Learning English Through Social Interaction: The Case of Big Brother 2006, Finland

Abstract

In line with recent Conversation Analytic work on language learning as situated practice, this article investigates how interactants can create language learning opportunities for themselves and others in and through social interaction. The study shows how the participants of Big Brother Finland, a reality TV show, whose main communication is in Finnish, take up resources provided by English and use them for learning in their interaction. This interaction is characterized by an orientation to both the local context and the television audience, a mixture of activity types and translanguaging. It focuses on one of the participants who explicitly evaluates his own proficiency in English as limited, and demonstrates how English nevertheless constitutes a motivated choice for him that he integrates into his and the other Big Brother housemates' talk and interaction. Analysis shows how the participant actively topicalizes English not only to understand the ongoing talk, but also to serve a range of social and symbolic purposes, for example, for inviting and engaging in participation, building expert-novice participant roles, and creating entertainment and humor. In this fashion the study depicts diverging interactional environments where learning opportunities are created and shows how these are employed by the participants.IN MANY PARTS OF THE WORLD, THE MEDIA and popular culture play a key role as agents in sociolinguistic change and diversity. Such change and diversity manifest themselves in various

English in Finland: Opinions and Attitudes on the Use of Anglicisms

“…Another dimension of mass media in which English is used are reality shows like Big Brother where participants are subject to ongoing observation through cameras in their daily activities. Kääntä et al (2013) analyze the learning process of Kaki, a participant in the 2006 edition of the Finnish Big Brother, regarding English words like "wife beater" and "second hand". In their analysis, it is manifest that informal learning contexts created by this inhabitant serve as the means for interacting in conversations where those items show up while learning them, and for a more general self-integration and self-identity construction in the dynamics of the house.…”