towards respecification of communicative competence

Applied Linguistics 27/3: 349–376 � Oxford University Press 2006

doi:10.1093/applin/aml011

Towards Respecification of CommunicativeCompetence: Condition of L2Instruction or its Objective?

YO-AN LEE

The concept of communicative competence is one of the most influential theoretical

developments in language education as it helped redefine the objectives of

L2 instruction and the target language proficiency. While acknowledging

these contributions, this paper asks if the conceptual formulation of

communicative competence has other relevancies for our understanding of the

realities of language use in L2 instructional settings. Classroom interaction

itself is an occasion of language use that relies on the competence of the parties

to the interaction; the competence that is already in the room is then a

constitutive feature of the work-practices of teaching and learning. Informed

by Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, this paper proposes that

communicative competence may be as much the condition of L2 instruction,

one that makes L2 instruction possible in the first place, as its target outcome.

Brief analyses of transcripts from ESL classrooms are offered to demonstrate

how the communicative competence found in L2 classrooms is a contingent

resource for language teaching and learning.

INTRODUCTION

Hymes’ formulation (1971) of communicative competence has been one of the

most influential theoretical developments in natural language studies and

in applied linguistics (Ellis 1994; Firth and Wagner 1997; Stern 1983).

The language education literature has seen an array of proposals to formalize

communicative competence into theoretical constructs that can offer

common frames of references for establishing L2 (Second Language)

instructional objectives and measuring the language proficiency of nonnative

students (e.g. Bachman 1990; Canale and Swain 1980; Celce-Murcia et al.

1995; Cummins 1983; Harley et al. 1990; Widdowson 1978).

While recognizing continued efforts to generate more refined theoretical

models, this paper asks if the formulation of communicative competence has

other relevancies for the study of language education. Theoretical models

of communicative competence may help to formulate target objectives

for language teaching and learning and thus help to determine what L2

instruction needs to do to achieve them. Yet, we have rarely considered that

L2 classroom interaction itself relies on competent language use for its

accomplishment; the competence that is already in the room is a constitutive

feature of the work-practices of teaching and learning.

This question traces back to Hymes’ call (1971) for language studies that

take the organization of living speech as a viable object of study and thus,

recognizes the language classroom as a natural social setting in which

members carry out various interactional tasks through competent language

use. If so, what we need is a more closely considered account of language use

in L2 classrooms and examine how that figures into the realities—and

resources—of what goes on in the practical course of L2 instruction. This

paper begins by questioning what language behavior could count as evidence

of competence and what the parties to the interaction accomplish with it.

L2 classroom interaction is then not just an instrument to accomplish

communicative competence as an instructional objective, but is also a

practical occasion that exhibits competent language use.

This alternative undertaking of competence examines the interactional

detail in an L2 classroom in order to describe how the actual interactional

contexts and contingencies are managed by and made intelligible to the

teacher and students as practical matters of their competent hearing

and productions. Brief analyses of transcripts from undergraduate ESL

(English as a second language) classrooms are offered to demonstrate how

communicative competence sustains the very thing that goes on there,

namely, the work of teaching and learning.

COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE IN THE ACTUALCONTEXT OF LANGUAGE USE

Communicative competence for L2 instruction

This alternative interest in communicative competence in L2 instruction

begins with the question that prompted Chomsky and later Hymes, ‘What is

so competent and remarkable about language behavior?’ While Chomsky

(1965) found competence in the generative possibilities of language systems,

Hymes (1974) expanded the scope of competence to include knowledge of

social and cultural norms and rules of speaking that underlie language use

and an individual’s ability to realize it in actual speech. Competent speakers

are capable of producing adequate ways of speaking that each situation

demands and of making use of the rules for their own ends (Hymes 1973,

cf. Widdowson 1983). As a rejoinder to Chomsky’s cognitive essentialism,

Hymes reinstated the social realities of communications in language studies

that Chomsky had suppressed for analytic reliability (Taylor 1988).1

Hymes’ call to take interest in the sociability of language has been a

catalyst for the field of language education as it expanded the scope and

epistemic content of target competence that concerns L2 curriculum.

Furthermore, it offered a much needed theoretical rationale for L2 research,

which was leaning toward a more functional approach (Richards and Rogers

1986). This resulted in the development of various theoretical constructs

for L2 instruction (e.g. Canale and Swain 1980; Celce-Murcia, et al. 1995;

350 RESPECIFICATION OF COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

Munby 1978; Savignon 1983, 1997) and language assessment (e.g. Bachman

1990; Canale 1983; Canale and Swain 1980).

Behind this development was a common disciplinary interest, namely, to

generate broadly acceptable frames of reference that identify the essential

components of target competence. The adequacy of the given theories is

then to be assessed by the degree to which they offer systematic ways of

characterizing language phenomena in terms that can effectively identify

and organize the objects and objectives of L2 instruction. This would allow

language professionals to design their instructional programs and evaluate

the language proficiency of their L2 students from within a common or

unified perspective. This point is put forth in the seminal paper by Canale

and Swain (1980).

These (theoretical) principles serve as a set of guidelines in termsof which communicative approaches to second language teachingmethodologies and assessment instruments may be organizedand developed. Such a theoretical analysis is crucial if we areto establish a clear statement of the content and boundaries ofcommunicative competence—one that will lead to more usefuland effective second language teaching and allow more valid andreliable measurement of second language communication skills(Canale and Swain 1980: 1).

This has been an enormous theoretical undertaking that has shaped the

direction of L2 instruction significantly. However, it also entails a precarious

task, namely, representing in a few abstract constructs the complex realities

of language use across an unforeseeable range of variation and situational

contingency.2 The success of this enterprise depends largely on the capacity

of the theories to abstract the realities of language use into stable and

recognizable constructs.

