Abstract
Drawing on longitudinal data, this study explores the dynamic relationship between the development of conceptual knowledge of language and the emergence of sociostylistic variation in second language (L2) speech. Participants include eight intermediate-level US university learners of French who participated in a concept-based pedagogical enrichment program over the course of two months. After presenting an overview of the study’s design, this article analyses the co-development of conceptual knowledge and one type of sociostylistic variation in French: the variable presence versus absence of the proclitic negative particle ne of verbal negation. The analysis centers on learners’ orientations to scenarios to be performed as spoken-interactive tasks, including reasons for choosing different negative structures, their use of negative structures in actual performance, and the emergence of mediated and independent performance abilities.
Keywords
I Introduction
Second language (L2) sociolinguistic competence has been of interest to applied linguists since the early 1980s, as discussions of Hymes’ (1972) concept of communicative competence began to highlight the need for L2 learners to acquire knowledge of the appropriateness of language variants in relation to sociocultural factors such as setting, interlocutor status, and genre/register (see Celce-Murcia, 2007). One specific strand of research in this domain has drawn on the theoretical and methodological traditions of Labovian variationist theory (e.g. Labov, 1972) to explore L2 learners’ acquisition of native-speaker-like patterns of sociostylistic variation (e.g. Mougeon, Nadasdi, & Rehner, 2010; Regan, Howard, & Lemée, 2009). Sociostylistic variation refers to intraspeaker alternation between two or more referentially equal linguistic forms whose distributions can be correlated with sociosituational factors, such as formality of context, interlocutor, medium (e.g. speech, writing), and so on. Emergent associations between sociostylistic variants and their particular contexts of use participate in the formation of social evaluations of this type of variation (van Compernolle, 2011a). Some forms come to be perceived as informal or colloquial variants (i.e. everyday, casual language), while others are considered to be standard (e.g. the language taught in schools), and still others hyperformal (e.g. literary and ceremonial language).
The difficulty experienced by L2 learners in acquiring this type of knowledge is considerable: not only do they need to learn what the available linguistic options are, but they must also develop the capacity to recognize the associations between linguistic variants and appropriate contexts of use. Recent scholarship in the domain of L2 pedagogy (Etienne & Sax, 2009) has critiqued typical language classrooms and textbooks for lacking sufficient emphasis on sociostylistic variation. In short, L2 classrooms focus almost exclusively on standard language varieties, thereby marginalizing the more common informal linguistic forms widely used by native speaker communities. When sociostylistic variation is presented, it is often described in terms of simplistic rules of thumb, or narrowly empirical conventions of use (van Compernolle, forthcoming; van Compernolle & Williams, 2012b). Most classroom L2 learners do not, therefore, develop the ability to vary their speech in relation to sociosituational factors unless they have had extensive opportunities to interact with native speakers in noneducational contexts (Dewaele, 2004; Kinginger, 2008; Mougeon et al., 2010; Regan et al., 2009). Consequently, pedagogical recommendations – which tend to favor explicit forms of instruction – have been made for incorporating sociostylistic variation into L2 curricula from a variety of theoretical frameworks (Etienne & Sax, 2009; Lyster, 1994; van Compernolle, 2011b; van Compernolle & Williams, 2009). Although the details of the pedagogical approaches vary, the recommendations have a common emphasis on two issues: (1) raising learners’ awareness of sociostylistic variation; and (2) creating opportunities for learners to use sociostylistic variants in communicative tasks.
Drawing on longitudinal data, this article explores the dynamic relationship between the development of conceptual knowledge of language (i.e. awareness of sociostylistic variation and its meaning) and the emergence of sociostylistic variation in second language (L2) speech. Participants include eight intermediate-level US university learners of French who participated in a concept-based pedagogical enrichment program over the course of two months (van Compernolle, 2012, forthcoming). After presenting an overview of the study’s design, this article analyses the co-development of conceptual knowledge and one type of sociostylistic variation in French: the variable presence versus absence of the proclitic negative particle ne of verbal negation (Dewaele, 2004; Mougeon et al., 2010; Regan et al., 2009; van Compernolle & Williams, 2009, 2012b). The analysis centers on learners’ interactions with a teacher who mediates their conceptual understanding of the meaning potential and social significance of sociostylistic variation and their increasing ability to use sociostylistic variants in a series of dynamically administered spoken-interactive tasks.
