Discourse management
- amount and type of information conveyed
- use of questions
- here-and now orientation
- comprehension checks
-self-repetition
Interactional
modifications
Discourse repair
repair of communication
breakdown
- negotiation of meaning
(requests for
clarification; requests for
confirmation; self-and
other-repetitions)
- relinquishing topic
repair of learner error
-avoidance of othercorrection
- on-record and off-record
corrections
Types of interactional modifications in foreigner talk
Problematic communication types (from Gass and Varonis 1991)
Problematic communication
Non-engagement
Noncommunication
miscommunication
Communication
Breakoff
misunderstanding
Non-understanding
Incomplete
understanding
Partial understanding
Discourse repair
• An initial distinction is made between ‘nonengagement’ and ‘miscommunication’
• The former occurs either when there is ‘noncommunication’ (i.e. when a non-native
speaker avoids talking to a native speaker) or
when there is ‘communication breakoff’ (i.e.
when a native speaker stops communicating
as soon as they discover they are talking to a
non-native speaker)
• ‘Miscommunication’ occurs when some message
other than that intended by the speaker is
understood
• It can take the form a ‘misunderstanding’ or an
‘incomplete understanding’ (either ‘nonunderstanding’ or ‘partial understanding’),
depending on whether or not the participants
overtly recognize a problem and undertake repair
• In the case of an ‘incomplete understanding’
remediation occurs, but in the case of
‘misunderstanding’ no repair occurs and the
speakers are likely to lapse into silence
• Gass and Varonis also note that
miscommunication can occur both as result of
cross-cultural differences in the way language
is interpreted and because of purely linguistic
difficulties
• Repair, then, occurs when there is an
‘incomplete understanding’
• It takes the form of negotiation of meaningthe collaborative work which speakers
undertake to achieve mutual understanding
• Native speakers typically use requests for
clarification (‘sorry?’, ‘Huh?’, ‘I beg your
pardon’) and requests for confirmation, which
often make use of intonation or tag questions:
NNS: Mexican food have a lot of ulcers.
NS: Mexicans have a lot of ulcers?
(Young and Doughty 1987)
• Other conversational or semantic
modifications that help to repair discourse are
self- and other-repetitions, which can be exact
(i.e. paraphrases) and complete or partial
• It should be noted that not all repetitions have
a repairing function; as Pica and Doughty
(1988) point out, native speakers also use
them to manage discourse (i.e. to try to
prevent a communication problem arising)
• The presence of higher frequencies of
discourse repair functions such as requests for
clarification and confirmation has been taken
as evidence that higher levels of negotiation
of meaning are occurring
• This is, however, questionable
• Ashton (1986) has pointed out that these
discourse acts do not unambiguously indicate
negotiation of meaning, as the same
procedures can be used in non-problematic
conversation
• Ashton argues that they are often used ‘to
achieve a formal display of convergence of the
participants’ worlds’ by allowing them to
perform ‘a ritual of understanding or
agreement’
• In other words, negotiation can be motivated
by the interactants’ need to display
satisfactory outcomes rather than to
overcome trouble sources
• In addition to repair work directed at solving
problems of understanding, there is also the
repair of learners’ error
• Schwartz (1980) reports a general preference
for self-correction over other-correction in
non-native speaker – non-native speaker
discourse
• Chun et al. suggest that low level of repair
reflects the native speakers’ desire not to
impair the cohesion of the discourse
• In the case of other-correction, a distinction
can be made between on-record and offrecord feedback
• Day, Chenoweth, Chun, and Luppesu (1984)
define the former as feedback which occurs
when the native speaker responds to the
source of a learner’s language problems
directly and unambiguously, by means of a
statement with declarative intonation
Discourse structure
• Gass and Varonis (1985a; Varonis and Gass
1985) have developed a model to describe the
structure of ‘non-understanding routines’
where meaning negotiation takes place
• It consists of ‘trigger’ (i.e. the utterance or
part of an utterance that creates a problem of
understanding), an ‘indicator’ which is
optional
• The ‘indicator-response-reaction to the
response’ portion of a non-understanding
sequence is called a ‘pushdown’, because it
has the effect of pushing the conversation
down rather than allowing it to proceed in a
forward manner
• The model is recursive in that it allows for the
‘response’ element itself to act as a ‘trigger’
for a further non-understanding routine
A simple discourse model of the negotiation of meaning
( example from Gass and Varonis 1985a)
Utterance
Function
NNS1: My father now is retire.
Trigger
NNS2: Retire?
Indicator
NNS1: Yes
Response
NNS2: Oh yeah.
