Studying Speaking to Inform Second Language Learning

by Diana Boxer (Editor), Andrew D. Cohen (Editor)

Overview

In a series of studies specially written for this volume, Studying Speaking to Inform Second Language Learning offers the applied linguist research on spoken interaction in second and foreign languages and provides insights as to how findings from each of these studies may inform language pedagogy. The volume offers an interweaving of discourse perspectives: speech acts, speech events, interactional analysis, pragmatics, and conversational analysis.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781788920285
Publisher:	Multilingual Matters Ltd.
Publication date:	05/11/2004
Series:	Second Language Acquisition , #8
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Diana Boxer is Professor and Chair of Linguistics at the University of Florida and author of several books. Andrew D. Cohen is Professor in English as a Second Language Program, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis and author of several books.

Diana Boxer is Professor and Chair of Linguistics at the University of Florida and author of several books.

Andrew D. Cohen is Professor Emeritus from the University of Minnesota. He is currently living in Oakland, VA. He was a Peace Corps Volunteer in rural community development with the Aymara Indians on the High Plains of Bolivia (1965-67). Cohen taught in the ESL Section, UCLA (1972-1975), in Language Education at the Hebrew University (1975-1991), as a Fulbright Lecturer/Researcher at the PUC, São Paulo, Brazil (1986-87), and as professor of L2 Studies, University of Minnesota (1991-2013). During his Minnesota years, he was a Visiting Scholar, University of Hawaii (1996-7) and Tel Aviv University (1997), and a Visiting Lecturer, Auckland University, New Zealand (2004-5). He co-edited Language Learning Strategies with Ernesto Macaro (Oxford University Press, 2007), co-authored Teaching and Learning Pragmatics with Noriko Ishihara (Routledge, 2014, with translations into Japanese, Korean, and Arabic), authored Strategies in Learning and Using a Second Language (Routledge, 2011), and most recently published The Learning of Pragmatics from Native and Nonnative Language Teachers (Multilingual Matters, 2018). He has also published many book chapters and journal articles. Copies of most of his papers are available for download on his website: https://z.umn.edu/adcohen.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Studying Speaking to Inform Second Language Learning: A Conceptual Overview

DIANA BOXER

This chapter provides a conceptual overview of the intersection of two sub-fields of Applied Linguistics: Discourse Analysis and Second Language Acquisition. I review several theoretical perspectives on how the analysis of spoken discourse can inform what we know about the various processes of language learning and testing. Three frameworks are discussed herein: (1) Language Identity; (2) Language Socialization; and (3) Sociocultural Theory. Moreover, a major focus of this introduction is an overview of methodological approaches to studying spoken discourse in language learning contexts. The 12 chapters that comprise the present volume are placed into their theoretical and methodological frameworks.

Introduction

The past 30 to 40 years have witnessed the emergence of the field now known as Applied Linguistics. Indeed, in this relatively short time, we have seen the birth and growth of the sub-field of Applied Linguistics known as Second Language Acquisition (SLA), now in its adolescence. At the same time, there has been an enormous proliferation of literature in the realm of Discourse Analysis (DA), including the ethnography of communication, or speaking (ES), Interactional Sociolinguistics (IS), Conversation Analysis (CA), and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). These two strands of research, discourse studies and SLA research, have only recently begun to intersect. This fact holds true despite the belief held by many that SLA and DA can and should inform each other. While it is true that some recent research in SLA has begun to glean insights from the various approaches to the analysis of spoken discourse, there is much more to be studied that can lend theoretical illumination and practical applications to second language (L2) learning and pedagogy. By studying how language users employ their language(s) in a variety of contexts, with a variety of types of interlocutors, and on a variety of topical issues, students, teachers, and scholars can create curriculum, materials, and assessment instruments based on something more substantive than the intuitions of mother tongue users. Given the state of affairs of a highly developed DA and a highly developed body of research in SLA, it is timely to put forth a collection of articles that closely connects these two thrusts in Applied Linguistics. In so doing, we demonstrate the value of studying spoken discourse as it can be applied to language learning contexts. Such is the intention of this volume.