II Theoretical framework
1 Pragmatics as mediated action
The present article – and the larger study of which it is a part – centers on developing a Vygotskian framework for L2 instructional pragmatics (van Compernolle, forthcoming). Sociostylistic variation, which entails language choices made for social and pragmatic purposes, is one area of interest. The central tenet of the framework is that pragmatic development is mediated by one’s knowledge, and understanding, of the meaning potential of language and of the language forms that instantiate those meanings. L2 development, therefore, is a largely conceptual process (Negueruela, 2008). It entails ‘acquiring new conceptual knowledge and/or modifying already existing knowledge as a way of re-mediating one’s interaction with the world’ (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006, p. 5).
In this sense, language awareness is a psychological tool that mediates performance (van Compernolle & Williams, 2012a, 2012b). Thus, pragmatics instruction centers on mapping meanings onto forms. This reverses the more traditional question of how to map acquired forms onto meanings in instructed SLA in general and instructional pragmatics in particular. The rationale for the approach is that providing learners with a meaning-based framework for understanding language use from the outset assists them in developing a systematic basis for interpreting and using language beyond the forms targeted for instruction. To be sure, forms are important. However, in the Vygotskian framework, linguistic forms selected for instruction serve to illustrate how meaning potentials play out in concrete communicative activity. In other words, forms demonstrate how the meanings are relevant for the learners’ communicative practices. Figure 1 illustrates the orientation to pragmatics as mediated action proposed in the framework (see van Compernolle, forthcoming: Chapters 1 and 2).
Pragmatics as mediated action.
Pragmatics is about accomplishing social actions. Speech acts such as invitations, compliments, and requests are common examples studied in the L2 pragmatics literature. Less commonly researched social actions include self-presentation, creating social relationship qualities, and so on. Social actions are mediated by pragmalinguistics; that is, linguistic forms. Examples include address terms, pronouns, direct and indirect request strategies, and so forth. The selection of pragmalinguistic form is in turn mediated by one’s sociopragmatic knowledge; that is, one’s understanding of the social meanings that can be indexed in particular contexts. Degrees of formality, social distance, and power differences are examples. As Figure 1 makes clear, sociopragmatics – meaning – occupies a central role in pragmatics, and this is why the pedagogical framework emphasizes the teaching of meanings first, and then mapping those meanings onto forms and relevant social actions.
2 Conceptual knowledge and performance abilities
Vygotsky (1986, 1997) posited a dialectic relationship between knowledge and practice as the basis for developmental education. Critiquing reductionist approaches to education that favored either conscious knowledge of or practical ability in the object of study, Vygotsky argued that it was in fact the unity of the two that characterized higher mental functioning. This is because conscious knowledge separated from practical ability is ‘inert’ while practical ability without conscious knowledge is nonthoughtful and, therefore, beyond an individual’s conscious control. Unifying conscious knowledge and practical ability through formal instruction affords learners the ability to inhibit automatic response processes (i.e. nonthoughtful actions), meaning that they become able to make conscious and meaningful choices (i.e. deliberately controlled actions) in light of present, and potentially changing, circumstances and goals (Stetsenko & Arievitch, 2010; for L2 research, see Lantolf & Thorne, 2006; Negueruela, 2008). In short, knowledge mediates behavior by providing an orienting basis for action.
Drawing on Vygotsky’s argument, Galperin (1989, 1992) developed a theory of the formation of mental actions consisting of three processes: orientation, execution, and control. The orientation process establishes the goals of one’s upcoming actions and how those actions are to be accomplished. The execution process is the actual performance of the action mapped out by the orientation. Control refers to the processes of monitoring and evaluating one’s execution in relation to the orientation. In a series of studies in educational contexts (see Stetsenko & Arievitch, 2010), Galperin showed that the quality of students’ orienting basis for action had significant consequences for the quality of the actions and their abilities to deal with new and unfamiliar contexts. Essentially, the more abstract and systematic one’s orienting basis for action is, the better one is able to control one’s behavior and adapt to changing circumstances.
