in the ridiculous and destructive situation of having attempted to tell a joke, while
afterward having to explain to his learners why and when they should have laughed? ←
214 | 215 →
We are all familiar with the benefits of humor in the classroom – the precious
moments of complicity; wittiness and fun: the teacher who proposes role-playing games,
tells funny stories, and is even self-mocking. Humor in the language classroom gives
rise to a host of pedagogical practices, as play and knowledge are intimately linked.
Ludic resources can contribute to apprehending and consolidating the content.
Languages manifest a great deal of inventiveness and contain a number of strategies in
the manipulations of the signifier. The competence of being able to play with language is
an indicator of linguistic and cultural competence.
Rather than create humor, learners need to identify it, to understand it, and to react
to it in an appropriate manner. In order to attain these objectives, teachable segments, in
particular scripts proper to the target culture, should be taught (Szirmai, 2012).
Humor in the language classroom, this relational emollient, not only serves to loosen
up the atmosphere, it makes grammatical commentary as well as the transfer of
knowledge more learner-friendly. It also constitutes a subject of study and a means of
allowing the learner to perceive culture. It is also a form of detachment with respect to
one’s own practice of humor. One must admit that humor in language textbooks all too
often simply has an ornamental status. Far from being a simple form of entertainment,
however, laughter is essential to understanding ordinary communication in media and
literature. Humor challenges standardized visions of the world, which should incite the
teacher to show prudence: as what is purely ludic to some may be cynical or offensive
to others, in view of their social norms. Humor raises the question of taboos and limits
which cannot be transgressed.
5.9 Interactional Rules
5.9.1. Cooperation – Competition
Any speaker participating in interaction respects culturally sensitive rules and responds
to his interlocutor’s expectations, based on the objectives of the exchange. Grice (1975:
45–46 & 52) demonstrates: our verbal exchanges cannot be reduced to a series of
disconnected remarks. Communication is only possible because its protagonists tacitly
adhere to a ← 215 | 216 → “cooperative principle” which implies the mastery of a
certain number of rules that, echoing Kant, he calls “maxims of conversation”: Quantity,
Quality, Relation and Manner. Quantity: 1. Make your contribution as informative as is
required. 2. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required. Quality:
1. Do not say what you believe to be false. 2. Do not say that for which you lack
adequate evidence. Relation: Be relevant. Manner: 1. Avoid obscurity of expression. 2.
Avoid ambiguity.
Clearly, in a communication situation (conversation not constituting more than a
particular case), maxims can be strategically violated (and this in order to conceal or
obtain information). In the following example, instead of strictly conforming to these
rules, the communication dynamics rest on voluntary transgression: “A is writing a
testimonial about a pupil who is a candidate for a philosophy job, and his letter reads as
follows: ‘Dear Sir, Mr. X's command of English is excellent, and his attendance at
tutorials has been regular. Yours, etc.’ A does not refuse to play the game, but he does
however make light of the rule of quantity in order to imply: X is not competent on a
philosophical level (Grice, 1975: 52).
The opposition cooperation / competition is, upon first glance seductive in
establishing a typology of interactions. Reality is more complicated, however. No
interaction exists that cooperates absolutely perfectly while, conversely, in the most
polemic interactions possible, there is always room for a minimum of cooperation
(Vion, 2000: 126; Maingueneau, 2009: 38–39).
The most banal of events allow for observing verbal interaction: “What is said
exactly in such and such a situation?”; “What poses problems in foreign language
communication?”. Berrier (2001) incites his learners to discover a verbal corpus
confronting mini-dialogues leading speakers of different cultural origins to intervene.
Conversational analysis provides an interesting line of thought in language teaching and
learning theory, likely to result in a deeper reflection concerning the communicative
norms that are proper to different societies: the conception of interpersonal relations,
the degree of ritualization, or the place of speech and silence, etc.
The adaption of linguistic forms and behavior to the communication situation is
closely linked to the manner in which, inside the culture in question, objects are named
and events are described. The act of naming does, however, constitute a complex
relationship between linguistic expression and elements of reality. Every culture
categorizes acts and things: indeed, language is turned towards the world in order to
capture it. In her terminology, Pavlenko (2011: 199–200) calls 1) “word-to-referent
mapping” the ← 216 | 217 → process of linguistic elements and patterns mobilization,
through which speakers can refer to the world, and 2) “re-naming the world” the act of
naming in a foreign language.
