Applied Linguistics Advance Access originally published online on February 14, 2008
Applied Linguistics 2009 30(1):26-48; doi:10.1093/applin/amm057
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© Oxford University Press 2008
Soliciting Teacher Attention in an L2 Classroom: Affect Displays, Classroom Artefacts, and Embodied Action
Linköping University
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Abstract |
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This paper explores L2 novices’ ways of soliciting teacher attention, more specifically, their summonses. The data are based on detailed analyses of video recordings in a Swedish language immersion classroom. The analyses illuminate the lexical shape of summonses in conjunction with prosody, body posture, gestures, and classroom artefacts. As demonstrated, a simple structure of summoning provided a handy method for soliciting and establishing the teacher's attention, and facilitated the novices’ participation in classroom activities from early on. Importantly, however, the local design of the summonses was influenced by the competitive multiparty classroom setting. The analyses illustrate how the novices upgraded their summonses by displaying a range of affective stances. Different aspects of the students’ embodied actions were employed as ways of indexing affective stances, for example ‘tired’, ‘resigned’, or ‘playful’, that in the local educational order created methods that invited the teacher's attention and conversational uptake. These locally available resources allowed children to upgrade their summonses and to indicate their communicative projects, in spite of their limited Swedish (L2) resources. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for understanding participation in L2 classroom interactions as being a matter of delicately calibrated collaborative accomplishments.
Key Words: L2 novices • summonses • embodied action • affective stances • classroom artefacts
Accepted for publication 1 June 2007.