27.2709, Review: Discourse; Lang Acq; Pragmatics; Socioling: Blyth, Koike (2015)

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Subject: 27.2709, Review: Discourse; Lang Acq; Pragmatics; Socioling: Blyth, Koike (2015)

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Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2016 13:30:10
From: Maria Prikhodko [m.prikhodko at iup.edu]
Subject: Dialogue in Multilingual and Multimodal Communities

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-3623.html

EDITOR: Dale A.  Koike
EDITOR: Carl S.  Blyth
TITLE: Dialogue in Multilingual and Multimodal Communities
SERIES TITLE: Dialogue Studies 27
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2015

REVIEWER: Maria Prikhodko, Indiana University of Pennsylvania

Reviews Editor: Robert A. Cote

SUMMARY

Dale A. Koike and Carl S. Blyth, authors of “Dialogue in Multilingual and
Multimodal Communities” encompass ten chapters to illuminate controversial
topics in the realm of dialogic relations in multilingual and multimodal
communities of practice (CofP). Specifically, the authors tie these studies
together through the construct of community (Lave and Wenger, 1991) and how
dialogue is being co-constructed by means of various modalities and languages.
In the Introduction, Koike and Blyth state that they organized the volume
around three themes: (1) Language practice in dialogue; (2) Learning culture
and identities through dialogue; and (3) Learning practices of communities.
Section 1 revolves around dialogical relations between language learners and
native speakers for the purpose of establishing some kind of linguistic or
emotional understanding between them. Section II unites three chapters for the
sake of analyzing how both native speakers (NS) and non-native speakers (NNS)
language learners construct their unique identities as practitioners of
communities situate in order to represent their belonging to communities of
interest. Finally, Section III illustrates how the dynamicity of languages and
cultures is reified in learning practices of communities through transnational
and transcultural orientations. 

In Chapter 1, “Complex Nature of Language-Related Episodes”, Cory Lyle
problematizes social aspects of language-related episodes (LRE) to be
heterogeneous and historically situated in the context of native – nonnative
interactions. The author divides the discussion into two subsections
represented by 15 synchronous computer-mediated chat snapshots of 8 NS-NNS
participants. First, the author criticizes the information-processing paradigm
(Johnson, 2004) for underestimating LRE as context independent and tallied.
Then,  several LRE snapshots are presented  as continuous, straightforward,
momentary, context-independent, and sometimes non-negotiable.

Furthermore, Lyle empirically proves LRE to be also of uncertain duration,
counterproductive to language learning, and contextually mediated from the
research understanding of learning as situated (Lave and Wenger, 1991). By
doing this, the author claims that social and cognitive aspects of LRE should
not be investigated separately, but rather be contemplated by historical,
sociocultural, and sociocognitive aspects of language learning practices.
Based on this argument, the chapter concludes with the necessity to dig deeper
into controversies of feedback/repair pedagogy to use assets like history,
membership, identities, motivations, etc. that are intertwined into the
learning process.

In Chapter 2, “Navigating the Language-Learning Classroom Without Previous
Schooling: A Case Study of Li”, John Hellerman and Kathryn A. Harris argue
that  participation is more essential than acquisition of linguistic scripts
in language learning classrooms. Such an argument is made in the frame of
Situated Learning Theory (Lave and Wenger, 1991), which allows understanding
classrooms as CofP. Specifically, in the English learning classroom for
immigrant adults, the authors situate the research around one adult immigrant
English learner without previous formal language education. This student’s
over-18-month interaction with other classroom practitioners shows d how Li
moves from the novice stage to more mutual participation in the classroom. 
This becomes evident as the learner managed to diversify her English beyond
the full-class or peer dyadic tasks in class, which proved learning to be an
ongoing process framed by her identities, cultures, and discourses. Based on
the empirical results, the authors question language learning standardized
assessment of ‘competence’ and its ultimate goal of seeing all language
learners as ‘successful’. Additionally, the chapter claims to conceptualize
language and language learning as co-constructive, interactive, and context
sensitive, so that further research should carefully investigate instructed
actions in such classroom settings intertwined with practitioners’ lived
experiences they bring with them into the community.

