Abstract
Speech readiness, willingness to communicate and levels of speaking skills, i.e. factors crucial for the learner’s communicative competence, develop in the course of interaction in the EFL classroom or beyond it. Yet intensity and type of interaction depend on inferences conversational partners make about their interlocutors based on the way they speak. Conversational styles play an important role in interpersonal relations since both positive and negative personality characteristics tend to be ascribed to particular ways of using silence and speech in a particular speech community. The role of conversational styles grows in importance in the process of developing intercultural communicative competence as cross-cultural differences result in mismatches leading to the perception of otherness, and, in consequence, to distance and conflict. Implications are sought for ways to raise awareness of these issues in teachers and learners of second and foreign languages.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Abramson, L. Y., Seligman, M. E., & Teasdale, D. (1978). Learned helplessness in humans: Critique and reformulation. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 87, 49–74.
Agar, M. (2012). Culture: Can you take it anywhere?. In L. Monaghan, J. Goodman, & J. M. Robinson, J. M. (Eds.), A cultural approach to interpersonal communication (pp. 24–26). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Ajtony, Z. (2009). Ethnicity in interaction: The state-of-the-art. Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica, 1, 212–228.
Auer, P. & Kern, F. (2000). Three ways of analyzing communication between East and West Germans as international communication. In A. Di Luzio, S. Günthner, & F. Orletti (Eds.), Culture in communication. Analyses of intercultural situations (pp. 89–116). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Baker, S. C., & MacIntyre, P. D. (2003). The role of gender and immersion in communication and second language orientations. Language Learning, 53, 65–96.
Bamberg, M. (Ed.). (2006). Narrative development: Six approaches. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Baron, R. A. (1990). Conflict in organizations. In K. R. Murphy & F. E. Saal (Eds.), Psychology in organizations: Integrating science and practice (pp. 197–216). London: Routledge Psychology Press.
Basso, K. (2012). To give up on words. Silence in western Apache culture. In L. Monaghan, J. E. Goodman, & J. M. Robinson (Eds.), A cultural approach to interpersonal communication (pp. 73–82). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Bernstein, B. (1990). Class, codes and control. The structuring of pedagogic discourse. London: Routledge.
Bernstein, B. (2001). From pedagogies to knowledges. In A. Morais, (Ed.), Towards a sociology of pedagogy. The contribution of Basil Bernstein to research (pp. 363–368). New York: Peter Lang.
Biedroń, A. (2008). Attribution related effects in second language acquisition. Słupsk: Pomeranian Academy Press.
Bogdanowska-Jakubowska, E. (2010). Face. An interdisciplinary perspective. Katowice: University of Silesia Press.
Carbaugh, D. (2012). Ethnography of communication. In L. J. Monaghan, J. Goodman, & J. M. Robinson (Eds.), Cultural approach to interpersonal communication (pp. 245–248). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Carroll, D. (2004). Restarts in novice turn beginnings. Disfluencies or interactional achievements. In R. Gardner & J. Wagner (Eds.), Second language conversations (pp. 201–220). London: Continuum.
Coates, J. (1996). Women talk. London: Blackwell.
Common European framework of reference for languages: Teaching - learning - assessment. (2001). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Crown, S., & Feldstein, S. (1985). Psychological correlates of silence and sound in conversational interaction. In D. Tannen & M. Saville-Troike (Eds.), Perspectives on silence (pp. 31–54). Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex.
Davis, B. G. (1993). Tools for teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Edelsky, C. (1981). Who’s got the floor? Language in Society, 10, 383–421.
Efron, Z. (1941/1972/1975). Gesture, race and culture. The Hague: Mouton.
Feldstein, S., Alberti, L., & Ben Debba, M. (1979). Self-attributed personality characteristics and the pacing of conversational interaction. In A. Siegman & S. Feldstein (Eds.), Of speech and time. Temporal speech patterns in interpersonal contexts (pp. 73–87). Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Fiske, S. T., & Taylor, S. E. (1991). Social cognition. (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Försterling, F. (1994). The functional value of realistic causal attributions. European Review of Social Psychology, 5, 151–179.
