwin, 1992b). The focal character is Kimahri Ronso, a young, coldblooded and reticent character, who rarely speaks. He has taken on the role of protecting the female character Yuna in her role of a ‘summoner’ leading the fight against the evil force Sin. As Kimahri is known to only talk to those he can trust, the fact that he will talk to Tidus in this scene is a remarkable development, which arouses the players’ interest. Excerpt 2.8 (k = Kimahri, y = Yuna) 1 P >no nii nyt se puhuu< >okay now he’s going to talk< 2 K @↓rauwauwauwauwau@ (0.3) (hhhhhh)
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3
$seon niin hyvä$ [(hhhh) $he’s so good$ [Kimari on nii aito = [Kimahri is so real = = hmm (0.3) seon vähän siisti = hmm (0.3) he’s so cool hey you two hu[rry up] . [#hurry? u]:p# gaze: screen she’s awfully cheerful nyt Khimari ↑luottaa. Tiittukseen, °sen takia [se puhuu sille°] Now Kimahri trusts. Tidus,, °that’s why he [talks to him, °] [vähä:n ene: ]män [a little mo: ]re niih yea in dark times she must be (0.5) she must shine bright huh °so you talk,°
4 P 5
K
6 7
y K→
9 t 10 P 11
K→
12
P
13 14 15
k t K→
The excerpt begins with actions through which the players position themselves as viewers of the scene which is about to begin. Drawing on his knowledge about the game world and the plot, P informs the coplayer that Kimahri is soon going to speak, thus prospectively orienting to a meaningful event (line 1). In his response the co-participant, K, displays both knowledge about the character and his affective stance by jokingly imitating Kimahri’s low and gruff voice (line 2). The affect display is enhanced by laughter and an assessment evaluating the game character (lines 2–3). In the next turns the players build a shared perspective on the scene through another assessment sequence which appreciates the character (lines 4–5). The anticipatory completion produced by K of the character Yuna’s turn (line 7) allows K to display his appreciation of the talk currently in progress. As it happens, the turn that K completes is the target of evaluation also in the game dialogue, as is seen in the following turn where Tidus assesses Yuna’s upbeat behavior (line 9). In lines 10–11, the players co-construct an explanation for the observation that Kimahri will speak more than in earlier scenes. K’s preemptive completion in line 11 is designed to advance P’s turn by suggesting a possible turn final description. Although P’s turn takes a different course, he accepts the candidate completion (line 12). In line 13, Kimahri finally begins talking. In the next turn, K responds to the utterance by addressing the character in English: ‘so you talk’ (line 14). With this utterance K accomplishes a footing shift, which allows him to highlight the meaningful aspect of the scene.
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Excerpt 2.9 is somewhat more complex than the preceding ones. Here the player (K) does more than voice the completion of a turn in progress. He shares in the production of talk with the central character in the game, Tidus, by ‘putting words in his mouth’ and thus intervening in the narrative. The unit that the player contributes is a pragmatic one: it is similar to cases where tellers use reported speech in certain conversational activities (e.g. jokes and amusing stories) (Holt & Clift, 2007). In terms of its function it contributes to the players’ commentary through which they position themselves as knowing and critical recipients of the narrative. The players are following a scene which is highly meaningful in the game’s plot. The scene involves the main characters Yuna and Tidus reminiscing about the past. In the game’s narrative, the act of remembering dead relatives allows the characters to make them appear so that they can speak with them. In this scene, Tidus finds out that Jecht, his father, is not dead, and that he is the evil force Sin. This realization causes him to start worrying about how to explain the situation to the others. It is this problem that K addresses in his insertion (line 10) that offers a possible completion for Tidus’s utterance. Excerpt 2.9 (t = Tidus; y = Yuna) 1 t trying not to think about my old man 2 (.) made me th↓ink about him of course. 3 Y see, told you. 4 t he isn’t here becau:se (.) he’s not dead (.) he’s Sin. 5 Y eheh eh(.) that means he’s alive you know, = 6 K = you [know 7 t [what if my old man really is Sin = 8 P no se on: = well he i:s = 9 t = what could I say Yuna (.) 10 heck to everybody [in Spira] 11 K → [>hey< ] (.) Sin is my dad = 12 t = wait [why] should I have to apologize for him anyway (1) 13 K [(hhh)] 14 t I’d rather never see him again Lines 1–4 show how Tidus forms the new understanding of his connection with Sin through his own narrative. Yuna’s comment (line 3) refers to earlier talk as well as the visual development of the scene: Yuna has encouraged Tidus to call his father, but Jecht does not appear. The scene is rich in dramatic irony: both Yuna and the players seem to understand the truth before it reveals itself to Tidus. While the narrative shows Tidus reasoning why his father does not appear (‘he’s not dead’, line 4), Yuna spells
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out the logical conclusion (‘he’s alive you know’; line 5), occasioning an appreciative partial repetition by K (line 6). As Tidus continues to consider the possibility that his father is the evil force Sin (line 7), the other player, P, displays his knowledge of the game’s plot by emphatically confirming the assumption in Finnish (line 8). K’s entry into talk in line 11 similarly displays his detailed understanding of the scene. It addresses Tidus’s selfreflective turn (‘what could I say to Yuna (.) heck to everybody in Spira’, lines 9–10) by formulating the plain truth (‘Sin is my dad’) from Tidus’s own perspective. K’s utterance begins in overlap with the final words of Tidus’s utterance and seems designed as a continuation of it. The use of ‘hey’ as an attention getting device and the first person accomplish a footing shift, making Tidus the author of the utterance and animating what he might say to the others. Inserted into Tidus’s turn it becomes a self-quotation, which can be used by story tellers to portray their own words in real or hypothetical situations (cf. Holt, 2007). In this case the utterance enacts a hypothetical situation where Tidus would announce the truth to Yuna and the others. K’s laughter (line 13) suggests that the candidate completion is delivered in a joking mode. The utterance is occasioned by the dramatic irony built into the scene. Both players display more detailed knowledge of the situation than the game character. The carefully timed footing shift and borrowing of Tidus’s voice seem to portray the character’s dilemma in a ridiculous light and critically comment on his inability to grasp the reality. This builds an ironic stance contributing to a course of action through which the players evaluate the scene and position themselves as knowing, competent participants.
Conclusion This chapter has examined the coproduction of talk as one type of interactional activity through which individuals competently participate in a gaming activity. As research in conversation analysis has shown, the joint production of utterances enables recipients of talk to demonstrate their understanding of unfolding talk and claim ‘ownership’ of this talk, either affiliating or disaffiliating with it. Semiotically rich computer and video games both structure social interaction and offer specific kinds of opportunities and resources for participation. The fantasy role play game at the focus of this chapter includes narrative scenes which are central to the development of the plot and which unfold through story-telling activities and dialogue between game characters. The players attend to the dialogue in a variety of ways in their talk, jointly recontextualizing its sense moment by moment. Turn-sharing, choral production and anticipatory completions emerge as recurrent practices through which the participants engage with talk produced by the game characters. The analysis has attempted to demonstrate how utterances fitted into the unfolding dialogue display the players’ emerging alignments toward the activities in progress.
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Participation in any social activities requires ongoing monitoring and analysis of how the sequential organization of the activity unfolds. In the gaming activities analyzed here, the participants are required to attend to multiple, simultaneously available semiotic fields, to adjust their actions to the often rapidly changing situations and events in the game, and to manage participation frameworks associated with different activities (e.g. managing gaming moves vs. commentary on scenes). The analysis shows that entry into talk with the virtual characters is one resource through which players signal their cognitive and affective alignment (Goodwin, 2007) with evolving scenes. Turn-sharing, along with orientation of the body and direction of gaze are used to accomplish a shift of attentional focus, for instance to reengage with the game after orienting to other activities. Sustaining focus on the game thus emerges as a public activity enabling the players to display their orientations to emerging objects of interaction and make sense of the events under way. The joint production of talk often occurs in environments where players (prospectively) orient to particular scenes as meaningful, and engage in evaluative commentary on characters, the plot or particular events. In these contexts, turn-sharing and candidate completions of game characters’ turns provide special kind of practices for recipient activity. They allow the participant not only to display understanding of a turn-in-progress, but also a detailed, and often critical analysis of the action and its import within a particular scene. Players can, for example, use mimicry to mock a character or intervene in the narrative by putting words in a character’s mouth, as way of accomplishing an ironic or critical stance. Turn-sharing and anticipatory completions are just one of many different types of actions through which players can display their orientations to talk by the virtual characters. Other resources for this are various recipient actions ranging from vocalizations and response cries, repetition and turns addressed to the game characters (see Aarsand & Aronsson, 2009; Piirainen-Marsh & Tainio, 2009a, 2009b). These actions are central in the process through which the players co-construct the meaning of the game’s events for themselves and build shared experience. The goal of this study has been to demonstrate how participants in a technologically mediated L2 setting employ the array of resources available to them in making sense of the local social world created through a collaborative gaming activity. Findings suggest that generic practices of turn-sharing and coproduction of talk are used to manage shifts from one type activity to another, to sustain common focus and to display the participants’ analyses of and stances toward unfolding scenes. The players enact their interactional competences through responding to talk produced by virtual others in timely, meaningful, competent and critical ways. The players’ ability to respond to unfolding game dialogue through carefully timed utterance or turn completion sheds light on the multiple competences implicated in the joint management and enjoyment of the complex task. The findings highlight the participants’ capacity for
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coordinating attentional focus, which is crucial to managing competing participation frameworks, maintaining a common focus and building a shared understanding of the changing situations of the game. Verbal coproduction of a turn unit in progress provides evidence – also to the co-participant – that the speaker is (re)orienting himself to the current situation in the game and monitoring the progress of the dialogue. The details of utterance and turn completions show that players pay close attention to the multiple linguistic, turn-constructional and other interactional resources available through the different semiotic fields of the game and are able to draw on these multiple modalities in anticipating how the virtual characters’ turns or utterances may be completed. The precise timing of completions indicates that the players are able to not only competently follow the real-time development of the dialogue, but also grasp the organization of larger activities, for example stories. Completions provide a means for displaying recognition and understanding of meaningful aspects of the scene so that these can be shared with the co-participant. Through coproducing utterances with virtual characters players can display an analysis of the actions accomplished in the game world, express their appreciation of them and also build their own meanings that go beyond the game’s narrative. Coproduction of game characters’ turns emerges an important practice for building alignments toward ongoing scenes. The possibility of producing a candidate completion for a character’s turn-in-progress in anticipation of it also allows the participants to display knowledge that goes beyond the local resources, providing opportunities for testing their interactional competence. The analysis also sheds light on the specific kinds of resources for participation and learning afforded by gaming activities. Gee (2003, 2004), for example, argues that (good) video games can enhance learning through enabling active and critical engagement with the game. The analytic lens of CA makes visible the detailed ways in which players consciously attend to, notice and appreciate the semiotic domain of the game, including the resources through which the game’s narrative and discursive meanings are constructed. More generally, the study also adds to the growing body of work on specific discursive and interactional practices through which second language users accomplish social action in a variety of settings. Previous studies in the field known as CA for SLA have identified several different types of behaviors which may enhance learning. These include expressions of noncomprehension or understanding, changes of epistemic state and practices of repair. As Markee (2008) points out, these are analyzable as collaborative behaviors that evidence socially distributed cognition (see Firth & Wagner, 2007; Kasper, 2009; Markee, 2008; te Molder & Potter, 2005). The findings of this study suggest that joint production of talk is another resource which allows participants to build their cognitive and
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affective alignment (Goodwin, 2007) with the activity in progress. As such it provides one of the interactional resources through which the players sustain interaction and assemble the social activity of game-playing. As noted by previous research on learning settings (e.g. Kasper, 2009; Nishizaka, 2006; Seedhouse, 2004), the same organizations that enable the building of intersubjectivity and orderly interaction in specific social activities, also enable learning. Finally, the study adds to previous research on joint construction of utterances in CA by offering an initial description of how the generic practices employed in collaborative turn sequences may be adapted in interactions shaped by the social, material, semiotic and temporal structuring of a video game. Transcription conventions . Falling intonation , Level or slightly rising intonation ? Rising intonation Cut-off ↑ Change in pitch height: higher than preceding speech ↓ Change in pitch height: lower than preceding speech >< Faster tempo Slower tempo : Sound stretch never Stressed syllable hey Emphasis theWord is cut off YES Loud voice ° ° Quiet voice $ Laughing voice @@ Animated voice * hope * Whispering (.) Pause, less than 0.3 s. (0.5) Length of pause hh .hh Out-breath / in-breath j(h)oo Laughing production [] Overlap = Latching of turns ((soft voice)) Researcher’s comment Acknowledgements I am very grateful to Joan Kelly Hall and Simona Pekarek Doehler for their detailed and helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
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Notes 1.
2.
3.
I am deeply indebted to the young players and their parents for agreeing to take part in this study. This work would not have been possible without the help of the participants who agreed to have their interactions video recorded and gave their consent for the use of these materials for research purposes. Detailed information on the Final Fantasy series can be found on several (unofficial) websites (see e.g. Final Fantasy online http://www.ffonline.com/, eyesonff http://www.eyesonff.com/ and Wikipedia). See also Burn and Schott (2004) for an analysis of the characters in Final Fantasy. I am grateful to Ari Häkkinen for his invaluable help with the transcription and editing of visual images.
References Aarsand, P. and Aronsson, K. (2009) Response cries and other gaming moves – Building intersubjectivity in gaming. Journal of Pragmatics 41, 1557–1575. Androutsopoulos, J. (ed.) (2006) Sociolinguistics and computer-mediated communication. Theme issue. Journal of Sociolinguistics 10. Arminen, I. (2005) Institutional Interaction: Studies of Talk at Work. Aldershot, Hants: Ashgate. Bolden, G. (2003) Multiple modalities in collaborative turn sequences. Gesture 3, 187–212. Burn, A. and Schott, G. (2004) Heavy hero or digital dummy? Multimodal player– avatar relations in Final Fantasy 7. Visual Communication 3, 213–233. Cassell, J. and Jenkins, H. (eds) (1999) From Barbi to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Couper-Kuhlen, E. (1996) The prosody of repetition: On quoting and mimicry. In E. Couper-Kuhlen and M. Selting (eds) Prosody in Conversation ( pp. 366–405). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Firth, A. and Wagner, J. (2007) Second/foreign language learning as a social accomplishment: Elaborations on a ‘reconceptualised’ SLA. Modern Language Journal 91, 800–819. Gardner, R. and Wagner, J. (2004) Second Language Conversations. London: Continuum Gee, J.P. (2003) What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. New York: Palgrave and MacMillan. Gee, J.P. (2004) Situated Language and Learning: A Critique of Traditional Schooling. London: Routledge. Gee, J.P. (2007) Good Video Games + Good Learning. Collected Essays on Video Games, Learning and Literacy. New York: Peter Lang. Goodwin, C. (2000) Action and embodiment within situated human interaction. Journal of Pragmatics 32, 1489–1522. Goodwin, C. (2003) Embedded context. Research on Language and Social Interaction 36, 323 –350. Goodwin, C. (2006) Human sociality as mutual orientation in a rich interactive environment: Multimodal utterances and pointing in aphasia. In N.J. Enfield and S. Levinson (eds) Roots of Human Sociality. Culture, Cognition and Interaction (pp. 97–125). Oxford: Berg. Goodwin, C. (2007) Participation, stance and affect in the organisation of activities. Discourse & Society 18, 53–73. Goodwin, C. and Goodwin, M. (1992a) Context, activity and participation. In P. Auer and A. di Luzio (eds) The Contextualization of Language ( pp. 77–99). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
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Goodwin, C. and Goodwin, M.H. (1992b) Assessments and the construction of context. In A. Duranti and C. Goodwin (eds) Rethinking Context ( pp. 147–185). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hellermann, J. (2008) Social Actions for Classroom Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Heritage, J. (1984) Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Holt, E. (2007) ‘I’m eyeing your chop up mind’: Reporting and enacting. In E. Holt and R. Clift (eds) Reporting Talk ( pp. 47–80). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Holt, E. and Clift, R. (eds) (2007) Reporting Talk. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hutchins, E. (1999) Cognitive artefacts. In R. Wilson and F. Keil (eds) The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences ( pp. 126–127). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hutchins, E. (2006) The distributed cognition perspective on human interaction. In N.J. Enfield and S. Levinson (eds) Roots of Human Sociality. Culture, Cognition and Interaction (pp. 375–398). Oxford: Berg. Kasper, G. (2009) Locating cognition in second language interaction and learning: Inside the skull or in public view? IRAL 47, 11–36. Leppänen, S. (2007) Youth language in media contexts: Some insights into the functions of English in Finland. World Englishes 26, 149–169. Lerner, G. (1989) Assisted storytelling: Deploying shared knowledge as a practical matter. Qualitative Sociology 15, 247–271. Lerner, G. (1991) On the syntax of sentences in progress. Language in Society 20, 441–458. Lerner, G.H. (1995) Turn design and the organization of participation in instructional activities. Discourse Processes 19, 111–131. Lerner, G. (1996) On the ‘semi-permeable’ character of grammatical units in conversation: Conditional entry into the turn space of another speaker. In E. Ochs, E. Schegloff and S. Thompson (eds) Interaction and Grammar ( pp. 238–276). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lerner, G. (2002) Turn-sharing: The choral co-production of talk-in-interaction. In C. Ford, B. Fox and S. Thompson (eds) The Language of Turn and Sequence ( pp. 225–256). Oxford: Oxford University Press . Lerner, G. (2004) Collaborative turn sequences. In G.H. Lerner (ed.) Conversation Analysis. Studies from the First Generation ( pp. 225–256). Amsterdam: John Benjamins . Markee, N. (2008) Toward a learning behavior tracking methodology for CA-for-SLA. Applied Linguistics 29, 404–427. Mehan, H. (1982) The structure of classroom events and their consequences for students’ performance. In P. Gilmore and A. Glatthorne (eds) Ethnography and Education: Children In and Out of School ( pp. 59–87). Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics. Mondada, L. (forthcoming) Coordinating mobile action in real time: The timed organisation of directives in video games. In P. Haddington, L. Mondada and M. Nevile (eds) Interaction and Mobility. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Mondada, L. and Pekarek Doehler, S. (2004) Second language acquisition as situated practice: Task accomplishment in the French second language classroom. Modern Language Journal 88, 501–518. Nishizaka, A. (2006) What to learn: The embodied structure of the environment. Research on Language and Social Interaction 39, 119–154. Noppari, E., Uusitalo, N., Kupiainen, R. and Luostarinen, H. (2008) ‘Mä oon nyt online!’ Lasten mediaympäristö muutoksessa. [‘I’m online now!’ Children’s changing media environment]. University of Tampere, Department of Journalism, Publication series A 104.
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Piirainen-Marsh, A. (2010) Bilingual practices and the social organisation of video gaming activities. Journal of Pragmatics 42 (11), 3012–3030. Piirainen-Marsh, A. and Tainio, L. (2009a) Prosodic repetition as a resource for participation in the activity of playing a video game. Modern Language Journal 93, 153–169. Piirainen-Marsh, A. and Tainio, L. (2009b) Collaborative game-play as a site for participation and situated learning of second language. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 53, 167–183. Raudaskoski, P. (2003) TV-reception as a resource for developing TV programmes and new media. Manuscript. [Danish version published in In Asmuβ and J. Steensig (eds) Samtalen på arbejde. Copenhagen: Samfundsliteteratur.] Sacks, H. (1992) Lectures on Conversation. Oxford: Blackwell. Sahlström, F. (ed.) (2009) Conversation analysis as a way of studying learning. Special Issue of the Scandinavian Journal for Educational Research 53. Seedhouse, P. (2004) The Interactional Architecture of the Language Classroom. A Conversation Analysis Perspective. Oxford: Blackwell. Steinkuehler, C. (2006) Massively multiplayer online videogaming as participation in a discourse. Mind, Culture, & Activity 13, 38–52. Steinkuehler, C. and Williams, D. (2006) Where everybody knows your (screen) name: Online games as ‘third places’. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 1, article 1. On WWW at http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol11/issue4/steinkuehler. html. Accessed 1.6.10. Te Molder, H. and Potter, J. (eds) (2005) Conversation and Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thorne, S. (2008) Mediating technologies and second language learning. In D. Leu, J. Coiro, C. Lankshear and M. Knobel (eds) Handbook of Research on New Literacies (pp. 417–449). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Thorne, S.L., Black, R.W. and Sykes, J. (2009) Second language use, socialization, and learning in internet interest communities and online games. Modern Language Journal 93, 802–821.
Chapter 3
Learning as Social Action F. SAHLSTRÖM
Introduction At the very least, a basic and minimalist understanding of the possible relevance of conversation analysis (CA) research for learning studies is that if learning is understood as situated and constituted in interaction, research on interaction will provide for better understanding of learning. As CA is all about interaction, the understandings of interaction provided for by CA will also, in this basic view, be of relevance for the field of learning studies. Despite differing views on many issues, there is a general agreement on the fact that learning is inherently longitudinal; that it involves changes in the practices of individuals occurring over time. Hence, CA researchers arguing for the relevance of their findings for learning research are, in a growing fashion, examining new and existing data sets for evidence of longitudinal change. In this body of research (which will be presented in short below), CA researchers have presented compelling evidence for how the ways individuals take part in interaction change over time. However, conceptualizations of learning and change are most commonly brought in from the learning sciences, rather than being developed within CA itself. In this chapter, I will argue, relying on recorded data, that it is both feasible and of value to attempt to formulate ‘learning’ as something conceptualized within CA. This in addition to the insights provided for by the line of work, which relies on CA for the empirical demonstration of learning having occurred, but where learning is understood as changes in doing, rather than as a doing in itself. To do this, I will briefly present some core aspects of CA, and briefly present how learning has been studied using CA. This will be followed by an analysis of videorecordings of face-to-face interaction, where I argue that the participants are carrying out learning. To the readers of this book, CA is most likely a quite well-known enterprise of the social sciences (and if not, the introduction to this volume 45
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provides some background). Although there are differences in approaches, one can say that at the core of any CA work is the study of embodiments of human sociality: action, activity and conduct in interaction, through use of the language and the body, as Schegloff (1996) argues in an elaborately crafted introduction to CA as a social science. The sociology of action, or practice, Schegloff argues, has been lacking serious empirical theorizing of the social use of language and the body. He writes: Several strands of contemporary theorizing (most notably those associated with the names of Bourdieu and Habermas) have sought to put language, communication, and ‘practice’ in a position of comparable theoretical ‘gravity’; still, none has yet provided a clear depiction and exemplar of how the prima facie, observable embodiment of sociality – action, activity, and conduct in interaction – as effectuated through the deployment of language and the body can be put at the center of theorizing about the social and can be grounded and elaborated in detailed, empirical analysis of that conduct. (Schegloff, 1996: 162) This focus, Schegloff (1996) writes, has been surprisingly non-frequent in current sociological understandings of ‘practice’, but is the core business of CA. Charles Goodwin, another of the leading researchers within the field (cf. Goodwin, 2000, 2006) argues that the ‘primordial site’ for the study of human sociality can be found in situations in which multiple participants are carrying out courses of action together, thus setting a research agenda with an explicit focus on embodied social action in itself (rather than as an expression of the individual mind, or as an expression of external determining structures). Thus, while CA certainly has contributed to disciplines such as sociolinguistics and interactional linguistics (Ochs et al., 1996), not least with respect to the seminal insights in turn-construction and turn-allocation, it is here primarily viewed as a research paradigm for understanding the social organization of human interaction. In its pursuit of the organization of human sociality, CA takes up a radical participant’s perspective. What is to be studied is what participants in social interaction are oriented to, and the description of these phenomena is to be controlled by empirical findings, situated in naturally occurring settings (Schegloff, 1996). Through the way participants display to each other their orientation to the interaction, they provide both to each other and to analysts resources for checking and elaborating on how the unfolding actions are to be understood. This provides what Sacks et al. (1974) call a ‘proof procedure’ to participants and analysts alike. The materiality within which the resources for understanding reside are presented in transcripts, as text, drawings or other graphics. The use of detailed
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representations, such as in this volume, enables readers to understand and judge the interpretations of the analyst. As a consequence of its theoretical points of departure and its practices, CA is seemingly ‘surface oriented’, aiming at studying what is out there in the material world, as it is perceived and oriented to by participants (see Schegloff, 1996: 165 for a more extended discussion of what he calls ‘ordinary actions in the first instance’). It is not about unveiling, uncovering or showing what ‘really’ goes on, beneath presumably innocent exchanges of turns at talk. Conversation analysts do not claim to know better than the participants they study what they ‘actually’ do, think, know, but aim at describing their embodied doing, thinking and knowing, but concerns itself with theorizing about human action in a way that allows for the complexities of social situations to be represented and understood in the way they are by the participants studied. In approximately the same time period within which CA has developed, the understandings of ‘learning’ have been undergoing quite substantial development, not least within what is often referred to as a socio-cultural perspective. Embracing different ways of approaching learning, a common point of departure is the emphasis on the human being as a social being, acting within different contexts (Lave & Wenger, 1991). This acting is captured in the concept of participation, leading to what Sfard (Sfard, 1998; Sfard & Lavie, 2005) has argued as a ‘participationist’ view of learning. She writes ‘to put it differently, learning a subject is now conceived of as a process of becoming a member of a certain community. This entails, above all, the ability to communicate in the language of this community and act according to its particular norms’ (Sfard, 1998: 6). In the introductory chapter to the much referred to Understanding Practice (Chaiklin & Lave, 1993), Lave writes that: there is no such thing as ‘learning’ sui generis, but only changing participation in the culturally designed settings of everyday life. Or, to put it the other way around, participation in everyday life may be thought of as a process of changing understanding in practice, that is, as learning. (Lave, 1993: 5–6) Formulations such as these put social interaction at the centre, in ways that in their extended implications quite radically challenge many established notions of learning. The ways CA research on social interaction can contribute empirically to the learning sciences have been, and currently are being, explored in a rapidly growing body of research (although generally speaking, it is fair to say that learning and development is something that has not historically been at centre stage of CA research). In sum, one can argue that in this work, there are three different approaches, all of them with different advantages. The first of these is the
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most straightforward: CA researchers study classroom interaction (or interaction in other educational settings), to find out the organization of interaction in these settings. The findings from these studies, most often focused on turn-taking and turn-allocation, can then be used as a basis for studying learning. However, the studies themselves do not make any claims on learning. A seminal example is Hugh Mehan’s (1979) study ‘Learning lessons.’ Other examples are Cekaite (2006), Kääntä (2010), Macbeth (2004), Sahlström (1999, 2002) and Slotte-Lüttge (2005). A second approach has been to rely on CA for studying longitudinal change in a certain CA action – often repair – in one participant’s interaction over time (e.g. Hellermann, 2008; Martin, 2004; Nishizaka, 2006; Wootton, 1997). The focus in these studies is on changes over time in a participant’s use of a structural-sequential phenomenon, thus exploring the possibilities of relying on core sequential findings within CA for studying development and change. The conceptual view of what is viewed as learning, such as changing participation, changing understanding, increased competence, is based on theories of learning rather than on theories of interaction. Learning is not argued as a literal action in itself, as something done there-and-then demonstrably oriented to as such, for the participants, but as an outcome of empirically demonstrated changes in action. This line of reasoning has been further developed, within the almost explosive growth of CA studies of learning a second language, reflected also in this volume. This ‘CA for learning’ resembles the way that CA has been applied for studying other social concepts, which have their primary origins outside CA itself. In an article from 1991, Emanuel Schegloff discusses this issue in relation to social structures, arguing that CA as such does not rule out the existence of structures such as class and gender, but that the task of CA itself is not, in Schegloff’s view, to provide evidence at a micro-level for what is presumed to exist at a macro-level. According to his view, it is possible that CA methods and findings can contribute to the understandings of class and gender, but this pursuit should be understood as something different than working within CA on class and gender (as two examples). Finally, a third approach, focused in this chapter, is to study longitudinal change as content-integrated literal doing, constituted by certain oriented-to aspects of social interaction. A prior example of work like this is Melander (2009) and Lee (2010). In line with their arguments, the attempt here is to consider the possibility that among the many things people do, learning can be considered one, in addition to treating learning as an outcome of changes in the ways people do things, other things, and while doing so, learn. Lee writes, in an article that came to my knowledge only during the very last revision of this chapter, ‘we want to recover the evidence of learning in and as the parties’ undertaking of the interaction’ (Lee, 2010: 410) rather than having to rely on pre-formulations of change. Doing so does not in any way
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claim that that the detailed and elaborated demonstrations of learning afforded by the other approaches are less valid or less fruitful – what I want to claim is that the ways are different, and make different things visible. As a final hedge, I would like to point out that no perspective or understanding ever will be able to fully describe learning, and that the forthcoming claims that participants are doing learning are not intended to be read as claiming that that is all the learning anyone ever can do.
Counting in English: The Empirical Material The empirical material used consists of longitudinal video recordings, collected over one week, of the everyday interaction of Sara, a seven-yearold multilingual child.1 Sara was born in Finland to African parents. She went to a Swedish-language kindergarten in a Swedish-dominated part of Finland (Swedish Ostrobothnia). Before she started preprimary education (a one-year program prior to beginning primary school at the age of seven) the family moved to the Finnish-dominated Helsinki metropolitan area, where the video recordings were made. She mainly uses Swedish with her parents, who speak Swahili, but also some Swedish and English, with her. At the time of data collection, Sara was attending a Swedish-language preprimary class, where teachers always use Swedish. As a consequence of the Swedish–Finnish bilingual background of almost all children, the children also use Finnish in the preprimary class. This is done in two ways, (1) some of the children choose Finnish as their common language in many peer interactions; (2) almost all of the children use (certain) Finnish words in their Swedish. Thus, competence in Finnish can be described as everyday competence among the children. There is explicit emphasis on the support of Swedish in the preprimary class, Swedish being regarded as the weaker language for many children. Sara was recorded for five whole school days, at post-school programs and for large parts of the day at home from a Thursday to a Tuesday in the spring of 2008. The recordings at the preschool and during post-school programs were administered by researchers and include all interactions involving Sara at school: classrooms, breaks outside, school lunches as well as all activities during post-school programs. The camera was focused on Sara, who was wearing a wireless microphone, and on her peers and teachers. On the same days, and over the weekend, the parents administered recordings in the family at home (cf. Hummelstedt et al., 2008). In the data, consisting of 32 hours of video recordings from preschool and post-school programs and about 10 hours from the home, we have traced trajectories of situations where the children are oriented to the same topical content (cf. below; Melander & Sahlström, 2008, 2009). Some of these topics are language related, such as discussions about language competence or teaching English; some are, for example, about a TV-program or a game
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(cf. Slotte-Lüttge et al., accepted). Here, all the situations are concerned with learning how to count from one to 10 in English. All of the analysed situations below are from child to child interactions in the preschool setting. Results The first situation in which an orientation to learning to count from one to 10 in English is found in the preschool class, when the children are getting ready to go outside for a break. Right before the beginning of Excerpt 3.1, one of the children, Hanna, has taken out a piece of paper from her pocket. In line 1, she announces the presence of the note. Lines 3–11 are concerned with the English equivalents of the numbers, and lines 12–24 are concerned with claiming knowledge to Hanna’s parents. In this and the subsequent excerpts, there are many aspects of interaction, which for reasons of space are not discussed. The intent is to cover aspects of the situation relevant for the analysis of learning. Excerpt 3.1 Re-introducing the English note 1 Hanna: ja ha:r den hä engelskalappen. I have here the English note 2 (1.2) 3 Hanna: ja kommer int ihÅ:g va va tie å åtta. I don’t remember what was ten and eight 4 Sara: tie å åtta. ten and eight 5 (1.0) ((they unfold the note)) 6 Sara: tie å åtta e eight och (.) de e ten. ten and eight is eight and (.) that is ten 7 Hanna: va e de dä då. (.) nie. what is that then (.) nine. 8 Sara: va hh¿ what¿ 9 Hanna: va e ni:e då, what is ni:ne then, 10 Sara: ni:ne nine 11 (2.3) ((Hanna folds the note and they begin to walk toward the door)) 12 Sara: men vi- ha du visa ti dina föräldrar. but sh- have you shown to your parents 13 Hanna: nä:, no 14 Sara: bra:, good:, 15 (0.8)
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Sara:
17 18 19
Hanna:
20
Sara:
21
Hanna:
22
Sara:
23
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hej. hej. du kan säga (.) hej. ja vet ja ha en hey hey you can say (.) hey. I know I have one bra idé. du kan säga att du: till dina föräladrar att good idea you can say that you: to your parents that ti:tta du ha skrivi di här (.) första f- engelska. loo:k you have written these (.) first f- English. jo ja lurar dom. yes I fool them. jo du ska- ha du lura dom igår. yes you shall did you fool them yesterday. nä:. ja måst ida ta hem den. no:. I must today take it home. jo men (.) du måst säga att du ha skrivit dig yes but (.) you must say that you have written you själv de it yourself
In line 1, Hanna introduces the note written in English. She does so in a way which shows that the note is known to both participants prior to the situation, by using the definite article, and by making so little of the announcement. In the 1.2-second silence, Hanna unfolds the note, before proceeding to ask about the word. In lines 3–10, Hanna asks Sara about eight, nine and 10, while intently looking at the note with the written words. A core resource for establishing longitudinal relationships is the talkedabout content. In an article from 2008, Helen Melander and I show how children in a classroom use the size of the blue whale as a topical resource for establishing the talk as related to prior interaction (Melander & Sahlström, 2008). The analysis does not restrict interactional change to changes in sequential patterns, but includes content changes as an integrated aspect of interaction. This development is building on work in CA by Charles Goodwin (e.g. 2000), who strongly has argued for an integrated, embodied understanding of social interaction. In Hanna’s very first line, the verbal content, the English note and the actual artefact, function as resources for establishing the talk about to come forth as something longitudinally tied to a prior, shared situation. The formulation ja kommer int ihå:g, ‘I don’t remember,’ in line 3 positions Hanna epistemically as someone who accountably should remember the letters and numbers, thus adding to the topicalization of the understanding of the English words for the number letters. Following Kärkkäinen here, epistemic stance is defined as: marking the degree of commitment to what one is saying, or marking attitudes toward knowledge. This definition also includes evidential distinctions, or how knowledge was obtained and what kind of evidence the speaker provides for it. (Kärkkäinen, 2006: 705)
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Epistemic positioning, that is the way participants in interaction claim and demonstrate their ways of knowing and understanding, is found frequently in many turns at talk, in different situations. They seem to be particularly frequent in teaching situations, as indicated by preliminary findings in classroom interaction (Melander & Sahlström, 2010). In the initial 10 turns, one can also observe how the participants, relying on epistemic stance (line 3), the relationship between talk and the orientedto artefact (lines 3, 6, 7), and explicit questions (lines 7, 9) establish and sustain knowledge asymmetries with respect to the topicalized understanding of number words in English. Hanna positions herself as knowing less than Sara, and Sara aligns with this proposal, acting as someone more knowledgeable than Hanna, throughout lines 4–10. Explicit longitudinal orientation (as in ‘I don’t remember’ in line 3 in Excerpt 3.1), topicalized understanding (also in line 3, Excerpt 3.1) and orientation to knowledge asymmetries (as in lines 3–7 in Excerpt 3.1) have been shown to be frequent in other situations of explicit peer teaching and learning. As an example, in an analysis of pilot training, Helen Melander (2009) demonstrates how the students and the teachers rely on these means for constituting the situations in question as learning situations, by situating their talk as part of a trajectory, by talking about their understanding of situations such as ‘unusual situations’, and by orienting to their roles as students and teachers. In Martin and Sahlström (2010), a physiotherapist and her patient act in a similar way, with explicit orientation to the longitudinality of their actions, with understanding being topicalized and with a distinct orientation to expertise. In this chapter, these three aspects of action will be relied upon for analysing the subsequent situations in which Sara and Hanna continue, and return to, their talk on number words in English. In the very next turns, lines 12–23, the explicitly longitudinal aspects and the epistemic accountability of the number words in English are returned to. In line 12, Sara says men vi- ha du visa ti dina föräldrar, ‘but shhave you shown to your parents’. This is responded to with a ‘no’, followed by a ‘good’. Then Sara says she has an idea: Hanna should tell her parents that it is she herself who has written the words in English, and that she should show the note to them at home. Here, the number words in English are not only set in relation to prior situations (as in line 1), but also in relation to projected and expected future use. Thus, the longitudinal aspects of the topical content are oriented to and extend both backwards, in relation to prior use, but also forward, in relation to expected future use. In both cases, this longitudinal relationship is beyond the relationships CA most often has concerned itself with, based on and carried out in relation to the adjacency pair. Further, the participants in lines 12–24 also orient explicitly to epistemic stance, in that the gist of Sara’s proposal is that Hanna should claim mastery of something, writing words in English, which Hanna has not really
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mastered. She asks Hanna to cheat. This proposal is related to the actual note, because Sara asks Hanna to show the writing and claim that it is her own. Sara is asking Hanna to claim knowledge as well as demonstrate that knowledge with the artefact of the note. In the next situation, later the same day, Sara and Hanna are outside in the school yard. In transcript 2, Sara and Hanna are discussing about whether to continue with de dä engelska, ‘that English’. The discussion is initiated by Hanna, who asks Sara in line 1 whether they can continue with the English. She receives no initial response, but eventually she succeeds in soliciting a response from Sara. The excerpt ends at line 28, where they begin looking for a pencil. Excerpt 3.2 Negotiating about learning 1 Hanna: kan vi nu titta (nu) på de dä engelska. can we now look now at that English? 2 (2.0) 3 Hanna: plea:se. 4 (1.5) 5 Hanna: kan vi. (.) pleah(se). can we (.) pleah(se) 6 Sara: va blir de om ja säger nä. what will it be if I say no. 7 Hanna: >ingenting.< >nothing.< 8 Sara: VA BLIR DE OM JA SÄGER NÄ. what will it be if I say no. 9 Hanna: ingenting. nothing. 10 Sara: ja sku villa lära dig ALLA snabbt så snabbt I would like to teach you all fast so fast 11 engelska. English. 12 (1.0) 13 Sara: (vet du) fast du int låter mig å gö de. (you know) although you don’t let me do so. 14 Hanna: du fÅr (.) lära mig engelskan. you can (.) teach me English. 15 Sara: ända tills du går hem¿ all the time until you go home¿ 16 (0.8) 17 Sara: lova? promise? 18 (1.0)
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Hanna:
20 21 22
Sara:
23
Hanna:
24 25 26
Hanna:
27
Sara:
28
okej. men (.) bäst mesta in- mest- men om vi OK but (.) best- most in most- but if we går allti in då måst- då måst du- då måst du go always in then must then must you then must you skriva ner på ett papper engelska. write down on a paper English. jo me– yes butmen ja- ja kommer int mera ihåg dom där but I- I don’t any more rememember those enkla sakerna. = så kom. Emelin kom ut. simple things so come Emelin came out (0.8) kan du li:te lära mig någå nu. can you a little teach me something now. ja men om du hämtar (din) krita. (.) eller (.) yes but if you get (your) crayon(.) or om du hämtar din blyertspenna eller nånting. if you get your pencil or something.
In the same way as in Excerpt 3.1, Hanna’s way of introducing the subject situates it as previously known, by the way she phrases it as ‘look at that English’. Thus, the explicit longitudinal orientation argued for above also seems to be present here. The way Hanna pursues her request using please in lines 3 and 5 further situates their talk as being about the English. Following the talk about possible consequences of saying no (lines 6–9), Sara says ja sku villa lära dig ALLA så snabbt så snabbt engelska, ‘I would like to teach all of you so fast so fast English.’ In the Swedish Here, as in Excerpt 3.1, Sara explicitly positions herself as someone both willing and able to teach others, all the others, English. Thus, she positions herself epistemically, and claims a more extensive knowledge of English than the rest of the class. This claim is recognized by Hanna, who first in line 14 and later in line 26 asks Sara to ‘teach her’ English. Further, Hanna in lines 23–24 says she does no longer remember even the simple things, thus once again topicalizing her epistemic stance, and further establishing the English note as something situated in a longitudinal trajectory, as something once remembered. On the basis of this second excerpt, one can argue that the features introduced in relation to Excerpt 3.1 also are present here. Longitudinal orientation, topicalized epistemic stance and recognized and oriented-to knowledge asymmetries are also featured here. The two children not only say that they are going to do learning, but they competently negotiate whether it will take place (lines 1–19), and discuss the requirements for it to happen, such as writing (lines 19–21), and ‘a pencil or something’ (line 27). The extensive argumentation between the participants about whether
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or not to carry out the learning/teaching activity suffices as a base for arguing that in this situation, learning is not only something that might or might not happen to Sara and Hanna as a consequence of their really doing something else, but rather the activity itself, recognizable to Hanna and Sara in such a way that they actually can argue about how it should be done. Immediately following the discussion, Sara and Hanna continue talking about the number words, and about other words in English. Excerpts 3.3 and 3.4 are two examples of how the teaching activities initiated in Excerpt 3.2 take place. As the general subject of English already is in place, there is not the same initial longitudinal orientation as in Excerpts 3.1 and 3.2. In the first situation, Hanna asks Sara what is said in the note, va står här one? (What is written here one?). Sara responds to this by saying one, with a slightly rising intonation, invoking a listing of numbers one to 10. In a slightly delayed fashion, Hanna repeats in overlap the numbers two to 10. Excerpt 3.3 One, two, three 39 Hanna: jå bakom. (.) va står här. (.) one? yes behind. (.) what is written here. (.) one? 40 Sara: >one¿ 41 Sara: t[wo, 42 Hanna: [two, 43 Sara: t[hree, 44 Hanna: [three, 45 Sara: f[our, 46 Hanna: [four, 47 Sara: f[ive, 48 Hanna: [five, 49 Sara: s[ix, 50 Hanna: [six, 51 Sara: s[even, 52 Hanna: [seven, 53 Sara: e[ight, 54 Hanna: [eight, 55 Sara: n[ine, 56 Hanna: [nine, 57 Sara: t[en, 58 Hanna: [(ten,) 59 Sara: ↑hej he- e (0.5) ↑hi ↓hej ↑hey he- is (0.5) ↑hi ↓hey 60 (1.0)
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Here, the epistemic topicalization and oriented-to-knowledge asymmetries argued for as constitutive of learning situations also can be found. In line 39, Hanna asks Sara what it says in the note. She positions herself as someone not knowing what it says. The try-marked one in line 39 asks for confirmation, which she also gets. Sara positions herself as someone knowing more. In the subsequent listing, she takes the lead and Hanna follows, in a fashion which can be found in classrooms, where repeat with a slightly delayed onset is a common way of teaching lists of different kinds. Thus, something that at first sight might seem as a simple reading of one to 10 in English also seems to contain an orientation to learning how to do this. In relation to the argument suggested in this chapter, learning is done as such. Some 10 minutes later, Hanna again asks Sara to read the words. In Excerpt 3.4, both children read first in English and then in Swedish from one to 10. Excerpt 3.4 Reading through the list again 91 Hanna: kan du läsa en gång till. can you read one time more. 92 Sara: >one two th[ree four five 93 Hanna: > [three four five 94 Sara: six seven (.) eight nine ten< 95 Hanna: six seven enine ten< 96 Sara: >ett två [tre fura fem sex sju åtta nie ti:e< one two [three four five six seven eight nine ten< 97 Hanna: [>tre fyra fem sex sju åtta nie tie< [three four five six seven eight nine ten< 98 Hanna: ja för den här hit. I bring this one over here. As in Excerpts 3.1 and 3.2, Hanna’s fi rst turn explicitly situates the requested reading in relation to prior talk about English, in this case using the phrase ‘one more time’. She asks Sara to read, acknowledging her own epistemic claims on knowing, and orienting to the asymmetry between herself and Sara. As in Excerpt 3.3, there is a slight delay in the onset of Hanna’s use of the English terms, in lines 93–95. Hanna also finds eight problematic, shown in her cut-off in line 95. When Sara switches to Swedish, however, the children read in unison from tre, ‘three’, in lines 96–97. One can argue, then, that Excerpt 3.4 is evidence of the differences between counting in Swedish and counting in English. When counting in English, Hanna finds the counting more difficult, whereas the same activity in Swedish runs smoothly, in perfect overlap. The following day, Sara and Hanna are playing in the woods. In the middle of a Harry Potter-inspired play, Sara asks Hanna whether she has a pencil and the English note. This is followed by another extensive
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discussion about the words one to 10 in English, where the already discussed themes reappear. The excerpt is included in its entirety, despite its length. It begins with a presequence in lines 1–4, where Sara and Hanna establish the possibilities for counting in English. This is followed by a request directive from Sara that Hanna should count the numbers, in lines 6, 8 and 10. This is followed by a negotiation of how to carry out the reading of the numbers, interspersed with several tries at reading, beginning in line 22, ending in a shared reading of the numbers in lines 60–62. As above, the discussion of the excerpt will deal with longitudinality, epistemic topicalization and oriented-to knowledge asymmetries. Excerpt 3.5 Counting in the woods 1 Sara: har du bly:ertspenna me. did you bring a pencil 2 Hanna: °nä° °no° 3 Sara: har du din engelskapapper. have you got your English note 4 Hanna: jå. yes. 5 (2.4) 6 Sara: du kan räkna nu. you can count now 7 (0.5) 8 Sara: du kan nu räkn- försöka nu räkna utan de. you can now coun- try to now count without it 9 (0.2) 10 Sara: du kan läsa. you can read 11 Hanna: nej du får lä:sa. fö ja säger efter okej no you can read because I say after okay 12 (.) sådär som (0.7) som (.) Marina sa. (0.2) (.) the way as (0.7) as (.) Marina said. (0.2) 13 ( [ ) 14 Sara: [alltså de där ga- när ga:tan gick sönder. [that one where st- when the street broke 15 Hanna: ((brings out the note)) ja så kan du nu gör de yes then can you now do this 16 här att vi räknar också samma sak. here that we count also the same 17 Sara: °(okah)° (okey) 18 (2.8) 19 Sara: ja måst först gör den här ti att dofta brinn.
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20 21
Hanna:
22 23 24 25 26
Sara: Hanna: Sara: Hanna: Sara:
28 29 30 31
Hanna: Sara: Sara:
32 33 34
Hanna:
35
Sara:
36
Hanna:
37
Sara:
38 39 40 41 42 43 44
Hanna: Hanna: Hanna: Hanna:
45
Sara:
46 47
Hanna: Sara:
48 49
Hanna: Hanna:
I must first make this to smell of burn ((pounds with a rock)) ja för de där va va de blir (.) >nu säg.< yes because that what what it is now say one. one. two. two. vänta du måst säga efter mej ja säger wait you must say after me I say se- (.) one. the- (.) one. t[wo ] [tw-] three feiku du ska va tyst. (.) >one. two. three. no but you should be quiet four. five. six. seven. eight. nine. ten¿ okej. din tur.< okay. your turn. nununu säger vi tisammans. nownownow say we together nä du får försöka. no you can try nä, (0.2) ja kan b [ara lite.] no I only know a [little ] [försö:ka.] [try ] one. two. (0.5) three. (0.6) four. (0.7) five. längre kan ja int. five I can’t any further o[kä:j. o[kay [°s-° seven. si- okej okej du kan [ba de. ] si- okay okay you know [only that.] [(iti) ] ja kan [ba- ] I know [on- ]
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Sara:
51 52 54 55
Sara: Hanna:
56
Sara:
57 58
Sara:
59 60 61 62 63
Hanna:
Hanna: Sara: Hanna: Sara:
59
[okej ]säg one. two. three. four. five. [okay ]say six. seven. eight. nine. ten. e ight. eight. nite. (1.0) va kommer sen. what comes next. >ja kan- ja kan- ja kan<säga. >I can- I can- I can<say. (0.4) one. du får börja också. one. you can begin too. one. two. three. four. five. six. seven. eight. our. five. six. seven. ni(ght). ↑ten. (2.0)
The questions about the pencil and the English note in lines 1 and 3 are similar to the beginnings of Excerpts 3.1 and 3.2, in that it explicitly situates the activity to come as part of something that has already happened. Thus, lines 1 and 3 are not only designed as something projecting a forthcoming activity, but also establishes that activity as longitudinal, with a relationship to prior situations (Excerpts 3.1–3.4). Further, these prior situations are not only prior to the current counting, but they are expected to have caused a change in the practice. The ‘now’ in the formulation du kan räkna nu, ‘you can count now,’ in line 6, situates this counting as one preceded by prior ones (‘now’ is also found twice in line 8), indicating that what then was not possible now should be. With respect to longitudinality, it is also again evident that it not only is the verbal turns at talk that establish the longitudinal character of the situation. The note and the pencil are also semiotic resources with an inscribed material remembering of the prior activity. Invoking and orienting to the note is not only a matter of orienting to the written words, but a matter of remembering together something that has been done in the past, in this case the writing of the numbers one to 10 the day before. Explicit orientation to a shared prior experience can also be found in lines 11–14, where Hanna uses the way a song is sung in circle time as a way of ordering the allocation of turns at talk in the projected listing. The song has a turn-taking format, where the lead singer sings his or her lines first, followed by the rest of the group repeating the sung lines. What Hanna is suggesting is that their reading should be done the same way, with Sara going first and Hanna repeating what Sara has said.
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The seemingly straightforward character of reading the words one to 10 together turns out to be quite challenging. In line 6, Sara proposes that Hanna should count, repeated in line 8 in a slightly modified form. Hanna refuses, they talk about how to do it, Sara returns to the play frame for a couple of turns (lines 18–19), and then they try, without success at first to read the list out loud. Following several elaborations, they come to an agreement at the end of the excerpt. In the excerpt, there are many examples of epistemic topicalization. The first are found in lines 6–8, where Sara argues that Hanna kan räkna nu, ‘knows how to count now’. Sara argues that Hanna ‘knows’. The ‘now’ at the end of the turn at talk where the ‘know’ is found indicates that the knowing not only is a matter of fact, but that it is presented by Sara as a consequence of prior activities. The claim is also specific with respect to content, in that it specifies what Hanna knows is ‘how to count’. Here, Sara claims that Hanna has learned a specific content, and that claim is accomplished through situating that content within a longitudinal trajectory. In line 8, Sara proposes that Hanna should try to count without reading, implying that Hanna possibly could do this, but also that she possibly could not. Following the already mentioned refusal and the subsequent discussion, the situation continues with several more examples of how epistemic stance is topicalized. In line 35, Sara asks Hanna du får försöka, ‘you should try’, answered by nä, (0.2) ja kan bara lite (‘no I only now a little’, line 34). In line 44, Hanna says five. längre kan ja int, ‘five I can’t any further’, responded to with si- okej okej du kan ba de. (‘si- okay kay you only know that’, line 45), and another ja kan ba- (‘I only know’, line 47). Finally, in line 56, Sara says >ja kan- ja kan- ja kan< säga (‘I can- I can- I can say’). In lines 34, 44 and 47 Hanna assesses her own competence, and in line 45, Sara assesses Hanna’s competence. As in the previous excerpts, the ascription of epistemic stance is one of the resources for establishing and sustaining knowledge asymmetries in relation to the subject matter. In this final excerpt, Sara requests Hanna to count, or at least to try to do so, in lines 6, 8 and 10. In so doing, Sara is encouraging Hanna to do something that both she and Hanna know that Sara herself knows how to do. Hanna aligns with this proposed asymmetry, and positions herself in this way throughout the excerpt. In lines 35–37, Sara asks Hanna to try again, in lines 44 and 48 Hanna says that she cannot count any further, in line 47 Sara says to Hanna you only know that, implying that this lack of knowledge is Hanna’s only, and in line 50 Sara asks Hanna to repeat. In line 55 Hanna asks what comes next, suggesting that she does not know, and that Sara knows. Based on these observations, it seems fair to say that the situation is characterized by recognized asymmetries, and by efforts to try to get Hanna to know more.
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As was the case in Excerpt 3.2, there is extended negotiation about how to carry out the discussion about the letter words. In Excerpt 3.2, the discussion concerned wanting or not wanting to do it. In Excerpt 3.4, what proves to be challenging is how to organize the talk itself, with respect to turn-taking and turn-allocation. The way Sara and Hanna are able to negotiate the activity, relying on explicit reference to prior shared activities, again underlines that the on-going activity is recognizable to them as something to negotiate about, as something one can be discursively aware of.
Discussion The four situations discussed above constitute a longitudinal data set. The data demonstrate that in social interaction, there are recognizable and oriented-to pursuits that extend beyond turn exchanges and episodes. Sara and Hanna seem to have practices available that enable them to situate what they are about to do within a longitudinal trajectory. This trajectory is not only about the past, but also about projecting future action, in other settings and situations. The relationship between past, present and future situations is not yet fully explored within CA, and in comparison with the by-now substantial knowledge on the relationship between units within a turn at talk, or between different turns at talk, what has been shown here is but a beginning. With respect to the different approaches to learning within CA, recordings like the ones studied here form the basis of studies of longitudinal change (the second approach outlined in the chapter introduction). For such purposes, this data set could be relied on for trying to find ways in which the reading of one to 10 in English changes over time. The thing to do would be to identify comparable practices in the situations, assemble them longitudinally, and then compare and contrast. One would then find, possibly, that there are some changes, such as the shortening of onset delay when comparing Excerpts 3.3 and 3.4. But most likely one would also conclude that Hanna has not yet learned, that, by the end of the last excerpt from the woods, she does not yet know how to count from one to 10 in English. For the line of analysis attempted here, the issue of whether Hanna’s ways of counting actually have changed or not is not the prime concern. What I have been interested in is whether it would be possible to understand what Sara and Hanna are doing as learning, not on the basis of an analysis of the possible outcome, but on the basis of analysis of actions ‘in the first instance’, as Schegloff (1996) puts it. Arguing in a similar way, Lee (2010) presents the notion of learning as a member’s task. In support of such an understanding I have argued that, in the data I have analysed, the explicit oriented-to longitudinal character, the
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topicalized epistemic stance and the oriented-to knowledge asymmetries are constitutive of the activities in which Sara and Hanna are doing learning. I claim that within the activities studied here, both Sara and Hanna hold each other accountable for that, for example through explicit negotiation about whether to pursue the activity or not, and through negotiation of how to carry out the activity. However, the occasional use of the word ‘learning’ is not a sufficient basis for arguing that learning literally can be understood as action, rather than as an outcome. More convincing is the fact that in all of the three discussed features, change seems to be a central aspect. When Sara and Hanna situate the subject of the words one to 10 in English in relation to prior use, they do so not only to remind themselves that they are doing the same thing. Rather, they do so, so as to be able to change that very thing. When epistemic stance is topicalized, Sara and Hanna not only make explicit their stance. Rather, they do so in order to change in particular the epistemic possibilities for Hanna. This in turn is related to the oriented-to knowledge asymmetries. They too are also oriented to not as static and solid, but as something to be both relied on and changed. Several researchers in fields outside CA, among them most recently the psychologists György Gergely and Gergely Csibra, have argued that humans are intrinsically pedagogical. Their basic argument is humans have evolved into a communicative species, with ‘an intrinsic inclination to teach and learn new and relevant cultural information to (and from) conspecifics’ (Gergely & Csibra, 2006: 241). According to this line of research, pedagogic situations, which occur in many different settings, are characterized by things not just being done, but being ostentatively done. People seem to be doing things in ways, which make available and demonstrates these things as something to be seen and learned. The work by psychologists on general traits of human sociality differs from CA in many ways, and the possibilities to use findings across perspectives are often constrained by the different ways of pursuing the empirical work. However, the findings within this body of psychological studies of human sociality seem to me to encourage further investigation by CA researchers into processes of teaching and learning, with an interest in these as doings in themselves (or, as Lee, 2010: 418, puts it, ‘how participants come to find their learning objects, problematize and act on them in the course of interaction through their situated language use’). The data provided here, limited in scope, seem to suggest that at least for the studied children, teaching and learning are parts of their interactional competence. Further, the results also demonstrate that teaching and learning is something not limited to adult–child relationships, or classrooms or other formal educational settings, but seem to be part of the interactional repertoire used and relied upon in a number of different settings, none of them in this case in classrooms.
