Common ground and positioning in teacher-student interactions: Second language socialization in EFL classrooms

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-82
Author(s):  
Deniz Ortaçtepe Hart ◽  
Seçil Okkalı
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Language Socialization ◽  
Common Knowledge ◽  
Positioning Theory ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Transmission Of Knowledge ◽  
Teacher Student ◽  
Cultural Mediator ◽  
Efl Classrooms

Abstract This study aims to present how intercultural and intracultural communication unfolds in EFL classrooms with NNESTs and NESTs who constantly negotiate common ground and positionings with their students. Three NEST and three NNEST teaching partners were observed and audio recorded during the first and fifth weeks of a new course they taught in turns. Data were transcribed and analyzed through conversation analysis using Kecskes and Zhang’s socio-cognitive approach to common ground (Kecskes, István & Fenghui Zhang. 2009. Activating, seeking, and creating common ground. A socio-cognitive approach. Pragmatics and Cognition 17(2). 331–355) and Davies and Harré’s positioning theory (Davies, Bronwyn and Rom Harré. 1990. Positioning: The discursive production of selves. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 20(1). 43–63). The findings revealed several differences in the ways NESTs and NNESTs established common ground and positioned themselves in their social interactions. NESTs’ lack of shared background with their students positioned them as outsiders in a foreign country and enabled them to establish more core common ground (i.e., building new common knowledge between themselves and their students). NNESTs maintained the already existing core common ground with their students (i.e., activating the common knowledge they shared with their students) while positioning themselves as insiders. NESTs’ difference-driven, cultural mediator approach to common ground helped them create meaningful contexts for language socialization through which students not only learned the target language but also the culture. On the other hand, NNESTs adopted a commonality-driven, insider approach that was transmission-of-knowledge oriented, focusing on accomplishing a pedagogical goal rather than language socialization.

The cognitive saliency of word associations of verbs of speech in English as a Lingua Franca interactions

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 417-443
Author(s):  
Yang Pang
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native English Speakers ◽  
Target Language ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Lingua Franca ◽  
Word Associations ◽  
Similar Word ◽  
Speech Communities

AbstractBuilding on the theoretical insights into the socio-cognitive approach to the study of interactions in which English is used as a lingua franca (ELF)), this paper reports on the idiosyncratic phenomenon that ELF speakers do not adhere to the norms of native speakers, but instead create their own particular word associations during the course of the interaction. Taking the verbs of speech talk, say, speak, and tell as examples, this study compares word associations from three corpora of native and non-native speakers. The findings of this study reveal that similar word associative patterns are produced and shared by ELF speech communities from different sociocultural backgrounds, and these differ substantially from those used by native English speakers. Idiom-like constructions such as say like, how to say, and speakin are developed and utilized by Asian and European ELF speakers. Based on these findings, this paper concludes that ELF speakers use the prefabricated expressions in the target language system only as references, and try to develop their own word associative patterns in ELF interactions. Moreover, the analysis of the non-literalness/metaphorical word associations of the verbs of speech in the Asian ELF corpus suggests that ELF speakers dynamically co-construct their shared common ground to derive non-literal/metaphorical meaning in actual situational context.

scholarly journals A STUDY OF TEACHERS AND STUDENTS’ CODE SWITCHING IN EFL CLASSROOMS SETTING

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 21
Author(s):  
Muslim Muslim ◽  
H Sukiyah ◽  
Arif Rahman
Keyword(s):  
Code Switching ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Classroom Observations ◽  
Audio Recording ◽  
New Words ◽  
English Classes ◽  
Teachers And Students ◽  
Field Notes ◽  
Efl Classrooms

This study aims to investigates a phenomenon of bilingualism in which the use of Target language (English) is switched to target Indonesia, known as code switching (CS). More specifically, the study focuses on the types of CS and the functions of CS in EFL classrooms setting. The data were obtained from classroom observations through audio recording and field notes from two different English classes. The finding reveals that both the teachers and the students employed three types of CS: inter-sentential, tag-switching, and inter-sentential switching in different contexts. Furthermore, the different frequency of CS functions employed by teachers and students’ occurs both in two classes for two reasons: for social and pedagogical functions. Socially, CS in this study served as (1) conveying teacher’s admonition, (2) requesting for help, (3) helping other students, (4) commenting on the students’ unsatisfactory answers, and (5) building unofficial interaction among the students. Pedagogically, CS served to (1) explain or repeat ununderstandable utterances which has been said previously in order to help students understand it, (2) check the students’ understanding to the new words or expression introduced in the lesson, (3) translate sentence when students learn about grammatical features (4) repair self mistakes, (5) clarify teachers’ misunderstanding, and (6) initiate a question.

scholarly journals The Definite and Indefinite Articles of Spanish (or Castilian) Language in Context

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-127
Author(s):  
Sonia Montero Gálvez
Keyword(s):  
Common Knowledge ◽  
Definite Article ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Indefinite Article ◽  
The Common ◽  
Communicative Context ◽  
The Way

The present paper addresses the contrast between the definite article (el/la/los/las) and the indefinite article (un/a/os/as) from a cognitive approach that not only poses a single meaning for each kind of article, but also highlights the pragmatic (or contextual) aspects that underlie that meaning and establish the use of one form or another. The article’s meaning is shaped by the way we conceptualize the reference: the definite article implies an inclusive reference characterized by the uniqueness of the referent, while the indefinite article implies an exclusive reference characterized by the lack of uniqueness. The possibility to choose one or other way depends on contextual aspects related to the common knowledge shared by the interlocutors, the communicative context (linguistic and situational) and the space (physical or mental) where the referent is located.