Carmen Talegani-Nikazm in Chapter 3, “On Multimodality and Coordinated
Participation in Second Language Interaction: A Conversation-Analytic
Perspective”, scrutinizes how six US students registered for a third semester
intermediate German course conversed within the group using various semiotic
resources (talk, gaze, prosody, gesture, and body posture) in off-class
settings. Before revealing the data analysis, the author rigorously analyzes a
bulk of background literature to discuss visuospatial modalities in L2
interactions, repair in L2 interactions, and then contextualizes these
concepts into the frame of L2 communities. The empirical part illuminates
German language learners’ “video-recorded language and bodily conduct” (p. 79)
in order to determine how they involved L2 repair strategies and construct
shared understanding of the problem as legitimate practitioners of L2
community. Overall, the study showed that students were highly motivated not
to code switch in search for lexical equivalents, but rather tried to express
the essence in the target language. The chapter’s conclusion underscores the
context dependent nature of turn-at-talk interactions, which may involve
speakers’ language backgrounds, interests, anticipations, and frames of
reference.  

‘“Tú no Eres Española’: Teasing of L2 Learners in Host Family Communities of
Practice” is Chapter 4 by Rachel L. Shively. It focuses on analyzing teasing
in conversations between six US undergraduate students studying Spanish with
their host families in Spain and reveals the scarcity of empirical research in
the joint area of CofP and teasing in the context of L2 learners studying
abroad.. As a part of a larger project devoted to general social interactions
within families, this chapter discusses several snapshots of the participants’
audio-recorded 30-min conversations with their Spanish families and ran
follow-up journal by “responding to questions regarding social interaction and
L2 learning.” (p. 114) The discussion is thematically presented to answer each
research question separately. The results revealed L2 students were teased
about L2 pragmatic incompetence (breaking social and family norms, misapplying
Spanish language models) and constructed identities of ‘novice learners’.
Finally, the author concludes with limitations and suggestions for future
research.

In Chapter 5, “Exploring the Complex Nature of Language and Culture Through
Intercultural Dialogue”, Carl S. Blyth deals with how 216 students from two
American universities and 194 students from five French institutions mediated
via computer-mediated forum Cultura, an essential medium “for helping learners
to gain awareness of their own and others’ linguacultural patterns”
(Furstenberg and Levet, 2014, p. 8) The main initiative of examining their ten
discussions is to grasp the ways these students utilize language and cultural
constructs by discursively negotiating their communicative purposes. After
highlighting pros and cons of Cultura as a cross-cultural platform for raising
intercultural awareness, the author discusses data commentaries to reveal
participants’ discursive strategies (negotiating lexical meaning, telling
anecdotes, contesting a unified national identity and culturalist discourses).
This data analysis brings the researcher to the conclusion that the
participants employed language and culture constructs as dynamic, emergent,
and contingent, thus problematizing some of their previous conceptualizations
as essentializing. 

“Multilingual Eurovision Meets Plurilingual YouTube” authored by Steven L.
Thorne and Dejan Ivković is the title of Chapter 6. Its focus is on analyzing
how various ethno-linguistic users manipulate ‘virtual linguistic landscapes’
(Ivković and Lotherngton, 2009) in the context of Youtube.com field comments
made on  Eurovision Song Contest video clips. Before proceeding to this corpus
data analysis, the discussion delves into reviewing a set of sociolinguistic
conceptions (e.g. superdiversity, multi-, plurilingualism, and polilogues).
Such a controversial angle allows further examination of multi-parties
interactional repertoires of various sociolinguistic origins in the context of
complicated European linguo-political and ideological settings. The corpus
set, collected from commentaries around the Eurovision Song Contest video
clips, empirically proved limited such discourse settings to be called
‘dialogues’. Instead, the authors named them ‘polylogues’ of a quadrilingual
nature that became discursively mediated in digital contingent spaces. The
chapter concludes with naming discursive mediations such as linguascaping,
which problematizes the term ‘community’ in itself. 

In Chapter 7, “Dialogic Knowledge Building in Learning Communities:
Discovering an Electric Circuit Through Collaborative Learning”, Sebastian
Feller empirically demonstrates how Dialogic Knowledge Building (DKB)
facilitates deep learning and critical thinking through active ‘teacher –
learner’ interactions in the process of explaining an electric circuit. First,
the author highlights the conceptual basics of learning communities (Bielaczyc
& Collins, 2013; Gee, 2005; Vygotsky, 1978; Wenger, 2010), and further
necessitates drawing on psychological conceptions (see Self-Determination
Theory in Deci & Ryan, 2002); Bloom’s Taxonomy, 1956; Types of Reasoning
(Krathwohl, 2002), Types of Knowledge (Chi & Ohlsson, 2005) in order to
synthesize relations of knowledge types with types of reasoning (p. 203).
Then, by examining 124 ‘teacher – learner’ question – answer sequential
interactions as “chains of explorative action games (Weigand, 2001)” (p. 204),
the chapter concludes with four ‘deep explanation questions’ that triggered
the learner to move to the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978). This
discussion ends with a set of limitations.  