Reaction to response
The function of foreigner talk
1. To promote communication
Three functions
of foreigner
talk
2. To signal, implicitly or explicitly,
speakers’ attitudes towards their
interlocutors
3. To teach the target language
implicitly
• Hatch (1983b) argues correctly that (1) is
primary in that most adjustments are geared
to simplifying utterances to make them easier
to process or to clarify what has been said by
either the native speaker or the non-native
speaker
• Hatch characterizes (2) in terms of the special
kind of effective bond that FT can create
between the native speaker and non-native
speaker, but it is also manifest in FT whose
purpose is ‘talking down’ (Ferguson and
Debose, 1977)
• In fact, it can reflect either downward divergence
(such as when a native speaker deliberately
employs ungrammatical forms with a competent
native speaker to signal lack of respect), or
downward convergence (such as when a native
speaker approximates the interlanguage forms
used by the native speaker as a way of signaling
solidarity
• This double function of (2) may help to explain
why ungrammatical FT can occur between nonfamiliar interlocutors in service or workplace
encounters and between familiar interlocutors in
ordinary conversation
• (3) is only ‘implicit’ because native speakers
do not usually have any pedagogic intent,
although Naro (1983) in a response to Hatch
argues that FT can occur with an explicit
teaching function (i.e. with the intention of
helping a learner learn)
How native speakers come to be able to adjust the level of
their FT to suit the level of individual learners
1. Regression (native speakers move back through
the stages of development that characterized
their own acquisition of language until they find
an appropriate level)
Hatch (198b)
considers 3 ways
2. Matching (native speakers assess a learner’s
current interlanguage state and then imitate the
forms they observe in it)
3. Negotiation (native speakers simplify and clarify
in accordance with the feedback they obtain from
learners in communication with them)
Interlanguage talk
ILT consist of the language that learners
receive as input when addressed by other
learners
• In chapter 6 we noted that ILP constitutes the primary
source of input for many learners
• The treatment will be brief because there is a more
extended discussion of the research in chapter 13
ILT, not surprisingly, tends to be less
grammatical than FT, but it is characterized by
more interactional modifications associated
with the negotiation of meaning
The effect of input and interaction on acquisition
Input and interaction in first language
Input frequency and
second language
acquisition
Ungrammatical
input
Formulaic
speech
Input and interaction in second language
Comprehensible
input and second
language acquisition
Learner
output and
acquisition
Collaborative
discourse and
second
language
acquisition
Input and interaction in first language
acquisition
• A number of studies have investigated to what
extent there is a relationship between the
language that caretakers address to children
and acquisition
• The results have been somewhat
contradictory, leading to controversy regarding
the role of input in L1 acquisition
• One way in which interaction may help children
learn language is by providing them with
opportunities to form vertical constructions
• A vertical construction is built up gradually over
several turns
• Scollon (1976) provides a number of examples of
mother-child discourse, where the child produces
a meaningful statement over two or more turns:
Brenda : Hiding
Adults : What’s hiding?
Brenda : Ballon
• Scollon suggests that vertical constructions
prepare the child for the subsequent
production of horizontal constructions (the
production of a meaningful statement within a
single turn)
• Children also seem to benefit from assistance
in building conversations about topics in
which they are interested
Input and interaction in second
language acquisition
It is useful to distinguish four broad approaches in
studies that have investigated the relationship between
input/interaction and L2 acquisition
1) Simply seeks to establish whether the frequency of
linguistic features in the input is related to the
frequency of the same features in the learner
language
2) Emphasizes the importance of input that is
comprehensible to learners
3) Emphasizes the role of learner output in interaction
4) Looks more holistically at discourse by asking how the
process of collaborative discourse construction aids
acquisition
Input frequency and second language
acquisition
• The frequency hypothesis states that the order
of L2 acquisition is determined by the
frequency with which different linguistic items
occurs in the input
• The hypothesis deals with the relationship
between input and accuracy rather than that
between input and acquisition
• The hypothesis was first advance by Hatch and
Wagner-Gough (1976), who suggested that
the limited range of topics about which
learners, (particularly children) typically talk
results in certain grammatical features
occurring with great frequency in the input
• The more frequently occurring items, they
claimed, were among those that emerged
early in the learners’ output
Ungrammatical input
• Evidence that ungrammatical input has a
direct effect on acquisition comes from a
study by Gass and Lakshman (1991)
• They reanalyzed data from two of the learners
investigated by Cazden et al (1975) – Alberto
and Cheo – and found a striking correlation
between the presence of subjectless
utterances in the input and in the production
of the two learners
Formulaic speech
• How do learners learn formulas?
• One possibility is that they respond to the high
frequency of certain patterns and routines in the
input
• Ellis, for instance, suggested that the formulas
learnt by the three classroom learners
investigated reflected frequently occurring social
and organizational contexts that arose during the
course of communicating in classroom
environment