Negotiation of Wit in Facebook Humour

2016 ◽  
pp. 20-37
Author(s):  
Akin Odebunmi ◽  
Simeon Ajiboye
Keyword(s):  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Ground Theory ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Cultural Experiences ◽  
The Common ◽  
Asymmetrical Relationships

This chapter unpacks the humorous contents of selected Facebook-based Akpos jokes which have received inadequate attention in the scholarship with respect to wit negotiation which mostly indexes the jokes. Six out of fifteen sampled jokes have been analysed with the theoretic aid of Istvan Kecskes' Socio-Cognitive Approach (SCA), aspects of the common ground theory, aspects of conversation analysis and elements of selected humour theories. The analysis shows three forms of wit negotiation: negotiation of mis-oriented twists, negotiation of dis-preference and negotiation of un-designed twists. In the respective cases, the talk initiating speakers have their logic flawed by recipient speakers, usually Akpos, and consequently get outsmarted; earlier sequentially dispreferred social choices are re-negotiated as preferred options in the light of new discursive realities; and the interactive designs or expectations of talk initiating participants receive undersigned or unexpected sequential responses in symmetrical or asymmetrical relationships. The paper argues that the joke characters' situationally adaptive orientation to apriori or emergent common ground and intention demonstrates the Akpos jokes' recontextualisation of particular Nigerian social and cultural experiences through the characters' socio-cognitive designs in the mediated encounters. It concludes that while these designs offer the relaxant effects jokes are naturally meant to yield, their negotiation mechanisms provide resources for the application of Kecskes' SCA in Facebook humour and produce sarcasm with a wing of moral lessons.

Activating, seeking, and creating common ground

2009 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 331-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Istvan Kecskes ◽  
Fenghui Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Mental Representation ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Emergent Property ◽  
Shared Knowledge ◽  
Construction Process ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
The Core ◽  
Communicative Process ◽  
Integrated Concept

This paper argues that current pragmatic theories fail to describe common ground in its complexity because they usually retain a communication-as-transfer-between-minds view of language, and disregard the fact that disagreement and egocentrism of speaker-hearers are as fundamental parts of communication as agreement and cooperation. On the other hand, current cognitive research has overestimated the egocentric behavior of the dyads and argued for the dynamic emergent property of common ground while devaluing the overall significance of cooperation in the process of verbal communication. The paper attempts to eliminate this conflict and proposes to combine the two views into an integrated concept of common ground, in which both core common ground (assumed shared knowledge, a priori mental representation) and emergent common ground (emergent participant resource, a post facto emergence through use) converge to construct a dialectical socio-cultural background for communication.
Both cognitive and pragmatic considerations are central to this issue. While attention (through salience, which is the cause for interlocutors’ egocentrism) explains why emergent property unfolds, intention (through relevance, which is expressed in cooperation) explains why presumed shared knowledge is needed. Based on this, common ground is perceived as an effort to converge the mental representation of shared knowledge present as memory that we can activate, shared knowledge that we can seek, and rapport, as well as knowledge that we can create in the communicative process. The socio-cognitive approach emphasizes that common ground is a dynamic construct that is mutually constructed by interlocutors throughout the communicative process. The core and emergent components join in the construction of common ground in all stages, although they may contribute to the construction process in different ways, to different extents, and in different phases of the communicative process.

Common Knowledge

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 309-325
Author(s):  
John Greco
Keyword(s):  
Recent Literature ◽  
Common Knowledge ◽  
On Certainty ◽  
Transmission Of Knowledge ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
Hinge Propositions ◽  
Distinctive Role

A promising idea in the recent literature is that the concept of knowledge serves to govern the flow of actionable information within a community of information sharers. In this connection, several authors have argued that knowledge is the “norm of assertion,” while others have explored the distinctive role of testimony in the transmission of knowledge. This paper investigates the role of “common knowledge” in such a community, and compares it to Wittgenstein’s notion of “hinge propositions” in On Certainty. Wittgenstein’s thinking is evaluated in this context, and an account of common knowledge along Wittgensteinian lines is considered. I do not here endorse the account of common knowledge that results. Rather, I consider some of the advantages and disadvantages of what looks to be a promising approach.