Although this practice of abstracting is at the heart of any disciplinary

undertaking of formal analysis (Cazden 1996), it is still an open question

as to whether and how these analytic undertakings have been successful

(see Chalhoub-Deville 1997; Davis 1989; Fulcher 1998; Harley et al. 1990;

Hoekje and Linnell 1994; McNamara 1996, 1997; Schachter 1990; Skehan

1995; Spolsky 1989). Nonetheless, there is a disciplinary consensus that

communicative competence points to an underlying cognitive knowledge

system, and therefore, specifying distinctive properties of the system is an

important goal of language acquisition research. Doughty and Long illustrate

the case in point:

The focus is firmly on identifying the nature and sources ofthe underlying L2 knowledge system, and on explainingdevelopmental success and failure. Performance data areinevitably the researchers’ mainstay, but understanding under-lying competence, not the external verbal behavior that dependson that competence, is the ultimate goal. Researchers . . . recognize

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that language learning, like any other learning, is ultimatelya matter of change in an individual’s internal mental state.As such, research on SLA (Second Language Acquisition) isincreasingly viewed as a branch of cognitive science (Doughty andLong 2003: 4).

Hence, there remains a classic distinction between competence and perfor-

mance in which actual language use is regarded as a surface manifestation of

much larger and stable cognitive learning mechanisms.

However, the centrality of cognition in prior research has been challenged

recently by several researchers (e.g. Block 1996; Lantolf 1996; van Lier

1994). This controversy was brought out acutely in the exchange that was

featured in the special issue of Modern Language Journal that carried Firth

and Wagner’s (1997) critique of the SLA research. This debate furnished us

with a rare occasion to reflect on the nature of the enterprise of L2 studies

by tapping into the epistemological foundations that underlie it.

Interaction and interactional competence

One issue that figures centrally in this debate is the role of interaction

and what it shows about competence. Firth and Wagner (1997) argued for

the importance of contextual and interactional dimensions of language use

and the need to treat them analytically on their own terms. To this charge,

there was a firm stance on the generality and stability of cognitive

organization as a primary objective of L2 research (see Gass 1997: 83, 1998;

Kasper 1997; Long 1997); competence displayed in social interaction is

considered to represent the cognitive outcome of learning. That is to say, the

contextual and interactional dimensions of language use are recognized only

insofar as they contribute to building global language acquisition systems

(see Liddicoat 1997). Not all that can be found in interaction counts because

the aim of acquisition research is to distill a language structure that could

be mapped on an underlying knowledge system. The formulation by Gass

is illustrative:

The goal of my work has never been to understand language useper se, but rather to understand what types of interaction mightbring about what types of changes in linguistic knowledge . . . theemphasis in input and interaction studies is on the language usedand not on the act of communication. (Gass 1998: 84)

In this regard, for both sides of the debate, what can be seen in

interaction and how to characterize it is a central issue for understanding

competence.

There have been several analytic programs in language studies that center

on interaction. Hymes’ own ethnography of speaking is one such undertaking

that aims at ‘discovering and formulating rules for appropriate language use’

(Saville-Troike 1996: 353) in specific contexts that are culturally defined


and socially determined. This focus is also echoed in the undertaking

of interactional sociolinguistics (Gumperz 2001) that provides ‘a framework

within which to analyze social context and to incorporate participants’

own understanding of context into the inferencing of meaning’ (Schiffrin

1996: 316).3

These analytic programs tend to find competence in the social/cultural

systems that underlie communicative conventions and in the speakers’

abilities to make use of them in interactional contexts. A great deal of

research has ensued by examining how social and cultural contexts become

embedded in language use and how they interact with language teaching

and learning (e.g. Allen 1992; Brooks 1992; Bryant 2001; Cheng and Warren

1999; Foster-Cohen 1990; Riggenbach 1991; Sato and Kleinsasser 1999;

Shehadeh 1999; Tyler 1995; Wilkins 1982). These analytic programs offered

a completely different epistemic stance toward interaction from the prior

emphasis on language cognition as they attempted to substantiate what

interaction reveals, for example, how actual interaction displays different

social and cultural conventions among the participants and how those

differences can render particular forms of language use relevant or

problematic.

Accordingly, the term ‘interactional competence’ has been used

increasingly in applied linguistics as several L2 researchers find it important

to examine what can be seen in actual interaction (e.g. Hall 1995a; Kramsch

1986; Young 2000). For example, interactional details are important in socio-

cultural theories because ‘the language that we learn to use in these practices

comes to us packaged with particular histories, already dialogized, spoken

about, and evaluated and we encounter it already ‘‘used’’ ’ (Hall 1995b: 218).

Interaction brings into view how individual competence is connected to,

and partially constructed by both those with whom she is interacting and

the larger sociohistorical forces (Hall 1995b; Vygotsky 1978). It is then

through the regularities of communicative practices that L2 learners gain

access to conventionalized means and activities; in a way this becomes

another dimension of target competence.

The analytic focus on interactional competence in applied linguistics carries

on its back a certain degree of tension between two conflicting interests:

on the one hand, there is a disciplinary interest to formulate interaction as

stable and recognizable constructs that can be transformed into target

objectives for language teaching while, on the other hand, analysts have to

preserve in some way the detail of interactional organizations that are

complete with contingency and variation. This tension can be found in the

papers by He and Young (1998) and Young (2000) that attempted to define

speaking abilities in a way to represent normal conversation in the target

language authentically. In their account, interactional competence is

co-constructed by all participants via discursive practices that are specific to

practice because ‘individuals do not acquire a general, practice-independent

competence; rather they acquire a practice-specific interactional competence

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by participating with more experienced others in specific interactive

practices’(He and Young 1998: 7).

While recognizing the specificity of interactional details within each

situational context, there is still the need for the common categories through

which an analytic program can ‘make principled comparisons between one

context of interaction and another’ (Young 2000: 2). Accordingly, Young

(2000) offers five regular and formal interactional resources that participants

bring to the interaction as a basis for comparative analysis.4

This is, however, a precarious task; it points to the discursive practice of

interaction that is locally contingent and situationally specific while at the

same time, it attempts to create stable and unifying categories with which

to compare language practices across contexts and even to document change.