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Obviously, there are many issues, which need to be addressed, discussed and eventually modified in the argumentation presented in this chapter. For those who are convinced by prior results of CA research on interaction, where the collective efforts of a large number of researchers have produced convincing and empirically sustained descriptions of how social action is carried out, the possibility of similar work on learning seems promising. Further study of learning as process would also be a contribution to the CA understanding of human sociality. For CA itself, empirically substantiated analysis of relationships between action occurring at different times and in different settings is a possibly relevant expansion of the current body of knowledge within CA. And if CA in time could contribute to the learning sciences with accurate and precise descriptions of learning actions, there would be openings for carrying out research on learning in ways which are not currently available. Note 1.
I want to acknowledge the pivotal contributions of colleagues to my understandings of the data and the issues, especially Cathrin Martin and Helen Melander (Martin & Sahlström, 2010; Melander, 2009; Melander & Sahlström, 2009) at Uppsala University, and the FLIS-project team at Åbo Akademi University (Lotta Forsman, Ida Hummelstedt, Michaela Pörn, Fredrik Rusk and Anna Slotte-Lüttge). An argument in Swedish along the same lines and relying on the same data set as presented in this chapter can be found in Sahlström, Hummelstedt, Forsman, Pörn and Slotte-Lüttge (forthcoming). Melander and Sahlström (unpublished manuscript), also in Swedish, develop and expand some of the arguments, to a slightly broader audience, and with the addition of another data set. Liisa Tainio, Anna Lindström and the volume editors Joan Kelly Hall and John Hellermann have all provided comments, which have substantially helped me to improve the analysis.
References Cekaite, A. (2006) Getting Started. Children’s Participation and Language Learning in an L2 Classroom. Linköping: Linköping University. Chaiklin, S. and Lave, J. (eds) (1993) Understanding Practice: Perspectives on Activity and Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gergely, G. and Csibra, G. (2006) Sylvia’s recipe: The role of imitation and pedagogy in the transmission of cultural knowledge. In N. Enfield and S. Levinson (eds) Roots of Human Sociality. Culture, Cognition and Interaction (pp. 229–255). Oxford, NY: Berg. Goodwin, C. (2000) Action and embodiment within situated interaction. Journal of Pragmatics 32, 1489–1522. Goodwin, C. (2006) Human sociality as mutual orientation in a rich interactive environment: Multimodal utterances and pointing in aphasia. In N. Enfield and S. Levinson (eds) Roots of Human Sociality. Culture, Cognition and Interaction (pp. 97–125). Oxford: Berg. Hellermann, J. (2008) Social Actions for Classroom Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
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Hummelstedt, I., Sahlström, F., Forsman, L., Pörn, M. and Slotte-Lüttge, A. (2008) Datainsamling och inledande datahantering, FLIS-projektet våren 2008. FLISrapport 1: 2008. On WWW at http://www.abo.fi/pf/flis. Accessed 3.6.09. Kääntä, L. (2010) Teacher turn-allocation and repair practices in classroom interaction: A multisemiotic perspective. Jyväskylä Studies in Humanities 137. University of Jyväskylä. On WWW at http://urn.fi/URN. Accessed 16.3.11. Kärkkäinen, E. (2006) Stance taking in conversation: From subjectivity to intersubjectivity. Text & Talk 26, 699–731. Lave, J. (1993) The practice of learning. In S. Chaiklin and J. Lave (eds) Understanding Practice. Perspectives on Activity and Context (pp. 3–32). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lee, Y-A. (2010) Learning in the contingency of talk-in-interaction. Text & Talk 30, 403–422. Macbeth, D. (2004) The relevance of repair for classroom correction. Language in Society 33, 703–736. Martin, C. (2004) From other to self. On learning as interactional change. PhD thesis, Uppsala University. Martin, C. (2009) The relevance of situational context in studying learning as changing participation. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 53, 133–149. Martin, C. and Sahlström, F. (2010) Learning as longitudinal interactional change: From other-repair to self-repair in physiotherapy treatment. Discourse Processes 47, 1–30. Mehan, H. (1979) Learning Lessons. Social Organization in the Classroom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Melander, H. (2009) Trajectories of learning. Embodied interaction in change. PhD thesis, Uppsala University. Melander, H. and Sahlström, F. (2008) In tow of the Blue Whale. Learning as interactional changes in topical orientation. Journal of Pragmatics 41, 1519–1537. Melander, H. and Sahlström, F. (2009) Learning to fly: The progressive development of situation awareness. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 53, 151–168. Melander, H. and Sahlström, F. (2010) Lärande i interaction [Learning in interaction]. Stockholm: Liber. Melander, H. and Sahlström, F. Lärande som samtalsanalytisk aktivitet [Learning as an activity within conversation analysis], Unpublished manuscript. Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. Nishizaka, A. (2006) What to learn: The embodied structure of the environment. Research on Language and Social Interaction 39, 119–154. Ochs, E., Schegloff, E. and Thompson, S. (eds) (1996) Interaction and Grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sacks, H., Schegloff, E.A. and Jefferson, G. (1974) A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language 50, 696–735. Sahlström, F. (1999) Up the hill backwards: On interactional constraints and affordances for equity-constitution in the classrooms of the Swedish comprehensive school. PhD thesis, Uppsala University. Sahlström, F. (2002) The interactional organization of hand raising in classroom interaction. Journal of Classroom Interaction 37, 47–55. Sahlström, F., Hummelstedt, I., Forsman, L., Pörn, M. and Slotte-Lüttge, A. (2010) Samma innehåll – olika sammanhang: mikro-longitudinellt lärande i sjuåringars vardag [Same content – Different contexts: Micro-longitudinal
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learning in the everyday lives of seven-year old children]. Språk och interaktion, 2 (Nordica Helsingiensia 19). Helsinki: University of Helsinki. Schegloff, E.A. (1996) Confirming allusions: Toward an empirical account of action. The American Journal of Sociology 102, 161–216. Sfard, A. (1998) On two metaphors for learning and the dangers of choosing just one. Educational Researcher 27, 4–13. Sfard, A. and Lavie, I. (2005) Why cannot children see as the same what grown-ups cannot see as different? Early numerical thinking revisited. Cognition and Instruction 23, 237–309. Slotte-Lüttge, A. (2005) ‘Ja vet int va de heter på svenska.’ Interaktion mellan tvåspråkiga elever och deras lärare i en enspråkig klassrumsdiskurs [‘I Don’t Know How to Say it in Swedish.’ Interaction between Bilingual Students and their Teachers in a Monolingual Classroom Discourse]. Åbo: Åbo Akademi University Press. Slotte-Lüttge, A., Pörn, M. and Sahlström, F. (forthcoming) Learning how to be a tähti: A case study of language development in everyday situations of a sevenyear-old multilingual Finnish child. International Journal of Bilingualism. Wootton, A. (1997) Interaction and the Development of Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Chapter 4
The Social Life of Self-Directed Talk: A Sequential Phenomenon? F. STEINBACH KOHLER and S.L. THORNE
Introduction So a rule: Not talking to oneself in public. But of course, the lay formulation of a rule never gets to the bone, it merely tells us where to start digging. In linguistic phrasing, Not talking to oneself in public is a prescriptive rule of communication; the descriptive rule – the practice – is likely to be less neat and is certain to be less ready to hand, allowing, if not encouraging, variously grounded exceptions. (Goffman, 1981: 88) The Goffman quotation above makes two astute observations. The first is implied in the stated rule, ‘Not talking to oneself in public,’ which indirectly suggests that it is commonplace for people to talk to themselves when out of the public eye. The second observation comes in the form of critical commentary of this ‘lay formulation of a rule’ and acknowledges that talking to oneself does happen in public, and may, in fact, even be a necessary part of the achievement of everyday social interaction. This chapter examines cases of audible speech occurring in multiparty interaction that appear to be self-directed, that is to say, utterances that at first glance seem to be produced with oneself as the target interlocutor. In nonpathological cases, self-directed talk, the label used in this chapter, is a phenomenon that includes both the vernacular notion of ‘talking to oneself’ as well as more technical and theoretically specific concepts such as ‘self-talk’ (Goffman, 1981) and ‘private speech’ (Flavell, 1966). Drawing upon conversation analysis and its emphasis on the sequence organization of talk-in-interaction, this study investigates the interactional dynamics within which self-directed talk is a constitutive element, including both the sequential position of self-directed talk in social interaction and the ways that interactional dynamics relate to the
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emergence of self-directed talk. With respect to the volume’s overarching topic, self-directed talk might at fi rst glance seem peripheral to ‘interactional competence’ as a way of doing things through languagein-action in concert with others. However, our research on small group interaction shows that self-directed talk recurrently occurs as part of speech events involving peer interaction and task accomplishment, contributing to the interactional flow and architecture of the encounters. We have evidence and analyses to support three phenomena related to sequence and participatory organization: (1) self-directed talk provides the option for potential recipients to disattend its producer and her actions, momentarily reconfiguring the participation framework, for example opening a space for working out a problem at one’s own pace. (2) (Simultaneously) self-directed talk can act as a publicly available resource for co-participants as they attend to the ‘private speech’ of others. In these instances, participants can treat others’ self-directed talk as a display of task- and group-relevant problem-solving procedures that makes visible the foci of attention, such as cognitive processes and linguistic and performance-based problems, and thus becomes a resource for maintaining intersubjectivity. (3) Self-directed speech can emerge as a result of sequential organization, typically following sequential misalignment, which makes visible co-participants’ (non)availability at a particular moment in time. Self-directed talk has been discussed from two distinct perspectives, one rooted in the work of the micro-sociologist Erving Goffman and the other as part of Vygotskian sociocultural theories of human development. While Goffman (1981) offers an interactional account and a typology of self-directed talk, describing its forms and implications in the public sphere, the sociocultural tradition following Vygotsky (e.g. Luria, 1981; Vygotsky, 1978, 1986) has produced an extensive body of research focusing on its self-regulatory functions in both L1 and L2 learning contexts (e.g. Lantolf, 1997, 2003; Ohta, 2001; see Lantolf & Thorne, 2006, for a review). However, consideration of the sequential and multimodal dynamics within which self-directed talk occurs is largely missing in both literature. In what follows, we attempt to provide detailed microinteractional analyses that take the next step of outlining the ways in which self-directed talk contributes to the flow and organization of joint activity at the level of procedural relevance and action sequencing (see Schegloff, 1992a). Questions that have guided this research are informed by the general query, ‘why this now?’ (Schegloff & Sacks, 1973), and more specifically include the following: When and why does self-directed talk occur? What behaviorally visible interactional work does self-directed talk serve in multiparty interaction? What sequential slots for next action does selfdirected talk make available?
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Approaches to Self-Directed Talk Goffman’s writings, while primarily based on constructed prototypical scenarios, outline with considerable lucidity the principled and patterned organization of human conduct. As he describes it, ‘[t]alk is socially organized, not merely in terms of who speaks to whom in what language, but as a little system of mutually ratified and ritually governed faceto- face actions . . .’ (Goffman, 1964: 136). In later work, Goffman (1981: 116) includes an exposition on uses of ‘self-talk’ in a chapter titled ‘response cries’, the latter defined as ‘signs meant to be taken to indicate directly the state of the transmitter’. Goffman’s analysis of self-talk in public places emphasizes its role as a kind of conventionalized ‘display’ that predominantly functions to shore up credibility in face-threatening situations. We find confirmation of this function of self-directed talk in the analyses presented below. Psychological and self-regulatory aspects of self-directed talk have been investigated by researchers working within cultural–historical activity theory and sociocultural research on L2 learning (e.g. Frawley, 1997; Vygotsky, 1987). This research supports the view that human mental functioning is a mediated process that is organized by cultural tools and activities, the primary of which involve language. In this theory, self-directed talk, or ‘private speech’, is defined as an individual’s externalization of language for purposes of maintaining or regaining self-regulation, for example to aid in focusing attention, problem solving, orienting oneself to a task, to support memory-related tasks, to facilitate internalization of novel or difficult information (e.g. language forms, sequences of numbers and mathematical computation), and to objectify and make salient phenomena and information to the self (e.g. DiCamilla & Anton, 2004; Frawley, 1997; Frawley & Lantolf, 1985; McCafferty, 1992; Ohta, 2001). Such talk shares empirical features that include averted gaze, lowered speech volume, altered prosody, abbreviated syntax and multiple repetitions, among other descriptors. Sociocultural research on private speech has been investigated primarily in noninteractive and controlled research conditions. As evidence of this, in a review article of L2 private speech research, only one of the nine studies included analyzed private speech in an interactive setting (McCafferty, 1994). In a recent article that is more congruent with our interests here, Smith (2007) analyzed video recordings of English language learners playing a board game and elaborated a much needed and expanded conception of private speech, arguing that ‘there is a mutually interacting relationship between the social and cognitive functions of speech for intermental activity and the self-regulating, metacognitive function of private speech for intramental activity’ (Smith, 2007: 353). Later in the article, she makes the stronger claim that ‘all speech uttered aloud in the presence of another person has the potential to be perceived as an
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intermental act, even if one’s intention is primarily private’ (Smith, 2007: 354). We note, however, that in a summary table listing the ‘function of private speech utterances across the games’ (Smith, 2007: 352), Smith includes only individual and self-regulatory functions of private speech. This limitation aside, Smith’s private speech research is the first that we are aware of that seriously attends to the social and interactional dimensions of self-directed talk. While sociocultural research has certainly produced an extensive body of findings with respect to ‘private speech’ in language learning contexts, we find a number of issues to be problematic, namely that a clear-cut boundary between ‘private’ and socially oriented functions of speech is generally assumed, that ambiguous cases are often excluded from consideration (e.g. Lantolf, 2003; Ohta, 2001), and most relevant to this research, that the interactional dynamics within which ‘private speech’ occurs are by and large not taken into account (with the notable exception of Smith, 2007).
Cognitive Functions and the Social Architecture of Interaction and Intersubjectivity The presumed intramental or cognitive functions of self-directed talk present a challenging topic for empirical investigation and one that is controversial within ethnomethodological and conversation analytic research. Sacks, for example cautioned against analyses of talk-in-interaction that project cognitive states and processes, proposing instead that analysts worry less about ‘thinking’ and rather should focus on ‘how it is that persons go about producing what they do produce’ (Sacks, 1992: 11). Heritage (2005) has proposed that cognitive processes may be represented and embodied in talk-in-interaction, particularly in the form of interactional displays, but he, too, warns that verbalizations may present only partial traces of psychological and cognitive activity. In a recent article, Kasper has acknowledged the importance of addressing cognition in CA informed research on development, stating that, ‘a key question in the debate on conversation analysis as an approach to SLA concerns the role of cognition in interaction and learning’ (Kasper, 2009: 11). In this vein, promising (and explicitly oppositional) explorations into the interface between talk and cognition have emerged in volumes such as the one edited by te Molder and Potter (2005), which brings into dialogue theorists working within the traditions of ethnomethodology/conversation analysis, discursive psychology and situated action. It is with these issues and challenges in mind that we explore particular forms of talk that, from a sociocultural or ‘private speech’ perspective, appear to serve as cognitive affordances for the speaker. However, the cognitive processes that self-directed talk may or may not facilitate are not our primary concern here. Rather, we examine self-directed talk as an
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interactional display integrally interwoven with patterns of social interaction, and more specifically, to sequence and participatory organization (e.g. Goodwin & Goodwin, 2004; Schegloff, 2007) and the procedural infrastructure of talk-in-interaction (Schegloff, 1992b) in an institutional foreign language (L2) learning context (e.g. Hellermann, 2008; Lerner, 1995; Seedhouse, 2004). In the remainder of this chapter, we employ close analysis of participatory and sequence organization to examine instances of talk that meet the sociocultural criteria for ‘private speech’. In doing so, we attempt to show how such talk is fundamentally indisassociable from broader processes of social interaction and the maintenance of intersubjectivity and joint activity.
Data and Procedure Our analysis concentrates on two sets of excerpts taken from two peergroup interactions in a French foreign language (FFL) classroom at a lower intermediate level (8th grade, 4th year of FFL) in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. Each group includes three adolescents, aged 14–15, working together to accomplish a given pedagogical task. The first set of excerpts (Excerpts 4.1–4.3) is drawn from a role-play rehearsal; the second set (Excerpts 4.4 and 4.5) is drawn from a task involving descriptions of a travel itinerary. All excerpts are part of a larger corpus of 31 audio- and video-taped lessons from three FFL classes at the same level.1 In what follows, we use sequential and multimodal microanalysis to investigate the ways in which self-directed talk is integrally bound up with the procedural infrastructure of social interaction, and in so doing, we explore the intertwined social and cognitive dimensions of language practices in this L2 educational context. The first set of excerpts describes the effects of an individual’s self-directed talk as it relates to subsequent interactional dynamics on the social plane, with the conclusion that selfdirected talk embedded in social interaction is a hybrid cognitive-social phenomenon that serves as a constitutive component of the sequential organization of multiparty interaction. The second set of excerpts illustrates the inverse trajectory, from the social to the individual plane, and illustrates how self-directed talk can emerge as a consequence of sequential misalignment in social interaction.
The Hybrid Nature of Talk-in-Interaction and its Sequential Conditions This first set of excerpts (Excerpts 4.1–4.3) focuses on audible language production that displays features that have been associated with private speech (e.g. averted gaze and bodily orientation, lower volume). The instances of what we assess to be self-directed talk occur in the context of
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Figure 4.1 The Homework
peer-group interaction, and thus allow us to observe how co-participants treat self-directed talk as a resource for, or obstacle to, task management and mutual alignment. More specifically, these interactions show how selfdirected talk can act as a publicly available resource for maintaining intersubjectivity through its display of task- and group-relevant problem-solving procedures. In Excerpts 4.1–4.3, Olivia, Lorena and Michelle2 are rehearsing a previously prepared written dialogue. The instructions read: ‘You meet before school; ask each other questions about what you have been doing the night before/going to do later today.’3 The three girls do several runs of their rehearsal, rearranging their orientations and gestures for dramatic purpose while periodically referring to the written script in a notebook and focusing on L2-related issues (see Figure 4.1). During their second rehearsal run, Olivia encounters problems with one of her dialogue lines (lines 3–4), which eventually leads to a first instance of talk displaying features of self-directedness (line 13), an orientation that remains consistent throughout the two subsequent excerpts: Excerpt 4.1 Les devoirs: The Homework I 1
MIC: trans
2 3
trans OLI: trans
4 -> 5
trans LOR: trans
(et;äh)=olivia qu’est-ce que
yesterday evening j’ai regardé la télé, (.) à la maison, °h:m° I have-AUX watched-PP TV at home uhm °und°=e::t (0.8) f- (1.0) j/E/ f/ε:/ (l-) and and fI do;have-AUX done-PP4 (th-) °°> (les) dévoirs<°° ((leaning forward, in direction of OLI)) (the) homework
72 6 7 8
9 10 11 12 13 -> 14
Part 1: The Nature of L2 Interactional Competence OLI: trans OLI:
OLI: LOR: trans OLI: trans LOR: trans OLI: trans MIC: trans
j/E/ f/ε:/=tu as:: I have done you have (1.1) ((produces a high-pitched noise, that goes over into laughter, while throwing her hands in the air and turning away, moving outside the visual field of the camera; her laughter is joined by Lorena)) (xx[x) [(j/E/ f/ε/) les DEVOIRS I do;have-AUX done-PP the homework (oh gottxx; oh camera) (oh godxx; oh camera) j/E/ f/ε/ les devoirs I do;have-AUX done-PP the homework <°j/E/ f/ε/ (.) les devoi[rs°> ((OLI moves back into the I do;have-AUX done-PP the homework visual field of the camera)) [SCHNITT ((towards camera)) cut
At the beginning of the excerpt, Olivia has problems delivering one of her dialogue lines in answer to Michelle’s question (lines 1–2). From the end of line 3 forward, Olivia exhibits a series of trouble signs, displaying ‘a variety of non-lexical speech perturbations’, typically accompanying the initiation of self-correction (Schegloff et al., 1977: 367). In order of appearance, we see a hesitation marker uttered in a quieter voice ‘h:m’ at line 3; then in line 4, a switch to L1 with a quieter voice ‘und’ (and), vowellengthening ‘e::t’ (and), pause, cut-off ‘f-’, (d-) pause, vowel lengthening ‘f/ε:/’ (do or done) and another cut-off ‘l-’ (th-). At line 5, Lorena reacts to these trouble signs, potentially interpreting them as a word-search or memory issue as she proffers a candidate element ‘les devoirs’ (the homework). We know from the preceding rehearsal that ‘les devoirs’ is the appropriate item to be produced at this point. In sequential terms, the rather late onset of Lorena’s other-repair attempt seems to respect the preference for self-correction (Schegloff et al., 1977), together with the fact that interlocutors tend to let the current speaker go through a search-cycle before providing other repair (Goodwin & Goodwin, 1986). Also, Lorena delivers her turn at line 5 in a very quiet voice as she looks toward the camera rather than at Olivia. This potentially indicates that she is mindful of maintaining the play frame in front of the audience (the camera in this case) so as not to disrupt the performance. Olivia, however, does not pick up on Lorena’s proffer, nor does she display any acknowledgment of it until line 13. At line 6, she repeats parts of line 4, and then does a restart producing a second form of another verb paradigm. In lines 7–8, the play frame is finally disrupted, as Olivia first produces a gesture with both hands, palms facing upward, while her gaze seems to move from Michelle to Lorena (on the video, we only see her
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head move from behind) before producing a high-pitched noise, a response cry (Goffman, 1981) seemingly voicing frustration, that eventually transitions into laughter, at which point she throws her hands in the air and turns away, moving outside the visual field of the camera. Her laughter is joined by Lorena, but not Michelle. Lorena reiterates her initial proposition two more times, expanding the full noun phrase she used the first time (line 5) into a full sentence spoken at a normal volume (lines 10 and 12), while Olivia continues to engage in displays of self-deprecation (lines 9 and 11). In line 13, Olivia finally acknowledges Lorena’s reiterated attempts to provide help and takes up the offered formulation and repeats it. In this sense, there is a socio-interactional component to Olivia’s action at line 13. We acknowledge Schegloff’s reminder that within any given ‘actionformation resource pool’, there exists the analytic danger of presuming a ‘one-to-one practice/action pairing’ (Schegloff, 1997: 505), and indeed, demonstrating the potential for externalized talk to serve multiple functions is the superordinate goal of this research. In illustration of this point, Olivia’s visual orientation to her notebook and the prosodic features of her turn, such as an alteration in pace and a decrease in volume that is typically associated with talk used as a tool for self-regulation (e.g. Vygotsky, 1987), can be analyzed as indicative of the dual or hybrid nature of talk as both acknowledging and ratifying the interlocutor’s (Lorena’s) contribution while simultaneously serving to mediate the speaker’s (Olivia’s) engagement with the stretch of talk that causes her some trouble. As we continue to follow the focus lines (Excerpt 4.1, lines 3, 4 and 6, above) through the interaction, a similar pattern emerges, with respect to the dual nature of talk-in-interaction in FL contexts, which corroborates our analysis of Excerpt 4.1. Excerpt 4.2 constitutes the immediate continuation of Excerpt 4.1. The analytical focus continues to be on Olivia and the focus lines (here, transcript lines 13, 17 and 19, 30 and 31): Excerpt 4.2 Les devoirs: The Homework II 13 -> 14
OLI: trans MIC: trans
15 16 17 -> 18
LOR: trans OLI: trans LOR: trans
<°j/E/ f/ε/ (.) les devoi[rs°> ((OLI moves back into the I do;have-AUX done-PP the homework visual field of the camera)) [SCHNITT ((looking toward camera & cut performing a large cut-gesture with both arms, imitating a clapperboard)) (2.0) ((all three join in the performance of a series of ample cutgestures with both arms, orienting to the camera and laughing)) (stop) UND NOMOL= ((to OLI, pointing towards a spot stop and again outside the visual field of the camera)) = j’ai regardé: la tél[ é, (.) à la& ((starts to return to her initial I have-AUX watched tv at position, then stops)) [ GANG NOMOL go again
74 19 -> 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 -> 31 ->
Part 1: The Nature of L2 Interactional Competence OLI: trans LOR: trans OLI: trans LOR: trans OLI: trans LOR: trans OLI: trans LOR: trans OLI: trans
&maison, (et x) = ((approaches the table)) home (and x) =JE REGARDE, (.) la télé [et je fais mes devoirs. °à la& I watch tv and I do my homework at [(>°wart schnell°<) ((grabs the notebook)) wait a second &mais [on° home [nei °(mues erscht mol läse)° no (I first need to have a look) (2.0) ((OLI flips pages in the notebook, LOR observes her)) LUEG have a look (1.0) ((OLI is silently scrutinizinga page in the note-book)) eh:m blua blua bla ((towards the note-book)) uhm blua blua bla (2.0) ((OLI flips back a page)) JE REGARDE la télé: et je [: ((towards OLI)) I watch tv and I [>j’ai regardé la télé à la maison< et I have watched tv at home and j’ai fait mes devoirs. ((OLI is reading in the notebook; LOR seems to I have done my homework be mouthing the text in sync while observing her))
In line 14 at the beginning of Excerpt 4.2, Michelle intervenes for the first time. She slightly overlaps Olivia’s turn with her interjection and visibly orients to the camera while producing an exaggerated ‘cut’ gesture associated with the culture of movie-making. In doing so, she officially interrupts the rehearsal, and treats the previous sequence – initiated by Olivia in line 4 – as closed. At line 15, Lorena and Olivia visibly align with this trajectory by joining in Michelle’s cut gesture and laughter. Lorena then orders Olivia back to her starting position (line 16 – at the beginning of their play, Olivia moves in from outside the ‘scene’, that is the camera’s visual field, to greet the other two, who are seated on top of a table). Olivia complies and begins moving toward her initial position. In parallel, she repeats the part of her dialogue that had caused her troubles (Excerpt 4.1, lines 3–4). She eventually stops her movement (line 17) all the while continuing to reiterate her part (lines 17 and 19). What we find interesting here is that Olivia’s turns (lines 17 and 19) again combine both self-directed and social elements that the group orients to and addresses. As regards the social features: Olivia orients her body toward Lorena who in turn is visibly oriented toward her (the angle of the camera does not show Olivia’s gaze). Also, Olivia delivers her turn at a normal and fully audible speech level which might potentially serve to elicit approval or help from her interlocutor. As regards its
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self-directedness: Rehearsing fragments of one’s part in a play without being explicitly instructed to do so, in the presence of ones coactors, is reasonably analyzed as self-directed in its orientation. In addition, Olivia accompanies her turn with rhythmic beat gestures:
Excerpt 4.2a (lines 17–19) 17
->
OLI: trans oli oli
->
oli
18 19 ->
LOR: trans OLI: trans oli oli
+=j’ai +regardé: la +tél[é, (.) à la& I have-AUX watched tv at +starts to return to her initial position, then stops +accompanies the first syllable with a beating gesture of her hand +accompanies the first syllable with a beating gesture [GANG NOMOL go again &+maison, (et x) += home (and x) +accompanies the first syllable with a beating-gesture +moves toward the table
Within sociocultural studies of L2 learning and drawing on McNeill’s gesture continuum (McNeill, 2005), beat gestures have been associated with self-directed attempts to regain self-regulation and focus attention (Haught & McCafferty, 2008; McCafferty, 2006). Olivia’s gesticulation may serve such a self-regulatory function. By the same token, it has the wider social impact of stalling the projected course of action (redoing the rehearsal of the play from the start) for the whole group. Olivia’s rehearsal is interrupted by Lorena (line 18), indicating that rehearsing individual lines in the common interactional sphere is not an appropriate action at this point in time. Lorena even raises her voice, as indicated by the capital letters, a procedure commonly used in competitive conversational environments, while ordering Olivia a second time to return to her starting position. Olivia stops her rehearsal activity, but instead of returning to her starting position, she moves toward the table and grabs the notebook (lines 19 and 21). From line 20 on, Lorena eventually suspends her orientation to redoing the play, adjusts her actions and contributes to Olivia’s attempt to locate the problematic line in the notebook (lines 20–31). To summarize, Olivia’s ‘private’ rehearsals and display of a problem with one of her dialogue lines stalls the group’s enterprise of collectively rehearsing their play. This orientation is in part realized through actions that oscillate between social talk, addressed to others, and private or selfdirected talk, which is also visible and audible to the group.
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The last excerpt in this set is the continuation of Excerpt 4.2. Again, we observe an instance of audible language production that displays features associated with private speech. As it resonates in the public sphere, we can observe how this talk acts at the same time as a publicly available resource for task- and group-relevant problem-solving procedures. Excerpt 4.3 starts with Olivia reading the line in question from the notebook while Lorena closely follows her actions: Excerpt 4.3 Les devoirs: The Homework III 30
OLI: trans
31
32 33 34 35 36 - >
37 38 39
OLI: trans LOR: trans OLI: trans LOR: trans MIC: trans OLI: trans
> j’ai regardé la télé à la maison< et I have watched tv at home and j’ai fait mes devoirs. ((reading in the notebook; LOR I have done my homework seems to be mouthing the text in sync while observing OLI)) (.) mes? oder (.) les ((OLI looking up from notebook at LOR)) my or the (1.0) ((LOR makes ‘thinking face’)) °jo- isch-° (.) >sag le:s (.) °°devoirs°°< (well nev-) say the homework °et j’ ai fait mes- <et j’ai fait °°mes- (.) devoi:rs,°°°> and I have done my and I have done my homework ((oriented to the notebook)) > okay sag mes devoirs < ((grabs notebook from OLI, puts it okay say my homework back on table)) °(okay mache mers nomol)° ((sits up straight)) okay let’s do it again okay ((claps hands and bouncily returnsto her starting position)) okay
Olivia has found the focus line in the notebook and reads it aloud, with Lorena silently mouthing the text in sync (lines 30–31). The stress in line 31 ‘fait mes’ (done my), as indicated by the underlining, identifies the current problem area. Going back to the initial focus line in Excerpt 4.1 (lines 3–4), we see that the cutoff element ‘l-’ presumably was the beginning of the determiner ‘les’ (the): 4
OLI: trans
°und° = e::t (0.8) f- (1.0) j/E/ f/ε:/ (l-) and and fI do;have-AUX done-PP (th-)
We cannot know for sure whether this actually was the issue Olivia had been wrestling with from the start. However, it clearly is displayed as the focal issue at this point in their interaction. After a short pause, Olivia addresses Lorena (lines 32–33) in order to ask whether the appropriate
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linguistic form should be the possessive determiner ‘mes’ (my), as the previously written text in the notebook seems to indicate, or the definite article ‘les’ (the). In line 34, Lorena displays a thinking face (Goodwin & Goodwin, 1986: 57) in response to this question and then goes on to verbally respond to it in line 35, first starting out with something that looks like the beginning of ‘never mind’ in Swiss German. Lorena then cuts herself off and self-repairs, proposing the article ‘les’ (the). Sequentially, assessment of Lorena’s proposition is the relevant next social action for Olivia, that is acknowledging or rejecting the candidate solution she has been offered. Olivia’s turn at line 36 does reject Lorena’s proposition as Olivia reiterates the segment in question, using the possessive determiner ‘mes’ (my) instead of the proposed article ‘les’ (the). More significantly for our purpose here, Olivia’s turn at line 36 again provides empirical evidence of self-directed talk: her body position displays orientation to the notebook rather than to Lorena, her speech is more slowly paced, she produces two cutoffs at the same syntactic position (the same one already in play at the very beginning of Excerpt 4.1, line 4), she repeats the element in question, pauses, then produces lengthening and continuing (but not rising) intonation, all produced in a soft voice that gradually fades throughout the turn. From a sociocultural perspective, this cluster of features is typically assessed as self-directed talk serving functions of self-regulation and focusing on problematic L2 forms. In addition to these potentially selfregulatory functions, Olivia’s turn also resonates in the public sphere, evidence for which is Lorena’s reaction in line 37. Here, Lorena acknowledges Olivia’s alternative choice to the candidate form she proposed, the determiner ‘les’ (the), by changing to the possessive ‘mes’ (my). At the same time, Lorena grabs the notebook from Olivia and puts it back on the table, presumably in order to close the matter and to finally get back to the business of resuming the rehearsal as a whole. Lorena’s action of putting the notebook back on the table coincides with Michelle’s change of posture (line 38): She straightens up from her slumped position and verbally addresses, once again, the issue of task management, thus suggesting that the side sequence focusing on Olivia’s trouble with one of her lines is closed. Olivia aligns with an ‘okay’ (line 39) and another round of rehearsal begins. This fi rst set of excerpts has attempted to make visible the hybrid nature of ostensibly self-directed talk in social interaction and to show that copresent interlocutors can and do treat such talk as a resource for managing interaction. To summarize the analysis of these 39 turns, Olivia’s difficulty with one of her dialogue lines stalled the projected course of action, which was to redo the rehearsal from the beginning. Olivia tried to work through her problem partially through social interaction, soliciting her interlocutors, particularly Lorena, but partially also
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through the use of audible self-directed talk. This resulted in Lorena eventually orienting to Olivia’s self-directed talk as a resource for pinpointing Olivia’s linguistic problem and to manage task- and grouprelevant problem-solving procedures. As a fi nal point that relates to the interaction we discuss below, Michelle’s stance in this interaction suggests that self-directed talk appears to sanction the option of disattending self-talk producers. We turn now to a second set of excerpts that deals with the question of how sequential and participatory misalignment serves as a catalyst for self-directed talk.
Sequential Misalignment as Emergent Ground for Self-Directed Talk The following set of excerpts (Excerpts 4.4–4.5) illustrates how selfdirected talk can emerge as a result of breakdowns in sequential and participatory organization, in particular in the context of misalignments in action sequencing in relation to co-participants’ nonavailability at certain moments in time. In Excerpts 4.4 and 4.5, Olivia, Raul and Aurélien have been given the task of preparing three itinerary descriptions, with the help of a city map of their hometown, in order to prepare for a future role play. Each participant is using an instruction sheet with identical instructions and for taking notes (see Figure 4.2). In Excerpt 4.4, the three participants are concluding the discussion of who is in charge of which itinerary – a subtask not specified by the instructions – and are about to launch into task accomplishment. The
Figure 4.2 The Tramway
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transition from task management to its accomplishment sparks problems of coordination between the participants. This misalignment gives rise to self-directed talk as part of the realm of social interaction. Lines 4 and 8, below, are the focal lines with respect to the question of selfdirected talk: Excerpt 4.4 Le tram: The Tramway I 0
AUR: ich nimms erschte trans I take the first (itinerary) . . . ((8 lines omitted)) 1 AUR: >u[nd du s zweite aso mache mer das:& trans and you the second so let’s do this 2 OLI: [aso trans so 3 AUR: & [ (h) (ding) (h) trans (h) (thing) (h) 4 -> OLI: [ sie nehmen=°vous prenez,° ehm ((to AUR who is oriented to you take
5 6
AUR: trans OLI: trans
7 8 ->
OLI: trans
9
AUR: trans
10 11
12
RAU: trans OLI: trans
you
take
uhm
instruction-sheet before him; as he turns to her, she turns to the instruction-sheet before her))
jo wart=wart=wa[rt ((orients back to his instruction-sheet)) ey wait wait wait [was heisst tram?=train:? ((to AUR who is how do you say tramway train oriented to instruction-sheet before him))
(.) ((OLI still oriented to AUR how is still looking down at his instruction-sheet and has started to write on it)) °la train, le train, numéro°°= ((orients back to the-FEM train the-MASC train (number) instruction-sheet before her and gives a small shoulder-shrug))) = le t(h)(rain) (h)=°°le t(h)ra(in) (h)(h)°° ((looking briefly up from his the t(h)(train)(h) the t(h) ra (in) (h) (h) note-taking towards OLI, who is oriented to instruction-sheet before her, and covering his mouth with his left hand))
[°le tra(m)° ((orienting to AUR who is back at writing)) le tra(mway) [WAS HEISST TRAM ((orienting first to AUR who is writing and how do you say tramway oriented to his notes, then to CHE who is passing by)) (..) ((OLI orients from CHE again to AUR who is still writing and oriented to his notes))
80 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
Part 1: The Nature of L2 Interactional Competence CHE: trans AUR: trans CHE: trans OLI: trans CHE: trans OLI: trans
le tram the tramway °tr[am° ((oriented to his instruction-sheet, smiling and continues writing)) tramway [LE TRA[M ((OLI orients to CHE)) the tramway [LE TRAM? the tramway mhm? uhu (..) ((OLI orients back to her notes, then to RAU)) °ts° äh was heisst >vierzäh< ((addressing RAU)) ts uhm how do you say fourteen
Lines 1–6 of this exchange constitute the transition from task-management, that is who is in charge of which itinerary, to actually doing the task, that is formulating the itineraries in French according to the instructions. Audio-visual clues from the video recording reveal sequential misalignment between Olivia and Aurélien. Even though they physically orient to and verbally address one another during the first six lines (totalling six seconds of interaction), they do not do so at the same moments in time: Their gazes and bodily orientations alternate between one another and their respective instruction sheets (see Figure 4.3 and the multimodal comments in the transcript below): Excerpt 4.4a (lines 4–9) 4 OLI: + [#1 sie nehmen=+°vous prenez,°#2 ehm trans you take you take uhm -> oli&aur +OLI turns towards AUR who is oriented to his instruction-sheet -> oli&aur +OLI turns towards her instructionsheet; AUR turns to look at OLI 5 -> AUR: jo wart=wart=wa+[rt ((orients back to his notes)) trans ey wait wait wait 6 OLI: + [#3 was heisst tram?=train:? trans how do you say tramway train -> oli&aur +OLI looks up from her instruction-sheet towards AUR who is oriented to his own instruction-sheet again and has started to write 7 (.) ((OLI still oriented to AUR how is oriented to his instruction-sheet)) 8 OLI: °la train, le train, + numéro°°+=
The Social Life of Self-Directed Talk
->
9
trans oli oli AUR: trans
81
the-FEM train the-MASC train number +orients back to instruction-sheet before her + small shoulder-shrug
=le t(h)(rain) (h)=°°le t(h)ra (in) (h) (h)°° ((looking briefly the t(h)(train)(h) the t(h) ra (in) (h) (h) up from his note-taking towards OLI, who is oriented to the instruction-sheet before her, and covering his mouth with his left hand))
In addition to alternating gaze and body orientation, we note a series of verbal cues, in the form of multiple overlaps (lines 1–2, 3–4 and 5–6) that hint at sequential misalignment. We will look at these overlaps in some detail before coming back to the question of self-directed talk in order to establish sequential misalignment as the catalyst for an instance of selfdirected talk in line 8: (1)
(2)
The first overlap, between Aurélien and Olivia (lines 1–2), involves two discourse markers that have divergent orientations. Aurélien starts his turn (line 1) with the marker ‘und’ (and), linking back to his previous turn (as well as to the immediately preceding turns of his interlocutors, not reproduced for the sake of space), signaling continuation of an ongoing action, in this case task management to confirm who is responsible for which itinerary. Olivia on the other hand uses ‘aso’ (so), a marker that typically prefaces next actions and which raises the possibility of a new agenda item (Bolden, 2006), in this case, moving toward task accomplishment in the form of formulating itinerary descriptions in L2 French. The second overlap occurs at lines 3 and 4. Given the point of onset of the overlap, a cursory glance might suggest that Olivia is not actually entering Aurélien’s turn space, as his second turn construction unit (TCU) at line 1 ‘asomachemer das’ (so lets do this) appears complete
Figure 4.3 Syncopated embodied orientations
82
(3)
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from the perspective of grammatical constituency. Launching the next relevant action, that of accomplishing the task through formulating the necessary L2 constructions, could be seen as the appropriate thing to do, and the overlap between lines 3 and 4 would simply be the result of Aurélien expanding the TCU beyond a possible transition relevance place, retrospectively converting a demonstrative pronoun ‘das’ (this) into a determiner ‘das ding’ (this thing). However, if we take into account the lengthening of the final sound that projects more to come ‘das::’ (this, line 2), the picture changes (see Ford & Thompson, 1996; Ford et al., 2002). It corroborates the assumption that Olivia is indeed entering an ongoing turn space and prematurely launching a new activity sequence (i.e. formulating an itinerary, the action she assigned herself earlier), before the current course of action (i.e. task management and transition to task accomplishment) is properly and collectively brought to closure. The third overlap occurs in lines 5 and 6 and follows Olivia’s attempt to start a new sequence of action in line 4. Aurélien’s reaction at line 5 ‘jo wart=wart=wart’ (hey wait wait wait) is designed to stall this new action. Aurélien’s turn at line 5 is overlapped by Olivia’s turn at line 6, the latter a turn that continues Olivia’s new course of action as she sets out to gather adequate material to formulate the itinerary in French.
Although no further overlaps occur between Olivia and Aurélien in this excerpt, there are further cues indicating continued misalignments, for example lack of response and disaffi liative laugh tokens. Olivia’s information-gathering request and the try-marked candidate solution she produces (line 6) are (paradoxically) directed at Aurélien and do not get a response nor any acknowledgment of having been produced at all as Aurélien is oriented to his instruction sheet and engaged in writing (lines 6 and 7). Olivia then tries to work things out herself (line 8) and this time, she does get a reaction from Aurélien. Aurélien’s turn at line 9 is a (partial) repeat of Olivia’s preceding turn, containing particles of ‘withinspeech-laughter’ that construe the preceding turn or parts of it as ‘laughables’ (Jefferson, 1979). Such ‘laugh token repeats’ can and do enact ‘laughing at’ (rather than ‘laughing with’), a disaffi liative action that orients to the ‘troublesomeness’ of the prior turn and calls ‘for some remedial work’ (Jefferson, 1972: 300). Olivia reiterates her request for a lexical item in line 11. The addressee of her request serially shifts from Aurélien, who is not orienting to her, to the researcher who happens to pass by. Her request overlaps with Raul’s turn (line 10), which provides the lexical item, probably as much in reaction to Olivia’s reiterated request as in reaction to Aurélien’s behavior and laughter (line 9), evidence for which is Raul’s embodied orientation to the latter, rather than to Olivia.5 At line 13,
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the researcher provides the sought for lexical item and after a confirmation sequence (lines 15–17), Olivia continues with a request for a next item, this time addressing Raul (line 19). In this excerpt, Olivia produces talk that has features of self-directedness at lines 4 and 8. We base this claim on features of turn shape and delivery as well as on sequential and participatory features: The fi rst part of Olivia’s turn at line 4 is accompanied by an embodied orientation to Aurélien, who is looking down at his instruction sheet. In the second part of her turn, she switches languages, translating the first part, while turning to gaze at the instruction sheet in front of her, with a marked drop in voice volume. In line 8, Olivia at fi rst maintains orientation toward Aurélien following her question in line 6. However, Aurélien is again not orienting to her, and we notice lower speech volume and a slight difference in rhythm (not visible in the transcript, but perceivable when listening to the tape) and voice quality as Olivia transitions from a question-marked to a try-marked intonation directed at Aurélien (line 6) to a continuing, hesitating intonation, accompanied by a small shoulder shrug (line 8), as she eventually brings her gaze back to her instruction sheet and drops her speech volume even further at the end of her turn (as indicated by the increasing degree signs . . .). In these two instances (lines 4 and 8), Olivia does not obtain her intended recipient’s gaze nor the projected reactions, as the first one displays misalignment with her course of action (line 5), while the second instance is delayed and comprises disaffiliative elements, that is Laugh token repeats, instead of the sought for lexical item (line 9). Both times, Olivia ends up orienting back to the space before her, continuously lowering her voice while continuing to work on her own. Excerpt 4.5, below, is a continuation of Excerpt 4.4 and illustrates further instances of self-directed talk emerging from divergent orientations. At this point, the group has transformed into three ‘singles’ in Goffman’s terms: ‘a party of one [i.e. three parties of one] present among other parties’ (Goffman, 1981: 79), each one oriented to preparing his or her itinerary as an individual activity. Excerpt 4.5 Le tram: The Tramway II ((continuation of ex. 4, 4 lines omitted)) 20 OLI: <°°vous (.) prenez (°°°le tram°°°)> pren[ ez, (..) le tram ]°°& trans you take the tramway take the tramway 21 RAU: [ eh: : : : : : : : :]: : ((oriented towards map, then looks down hat instruction sheet before him)) 22 OLI: &°quator(ze)°, ((oriented to instruction-sheet before her)) trans fourte(en) 23 RAU?: > (oha mann) < ((orienting from instruction-sheet before him again to map)) trans gee
84 24 25
26
Part 1: The Nature of L2 Interactional Competence OLI: trans RAU: trans oli OLI: trans oli
27 28
trans RAU: trans
29 30 31 32 - >
OLI: trans OLI: trans oli&rau
33 34 35
RAU: trans Oli: trans
°jusqu’[à,°& till [OH HALT=>muess vo do obe +bis do unt+[e < oh wait I have to go from up here to down here + casts a quick glance on the map where Raul is moving his hand + [°sankt saint + two beats on the syllables of sa(nkt) and ja(kob) jak[ob,° ((city’s soccer stadium with integrated mall, one of the itinerary jacob destinations)) [also so (2.0) ((all three are silently oriented to the instruction-sheets in front of them; AUR is still writing; the two others do not have a pen, yet)) >was heisst sie< fahren ((turning to RAU who remains how do you say you drive oriented to the map)) (.) sie allez °(à voit-) (.) +(à voiture)°° °(x)° you go (with the ca-) ( with the car) (x) +withdrawing gaze from RAU who has not changed position and is still not reacting/orienting to OLI (1.0) ((OLI continues to articulate silently, her lips moving repeatedly from a rounded labial to an unrounded aperture position)) > (mh) was hesch gfrogt< ((lifting his head turning to OLI)) (uhm) what did you ask sie fahren you drive
This excerpt provides a clear example of one task realized through three different types of activity. Aurélien is silently writing notes throughout the excerpt and he is the only one to have a pencil at this time. In contrast, Raul and Olivia engage in different types of self-directed talk (lines 20–33). Raul resorts to his L1 while gesturing at the map, presumably in order to conceptualize his itinerary (lines 21, 23, 25, 28)6 while Olivia continues working on the French formulation of her itinerary, the very activity she had attempted to complete in the previous excerpt (Excerpt 4.4, line 4). What empirical evidence warrants our analytic claim that we are in the presence of three singles and two varieties of self-directed talk? Looking at the discourse produced in these excerpts, we note that Olivia’s talk (lines 20, 22, 24, 26–27, 32) shows the cluster of features typically associated in sociocultural research with the phenomenon of ‘private speech’, namely reduced volume, slower pace, repetition and, most strikingly, no obvious
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physical orientation to a potential addressee as she looks down at her instruction sheet throughout this episode. Additionally, Olivia’s turns do not sequentially project a response from a co-participant as relevant next action.7 There is a transition in line 30, however, where we observe a notable change in Olivia’s body orientation, pace, volume and language choice, which co-occur with speech that appears to be other, rather than self, directed. As for the talk produced by Raul, his voice volume remains high and his utterances are produced at a rhythm and rate associated with socially directed speech. However, Raul does not visibly orient to his co-participants, nor does he display awareness or concern that his clearly audible speech receives no acknowledgement or response. As shown in Figure 4.4, each participant, Aurélien included, is oriented to an individual activity space that is restricted to objects they are manipulating: Olivia is oriented to her instruction sheet, Raul is pointing on the map, Aurélien is writing on his instruction sheet. We note the absence of mutual gaze and bodily orientation between the participants (however, we acknowledge that when manipulating objects during social interaction, mutual gaze is not at all times necessary or possible). Up to line 30 there is only one oblique embodied display of orientation to a co-participant, Olivia’s glance toward Raul’s gesticulation (line 25). Also, Raul’s talk arguably has some elliptical features that are associated with the use of L1 within L2 problem-solving tasks (Centeno-Cortés & Jiménez, 2004; DiCamilla & Anton, 2004; Lantolf, 2003).8 It is interesting to note that Olivia seems to react to the voluble self-directed talk that Raul produces. In lines 26–27, Olivia accompanies her discourse with two gestural beats just after she casts a very short glance toward Raul’s hand hovering over the map (line 25). The function of focusing attention has been linked to gestures synchronized with speech, typically up-and-down
Figure 4.4 Three ‘singles’ or one task, three activities
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movements of the hand that parse discourse into syllables, as a means to ‘gain control over the rhythmic pulse of the L2. . . . [G]esture, like speech, can serve as a “private” mediational means for individual learners, which in turn, may help in the development of L2 proficiency’ (Haught & McCafferty, 2008: 143). In Olivia’s case, we argue that the beats functioned as a focusing tool to counter the distraction of Raul’s loud, albeit primarily self-directed, verbalizations. Thus far, Excerpt 4.5 has shown how self-oriented talk in the presence of others in part indexes an agreement to disattend copresent parties and reconfigures the participant framework, allowing each participant to focus on procedures and materials that most serve their immediate personal goals. The last part of Excerpt 4.5 (lines 29–35) brings us back to the issue of self-directed talk emerging out of participatory and sequential organization and presents us with a case similar to the ones observed in Excerpt 4.4. At line 29, the participants are silently oriented to the respective papers in front of them. At line 30, Olivia addresses Raul with a request for a lexical item. As in the instances in Excerpt 4.4 (lines 4, 6 and following), there is no immediate physical or verbal reaction acknowledging her request (lines 30–31). Unlike Excerpt 4.4, there is not a preceding sequential misalignment context at play, but rather the participatory framework that would minimally ensure recipiency of some sort is not established as each participant is engrossed in his or her own activity and activity space (see Figure 4.4 above). Subsequently, we see Olivia produce talk that shows the typical cluster of features associated with ‘private speech’ (line 32): slower pace, decreasing volume, repetitions without an intonational contour or bodily orientation that would suggest active pursuit of a reaction from her co-participants, before it eventually becomes subvocal (line 33). We suggest that this illustrates an instance in which self-directed talk serves to adjust to participatory circumstances, that is it functions as an adaptation to lack of recipiency and shifts in the participatory framework. As this second set of analyses has attempted to show, self-directed talk can and does emerge out of sequential and participatory organization in social interaction. By the same token, self-directed talk also resonates with and feeds back into the public sphere, as demonstrated in Excerpt 4.4, with Aurélien’s reaction and laughter (line 9), and in Excerpt 4.5 with Olivia’s gestural ‘response’ to Raul’s voluble self-directed talk (lines 25–27). To summarize, the second set of analyses described how self-directed talk emerges as a consequence of sequential and participatory misalignments, and is thus a critical resource for achieving and maintaining interaction. In Excerpt 4.4, we observed arrhythmia in visual and bodily orientation and disjunctive actional sequencing as preparatory ground for the emergence of self-oriented talk. In three instances, the next-positioned turn did not accomplish the action potentially projected by the one
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preceding it (lines 4–5, 5–6 and 6–7 for Excerpt 4.4; lines 30–31 for Excerpt 4.5). In three instances (lines 4 and 8 for Excerpt 4.4 and lines 32–33 for Excerpt 4.5), some sequential misalignment, or lack of response or display of recipiency, preceded the emergence of self-directed talk, with the result that initially socially oriented talk was transitioned into self-directed talk.9 In addition, in Excerpt 4.5, we observed how the dissolution of the participatory framework into three singles with divergent foci of attention and activity allowed co-participants to treat hearable talk produced by others as self-oriented, and hence to disattend it, giving them space and time to work on their own and at their own pace.
Discussion and Conclusion We began this chapter with the observation that self-directed talk is ubiquitous in everyday social interaction. We then continued with an exploration of self-directed talk occurring in task-induced multiparty interactions among peers in an L2 learning context. In our analyses of two sets of excerpts of peer-group interactions in an FFL classroom, we have attempted to illustrate that self-directed talk is contingent upon social and situational dynamics of mutually oriented and jointly coordinated courses of action, and is intricately linked to the sequential and participatory organization of talk-in-interaction. The first set of excerpts (Excerpts 4.1–4.3) addressed the issue of the dual nature of self-directed talk in social contexts. We acknowledged the sociocultural claim that self-directed talk can facilitate cognitive functioning in areas such as focusing attention, rehearsing difficult utterances, and experimenting with possible language forms. Our primary focus, however, was to describe instances of self-directed talk, serving as publicly available displays, that enabled collective attention to group-relevant problems and issues. Like other and better-documented interactional phenomena such as repair (Hall, 2007; Kasper, 2009; Schegloff et al., 1977), self-directed talk is not a threat to intersubjectivity (Goffman, 1981), but rather acts as a resource for its maintenance, opening up slots for group problem solving and interactional achievement. Inversely, the second set of excerpts (Excerpts 4.4 and 4.5) allowed us to focus on the ways in which self-directed talk emerged as a result of sequence and participatory organization, specifically as a function of sequential misalignment linked to co-participants’ interactional nonavailability at particular moments in time. These latter examples also demonstrated that participants transitioned into extended displays of self-directed talk as a face-saving strategy in response to nonrecipiency. More generally, we hope to have modestly contributed to long-standing questions concerning the distinction between social and self-directed uses of language, in part by empirically demonstrating that any rigid
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distinction between the two is equivocal. In this sense, our analyses support the notion that externalized linguistic signs, with self-directed talk as perhaps an exemplar variety, simultaneously operate as constituents of social interaction and as tools for thinking and doing (Prawat, 1999). Additionally, the notion that self-directed talk serves to display aspects of orientation and cognition aligns with contemporary research which describes language use as a complex type of ‘joint attentional skill’ (Tomasello, 2003: 21) that involves the species-wide capacity for sharing attentional frames and for attuning to the intentions, cognitive and emotional states, and conceptual perspectives exhibited by humans in one’s environment. Finally, our emphasis on the social functions and interactional embeddedness of self-directed talk contributes to a wide array of research that situates cognition as fundamentally collective and distributed across individuals and artifacts. As Kasper recently phrased it, cognition has been ‘relocated from its Cartesian habitat in the privacy of the individual mind to the public sphere of social life, where it becomes visible to members throughout their observable and reportable (“accountable”), practical, situated reasoning methods’ (Kasper, 2009: 13). Independent of its putative intrapersonal functions that cannot be assessed from an emic perspective, and based on the analyses presented above, we propose that self-directed talk in social settings is always implicated in the turn economy and the participatory organization that comprises a given interaction. As such, self-directed talk does not simply emanate from and relate to an individual mind, but is observably tied up with, and has consequences for, the broader organization of social interaction such as task-induced joint activities in a language classroom. Selfdirected talk and its social functions are part of the resources that language learners use to establish and maintain intersubjectivity, display and ascribe current foci of attention, and to organize their individual and collective actions in mutually recognizable ways. In this sense, the social functions of self-directed talk may be one of the central building blocks of interactional competence in an additional language, serving as fundamental a role to interactional achievement as more widely discussed semiotic actions such as story openings, repair or disagreement (Pekarek Doehler & Pochon-Berger, this volume). Transcription conventions [ = & (.) (. .) (. . .) (1.5) coul-
onsetof overlap latching continuation after overlap unmeasured pauses up to ca. 1sec measured pauses cut-off
The Social Life of Self-Directed Talk ti:me kostet? oridnateur. j’achète, und ça fait nei und NON °ça fait tout° ell(h)e f/ε/, f/ε:/ >et ça ça< (du;de) (xx) EBR? + ((to ANI))
89
lengthening of preceding sound rising intonation falling intonation continuing intonation dotted underlining indicates talk in (Swiss) German stress louder soft voice laughter particle phonetic transcription in case of dubious pronunciation; information on stress, lengthening, etc. might be added faster slower alternatives in case of dubious hearing unidentifiable stretch of talk dubious speaker identification references in the verbal transcription line the action described in the following comment line transcriber’s comment
Notes
2. 3.