Försterling, F. (2005). Atrybucje. Podstawowe teorie, badania i zastosowanie [Attributions. Basic theories, research and applications]. Gdańsk: GWP.
Gardner, R. (2014). Conversational analysis in the classroom. In J. Sidnell & T. Stivers (Eds.), The handbook of conversational analysis (pp. 593–611). London: Wiley-Blackwell.
Gilovich, T., Griffin, D. W., & Kahneman, D. (Eds.). (2002). Heuristics and biases: The psychology of intuitive judgment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction ritual: Essays on face-to-face behavior. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
Goffman, E. (1974). Frame analysis. New York: Harper.
Graham, S. & Folkes, V. (Eds.). (2014). Attribution theory. Application to achievement, mental health and interpersonal problems. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J. L. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics. Volume 3. Speech acts (pp. 41–58). New York: Academic Publishing.
Gumperz, J. (1982). Discourse strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. New York: Wiley.
Hellermann, J. (2008). Social actions for classroom language learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Hellermann, J., & Cole, E. (2009). Practices for social interaction in the language-learning classroom: Disengagements from dyadic task interaction. Applied Linguistics, 30, 186–215.
Heritage, J. (2004). Conversational analysis and institutional talk: Analyzing data. In D. Silverman (Ed.), Qualitative research: Theory, method and practice (pp. 222–245). London: Thousand Oaks.
Hofstede, G., Hofstede, G. J. & Minkov, M. (2010). Cultures and organizations. Software of the mind. Intercultural cooperation and its importance for survival. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Jaworski, A. (1993). The power of silence. Social and pragmatic perspectives. London: Sage.
Jones, E. E. (1990). Interpersonal perception. New York: Macmillan.
Jurafsky, D., Ranganath, R. & McFarland, D. (2009). Extracting social meaning: Identifying interactional style in spoken conversation. In Proceedings of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics—Human Language Technologies (NAACL—HLT 2009) (pp. 638–646). Stroudsburg: Association for Computational Linguistics.
Jussim, L., & Harber, K. D. (2005). Teacher expectations and self-fulfilling prophecies: Knowns and unknowns, resolved and unresolved controversies. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 9, 131–155.
Kerekes, J. (2003). Distrust. A determining factor in the outcomes of gatekeeping encounters. In J. House, G. Kasper, & S. Ross (Eds.), Misunderstanding in social life (pp. 227–257). London: Longman.
Kerekes, J. (2007). The co-construction of a gatekeeping encounter: An inventory of verbal actions. Journal of Pragmatics, Special Issue, High Stakes Gatekeeping Encounters and Their Consequences: Discourses in Intercultural Institutional Settings, 39, 1942–1973.
Kita, M. (2006). Style komunikacji międzypokoleniowej [Styles of communication between generations]. In B. Witosz (Ed.), Style konwersacyjne [Conversational styles] (pp. 80–89). Katowice: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego.
Klos-Sokol, L. (1992). Shortcuts to Poland. Warsaw: Wydawnictwo IPS.
Komorowska, H. (2015). Stereotyping through silence and speech. Cross-cultural differences in conversational styles of Poles and Jews as presented in Polish literature. In L. Aleksandrowicz-Pędich & J. Partyka (Eds.), Jews and non-Jews: Memories and interactions from the perspective of cultural studies (pp. 85–102). Frankfurt am Mein: Peter Lang.
Koshik, J. (2002). Designedly incomplete utterances. A pedagogical practice for eliciting knowledge displays in error correction sequences. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 35, 277–309.
Kurzon, D. (2007). Towards a typology of silence. Journal of Pragmatics, 39, 1673–1688.
Lakoff, R. (1975). Language and women’s place. New York: Harper & Row.
Lakoff, R. T. (2012). The triangle of linguistic structure. In L. J. Monaghan, J. Goodman, & J. M. Robinson (Eds.), A cultural approach to interpersonal communication (pp. 135–140). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
MacBeth, D. (2004). The relevance of repair for classroom correction. Language in Society, 33, 703–736.
