Interlanguage Pragmatics

Exploring Institutional Talk

Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig, Beverly S. Hartford

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• eBook ISBN: 9781317371373
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Theory & Practice

This volume brings conversational analysis into the study of second language pragmatics as an analytic paradigm. A well-regarded team of researchers addresses a difficult area for the interlanguage pragmatics research community--the balance between experimental method and the use of conversational data. Institutional talk provides authentic and consequential talk. The goal of the book is to demonstrate how the investigation of institutional talk balances the researcher's need for comparable and replicable interactions with the need to observe authentic outcomes. The chapters present empirical studies based on quantitative and qualitative analyses, which are carefully illustrated by the real-world variables that each institution controls. The chapters span a range of institutions, including the university writing center, hotels, secondary schools, and employment offices. The variables examined include the traditional ILP variables, such as status, directness, and social distance, as well as new concepts like trust, authority, equality and discourse style.

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Institutional Discourse and Interlanguage Pragmatics Research

Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig
Beverly S. Hartford
Indiana University

Interlanguage pragmatics research investigates the acquisition of pragmatic knowledge in second languages, deriving its research methods from comparative cross-cultural studies and second language acquisition research. Both disciplines place a high value on the control of variables that facilitate comparison across speakers, whether across cultures and languages, between native and nonnative speakers, or among learners at different stages of acquisition. The orientation of these disciplines exerts a strong pull toward experimental data collection procedures. However, the fundamental nature of the very object of study–language use–argues for the study of situated authentic discourse. This tension between the controlled and the authentic has been pointed out in a number of discussions of research methods in interlanguage pragmatics research. As Kasper and Dahl (1991) observe:

IL pragmaticists are caught between a rock and a hard place. With the exception of highly routinized and standardized speech events, sufficient instances of cross-linguistically and cross-culturally comparable data are difficult to collect through observation of authentic conversation. Conversely, tightly controlled data elicitation techniques might well preclude access to precisely the kinds of conversational and interpersonal phenomena that might shed light on the pragmatics of IL use and development. Clearly there is a need for more authentic data, collected in full context of the speech event. (p. 245)

The identification of the problem and the call for greater use of authentic conversation as data has done little to shift the balance toward the study of authentic talk in interlanguage pragmatics research, however. As we show in the following discussion, tightly controlled elicitation tasks are still the norm.

The problem that we address in this chapter is how interlanguage pragmatics research can retain the highly valued replication and comparability of experiments that have dominated interlanguage pragmatics studies and at the same time meet the expressed desire of incorporating authentic data into the interlanguage pragmatics corpus. The goal of this chapter is to introduce interlanguage pragmatics researchers (and students of interlanguage pragmatics) to institutional talk and to demonstrate that it is a source of authentic discourse that helps fulfill the expressed needs of the field. Institutional talk may be understood as talk between an institutional representative and a client (e.g., a faculty advisor and a graduate student, or an interviewer at a job agency and an applicant) or between members of the same institution (also called workplace talk, such as talk between a nursing supervisor and a nurse, or among hotel or factory employees). We return to a more technical definition in the next section.

We are well aware that some linguists in other areas need no introduction to institutional talk or other forms of conversation. In this chapter we address ourselves specifically to interlanguage pragmatics and interlanguage pragmatics researchers as we adopt and adapt this source of data as our own. We do not intend to provide a comprehensive overview of research on institutional talk, but rather to review recent interlanguage pragmatics studies that have investigated institutional and workplace talk and to demonstrate their contribution to the field of interlanguage pragmatics. In the next section we provide a definition of and introduction to institutional talk, and in the following section provide a brief survey of data collection in interlanguage pragmatics research.

Institutional Discourse

Although there are varying definitions of institutional discourse in the field, we draw upon those offered by Sarangi and Roberts (1999) and Drew and Heritage (1992). Sometimes referred to as workplace talk or institutional interaction, interaction, these authors agree, "is institutional insofar as participants' institutional or professional identities are somehow made relevant to the work activities in which they are engaged" (Drew & Heritage, 1992, pp. 3-4. For our purposes this includes two main categories: interactions between institutional representatives and clients, and interactions between members of the institution.