Computer-mediated communication, on the other hand, is supposed to conform to a
certain number of interactional norms: identification of writers and of recipients,
pertinence, clarity, brevity, network technical constraints, use of smileys, etc. Personal
communicative profiles aside, is the communicative behavior of Internet users
conditioned by their cultural origins? Atifi & Marcoccia (2006) focus on the existence
of a cultural variable in digital styles, beyond the behavior assumed to constitute
universal netiquette schemas, and submit the hypothesis of appropriation by every
culture of a global and standardized model.
The comparative analysis of interactions allows for the description of the
functioning of the exchanges attested within our societies, and the identification of
regularities and cultural (as well as transcultural) variabilities linked to the interactions
studied, in more or less formal contexts. Such a procedure necessitates linking the
manifestations of one single genre of interaction within several communities. Traverso
(2006: 47–55) considers interactive radio programs in Syria and in France: the host
welcomes a guest, whom the audience can talk with, by calling in. It is a well
established genre in both countries. (Otherwise, globally speaking, the format of the
programs is similar.) However, important asymmetries appear in the usages attested by
the corpus: 1) appellatives – in French the only category that is used is the pronoun
associated with “vouvoiement” (the respectful “vous” form of address, in the plural); in
Arabic nine appellative categories are attested; 2) ritual interpolated clauses and
wishes – in Arabic the interaction procedure is regularly interrupted by exchanges such
as “May God protect your daughter”; in the French corpus there does not seem to be any
exchange of this type.
Another example is to be found in commercial interaction. The transactional
exchange takes place in a business, and the participants assume complementary roles as
client and vendor. Windmüller (2011: 113–134) proposes drawing a parallel between
two dialogues, taking place in French and German pharmacies, respectively. The
interactions are partially ritualized, and not only the opening and closing salutations:
giving a prescription, explanations on the taking the medication, advice, in certain
countries the pharmacist asks if he should write down the information on the boxes. In
language pedagogy, such an analysis constitutes “disruption in daily life”: i.e., social
action proper to a pharmacy is part of ordinary daily events that ← 217 | 218 → repeat
themselves regularly without having to be challenged at any given moment; it becomes
interesting only if the teacher confronts this action with a similar situation in a different
cultural environment.
5.9.2 Speech Acts – Social Usages
To Hymes (1972a: 56), a “speech situation” is composed of “speech events”, governed
directly by rules and norms of use that are shared within a community, themselves made
up of “speech acts”. A central concept of pragmatics, the speech act (or communication
act, or also the language act) is based on the conviction that the unit of human
communication is not the sentence but the completion of certain social acts destined to
modify the interlocutors’ situation.
In a good number of cases, in speaking, or in writing, and with respect to his
intentions of communication, the speaker resorts to language in order to, at the same
time, carry out a precise action (announce a fact, take leave, give orders, pass judgment
on, etc.). One describes reality and, at the same time, one acts on reality. Following
such a point of view, one may estimate that the linguistic forms are not solicited in
themselves, but for the social operations that they can implement in communication
situations, that are often stereotypical.
A Niveau-Seuil (1976: 18) regroups speech acts according to five social domains of
language activity: 1) family relations; 2) professional relations; 3) gregarious relations
(contact with friends, neighbors); 4) commercial and civil relations; 5) frequenting of
the media.
Threshold Level (1990: 8) refers more particularly to three sectors: a) “situations,
including practical transactions in everyday life, requiring a largely predictable
language use”; b) “situations involving personal interaction, enabling the learners to
establish and to maintain social contacts, including those made in business contacts”; c)
“situations involving indirect communication, requiring the understanding of the gist
and/or pertaining to details of written or spoken texts”.