4.
The corpus is part of a larger database of two research projects: Emotions and foreign language learning in the classroom, University of Basel, Switzerland and Discourse organizational competence in L2, Swiss NSF Grant No. 405640108663/1, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, http://www2.unine.ch/codi. Accessed 23.7.10. All names are pseudonyms. There are no recordings of the preparation as the rehearsal lesson is the fi rst time recordings that took place in this class. On the teacher’s suggestion, the groups pass one after another into an adjacent room where the camera is installed to rehearse their dialogue while the teacher continues working with the whole class in the adjacent classroom. Once the students feel ready, they call the researcher, working as teacher aid, and do their fi nal performance. The fi nal performances of all groups are later assessed and graded by the teacher. From an observer’s, or etic, perspective, the pronounciation is ambiguous and does not allow the transcriber or analyst to decide what tense Olivia, and later also Lorena produces, the present, “je fais = I do’, or the present perfect ‘j’ai fait = I have done’. From an emic perspective, however, there is no overt indication that the perceived ambiguity is a problem for the participants at this point in the interaction. Despite the troubles Olivia displays from line 3 on, the tensepronounciation issue does not seem to constitute the trouble source (neither can we impute her problems simply to a memory issue, as we will see later (Excerpt 4.3, lines 31 et seqq). The sign /E/ that we use in our transcript, usually serves to indicate an archiphoneme where the distinguishing trait, open (/ε/) vs. closed (/e/), is neutralized. In absence of an established alternative notation, the /E/ is used here to indicate an ambiguous pronounciation systematically oscillating between the French schwa / / (e.g. je = I) and the closed vowel /e/ (e.g. j’ai = I have). e
1.
90 5. 6.
7.
8.
9.
Part 1: The Nature of L2 Interactional Competence As we learned later, French is one of Aurélien’s L1s, spoken at home with his parents. The use of the L1 is a procedure commonly observed in other studies examining ‘private speech’ within sociocultural research, according to which it fulfills self-regulatory functions for managing cognitively demanding tasks (cf. Brooks & Donato, 1994; Frawley & Lantolf, 1985). See also Goffman: ‘In no immediate way do such utterances belong to a . . . a ritually ratified state of talk embracing ratified participants . . . or to a summoning one. First speaker’s utterance does not officially establish a slot which second speaker is under some obligation to fill: there is no ratified speaker and recipient.’ (Goffman, 1978: 799–800) Raul’s self-oriented talk stops, or ‘goes underground’ in sociocultural terms, after his ‘also = so’ at line 28 – a marker typically used to preface next actions (cf. Bolden, 2006). In this case, the next action, presumably formulating the itinerary in L2, is carried out without the use of audible speech as Raul is silently oriented to his instruction sheet. At some later point, we see him getting a pen and then taking, silently, notes. Still later, within the ensuing role play, we hear him verbalizing his itinerary in French L2. In addition to their sequential embeddedness, these instances of self-directed talk may be characterized as serving face-saving functions since they offer an alternative to nonrecipiency and the resultant talking into a void.
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Schegloff, E.A. (1997) Practices and actions: Boundary cases of other-initiated repair. Discourse Processes 23, 499–545. Schegloff, E.A. (2007) Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in Conversation Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schegloff, E.A., Jefferson, G. and Sacks, H. (1977) On the preference for selfcorrection in the organization of repair in conversation. Language 53, 361–382. Schegloff, E.A. and Sacks, H. (1973) Opening up closings. Semiotica 8, 289–327. Seedhouse, P. (2004) The Interactional Architecture of the Language Classroom: A Conversation Analysis Perspective. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Smith, H. (2007) The social and the private worlds of speech: Speech for inter- and intramental activity. The Modern Language Journal 91, 341–356. te Molder, H. and Potter, J. (eds) (2005) Conversation and Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tomasello, M. (2003) Constructing a Language: A Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Vygotsky, L.S. (1987) In R.W. Reiber and A.S. Carton (eds) The Collected Works of L. S. Vygotsky (Vol. 1) Problems of General Psychology. New York: Plenum Press. Vygotsky, L.S. (1978) Mind in Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vygotsky, L.S. (1986) Thought and Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Chapter 5
Second Language Interaction for Business and Learning G. THEODÓRSDÓTTIR
Introduction Second language (L2) learners, as opposed to foreign language learners, may have opportunities to interact in the L2 in their everyday life outside of the classroom, be it in service encounters or private conversation, which could be beneficial for the learning of the L2. In Wagner’s words: The real potential for a social approach to language learning lies outside the classroom in the activities of ordinary bilingual social life (. . .) The noneducational reality is just outside the classroom, the target of the participants is to participate in these activities. (Wagner, 2004: 615) Following Firth and Wagner’s (1997) call for a broadening of the second language acquisition (SLA) database to include nonelicited data, this study is interested in how L2 speakers identify or create opportunities for everyday L2 interaction and more specifically how they take advantage of these opportunities with respect to learning or practicing the L2. Using the recording of a service encounter (a bakery) between Anna, who is learning Icelandic as a L2, and a clerk who has Icelandic as his first language (L1), this chapter investigates different activities in which Anna’s identity as a L2 learner is made relevant in the interaction. This investigation shows the unfolding of two trajectories in the course of the interaction, one with a linguistic focus and one with a topical focus. Examining the interaction as an opportunity for interacting and learning, the roles of both participants in the interaction will be discussed with respect to this dual nature of the talk: how they manage in cooperation to successfully complete their business in the target language (Icelandic) despite the limited resources of the L2 speaker. In fact, the interaction may have been beyond the L2 speaker’s linguistic abilities without the help of the co-participant. We will see a strict division of labor between the participants with the L2 learner initiating focus on linguistic features of the L2 and the clerk moving the 93
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business transaction forward, while maintaining an agreement with Anna to interact in Icelandic. In order to fulfill both aspects, the clerk deploys a specific strategy in the conversation, as will be shown in the chapter. One of the benefits of analyzing the activities in which the participants engage in one encounter, rather than applying the more common conversation analytic (CA) approach based on a collection of examples of a single phenomenon from different encounters, is the opportunity to study the dynamics in the interaction: how the activities are structured during the interaction. An examination of the activities of both participants through the course of the interaction reveals a cohabitation of the topical and the linguistic issues, where orientation to linguistic matters is within the scope of the topical interaction. Another interesting point is the development of the participants’ activities, that is Anna’s linguistic focus and the clerk’s strategy, as the interaction progresses: how these activities become increasingly bold. Rather than relying exclusively on my own membership knowledge (Garfinkel, 1967; ten Have, 2002), that is the knowledge or capacities that people have as members of a society, of these kinds of service encounters for the analysis, I will introduce and analyze a service encounter (see also Ventola, 1983, 2005), which also takes place in a bakery, between two Icelanders. The purpose of this is to display how these business interactions are organized sequentially and compare to the focal L2 interaction. This makes for necessary background knowledge in terms of addressing the main topics of the chapter: Does the interaction, where one of the participants is a L2 speaker, have specific characteristics that distinguishes it from interaction between L1 speakers? And, what are they? Building on a relatively new research direction, CA-SLA (Firth & Wagner, 1997, 2007; Kasper, 2009; Kasper & Wagner, 2011; Markee & Kasper, 2004; Mori & Markee, 2009; Pekarek Doehler, 2010), this study applies methods of CA to carefully study naturally occurring talk-in-interaction in its interactional details. This methodology, it is argued, ensures a rich picture of the interactional competencies of the L2 learner. In recent years, a number of studies using this method for the study of SLA have come forth, focusing primarily on L2-classroom activities (He, 2004; Hellermann, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009; Kasper, 2004; Markee, 2000; Markee & Kasper, 2004; Mondada & Pekarek Doehler, 2004; Mori, 2004a, 2004b; Mori & Hasegawa, 2009; Seedhouse, 2004). However, interest in L2 learners’ activities outside the classroom with regards to the learning of the L2 has increased over the past few years (Brouwer, 2003, 2004; Brouwer & Wagner, 2004; Wagner, 2004, 2010). Still little is known about how L2 learning in noneducational settings is organized. It is clear that a better understanding of the available resources for L2 use and learning in the L2 society, and how they can be exploited for the benefits of the L2 learner, can inform teaching and learning practices and can be used for the development of teaching materials and design of language courses. This chapter intends to contribute to the
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ongoing discussion of the relevance of L2 learners’ language use in their daily life to language learning. The chapter is organized as follows: Following a discussion on the data used in this study is a brief look at a business interaction between two Icelanders. The point of this is to enhance our understanding of the roles of the participants and the sequential organization of the conversation. In the main section of the chapter, a L2 interaction in a bakery will be analyzed and discussed in detail with respect to a dual nature of the talk and the roles of the participants with this question in mind: How does Anna, the L2 learner, with the help of her co-participant, exploit the business interaction as a resource for L2 use and learning? Finally, there is a summary, discussion and the concluding remarks.
The Data The data used in this study consist of audio recordings that a few foreign students at the University of Iceland made on a regular basis in their daily lives. I had sought volunteers among beginning students in the program Icelandic for foreign students at the University of Iceland to record themselves in their interactions outside the classroom. In return, the participants were offered a one-hour tutoring session a week with my assistant, who helped them with their homework. The data collection is based on a method described in Brouwer and Nissen (2003) where participants in courses in L2 Danish were asked to tape their conversations outside of the classroom and hand in the recordings to their teacher who gave them feedback. No such feedback was given on the conversations in my data: it was kept separate from the tutoring sessions. The specific data used in this chapter are taped by Anna, a Canadian student who came to Iceland in the fall of 2005 to learn Icelandic. Anna started recording herself after having been in Iceland for a month. She handed in recordings of half an hour a week for three years. The service encounter, which is the topic of this chapter, was recorded in Anna’s second month in Iceland. The L1 interaction also examined here was taped in the fall of 2009. Whether to use audio or video recording for this project was certainly an issue in the beginning: The choice of audio over video was made with regards to the type of material I was after, namely, authentic, unprepared, naturally occurring interaction. A tape recorder comes in more handy than a video camera and is less likely to compromise the authenticity of the interaction; using video might require two cameras which would have to be set up and adjusted to capture both the participants in the interaction. This takes time that might enable the participants to prepare for the ‘recording’ and thus make the data more prepared and less authentic.
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Interaction in a Service Encounter Service encounters may be the optimal places to practice the L2; the service-personnel (usually) speak the language which is the L2 learners’/ customers’ target language and get paid to interact with the customers. Furthermore, L2 speakers may not, in the beginning of their stay in the new country, know many experienced speakers of their target language and therefore may not have many possibilities to use it in private conversation. However, one aspect of modern society, that is increasing self-service, limits such opportunities for L2 use. The L2 speaker may discover that in many service encounters very little language is needed. In some grocery stores the only face-to-face encounter may be with the cashier when checking out, which due to the nature of the cashier’s job may not be very suitable for lengthy conversations. A L2 learner who wants to use service encounters as language-learning opportunities needs to identify the (few) service situations in which language is actually used to do business. It may, thus, be important for the L2 learner to make the most of each opportunity. The interaction studied here takes place in a bakery where language exchange is in fact needed for business transactions. Before the analysis of the target interaction, we will briefly look at an analysis of an encounter in a bakery where both participants’ L1 is Icelandic. This is to ‘set the stage’ for the main topic of this chapter: The roles of the participants and the sequential organization of the interaction will be examined and compared to the corresponding roles and sequences in the L2 interaction. A L1 interaction for business This part of the chapter studies an interaction between an Icelandic customer and an Icelandic clerk recorded in a similar environment (a bakery) as the focal L2 interaction presented later (Excerpts 5.2–5.6). The purpose of this section is to better understand the structure of a ‘typical’ business interaction in the bakery with which we can then compare the L2 conversation. On service encounters see also Ventola (1983, 2005). The goal is to home in on what distinguishes a business interaction where both participants are L1 speakers from an interaction in a similar situation where one of the participants is a L2 speaker. In Excerpt 5.1, we see a conversation between a customer and a clerk in a bakery. Both participants are L1 speakers of Icelandic. Excerpt 5.1 (simplified): A business interaction in the bakery (CL is the clerk, CU is the customer) 01 CU: góðan dag good day
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((someone is talking on a cell phone)) (daginn) day-the Good day áttu brauð með kúmeni↓ have-you bread with cumin↓ Do you have bread with cumin? nei no
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heyrðu ég er að hugsa um að fá þarna þetta listen I am to think about to get there this Listen I think I will get there this sem þú sagðir mér fyrst [°uppskeru-°] that you told me first [°harvest-°] that you told me first harvest[já] [yes] já yes viltu það sneitt↓ want-you it sliced↓ Do you want it sliced? já takk yes thanks Yes please já yes (33.7) ((bread-cutting machine)) fleira fyrir þig↓ else for you↓ Anything else for you? já takk ég ætla að fá hérna tvær hrískökur yes thanks I will to get here two rice-cakes Yes please I’ll get here two rice cakes (0.3) já yes (26.4) fleira↓ else↓ Anything else?
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hvað er það komið mikið↓ how is it come much↓ How much is it now? 37 CL: níu hundruð og (fimmtán) nine hundred and (fifteen) 38 CU: .hjá nei takk ég ætla ekki að (fá meira) .hyes no thanks I will not to (get more) Yes no thanks I will not get anything else 39 CL: takk fyrir thanks for Thanks 40 (5.6) 41 CL: gerðu svo vel here you go 42 CU: já (takk) yes (thanks) Lines omitted Following the participants’ exchange of greetings (lines 1–2) the customer utters: áttu brauð með kúmeni (Do you have bread with cumin). The utterance has the format of a yes/no question, possibly inquiring into the availability of the item rather than directly ordering. The use of áttu (do you have) further suggests that the item in question is not displayed for the customer to see. The clerk’s negative response (line 4) shows this to be the case. Following the clerk’s listing alternative choices of bread (omitted from the transcript) to the unavailable cumin-bread, the customer makes his choice in lines 22–23. The participants confirm their understanding in lines 24–25. The next relevant action after the ordering of the bread is for the clerk to inquire whether or not to slice it as we see him do in line 26. Following mutual confirmation tokens from the participants (lines 27–28) the verbal interaction is put on hold while the clerk physically prepares the bread indicated by the long pause in line 29 and the sound of the breadcutting machine. In line 30, the clerk utters: fleira fyrir þig (anything else for you), displaying that he is ready to take an order for a possible next item which is a part of his duties (Ventola, 1983: 246). The clerk has now delivered a first pair part of an adjacency pair, which is described in Schegloff and Sacks (1973: 295–296) as paired sequences, that is question–answer, greeting–greeting, where one speaker produces a first pair part and the co-participant delivers the second pair part of the adjacency pair. The clerk’s first pair part (line 30) is formulated as a yes/no question, but the next relevant action is for the customer to order or indicate that he does not want anything else. The customer provides a second pair part ‘yes’ to the clerk’s question as it is formulated and then he places the order: já takk ég ætla að fá hérna tvær
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hrískökur (yes please I will get here two rice cakes) (line 31). The clerk, acknowledging the order, responds with a ‘yes’ token after a short pause (line 33). The next relevant action is for the clerk to prepare the order, the verbal response (line 33) does not suffice – a physical response is necessary. The 26.4 second pause (line 34) may be the clerk physically preparing the order as we saw in line 29. In lines 26–29 and lines 30–34, we can see a similar sequential order: Following an order and its preparation, the clerk takes the turn with the next relevant action, inquiry into the handling of an item ordered (line 26) or a next possible item (line 30). This shows that it is the clerk’s role to move the business interaction forward. In his turn the customer responds and then there is an extensive pause in the verbal interaction where the clerk physically fulfills the customer’s request and therefore no participation is required from the customer. A final example of this recurring sequence can be observed in lines 35–40: Following the pause the clerk resumes the verbal interaction fleira? (anything else?). Rather than responding to the clerk’s question the customer inquires into how much the current items cost (line 36). The customer has now delivered a first pair part of an adjacency pair, possibly asking for information that will allow him to respond to the clerk’s question. This is an insertion sequence (Hutchby & Wooffitt, 1998; Schegloff, 1968) which is a question–answer sequence that is placed between the first and second pair parts of an adjacency pair and functions as an inquiry into how to understand or respond to the first pair part. At this point there are two first pair parts pending and the next relevant action is for the clerk to respond to the customer’s question (line 36), as he does in line 37. The customer’s response já nei takk ég ætla ekki að fá meira (yes no thanks I will not get anything else) appears to be designed to accomplish at least two things: já (yes) as a confirmation of understanding of the clerk’s response in line 37 which closes the insertion sequence in lines 36–37, nei (no) as an answer to the clerk’s question in line 35, that is the second pair part of the adjacency pair. Finally, the customer provides a ‘long version’ of his negative response: ég ætla ekki að fá meira (I will not get anything else). The clerk’s thanks (line 39) which can be seen as a confirmation of understanding is followed by a 5.6 second pause. As in the previous examples (lines 26–29, 30–34) the verbal interaction is put on hold while the clerk may be engaged in a physical aspect of his work, that is preparing the goods. In short, we can see that this business interaction is driven by the clerk who initiates recurring sequences that consist of (1) an inquiry from the clerk into further orders (cf. Ventola, 1983: 2), (2) a response from the customer and (3) a ‘silent’ period where the clerk may be attending to some physical aspects of his duties, and does not need the customer’s participation. A description of service encounters is found in Ventola (1983) and represented as flow charts which identify several components in service
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encounters, that is greeting, turn-allocation, service bid, service, resolution, pay, goods handover and finally goodbye (Ventola, 1983: 245). The ‘service bid’ corresponds to the recurring sequence described here: it is recurrent depending on the response from the customer; a positive response to a service bid initiates a further bid whereas a negative response takes the interaction to the next step which is also a point made in the present study. The next section addresses the main subject of this study, namely the L2 interaction for business and learning in which a L2 speaker of Icelandic manages, with the cooperation of his co-participant, to take advantage of an everyday business encounter for language-learning purposes. A L2 interaction for business and learning The interaction examined in this section has a dual focus of ‘doing topical interaction’ on the one hand and ‘orienting to language’ on the other. The analysis shows how the participants manage this duality in the interaction, as well as the question of how the language-oriented activities relate to matters of language learning. In other words, I focus on whether language learning can be described as attending to linguistic features of the L2, whether the participants orient to these activities as language learning, and finally how these activities relate to the ongoing business interaction, that is to what extent they are embedded in the topical interaction, to what extent the business at hand requires attending to linguistic features as a necessary condition for conducting the business, and to what extent the language-oriented activities are parallel activities in their own right. In Excerpts 5.2–5.6, Anna is in a bakery talking to the Icelandic clerk. Early in the interaction (lines 1–2 in Excerpt 5.2), Anna makes her identity as a L2 learner relevant by negotiating with the clerk to use Icelandic in the upcoming interaction, indicating that the interaction may be more than just an ordinary business transaction; it may be an opportunity for language practice. Excerpt 5.2 The first order in the bakery 01 CL: *icelandic 02 AN: já. yes. 03 (0.8) 04 AN: uh:uhm::: (1.7) °uhuhuhuh° má ég fá:: (1.9) uh:m::: (1.3) may I ge::t Can I have 05 hás::: (1.0) uh::::: (2.4) haus:br↑auð? autu:: autumn:br↑ead? autu- autumnbread
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j↑á= y↑es = °>(hau)s:brauð<°. °>(au)tumn:bread<°. Autumnbread. (1.8)
In the beginning of the recording (lines 1–2), we hear what appears to be the final part of a negotiation of the language to use in the upcoming business interaction. The clerk’s utterance, Icelandic (line 1), refers to the medium language and is possibly a confirmation check responding to a prior request made by the L2 speaker that they speak Icelandic. In line 2 Anna responds with já (yes), confirming the clerk’s understanding. The response is in Icelandic which further emphasizes the L2 speaker’s request to interact in her target language. It is now clear that in the upcoming interaction the clerk’s task is twofold. He is, as expected of a clerk in a bakery, responsible for the business interaction. But he has also, as can be seen in lines 1–2 in Excerpt 5.2, agreed to interact with the low-level L2 speaker in Icelandic. Anna is a native speaker of English and it is clear from the start that the clerk can speak and understand English. However, having only been in Iceland for a month, Anna is a beginning learner of Icelandic. English would thus seem to be the least costly choice of language for this interaction from the point of view of the business, that is to facilitate a ‘smooth’ and quick business transaction. The fact that the participants engage in a negotiation on the language to use suggests that the upcoming interaction has more to it than simply doing business. A second aspect of the upcoming interaction has now been brought into play, namely, a linguistic focus or a possible language-learning opportunity. This may, however, not be obvious for the clerk at this point. He has only agreed to speak Icelandic and he might not have enough information yet to assess Anna’s low competence. In line 4 after the formula, má ég fá (may I get), is a slot for the name of the item Anna is purchasing. Following extensive pauses and uhs, Anna utters hás- (line 5). The placement of hás- in the TCU shows this as the beginning of the term for an item she wants to purchase, but at this point it is not clear what it is. The stretching of the s in hás together with uhs and pauses indicate trouble in naming the item (Brouwer, 2003; Schegloff, 1979; Schegloff et al., 1977). In Anna’s second attempt to name the item, still in line 5, she uses a different vowel for the pronunciation of the first part of the word, namely [öi] in haustbrauð as opposed to [au] in hás,1 indicating that the trouble may have to do with pronouncing the target word. As indicated by the uhs and pauses and the self-correction in line 5, Anna puts great effort into speaking Icelandic correctly. Moreover, the clerk
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does not attempt to move the interaction forward, which he might be expected to do (Stivers & Robinson, 2006), rather, he allows Anna the time she needs to deliver her utterance. The clerk’s ‘yes’ in line 6 works as a response to the question may I have autumnbread? Furthermore, it is treated as a positive assessment of the pronunciation of haustbrauð: Anna’s (line 7) repetition of the target word, haustbrauð, is in a low volume and increased speed which suggests that it is not designed for the clerk to attend to, rather some sort of private speech (Ohta, 2001), that is repeating the word for herself with the correct pronunciation. She has thus accomplished two interrelated activities, getting a word right and placing an order in the bakery. In Excerpt 5.3, the clerk proceeds with the business. Excerpt 5.3 Sneiða means to cut 09 AN: u [h ] 10 CL: [á ] ég að sneiða það? [shall] I to slice it? Do you want me to slice it? 11 (0.4) 12 AN: sneiða:: means to cu[t] 13 CL: [c]ut(.)cut = 14 AN: Uh: j[á] uh sneiða. y[es] slice. Yes slice. 15 CL: [(já)] [(yes)] 16 (14.1) ((sound of a bread-cutting machine, tape cut off)) The next relevant action after ordering the bread (cf. Excerpt 5.2) is for the clerk to ask whether to slice it (cf. Excerpt 5.1, line 26). This is done in line 10: á ég að sneiða það? (do you want me to slice it?). The question requires a yes or no response from Anna. However, she orients to the meaning of an apparently troublesome word, sneiða, used by the clerk and delivers a candidate understanding, sneiða means to cut (line 12). The clerk (line 13) overlaps her with cut and repeats it once out of the overlap. This is his translation of sneiða and a possible confirmation of Anna’s candidate understanding. The activity seen in lines 12–13 fits the description of an insertion sequence. When the insertion sequence is finished, the participants attend to the second pair part (cf. Excerpt 5.1, lines 36–38). The emphasis on sneiða (slice) in the question Á ég að sneiða það? (do you want me to slice it?) (line 10) indicates it as the key-word here. The clerk may not be certain that Anna understands this word since it may not be
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very common outside the bakery, and Anna, has now revealed her status as a low-level L2 learner. This word is not, however, placed sequentially as a repairable, that is at the end of the turn ( Jefferson, 1972), rendering the language-oriented activity embedded in the main interactional activity; to answer the question in line 10, the L2 speaker has to check her understanding. That is precisely what Anna does in line 12, sneiða means to cut. Anna’s formulation of her candidate understanding includes the infinitive marker, sneiða means to cut, which suggests an orientation, perhaps implicit, to more subtle aspects of conceptualization in terms of word class. The clerk, then, participates in this language-oriented activity by delivering a confirmation of Anna’s candidate understanding. Note that in his response (line 13) the clerk does not say ‘to cut’ like Anna does. Anna as a language learner identifies a verb here whereas the clerk is supplying a word for the action. Lines 12–13 constitute a clear example of a division of labor between the participants. Anna’s candidate understanding requires a response and can therefore be seen as a first pair part of an adjacency pair (line 12) and the clerk responds (line 13) and thereby delivers the second pair part. This is a reversed order from the topical aspects of the interaction where the clerk delivers the first pair part and the L2 speaker responds (cf. lines 10 and 14 in Excerpt 5.3). This shows that the participants may have different interactional foci; the clerk (the Icelander) attends to the topical side of the interaction and Anna (the L2 speaker) orients to linguistic matters. Kurhila (2004) made the same point in her study on L2 speakers of Finnish in service encounters. The insertion sequence (lines 12–13) puts the main interaction on hold, and the clerk’s question in line 10 has not yet received an answer. This insertion sequence in which this activity takes place thus involves both participants without disturbing the main interaction as evidenced by the participants returning to their business interaction (line 14). Anna delivers her answer to the clerk’s question in line 10 without any explanation: (simplified) já sneiða (yes slice) and the clerk’s response, a ‘yes’ token overlapping Anna (line 15) shows his understanding of Anna’s response referring to his question in line 10. He then goes on to perform the service of cutting the bread, as agreed. The uttering of sneiða in the reply já sneiða (yes slice) (line 15) is curious. At first glance sneiða (slice) seems redundant here for business purposes – a simple yes might have been sufficient. This might indicate that Anna is still orienting to language at this point, as she is practicing uttering the new word. A closer inspection reveals a slightly more complicated situation where two activities are going on at the same time. The clerk’s utterance in line 10 is a first pair part of an adjacency pair and the second pair part, a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer, is still pending. At the same time the language orientation which is initiated after the first pair part (lines 12–13) may not
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be completed: the possible completion in line 13 with the clerk’s utterance: cut, that is his English translation of sneiða is partially in overlap with Anna’s utterance (line 12), which may cause the participants to be unsure whether they have reached intersubjectivity on the meaning of the word, or if further confirmation is needed, possibly a ‘yes’ token or even ‘yes cut’. Therefore, a simple ‘yes’ from Anna could have been interpreted either referring to the business (to go ahead and slice the bread) or the language (Anna’s confirmation of her understanding of the meaning of the word). Her response: já sneiða (yes slice) cannot be understood as a confirmation of understanding of line 13 since cut has now replaced sneiða as the topic and therefore, sneiða in the answer já sneiða cannot refer to the clerk’s cut cut in line 13. This leads to the conclusion that Anna’s response is so designed to be addressed to the business and language issues together, that is responding to the business part, and avoiding a possible misunderstanding, and at the same time taking the opportunity to utter the word again. The clerk’s understanding is indicated by his yes token and the physical response of actually cutting the bread. The sequence seen in lines 10, 14–16 (Excerpt 5.3) has a similar structure as the sequences described for the business interaction (Excerpt 5.1) seen in lines 26–29, 30–34 and 35–40 in Excerpt 5.1. There is, however, a difference between the sequences in the two encounters which can be seen by comparing the two insertion sequences seen in lines 36–38 in Excerpt 5.1 (L1 interaction) and lines 12–13 in Excerpt 5.3 (L2 interaction): In the former, the focus is on topical matters whereas in the latter attention is given to linguistic features. In short, the L2 speaker attends to the meaning (both referential and conceptual) of the word sneiða (slice) (line 12). This activity is embedded in the topical interactional trajectory as its accomplishment is a prerequisite for Anna to answer the clerk’s question in line 10. In Excerpt 5.4 the clerk proceeds with the business, inquiring about further items. Anna searches for a different formula (from the one she used for her first order) to use in placing an additional order. In this excerpt the clerk employs a specific recipient design which can be seen as a language-oriented practice. This practice enables him to fulfill both aspects of his task, language and business, by assisting the L2 speaker to do her business in Icelandic (the language aspect) and making sure that she understands (business aspect). Excerpt 5.4 The second order 17 CL: og fl↑eira? and ↑else? And anything else? 18 (0.8)
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°*uh::::° any[(thing) el
]s:e uh:m: (0.5) uh JÁ YES [(anything else)] uh::uh:: (1.5) uh é:::g uh (2.1) é::::g (.) uh::m::: (0.2) I::: I:::: (.ts) (1.5) will get? (.) *uh:uh:uh (.) ah (0.3) tu:, have- (0.3) you:, will get? Do you have ég skal fá. I will get. (0.5) hhe (0.7) uh:m:: (0.4) s:>S:NÚÐAC:INNAMON-ROLLS
The clerk’s design of his utterances to accommodate the needs of a lowlevel L2 speaker is evident in the way in which he first delivers his utterance in Icelandic and, when no response is forthcoming from Anna and following a pause, repeats his utterance in English (lines 17–20). In line 17 the clerk inquires about the possible ordering of a next item with the utterance og fleira? (and else?). A pause of almost a second follows in which the clerk may be waiting for Anna to respond – after all, it is her turn. Following some uhs, which in combination with the pause indicate trouble, Anna starts to repeat the clerk’s question in English, ‘any’. Upon Anna’s hesitant start of her turn and her use of English ‘any’, the clerk overlaps her with the English version of the question: anything else? (line 20). Apparently he analyzed the pause and Anna’s use of English ‘any’ in line 18 as trouble in understanding, to which he responds with the utterance of the English version of the question. In line 19 we see Anna providing a second pair part ‘yes’ to the clerk’s question as it is formulated, but no order comes forth, instead she utters uhs followed by a 1.5 second pause. This indicates trouble in finding the
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next element in her TCU. After further hesitation she starts a new TCU, uttering é:::g (I:::) followed by more uhs and pauses and é::::g (I::::). Anna then switches to English, will get, after a 1.5 second pause. The formula, ég ætla að fá (I will get), commonly used in similar situations may be what Anna is searching for (cf. Excerpt 5.1, lines 31, 38). Privileged knowledge of the data supports this hunch; Anna had told a friend,2 before going to the bakery, that she intended to use má ég fá (may I get) for her initial order and then ég ætla að fá (I will get), which was offered by this friend, for her additional order. This is exactly what she is doing in lines 21–22. At this stage, however, Anna’s activity is not clear to the clerk. Even though will get seems to be try-marked (with a rising intonation) and with emphasis on the word get it does not elicit any response from the clerk. Anna keeps going, uttering uhs, suggesting that she does not want the clerk’s help. After a micro pause she utters ah and after a 0.3 second pause tu (line 22). Then, in line 23, comes the clerk’s candidate solution to Anna’s search for the formula will get (line 22): ég skal fá. This is curious because it is not a usual formula used in situations like this, and because it follows Anna’s ah (0.3) tu: which can be heard as a version3 of áttu (do-you-have), a frequent formula used in service encounters (cf. Excerpt 5.1, line 3). Apparently, the clerk now orients to Anna’s utterance will get in line 22 as a request for help which he offers by providing the searched for item, and thereby ignores Anna’s own solution ahtu (áttu) (do-you-have). The clerk’s ignoring áttu (have-you) may be due to problems in understanding Anna’s pronunciation. The clerk’s utterance ég skal fá (I will get) is a direct translation of Anna’s will get which is pragmatically inappropriate from the perspective of speakers of Standard Icelandic. The clerk seems, at that point, to be focusing on the language rather than the situation, adopting the role of a language expert rather than that of a clerk in a bakery. Instead of his candidate solution, a pragmatically appropriate translation of will get in this situation would be ætla að fá, which, as stated earlier, is commonly used when making a purchase. Anna resumes her talk with the utterance of snúða (cinnamon rolls) following uhs and a pause. This part is pragmatically and syntactically fitted to áttu (do-you-have) and can be seen as the final element of Anna’s turn áttu snúða (do-you-have cinnamon rolls). Anna does not acknowledge the clerk’s contribution in line 23 and continues with her own talk. She has now completed the TCU she started in line 22 ignoring the intervening talk (the clerk’s help). Theodórsdóttir (2011) shows that L2 speakers may insist on finishing their own TCU, ignoring the other participants’ contribution. Anna’s accomplishment, with regards to the L2, is the uttering of a complete phrase áttu snúða4 (do-you-have cinnamon rolls). At this point in the interaction she has managed to order two items using two different formulas. Anna does not seem to orient to the clerk’s
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candidate solution, perhaps because she has now abandoned her search for will get and chosen another formula áttu (do-you-have), and perhaps, thinking back to Anna’s own intentions to use two specific formulas in this encounter, because she simply does not recognize the clerk’s phrase. Anyhow, after some pauses, lines 24–26, she manages to order a cinnamon roll. In fact, Anna’s search for another formula to order her additional items seems unnecessary; the one used for buying the bread ‘may I get’ applies to the additional items as well, and therefore naming the items is sufficient, as also shown in the interactional trajectory in which the business is accomplished. This excerpt then shows a shift in Anna’s language-oriented activities. This activity, as opposed to the one in the previous excerpt, is not embedded in the business interaction, as the business interaction does not call for this. Rather, it transpires as a parallel activity, but an activity that is not accomplished in co-participatory agreement, that is Anna ignores clerk’s offer of the formula ég skal fá (I will get) and finds a different one: áttu (do you have). Nevertheless, this can be seen as Anna working on her interactional competence; increasing her vocabulary for use in business interactions. In lines 31–33, we see another example of the clerk’s specific recipient design (Sacks et al., 1974: 727). Anna orders a cinnamon roll (line 27) but she does not specify which of the three available kinds she wants. In line 31 the clerk lists the options for Anna to choose from: með súkkulaði karamellu eða glassúr? (with chocolate caramel or frosting?). Then, after a short pause and no response from Anna, the clerk starts repeating the list in English (line 33): chocolate. Anna makes her choice by repeating chocolate (line 34), making it unnecessary for the clerk to continue with the list. Now, Anna has ordered some items that the clerk needs to handle (possibly wrapping them), which puts the verbal business-interaction on hold: The customer’s participation is not needed here (cf. Excerpt 5.1). The pauses in lines 35 and 37 (in Excerpt 5.5) mark the beginning of such a ‘silent’ period in the interaction. Rather than standing there in silence waiting until the clerk finishes his physical activity and initiates the next step in the business interaction, as we saw the customer do in Excerpt 5.1, Anna initiates chat with the clerk, using her limited linguistic means. She sees an opportunity for some language exchange and makes use of it. Excerpt 5.5 Chat 35 (0.8) 36 AN: .hh (sniff) 37 (2.2) 38 AN: það >það< er gots it >it< is good
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39 40
AN:
41
CL:
42 43
AN:
44 45 46
CL: AN: CL:
47 48
AN:
49
CL:
50 51
AN: CL:
52 53 54
CL: AN:
(0.8) það er gots it is good já yes (0.4) já yes hehe uh:uhm >sweet< já perfect yes (0.7) það er (0.3) það er stor it is it is big .hh já yes hehehe (0.3) .hh (2.6) uh::: (3.6) eitthvað fleira? anything else? (0.8) anything else? *uh:uh* ne:i (0.2) uh::: that’s all (.) ehehe no: No that’s all
In line 38, Anna utters það það er gots (it it is good). The word gots can be heard as a version of gott (good). Anna’s utterance það það er gots (it it is good) may be a comment on the cinnamon rolls that she is buying and that the clerk may be handling at that moment. Her use of it for deictic purposes5 shows that she expects its reference to be clear to the clerk. Her utterance requires a response from the clerk. The pause in line 39 may be Anna waiting for the clerk to respond. No action is forthcoming from the clerk and following a 0.8 second pause Anna repeats her statement (line 40). This time the clerk responds in line 41: já (yes) in a smile voice. Anna continues in line 45 and utters sweet. This word is try-marked (with a rising intonation) which can indicate it as a candidate translation of gots (good)6 or asking for the Icelandic translation of sweet. Another possibility is that this is an additional comment on the cinnamon rolls. That is precisely the clerk’s interpretation, indicated with his response já perfect (line 46),7 the cinnamon rolls are good and sweet. Anna takes the opportunity to chat in the L2 using her limited linguistic means, delivering utterances of the type it is X: það er gots (it is good) (lines 38, 40) and það er það er stór (it is it is big) (line 48), and manages
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to get the clerk to participate, even if she does most of the chatting herself. There is still no attempt from the clerk to progress with the business interaction at this point; he seems quite relaxed in his participation in the small talk indicated by the smile voice in his replies (lines 41 and 49). Taking into account that there are other customers waiting to be served as can be heard in the recording, that is in the background of Anna’s and the clerk’s conversation some people are talking on their cell phones, and some are making other sounds. This suggests that the clerk is still taking care of his part of the business, which does not require any participation from the customer, as we saw in Excerpt 5.1. Line 51 marks the ending of the small talk when the clerk resumes the business talk indicating that he is ready for the next order: eitthvað fleira? (anything else). Then following a 0.8 second pause and no response from Anna he translates his utterance into English: anything else? This, as we can see, is yet another example of the clerk’s recipient design work (cf. Excerpt 5.4, lines 17–20, 31–33). There is a change in Anna’s activities between the example in lines 17–20 in Excerpt 5.4 where she utters ‘any’ as a candidate understanding of the clerk’s words and this one where she makes no such attempt at displaying understanding. In the three examples, the clerk designs his talk in a specific way for the L2 speaker. The structure of these sequences is roughly as follows: (1) (2) (3)
The clerk delivers a first pair part of an adjacency pair in Icelandic. A pause and no second pair part forthcoming from Anna. The clerk translates his first pair part into English.
This practice allows the clerk to accomplish the dual purpose of his task in the interaction in two turns at talk (Sacks et al., 1974). With the first turn he upholds the agreement made with the L2 speaker to interact in Icelandic. In the second turn, facing nonresponse and thus a possible lack of understanding on the part of the co-participant, he uses English as a means to establish intersubjectivity. Thereby he also fulfills the task required by the business at hand, as he makes himself understood and manages to move the interaction forward. In short, the L2 speaker initiates small talk with the clerk (lines 38–48) at a point in the interaction where a lengthy pause in the verbal interaction can be expected (cf. Excerpt 5.1, line 34). This shows Anna’s continuous dedication to practice the L2: creating an opportunity for herself to exercise the second language, and the clerk’s willingness to co-produce the opportunity. We see in lines 51–53 that the clerk continues to use his specific recipient design of his utterances to accommodate the L2 speaker and at the same time move the business interaction forward. In this example, however, Anna makes no attempt at understanding as she did in a previous example.
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In the next excerpt, we see a monetary activity take place toward the end of the interaction. Anna is still focusing on the L2 which is evident from her initiating language-learning activities in these final moments of the interaction. The analysis reveals a certain development in these activities over the course of the interaction, which is one of the more interesting points made in this chapter. In Excerpt 5.6 (line 60), Anna makes an explicit request to the clerk asking him to perform a language-related task: to count the change out loud, and then she starts repeating his words (line 66), an action which seems to intensify the nature of her orienting to the second language in the interaction. Excerpt 5.6 Counting the change 55 56
CL:
57 58
AN:
59 60 61 62 63
AN: CL: AN:
64 65
CL:
66
AN:
67 68 69
AN: CL:
70
71
AN:
(0.9) tvö hundruð sextíu og átta↓two hundred sixty eight. two hundred sixty and eight ↓ two hundred sixty eight. ((backgound conversation between a customer and another clerk)) (1.0) *uh:m (0.4) s: °two (0.6) hundruð° (0.5) sex hundred° six s two hundred six (16.5) ((sound of coins, a (purse)zipper, another customer ordering)) can you count the change (for me)? (1.0) in icelandic? já. yes. (0.3) fimm hundruð, five hundred, fimm hundruð five hundred (0.9) (uh) sex hundruð, sjö hundruð (0.4) og (0.5) six hundred, seven hundred and þrjátíu og tvær. thirty and two. ((sound of coins, background talk)) ah: (0.5) takk takk fyr(ir) thanks thanks fo(r) Thanks thank you
In line 56, we see the final example of the clerk’s recipient design work. Sequentially, however, it unfolds in a slightly different manner. The clerk
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utters the amount due, first in Icelandic and then immediately in English tvö hundruð sextíu og átta two hundred sixty eight. In this example there is no pause between the utterance in Icelandic and the translation to English. The practice done in two turns at talk in the first three examples is accomplished in a single turn in this last example. The clerk is still accommodating the needs of the L2 learner, by using Icelandic as agreed upon, while also attending to business matters, by establishing intersubjectivity through the use of English. The possibility for Anna to reply does not occur here, however, as there is no pause in the shift between Icelandic and English. This suggests an escalation in the practice over the course of the interaction, perhaps brought into play by the business matters increasingly overwriting the clerk’s readiness to accommodate the L2 speaker after all there are other customers waiting to be served as can be heard when listening to the tape. Anna repeats the amount (uttered by the clerk in line 56) in line 58 in low volume. This activity is embedded as a part of the business interaction, counting the money out of her purse. The low volume of Anna’s utterance (line 58) suggests that it is designed not to be attended to by the clerk (see also discussion on haustbrauð in section ‘A L2 interaction for business and learning’). No response from the clerk shows that to be his understanding. Anna starts with English two and then switches to Icelandic partially repeating the clerk’s utterance in line 56, hundruð sex. In line 60 Anna utters a first pair part of an adjacency pair (in English): can you count the change ( for me).8 Her request for the clerk to count the change can be interpreted in two ways. On the one hand she may want to be sure to get the correct change, in which case counting the change in English would suffice. Her request is in English suggesting that this is indeed the case. On the other hand, this might be oriented toward the L2, that is an opportunity to hear a L1 speaker pronounce these words. Chances are that as a beginner she does not have the linguistic means to utter her request in Icelandic. The one second pause in line 61 may reflect the clerk’s uncertainty of how to understand Anna’s request. The next relevant action is for the clerk to deliver the second pair part, an answer to the question. Instead he utters in Icelandic in line 62, which is a first pair part of an adjacency pair asking for a confirmation of the candidate understanding of this activity focusing on the second language. Anna’s confirmation is in line 63: já (yes). The question–answer sequence seen in lines 62–63 is an insertion sequence concerning the understanding of Anna’s request in line 60. The part of the conversation in lines 60–62 is in English but with her confirmation Anna switches back to Icelandic, possibly emphasizing her request. Counting the change out loud may be seen as a ‘normal’ activity for a clerk to perform in the bakery. In this case, however, where it has been established that the counting has to do with the language as well as the business; it can be seen as a linguistic activity embedded in the topical interaction.
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In line 65 the clerk starts – as requested – counting the change: fimm hundruð (five hundred), which can be seen as his response to Anna’s request in line 60. In line 66 Anna repeats the clerk’s words: fimm hundruð (five hundred). This shows that using language for practical matters can also result in language learning, that is Anna’s request for the clerk to count the change as a part of his duties opened an opportunity for her to engage in language focus, that is repeating his words which looks very much like a traditional classroom activity. While the clerk did agree to count the change in Icelandic, which is within the scope of the business interaction and a part of his normal duties, Anna’s repeating, however, is clearly outside the ‘normal’ ways of doing business: she has intensified her language focus. The clerk’s participation in the language-oriented activities has until now been limited and sometimes integrated into his normal ways of doing business – as counting the change in Icelandic – whereas this activity is more in the line of a teacher–student interaction. The pause in line 67 may reflect this dilemma, that is the clerk’s reluctance to participate in the activity. In line 69 the clerk continues counting the change: sex hundruð, sjö hundruð (six hundred, seven hundred). He does not pause after uttering ‘six hundred’ as he did previously following the utterance of ‘five hundred’, making it difficult for Anna to repeat without overlapping him and there is no further attempt from her to repeat. This may also reflect that the clerk is no longer participating as a language expert in this activity.
Summary and Discussion In the analyzed L2 interaction, the participants, in joint effort, manage to maintain the L2 as the main language throughout the whole encounter. Their agreement on using Icelandic (L2) for the upcoming interaction together with Anna’s persistence in her linguistic focus seem to explain the maintenance of the L2 in this interaction where English would seem to be the more obvious choice for this business transaction. Anna succeeds in exploiting this business encounter for languagelearning purposes with help from the clerk. The clerk deploys a specific practice which allows him to meet his double obligation in this conversation, that is he agreed to interact in Icelandic with the low-level L2 speaker and as a clerk in a bakery he is responsible for maintaining the business part of the encounter. The clerk designs his utterances in a specific way to accommodate the dual focus on business and language in the L2 interaction. This recipient design was seen in the clerk’s use of Icelandic and, when faced with no response, his subsequent shift to English to ensure comprehension on the part of the L2 speaker which is beneficial to the business part. The attending to features in the L2 relates to the ongoing interaction at that point, that is Anna repaired the pronunciation of a key referential
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item for ordering in the bakery (Excerpt 5.2), she attended to the meaning of a word (Excerpt 5.3) which was seen as a prerequisite for responding to the clerk’s question and thereby for continuing with the business. Anna can be seen working on her interactional competence here as well as in the cases where she engages in small talk with the clerk (Excerpt 5.5) at a point in the interaction where a lengthy pause may occur (cf. Excerpt 5.1). In this encounter, Anna and the clerk adopt the roles of a language learner and a language expert respectively and engage in language orientation suggesting that they are ‘doing’ language learning. The actions of both participants, Anna’s linguistic focus and the clerk’s practice, intensify during the course of the interaction. In Anna’s case we see at fi rst the attending to linguistic aspects is embedded and only implicitly requires the participation of the L1 speaker (cf. Excerpts 5.2 and 5.3), while toward the end of the interaction Anna has become ‘bolder’ in her attending to language matters. This we see in one aspect of the activity in Excerpt 5.6. First, the explicit request to the clerk to count the change in Icelandic is seen as an embedded language orientation within the scope of ‘normal’ bakery conduct. Anna’s repeating the clerk’s utterances is, however, moving the language-oriented activities out of the scope of a ‘normal’ real-life business interaction into a more classroom-like activity. The clerk’s practice usually takes two turns at talk where a pause in between the turns affords an opportunity for Anna to respond but in the last example there is no pause between the Icelandic and the translation to English and therefore no longer an opportunity for Anna to react.
Conclusion This section will address some of the questions and points of interest put forth in the chapter. Does the interaction, where one of the participants is a L2 speaker, have specific characteristics that distinguish it from interaction between L1 speakers? And, what are they? This study revealed an omnipresent linguistic focus in L2 interaction by the L2 speaker herself which suggests a duality of L2 interaction, topic and language. This distinguishes L2 interaction from L1 conversation where such duality in the interactional focus is not present. How does the L2 learner, with the help of her co-participant, exploit this business interaction as a resource for second-language use and learning? One of the most important points in this chapter is how the participants manage the duality of this interaction, through elaborate collaboration and division of labor, where Anna focuses on the linguistic aspects of the interaction and the clerk manages the business side. The active participation of both Anna and the clerk is the key factor in the success of this interaction for business and learning.
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How are the activities focusing on linguistic items related to the ongoing topical activity? In all cases the linguistic focus is closely related to the ongoing business interaction. Some of the activities Anna engages in are a necessary prerequisite for continuing the business interaction (cf. Excerpts 5.2 and 5.3). In that sense we can say that she is ‘learning’ to participate in an interaction in a bakery or in other words working on her interactional competence. She solicits the linguistic features she lacks for participating in the topical interaction from her co-participant.9 Whereas other language-oriented activities are parallel activities in their own right (cf. Excerpts 5.4, 5.5, 5.6). The contribution of this chapter to the main theme of this volume is showing how a L2 learner works on improving her interactional skills by means of language. She actively orients to linguistic features of the L2 as a way to be able to participate in the business interaction at hand. This is especially clear in the examples where her attending to linguistic features can be seen as a precondition to continue the business in an interaction for business and learning. Notes 1. 2. 3. 4.
5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
This suggests that Anna is reading the name of the item (haustbrauð) from a label. This conversation was also recorded. In the pronunciation of the word áttu (have-you), there is preaspiration (between the vowel [a] and the double t). We can thus hear Anna’s ahtu as a version of áttu even if the vowel she uses is [a] and not the expected [au]. The formula áttu (do you have) is used to ask for items that are not in plain sight. A support for this claim comes from a no answer-token to a customer’s question using áttu (cf. line 4 in Excerpt 5.1). In this case the item is actually displayed in front for the customer to see. Therefore, we see the use of áttu (do you have) here not be asking about the availability of the item, rather as a formula for ordering. The use of ‘it’ here is not correct if referring to cinnamon rolls. The expected form is ‘he’, or possibly ‘this’. The word ‘gott’ (good) also has the meaning ‘sweets’ or ‘candy’. Note that Anna’s statement includes code-switching (Icelandic-English: gott sweet and the same is true for the clerk’s reply: já perfect). This shows us that she did not find the exact amount: somewhere in the long pause she abandoned the search for the 268 crowns the clerk asked for and paid a larger amount. This point is relevant to L2 learners’ motivation to learn: in the real-life situation itself (in the here and now).
References Brouwer, C. (2003) Word searches in NNS-NS interaction: Opportunities for language learning? Modern Language Journal 87, 534–545. Brouwer, C. (2004) Doing pronunciation: A specific type of repair sequence. In R. Gardner and J. Wagner (eds) Second Language Conversations. London: Continuum.
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Brouwer, C. and Nissen, A. (2003) At lære dansk som andetsprog i praksis [To learn Danish as second language in practice]. In J. Steensig and B. Asmuss (eds) Samtalen på Arbejde – konversationsanalyse og kompetenceudvikling [Talk at Work – Conversation Analysis and Development of Competence]. Frederiksberg: Samfundslitteratur. Brouwer, C. and Wagner, J. (2004) Developmental issues in second language conversation. Journal of Applied Linguistics 1, 29–47. Firth, A. and Wagner, J. (1997) On discourse, communication and (some) fundamental concepts in SLA research. Modern Language Journal 81, 285–300. Firth, A. and Wagner, J. (2007) Second/foreign language learning as a social accomplishment: Elaborations on a reconceptualized SLA. The Modern Language Journal 91, 800–819. Garfinkel, H. (1967) Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. He, A. (2004) CA for SLA: Arguments from the Chinese language classroom. The Modern Language Journal 88, 568–582. Hellermann, J. (2006) Classroom interactive practices for developing L2 literacy: A microethnographic study of two beginning adult learners of English. Applied Linguistics 27, 377–404. Hellermann, J. (2007) The development of practices for action in classroom dyadic interaction: Focus on task openings. The Modern Language Journal 91, 83–96. Hellermann, J. (2008) Social Actions for Classroom Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Hellermann, J. (2009) Practices for dispreferred responses using no by a learner of English. International Review of Research in Applied Linguistics and Language Teaching 47, 95–126. Hutchby, I. and Wooffitt, R. (1998) Conversation Analysis: Principles, Practices, and Applications. Cambridge: Polity Press. Jefferson, G. (1972) Side sequences. In D. Sudnow (ed.) Studies in Social Interaction (pp. 294–338). New York: The Free Press. Kasper, G. (2004) Participant orientations in German conversation-for-learning. The Modern Language Journal 88, 551–567. Kasper, G. (2009) Locating cognition in second language interaction and learning: Inside the skull or in public view? International Review of Research in Applied Linguistics and Language Teaching 47, 11–36. Kasper, G. and Wagner, J. (2011) Conversation-analytic approach to second language acquisition. In D. Atkinson (ed.) Alternative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition. London: Routledge. Kurhila, S. (2004) Clients or language learners: Being a second language speaker in institutional interaction. In R. Gardner and J. Wagner (eds) Second Language Conversations (pp. 58–74). London: Continuum. Markee, N. (2000) Conversation Analysis. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Markee, N. and Kasper, G. (2004) Classroom talks: An introduction. The Modern Language Journal 88, 491–500. Mondada, L. and Pekarek Doehler, S. (2004) Second language acquisition as situated practice: Task accomplishment in the French second language classroom. The Modern Language Journal 88, 501–518. Mori, J. (2004a) Negotiating sequential boundaries and learning opportunities: Acase from a Japanese language classroom. The Modern Language Journal 88, 536–550. Mori, J. (2004b) Pursuit of understanding: Rethinking ‘negotiation of meaning’ in conversations. In R. Gardner and J. Wagner (eds) Second Language Conversations (pp. 157–177). London: Continuum.
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Mori, J. and Hasegawa, A. (2009) Doing being a foreign language learner in a classroom: Embodiment of cognitive states as social events. International Review of Research in Applied Linguistics and Language Teaching 47, 65–94. Mori, J. and Markee, N. (2009) Language learning, cognition, and interactional practices: An introduction. International Review of Research in Applied Linguistics and Language Teaching 47, 1–9. Ohta, A.S. (2001) Second Language Acquisition Processes in the Classroom: Learning Japanese. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Pekarek Doehler, S. (2010) Conceptual changes and methodological challenges: On language and learning from a conversation analytic perspective on SLA. In P. Seedhouse, S. Walsh and C. Jenks (eds) Conceptualising Learning in Applied Linguistics (pp. 105–127). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Sacks, H., Schegloff, E.A. and Jefferson, G. (1974) A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language 50, 696–735. Schegloff, E. (1968) Sequencing in conversational openings. American Anthropologist 70, 1075–1095. Schegloff, E. and Sacks, H. (1973) Opening up closings. Semiotica 7, 289–327. Schegloff, E., Jefferson, G. and Sacks, H. (1977) The preference for self-correction in the organization of repair in conversation. Language 53, 361–382. Schegloff, E.A. (1979) The relevance of repair to syntax-for-conversation. In T. Givón (ed.) Syntax and Semantics: Discourse and Syntax (Vol. 12) (pp. 261–286). New York: Academic Press. Seedhouse, P. (2004) The Interactional Architecture of the Language Classroom: A Conversation Analysis Perspective. Oxford: Blackwell. Stivers, T. and Robinson, J.D. (2006) A preference for progressivity in interaction. Language in Society 35, 367–392. ten Have, P. (2002) The notion of member is the heart of the matter: The role of membership knowledge in ethnomethodological inquiry [Electronic Version]. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung [Forum: Qualitative Social Research], 3. On WWW at http://www.qualitative-research.net. Accessed 20.12.09. Theodórsdóttir, G. (2011) Language learning activities in everyday situations: Insisting on TCU completion in second language talk. In G. Palotti and J. Wagner (eds) L2 Learning as a Social Practice: Conversation-Analytic Perspectives. Honolulu, HI: National Foreign Language Resource Center. Ventola, E. (1983) Contrasting schematic structures in service encounters. Applied Linguistics 4, 242–258. Ventola, E. (2005) Revisiting service encounter genre: Some reflections. Folia Linguistica 39, 19–43. Wagner, J. (2004) The classroom and beyond. The Modern Language Journal 88, 612–616. Wagner, J. (2010) Learning and doing learning in interaction: What do participants do in everyday out-of-school second language talk? In Y. Kite and K. Ikeda (eds) Language Learning and Socialization through Conversation (pp. 51–59). Osaka, Japan: Kansai University Press.