This undertaking extends the scope of acquisition research into the detailed

interactional realm of language use, meanwhile maintaining what are

essentially ‘abstracting’ procedures with formal criteria; in a way, it continues

the program of specifying ‘competence’ as the target objective for both L2

analysts and classroom professionals. Recognizing this dualism, Kasper and

Rose (2002) proposed that interactional competence could be treated both

as a curricular objective and also as an interactional process that enables L2

learning:

They (L2 learners) perform their current interactional competencein collaboration with peers or participation in IRF-structuredclassroom discourse and at the same time develop theirpragmatic, sociolinguistic, and interactional ability. In the notionof interactional competence, goals and processes of L2 learningare dialectically related (Kasper and Rose 2002: 57–8).

The tension is thus clarified as the dialectic of goals and process. Yet the

question remains: what does this ‘process’ look like in actual language use

in L2 classroom interaction and how do we understand it analytically in

relation to the activities of the members who carry it out?

Analytic resources of conversation analysis

A central resource for addressing this question may be found in the literature

of conversation analysis (CA). Conversation analysts are concerned with the

competences that underlie ordinary social activities and interactional

routines. They focus on describing a common set of methods and procedures

that ordinary speakers use when they engage in intelligible conversational

interaction (Heritage 1984a). The emphasis on the procedural aspects means

that CA researchers consider language interaction ‘an achievement out of

structured sets of alternative courses or directions which the talk and the

interaction can take’ (Schegloff 1986: 114). CA’s analytic task is to explicate

how language interaction is posed as a problem to members and how they

(members of interaction) resolve it by constructing their talk methodically


in the moment-by-moment contingencies of interaction (Schegloff 1991).

Particularly notable is their finding that interaction exhibits identifiable,

stable, and thus recurrent structural regularities such as turn-taking, repair,

preference, and IRE structure (Mehan 1979; Sacks et al. 1974; Schegloff et al.

1977; Schegloff et al. 2002). Ordinary speakers bring their knowledge of these

organizations as it influences their conduct and interpretation of the conducts

of others (Heritage 1984a).

Over the years, CA’s detailed findings about the sequential production of

talk-in-interaction have been appreciated and set to work across various

settings of social studies. As Wagner and Gardner noted, one of the real

strengths of CA that makes it attractive is that it is ‘based on the regularity of

behavior as documented in the collection of cases’ (Wagner and Gardner

2004: 7), which makes CA findings robust and cumulative.5

In the Modern Language Journal debate, Kasper expressed optimism that

CA’s analytic program may enable us to ‘reconstruct links between L2

discourse and the acquisition of different aspects of communicative

competence’ (Kasper 1997: 311). Since then, there have been some

recognizable efforts to examine SLA using CA’s methodological resource.

Broadly identified as CA for SLA (Markee 2000), these researchers

endeavored to give analytic accounts of the relation between pedagogy

and interaction by explicating how learning behaviors could be understood

as ‘a conversational process’ (Markee and Kasper 2004: 496; Seedhouse

2004). A recent volume of Modern Language Journal published several

exemplary studies to that end (He 2004; Kasper 2004; Markee and Kasper

2004; Mondada and Doehler 2004; Mori 2004; Young and Miller 2004).

Mondada and Doehler (2004) identified the contribution of interaction

to learning by examining how grammar exercises in second language

classrooms in Switzerland are being accomplished in and through the

interaction. Kasper (2004) showed how the definition of character of the

task by a native and nonnative speaker, whether it is conversation among

friends or meta-lingual focus for learning, is procedurally consequential in

their deployment of repairs and topic initiation of talk. In their examination

of one-on-one interactions between an adult ESL learner and his writing

tutor over a period of time, Young and Miller’s research (2004) identified

change in the ESL learner’s ability to engage in pedagogical interaction.

In his book on conversation analysis, Markee (2000) explored the

possibility that CA’s regularities would ‘enable SLA researchers interested

in understanding the effects of conversational repairs on language learning

to investigate whether the moment-by-moment sequential organization

of such talk has any direct and observable acquisitional consequences’

(Markee 2000: 42).

More recent reactions to the growing number of CA for SLA studies in L2

literature are still mixed. One of the criticisms is that CA remains descriptive

in delineating learners’ competence without manifesting explanatory

adequacy (see Ellis 1994: 38, 429–430; Gregg 1993; Long 1993 for earlier

YO-AN LEE 355

formulation of explanatory adequacy). Several critics in the Modern Language

Journal (2004) collection argued that CA oriented studies fail to go beyond

descriptive analysis in order to tackle the issue of learning and acquisition

(Gass 2004; Hall 2004; Larsen-Freeman 2004). Their critiques seem to

acknowledge the universal and generative possibilities of structural

regularities in CA’s findings and therefore, they urge CA researchers to

take up and solve the puzzle of acquisition. That is to say, there seems to be

confidence that CA’s structural regularities offer an important resource in

going beyond mere descriptive analyses of what happens in the classroom

in order to examine what kinds of change are possible and how.

Communicative competence in L2 instruction

The recognition of CA’s structural resources has energized various language

researchers to examine acquisition issue (e.g. Hall 1998; Young and Miller

2004). It is not entirely clear, however, to what directions CA for SLA will

take in coming years. As for my interest in an alternative undertaking

of communicative competence, I want to stay a little longer with what

CA’s sequential analysis can offer.

The sequential analysis of talk-in-interaction can show us how the parties

undertake their own discourse and assemble courses of action that we

commonly speak of as teaching and learning. While the promise of

explanatory adequacy implicates going beyond what the interactional details

reveal, the sequential analysis treats the descriptive analysis as a production

account. That is to say, interactional details are examined because they

show the competent and orderly production of the discourse as the

members produce and experience it. Interactional details exhibit structural

regularities but they also pull into view how members accomplish social

action and activities by managing and acting on those organizational

regularities.