On the basis on these observations, Galperin proposed a model of systemic-theoretical instruction (STI) in which abstract, theoretical concepts served as the minimal unit of instruction. Thus, in STI, the goal is to promote the development of holisitic, systematic, concept-based knowledge of the object of study, and to link that knowledge to the capacity to act in concrete practical activity; that is, praxis. Recent L2 research has shown the effectiveness of this approach to pedagogy for teaching tense, aspect, and modality in Spanish (Negueruela, 2003, 2008; Negueruela & Lantolf, 2006), Spanish locative prepositions (Serrano-López & Poehner, 2008), genre in an ESL academic writing course (Ferreira, 2005), the concept of voice in French (Swain, Lapkin, Knouzi, Suzuki, & Brooks, 2009), and Spanish literature and metaphor (Yáñez Prieto, 2008). The study reported on in this article expanded this line of inquiry to the domain of pragmatics and sociolinguistic variation.
3 Appropriate concepts for L2 instructional pragmatics
The Vygotskian framework for instructional pragmatics proposes that pedagogy be centered on four principal concepts (outlined below). Verbal explanations of the concepts, and pedagogical diagrams depicting the concepts, are meant to assist learners in appropriating the concepts and using them to plan and evaluate their language use. Sample concept explanations and pedagogical diagrams are provided in Appendix 1.
Silverstein’s (2003) notion of ‘orders of indexicality’ serves as the leading concept to frame the pedagogy in terms of how language users draw on empirical patterns and conventions of meanings (e.g. formality, styles, contexts of use) and supralocal ideologies about language use (e.g. stereotypes) in order to create local, contextualized meaning (see also van Compernolle, 2011a). The rationale for using this concept is threefold:
to show learners that sociolinguistic conventions are probabilistic, associative links between linguistic phenomena and contexts, but not steadfast rules of proper language use;
to illustrate to learners that patterns of language use point to larger, macro cultural factors related to age/generations, politics, education, ‘properness’ or ‘politeness’ in society, and so forth; and
to emphasize the agentive choice-making learners can engage in to manipulate their semiotic artifacts to index personally significant meanings in the act of communication (on L2 ‘sociolinguistic agency’, see also van Compernolle & Williams, 2012a).
Three subconcepts then serve to guide learners through a quasi-investigation (Davydov, 2004) of the leading concept, orders of indexicality, by linking meaning potentials to concrete linguistic practices. These include self-presentation, social distance, and power hierarchies. Self-presentation refers to the way in which a speaker wants to ‘come off’ at the time of utterance. This concept is depicted for learners as the choice between presenting oneself as more ‘tee-shirt-and-jeans’ or more ‘suit-and-tie’. Social distance is explained as the degree of closeness or separation a speaker wants to establish or maintain with his or her interlocutor, which was depicted as the choice between two people standing close together versus far apart. The concept of power hierarchies is meant to illustrate to learners that power differences in social relationships may be made more or less salient through language. This was depicted as two people standing at the same level versus people standing at different levels.
III Illustrative sociolinguistic forms
As noted above, Vygotsky’s (1986, 1997) theory emphasizes a dialectic relationship between knowledge and practice. In addition, Galperin’s (1989, 1992) formulation of systemic-theoretical instruction stresses the need for not only developing in learners a conceptual orientation to the object of study (e.g. an L2), but linking that knowledge to concrete practical activity. In concept-based L2 teaching, this entails choosing illustrative linguistic practices that demonstrate how the concepts to be appropriately play out in actual language use; that is, which forms and other discourse features are used to point to the meanings (the concepts) under study.
In the study, three variable features of French were selected in order to illustrate how the leading concept (orders of indexicality) and the three subconcepts (self-presentation, social distance, power hierarchies) are relevant to French pragmatics: the second-person pronouns tu and vous, the first-person plural pronouns on and nous, and the presence versus absence of the proclitic negative particle ne in verbal negation. These three features were selected because of their frequency and salience in a wide range of communicative contexts. In other words, they are features of the language that learners will undoubtedly encounter, and need to use, in many social-interactive settings. This article focuses on the proclitic negative particle ne as an illustrative example of the relationship between concept appropriation and the emergence of sociostylistic variation in L2 speech. The interested reader is referred to the larger study (van Compernolle, 2012, forthcoming) for fuller description and analyses of the other illustrative sociolinguistic forms.
