Culture and spoken discourse: Analyzing talk through interactional sociolinguistics

Summary: Mckay chapter six gave a brief overview of interactional sociolinguistics and provided three examples (ELF research, code switching, and language attitudes) where sociolinguistics has produced valuable information. The chapter also touched upon the concept of English as a lingua franca. Baker’s study explored the relationships between languages and cultures. Marra’s study explored the challenges of obtaining accurate interaction in Maori workplaces.

Interactional sociolinguistics interested me during the readings because this is the first time language learning theories have been mentioned the readings for this class. I wondered how the different theories (Nativist, behaviorist, interactionist, etc) correlate with and influence our subject material this semester. It seems that some theories are more essentialist or non-essentialist than others are, but others appear to pick a side more arbitrarily. For examples, the Chomskian view of language as an entity set in stone would be more essentialist, the behaviorist theories could be used to reduce people through culturism or to account for their various influencing discourses, and the Interactionist theories would be more non-essentialist. Then again, perhaps the theories of language learning cannot be/should not be classified in terms typically reserved for theories of culture.

Language is typically taught through its relation to culture. Students learn the formal and informal languages and how to perform certain cultural tasks with the culture’s language. At least that is always how it has been taught to me, and the only way that I have heard of it being taught. Consequently, Baker’s summary of Risager (2006) caught my eye. Risager’s study apparently “questions the perceived inexorable link between language and culture that has become a part of second language pedagogy. Risager claims... languages and cultures can be separated.” Given the standard “you have to know their culture if you want to speak their language” discourse of my L2 courses this came as a surprise. However, as Baker alludes too, Risager isn’t really arguing that teachers should separate language and culture, but that teachers should move from a generic sense to a differential sense. To put it another way, that teachers should move from the essentialist/generic view of language as the “embodiment of culture” to a non-essentialist/differential view that examines specific languages, like English, which can take on new cultural meanings with new contexts. Risager’s concept of languacultures, where languages take on new meanings because of the individual speakers of the language, that give “no identifiable culture to which a language is inseparably tied” (571). I like this concept because it reinforces a multiplicity of discourses over a monolithic English speaking culture.

Finally, I feel as if I should write about the conversation extracts. I think this is a really cool way to study language and discourse, but am slightly skeptical about its effectiveness. People act differently when they know they are being recorded or may be recorded. Even the conversation in an everyday settings, like a Maori workplace, would change if knowledge of information gathering was announce to the workers. This presents a conflict between authentic conversation and personal privacy. Although I believe that collecting and analyzing conversation and speech is integral to the field of TESOL, the tension between authentic conversation and recorded conversation has not yet been resolved.