When the seminal article on the organization of turn‐taking by Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson (1974) was published 30 years ago, I started learning English as a foreign language. In addition to being a learner of the English language for many years, I was also trained in the traditions of Conversation Analysis (CA) and linguistic anthropology (particularly Language Socialization) in graduate school. For the present article, my objective is to explore the uses and nonuses of CA for language learning, particularly for Chinese language learning. In what follows, I take the perspective of a conversation analyst as well as that of a second language (L2) learner.
This article is divided into three main sections. The first section discusses the kinds of contributions CA can make to research on L2 learning and teaching. I propose that the basic science produced by CA research can be fruitfully applied to L2 learning and instruction and to oral language assessment. I further suggest that CA studies of classroom interaction provide richly textured descriptions of language learning contexts such as expert‐novice relations and participants' identity construction. The second section considers what CA does not do, or is not designed to do for Second Language Acquisition (SLA). I submit that, unlike language socialization research, CA does not address introspective, unobservable matters that may be important to language learning. Furthermore, unlike ethnomethodology, CA is not designed to document learning (i.e., change in behavior) over a considerable period of time. The final section concludes on a hermeneutical note: I argue that CA studies of SLA provide a part of the picture of L2 learning and teaching, a part that, crucially, compels us to reconsider the whole.
The very notion of heritage language (HL) is a sociocultural one insofar as it is defined in terms of a group of people who speak it. Heritage languages also have a sociocultural function, both as a means of communication and as a way of identifying and transforming sociocultural groups. This article surveys two broad approaches to research on the sociocultural dimensions of HL learning. While both of these approaches acknowledge the close connection and mutual dependency between HL learning processes and sociocultural processes, they differ in that one of them takes a correlational perspective, and the other a social constructivist perspective. This article reviews a selective body of work conducted from each of the two perspectives and concludes with a discussion of the implications of the sociocultural complexity associated with HL learning for research and practice.
From an interactionally enriched linguistic anthropological perspective, this article promotes the view that identity is indexical with specific sets of acts and stances, which in turn are constructed by specific language forms. Based on detailed sequential and grammatical analyses of data from Chinese heritage language classes, it argues that identity is dynamic, constantly unfolding along with interaction, and thus has the potential to shift and mutate. It positions identity as emerging through co-participants’ responses and reactions and thus as an intersubjective and reciprocal entity. It further suggests that identity construction is intricately linked with heritage language learning.
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