For each act there are rules of social usage. Using speech acts that are combinations
of linguistic and situational information, also signifies awareness of their degree of
optionality and their possible combinations in the given cultural environment. Who
should / should not, who may / may not say what? Is such and such an act optional, is its
absence tolerated according ← 218 | 219 → to the norms in force? It seems essential to
know which acts are likely to be articulated and combined together and, if so, in what
order. For example, what are the (possible) justifications that precede or follow an
information request? In a number of languages, the use of the masculine / feminine
reflects the impact of social models: “lawyer, “president”, “doctor” represent –
depending on the context – as much men as they do women.
How are our interactions structured? In the framework of exchanges, Moeschler &
Auchlin (2009: 200–201) identify – a) a series of “interventions”: immediate
constituents of the exchange, and b) “discursive acts”: smaller structure units providing
information that modifies the state of knowledge mutually shared by interlocutors
(statement, nodding of head, shrugging of shoulders).
The succession of interventions and of discursive acts, in the course of exchanges,
more particularly reveals that the actors respect the role that they are in the midst of
playing; e.g., “confirming exchanges” typically having a binary structure, or “repairing
exchanges” serving as a remedy to language-induced ruptures, having a minimally
ternary structure. In their reality, exchanges are not limited to two or three constituent
systems: they result in pre-sequences, post-sequences, multiple ruptures, hesitations,
extensions and variations (e.g., proposition followed by an unfavorable reaction,
proposition renewal followed by a favorable reaction, etc.). The sequential structuring
is infinitely more difficult to grasp in activities such as “storytelling”.
Working on a corpus of “transactional” conversations held in a sewing supplies
store, Moirand (1990: 72) attempts to take inventory of opening markers (“Who’s
next?”, “What can I do for you?”), closing markers or markers of transactional
resumption (“Will that be all”, “That will be…”), and observes to what extent it is
frequent, including with new clients, for the exchange to go beyond simple transaction,
to involve conjunctural elements with a barely predictable character.
5.9.3 The Most Appropriate Formulation
How does one express one’s ideas through expressions that are consistent with specific
contexts? How can one be aware of the game rules regarding standard behavior? How
can one belong to a group? Hall raises these question (1981: 132–133), notably in
observing experienced speakers ← 219 | 220 → whose exchanges are ever so swift and
smooth, when they say “Two first to Land’s End returning”, instead of “Would you
please sell me two round-trip tickets, first class, to Land’s End for today?”
In order to express the same content, languages require a host of phrases which
appear to the speaker as formulating more or less the same thing. As Bourdieu suggests
(1982: 80–81), expressions that may appear substitutable (“Come!”; “Please come.”;
“You will come, won’t you?”, etc.), actually are not, as each of them endeavor to attain
the optimal form, following a compromise between an expressive intention and the
censure imposed by a more or less dissymmetrical social relationship.
Every language may elaborate its clarification expressions, aiming for conversation
resumption: “excuse me, I didn’t quite catch that”, “could you repeat that, please?” In
social formalism, sometimes there is only one typical expression that is suitable and
which embodies all the sociologically pertinent features of the situation. One can, as
such, observe that in the most diverse of languages, the reply to a question may take on
the ritualized form of an admission of ignorance (Kerbrat-Orecchioni, 2005a: 93), e.g.
(Table 30):
Table 30: I have no idea!.
The speaker seeks to retain the formulation that is the most appropriate for the
communicative situation. For example, in a shop the client expresses his ← 220 | 221
→ request differently depending on whether he is there for a very ordinary item
(Kerbrat-Orecchioni, 2005a: 43): “Je voudrais un petit bifteck” (I’ll have some steak,
please) or a product whose availability is less certain: “Vous avez des rognons de veau
?” (Would you happen to have veal kidneys?).
On the basis of a corpus of interactions in a bookshop, Roulet (2005: 33–35)
remarks that a bookseller does not behave in the same way if he is dealing with an
isolated order, as compared to several students coming in successively to purchase the
same book. Likewise, the client does not display the same behavior when he buys a
book for himself, as opposed to for somebody else. The description of the actional
framework necessitates not only that one define, with considerable precision, the social
statuses and the respective roles of the interactants (provider or seeker of services) but
also their activity program (e.g., fulfilling school obligations) and the discursive /
operational organization which results from this, including non-verbal constituents.
