Communication Strategies

Psycholinguistic and Sociolinguistic Perspectives

Gabriele Kasper, Eric Kellerman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9780582100176
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317894612
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book examines the topic of communication strategies, the ways in which people seek to express themselves or understand what someone else is saying or writing. Typically, the term has referred to the strategies that non-native speakers use to address the linguistic and pragmatic problems encountered in interactions with native and non-native speakers of the language in question. Studies adopting a psycholinguistic perspective are well represented and updated in this volume. Other chapters re-examine communication strategies from a sociolinguistic perspective, exploring the strategies non-native speakers and their conversational partners use to create shared meanings in ongoing discourse. These studies reveal how communication strategies can serve to construct participants' identities and social relationships. Finally, the book incorporates a number of chapters which cover strategy-like behaviour in other related areas, such as language pathology, child bilingualism, normal native adult interaction, and mother tongue education. These studies add fresh dimensions to the study of communication strategies, showing how the concept can usefully be extended beyond the realm of second language acquisition and use, and pointing out the commonalities in many domains of language behaviour.

PART ONE

Psycholinguistic perspectives

The chapters in Part I have two things in common: they take a psycholinguistic, intraorganism view on CS (or contrast such a view with alternative positions), and they discuss or adopt as a model for analysis the CS taxonomy developed by the Nijmegen group (Kellerman et al., 1987). The first two chapters clarify some fundamental conceptual and theoretical issues in CS research and can thus be seen as further introductions to the book.

Yule and Tarone contrast the Nijmegen approach with a perspective on CS that emphasizes interaction, output strategies and teachability. They consider that an appropriate methodology for studying CS involves inspecting the differences between nonnative and native speakers of the second language in performing linguistic tasks. These differences, which will very largely involve linguistic form, can function as the basis of appropriate pedagogical intervention by identifying areas where learners are in need of help in performing such tasks.

Based on Bialystok’s two-dimensional model of language skills, Kellerman and Bialystok argue that non-native speakers’ CS are just special cases of a wider class of strategic behaviours that characterize all language activity, adult or child, native or non-native, normal or pathological. This view of CS exposes the commonalities underlying all linguistic processing and considers a narrow focus on second language learners/non-native speakers as potentially obfuscating.

In her chapter, Poulisse seeks to explain the task effects on CS use found in the Nijmegen studies. Parallel to Kellerman and Bialystok’s claim that CS are special cases of language as a fundamentally strategic activity, Poulisse argues that CS use abides by such universal principles as Grice’s Cooperative Principle, Leech’s principles of textual rhetoric, and Simon’s ‘satisficing’ principle. These principles are implemented differentially in strategy use depending on task demands. Poulisse further demonstrates that self-corrections of slips of the tongue and automatic codeswitches are also guided by these principles. Irrespective of speaker status (e.g., native or non-native), the choices made in speech production appear to reflect the same principles of communication.

Russell’s chapter reports on a replication of an earlier experiment in foreign language referential communication. Japanese learners of English participated both as L1 and L2 speakers when performing descriptions of abstract shapes. Following Kellerman et al. (1990), Russell shows that there is evidence for a hierarchy of strategies irrespective of language used: speakers prefer to describe a shape holistically either by analogy or geometric shape (‘a rhomboid/a diamond’), then, if linguistic means are lacking, to partition it (‘two triangles/two roofs attached at the base’), and finally, if all else fails, to linearize the figure by describing it literally like a set of route directions. While there is thus some support for a cross-linguistically valid CS sequence, Russell’s study also suggests possible language- and culture-specific variation which requires further exploration.

Stemmer and, Joanette extend the scope of enquiry to CS use by aphasic patients. Examining CS use at the phonological, morphosyntactic, syntactic, and lexico-semantic level, the authors find that both conceptual and code compensatory strategies are used to express a target item. While there is no systematic preference for either strategy type at any processing level, the type of aphasia appears to influence strategy choice to some extent. Consistent with previous chapters in this section, Stemmer and Joanette note that aphasic patients use the same types of CS as unimpaired speakers.

1

Investigating communication strategies in L2 reference: pros and cons

GEORGE YULE and ELAINE TARONE

Introduction

In the decade since the publication of the then state-of-the-art collection of papers on communication strategies in Færch and Kasper (1983a), there has been continued interest in the ways in which second language (L2) learners make use of their interlanguage resources in attempting to create L2 reference. The basic challenge has remained essentially the same as that raised by Váradi (1983) a decade earlier when faced with a range of L2 referential expressions for the same observed object (i.e., balloon, ball, air ball, special toys for children): how do these observed ‘creations’ help us better understand what is involved in second language learning and use? While there has always existed a variety of different, though relatively compatible, perspectives on how to go about answering this question, how to conduct investigations and how to characterize the various forms produced by L2 learners, there has emerged, in recent years, a fairly serious challenge to the validity of much of the previous work done in this area.

In essence, there has been a marked divergence of opinion between those who are prompted by their investigations to propose additional categories, maintaining and expanding existing taxonomies (e.g., Tarone & Yule, 1987), and those who are prompted to deny the value of existing taxonomies and to propose a substantial reduction in the number of categories of analysis (e.g., Bongaerts et al., 1987). For ease of reference, let us characterize the first group as being rather profligate (‘the Pros’) in their liberal expansion of categories, and the second group as being rather conservative (‘the Cons’), given their emphasis on parsimony. There are, of course, other differences in the focus of each of these two groups, with the Pros often exhibiting a preference for investigating variability in linguistic performance while the Cons emphasize the generalizability and psychological plausibility of their categories.