The variable presence versus absence of ne has been the object of much sociolinguistic research over the past 40 years. Its presence, along with a postverbal negative adverb (e.g. pas ‘not’), as in: Il ne veut pas y aller. he ‘He does not want to go there.’
is associated with more formal and/or scripted speech as well as standard writing, which is typically presented as the ‘correct’ grammatical structure in reference grammars and pedagogical texts (Etienne & Sax, 2009). However, its absence, where the postverbal negative adverb carries the negation alone, as in: Il veut pas y aller. he wants not- ‘He does not want to go there.’
is considered to be the everyday norm. In fact, recent sociolinguistic research (e.g. Armstrong, 2002; Fonseca-Greber, 2007; Hansen & Malderez, 2004) has documented ne omission rates higher than 90% in spontaneous speech. Nonetheless, instructed L2 learners of French are typically taught that verbal negation includes both ne and a negative adverb. As a result, learners are often unaware that ne can be omitted, and they therefore tend to use the more formal, standard structure at relatively high rates, even following sojourns abroad or immersion in French-speaking contexts where they encounter the everyday sociolinguistic norm (Dewaele, 2004; Mougeon et al., 2010; Regan et al., 2009; van Compernolle & Williams, 2009). Awareness-raising tasks have been shown to assist learners in approximating the sociolinguistic norm (van Compernolle & Williams, 2012a, 2012b). Yet, learners’ metalinguistic knowledge and performance abilities often remain rather limited to simplistic formal/informal distinctions.
The pedagogical program illustrated in the present study aimed to guide learners toward an understanding of the way in which language choices can reflect and shape social contexts, identities, and relationships. The presence versus absence of ne participates in a functional sociolinguistic system where the orders of indexicality (Silverstein, 2003) – or the indexical field (Eckert, 2008) – provide language users with sets of conventionalized, yet malleable, linguistic practices for the construction of meaning (van Compernolle, 2011a). For example, ne’s presence can index formality, conservatism, and social distance, while its absence can index informality, youthfulness, and social closeness. The appropriation of such concepts as orders of indexicality, self-presentation, social distance, and power hierarchies provides learners with a systematic, meaning-based framework for choosing sociolinguistic forms (e.g. ne’s presence versus absence). The point is not to replicate native speaker sociolinguistic conventions nonthoughtfully, but to develop in learners personally significant meaning–form relationships in order to allow them to select from among the available linguistic practices to create the meanings they want to create.
IV Method
1 Context and participants
The present article draws on data collected during a six-week concept-based pedagogical enrichment program focused on developing advanced sociopragmatic capacity in French as a second/foreign language. Eight intermediate-level US university learners of French (5 female and 3 male) who were enrolled in an oral communication and reading comprehension course participated in the study. All participants had at least four years of preuniversity French studies, and six had taken one or two semesters of French studies at the university prior to participating in the study.
Each learner met individually with a tutor for one-on-one pedagogical sessions once a week for a period of six weeks. During the pedagogical sessions, learners engaged in a number of different individual and collaborative tasks included in a short (36-page) course book developed for the study. The course book included written explanations of key sociopragmatic concepts and pedagogical diagrams depicting the concepts (orders or indexicality, self-presentation, social distance, power hierarchies). In addition, learners engaged in verbalized reflection tasks (i.e. verbalizing their understanding of the concepts they were appropriating), appropriateness judgment tasks, and spoken-interactive tasks with the tutor. This article is primarily concerned with learners’ planning, performance, and control over performance in the spoken-interactive tasks, which were modeled on Di Pietro’s (1987) strategic interaction scenarios.
2 Scenarios
Strategic interaction scenarios are ‘a strategic interplay of roles functioning to fulfill personal agendas within a shared context’ (Di Pietro, 1982, p. 41). Put briefly, the shared context serves as a background to the interaction to come, yet each interactant has a desired outcome that is unknown to the other, and which conflicts in some way with it. The point is to promote creative language use not solely to create an open-ended interaction or to perform a single type of interaction with a predefined shared goal (as in a role play), but to negotiate, convince, or compromise personal agendas. For example, one scenario created for the present study was set against the backdrop of two roommates searching for an apartment (i.e. the shared context). However, each interactant had particular desired, or ideal, outcomes related to the apartment’s proximity to the university and downtown area and monthly rent. (Descriptions of scenarios are provided in the analysis.)
