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Language Alternation as an Interactional Practice in the Foreign Language Classroom

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Multilingual Education Yearbook 2019

Part of the book series: Multilingual Education Yearbook ((MEYB))

Abstract

Language alternation (code- or language-switching) has been a long-standing focus of research in language classrooms and multilingual communities. We know about its functions, about the distribution and frequencies in speakers’ use of their languages, about the cognitive impact of language alternation on learning, and about social and interactional accounts of language alternation that are concerned with indexing shifting identities and social inequalities, and with showing how they are deployed as interactional resources in languaging practices. This chapter presents an overview of recent research in the Conversation Analytic (CA) tradition which treats language alternation in the foreign language classroom as a social practice. It describes how the micro-analytic methods of CA have contributed to understanding language alternation through analysis of two samples from Australia: a secondary Italian foreign language classroom and a tertiary Japanese foreign language classroom. The focus of the analyses is on the language alternation practices between teacher and learners and between learner and learner. The chapter ends with a consideration of the implications of this research for language teacher education with reference to medium of classroom interaction.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    While the debates about terminology are robust and ongoing, the term “language alternation” based on Gafaranga’s (2007, 2018) conceptualization of the practice will be used in this chapter. [See Lin (2013) for a recent discussion about terminology.]

  2. 2.

    This was an Australian comedy aired on TV in 2006. It involved participants walking through a door and improvising a scene.

  3. 3.

    For discussions surrounding the terms medium versus language alternation, and how to determine a base language and normative language choice, see Gafaranga and Torras (2001).

  4. 4.

    Although it should be noted that a small number of students would have had exposure to Italian in primary school but in a limited capacity of 50 min/week.

  5. 5.

    I would like to thank Hyesun Ko who generously provided this previously unanalyzed transcript from her dataset, collected as part of her Ph.D. study.

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  1. Faculty of Education, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

    Anna Filipi

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  1. School of Education, Deakin University, Burwood, VIC, Australia

    Indika Liyanage

  2. School of Education, Deakin University, Burwood, VIC, Australia

    Tony Walker

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Filipi, A. (2019). Language Alternation as an Interactional Practice in the Foreign Language Classroom. In: Liyanage, I., Walker, T. (eds) Multilingual Education Yearbook 2019. Multilingual Education Yearbook. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14386-2_2

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