Loulou Kosmala
[Advances in Interaction Studies 11] 2024
► pp. 103–145
The present chapter deals with the analysis of inter-(dis)fluency and the distribution of fluencemes in native and non-native discourse, based on the SITAF corpus, thus targeting aspects of L1 versus L2 uses in French and English. While a lot of research in L2 fluency has focused on the relationship between fluency and proficiency by examining the frequency of temporal variables in L2 versus L1 speech, the present study does not linger on proficiency measures specifically, but rather pays attention to the interplay of the different prominent features surrounding the construct of fluency, mainly gesture, gaze, and interactional dynamics. The general aim of this chapter is to introduce new methods for evaluating the degree of inter-(dis)fluency, with respect to fluenceme rate, visual-gestural behavior, and interactional dynamics.
This chapter is structured as follows: I first present my research questions and hypotheses, then report on my corpus-based findings regarding the distribution of fluencemes in native and non-native discourse, by integrating different levels of analysis (fluenceme, sequence, and gesture/gaze), extracted from my annotations. These findings are then further exploited with fine-grained qualitative analyses of the data. Lastly, I end this section with a discussion of my findings.