Linguistic expertise in second language interaction

In this section, the observations made in the analytic chapters will be considered in terms of orientations to linguistic identities.

In Chapter 5, these observations were made in light of OIR sequences which, as was discussed in Section 8.2.1, were not typical in that the speaker of the TS did not ‘try the easiest solution first’, but allowed for the possibility of potential trouble in understanding, even if such trouble was not explicitly indicated through the initiation of repair. This brings to mind an observation by Schegloff (2002), who rightly points out that:

[s]peakers whose utterance is followed by… a repair initiation are not automata; they take into account the character of the turn which they produced and the circumstances of its production in determining what the likely source and character of the trouble was and what form its repair should take. (p. 321) In other words, participants at talk do not automatically respond to an OIR by responding in the ‘typical’ manner. Rather, they consider the local circumstances in which the repair has been initiated. Schegloff continues to provide the example that, if one speaks while a pile of dishes crashes loudly to the floor, an OIR may be

responded to with a ‘repeat-as-repair’, treating the noise as the cause of the trouble. While Schegloff’s point is a wholly valid one, he appears to be referring only to the interactional and contextual factors. However, the importance of his point may extent to broader social contexts, such as interactional setting and social identities of the participants. Considering this for the present study, the nature of the chat rooms as for English language practice, as well as the social identities of the participants as L2 users, may be factored in by participants facing breaches to mutual understanding.

For example, in the OIR sequences examined (as well as the nonresponse

sequences in Chapter 6), it could be that the participants are treating their interlocutors as L2 speakers who are not yet fully proficient, and repairing accordingly. Similarly, it could be an orientation to their own language proficiency; as was evidenced in some cases, such as the ‘winter’ example, speakers of an unspecified TS often repaired one particular lexical item within their TS turn, thus treating that item as the specific TS. This would appear to demonstrate a sensitivity to their own usage of that word.

Additionally, as was mentioned in the analytic chapters, in allowing for possible trouble in understanding, any such trouble is not exposed, and issues of linguistic proficiency or expertise do not surface in the interaction. There is no orientation to linguistic identities on the part of the participants; quite the opposite. The participants seem to put work in in order to avoid linguistic expertise becoming a relevant matter.

In this sense, then, Rampton’s idea of L2 interactants outside of the classroom “getting past communicative differences, downplaying incompetence, and getting on with business” (1997: 331, emphasis added) may be evidenced. It may be unfair to talk about incompetence among the very sophisticated communicators in these chat rooms, but the participants can be seen to at least bypass the exposure of (possible) linguistic shortcomings.

These observations are also in fitting with Firth’s (2009b) idea of linguistic expertise being a ‘private’ matter in some settings. Firth (ibid.) points out that, in L2 classrooms, linguistic expertise is open to being “topicalised, evaluated, commented upon, discussed, inquired about, ‘noticed’ and ‘corrected’” (p. 140). Conversely, Firth observed that in his workplace data, none of these actions were present. In fact, the participants in the workplace settings were seen to put in interactional work in order to maintain the ‘privacy’ of their linguistic expertise.

As was pointed out in Chapter 2, to date, few studies appear to have examined Firth’s ideas further, or provided further empirical support for them. The sequences analysed and presently discussed lend weight to the idea, and expand the previous observations in two ways.

First of all, Firth (ibid.) suggested that the maintenance of linguistic expertise as a ‘private’ matter was achieved by speakers themselves, whose own interactional work prevents the topicalisation or exposition of any linguistic issues they might display; for example through what he labelled as ‘flagging for markedness’ (p. 140) – a kind of indication of the speaker’s awareness of their own less-than-proficient, or unidiomatic, language usage. However, in the present study, it appears to be other speakers, through the way they manage threats to mutual understanding, whose interactional work maintains the ‘privacy’ of any linguistic shortcomings. It is the other speaker, when repairing a TS or faced with a nonresponse, who manages to avoid topicalising or exposing problems in understanding, should they exist.

Secondly, the present study provides some evidence for this idea in a different interactional context. In the setting of English language chat rooms, it would appear again that linguistic expertise is treated – for many of the participants, if not all – as a ‘private’ matter, not to be exposed.

This may again be related to the point raised in the previous section; for the participants, it appears that being understood is one of the primary goals for participants in the chat room. How this is achieved does not appear to be of importance.

While the present and preceding section have considered the analytic findings in relation to the nature of the participants as L2 users, the following section will offer some further comments pertaining to the nature of the interaction as mediated by technology.