The Research

Overview

Communicative success is not guaranteed by a student's ability to memorise and employ the structural features of a target language. Teaching the grammar, vocabulary and syntax of a language does not prepare the L2 learner for real-world interaction which requires the ability to engage differing interlocutors in diverse and dynamic situations to achieve specific objectives. From the earliest stages of language learning programmes, students, irrespective of age and proficiency level, require pedagogically appropriate and concrete opportunities to compare and contrast pragmatic features of language through attention to cultural, social and individual factors that shape the way language is used and interpreted. It is here that the classroom provides a unique context from which to explore the linguistic systems of the target language and the mother tongue in order to build cultural tolerance through raising awareness of factors that influence language use and behaviour. Awareness raising activities are followed by student-centred interactive opportunities in which authentic language samples stimulate interpretation and production activities designed to rehearse linguistic forms and contextualised pragmatic meaning.

The responsibility falls on the teacher to incorporate pedagogical strategies that are culturally and linguistically responsive in order to enhance student efficacy, motivation and achievement. For pragmatic instruction to be effective, it is critical that pragmatics forms a part of the language teacher's content and pedagogical knowledge. As a first step, in order to recognise, embrace and value cultural diversity, we teachers are faced with the challenge of actively questioning the pedagogies and practices we employ within the L2 classroom, and the impact these potentially have on our students. It is equally important to develop awareness of our students and the socio-cultural beliefs, traditions, customs and values associated with their linguistic practices and behaviour, observed in the target language and mother tongue. It is here that identity, as revealed through the construct of face, and face, as revealed through identity (dis)alignment, are examined through attention to the students' subjective interpretation of their own language use and behaviour at specific moments during English activities.

Synopsis

The person who learns a language without learning a culture risks becoming a fluent fool.

(Bennett et al., 2003: 237)

Face and identity influence the complex and dynamic ways in which individuals present themselves both verbally and non-verbally during interaction. Language and issues of identity are closely bound together, as too are language and the management and negotiation of face. Nevertheless, there has been surprisingly little attention within the research community to how the constructs of identity and face are interrelated and impact on the student within the language classroom. These two formidable conceptual areas present an opportunity to explore the communicative negotiation of face within the broader framework of identity. Or, simply speaking, theories of identity may enrich our understanding of face and potentially aid the analysis of face by adding layers of description that have traditionally been overlooked (see Spencer-Oatey, 2007; Joseph, 2013). While face research has addressed issues such as the degree to which face is individual or relational, public or private and situation-specific or context- independent, Spencer-Oatey (2007: 639) points out a lack of attention to the one fundamental point underpinning the debate, namely the issue of identity.

The research described in this book explores student identities as revealed through the pragmatics of face as observed during L2 classroom interaction between Japanese students and a native-speaker (NS) teacher. The study is directed at an examination of classroom discourse as interpreted through the voices of the typically neglected perspectives of younger students during retrospective interviews following English language learning activities. Classroom recordings, student retrospective interviews and teacher interviews reveal specific moments during learning activities when the Japanese students' and their non-Japanese English teacher's interpretations of classroom communication deviate from the speaker's communicative intentions. These points of disparity expose ways in which the meanings attributed to language use by both students and teacher are influenced by socio-cultural and individual affiliations. What emerges from this analysis of retrospective data and classroom excerpts is the complexity of separating identity and face in interactions where language and identity constitute part of the subject matter.

Student interpretations of classroom interaction offers compelling evidence that the Japanese students felt threatened by specific verbal and non-verbal features of the L2 classroom that the teacher assumed to be standard practice. This was particularly evident when language use or behaviour viewed by the students as being standard was not recognised, or rejected by the teacher as violating unstated classroom protocol. Candid student insights captured through retrospective interviews highlight that, while language was employed by both students and teacher so as to confront issues of face and to enable them to enact specific identities, meanings attributed to such language were rooted in socio-cultural and individual affiliations of both students and teachers and were not always mutually recognised. Student reflections provide access to pervasive patterns of language use, attitudes, and behaviour from which a picture of the Japanese students' face, as a construct of identity, begins to materialise. Data analysis, organised around four recurring themes, explores cross-cultural pragmatic divergence from the perspective of the students in relation to; (a) spontaneous peer collaboration, (b) characteristics of Japanese identities, (c) use of the L1 (Japanese), and (d) recourse to, and the maintenance of, silence. It is necessary to bear in mind that the themes are interwoven and consequently there is a degree of overlap which aptly reflects the interconnectedness of the constructs of face and identity.

The recurring themes reveal identities that the students actively seek to align with, resist or reject within the language classroom. In the analysis of classroom interaction and student reflections on this interaction, the discussion draws on a critical account of the...