Background

It would be unfair and indeed untrue to categorically state that spoken interaction has been overlooked in the relatively brief history of research in L2 studies. A fair amount of early SLA research as well as more current investigations have studied speaking to ascertain the interactional features so important to language learning (e.g. Gass & Varonis, 1985; Hatch, 1978; Long, 1983; Pica, 1988; Swain, 1985). This research thrust views conversation from the perspective of negotiated interaction, either between native speakers and learners (NS-NNS) or between two or more learners (NNS-NNS). This kind of interaction encourages language learners to stretch their linguistic abilities in L2 by means of checking their understanding of the discourse until mutual competence is achieved.

Studies in negotiation of input and production of comprehensible output have been taken by some as a narrowly defined psycholinguistic approach to acquisition. A notable example of this stance is Firth and Wagner (1997). At a colloquium that took place at the International Association of Applied Linguistics (AILA) meetings in Jyväskylä, Finland, in 1996, Alan Firth and Johannes Wagner opened up a very interesting and controversial debate on this very issue, in which they called for a reconceptualization of SLA in order to address what they saw as an imbalance biased toward a cognitive perspective on SLA that neglected social interactional perspectives. Their major claim is that SLA research has by and large viewed L2 development from a purely psycholinguistic point of view, with learners traversing an "interlanguage" continuum that has, at its hypothetical end point, the abstract notion of the idealized "native speaker." Movement toward the "target" proceeded along the linguistic dimensions of phonological, morphological, syntactic, lexical, and semantic growth. Pragmatic considerations have been studied in terms of "interlanguage pragmatics," a concept viewing the acquisition of norms of appropriate speech behavior largely through a lens of movement from L1 norms to L2 norms, with particular attention to pragmatic transfer. Few would deny the usefulness of these perspectives in amassing a body of knowledge on how additional languages are developed, with attention to the various levels of linguistic competencies.

However, since the beginning of this rich body of research in Applied Linguistics amassed over the past 40 years, the world has become a very different place. While it remains true that English continues to be the world's lingua franca with regard to commerce, trade, and diplomacy, it is now the case that communication in the English language occurs, more often than not, among speakers none of whose first language (L1) is English (see McKay, 2002, for a good overview of this phenomenon). The issues of "native speaker," "learner," and "interlanguage" have consequently changed from how they were seen in early SLA research.

Given this proliferation of "Englishes," Firth and Wagner proposed three major changes in SLA research, including: "(a) a significantly enhanced awareness of the contextual and interactional dimensions of language use, (b) an increased emic (i.e. participant-relevant insider perspective) sensitivity towards fundamental concepts, and (c) the broadening of the traditional SLA data base" (Firth & Wagner, 1997: 286). The proposal caused quite a stir among applied linguists, giving rise to rebuttals by such SLA researchers as Michael Long, Gabriele Kasper, and others. In fact, the Modern Language Journal, one of the foremost venues publishing cutting-edge theoretical and data-driven work in the field, took the debate to print by publishing papers on both sides of the issue in 1997, following the 1996 panel presentations and debate in Jyväskylä. Because the theoretical perspectives on how to best study L2 learning remain controversial, it is worth taking up some of the principal arguments here that relate to how the study of spoken discourse can lend insight into the process of second language learning (see the Modern Language Journal, Vol. 81, No. 3, 1997 for a complete overview of the debate).

Regarding SLA research dating back some 20 years, to the 1980s, it is true that much of what was studied as "interactional" had, at its core, a psycholinguistic basis. Note that I use the term "basis" and not "bias," as did the strong oppositional perspective of Firth and Wagner. I take the point of view here that SLA, as a relatively young field, has grown dramatically since its early days. Most researchers in the field would not now deny that there are advantages in taking multiple perspectives on how the acquisitional process occurs. Michael Long, in his strong rebuttal of Firth and Wagner, conceded that multiple perspectives can certainly benefit the field: "... clearly it would be dangerous and counterproductive to succumb to a single paradigm at this early stage in the field's development" (Long, 1997: 319).

While it may be true that the groundbreaking work on studying the spoken discourse of negotiated interaction had its roots in the psycholinguistic sphere, other early work in SLA did indeed take into account more sociolinguistically relevant points of view: Labovian sociolinguistic perspectives on SLA (see, for example, the early work on variation and SLA of Tarone, 1985, 1988), accommodation theory perspectives on SLA (e.g. Beebe & Giles, 1984; Beebe & Zuengler, 1983), acculturation theory perspectives (e.g. Schumann, 1978, 1986), and classroom discourse and interaction perspectives (e.g. Kramsch, 1985; Mehan, 1979; Stubbs, 1983).

