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Noticing Words in the Wild

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Book cover Conversation Analytic Research on Learning-in-Action

Part of the book series: Educational Linguistics ((EDUL,volume 38))

Abstract

This chapter draws on multi-modal Conversation Analysis to examine instances of mundane L2 interaction in which participants orient to learning new lexical items. Such sequences are initiated when one speaker pays attention to an instance of language use, either in the just-prior talk or via some environmentally available target word. This typically involves a repetition of the target lexical item which topicalizes it for the other participants and can lead to the sort of talk regularly seen in language classrooms, including explanations, alternative formulations and intersubjective repair. Occasionally such sequences also include explicit noticing of learning itself, which momentarily indexes the co-participants’ relative identity categories. The study tracks episodes of L2 talk in two distinctive non-classroom contexts: (1) English dinner table talk between a Japanese student and his American homestay host family and (2) mundane Japanese talk between non-Japanese clients and Japanese hairdressers. The analysis examines the layered manner in which elements such as intonation, gaze, gesture and physical objects co-occur with the talk to accomplish noticing as an orientation to language learning. Epistemic asymmetries made relevant in the interaction afford novice language users access to the lexical resources they require and locally ascribe the expert speaker with teacher-like qualities.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Although the vast majority Schmidt’s Noticing Hypothesis relates to grammatical forms rather than vocabulary, research that focus on the latter are not without precedent (e.g., Godfroid et al. 2010, 2013; Laufer and Hulstijn 2001).

  2. 2.

    In other dialects of English, this would be known as a splinter.

  3. 3.

    Due to the camera angle, the screenshots in this transcript are largely taken from reflections in the mirror, so when Yumi is looking forward in the third figure in line 13, she is actually establishing mutual gaze with Emil via the mirror, a practice that I have explored in greater detail in Greer (2013).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Languages and Communication, Kobe University, Kobe, Japan

    Tim Greer

Authors
  1. Tim Greer
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tim Greer .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Applied Linguistics, Portland State University, Portland, OR, USA

    John Hellermann

  2. Department of Design and Communication, University of Southern Denmark, Sønderborg, Denmark

    Søren W. Eskildsen

  3. Center for Applied Linguistics, University of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland

    Simona Pekarek Doehler

  4. Department of Language and Communication Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland

    Arja Piirainen-Marsh

Appendix: Transcript Conventions

Appendix: Transcript Conventions

The talk has been transcribed with standard Jeffersonian conventions (Jefferson 2004a). Japanese talk has been translated based on the three-tier system used by Greer, Ishida and Tateyama (2017):

  • First tier: original talk (plain text in Courier)

  • Second tier: gloss translation (Courier italics)

  • Third tier: prose rendering (Times New Roman italics)

Embodied elements of the interaction are noted in gray font and the onset of the action is indicated in the talk via a vertical bar. Where the physical action does not coincide with talk, the silence is timed and appears on the same line as the description, separated by a forward slash. Abbreviations used for Japanese morphemes in the word-by-word gloss tier are as follows:

  • CP copula (e.g., da, desu)

  • H hesitation marker (e.g., e::, ano)

  • IP interactional particle (e.g., ne, sa, no, yo, na)

  • LK linking particle (no)

  • N nominalizer (no, n)

  • O object marker (o)

  • Q question marker (ka and its variants)

  • S subject marker (ga)

  • TP topic marker (wa)

  • CS change of state token (ah)

  • RT receipt token

  • NG negative (−nai)

  • POL polite form

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Greer, T. (2019). Noticing Words 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_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22165-2_6

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