The characterization that interaction is itself a competent production

contrasts sharply with the prior research that treats communicative

competence as a criterion reference to determine the qualities of classroom

interaction. The proposed criteria are used to reconstruct language use in the

classroom and therefore, interactional details recede into the background in

deference to the theories of target competence. Communicative competence

then becomes an analytic resource for L2 research, rather than an analytic

topic that shows how language use organizes the interactional realities

of L2 instruction or how the parties to L2 instruction make their way

through their interaction (see Lynch 1993: 147–52; Zimmerman and

Pollner 1970 for the distinction of topic and resource in the study of

practical actions).

This leads us to the useful distinction between communicative competence

as an outcome of L2 instruction and communicative competence as a condition

of L2 instruction. If we follow Hymes’ initial call for the study of actual


language use, we recognize L2 instruction as an actual occasion of language

use (Cazden 1988; Cook-Gumperz and Gumperz 1982; Erickson 1986;

Heap 1982; Mehan 1980). Accordingly, we treat language use as an analytic

topic and investigate what may be already competent about it before

subjecting it to pre-formulated criteria of competence or incompetence. The

idea is to find a collection of competency’s evidences in the practical

interactional details of L2 instruction as the students and their teachers

experience them; this can be accomplished by describing the interactional

choices made by the parties and analyzing what consequences their choices

have for how the instruction takes the shape that it does.

One of the primary tasks in this regard is to preserve and retrieve the ways

in which the parties understand what goes on across the emergence of their

contingent interactions. Prior literature has tended to treat understanding as

a matter of the propositional contents of the speakers’ intentions by invoking

inferences based on ‘mutually shared background information’ (Searle 1975:

60–1). Analysts make out the substantive contents by referring to speakers’

intentions, social and situational contexts and the relevant communicative

conventions. They then determine whether and how the contents are

recognized or problematized by the parties to the talk as a case of

competence or incompetence.

The alternative rendering of communicative competence, in contrast,

considers understanding to be a local-interactional matter (Garfinkel 1967;

Macbeth 2003; Schegloff 1988). Interaction itself brings out a contingent

task of common understanding: in the projectable course of interaction, the

parties attend to what has been said, what it entails, what it calls for next,

and figure out when and how to say it. Meaning making is a members’

task, first, and their work is made available to each other and to us in

the production of appropriate next turns on time (Moerman and Sacks

1971/1988). Understanding in this regard is a procedural operation (Garfinkel

1967; Schegloff 1992) rather than the matching of corresponding sets of

shared content knowledge.6

This does not mean that we disregard the substantive contents of language

interaction. Rather, we insist on finding those contents in the ways the

members locate, characterize, and act on them in their talk-in-interaction.

CA’s analytic strength is in helping us access and describe the ways in which

competence is made available and used in interaction. Mehan’s comment

is illustrative:

Interactional competence is not purely a cognitive or subjectivisticconsideration. It is not to be confused with underlyingabilities. The conception of competence being developed here isinteractional in the sense that it is a competence that is availablein the interaction (Mehan 1979: 129).7

Note in the following exchange how this difference becomes visible in the

analysis of its sequential production. This brief exchange was used to

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illustrate the role of a native speaker’s feedback on nonnative speech

(Day et al. 1984: 25).

NNS: How do you do on- o weekends? Usually, I mean usually.NS: What do I do on the weekends?NNS: Yeah.

The native speaker’s comment ‘What do I do on the weekends?’ is a part

of what is called negative input (Schachter 1982), informing the nonnative

speaker of what was problematic in his/her talk and supplying corrective

feedback.

However, if we consider this exchange purely to be a matter of linguistic

error and correction, we would miss and thus take for granted the competent

practices of language use that make this exchange intelligible in the first

place. Note, first, that the nonnative speech contains repair initiations

especially in the second utterance ‘Usually, I mean usually.’ This repair

indicates that this nonnative speaker is competent enough to see how his/her

earlier question may be problematic and therefore repairs it to tell the native

speaker how to hear the question: s/he is interested in knowing what the

native speaker does on weekends in general, not on one particular weekend.

The native speaker’s subsequent response then becomes the second repair

initiation that is oriented to the task of common understanding: it recognizes

what the nonnative speaker was doing and thus asks ‘Is this what you

mean?’ The native speaker’s question can be considered a language

correction and yet, identifying it only as a ‘correction’ does not adequately

recognize the interpretive works embedded in the exchange.8 That is to say,

this excerpt shows each member’s orientation to the intelligibility of their

talk and its contingent accomplishment as a course of action. We may not

know if this nonnative speaker finally learned how to ask a question about

what people do on the weekends. However, the issue of learning the correct

ways of speaking is preceded by the competent language use to make his/her

own talk intelligible.

The focus on structural and functional regularities of given language

production might be important in identifying language errors and generating

instructional remedies to address target competence. A close analysis of

sequential organizations shows, however, that it is the members’ interactive

production of their discourse that makes the interactional sequence what

it is, even when there appear to be communicative problems and incorrect

language use.

L2 classroom interaction is built on similar types of competent language

use and it is in this sense that we see communicative competence as the

condition to L2 instruction. This competence is to be found in the members’

operational methods by which they construct the orderly, evident, and

practical understandings of classroom interaction. CA’s resources are

informative, not just because they bring out recognizable regularities, but

also because they pull into view the members’ reflexive undertaking of


their discourse; this essentially constitutes their work-practices of classroom

interactions. That is to say, our understanding of L2 classroom interaction, its

pedagogy and accomplishment, and even problems, relies on the participants’

undertaking, their activities, and therefore, their communicative competence

that carries them.