A few of the former contexts, referred to as frontstage by Sarangi and Roberts (1999, p. 20) in which institutional discourse has been studied include settings such as business, as in employment interviews (Akinnaso & Ajirotutu, 1982; Gumperz, 1982a); legal, especially court testimonies (Conley & OBarr, 1990; Gumperz, 1982b; Philips, 1990); educational, including school counseling sessions of students (Erickson & Schultz, 1982; He, 1994) and teacher–student discourse (Mehan, 1994); and medical, including interviews between doctors and patients (Fisher & Todd, 1983; Labov & Fanshel, 1977; Tannen & Wallat, 1993).¹

The second category, interaction that takes place among workers of the institutions rather than between client and institutional representative (backstage for Sarangi & Roberts, 1999, p. 20), has been less widely studied. However, some work can be cited: ODonnell (1990) discusses the interaction in disputes between labor and management; Linde (1988) examines pilot and air traffic controller discourse; Erickson (1999) discusses physician-apprentice discourse; and Cook-Gumperz and Messerman (1999) study professional collaboration.

Institutional discourse differs from ordinary conversations in three primary ways: goal orientation, constraints, and frameworks (Levinson, 1992). Drew and Heritage (1992, p. 22) summarize these facets of institutional discourse as follows:

1. Institutional interaction involves an orientation by at least one of the participants to some core goal, task or identity (or set of them) conventionally associated with the institution in question. In short, institutional talk is normally informed by goal orientations of a relatively restricted conventional form.
2. Institutional interaction may often involve special and particular constraints on what one or both of the participants will treat as allowable contributions to the business at hand.
3. Institutional talk may be associated with inferential frameworks and procedures that are particular to specific institutional contexts.

These three characteristics are those which make institutional discourse suitable data for interlanguage pragmatics research: They contribute to the comparability of multiple interactions. Whereas conversations do not tend to have such constraints and are therefore not so easily comparable, institutional interactions often include expected norms of interaction such as turn-taking, constant social relations/roles, and asymmetrical power relationships.² Sarangi and Roberts (1999) also list as additional constraints on institutional talk the following: "decision-making and problem-solving; the production and regulation of professional knowledge and activities concerned with professional credibility, role relationships around issues of identity and authority" (p. 11).

Types of Data in Interlanguage Pragmatics Research

Interlanguage pragmatics research has been slow—and even reluctant—to embrace conversational or other authentic data, as an inventory of the data collection methods used in published volumes of interlanguage pragmatics research shows. The survey of methods in use in interlanguage pragmatics done by Kasper and Dahl in 1991 shows that out of 34 production studies, reporting 35 data collection procedures, only 2 (6%) used authentic data, 19 (54%) used discourse completion tasks (DCTs), and 14 (40%) used role plays, in Interlanguage Pragmatics (Kasper & Blum-Kulka,1993), seven chapters report data collection. One uses a role play and five use some type of DCT (4 DCTs and one written dialogue construction). One uses authentic dinner table conversations (Blum-Kulka & Sheffer, 1993). In Speech Acts across Cultures: Challenges to Communication in a Second Language (Gass & Neu, 1996), 11 chapters report 13 data collection techniques. No chapters report spontaneous conversation: One study collected TV commercials (Schmidt, Shimura, Wang, & Jeong, 1996), and one used talk generated in the course of a puzzle-solving task performed by dyads (Geis & Harlow, 1996). The remaining 11 used controlled elicitation tasks: Five used DCTs (3 written, 2 oral), 4 used role plays, and 2 used retrospective interviews to collect reports of speech acts. A monograph entitled Interlanguage Refusals (Gass & Houck, 1999), reports on role plays in which participants play themselves (EFL students visiting the United States and staying with host families) faced with a number of undesirable offers, invitations, or suggestions.

