On Discourse, Communication, and (Some) Fundamental Concepts in SLA Research: Republication from The Modern Language Journal, 81, 1997, 285-300

This article argues for a reconceptualization of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research that would enlarge the ontological and empirical parameters of the field. We claim that methodologies, theories, and foci within SLA reflect an imbalance between cognitive and mentalistic orientations, and social and contextual orientations to language, the former orientation being unquestionably in the ascendancy. This has resulted in a skewed perspective on discourse and communication, which conceives of the foreign language speaker as a deficient communicator struggling to overcome an underdeveloped L2 competence, striving to reach the “target” competence of an idealized native speaker (NS). We contend that SLA research requires a significantly enhanced awareness of the contextual and interactional dimensions of language use, an increased “emic” (i.e., participant-relevant) sensitivity towards fundamental concepts, and the broadening of the traditional SLA data base. With such changes in place, the field of SLA has the capacity to become a theoretically and methodologically richer, more robust enterprise, better able to explicate the processes of second or foreign language (S/FL) acquisition, and better situated to engage with and contribute to research commonly perceived to reside outside its boundaries.

On Discourse, Communication, and (Some) Fundamental Concepts in SLA Research

https://arrow.tudublin.ie/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1071&context=dmcart

Investigating automatic measurements of prosodic accommodation and its dynamics in social interaction

Based on recent research in cognitive science, interaction, and second language acquisition (SLA), I describe a sociocognitive approach to SLA. This approach adopts a non-cognitivist view of cognition: Instead of an isolated computational process in which input is extracted from the environment and used to build elaborate internal knowledge representations, cognition is seen as adaptive intelligence, enabling our close and sensitive alignment to our ecosocial environment in order to survive in it. Mind, body, and world are thus functionally integrated from a sociocognitive perspective instead of radically separated.Learning plays a major part in this scenario: If environments are ever-changing, then adaptation to them is continuous. Learning is part of our natural ability to so adapt, while retaining traces of that adaptation in the integrated mind-body-world system. Viewed in this way, SLA is adaptation to/engagement with L2 environments.Interaction also plays a central role in sociocognitive SLA: We learn L2s through interacting with/in L2 environments. Founded on innate, universal skills which evolutionarily preceded language and make it possible, interaction supports SLA at every turn. Having presented this argument, I illustrate it by analyzing a video clip of an EFL tutoring session, indicating various ‘sociocognitive tools’ for interactive alignment which undergird L2 development.

Language learning in mindbodyworld: A sociocognitive approach to second language acquisition

In this paper, I investigate interpersonal variation in verbal HRI with respect to the computers-as-social-actors hypothesis. The analysis of a corpus of verbal human-robot interactions shows that only a subgroup of the users treat the robot as a social actor. Thus, taking interpersonal variation into account reveals that not all users transfer social behaviors from human interactions into HRI. This casts doubts on the suggestion that the social responses to computers and robots reported on previously are due to mindlessness. At the same time, participants' understanding of robots as social or non-social actors can be shown to have a considerable influence on their linguistic behavior throughout the dialogs.

/pdf/interpersonal-variation-in-understanding-robots-as-social-af83kfqes5.pdf

Interpersonal variation in understanding robots as social actors

Introduction In recent years, an increasing amount of research on second-language acquisition (SLA) has shifted away from studying aspects of the learner's second language (L2) behavior in isolation. The emphasis in the 1970s was on analyses of errors in the learner's language, in support of linguistic theory stating that there are certain universals that govern all SLA. By implication, it was assumed that all learners make the same, or similar, errors (see e.g., Burt and Dulay 1975; Oiler and Richards 1973; Richards 1974; Schumann and Stenson 1975). Although there is still some theoretical support for such a research orientation, a growing number of SLA researchers have begun to study L2 learners as they interact with others, whether it be native speakers (NSs) of the language they are learning or other nonnative speakers (NNSs). The shift toward interactionally situated research can be credited, in large part, to theoretical assertions by Krashen (1981, 1982) that comprehensible input from the L2 learner's interlocutor is crucial for language acquisition to take place. Also influential are claims by Long (1981, 1983, 1985), Hatch (1983), and others that in interactions, it is the negotiations toward meaning that are necessary for L2 development. The growth in research on NS-NNS interactions clearly represents an important step toward the study of language as communication. However, much of the research is atheoretical, confined to linguistic descriptions of the NNS's or NS's speech. Since NNSs and NSs communicate within a social context that they both influence and are influenced by, it is essential to tie the research to sociolinguistic theory. In so doing, we can go beyond linguistic description to an explanation of how NSs and NNSs communicate.

Contexts of Accommodation: Accommodation in native-nonnative interactions: Going beyond the “what” to the “why” in second-language research

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Contexts of Accommodation: Accommodation in native-nonnative interactions: Going beyond the “what” to the “why” in second-language research