EVIDENCE OF COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCEIN L2 INSTRUCTION

The present section offers a sequential analysis of two excerpts that are lifted

from a data corpus that includes three ESL undergraduate composition

courses and one speaking class across 46 class sessions that were audio/video

taped. These excerpts are selected because they are particularly telling cases

(Mitchell 1984) in demonstrating the communicative competence embedded

in the details of classroom interaction.

The students in these classes are either immigrant or international students

who are learning English to pursue their academic degrees at North

American universities. The speaking class is part of an ESL program that

offers comprehensive and intensive language courses in the area of speaking,

writing, reading, listening, grammar, and pronunciation. The students in

these classes are largely from Arabic or East-Asian countries. The composition

program has three levels; two composition classes in the data corpus are from

an intermediate level and the third one is from an advanced level. The

students are generally active in both teacher-led discussions and in other

small group activities. The teachers in these data sets are female native

speakers of English who have taught nonnative students for several years

in each program.

The collected materials were transcribed following the convention

developed in conversation analysis. Transcriptions provide a practical

means of describing actual social events in the details of their interactional

production (Drew and Heritage 1992; Jefferson 1985; Sacks 1984).9 This does

not mean, however, that the transcripts provide unmediated access to inter-

actional activities. Rather, they serve as detailed reminders of how the parties

to the interaction competently locate, analyze, and coordinate activities

in the course of interaction (Atkinson and Delamont 1990; Lynch 2002).

In this sense, I take transcripts as useful records of the participants’ sequential

production of their own discourse.

The communicative competence of repair

In the first excerpt, the teacher and her students are brainstorming ideas

about various types of inventions. This is a preliminary to a group activity

in which the students are to devise inventions that would be useful in

their everyday lives. The exercise is supposed to be fun and imaginative and

the students understand it as such.

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Note that this excerpt is full of incomplete utterances, uncertain hearings,

and subsequent repairs that may be indicative of nonnative discourse. The

study of errors in L2 discourse is an important area of L2 research that

identifies types of errors and proposes ways to correct them (Corder 1981;

James 1998). However, the sequential analysis shows that repairs bring into

view the members’ competence to monitor their talk, recognize potential

difficulties, and adjust in the course of interaction.

Excerpt 1–110

912. T: Think of something else that would be useful in your

913. everyday life, what’s something that would be useful in your

914. everyday life?

915. (5.0)

916. E: A machine to wake me.

917. T: A ma(h)chine to what?

918. E: OK(h), awake me.¼

919. T: ¼Wake you up, and I hope the machine would then actually

920. get you to class (.) on time, hahaha, all right, is this possible,

921. all right", this might be something similar to:: this

922. invention, it might be a little crazy and goofy (.) all right,

The teacher begins this exchange by characterizing the type of inventions

she is looking for, ‘something that would be useful in your everyday life?’

(913–914). After some considerable silence by the cohort (915), one student

(E) ventured an answer ‘A machine to wake me’ (916).

The teacher’s next turn to E’s answer is a repair initiation (917) pointing to

her problem in hearing E’s response: ‘A machine to what?’ (On reparative

organizations, see Schegloff 1989; Schegloff et al. 1977). This is followed by E’s

follow-up in line 918, ‘OK(h) awake me.’ As a repair, this turn displays her (E)

analysis of what may be problematic for the teacher’s hearing; her analysis

is both competent and correct as she transforms ‘wake me’ to ‘awake me.’

The laughter token embedded here also displays her self-assessment of what

her previous answer should have been in offering the alternative.11 The next

turn by the teacher then shows her recognition of the interpretive work by E.

Many L2 researchers have considered these kinds of sequences—repairs

producing reformulations—the key to successful language development

(Gass and Selinker 2001; Pica 1987). Teachers offer feedback that informs

L2 speakers of problems in their language production (Day et al. 1984,

Schachter 1982) and how to correct them in the form of a recast (Long and

Robinson 1998; Lyster 1998; Nicholas et al. 2001). However, the above repair

sequence also displays both participants’ orientations to the intelligibility

of the student’s reply to the teacher’s first question. Whatever instructional

objective was intended in this question, its success relies on the

communicative competence of all parties, particularly the students’ analytic


competence to recognize problems, locate, and analyze their object, and

repair them in the course of interaction. Their competence is then to be

found not just in the presence of structural features such as ‘recast’ or

‘correction’ but in how these repairs carry the course of interaction in

producing the relevant next turns. The repair brings into view the members’

orientation to the tasks of common understanding and my data corpus is

full of such sequences, contrary to Pica’s observation that this type of

interactional modification is not common in classroom settings (Pica 1987).

The next exchange in this same sequence offers a similar display of

competent language use. The teacher solicits more answers from the

students by offering formulation of what kinds of invention the students

could suggest, ‘it might be a little crazy and goofy’ (922). J’s answer in the

next turn (924) comes in this sequential context.

Excerpt 1–2

919. T: ¼Wake you up, and I hope the machine would then actually

920. get you to class (.) on time, hahaha, all right, is this possible,

921. all right", this might be something similar to:: this

922. invention, it might be a little crazy and goofy (.) all right,

923. what else, what’s another (.) possible invention?

924. J: A robot can (cook).

925. T: I’m sorry?

926. J: A robot can (cook) for me.

927. (0.5)

928. J: (Cook).

929. T: Oh, a robot to bring a can of coke to you?

930. J: Yeah.

931. T: Excellent, I wouldn’t mind having one of those myself Juma,

932. a(h)ll righ(h)t" all right, what else?

This answer is met by the teacher’s request for clarification in her repair

initiation ‘I’m sorry?’ (925). Drew (1997) calls this type of remark an open

class repair initiator because it does not specify the source of the difficulty.

