Cognitive Discourse Functions: Specifying an Integrative Interdisciplinary Construct

Christiane Dalton-Puffer

Introduction

In the introduction, we argued that content and language integrated learning (CLIL) needs to articulate substantial links between the pedagogies of different subjects like mathematics, history or economics and the pedagogy of language teaching in order to fulfil its promise of 'dual focus'. The underlying idea of this chapter is, therefore, that integration actually lies in transdisciplinarity and that cognitive discourse functions (CDFs) constitute a conceptual and pedagogical territory where such transdisciplinarity can be achieved (Dalton-Puffer, 2013).

Since learning as a cognitive event is not directly observable, the nearest we can hope to get are its observable analogues. In the case of CLIL, these analogues are to be sought in the secondary school classrooms and the discursive interaction between teachers and learners in them. Today, there is a broad consensus in education that classroom talk during lessons is the chief locus of knowledge construction and subjects are 'talked into being' (e.g. Edwards & Mercer, 1987; Ehlich & Rehbein, 1986; Mercer, 2000; Wells, 1999). However, it is not only the social construct of school subjects that is at issue, it is the activity of learning itself. Under a social and contextual theory of learning (implying a social and contextual theory of language), we must assume that participant verbalisations, which make the learning matter intersubjectively accessible and represent knowledge objects, thought processes and epistemological stance, are constitutive of learning itself. These verbal actions I call cognitive discourse functions (sometimes also referred to as academic language functions). CDFs thus are verbal routines that have arisen in answer to recurring demands while dealing with curricular content, knowledge items and abstract thought. The actional demands as such (e.g. classifying, hypothesising) and the requirement that students demonstrate the ability to enact them, are regular features in today's competence oriented school-curricula. For learners in CLIL classrooms, however, operating in an imperfectly known second or foreign language, the linguistic resources presupposed by the enactment of these competences are often precarious, a situation that may also hold for CLIL teachers who normally share their students' status as second language (L2) users of the medium of instruction. So subject-specific language issues would need to be addressed in the classroom, but content-subject specialist CLIL teachers view this as outside their expertise and responsibility (except vocabulary). It is my contention that CDFs and their linguistic realisation may be a pivot that can change this view and give CLIL teachers the perspective that when they are modelling/teaching how to verbalise subject-specific cognitive actions, they are not 'doing the language teachers' job' but actually teaching their subject in a very substantial way.

This chapter, then, approaches integration via a transdisciplinary construct of CDFs, grounded on both educational and linguistic concepts, and links subject-specific cognitive learning goals with the linguistic representations they receive in classroom interaction. The rationale of the construct lies in its aim to conceptually order and reduce the multitude of academic language functions that are circulating in curricula and specialist literature alike. Its aim is to enable researchers and teacher educators to access CDFs via a principled heuristic tool which enhances their visibility (and ultimately teachability) in naturally unfolding classroom interaction. Next, the theoretical rationale of the construct will be briefly introduced (for a full account see Dalton-Puffer, 2013). The main part of the chapter is dedicated to a description of the seven components of the CDF construct, illustrated with examples from naturalistic CLIL classroom discourse.

Theoretical Grounding and Description of the CDF Construct

Multiperspectival theoretical grounding in education and linguistics

The formulation of learning goals and competence models is a central concern of educational research and development and Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (Anderson et al., 2001; Bloom, 1956) is certainly one of the seminal texts in this respect. A cascade of publications in different contexts and educational levels (e.g. Bailey et al., 2002; Biggs & Tang, 2011) have presented further attempts at formulating coherent taxonomies and identifying verbal behaviours that can serve as indicators of learners having reached a particular learning goal (normally in the shape of can-do statements of the kind can compare X and Y, can elaborate W etc.). All of these approaches have in common that they take a curricular perspective, that is to say they set standards for, rather than examine the practice of, teaching and learning. An analogous perspective has also been adopted in the Council of Europe's project Language(s) in Other Subjects which aims at systematically cataloguing the linguistic requirements arising in connection with participating in lower secondary history, science, mathematics or literature classrooms across a number of European education systems (e.g. Beacco et al., 2010), its aim being to improve support of at-risk...