What can the pedagogical potential of such an analysis be? The non-native speaker may
learn to construct and interpret sentences and texts, but does he need to acquire an
“actional” competence which would allow him to carry out operations such as “entering
into a bookshop”, “pay the required sum”, etc.? Does he not possess such capacities
through his first language and his previous social practices? In numerous situations, the
learner can, and is able to, re-exploit his actional knowledge. However, the structure of
such events may vary from one cultural milieu to another. As such, language teaching
cannot choose to ignore the question of the social organization of various types of
discourse, beyond the inventory of their linguistic dimensions per se.
5.9.4 Prefabricated Scripts
A set of raw linguistic material can become a precious object of research, notably to
explain that every language possesses its own operations, allowing it to defend its
ideas, to persuade its interlocutor, and to tell a story. Based on the Oral History Corpus,
a large collection of spoken texts, Sealey (2010) conducted research to better
understand the links between language and identity. Exploring a great variety of
testimonies (144 interviews recorded in Birmingham on the occasion of the third
millennium), the author firstly confirms that every person interviewed has his own
“psycho-biography”. In the testimonies of men, obviously we are hardly ← 221 | 222 →
surprised by the very frequent evoking of topics such as “football” and “films”, just as
we might expect “children” or “nursery” to be preferred themes amongst women. This
compilation of data becomes particularly interesting when it comes to the analysis of the
discursive regularities likely to be observed in the “self-narration” – the latter
abounding in the linguistic schemas underlying the social models. In more than 100
interviews, one finds recurrences of sequences such as “I think it was”, “I was born in”,
“and I used to”, or “and we used to”.
The broadening of the analysis of the combinatorics towards the discursive level is
imposed: all people living in a social world are prone to have face to face or
mediatized contacts with others, and during these contacts the individual tends to
exteriorize a line of conduct, that is to say an outline of verbal and non-verbal acts
allowing him to express his point of view on the situation. Whether or not he has the
intention of adopting such a line of conduct, the individual always ends up realizing that
he did indeed adopt one (Goffman, 1974: 9) because every society is based on a system
of procedural practices, conventions and rules serving to orient and to organize the flow
of the messages transmitted (Goffman, 1974: 32). Some submit the hypothesis that
interactions are a series of, at times, complex praxeograms. These are defined as
pragmatic units (Ehlich & Rehbein, 1972) or schemas of conceptual, verbal and gestural
actions, governing daily or professional activities (Moirand, 1995).
What does the capacity to interact consist in? What is this skill that one needs to
possess, beyond knowledge that is strictly linguistic, in order to communicate
efficiently? The idea that social interaction is elaborated through an ensemble of microtasks and situational constraints, that the learner needs to manage in L2 opens up
promising research and pedagogical perspectives. Identifying and describing typical
interactive processes initially implies minute observation of local practices as possible
places of knowledge construction, as well as the micro-analysis of interactions between
non-native and native speakers, for example (Pekarek Doehler, 2000).
According to Gumperz (1969), defending a thesis, as a language activity, is not
unlike a political activity: it involves the ability to reach a consensus on the definition
of key terms. If the latter enjoy a negotiated meaning, they allow the participants to
express their own point of view and that of the group without risking entering into a
conflict with one another. The jury members know what, how and when something can
be said. Ritualization is the fruit of the coproduction that is undertaken by ← 222 | 223
→ the participants, while figuring in the mix are also the official and the informal
elements (conversational resources of ordinary language: “good job”, “enjoyable”;
anecdotes, private conversations, etc.), which recourse to prosodic conventions can
help distinguish.
If, corresponding to every type of interaction, there is a script that is specific and
binding to various degrees, certain scripts (e.g., informal exchanges) at the speaker’s
disposal are however reduced to vague template status, while others (more protocollike exchanges) provide the interactants with nothing more than a limited level of
flexibility.
As a panel of pertinent verbal and non-verbal knowledge that is proper to typical
communication situations, the script “is a structure that describes appropriate sequences
of events in a particular context” (Schank & Abelson, 1977: 41). The script is outlined
by Dewaele (2012: 208–218) as a fairly rudimentary draft of a cinema screenplay,
stocked at a conceptual level and containing possible directing instructions, and
potential discourses, according to a pre-determined chronology.