In the present study, two scenarios were performed during weeks 1, 3, 5, and 6 of the study. Each time, one conventionally more informal and one conventionally more formal scenario was performed. The goal was to provide spoken-interactive contexts in which learners could demonstrate their ability to differentiate different levels of discourse in accordance with their interpretations of the social context of the scenarios (on the use of role play scenarios to elicit different levels of discourse, see also Sax, 2003). Scenarios were intended to reflect real-life social contexts with which the learners were likely familiar, including university life, work, friend–friend interactions, and parties and other social gatherings. Table 1 outlines the three-stage procedure used for the administration of scenarios, following Di Pietro’s (1987) method, and how the stages articulate with Galperin’s (1989, 1992) theory of the formation of mental actions (i.e. orientation, execution, and control functions).
Procedure for scenarios.
Stage 1, planning, served to render learners’ orientations to the scenarios visible and open to conscious reflection and, possibly, intervention from the tutor. In other words, learners explicitly made use of their conscious knowledge to plan their performance, including which sociolinguistic forms they judged to be appropriate for the scenario. The tutor assisted in the process when needed; for example, when a learner struggled to articulate a systematic rationale for selecting forms based on the concepts.
Stage 2, performance, represented the actual execution of the orientation. The learner and tutor performed the scenario in line with the plan. However, because learners often struggled to execute the orientation error free, the tutor intervened to support the performance following dynamic assessment principles (Poehner, 2008). As discussed below, the rationale for dynamically administering the scenarios was to allow the locus of control over performance to be distributed between the learner and the tutor, with the ultimate goal being a shift toward increased independent control on the part of the learner.
Stage 3, evaluation, allowed the tutor and learner to discuss the performance of the scenario and any areas of difficulty experienced by the learner. In addition, this stage provided a context in which the learner could practice with the assistance of the tutor using certain structures or phrases that had been the source of problems in performance.
3 Data collection and analysis
Data for this study are videorecorded interactions between the learners and their tutor over the course of the six-week pedagogical enrichment program. For the present article, stages 1 and 2 of strategic interaction scenarios (i.e. planning and performance) were transcribed for analysis. The results reported in this article center on learners’ orientations to the scenarios (i.e. forms selected as appropriate and reasons for these choices) and their use of the ne present/absent variable in spoken performance. This approach responds to calls for investigations into the relationship between learners’ metasociolinguistic awareness and performance abilities (e.g. Kinginger, 2008; van Compernolle & Williams, 2011, 2012a, 2012b).
This article is also concerned with the emergence of the ne-absent variant in learners’ speech; that is, the first occurrence of a negative structure in which ne is omitted. The ability to use both sociolinguistic variants in socially meaningful ways is the ultimate goal of this type of pedagogy; however, learners’ already have the ne-present variant in their repertoires, as this is the structure normally taught as the ‘correct’ way to negate a verb (see above). Consequently, the emergence of the ne-absent structure represents a first step toward developing the ability to vary one’s level of discourse purposefully and thoughtfully.
V Results
1 Orientations to scenarios
As noted above, scenarios were designed to include both conventionally more informal and conventionally more formal shared contexts of interaction. This was done in order to provide learners with opportunities to vary their level of discourse (i.e. selection and use of the forms learners deemed to be appropriate) in different contexts. Table 2 displays information about the scenarios performed in the study. Note that during session 1 learners had not yet been introduced to the concept-based materials. As such, orientations to, and performance during, session 1 represents learners’ pre-enrichment knowledge and performance abilities.
Brief description of scenarios.
During the planning stage, learners had access to a description of the scenario, which included their role/objective as well as three planning questions:
What do you think about the relationship between each person in this scenario?
In your opinion, what’s an appropriate or desired way to present yourself in this scenario?
How can the language you use help to show the relationship between the two people in this scenario and how you want to present yourself?
The planning questions were meant to push learners to think about the context and appropriate forms of language. However, learners were not provided with specific options for linguistic forms (e.g. ne’s presence or absence). This was done, in part, in order to evaluate learners’ independent knowledge of meaning–form relationships, particularly for session 1 (i.e. to explore whether or not they were at least aware that sociostylistic variation was possible). Table 3 displays learners’ choices regarding the presence or absence of ne in each of the scenarios performed during the study.
