Referential Communication Tasks

George Yule

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780805820034
• eBook ISBN: 9781135450731
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Referential communication is the term given to communicative acts, generally spoken, in which some kind of information is exchanged between one speaker and another. This information exchange is typically dependent on successful acts of reference, whereby entities (human and non-human) are identified (by naming or describing), are located or moved relative to other entities (by giving instructions or directions), or are followed through sequences of locations and events (by recounting an incident or a narrative). These "activities" are examples of events that are more typically described as "tasks" in the area of second language studies. These might be real world tasks encountered in everyday experience or pedagogical tasks specifically designed for second language classroom use.

This volume comprehensively documents and describes the veritable explosion of task-based research in language acquisition. In a succinct, yet easily accessible fashion, it presents the origins, principles, and key distinctions of referential communication research in first and second language studies, complete with exhaustive analyses and illustrations of different types of materials. The author also describes and evaluates different choices for using or modifying these materials, provides analytic frameworks for focusing on various aspects of the data elicited by these tasks, and includes an extensive bibliography plus an appendix showing original task materials.

1

Overview

Referential communication is the term given to communicative acts, generally spoken, in which some kind of information is exchanged between two speakers. This information exchange is typically dependent on successful acts of reference, whereby entities (human and nonhuman) are identified (by naming or describing), are located or moved relative to other entities (by giving instructions or directions), or are followed through sequences of locations and events (by recounting an incident or a narrative). In one established definition, referential communication is described as: “that type of communication involved in such activities as giving directions on a map, telling someone how to assemble a piece of equipment, or how to select a specific object from a larger set of objects” (Dickson, 1982, p. 1.

What are presented in this definition as activities are examples of what, in the area of second language studies, are more typically described as tasks. They might be real-world tasks encountered in everyday experience or pedagogical tasks specifically designed for second language classroom use. When the notion of task is reviewed in studies of second language teaching, one common concept can be identified in the definitions: “they all imply that tasks involve communicative language use in which the user's attention is focused on meaning rather than linguistic structure” (Nunan, 1989, p. 10).

This focus on meaning rather than structure tends to be matched by a general interest in the function of utterances rather than their form and a concern with the nature of actual communicative performance on a particular occasion rather than with the analysis of linguistic competence at some abstract level. Described in this way, referential communication tasks represent research instruments that differ in many ways from others more usually employed in the investigation of second language acquisition. In order to appreciate that difference, some brief background information has to be considered.

BACKGROUND

What is now known as referential communication can be traced back to ideas presented by Piaget during the 1920s in connection with his studies of children's development. Focusing specifically on the development of verbal abilities in children, Piaget drew attention to a noticeable shift away from egocentric speech that occurred around 6 or 7 years of age. The tasks devised to explore this phenomenon (cf. Piaget, 1959; Piaget & Inhelder, 1956) required the children to communicate information in such a way that their ability to adapt the message to another's perspective could be analyzed. Although he did not label them as such, Piaget was using referential communication tasks.

However, it was not until the 1960s that a more active research field exploring referential communication emerged. During that period, it became apparent to researchers that the concept of egocentric speech (i.e., communication not adapted to the listener) had much more complexity than the single cognitive construct offered by Piaget. The range of factors found to be capable of influencing children's communicative performance increased substantially. Theoretically different explanations for observed behavior were explored (e.g., Vygotsky, 1962) and the idea of role-taking was investigated in much greater depth (e.g., Flavell, Botkin, Fry, Wright, & Jarvis, 1968). For many investigators, referential communication ceased to be primarily a psychological concept and was increasingly interpreted from the perspective of social knowledge. For two of the most influential researchers at the time, the crucial distinction was characterized in terms of “social versus non-social speech” (Glucksberg & Krauss, 1967). Social speech is edited communication, produced specifically to take account of some other (the current listener) and responsive to what the other does, knows, and says. Nonsocial speech is unedited, produced as an expression of the perspective of self (the speaker only), and not responsive to what the other does, knows, or says. Social speech appears to develop after nonsocial speech. Related to this social–interactional perspective, there was the clear realization that utterances never “exhaust the potential features” (Olson, 1970, p. 264) of a referent, but specify only certain features. It followed that variation in the selection of relevant features would necessarily be an inherent aspect of referential communication.