With no further direction, J’s next turn repair makes his answer more

complete, ‘A robot can (cook) for me’ (926). His articulation is, however,

phonetically ambiguous as it can be heard as ‘coke’ or ‘cook’; this ambiguity

is played out in the subsequent turns.12

J’s repair is followed by another repair after a short pause (927) which he

apparently hears as a continuing problem for the teacher, and thus he

repeats the word, ‘(cook)’ (928). Note that the teacher’s initiation has been

open and non-specific, but J produces consecutive repairs in 926 and 928

that locate what the teacher’s problem of understanding is. In other words,

J’s repair in line 926 demonstrates his competence in analyzing what the

YO-AN LEE 361

teacher did and did not hear in his previous answer and his repair in 928

demonstrates his assessment of how effective his first repair was.

The analyses shown by J in his repairs yield an interesting result. The

teacher begins her next turn (929) with ‘Oh,’ signifying a change-of-state

in her understanding (Heritage 1984b), followed by her formulation of his

reply: ‘a robot can bring a can of coke to you?’ (929). This response can be

categorized as a ‘recast’ that shows how the teacher recognizes what J meant

and transforms his answer into a linguistically adequate utterance by

changing ‘coke’ into ‘a can of coke’ with her emphasis on the word ‘bring.’

To my hearing, however, ‘coke’ is not what J said or meant.13 In this light, his

subsequent agreement in line 930 to the teacher’s hearing in 929 displays his

decision to let it pass: perhaps, he sees that the repair so far has taken the

interaction in a different direction and decides that there is no time to work out

what a certain word was, especially when the larger task of talking about a

useful invention has already been accomplished. This in itself is quite a

sophisticated display of communicative competence, one that recognizes the

ambiguity of the discourse enacted in the sequence so far and what can become

of it. Similarly, the subsequent turn shows how the teacher brings this

exchange to a close by offering her acknowledgment of J’s invention and its

relevance to the task at hand.14 J’s comments might seem less than fluent

and even unsuccessful in getting his message across, and yet they show a com-

petent assessment of what is at stake in the interaction and how to proceed.

It is commonplace to find problems of understanding in natural

conversation; ambiguity and/or misunderstanding are routine occurrences

in talk-in-interaction. But as analysts of L2 instruction, we tend to look

beyond them to get at the source of the problems in things like

mispronunciation, a lack of grammatical competence or even an inadequate

understanding of social norms and rules of speaking. That would,

however, miss the competence of the participants who constantly monitor

the intelligibilities of their own discourses and act on them accordingly.

Rather than proceeding with the errors, J instead produced a next

turn that is appropriate for the construction of the lesson sequence. His

competent language use then becomes a condition for instruction to proceed.

As the discussion continues,wefind another case of competent language embed-

ded in repair sequences. The teacher wants another example of an invention.

Excerpt 1–3

931. T: Excellent, I wouldn’t mind having one of those myself Juma,

932. a(h)ll righ(h)t" all right, what else?

933. (2.0)

934. T: Give me one more.

935. (6.0)

936. T: In a perfect world, use your imagination (.) what else?

937. (5.0)


938. H: Uh like when you are drive- aha:: driving on the highway"

939. T: Uh [hmm.

940. H: [aha (.) boring (.) for long time [to make aha:: long

941. T: [Uh hmm

942. H: distance trip, so something like aha:: aha:: mo-, aha moving

943. moving:: aha::

944. S: Pillow?

945. H: Uh[:: yeah, so car rise on the::: [(.) like an:: escalator"

946. S: [(hh)

947. R: [( ) [( )

948. T: Oh::, [excellent, OK((h).

949. H: [I, I don’t have to drive [( ) just sit.

950. T: [Yes, you can just sit back

951. 5and watch movies [or read a book.4

952. H: [Yeah.

953. H: Yeah.

954. T: A(h)ll righ(h)t, OK, very good, now, with all this in

955. consideration, what do you think I am going to ask you to do

956. right now?

H begins his comment in line 938 by setting up the situation before explaining

what his invention is. This turns out to take up multiple turns as he begins with

a dependent clause ‘when . . .’ with an upward intonation at ‘highway",’ which

indicates that more is forthcoming (Lerner 1996). The teacher recognizes

it and offers her go-ahead with ‘Uh hum’ (939) (See Jefferson 1984; Schegloff

1981 on continuers). In this response, the teacher not only registers what H is

saying but joins him in securing the resources to complete his answer.

In his next turn, H continues to build his scenario of how ‘it’s boring

for long time to make aha:: long distance trip’ (940 and 942). This is a

continuation of his work by establishing a domain of everyday life in which

his invention could be useful, for which the teacher offers another continuer

(941). In line 942, H turns to the substance of his invention, something

that goes along with long distance driving. However, he struggles across a

string of self-repair initiations to say it (‘aha:: aha:: mo-, aha moving moving

aha::’), not being able to offer a sufficient description for others to recognize

what his invention is and what it does.

Seeing H’s struggles, another student (S) ventures a candidate suggestion

‘Pillow?’ (944). Completing an interlocutor’s incomplete utterance is a

display of communicative competence as well (Sacks 1992);15 it shows that

S was following what H was trying to say closely enough to anticipate

what might make his repair-initiations complete.

H acknowledges S’s candidate repair in his next turn (‘Uh:: yeah’: 945) but

does not use it to develop his account further. Instead, he marks and

acknowledges S’s candidate repair and continues his account differently to

YO-AN LEE 363

offer an alternative version of what he means: ‘so car rise on the::: (.) like

an:: escalator?’ (945). In this sense, H’s difficulties in saying what he means

are complemented by his competence in producing his continuing efforts

to say it. And his continued effort gets some recognition from his fellow

students (946–947).

The teacher finally recognizes H’s invention in ‘escalator’ in her next

turn (‘Oh excellent’: 948). With this recognition, H goes ahead to say

what the consequence of his invention would be (949): that one only

sits and does not have to drive.16 In her overlapped next turn (950–951), the

teacher not only claims her understanding, but also offers evidence of it by

describing what one could do with the machine that H has been trying to

describe: ‘Yes, you can just sit back and watch movies or read a book.’ H

recognizes and affirms the teacher’s formulation in line 952–953.

