Connecting the Language Classroom and the Wild : Re-enactments of Language Use Experiences

AbstractUsing multimodal conversation analysis, this article analyses language learning as an in situ process during a teacher-assigned, experientially based pedagogical activity. The activity involved a three-part pedagogical structure, where learners first prepared for and then participated in real-life service encounters, and later reflected on their experiences back in the classroom. The analysis details how the co-constructed telling sequences through which novice second language users re-enact their experiences create an occasion for language-focused activity. We argue that the actions through which the participants display and sustain an orientation to an interactional practice as an…

Openings in technology-mediated business meetings

The prerequisites for opening a meeting, or beginning any kind of interaction for that matter, are participants’ presence and shared orientation towards the situation at hand. This paper analyses how the initial moments of technology-mediated business meetings involving distributed work groups are organized sequentially and multimodally. Drawing on video-recorded meetings in an international company, it documents the multimodal practices used in the process of establishing co-orientation to the shared meeting space and achieving entry into the meeting. The analysis shows that the stepwise unfolding of the opening phase requires the coordination of verbal and bodily conducts as well as the a…

Luokan ulkopuolisiin vuorovaikutustilanteisiin valmistautuminen prosessina

The Rally Course : Learners as co-designers of out-of-classroom language learning tasks

This chapter introduces a “Rally Course” as a novel CA-inspired approach to teaching a second language. This approach builds on an understanding of language learning as a social process that is closely intertwined with L2 speakers’ evolving membership in the surrounding community. It addresses the need to develop experiential pedagogies that widen learners’ opportunities for interaction and support the socialisation process. Building on recent pedagogical initiatives supporting language learning in the wild, we illustrate the overall structure of the Rally Course, describe the main materials that were designed to support the learning objectives and present a case analysis of a student carry…

Älypuhelimet oppimistoimintaa jäsentämässä

Situated at the intersection of usage-based and social interactional approaches to L2 learning (CA-SLA, in particular) and informed by usage-based research, this study aims to contribute to a better understanding of the role of objects in understanding and designing language learning activities. In particular, this study aims to contribute to a better understanding of the role of smartphones in group discussions in L2 classrooms. The data comes from “learning-in-the-Wild” tasks designed for courses focusing on conversational Finnish. The interactions around these activities were videotaped and analysed using the methods of multimodal conversation analysis. The analysis shows that in the cla…

Asymmetries of Knowledge and Epistemic Change in Social Gaming Interaction

While a growing number of studies investigate the role of knowledge and interactional management of knowledge asymmetries in conversation analysis, the epistemic organization of multilingual and second language interactions is still largely unexplored. This article addresses this issue by investigating how knowledge asymmetries and changing positions with regard to knowledge impact social interaction in multilingual gaming activities. Drawing on a collection of video recordings of social gaming sessions collected over a two year period and involving the same two participants, we examine how the participants orient to knowledge and deal with knowledge asymmetries while solving game-related p…

Making Sense of Interactional Trouble Through Mobile-Supported Sharing Activities

acceptedVersion Peer reviewed

How Hand Gestures Contribute to Action Ascription

This article investigates the embodied achievement of intersubjectivity by analyzing depictive gestures that are produced during the final components of the ongoing verbal TCU and extended into the following turn transition space. The depictive gestures in focus elaborate the TCUs by providing additional information on the verbal content of the turn. They may, for example, provide a visual representation of an action that is referred to in the verbal TCU, depict details that are not referred to in talk, or perform bodily enactments that model projected next actions. The analysis demonstrates that timed in this way, the gestures contribute to the multimodal action package that they are part …

Conversation Analytic Research on Learning-in-Action:The Complex Ecology of Second Language Interaction ‘in the wild’

This volume offers insights on language learning outside the classroom, or in the wild, where L2 users themselves are the driving force for language learning. The chapters, by scholars from around the world, critically examine the concept of second language learning in the wild. The authors use innovative data collection methods (such as video and audio recordings collected by the participants during their interactions outside classrooms) and analytic methods from conversation analysis to provide a radically emic perspective on the data. Analytic claims are supported by evidence from how the participants in the interactions interpret one another’s language use and interactional conduct. Thi…

Bilingual practices and the social organisation of video gaming activities

Abstract Grounded in the interactional paradigm for the study of bilingual language use, this paper investigates how players engaged in a collaborative game-playing activity orient to the co-presence of two languages in the setting and deploy bilingual resources in organising their action and participation. The analysis aims to demonstrate how a particular kind of ‘bilingual order’ ( Cromdal, 2005 ) is co-constructed in which the players use their native language (Finnish) for interaction with each other, but systematically draw on the language of the game in constructing their turns as recognisable and building their alignments with respect to activities under way. The analysis highlights …

Young People's Translocal New Media Uses: A Multiperspective Analysis Of Language Choice And Heteroglossia