Learners’ planning: ne presence and absence.
Notes. NR = no response; + = ne presence; – = ne absence
None of the learners indicated a preference for ne presence or absence during session 1. That is, the learners were not aware of the possible variation at the start of the study, as evidenced by language awareness interviews (see van Compernolle, 2012). Two minor exceptions to this were found, however. Leon revealed that he knew the phrase j’sais pas ‘I dunno’, which he qualified as ‘slang’, and Susan noted that she had been told that one of the negative words could be left out, though she was unable to recall whether it was the ne or the second negative adverb. Neither of these comments represents any real awareness of variation.
Starting in session 3 (i.e. after the concept-based materials had been introduced in session 2 of the study), the learners began making meaningful choices. All eight of the students agreed that ne’s absence was appropriate for the informal scenario (roommates discussing the pros and cons of several new apartments). There was disagreement regarding the more formal scenario (calling a travel agent in France), however. Pierre, Mary, Laurie, and Conrad selected ne’s presence, while Nikki, Susan, Leon, and Stephanie chose ne’s absence.
Reasons for this variability were many, but they all essentially related to the participants’ interpretations of the scenarios, including the quality of the relationship between the interlocutors, the type of activity they are to engage in, and how they wanted to present themselves in such situations. Leon, for example, explained that informal variants were appropriate in session 3 (calling a travel agent) because the scenario represented a type of activity in which he was comfortable presenting himself as ‘some informal random guy’. (Transcription conventions are provided in Appendix 2.)
01 Leon: in terms of the other ones though. ((on/nous, ne)) I don- I don’t know- 02 I don’t think that there’s like a + huge 03 and 04 Tutor: =so what do y- so how do you want to come off. 05 Leon: well + I guess uh just like. you know. = s- s- a + 06 just kind of some informal. random guy. who’s calling. I don’t know. 07 Tutor: okay.
By contrast, Mary decided to use the more formal variants based on her understanding of the potential negative consequences of the ‘tee-shirt-and-jeans’ style of self-presentation in such a situation, namely being duped into something because she could be perceived as naïve.
01 Tutor: do you 02 Mary: + um ++ WELL I 03 like could be 04 Tutor: okay, 05 Mary: by sounding too casual, + or too young, + or too + 06 Tutor: okay.
These data represent an important shift not only in learners’ awareness of the possible variation but in the type of knowledge they used to make sociolinguistic choices. Specifically, session 3 was the beginning of learners’ appropriation of the concepts as psychological tools for planning language use. Over the course of the enrichment program, learners’ conceptual knowledge became more and more systematic, and each learner also developed his or her own personally significant understanding of meaning–form relationships (for in-depth analysis, see van Compernolle, forthcoming). This also led to gains in performance abilities, as reported below.
2 The (ne) variable in speech
Table 4 displays group results for ne absence versus presence in informal and formal scenarios over the course of the study. Frequencies reported here are based on occurrences of ne’s absence out of the total number of variable contexts (i.e. negative structures in which ne could be present or absent).
Group results for ne absence in scenarios.
Note. * Leon used the phrase j’sais pas ‘I dunno’ in session 1, which he described as French slang.
There was a marked increase in ne omission between session 1 (virtually zero occurrences, with the exception of Leon’s one instance of j’sais pas ‘I dunno’ in the informal scenario) and session 3, where just over 75% of negative structures in the informal scenario, and approximately one third in the formal scenarios, did not include the ne. Performance remained relatively stable over time (sessions 5 and 6), meaning that the learners in general developed control over the two forms. It is important to recall that learners expressed different orientations to the formal scenarios. Therefore, it is more important to explore the correspondence between planned and actual performance. A correspondence score was calculated as follows:
Results are displayed in Figure 2 for informal scenarios, formal scenarios, and combined scores. Since none of the learners indicated a preference for ne’s presence or absence in session 1, the score is calculated based on the conventional choice (i.e. ne’s absence for the informal scenario and ne’s presence for the formal scenario). As the data clearly show, there was relatively high correspondence between planned performance and actual performance during sessions 3, 5, and 6. This finding demonstrates that learners were able to execute their orientation rather consistently following the introduction of the concept-based materials.
Control over ne.