According to its communicative objectives, an interaction is the place of a particular
category of conventionalized expressions whose aim is to convey praise, blame,
support, or affection…while the force of these language acts derives, in part, from the
sentiments that are projected (Goffman, 1987: 27).
Whatever the culture may be, certain prefabricated scripts can be observed with
relative ease. Let us consider all the scenarios of routine communication acts, bearers
of conventions such as greeting, thanking, excusing oneself, authorizing, or commanding,
for example, that the communities of native speakers adhere to. Language is inseparable
from the performing of social practices, such as: telling a story, participating in verbal
exchanges, being mutually categorized as members of a group, etc. (Pekarek Doehler,
2006).
These are operations that the learner is able to carry out in his native language. It
can, moreover be observed that native speakers are capable of recognizing a scenario
even if there are “gaps” in the discourse sequence, while the sub-groups (e.g., social,
generational, ethnic) that they form within the community may equip themselves with
specific scenarios – which does not prevent them from understanding one another
(Dewaele & Wourm, 2002).
One example suffices here to emphasize the scope of this idea (Table 31). In races,
for example, competitors are invited to take position on the ← 223 | 224 → starting line
and to take off when the “starter” traditionally gives them the classic three commands,
which date back to ancient Greek civilization: πόδα παρά πόδα! “poda para poda” (foot
by foot), ἔτοιμοι “etimi” (ready!), άπιτε! “apité” (go!).
Table 31: On your marks…!.
In ordinary language usage, we may perfectly well forget one of the terms, or replace it
with a gesture, and our initiated interlocutors will have no difficulty understanding us.
The routine scripts that allow us to navigate without a hitch can be very different from
one culture to another, and are a part of the shared knowledge of a social group. The
declaration of love, for example, appears to be a particularly difficult script to acquire.
Indeed, the speakers who are hardly familiar with the emotional value of the words and
expressions of love in L2 risk not recognizing the launching function of the script during
the first phase of courting. In an intercultural situation, the interactants may not share the
same conception of the ideal script (Kerbrat-Orecchioni & Traverso, 2004).
“Good morning, may I help you?” How many, even very advanced, non-native L2
learners know with certainly what the polite and ritualized response is to the vendor’s
(at times insistent or wary) question, that the client is supposed to give as a “defense
mechanism”: “no, thank you, I’m just looking …” = I just want to look without anybody
bothering me (Table 32).
Table 32: I’m just looking.
As is the case with expressions of politeness, an utterance of this type, which is a part
of the foreigner’s survival kit, illustrates perfectly well the cultural variations that affect
the actual course of micro-acts. There is no doubt that the discursification of
communication acts does not only depend ← 224 | 225 → on the specificities of the
linguistic system, but is rooted in the manner in which the speakers of every community
construct their representations concerning objectives and progression of this or that
social micro-event. Any major deviation from the script risks disturbing the completion
of an exchange project. Also, the capacity to properly manage daily interactions
necessitates the sequencing mastery of speech acts. The sequences of actions and the
schemas of discursive organization are, in part, common to the different languages that
participate in the same cultural area. With the help of the media, one can often find the
same recurring images, and the same narrative scenarios in the different western
cultures: “the act of discreetly pouring poison into the glass of an enemy”, “the fact of
stepping aside at the door so the ladies can pass”, “an Indian attack / those besieged put
up a desperate fight / arrival at the last minute of the cavalry”, etc. (Dufays, 1997: 316–
317).
However, from one language to another, events do not necessarily involve the same
number of steps. The interpretation of most of the utterances supposes the knowledge of
the sequence of stereotypical verbal or non-verbal actions relative to an activities’
domain. To understand the utterance “I got stranded at the airport. My visa had
expired.” one has to be aware of airport formalities (Maingueneau, 2009: 113–114).
Certain genres involve relatively rigid scripts: the purchase of an airline ticket, police
questioning, political speech, etc. (Maingueneau, 2009: 35).
The affirmation that cultural differences appear at the interaction level leads us to
the hypothesis that, depending on his level, the non-native has ← 225 | 226 → the
tendency to use in L2 the scripts of his native language. Foreign students who, on
replicating their social models, address Professor Dominique de Salins inside a
Parisian university by calling her “Mme Dominique” (de Salins, 1992: 67), do not
realize that this form connotes a very specific social situation, that is demeaning in
status.