Chapter 6
Responding to Questions and L2 Learner Interactional Competence during Language Proficiency Interviews: A Microanalytic Study with Pedagogical Implications1 R.A. VAN COMPERNOLLE
Introduction This chapter explores the sequential organization of end-of-semester language proficiency interviews (LPIs)2 between a teacher and intermediatelevel US university learners of French as a second language (L2). Specifically, I focus on the precision timing and conditional relevance of responses to questions in proficiency interviews in relation to L2 interactional competence (IC) as well as nonunderstanding of questions and repair sequences as potential opportunities for language learning. One of the central arguments that I present in this chapter is that responding to questions is an index of language learners’ IC as interviewees within the context of an LPI (Johnson, 2000), even if the response is inappropriate or infelicitous in relation to the content of the question asked by the teacher. The analyses presented below therefore have a dual focus on both the provision of a response in the appropriate interactional slot (i.e. following an utterance heard as a question) and the appropriateness of the response in relation to the content of the question. Following the analytic portion of the chapter, I present a pedagogical framework for developing L2 IC that focuses on the empirical observation that IC – namely the ability to repair troubles in understanding (Hellermann, this volume) – both produces and is the result of learning opportunities. The historical and epistemological underpinnings of IC in L2 learning and development are effectively summarized in the introduction to this volume (Hall & Pekarek Doehler), and so there is no need to repeat them here. Suffice to say that socially grounded approaches to language 117
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learning and teaching, as well as descriptive, observational research on L2 use and development falling under the IC label, have been on the rise since the early 1990s (e.g. Hall, 1993, 1995, 1999; Hellermann, 2008; Young, 2000, 2003; inter alia). Fundamental to these approaches to understanding L2 users’ IC is the recognition that competent interaction is tied to one’s socially constructed knowledge of social-context-specific practices and actions. Social-context-specific practices permeate both institutional and noninstitutional settings. Classrooms – as one type of institutional setting – have a myriad of ‘socioculturally conventionalized configurations of face-to-face interaction by which and within which group members communicate’ (Hall, 1993: 146). These interactive practices are fundamental to the organization of classroom interaction and language learning as a specific form of cultural activity (Hellermann, 2008). In what follows, I wish to extend the notion of oral practices (Hall, 1993) for classroom interaction to the context of LPIs, which are, at least in many cases, extensions of the classroom used for formal assessment purposes. A learner’s IC during an LPI is therefore tied to his or her knowledge of what constitutes acceptable, appropriate and/or recognizable contributions to this form of activity.
Language Proficiency Interviews Since the mid-1980s, LPIs have increasingly been used in university language departments for a variety of reasons, including determining placement in language courses, providing formative and summative assessments of learners’ spoken language abilities and conducting program evaluations (see e.g. Salaberry, 2000; Young, 1995). The goal of such interviews is to elicit – as far as possible – ‘natural’ conversational interaction between the examiner and examinee (Swender, 1999). The examinee’s performance during the interview is taken as an index of his or her spoken language competence, often evaluated in terms of the complexity, accuracy and fluency of the examinee’s responses to questions and/or other types of discourse elicitation tasks (see Housen & Kuiken, 2009). LPIs – in particular, ACTFL’s Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) – have, however, been critiqued on a number of fronts. Some researchers have questioned whether the constructs assessed by such interviews adequately reflect an examinee’s interactive abilities in the spoken language (Bachman, 1990; Johnson, 2000, 2001; Johnson & Tyler, 1998; Kitajima, 2009; Lantolf & Frawley, 1985; Lazaraton, 1996). In addition, the validity of scoring has been called into question because of inter-interviewer variation in question-asking and other aspects of conversation management (Johnson, 2000; Young, 1995). Another set of critiques has focused more specifically on the interactional context of LPIs. Although such interviews necessarily involve two or more people (i.e. an examiner and examinee), the examinee’s utterances are typically evaluated alone without regard for their
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appropriateness in the context of a conversational interaction (Bachman, 1990; Lazaraton, 1996; McNamara, 1997; Shohamy, 1988). LPIs are also power-laden, asymmetrical interactions in which the examiner controls the interaction and turns-at-talk, which detracts from the general claim that the discourse produced during such interviews is in fact conversational (Lazaraton, 1996; van Lier, 1989). This chapter is primarily concerned with the second set of critiques outlined above. As Johnson notes, with specific reference to the ACTFL OPI, LPIs often do not ‘test speaking ability in a real life context – conversation. [They test] speaking ability in the context of an interview, or more precisely, in the context of a survey research interview’ ( Johnson, 2000: 216). As such, LPIs are institutional contexts for talk-in-interaction in their own right (Lazaraton, 1997; van Lier, 1989). Competence demonstrated during such interviews therefore reflects the examinee’s knowledge of how to participate in this form of interaction (e.g. responding to questions) rather than ‘conversation’ or ‘spoken’ language broadly (and often vaguely) defi ned (for extended discussion, see Johnson, 2001). In other words, although LPIs set out to evaluate a learner’s overall speaking ability, they require social-context-specific knowledge (i.e. IC) of what it means to participate in this type of interaction, specifically with regard to the roles (i.e. interviewer and interviewee) and interactional responsibility (e.g. question-asking vs. question-answering) of each participant. Johnson and Tyler (1998), for example, analyzed a video-recorded ACTFL OPI session used for tester-training purposes. They found that the types of turn-taking, adjacency pairs and topic nomination found in everyday conversation were virtually absent from the interaction. In addition, they noted that interviewers rarely showed signs of conversational involvement. Instead, interviewers essentially asked questions to elicit discourse from the examinee but did not engage in interactive practices (e.g. continuers, evaluations) thereafter. Similarly, in a quantitative analysis, Johnson (2000) found that the vast majority of utterance types on the part of interviewers and interviewees were question-asking and questionanswering, respectively. Elsewhere, Johnson (2001) refers to participation in the ACTFL OPI as the art of nonconversation. For her part, Lazaraton (1997) showed that interviewers themselves orient to LPIs as formal (and highly structured) assessment interviews rather than normal or everyday conversational interactions.
Data Analysis The following analyses draw from a collection of audio-recorded LPIs (approximately 8 h of data) collected during the Spring 2008 academic term as part of an end-of-semester oral examination in an accelerated intermediate-level (i.e. 3rd and 4th semesters combined) US university French
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course. The teacher was a highly proficient (near-native) L2 speaker of French with several years of teaching experience at the university level (including conducting oral assessment interviews) as well as experience as a sociolinguistic interviewer. The LPI questions included topics typically found in communicative language classrooms (and specifically in these students’ course textbook, Quant à moi; Bragger & Rice, 2005), such as food, pastimes and leisure activities, vacations, daily routines, university studies, work, future career goals and so forth. Students were given the grading rubric (see Appendix A) in advance of the LPI. Of particular interest to the present study is the category ‘Communicative Success’, which included not only students’ own productive abilities in French but also their ability to repair and/or negotiate problems in comprehension, an important aspect of IC (see Hellermann, this volume). Briefly put, the students were told that points would not be docked because of a ‘communication breakdown’ as long as they were able to repair it in collaboration with the teacher. The data have been transcribed following conversation analysis (CA; Sacks et al., 1974) conventions (see Appendix B) in order to represent the interactions as accurately as possible. Standard French orthography has been used throughout the transcripts, except in cases where pronunciation makes it difficult to know exactly what the learner said. In such cases, a phonetic approximation is given in parentheses to indicate unclear speech. Translations are provided in italics following each transcript line. Responding to questions, 1: Appropriate contributions by learners The primary interactional format for interviews in general and these LPIs in particular is question–answer adjacency pair (Johnson, 2000) with the possibility of a sequence closing third turn (Schegloff, 2007). As noted above, interviewers are primarily responsible for asking questions whereas the interviewees are expected to provide responses to them. Although the truthfulness of student responses is not necessarily known by the interviewer, responses are typically evaluated in terms of their appropriateness to the content of the question asked. Thus, appropriate responses to questions are both conditionally relevant (i.e. they follow questions) and content relevant (i.e. they address the question’s content). Excerpt 6.1 provides an example of this typical sequence. Excerpt 6.1 1 T: est-ce que tu travailles maintenant? do you work now? 2 S: non: (.) je: (.) travaille uh (.) pour le: (0.8) no I work uh for the
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#le:# °uh:° Noël: (.) à Barnes and Noble. the uh Christmas at Barnes and Noble ↑d’ac↓cord. okay ((T begins a new question))
Here, the teacher and student are discussing work. Immediately preceding this excerpt, the student had been talking about his studies and what he hoped to do in the future. The teacher then initiates a follow-up question in line 1: est-ce que tu travailles maintenant? ‘do you work now?’ In response (lines 2–3), the student answers that he does not currently work but has a Christmas holiday job at Barnes and Noble (a large chain of bookstores), which is followed by the teacher’s sequence closing third ↑d’ac↓cord. ‘okay’ in line 4, indicating the end of this question–answer segment. Because the LPI does not center around known-answer questions (i.e. the teacher does not necessarily know whether or not the response is factually accurate), sequence closing thirds generally indicate that the question has been satisfactorily responded to by the student – that is, there is no evaluation of the correctness of the content but rather an acknowledgement that the content of the response is appropriate in relation to the question asked. In Excerpt 6.1, the student’s response – his Christmas holiday job at Barnes and Noble – is appropriate because the teacher had asked about work. Another example is provided in Excerpt 6.2. Here, the teacher initiates a question (line 1), the student provides a response (line 3) and then the teacher provides a sequence closing third (line 4). Excerpt 6.2 1 T: d’abord: (.) t’as quel âge. first of all how old are you 2 (0.6) 3 S: uh: (.) je suis uh (0.4) dix neuf, (.) ans? I am uh nineteen years old 4 T: mhm, (.) ↑d’ac↓cor:d, mhm okay 5 ((T begins a new question)) As in Excerpt 6.1, the student’s response in line 3 is appropriate in two ways: first, it follows a question and, second, its content is relevant to the question. Incidentally, although the student chooses an inappropriate verb in line 3 (i.e. je *suis dix neuf ans ‘I am nineteen years’ vs. j’ai dix neuf ans ‘I have nineteen years’), the teacher does not use the third turn to correct the student. Instead, he adopts a ‘let it pass’ strategy (Firth, 1996) and closes
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the sequence, which indicates that the question has been responded to satisfactorily. This provides evidence that the teacher – at least in this case – orients not to the formal grammatical accuracy of the response but to its sequential appropriateness (i.e. it follows a question) and contentrelevant features. A feature in the data that indexes LPIs as a pedagogical activity is the co-construction of the second-turn position response. In Excerpts 6.1 and 6.2 (above), the learners were able to respond to the teacher’s questions independently, but such is not always the case. The L2 learners in this study sometimes – and understandably – encountered troubles in language production related to lexis, grammar and pragmatics. In such cases, the teacher often provided assistance in the collaborative construction of the response. One example is given in Excerpt 6.3: Excerpt 6.3 1
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et: (.) qu’est-ce que tu étudies. and what do you study ici à Big State U. here at Big State U uh: j’étudie (.) la: (.) s::cience (.) politique. I study political science m↑hm mhm et:: (0.4) je: minor (.) uh: and I minor uh ↑d’ac↓cord. oui, = okay yes = uh: [( )] uh [( )] [tu fais ] une mineur [you’re doing] a minor mineur. minor (.) c’est: (.) um: (.) relations (.) internationales. It’s um international relations. ↑d’ac↓cord. okay ((T begins a new question))
The student begins to respond to the teacher’s question (‘what do you study’) in line 3: uh: j’étudie (.) la: (.) s::cience (.) politique. ‘I study political science.’ The student orients to the teacher’s m↑hm (l. 4) as a continuer, and thus
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an indication to elaborate the response, as evidenced by her continuation/ elaboration in line 5: et:: (0.4) je: minor (.) uh: ‘and I minor’. This is an important distinctive feature of Excerpt 6.3 in relation to the two previous examples: the teacher’s m↑hm is not taken as a sequence closing third but an indication that the response has not yet been satisfactorily completed, which may be related to the sharp pitch shift present in the teachers utterance (Incidentally, the coordinating conjunction et:: ‘and’ provides further evidence that this student is continuing/elaborating her response rather than beginning a new answer.) This particular student encounters a linguistic problem as she attempts to say that she is doing a minor in international relations (ll. 5–12), specifically how to say in French ‘I’m minoring in’ (cf. l. 5: je *minor vs. je fais une mineur).3 This is evidenced by three principal features of her talk: first, the elongated et:: and long within-turn pause indicating hesitation; second, her pronunciation of minor, which is arguably not simply a lexical borrowing but total switch to English4; and third, the elongated uh:, which suggests that she is searching for a word and/or grammatical item. Interestingly, the teacher interrupts her response (l. 6) with a potential sequence closing third: ↑d’ac↓cord. oui, ‘okay. Yes’. The student, however, continues to respond (l. 7) but is once again interrupted by the teacher (l.8) who provides the lexicogrammar necessary for the student to express her idea: tu fais une mineur ‘you’re doing a minor.’ The student then takes up the lexical item mineur – this time pronouncing it with French phonology – and completes her response in line 11: c’est: (.) um: (.) relations (.) internationales. ‘it’s um international relations.’ Finally, the teacher closes the sequence with ↑d’ac↓cord. ‘okay’ in third-turn position. This question–answer sequence can therefore be summarized as follows: lines 1–2 represent the teacher-initiated question; lines 3–11 together represent the co-constructed response; and line 12 represents the closing of the co- constructed response. The data shown so far are indicative of the general preference (in the CA sense)5 for a survey interview-like structure in the LPIs analyzed here (see also Johnson, 2000; Johnson & Tyler, 1998). Typically, teacher fi rst-turn questions are information-seeking questions in that they aim to elicit an answer relevant to the student’s personal life. Student responses to teacherinitiated questions, in turn, are concise and informative,6 and they are evaluated on the basis of their relevance to the question asked. Even when students require some assistance in completing their responses (as in Excerpt 6.3), the question–answer sequence is closed by a closing third (Schegloff, 2007). Incidentally, it is also noteworthy that in the three cases presented above (as well as in the vast majority of the LPIs analyzed for the present study), students demonstrate a preference for providing completesentence responses, at least when initially responding to questions. This is perhaps not surprising given the privileged status of complete sentences
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(e.g. subject–verb–predicate), based on the standard of written discourse, in most foreign language classrooms and pedagogical materials. Responding to questions, 2: Inappropriate contributions by learners As noted in the introduction, the analytic focus of this chapter is twofold. On the one hand, responses to questions are made conditionally relevant by (i.e. projected by) the asking of a question. On the other hand, the teacher orients to the appropriateness of the content of the response in relation to the meaning of the question asked. In cases where a conditionally relevant response is also appropriate, the teacher in this study tends to follow up with a sequence closing third, such as d’accord ‘okay’, as shown above. However, language learners do not always understand the intended meaning of questions for whatever reasons (e.g. mishearings, lack of lexical or grammatical knowledge). Although repair initiation would normally be warranted in the context of ‘normal’ conversational interaction (Hellermann, this volume), the learners in this study routinely opt for the provision of a response instead, even if the response turns out not to be appropriate. This is a particularly interesting phenomenon found throughout these LPI data that puts the ‘appropriateness’ and ‘conditionally relevant’ features of responses in direct conflict. Excerpt 6.4 provides one such example: Excerpt 6.4 1 T: qu’est-ce que tu fais l’après-midi what do you do in the afternoon 2 ou après les cours. or after classes 3 (1.5) 4 après:: tes ↑cours: ↓tu fais quoi. after your classes you do what 5 (1.0) 6 S: °le cours:,° the class 7 T: les cours. les (0.5) le: le cours de français, the classes the the the French class 8 le cours de: sciences politiques, = le class on political science 9 S: = oui = yes 10 T: = et pis après ça. and then after that
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qu’est-ce que [tu ] fais d’habitude. what do [you] do normally [oui] [yes] pour: le semestre #uh um:# je: prendre um. for the semester uh um I to take um français, bien sûr, (.) et le- et le uh French of course and the- and the uh relat- uh un classe de relations internationales:, relat- uh a class on international relations ((S continues to talk about his course schedule; the answer is not pursued until much later in the interaction))
The question asked by the teacher in lines 1–2 is clearly problematic for the student. First, after the initial question-asking, there is a long pause (l. 3). Then, the teacher reformulates the question in line 4, which is followed by another long pause (l. 5). The student’s first utterance is a quiet ‘sounding out’ (van Compernolle, 2010) of part of the question with slightly rising, continuing intonation: le cours:, ‘the class’ (l. 6). Sounding out provides evidence that the student has heard the question but may not have understood it. The teacher orients to this practice as evidence that the student is in need of assistance, this time listing some example courses that the student is presumably taking (e.g. French, political science; ll. 7–8), and then pursuing the answer with a reformulated question (ll. 10–11): et pis après ça./qu’est-ce que tu fais d’habitude. ‘and then after that/what do you do normally.’ This negotiation between teacher and student is not, however, successful: the student responds (ll. 13–16) by discussing the courses he is taking rather than what he does after classes are out. To be sure, it is difficult to say whether the student has not really understood the question at all or has simply revised his understanding of the question based on the teacher’s listing of courses. For instance, the argument could be made that, when the student overlapped the teacher’s reformulated question (l. 12), he had understood the question so far, which included the course listing and the utterance et pis après ça ‘and the after that’. The ‘and then after that’ could have been understood as ‘after those courses’ or ‘and what other courses’, which would explain this student’s course-schedule-oriented response. It is also noteworthy that the teacher allows the student to continue his discussion of his course schedule following the data shown in Excerpt 6.4, and even offered a number of continuers and (positive) evaluations of the student’s response. Eventually, however, the teacher recovered the question to pursue the answer originally sought after (i.e. after school activities). In short, although the student provides conditionally relevant responses to the teacher’s questions throughout Excerpt 6.4, the teacher orients primarily to the appropriateness
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of the content of the response, pursuing the answer until an appropriate one is provided. Another example is provided in Excerpt 6.5. Here, the student claims understanding (Sacks, 1995) after some negotiated interaction but her response, while conditionally relevant, is actually inappropriate. This is similar to the previous example in that an inappropriate response is given. However, in this case, the teacher allows the student to finish her response and closes the sequence, but then pursues a relevant answer in a new question–answer sequence. Excerpt 6.5 1 T: et:: tu viens d’où. and where are you from. 2 (3.5) 3 S: °je viens,° I come 4 T: tu viens d’où. where are you from 5 t’as habité:: (.) ici = have you lived here 6 S: = °oh.° j’habite à (1.0) Honor’s Hall. oh I live in Honor’s Hall 7 (.) 8 mais: but 9 T: mhm, mhm 10 S: °um° (.) j’habite à Little Town, um I live in Little Town 11 (.) 12 pour l’été. during the summer 13 T: d’accord. d’accord. okay okay 14 et tu viens de là:, and are you from there 15 de Little Town, from Little Town 16 S: mhm mhm 17 T: d’accord. d’accord. okay okay 18 ((T begins a new question))
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Here, the teacher’s question in line 1 (et:: tu viens d’où. ‘and where are you from’) is identifiable as the trouble source for two reasons. First, there is a long pause (3.5 seconds) following the question (l. 2), which is indicative of hesitation on the part of the student. Second, the student partially sounds out (van Compernolle, 2010) a reformulated form of the question in line 3 (°je viens,° ‘I come’), further demonstrating her trouble in comprehending the teacher’s preceding turn. The teacher then orients to this sounding out behavior as evidence that repair is warranted: in essence, the student’s sounding out behavior initiates the teacher’s self-repair where he repeats the question (l. 4) and then reformulates it as a kind of leading prompt (l. 5): t’as habité:: (.) ici ‘have you lived here?’ The student’s inappropriate response is delivered in lines 6–12. First, in line 6, the student produces the change-of-state particle oh, indicating that she has now understood – or is claiming understanding of – the question and begins to talk about where she currently lives (i.e. in ‘Honor’s Hall,’ a student dormitory at Big State U). This is an inappropriate response simply because its content (i.e. where she lives at the time of the LPI) is not relevant to the content of the question asked (i.e. where she comes from). The teacher, however, lets this pass (Firth, 1996), even offering a continuer in line 9, and concludes the sequence with a closing third in line 13 (d’accord. d’accord ‘okay okay’). The third turn is then extended by the teacher in lines 14–15 in order to pursue the answer to the original question (et tu viens de là:,/de Little Town ‘and are you from there/from Little Town’). The student’s response in line 16 (mhm) confirms the answer, and the teacher again provides sequence closing third in line 17 (d’accord. d’accord. ‘okay okay’). As in Excerpt 6.4, the teacher’s orientation is to pursue a conditionally relevant and appropriate response to the question. Another interesting (sub)category of inappropriate responses involves an answer-like response in the absence of a preceding question. In other words, the student provides an answer-like response to a preceding teacher turn in which there is no question, another indication that the question–answer sequence is the preferred or expected script (Young, 2003) found in these LPIs. This is exemplified in Excerpt 6.6: Excerpt 6.6 1 T: et um: (0.6) là parce que c’est la fin du semestre, and um because it’s the end of the semester 2 °et tout ça° c’est fini, and all that it’s over 3 on peut se dire tu. okay, we can call each other tu okay 4 S: m. m
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5
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ouais, yeah oui (.) c’est (.) le semestre (.) fini? uh: yes it’s the semester over uh mais:: je veux dire on- on peut se dire tu. but I mean we we can call each other tu ((T continues a brief explanation that S can use tu))
This excerpt took place in the very opening of the LPI. After exchanging pleasantries, the teacher tells the student that, since the semester is over, he can use the more familiar tu address pronoun (ll. 1–3).7 The student apparently acknowledges this offer in line 4 with a short m. sound, but then begins to produces a turn that is oriented to the contextualization of the teacher’s offer (i.e. the end of the semester) rather than the offer itself (l. 6). In addition, the response begins with oui ‘yes’, indicating that the student may have heard the teacher’s offer to use tu as a yes/no question. This confusion is likely related to the teacher’s slightly rising pitch on the tag okay, (l. 3) and/or on the continuer ouais, ‘yeah’ (l. 5). In turn, the teacher initiates self-repair (l. 7) by reformulating his offer to switch to the more familiar tu form. The importance of this excerpt is that the student’s response is not actually conditionally relevant because an answer-response is not projected by the teacher’s preceding turn. The teacher’s turn is an offer to use the informal second-person pronoun tu, which projects acceptance or rejection on the part of the student (i.e. the teacher projects an ‘offer-acceptance/ rejection’ adjacency pair). However, the student hears this offer as a yes/ no question projecting an answer (i.e. he answers ‘yes’ and then begins to elaborate). What this shows is that the student’s understanding of the interactional framework for talk with his teacher – at least within the context of an LPI – is based on a question–answer sequence (i.e. the teacher asks questions and the student provides answers). In short, he knows – based on his past experiences in phenomenologically similar interactional contexts (e.g. other classrooms and interactions with teachers in assessment contexts) – that if his teacher says something, an answer is the most likely next turn or preferred response. Together, Excerpts 6.4–6.6 are illustrative of two features of IC within an LPI context. First, both the teacher and students orient to this type of interaction as one primarily characterized by question–answer adjacency pairs. Second, the teacher orients to student responses in terms of conditional relevance and content appropriateness. By providing responses to teacher first turns, students display their competence as interviewees, regardless of whether the content of the response is appropriate in relation to the question. In turn, the IC of both the teacher and learners becomes evident in cases where student responses are not appropriate (Excerpts
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6.4–6.5) and/or conditionally relevant (Excerpt 6.6) to the preceding turn. By recognizing possible repairables and/or learner-produced turns indicating troubles in understanding (e.g. ‘sounding out’), and by pursuing an appropriate answer, the teacher displays his IC as a language proficiency interviewer and teacher. In turn, the student’s ability to provide an eventual appropriate response is fundamentally tied to his or her recognition that the response was not appropriate, and that a repair sequence has been initiated. Opportunities for learning In a recent study, I argued that troubles in understanding are potentially opportunities for microgenetic development (van Compernolle, 2010). Drawing on a sociointeractionist perspective on SLA (Mondada & Pekarek Doehler, 2004) that combines CA’s methods and analytic mentality for the analysis of interaction with Vygotskian sociocultural theory of mind (Vygotsky, 1978, 1986; for L2 research, Lantolf & Thorne, 2006), I documented how a teacher and learner collaboratively constructed an object of learning, negotiated developmentally appropriate assistance (i.e. mediation) and together created an opportunity for the learner to incorporate into his productive repertoire an informal (or colloquial) language form. In contrast to the cognitivist input–interaction–output perspective on SLA (see Gass & Mackey, 2006), which sees SLA as a process exclusively taking place within the mind/brain of the learner, strong sociointeractionist perspectives treat social interaction as the basic site of learning, where novices can appropriate the means for interaction (e.g. language, interactional routines) in collaboration with more mature or competent members of the culture. In essence, cognition (including learning) does not take place exclusively within the individual (i.e. inside the head). Instead, cognition includes, of course, the brain, but also incorporates shared or distributed (interpersonal) cognitive responsibility, the body and cultural artifacts (Wertsch, 1998). The gist of the analysis presented in van Compernolle (2010) is as follows. During an LPI, the student, Tarik, encountered a problem in understanding related to his teacher’s formulation of a question (i.e. the colloquial form t’aimes pas ‘you don’t like’; cf. the more standard tu n’aimes pas form). The trouble source was eventually repaired after several inappropriate responses. Later in the interaction, the t’aimes pas structure recurred in a new context, at which time Tarik responded appropriately to the question, thus demonstrating comprehension, and just seconds later actually used the structure himself. One important comment to make about the case presented in van Compernolle (2010) is that, although the object of learning was collaboratively constructed and mediation was negotiated by both participants, it was the teacher who initiated repair in the first place and, thus,
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the opportunity for development. In other words, the teacher demonstrated his own IC (as an experienced language instructor) to mediate his student’s performance in the LPI and to help launch this learning opportunity. There are several similar cases in the present study. Excerpt 6.7 provides one example where trouble in understanding and the ensuing repair sequence occasion a potential learning opportunity. What is interesting in this excerpt is how the student implicitly initiates self-repair on the part of teacher through her delivery of an inappropriate answer (see also van Compernolle, 2010). Excerpt 6.7 1
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et après les cours:, (.) and after classes qu’est-ce que tu faisais [ (.) ] d’habitude. what did you do [ (.) ] typically [uh-] [uh-] d’habitude (.) uh pour les cours, typically uh for the courses c’est um (1.8) encore (.) le (.) le classe it’s um still the the class c’est très [(um )] it’s very [(um )] [<non non non] non <°je veux dire° [ no no no] no I mean après les cours. after classes (1.0) a[près] (.) l’a- l’après-midi: ou le soir: a[fter ] the- the afternoon or the evening [après?] [after ] oh. après le cours. oh after class ((S continues to discuss what he did after classes in high school))
Here, the student struggles to respond appropriately to the teacher’s question about her typical after-class activities during high school (ll. 3–6). Her answer appears to address the courses themselves (e.g. d’habitude (.) uh pour les cours, ‘typically uh for courses’), and so the teacher stops the answer-in-progress by clarifying what his question was about (ll. 7–8). Still, the student does not demonstrate understanding, as evidenced by the long pause in line 9, to which the teacher orients by restating après
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‘after’ and then giving time-relevant information (l’après-midi: ou le soir: ‘the afternoon or the evening’). For her part, the student encounters a problem with the word après ‘after’, as shown by her repetition of the word with final rising intonation in line 11. But after the teacher gives the timerelevant information (l. 10), she demonstrates understanding – marked by oh. and the repetition of après le cours. with prosodic stress – and then begins her appropriate answer from line 13 onward. To be sure, given the lack of longitudinal data here, it is difficult to say what, if anything, this particular learner has learned (e.g. the word après), or whether the teacher simply mediated her interactional abilities in this one instance. Nonetheless, these types of interactions do have the potential to lead to language learning. Another, much less common type of interaction with developmental potential is more explicit self-initiated other-repair by students when they encounter troubles in understanding the teacher’s talk instead of trying to provide an answer-response as shown in the excerpts above. Excerpt 6.8 shows one of the very few examples of this found in the data: Excerpt 6.8 1 T: et: um: tu peux décrire: um and um can you describe um 2 ta routine euh (0.8) quotidienne, your daily routine 3 (.) 4 c’est-à-dire ce que tu fais tous les jours that is what you do everyday 5 du matin au soir et tout ça, from morning to night and everything 6 (0.8) 7 S: um (.) excusez? um excuse (me) 8 T: la:- ta routine quotidienne: = the your daily routine 9 S: = ta routine. your routine 10 (.) 11 ((S continues to talk about his daily routine)) Here, the teacher asks the student to describe his daily routine (ll. 1–2). A micropause (l. 3) suggests the learner does not understand the question, and the teacher orients to it as such when he offers a clarifying description in lines 4–5: c’est-à-dire ce que tu fais tous les jours/du matin au soir et tout ça, ‘that is what you do every day/from morning to night and everything’.
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Then, following a slightly longer pause, the student initiates repair with an open class repair initiator (Drew, 1997) in line 8: um (.) excusez? ‘um excuse (me)’. The teacher once again repeats the phrase ta routine quotidienne. ‘your daily routine’ (l. 8) from the initial question, a topicalization of a category that the student recognizes, which is taken up by the student (l. 9), who then proceeds to provide an appropriate response from line 11 onward. Discussion The preceding has highlighted the preference organization of the LPIs analyzed in this study. In general, the interactions center around a survey interview-like sequence (Johnson, 2000) where the teacher asks a question, the student responds with an answer and the teacher provides a sequence closing third (Schegloff, 2007) to conclude the adjacency pair. This is nothing out of the ordinary for classroom and teacher–learner talk, LPIs, or interviews more generally. Nonetheless, it is worth pointing out that this preference organization is apparently so strong that learners typically provide a response even if they have encountered troubles in understanding the teacher’s preceding utterance. At the same time, troubles in understanding – including inappropriate responses that are successfully repaired (usually by the teacher) – can also present learners with opportunities for language learning. So what do these analyses mean for L2 IC research? I began this chapter with the assertion that providing a response where conditionally relevant (i.e. following a question) was evidence of a learner’s IC as LPI participants, even if the content of the response is not wholly appropriate in relation to the question. The question–answer organization structure provides learners with a rhetorical script (Young, 2003) for LPI interactions. By giving answer-responses when and where they are relevant, learners demonstrate their IC – their socially constructed knowledge of what it means to interact with an LPI interviewer – regardless of whether the propositional content of their response is relevant to the question asked. In short, IC in an LPI is demonstrated in large part by the provision of a sequentially relevant response, whose propositional content then may or may not be oriented to as an appropriate response by the teacher. While this is interesting for research that aims to document and describe the nature of L2 IC, it is equally interesting for pedagogically motivated research. One of the issues that the preceding analysis brings to light is that the students in this study rarely initiated repair when they encountered L2 problems. As a result, it was primarily up to the teacher to identify and resolve troubles in understanding. Although there is a general preference for self-initiated self-repair in ‘normal’ or everyday conversation (Schegloff et al., 1977), other/student-initiated repair of the teacher’s talk
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may be desirable in language-learning contexts for at least two reasons. First, because repair is a fundamental resource for the management of interaction, it seems that encouraging students to initiate repair when they do not understand the preceding utterance – as opposed to providing a potentially inappropriate response – is a worthwhile goal for programs interested in promoting learners’ IC. Second, learner-initiated repair has the potential to facilitate teacher mediation. This is because even experienced teacher-mediators can only hypothesize about the actual locus of trouble, which may take several attempts to identify (van Compernolle, 2010). By contrast, learners themselves may, in many cases, know what they do not understand – or at least know when they do not understand something – and can, through their initiation of repair, potentially shape the way developmentally appropriate assistance is provided by the teacher or a more competent peer. Although an LPI is not typically thought of as an appropriate context for instruction to take place, offering mediation through, for example, dynamic assessment (Poehner, 2008) has the potential not only to help the learner in interaction but also to arrive at a more fine-tuned evaluation of his or her current and emerging abilities (see also McNamara, 1997).
Pedagogical Implications Toward a CA-for-LT (conversation analysis for language teaching) framework As shown in the preceding analysis, learners often demonstrate a preference for responding to/answering teacher-initiated questions, even if repair is warranted because of a trouble in understanding. At least two issues are at work here. The first is in line with my argument that LPIs are generally structured around question–answer adjacency pairs. This is especially true in language-learning contexts where the absence of a response may be taken as evidence that learners have not acquired/ learned the requisite lexical and/or grammatical features necessary for comprehension and/or production. In other words, in not providing a response, students may risk being docked points on formal assessments within a deficiency-oriented language education system (Firth & Wagner, 1997). The second issue is related to the first. Pedagogical models of spoken interaction (e.g. model dialogues) rarely depict anything other than ‘perfect’ interaction – that is, interactants rarely, if ever, demonstrate troubles in speech production or comprehension that would warrant repair. In fact, learner textbooks notoriously do not even provide examples of when, why or how interactants might initiate repair,8 despite the fact that repair is one of the fundamental resources available to interactants (Schegloff
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et al., 1977). In essence, the absence of repair in pedagogical materials is indicative of an overall nothing-less-than-perfect-language-use orientation to language education in the United States. Repair, it seems, is left out for fear of showing learners ‘bad’ or ‘deficient’ (i.e. imperfect) models of interaction. One way to remedy this situation is to use CA for language teaching (CA-for-LT) as a means for expanding the range of discourse options (Kramsch, 1985) available to language learners. Conversation analytic research has produced a robust understanding of the sequential organization of conversation since the 1970s (Sacks et al., 1974) and of the basic components of interaction – turn constructional units (TCUs), transition relevance places (TRPs), adjacency pairs and insertion sequences, such as repair. These basic components could be incorporated into a CA-for-LT framework as a means of orienting learners to the mechanisms available to speakers in interaction (Mori, 2007; Seedhouse, 2004; Wong & Waring, 2010). For instance, CA-based teaching materials have been proposed for the teaching of sociopragmatics (Huth & Taleghani-Nikazm, 2008) and specific interactional routines (Seedhouse, 2004; Wong, 2002; Wong & Waring, 2010). These suggestions have been made in large part due to the perceived inauthenticity of model interactions presented in languageteaching materials. CA-informed descriptions have the potential to provide learners with more authentic depictions of the social-interactive norms of the L2 they are learning and to raise their awareness of the interactional resources available to them. My focus below is on the more abstract concepts relevant to CA as applied to language teaching. As such, I am less concerned with developing specific recommendations for teaching particular practices and actions than I am with developing a more macro-orientation to CA-for-LT. The basic idea is one of providing learners first with a plan of action (i.e. a conceptual orientation) and then with the practices available to them for accomplishing those actions. It is also worth noting that these proposals have direct implications for teacher education as well, in particular raising teachers’ awareness of the mechanisms by which interactants accomplish social actions through talk. This is particularly relevant to oral assessments done through LPIs, where teachers should be encouraged to treat repair as a relevant response rather than simply a gap in linguistic competence (see Johnson, 2001). Concept-based instruction as a model for CA-for-LT A promising pedagogical model for CA-for-LT derives from Vygotsky’s (1997) proposal that formal education should focus on developing students’ conceptual knowledge of the object of study. By this, Vygotsky meant teaching theoretical concepts and then linking those concepts to
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practical activity (see Davydov, 2004; Galperin, 1989, 1992). In short, the concept serves as an orienting basis for action and, when materialized in the form of a pedagogical diagram, can prove to be a powerful tool/artifact for thinking. Within language teaching, concept-based instruction (CBI) has been successfully implemented as a means of teaching a number of grammatical concepts.9 My proposal, therefore, is to teach the essential features of the sequential organization of talk-in-interaction (from CA) as a means of promoting the artificial (i.e. intentional; see Vygotsky, 1997) development of IC. Below, I sketch out a preliminary pedagogical proposal along these lines that includes three principal components: (1) conceptualization of the mechanisms of talk-in-interaction; (2) materialization of the concept; and (3) linking conceptual knowledge to practical activity through problem-solving and spoken-interactive tasks. Conceptualization refers to providing complete and coherent explanations of concepts. This entails, crucially, explaining the relevant concepts in a way that is accessible to learners without compromising their coherence and integrity. In other words, explanations should be simple
Table 6.1 Example pedagogical explanations of components of talk-ininteraction Term
Explanation
Turn, turn-taking
A turn is a part of spoken interaction done by one speaker. Turn-taking refers to the changes in speakers as they complete turns.
Turn constructional unit (TCU)
A part of an utterance (not necessarily a sentence) that might complete a turn. Turns may include one or several TCUs.
Transition relevance place (TRP)
The place in a turn where a change in speaker is most relevant.
Adjacency pair
A two-part sequence in which the first part (called a first-pair part or FPP) makes the second part (called a second-pair part or SPP) relevant. Some examples include question–answer, greeting–greeting and invitation–acceptance.
Preference
Preference refers to the expected (preferred) versus unexpected (dispreferred) SPPs. For instance, a preferred SPP to ‘invitation’ is ‘acceptance’, whereas ‘rejection’ of the invitation is dispreferred.
Repair
A way of dealing with troubles in the interaction, such as problems of (mis)hearing or (mis) understanding. A repair sequence usually ‘looks backward’ because it attempts to resolve a trouble source in a preceding turn.
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(comprehensible) but not reduced to simplistic ‘rules of thumb’ (Lantolf, 2007). Table 6.1 presents what I consider to be the principal concepts and explanations relevant to a concept-based CA-for-LT pedagogical unit. These explanations have been adapted from ten Have’s (2007) glossary of CA terms/concepts. These concepts could be explained by the teacher or presented to students (e.g. on notecards) for them to read independently. However, it should be kept in mind that one of the main principles of CBI is that learning a concept does not merely entail rote memorization of the verbal explanation. Instead, it entails the internalization of the concept as a tool for thinking. As such, students should be encouraged to explain the concept to themselves and to make inferences about the nature of talkin-interaction based on their understanding of the concepts. The notion of ‘languaging’ (Swain, 2006) – that is, self-explanation – is relevant here. As Swain et al. explain, ‘languaging is an important part of the learning process, as it transforms inner thoughts to external knowing (externalization) and, conversely, it transforms external knowing into internal cognitive activity (internalization)’ (Swain et al., 2009: 5). In addition, supporting the conceptual explanations with concrete examples and language analysis tasks, and asking students to explain their understandings of how the concepts are relevant to the examples (Huth & Taleghani-Nikazm, 2008; Seedhouse, 2004; Wong, 2002; Wong & Waring, 2010), can help them to internalize and transform this conceptual knowledge. Another component of CBI is the materialization of the concept in the form of pedagogical diagrams. These pedagogical diagrams serve as imagistic depictions of concepts that complement a learner’s developing conceptual knowledge based on verbal explanations (Lantolf, 2007; Serrano-Lopez & Poehner, 2008). Figure 6.1 displays an example
Figure 6.1 Pedagogical diagram
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pedagogical diagram depicting the organization of adjacency pairs but also emphasizing the possibility of initiating repair. This figure is intended to demonstrate that understanding a relevant first-pair part is necessary for deciding whether to provide a second-pair part (either preferred or dispreferred) or, in the case of problems of (mis) hearing or (mis)comprehension, to initiate repair. The idea behind using such diagrams is that they can serve as easily accessible references to or depictions of the concepts students are learning that simultaneously facilitate learners’ internalization of the concepts as such as well as guide their performance in problem-solving and/or performance/ interactional tasks. The fi nal basic component of concept-based CA-for-LT framework is the application of theoretical (conceptual) knowledge to practical activity. Vygotsky argued that for theoretical conceptual knowledge to be of value, it had to be linked to practical activity. This is because acquiring scientific knowledge without developing the ability to use that knowledge in practice results in ‘knowledge detached from reality’ (Vygotsky, 1987: 217). Linking learners’ developing understanding of the mechanisms for accomplishing talk-in-interaction to practice could be done in a two-step process. In the first step, learners could engage in problemsolving tasks in collaboration with a teacher or peers. Such problemsolving tasks might include discourse completion tasks in which they are instructed to provide preferred and dispreferred second-pair parts as well as examples of repair initiation. The second step might then focus on learners’ spoken interactions. For instance, strategic interactions (Di Pietro, 1987) are open-ended goal-oriented tasks in which two or more learners participate in a real-life scenario. Each participant is given a role that is in some way in conflict with the other’s role. Importantly, each participant has access only to the specific details of his or her own role, which creates the need to negotiate the interaction and to think rather spontaneously. A note on the teaching of specific practices and actions So far, my discussion of a CA-for-LT framework has focused exclusively on the rather abstract mechanisms of talk-in-interaction (e.g. turntaking, repair). I believe that this is an important starting point for a concept-based approach to this type of pedagogy, which privileges an abstract-to-concrete approach to pedagogy (Davydov, 2004). However, it is also important to develop learners’ repertoires of concrete socialinteractive practices that can be used to accomplish various social actions.10 For instance, when teaching the concept of preference (and preference organization), it seems necessary to illustrate to learners that preferred responses are typically given without hesitation while
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dispreferred responses are often delayed and followed by an account of why the dispreferred response is given (e.g. rejecting an invitation is typically followed by an excuse). In addition, types of adjacency pairs – and the actions they accomplish (e.g. greetings, invitations and apologies) – could form the specific units in a curriculum based on a CA-for-LT framework.
Concluding Remarks In this chapter, I have argued that responses to teacher-initiated questions are indices of L2 learners’ competence as LPI interactants, even if the content of the response is not relevant to the question asked. This is because providing a response is the prototypical preferred next action within the context of LPIs. Thus, one part of learners’ IC is the socially constructed knowledge that a teacher’s first-turn position utterance normally projects a student’s answer-response. This argument is in line with the critiques of LPIs more generally (see above) as not being characteristic of conversation but a survey research interview. The second part of my argument focused more specifically on the pedagogical implications of the analysis. Although I believe it is important to give credit to these learners for being interactionally competent rather than seeing them as deficient communicators (Firth & Wagner, 1997), we have to ask ourselves whether this kind of routinized interaction is beneficial to learners’ (more complete) development of IC. I do not believe so. As mentioned above, LPIs are not traditionally designed to be instructional but rather to assess competence in the L2 (i.e. the result of previous teaching and learning). However, within a Vygotskian understanding of the teaching–assessment relationship, LPIs can be – and perhaps should be – instructional (Johnson, 2001; McNamara, 1997; Poehner, 2008; van Compernolle, 2010). This entails recognizing learners’ adherence to interactional routines and their ability to participate appropriately in LPIs as illustrated above as well as encouraging teachers to fi nd other ways of interacting with and assessing learners’ competence in the language they are studying. My proposal for a concept-based CA-for-LT framework attempts to address this important and exciting new line of inquiry from the pre-LPI instructional perspective. At the same time, if such a pedagogical approach is used in the classroom, commensurable assessment tasks and evaluation criteria must also be incorporated (Johnson, 2001). This includes not only viewing repair as a relevant action rather than a deficiency or gap in competence but also going beyond the survey research interview format of traditional LPIs. Future research in this domain has the potential to inform CA-for-SLA/LT research in particular as well as the field of applied linguistics in general.
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Notes 1. Many thanks are due to John Hellermann and Simona Pekarek Doehler for their insightful comments, questions and recommendations for strengthening the arguments presented in this chapter. All remaining errors or shortcomings are, of course, my own. 2. I use the term language proficiency interview to refer to any spoken-interactive assessment of oral proficiency. This includes, of course, ACTFL’s OPI but also a teacher’s own version of an OPI-like test or simulated OPI designed for assessment purposes, such as done in the present study. 3. The phrase je fais une mineur ‘I’m minoring in’ is a Québécism. This is a frequent problem for US learners of French whose textbooks emphasize standard European French where there does not exist an equivalent phrase for English to minor in. However, because the Canadian university system is closely aligned with its US counterpart, the concept of faire une mineur ‘to do a minor’ exists in Quebec. 4. After repeatedly listening to the recordings and verifying with another French–English bilingual (and university French teacher), I determined that this student was not simply borrowing an English word but in fact switching to English as she pronounced minor. In short, her phonology dramatically changes between je (French) and minor (English). 5. Preference (e.g. preferred and dispreferred responses) is a structural issue in CA, not a psychological one. Claiming that there is a preference for a survey interview-like structure means that, in the data, the normal structural organization of the LPIs centers around a question–answer adjacency pair with a possible sequence closing third. No claim is made about the psychological preference (i.e. want, desire) of the participants. The reader is referred to the works of Heritage (1984), Pomerantz (1984), Schegloff et al. (1977) and ten Have (2007) for more detailed discussions of preference. 6. It should be noted that, according to ACTFL’s proficiency guidelines for speaking, concise responses are typical of Intermediate Mid L2 speakers, who ‘tend to function reactively, for example, by responding to direct questions or requests for information’ (ACTFL, 1999: 5), whereas more extended ‘paragraphlength’ responses are required for placement as Intermediate High and all Advanced levels of proficiency. Given that these learners were just completing their intermediate coursework, and the relatively constrained nature of LPIs, it is not surprising to fi nd few examples of learners engaging in extended discussion of the topics or nominating new topics of discussion (see above). 7. The teacher and students routinely used the more formal second-person pronoun vous during the semester. 8. This claim is made as part of an ongoing project exploring the pragmatic and interactional authenticity of first- and second-year French textbooks. In the L2 textbooks I reviewed, repair sequences were found primarily in explanations and sample dialogues intended to illustrate the use of question words and interrogative syntax. There was no focus on the interactional relevance of repair sequences. In short, the emphasis in textbooks is on lexicogrammar (e.g. asking questions using various lexicogrammatical variants), not sense-making in interaction. For other critiques of textbook dialogues, see Wong (2002) and Mori (2005). 9. The interested reader is also referred to Lantolf (2007, 2008), Negueruela (2008) and Negueruela and Lantolf (2006) for in-depth discussions of CBI in L2 teaching and learning. 10. For discussion of the distinction and relationship between practices and actions, see Schegloff (1997).
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Serrano-Lopez, M. and Poehner, M.E. (2008) Materializing linguistic concepts through 3-D clay modeling: A tool-and-result approach to mediating L2 Spanish development. In J.P. Lantolf and M.E. Poehner (eds) Sociocultural Theory and the Teaching of Second Languages (pp. 321–346). London: Equinox. Shohamy, E. (1988) A proposed framework for testing the oral proficiency of second/foreign language learners. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 10, 165–180. Swain, M. (2006) Languaging, agency and collaboration in advanced language proficiency. In H. Byrnes (ed.) Advanced Language Learning: The Contribution of Halliday and Vygotsky (pp. 95–108). London: Continuum. Swain, M., Lapkin, S., Knouzi, I., Suzuki, W. and Brooks, L. (2009) Languaging: University students learn the grammatical concept of voice in French. Modern Language Journal 93, 5–29. Swender, E. (ed.) (1999) Oral Proficiency Interview Tester Training Manual. New York: ACTFL. Ten Have, P. (2007) Doing Conversation Analysis: A Practical Guide (2nd edn.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. van Compernolle, R.A. (2010) Incidental microgenetic development in secondlanguage teacher–learner talk-in-interaction. Classroom Discourse 1, 66–81. Van Lier, L. (1989) Reeling, writhing, drawling, stretching, and fainting in coils: Oral proficiency interviews as conversation. TESOL Quarterly 23, 489–508. Vygotsky, L.S. (1978) Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Mental Processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Vygotsky, L.S. (1986) Thought and Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Vygotsky, L.S. (1987) The development of scientific concepts in childhood. In R.W. Rieber and A.S. Carton (eds) The Collected Works of L. S. Vygotsky. (Vol. 1) Problems of General Psychology. Including the Volume Thinking and Speech. New York: Plenum. Vygotsky, L.S. (1997) Educational Psychology. Boca Raton, FL: St Lucie Press. Wertsch, J.V. (1998) Mind as Action. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wong, J. (2002) ‘Applying’ conversation analysis in applied linguistics: Evaluating dialogue in English as a second language textbooks. International Review of Applied Linguistics 40, 37–60. Wong, J. and Waring, H.Z. (2010) Conversation Analysis and Second Language Pedagogy: A Guide for ESL/EFL Teachers. London: Routledge. Young, R.F. (1995) Conversational styles in language proficiency interviews. Language Learning 45, 3–42. Young, R.F. (2000) Interactional competence: Challenges for validity. Paper presented at a joint symposium on ‘Interdisciplinary Interfaces with Language Testing’. Annual meeting of the American Association for Applied Linguistics and the Language Testing Research Colloquium, March 11, 2000, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Young, R.F. (2003) Learning to talk the talk and walk the walk: Interactional competence in academic spoken English. North Eastern Illinois University Working Papers in Linguistics 2, 26–44.
• Few, if any, problems expressing ideas and understanding questions • Able to repair miscomprehensions
• Few, if any, major pronunciation problems
• Appropriate vocabulary is used throughout the conversation • English not used
• Few, if any, major problems • No misunderstandings caused by grammatical mistakes
Pronunciation
Vocabulary
Grammar
Excellent (4 pts)
Communicative success
Category
Table A.1 LPI Rubric
Appendix A
• Some appropriate vocabulary • English used frequently
• Frequent problems with word order or parts of speech • Frequent misunderstandings
• Mostly appropriate vocabulary is used throughout • Some English • Some problems with word order or parts of speech • Few misunderstandings caused by inaccurate grammar
• Pronunciation problems • Little, if any, of lead to misunderstandings the conversation frequently is comprehensible
• Some pronunciation problems, but does not impede comprehension
• Grammar never accurate • Incomprehensible speech
• Little, if any, appropriate vocabulary • Lots of English used
• Unable to hold conversation in French
• Trouble with expressing ideas and/or understanding questions • Frequent breakdown in communication
• Some problems expressing ideas and understanding questions • Not always able to repair miscomprehensions
Poor (1 pts)
Fair (2 pts)
Good (3 pts)
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Appendix B Table B.1 Transcription conventions Sequencing [
Onset of overlapping speech
]
End of overlapping speech
=
Latching (i.e. no gap between utterances)
Timed intervals (.)
Micropause (less than 0.2 seconds)
(2.0)
Timed pause (longer than 0.2 seconds)
Speech delivery word
Underlined words (or parts of words) indicates stress
::
Sound lengthening. Multiple colons indicate more prolongation
−
Abrupt cutoff
.
Falling intonation
,
Slightly rising/continuing intonation
?
Rising intonation (not necessarily a question)
↑
Markedly higher pitch relative to preceding talk
↓
Markedly lower pitch relative to preceding talk
WORD
Markedly loud sound relative to surrounding context
ºwordº
Markedly soft sound relative to surrounding context
#word#
Creaky voice
h
Audible outbreath (multiple hs mean longer outbreath)
.h
Audible inbreath (multiple hs mean longer inbreath)
w(h)ord
Breathiness, as in laughter during speech
@
Laughter. Each @ represents one beat (e.g. ha ha ha → @ @ @)
Transcriber’s doubts and comments ()
Empty parentheses indicate inaudible speech
(word)
Unclear speech. For errors in French leading to unclear or indecipherable speech, the transcription is a phonetic approximation of the word or string of sounds.
(( ))
Transcriber’s notes, comments, descriptions etc.
Part 2
Development of L2 Interactional Competence
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Chapter 7
Members’ Methods, Members’ Competencies: Looking for Evidence of Language Learning in Longitudinal Investigations of Other-Initiated Repair J. HELLERMANN
Introduction From the particular socio-cultural perspective on language and language learning that I (and others in this volume) take, objects for the analysis of language acquisition are inherent in and emerge from communicative language in use. Although linguistic systems would not exist without individuals and their brains, these systems emerge from the interaction that takes place among the brains, minds, bodies and activities of mutually engaged individuals. From this perspective, language is an embodied system of conventional symbols (Johnson, 1987) used and acquired in a web of cognition that is distributed among individual bodies, activity and culture (Harris, 1981; Schegloff, 1991). Given this embodied, social and distributed nature of cognition, the objects for analysis of language learning are considered to be co-constructed phenomena, practices for the management of the regularities and contingencies that are necessitated by face-to-face interaction. This chapter contributes to the effort for second-language acquisition research to reconsider action-oriented studies of language as communication and language competence as interactional competence (Hall, 1993, 1995; Young, 2000, 2003) by investigating the interactional practice of repair, specifically, the phenomenon conceptualized by conversation analysis (CA) as other-initiated repair. The term repair has been used in several fields of research that study language and interaction. Some of these perspectives see repair as a marker of disfluency and in research on language learners, a signal that remediation is in order for those who are doing repair (Gass & Varonis, 1985). The 147
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theoretical and methodological background for this study, CA, has studied the mechanism of repair as one aspect of the turn-taking system for talkin-interaction (Schegloff, 1979; Schegloff et al., 1977). This mechanism is seen as one of the competencies that language users can access to maintain the course of action in their talk when some source of interactional trouble arises. Although the source of repair is called a trouble source, that source is not necessarily some deviant language structure, error or mistake. It is a trouble source with respect to the ongoing progressivity (Schegloff, 2007) of the local order of some talk-in-interaction. The trouble may be due to lack of hearing, lack of attention, infelicitous referencing or something else. The analytic methods used for this investigation, CA, developed in sociology to study the social organization of conversations as accomplished in sequential turns of talk (Drew, 2005; Sacks, 1992). Given its roots in ethnomethodology (Garfinkel, 1967; Heritage, 1984; Maynard & Clayman, 2003), CA developed to show how common sense methods are used by members of a society to hold one another accountable for acting and talking in a culturally relevant way. CA focuses on the sequences of turns at talk that participants in an interaction use to show their own interpretations of or orientations toward other’s talk and actions and thus display accountability for their talk-in-interaction to one another. Repair in the CA tradition is described as being initiated by current speaker (self ) or another currently nonspeaking participant (other) and then accomplished by one of those parties. So, for example, if a current speaker says something that is oriented to as a trouble source by a recipient of that talk, CA methods state that other has initiated a repair (other-initiated repair). An example from data is seen in Excerpt 7.1, lines two and four: Excerpt 7.1 Lena and Sally 1 2 3
Lena:
4
Sally: =>
5 6 7
Lena:
=>
Sally:
I jus talked to Je:ff too:, he sounded pretty hu:ngry:: hu uh ⎡ ⎣eh heh he sou:nded pretty hungr(h) y::? ⎡ ⎣heh heh .hh$iyeah::$ that’s funny,
In Excerpt 7.1, line 2, the current speaker (self ) Lena says that a friend, Jeff, sounded hungry which Sally (other) orients to as odd in some way and initiates a repair of Lisa’s turn repeating the trouble source clause with rising pitch and laughter tokens (line 4). A situation in which a participant
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other than the person who produces a trouble source also repairs that trouble source is described as other repair. I will be looking at instances in which a focal learner either initiates repair on the talk of other (otherinitiation) or repairs the talk of other (other-repair). A number of researchers interested in issues of intercultural communication and language learning have used CA methods to address the construct of repair as it is used by so-called native and nonnative speakers (Hosoda, 2000, 2001, 2006; Kurhila, 2001, 2004; Wong, 2000) and by teachers and students in classrooms (Hall, 2007; Kasper, 1985; Macbeth, 2004; McHoul, 1978, 1990; Seedhouse, 1997, 1999, 2004; van Lier, 1988). Little research, however, has focused on how repair is accomplished among language learners themselves in language-learning classrooms. This research has focused on (among other things) the preference for self-repair, gesture used to initiate repair and differences in repair between native and nonnative speakers. Although much SLA research focuses on learners’ problems with language, recent research on repair (Brouwer, 2004; Egbert et al., 2004) suggests second-language speakers repair practices are likely quite similar to those used by native speakers. For the research in this chapter, I have attempted to investigate the language of these participants in its own right rather than as nonnative talk to understand to what degree self-identified language learners do repair in ways noted by CA research. This follows suggestions by Schegloff (2000 and in Wong & Olsher, 2000) for the researcher to withhold attribution of differences in practices for language use to a participant’s status as a nonnative speaker of the language until research findings are complete. As mentioned previously, a main practice of CA research is the work done to uncover the methods used to organize particular interactions understanding that contexts and participants make innumerable contingencies relevant to each interaction. This research tradition, however, also considers findings of language practices that members use for the organization of their mundane interaction to be available for use by any member of the language culture being studied.1 CA research findings from one or a collection of interactions are routinely cited by CA researchers investigating other participants in other contexts. Given this notion of the possible universality, a ‘context-free language architecture’ (Seedhouse, 2005: 536) for constructs in CA such as repair, investigations of the repair practices of language learners can uncover evidence for changes in what language learners orient to for repair and how learners’ repair practices become co-constructed differently at different points in time. Although the title of the chapter uses the label learning, I will purposefully leave that term underspecified until later in this chapter. CA researchers have participated in a vigorous debate about whether CA research can or should address the notion of learning (He, 2004; Koschmann et al., 2005; Mori, 2004), about how exogenous theory might be used with CA to
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address learning (Kasper, 2006; Markee, 2008), and how CA methods can provide visible evidence of cognition (Mori & Markee, 2009) or at least conscious learning (Mori & Hasegawa, 2009). My own previous research (2008) has found the theoretical constructs in Situated Learning Theory (Lave & Wenger, 1991) to provide explanations for the development of interactional practices used by language learners. Given CA’s focus on the local organization of sequences of talk-ininteraction, longitudinal data collection and research design is relatively rare (Forrester, 2008; Forrester & Cherington, 2009; Hellermann, 2008; Markee, 2008; Nguyen, 2008, this volume; Wootton, 1994, 1997, 2005). This research, drawing on data from learning contexts (inside and outside classrooms) has seen the value of longitudinal data for studies that use CA to show practices for talk-in-interaction by the same participants at different points in time. The goal in the research reported on here is to take advantage of longitudinal data of language learners in interaction, to foreground the practices for interaction at different points in time and to show evidence of change in these practices from which learning can be inferred. In this investigation, learners were seen actively engaged in talkin-interaction that was fostered, in part, by an instructor and instructordesigned tasks. However, the practice of focus in this chapter, repair, was never the focus of instruction and learners did not explicitly orient to repair as an object for learning. Rather, in looking at repair to understand language learning, we are looking at one of many practices for talk-ininteraction that are the methods that members use as hearable responses to the language and other contexts of an interaction. Talk-in-interaction necessitates conscious, hearable and visible orientation to sequences of turns of talk that is displayed in the management of the sequences of turns at talk through, in part, repair practices. The accomplishment of repair is done unremarkably in mundane talk and is one of the competences of members (Heritage, 1984) used for the co-construction of intersubjectivity. Such categorization comes out in the talk of the participants themselves. It is this goal, intersubjectivity, that drives an interaction and is present regardless of participants’ degrees of expertness with the language being used. Of the different repair trajectories, other initiations and other repairs make available the participants’ monitoring, awareness and orientation to the ongoing linguistic and communicative structures in the sequences of talk. The psycholinguistic construct in SLA theory of noticing is an attempt to explain how linguistic input becomes intake for acquisition through conscious awareness (Schmidt, 1993 and overviews in Van Patten & Williams, 2007). Previous more structurally oriented investigations of these data (Bongartz & Hellermann, 2004) showed that CA methods are well equipped to show how this consciousness (noticing) is made public as participants
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in interaction orient to another’s talk and publicly display a particular orientation to it by, in some cases, initiating repair on that talk. In the data examined for this study, this conscious orientation to language is visible and displayed in other-initiations and repair by two focal participants. The goal of this analysis was to examine the interactions of two learners who participated in task interaction in language-learning classrooms for five terms (50 weeks) to see what the participants orient to as repairable at different points in time and to see how this orientation is displayed in their talk-in-interaction. The longitudinal data show that there are consistencies in the practices used for initiating or performing other repair across the three time periods during the 50 weeks suggesting that the basic interactional necessities that make repair relevant occur even among novice language users. However, the data also show that there are changes by each learner across the three time periods in both what is oriented to as a repairable and the mechanisms for doing the repair. These changes of focus and practice are evidence of the learners’ changing abilities to participate using English. These changes, however, are also necessitated by the different interactional contexts afforded by more advanced proficiency language-learning classrooms.2 In analyzing changes in the interactional competence of these two learners by focusing on repair, I will first present a recurring repair sequence type used in the learners’ first term of study. Next, I will trace changes in repair practices by examining similar contexts for repair and the practices used by the participants at different points in time. Acknowledging that changes in orientation to repairables and repair practices are necessitated, in part, by different interactional configurations in different classrooms and contexts, and are not simply changes in an individual’s language competence, the third set of examples show how different contexts provide opportunities for different orientations to repairables and different repair practices. From this it can be inferred that interactional competence develops as part of language development in a classroom community of practice.