It was also during this period that the distinction between linguistic competence and communicative competence (Hymes, 1971) began to attract more interest among those studying language. In a related development, a clearer distinction was drawn between the general development of verbal ability and the notion of communicative effectiveness as something that could be found in performance to a greater or lesser extent. Proposing that there is such a thing as the ability to distinguish between potentially effective versus ineffective messages inevitably leads to a consideration of some message-analytic capacity (cf. Asher, 1976). In essence, this is metacommunicative ability, or communicating about communicating. In one of its simplest manifestations, this would be one function of feedback in a task where difficulty in understanding the message is indicated. Having the ability to use feedback to make revisions to a message or, more generally, to conceive of messages as potential objects of analysis, may have been what distinguished the older from younger children in some of Piaget's original explorations. If feedback, or even anticipated feedback, can influence the message being communicated, then once again variation in the selection of the message will be an unavoidable aspect of communicative acts. In one of the major reviews of this era of research, Asher (1979) provided the following summary: “Communication effectiveness involves a number of separate skills whose relevance to performance varies as a function of the nature of the listener and the nature of the task” (p. 194).

We return, throughout this book, to many of these issues regarding the nature of communicative effectiveness, the role of feedback, the impact of social knowledge, and the overwhelming fact of variation in message form. However, it is worth noting that all this research on the development of referential communication skills among children is almost totally ignored (then and now) in reviews of what is called first language (L1) acquisition. Something else entirely has been absorbing most investigators of L1 acquisition and it has largely dominated the basic research agenda in second language (L2) acquisition studies, too.

Structure Versus Function

In most reviews of L1 and L2 acquisition research, the spotlight has been on morphology and syntax. In answer to the question, “what is being acquired?” the L2 acquisition field has traditionally pointed to grammatical morphemes (e.g., words containing the inflections -ing or -s) and grammatical structures (e.g., sentences containing negative or question forms and word orders). The early dominance of this perspective is apparent in the focus of most of the papers collected in Hatch (1978a). As the theoretical concepts and the forms being investigated have become more complex, the concern with morpho-syntax has not diminished. From the “natural order” of English morphemes at the core of Krashen's Monitor Theory (cf. Krashen & Terrell, 1983) to the “developmental sequence” of word order rules at the heart of Pienemann's Teachability Hypothesis (cf. Pienemann & Johnston, 1987), the dominant concept for most research has been how L2 morpho-syntactic forms are acquired.

Referential communication tasks are not particularly useful instruments for addressing morpho-syntactic development as typically conceived, largely because they do not guarantee obligatory contexts for the occurrence of specific morpho-syntactic forms (cf. Gass, Cohen, & Tarone, 1994; Mackey, 1994; Pienemann, Johns ton, & Brindley, 1988). They can yield insights into the use of grammatical structures, but only within the larger activity of speakers making sense of each other (i.e., being focused on meaning). From a linguistic perspective, referential communication tasks appear to be more concerned with semantics (particularly with regard to vocabulary) and pragmatics (speaker meaning in context) than with morpho-syntax. Support for a fundamental difference can be found in Zurif's (1990) proposal that there must be “a neurological distinction between, on the one hand, a system supporting reference (one that is likely embedded in, and structured by, our knowledge about objects in the world) and, on the other hand, a uniquely linguistic system for the representation of grammatical knowledge” (p. 181). Given this wider perspective, tasks involving referential communication will also be concerned with issues in psychology, such as the nature of mental representations and processes, as well as social concerns that arise from the nature of face-to-face interaction. With these rather special characteristics, research undertaken via these tasks will tend to be distinguished from other L2 research and theoretical perspectives along a number of dimensions.

The major tradition influencing many L2 acquisition researchers has continued to be structuralist in orientation. For the minority who have been interested in it, referential communication has had a strongly functionalist character. In an attempt to illustrate some of the major differences between a structurally oriented perspective and one more attracted to a functionalist view, the following differences are listed as representative, not of two people or even of two extreme groups, but of two divergent tendencies noticeable in assumptions of what is important and hence worthy of research energy. These differences are summarized in Table 1.1.

Instead of narrowly focusing on linguistic form (e.g., morphology), those who use referential communication tasks tend to be concerned with pragmatic functions (e.g., acts of reference). Instead of absolute correctness or accuracy of form, it is relative success or effectiveness of the referential act that is considered. Rather than rule-based adherence (or not) being judged, relative level of appropriateness to situation is assessed. Instead of a single unifying abstract construct called competence as the object of study, the variable manifestations of actual performance are recorded and analyzed. Instead of stages of acquisition, mechanically following one after the other, there are developmental changes viewed as occurring, organically and variably, as a result of experience. Rather than nativist concepts such as innate properties or biological specialization as explanations, there are experiential and social explanations. Instead of a search for uniformity in the evidence of acquisition, there is an exploration of variation. And finally, instead of viewing the large-scale failure to acquire nativelike L2 ability as the thing to be accounted for (theoretically), the large-scale development of varying degrees of nonnative communicative ability is treated as a valid object of investigation.