Knowledge of the L2 interactional norms and scripts results from our previous
experience of the world. This acquired knowledge also allows anticipating and filling
in the gaps during L2 learning. Ranney (1992) focuses his analysis less on speech acts
than on speech events; e.g., “medical consulting”, in the course of which the non-native
speakers – in this case refugees from South-Eastern Asia – marked by a traditional
conception of disease and medicine, are confronted with the American medical model.
Among the numerous language learning multimedia products on line, one can
observe the site “Dancing with Words. Strategies for Learning Pragmatics in Spanish”,
animated by the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA)4. It
provides a range of resources aimed at facilitating the approach to, and the analysis of,
language acts and interaction in Spanish. It is committed to capitalizing on research in
pragmatics, this concept being defined as the manner in which “we convey meaning
through communication.” Despite the fact that the examples focus on one particular
language (and its variants), the ensemble of the program clarifies, through pedagogical
commentary and pertinent examples, (e.g., strategies in greeting, thanking, apologizing,
inviting, requesting, etc.), the use of language acts and ritualized expressions – the
mastery of which is a delicate point in any foreign language.
Knowledge of stereotypical sequences can be indispensable in grasping a message.
What follows is the summary of a film cited by Maingueneau (2007: 22): “A., an
ordinary-looking young veterinarian, hosts a radio program. One of her correspondents,
impressed by her advice, invites her out for a drink. A, however, describes herself
borrowing the features of her best friend, a striking blond. One can imagine the
misunderstanding that this situation can produce …”. In order to understand this text, it
is necessary to activate in one’s memory the script of radio programs (activities pursued
by the radio host, flow of the programs), as well as that of flirting (having a drink,
seduction operation). ← 226 | 227 →
5.9.5 Framing Sequences
Gülich & Krafft (1997) draw attention to the prefabricated character of certain types of
discourse (advertisements, announcements, cooking recipes, word of welcome,
recommendation letters, scientific reports) comprising particular discursive structures
that they call “typical texts” (formelhafte Texte), considering them as solutions that are
elaborated by a social group for recurring communicative tasks purposes. The authors
remark that in having recourse to preformed elements of this type of discourse, even at a
very low level of L2 competence, speakers manage to produce correct sequences,
sometimes without any hesitation. A typical model is an ensemble of instructions that
one can choose to follow and to exploit. A discourse that is composed according to a
model refers to collective knowledge concerning the production of such texts.
A good number of errors can be explained through the insufficient mastery of means
by which one’s ideas are structured, as well as the manner in which the relationship
between the sentences is articulated. Considering that the analysis of a corpus consisting
of student’s written work constitutes the surest way to apprehend interlanguage, for the
implementation of a more “focused” type of teaching, Anastassiadis-Syméonidis & alii
(2009: 297) propose to a group of foreign students learning Greek, in Greece, simple
communicative tasks (e.g., describing their classroom to a friend who is in their country
of origin). The quantitative breakdown of systematic errors in this written production
corpus confirms that textual organization is “very problematic”, more particularly due
to markers of connectivity.
Among the most ritualized elements there are “framing” sequences that allow entry
into interaction, and exit from it. The opening, pre-closing and closing of a conversation
or of a written text are delicate stages: in a good number of cases, a language offers
speakers ready-made and immediately reusable solutions.
The opening part serves to get the interaction started, cf. ritual exchanges on time,
health, etc. Meetings begin with the expression: “Let this session/meeting/deliberation,
etc. open.” In emails, one can note sentences such as: “I hope all is well”, “I hope you
are doing well”, “I hope everything is going well for you”, “I hope this email finds you
well”, etc. The pre-closing orients the interaction towards the closing (announcing the
separation, the project to meet again, etc.), while the closing marks the separation (“the
meeting is ← 227 | 228 → adjourned”). The interview – strongly present in our culture
– constitutes an interactional form practiced in a multiplicity of heterogeneous contexts,
according to an interactional pattern which seems permanent and tends to restrict the
range of communicative resources: e.g., series of adjacent question/answer pairs,
variable but non-arbitrary question order, opening modalities – greetings, justification,
permission request. Interviews often start with “You were born, Sir, in[…] on […]”
(Dufays, 1997: 316–317).