Chapter 8, “Artifacts, Gestures, and Dispensable Speech: Multimodality in
Teaching and Learning of a Biology Laboratory Technique” by Junko Mori and
Tomoharu Yanagimachi explores a segment of communication between a Japanese
professor of biology and an international graduate student from China through
various multimodal semiotic resources and artifacts in order to track their
sense of understanding and successive trajectory of instruction. To conduct
the study, the author conceptualizes ‘community’ in terms of Bloomaert’s
(2010) “truncated multilingualism”. Two analytical frames were used to explore
the data: ethnomethodology and Conversational Analysis (CA) in the context of
apprenticeship learning. Empirically, one episode of the video-recording
collection of six consecutive months in the 2000s targeted on demonstrating an
artifact called a ‘gel strip’ used for electrophoresis. Finally, the author
delineates several points for second language learning and teaching: language
is never-to-analyze without embedded semiotic resources. Besides oral
instructions, language learners of various levels and backgrounds should be
supported with other semiotic devices. Also, instructors should motivate them
to participate in a new community through agency.

David Koike in Chapter 9, “Changing Frames in Native Speaker and Learner Talk:
Moving Toward a Shared Dialogue”, focuses on how Spanish NS and language
learners change frames in interaction to further outline shared pragmatic
resources related to frames in this language. First, the study is situated in
the conception of ‘frames’ and, more specifically, interactive frames
(Bateson, 1972; Goffman, 1959). Then, it delves into the theoretical process
of (co)-constructing a frame in search for shared meaning (and common ground).
The audiotaped data gathered from institutional and personal discourses were
drawn from a corpus of 30 interviews. Koike represents the study results in
sequence from changing frames at the beginning or middle of the interview or
their complete rejection to further summarizing for better visualization (p.
278). In conclusion, the author explicitly answers two research questions by
stating two components of the frame changes: pragmatic and discursive.
According to the author, further research needs to investigate what knowledge
and skills of operating linguistic and paralinguistic components of language
become involved in this process. 

In the concluding Chapter 10, “Transnational, Transcultural, Translingual
Communities of Practice in Flux”, Claudia Kunschak explores how a group of
teachers of various backgrounds participate in a community of practice and how
they change or reframe their beliefs and interpret their experiences. First,
the author briefly introduces the main concepts shaped the study – CofP model
of apprenticeship (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998).Then, she defends a
more holistic way of conceptualizing CofP, i.e. seeing that community beyond
the professional boundaries, writing “[they] form a highly diverse and
fluctuating community of work and living, what happens outsides the classroom,
the faculty meetings, contributes to the self-concept” (p. 289).  Collected
from nine volunteering teachers from two departments at a university in
Southern China, the data revealed overlapping self-identities that depended on
divergent subgroups they identified with: their strategies of
differentiation/inclusion in the CofP (desire/reluctance to demonstrate
interconnectedness) and transnational, transcultural, and translingual
manifestations through values, beliefs, attitudes, and linguistic behaviors.
The chapter concludes with the strong recommendation to consider “a
local-regional-global continuum [within the community]” (p. 301). Thus,
language learning communities should not be seen as monolithic and
unidirectional, but rather through the individual sharing of ideas and
experiences. 

EVALUATION

Dialogue in Multilingual and Multimodal Communities is a research edition
essential for graduate students in profound learning about the multifaceted
nature of CofP. After the seminal work of Lave and Wenger (1991) and Wenger
(1998), there has been a limited amount of literature devoted to understand
multilingual communities from a holistic point of view. In this edited book, 
examining dialogues through the construct of communities in diverse
multilingual and multimodal settings serves as an important conceptual area
for bridging theoretical and empirical construes in the context of considering
CofP from a global perspective. 

In the Introduction, David A. Koike and Carl S. Blyth claim to illuminate
various aspects of dialogic interaction in communities of geographic
proximity, online settings, or professional discourses. To make a coherent
argument, they thematically broke down the discussion into three sections: “
Despite this categorizing attempt, I hardly see the value of dividing them
based on these criteria. It is next to impossible to discuss dialogue in
communities without arguing about cultural and sociolinguistic specifics of
the communities involved or about language practices without learning those
practices. This categorization seems to deviate the reader’s attention from
the main initiative – to problematize community and dialogue in more holistic
terms. I believe there should be a different angle to approach multi-level
concepts such as dialogue and community (discourses; areas of expertise, age
group, etc.).