The aim of this paper is to shed light on the particularities of the linguistic, social and cultural action of young Finns in translocal new media spaces, and the ways in which they themselves make sense of and account for their actions. We present findings from 4 case studies, each of which illustrates aspects of translocality in young Finns' new media uses. Theoretically and methodologically the case studies draw on sociolinguistics, discourse studies, and ethnography, making use of the concepts of language choice and linguistic and stylistic heteroglossia. Through the 4 cases in focus, the paper shows how young people's linguistically and textually sophisticated new media uses are geared…

Irony and the moral order of secondary school classrooms

Abstract This paper describes how irony is used to negatively evaluate student behaviour in sequences where students disrupt or resist the official business of the lesson and thus challenge the teacher's authority. Irony-implicative utterances, i.e. utterances hearable as ironic in their context, are examined from two complementary perspectives: (i) the intricate interactional work utterances involve; how utterances are hearable as ironic and how participants negotiate their implications within the sequences of action in which the utterances are occasioned and used, and (ii) the use of irony in the local management of moral orders in the classroom. Findings show that irony-implicative utter…

Bodily Practices in Action Formation and Ascription in Multilingual Interaction: Introduction to the Special Issue.

This special issue brings together empirical studies that investigate how bodily practices feature in action formation and action ascription in multilingual interaction (Schegloff, 2007; Levinson, 2013). Grounded in video-based conversation analysis and drawing on data from diverse sociomaterial settings, the articles investigate the contingent interactional processes through which speakers from different language backgrounds accomplish actions and achieve intersubjectivity. They demonstrate how specific constellations of linguistic resources, bodily conduct, spatial configurations, and material ecology are built into accomplishment of actions at different levels of interactional organizati…

Explaining Hooke’s Law : Definitional Practices in a CLIL Physics Classroom

This article examines how a teacher in a Content-and-Language-Integrated-Learning (CLIL) program engages in various definitional practices during a plenary episode in a physics class taught in English in Finland. The episode focuses on explaining Hooke’s law, which involves defining its key concepts and their relations as instructable matters. Using multimodal conversation analysis, the article shows how the teacher accomplishes definitions and definition-related actions through talk and a range of embodied and material resources. The different configurations of resources are coordinated to elucidate the key concepts, to contextualize them in relation to the larger activity, and to situate …

Other-Repetition as a Resource for Participation in the Activity of Playing a Video Game

This article offers an empirically based contribution to the growing body of studies using Conversation Analysis (CA) as a tool for analyzing second/foreign language learning in and through interaction. Building on a sociointeractional view of learning as grounded in the structures of participation in social activities, we apply CA methods to examine the affordances offered by interaction during the activity of playing a video game for additional language learning. We focus on one type of interactional practice, lexical and prosodic repetition, as a recurring resource through which players attend to the game and collaboratively build their understanding and experience of game events. We arg…

När barnet blir expert: Förklaringar av ord och procedurer i det digitala spelet Growtopia

The ability to explain word meanings is central to a child’s language development and socialisation into different domains of language use. In previous research explanations have been shown to be linked to cognitive and linguistic development as well as academic language and discursive skills. This paper analyses what kinds of linguistic and discursive competences are put to use in explanation activities in interactions between an 8-year-old bilingual child (Albin) and his mother around a digital game. The data comes from a larger data set of video-recordings and field observation of children’s interactions around games. The analysis focuses on explanation sequences in which the child expli…

Learning Grammar for Social Action : Implications for Research and Language Teaching

Asymmetries of Knowledge and Epistemic Change in Social Gaming Interaction

While a growing number of studies investigate the role of knowledge and interactional management of knowledge asymmetries in conversation analysis, the epistemic organization of multilingual and second language interactions is still largely unexplored. This article addresses this issue by investigating how knowledge asymmetries and changing positions with regard to knowledge impact social interaction in multilingual gaming activities. Drawing on a collection of video recordings of social gaming sessions collected over a two year period and involving the same two participants, we examine how the participants orient to knowledge and deal with knowledge asymmetries while solving game-related p…

How Wild Can It Get? Managing Language Learning Tasks in Real Life Service Encounters

This chapter explores how experientially based pedagogical activities that involve participation in real life service encounters provide occasions for developing L2 interactional competence. The data comprises novice L2 students’ self-recorded interactions in service settings and videorecordings of classroom planning activities and de-briefing discussions, where the students reflect on their experiences. The analysis traces what kinds of occasions for learning arise as the students move between the classroom and the real-world service settings. The findings show that the different phases of the task complement each other in supporting the development of interactional competence. The prepara…

Constructing co-presence through shared VR gameplay

This study analyzes how participants playing VR games construct co-presence and shared gameplay. The analysis focuses on in­stances of play where one person is wearing the VR equipment, and other participants are located nearby without the ability to directly interact with the game. We first show how the active player using the VR equipment draws on talk and embodied activity to signal their presence in the shared physical environment, while simul­taneously conducting actions in the virtual space, and thus creates spaces for the other participants to take part in gameplay. Second, we describe how other participants draw on the contextual config­urations of the moment in displaying co-presen…