5.9.6 The Common Mental Context
Language users are alternately speakers and listeners. As such, all interaction includes
both production and reception activities. The particularity of the interaction resides in
the collective construction of meaning by the establishment of a common mental context.
The latter notably includes ideas, sentiments, impressions, as well as expectations, in
light of previous experiences, conditions and constraints that limit the choice of action
(CEFR, 4.1.4. & 4.4.3.5.)
The issues of genres, elaborated essentially with a view to the written word (and
literature, in particular) also concern oral production. Certain exchanges, e.g.,
administrative, technical, official, etc., follow a relatively predictable procedure.
Ordinary conversational interactions barely lend themselves to analysis in terms of
discourse genre. The analysis of conversations, and in particular casual dialogue,
illustrate the extreme variability of genres implemented in such exchanges. Indeed,
every interactional event between two speakers is unique: all exchanges take place in a
determined place and time, between specific partners who, themselves, are not identical
to what they were just previously. Nothing is ever preset, even in what appears to be
the most constrained of situations (Arditty & Vasseur, 2002: 254–255).
One can observe that instead of speaking through mechanical turn-taking, the
interactants are not passive targets: through their varied reactions, they guide, encourage
or slow down one another, with respect to social rules. Interaction imposes positiontaking on a permanent basis, and a distribution (and redistribution) of the participants’
places, given the physical and mental framework in which the exchange takes place.
Language production is integrated in a progressive verbal elaboration: every
participant reacts to the previous manifestation, while his reaction testifies to the
interpretation that he has constructed through this manifestation (Moeschler & Auchlin,
2009: 195). ← 228 | 229 →
Language users adopt strategies in order to obtain the floor and to keep it, as well as
to choose an adequate expression in a current repertoire of discursive functions. Having
“the word” (the first and/or the last word) as a general rule signifies winning the game.
Morel (2004) followed the authentic dialogue of an “inveterate speaker”, and of the
“listener”, by taking into account intonative clues, as well as head and gaze movements
of the two interlocutors talking in an asynchronous manner. Such an investigation aptly
illustrates that “the struggle for the right to speak” is a discursive strategy, to be
acquired by all non-native speakers.
While taking place within a flexible framework, dialogue, a common form of
interpersonal communication, is a more or less organized structure in a speech turntaking context that is dependent on the speakers’ L1 culture: “conversation is a
structured activity …many speech events are very similar […] the wording may not be
identical from one performance to the next, but the sequential organization is more or
less constant” (Coulmas, 1981: 1 & 3).
In the most varied of communication situations (in everyday life and in the language
classroom), one needs a certain number of indispensable skills, both to monitor one’s
own discursive actions, as well as the discursive actions and intentions of the Other.
If engaging in dialogue involves the co-construction of systems dictated in a certain
way by the environment, foreign language teaching should take interest in it by more
particularly drawing the learners’ attention to the deeper cultural roots of the most banal
of language practices, and the necessity to reflect on their naturalness. In order to
succeed in constructing a conversation – the prototypical form of verbal interactions –
exchanges must agree on a certain number of rules and resort to mechanisms of mutual
adjustments that can be called “negotiation” (Kerbrat-Orecchioni, 2005b: 94). In every
culture there are negotiation resources that preexist with respect to a given interaction.
As such, respective cultures have conversation scenarios that are different. Case in
point, multiple visits to a French company based in Australia, and the recording of
candid office exchanges, allowed Béal (1993) to observe conversational strategies
between the French and the Australians. These strategies seem to reflect specific
cultural norms. For example, Australians have a tendency to close exchanges rapidly,
practically without preparing the ground, while the French interlocutor is caught off
guard. The closing procedures of the French tend to be elaborate and are regularly
preceded by “false starts”. ← 229 | 230 → The Australian adjourns as soon as
possible, thus regaining his autonomy from the exchange; he does not want to impose his
presence on the other (occupy his territory) longer than is necessary. Cf. also the
frequent use of expressions such as “Thanks for your time”, “Thank you. That's all I
wanted to know”, etc.