3 Mediated development of control over ne
The findings reported above have shown that learners gained an understanding of sociostylistic variation, and that they were able to develop control over variation in strategic interaction scenarios. In this section, attention turns to how control over ne emerged from dynamically administered scenarios; that is, how support provided by the tutor during performance mediated learners’ development. Space does not allow for an in-depth treatment of each learner, so the discussion below is limited to a single representative example of the emergence of control over ne in one learner’s (Mary’s) interaction with the tutor in session 3, followed by a brief snapshot of emergence data for the group.
Excerpt 3 shows the first occurrence of a negative structure in Mary’s session 3 informal scenario performance (roommates searching for an apartment), in which she had planned to omit the ne. In line 1, the tutor used a negative structure without – ne, on peut pas marcher? (‘we can’t walk?’) – which Mary also used in line 2, but included the ne. (Mary’s negative utterances appear in boldface.)
01 Tutor: donc euh + on peut pas marcher? so uh we can’t walk 02 Mary: um ah non. um ah no we cannot walk 03 Tutor: wait- do you want to say on ne peut pas, we cannot 04 + what do you want to say. 05 Mary: 06 (5.5) 07 I guess I wan- 08 just I’m saying like we can’t walk.= 09 Tutor: =okay,= 10 Mary: =there? 11 Tutor: so what d- so think about that, + a little bit, 12 + what did you just say, 13 Mary: oh we cannot 14 Tutor: mmm, 15 Mary: +++ oh we can’t 16 Tutor: =ah. there you go. + right, + we can’t
The tutored intervened to support Mary’s performance in line 3, asking if she wanted to say on ne peut pas (i.e. use ne). Mary first oriented to this move as a question about the content of her utterance (i.e. ‘just I’m saying like we can’t walk’ in line 8). The tutor provided a follow-up supporting move, directing Mary to think about what she had just said (lines 11–12). At this point, Mary oriented to the problem as one involving verbal morphology, and she produced the ungrammatical structure on ne *pouvons pas (i.e. a first-person plural verb form with a third-person singular pronoun) in line 13. Once again, the tutor prompted her to try again (i.e. ‘mmm’ in line 14), at which time Mary realized where the problem was a produced the target structure, on peut pas.
Evidence of microgenetic development, and the emergence of control over ne-absent variant, was found approximately 60 seconds later when Mary used a second negative structure (excerpt 4). The tutor had just suggested that the two find a third roommate in order to pay for the higher cost of living close to town, but Mary hesitated, which prompted the tutor to ask if she did not want another roommate (line 1).
01 Tutor: tu veux pas? ou= do you not want to or 02 Mary: =um ++ um I am not umm 03 Tutor: hm? ((with raised eye brow)) 04 Mary: ++ ((nods head)) I’m not um 05 Tutor: contre? against 06 Mary: I’m not against um finding uh 07 un autre camarade de chambre, another roommate 08 mais ++ but I don’t know uh someone
Mary’s response included a ne-present form, je ne suis pas ‘I am not’ (line 2). Once again, the tutor moved to support her performance, this time saying ‘hm?’ with rising interrogative intonation and raising his eyebrow. At this point, Mary recognized the problem (cf. the head nod in line 4) and immediately corrected her utterance to align with her orientation to the scenario. This is evidence that she was gaining control over her performance because she did not need extensive support as she had in excerpt 3. More importantly, however, as she continued the scenario, Mary produced her first unassisted ne-absent structure, je sais pas (line 8). This is important for two reasons. First, she did not require any support from the mediator, which suggests increasing control over her use of negative structures. Second, this ne-absent structure occurred with a new pronoun–verb combination, meaning that it was not the result of a practice effect. In fact, Mary produced an additional seven tokens of ne-absent structures in several different linguistic contexts during the remainder of the scenario, which provides strong evidence that her performance abilities were indeed developing.
Table 5 provides a snapshot of the emergence of the ne-absent variant for each learner. The column labeled ‘Mediated’ refers to ne-absent structures produced with support from the tutor, while the column labeled ‘Independent’ refers to ne-absent structures produced with no support. Each learner produced at least one instance of an independent ne-absent structure during session 3. Three learners – Nikki, Susan, and Conrad – did not require any support at this stage to produce the ne-absent variant. To be sure, the emergence of the ne-absent variant does not mean that a learner performed flawlessly for the remainder of the study; such was certainly not the case. Nonetheless, the first occurrence of an independently produced ne-absent structure is important because it provides evidence that the learner had begun to incorporate the variant into his or her productive repertoire.