Oppija arjen sankarina – Luokasta arjen vuorovaikutustilanteisiin ja takaisin

Olemme opettajina usein miettineet, miten hyvin luokkahuoneen suomi toisena kielenä -opetus valmentaa opiskelijoita toimimaan arjen kielenkäyttötilanteissa. Kerromme tässä artikkelissa tutkimusta ja pedagogista kehitystyötä yhdistävästä pilottihankkeesta, jonka tavoitteena on pienentää kuilua luokkahuoneessa tapahtuvan kielen opetuksen ja luokkahuoneen seinien ulkopuolella tapahtuvan kielen käytön ja oppimisen välillä. Hankkeessa kerätään tietoa ja kokemuksia, joiden avulla kehitetään pedagogisia työkaluja tuettuun kielen oppimiseen arjen vuorovaikutustilanteissa. nonPeerReviewed

Manual Guiding in Peer Group Interaction: A Resource for Organizing a Practical Classroom Task

How might someone carry out an educational task by moving an object or by guiding another person in doing so? This article describes the practical work of a group of school students as they work through an object-based physics task. It analyzes a recurrent practice whereby one student influences another's embodied conduct, either by manually guiding an object (a weight, a moveable plank, and so on) or by guiding the hand of another student as they manipulate an object. We show how the practices of manual guiding involve a range of embodied and contextual resources. They serve to maintain and restore the progressivity of the task in two environments: corrective sequences and local projects i…

Recipient Design by Gestures : How Depictive Gestures Embody Actions in Cooking Instructions

This paper investigates how depictive gestures, i.e., hand movements that depict actions, scenes or objects, are configured and used for accomplishing instructions. By drawing on video recordings of second language interactions in cooking classes for newcomers in Finland, we focus on instructions that project a certain type of complying bodily action as the relevant next action. We demonstrate that the instructions are designed to be sensitive not only to the contingencies of the material ecology of the kitchen but also to the epistemic and linguistic asymmetries between the participants. The analysis shows how depictive gestures contribute to the forward-feeding function of cooking instruc…

Assessments and the social construction of expertise in political TV interviews

AbstractThis paper investigates how rights to knowledge and opinion are negotiated through assessments embedded in questioning sequences in political news interviews. The focus is on describing how assessments index epistemic positions and evaluative stances embedded in the turns through which the institutional goals of the interview are achieved. The analysis shows how assessments combine with other turn-constructional resources to build a critical or opposing position toward the interviewee's actions, deeds, status, views, or attitudes. It also sheds light on the strategies through which interviewees (IE) engage with and resist the positions displayed by interviewers (IR). Findings show t…

Collaborative Game‐play as a Site for Participation and Situated Learning of a Second Language

This paper addresses additional language learning as rooted in participation in the social activity of collaborative game‐play. Building on a social‐interactional view of learning, it analyses some of the detailed practices through which players attend to a video game as the material and semiotic structure that shapes play and creates affordances for additional language learning. We describe how players engage with the language resources offered by the game, drawing on the vocabulary, constructions, prosodic features and utterances modelled on game dialogue, in building their own actions during collaborative play. With these resources, the players display their ongoing engagement with the g…

How Hand Gestures Contribute to Action Ascription

ABSTRACTThis article investigates the embodied achievement of intersubjectivity by analyzing depictive gestures that are produced during the final components of the ongoing verbal TCU and extended ...

Kunnianhimoinen kokoomateos vuorovaikutuslingvistiikasta

Kirja-arvio Selting, Margret & Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth (toim.): Studies in interactional linguistics nonPeerReviewed

Coordinating action in technology-supported shared tasks: Virtual pointing as a situated practice for mobilizing a response

Drawing on recordings of remote screen-based work meetings in Finland, this conversation analytic study investigates interactive properties of mouse cursor movements in technology-mediated shared tasks. The article illustrates how participants rely on features afforded by the input device in ways that divert from its pre-designed functions to accomplish virtual pointing gestures. These gestures serve as an organizational resource in the precursory phase of action, i.e. when a next on-screen action is observably made relevant. In this sequential environment, pointing by means of the tool is a collaborative resource: an embodied practice for sustaining co-orientation and advancing the sequent…

Introduction: On the Complex Ecology of Language Learning ‘in the Wild’

This introduction explicates the central issues informing the chapters in the volume. We outline the epistemological development of Second Language Acquisition research as it has evolved from being predominantly individual-cognitive to a more pluralistic endeavor in which social approaches to cognition and learning are becoming central. Social interaction has been recognized as key to language learning since the 1970’s but the field is still lacking in research that studies the everyday social-interactional ecology in which the L2 speaker acts. We argue that it is time to broaden contexts for empirical investigations to study language learning in the full ecology of ‘the wild’, that is, in …