In this excerpt, H’s inability to articulate what his invention is drives the

sequence and may be the most prominent feature of the sequence. This

exchange shows, however, that H accomplishes the task of describing his

invention without being able to directly name it through collaborative

interaction; his next turn relies entirely on the recognition of the teacher

and his classmates. That is to say, this exchange shows how the teacher and

students rely upon their competent language use to accomplish the task

of understanding of those matters being talked about; H builds the preface

to his telling by managing his turns and recognizing how his last remarks

are interpreted by the teacher and his classmates, offering repairs and

reformulations as needed. The exchange also shows the teacher’s competent

hearing of non-native discourse and her ways of acknowledging the range

of interpretive work her students’ discourse manifests. It is these competent

practices of language use by the parties that construct the discourse and

accomplish the task at hand.

The most visible relevance of communicative competence to those who are

engaged in natural interaction is that they constantly refer to, invoke and rely

on each other’s competence to accomplish their interactional tasks of under-

standing. Any next utterance may yield misunderstanding, ambiguity or

confusion. Those problems, however, are found and addressed within the

sequences of actions as each next utterance displays its speaker’s analysis of

what has gone before, whether it is recognizing problems, acknowledging

responses, trying alternative hearings or even finding humor. There is no

question that the above excerpts reveal areas of English proficiency that these

students need to develop. Nonetheless, sequential analysis gives us a view of

the members’ competent undertaking of their discourse and this competence is

something that sustains and organizes the practical life of the L2 classroom.

Communicative competence in questioning sequences

The second excerpt shows a questioning sequence in another ESL classroom.

Questioning is one of the most familiar forms of teacher talk in language


classrooms that offers important language input for second language

development (Long 1996; Nunn 1999). Notice, however, that questioning

is also a central resource for classroom teachers in carrying out various

pedagogical and social actions, such as introducing topics, demonstrating

concepts, eliciting forms of reasoning, correcting grammar, and even

maintaining order. While many studies have classified questions according

to various functional characteristics (Carlsen 1991; Cullen 1998; Long and

Sato 1983), the intelligibility of a question often becomes a matter of

negotiation and interpretive adjustment by the parties involved in the

interaction. This following excerpt shows how one of the teacher’s questions

becomes an object of close analysis by her students, as they try to establish

a sense of what the question is asking.

The teacher is going over the directions for an oral presentation—the final

assignment for the course—that her students are required to do in a couple

of weeks. The direction under consideration reads ‘analyze your audience.’

Excerpt 2–1

597. T: OK, so, that’s the first thing, deci:de o:n the task, so make

598. sure you are doing this (.) second thing, analyze your

599. audience, what do I mean by this, analyze your audience,

600. what does this mean?

601. (4.0)

602. T: Who is your audience gonna be for this presentation?

603. S: ( )

604. K: [Classma[te and the::

605. S?: [�Classmate�

606. T: Good, OK, [so not just me (.) but all your classmates, now,

607. T: [((pointing to her and then, the cohort))

608. T: what would you need to analyze?

609. (4.0)

Each question the teacher asked in this excerpt is a display question

for which she knows the answer (Mehan 1979; Sinclair and Coulthard

1975; Wells 1993). What becomes notable in this questioning sequence is

not that it shows a process of unpacking the pre-figured propositional

content of the phrase ‘analyze your audience.’ Rather, the sense of ‘analyze

your audience’ becomes subject to a series of interactional exchanges in

which the teacher explores what students know and organizes her next

question accordingly. That is to say, the question’s sense remains indexical

and thus open for ongoing interpretation and negotiation.

The teacher’s initial question gets no response from the students (601) and

she then reformulates the question (602). Rather than a simple repetition

of the previous question, this reformulation shows the teacher’s analysis

YO-AN LEE 365

of what problems of understanding her students may have had with her

initial question. Accordingly, she narrows it into a question of ‘audience.’

In addition, the teacher ties the question to the actual context of the

students’ upcoming presentation by asking ‘who is your audience gonna be

for this presentation’ (602).17 The students’ silence in line 601 is, therefore, a

constitutive feature of her next question as the teacher determines what the

silence means and how it should be addressed.

Several students reply in line 603–605, and the teacher accepts them with

a positive evaluation in line 606. Now that they have practically settled the

issue of ‘audience,’ the teacher moves on to the first term of her initial

question, the ‘analyze’ part (606 and 608). This question, however, receives

another silence from the students and the teacher, once again, reformulates

and repairs the question in line 610–611.

Excerpt 2–2

610. T: What-, what would you need- what does the word ‘analyze’

611. mean?

612. (4.0)

613. T: 5Do you know what this word means?4

614. (3.0)

615. S?: ( [)-

616. W: [�Consider?�

617. T: Yeah

618. [((Nodding))

619. K: [We know what it means.

620. T: What does it mean?

621. K: The:: make order, [and::

622. T: [((Nodding))

623. O: To tell [to::

624. T: [((Turn to O and nodding))

625. (2.0)

626. K: Steps.

627. T: OK, what would it mean to analyze your audience?

Repairs routinely identify the source of the trouble—the thing to be repaired—

in the alternative they offer. In the above sequence, the repair is produced as

the teacher begins to repeat the previous question, but cuts it off twice (610).

The repaired question ‘what does the word analyze mean?’ becomes a

vocabulary question about the meaning of the word ‘analyze.’ We can say

then that the silence led the teacher to question her assumption as to what

students know and to rework her question: What was problematic for the

students is the semantic meaning of the word ‘analyze,’ not the pragmatic

sense of the question as her previous question has projected. The student’s


silence becomes a resource for the teacher in which the identity of L2 students

as second language learners becomes situationally invoked in her repair.

This repaired question, however, again receives no answer in the next turn

position (612), and the teacher pursues the question by making it into a yes/no

question (613). The answer by K (619) is interesting for a couple of reasons.

