Situation 8: Your new classmate is having a problem deciding which course to take next year—industrial computers or multimedia—because both of
2. Definitions of Keywords
4.3. After Interviews
said “I interviewed foreigners who were in a good mood and had good interpersonal skills.”
Students 9 and 28 felt more secure because foreigners used simple words, spoke clearly easy to understand and corrected her English. Student 10 saw that her interlocutors tried to communicate with her. Student 11 said “one of her interlocutors smiled a lot, laughed with fun and was willing to explain everything.” Student 16 met an American who was nice, friendly and smiley.
Student 38 felt more secure and less anxious because her foreign interlocutors were nice and friendly. Student 12 shared in more details that:
my foreign interlocutors seemed to understand her nature of speaking English. This was the reason why they spoke English as clearly as they could and use simple words so that I could understand. This showed their cooperative spirit lowering my anxiety, excitement and awkwardness.
Student 34 “gained more experiences because the interview assignment allowed me to express myself more, practice communicative skills and make more friends.” Student 38 said “the activity was a good fun and developed my positive attitudes towards farangs.”
5. Discussion
The overall outcomes showed that the participants encountered processes of constructing and negotiating multiple identities (Norton, 2000; Thornborrow, 2004) connected with their psychological wellbeing and perception of inadequate English level in three different stages. The first stage was prior to their intercultural contact, the second was during the interactions and the last was after they finished all the required interviews. These stages appear to be constructed through the present context where the participants had to initiate five different interviews in English with culturally different others and carry them on for an academic purpose. Seidlhofer (2004) and Jenkins (2007) consider use of English in this context as a lingua franca (ELF), that is English is adopted as a medium of communication between speakers whose first languages differ from one another.
During the first stage, all participants possessed extrinsic motivation in intercultural communication, for it was a part of the course requirements.
Dörnyei and Clément (2001) considered this kind of motivation as instrumental/pragmatic dimension, by which learners were driven to learn a language because they desired academic benefits, not because they were personally interested in it. Seven of them neither thought they communicated well, nor felt any lack of security and dignity because they said they had previous intercultural experiences (at least four times) for academic purposes. This suggests that they have successfully developed their positive attitude toward their English performance. Thirty-one participants did not have positive attitudes towards their English ability and consciously constructed similar senses of selves or identities, especially excitement, worry, shyness and fear due to the perceptions of their poor English. These negative emotions, which constructed anxiety, appeared to impair their task performance (Eysenck, 1979).
In theme one, during the recruitment seventeen students did not feel lack of dignity because they did not experience loss of face. They only felt insecure because they were excited and unable to control their fear and worry when approaching foreigners or initiating a conversation. They were afraid and worried because they perceived that their English competence was inadequate to understand foreigners and make themselves understood and that those foreigners might misjudge them. Such perceptions reflect communication apprehension, defined as "an individual's level of fear or
anxiety associated with either real or anticipated oral communication"
(McCroskey, 1977: 78), normally stemming from shyness. Feeling apprehensive further impinged on the participants’ risk-taking and self-confidence. Lack of risk-taking and confidence, on one hand, characterize identity insecurity in intercultural communication (Kim, 2009) and on the other hand prevent learners from achievement in language learning and acquiring (Gardner & Clément, 1990; Brown, 2001),
In theme two, fourteen participants not only felt insecure but also lacked of dignity, while five of them lost face when some foreign interlocutors refused them the interviews. Nine of them consciously felt excited and worried about their intercultural communication through the medium of English due to their perceptions of low English competence and personal trait of shyness. Some additionally cared about foreigners’ attitudes towards them. The outcomes are in line with Ting-Toomey’s (2005) extensive study that the notion of face, how individuals present their identities in social interactions, is tied to one’s emotion of social self-worth and the social self-worth of others. Additionally,
“conflict of any kind is an emotionally laden, face-threatening phenomenon”
(p. 72), linking with identity.
