Interlanguage Pragmatics: Exploring Institutional Talk (Second Language Acquisition Research Series)

237 Pages·2005·13.68 MB·English

by  Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig

INTERLANGUAGE PRAGMATICS
Exploring Institutional Talk
Second Language Acquisition Research
Theoretical and Methodological Issues
Susan M. Gass and Jacquelyn Schachter, Editors
VanPatten • Processing Instruction: Theory,
Research, and Commentary
Tarone/Gass/Cohen • Research Methodology in Second
Language Acquisition
Schachter/Gass • Second Language Classroom Research:
Issues and Opportunities
Birdsong • Second Language acquisition and
the Critical Period Hypotheses
Ohta • Second Language Acquisition Processes
in the Classroom: Learning Japanese
Major • Foreign Accent: Ontogeny and
Phylogeny of Second Language
Phonology
MONOGRAPHS ON RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Gass/Mackey • Stimulation Recall Methodology in
Second Language Research
Yule • Referential Communication Tasks
Markee • Conversation Analysis
Dornyei • Questionnaires in Second
Language Research: Construction,
Administration, and Processing
OFRELATED INTEREST
Gass/Sorace/Selinker • Second Language Learning Data
Analysis, Second Edition
Gass/Selinker • Second Language Acquisition: An
Introductory Course, Second Edition
INTERLANGUAGE PRAGMATICS
Exploring Institutional Talk
Edited by
KATHLEEN BARDOVI-HARLIG
BEVERLY S. HARTFORD
Indiana University
LAWRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PUBLISHERS
2005 Mahwah, New Jersey London
The camera copy for the text of this book was supplied by the editors.
Copyright © 2005 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in
any form, by photostat, microform, retrieval system, or any other
means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers
10 Industrial Avenue
Mahwah, New Jersey 07430
www.erlbaum.com
Cover design by Kathryn Houghtaling Lacey
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Interlanguage pragmatics: exploring institutional talk / edited by Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig,
Beverly S. Hartford.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8058-4890-8 (cloth: alk. paper) — 0-8058-4891-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Discourse analysis—Social aspects. 2. Conversational analysis. 3. Pragmatics.
4. Interlanguage (Language learning) I. Bardovi-Harlig, Kathleen, 1955- II. Hartford, Beverly S.
P302.84.1584 2004
306.44—dc22
2004053192
Books published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates are printed on acid-free paper,
and their bindings are chosen for strength and durability.
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21
Contents
Introduction 1
Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig and Beverly S. Hartford
1
Institutional Discourse and Interlanguage Pragmatics Research 7
Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig and Beverly S. Hartford
2 Writing Center Interaction: Institutional Discourse and the Role of 37
Peer Tutors
Jessica Williams
3 Negotiating an Institutional Identity: Individual Differences in NS 67
and NNS Teacher Directives
Lynda Yates
4 Before, During, and After the Event: Getting the Job (or Not) 99
in an Employment Interview
Julie Kerekes
5 Discourse Strategies in the Context of Crossculrural Institutional 133
Talk: Uncovering Interlanguage Pragmatics in the University
Classroom
Catherine Evans Davies and Andrea E. Tyler
6 English for Specific Purposes and Interlanguage Pragmatics 157
Elaine Tarone
7 Using Moves in the Opening Sequence to Identify Callers 175
in Institutional Settings
Tara Leigh Gibbs
8 Practical Considerations 201
Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig and Beverly S. Hartford
Author Index 223
Subject Index 227
V
This page intentionally left blank
Introduction
Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig
Beverly S. Hartford
Indiana University
Discussions of research design in interlanguage pragmatics reveal a tension
between the desire for highly controlled production tasks that yield comparable
language samples and the desire to integrate the investigation of authentic
discourse into studies of interlanguage pragmatics. In spite of the interest the
field has expressed in authentic discourse, controlled elicitation tasks still
dominate data collection. This book introduces interlanguage pragmatics
researchers to institutional talk, talk that occurs in the course of carrying out an
institution's business, usually between an institutional representative and a
client. The collection and analysis of institutional talk—one form of authentic,
consequential discourse—meets the field's methodological requirements of
comparability, predictable occurrence of pragmatic features, high rates of
occurrence, and relative ease of data collection. Other advantages of exploring
institutional talk include the availability of participants for retrospective inter-
views and of consultants for interpretation. The investigation of institutional talk
can be used to study the influence of context, the interaction of pragmatic
features, the effect of timing and escalation, the comparison of goals and
outcomes, and acquisition of linguistic and pragmatic features. Institutional
settings also afford researchers the opportunity to observe the acquisition of
institutional rules themselves, which represent a microcosm of culture.
In order to explore these advantages fully, we have assembled previously
unpublished studies in this volume that address both interlanguage pragmatics
and institutional talk. Taken together, these studies demonstrate the benefits of
studying—the context of authentic and consequential talk—the traditional
variables of status, directness, social distance, imposition, and others typically
investigated in interlanguage pragmatics. Many chapters in this volume
introduce new concepts, thus expanding the range of interlanguage pragmatics
research beyond what can be investigated in production questionnaires.
Additional concepts that are investigated include trust, individual variation
across multiple turns and interactions, authority and equality (in balance to
dominance and solidarity), and discourse style. The chapters also challenge
readers to reconsider the primacy of the dichotomy between native speaker and
nonnative speaker. Importantly, these chapters demonstrate that success (and
lack of success) is found on both sides of this linguistic divide. We are hopeful
that these fine-grained analyses will contribute to a better integration of the
nonnative speaker in pragmatics research. The potential for extended analysis of
both native and nonnative pragmatics in authentic interaction helps place
emphasis on individual pragmatic strategies that are (un)successful which may
be more or less prevalent in one speaker group than another. This will lead to a