    
Being intrigued by the title, I expected the edition to demonstrate
empirical/conceptual research around heterogeneous attributes of multilingual
communities. When I read the contents page, I was somewhat disappointed to see
such divergent topics such as native speakerism (Chapters 1 – 4; 7 – 9) and
highly diverse heterogeneous environment of multilingualism (Chapters 6 and
10) united together. Some of Part I, except Chapters 1 and 5, slightly move
towards a new epistemological paradigm (Blommaert, 2010; Canagarajah, 2013) as
they problematized the very nature of LRE (Chapter 1) and the Cultura program
(Chapter 5) to be constructed as discontinuous and congruent. 

Regardless of any misconceptions shared, pursuing a doctoral degree in the
interdisciplinary program Composition and Teaching English to Speakers of
Other Languages (TESOL), I appreciate most of the studies to challenge such
controversial notions in their disciplines and discourses. I strongly
recommend this book for critical discussions in graduate classes in related
programs. 

REFERENCES

Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an Ecology of Mind. New York, NY: Ballentine.

Bielaczyc, K., and Collins Alan. (2013). Learning Communities in Classrooms: A
Reconceptualization of Educational Practice. In C. M. Reigeluth (Ed.),
Instructional Design Theories and Models (Vol. 2, pp. 269 - 292). Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum.

Blommaert, J. (2010). Sociolingusitics of globalization. London, United
Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.

Bloom, B. (1956). Taxonomy of Educational Objectives - Handbook I: Cognitive
Domain. New York, NY: Longman.

Canagarajah, A. S. (2013). Translingual practice: Global Englishes and
composition relations. New York, NY: Routledge.

Chi, M., T., and Ohlsson, S. (2005). Complex Declarative Learning. In K.
Holyoak, J., and Morrison, Robert, G (Ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Thinking
and Reasoning (pp. 371 - 399). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Deci, E. L., and Ryan, R. M. (2002). Handbook of Self-Determination Research.
New York, NY: University of Rochester Press.

Furstenberg, G., and Levet S. (2014). Cultura: From Then to Now. In C. Dorothy
(Ed.), In Cultura-Inspired Intercultural Exchanges: Focus on Asian and Pacific
Languages (pp. 1 - 31). Honolulu, HI: National Foreign Language Resource
Center.

Gee, J., P. (2005). Semiotic Social Spaces and Affinity Spaces: From the Age
of Mythology to Today's Schools. In D. Barton, Tustig, K. (Ed.), Beyond
Communities of Practice: Language, Power and Social Context (pp. 214 - 232).
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Goffman, E. (1959). Performances The Presentation of self in everyday life
(pp. 17 - 76). New York, NY: Anchor Books.

Ivković, D., and Lotherington, H. (2009). Multilingualism in Cyberspace:
Conceptualizing the Virtual Linguistic Landscape. International Journal of
Multilingualism, 6(1), 17 - 36. 

Johnson, M. (2004). Philosophy of Second Language Acquisition. New Haven, CA:
Yale University Press.

Krathwohl, D., R. (2002). A Revision of Bloom's Taxonomy: An Overview. Theory
into Practice, 41(4), 212 - 218. 

Lave, J., and Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral
Participation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Vygotsky, L., S. (1978). Mind in Society: The Development of Higher
Psychological Processes (M. Cole, Steiner, V., J., Scribner, S., Souberman, E.
Ed.). Harvard, MA: Harvard University Press.

Weigand, E. (2000). The Dialogic Action Game. In M. Coulthard, Cotterill, J.,
and Rock, F. (Ed.) Dialogic Analysis VII. Working with Dialogue (pp. 1 – 18).
Tubingen: Niemeyer. 

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity.
New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Maria Prikhodko, a Ph.D. (ABD) candidate in Composition and TESOL at Indiana
University of Pennsylvania, is currently exploring how multilingual
internationally mobile students negotiate their lived languages and literacies
in the context of composition classes (Multilingual Sections) in US academia.
Also, Maria is a Teaching Associate in the English Department at Indiana
University of Pennsylvania with the primary duty to teach two sections of
Composition I and II.





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