The analysis of themes one and two suggests that excitement, worry, shyness and fear due to communication apprehension lowering the participants’
confidence and concurrently increasing their anxiety to initiate an interaction.
Loss of face results in lack of dignity; experiences in lack of dignity depend on the participants’ personal perceptions.
During the second stage, thirty-one participants had to negotiate similar identities. Those included confidence, courage and self-worth. In theme one, eleven experienced lack of security because they still felt excited about speaking English with culturally different others, suggesting that their excitement constructed their higher level of anxiety and lowered their confidence. When they viewed that they were unable to communicate in English effectively, they became psychologically vulnerable. Their language inability however did not impinge on their dignity because eight participants appeared to have positive attitudes towards it while three did not value much on speaking like a native. This analytical aspect suggests that the latter reason may derive from Whorf’s linguistic relativity (1956) in a sense that their first language, Thai, determined by their culture defined their experiences in communicating in English. As such, it was not necessary for them to speak as if they were native speakers. In addition, excitement is rather a negative emotion that arouses anxiety leading to lack of confidence and security in this context.
In theme two, twenty participants simultaneously lacked security and dignity
because they perceived their English ability to be inadequate in the real world. It appeared that four participants experienced “world Englishes shock”
because they were unfamiliar with different varieties of English rendering them psychologically vulnerable (Tananuraksakul, 2009: 49). Nine encountered “repetition shock” as they were psychologically affected by repetition, which in turn made them psychologically down (Tananuraksakul, 2009: 49). Unfamiliar words and accents, fear of face-loss, reluctance to impose upon interaction (kreng-jai in Thai), expectation to communicate with culturally different others well and academic status resulted in incompetent intercultural communication. This suggests that socially the participants value their academic status majoring in Business English and expectation caused them to lack security and dignity. When these values are discounted, their identity becomes threatened in a way that diminishes their confidence and self-worth. Culturally speaking, fear of face-loss and reluctance to impose upon interaction, deeply embedded in their being, psychologically affected their intercultural engagement. The psychological effects they experienced reflect the notions of ‘competence’ face and ‘moral’ face. Ting-Toomey (2005) refers the former as a desire to appear intelligent, accomplished, skilful, while the latter as a desire to appear dignified and honored. These two face content domains appeared to influence their perceptions.
In theme three, fourteen participants’ levels of security and dignity increased because they finally found some interlocutors who were helpful, smiley and friendly. These positive characteristics, namely speaking slowly and clearly and willingness to communicate appeared to lower their anxiety, increase their confidence and created relaxing atmosphere. Such characteristics of their foreign interlocutors assisted them to perceive smooth intercultural communication. They also found that their level of English was not actually low when they could communicate more effectively in these circumstances.
Once they possessed these perceptions, they felt proud and impressed and enjoyed interacting with culturally different others. This suggests that they gain both face and pride through perceptions of their positive intercultural contact. The suggestion is in line with Ting-Toomey (2005: 73) that face is “a precious identity resource” for non-native English speakers from Thailand to gain social pride, respect, honor, security and dignity in intercultural communication through the medium of English. Pride therefore characterizes dignity (Tananuraksakul & Hall, 2011) in this context.
In theme four, nine participants felt that their security increased because they had pleasant experiences with some of their foreign interlocutors who showed their friendliness through smiles, laughs and language accommodation and correction. These characteristics appeared to lower their anxiety and increase their confidence. This suggests that smiles, laughs,
language accommodation and correction boosted their identity security.
During the final stage, all participants mutually managed to negotiate these emotional identities: confidence, courage, pride and self-worth because their face was restored through feeling at ease with some foreign interlocutors’
linguistic accommodation, friendliness and willingness to interact. Such positive intercultural interactions they eventually experienced reflect the key nature of Thais, particularly laid back and friendliness (The Public Relations Department, 2002). This suggests that effective use of English in the present context is beyond the participants’ English performance but is connected with the embedded culture they exercised in their intercultural communication.