The arguments in defense of psycholinguistic perspectives on SLA research are cogently outlined in Kasper's rebuttal (1997) in which it is clear from the title of her piece that " 'A' stands for acquisition." Kasper takes up Firth and Wagner's critique of the three fundamental concepts in SLA research noted above: (1) native speaker, (2) learner, and (3) interlanguage. She argues that dropping the "A" in SLA results not in study about the developmental process of language learning but in the study of language "use" as opposed to "acquisition." Kasper states:

If the "A" of "SLA" is dropped, we are looking at a much wider field of second language studies, which spans as diverse endeavors as intercultural and cross-cultural communication, second language pedagogy, micro- and macrosociolinguistics with reference to second languages and dialects, societal and individual multilingualism, and SLA. (Kasper, 1997: 310)

It is difficult to take issue with this perspective. Indeed, the wider arena of L2 studies incorporates research that diverges from the cognitive and psycholinguistic and ventures into the realm of studying contexts of language interaction in which, in Kasper's own words, learners "... construct their own identities and those of their respective others ..." (p. 311). Kasper points out that the field of SLA has indeed seen more and more research of an ethnographic nature that clearly analyzes language learning in context and from an emic point of view. These studies, however, are not about the acquisitional process from a cognitive perspective but are about L2 issues that focus on identity, insider — outsider perspectives, and issues of what it means to be a language user in a world of increasing globalization.

There are many applied linguists who have argued for a broadening of perspectives on SLA to include increased social interactional and contextual points of view. These researchers and the work that they represent continue to press for a body of work in the field that takes into account what are now well-developed approaches stemming from the analysis of spoken discourse. Rampton (1997) is one important voice among this group whose arguments in the debate are both philosophical and sociopolitical. Consistent with Firth and Wagner's outlook, Rampton sees the current state of world globalization as necessitating new perspectives on what it means to be a language "learner" and "user." For him globalization presents an opportunity to take a postmodern view on issues such as communicative competence and speech community.

Indeed, language learning can no longer be seen as a purely cognitive phenomenon, as the issue of the native speaker is obfuscated in a shrinking planet (cf. Boxer, 2002b). When we speak about the acquisition of English as a second or foreign language, for example, we can no longer view it as an interlanguage with some "target" in mind. In his rebuttal of Firth and Wagner, Long also agrees with this inarguable fact when he states, "there are, however, of course, numerous multilingual settings in which most, even all, L2 users that a learner encounters will be other NNSs" (Long, 1997: 320). The issue, then, becomes, what it means to be a member of a "community of practice" (Le Page & Tabouret-Keller, 1985), rather than what it means to become or be a member of any particular "speech community." Rampton states:

in the discourses that one can call "postmodern," there is now much more of a preoccupation with fragmentation, contingency, marginality, transition, indeterminacy, ambivalence, and hybridity. ... In particular, it is now quite often suggested that being marginal is actually a crucial experience in late modernity ... [and] there are now many more scholars interested in how people negotiate and reconcile themselves both to otherness and incompetence, and this has implications for research on the teaching and use of additional languages. (Rampton, 1997: 330)

Thus, Rampton calls for a view of L2 research that departs from the earlier goal of SLA as guiding learners to become competent members of a new speech community. This perspective turns more traditional approaches to SLA research on their heads: "[SLA research] has generally shown very little interest in the context-sensitive, value-relevant, interpretive methodologies that fit more comfortably with late modern assumptions" (1997:330). Given this state of affairs and change in the air, if we construe SLA not as a question of striving toward some "target," the endeavor of L2 learning becomes transformed from the way in which it was previously seen. This new perspective is congruent with a view of the world as it presently exists: one of transnationalism and globalization. Given these arguments, the question facing applied linguists presently is: "How can we weave together a new view of talk-in-interaction research that can adequately inform L2 learning?

Theoretical Frameworks for Spoken Discourse and Language Learning

In order to adequately analyze the best means for applying findings on spoken language to SLA, we must assess the usefulness of existing theories, models, and frameworks for the processes involved in the development of spoken language ability in both first and second/additional languages. Three theoretical models offer fairly compatible insights into these processes: (1) Language Identity, (2) Language Socialization, and (3) Sociocultural Theory.