Data, Methods, Participants Working with video recordings of nonelicited data of the classroom interaction of adult learners of English (Reder, 2005; Reder et al., 2003), 3 I collected instances of two learners’ (‘Inez’ and ‘Reinaldo’4) engagement in dyadic interactions in language-learning classrooms. The interactions were transcribed following CA conventions (Jefferson, 2004, see the Appendix) and instances of repair were noted, analyzed and characterized by type. For this chapter, I focused on instances in which the focal participants either repaired or initiated repair on their interlocutor’s talk. Each participant was characterized as a successful student by the teachers
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at the data collection site and progressed through the four proficiency levels of the program in their time of study at the data collection site. Approximately 400 minutes of talk-in-interaction that included Inez and Reinaldo was transcribed over the course of five terms of study (i.e. five 10-week terms) – an average of about 40 minutes of talk per term for each participant and a collection of over 300 examples of repair was made. For this report, data from terms one, two, three and five were analyzed in an attempt to trace changes in interactional competence through a longitudinal focus on repair. As discussed earlier, the practice of other-initiation of repair starts with an orientation by the focal learner to some trouble source by other and a display of that orientation through talk. Other-repair by the focal learner may have been initiated by the learner (other-initiated) or may be made after the initiation by another participant. The analysis focused on these two aspects of other (-initiated) repair to look for evidence of change over time both for what the learners orient to as repairable and how the learners accomplished repair initiations and repairs.
A Recurring Sequence As a first step in the analysis, I want to illustrate a type of sequence that involves other initiation of repair that is seen at all time points in the data but most commonly in the talk of very beginning level learners. The sequence is presented to illustrate both a possible difference in the way that talk is organized among very beginning-level learners of a language as well as a feature common to repair organization reported on in CA research on everyday conversation. In Excerpt 7.2, Reinaldo, in his first term of classes, is working on a task with Gail in which they have been instructed to ask one another when they do typical daily activities including watching television. After Reinaldo’s task question (line 214) and Gail’s response, Reinaldo resays the last part of the response (‘to twelve’, line 219) which Gail then also repeats.5 Excerpt 7.2 TIME 1: 3-6-03, 204, 1:25:30 214 215 216 217 218 219 220
R: G: R: G: R: => G:
you watch TV? yeah (.) uh from what time to what time uh from (.) from eight (2) eight (.) to (.) uh (.) twelve. twelve. to twelve? mm twelve.
Members’ Methods, Members’ Competencies 01 02 03 04
A: B: A: B:
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QUESTION RESPONSE RE-SAYING WORD FROM RESPONSE (repair initiation) RE-SAYING SAME WORD
Figure 7.1 Common repair sequence among beginning learners involving resaying
Excerpt 7.2 illustrates a commonly occurring sequence in the talk of my data set in which a first-pair part question (asked by Reinaldo) is responded to by a peer (Gail). The sequence initiator then follows this response with a resaying of part or all of the peer’s response in the third turn (seen in Figure 7.1). In these sequences, the resaying in the third turn highlights a just-said lexical item or phrase. The reason for the resaying in this slot varies and may be for the sequence initiator to show receipt or hearing of answerer’s response, for sequence initiator to assure answerer that her/his answer is a felicitous production, or for both reasons. The initiation of repair is not, however, most often done due to a lack of understanding on the part of the repair initiator. In research on everyday conversational talk, it has been seen that any item for a number of reasons can be treated as a repairable, repair initiations are commonly made when the repair initiator has not heard a previous turn or wants to suggest an alternative to that turn for some reason (Schegloff et al., 1977). In these data from beginning learners, there is a strong orientation by both participants for making secondturn responses salient for some reason, sometimes for gaining understanding, but often (as in Excerpt 7.2) for purposes of confirming hearing. The frequency of the sequence type illustrated in Figure 7.1 from the learners’ interactions in early terms of study and the fact that the initiator of the repair is often doing work to confirm a previous turn suggests such a sequence to be characteristic of beginning language learners. This excerpt and the gloss of the sequence in Figure 7.1 also illustrate that language learners at the beginning stages of their learning accomplish repair initiations in the next turn following the trouble source, a sequential position where repair initiations have been shown to occur in mundane conversation (Schegloff, 2000; Schegloff et al., 1977).
Tracing the Development of Interactional Competence in Repair Practices For CA research that seeks to contribute to studies of longitudinal learning, the most difficult issue may be finding objects for learning on
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which to focus an analysis that we can call context independent. When purporting to see evidence of change in the way a learner accomplishes a CA practice, the analyst needs to show that the contexts within which the practice is being compared are similar (Schegloff, 1993). Finding comparable actions in comparable contexts at different points in time in the interaction of language learners has proven to be particularly challenging. However, the next excerpts offer four candidates for a comparative perspective, excerpts in which, I propose, different practices are used for similar actions at different points in time by the two focal learners. In Excerpts 7.3–7.4, the repair initiation practices Inez uses to correct language form in a second-pair part of an adjacency pair are compared. In Excerpt 7.3, from Inez’s first term of study, students have been instructed to perform an adjacency pair consisting of a first-pair part yes–no question (provided by the teacher) followed by a second-pair part short answer response in the grammatical format yes I do or no I don’t. In Excerpt 7.3, we see Inez ask the question in line 188 and initiate repair of her peer’s response nonverbally in line 190. Excerpt 7.3 TIME 1: 10-07-02, 204, 1:04:20 188 189 190 191 192
I: Y: I: => Y: I:
193 194
Y: I:
do you works part time? yes I am ((points to something on page)) oh yes I do. ye: s ((writing)) ⎡ ⎣yes I do. yes I do. okay thank you very much ((shifts posture))
In line 190, Inez orients to her peer response in the previous turn as repairable by pointing to a notebook page where, presumably, the target grammatical form is located. The result of the repair initiation by Inez is a correction by her peer, Ying, who responds (line 191) with a news marker and appropriate teacher-provided short-form response to Inez’s first turn ‘yes–no’ question. Excerpt 7.4 from 17 months later presents a similar sequential context (an adjacency pair: expression of an ailment followed by suggestion) in which Inez performs a similar action: correction. Here Inez and her peer, Minh are making suggestions to one another for what one might do to alleviate hypothetical ailments. After Inez offers a hypothetical ailment as a first turn of the sequence (line 1016: ‘headache’), her peer responds with a suggestion, to ‘take aspirin’ (line 1017). It is part of this peer response that Inez orients to as a trouble source and in the third turn of
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the sequence (line 1018) makes a repair initiation for purposes of correction. Excerpt 7.4 TIME 5: 03-02-04, 204, 1:22:08 1006 1017 1018 1019 1020 1021 1022 1023 1024 1025 1026 1027 1028 1029 1030 1031 1032 1033 1034 1035
I:
headache ((lines missing: working on pronunciation of headache)) M: I think uh take you need you need to take aspirins I: => take? (1) M: this ((gestures to throat)) I: = > no is take M: (yeah ) I: eh take the pencil, (1) M: uh huh, I: eat the food, M: yea h ⎡ ⎣drink water, a nd I: ⎡ ⎣yeah medicine is take. M: ⎡ ⎣ this action I: (1) M: I think medicine is take. = I: = sure? M: yea:h. we can ask teacher ⎡ ⎣I- I not sure I:
Inez’s repair initiation is a resaying of the trouble source word in Minh’s previous turn using rising intonation. After a short gap, in line 1020, Minh orients to Inez’s resaying as a repair initiation and uses verbal and gesture deixis to indicate the physical location for the action of taking an aspirin of her second turn response. As Minh does not change the particular trouble source verb (‘take’), Inez offers a more overt attempt at correction in line 1021 objecting to the use of the verb ‘take’ for ingesting aspirin using the negative marker ‘no’. She then supports her more explicit correction using exemplars of collocations she knows for the trouble source verb take (line 1023: ‘take the pencil’) and of her known verbs for the action of ingesting (lines 1026 and 1028: ‘eat the food’ and ‘drink water’). While this dispute was resolved later by the teacher, Excerpt 7.4 is presented to illustrate how Inez is engaged in a longer sequence of talk to
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accomplish a correction that is oriented to a language form. We see that in comparison with Excerpt 7.3, in Excerpt 7.4, in working to correct her peer, Inez uses more language including isolating a trouble source word from a longer utterance, resaying that trouble source word to initiate repair, and then offering evidence to support her attempted correction when her peer does not take up that suggested correction. Excerpts 7.5 and 7.6 are taken from interactions involving Reinaldo and show orientations to similar repairables (pronunciation) at two different points in time. In Excerpt 7.5 from Reinaldo’s first term, Reinaldo and peer Vladimir are engaged in a question/answer task regarding sharing biographical information. In this excerpt, after Vladimir asks Reinaldo what language he speaks (line 64), Reinaldo answers (line 65) without orienting to Vladimir’s nonstandard pronunciation of the word ‘language’. It is when Vladimir asks about the same information but reformulates his original question (line 69) that Reinaldo responds using and providing an alternative pronunciation of the trouble source word ‘language’ in an embedded correction (Jefferson, 1987).
Excerpt 7.5 TIME 1: 01-16-03, 204, 39:00 64 65 66 67 68 69 70
V: R: =>
71
V:
72
R: =>
73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84
V: R: V: R: =>
what lungin do you speak. I am speaking Spanish. (.) yes I am speaking Spanish oh Spanish (.) what do what is your lungin. my my lang uage is ⎡ ⎣what is you your lungin
my my language is Spanish ⎡ ⎣laungin V: R: => my language is Spanish V: ( my)? R: yeah wh at ⎡ ⎣native langin? is Russian. V: R: Russian yes okay what is your language language V: lounge (.) what is your lounge R: ((shifts posture, retrieves electronic dictionary)) ºlanguageº ((30 seconds during which students write names on cards and Reinaldo uses the electronic dictionary)) ED: => language
Members’ Methods, Members’ Competencies 85 86 87 88 89
T: V: R: V: R:
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bloh bloh herhm herhm loun ge language. language language language ((leans back))
After Vladimir’s first turn of the adjacency pair, a question, Reinaldo abdicates his chance for repair initiation in the next turn (Jefferson, 2007) but due to Vladimir’s reformulation of the question, Reinaldo reformulates his response (line 70) to match the formatting of Vladimir’s question changing the pronunciation for the trouble source word language. This response overlaps with Vladimir and Reinaldo repeats his response several times (lines 72, 74). In line 73, Vladimir orients to language as a trouble source and alters his pronunciation of the word. Here, after Reinaldo’s embedded correction and Vladimir’s alteration of pronunciation of the trouble source, the talk moves in the direction of an instructional sequence. In line 78, after Vladimir has stated his native language, Reinaldo models the trouble source word again in his question prompt saying it two times. In his response, Vladimir alters his pronunciation of the word again. At this point, Reinaldo seeks another resource for instructing Vladimir on pronunciation and uses an electronic dictionary. After the word is produced by the electronic dictionary (line 84) and after the teacher comments on the sound of the electronic dictionary (line 85), Vladimir resays the trouble source word with two syllables (line 86), Reinaldo repeats it two times, and Vladimir says the word again (line 88) closely approximating a target-like pronunciation. The sequence ends with Reinaldo’s posture shift and last resaying of the trouble source word as a sequence closing device. While in Excerpt 7.5, Reinaldo relied on resaying a trouble source word for purposes of other initiation of repair and correction and then used an electronic device to produce another model pronunciation, in Excerpt 7.6, from Reinaldo’s third term of study, a pronunciation correction sequence is accomplished through resaying and the use of spelling. In this interaction, students are also asking one another biographical questions. The sequence of focus is initiated by Donald who asks about Reinaldo’s work. Reinaldo responds in line 75 with the title of his position ‘I am a janitor’ to which Donald responds with an open class repair initiation (Drew, 1997), ‘uh’, line 76. Reinaldo orients to this as a repair initiation and resays his job title (line 77). Donald then isolates the trouble source, the title itself, and says ‘janitor’ with a different pronunciation from Reinaldo. Reinaldo resays the trouble source word with the more standard English pronunciation (line 79) that is followed by Donald’s resaying of the word in his idiosyncratic pronunciation (line 80).
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Excerpt 7.6 TIME 3: 06-24-03, 206, 1:12:37 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85
D: R: D: R: => D: R: => D: R: => D: R: D: R:
what’s your job. I am janitor. uh I am a janitor. yanika janitor. yanika janitor ‘g’ ( ) yanika janitor (1) janitor (3) ‘g’ ‘a’ ‘n’ ‘e’ ‘t’ ‘o’ ( ) ((writes)) are you married? yes I am.
After resaying the trouble source word one more time (line 81), Reinaldo begins spelling the trouble source word. During Reinaldo’s spelling, Donald writes the word and attempts to say it one more time before starting the next sequence in the task, a first-pair part question regarding marital status. As in Excerpt 7.5, Reinaldo attempts to correct a word that is a trouble source for his interlocutor and that becomes a trouble source for Reinaldo due to his interlocutor’s nonstandard pronunciation. Similar to Excerpt 7.5, in Excerpt 7.6, Reinaldo attempts the repair by resaying the trouble source word several times. In Excerpt 7.6, however, unlike Excerpt 7.5, Reinaldo uses spelling to resolve the issue. His interlocutor in Excerpt 7.6 seems satisfied with writing down the word rather than attempting to say the word again. A tentative claim was made at the start of this section that data would show evidence of the development of interactional competence by looking longitudinally at repair sequences. Both Inez and Reinaldo were seen orienting to similar objects for repair at two different points in time (language structure for Inez, pronunciation for Reinaldo) and using different practices in the later time points than were used earlier (Inez: use of ‘no’ as an upgraded correction and then providing evidence for the correction; Reinaldo: spelling a trouble source word). In each case, however, for the later time periods (term five (Excerpt 7.4) for Inez and term three (Excerpt 7.6) for Reinaldo), it is difficult to make a strong claim that the changes noted were not influenced by context. Due to the fact that these are language-learning classrooms, at the later time points, the interactions were taking place in the context of (by defi nition of the classes) more experienced language users. For example, language-learning tasks such as that
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from Excerpt 7.3 (a great deal of language support given by the teacher) will not occur in language-learning classrooms that use curricula for more advanced learners. The following excerpts show other examples of the learners’ different orientations for other-initiation of repair and practices for managing those orientations that occurred at the later time points, in classrooms designed for more complex use of English. These excerpts show aspects of repair work used in the communities of practice of more advanced languagelearning classrooms that we can consider to be evidence of the greater interactional competence of the members of that community of practice. These examples will display evidence for greater interactional competence of the learners in a more reflexive way; these practices are part of what makes them more advanced learners but also part of the repertoire of practices necessitated by the communicative context of more advanced language-learning classrooms. This issue of tracing individual versus community interactional competence will be revisited in the concluding section of the chapter.
Change in Contexts Fostering Different Repair Work Action trajectory as the repairable In later terms (time three and time five), several instances of repair initiations by Inez show a different focus in her orientation to trouble in the talk of other. In these instances, rather than a grammatical structure or lexical item, it is the action projection of the interaction during teacher-assigned tasks that is oriented to as the repairable. In Excerpts 7.7 and 7.8, from her third term at the data collection site, Inez is engaged in a task with two peers (Jin and Carla). The task had students describing weather in their respective home countries at various times of the year and asking one another questions about the weather. At the start of this excerpt, Inez assesses the weather in her country, southern Mexico, as hot and humid (Excerpt 7.7, line 141). Jin asks Inez to specify when this weather occurs (lines 142–143, 148, 151) by using the question formation ‘which month’. After Jin spends some time clarifying that Inez had assessed the weather as hot and humid, he asks again (line 179) ‘which month’ to which Inez responds with a number and then names the months during which the weather is hot and humid (line 180). It seems that Inez is orienting to the question as Jin intended: naming the months. However, Carla makes a formulation of Inez’s response as a number of months, producing candidate sayings of eight in line 186, corrected by Jin in line 188 and then repeated by Carla (lines 189 and 191).
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Excerpt 7.7 TIME 3: 4-4-03, 206 1:11:00 141 I: very mosht hot, and very mosht omid. 142 J: this ki- uh this ki- this kind of weather, is uh::: (which 143 month). 144 (1) 145 C: hm 146 J: which month 147 (2) ((J writes)) 148 J: which (.) month 149 I: oh 150 C: which 151 J: which month ((lines missing)) 179 J: which month 180 I: six. Sep tember, (.) October, ⎡ ⎣ 181 C: OH ( ) 182 J: uh September 183 I: September, Oc tober ⎡ ⎣ October 184 J: 185 I: November. 186 C: eich, eich months, 187 I: in 188 J: eight months oh:: 189 C: eight months 190 I: how 191 C: eight months Immediately following Carla’s reformulation of Inez’s answer as number of months rather than the names of the individual months, Inez makes a repair initiation (Excerpt 7.8, lines 193 and 197) after which she attempts to explain to the teacher (lines 203, 205) that Jin had asked her a different kind of question than Carla is giving a formulation to. Excerpt 7.8 TIME 3: 4-4-03, 206 1:12:15 192 193 194 195
J: I: => T: C:
the storm, ↑no:: what rain? yeah
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J: I: =>
198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207
C: J: I: J:
208 209 210 211
C: T: J: T:
I: T: I: C: I:
161
rain no::.no no no no no no no ⎡ ⎣ you Mexico. ( ) Mexico (1) eh he ask (1) we? eh:: okay ((to class)) how months (1) rain in your country. (2) how much ( ) September October November ⎡ ⎣I no understand which. which month. ah October, which month.
In Excerpts 7.7 and 7.8, we see that in term three, Inez was orienting to action projection as an object of repair, in this case the action projected by Carla as formulation of Jin’s question as how many months rather than which months. Similarly, in Excerpt 7.9, from Inez’s fifth term of study, students have been instructed to do a role play in which they are to act out the roles of customer and store worker in a supermarket. Inez starts with a question in her role as a shopper (lines 12–13). Excerpt 7.9 TIME 5: 2-3-04, 204 1:26:00 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22
I:
D: I: => D: I: C: I: D: C:
oka:y. excuse me sir, could you tell me (.) where I can buy the milk? (.) uh huh huh huh it’s the grocery estore. could you tell could you tell me could you tell me, whe:re, I ca:n (I can yes) buy the m↑ilk. oh ah yes at lit- little store ((points))
After a pause (line 14), Darrel, who is seated behind Inez, responds to her question with laughter (line 15). Another peer, Canh, looks puzzled.
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Both orient to Inez’s request as problematic in some way and Inez treats this response to her question (lack of answer and orientation to the question as humorous) as a trouble source by reminding her peers that the setting is not a classroom, but that of the assigned role play, a grocery store (line 16). She continues with the question from her customer role (in lines 16, 18, 20) to which Canh responds at line 22. As with Excerpts 7.7–7.8, Excerpt 7.9 shows Inez making a repair initiation on the action of her peers: the derailment of her task-oriented action (the role-play question about buying milk) treating it as laughable. Excerpts 7.3–7.9 illustrate different foci for the object of repair initiation and repair at different points in time by the focal learners. In early terms, Inez’s focus for repair initiations seems to be on lexical items, language form and pronunciation. As seen in the last three excerpts, Excerpts 7.7– 7.9, in term three and especially term five, an orientation toward different objects for repair appear for Inez: action projection by peers. Although this difference in focus does not show change in the sequential structure of the repair practice, it does point to new aspects of contextualized language being available for repair initiation. Inez’s repair initiations on peer action projection suggest a broader orientation to language and languagelearning tasks than the orientation to lexical issues from early terms. Use of ‘no’ in other-initiated repair and accounts following ‘no’ Given its force as a rejection or denial, the use of ‘no’ for other-initiation of repair is a potentially face-threatening move and something speakers treat as a delicate matter (Ford, 2001, 2002; Ford et al., 2004). This force is seen in the way ‘no’ is oriented to by participants and used within a sequential structure of talk. For language learners, the interpersonal delicateness for the use of ‘no’ makes its felicitous use an important aspect of interactional competence. The data included examples of Inez or Reinaldo using ‘no’ for other-initiated repair in term five and one example of Inez using this structure at an earlier time point (term three as seen in Excerpt 7.8). In the use of ‘no’ for repair initiation in term five, we see how its force as a denial may influence the way it is formatted, sequentially, by the two participants. For each participant, the formatting for the use of ‘no’ as a repair initiator in term five is similar. After the use of ‘no’, there seem to be explicit attempts to provide an account to ensure that the action ‘no’ implements, a denial, is not taken by other (the party whose talk is being repaired) as unsubstantiated. A first example (Excerpt 7.10) is seen in Reinaldo’s talk from term five when he and a peer are engaged in a task in which they are to ask one another and answer biographical questions. After working on the task for a few minutes, Reinaldo asks Mai when she was born (line 94). Mai responds hesitatingly with the prepositional phrase ‘on nineteen seven
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three’ which Reinaldo responds to with a high-pitched comment that may indicate surprise or a slight agreement (line 100). After Mai repeats the year without the preposition, Reinaldo makes a repair initiation starting with ‘no’ (line 102) and then provides an account for his repair explaining that Mai did not answer the question about what day she was born but gave the year. He concludes by providing a model for the use of a preposition and month (line 104). Excerpt 7.10 TIME 5: 1-13-04, 204, 1:24:00 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104
R: M: R: M: R: M: R: =>
what day, (.) is your birthday. (1) oh::.my birthdays? yeah oh my birthday (1.5) on (.) how do you say on nineteen seven three?oh no ↑mhm ( ) nineteen seventy-three nineteen no what day not this- this you answer is for year (.) for days maybe (thirty ai ) (.) my birthday is in:: (1) in in m- in July:: (.) nineteen seventy-four¿
In Excerpt 7.11, from Inez’s fifth term of study, she and her peer are providing suggestions for pieces of equipment that would be needed by a character from their workbooks, Andrew, who is going camping. In line 622, Inez reads from her worksheet that Andrew wants to have a small fire. Before she finishes, her peer, Quyen, provides a candidate piece of equipment, a flashlight (line 623) that Andrew would need. After Inez’s repair initiation (line 624) and the repair by Quyen, Inez continues searching for an alternative solution. After some negotiation over the phrase ‘have to’ (the deleted lines 627–632) Inez starts to read Andrew’s situation again (line 633) and when Quyen offers ‘flashlight’ again as a candidate piece of equipment, Inez asks for an explanation (line 635). After Quyen’s reaffirmation of ‘flashlight’ that follows, Inez uses a multiple saying of ‘no’ followed by an alternative response (‘insect repellent’, line 641) and an account (‘for mosquitoes’ line 641 and ‘for insect’ line 643). Excerpt 7.11 TIME 5: 2-24-04, 204 1:33:55 622 623
I: Q:
Andrew wants to have a small fire, every ⎡ ( ) ⎣flaslight,
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624 I: 625 Q: 626 I: ((lines missing)) 633 I: 634 Q: 635 I: 636 Q: 637 638 I: => 639 => 640 Q: 641 642 643
I: => I: =>
what? (the) flaslight? they have to. Andrew wants have to flaslight why. yes flashlight? (2.5) no no no no no no is the flashlight is the (.) eh:: they? are have to: bri:ng, brin g, ⎡ ⎣ insect repellent for mosquitoes. (1) for:: (.) insect
Such repair initiation formatting contrasts with examples found when ‘no’ was used for other-repair initiations in earlier terms. Although there were no instances of the use of ‘no’ for repair initiation by Reinaldo before term five there was the one example of Inez using this structure in term three (presented again below as (14)) and several examples of her use of ‘no’ in other-initiation of repair in term two. Together with the excerpt from term three they offer an interesting contrast to how ‘no’ was used with following accounts by both learners in term five. Excerpts 7.12–7.14 show much less in the way of explicit accounting for the use of ‘no’ as another-initiation of repair by Inez. In Excerpt 7.12, after peer responds with a minimal ‘yes’ response, Inez elicits a longer response to a yes/no question by using Spanish (‘yes que’) and then ‘no’ as a repair upgrade prefacing the repeat of her question and nonverbal prompt to focus on the board. Inez’s pointing may be seen as a nonverbal formulation of an account for her explicit negation.6 In Excerpt 7.13, after the repair initiations with ‘no’ in lines 95, 101 and 103 there is no formulation of an account for why Inez is repairing Jing’s talk with ‘no’. Rather, like Excerpt 7.12, the talk consists of resayings and reformulations of the first question that prompted the repairable. Excerpt 7.12 TERM 2: 1-17-03, 204, 41:30 267 268 269 270
I: A: I: =>
are you homesick? yes! yes que (.) no. are you homesick? (3) ((I points to board)) are you
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A: I:
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yes I am okay,
Excerpt 7.13 TERM 2: 1-14-03, 204, 1:17:50 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105
I: J: I: => J: I: J: I: J: I: => J: I: J: I:
106 107 108 109
J: I: J:
whole family speaking Chinese¿ ehh::: (.5) ehh:: ca- guang do city. > no no<. I’m come your family¿ I’m all family I come from ((shakes head)) no all fam family. your family¿ all family (.) espeak, espeaspeak berp berp berp Ch inese ⎡ ⎣oh (1) speak English, speak ( ) Chinese
Excerpt 7.14 from term three differs from the previous two excerpts in that there seems to be an attempt by Inez to account for her use of no and multiple sayings of no to initiate repair in lines 203 and 205. Excerpt 7.14 TERM 3: 4-4-03, 206 1:12:15 192 193 194 195 196 197
J: I: => T: C: J: I: =>
198 199 200 201 202
C: J: I: J:
the storm, ↑no:: what rain? yeah rain no::.no no no no no no no ⎡ ⎣you Mexico. ( ) Mexico (1)
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203 204 205 206 207
I: => T: I: => C: I:
208 209 210 211
C: T: J: T:
eh he ask (1) we? eh:: okay ((to class)) how months (1) rain in your country. (2) how much ( ) September October November ⎡ ⎣I no understand which. which month. ah October, which month.
In Excerpt 7.14, it appears that the language needed by Inez to make an explicit account for her repair initiations of other’s talk (especially the word which) is beyond her control at that moment. Also in Excerpt 7.14, as discussed earlier in Excerpt 7.8, the use of the multiple saying of ‘no’ indicates the initiation of repair on some action being projected by her peers and may make the attempt at an account after the use of no for repair initiation even more urgent. In Excerpts 7.10–7.14, it is not the use of the lexical item no for repair initiation that provides evidence for change in language practices over time but rather the sequential formatting of talk around the use of no in this context. The practice of making an account of some kind after the denial-type action of no for other-initiated repair is evidence of the culturally felicitous use of language with and for action.
Conclusions Previous CA research that has focused on the talk of language learners (including some chapters in this volume) provides evidence that these language-learner participants in talk-in-interaction organize their social interactions using members’ methods (as articulated by ethnomethodology) for talk-in-interaction. By looking at the sequential language practices of language learners, CA research is showing to what degree such methods may be language specific and learned. In this chapter, I have shown that methods for accomplishing the social practice of repair as noted in previous research on first language speakers are seen to be used in the talk of two language learners. In doing other-initiation of repair, even in term one when the participants were just beginning their study of the language, we see that otherinitiations of repair were done in the next possible slot for repair. The use of this method, the ‘next turn repair initiation’, suggests that even self-identified language learners are engaged in a practice that is panlinguistic and part of human interactional culture. In doing the practice in English, we can say that even from beginning proficiency levels these participants are also, to some degree, members of the English language-speaking community.
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A second conclusion is that there is evidence for learners orienting to different trouble sources for repair and using different methods to initiate and repair at different points in time in the data. This was seen in the longitudinal set of Excerpts 7.3–7.6 and in the examples that followed and that focused on practices for repair sequences during later time points. These examples were presented as evidence of the learners’ developing interactional competence. Of the aspects of repair initiations and repair presented in the chapter, the orientation to accounting and ability to provide accounts for no-initiated repair initiations in terms three and five (and not in term one) can be considered part of a learner’s greater pragmatic proficiency and evidence itself of greater interactional competence in the language. The appropriate use of language in potentially face-threatening situations involves orientation to linguistic form in its sequential production as well as orientation to sociocultural norms.7 Such evidence for change in practices over time, however, must be considered together with the changing contexts in which the practices occurred. The use of a wider repertoire of methods for doing otherinitiated repair at later points in time likely reflects the change in contexts that occur in classes designed for more advanced language learners as it does one’s individual competencies. The orientation to action projection as an object for repair and the use of open-class repair initiations are examples of this. In these cases, the object of repair is a discourse structure (a course of action) showing the ability of the two focal participants to orient to texts8 as well as lexical or morphological structure in their talk-in-interaction. It also shows the focal learners’ orientations to their peers as language users who have the proficiency to monitor talk at that level and to repair it. These conclusions suggest the difficulty in trying to separate the changes seen in language use of an individual at different points in time from the changes in context that occur together with that change over time. In any context for interaction but especially in a classroom, assessing change in interactional competence means assessing the changes of the individual within the entire community. CA methods seem ideal for longitudinal case studies designed to uncover details involved in the development of interactional competence in a language. However, when the focus of research is on the sequential practices and sequential contexts for talk-in-interaction, in language-learning settings (classrooms especially) the findings after analysis may point to changes in an individual’s sequential practices but will also point to the concomitant shifts in contexts for those sequential practices including language task design, the available material resources, peer competences and teacher expectations. The formulation of members’ language practices such as initiation of repair and repair is accomplished within these changing contexts. This suggests again a reconceptualization of language learning from an
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individual’s discrete and independent linguistic capacities to learners’ interactional competencies appropriate to the context and competencies of the participating communities of practice. Notes 1. 2. 3.
4. 5. 6. 7.
8.
See Lynch (1993) for a discussion on the tension between ethnomethodology and CA on the point of the reification of members’ practices as analytical categories. I would like to thank Simona Pekarek Doehler, Joan Kelly Hall and Jared Kramer for commenting on earlier versions of this chapter. The data collection for this analysis was funded, in part, by Grant R309B6002 from the Institute for Education Science, US Department of Education, to the National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy. The setting for the data collection was a partnership between Portland State University (PSU) and Portland Community College (PCC). The classrooms and research facilities were housed at PSU while the registration, curriculum and teachers were administered by PCC. These and all names used in the study are pseudonyms. Excerpts that do not violate confidentiality guaranteed to the students are available via this link: www.labschool.pdx.edu/Viewer/viewer.php? ICpaper. I would like to thank Simona Pekarek Doehler for noting this. One issue in support of this that was not discussed in this chapter is the use of gesture for other-initiation of repair. The decrease in the use of this nonverbal resource in later terms may be the most direct evidence of increased language proficiency seen in methods for repair. Research on this aspect of repair will be the topic of future investigations. This finding is similar to what Forrester and Cherington (2009) describe with the child in their case study. They found that the child began focusing on extended sequences of talk as the object of repair only around age four, the end time of their longitudinal study.
References Bongartz, C. and Hellermann, J. (2004) The development of [+definite] in English: Classroom task influences on beginning adult learners. Second Language Research Forum, 16–19 October, Pennsylvania State University. Brouwer, C.E. (2004) Doing pronunciation: A specific type of repair sequence. In R. Gardner and J. Wagner (eds) Second Language Conversations (pp. 93–113). London: Continuum. Drew, P. (1997) ‘Open’ class repair initiators in response to sequential sources of trouble in conversation. Journal of Pragmatics 28, 69–101. Drew, P. (2005) Conversation analysis. In K.L. Fitch and R. Sanders (eds) Handbook of Language and Social Interaction (pp. 71–102). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Egbert, M., Niebecker, L. and Rezarra, S. (2004) Inside first and second language speakers’ trouble in understanding. In R. Gardner and J. Wagner (eds) Second Language Conversations (pp. 178–200). London: Continuum. Ford, C.E. (2001) At the intersection of turn and sequence: Negation and what comes next. In E. Couper-Kuhlen and M. Selting (eds) Studies in Interactional Linguistics (pp. 51–79). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
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Ford, C.E. (2002) Denial and the construction of conversational turns. In J. Bybee and M. Noonan (eds) Complex Sentences in Grammar and Discourse: Essays in Honor of Sandra A. Thompson (pp. 61–78). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Ford, C.E., Fox, B.A. and Hellermann, J. (2004) Getting past ‘no’: Sequence, action and sound production in the projection of no-initiated turns. In E. CouperKuhlen and C.E. Ford (eds) Sound Production in Interaction (pp. 233–269). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Forrester, M.A. (2008) The emergence of self-repair: A case study of one child during the early pre-school years. Research on Language and Social Interaction 41, 99–128. Forrester, M.A. and Cherington, S.M. (2009) The development of other-related conversational skills: A case study of conversational repair during the early years. First Language 29, 166–191. Garfinkel, H. (1967) Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Gass, S. and Varonis, E. (1985) Variation in native speaker speech modification to non-native speakers. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 7, 37–57. Hall, J.K. (1993) The role of oral practices in the accomplishment of our everyday lives: The sociocultural dimension of interaction with implications for the learning of another language. Applied Linguistics 14, 145–167. Hall, J.K. (1995) Aw man, where you goin?: Classroom interaction and the development of L2 interactional competence. Issues in Applied Linguistics 6, 37–62. Hall, J.K. (2007) Redressing the roles of correction and repair in research on second and foreign language learning. Modern Language Journal 91, 511–526. Harris, R. (1981) The Language Myth. New York, NY: St Martin’s Press. He, A.W. (2004) CA for SLA: Arguments from the Chinese language classroom. Modern Language Journal 88, 568–582. Hellermann, J. (2008) Social Actions for Classroom Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Heritage, J. (1984) Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. London: Polity Press. Hosoda, Y. (2000) Other repair in Japanese conversations between nonnative and native speakers. Issues in Applied Linguistics 11, 39–63. Hosoda, Y. (2001) Conditions for other-repair in NS/NNS conversation. The Language Teacher 25, 29–31. Hosoda, Y. (2006) Repair and relevance of differential language expertise in second language conversations. Applied Linguistics 27, 25–50. Jefferson, G. (1987) On exposed and embedded correction in conversation. In G. Button and J.R.E. Lee (eds) Talk and Social Organization (pp. 86–100). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Jefferson, G. (2004) Glossary of transcript symbols with an introduction. In G.H. Lerner (ed.) Conversation Analysis: Studies from the First Generation (pp. 13–31). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Jefferson, G. (2007) Preliminary notes on abdicated other-correction. Journal of Pragmatics 39, 445–461. Johnson, M. (1987) The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kasper, G. (1985) Repair in foreign language teaching. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 7, 200–215. Kasper, G. (2006) Beyond repair: Conversation analysis as an approach to SLA. AILA Review 19, 83–99. Koschmann, T., Zemel, A., Conlee-Stevens, M., Young, N.P., Robbs, J.E. and Barnhart, A. (2005) How do people learn: Members’ methods and communicative mediation. In R. Bromme, F.W. Hesse and H. Spada (eds) Barriers and Biases in
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Computer-Mediated Knowledge Communication and How They May be Overcome (pp. 265–294). New York: Springer. Kurhila, S. (2001) Correction in talk between native and non-native speakers. Journal of Pragmatics 33, 1083–1110. Kurhila, S. (2004) Clients or language learners? Being a second language speaker in institutional interaction. In R. Gardner and J. Wagner (eds) Second Language Conversations (pp. 58–74). London: Continuum. Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lynch, M. (1993) Scientific Practice and Ordinary Action: Ethnomethodology and Social Studies of Science. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Macbeth, D. (2004) The relevance of repair for classroom correction. Language in Society 33, 703–736. Markee, N. (2008) Toward a learning behavior tracking methodology for CA-for-SLA. Applied Linguistics 29, 404–427. Maynard, D.W. and Clayman, S.E. (2003) Ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. In L.T. Reynolds and N.J. Herman-Kinney (eds) The Handbook of Symbolic Interactionism (pp. 173–202). Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press. McHoul, A.W. (1978) The organization of turns at formal talk in the classroom. Language and Society 7, 183–213. McHoul, A.W. (1990) The organization of repair in classroom talk. Language in Society 19, 349–377. Mori, J. (2004) Negotiating sequential boundaries and learning opportunities: A case from a Japanese language classroom. Modern Language Journal 88, 536–550. Mori, J. and Hasegawa, A. (2009) Doing being a foreign language learner in a classroom: Embodiment of cognitive states as social events. International Review of Research in Applied Linguistics and Language Teaching 47, 65–94. Mori, J. and Markee, N. (2009) Language learning, cognition, and interactional practice: An introduction. International Review of Research in Applied Linguistics and Language Teaching 47, 1–9. Nguyen, H.T. (2008) Sequential organization as local and longitudinal achievement. Text and Talk 28, 501–528. Reder, S. (2005) The ‘Lab School’. Focus On Basics: Connecting Research and Practice 8(A), 1–7. Reder, S., Harris, K. and Setzler, K. (2003) A multimedia adult learner corpus. TESOL Quarterly 37, 546–557. Sacks, H. (1992) Lectures on Conversation. Oxford: Blackwell. Schegloff, E.A. (1979) The relevance of repair to syntax-for-conversation. In T. Givon (ed.) Syntax and Semantics: Discourse and Syntax (pp. 261–286). New York, NY: Academic Press. Schegloff, E.A. (1991) Conversation analysis and socially shared cognition. In L. Resnick, J. Levine and S. Teasley (eds) Perspectives on Socially Shared Cognition (pp. 150–171). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Schegloff, E.A. (1993) Reflections of quantification in the study of conversation. Research on Language and Social Interaction 26, 99–128. Schegloff, E.A. (2000) When ‘others’ initiate repair. Applied Linguistics 21, 205–243. Schegloff, E.A. (2007) Sequential Organization in Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schegloff, E.A., Jefferson, G. and Sacks, H. (1977) The preference for self correction in the organization of repair in conversation. Language 53, 361–382.
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Schmidt, R. (1993) Awareness and second language acquisition. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 13, 206–226. Seedhouse, P. (1997) The case of the missing ‘no’: The relationship between pedagogy and interaction. Language Learning 47, 547–583. Seedhouse, P. (1999) The relationship between context and the organisation of repair in the L2 classroom. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching 37, 59–80. Seedhouse, P. (2004) Conversation analysis methodology. Language Learning 54, 1–272. Seedhouse, P. (2005) ‘Task’ as research construct. Language Learning 55, 533–570. van Lier, L. (1988) The Classroom and the Language Learner: Ethnography and Secondlanguage Classroom Research. London: Longman. Van Patten, B. and Williams, J. (2007) Theories in Second Language Acquisition: An Introduction. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Wong, J. (2000) Delayed next turn repair initiation in native/non-native speaker English conversation. Applied Linguistics 21, 244–267. Wong, J. and Olsher, D. (2000) Reflections on conversation analysis and nonnative speaker talk: An interview with Emanuel A. Schegloff. Issues in Applied Linguistics 11, 111–128. Wootton, A.J. (1994) Object transfer, intersubjectivity and 3rd position repair: Early developmental observations of one child. Journal of Child Language 21, 543–564. Wootton, A.J. (1997) Interaction and the Development of Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wootton, A.J. (2005) Interactional and sequential configurations informing request format selection in children’s speech. In A. Hakulininen and M. Selting (eds) Syntax and Lexis in Conversation (pp. 185–207). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Young, R.F. (2000) Interactional competence: Challenges for validity. Paper presented at the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL), 11 March, 2000, Vancouver, BC. Young, R.F. (2003) Learning to talk the talk and walk the walk: Interactional competence in academic spoken English. North Eastern Illinois University Working Papers in Linguistics 2, 26–44.
Appendix Transcription conventions Some transcript conventions in conversation analysis. indication of overlapping or simultaneous talk. ⎡ ⎣ = ‘latched utterances’ no break or pause between utterances. (1.5) Numbers within parentheses indicate silence, represented in tenths of a second. (..) Periods within parentheses indicate micropauses less than 0.5 seconds. . A period indicates a falling intonation contour, not necessarily the end of a sentence ? Question marks indicate high rising intonation.
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Inverted question marks indicate rising intonation, not as high as regular question mark. , A comma indicates ‘continuing’ intonation. :: Colons are used to indicate the stretching of the sound just preceding them. The more colons, the longer the stretching. A hyphen after a word or part of a word indicates a cut-off or self interruption. wordy Underlining is used to indicate pitch accent. The up and down arrows mark sharper rises or falls in pitch. ↑↓ WORdy Capital letters are used to indicate increased volume. °we° Markedly quiet or soft stretches of talk are included between degree signs. >< The combination of ‘more than’ and ‘less than’ symbols indicates that the talk between them is compressed or rushed. <> Used in the reverse order, they can indicate that a stretch of talk is markedly slowed or drawn out. hhh audible out-breath .hh audible in-breath (( )) Descriptions of events: ((cough)), ((sniff)), ((telephone rings)), ((footsteps)). (word) All or part of an utterance within parentheses indicates transcriber uncertainty. () empty parentheses indicate something was said but the transcriber cannot recover it in any way. # creaky voice $ smile voice
Chapter 8
Achieving Recipient Design Longitudinally: Evidence from a Pharmacy Intern in Patient Consultations H.T. NGUYEN
Introduction This chapter1 explores two questions in the study of interactional competence development: (1) What evidence is there to demonstrate that development has taken place? and (2) What may have contributed to the development evidenced in the learner’s social interaction? In answering these questions, I am informed by the ethnomethodological premise that discursive and cultural practices are learnable because they are on constant public display whenever people interact (Garfi nkel & Sacks, 1970). Participating in social activities requires ongoing monitoring and analysis of how the sequential organization of the activity unfolds, between and within turns. In this sense, culture provides its own inherent learning mechanism (Edward, 1997; Kasper, 2009a, 2009b; Wootton, 1997). Describing this process of learning is the objective of a growing body of research in SLA as well as of this edited volume. This chapter aligns with this project and extends the scope of inquiry to the development of interactional competence at the workplace by novice professionals. As such, the chapter provides a ‘vertical comparison’ (Zimmerman, 1999) in conversation analysis (CA), that is a longitudinal study of interactional competence development (see also Firth & Wagner, 2007; Hellermann, 2007, 2011; Ishida, 2006, 2009; Nguyen, 2003, 2006, 2008, 2011; Wagner & Brouwer, 2004; Young & Miller, 2004). In this study, I examine one social practice at the workplace, the pharmacy patient consultation, and trace the interactions by one intern (a native speaker of English) with various patients over the course of a two-month internship. In the larger project that this chapter is drawn from, I analyze how the intern managed practice-specific resources and activities more 173
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effectively over time. By practice-specific resources I mean interactional resources such as action sequencing, turn-taking, topic management, participation framework negotiation and linguistic resources including lexis, grammar and so on that are specific to pharmacy consultation work (Hall, 1993, 2004; He & Young, 1998; Nguyen, 2003; Young, 2008, 2009; Young & Miller, 2004 ). In this chapter, I look at the intern’s ability to produce recipientdesigned turns, specifically with respect to the presentation of technical information2 in advice-giving sequences.3 In particular, I focus on changes in (1) his explanations of internal processes as the medicine interacts with the body and (2) his use of some specific lexical items in the medical register. My goal is to document and explain how the intern became more competent by adapting to local contingencies in his interaction with patients. In order to address the first question and locate evidence of the learning process, I compare how the intern handled similar tasks or formulated a similar referent across tasks at different points in time. When later incidents show a more effective management of the given task or formulation of the given referent, I count that as evidence that somehow his competence has changed. But first, what is meant by ‘more effective’? Following Hall (1999) and Sanders (2003), effectiveness should be determined in the context of the individual learner’s goals and the institutional goals. In this case, the goals of the pharmacy patient consultation are to ‘[talk] with patients about the medications they are intended to take so that they will get the most benefit from the medications’ (Rantucci, 1997: 26). This means that in addition to dispensing medicines, the pharmacist needs to provide assistance to patient’s medication use, which entails both the conveying of accessible information and the building of positive, caring relationship with patients (The American Pharmaceutical Association, 1994, 1999a, 1999b; The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, 2001). In other words, in the institutional setting of an independently owned community pharmacy, skilled work performance involves effective delivery of accessible information as well as the building of positive relationship with patients. In order to address the second question – what may have contributed to the learning evidenced in the novice’s social interaction – I will take an emic approach and, in addition to considering factors outside of the recorded interactions, examine the learner’s social interaction over time to see whether there are incidents in the learner’s history of interactions that could possibly account for his later modifications of behavior.
The Patient Consultation in Pharmacy and Competence Development Patient counseling is crucial to the success of drug therapy. Current federal law and most state regulations in the US mandate pharmacists to
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counsel patients about the drugs they receive in order to prevent and manage potential problems with the drugs (Abood, 1993). Typically, the patient consultations in my data (involving the intern studied here and another intern) have the following sequential organization: OPENING Approach Greeting Pharmacist’s readying focal objects, for example, medicine, medical pamphlet, insurance form Business-related actions ORIENTATION Pharmacist’s drug identification Pharmacist’s inquiries – patient’s responses Pharmacist’s exposition about drug ADVICE-GIVING Pharmacist’s reference to doctor’s prescription Pharmacist’s advice-giving sequences Pharmacist’s problem noticing or inquiry/Pharmacist’s general statement (+rejecting)/Patient’s request or problem presentation Pharmacist’s advice Pharmacist’s account Optimistic projection Patient’s reception of advice PRE-CLOSING Closing up focal objects, for example, putting medicine bottles into bag Future arrangements Pharmacist’s invitation to questions Business-related actions (if not already done in Opening) Chatting Drug dispensation CLOSING Patient’s thanking Pharmacist’s response Patient’s leave-taking (see also Nguyen, 2003; Pilnick, 1998; Watermeyer & Penn, 2009). Since most of the data in this study involve advice-giving sequences, I will describe their context and features in detail. The pharmacist’s advicegiving sequences make up the bulk of the patient consultation. It is through these sequences that the pharmacist displays his/her professional
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knowledge and tailor information about the medicine to the patient’s case. Prior to advice-giving, that is, in the drug identification, drug exposition and reference to doctor’s prescription sequences, the pharmacist simply verbalizes information that is given and may have been known to the patient, as the patient has seen a doctor before visiting the pharmacy. In contrast, advice-giving sequences are when the pharmacist provides information that is specific to his/her field, such as the medicine’s side effects, cross-interactions, methods of administration, storage and allergies. There is also more judgment involved on the part of the pharmacist in advice giving. For example, a drug may have ten listed side effects, but perhaps only one or two are relevant to the patient, given the side effects’ commonality or the patient’s physical and medical profile. Further, whether a particular effect caused by the medicine is considered a main effect or a side effect depends on the purpose of the treatment: a diuretic, for instance, has the effect of drawing salt and water out of the blood vessels and can be used for both high blood pressure and swelling. If a patient is prescribed a diuretic to treat high blood pressure, the reduction of swelling is a side effect, but if a patient is prescribed a diuretic to treat swelling, the lowering of blood pressure becomes a side effect. Finally, an important aspect of decision-making by a pharmacist is how much medical information to incorporate into their advice to the patient. While the pharmacist is trained to have sophisticated knowledge about the medicine in question, how much of that knowledge is relevant in a given moment during a particular consultation with a particular patient is a matter of contingency to be negotiated locally in talk (Nguyen, 2006; Pilnick, 1998). In short, there is much decision-making and tailoring that need to be made by the pharmacist during the advice-giving sequences in order to accomplish the institutional tasks of conveying drug information to the patients effectively and building positive rapport with the patient. It is the ability to utilize interactional resources to apply field-specific knowledge and skills appropriately in specific moments of interaction that marks one’s performance as that of a competent professional (Benner, 1984; Dreyfus & Dreyfus, 1986; see also Jacoby & Gonzales, 1991; Koschmann et al., 2007). The development of one of the abilities to perform this type of ‘tailoring’ is the focus of this chapter: I examine how the intern adapted his counseling over time in order to respond more effectively to the patients’ displayed perspectives and needs. This notion of tailoring can perhaps be best captured by the CA concept of recipient design, which will be discussed in more detail in the next section.
Recipient Design Recipient design refers to ‘a multitude of respects in which talk by a party in a conversation is constructed or designed in ways which display
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an orientation and sensitivity to the particular other(s) who are the coparticipants’ (Sacks et al., 1974: 727, see also Johnson & Paoleti, 2004; Koschmann & LeBarron, 2002; Leudar et al., 2006; Sacks & Schegloff, 1979; Whitehead & Lerner, 2009). Recipient design may be achieved via ‘word selection, topic selection, admissibility and ordering of sequences, options and obligations for starting and terminating conversations’ (Sacks et al., 1974: 727) as well as gesture (Koschmann & LeBarron, 2002). For example, in a patient consultation, the pharmacist can select from a range of alternative verbal and nonverbal formulations to refer to and describe the medicine and the medical processes that take place when the body interacts with the medicine, and a formulation that orients to the patient’s knowledge, stance and goals would be characterized as being recipient designed (see also Sacks & Schegloff, 1997; Schegloff, 1972). Recipient design is a feature of talk that reflects and constructs the speaker’s understanding about the degree of shared knowledge that can be assumed between himself/herself and the recipient (e.g. Levinson, 2006). Producing talk that is recipient designed thus entails some familiarity with the coparticipant’s background, knowledge and stance as well as with the shared goals of the interaction. Recipient design is a locally accomplished feature of competent professionals’ talk, that is, the professional’s contributions correspond to the layperson’s displayed understanding or expectation at a given moment in the interaction (Candlin, 2002; Candlin & Candlin, 2002; Cicourel, 1999; Heritage & Sefi, 1992; Leudar et al., 2006; Maynard, 1991). In other words, doing recipient-design work is a part of being a competent professional. The question is: how does a novice professional develop the ability to maintain recipient design in his talk with laypersons? Further, for a novice professional participating in a recurrent discursive practice such as the patient consultation, does the ability to design one’s talk to accommodate a particular patient in a given consultation overlap in any way with the ability to be recipient designed with other patients in previous consultations? This chapter also aims at exploring the answers to these questions.
