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Part of
Discourse Studies in Public Communication
Edited by Eliecer Crespo-Fernández
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 92] 2021
► pp. 297–320

Chapter 13
Compensatory discourse strategies in the bilingual university classroom

ORCID logo | Universidad de Málaga , Spain

Contrastive Discourse Analysis operates in a boundary area where linguistics and psychology overlap. Systematic analysis of classroom and academic discourse can enhance approaches to public discourse, including those dealing with the communicative content rather than the form of texts. Such is the context of the bilingual discourse in the university classroom. This study takes a sequenced and multi-methodological approach to analyse, first, the errors in spoken performance in the bilingual classroom; second, the impact of these errors on overall intelligibility. The sample is taken from academic discourse and is comprised of 34 hours of spoken interaction with eight different Spanish speakers teaching through English. The findings show that compensatory discourse strategies, including listener comprehension, impacted communication much more than the errors detracted from it.

Keywords: academic discourse, intelligibility, multicompetence, contrastive discourse analysis, compensation strategies, bilingualism, English as a lingua franca
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical framework
  • 3.Method and sample
  • 4.Analysis and findings
    • 4.1Stage one
      • 4.1.1Phonological mis-performances
      • 4.1.2Interrogation and listener accommodation
    • 4.2Stage two
      • 4.2.1Phonological intelligibility and negative structures
      • 4.2.2Combined errors and interrogative function
      • 4.2.3Complex constructs: Verbal patterns and adjunctive syntax
      • 4.2.4Complex constructs: Causation
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 7 April 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.92.13gri
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