MacIntyre, P. D. (2007). Willingness to communicate in the second language: understanding the decision to speak as a volitional process. Modern Language Journal, 91, 564–576.
MacIntyre, P. D., Baker, S. C., Clément, R., & Donovan, L. A. (2003). Talking in order to learn: Willingness to communicate and intensive language programs. Canadian Modern Language Review, 59, 589–607.
MacIntyre, P. D., Clément, R., Dörnyei, Z., & Noels, K. A. (1998). Conceptualizing willingness to communicate in a L2: A situational model of L2 confidence and affiliation. Modern Language Journal, 82, 545–562.
Mairesse, F., Walker, M., Mehl, M., & Moore, R. (2007). Using linguistic cues for the automatic recognition of personality in conversation and text. Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, 30, 457–500.
Marzano, R. J. (2010). Art and science of teaching. Educational Leadership, 68, 82–84.
Maat, M., Truong K. P., & Heylen D. K. J. (2010). How turn-taking strategies influence users’ impressions of an agent. In J. Allbeck, N. Badler, T., Bickmore, C., Pelachaud, & A. Safonova (Eds.), Proceedings of the International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA) (pp. 441–453). Berlin: Springer.
Mäkitalo, A., & Säljö, R. (2002). Talk in institutional context and institutional context in talk. Text, 22, 57–82.
McHoul, A. (1978). The organization of turns at formal talk in the classroom. Language and Society, 7, 183–213.
McKown, C., Gregory, A., & Weinstein, R. S. (2010). Expectations, stereotypes and self-fulfilling prophecies in classroom and school life. In J. L. Meece & J. S. Eccles (Eds.), Handbook of research on school, schooling and human development (pp. 256–274). London: Routledge.
Mey, J. L. (1993). Pragmatics. An introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.
Meyer, W. U. (1992). Paradoxical effects of praise and criticism on perceived ability. In European Review of Social Psychology, 3, 259–283.
Nakane, I. (2008). Silence in intercultural communication: Perceptions and performance. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Nalewajko-Kulikov, J. (2012). Strategie przetrwania. Żydzi po aryjskiej stronie Warszawy [Survival strategies. Jews on the Aryan side of Warsaw]. Warszawa: Neriton.
Pawlak, M. (2004). Describing and researching interactive processes in the foreign language classroom. Konin: State School of Higher Professional Education in Konin Press.
Pawlak, M. (Ed.). (2013). Rola dyskursu edukacyjnego w uczeniu się i nauczaniu języka obcego. [The role of the educational discourse in learning and teaching foreign languages]. Poznań – Kalisz: Wydział Pedagogiczno-Artystyczny UAM w Kaliszu.
Philips, S. U. (2012). Participant structures and communicative competence: Warm Springschildren in community and classroom. In L. J. Monaghan, J. Goodman, & J. M. Robinson (Eds.), A cultural approach to interpersonal communication (pp. 395–411). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Poole, D. (2005). Cross-cultural variation in classroom turn-taking practices. In P. Bruthiaux (Ed.), Directions in applied linguistics (pp. 201–209). Clevedon, Buffalo: Multilingual Matters.
Puppel, S. (2004). An outline of domain-resource-agent-access-management (DRAAM) model of human communication: Towards an ecology of human communication. Oikeios Logos, 1, 1–26.
Roberts, C. (2009). Cultures and organizations meet ethno-linguistic cultures: Narratives in job interviews. In A. Feng, M. Fleming, & M. Byram (Eds.), Becoming intercultural through education and training (pp. 15–31). Bristol, Buffalo, Toronto: Multilingual Matters.
Rosenthal, R., & Jacobs, L. (1968). Pygmalion in the classroom. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on conversation. Oxford: Blackwell.
Sapir, E. (1927). The unconscious patterning of Behavior in society. In E. S. Dummer (Ed.), The unconscious: A symposium (pp. 114–142). New York: Knopf.