Methodology Data The data for this study come from a larger data set and consist of field notes and 28 video-recorded, naturally occurring patient consultations by one intern (pseudonym Jim) at an independently owned community pharmacy in the Midwestern US. These consultations involve 35 new prescriptions delivered to patients receiving the drug therapy or their representatives (parent, spouse or adult son/daughter). Since it is standard practice in pharmacy to counsel a patient’s representative as if they were
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the patient receiving the medicine, I will refer to the person to whom the consultation was given as ‘patient’.4 Analytical procedure To document Jim’s recipient design work, I use CA. CA enables us to understand social interaction from the participants’ perspectives and to see their competence at work (Drew, 2004; Heritage & Atkinson, 1984). In line with CA’s emic approach, I look for participants’ (i.e. speaker’s and recipient’s) verbal and nonverbal (implicit) indications in talk to see whether they treat an expression or an utterance as being specific to the medical register of the patient consultation. These indications may include behaviors that co-occur with the mentioning of a term, such as verbal explanation, gesture, pauses, emphasis, change in speech tempo and uptake. In addition to CA of recorded interaction, I also rely on ethnographic information to shed light on the phenomena observed directly in recorded conversations. The use of CA to document and explain learning is a relatively new direction of research (e.g. Brouwer & Wagner, 2004; Hellermann, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2011; Ishida, 2007, 2009; Nguyen, 2003, 2006, 2008; Pallotti, 2001, 2002; Young & Miller, 2004) and one of the open controversies is whether CA’s emic principle is compromised in the definition of the target of learning and the tracking of behaviors that evidence learning. Markee, for example, argued that to be true to CA’s emic approach, the researcher should not introduce their own focus on what is being learned but they need to show ‘how members orient to language behavior that has occurred days or even months earlier as a resource for learning during a subsequent speech event’ (Markee, 2008: 409, emphasis added). A key difference between what Markee proposed and the other studies on the development of interactional competence is the emphasis on members’ orientation to an interactional resource (a lexical item, pronunciation or a type of sequence) as a ‘learning object’ (Markee’s term). While I agree with Markee that longitudinal studies using CA to understand learning should not compromise CA’s principles in any way, I find it methodologically problematic to draw a line between when a participant is orienting to an interactional resource as a learning object and when she/he is not. In Markee’s (2008) study, this orientation is taken to be the participants’ co-construction of a repair sequence involving a key word. However, there are cases where learning clearly has occurred, but member’s orientation of this type (e.g. in a repair sequence) is not present. For example, in Brouwer and Wagner’s (2004) study, a second language user was shown to have changed over time in three telephone openings involving the same interlocutor. Specifically, in the initial phone call, there was much disorderliness and nonfluency (seen in pauses, overlaps, restarts and language shifts) but in the last recorded
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phone call, the interaction flowed smoothly. The difference in the participant’s observable behaviors attests that learning has occurred, but there was no specific ‘learning object’ that was oriented to by the participants in the initial phone call. What were oriented to by the participants was the disorderliness and nonfluency in the first phone call, and it may have been this orientation that then triggered the learner’s modification of behaviors in subsequent interactions when similar interactional problems arose. In my view, the distinction between Markee’s approach and other researchers’ approach is that between a focus on studying ‘doing learning’ in talk (e.g. via observable orientation to the ‘learning object’) vs. studying ‘learning’ that results in observable changes in behavior. In documenting ‘learning’, the analyst is performing a kind of ‘vertical comparison’ in CA (Zimmerman, 1999),5 and still relying on what members have access to in their history of interaction. Thus, CA’s emic approach is maintained.6 In this chapter, I will not be looking for instances when the participants orient to a ‘learning object’ as in Markee’s proposal; rather, I will be looking for observable changes over time in the learner’s interactional behaviors when he handled similar tasks or formulated similar referents as evidence of learning. Further, I will also attempt to identify possible moments in interaction that may be linked to a change in the learner’s subsequent behavior. In tracking how Jim’s turns became more recipient designed, I found that in some cases, Jim used fewer practice-specific lexical choices over time while in some other cases, he added more specific information. The first trend involves Jim’s explanations of internal processes in which the medicine interacts with the body, and the second trend involves his formulation of a specific lexical item in the medical register, ‘allergic reaction’.
Findings Evidence of learning: Recipient-design in explanations of internal processes In the accounts of advice-giving sequences, Jim typically provided explanations of internal processes that took place in the patient’s body while she/he was on the prescribed medication. I observed that overall, he included more specific medical details, that is, producing more technical talk, in these explanations in early consultations. He reduced the level of technicality in his talk in later consultations. In the sections below, I present excerpts of Jim’s explanations in early consultations, a problematic case in the middle of his internship, and his explanations in later consultations.
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Early consultations
In Jim’s early explanations, he seemed to construct his turns as being technical via the production of specific medical details, medical vocabulary and gestures to illustrate the content of this talk. I will cite three examples to illustrate this observation. Excerpt 8.1a involves Jim’s explanation on the avoidance of calcium while taking an antibiotic, Excerpt 8.1b on sunburn as a side effect and Excerpt 8.1c on upset stomach as a side effect. Excerpts 8.1a–8.1b are taken from Jim’s second week’s data, and Excerpt 8.1c from his fifth. Excerpt 8.1a7 Zithromax, Clk2-03, Week 2 112 Ph: = it takes it up- = 113 does he take vitamins? 114 Ph slightly raises head 115 Pt: yes. he [does. 116 Ph: [he shouldn’t have that at 117 the same time as (he has) this, 118 Pt: okay, 119 → Ph: cause what will happen is the calcium (.) 120 in that will bind (.) with the medicine 121 and the medicine won’t be absorbed 122 → Ph gestures with palm up 123 around abdominal area 124 → from the GI tract. [°you don’t wanna°125 Pt: [I wonder if he 126 should just take his multivitamins 127 when he eats his breakfast. In line 113, Jim enquires about whether the child takes vitamins. As soon as a positive response becomes clear with a ‘yes’ (line 115), he initiates advice-giving. This procedure is rather typical of advice-giving in institutional contexts, where the professional enters an advice-giving sequence via a ‘ticket-of-entry’ (Heritage & Sefi, 1992; cf. Sacks, 1995). After the advice is given and acknowledged (line 118), Jim proceeds to provide an account for this advice. In lines 119–123, he refers to specific internal processes: ‘the calcium will bind with the medicine’ and ‘the medicine won’t be absorbed from the GI tract.’ Unlike his previous turns in lines 112, 116–117, this turn contains intra-TCU pauses, displaying either that Jim needs to slow down to present the information, or that his talk needs to be slowed down for the patient to understand. In this turn, Jim explains an unobservable chemical process (the binding of calcium to the medicine) that occurs inside the human body. His elaborate hand gesture around the abdominal area (Figure 8.1) seems to illustrate this internal
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Figure 8.1 Excerpt 8.1, week 2, lines 122–123: Ph makes hand gesture with palm up around abdominal area
process and by the same token, indexes the talk as being field specific (hence nonverbal actions are needed to make the message clearer). Indeed, some specialized knowledge is required here to understand that substances are made of molecules, and one of molecules’ properties is to combine under the right conditions. It takes some further field-specific knowledge to recognize that GI stands for gastrointestine and some knowledge about how the human digestion system works in order to understand that it is the GI tract that absorbs the medicine. And yet, Jim does not provide any vernacular verbal explanations of this term for the patient. What happens next seems to index a misalignment between the participants following Jim’s explanation. In line 125 when the patient speaks, she does not orient to the content of the medical explanation in Jim’s turn in lines 119–124, for example, with a receipt token or an acknowledgement that the information is new to her. Rather, she proposes a future course of action (beginning in line 125) in overlap with Jim’s next quieter TCU. This turn by the patient orients to Jim’s advice back in lines 116–117 in the sense that it is also about the future action to be taken. The patient’s lack of uptake and her turn’s orientation could indicate her distancing from Jim’s account (lines 119–124). She might be treating Jim’s turn as belonging to the domain of ‘pharmacist’s talk’ and aligning herself with the role of a layperson. Similar to this consultation, Jim’s detailed explanation can be observed when he talked about how certain antibiotics could cause elevated sunburn in another consultation recorded in the second week (Excerpt 8.1b). Excerpt 8.1b Doxycycline, JimClk2-5, Week 2 48 Ph: = the other one: (.) ↓first 49 they put right on there, ↓
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Pt: Ph:
Pt: Ph:
Ph: Pt:
if you have Ph moves bottle towards Pt to be out in the sun, (0.3) use a good sunscreen. okay. Pt nods so (.) it causes you to get sunburn a lot easier. Pt nods several times okay, (0.5) your body actually reacts to the ew vee ((UV)) rays. Pt nods (0.2) it causes an allergic sorta reaction. right. Pt nods (3.0) ((Ph puts medicine into bag))
In line 48, Jim initiates an advice sequence. After the patient acknowledges this advice in line 54, Jim provides the reason for the advice (account) in lines 56–57, and again, the patient acknowledges his turn in line 58. At this point, the advice sequence can be complete. Indeed, there is a long pause in line 60 when neither party takes a turn to talk, thus indicating the possible closing of this sequence. Jim’s turns in lines 61–62 and 65 are thus extensions of the advice sequence. They are elaborations of Jim’s account for the advice produced in lines 48–53. Similar to Excerpt 8.1a above, the process that Jim describes here, namely, the reaction of the body to UV rays after intake of the prescribed medication, is an internal process, not directly observable to the layperson. Indeed, Jim treats this part of his talk as being specific to the medical context. First, his use of the word actually (line 61) marks the information he is giving in this turn as something new to the patient. Second, as Jim produces the word ‘reacts’ (line 61), he also makes a pronounced hand gesture with his fingers indicating a bonding process of some sort (Figure 8.2). Excerpt 8.1c provides a third example of the technical level of Jim’s explanations of internal processes in early consultations. In this consultation, when Jim advises the patient about Ibuprofen’s effect of causing an upset stomach, he emphasizes the importance of taking the medicine with food as a way to alleviate this symptom. He also provides an account for this advice by explaining the internal process that happens when the patient takes the medicine.
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Figure 8.2 Excerpt 8.1b, week 2, line 61
Excerpt 8.1c Upset Stomach 1, JimClk5-11, Week 5 66 Ph: and (.) the important thing is (.) 67 (lemme just put on one of these,) 68 Ph walks away to get label 69 (.) 70 Ph: always- always take it with some 71 Ph returns to counter, pasting label on bottle 72 food on your stomach. 73 Pt: okay. 74 Pt nods 75 Ph: you wanna have probably breakfast, lunch, 76 dinner, if you take it that way, 77 Pt: okay. 78 Pt nods 79 Ph: as long as there’s six hours in between 80 Ph looks up 81 these (.) three meals it’s fine °to take it at 82 Pt nods 83 certain point°. 84 (.) 85 → Ph: what happens is it gets absorbed in about an hour 86 Ph puts medicine into bag 87 later it causes your stomach to excrete a lot of 88 extra acid (.) and that can cause a heartburn and
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Pt:
gas, so have some food in your stomach will Ph opens hand as if holding something in the air Pt nods kind of (.) rule that out, okay. Pt nods (2.8)
Jim provides the advice from line 66 to line 83. In lines 85–91, he gives the account for this advice by describing the interaction between the medicine and the stomach. This description contains details and vocabulary specific to the medical context. Jim presents the internal process as consisting of three steps: ‘it gets absorbed’ – ‘in about an hour later it causes your stomach to excrete a lot of extra acid’ – ‘that can cause a heart burn and gas.’ He also employs several terms related to the medical register, including ‘absorbed’, ‘stomach’, ‘excrete’, ‘extra acid’, ‘heartburn’ and ‘gas.’ In addition to the lexical choices, Jim’s hand gesture seems to construct the content of his turn as being specific to the medical register. In line 90, around the time Jim says ‘heartburn and gas’, he makes a hand gesture around the abdominal area and holds it in the air briefly, which seems to convey the image of the stomach (Figure 8.3). This nonverbal illustration may be taken as an indication that he treats the content of his turn as being technical.
Figure 8.3 Excerpt 8.1c, week 5: Ph opens hand as if holding something in the air (from the camera angle, Jim’s hand gesture is visible behind the medicine bag)
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The three examples cited here represent Jim’s general tendency to produce a marked level of technical talk in his early consultations. However, somewhere in the middle of his internship, there was an instance in the recorded data in which Jim’s provision of medical talk was met with rejection and resistance from the patient. This problematic incidence is analyzed in detail below. A problematic case
This problematic consultation involved a patient who clearly and repeatedly oriented away from Jim’s medical explanations. The medicine of concern was Nitroglycerin, a heart medicine. In the segment shown here (Excerpt 8.2), Jim is providing advice concerning one of its side effects. Excerpt 8.2 Nitroglycerin, Jim Clk5-1, Week 5 81 (0.7) ((Pt nods)) 82 Ph: um when you take it you be sure 83 you’re either sitting down or lying down, 84 (0.2) 85 Pt: it’s the [↑headache. 86 Pt makes up-down vertical nod 87 Ph: [cause88 → Ph: yea:h. cause the way it 89 Pt looks down at purse 90 works, (.) it will uh (.) 91 Pt looks up at Ph 92 it makes some of your blood 93 vessels dilate and 94 Ph hands make tube shape 95 that will help the 96 blood flow to the heart and 97 Ph makes hand gesture downward 98 that’s how it helps the pain, 99 Pt: oh, o[kay, 100 Pt nods, takes money out 101 Ph: [chest pain. 102 (.) 103 → Ph: and also (.) um when the 104 Pt looks at money in purse 105 blood vessels dilate it 106 Pt takes more money out 107 causes the headache. so: 108 (0.6) 109 → Ph: some people might even have 110 problems with fainting = 111 Pt looks up
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Ph:
Pt:
Ph: Pt: Pt: Ph: Pt: Ph: Pt:
= so ↑that’s why they want you to sit down. okay. hhh. that’s how. good. Pt nods (1.5) so you can do that once, Pt counts bills and coins on counter, (0.2) and wait five minutes, (.) and if you still have pain Pt looks up then do it again, (.) Pt nods wait another five minute and do it a third time, Pt makes a quick nod and after five minutes after the third pill, if you’re still having chest pain [you should either call [just go. Pt nods, chops hand in the air, and looks down at money nine one one or have somebody take you to the emergency room. okay. hhhh. if I have [chest pain [and then: I’ll probably go to the emergency room anyhow, there is trouble. Ph smiles yeah. (1.0)
Elsewhere (Nguyen, 2006), I have analyzed this excerpt to show how the patient contests Jim’s display of expert knowledge, and how Jim fails to achieve ‘doing being an expert’ despite his production of ample talk specific to the medical register. Here, I will highlight the fact that Jim continues to display his professional knowledge while the patient repeatedly orients to the payment activity (lines 89, 100, 104, 106, 118 and subsequent lines not included here), which is usually done at the end of the encounter. Particularly, as Jim enters an explanation of the internal process of how the medicine works in the body (line 88) (which he treats as technical by the use of elaborate and specific illustrative hand gestures, lines 94, 97), the patient orients to her purse via a downward gaze (line
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89). As soon as Jim’s multiunit turn reaches a point of possible completion in line 98, the patient begins to take some cash out from her purse as she acknowledges Jim’s turn. Despite the patient’s orientation to the payment activity, Jim continues with the explanation (lines 103–113). As he is producing this turn, the patient orients away from the current activity by taking more money out of her purse (line 106). This is a nonalignment with Jim’s provision of medical information. Clearly, Jim’s technical talk does not receive positive uptake from the patient (see also Heritage & Sefi, 1992).8 Turning now to data from Jim’s last week of internship, I found that Jim’s explanations of internal processes are observably less technical compared to those in his early consultations. In an attempt to compare Jim’s behaviors over time, I examined three cases in which Jim provided explanations similar to those in Excerpts 8.1a–8.1c above. Later consultations
Similar to Excerpts 8.1a–8.1c, Excerpt 8.3a also involves advice on the use of calcium with an antibiotic, Excerpt 8.3b also on sunburn as a side effect and Excerpt 8.3c also on upset stomach with the administration of high-dose Ibuprofen. The level of specificity in Jim’s accounts in these advice sequences is noticeably lower compared to Excerpts 8.1a–8.1c. Excerpt 8.3a Zithromax, Clk8-16, Week 8 ((Patient is with baby who keeps playing with papers on counter during this segment)) 85 Ph: 86 87 88 89 Ph: 90 91 92 93 → 94 → 95 96 97 Pt: 98
as long as you haven’t had anything (.) with calcium in it, (.) for the last couple hours, (0.7) ((Pt takes papers away from baby)) not to take hhhh. anyhh.thing with Ph looks at baby playing on counter calcium, um, within a couple hours after having taken this so you don’t have anything in your system. =you Ph waves laterally off of counter might wanna take it in between meals in other words. okay, Pt hitches baby on hip
The structure of this advice-giving sequence is quite different from what happened in Excerpt 8.1a: there is no ‘ticket-of-entry’ presequence (as in line 113 in Excerpt 8.1a) and the account is minimal (‘so you don’t have anything in your system,’ lines 92–93). Compared to Excerpt 8.1a, Jim
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Figure 8.4 Excerpt 8.3a, week 8, line 94: Ph’s hand waves laterally off the counter
does not go into explaining the medical process in which calcium can bind with the medicine. He also uses a layperson word, system (line 93), instead of a medical term, GI tract (Excerpt 8.1a). The lack of intra-TCU micropauses in Jim’s account and his latching to the next TCU after the account (line 93) may indicate that he does not treat the information presented thus far as being technical. Further, when Jim mentions an internal part of the body (‘system’), his gesture (line 94) is less specific and less substantial (Figure 8.4) than the gesture he produced in the comparable consultation when he referred to the ‘GI tract’ (Figure 8.1). This provides further evidence that Jim does not formulate his turn as being specific to the medical register. Jim’s change toward less specific explanations can also be seen in Excerpt 8.3b, where he did not bring up the internal process mentioned in the comparable advice in Excerpt 8.1b above. By not doing so, he also bypassed the use of any medical terms. Excerpt 8.3b An Antibiotic, JimClk8-16, Week 8 104 Ph: and this one also comes with the 105 warning about being out in the sun, 106 Ph raises eyebrows 107 (.) 108 Ph: you can get a worse sunburn than usual, 109 Pt frowns, smiles
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(.) so you wanna put on a good sunscreen if you’re gonna be outside. uggkhkh [hhhh. [°okay:°. Pt smiles, nods (0.9)
In line 104, Jim initiates the advice-giving sequence and proceeds until line 112. In line 114, the patient acknowledges the advice, and after the pause in line 116, the sequence closes. Finally, Excerpt 8.3c contrasts with Jim’s advice on the side effect of upset stomach with the consumption of high-dose Ibuprofen presented above in Excerpt 8.1c. Although Jim gave a similar piece of advice with a similar account, this time, the explanation is brief and much less specific. Excerpt 8.3c Upset Stomach 2, JimClk8-2, Week 8 78 Ph: but the most important thing is to take it with 79 food, cause it’s a high dose, and 80 Pt lets go of bottle 81 → ((louder)) =about an hour after you take that, 82 (.) what happens is it causes your stomach to 83 Ph puts bottle into bag 84 produce more stomach acid, 85 Pt: okay. 86 Pt nods 87 Ph: and that’s what causes the big problems so having 88 food with it, and: (.) °(to have something) to have 89 Ph’s hand makes two quick 90 downward loops away from bag 91 with it (.) helps the problems°, 92 Pt: okay, 93 Pt nods In lines 78, Jim provides the advice and then gives the account (lines 79–90). In his account, he describes the interaction between the drug and the stomach. He formulates the process as consisting of the same number of steps as in Excerpt 8.1c (‘about an hour after you take that’ – ‘it causes your stomach to produce more stomach acid’ – ‘that’s what causes the big problems’), but this time he uses more ordinary and vague expressions (‘produce’ instead of ‘excrete’, ‘big problems’ instead of ‘heartburn and gas’). As well, Jim’s hand gesture in this consultation does not seem to construct the content of his turn as being specific to the medical register.
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Figure 8.5 Excerpt 8.3b, week 8, lines 89–90: Ph’s hand makes two quick downward loops away from bag
In contrast to Excerpt 8.1c, in Excerpt 8.3c, near the end of the account, Jim makes two downward loops away from the medicine bag, possibly conveying the idea that having food will eliminate the problem (Figure 8.5). His hand gesture in this consultation is not an illustration of a specific detail in the internal process, and I submit that it indicates that Jim is treating his turn as not technical. The cases presented here are typical of a general trend observed with Jim during the internship: over time overall, his explanations contained more ordinary language and fewer specific, medical details. In this sense, his turns could be characterized as becoming more recipient designed toward the laypersons receiving the consultations. Arguably, this change could enable Jim to deliver information in more accessible manners to patients. Jim’s effort to design his turns to be more sensitive to patients’ perspectives and needs can also be observed in his change regarding the formulation of one particular medical expression, drug allergies or allergic reactions. Here, he actually moved from not regularly formulating it as an expression in need of explanation to consistently treating it as such in later consultations. This change will be examined in detail below. Evidence of Learning: Recipient Design in Reference to ‘Allergies’ Early consultations
Mentioning of drug allergies or allergic reactions to the prescribed medicine sometimes occurred in the orientation phase in which the
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pharmacist made inquiries about the patient’s medical history, or it could occur in advice-giving sequences as a warning. In Jim’s consultations recorded in his second and fifth weeks, Jim generally did not treat allergies or allergic reactions as terms that need to be explained, as shown in Excerpts 8.4a and 8.4b. The only time he described the allergic symptoms at all was in his fifth week’s data (Excerpt 8.4c). Excerpt 8.4a Zithromax, JimClk2-3, Week 2 9 Ph: has Jonnie had Zithromax before:, 10 Pt: you know what, 11 Pt does something with her bag 12 → Ph: does he have [any (.) drug allergies, 13 Pt: [he’s had (.) Amoxicil- = 14 Pt looks at bottle 15 Pt: = nm. not that we’re aware of, 16 Pt looks at bottle 17 Ph: okay. 18 (0.6) Excerpt 8.4b Doxycycline, JimClk2-5, Week 2 [reproduced from above] 65 → Ph: it causes an allergic sorta reaction. 66 Pt: right. 67 Pt nods 68 (3.0) ((Ph puts medicine into bag))
Excerpt 8.4c Augmentin, JimClk5-8, Week 5 19 Ph: this is not a penicillin per se but even 20 though he had it before, be on the 21 → look out for any kind of uh (.) allergy, 22 (.) Pt makes deep nod 23 → Ph: itching:, swelling:, seek some medical attention. 24 (1.2) Ph puts patient insert back into box In Excerpt 8.4a, the mention of ‘drug allergies’ occurs in the context of the pharmacist’s enquiries of the patient’s drug history, which begins as early as line 9. As soon as the patient provides a negative answer to the question about drug allergies (line 15), the sequence closes with the pharmacist’s acknowledgement (line 17) and a pause (line 18). There is no orientation by either participant to the expression ‘drug allergies’ as a term in need of an explanation. In Excerpt 8.4b, the notion of allergic reactions
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comes up in the context of Jim’s explanation about the internal reaction between the medicine and the body (line 65) as part of the account for the advice. Here again, the term is mentioned without any verbal or nonverbal explanation. In the data collected in Jim’s second and fifth weeks, Excerpt 8.4c is the only instance in which Jim mentions the allergic symptoms (line 23) after introducing the term ‘allergy’ (line 21). In a consultation in Jim’s fifth week in the internship (after the one cited in Excerpt 8.4c above), Jim continued to formulate the term allergic reactions as nontechnical at first, but this formulation was contested by the patient. As an outcome of the negotiation with the patient, Jim ended up explaining what specific symptoms the category allergic reactions covers and how allergic reactions work inside the body, that is, treating the term as being technical. This case will be described in the next section. A problematic case
Excerpt 8.5 below takes place after a series of advice sequences about a medicine to reduce swelling. Excerpt 8.5 A Diuretic, JimClk5-12, Week 5 33 Ph: the only thing that I would mention 34 with this one is that (0.4) 35 very very very infrequently people 36 that have sulfa allergy will 37 have a reaction to this one, = 38 Pt: = I do. 39 → Ph: yeah. 40 (.) 41 → Ph: so. 42 Pt: what kind of an allergy:. 43 → Ph: just ah (.) typical (.) type of 44 Ph makes slight shrug 45 allergic (.) reaction. 46 Pt: itching? 47 → Ph: itching, swelling, it could be anything 48 from that, to: (0.2) swallowing 49 and (.) difficulty breathing, 50 (0.3) ((Pt nods)) 51 Ph: and it can (.) run the who:le 52 [(.) spectrum of different kinds of = 53 Ph’s hand sweeps outward laterally 54 Pt: [okay, 55 Pt nods 56 Ph: = allergic reactions,
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57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 → 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85
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Ph:
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(0.2) um. (0.3) usually how long after I’ve taken this to notice any type of reaction [°or does it happen at any time°. [it happens with your first (.) pill, (.) it happens: couple days after your last pill. (0.2) ((Pt nods)) kind of depends on (.) how your body reacts so just keep an eye out for anything throughout the whole course. (0.3) ((Pt nods)) ↓>like I said< most people don’t have a problem cause it’s a very: (.) infrequent sort of thing. (.) ((Pt nods)) (°but just°) mo- drug molecule happens to have a little: (0.3) kind of Ph’s hand makes a ring shape (0.3) (kinda) looks the same as the: (.) a sulfa group and (.) your body sometimes recognizes it but usually it doesn’t so. (.) okay, Pt nods (0.3)
In line 33, Jim provides a warning about a possible allergic reaction that could happen with the drug being prescribed. However, he presents this allergy as being very rare (‘very very very infrequently’), thus his warning is designed to prefer a negative response by the patient. The patient, as it turns out, latches on Jim’s ongoing turn to provide a positive confirmation in line 38. After this confirmation, the next relevant action for the pharmacist is to elaborate on the warning. However, in line 39, Jim produces only a minimal token ‘yeah’. And, after a micropause in line 40, he only adds ‘so’ with a falling intonation to end the turn and to prompt the patient to perform a next relevant action (Raymond, 2004). These minimal turns and pauses may indicate that Jim is not producing an elaboration as projected by the patient’s response in line 38. This might prompt the patient to ask a specific question in line 42 about the allergy.
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In lines 43–45, Jim produces the second-pair part to the patient’s question; however, his answer remains on the general level and does not explain the meaning of allergy in any way – this may be taken as a sign that Jim does not treat this term as technical at this point. In line 46, the patient offers a candidate answer for confirmation (Pomerantz, 1988). In lines 47–49, following the candidate answer format projected by the patient, Jim provides a list of symptoms that fall into the category of ‘allergic reaction’, thus unpacking the meaning of the term and by virtue of doing so, he is formulating it as technical. As the consultation goes on, Jim eventually provides an abstract technical explanation about how the allergic reaction takes place inside the body (lines 75–81). Evidence of how Jim treats this explanation as technical includes his use of an elaborate and specific gesture (line 77) and possibly also his use of intra-turnconstruction-unit pauses. It is important to note that this explanation emerges after the patient has issued another question about the allergic reaction (lines 60–62). What we have here is an instance when a lexical item is introduced and not treated as technical by the pharmacist initially but the patient clearly indicates that it is a technical term for him (by asking questions about which symptoms the term ‘allergy’ covers and how the allergy works). More specifically, it seems that back in line 33, Jim does not project an explanation of the term ‘allergy’ or ‘allergic reaction’ as the next relevant action. By the end of the sequence in Excerpt 8.5, with the patient actively asking for further information, Jim succeeds in providing a detailed medical explanation. This explanation of the technical term is thus an outcome of the negotiated and co-constructed (Jacoby & Ochs, 1995) interaction by both the pharmacist and the patient. In other words, the recipient design characteristic of the pharmacist’s turn has been jointly achieved. In examining Jim’s eighth week’s data, I found that he consistently provided reformulation of allergic reactions as specific physical symptoms (e.g. itching, swelling), whether in advice-giving sequences or in an inquiry leading up to advice-giving. Together with this change, he also seemed to emphasize the importance of these specific allergic symptoms more than in early consultations. This observation is detailed in the next section.
Later consultations
Excerpts 8.6a–8.6c show that in Jim’s last week at the pharmacy, when he mentioned ‘allergies’ or ‘allergic reactions’, he consistently provided examples of the physical symptoms, the type requested by the patient in Excerpt 8.5 above. By listing these symptoms (lines 32–33 in Excerpt 8.6a, line 67 in Excerpt 8.6b and line 30 in Excerpt 8.6c), he seemed to treat ‘allergies’ or ‘allergic reactions’ as field-specific expressions that needed explanation.
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Excerpt 8.6a Ultram, JimClk8-8, Week 8 28 Ph: those are the big ones. 29 (0.8) 30 Ph: the other ones they talk about down here 31 Ph points on patient insert 32 → are uhm. (1.0) sweating, and: rashes and: (.) 33 → itching and things like that, that would be 34 → a sign of a true allergy, (.) then he 35 should stop taking it and call the doctor. 36 Pt: ↑↓okay. 37 (3.0) Excerpt 8.6b Penicillin, JimClk8-13, Week 8 59 Ph: ya’ve ever had any problems with 60 → , 61 (.) 62 Pt: no. 63 Ph: with any drugs, 64 Pt: ↑↓mhm. 65 Ph: °okay.° 66 Ph: just be on the look out for 67 → any itching or swelling. 68 Pt: yeah mm. 69 Ph: an allergy can develop at any time. 70 [let the doctor know right away, 71 Pt: [I know my husband w- (.) has been 72 allergic to penicillin but 73 I never have, so. 74 Ph: ↑keep him away from that stuff. 75 Ph moves pen closer to center of counter 76 Pt: yeah heh heh right. Excerpt 8.6c Amoxicillin, JimClk8-18, Week 8 29 Ph: >and watch for any sign of< 30 → itchiness, swelling >even though 31 he had this before:, he could develop 32 → an allergy any times,< 33 Pt: o[kay, 34 Pt nods In addition to the frequency of the reformulations, there are some other differences between Jim’s data from the eighth week and those from the second and fifth weeks regarding the formulation of allergic reactions.
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First, in the one episode in Jim’s fifth week’s data when he listed the allergic symptoms (Excerpt 8.4c), he mentioned ‘allergy’ first (line 21) then provided examples of the symptoms (line 23). In later consultations (Excerpts 8.6a– 8.6c), however, Jim consistently introduced the symptoms before referring to them as ‘allergy’. When a speaker can choose from alternating syntactical structures, the elements they choose to present first in the turn might become more prominent (cf. Duranti & Ochs, 1979). It is possible that Jim’s formulation of a physical condition as the specific symptoms (e.g. swelling, itchiness) before referring to as a category of symptoms (‘allergy’) can make these actual symptoms more salient to the patient. Jim’s formulations in the later consultations can thus be considered more recipient designed. Second, Jim’s change in the formulation of allergic reactions is also embedded in an improvement in task management. Considering how Jim handled the task of checking the patient’s drug history (Excepts 4a and 6b), it seems that he shifted from simply checking whether the patient had drug allergies or not (Excerpt 8.4a) to checking then proceeding to give advice about possible allergies (Excerpt 8.6b).9 Specifically, in Excerpt 8.4a, as mentioned above, when Jim’s inquiry is met with a negative response from the patient, the sequence closes down. In Excerpt 8.6b, in line 59, Jim also initiates an advice sequence with a preliminary in the form of a question about the patient’s allergy status. This question can serve as a device to gain a ticket-of-entry to legitimize the upcoming advice (Heritage & Sefi, 1992; cf. Sacks, 1995). However, with a negative response by the patient (line 61), this ticket-of-entry is thwarted and the relevance of any upcoming advice on this matter becomes zero. And yet, unlike in Excerpt 8.4a, Jim does not let the sequence close down. In line 62, Jim adds an increment to his previous question, which can be logged as another attempt at gaining a ticket-of-entry. When this is again met with a negative response (line 63), Jim acknowledges the response (line 64) and proceeds with the advice anyway (‘just be on the look out for any itching or swelling’, lines 65–66). He then elaborates on this advice with an account in lines 68–69. Thus, in this later consultation, Jim seemed to treat drug allergies as something important and worth giving advice about. The shift in his formulation of the relevant term, allergies, thus coincided with a shift in how he handled the task of talking with patient about drug allergies. In short, in the later consultations, Jim consistently provided examples of allergic symptoms in talk concerning allergic reactions. Further, Jim’s turn design shows that he treated these specific symptoms as important (by placing the symptoms near turn beginnings). In addition, Jim’s emphasis on the importance of talk on allergic symptoms can be observed in how he handled one of the tasks associated with this term, namely, inquiry about the patient’s drug allergies (Excerpts 8.4a and 8.6b). The reformulation of allergic reactions as specific physical symptoms can arguably do recipient-design work, as it takes into consideration the patient’s
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perspectives (patients are the ones who would observe and experience the specific symptoms if they occur). To summarize, the data provide evidence that Jim’s talk changed toward being more recipient designed, specifically with respect to his explanations of internal processes and formulations of allergies. Being recipient designed involves being less technical in some cases (e.g. when talking about internal medical processes) and more technical in some other cases (e.g. when talking about drug allergies). By being recipient designed, Jim could be considered to be able to accomplish the institutional task of conveying drug information effectively and building positive rapport with patients more effectively. The second research question aims at exploring what may have contributed to Jim’s development of interactional competence. The next section attempts to consider possible answers to this question. Possible explanations for the changes My ethnographic field notes suggest that the change observed in Jim’s performance could have been influenced by the community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991) in which he participated. First, the experienced pharmacist recounted to me that he made suggestions for Jim to speak more ‘smoothly’ and less ‘wordy’. This suggestion could be linked to Jim’s change to become less detailed and less specific to the medical register in his explanations of internal processes. Second, the culture of the pharmacy as a local pharmacy, namely, the emphasis on building rapport with patients,10 could also have led Jim to change toward being less technical. Jim himself acknowledged that he did not learn much ‘drug knowledge’ at this clerkship site, thus revealing both his interest in the technical aspect of pharmaceutical care, and his self-assessment that his experience at the pharmacy was not about being technical as he had expected. On a broader level, one may also say that Jim’s training at the pharmacy school, where empathy toward the patient was promoted (e.g. Rantucci, 1997), could have led him to use more lay terms over time. While it is possible that these factors (and possibly also Jim’s selfreflection on his performance, cf. Dewey, 1938) may have contributed to the first and more general direction of change that Jim underwent, they cannot fully explain the second direction of change by Jim, that is, the change to be more specific in his talk about allergic reactions. In order to understand this second type of change, and in fact, to understand both directions of change, it is necessary to consider Jim’s very experience in patient counseling. The recorded consultations seem to provide a viable explanation for Jim’s two directions of change. Jim’s change to become less specific in his explanations over time may be reasonably linked to consultations such as the one in Excerpt 8.2, and his change to become more specific in talk
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about allergic reactions may be plausibly linked to consultations similar to the recorded case presented in Excerpt 8.5. It might have been moments like this, moments of locally managed interaction in which medical information did not receive positive uptake from and was even resisted by patients, which may have prompted Jim to present explanations in more ordinary terms. Similarly, it could have been moments in which a patient persistently requests for reformulation of a term in layperson language that led Jim to modify his formulation of a medical term in subsequent consultations. It is important to keep in mind that we do not have evidence that the problematic cases presented above function as a binary switch for Jim’s changes. In other words, the particular problematic episodes recorded in the data were not the single turning points. For example, shortly after Excerpt 8.2 (in which a patient resisted Jim’s medical explanation), Jim was still observed providing detailed and technical explanations to patients (such as in Excerpt 8.1c). Likewise, Excerpt 8.5 does not mark the absolute switch in Jim’s formulation of allergic reactions, as he was shown to mention examples of allergic reactions once before this excerpt (in Excerpt 8.4c). Jim’s changes seemed to be linked to these problematic cases in some loose manner rather than being immediately ‘triggered’ by them. Given that the data were collected only every three weeks, it was likely that moments such as those recorded in the problematic cases (Excerpts 8.2 and 8.5) were not isolated. It could have been that other similar problematic cases not captured in my data have led Jim to make the changes observed in later consultations. This point strongly suggests the usefulness of more intense collection of longitudinal data in the study of interactional competence development.
Discussion The development of interactional competence In this chapter, I have documented observable changes over time in the intern’s use of interactional resources to accomplish the institutional goals of the patient consultation, specifically in explanations of internal processes and the formulation of one specific medical term. I submit that these changes constitute the evidence that learning has taken place. With respect to the kind of changes that took place, I have shown that while there was a trend in the novice pharmacist’s language use to move toward a less technical level of talking, he also provided technical talk when implicitly requested by the patient. Taken together, these changes demonstrate how his talk became increasingly recipient designed. By modifying his talk to be less technical or more technical (via the use or nonuse of intraturn-construction-unit pauses, gesture and topic selection, cf. Koschmann & LeBarron, 2002; Sacks et al., 1974), the novice was designing his talk to be
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sensitive to what the patient expected in a given moment of talk. These adjustments responded locally to specific needs and problems of patient counseling. They demonstrate the intern’s emergent adaptations of conventional solutions to interactional problems or tasks, such as providing information in a recipient-designed manner and building positive rapport with the patients. The evidence for learning that has been identified here is in line with insights provided by Sanders (2003) on the notion of skill development for practitioners at the workplace. For an adult novice in an institutional activity with its specific constraints (Drew & Heritage, 1992), Sanders suggested that being skillful entails being able to produce verbal and nonverbal actions that are relevant to the attainment of the goals of the professional practice (see also Hall, 1999; Rogoff, 1990). Given that the pharmacy under study was a locally owned community pharmacy where bonding with clients was an important aspect of business, the intern’s ‘de-technicalizing’ at times helped him to address the institutional goal of building rapport with patients and making patients feel comfortable and welcomed.11 On this note, one might contrast what we find here with mainstream research on learning in the field of second language acquisition (SLA). In SLA, the dominant etic assumption has been that learning equals increasing complexity in language use. A majority of SLA research (see Gass & Selinker, 2008) has been on demonstrating that learning a second language involves increased vocabulary, increased grammatical complexity and correctness and so on. I certainly do not refute that language learning is that. However, I would like to argue here (and also in Nguyen, 2006) that language learning also has to be understood in emic terms, namely, how the learner solves local, contextualized problems in order to better accomplish their goals. Being more recipient designed clearly helps the intern accomplish his goals more effectively, even when it involves decomplexifying the language used at times.12 Thus, one of the implications of a shift from an etic approach to an emic approach in the study of learning is also a shift of focus on different kinds of phenomena that may constitute the target of learning. Of course, documenting learning is only a first step. This chapter has also attempted to explore what may have led to the type of learning that took place and I believe that we have some possible answers to the question of what might have contributed to development. While it is possible that factors such as the context of the pharmacy and the teaching of the pharmacy school (and possibly also Jim’s self-reflection on his performance, cf. Dewey, 1938) may have contributed to the direction of change that Jim underwent, I would like to argue that these factors cannot fully explain the specific changes in the usage of particular technical expressions used by Jim over time. As can be seen in the data excerpts presented above, what was modified and in what way it was modified could have been
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borne out from the intern’s locally managed interaction with patients where problems arose and were dealt with in the contingent moments of talk (see also Kasper, 2009a, 2009b). It is the outcome of real-time feedback as displayed in the patients’ contributions to the consultations that could possibly be linked to the specific changes we observed, such as improved recipient design in the novice’s talk about allergies after a consultation in which the patient initiated a lengthy negotiation about the meaning of ‘allergic reaction’. Repeated participation in the practice (see also Sahlström, 2011) may have allowed the novice to see what worked and what did not work for a certain problem, then to fine-tune their interaction the next time that similar problems arose in the practice. This attention to the emergence of competence or skills in locally managed and co-constructed social interaction owes much to CA’s insistence that talk is the primordial place where competence is at work (e.g. Drew, 2004; Goodwin, 1981; Heritage & Atkinson, 1984). At the same time, the finding that what was learned was the ability to produce turns that are more recipient designed also opens up a new way of looking at the concept of recipient design in CA. Toward a longitudinal understanding of recipient design The concept of recipient design has been largely taken as aspects of talk that are designed for the participant(s) in one particular conversation (e.g. Johnson & Paoleti, 2004; Koschmann & LeBarron, 2002; Leudar et al., 2006; Sacks & Schegloff, 1979; Sacks et al., 1974; Whitehead & Lerner, 2009). What the data show is that once we look at competence-in-interaction over time by the same individual as he learned to handle recurrent problems, it is possible to see that some aspects of recipient design can be carried over to a next interaction. That is, once the intern learned to modify his talk to be more effectively recipient designed with one patient in one interaction, he carried this recipient-designed formatting over to the next instances when a similar problem arose. Since the changing state of the learner’s competence was evidenced in talk (see also Edwards, 1997), it is possible for us to locate possible moments in his social interaction history that may have led to later changes in behavior. From this perspective, the ‘recipient’ in ‘recipient design’ may be understood as members of the same category and not just one particular co-participant in a given conversation (cf. Sacks et al., 1974). It is important to keep in mind that recipient design is still locally managed: the intern under study did not produce the exact same bits of language about drug allergies in later consultations with patients (Excerpts 8.6a–8.6c) even though there were features of talk that were recycled in these interactions (e.g. the mentioning of the specific allergic symptoms as ‘sweating, and: rashes and: (.) itching’ [Excerpt 8.6a], ‘itching or swelling’ [Excerpt 8.6b] and ‘itchiness, swelling’ [Excerpt 8.6c]). In fact, it is
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precisely this locally managed nature of social interaction that could have led to further modifications of the novice’s professional competence, such as the change from Excerpt 8.6b to Excerpt 8.6c with respect to how he handled the advice about drug allergies. As the new problem of gaining a ticket-of-entry arose in Excerpt 8.6b, a previously modified way of speaking (i.e. the elaboration of allergic symptoms) might be modified once more in Excerpt 8.6c in the form of an advice-giving sequence without a ticket-of-entry. This resulted in multilayered changes in the novice’s interactional competence. What we see as an individual’s interactional competence in a given conversation such as the ability to produce recipient-designed turns, then, is an accomplishment that is both local and longitudinal. Notes 1. I would like to thank Gabriele Kasper for her substantial contributions to the ideas presented in this chapter. Any remaining errors are mine. A previous version of this chapter was presented at the 2009 conference of the American Association for Applied Linguistics (Nguyen & Kasper). 2. Technicality is understood herein to mean being specific to the given practice, in this case, the medical register of pharmacy patient consultation (see also Drew & Heritage, 1992). I consider technicality as existing on a continuum, and as Schütz (1964) observed, specialized knowledge is available not only to the trained professional but also the well-informed layperson. What this amounts to is that technicality is not fixed and stable but it is determined emically by the participants in a given interaction. In this chapter, I take this emic approach to the characterization of technical talk. 3. My motivation to focus on the presentation of technical information stems from the fact that the invocation of specialized knowledge via field-specific expressions plays an important role in the process of information conveyance as well as in rapport building between a professional and a layperson in institutional talk. Through the use of technical expressions, participants orient to the specific institutional character of the setting (Drew & Heritage, 1992; Heritage, 2004; Valle, 1998). For the institutional agent, technical terms can also contribute to their identity construction as members of a professional community (see also Nguyen, 2006). 4. Future research may be needed to investigate possible differences between these two types of scenario. 5. ‘Horizontal comparison’ refers to comparison across cases without a focus on how an individual may change over time (Zimmerman, 1999). This type of comparison is standard and common in CA research when observations are made based on a collection of cases. 6. See also Nguyen (2011). 7. Transcript notations follow Jefferson (2004). In addition, text in italics describes nonverbal actions accompanying speech in the line above, or during silent periods. 8. A patient’s resistance of a pharmacist’s advice may stem from the patient’s familiarity with their own health conditions (Pilnick, 1998). 9. See also Heritage and Sefi (1992) on how professionals may bring up potential problems as a way to legitimize their advice-giving.
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10. During my fieldwork at three independently owned community pharmacies, I noted that the onsite pharmacists and patients often chatted about aspects of their lives such as the birth of a baby, the health of their mothers, book clubs and career choices. 11. In fact, I observed that an experienced pharmacist at this pharmacy used minimal technical terms, and when technical terms were used, they were introduced after a layperson presentation has been introduced. 12. I thank Steven Thorne (CA/SCT research group meeting, Long Beach, NJ, June 13, 2008) for bringing this point to my attention.
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and B. Burleson (eds) The Handbook of Communication and Social Interaction Skills (pp. 221–256). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Schegloff, E.A. (1972) Notes on a conversational practice: Formulating place. In P.G. Paolo (ed.) Language and Social Context (pp. 75–119). London: Penguin Modern Sociology Readings. Schütz, A. (1964) The well-informed citizen: An essay on the social distribution of knowledge. In A. Brodersen (ed.) Collected Papers: Studies in Social Theory (pp. 120–134). The Hague: Martinus Njhoff. The American Pharmaceutical Association (1994) Codes of ethics for pharmacists. On WWW at http://www.aphanet.org. Accessed 10.2.02. The American Pharmaceutical Association (1999a) Principles of practice for pharmaceutical care. On WWW at http://aphanet.org. Accessed 10.2.02. The American Pharmaceutical Association (1999b) APhA mission, vision, values and strategic goals. On WWW at http://www.aphanet.org. Accessed 10.2.02. The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (2001) Mission statement. On WWW at http://www.ashp.org. Accessed 10.2.02. Valle, E. (1998) Insider talk: The study of discourse in professional communities. Anglicana Turkuensia 16, 111–126. Wagner, J. and Brouwer, C.E. (2004) Developmental issues in second language conversation. Journal of Applied Linguistics 1, 29–47. Watermeyer, J. and Penn, C. (2009) The organization of pharmacist–patient interactions in an HIV/AIDS clinic. Journal of Pragmatics 41, 2053–2071. Whitehead, K.A. and Lerner, G.H. (2009) When are persons ‘white’?: On some practical asymmetries of racial reference in talk-in-interaction. Discourse & Society 20, 613–641. Wootton, A. (1997) Interaction and the Development of Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Young, R.F. (2008) Language and Interaction: An Advanced Resources Book. London: Routledge. Young, R.F. (2009) Discursive Practice in Language Learning and Teaching. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Young, R.F. and Miller, E. (2004) Learning as changing participation: Discourse roles in ESL writing conferences. The Modern Language Journal 88, 519–535. Zimmerman, D.H. (1999) Horizontal and vertical comparative research in language and social interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction 32 (1&2), 195–203.
Chapter 9
Developing ‘Methods’ for Interaction: A Cross-Sectional Study of Disagreement Sequences in French L2 S. PEKAREK DOEHLER and E. POCHON-BERGER
Introduction1 Participants in talk-in-interaction use language and other semiotic resources to accomplish social actions and to coordinate these. This requires participants not only to format their utterances linguistically in a way that they can be understood by others, but also to use language (along with gesture, gaze, posture and the manipulation of objects) in order to deal with the contingencies of talk. Participants use language for establishing participation, for initiating or closing interactional encounters, for agreeing or disagreeing with others and so on. Seen in this light, language is a resource for action (Ochs et al., 1996). Learning a second language (henceforward: L2) can therefore be understood as part of learning to act jointly with others within the social world. Such a view implies a focus on language and learning as inextricably embedded and configured within social practice. The recognition of social interaction as the core site where language (as well as cognition) is shaped has triggered a major shift in the SLA scientific landscape within the last decade or two (see the discussions in Firth & Wagner, 1997, 2007; Pekarek Doehler, 2010; see also Block, 2003). Conversation analytic work on SLA (henceforward CA-SLA), in particular, views L2 learning as anchored in language use, that is, as embedded in the moment-to-moment unfolding of talk-in-interaction. Such an understanding critically challenges what can be taken as evidence for learning: documenting language learning, in this view, involves analyzing how speakers use language within social practices to accomplish (joint) actions. Against this background, we argue that the development of L2 interactional competence can be usefully understood in terms of the development 206
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of ‘methods’ – in the ethnomethodological sense of the term (i.e. members’ systematic procedures; see section Interactional Competence and the Notion of ‘Method’) – for dealing with the contingencies of talk-in-interaction (see Hellermann, 2008; Mondada & Pekarek Doehler, 2004; Pekarek Doehler, 2010). Such a notion, however, raises a critical question: How can learning be empirically documented in terms of the development, across time, of such socially situated methods of accomplishing social actions? In this chapter, we propose one empirical solution to this question by focusing on a specific practice, namely doing disagreement. Excerpt 9.1 shows a disagreement sequence in an advanced French L2 classroom. While Tom has just brought up several arguments downgrading the importance of the Swiss army, Emilie insists on its strength. Excerpt 9.1 ‘l’armée Suisse’ (SPD-14) 01
TOM:
02 03 > EMI: 04 05
l’armée de suisse est très petit. the army of Switzerland is very small (1.8) oui elle est très petit mais nous avons un (.) yes it is very small but we have a système (parfait) souterrain, (.) par exemple sous le gothard (perfect) subterranean system for instance underneath the Gothard existe un (.) (xx) (.) et on ne peut pas nous conquérir. there is a (xx) and they cannot conquer us
The disagreeing turn shows several noteworthy features to which we will come back in section Methods for Doing Disagreement – II: Advanced Learners of this chapter: the turn starts off with an alignment ‘yes it is very small’; this alignment pushes the disagreement proper further back into the turn and hence carries a hedging effect; the disagreement is then introduced by means of the contrastive marker mais ‘but’, and it is followed by an exemplification by means of which Emilie backs up her position. In short, a range of means is deployed in order to both mitigate and back up the disagreement, and these means are distributed sequentially in a specific way. The basic sequential architecture of the disagreeing turn as illustrated in Excerpt 9.1 corresponds to what has been shown to be typical for conversations among L1 speakers (see section Disagreement in Talk-inInteraction). Now, how does an L2 speaker come to accomplish disagreement in this way? Can he or she simply transfer her ‘methods’ for doing so from his or her L1? Or is there some readaptation or reelaboration of his or her interactional competence involved? These are the issues that this chapter sets out to tackle by focusing on the specific case of L2 speakers’ doing disagreements.
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In the first part of the chapter, we briefly outline our view of L2 interactional competence (see section A Situated View of Learning: Interactional Competence and the Notion of ‘Method’; for a more detailed discussion see the introductory chapter to this volume, Hall & Pekarek Doehler) and we discuss previous research on disagreements (see section Disagreement in Talk-in-Interaction). In the second part of the chapter, we present an empirical study of disagreement sequences in French L2 classroom interaction, based on a cross-sectional research design that allows us to compare lower-intermediate and advanced learners (see sections Data and Methodology through Methods for Doing Disagreement II: Advanced Learners). In the last two sections, we reflect on the implications of our findings for SLA research as well as on the methodological challenges that arise when it comes to documenting the development of interactional competence across time.
A Situated View of Learning: Interactional Competence and the Notion of ‘Method’ Language learning as a situated practice CA-SLA proposes a ‘socially situated’ view of learning (see e.g. Mondada & Pekarek Doehler, 2004). Learning is seen as embedded in the microdetails of locally accomplished and sequentially organized everyday practices. It is defi ned as ‘learning-in-action’ (Firth & Wagner, 2007: 801) – as learning that is inseparable from language use within social practices. This situated view of learning implies that neither the products nor the processes of learning can be fully understood when abstracted from their natural ecology, that is, the practices the learner engages in. The analytic focus thus is on how learners use language in naturally occurring talk-in-interaction to accomplish situated actions, such as opening a story, (dis)agreeing with others, or closing a conversation. Analyses are carried out on language-in-action: they are not concerned with linguistic structures alone, nor with the organization of actions alone, but with the intricate interrelation between the linguistic and other layers of the organization of second language talk (see Pekarek Doehler, 2010). Here exactly lies the methodological challenge: how can we grasp language-in-action over time? While there is an increasing call for microanalytic studies of learners’ accomplishing situated actions across time (Hall, 2004; Kasper, 2004; Markee, 2008; Wagner, 2004), to this date there has been little empirical work done in this line (but for L2 see Cekaite, 2007; Hellermann, 2008 and this volume; Markee, 2008; Young & Miller, 2004; for L1 see Wootton, 1997). This may partly be explained by the relative lack of conceptual instruments to address issues of development over
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time with a CA framework. Classic CA work, while it aims at discovering the ‘methods’ by which members organize their conduct in mutually recognizable ways, does not address the question of how members develop these methods (Kasper, 2009). There is a range of challenging issues to be addressed when it comes to documenting the development of interactional competence from a CA perspective. Interactional competence and the notion of ‘method’ We understand the development of L2 interactional competence in terms of the development of speakers’ ‘methods’ for accomplishing social actions in L2 talk. And we suggest that this development can best be documented by analyzing how the methods for accomplishing a specific micropractice (or ‘actional microcosm’, as we call it; see below) change across time. The term ‘method’, as we use it here, has been forged by Harold Garfinkel (1967), the founder of ethnomethodology: Methods are systematic procedures (of turn-taking, repairing, opening or closing conversation etc.) by which members establish and maintain social order and intersubjectivity. These procedures are socially shared and mutually oriented to and they enable members to organize their behavior in mutually recognizable ways. Discovering the methods by which members organize talk-in-interaction is the basic aim of classic CA. We have suggested earlier (Mondada & Pekarek Doehler, 2004: 503; see also Pekarek Doehler, 2010) that these methods play a key role in situated learning. They are part of the competence that allows members to participate in social interactions (Garfinkel, 1967). In this sense, they are the very substance of interactional competence – be it in L1 or in L2. When arguing that the development of L2 interactional competence can be understood in terms of the development of speakers’ methods, we do not necessarily refer to the creation of new methods. Rather we see development in terms of the increased diversification and local efficacy (i.e. relevance for this specific action, for these interlocutors at this sequential moment; see Brouwer & Wagner, 2004) of such methods. Previous findings (e.g. Firth, 2009; Hellermann, 2008) suggest that the development of L2 interactional competence may include some sort of recalibration of participants’ methods for dealing with talk-in-interaction. For instance, speakers do not learn totally anew how to open a conversation, but they readapt the ways they do so, including the linguistic and sequential resources they use. Accordingly, observables such as turn-taking mechanisms, precision timing, the use of story-prefaces or more generally sequential organization can be used as indicators of L2 interactional development. There is some empirical evidence supporting the relevance of these analytic parameters
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for tracking interactional development in an L2 (e.g. Cekaite, 2007; Markee, 2008; Young & Miller, 2004). Possibly the most noteworthy study for our purpose here is presented by Hellermann (2008). Following the same dyads of adult English L2 learners in a classroom setting across several months, Hellermann analyses their practices of opening tasks, of telling stories and of disengaging from an activity to document how these practices change across time. He shows, for instance, that openings of teacher-assigned dyadic tasks at lower levels of proficiency are typically launched directly, with less or no prefatory talk, while at more advanced levels participants show increased use of prefatory talk before launching the task and a wider repertoire of verbal negotiations of the upcoming task. Hellermann’s focus on a delimited set of micropractices allows him to provide evidence for interactional development as observable in changes in the way participants accomplish recurrent situated actions, in particular as regards the sequential organization of these. In line with the preceding considerations, we will investigate in this chapter one recurrent interactional practice – or rather, as we put it, an ‘actional microcosm’, namely the management of disagreement. We use the term actional microcosm to refer to a practice such as disagreeing with someone else, opening a story or closing down a conversational sequence, that is typically accomplished by means of one or several adjacent action(s).2 An actional microcosm may spread across adjacency pairs (for instance, a story opening prefaced by a presequence) or be accomplished by means of a single turn (for instance, the proffering of a disagreement). This analytic focus enables us to zoom in onto participants’ methods for action within a delimited frame, where basic principles of interaction such as turntaking, precision timing and preference organization can be investigated. This zooming in onto a micromoment of interactional practices is crucial, given CA’s strict commitment to naturally occurring data, which renders problematic the control of variables. It allows us to trace the development of methods for action through systematic comparisons between two different moments in time while grounding the analysis on actions that are observably oriented to by participants (rather than being predefined by the analyst).