Although many readers will be familiar with the elicitation tasks used in interlanguage pragmatics, we will briefly review the major types here. Production questionnaires are the most commonly used elicitation task in interlanguage pragmatics. In fact, Rose (2000, p. 111) characterizes the dominance of production questionnaires as reflecting the field's "overwhelming reliance on one method of data collection." Production questionnaires include any of a variety of questionnaires that elicits speech act production data (Johnston, Kasper, & Ross, 1994, 1998; Rose, 1997). Among production questionnaires, the most common type is the DCT. DCTs, often described as written role plays, present a description of a situation (called a scenario) and ask the participant to respond. There are at least two types of DCTs; open questionnaires in which no turns are provided, and dialogue completion tasks in which an initiating turn or a rejoinder is provided (Kasper, 1991). Production questionnaires have developed to include oral as well as written DCTs (Murphy & Neu, 1996; Yuan, 1998), computer-interactive DCTs where the computer gives and takes up to three turns (Kuha, 1997), the cartoon oral production task (COPT) designed for younger L2 learners (Rose, 2000), and dialogue writing (Bergman & Kasper, 1993).

Two types of role plays are distinguished in the literature: closed and open role plays (Gass & Houck, 1999; Kasper & Dahl, 1991). Closed role plays are more commonly known as oral DCTs; in these a respondent replies to a scenario provided by the researcher on tape. Such oral DCTs do not offer the opportunity to study interaction. Open role plays (or simply, role plays) describe a scenario provided by the researcher which two or more participants act out. The outcome of the interaction is often unspecified so that participants have some flexibility in their contributions.

In contrast to responses to production questionnaires and role play scenarios, authentic discourse takes place without the instigation of a researcher. We note that authentic discourse may be either oral or written, and either monologic, dyadic, or multipartied. Conversational data constitutes the most familiar form of authentic discourse and the one most generally referred to in discussions of data collection in interlanguage pragmatics research. In this chapter we focus on oral dyadic exchanges that are the intended target of most interlanguage pragmatics research, but include one example of interactional email institutional discourse that has been investigated in interlanguage pragmatics (Hartford & Bardovi-Harlig, 1996a).

The major data collection techniques have received numerous assessments in the literature (e.g., Cohen, 1996; Cohen & Olshtain, 1994; Gass & Houck, 1999; Houck & Gass, 1996; Kasper & Dahl, 1991; Rose, 1997; Wolfson, 1989). We draw on these discussions to compare the resulting language samples by three main features: comparability, interactivity, and consequentially. These three features reflect the articulated values of the field (Bardovi-Harlig, 1996; Gass & Houck, 1999; Kasper & Dahl, 1991, among others). Comparability assures that language samples can be reasonably compared. Comparability is seen to be the result of control in the collection of production data (cf. Kasper & Dahl, 1991). Interactivity characterizes language samples in which speakers have the opportunity to take turns. Consequentiality refers to the fact that there is a real world outcome, or consequence, to naturally occurring talk, which often extends beyond the verbal exchange to establish itself in order to accomplish goals (Drew & Heritage, 1992; Sarangi & Roberts, 1999).

In Table 1.1 we use these three features to characterize the data yielded by the major collection techniques (i.e., production questionnaires, role plays, conversations, and institutional talk). We use the conventional notation of indicating that a feature is present or absent, (e.g., [+/- comparable]), although we note that this is a shorthand because these features likely represent continua rather than binary categories. Production questionnaires, by virtue of the fact that they are highly controlled tasks, yield language samples of high comparability. However, as widely noted, they are neither interactive, nor consequential. Role plays retain the experimental control of production questionnaires, resulting in comparable language samples, and they have the additional advantage of being interactive. Kasper and Dahl (1991) observe that open role plays "represent oral production, full operation of the turn-taking mechanism, impromptu pl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Institutional Discourse and Interlanguage Pragmatics Research
• 2 Writing Center Interaction: Institutional Discourse and the Role of Peer Tutors
• 3 Negotiating an Institutional Identity: Individual Differences in NS 67 and NNS Teacher Directives
• 4 Before, During, and After the Event: Getting the Job (or Not) in an Employment Interview
• 5 Discourse Strategies in the Context of Crosscultural Institutional Talk: Uncovering Interlanguage Pragmatics in the University Classroom
• 6 English for Specific Purposes and Interlanguage Pragmatics
• 7 Using Moves in the Opening Sequence to Identify Callers in Institutional Settings
• 8 Practical Considerations
• Author Index
• Subject Index