Affective stances in teacher-novice student interactions: Language, embodiment, and willingness to learn in a Swedish primary classroom

2012 ◽  
Vol 41 (5) ◽  
pp. 641-670 ◽  
Author(s):  
Asta Cekaite
Keyword(s):  
Language Socialization ◽  
Classroom Community ◽  
First Grade ◽  
First Year ◽  
Cultural Patterns ◽  
Student Interactions ◽  
Moral Socialization ◽  
Teacher Student ◽  
Longitudinal Tracking ◽  
Teacher Student Interactions

AbstractThe present study explores a child, language, and cultural novice's affective and moral socialization during her first year in a Swedish first-grade classroom. Within the language socialization framework, it focuses on the lexicogrammatical and embodied organization of the novice's affectively charged noncompliant responses to (teacher) instructional directives, and the teachers' socializing responsive moves (contextualizing them within local and wider societal values and ideologies). The methods adopted combine a microanalytic approach with ethnographic analyses of socialization within a classroom community.Longitudinal tracking of the novice's stances demonstrated a trajectory across which socialization into normatively predictable cultural patterns did not occur. As shown, the student's affective stances and the teachers' socializing responses were consequential for the emergence of her “bad subject,” that is, her socioculturally problematic identity (from a “resigned” to an “oppositional” student who was “unwilling” to learn). Such deviant cases, it is argued, provide insights into the contested and dynamic aspects of second language socialization and demonstrate how affective (and moral) stances are mobilized as resources in the indexing of institutional identities. (Language socialization, language novice, affective stance, teacher-student interactions, directive sequences, embodiment, volition)*

scholarly journals Dialectic aspects between periphery and center: the translations of Aeschylus’ tragedies into French by Olivier Py

2021 ◽  
Vol 68 ◽  
pp. 27-38
Author(s):  
Maria Baïraktari
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
First Century ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Cultural Variations ◽  
Source Language ◽  
Translation Strategy ◽  
Cultural Mediator ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
Spatio Temporal

“Periphery” and “centre” are two concepts which could be examined in terms of geographic, linguistic, or cultural variations and constants at different periods of human history. If world literature is a united system, with an unequal center and periphery, the interlinguistic translation of Aeschylusʼ tragedies into French by Olivier Py in the twenty-first century will serve as an example in order to highlight the various facets of this multidimensional relationship. Olivier Py, an award-winning prose and theatre writer, poet, director, actor, translator, director of the Avignon Festival since 2013, translated and directed all seven surviving Aeschylean tragedies between 2008 and 2017. He thus played the role of a cultural mediator who ensured the transition from the source language to the target language by creating texts designed to be presented on stage, and following the priorities of the codified theatrical discourse of tragedy. Based on this process, the author exam-ines the various spatio-temporal and cultural relationships between periphery and centre in order to present the main points of Olivier Py’s translation strategy.

scholarly journals The Kinds of the Linguistic Interference

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 176
Author(s):  
Sayana Movsum Baghirova
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Student Attitudes ◽  
Scientific Literature ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Language Skills ◽  
First Language ◽  
The Other ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Teacher Student ◽  
Linguistic Interference

In the scientific literature, the symbols L1 (Language 1) and L2 (Language 2) are used to indicate the sequence of languages. In most countries, L1 is understood as a first language, and it usually coincides with the mother tongue. The other languages are learned later. This can be seen in the children of multilingual parents. Teaching a second foreign language covers everything a student hears and sees in a new language. This includes a variety of discourse activities, such as exchanges in restaurants and shops, talking to friends, reading billboards and newspapers, as well as teacher-student attitudes in the classroom, as well as language activities and books in the classroom. Regardless of the learning environment, the learner's goal is to master a target language. The learner starts the task of learning a second language from scratch (or close to it) and uses the necessary language skills in the mother tongue to determine the reciprocity of language units in the target language.

Meanings as Species

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Richard
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Common Knowledge ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Competent Speaker ◽  
Conceptual Engineering ◽  
As Species ◽  
Everyday Talk ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
Level Process

One kind of meaning is constituted by what we need to grasp about usage to be competent participants in a community’s linguistic practices. This book proposes that this sort of meaning is primarily a matter of common knowledge about the presuppositions speakers make in using their language. It argues we should think of this as a population-level, process-like phenomenon. It’s population-level since what needs to be grasped is determined by a rough equilibrium of assumptions across speakers; it’s process-like since what needs to be grasped is a dynamic property of a practice: the competent speaker needs to track how what’s taken for granted about a community’s words fluctuates as the environment changes what is salient to all. The case for thinking of meaning in this way is a matter of its payoffs in theorizing about language. Thinking of meaning in this way reconciles Quine’s skepticism about an epistemically interesting sort of analyticity with the belief that everyday talk about meaning tracks something real, something about which we can and should theorize. It helps ground a sensible way of thinking about philosophical analysis and the role of our intuitions therein, and helps resolve a number of puzzles about relations between illocution and meaning. It helps ground a way of thinking about our practices of ascribing content to others. And it helps provide an understanding of ‘conceptual engineering’—as an attempt to add or subtract from interpretive common ground but not (necessarily) to shift reference—that makes such engineering look like a sensible, conceivably successful project.

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