The phraseology of authentic conversation is a vast and evanescent reality. The nonnative, overwhelmed by the target-society’s “mechanisms of profound thought”, has
little chance of spontaneously producing utterances that do not correspond between the
source and target languages involved (Bidaud, 2002: 1–11): the rules governing the
communicative exchanges in L1 are acquired unconsciously, through imitation,.
5.9.7 Exploring the Customary
How can access be gained to the interactive wealth (with all its data and expressive
options mobilizing ordinary gestures and words) that culture, down to the smallest
detail, provides its speakers? “In what way can what is not shown, photographed,
archived, restored, or staged, be captured?” – this is the question raised by author G.
Perec (1989: 11) who is committed to recording the real, in a raw, ethnographic,
manner. Regarding the most ordinary items that he calls “the infra-ordinary ”, he
expresses himself thus: “What takes place every day, and recurs every day, the banal,
the daily, the obvious, the common, the ordinary, the infra-ordinary, the noise in the
background, the habitual – how can they be recounted, and described? As exploring the
customary. For, precisely, we are used to all of this: we do not examine it, it does not
make us wonder, it does not seem to pose a problem, we experience it without thinking
about it […] However, how does one speak about these common thing”, how does one
track them down, detect them, extract them from the mass of rock in which they are
embedded, how does one lend them meaning, a language: let them speak, finally, of
what is, of what we are.”
In the introduction of his “Tentative d’épuisement d’un lieu parisien”, Perec (1975:
11 & 12) enumerates the main attractions of Place Saint-Sulpice (town hall, revenue
service, police station, three cafés, one of which sells tobacco…), before becoming
more precise: “The purpose of the following pages is rather to describe the rest:
whatever one does not generally note that which is not noticed, that which has no
importance: that is, whatever is happening when nothing is happening, if not time,
people, automobiles and clouds”. Perec hastens to ← 230 | 231 → observe: “an old
man with his demi-baguette, a lady with a pack of small pyramid-shaped cakes” (17),
“pigeons flying around the square, coming back to land on the eavestroughs of the town
hall” (24) while “a parish priest returns from a journey (there is an airline tag hanging
from his handbag”, 25), etc.
What is the knowledge range mobilized by the speaker in such and such a
communication situation? Daily interaction combines with multiple elements of factual,
linguistic and gestural knowledge. Galisson (1999b: 485) postulates that in every life
situation there are “behavioral and verbal operations”. His objective: to find the
appropriate words to say, the appropriate gestures to express, the appropriate attitudes
that should be displayed at the doctor’s or in a lineup, etc. What is banal and goes
without saying to the native constitutes the basic “socio-cultural viaticum” of a
foreigner wishing to practice the language and culture of Another (Table 33).
Table 33: Surprise!
In order to illustrate these operations, socially constructed in this or that specific
experiential domain, Galisson proceeds by “universe fragments” ← 231 | 232 → and
attempts to reproduce the mini-process that each of them covers. Case in point:
“Ordering something in a café, at the counter”: – deciding to enter, – approaching the
counter, – waiting until the waiter is available, – placing the order, – consuming on the
spot, – asking for the bill, – paying, – leaving, etc. (Galisson, 1991, 162–163). This
genre of investigation and “theatricalization” leads to the discovery of something
complex and surprisingly organized, an ensemble made up of banal and varied types of
know-how: the sequencing and the realization of different phases (visible and audible)
of the mini-processes are conditioned by culture. The identification of the most
elementary social habits, and the mastery of series of particular verbal / non-verbal
operations carrying the micro-domains of experience aim to facilitate linguistic and
social insertion.
5.10 The Non-Verbal and the Paraverbal
5.10.1 The Speaking Body
Communicative resources cannot be reduced to a purely linguistic corpus; they include
verbal and paraverbal (physical appearance, attitudes, hand gestures, body language,
facial expressions, distances, physical contact with others) or paraverbal (articulation
intensity, pauses, sighs…) elements. Languages are spoken with our head, neck, eyes,
hands, torso […] Culture is imprinted in our ways of speaking, and in our movements.