Disagreement in Talk-in-Interaction The preference for agreement Why focus our study on disagreements? First, disagreements are frequent in our data: disagreeing is a recurrent practice both in the classroom and beyond. Second, disagreements are interactionally dense moments: they open space for negotiation and controversy (Antaki, 1994; Goodwin & Heritage, 1990), hence bringing into play in a particularly critical way
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participants’ investment and their ability to maintain intersubjectivity. Third, disagreements have been shown by previous research to follow regular sequential patterns, both in everyday conversation (Pomerantz, 1984) and in institutional interactions (e.g. Atkinson & Drew, 1979; Greatbatch, 1992). Disagreements materialize recurrent methods for dealing with the sequential organization of talk, yet little is known about how precisely they are accomplished in L2 talk-in-interaction. In conversation analytic research, agreeing and disagreeing have basically been discussed in terms of preferred and dispreferred actions. In his seminal paper on preference, Sacks observed participants’ tendency toward what he calls a ‘preference for agreement and contiguity’ (Sacks, 1987 [1973]: 58). ‘Agreement’ here does not refer to the display of acceptance of personal ideas or opinions, but to a sequential property, namely the alignment of an action with regard to the preceding action. When producing a second-pair part (e.g. an answer), participants tend to provide an action that aligns with the course of action projected in a first-pair part (e.g. a question) (‘preference for agreement’), and the delivery of this action is sequentially placed as soon as possible (‘preference for contiguity’) in the turn at hand. This is not an overall property of conversation, but a frequently encountered interactional fact relating to the formal infrastructure of sequential organization. Preference for agreement is embodied in the very way a second speaker’s turn is delivered as related to a first speaker’s turn. In a much quoted study, Pomerantz (1984) discusses the specific case of agreeing and disagreeing with assessments. The author identifies a preferred-action turn shape characterized by immediate turn uptake and display of agreement, and a dispreferred-action turn shape characterized by delayed turn start, the use of mitigation techniques and display of disagreement. In particular, she shows that disagreement tends to be pushed further back into the turn, being preceded by some kind of agreement token, or a downgraded agreement, within a ‘yes–but’ type of turn architecture. Excerpt 9.1, quoted earlier, provided an illustration of this pattern. The preference organization of talk-in-interaction, however, is highly context sensitive. Atkinson and Drew (1979), for instance, observed that participants in courtroom settings react systematically to accusations by means of unmitigated denials. Greatbatch (1992) documented that in broadcast interviews disagreement is preferred. And M.H. Goodwin (1983, 1990) showed the frequent use of aggravated disagreements in children’s interactions when playing at hopscotch or jump rope. The organization of disagreements also appears to depend on the position of the disagreeing turn within a sequence. Based on student–lecturer dyadic interactions, Kotthoff (1993) found a preference for disagreement once an argument has started, that is, after a first dissent-turn has already been displayed. In her data, the occurrence of a first disagreement implies
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regularly the relevance for further disagreement, in that way flipping over the preference structure toward preference for disagreement. While the cited studies identify recurrent sequential patterns and mitigation techniques for disagreements, they also point out their eminent context sensitivity, as regards both the larger interactional context in which they occur and their precise sequential location. Context sensitivity is a highly consequential issue when it comes to comparing practices across time. It is possibly one of the major challenges that longitudinal CA studies are currently facing (Pekarek Doehler & Wagner, 2010): when we look at learning across longer stretches of time, how can we differentiate, in the observable change between time X and time X + 1, what is due to development over time and what is due to a change in local context? Disagreement in second language talk Disagreements along with oppositional talk more generally have been extensively studied in adult ‘native’ speaker interactions (Atkinson & Drew, 1979; Mori, 1999; Pomerantz, 1984; Sacks, 1987 [1973], inter alia) as well as in interactions involving children (Corsaro & Maynard, 1996; Eisenberg & Garvey, 1981; Goodwin, 1983, 1990; Goodwin & Goodwin, 1987; Maynard, 1985, inter alia). By contrast, how L2 speakers deal with disagreements has remained largely unexplored. One noteworthy exception is Bardovi-Harlig and Salsbury’s (2004) investigation into the development of disagreeing practices in English L2 conversations. The study is based on a corpus of conversational interviews among adult native and non-native speakers, which have been recorded over the period of one term. The non-native speakers, with various L1 backgrounds, are enrolled in an intensive ESL course. Situated within the general framework of interlanguage pragmatics, and using conversation analytic concepts and methods, the study identifies four main developmental stages in the learners’ management of disagreement (BardoviHarlig & Salsbury, 2004: 218): (1) (2) (3) (4)
Strong disagreements, characterized chiefly by the occurrence of ‘no’. Inclusion of agreement components with disagreement components. The postponement of disagreement components within a turn. The postponement of disagreement turns within a sequence of turns.
This ranking indicates a diversification of the speakers’ means for expressing disagreements over time: starting with explicit and immediate disagreements at the beginning stage, speakers later mitigate their oppositional stances by means of the sequential placement of the disagreeing elements.
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In a conversation analytic study on the use of unmitigated ‘no’ tokens by L2 learners within classroom interactions, Hellermann showed that such ‘direct formatting for disaffiliation’ (Hellermann, 2009: 120), which might be perceived as inappropriate as regards preference organization, is in fact treated by co-participants as appropriate for specific activities within the given community of practice, for instance, in the case of othercorrection related to language-learning tasks. This result suggests that speakers’ use of simple ‘no’ tokens does not necessarily provide evidence of limited L2 competence, but is part of a contextually meaningful practice of disaffiliation. While Bardovi-Harlig and Salsbury’s study suggests that there is L2 development that can be seen in the sequential organization of disagreement practices, Hellermann’s study recalls that dispreferred activities are highly context sensitive. Taken together, these two observations have important implications for our understanding of disagreements in an L2: what is at stake for the L2 learner is not simply to develop mitigation techniques, but to diversify his or her methods for accomplishing disagreement in order to be able to respond to the local contingencies of talk-in-interaction in a context-sensitive way. In the remainder of this chapter, we will document how our students’ methods for doing disagreement change over time, how they become more diversified and more context sensitive.
Data and Methodology A cross-sectional study design This study is based on a data set3 consisting of 40 hours audio/videorecorded French foreign language classroom interactions, collected in German-speaking Switzerland, where French (a national language that is spoken in another part of the country) is taught at school from the age of 10 on. The data have been collected according to a cross-sectional design focusing on two moments of school education, which are four years apart. The data include lower-intermediate learners4 at lower-secondary school (20 hours of recordings) and advanced learners at upper-secondary school (20 hours). The lower-intermediate learners are 13–14 years old; being in 8th grade of secondary school, they are in their fourth year of French L2 classes (3–5 hours a week) at the moment of the recordings. The advanced learners are 17–18 years old and they are in their last year of high school; they have had eight years of L2 French classes (again 3–5 hours a week). Comparability between the two groups is enhanced by the fact that the advanced learners have previously gone through the very same educational system (lower secondary) as the less advanced learners were in at the time of the recordings, and that there were no major reforms implemented in
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French L2 teaching in the time since the more advanced learners left lowersecondary school.
Procedure The data has been transcribed entirely according to the transcription conventions commonly used in CA. We have established extensive collections of disagreeing turns across the whole body of the data. Coincidentally, we have found the exact same number of disagreements proffered by students in each of the datasets (n = 60) – at least as regards disagreements that are done in the L2. (There is however a large number of disagreements done in German L1 with the lower-intermediate learners, but less with the advanced learners.) While our collections contain disagreements between pairs as well as disagreements done by a student as regards a teacher’s or teaching assistant’s turn, for reasons of consistency the qualitative analysis presented here focuses only on student–student disagreements. Although we did analyze some of the nonverbal resources that accompany those disagreements that are expressed verbally (e.g. gesture and gaze), we did not include in our collections disagreements that are expressed merely nonverbally (e.g. by head shake or raising of eyebrows). We also did not include instances of linguistic repair, although some cases of repair (specifically other-initiations) may be treated as a speaker’s display of disalignment as regards the linguistic shape of another speaker’s utterance (see Hellermann, 2009). Based on our collections, we have identified four major distinctive features of how students proffer a disagreement at the two levels of schooling/competence: • Turn architecture concerns the sequential placement of the disagreeing element(s) within the turn: that is, turn-initial vs. nonturn-initial (in the latter case the disagreement is pushed further back into the turn by means of delaying devices and/or prefaces, see Pomerantz, 1984). • Articulation to source turn relates to the question whether the disagreeing turn occurs in a turn that is adjacent to the source (target) of the disagreement or not: immediate vs. distal disagreement; this feature also refers to the specific means by which the relation of the disagreeing turn to a specific previous turn may be displayed, for example, the use of format tying techniques (Goodwin & Goodwin, 1987). • Linguistic formatting refers to the linguistic properties of the disagreement, among which we have chosen to focus on the use of hedges and some dimensions of the lexical and syntactic shaping of the disagreement segment (in particular clause-combining patterns, but also recyclings of lexical and syntactic patterns in format tying).
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• Discursive ‘thickness’ relates to whether or not the display of a disagreement is followed by accounts, exemplifications (see Excerpt 9.1 quoted earlier), and other argumentative moves that strengthen or mitigate the oppositional stance (for accounts see e.g. Antaki, 1994; Heritage, 1988; Pomerantz, 1984; Schegloff, 1996). Across the whole data set, we have counted the occurrences of the two types of turn-constructional techniques used by the two groups of learners (turn-initial vs. nonturn-initial), as well as the placement of the disagreement in immediate or distal position. In what follows, we will first discuss these quantitative results (see section A General Picture of the Data. . .) and then present detailed qualitative analysis of selected data excerpts in order to illustrate the major differences between the lowerintermediate and the advanced L2 learners (see sections Methods for Doing Disagreement – I: Lower Intermediate Learners and II: Advanced Learners).
A General Picture of the Data: Some Quantitative Differences as Regards Turn Architecture and Sequential Placement When investigating participants’ methods for accomplishing actions, CA research has worked to uncover recurrences of participants’ procedures. Recurrence, of course, can best be brought to light by a large number of cases, and this is why we base our analyses on collections of cases. Recurrence may also usefully be backed up by means of quantification. When it comes to accounting for the details of human conduct, however, quantification is a tricky issue, most importantly because it raises the question as to whether the quantified occurrences are participantrelevant occurrences (Schegloff, 1993), that is, whether the actions or items quantified are oriented to as doing or being such and such a thing by the participants. As Schegloff puts it: ‘What counts as an occurrence of whatever it is we think we are counting?’ (Schegloff, 1993: 107). We wish at this point to show quantitative observations as regards the placement of disagreements within turns and sequences in order to give the reader a first idea of the extent of the differences we observe between the two proficiency groups in our data. The quantification is based on prior sequential analysis of the total number of disagreements found in the data. Table 9.1 shows a comparison between L2 lower-intermediate and advanced learners as to two factors: (1) immediate disagreement vs. distal disagreement (disagreement that occurs in a turn that is not adjacent to the source of the disagreement); (2) (for immediate disagreement) turn-initial vs. nonturn-initial position.
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Table 9.1 Techniques for doing disagreements Lower intermediate L2 (n = 60) I. IMMEDIATE DISAGREEMENT (AS REGARDS SOURCE TURN)
100% (n = 60)
Advanced L2 (n = 60) 90% (n = 54)
I.1 turn-initial
98.3% (n = 59)
68.3 % (n = 41)
I.1.1 polarity markers non ‘no’/ si or oui ‘yes’
75% (n = 45)
36.7% (n = 22)
I.1.2 mais ‘but’-introduced counterargument
10% (n = 6)
18.3% (n = 11)
I.1.3 counter-argument without mais ‘but’ I.1.4 others: for example, ‘that’s wrong’
3.3% (n = 2) 10% (n = 6)
I.2 non-turn initial: ‘yes (x) but’ type of pattern (the ‘but’ may remain implicit)
0% (n = 0)
I.3 other techniques (namely: rhetoric question)
1.7% (n = 1)
II. DISTAL DISAGREEMENT (by means of quotations [‘John said that X, but . . .’], metacommunicative comments [‘I think that John is not right. . .’] or format-tying)
0%
3.3% (n = 2) 10% (n = 6) 16.7% (n = 10)
5% (n = 3) 10% (n = 6)
Table 9.1 indicates that the lower-intermediate learners use a very restricted range of means for doing disagreements. They almost exclusively (98.3% – with one single exception) produce turn-initial disagreements, and these are predominantly (75%) accomplished by means of the polarity markers ‘no’/’yes’ (i.e. stand-alone non ‘no’/contrastive si or oui ‘yes’, or non/si/oui + alternative suggestion, affirmation etc.). The advanced learners, by contrast, show a notable diversification of techniques for doing disagreement. While still privileging turn-initial disagreement (68.3%), advanced learners regularly produce ‘yes–but’ types of disagreements (where the disagreeing element is pushed further back in the turn, being preceded by a display of agreement: 16.7%). Also 10% of their disagreements are distal disagreements, that is, they tie back to some turn that is not immediately preceding. Table 9.1 also shows that, within the turninitial disagreements, the proportion of disagreements accomplished by simple ‘no’ significantly decreases with the advanced learners (36.7% vs. 75%), while the proportion of ‘but + counter-argument’ types of disagreements increases (18.3% vs. 10%).
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These first observations indicate not a replacement of methods but a diversification over time: the advanced learners still do use (though much less frequently) turn-initial disagreements, and they also do use (though much less frequently) the ‘no’ type of disagreement, but they also use many other resources. This diversification may be an indicator of more adaptative, context-sensitive conduct of the advanced learners, suggesting an increased interactional competence. In what follows, we will first look in detail at L2 speakers’ methods for accomplishing disagreement by means of the qualitative analysis of representative data excerpts. We will then discuss in what regard the observed diversification with the advanced learners can be understood as an indicator of a more developed L2 interactional competence.
Methods for Doing Disagreement – I: Lower Intermediate Learners Table 9.1 indicates that at the lower-intermediate level, the practice of disagreement is highly uniform, both in terms of turn architecture and linguistic formatting, most typically accomplished by means of turninitial polarity markers or ‘but-X’ formats.
Turn-initial ‘no’ as the standard pattern Excerpts 9.2 and 9.3, both taken from group work, provide an illustration of the most recurrent technique for doing disagreement found with the lower-intermediate learners, namely turn-initial disagreements initiated or accomplished by means of ‘no’. Excerpt 9.2 ‘hip hop’ (Tschu-181105) 1
MIC:
2 3
LOR:
4 5 > MIC: 6 7
LOR: OLI:
ehm (. . .) (x) (achète; apporte de) la musique et- (0.9) ehm (x) (buys; brings) the music and et [quelle <musique> ]? and which music [de la pop musique]. DET pop music de la po[p musique]. DET pop music [non: ]c’est- = no it’s = hip hop = = hip hop =
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Excerpt 9.3 ‘salut’ (Tschu-181105) 1 ANI: jetzt machen wir dialogo no? now we do +dialogue no ((in Spanish)) + 2 NAT: ich sag (xx) I say (xx) 3 (*1.7) ebr *taking notes on a piece of paper 4 > EBR: non: (.) mir säge ds (erschte ding) (.) salut::, no we say the (first thing) hello 5 (4.3) 6 NAT: und wer seid das? and who says that 7 ?: ich. I In Excerpt 9.2, Michelle rejects Lorena’s suggestion to bring pop music to an imaginary party by means of a straightforward non ‘no’ (she then cuts off the further course of her turn). In Excerpt 9.3, which illustrates students’ frequent use of L1 German (cf. dotted underlining in the translation) to manage the task (see also Hellermann & Pekarek Doehler, 2010), Ebru objects to the course of action initiated by her co-participants by means of a straight ‘no’ (in French), followed by an alternative suggestion. The two excerpts show typical features of disagreements found with the lower-intermediate learners. Disagreements are proffered by means of ‘no’ tokens placed in turn-initial position. The disagreeing turn may be delayed or not; delay can be a sign of an upcoming dispreferred response (Pomerantz, 1984), but may in our data also be due to students’ searching for words or being involved in parallel activities, like taking notes (as in Excerpt 9.3). Disagreements typically show sound stretch on the polarity marker, highlighting the contrastive stance of the speaker. The ‘no’ (or the contrastive ‘yes’) may stand alone or may be followed by an alternative affirmation, candidate, course of action and so on. While in Excerpt 9.2 the alternative candidate is proposed in a third turn (line 6) by the first speaker as a reaction to a second speaker’s disagreeing ‘no’, in Excerpt 9.3 it is provided by the second speaker in the disagreeing turn itself, subsequently to the turn-initial ‘no’ (line 4). Such straightforward disagreements may trigger an exchange of ‘no’ and ‘yes’ tokens, a little verbal duel where polarity markers are fired until one of the participants gives in. An example is provided in Excerpt 9.4, where Peter, Thomas and Ugo are involved in a discussion with the teaching assistant (RES, who is also the researcher who video taped this piece of data) about a big stadium in their home city.
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Excerpt 9.4 ‘y a des matchs’ (Tschu-210606) 1 RES: m- y a des matchs maintenant? m- are there games now 2 (0.3) 3 PET: eh: n[on eh no 4 THO: [oui = oui yes yes 5 > PET: *non: no pet *turns to THO 6 > THO: *oui yes tho *looks at PET 7 > PET: NON: no 8 > THO: OUI yes 9 UGO: * (x[xx) ] ugo * looks at THO 10 PET: [eh- ah = jo:] *ehm = eh oh yes ehm pet *looks into the air 11 THO: = *le f-c bâ::le contre le f-c zürich. the FC Basel against the FC Zürich tho *looks at RES 12 RES: ah:? d’accord. oh alright At the beginning of the excerpt, the teaching assistant’s question (line 1) receives two contrasting and overlapping answers by Peter (‘no’, line 3) and Thomas (‘yes’, line 4), respectively. This leads into a sequence of multiple reassertions of each participant’s affirmation (lines 5–8) by means of the stand-alone polarity markers ‘yes’ and ‘no’. Whereas the initial, simultaneously produced ‘yes’ and ‘no’ (lines 3–4) merely provide the second pair parts to the first pair part launched by the researcher (a yes–no type of question), the subsequent series of ‘yes’ and ‘no’ tokens enact strong disagreements. Several features concur to demarcate the disagreement sequence from the preceding question–answer sequence. On the one hand, while the initial ‘yes’ and ‘no’ are produced with regular prosody, the subsequent ‘yes’ and ‘no’ polarity markers show sound stretches (lines 5 and 7), accentuation (lines 6 and 8) and then rise in volume (lines 7 and 8). Both participants hence use prosody as a resource to progressively
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upgrade their disagreement: though they produce simple polarity markers, these are gradually made more prominent through lines 5–8. On the other hand, the onset of the disagreeing sequence is accompanied by a notable change in body posture: Peter turns physically toward Thomas (line 5) and Thomas returns his gaze to him (line 6). Thereby, they enact a change in participation framework, the two opponents starting to address each other rather than orienting toward the teaching assistant to whom their initial ‘no’ and ‘yes’, respectively, where addressed. This peerto-peer participation framework is only abandoned when the disagreement sequence is closed with Peter’s change-of-state token ah ‘oh’ followed by an agreeing ‘yes’ (line 10) by means of which Peter displays alignment with Thomas’ position. This also provides for Thomas’ subsequent pursuit of his initial affirmation, offering details as to which teams are playing (line 11) while directing his gaze back to the researcher. What we see Thomas and Peter do in this sequence is reminiscent of Eisenberg and Garvey’s (1981) observation on children’s interactions: when one participant insists on his position after a disagreement has been displayed, the co-participant often responds by the same type of insistence as regards his own position. These disagreements in a series (see also Kotthoff, 1993) are enacted here as aggravated disagreements, highlighting the oppositional stances in a way that appears to be frequent among children (see Goodwin, 1983, 1990). The three quoted excerpts illustrate the most recurrent disagreement pattern found with the lower-intermediate learners: the production of polarity markers ‘no’ or ‘yes’, either stand alone or followed by a counter suggestion. These provide the standard solution for refusing a suggestion (as in Excerpt 9.2) or a course of action (as in 9.3), for proffering a counter affirmation (as in 9.4), and much more. While both their sequential and linguistic formatting is uniform and no additional sequential or linguistic means are used for upgrading or downgrading disagreement, participants do show subtle uses of prosody as an alternative means for such up- or downgrading. Turn-initial ‘but-X’ The second technique deployed by the lower-intermediate learners for doing disagreements consists in the use of a but-initiated objection, placed again in turn-initial position in a turn that is adjacent to the source-turn. An example is provided in (9.5), where Michelle, Lorena and Olivia, still talking about the party, discuss what they will wear. Excerpt 9.5 ‘pas la même couleur’ (Tschu-181105) 1 MIC: j’habille comme toi. I dress like you
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2 3 >
LOR:
4 5
OLI: LOR:
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eh::hh ehm mais pas le même [+couleur. ((laughing)) + but not the same color [((laughter)) et toi olivia qu’est-c- eh qu’est-ce que tu: habiller? and you Olivia what dowhat do you dress-INF
The excerpt starts with Michelle stating that she will dress for the party the same way as her friend Lorena. This statement encounters an objection on the part of Lorena (line 3), whose disagreement is launched straightforwardly, without any hesitations, by means of mais ‘but’. Lorena’s laughter (line 3), though, may be interpreted as mitigating her disagreement. While this excerpt shows a partial disagreement (by objecting ‘not the same color’ Lorena only partially rejects Michelle’s statement ‘I’ll dress like you’), other mais ‘but’-initiated turn-initial disagreements in the data accomplish fuller disagreements, in the sense that they reject a coparticipant’s entire affirmation or suggestion, and not merely part of it. Excerpt 9.6 shows how the turn-initial ‘but-X’ pattern is used to reject a course of action suggested by a co-participant: Excerpt 9.6 ‘un disque’ (Frai-230106) 1 NEL: °wär (.) qui organiser [(..) la (.) musique°] who who organize-INF the music 2 MAR: [°(xxx) ] la musique° (xxx) the music 3 (2.0) 4 NEL: hü mar- = come on Mar5 RUN: = nei hehehe wart emol schnäll. no hehehe wait a minute 6 NEL: et quelle? and which 7 (. . .) 8 > MAR: mais tout le monde peut amener un disque que: (xxx) = but everybody can bring a record that (xxx) 9 RUN: = ehm (2.6) les deux crè:mes, ehm the two creams 10 NEL: moi (.) schribsch (.) moi. I I write-2SG The excerpt starts with Nelly’s asking who will organize the music for an imaginary birthday party that the group has been instructed to plan
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(line 1). Runa, who is still busy writing something down on her paper, reacts in German L1 with her ‘no wait a minute’ (line 5), but does not seem to be oriented to by her co-participants. Rather, Nelly extends her fi rst-pair part by adding ‘and which [music]’ (line 6) and then Marie comes in with a disagreement (line 8). She proffers a ‘but’-initiated objection as to the well foundedness of Nelly’s question: it is of no use to determine who brings what music, as ‘everybody can bring a record’. Subsequently, Nelly does not react to that issue, but later she responds to Runa’s question (line 9) as to who will bring the two creams they have been talking about earlier (line 10). The disagreement is thus passed over in silence (but will be relaunched by Marie in the further course of the interaction). Sum: Lower-intermediate learners The lower-immediate students in our data show the exclusive use of turn-initial immediate disagreement accomplished by means of two recurrent linguistic formats (see Table 9.1): non ‘no’/ oui ‘yes’ polarity markers and mais-X ‘but-X’ formats. Also, the data do not show any occurrence of linguistic hedges with the lower-intermediate learners: no single ‘I think’, ‘I mean’, ‘perhaps’ or similar thing is used within disagreements, although these elements are regularly produced by the same learners in other sequential environments (e.g. ‘I think’ is often used as a response initiator after a question regarding a student’s personal opinion or asking about a fact). By contrast, as shown most clearly in Excerpt 9.4 ‘y a des matchs’, voice, posture and gesture provide rich resources for managing disagreement, for instance, by upgrading disagreement in the case of disagreements in a series. The absence of verbal hedges is a distinctive linguistic-pragmatic feature that characterizes disagreements at lower levels of competence in our data, in addition to the turn-initial sequential positioning and the uniform ‘no’/‘yes’ or ‘but-X’ linguistic formatting outlined above. A further noteworthy feature is the absence of sequential elaborations of disagreements with the lower-intermediate learners: their disagreements are not followed (nor preceded) by accounts, explanations, illustrations or other elements that could reinforce, moderate or justify the stance taken by the speaker. These, however, have been found to be a recurrent feature in the context of dispreferred actions (Heritage, 1988: 132). The way these agreements are built (turn-initial positioning, minimal linguistic formatting and absence of postdisagreement elaborations) results in a strong tendency for aggravated disagreements (Goodwin, 1983) rather than mitigated ones. The total absence of other techniques, in particular disagreements that are pushed back in the turn, with the lowerintermediate learners (see Table 9.1) suggests that these learners do not simply orient to a preference for disagreement because the situation allows
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them or asks them to do so, but that they lack other means that would allow them to manage disagreement in a way that respects the preference for contiguity and agreement. We will come back to these developmental issues in the discussion of the findings (see section Documenting Change across Time: A Critical Look at the Findings).
Methods for Doing Disagreement – II: Advanced Learners As we move to the more advanced students, we observe a significant diversification of disagreeing practices (see Table 9.1): they still do use (though much less frequently) turn-initial disagreements, and they also do use (again much less frequently) the ‘no’ type of disagreement, but they also use many other techniques. This suggests that their nonmitigated disagreements, including the ‘no’ type of disagreements, do not necessarily reflect a lack of interactional competence or linguistic means, but might be used in a way that is appropriate in specific sequential environments. This has been suggested by Hellermann (2009) in his longitudinal study of an adult learner of English’s use of ‘no’ tokens in disaffiliative responses. What is significant is that the advanced learners in our data use a wide range of other methods for accomplishing disagreement in addition to such rudimentary means as polarity markers: techniques for accomplishing a disagreement at a distance as well as agreement–disagreement turnconstruction techniques for immediate, but mitigated, disagreement. The general tendency, therefore, is diversification of techniques for doing disagreement, as manifest most recognizably in their sequential placement. ‘Yes–but’ type of turn construction technique In her seminal work on disagreeing with assessments, Pomerantz (1984) has documented a typical device for managing preference organization in ordinary conversation between native speakers: speakers tend to postpone disagreeing elements within a turn by having them preceded by some display of agreement that is typically downgraded, providing a ‘yes–but’ type of turn shape. Such delaying techniques are a more general feature of dispreferred response, as documented by Sacks (1987[1973]). In our data, this turn-construction pattern is regularly used by advanced learners, but was not found with the lower-intermediate learners. Excerpt 9.7 is taken from a small-group debate about the Swiss government’s plan to buy new fighter airplanes, which has just been accepted by a popular vote. Pascal interprets the results of the vote as showing that the Swiss people want a strong army (lines 1–2), but Anita objects by reminding that it was only 30% of the population who went to vote (line 3). From here on, a sequence of disagreements emerges throughout several turns at talk.
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Excerpt 9.7 ‘une majorité’ (SPD-14) 1
PAS:
2 3
ANI:
4 5 >
PAS:
6 >
ANI:
7 8 >
ANI:
9 10
EMI:
je crois: que le peuple suisse veut (.) une armée qui peut I think that the Swiss population wants an army that is able résister, (.) qui est puissante. to resist that is powerful mais tu parles du peuple suisse mais: euhm c’était: trente but you speak of the Swiss population but ehm it was thirty pour cent, (..) [euh] percent ehm [oui mais] c’est^une- c’est^une majorité. yes but it’s a it’s a majority .h (0.3) oui: (.) mais: °pas une grande majorité°. yes but not a big majority (3.5) pas si:^une: grand majorité. not such a big majority (9.0) mais si tu peux imaginer quelqu’un nous attaquerait peut-être but if you can imagine someone would attack us maybe
While Anita’s objection (line 3) is proffered by means of a turn-initial mais ‘but’ followed by a metadiscursive comment plus a counterargument, quite like the pattern found with the lower-intermediate learners, Pascal in turn reacts by means of a ‘yes–but’ initiated turn (line 5): ‘yes but that’s a majority’. Anita then counters using the same type of pattern, but with some prosodic modulation (line 6): we hear her breathe in, then pause, her ‘yes but’ shows sound stretches, and the counterargument (‘not a big majority’) is proffered in soft voice. These features have the effect of mitigating the disagreement. Subsequently, in response to the absence of a reaction on the part of Pascal (see the pause line 7), Anita recasts her disagreement (line 8), further downgrading it by means of the si ‘such’: ‘not a big majority’ becomes ‘not such a big majority’, after which the debate goes on. Anita hence deploys a range of sequential, linguistic and prosodic means for mitigating her disagreement. She displays orientation to the preference for agreement by using the ‘yes–but’ format, she shows subtle use of prosody, and then of the lexico-semantic shaping of her utterance to further mitigate her disagreement. In many cases oui mais ‘yes but’ appears as a routinized disagreement initiating format. This is clearly shown in Excerpt 9.8, where the oui mais is followed by an objection produced in L1 Swiss German. The excerpt is taken from a small-group work where the students are invited to invent a story using some initial pieces of information about a duchess living in a castle. While negotiating where the duchess’ castle is located, Silvia just suggested that it is in England, and accounts for that suggestion (line 1):
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Excerpt 9.8 ‘z’ängland’ (JM-1) 1 SIL: mais elle est (.) elle a aussi un nom anglais. but she is she has also an English name 2 (.) 3 °je pense°. I think 4 > ERI: oui mais +c- ((lauging))+ (. .) yes but 5 sie muss jo ned unbedingt z^ängland sii (.) eh (dehei). she does not necessarily need to be in England eh at home The oui mais here is launched ‘en bloc’ as a turn-initiating token, projecting upcoming disagreement, but the disagreement is produced in Swiss German. We find several such instances in our data, which confirm the routinized use of the oui mais as a disagreement-turn introducing format. It is noteworthy that the ‘yes–but’ turn-constructional pattern is by far not limited to being implemented within contexts where the exchange of personal opinions or real-word issues is at stake (as in Excerpt 9.7): it is here used while students discuss an imaginary situation within a group work. Within the ‘yes–but’ turn-constructional pattern, the agreement displayed at turn-start takes a range of different shapes with the advanced learners. For instance, in Excerpt 9.9, which we have quoted earlier as Excerpt 9.1, the agreement is expressed by means of a oui ‘yes’, plus a word-by-word repetition of the opponent’s affirmation (line 3). In addition, it is backed up by the speaker’s providing of a concrete example (line 4). Excerpt 9.9 ‘l’armée Suisse’ (SPD-14) 1
TOM:
2 3 >
EMI:
4 5
l’armée de suisse est très petit. the army of Switzerland is very small (1.8) oui elle est très petit mais nous avons un (.) yes it is very small but we have a système (parfait) souterrain, (.) par exemple sous le gothard (perfect) subterranean system for instance underneath the Gothard existe un (.) (xx) (.) et on ne peut pas nous conquérir. there is a (xx) and they cannot conquer us
By contrast to such straightforward agreements preceding the disagreement proper, in many cases in our data what prefaces the disagreement are weak agreements (cf. Pomerantz, 1984). This is shown in Excerpt 9.10. Georges has just argued against transferring the Basel fair to neighboring regions. Marlyse then suggests that Georges thinks that the neighboring regions wish to acquire the fair for purely egoistic reasons (lines 1–4).
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Excerpt 9.10 ‘pas seulement d’argent’ (SPD-16) 1 MAR: alors tu crois que: que chaque région l’alsace (xxx) sont: so you think that each région the Alsace (xxx) are 2 des égoïstes (. .) ils veulent seulement la foire (. .) DET selfish people they only want the fair 3 dans: leurs régions pour ce que: pour ce qu’ils (. .) in their region so that so that they 4 peuvent (. .) tirer euh: de profit. can benefit ehm from it 5 > GEO: peut-être pas seulement mais: mais je suis sûr maybe not only but but I am sure 6 qu’ils (.) ils n’offrent pas seulement de- d’argent that they they do not offer only money 7 quand ils ne: voient pas le profit. when they don’t see the benefit 8 PHI: mais il n’y a pas seulement le profit: d’argent, il y a but there is not only DET monetary profit there is 9 aussi le profit euh (. .) d’ + image, ((in English)) also the benefit ehm of image 10 (.) on peut le dire. we can say it Georges starts off his disagreeing turn with a very moderate ‘maybe not only’ (line 5), that is, a week agreement that clearly projects an upcoming disagreement (Pomerantz, 1984). The disagreement is then introduced by mais ‘but’ and is proffered as subordinate clause, syntactically embedded in the main clause je suis sûr ‘I’m sure’ which marks the speaker’s epistemic stance and reinforces the disagreement. In some cases the disagreement preface consists of a lengthy stretch of talk, and the speaker only slowly, hesitantly moves toward proffering the disagreement proper. This is illustrated in Excerpt 9.11, taken from a group of students who discuss the topic of abortion. Jana has just argued that a woman has to assume responsibility for her own actions or negligence, and therefore keep the child if she gets pregnant. Catherine counters by stating that it is a horrible thing if a child is born whose parents do not want it (lines 1–4): Excerpt 9.11 ‘l’avortement’ (DK-A-4) 1 2
CAT:
((turn continued)) c’est c’est l’enfant qui: qui peut-être (.) it’s it’s the child that maybe pas des: (.) des parents qui: qui le veulent pas, (.) qui NEG DET DET parents who don’t want him who
Developing ‘Methods’ for Interaction
3 4 5 jan 6 > JAN: jan
7 8 9 jan 10 11 12 13 14 15
CAT:
16 17
JAN:
18
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l’aiment pas, (.) > parce qu’ils eh: ils ont pas voulu un endon’t love him because they didn’t want a enfant,< euh child (1.3*) *looks into the air during the pause °j- (.) m- ou:ai:s eh° (0.8) mais (.) je pense *euhm (4.5) yeah but I think ehm *looks down on the desk in front of her euhm (1.9) oui c’est: c’est dommage pour euh ((laughter)) ehm yes it’s it’s too bad for eh .h +pour le bébé, ((laughing))+ ((laughter)) mais- euhm for the baby but ehm (0.6) *je pense euh une personne peut euh (0.7) l- la femme I think eh a person can eh th- the woman *looks at CAT peut (.) peut pen- euh (0.5) réfléchir (.) qu’est ce qu’elle can can eh think about that what she veut fair- e- si (.) elle veut se protéger, et si elle wants to do if she wants to protect herself and if she ne (fait-) pas euh je pense si elle est vraiment (. .)euhm:: un doesn’t do eh I think if she is really ehm a peu intelligent (.) elle se protège si elle ne veut pas un- un bit smart she protects herself if she doesn’t want a- a enfant. (.) [et] child and [il y a] toujours des accidents? accidents happen (1.3) oui mais alors euh (.) euh oui HEIN (. . .) HEIN (1.9) oui yes but so eh eh yes huh huh yes (.) pas de chance. ((laughter)) bad luck
Jana’s reaction (lines 6–14) to Catherine’s argument is accomplished by means of a complex agreement–disagreement turn-constructional format. Her turn comes in late, slowly and in soft voice: it is initiated by some prestart sounds, and a strongly hesitant agreement token ouais ‘yeah’ followed by a 0.8 second pause. In this sequential environment, and given its prosodic shape, ouais ‘yeah’ is a rather weak agreement token (oui, like English ‘yes’, would more straightforwardly express agreement). As a
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consequence, the ouais ‘yeah’, together with the hesitations and the low voice, can be heard as premonitory of an upcoming disagreement. The subsequent mais ‘but’, however, does not introduce a disagreement, but is followed by some further hesitation marks and the display of alignment ‘yes it’s too bad for the baby’ (lines 7/8). Although there is no audible cutoff, this may be a self-repair where Jana first starts producing a disagreement ‘but I think ehm’, but then offers instead a renewed display of agreement (see Schegloff, 1979, on hesitation markers and other disfluencies as prefaces to repair). Possibly, this whole start of the turn, with all the hesitations, the ouais, mais, je pense ehm, is also a means by which Jana claims speakership – a way of holding the floor, before wording out what she actually is about to say. The orientation of her gaze, withdrawing from Catherine’s visual contact, looking into the air (line 5) and then toward the desk (line 6), corroborates this interpretation, suggesting that Jana is doing thinking (cf. Goodwin & Goodwin, 1986). Also noteworthy is Jana’s laughter occurring when formulating an alignment at line 7 as well as subsequently to it (line 8). The laughter embodies here a somewhat ironic, or even sarcastic stance: ‘too bad for the baby’, which again may be heard as premonitory of some upcoming disagreement. The actual disagreement is then introduced by means of the mais ‘but’ at line 8, which coincides with a change in tempo and gaze: from this point on, though still interspersed with some hesitations, Jana’s talk becomes progressively more fluent and her gaze returns to Catherine (line 9). The disagreement proper shows several noteworthy characteristics. First, it is accompanied by hedges (‘I think’, lines 9 and 12). Second, it shows a relatively rich linguistic formatting, and in particular complex clause-combining patterns ( je pense + clause, lines 9 and 12; la femme peut réfléchir + subordinate clause, line 10; ‘if . . . then’ bi-clausal patterns, lines 11–13). Third, the disagreement is deployed in two layers. Jana first states ‘the woman can think about what she wants to do’ (lines 9–11). By relegating in this way to the woman the responsibility of getting pregnant or not, she strongly opposes Catherine. Jana then backs her argument up by bringing up the case of women who do not desire to get pregnant: ‘if she is really intelligent she can protect herself if she does not want a child’ (lines 12–14). This argument, by which Jana implicitly blames the (nonintelligent) women who do get pregnant even if they do not want to, then triggers Catherine’s objection ‘accidents happen’ (line 15). To this Jana reacts with a turn-initial oui mais, some suggestive sounds, and the ironic ‘bad luck’ (again mitigated by laughter), letting the argument fade out in this way. (The ‘bad luck’ here is reminiscent of the use of idiomatic or aphoristic formulations as closing devices in talk-in-interaction; Drew & Holt, 1998; Schegloff & Sacks, 1973).
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Throughout the excerpt, Jana displays orientation to the preference organization of talk, and she clearly mitigates her disagreement. However, in terms of the contents of her talk, as well as of some of her wordings, she presents a radical (politically not quite correct) stance. Significantly, she uses the formulaic expressions ‘too bad for the baby’ and ‘bad luck’, both in the opening and the closing down of her argument, to highlight her position, and her laughter possibly indicates Jana’s embarrassment in the face of the sensitive nature of the topic. The excerpts quoted in this section have illustrated one recurrent turnconstruction format used for disagreements by the advanced learners in our data: the ‘yes–but’ type of pattern. While this sequential format sometimes occurs in its minimal form oui mais ‘yes but’, it also takes a variety of other shapes, both linguistically and prosodically. In particular, advanced learners use a range of delaying devices that push the disagreement further back in the turn (hesitation markers, agreement tokens and more generally prefatory talk that displays agreement), and they use hedges and rich linguistic resources, including complex clause-combining patterns) to fine-tune their positions. By these means, the advanced learners deploy subtle formatting of both the disagreement preface and the disagreement proper, which sometimes they back up by means of exemplifications, accounts or other arguments. They have at their disposal a variety of linguistic, prosodic and sequential techniques to manage the preference for agreement and to modulate their display of disagreement. The use of format-tying techniques and the specific case of distal disagreement A last feature we wish to comment on, which we find with the advanced learners but not with the lower-intermediate learners, is the use of format-tying techniques. 24% of the advanced learners’ disagreements involve the use of some kind of format-tying technique that is instrumental in doing the disagreement (both in immediate and in distal disagreements); by contrast, in the lower-intermediate learners data, we found only two occurrences of format-tying (3.3%, in immediate disagreements). Goodwin and Goodwin (1987) have observed the frequent use of format-tying among children arguing (see also Corsaro & Maynard, 1996). Format-tying consists of recycling a lexico-syntactic pattern from a preceding turn. By means of format-tying the speaker may display that the current turn is related to a specific previous turn. Format-tying is part of a large set of tying techniques speakers use in talk-in-interaction to make recognizable their orientation to preceding pieces of talk (Sacks, 1992). However, the recycling of previous talk in format-tying does not simply reproduce a previous action, but accomplishes a new action, which may go
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against a previous action. Format-tying may therefore function as a ‘boomerang’ where the words of a speaker are turned against him- or herself (Goodwin, 1990). An example of such a boomerang effect is provided in (9.12) (source and format-tying are indicated by an arrow): Excerpt 9.12 ‘beaucoup de défense’ (SPD-14) 1 > FRA: oui mais: nous avons: beaucoup de défense. yes but we have a lot of defense 2 (. .) 3 nous avons pas besoin (.) des: des neufs avions. we do not need DET new airplanes 4 > PAS: nous avons pas beaucoup de défense. we do not have a lot of defense 5 (. .) 6 notre défense maintenant est trop vieux. our defense today is too old 7 (.) 8 et elle ne pe- ne peut pas résister. and it is not capable of resistance Pascal here reuses his co-participant’s words but turns them into the negative, thereby showing strong disagreement (line 4). It is noteworthy that he backs up his disagreement by providing an explanation that supports his stance (l. 6–8), and that his whole contribution is composed incrementally – layered, so to say, adding one turn-construction unit onto the other, each reaching a transition relevance place marked by fi nal falling intonation. The excerpt hence provides a nice illustration of what we call ‘discursive thickness’, where a disagreement is elaborated on by additional arguments. The absence of François’ reaction during the short pauses in between these layers (lines 5 and 7) – or of any attempt at turn-taking on his part at these transition relevance points – may indicate his expectation that the disagreement proper will be elaborated on by the current speaker. Excerpt 9.12 illustrates the type of format-tying in disagreements discussed by M.H. Goodwin (1990): schematically, speaker A says [X] – and speaker B says [neg X]; the two X are not necessarily identical, but represent semantico-syntactic parallelisms. The format-tying functions here as an operator of disagreement (i.e. the [neg. X] pattern). This function, among others, has been found in a previous study (Pekarek Doehler & Pochon-Berger, 2010) where we explored 92 hours of video-recorded data from both French L2 (including the data used for the present study) and French L1 classroom interactions. This study showed a recurrent use of format-tying techniques in disagreements between teenagers (again aged 13/14 and 17/18): 40% of the disagreements in L1 and 15% in L2
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involved format-tying techniques. We also documented that the use of format-tying as an operator of disagreement is only one out of three uses of format-tying techniques found in disagreement sequences. A second use can be schematized as follows: speaker A: [X] – speaker B [yes–X but . . .]. In this case, the format-tying is not part of the disagreement proper, but functions as a disagreement preface, displaying alignment with the preceding speaker before the introduction of a disalignment. An example was provided in (9.1) and (9.9), out of which we quote a shorter sequence, reproduced here as (9.13): Excerpt 9.13 ‘l’armée Suisse’ (SPD-14) 1 TOM: l’armée de suisse est très petit. because the Swiss army is very small 2 (1.8) 3 > EMI: oui elle est très petit mais nous avons un (.) yes it is very small but we have a Here, the taking up of the stretch NP est très petit by Emilie serves as a disagreement preface, displaying fi rst alignment with the preceding speaker, before she turns to proffering a disagreement. (Note that in her format-tying, Emilie copies the masculine form /pǣti/ ‘petit’ from Tom, which, however, should run /pǣtit/ ‘petite’, to agree with the feminine NP ‘l’armée’.) Often in our data, format-tyings used as disagreement prefaces provide downgraded agreements, which is however not the case for Excerpt 9.13. A third use of format-tying is found in distal disagreements. In our data, 10% of the disagreements accomplished by the advanced learners are done at a distance, that is, they occur in a turn that is not adjacent to the source of the disagreement. The late placement of a disagreement within a sequence implies for the current speaker the need to clearly display to what earlier turn he is tying back to in order to warrant recognizability of the object of his or her disagreement. Advanced learners regularly use the technique of format-tying for doing exactly this. This is shown in Excerpt 9.14, taken from a discussion about the freedom of speech. While Mélanie posits that saying something is not as dangerous as actually doing it (lines 4–6), Nadine disagrees (lines 13–15). Excerpt 9.145 ‘parle de quelque chose’ (DK-B-4) 1 2
T:
ou alors- ou alors chacun (. .) ou alors chacun a le droit or else or else everyone or else everyone has the right de dire ce qu’il veut, (.) c’est une liberté. to say what he wants it’s a freedom
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3 4 > MEL: 5 6 7 8
T:
9 10 11
MEL:
12 13 >
NAD:
14 15 16
(1.9) euh ouais je pense que (. . .) ehm quand on seulement parle (.) eh yeah I think that ehm when one only talks et dit (.) quelque chose c’est pas (.) non c’est (. . .) pas and says something it’s not no it’s not si: (.) dangereux que quand on fait quelque chose ou (.) °oui° as dangerous as when one does something or yes (3.7) ouais tu penses que juste parler euh (.) c’est pas si grave, yeah you think that simply talking that’s not as bad l’essentiel c’est qu’il n’y ait pas the main thing is that there is no d’action euh (. .) euh dangereuse ? dangerous action pas toujours mais ((laughter)) not always but (2.1) °ehm° mais quand- quand quelqu’un parle de quelque chose (.) on but when when someone talks about something you ne sait (.) jamais (.) si il (. . .) ° va° faire (..) ehm never know whether he will do ehm °ce qu’il dit°. what he says (1.1)
Nadine’s disagreement (line 13) does not occur in the turn following the ‘source-turn’ (lines 4–6), but later on in the sequence, after the teacher’s ratifying and summarizing move (lines 8–10) and after Mélanie’s subsequent attempt to develop another argument (line 11). Nadine’s turn is both syntactically and lexically mapped onto Mélanie’s initial statement: she reuses a ‘when X – (then) Y’ pattern, and recycles the same lexicosemantic entities (‘to talk about’, ‘to say’, ‘to do something’). She even repeats the same prosodic accents on the verbs parler and faire. What is common to the two turns is the following lexico-syntactic Gestalt: quand when quand when
on one quelqu’un someone
parle X says X parle X says X
[≠] [?]
on one Il he
fait X does X va faire X will do X
This Gestalt, however, is filled in with substantially different elements in the disagreeing turn as opposed to the source turn. While in the source turn, Mélanie does not treat ‘saying something’ as equivalent [≠] to ‘doing it’ (‘it is not as dangerous as when one does’, line 6), Nadine questions [?] the argument, expressing the possibility that it might in fact be the same (‘one never knows if he will do’, line 14).
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By means of her format-tying the speaker accomplishes two things at once: (1) she displays that the ongoing turn and action tie back to a specific previous turn and action and (2) she accomplishes a disagreement by producing a variation on the original pattern that has a strong contrastive effect. This is similar to the [neg. X] pattern illustrated initially in Excerpt 9.12 ‘beaucoup de defense,’ though here the tying effect is decisive, because adjacency positioning of disagreement and source is not given. The three uses of format-tying in disagreement sequences that we have documented in this section are interesting not merely because they represent one of the features of diversification found with advanced learners, as opposed to lower-intermediate learners. They also tell us something about the learners’ competences. For one thing, the use of format-tying techniques presupposes on the part of the speaker a close monitoring both of the contents of a prior turn and of its lexico-syntactic patterning. The varied and sometimes subtle format-tying techniques observed with the more advanced learners suggest that these speakers do a particularly good job in such monitoring, which in turn allows them to coordinate their actions with others in specific ways, so that, for instance, they can recognizably tie back to a previous turn while at the same time displaying disagreement with that turn. For another thing, the format-tyings that we have documented bear witness to the fact that the advanced learners are able to reuse in creative ways the linguistic resources deployed by their co-participants: they can do something else out of the talk of others. Finally, the format tying observed in distal disagreements, in particular, suggests that the advanced learners orient to and are able to navigate through larger stretches of discourse, larger interactional projects, beyond sequentially adjacent actions and turns at talk. Through all these properties, the way L2 learners orient to and use linguistic resources opens a window onto their interactional competence, way beyond issues of mere linguistic competence. Sum: Advanced learners The findings regarding the advanced learners show a diversified set of techniques for doing disagreement. Advanced learners produce both turninitial and nonturn-initial disagreements and these are immediate as well as distal with regard to the source of the disagreement. Also, advanced learners show the use of various types of hedges and their disagreements are syntactically mapped in ways that allows them to develop ‘discursively thick’ arguments, for instance by means of [if . . . then . . .] formats and other types of clause-combining patterns. Their disagreeing turns comprise prefaces of various types and are regularly backed up by means of accounts, exemplifications or other arguments. Also, advanced learners use format-tying techniques for articulating the disagreement turn to the source of the disagreement, be it in an immediately adjacent turn or at a
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distance. Through all these means, advanced learners demonstrate a capacity to accomplish aggravated disagreements as well as mitigated disagreements. In their interactions we observe an orientation toward the joint construction of knowledge or the resolution of an argument, which in many cases includes the nuancing of the oppositional stance and contrasts with the binary logic found with the lower-intermediate learners.
Documenting Change Across Time: A Critical Look at the Findings Summary of results In the preceding two sections, we analyzed selected excerpts documenting the techniques used by lower-intermediate and advanced learners, respectively, for accomplishing disagreements. Results show clear differences between the two groups, as well as a tight interrelation between linguistic and sequential means for organizing disagreement. The findings are summarized in Table 9.2. The advanced learners show a diversification of means for doing disagreement. The turn-initial ‘no’/’yes’ and ‘but-X’ types of disagreements that lower-intermediate learners use can still be found in the advanced learners data, but these are complemented by a range of other techniques. Most notably, disagreement prefaces and postdisagreement elaborations emerge. These are central to the speakers’ ability to manage the preference Table 9.2 Summary of techniques for doing disagreements: lower-intermediate vs. advanced learners Lower-intermediate learners
Advanced learners
Turn architecture
• Turn-initial positioning only
• Turn-initial + nonturninitial • Use of disagreement prefaces
Linguistic formatting
• Either ‘no’/’yes’ polarity markers or ‘but-X’ formats • No hedges, simple syntactic formats, but prosodic and postural embodiment
• Diversified disagreement marking devices • Regular use of hedges • Increased syntactic complexity
Discursive thickness
• Absence of elaborations
• Discursive elaborations: accounts, exemplifications, explanations
Articulation to source-turn
• Immediate • No special tying techniques
• Immediate + distal • Use of format-tying as a privileged tying technique
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organization of talk and to nuance or reinforce his or her stance. Linguistic and prosodic resources, in particular, are used to subtly shape disagreement prefaces so as to manage the preference organization of talk by displaying agreement while at the same time projecting an upcoming disagreement. Hedges, format-tying techniques and clause-combining patterns such as subordination or bi-clausal formats emerge that further allow for mitigation or reinforcement of the disagreeing stance, for a more and more subtle management of intersubjectivity and for the mutual coordination of actions across longer stretches of talk. These findings indicate a clear change, across the two groups of learners, in the methods for doing disagreement. But in how far can this change be taken as evidence for learning? Or is it a mere reflection of different communicative cultures at the two levels of schooling – and hence the trace of context-sensitive implementations of disagreements? Evidence for learning? When it comes to interpreting change across time as to how participants accomplish a given practice, we are faced with the problem that social practices are both context free and context sensitive (cf. Sacks et al., 1974: 699). This implies the need to differentiate, in the observable change of behavior, between what is evidence for development over time and what is evidence for context sensitivity, that is, variation due to local environment, co-participants and so on. If, for instance, we see learners in an initial stage of L2 learning manage disagreements with simple ‘no’ tokens, and at a latter stage with ‘yes–but’ turn formats, how can we exclude the possibility that the latter is simply due to different circumstances of interaction, calling for more mitigated disagreements, rather than reflecting interactional development? This difficulty is critically highlighted in the case where socialization processes are likely to affect the way people deal with talk-in-interaction at time X + 1 as opposed to time X. This is the case for our data. The communicative culture of the lower-secondary degree is not identical to that of the upper-secondary degree. Also, 13/14-year-olds tend to behave somewhat differently than 17/18-year-olds. For instance, in our data, we see the two groups talk about different things: football matches and clothing for the younger ones, the military and abortion for the older ones. From an etic (e.g. the researcher’s) perspective, one might argue that these topics imply very different social issues and interactional involvements. From an emic (i.e. the participants’) perspective, however, we see the lower-intermediate learners engage in talk about clothing or football no less intensely than we see the advanced learner engage in talk about abortion or the military. Excerpt 9.4, for instance, where Peter and Thomas were arguing about football matches, clearly showed strong
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involvement by the less advanced learners, but this involvement, rather than being expressed by linguistic means, was embodied in the use of prosody and gaze. In order to empirically demonstrate that the data unmistakably provide evidence for the development of L2 interactional competence, we have undertaken a comparison with French L1 classroom data as to two factors: turn-construction format (turn-initial vs. nonturn-initial) and sequential location of the disagreement (immediate vs. distal). The French L1 data are taken from classroom interactions involving speakers of the same age as our lower-intermediate L2 learners, within the same context of lowersecondary education. Given this convergence in age and in institutional setting, the L1 data provide a reference against which the impact of L2 development vs. communicative culture or age can solidly be measured. As shown in Table 9.3, results clearly indicate that the change we observe actually does reflect interactional development. The lower-intermediate L2 learners’ behavior in disagreements clearly differs from the L1 speaker’s of the same age/context. By contrast, the general picture for L2 advanced learners is much closer to the L1 students, both showing a diversified range of turn-constructional techniques as well as the use of both immediate and distal disagreement. The general tendency shown in Table 9.3 for our L2 speakers is congruent with earlier fi ndings by Bardovi-Harlig and Salsbury (2004) who, in a longitudinal study of adult ESL learners (see section Disagreement in talk-in-interaction), showed a developmental sequence leading from strong disagreements mainly expressed by means of ‘no’ toward the postponement of disagreement components within a turn (i.e. what we call ‘yes–but’ pattern), and even within a sequence of turns (see our notion of distal disagreement). Table 9.3 Sequential positioning of the disagreement component: L2 and L1 L2 lower intermediate (lower secondary) (a) Immediate (i) Turn-initial
L2 advanced (upper secondary)
L1 (lower secondary)
100%
90%
95.8%
98.3%
68.3%
73.6%
(ii) Nonturn-initial
0%
16.7%
16.7%
(iii) Others*
1.7%
5%
5.5%
(b) Distal
0%
10%
4.2%
Total
100% (n = 60)
100% (n = 60)
100% (n = 72)
*The category ‘others’ comprises cases which, in terms of the action they accomplish, can be read as disagreements, and are oriented to by co-participants as such, but are very indirect. These are mostly made up of rhetorical questions that express an oppositional stance (e.g. ‘don’t you think our army becomes ridiculous if we don’t buy those airplanes?’, as one of our students puts it).
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Based on the quoted findings, we conclude that our comparison between less advanced and more advanced L2 speakers provides evidence for L2 interactional development in terms of a diversification of participant’s methods, and of an approximation to how L1 speakers tend to accomplish disagreements in many contexts. While this development may partially reflect a process of socialization that cannot be reduced to language learning, it includes language learning as one of its central components (cf. Hall, 1993; Kramsch, 2002; Pallotti, 1996; Wootton, 1997). The striking uniformity of the L2 techniques for doing disagreement at the lower-intermediate level, as opposed both to advanced L2 and to L1, is sign of a less advanced interactional competence, while the diversification of methods observed with the advanced learners is sign of a more elaborated competence. In sum, we draw three main conclusions from our findings as regards the change in how disagreements are accomplished: • The advanced learners’ use of ‘yes–but’ types of turn-construction formats bears testimony to their increased sensitivity for the preference organization of talk as described by Pomerantz (1984) for L1 speakers. The advanced learners show an ability to manipulate the sequential positioning of the disagreement component that has been documented in earlier research also for adult L2 learners (Bardovi-Harlig & Salsbury, 2004). • Their use of post-disagreement accounts and explanations concurs with findings on L1 oppositional talk (Heritage, 1988: 132), showing their increased ability to scaffold their disagreements. • Their use of format-tying techniques both in immediate and in distal disagreements indicates the advanced learners’ growing capacity to monitor the linguistic details of co-participants’ talk, and their ability to create something new on the basis of other participants’ words. The diversification of both sequential and linguistic means for accomplishing disagreements provides evidence for L2 development (or: learning) in terms of developing methods for participating in social action, based on a complex interplay between linguistic resources, sequential placement and turn-constructional techniques. The diversification of these methods is a central component of a growing interactional competence, as it provides for the speakers the possibility to adapt to the local circumstances of talk.