Emergence of ne absence in scenarios by individual (Session 3).
VI Discussion and conclusion
This article has described, in part, the design and results of a Vygotskian approach to instructional pragmatics (van Compernolle, forthcoming), with specific focus on one type of sociostylistic variation in French: the presence versus absence of the preverbal negative particle ne. The approach centers on the teaching of holistic, systematic concepts related to sociopragmatic meanings (e.g. self-presentation, social distance) and how these meanings are instantiated in concrete communicative activity through the use of illustrative forms. The findings presented above show one example of development in terms of learners’ orientations to strategic interaction scenarios and their use or omission of the optional preverbal negative particle ne. Overall, learners gained awareness of the variation and its meaning potential, and they made advances toward gaining independent control over the variation in spoken performance.
One of the characteristics of the approach to teaching sociolinguistic and pragmatic features of language illustrated in this study that distinguishes it from others advocated in the literature (e.g. Etienne & Sax, 2009; Lyster, 1994) is that it takes as its point of departure the meanings – concepts – that are important for learners to appropriate rather than the forms or structures that have traditionally guided such research. This derives from the sociocultural framework of pragmatics as mediated action. Sociopragmatic knowledge (meaning potential) mediates pragmalinguistic choices (forms) in the accomplishment of social actions. The appropriation of concepts as psychological mediators provides learners with a systematic, meaning-based framework for interpreting and producing language that is thoughtful and intentional (Negueruela, 2008). To be sure, this means that learner choices may in some cases break with conventionalized patterns of use, or the narrowly empirical, idealized conceptions of appropriateness that are often presented in pedagogical texts. This is not, however, a problem that needs to be resolved. Rather, because appropriately organized concept-based pedagogy can support learners in developing personally meaningful and relevant understandings of meaning–form relationships, the choice to flout conventions represents an important aspect of their sociolinguistic agency (van Compernolle & Williams, 2012a).
Another important aspect of this research is that gains in performance are not meant to be understood merely as the result of the right kind of input. Dynamically administered scenarios were at once assessment tasks used to evaluate the extent to which learners were able to use the forms they judged to be appropriate and pedagogical tasks in which the tutor could intervene to support learners’ developing control over their performance. As shown in the emergence data, most of the learners were not immediately able to produce ne-absent structures independently, even after they had been taught that ne was optional and had planned to omit it. This finding suggests that awareness-raising tasks are not enough; instead, instructional arrangements specifically intended to support learners’ developing control over performance are also necessary. Dynamic assessment (DA) (Poehner, 2008; Poehner & Lantolf, this issue) is one promising approach to accomplishing this goal as it aims to support learners in performing beyond their current independent abilities, but also to position them to contribute maximally to solving the problem at hand as a means of fostering further growth rather than being corrective from the outset; that is, its objective is to co-create, and work within, a learner’s zone of proximal development (ZPD). It is the cooperative, problem-solving aspect of DA that is primary driver of development in this type of ZPD activity (Poehner & van Compernolle, 2011).
The present article has focused on one aspect of the sociocultural framework for instructional pragmatics, namely dynamically administered strategic interaction scenarios. The framework, exemplified by the larger study from which this article has drawn (van Compernolle, forthcoming), is a systematic and multifaceted pedagogical approach comprised of a variety of mediated learning opportunities. These include verbalization tasks and problem-solving tasks, in addition to forms of direct teaching. It is therefore important to bear in mind that the developmental processes and results illustrated above did not occur solely in and through dynamically administered scenarios. Instead, the scenarios were one among several, interconnected and intersecting threads of development. As research in this domain continues, further explorations of the relationship between conceptual development and performance abilities will no doubt contribute to our understanding of L2 development in general and of L2 pragmatic and sociolinguistic abilities in particular.
Footnotes
Appendix 1
Funding
This research was funded by a Gil Watz Dissertation Grant awarded to Rémi A van Compernolle through the College of Liberal Arts and the Center for Language Acquisition at The Pennsylvania State University.