Abstract
In this study we extend current research on L2 interactional competence and its development by exploring the reflexive relationship between, on the one hand, peoples’ changing practices for accomplishing social actions and, on the other hand, their evolving social relationships. Our analytic focus is on word-searches as a type of self-initiated repair, and hence as part of a mechanism of social interaction that is fundamental to in-situ meaning-making processes. We document change, over a period of 10 months, in an L2-speaking au-pair’s ‘methods’ and grammatical resources for recruiting co-participants’ assistance while searching for a word during dinner table conversations with her host family. We show how this change indicates the L2 speaker’s increased ability to maximize the progressivity of talk while at the same time establishing mutual comprehension, and hence intersubjectivity. Zooming in onto one precise linguistic construction recurrently used in word-searches (comment on dit ‘how do you say’), we also shed light on the progressive development of an L2 grammar-for-interaction as part of L2 interactional competence. We discuss how the observed changes constitute and simultaneously reflect dynamically evolving epistemic entitlements and social relationships between the participants.
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Notes
- 1.
The study was carried out as part of the larger research project TRIC-L2 « Tracking the development of interactional competence in a second language » financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant no. 100012_126868/1).
- 2.
An analysis of embodied conduct would be needed (but is not possible with our audio-recorded data) to identify how stopping in medias res is designed to invite recipient’s help. Gaze on recipient, in particular, might be an important indicator of this, as well as iconic gesture.
- 3.
It is important to recall that we do not have access to embodied conduct as a resource for eliciting recipient response; cf. Goodwin & Goodwin (1986).
- 4.
‘>comm’on dit<’ is delivered phonetically as /kɔmɔ̃di/.
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Appendix: Transcription Conventions
Appendix: Transcription Conventions
In addition to the Jeffersonian transcription symbols, we use the following (in the translation line): DET = determiner; PREP = preposition; ((German)) = the language of the original word or stretch of talk (if different from French), delimited by + signs.
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Pekarek Doehler, S., Berger, E. (2019). On the Reflexive Relation Between Developing L2 Interactional Competence and Evolving Social Relationships: A Longitudinal Study of Word-Searches in the ‘Wild’. In: Hellermann, J., Eskildsen, S., Pekarek Doehler, S., Piirainen-Marsh, A. (eds) Conversation Analytic Research on Learning-in-Action. Educational Linguistics, vol 38. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22165-2_3
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