Contenu du sommaire : Intéraction et langue étrangère, sous la direction de Jo Arditty et Marie-Thérèse Vasseur

Speakers, as well as analysts, deal with the problem of having to relevantly categorize themselves, their interlocutors and other persons in interactions. This categorization process is a contextualized, heuristic accomplishment related to the social action being performed locally. In this article, a conversational approach to categorization processes, inspired by Harvey Sachs, helps us to re-think such taken-for-granted categories as « non-native » or « foreigner » in exolingual conversation, and to analyze how speakers make these categories relevant in their actual interactions.

This paper aims to define the conditions allowing the emergence in peer groups of linguistic awareness and representations of learning. The first part analyzes the characteristics of the interaction when learners work in groups. The second part examines the procedures used by learners in metalinguistic problem solving tasks and communicative activities.

In « conversational writing » two or more persons cooperate in order to produce common texts. We propose to consider these groups as « writing systems », whose functioning conditions can be determined as follows : construction of an interactional space, management of social relationship, definition of roles for the « agents » of the system, conceptualization of the task, use of material resources, of norms and conventions. The processes of L2 text production by a writing system are the object of a second series of analyses : wording activities, preparation and elaboration. These processes can be described as a step-by-step conceptual organisation with a view to formulating the contents the system proposes to transmit.

This article proposes an interactional re-analysis of an experiment whose purpose was to study instructions produced by fluent (native) and less fluent speakers of a language. After describing the general characteristics of the experimental procedure, we compare the instructional discourse of a French speaker and of a semi-beginner in French, first in interaction with a partner supposed to perform the instructions, then alone in front of a tape-recorder. Linguistic and rhetorical variation is found in each text and related to the tension due to the combination of cognitive difficulties and face-work. The second situation shows a sophistication in both subjects' strategies to overcome these difficulties as well as experimentation of new linguistic devices on the part of the second language learner.

This case study focuses on one particular learner's particular practice of « technical reiteration » in soliloquies, besides other intercultural communicative tasks. The interest of such a case is that it emphasizes the fact that the learner may, in some situations, conceive and organise her « second language training » as based on the whole activity of task achievement. The analysis shows that the learner may focalise and organise her reflexive activities on the interactional event as a whole. This does not mean that she is not interested in linguistic forms but it highlights the fact that she also gives importance to other aspects and levels which constitute interactions. This case and similar ones tend to indicate that focalising on and negociating linguistic forms is not the only way of conceiving L2 learning and acquisition (or of studying it) .

This paper recasts the process of learning to use a second language as language socialisation (SLS). But also identifies some limitations of SLS. The social aspects of language learning and use include not only a study of second language interaction but also the wider social outcomes of intercultural encounters. Detailed analyses of encounters between minority workers and gatekeepers from the majority group are used to illuminate the socio-cultural knowledge necessary for SLS. They also shed light on the ways in which minority workers are ideologically positioned in interaction and so on the potentially hostile environment for language learning. The link between SLS and wider social processes is illustrated through Gumperz's work on intercultural communication.