What lessons for language learning and teaching can be derived from a social interactional perspective? Alternatively stated, what happens when linguists shift the focus of their attention from the cognitive processes to the interactions of language learners in various contexts (specifically, interactions between learner and teacher, learners themselves, learners and the surrounding environment, and learners and the wider society)? This book provides thoughtful answers to such questions and will prove particularly useful to those language teachers who place emphasis on the discursive nature of language learning.
The interactional model presented here is based on close observations of a broad sample of nonverbal semiotic systems. The first part of this work is devoted to language learning and teaching contexts from seven different countries (the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Turkey, Morocco, and Switzerland). Conversation analysis is the central methodology used to apply a certain rigor to the authors’ analyses of different types of conversational behavior in the second language classroom such as off-task talk, broken-turn starts, and repair sequences. Later, in Part 3, conversation analysis is also applied to a variety of learners who are negotiating multilingual and multicultural classroom settings—for example, bilingual Punjabi-English teachers in England, predominantly Spanish-speaking adolescent immigrants in a Texas middle school, and multilingual primary students in Fiji.
Sandwiched between these empirical studies are five chapters under the general heading “Identity and Social Action.” Each of these chapters uses a specific case study to draw a common set of implications: Language learners not only acquire new linguistic skills but also create (sometimes painfully, sometimes playfully) a new identity. The authors collectively argue that closer attention to the complex process of identity construction of an emerging self can provide valuable keys for language teachers, particularly those who regard their students as human beings interacting with the world—rather than passive recipients of linguistic data who happen to be sitting in a classroom.
A theoretical overview of the interactional perspective is provided in a conclusion chapter, which usefully serves not only to look back at and contextualize the previous 15 essays but also to suggest future areas of research and investigation. Perhaps the most provocative claim put forward in this chapter is that the social interactional perspective can have a major impact on “relations of power and equity” between language learners and teachers, thereby contributing to “reproduction of, or resistance to, dominant ideologies within the country at large” (p. 271).
Although convincing evidence is presented to support such a claim, spelling out its radical implications for the classroom (as well as for specific social and cultural contexts) is beyond the scope of this work. Yet, clearly, this is the direction for the future, and the present book lays a sound foundation for such an important agenda.