This connection is parallel with Baker’s (2009) argument that English is not linked with the culture of the traditional English-dominant countries. It may be linked with the culture of non-native English speakers who initiate an interaction. For illustration of cyclical feelings of security and dignity in the present context adapted from Tananuraksakul’s and Hall’s (2011: 197) work, see Figures 1 and 2.
Figure 1. Effect of students’ English ability perceptions on their cyclical lack of security and dignity.
Figure 2. Effect of students’ perceptions of positive intercultural engagement on their cyclical security and dignity.
6. Conclusion
The present study explored 38 EFL learners’ encounters of intercultural communication in Thailand particularly their security and dignity. Although they are undergraduate students majoring in Business English, they view their English ability to be inadequate. In fact, this academic status threatened their face and diverted to lower their security and dignity. The processes of intercultural communication they experienced revealed their multifaceted identities not only during interaction (Martin & Nakayama, 1997) but also before and after it. Such multiple identities reflected their emotional or psychological senses of selves, influenced by their perception of poor English and culture.
The three stages that the participants went through firstly revealed that face and facework, key behavioural patterns found in Thai culture (Samovar, Porter & McDaniel, 2007) appeared to influence their conscious perceptions of security and dignity. Seven participants had positive attitudes towards their English performance prior to the interview assignments, which made them feel secure and dignified, while it was the opposite case for the rest.
This analysis is in accordance with Tananuraksakul’s and Hall’s (2011)
research implication that language learners need to have positive attitude towards developing their English performance. Secondly, it confirmed the essence of promoting intercultural engagement for academic purposes and the interconnection between cognition and affect in language learning.
In the first stage, being familiar with intercultural engagement assisted some of the participants in neutralizing their inadequate English ability on their security and dignity. The majority felt unconfident or insecure due to communication apprehension, leading them to commonly create these emotional identities: excitement, worry, fear and shyness. Some simultaneously lacked dignity and security because they additionally lost face. In the second stage, they had to deal with negotiating their emotional identities constructed in the first stage. Some were able to negotiate so due to their positive encounters with foreign interactants. In the last stage, regardless of their language inability, once they saw that their foreign interlocutors were friendly, willing to interact and linguistically accommodate them, they successfully negotiated those emotional identities in that they felt more comfortable in intercultural engagement and gained identity confidence and identity self-worth.
The study also offers four implications. First, more experiences in or familiarity with intercultural communication can balance EFL learners’
cognition and affect. Second, positive attitudes toward one’s English performance, whether it is individually perceived to be adequate or inadequate can immune his or her level of security and dignity, leading to intercultural communication competence in the present context. Third, smiles, laughs, willingness to interact and language accommodation are intercultural communication tools for facework, restoring their threatened face when engaging in conversations. Last, these tools hence characterize intercultural identities in the present context and perhaps are mutual cultures practiced in ELF contexts.
The number of participants and qualitative approach limits the study, which cannot represent the entire population. However, it offers insightful outcomes for EFL teachers at all levels that they should promote intercultural experiences in the real world as parts of academic assignments. They should inform their students of what to expect in terms of cognitive and psychological impacts so that they can prepare to overcome those effects and develop their English skills more successfully.
The Author
Noparat Tananuraksakul (Email: noparatt [at] sau.ac.th) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Business English, South-East Asia University,
Thailand. Her main interests encompass teaching EFL, classroom based research, intercultural communication and social psychology of language.
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International Journal of Language Studies (IJLS), Vol. 6(3), 2012 (pp. 99-126) 99 Insights from conversation analysis
Yasunari Fujii, Daito Bunka University, Japan
This article presents the results from an experimental study on raising Japanese ESL students’ awareness of language-specific aspects of English through conversation analysis. The subjects were 100 non-language major undergraduate students at a university in Japan who were completing required academic English courses. For the purposes of this research, the participants received an introductory lecture on conversation analysis and used online video resources to study the basic concepts of conversation analysis and complete tasks and assignments. The data analysis and questionnaire responses suggest that the employed method had a positive effect on participant interest in the structure of English conversational interactions and language learning aptitude. The findings also suggest that the participants appreciated the opportunity to examine the intricacies of unscripted English conversations usually excluded from the standard ESL language classroom.
