Article published in:
Dialogue in Multilingual and Multimodal Communities
Edited by Dale Koike and Carl S. Blyth
[Dialogue Studies 27] 2015
► pp. 221–251

Artifacts, gestures and dispensable speech

Multimodality in teaching and learning a biology laboratory technique

| University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
| Hokusei Gakuen University, Japan
The chapter examines the nature of embodied, multimodal language use in science training in a segment of an interaction where a Japanese professor and a Chinese student engaged in teaching and learning a basic laboratory technique. The analysis, informed by ethnomethodological and conversation analytic studies of learning, reveals how the participants’ coordinated, non-verbal conduct played a critical role in the professor’s instruction and the student’s indication of understanding, which in turn mutually affected each other. The student’s limited proficiency in Japanese, the chosen language of instruction, was not explicitly problematized during this interaction, but her ability to demonstrate understanding by acting appropriately in accordance with the ongoing development of the professor’s instruction was treated as essential for this apprenticeship learning.
Published online: 10 July 2015
https://doi.org/10.1075/ds.27.08mor
References
Antaki, Charles
(ed.) 2011 Applied Conversation Analysis: Intervention and Change in Institutional Talk. Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Antaki, Charles, and Susan Widdicombe
(eds) 1998 Identities in Talk. London: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Benwell, Bethan, and Elizabeth Stokoe
2006 Discourse and Identity. Edinburg: Edinburg University Press.Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan
2010 The Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Brouwer, Catherine E
2003 “Word Searches in NNS-NS Interaction: Opportunities for Language Learning?” Modern Language Journal 87: 534–545. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Firth, Alan, and Johannes Wagner
1997 “On Discourse, Communication and (Some) Fundamental Concepts in SLA Research.” Modern Language Journal 81: 285–300. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2007 “Second/Foreign Language Learning as a Social Accomplishment: Elaborations on a Reconceptualized SLA.” Modern Language Journal 91: 798–817. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, Charles
1994 “Professional Vision.” American Anthropologist 96(3): 606–633. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
1997 “The Blackness of Black: Color Categories as Situated Practice.” In Discourse, Tools and Reasoning: Essays on Situated Cognition, ed. by Lauren B. Resinick, Roger Säljö, Clotilde Pontecorvo, and Barbara Burge, 111–140. Berlin, Heidelberg, New York: Springer. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2003 “Pointing as Situated Practice.” In Pointing: Where Language, Culture and Cognition Meet, ed. by Sotaro Kita, 217–241. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
2013 “The Co-operative, Transformative Organization of Human Action and Knowledge.” Journal of Pragmatics 46: 8–23. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, Marjorie Harness, and Charles Goodwin
2012 “Car Talk: Integrating Texts, Bodies, and Changing Landscapes.” Semiotica 191(1/4): 257–286.Google Scholar
Hindmarsh, Jon
2010 “Peripherality, Participation and Communities of Practice: Examining the Patient in Dental Training.” In Organization, Interaction and Practice: Studies in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, ed. by Nick Llewellyn, and Jon Hindmarsh, 218–240. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hindmarsh, Jon, and Alison Pilnick
2007 “Knowing Bodies at Work: Embodiment and Ephemeral Teamwork in Anaesthesia.” Organization Studies 28(9): 1395–1416. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hindmarsh, Jon, Patricia Reynolds, and Stephen Dunne
2011 “Exhibiting Understanding: The Body in Apprenticeship.” Journal of Pragmatics 43: 489–503. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hosoda, Yuri
2006 “Repair and Relevance of Differential Language Expertise in Second Language Conversations.” Applied Linguistics 27: 25–50. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Jacoby, Sally, and Tim McNamara
1999 “Locating Competence.” English for Specific Purposes 18(3): 213–241. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Koschmann, Timothy
ed. 2011 “Understanding Understanding in Action.” Journal of Pragmatics 43(2): 435–690. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2012 “Conversation Analysis and Learning in Interaction.” In The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, ed. by Carol A. Chapelle, 1038–1043. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Koschmann, Timothy, Curtis Lebaron, Charles Goodwin, and Paul Feltovich