Sapir, E. (1958). Speech as a personality trait. In D. Mandelbaum (Ed.), Selected writings of Edward Sapir in language, culture and personality (pp. 533–543). Berkeley: University of California Press.
Sato, Ch J. (1981). Ethnic styles in classroom discourse. In M. Hines & W. Rutherford (Eds.), On TESOL’81 (pp. 11–24). Washington, DC: TESOL.
Saville-Troike, M. (1985). The place of silence in an integrated theory of communication. In D. Tannen & M. Saville-Troike (Eds.), Perspectives on silence (pp. 21–30). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Scollon, R. & Scollon, S. B. K. (1981). Athabaskan English interethnic communication. Narrative, literacy and face in interethnic communication. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Seedhouse, P. (2004). The interactional architecture of the language classroom. A conversation analysis perspective. Oxford: Blackwell.
Sidnell, J., & Stivers, T. (Eds.). (2014). The handbook of conversational analysis. London: Wiley-Blackwell.
Silverstein, M. (1992). The uses and utility of ideology. Issues and Approaches. Pragmatics, 2, 311–324.
Sławkowa, E. (2006). Style komunikacji w perspektywie komunikacji międzykulturowej. In B. Witosz (Ed.), Style konwersacyjne [Conversational styles] (pp. 69–79). Katowice: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego.
Sperber, D., Premack, D., & Premack, A. (1995). Causal cognition. An interdisciplinary debate. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Spychała, M. (2014). Analysis and development of occupational competences of 21st century managers of municipal sectors. In P. Vink (Ed.), Advances in social and organizational factors (pp. 402– 413). Danvers: AHFE Conference.
Swain, M. (2006). Languaging, agency and collaboration in advanced second language proficiency. In H. Byrnes (Ed.), Advanced language learning. The contribution of Halliday and Vygotsky (pp. 95–108). London: Continuum.
Swain, M. (2010). Talking it through: Languaging as a source of second language learning. In R. Batstone (Ed.), Sociocognitive perspectives on second language learning and use (pp. 112–129). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Szarota, P. (2006). Uśmiech: Instrukcja obsługi [A smile: A manual]. Gdańsk: GWP.
Tannen, D. (1984). Conversational style. Analyzing talk among friends. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Tannen, D. (2005/1981). New York Jewish conversational style. In S. Kiesling & B. C. Paulston (Eds.), Intercultural discourse and communication (pp. 136–149). Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Tannen, D. (2012). Conversational signals and devices. In L. J. Monaghan, J. Goodman, & J. M. Robinson (Eds.), A cultural approach to interpersonal communication (pp. 157–167). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Thornbury, S. (1996). Teachers research teacher talk. ELT Journal, 50, 279–289.
Walsh, S. (2006). Investigating classroom discourse. London: Routledge.
Weaver, R. R., & Jiang, Q. (2005). Classroom organization and participation: College students’ perceptions. Journal of Higher Education, 76, 570–601.
Weiner, B., Frieze, I., Kukla, A., Reed, L., Rest, S., & Rosenbaum, R. (1971). Perceiving the causes of success and failure. New York: General Learning Press.
Witosz, B. (Ed.). (2006). Style konwersacyjne [Conversational styles]. Katowice: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego.
Wojciszke, B., & Baryła, W. (2005). Kultura narzekania czyli o psychicznych pułapkach ekspresji niezadowolenia. In: M. Drogosz (Ed.), Jak Polacy przegrywają. Jak Polacy wygrywają [How Poles lose. How Poles win] (pp. 35–52). Gdańsk: Gdańskie Wydawnictwa Psychologiczne.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Komorowska, H. (2016). Pitfalls of Attribution—Conversational Styles in Language Education. In: Gałajda, D., Zakrajewski, P., Pawlak, M. (eds) Researching Second Language Learning and Teaching from a Psycholinguistic Perspective. Second Language Learning and Teaching. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31954-4_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31954-4_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-31953-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-31954-4
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)