The noted divergence in analytic preference is accompanied by an equally marked divergence of views on the pedagogical implications of the research findings, with the Pros typically in favour of teaching the use of some communication strategies (e.g., Tarone, 1984) and the Cons expressing a strong opposition to any such teaching (e.g., Kellerman, 1991).

For students and teachers in the many fields related to second or foreign language education and research, this marked divergence of opinion may present a rather puzzling problem. If they choose to follow one school of thought, their research or teaching may be subject to criticism from those holding opposite views. If that potential opposition is interpreted as a source of conflict, then the whole area may be avoided, both in research and teaching. This would not be a desirable outcome. In this chapter, we will attempt to clarify the source of this puzzling situation, which may help researchers and teachers to decide, on the basis of their identified goals, how to approach the empirical data involved in L2 reference.

Pros and Cons

The most obvious way in which the two approaches differ is in the number of strategies considered necessary. Although some variation can be found in the terms employed by both groups as they developed their analytic frameworks over time, it is possible to capture the essential distinctions. In the typical taxonomic approach favoured by the Pros, there are both reduction strategies and achievement strategies recognized. Reduction strategies are associated with avoiding, changing or abandoning a communicative goal when faced with a perceived communication difficulty. Achievement strategies, also called compensatory strategies, are characterized by the use of alternative communicative resources (e.g., approximation, circumlocution, language transfer, word coinage) when faced with a perceived communication difficulty. Description and exemplification of these and related strategies can be found in Bialystok (1990), Færch and Kasper (1983d), Paribakht (1985) and Tarone (1977). In opposing this taxonomic approach, a more recent perspective, favoured by the Cons, has focused on only compensatory strategies, divided into two types described as conceptual and code. A conceptual strategy is either holistic (i.e., using a term for a related substitute concept) or analytic (i.e., describing properties of the referent), whereas a code strategy involves using purely linguistic devices (i.e., L1 words, neologisms). Description and exemplification of these strategies can be found in Bialystok (1990), Bongaerts and Poulisse (1989), Kellerman (1991) and Kellerman, Ammerlaan, Bongaerts and Poulisse (1990).

Underlying these two different sets of descriptive terms is a fundamental difference in analytic perspective. The taxonomic approach of the Pros focuses on descriptions of the language produced by L2 learners, essentially characterizing the means used to accomplish reference in terms of the observed forms. It is primarily a description of observed forms in L2 output, with implicit inferences being made about the differences in the psychological processing that produced them. The alternative approach of the Cons focuses on a description of the psychological processes used by L2 learners, essentially characterizing the cognitive decisions humans make in order to accomplish reference. It is primarily a description of cognitive processing, with implicit inferences being made about the inherent similarity of linguistically different forms observed in the L2 output. The focus of the Pros is on the external and interactive while the focus of the Cons is on the internal and cognitive. In more familiar terms, it might be said that the Pros attempt to work from performance data to consider underlying competence while the Cons seek to characterize underlying competence in order to account for performance data.

Given this version of the Pros and Cons, it should be possible to treat the dichotomous categorization of processing possibilities (conceptual vs code) as ‘a higher order description’ (Bialystok, 1990, p. 114) that could be combined with the taxonomy of more specific instantiations devised to describe the linguistic performance of L2 learners. This type of compromise might take a form such as that presented in Figure 1.1 (overleaf). Although the combination of categories presented in Figure 1.1 may help clarify the relationship between the approaches of the Pros and Cons, it actually disguises a number of serious methodological and pedagogical differences that require further consideration.

Figure 1.1 Types of communication strategy

Creating L2 reference

It is normally agreed that, as part of their general communicative competence, all adult language users make use of strategic competence or ‘the mastery of communication strategies that may be called into action either to enhance the effectiveness of communication or to compensate for breakdowns in communication’ (Swain, 1984, p. 189). Although the interest in most studies is in the types of communication strategies used by L2 learners, it has been emphasized (Kellerman, 1991; Yule & Tarone, 1990) that native speakers also employ communication strategies in their L1. This recognition of L1 communication strategy use has influenced research thinking in two quite distinct ways.

For the Cons, the relevant L1 has been the learner’s L1. In their study of Dutch learners of English, Kellerman et al. (1990) reported that there was an overwhelming similarity between the strategies used in Dutch (the L1) and those used in English (the L2) immediately afterwards by the same speakers, when the same referential task was performed in that sequence. No results were reported for the reverse sequence. Moreover, there was a consistent hierarchical relationship among the strategies used, with the holistic being preferred over the analytic (only higher order descriptive categories were used). The advantage of this approach is in terms of the opportunity provided to ascertain the influence of a predisposition from a learner’s L1 experience in the process of creating L2 reference. One example presented to illustrate the similarity of conceptual strategy used in describing an abstract shape is shown as (1), with the L1 version followed by the L2 version of the same speaker (from Kellerman et al., 1990, p. 175).

(1)	(L1)	De vorm van een hoefijzer (‘The shape of a horseshoe’)
	(L2)	Erm, this is the figure that erm I do not know how they call it in English … but it is the same figure. It has the same form as … the things that horses wear under their feet, the iron things.

Using the Cons’ analytic framework, we would say that this speaker uses the same (‘holistic’) approach to the task in both L1 an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: approaches to communication strategies
• PART I Psycholinguistic perspectives
• PART II Expanding the scope
• PART III Sociolinguistic perspectives
• Bibliography
• Subject index
• Name index