Keywords: Applied Conversation Analysis; Awareness Raising; L2 Interactional Competence and Development; Sociocultural Norms ; Authentic Conversation Materials
1. Introduction
Based on research on discourse analysis, conversation analysis (CA), sociolinguistics, and pragmatics, researchers have explored and highlighted different aspects of communicative competence. These researchers have questioned the lack of adequate models for spoken grammar in textbooks (Basturkmen, 2001; Carter & McCarthy, 2006; Hughes & McCarthy, 1998;
McCarthy & Carter, 1994, 1995; Wray, 2000), the lack of pragmatic models (Bardovi-Harlig & Dörnyei, 1998; Bardovi-Harlig & Nickels, 2011; Boxer &
Pickering, 1995; Crandall & Basturkmen, 2004; Usó-Juan, 2007), and the current neglect of the value and placement of the sociocultural context in dialogues and dialogue-related activities (McConachy, 2009). Shrum and Glisan (2009) have pointed out that many textbooks contain poorly motivated and illogically sequenced text and dialogue samples that do not accurately reflect real-world language use. According to Kramsch (1993), the root of this problem lies in the fact that many authors of language textbooks do not provide enough relevant input to the learner. This observation has been
validated in the field of corpus linguistics. For example, Mindt (1996) has shown how the use of grammatical structures presented in language textbooks differs considerably from ordinary English speech. Knowledge of the formal structure of English is valuable as it provides a sound basis for examining and learning ordinary English speech; however, neglecting to address the nature of ordinary English speech can also hinder full comprehension and use of English. Thus, an opportunity may be available to write a related supplementary text or workbook that addresses this issue alone.
In this situation, teachers must individually decide, often on an ad hoc basis, what cultural materials are needed to support student learning and how these cultural resources should be incorporated into teaching (Lambert, 1999, p. 65). When teachers are not given firm direction as to what needs to be taught, teaching conversation is often equated with simply making students talk (Barraja-Rohan, 2000, p. 66). A lesson in spoken interaction, for instance, may contain a variety of conversational activities, such as the creation of skits, games, role-playing, and interactive situations to get everyone in the classroom involved. However, these activities alone are insufficient to meet the specific needs of language learners at intermediate and advanced levels.
These needs include the ability to conduct second language conversations more effectively and to have more meaningful, precise, and interesting interactions with target language speakers (Hall, Hellermann, & Pekarek Doehler, 2011).
Against this backdrop, this article discusses the soundest pedagogical strategies for teaching conversation in light of the sociocultural norms, especially culture-specific norms of speech and language interaction, of the society/culture into which the students are intended to integrate by applying the principles of CA. The next section looks in detail at previous studies that have focused on the application of CA to language teaching.
2. Background
Canonical CA describes the ways in which people use language in human interactions in an actual social context (Schegloff, 2007). By examining not only what people say, but also how and when they say it, CA shows that conversation is a highly structured activity and that its structure is closely tied and highly sensitive to both social relationships and social needs. CA can be used to help explicate and illuminate the organization of talk-in-interaction by addressing the following key aspects of talk (Psathas, 1995):
x All talk is ordered, and this order can be identified.
x Talk is organized and coordinated in terms of interaction.
x Utterances are sequentially organized.
x Utterances are both context-shaped and context-renewing.
x Order in talk is produced by the parties in situ; that is, it is situated and occasioned, and the participants orient themselves to that order.
x The relationship of the participants influences their interaction.
x The interaction of the participants is dictated by their sociocultural norms, which clarify what can be said and how it should be said in particular and/or different situations.
x Language and culture are clearly intertwined.
x Human interaction in conversation includes both verbal and nonverbal forms of communication.