greater sophistication in our description of why native speakers may be more
1
2 Bardovi-Harlig and Hartford
successful, but avoids the pitfall of attributing "pragmatic competence" to native
speakers (NS) and "lack of pragmatic competence" to normative speakers
(NNS).
To this end, the studies reported in this volume are set in a variety of
institutions in which both NS and NNS participate as institutional represen-
tatives and clients. The range of settings investigated in this volume include a
university writing center, a university physics laboratory, a variety of secondary
school classrooms, an employment agency, and a four-star conference hotel. The
different settings show the importance of locating research in talk that native and
normative speakers actually perform. Speakers engage in talk in settings that are
important to them and studies of situated language observe people engaged in
talk in institutions which they frequent. This then eliminates the methodological
question of constructing relevant scenarios in elicitation tasks and provides the
opportunity to observe actual outcomes.
Cataloguing differences between NS and NNS is ultimately insufficient: We
must also understand which differences are important (Kasper, 1997). One way
to do this is to study outcomes. The study of consequential talk found in
institutions furthers that goal: Native and normative differences can be
understood in light of what pragmatic strategies seem to contribute to and which
seem to impede the interlocutor's success at the institution. Institutional events
have outcomes. An advising session may result in a signed registration form, a
writing tutorial may result in a better paper, an interview at an employment
agency may result in a job referral—or not. Outcomes viewed as endpoints are
not the only measure of success, however. There may be characteristics of the
encounter itself that indicate a felicitous or infelicitous interaction: how long it
takes to negotiate, what follow-up questions are asked during the encounter, and
speaker dominance, for example.
Whereas a predetermined research design may set up a dichotomy between
native and normative speakers, we may find by observing authentic interactions
that such a dichotomy is only one variable among many. The NS-NNS speaker
division may be less important than shared interests or common background,
education, job types, gender, as studied by Kerekes, individual styles,
investigated by Yates, or expertise, as discussed by Tarone and Gibbs. Some of
these differences in viewing the participants are evident in the descriptors used
by the various authors, including the familiar NS-NNS designation, as well as
NE (Native English) and L2 Writers used by Williams, and novice and expert
members of a discourse community, employed by Tarone and Gibbs.
Participants may also be referred to by their roles, such a student and teaching
assistant, as in the chapter by Davies and Tyler.
This volume is organized into eight chapters. The first chapter provides an
overview of research that has been done in interlanguage pragmatics in the
context of institutional talk. This is followed by six chapters that report on
studies conducted at institutions and that illustrate a number of advantages to
using institutional talk as a source of information informing the acquisition of
Introduction 3
L2 pragmatics. The volume ends with a chapter that addresses the practical
considerations of conducting research on pragmatics at institutions.
In the first chapter, "Institutional Discourse and Interlanguage Pragmatics
Research," we survey research in interlanguage pragmatics that is situated in
institutional talk. We argue the main thesis of the book, namely that institutional
talk is a rich setting for the investigation of interlanguage pragmatics, and that
such work/investigations can easily be accomplished in the framework of
interlanguage pragmatics. We review 13 studies that were available at the time
of this writing that illustrate the benefits of the approach. We demonstrate that
such studies can and do address the typical concerns of interlanguage pragmatic
analysis such as the realization of a range of speech acts, while at the same time
addressing concerns such as miscomrmmication, input, communicative success,
and conversational strategies.
In her chapter, "Writing Center Interaction: Institutional Discourse and the
Role of Peer Tutors," Williams studies 10 writing tutorials that take place
between four writing tutors and five students at a university. This design allows
each student to be observed in two tutorials with different tutors. Stimulated
recall interviews were also conducted. Williams reports that the input to the NE
and L2 writers is not always the same. There are both quantitative and qualita-
tive differences. Tutors produce more supportive interruptions of L2 writers, but
more advice for NS writers. Directives to nonnative speakers get more upgraders
than directives to native speakers. One possible explanation may be the effort on
the part of the tutors to facilitate L2 writer comprehension. This may also be a
factor in the simpler and more explicit directive forms that the tutors use with
these students. Though characteristics of both dominance and solidarity are
present in the writing center sessions, the data suggest that both participants
willingly take on nonreciprocal roles in their interaction. The balance is toward
tutor dominance and authority, as shown through turn length, floor management,
and their use of potentially face-threatening speech acts.
In the next chapter, Yates investigates the directives used by 18 teacher
trainees doing their practice teaching in secondary schools in Australia. In
"Negotiating an Institutional Identity: Individual Differences in NS and NNS
Teacher Directives," Yates compares the directives produced by nine Australian
background teachers and nine Chinese background teachers each in two full
class sessions in a variety of school subjects that include ESL, business, math,
music, science, and swimming. Teacher directives are compared by group
(Australian and Chinese, male and female) and by individuals. Although, in
general, Australians employ a greater variety of mitigators than Chinese
background teachers, the production data also shows that the Australian female
teacher trainees use more mitigators than the Australian males and that the
Chinese background female teachers use more than the Chinese background
males. In addition to gender and background, individual differences also play a
role. Individuals vary in the way in which they project themselves through
language use, in this case, in how they mitigate directives in the social identity
of novice teacher. The variation found here is a useful reminder that all speakers