TABLE 1.1

Focus of Referential Communication Research Versus Traditional L2 Acquisition Research

L2 acquisition	Referential communication
Linguistic form	Pragmatic function
(e.g., morphology)	(e.g., acts of reference)
Accuracy of form	Effectiveness of act
Adherence to rules	Situational appropriateness
Abstract competence	Situated performance
Acquisition stages	Developmental changes
(mechanical)	(organic)
Nativist explanations	Experiential explanations
Uniformity sought	Variation explored
Failure to acquire	Development of ability
(native-like L2)	(non-native L2)

Methodology

Given these distinct characteristics, it is to be expected that referential communication research will have looser, or less tightly controlled, elicitation devices than research that is more structural in orientation. The analytic frameworks employed will also be more open and depend on consistency of interpretation rather than on some correct–incorrect dichotomy based on suppliance of a particular linguistic form. The relevant data will tend to be the discourse or the interaction, and not the word or sentence. It will also typically be production data, created by the participating speakers, and not reaction data where choices have been created by the researcher. In many ways, referential communication research will fail to meet many of the criteria traditionally considered crucial for rigorous research methodology. There is unlikely to be sufficient control, nor will the findings be considered technically reliable or easily replicable or even widely generalizable. These criteria, however, are largely a reflection of a structuralist perspective and so it should not be surprising that a shift in perspective would result in a change of criteria for conducting and evaluating the research. Consequently, in the course of the following chapters, a wide range of methodological issues is discussed and the value of different types of elicitation materials is considered. Very much tied to these issues is the typical goal of such research and its relevant context.

CONTEXT AND ROLE

There is no reason, in principle, why referential communication tasks could not be used in informal contexts with natural L2 acquirers. However, in practice, virtually all the research has been conducted in formal contexts such as schools and colleges, and the impetus for most of the research has been related to instructional issues. In L1 research, the focus has been on finding ways to create conditions under which young children (4- to 8-year-olds) can become more effective communicators in a language whose morpho-syntax they have, to a large extent, demonstrably acquired already. In L2 research, the focus has been on attempting to discover the conditions under which adult users of a second language, whose morpho-syntax they have demonstrably not fully acquired already, can manipulate their available linguistic resources to produce task-related, communicatively effective messages.

The contexts of the L2 research have been instructional environments. The goal of most of the research has been the improvement of L2 instructional materials and practices. There should be no illusion that we are exploring any natural acquisition of some communicative capacity. We are looking at the kind of institutionally (and hence, socially) determined concept of mature or well-developed, “on-task,” verbal behaviors that are communicatively better than others. The sociocultural concept of better in communicative terms is clearly tied to effective task completion in the immediate context. As Long (1985) argued, specifically focusing on pedagogic tasks, “success on these is judged by task accomplishment, not target-like linguistic production” (p. 95).

Recognizing this sociocultural bias is extremely important. Much of the research in referential communication has underlying assumptions concerning the requirements of language in use. The concept of a target is not a target language, but what Breen and Candlin (1980) called a target repertoire, or the ability to use the L2 in communicative exchanges. Once we expand our perspective from the L2 as simply words and sentences, we are immediately confronted with the existence of sociocultural values. Learning to use an L2 includes developing an awareness of how L2 messages (not structures) are expected to be formed and expressed within communicative events. Some kind of socialization has to take place with respect to community (e.g., classroom) norms of participation. Some kind of social persona has to be assumed and social values have to be recognized.

In its most obvious manifestation, the social persona is the role assigned to (or adopted by) a participant in any referential communication task. That role may simply be labeled the sender (of information) to the listener, but it may also have other subtle dimensions, such as expert, female gender, higher status individual, non-familiar, proficient speaker, and many others. The social values to be recognized may be characteristics of effective talk, such as brevity, clarity, involvement, good recipient design, and others, that are considered important by a particular group, but may, in fact...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Overview
• 2 The Development of (L1) Referential Communication
• 3 Principles and Distinctions
• 4 Materials and Procedures
• 5 Analytic Frameworks
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index