Beyond Disagreement: Implications for Our Understanding of L2 Interactional Competence and its Development In this chapter, we have set out to document some aspects of the development of interactional competence in an L2. We have focused our study on a single actional microcosm, namely the accomplishment of
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disagreements. This analytic focus has allowed us to zoom in onto participants’ methods for action (including such resources as linguistic forms, sequential organization, turn-constructional formats) within a well-delimited frame and to trace the development of these methods through systematic comparisons between these microcosms at two different moments in development. This provides one methodological solution to the problem of tracking the development of interactional competence across time. We would like to conclude by bringing up what we see as three major implications of the findings reported in this chapter for understanding L2 interactional competence. First, the findings show that learners do not simply transfer their interactional competence from one language to the other, merely developing the linguistic forms needed to accomplish specific interactional tasks. Rather, when learning an L2, learners recalibrate their ‘methods’ for accomplishing actions – including the linguistic means to do so. This provides one possible answer to the question, what is evidence for L2 learning? Learning (broached here in terms of products of learning; we have not looked at learning processes as they are inscribed in the moment-tomoment deployment of talk-in-interaction), as we have shown, can be evidenced in systematic changes in participants’ interactional methods for accomplishing recurrent and situated social actions. Accordingly, the development of interactional competence can be understood in terms of a diversification of methods for accomplishing talk-in-interaction, which is a crucial condition for the speaker’s capacity to deal with the local contingencies of talk. Second, progression in interactional competence centrally implies the increased capacity for context sensitive conduct, that is, the ability to adapt one’s methods for action to the local contingencies of talk. The diversification of participants’ methods that we have observed between two levels of proficiency is instrumental for the participants’ ability to respond in more and more context-sensitive ways to the ever-changing contingencies of talk-in-interaction. The new methods that emerge therefore also embody a change in the participants’ way of dealing with the preference organization of talk-in-interaction. Third, the development of interactional competence involves the increased capacity to use the L2 in order to deal with projections. The advanced learners have developed various kinds of disagreement prefaces by means of which they project upcoming disagreements. This is convergent with Hellermann’s (2008) findings on the emergence of story prefaces and other prefatory talk with more advanced learners. We consider that the growing ability to project upcoming actions is a central component of interactional competence. These projections are tools by which speakers contribute to the mutual coordination of talk-in-interaction (cf. Goodwin, 2002; Sacks et al., 1974), warranting the recognizability, by co-participants, of
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what they are about to do next. The ability to foreshadow what comes next by means of projections is part of the L2 speaker’s increased capacity to participate in L2 talk-in-interaction. These elements provide the grounds for understanding the development of L2 interactional competence in terms of the increased diversification and local efficacy of speakers’ methods for dealing with L2 talk-in-interaction. But what about the details of language? L2 interactional competence involves not only the use of the L2 as a resource for coordinating actions and for dealing with the local contingencies of talk-in-interaction. It also – and centrally – involves the capacity to monitor the linguistic details of co-participant’s talk. Learners, just like native speakers, need to monitor not only the contents of other speakers’ talk but also the actions accomplished by that talk. They orient to the detailed lexical, syntactic and prosodic features of co-participants’ talk as a basis for turn-taking (Sacks et al., 1974), for tying parts of talk to other parts of talk (Sacks, 1992) or for projecting relevant next actions (Auer, 2005). This orientation is the sine qua non for their participation in social interaction. It is by closely monitoring the linguistic shaping of each other’s turns at talk that speakers are able to coordinate their actions with others, and to make the relation of their actions to others’ actions recognizable. This has been evidenced in our data in the advanced learners’ use of format-tying techniques, which provides just one point in case for a substantial fact: The details of language (as much as the details of gesture, posture, gaze and the cross-cutting dimensions of sequential organization of actions or precision timing) are integral parts of the methods members use to get their interactional work done. As such, they are also an integral part of interactional competence. Learning the details of the L2 can hence be seen as a central part of L2 interactional development, understood as the elaboration of contextually sensitive methods of ‘doing things’. Symbols used in transcripts [] onset, and, if relevant, end of overlap = intra- and inter-turn latching & turn continuation after overlap (.) (. .) (. . .) unmeasured (micro-)pauses up to ca. 1s (1.5) measured pause, in seconds etcut-off si: lengthening of preceding sound quelle? rising intonation vieux. falling intonation enfant, continuing intonation parle accentuation NON increase in volume
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.h °la musique° >et ça < (non) (xxx) ((laughing)) + *
in-breath soft voice faster slower uncertain hearing unintelligible stretch of talk transcriber’s comment on a stretch of talk marks the onset of the stretch of talk to which a transcriber’s comment refers indicates the moment of onset of non-verbal actions (gaze, body movement and gesture) that are noted on a separate line
in the translation line: he did dotted underlining indicates stretches of talk that are produced in L1 Swiss German DET determiner NEG negation particle INF infinitive (verb-form) 2SG second person singular (verb-form) Notes 1.
2.
3.
4.
The analyses presented in this chapter have greatly benefited from three data sessions with colleagues, held in Neuchâtel and Luxembourg. We thank the participants to these sessions for their inspiring input. We are grateful to Joan Kelly Hall and John Hellermann for their insightful comments on an earlier version of this chapter. Most importantly, we thank Virginie Fasel Lauzon and Fee Steinbach Kohler for many critical discussions on the data, for help with the data collection, the transcriptions and the establishment of collections of disagreement sequences across the database. This study is part of a larger research project (‘TRIC-L2: Tracking interactional competence in a second language’), subsidized by the Swiss National Science Foundation for the period 2010–2012 (subsidy no. 100012_126860/1). The term ‘actional microcosm’ allows us to avoid the notoriously underdetermined notion of ‘practice’, which is commonly used to refer to speakers’ doings at very different levels of granularity, ranging from the opening of tasks or of stories (e.g. Hellermann, 2008), to the participation in revision talk (e.g. Young & Miller, 2004), through practices of turn-taking or repair. The data have been collected within the framework of the research project ‘Discourse-organizational competence in L1 and L2: learning, teaching, evaluating’ that has been generously subsidized by the Swiss National Science Foundation for the period 2006–2009 (subsidy no. 405640-108663/1). Characterizing L2 speakers as learners is problematic, as L2 speakers do not necessarily (always) behave as learners (for a critique of so-called ‘etic’, a-priorist characterizations of participants in L2 interaction, see Firth & Wagner, 1997). For the sake of clarity, we nevertheless speak of ‘lower intermediated learners’ and ‘advanced learners’ each time we refer to one of these
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two (institutionally anchored) groups as a whole (‘advanced speakers’ would sound odd). In the data analysis we designate the L2 speakers as ‘participants’, ‘speakers’ or simply by their names (pseudonyms). We have presented a more detailed discussion of this excerpt in Pekarek Doehler and Pochon-Berger (2010: 129–130).
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Chapter 10
Becoming the Teacher: Changing Participant Frameworks in International Teaching Assistant Discourse E.F. RINE and J.K. HALL
Introduction Studies employing conversation analysis (CA) in second language (L2) environments have revealed the myriad interactional resources L2 speakers use to create and index membership in L2 communities, and in particular, L2 classrooms (Kasper, 2004; Lee, 2004; Markee, 2000, 2004, 2005; Mori, 2002, 2004a, 2004b; Seedhouse, 2004). Findings have revealed in microanalytic detail such tools for accomplishing the work of classrooms as examples (Lee, 2004), repair practices (Hellermann, this volume) and error correction (Koshik, 2002). Studies have also shown how individuals use actions to construct and manage particular social roles on a turn-byturn basis. Wong (2005), for instance, revealed how a teacher and students used explicit error correction in classroom talk in order to co-construct the roles of ‘expert’ versus ‘novice’ speaker, a method also reported by Liebscher and Dailey-O’Cain (2003) in a German-as-a-foreign-language classroom. While earlier CA studies of L2 interactions examined actions constructed primarily in talk, more recent research describes a variety of actions accomplished through a wide range of modalities in addition to vocal cues such as gesture and body movement, and facial expressions such as gaze (Carroll, 2004; Hellerman, 2005; Mondada, 2006; Mori & Hayashi, 2006; Olsher, 2004). Additionally, CA studies of L2 discourse, both in and out of the classroom, have shown how even less proficient language users are able to skillfully construct their participation in talk by, for example, recycling turn-beginnings to solicit attention and gaze by their interlocutors (Carroll, 2004), precision-timing their entry into conversations (Carroll, 2000) and completing a turn through ‘embodied completions’ (Mori, 2004b; Mori & Hayashi, 2006; Olsher, 2004). 244
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With the discovery of this much wider range of interactional resources available to participants in talk, recent CA research on L2 interactions has turned to investigating how individuals learn to use these interactional resources. As Markee (2007, 2008) and Kasper (2006) have pointed out, one of the main issues confronting those using CA to examine learning is how to describe the object of learning. The idea of reframing learning in terms of interactional resources rather than linguistic form is a radical departure from the work of ‘mainstream’ SLA researchers who ‘view the object of inquiry as in large part an internal, mental process’ (Long, 1997: 319). From an ethnomethodological perspective, ‘knowledge’ is viewable in the ways individuals configure particular interactional resources in the accomplishment of recurrent actions of particular practices; learning is considered to be the ‘systematic and structural change’ (Brouwer & Wagner, 2004: 32) in the display of such knowledge. Although the number of studies using CA to investigate learning is limited, research has uncovered some information regarding how individuals develop particular interactional resources over time. Young and Miller (2004), for example, drew on situated learning theory and the concept of legitimate peripheral participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991) in order to show learning as changes in participation patterns of an undergraduate student as he moved from peripheral to fuller participation in the process of doing revision talk with his teacher. Nguyen (2004, 2006, 2008) also reported developments in the interactional repertoires used by two students as they partook in a pharmacy internship. She demonstrated that the two pharmacy students showed evidence of learning in the areas of sequencing, topic management and participant frameworks (PFs). For example, both students learned to transition more smoothly between actions, which Nguyen attributed to an increased competence in the sequencing of actions. They also learned to more strategically position themselves as ‘experts’ with clients and during advice-giving sequences. Other studies have used CA to show learning through the integration of specific linguistic items into individuals’ interactional repertoires (Hellermann, 2007; Markee, 2000, 2008). Markee (2008), for instance, showed how one particular student integrated the word prerequisites into his interactional repertoire of resources for preparing university course descriptions in English over a period of two days. During this time the course instructor and the student first co-constructed the definition of the word prerequisites in class. Then, through explicit correction and instruction, the student used the word on his own. Hellermann (2007) also looked at how six beginning adult ESL students accomplished opening sequences in dyadic tasks over a period of at least two years. He observed that students took a particularly ‘unusual’ phrase used by the teacher (‘what is your book?’) in an earlier task and integrated it creatively into their own language in subsequent dyadic work. He also showed how one student
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co-opted a particular phrase used by a previous task partner in subsequent pair-work as a means to solicit a new task partner. To date, most studies using CA to examine learning have documented individuals’ appropriation of linguistic cues into their interactional repertoires. Few, however, have documented learners’ development of extralinguistic cues. Fewer still have linked specific cue development to the appropriation of social roles (but see Nguyen, 2004). It is to this particular area that the current study contributes.
Literature Review CA and participant roles Rather than the term ‘identity’, we use the term ‘participant roles’ to describe the social roles individuals create for themselves and others in talk. Using CA to investigate participant roles allows CA practitioners to see what roles the participants themselves consider to be relevant to a particular context and the ways in which those roles are invoked in situ (Hall, 2004; Mori & Zeungler, 2008). Thus, CA practitioners do not make distinctions between some type of internal, core identity and an external identity visible to the world. Nor do they automatically assign participants to a given social category unless there is evidence in the data itself that the participants themselves are orienting to those categories (e.g. student, teacher). For example, Jacoby and Gonzales (1991) showed in their study of a university physics research team that a particular participant role relationship, such as that of EXPERT–NOVICE, is a dynamically co-constructed achievement in which participants invoke and ratify one another’s social positioning on a moment-to-moment basis rather than on an activity or contextual basis. Thus, although the lead professor of a physics team might generally be considered an ‘expert’ compared to his research assistants, within a given interaction lower ranked members of the team may position themselves, or be positioned, as experts in a given knowledge domain as the situation arises as well as position the ‘expert’ as ‘novice’ within that domain (Jacoby & Gonzales, 1991). In order to construct a particular participant role on a moment-bymoment basis, individuals utilize particular interactional resources at their disposal, which entail both linguistic and extralinguistic cues. One way that these resources have been talked about in the literature to describe how individuals embody particular social roles is through the concept of PFs.1 PFs are made up of the different social roles individuals adopt and manage in interactions. The invocation of appropriate participant roles in a given practice is extremely important for participating both competently and recognizably in that practice. As such, negotiating participant roles
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has been identified as an important aspect of interactional competence (Hall, 1993, 1999; Young, 2000, 2003). While many researchers have discussed the concept of PFs (e.g. Brown & Gilman, 1972; Hanks, 1996; Silverstein, 1976), the most influential work in this area has been done by Erving Goffman (1981). Goffman’s work, particularly in footing, has been instrumental in conceptualizing the primarily verbal ways in which people make alignments between themselves and others in conversation. Goffman’s work disputes the notion of a conversation as simply between a speaker and a hearer, and instead illustrates how individuals’ roles shift according to how they orient to what is being said. A ‘speaker’ can be the animator, principal or the author at any point in the conversation, while the role of ‘hearer’ is also multifaceted and can represent a participant as ratified or unratified. The more recent work of Charles Goodwin (2007a, 2007b) on interactive footing has both problematized and extended Goffman’s work in ways more aligned with CA by looking at how the participants in a conversation actively orient to one another both verbally and nonverbally as the conversation unfolds in sequence. Goodwin (2007a) maintains that while Goffman provided a complex picture of the speaker, he relegated the role of the hearer as ‘cognitively simple’, with only a few categories (e.g. Addressee, Overhearer). Thus, Goffman’s model ‘cannot provide the analytic resources necessary to describe how participants build utterances and action by taking each other into account within an unfolding process of interaction as talk unfolds, i.e. the essential mutual reflexivity of speaker and hearer(s)’ (Goodwin, 2007a: 45). Interactive footing, on the other hand, looks at how all the participants in a conversation actively orient to one another both verbally and nonverbally as the conversation unfolds. Therefore, the speaker is no longer positioned as the center of the activity, but as part of the emerging dynamic framework co-created by all the participants. For instance, Goodwin (2007b) presented an example of a father helping a daughter with her homework. Goodwin argued that by coupling his answer with a pointing gesture to the correct answer while gazing down to where he was pointing, and then back up to his daughter to make sure she was co-orienting to where he was pointing, the father was able to make sure he and his daughter were creating a field of mutual coparticipation to the activity at hand. In sum, we know from the vast CA literature and studies of interactive footing (Goodwin, 2007a, 2007b) that becoming interactionally competent, and embodying the social roles to do so, includes more than the incorporation of linguistic items into one’s interactional repertoire. It also includes the appropriation of nonverbal actions such as gesture, gaze and body positioning. In the study we report on here, we use the precise microanalytic tools that CA affords to show how one International Teaching Assistant (ITA) learns to build on and use the interactional resources at his disposal to become more recognizable in the role of teacher over time,
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thereby indexing his increasing interactional competence in performing the role of an ITA. Constructing the role of teacher ITA research has shown that part of becoming a competent ITA involves the ability to take on and cultivate a teacher presence through the development of pedagogical skills (Hoekje & Williams, 1994; LoCastro & Tapper, 2006; Morgan, 2004). The pedagogical skills involved in becoming a competent teacher involve creating the right atmosphere, facilitating student understanding of the material, managing the classroom and developing a teacher presence (Axelson & Madden, 1994). The first dimension of skills, ‘creating the right atmosphere’, has been described as building rapport with students and creating a supportive, inclusive and interactive environment (Axelson & Madden, 1994; Bailey, 1983, 1984; McKeachie, 2002; Nelson, 1989; Rounds, 1987; Stevens, 1989). ‘Facilitating student understanding of the material’ entails the organization of classroom lessons, including presenting lectures clearly and in an organized manner by emphasizing keywords, using examples to illustrate points, chunking information into logical segments, providing transitional and framing statements to help students follow the lecture, and linking information in the lecture to past and future information to situate it for students (Axelson & Madden, 1994; Halleck & Moder, 1995; Hoekje & Williams, 1994; McKeachie, 2002; Nelson, 1989; Rounds, 1987), ‘Managing the classroom’ involves the ability to open and close a lecture, make announcements in the class, defer students’ questions to another time and manage student turn taking (Axelson & Madden, 1994; McKeachie, 2002). The fourth dimension of effective teaching skills, ‘developing a teacher presence’, entails the management of teacher and student roles in the classroom. Morgan (2004) has referred to this as ‘teacher identity as pedagogy’, meaning that teachers dynamically co-construct their identities in the classroom with students based on past and current experiences and expectations of what it means to be a teacher and ‘do’ teaching. According to Eble (1983) and Stevens (1989), a ‘teacher presence’ is ‘bound up in dramatic energy – the mask of confidence and demeanor the instructor assumes as he faces his students’ (Stevens, 1989: 189). Researchers interested in ITA identity have noted the delicate conditions faced by ITAs in negotiating the role relationships between themselves and their undergraduate students (LoCastro & Tapper, 2006; Unger-Gallagher, 1991). Unger-Gallagher (1991), for example, conceptualizes the complex roles that an ITA must negotiate while trying to helm an interactive classroom and while trying to explore the different personas that can be taken on during this process of negotiation. Unger-Gallagher argues that within a ‘traditional’ classroom setting, the metaphor of the
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teacher’s role is that of teacher as commander. In these classrooms, the teacher is the disseminator of knowledge who controls the agenda and information flow in the class, and they are the allocators of turns. In contrast, in a more progressive classroom setting the metaphor of teacher as conductor is more common. In this environment, the goal of the conductor is to make interaction occur ‘more easily and fluidly’ between individuals (UngerGallagher, 1991: 276). This is accomplished by lessening control over turnallocation and of the types and amounts of questions and topics that can be broached in discussion, thereby de-emphasizing the power differential between teacher and students. In LoCastro and Tapper (2006), a study of ITA identity construction, the researchers reveal how five ITAs created and negotiated their identities as teachers with their students in order to highlight or offset preconceptions the students had of their identities as ITAs. LoCastro and Tapper found that the ITAs’ identities as teachers were not predetermined entities but ones that were co-constructed with students in a classroom over time through an integration of their personal experiences with expectations of US undergraduates. For example, one ITA commented that while her students expressed that they only wanted her to teach them what was on the test, she would not do that although she knew that the pressure to get good grades was part of the US education system and teaching to the test was a pedagogical norm. Instead, she chose to add words of encouragement and motivation to learn beyond what was needed for the test whenever they complained. Both articles argue that ITAs need practice performing in the teacher role as an important part of the training process. However, no study has examined the specific behaviors that comprise such performances and thus make ITAs more recognizably teacher like. Nor has any study examined the development of these behaviors. This is the focus of this chapter. Specifically, we present research on one ITA’s development of behaviors typically associated with the role of a teacher through his participation in one particular interactive practice, the dialogic lecture, in an ITA training course.
Interactive Practice: The Dialogic Lecture Interactive practices are ‘culturally-mediated moments of face-to-face interaction whereby a group of people come together to create and recreate their everyday social lives’ (Hall, 1993: 145). Much like speech events (Hymes, 1974) or communicative events (Saville-Troike, 2003), interactive practices contain certain kinds of recurrent actions marked by particular verbal (e.g. change in tone or key, use of particular opening or closing phrases) or physical boundaries (e.g. change in participants, participant roles) to indicate when they have started and ended (or interrupted) and another practice has begun.
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The interactive practice of interest in the current study is that of the dialogic lecture, which is one type of academic lecture and is one of the most important pedagogical practices in university life. The academic lecture has been called ‘the central ritual of the culture of learning’ (Benson, 1994: 182). Academic lectures come in many styles but, as Goffman (1981) writes, ‘Traditionally, a [academic] lecture has been considered an institutionalized extended holding of the floor in which one speaker imparts his view on a subject using a slightly impersonal style’ (Goffman, 1981: 165). The language of the interactive academic lecture tends to be more conversational in style, using colloquialisms, personal pronouns to acknowledge audience members, and especially direct engagement with the audience members themselves (Biber, 2006). It is this engagement with the audience that marks this style of academic lecture as an interactive one. The dialogic lecture is a particular kind of interactive lecture in which the teacher tries to get the students involved in the lecture itself through questions-and-answers, debate and so on, and attempts to develop a rapport with the students (Bamford, 2005; Morell, 2004, 2007). Rine (2009) described the structure of the dialogic lecture as constituted in the classroom in terms of six primary macro-sections, each of which is loosely comprised of particular recurrent action sequences. These six macrosections are the opening, review, lecture, pre pre-closing, pre-closing and closing. Figure 10.1 illustrates a template of the architecture of the dialogic lecture. Included are the recurrent sequence types of each macro-section, which have been designated as mandatory (i.e. they occur in every instance of the dialogic lectures reviewed), conditional (i.e. sequence types only occurring in cases in which other actions co-occur with it) and optional (i.e. sequence types that may or may not occur in each of the dialogic lectures). Closing the dialogic lecture There are generally three sections that involve the closing of the dialogic lecture. They are the pre pre-closing, the pre-closing and the closing sections. These sections mark a noticeable shift in the organization and content of the lecture in that the actions projected in the sequences of each section no longer involve new information about the content of the lecture topic itself, but generally serve to transition out of the content of the lecture and eventually out of the activity of the lecture. The pre pre-closing2 section is made up of a series of single-action sequences. Single-action sequences are quite common in academic lectures; in fact, research into academic lectures and presentations has shown that, unlike in everyday conversation, the regular turn-taking mechanisms are suspended (Bamford, 2005; Goffman, 1981; Rendle-Short, 2006). In these situations, the main speaker – the instructor – may hold the floor for an extended period of time without interruption, at least in the portions
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I. Opening A. Greeting@ B. Plan of Action (Announcement) II. Review A. Pre-Announcement of IRF* B. Initiation-Response-Follow-up Sequence III. Lecture A. Repeat plan of action (RPOA) (Announcement) B. Pre-Announcement of IRF* C. Initiation-Response-Follow-up Sequence IV. Pre Pre-Closing A. Single-Action Sequences 1) End of Lecture@ 2) Summary@ 3) Take-away point* 4) Homework* 5) Previews Next Lecture* V. Pre-Closing A. Opens Floor to Questions (Offer-Accept/Decline)@ B. Question-Answer sequence* VI. Closing A. Delayed Offer-Accept/Decline sequence* B. Ending@
*Indicates actions that are optional @ Indicates actions that are conditional
Figure 10.1 Architecture of the dialogic lecture (Rine, 2009: 85)
not open to audience participation. In Rine (2009), the pre pre-closing sequences took the form of an END OF LECTURE announcement, a SUMMARY of the lecture, a TAKE-AWAY point of the lecture, assignment of HOMEWORK and a PREVIEW of the next lecture. The pre pre-closing section can be thought of as the ‘housekeeping’ portion of the lecture in that it provides a space to make any announcements about the class that are separate from the lecture content itself. Some of these sequences, such as the PREVIEW of the next lecture or assigning of HOMEWORK, can be likened to Button’s (1987) sequence-type arrangements, which he shows to be typical of closings in everyday conversation. Arrangements orient to
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conversation-in-a-series (Button, 1985) by serving as a ‘last topic’ of a conversation and thus render further topics unnecessary for the time being in the current conversation. Borrowing the term from Schegloff and Sacks’ (1973) canonical article on conversational closings, the pre-closing section serves as a possible gateway to a closing sequence in that it makes relevant the initiation of a closing sequence or allows another to initiate a new topic without breaking topic coherence (Schegloff & Sacks, 1973). The pre-closing in the dialogic lecture consists of at least one, although sometimes more, sequences. The first sequence is that of an OFFER-ACCEPT/DECLINE sequence. Unlike in everyday conversation, in which a pre-closing is typically marked by words like ‘well’, ‘okay’ and ‘so’ with a downward intonation contour (Schegloff & Sacks, 1973), in the dialogic lecture a pre-closing is marked by the teacher offering the floor to the audience to ask questions about the lecture topic (Rine, 2009). In Excerpt 10.1, we see one possible trajectory for a pre-closing sequence. Excerpt 10.1 Pre-closing sequence 129 X: homework today. and (.) next week we will start 130 in two dimension motion? do you guys have any 131 question? 132 (2.3) 133 okay if any questions please come to see my 134 office hour’ (.) it should be in the (.) website
OFFER DECLINE
In this excerpt, an initial OFFER of the floor is made (‘do you guys have any question’, lines 130–131) but is declined through silence (2.3 second pause) in line 132, which makes a shift to the closing section possible. The other sequence types that may occur in this section are conditional on the floor being taken up by other individuals who choose to ask questions, and thereby constitute various QUESTION–ANSWER sequences. The closing is the final section of the dialogic lecture and comes after the pre-closing section. It is bounded by either applause at the end or silence. Transitioning to the closing is sequentially dependent on a declination of the floor in the pre-closing. The closing section is comprised of two possible sequences, a DELAYED OFFER OF THE FLOOR and an ENDING. A delayed offer of the floor is an optional component of the closing section that was only found in one lecture within the corpus. Like other arrangements (Button, 1987), it describes a situation in which the teacher offers students the opportunity to bring questions to him at a later time, such as during office hours. The second sequence in the closing section is the ENDING3 sequence, which is comprised of one or two moves. The first move is always a verbal terminal move. There may be no second move, or the second move may be
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applause (Rine, 2009). An example of this sequence type using two moves is illustrated in Excerpt 10.2. Excerpt 10.2 Leave-taking sequence with two moves 133 X: okay if any questions please come to see my ACK/OFFER 134 office hour’ (.) it should be in the (.) website 135 and the (.) of this class you can check it by 136 yourself’ (.) and have a good day (.) +goodbye ENDING 137 x: +looks down at notes 138 + (0.8) ++ 139 x: [++ smiles 140 SS: [((clapping)) APPLAUSE In this excerpt, we see a verbal ENDING in the form of ‘goodbye’ and a response consisting of applause by the audience (line 140). In sum, the dialogic lecture is a particular type of interactive practice that is one type of academic lecture and is one of the most important pedagogical practices in university life. It is organized by sections comprised of a number of recurrent sequences. The focus of this study is on the sections and sequences involved in closing the lecture. In what follows, we show how one ITA becomes more interactionally competent at closing a lecture as a teacher, rather than student, would, as evidenced by the ways he uses the linguistic and extralinguistic resources at his disposal to make himself more ‘teacher-like’ in his actions.
The Study The ITA course from which the data for this study comes was called American Oral English for International Teaching Assistants. This course is the third in a three-course series designed for nonnative Englishspeaking international graduate students to provide them training in the academic discourse of being a teaching assistant in their respective departments. Students must receive an A in this course before they are permitted to begin active teaching duties in their departments. In the course, the students are required to give four mini dialogic lectures to the class over the course of the semester. During these simulations, the ITAs are asked to perform as if they were teachers in a classroom. To investigate changes in PFs, we performed a microanalysis of the pre pre-closing and closing sequences of the ITA’s dialogic lectures. Data collection The ITA whose behavior is the focus of the study is a Chinese male named Xu.4 At the time of data collection, Xu was a second-year graduate
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student in the Physics department. In addition to Xu, there were 11 other students in the course and one instructor. These students were members of several different departments in the fields of science and engineering. The course instructor, Tabitha, was an experienced ESL teacher in her late 20s and a first-year PhD student at the time of data collection. Data were collected during the summer 2007 semester. In the summer session, the class met four days a week for 75 minutes each day over a period of eight weeks. This totaled approximately 40 classroom contact hours over the eight-week period. The data were collected via videotaping. The corpus of videotaped data consists of all 40 classroom contact hours, as well as office hours sessions, and a 30-minute postevaluation exam. Of the more than 40 hours of data collected, a smaller subset of data was used in the present analysis. Because the interactive practice under investigation is the dialogic lecture, each instance of Xu engaging in the simulated practice of lecturing dialogically was selected and transcribed. Occurrences of student simulations of the dialogic lecture were determined by the course instructor’s directions; therefore, we looked only at instances in which the instructor gave directions to ‘teach dialogically’ and did not impose judgment of whether the teaching was dialogic or not. In the directions for each of the dialogic teaching tasks, students were instructed to take on the role of the teacher by ‘develop[ing] rapport with students through thoughtful language usage – encouraging student participation, integrating student responses, acknowledging correct answers, and clarifying incorrect or semi-incorrect answers.’5 Additionally, based on the teacher’s instructions to the students, as well as the written instructions and evaluation form for the activity (see Appendices 2 and 3), the students were instructed by the teacher verbally in class to ‘have a strategy for making sure students are “with you” and “prepare several questions to ask students to find out what they understand”’. While these verbal strategies for interacting with students were highlighted, additional organizational devices were stressed as well to improve lecture clarity. In the evaluation forms6 used by the course instructor during each of the lectures, students were graded on their ability to make lecture introductions, closings, transitions and verbally organize their lectures (i.e. verbal road-mapping). Finally, the role of nonverbal cues in interacting with students was also emphasized. On the evaluation forms, the ITAs were evaluated on their ability to use eye contact, gestures and body language to build rapport with students. In total, there were four instances of Xu performing the dialogic lecture over the course of the semester, which we refer to as Dialogic 1 (D1), Dialogic 2 (D2), Dialogic 3 (D3) and Dialogic 4 (D4). The first lecture (D1) is presented in a slightly different format than subsequent lectures; in D1, Xu is one of four presenters of the lecture. In this lecture, Xu and his three other group members were assigned the lecture topic of ‘motivating
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Table 10.1 Data Subset of Xu’s Dialogic Lectures Lecture
Date recorded
D1
July 13, 2007
Length in minutes 5:24
D2
July 20, 2007
7:17
D3
August 10, 2007
6:17
D4
August 15, 2007
9:50
students in the classroom’. The group was permitted to divide the teaching roles in any manner they wanted under the restraint that the entire lecture be no longer than 15 minutes and that they teach dialogically. In this lecture, Xu was the second of four lecturers. In lectures D2 through D4, Xu was the only lecturer. Table 10.1 provides information on the length and date of each of the four dialogic lectures. The first three dialogic lectures were done during classroom time and the fourth lecture took place during the postevaluation exam, although the format of the fourth lecture mirrored those of the prior three, including having postevaluation raters act as students in the class. Methods Selection of focal sections
In this study, we focus our analysis only on changing PFs in the sequences used to end the lecture, specifically the sections Rine (2009) has termed the pre pre-closing and closing sections of the dialogic lecture. While Rine showed that a pre-closing section of a lecture can exist, it was not focused on in this chapter because it was not a section that appeared in every lecture and was therefore not one in which change was easily documented. We chose to focus on the closing sections of the lecture because they serve as the boundary between two ‘keyed’ frames. Keying is ‘a set of conventions by which an activity already meaningful in terms of some primary framework is transformed into something patterned on this activity but seen by participants as something quite else’ (Goffman, 1974: 43–44). Here, the activity of teaching dialogically has already been keyed in terms of the primary framework of a classroom activity occurring within the larger ITA course; thus, the closings between the dialogic lecture and the regular activities of the ITA course allow us a view from the ‘rims’ (Appel, 2007: 286), or boundaries, between these two frames, in which shifts between different participant roles may become relevant. Identification of the lecture boundaries
To identify the boundaries between the end of the lecture and the next activity, we identified the sequences in which other class members oriented
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to the fact that the lecture had ended by, for example, clapping. Also signaling the end of the lecture was the instructor’s verbal indication that another speaker could begin. Identification of participant frameworks
In order to identify the different PFs enacted in the discourse during the dialogic lecture, like Nguyen (2004), we looked turn-by-turn at what Xu was doing, and asking, ‘At this moment, what participant role is the speaker projecting for him/herself and for others?’ (Nguyen, 2004: 293). Evaluating the participant roles on a turn-by-turn basis afforded us the opportunity to let the particular roles relevant to the interaction emerge from the data itself rather than have us impose pre-specified categories, such as ‘teacher’ or ‘student’. The particular linguistic items that emerged which indexed particular participant roles were those of personal pronouns, deictic references (e.g. ‘this class’), verbs indicating beliefs about membership or knowledge of something (e.g. ‘I know’, ‘you are’) and other linguistic resources conventionally linked to the roles of teacher and student. For example, in Excerpt 10.3, Xu explicitly orients to his and his classmates’ roles as students in the ITA course by referencing the course instructor and her beliefs about their collective experiences as students in the ITA course. Excerpt 10.3 D1 79 X: (.) and the last thing is that (.) not only (.) 80 you need to let students know your expectation 81 (.) however the most important thing is you need 82 to make them to believe (1.0) it is realistic 83 for them (.) for example at the beginning of the 84 118 Tabitha said all of ↑us will be is good 85 enough to pass the this 118? and get all get a 86 (.) and that’s kind of (0.9) to:: made us to 87 believe’ that his- her- expe- expectation is 88 realistic for us. so that’s an example [(.) so: now 89 n: [nods
← ← ←
In line 84 Xu makes a direct reference to what Tabitha, the course instructor, ‘said’ (line 84) for all of ‘us’, the students, (line 84) to pass ‘this 118 [course]’ (line 85). Additionally, the use of inclusive ‘us’ (lines 84, 86, 88) indicates that Xu is orienting to both the other classmates and himself as students in the ITA course. With regard to nonverbal cues, we looked at participants’ gaze, body positioning, such as how Xu’s torso was positioned vis-à-vis the other participants, and spatial arrangements, such as where Xu stood vis-à-vis the other participants in the class.
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Development in participant frameworks
After identifying the instances of Xu’s orientation to the PFs of teacher and student, we arranged all of the transcripts chronologically so that we could see orientations to each participant role in the order of when they occurred in each lecture. This allowed us to look for verbal and nonverbal changes in Xu’s orientation to a particular participant role over time. Findings Evidence of Xu’s increasing orientation to and recognizability in the role of ‘teacher’ versus ‘student’ was observed in two areas: (1) increasing use of teacher-specific actions in the pre pre-closing sequences and closing ENDING sequences, and (2) spatial and nonverbal orientation to the ‘teacher’ space. Teacher-specific actions: Pre pre-closing sequences
In the case of teacher-specific actions involving pre pre-closing sequences, we found that, over time, the number of student-oriented references Xu made in the pre pre-closing section of the lecture decreased while the number of teacher-oriented references increased. In D1 (Excerpt 10.3), we first see Xu shift between the roles of teacher and student. In lines 117–118, Xu initially refers to the next lecturer as a ‘speaker’, which treats the activity as a student presentation in the ITA class. However, he then shifts his orientation to that of a teacher role in lines 118–119 when he states that the next ‘speaker’ will discuss ‘how we treat the grades and how to motivate students.’ The use of inclusive ‘we’ indexes himself and the audience members as teachers because teachers deal with ‘grades’ and students are referred to as ‘the students’ rather than ‘us’ or ‘we students’. Excerpt 10.4 D1 113 X: so if they have their own choice (.) they will 114 be (.) more interested in your homework (.) 115 however definitely you cannot (.) let them 116 choose their exam ºI mean I don’t need to 117 explain whyº (.) and the next our another 118 speaker will talk about ↑how: we treat the 119 grades and how to motivate students (.) by 120 respond to their work 121 +(1.0) 122 x: +starts to walk back to his seat 123 X: +welcome Nianzu 124 x: +indicates to Nianzu 125 Ss: ((clapping))
← ←
In D2 (Excerpt 10.4, line 194), as in D1, Xu refers to the next person coming up to lecture as a ‘speaker’ rather than a ‘teacher’, thereby indexing
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his orientation to his and his peers’ roles as students performing a teacherassigned task. Excerpt 10.5 D2 185 anything else? 186 +(2.4) 187 x: +looks around room 188 X: +okay:. (.)+ ++ +++so’ (.) ++++let’s get started 189 x: + turns away looking down at desk 190 x: ++picks up notes from desk 191 x: +++turns to face audience 192 x: ++++starts walking back to desk 193 Ss: ((cla + pping)) 194 X: + welcome the next speaker.
←
In the third and fourth lectures (D3 and D4) we can see changes in Xu’s actions that reflect an orientation to the role of a teacher who is ending a lecture in a class, as would be the case in a typical university classroom, rather than ending a student presentation. Excerpt 10.6 D3 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137
X:
X:
x:
138 139 x: 140 ss:
there (.) ss- (0.9) and (1.4) so:: I think it’s a good place to stop. (.) so today we talk about the gravity we talk about how object move (.) and the influence of gravity. the ↑only information you need to remember today is that (.) in the so called ideal world. (1.3) (trust/just) the gravity regardless of the (0.5) how heavy you are or (.) the mass of the (.) object you are studying. so (0.9) we have no homework today. and (.) next week we will start in two dimension motion? do you guys have any question? (2.3) okay if any questions please come to see my office hour’ (.) it should be in the (.) website and the (.) of this class you can check it by yourself’ (.) and have a good day (.) + goodbye + looks down at notes +(0.8) ++ [++ smiles [((clapping))
END OF LECTURE SUMMARY TAKE AWAY
HOMEWORK PREVIEW
OFFICE HRS
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Excerpt 10.6 reveals several ways that Xu orients to the teacher role. He performs four actions that typically come at the end of the lecture (lines 120–121): he summarizes the lecture (lines 121–123), offers a main ‘take away’ point7 of the lecture (lines 123–128), announces that there is no homework assignment for the day (lines 128–129) and previews the lecture for ‘next week’ (lines 129–130). The ‘end of lecture’ announcement and summary of the lecture are two actions that are not unique to the end of a teacher’s lecture in that they may also come at the end of a student presentation. Xu’s orientation to the teacher role is shown by the action of giving homework, previewing the next lecture and announcing office hours. His reference to homework shows a clear orientation to his role as a teacher because, in the classroom, only the teacher has the authority to assign homework. Furthermore, the preview of the next lecture indicates an orientation to the teacher role because it positions the present lecture as one in a series of classes throughout the semester, what Button (1985, 1987) has called ‘orient[ation] to conversation-in-a-series’. This stands in contrast to both individual student presentations, which are not typically given in class every week, and Xu’s earlier reference to the next ‘speaker’s’ topic, rather than ‘teacher’s’ topic, in Excerpt 10.4. Likewise, in lines 133–134, we see Xu extending an offer to the other members of the class to bring questions to his office hours (lines 133–134). In the offer, he refers class members to the ‘website’ (line 134) of the ‘class’ (line 135), where they can find his ‘office hours’. Typically, the language of course instructors, such actions exemplify Xu’s clear orientation to the teacher role rather than any shifts between that and the student role. Excerpt 10.7 D4 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201
X:
SU: X:
SU:
so (1.6) let’s (0.5) wrap up that n- today we talk about that (0.5) the one dimensional motion under the influence of the gravity. (.) and one thing you need to remember is that in a so called ideal world which we don’t have (0.8) any air surround us’ (0.7) the (0.5) gravity applied from any mass = mhm = = will be identical. (.) they will not have no difference at all that’s what we need to remember today. (0.6) so (.) we don’t have homework this week (.) and next week we will study the two dimensional motion (.) under the influence of the gravity. (.) so two dimensional will be means that it can move either in left and right and then move up and down together. (.) so we will study then next week (.) um (1.6) yeah as I said no homework so it’s (.) enjoy your weekend’ so see you next week. goodbye (1.2) thank you
END OF LECTURE SUMMARY TAKE AWAY
TAKE AWAY HOMEWORK PREVIEW
PREVIEW HOMEWORK ENDING
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In the pre pre-closing of the final lecture, D4, shown in Excerpt 10.7, we see a marked increase in both the number of announcements made to the class as well as an increase in the teacher-specific nature of the announcements made. Specifically, we see in that, in addition to the pre pre-closing sequences of the end of the lecture, a general summary of the lecture, and a ‘take away’ point, Xu assigns homework for ‘next week’ (lines 191–192, 197–198), and previews ‘next week’s’ lecture (lines 192–194, 196–197). These references to future expected meetings between him, as the teacher, and his students, as well as assigning homework, indicate a clear orientation to the role of teacher rather than student. Changes in Xu’s use of teacherspecific actions across the four lectures are depicted in Table 10.2. Teacher-specific actions: Closing ENDINGS
A second area in which increases in teacher-specific actions were observed is that of leave-taking actions in the closing section. The main sequence in the closing section is an ENDING by the teacher. In the first two lectures (D1 & D2), rather than taking leave of the class, which is what is expected to happen at the end of a class, the ITA introduces the student who is giving the next part of the lecture. Excerpt 10.8 D1 113 X: so if they have their own choice (.) they will 114 be (.) more interested in your homework (.) 115 however definitely you cannot (.) let them 116 choose their exam ºI mean I don’t need to 117 explain whyº (.) and the next our another 118 speaker will talk about ↑how: we treat the 119 grades and how to motivate students (.) by 120 respond to their work 121 +(1.0) 122 x: +starts to walk back to his seat 123 X: +welcome Nianzu 124 x: +indicates to Nianzu 125 Ss: ((clapping))
←
Table 10.2 Development of increasing use of teacher-specific actions in pre pre-closing announcements D1:
PREVIEW
D2:
SUMMARY
D3:
SUMMARY – HOMEWORK – PREVIEW – OFFICE HOURS
D4:
SUMMARY – HOMEWORK – PREVIEW
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As we see in Excerpt 10.8, in D1, the transition out of the activity through closing ENDING actions begins with a one-second pause (line 121), during which time Xu begins walking back to his seat (line 122). Following the pause, and while walking back to his seat, Xu welcomes the next ‘speaker’ by name (line 123). The combination of Xu’s ‘welcome’ in conjunction with his movement back to his seat indicates this ‘welcome’ as a terminal move meant to end his participation, although potentially also as a beginning move as well for the next ‘speaker’. Excerpt 10.9 D2 185 X: anything else? 186 +(2.4) 187 x: +looks around room 188 X: +okay:. (.)+ ++ +++so’ (.) ++++let’s get started 189 x: +turns away looking down at desk 190 x: ++picks up notes from desk 191 x: +++turns to face audience 192 x: ++++starts walking back to desk 193 Ss: ((cla+pping)) 194 X: + welcome the next speaker. ← In D2, shown in Excerpt 10.9, Xu still welcomes the next ‘speaker’ (line 194), although he does not call him by name, possibly because he does not know who specifically will be teaching after him. After making an offer to open the floor to questions, which is responded to by silence (lines 185– 196), Xu picks up his notes and says ‘let’s get started’ (line 188). The tense used suggests that he would be starting the lecture section imminently. However, no additional lecturing comes after this statement, and that the audience orients to this statement as some sort of ‘end of lecture’ statement though their applause strongly suggests that the use of the present tense is an unconscious grammatical error. Following this statement, Xu makes a closing ENDING by welcoming the next ‘speaker’ (line 194). By the third lecture (D3), there is no explicit orientation to other upcoming speakers, only a verbal ENDING of the class by wishing them a good day and saying goodbye, which we can see in Excerpt 10.10, line 136. Excerpt 10.10 D3 133 X: okay if any questions please come to see my 134 office hour’ (.) it should be in the (.) website 135 and the (.) of this class you can check it by 136 yourself’ (.) and have a good day (.) +goodbye 137 x: +looks down at notes
←
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x: ss:
+(0.8) ++ [++ smiles [((clapping))
Finally, in D4, not only does Xu not make explicit reference to upcoming presenters while he ends the class, he makes reference to fact that he will see these students ‘next week’ (Excerpt 10.11, line 199).
Excerpt 10.11 D4 194 gravity. (.) so two dimensional will be means that 195 it can move either in left and right and then 196 move up and down together. (.) so we will study 197 then next week (.) um (1.6) yeah as I said no 198 homework so it’s (.) enjoy your weekend’ so see 199 you next week. goodbye
← ←
The absence of these explicit references in the third and fourth dialogic lectures is significant. Because suspending reality to embody the role of the teacher in one’s own classroom is one of the pedagogical goals of the activity, that Xu does not orient to the fact that there is someone giving a ‘presentation’ after him is considered evidence of positive development. Additionally, the overt references to it being a class in which Xu is the teacher, such as references to seeing the students next week, is also evidence of positive development in his performance of the role of teacher. Spatial and nonverbal orientation to teacher space
The last area of change takes place through embodiment of space and nonverbal language of the teacher. Research has shown robust evidence that the position of the teacher at the front of class is the canonical image associated with someone being perceived as a teacher (McGregor, 2004; Stevens, 1989; Van Tartwijk et al., 1998). Therefore, by learning to embody this ‘power spot’ (McLaren, 1986), one increases his or her recognizability as teacher. In addition, research has shown that maintaining gaze with an interlocutor is one of the primary means for establishing rapport and signaling engagement in a conversation (Goodwin, 1981) and is important for building and maintaining rapport with students (Stevens, 1989). In the first and second lectures, (D1 and D2) Xu appears to physically embody the role of a student. In both lectures, he begins walking away from the front of the class back to his seat as he introduces the next speaker, with body turned to the side and gaze averted (Excerpt 10.12, line 122; Excerpt 10.13, line 192).
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Excerpt 10.12 D1 113 X: so if they have their own choice (.) they will 114 be (.) more interested in your homework (.) 115 however definitely you cannot (.) let them 116 choose their exam ºI mean I don’t need to 117 explain whyº (.) and the next our another 118 speaker will talk about ↑how: we treat the 119 grades and how to motivate students (.) by 120 respond to their work 121 +(1.0) 122 x: +starts to walk back to his seat 123 X: +welcome Nianzu 124 x: +indicates to Nianzu 125 Ss: ((clapping))
263
← ←
Excerpt 10.13 D2 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194
X: x: X: x: x: x: x: Ss: X:
anything else? +(2.4) +looks around room +okay:. (.)+ ++ +++so’ (.) ++++let’s get started + turns away looking down at desk ++picks up notes from desk +++turns to face audience ++++starts walking back to desk ((cla+pping)) +welcome the next speaker.
Figure 10.2 D1 ENDING
← ←
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This body positioning and gaze are also represented in Figures 10.2 and 10.3. In Figure 10.2, Xu is already walking around the desk with his gaze averted and body turned as he is about to end class by taking leave. In Figure 10.3, his body is completely turned to the side and he is halfway back to his seat when he takes leave. By the time of the third lecture, Xu remains at the front of the class during the verbal ENDING, although during this time he also averts his gaze as he says goodbye (see Figure 10.4). Excerpt 10.14 D3 133 X: okay if any questions please come to see my 134 office hour’ (.) it should be in the (.) website 135 and the (.) of this class you can check it by 136 yourself’ (.) and have a good day (.) +goodbye 137 x: + looks down at notes 138 + (0.8) ++ 139 x: [++smiles 140 ss: [((clapping))
← ←
As can be seen in Excerpt 10.14, during the verbal ENDING (line 136), instead of demonstrating engagement with the class members, Xu looks down when saying goodbye (line 137). Only after a 0.8 second pause, does he look up at the audience and smile, thus demonstrating some engagement with them. Thus, while Xu remains in the physical space at the front of the class facing the audience while performing the closing ENDING, his
Figure 10.3 D2 ENDING
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Figure 10.4 D3 ENDING
averted gaze signals that he is not totally engaged with the audience. Figure 10.4 illustrates Xu’s body and gaze positioning as he takes leave.
Excerpt 10.15 D4 194 X: gravity. (.) so two dimensional will be means that 195 it can move either in left and right and then 196 move up and down together. (.) so we will study 197 then next week (.) um (1.6) yeah as I said no 198 homework so it’s (.) enjoy your weekend’ so see 199 you next week. goodbye 200 (1.2) 201 SU: thank you
←
By the time of the fourth lecture, Xu appears to have fully taken on the role of the teacher. In lines 198–199, Xu performs a verbal ENDING by telling students to ‘enjoy your weekend’, that he will ‘see you next week,’ and ‘goodbye.’ Unlike in previous lectures, however, during this verbal ENDING, not only does Xu remain in the physical space at the front of the class with his body positioned in front of the audience, he performs the verbal ENDING while maintaining eye contact with the class as well (see Figure 10.5). These changes in body positioning and gaze over the course of the four dialogic lectures indicate Xu’s development in the use of spatial and gestural resources that indicate an orientation to the role of teacher.
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Figure 10.5 D4 ENDING
Conclusions In this chapter, we have shown that PFs are dynamically co-constructed in interaction and that, within the PF of TEACHER–STUDENT, Xu showed changes in orientation to his role as teacher. Changes in Xu’s orientation were found in two areas: (1) increasing use of teacher-specific actions in both pre pre-closing sequences and closing ENDINGS and (2) spatial and nonverbal orientation to the ‘teacher’ space. These changes provide positive evidence that Xu’s behaviors became more recognizably teacherlike over the course of the semester, which was one of the primary pedagogical goals of the activity and of the course as a whole. These findings contribute to the literature in two main areas. First, the current study adds to the increasing body of literature interested in using CA to investigate learning. More specifically, the use of CA as an analytical tool has allowed us to examine the changing role of nonverbal cues in addition to verbal cues that are used to accomplish teaching dialogically. One example of the nonverbal resources ITAs develop to embody the role of teacher is changing awareness of and orientation to ‘teacher space’. As was discussed earlier, the role of ‘teacher’ has been strongly linked in the literature to the image of the teacher in front of the classroom facing the students (McGregor, 2004; McLaren, 1986; Van Tartwijk et al., 1998; Wubbels & Brekelmans, 2005). One of the pedagogical goals of the ITA course was for the students to take on the role of teacher and become more recognizably ‘teacher-like’. The changes in Xu’s body positioning and gaze
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during the course of the semester are fairly compelling evidence of his success in learning to take on the role of teacher. When combined with changes in how Xu verbally performs the ENDING actions to actively shift orientation from the role of student to the role of teacher, the totality of Xu’s actions provides strong evidence that learning is embodied and that attention to changes in nonverbal cues is crucial to study of learning. More generally, the fi ndings provide evidence that links changes in spatial orientations to changes in particular PFs. A second area to which this study contributes is ITA development and evaluation in that the findings reveals development of interactional competence in areas not traditionally focused on in ITA programs. That is, although researchers have noted the importance of ITAs embodying the role of teacher and balancing that role in juxtaposition to the role of student, the literature has not explored what such competence entails. As we saw here, teaching dialogically includes appropriate use of interactional resources such as gesture, gaze and teacher-specific language. Thus, we urge ITA programs to expand their curricular and assessment foci to include the myriad resources comprising the interactional competence needed for effective teaching. In doing so, we can help shift the pedagogical focus away from erasing ITA linguistic deficits to expanding their pedagogical repertoires. Notes 1. 2.
3.
4. 5. 6. 7.
The concept of participant frameworks has also been referred to in the literature as participation structures (Hall, 1993; Philips, 1972), and participation frameworks (Goffman, 1981; He & Young, 1998; Young, 2000). The pre pre-closing section should not be confused with Schegloff’s (1980) reference to ‘preliminaries to preliminaries’. Schegloff discusses ‘pre pres’ as ‘preparing or securing the recognizability and understandability of what will be referred to . . .’ in the presequence that will project the next action (Schegloff, 1980: 115). However, the sequences in the pre pre-closing section here do not serve to secure information for the pre-closing, but rather stand on their own as actions. In fact, as Rine (2009) has shown, sequentially what marks this section as a pre pre-closing is its sequential positioning after any of the new lecture content has been presented but before the lecture end. However, the pre pre-closing sequences do not secure information to project any pre-closing offers of the floor. In Rine (2009), the second closing sequence is referred to as a LEAVE TAKING SEQUENCE rather than ENDING sequence. However, based on further discussions, the term has been changed here to reflect the more general nature of the terminal move(s) in the closing. Pseudonyms were used for all participants in the study. The instructions for dialogic teaching task D2 is included in Appendix 2. The evaluation form used for D2 can also be found in Appendix 3. A ‘take-away’ point is a piece of information or statement that the instructor deems the most important point of the lecture to remember.
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Appendix 1 Transcription Notations Notation
Example
Meaning
Open square brackets
[You
Overlapped talk begins
Colon
uh:
Lengthened speech
Hyphen
but-
Cut-off speech
Capital letters
NOT
Louder speech
Underline
and
Emphasized speech
Equals symbol
so =
Latching speech
Parentheses
(it)
Uncertain transcription of utterance
Series of x’s
(xxxx)
Unintelligible speech marked by syllables
Italicized text in double brackets
((laughing))
Nonverbal actions not accompanying speech
Period encased in parentheses
(.)
A pause < two-tenths of a second
Number encased in parentheses
(1.3)
Pause length > two-tenths of a second
Period
.
Falling intonation
Apostrophe
has’
Slightly rising intonation
Question mark
?
Rising intonation
Up arrow
↑
Higher pitch begins
Down arrow
↓
Lower pitch begins
Degrees symbol around text
ºbutº
Softer speech
Period followed by hhh
.hhh
Audible inhalation
hhh followed by period
hhh.
Audible exhalation
Small text preceded by one or more plus signs
+smiles
Indicates nonverbal actions coupled with talk
One or more plus signs before or after talk
+I said+
Indicates start or end to coupled nonverbal action
Unknown speaker name followed by colon
SU:
Indicates exact speaker is unknown
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Appendix 2: Dialogic Lecture (D2) Instructions Teaching task #2: Explaining a concept dialogically In this activity, you will select another concept from your Case Study and will teach this concept dialogically (interactively) with your classmate using the kinds of interactive strategies we have been exposed to throughout the semester. You will have 7 minutes for this Teaching Task. Because you must teach dialogically, you should be very aware of timing issues. As we have learned, you should have a ‘well-marked roadmap’: Relate this concept to what you probably would have done previously. Present a brief preview. Organize your content logically. Use organizational markers throughout. End in an appropriate fashion. To accomplish this task, you are expected to: (1) (2)
(3)
Integrate student participation – teacher-initiated questions, studentinitiated questions and any other form of student activity. Develop rapport with students through thoughtful language usage – encouraging student participation, integrating student responses, acknowledging correct answers and clarifying incorrect or semicorrect answers. Use recovery tactics in case of difficulties.
As we have stressed the importance of appropriate pronunciation of key words, this assignment requires you to collect relevant vocabulary words again. On the lines below, write any words that are important and/or common when describing this concept that are difficult for you to pronounce. 1.______________ 2.______________3.______________ 4._________ 5.______________ 6.______________7.______________ 8._________ 9.______________ 10._____________11._____________ 12.________ Consult a dictionary or speaker. Identify primary stress and reduced syllables.
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Part 2: Development of L2 Interactional Competence
Appendix 3: Dialogic Lecture Evaluation Form Evaluation sheet (dialogic teaching) 100 points Name: _________________________ Language skills (40 points): Pronunciation (out of 15) _____ Words/Sounds to work on: Fluency (out of 15) _____ Comprehensibility (out of 15) _____ Presentation skills (20 points): Introduction (out of 5) _____ Use of transitions & verbal road-mapping (out of 5) _____ Clarity (out of 5) _____ Conclusion (out of 5) _____ Interactive teaching skills (40 points): Asking questions (What kinds of Q types are used? Are they varied?) (out of 10): _____ What Qs (including Y/N, closed answer Qs): Qs that guide Ss learning (What does this mean? What’s a reason for this?): Comprehension checks (Is everyone with me?): Clarification requests (Could you say that again?): Responding to students’ Q & A (Providing feedback to Ss responses; Responding clearly to Ss questions? Doing Clarification requests; Relating Ss responses instructional focus?): (out of 10) _____ Body language (eye contact, gestures, body position) (out of 10): _____ Eliciting students’ responses (Encouraging Ss to answer your questions; getting Ss involved; wait time) (out of 10): _____ Additional comments:
