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,...