Because CA is based on naturally occurring talk and not artificial examples, actual speech samples are needed in order to work with and understand unrehearsed action as it occurs. Gilmore (2007, p. 102) argues that recordings of spontaneous conversation are the most useful models to illustrate how target language speakers manage normal/actual discourse and build relationships. Interest in CA and its possible application in the field of language teaching has been reinforced by this growing awareness of the importance of including authenticity in language learning materials (Lazaraton, 2004).
There are currently two broad classes of applied CA (Richards & Seedhouse, 2005; Wong & Waring, 2010) in the second language research. The first adopts CA as an approach to studying L2 interaction and learning. This line of research examines interactions involving nonnative speakers in such institutional settings as L2 classrooms (Barraja-Rohan, 2003; He, 2004; Huth, 2010, 2011; Kasper, 2004; Lazaraton, 2003; Lee, 2004; Markee, 2000, 2004, 2005; Markee & Kasper, 2004; Mondada & Pekarek Doehler, 2004; Mori, 2002, 2004, 2007; Seedhouse, 2004, 2005, 2008, 2011) and language proficiency interviews (Brown, 2003; Kasper & Ross, 2003; Kim & Suh, 1998; Lazaraton, 1997, 2002; Ross, 1998).
The second version of applied CA uses it as a more instructional tool to develop students’ interactional competence in a target language through actual pedagogical intervention. This pedagogical approach to CA has only recently been recognized as important (see Antaki, 2011). Research in this regard includes works on interactional practices in French (Barraja-Rohan, 1999, 2000), complimentary responses in German (Huth, 2006; Huth &
Taleghani-Nikazm, 2006), refusal sequences in Spanish (Félix-Brasdefer, 2003, 2006, 2008), and practice in conversational openings in French (Liddicoat & Crozet, 2001). The research shows that, through CA, learners can participate in analyzing the sequential organization of conversation in the
target language and build greater sociocultural awareness as a result of that learning experience. They are better able to anticipate, interpret, and engage in culturally recognizable practices through talk-in-interaction when using the target language. These studies demonstrate that it is clearly possible to boost learner sociocultural awareness by integrating CA-based materials into the foreign language curriculum; doing so helps language teachers to address specific sociocultural aspects in the language classroom and build learners’
communicative competence in the target language during actual use.
It is worthwhile to stress here that 40 years of CA research has shown that the fundamental interactional apparatus (i.e., the underlying orderliness of turn-taking; Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974) is not culture-specific, as evidenced in prior studies by Carroll (2000, 2004, 2005). Carroll’s studies of conversations in English among Japanese university students lead to the conclusion that the rules of turn-taking are similar across languages. However, there are also a number of phenomena that have been found to exhibit sociocultural variation within conversations. For example, such sociocultural norms affect:
x Telephone openings (Hopper & Chen, 1996; Houtkoop-Steenstra, 1991; Hutchby & Barnett, 2005; Lindström, 1994; Pavlidou, 1994; Sun, 2004),
x Telephone closings (Antaki, 2002; Pavlidou, 1998; Sun, 2005; Wong, 2007),
x Response tokens (Gardner, 1997a, 1997b, 1998, 2001, 2007; Keevallik, 2010; Sorjonen, 2001),
x Conversational fillers (see Clark & Fox Tree, 2002; Fox Tree & Clark, 1997; Rendle-Short, 2006),
x The use of silence to communicate meaning (Mushin & Gardner, 2009),
x Preference organization (Robinson & Bolden, 2010; Tanaka, 2008), x Social status (Geyer, 2008),
x Context (Bilmes, 1993; Burns & Radford, 2008; de Kok, 2008), and x Participant intentions (Duranti, 2006).
Due to these variations, CA provides a valuable resource for understanding the many different sociocultural norms. An examination of the interactional aspects of communication in different languages is useful to determine the universality or specificity of mundane interactions in language communication (Sidnell, 2009). The next section details the procedures used for conducting this study.
3. METHOD