Language Identity

In the past several years there has been an increasing interest among applied linguists in the relationship between identity and second language development (e.g. Boxer & Cortes-Conde, 2000; McKay & Wong, 1996; Norton, 1997; Norton-Pierce, 1995; Pavlenko & Lantolf, 2000). These scholars have been interested in studying how incorporating an additional language and culture impacts on one's sense of who one is in the world. For immigrants, the issue of taking on a new and/or changed identity is a hallmark of one's linguistic and cultural development in the context of immigration. Even for those learning an L2 for more instrumental purposes, as the case with ESL/EFL as the world's lingua franca, adding a second language to one's verbal repertoire necessarily entails modifying one's self perception in relationship to others in the world. From this basic premise stems the relatively new heightened interest among applied linguists in Language Identity.

In their emphasis on "agency enhancement" and "identity enhancement," McKay and Wong (1996) focused on the importance of fluid and changing individual and social identities and their relation to multiple discourses (e.g. immigrant, minority, academic, gender). In this view, the identity of an individual in the process of second language learning is an extremely important consideration for such learning, affecting agency, a concept that differs from the traditional view of motivation. Agency enhancement derives from identities that afford learners a sense of power over their environment and thereby their learning.

In a somewhat parallel view, Norton (cf. Norton, 1997; Norton-Pierce, 1995) highlighted the importance of "investment enhancement" in her discussion of identity and its relation to language learning. Her 1995 piece described investment as the relationship of social identity to power differences between learners and mother tongue speakers: "An investment in the target language is also an investment in a learner's own social identity, which changes across time and space" (Norton, 1997: 411). In a similar vein, Pavlenko and Lantolf (2000) describe the process that immigrants go through when they confront and either appropriate or reject linguistic and cultural "affordances" of the new language and culture. Here, "affordances" refers to aspects of the new language and culture that have the potential to transform one's sense of self.

Boxer and Cortes-Conde (1997, 2000) put forth the concept of "relational identity" (RID), which differs from both individual and social identity. Relational identity is displayed and developed between and among specific interlocutors in their interactions over time. For language users and learners, relational identity reflects the comfort to build on sequential interactions that rest on rapport and solidarity. This relationship built between interlocutors leads naturally to further interaction and, consequently, increased opportunities for scaffolding and thus language development.

It seems likely that the first and foremost resource of those involved in additional language learning is social and interactional, involving face-to-face spoken discourse. Individuals involved in acquiring additional languages must grapple with fluid and shifting identities — individual, social, and relational — and come to terms with the power relations inherent in them. Whether or not those in the position of taking on new linguistic and cultural identities choose to appropriate or reject the "affordances" of the new language/culture may depend largely on the lived histories of the individuals, the contexts of their interactions, and the power relationships inherent in these contexts.

(Continues…)

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Table of Contents

Bio-statements
Part I: Theoretical Issues
1 Diana Boxer: Studying Speaking to Inform Second Language Learning: A Conceptual Overview
2 Dan Douglas: Discourse Domains: The Cognitive Context of Speaking
Part II: Studying Spontaneous Spoken Discourse to Inform Second Language Learning
3 Anne Lazaraton: Conversation Analysis and the Nonnative English Speaking ESL Teacher: A Case Study
4 Joan Kelly Hall: “Practicing Speaking” in Spanish: Lessons from a High School Foreign Language Classroom
5 Heidi Hamilton: Repair of Teenagers’ Spoken German in a Summer Immersion Program
6 Helena Halmari: Codeswitching Patterns and Developing Discourse Competence in L2
Part III: Studying Elicited Spoken Discourse to Inform Second Language Learning
7 Carrie Taylor-Hamilton: Giving Directions as a Speech Behavior: A Cross-cultural Comparison of L1 and L2 Strategies
8 Koji Konishi and Elaine Tarone: English Constructions Used in Compensatory Strategies: Baseline Data for Communicative EFL Instruction
9 Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig and Tom Salsbury: The Organization of Turns in the Disagreements of L2 Learners: A Longitudinal Perspective
10 Leslie M. Beebe and Hansun Zhang Waring: The Linguistic Encoding of Pragmatic Tone: Adverbials as Words that Work
Part IV: Studying Spoken Discourse to Inform Second Language Assessment
11 Annie Brown: Discourse Analysis and the Oral Interview: Competence or Performance?
12 Carsten Roever: Difficulty and Practicality in Tests of Interlanguage Pragmatics
13 Andrew D. Cohen: Assessing Speech Acts in a Second Language
Index