2011 “ ‘Can You See the Cystic Artery Yet?’: A Simple Matter of Trust.” Journal of Pragmatics 43: 521–541. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Koshik, Irene
2002 “Designedly Incomplete Utterances: A Pedagogical Practice for Eliciting Knowledge Displays in Error Correction Sequences.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 35(3): 277–309. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Koskela, Inka, and Ilkka Arminen
2012 “The Embedded Evaluations in Air Traffic Control Training.” In Evaluating Cognitive Competences in Interaction, ed. by Gitte Rasmussen, Catherine E. Brouwer, and Dennis Day, 15–42. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lave, Jean, and Etienne Wenger
1991 Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
LeBaron, Curtis, and Jürgen Streeck
2000 “Gestures, Knowledge and the World.” In Language and Gesture: Window into Thought and Action, ed. by David McNeill, 118–138. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lerner, Gene
1991 “On the Syntax of Sentences in Progress.” Language in Society 20: 441–458. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Li, Yongyan
2005 “Multidimensional Enculturation: The Case of an EFL Chinese Doctoral Student.” Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 15(1): 153–170. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2007 “Apprentice Scholarly Writing in a Community Of Practice: An Interview of an NNES Graduate Student Writing a Research Article.” TESOL Quarterly 41(1): 55–79.Google Scholar
Lynch, Michael
2011 “Commentary: On Understanding Understanding.” Journal of Pragmatics 43: 553–555. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Mondada, Lorenza
2006 “Bilingualism and the Analysis of Talk at Work: Code-switching as a Resource for the Organization of Action and Interaction.” In Bilingualism: A Social Approach, ed. by Monica Heller, 297–318. Basingstoke: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Morita, Naoko
2004 “Negotiating Participation and Identity in Second Language Academic Communities.” TESOL Quarterly 38: 573–603. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Norton, Bonny
2001 “Non-participation, Imagined Communities and the Language Classroom.” In Learner Contributions to Language Learning: New Directions in Research, ed. by Michael P. Breen, 159–171. Essex, England: Pearson Education.Google Scholar
Polanyi, Michael
1958 Personal Knowledge. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey
1992 Lectures on Conversation Volume II. Oxford, UK; Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey, Emanuel A. Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson
1974 “A Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-Taking for Conversation.” Language 50(4): 696–735. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sawyer, Reiko
2004 International Graduate Students of Science in Japan: An Ethnographic Approach from a Situated Learning Theory Perspective. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation. University of Hawaii.Google Scholar
Streeck, Jürgen
1993 “Gesture as Communication I: Its Coordination with Gaze and Speech.” Communication Monograph 60: 275–299. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2002 “Grammars, Words, and Embodied Meanings: On the Uses and Evolution of so and like .” Journal of Communication 52(2): 581–596. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, Michael
1995 “Joint Attention as Social Cognition. In Joint Attention: Its Origins and Role in Development, ed. by Chris Moore, and Philip J. Dunham, 103–130. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
2003 Constructing a Language: A Usage-based Theory of Language Acquisition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Toohey, Kelleen
1998 “’Breaking Them Up, Taking Them Away’: ESL Students in Grade 1.” TESOL Quarterly 32: 61–84. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2000 Learning English at School: Identity, Social Relations and Classroom Practice. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Wenger, Etienne
1998 Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Zemel, Alan, Timothy Koschmann, and Curtis LeBaron
2011 “Pursuing a Response: Prodding Recognition and Expertise within a Surgical Team.” In Embodied Interaction: Language and Body in the Material World, ed. by Jürgen Streeck, Charles Goodwin, and Curtis 
Lebaron, 227–242. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Kimura, Daisuke & Suresh Canagarajah
2020. Embodied semiotic resources in Research Group Meetings: How language competence is framed. Journal of Sociolinguistics 24:5 ► pp. 634 ff. Crossref logo
Mori, Yoshiko, Atsushi Hasegawa & Junko Mori
2021. The trends and developments of L2 Japanese research in the 2010s. Language Teaching 54:1 ► pp. 90 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 14 may 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.