First, he speaks for the cohort by using ‘we’ rather than ‘I.’ Second, he

addresses the pragmatic sense of the question not the semantics of the

vocabulary item.18 In K’s reply, then, we can see how he understands the

question’s implications; he recognizes the teacher’s question as a prefacing yes/

no question and replies to it, rather than answering the question it prefaces.19

Just as each next question by the teacher shows how she understands the

students’ response and its projectable horizons, K’s response, too, shows his

understanding of the teacher’s last turn, the sense it carried. In this way, K’s

reply displays a keenly competent analysis of the teacher’s question, as he

speaks up on behalf of the competence of the cohort. Every next turn at talk

then becomes a mark of competent analysis of the previous turn and it is this

competence that sustains and makes the interaction move forward. The

participants’ next course of action then is the competence’s evidence.

Note that the claim by K that they know what it means is not enough for

the teacher as she pursues the question in line 620 (see Pomerantz 1984 for

how speakers pursue a response in ordinary conversation). A few students

including K offer answers in lines 621 and 623 even though they are

incomplete and fragmented.

Excerpt 2–3

627. T: OK, what would it mean to analyze your audience?

628. (5.0)

629. T: Before you give a speech to someone, what would you mi-

630. what might you want to know?

631. (0.5)

632. T: Why would this be important?

633. K: Consider of:: our audience.

634. T: Yeah, consider about- OK? take some consideration (.) Gima

635. (.) would not want to give this presentation to me if I was

636. Pele, OK, (.) or if I was this great soccer player, all right, he

637. would not want to give a presentation about learning about

638. how to play soccer to a roomful of soccer players (.) right?

639. So you need to take into consideration what does your

640. audience already know, what don’t they know (.) all right, so

641. think about this, next one, analyze the task.

In line 627, the teacher returns to her initial question posed in line 598–600.

Between these two iterations of the same question (line 598–600 and 627),

however, much has changed. One evidence is that the teacher takes the

YO-AN LEE 367

cohort’s silence in line 628 differently as she invites the students to

contemplate a particular situation (‘before you give a speech to someone’)

that calls for a particular course of action (‘what might you want to know

and why is it important?’). Although it is syntactically fragmented, K’s

comment in the next turn (633) is a direct reply to the question in line 627:

‘what does it mean to analyze your audience?’ The teacher immediately

accepts it, elaborates upon it, and provides a summary formulation: ‘So you

need to take into consideration . . .’ (639–641).To point out how the teacher reformulates her question this way is not

meant to criticize her on grounds that her initial question was ambiguous or

incomplete. Rather, it exemplifies the indexical nature of questions whose

sense is contingent on and made available by the parties’ interpretive work.

The sense of the questions, therefore, is managed and made sensible through

the on-going exercise of communicative competence in which what students

know and understand is made public and addressed in the course of

questioning and answering.

From a close analysis of the unfolding interactional sequences, one can try

to bring out categorical features of interactions to abstract teachable and

learnable constructs. Yet even that undertaking relies on the parties’

competence because their logic and knowledge are built into the sequential

organization of the discourse, which is made available and managed in the

course of interaction. Interaction when seen in its produced detail displays

these sequential contingencies and CA’s structural resources point to how

members accomplish their practical tasks of understanding across them.

The immediate purpose of the transcript and its analyses is to demonstrate

how a descriptive analytic program can show the essential sociability of

language behavior for which Hymes’ proposal of communicative competence

is instrumental. Instead of proposing to amend or refine it as a theoretical

construct, this treatment of communicative competence seeks ways to describe

the competent achievements of common understanding in the interactional

details of L2 instruction. This competence is displayed not in post hoc accounts

or in the observers’ categorical constructs, but in the ways in which the

members act on their discourse within the sequential order of their

interaction. Through this competent work, instruction falls into place,

curricula are brought into view, speakers are nominated and activities

develop. This is where we can recover the evidence of their communicative

competence as the very thing that organizes the possibilities of L2 instruction.

CONCLUSION

The primary goal of the present paper is to propose a respecification of

communication competence through a descriptive analysis of L2 classroom

interaction. Rather than treating communicative competence as just an

outcome of L2 instruction, we see it as an enabling condition. The task

of respecification begins by asking what occurrences of language behavior


could count as a competent case of language use. This question points

to a distinctively different analytic direction for understanding what

communicative competence is and how to locate it both analytically and

naturalistically. There is no question that previous theories of communicative

competence have offered L2 literature conceptually useful and analytically

powerful resources for understanding L2 instruction and L2 language

phenomena. The familiar analytic task has been to locate the systematic

theoretical bases for characterizing competence and then fitting the

instruction to the characterization in order to facilitate learning.

The alternative analysis of L2 instruction, however, demonstrates that

learning begins in the practical fields of understanding and that understanding

is the practical undertaking of the parties engaged and embedded in their

analysis of their discourse, which is visible in the detail of its production.

Communicative competence becomes available in action, rather than

something contained in an utterance whose presence or absence is indicative

of theoretical objects or constructs such as discourse competence or

grammatical competence. The alternative view, therefore, does not separate

the practical actions the members accomplish from the communicative

means for accomplishing it. The sequential organization of classroom

interaction shows this procedural course of action in which L2 instruction

is organized in and as the members’ competent language use in the room.

Accordingly, taking communicative competence as a condition of L2

instruction brings us closer to an understanding of L2 instruction because it

helps us to examine and take interest in the most mundane organizations

of classroom teaching and learning. This might coincide with what Allwright

and Bailey (1991) had in mind when they argued that ‘in order to help our

learners learn it is not ‘‘the latest method’’ that we need but rather a fuller

understanding of the language classroom and what goes on there’ (Allwright

and Bailey 1991: xviii). The task of respecification points to the teaching and

learning as activities and actions in the making as we attend to ‘those matters

which are visible in the midst of the activity which manifests them’ (Sharrock

and Anderson 1982: 173) rather than focusing on patterns or regularities that

could be indicative of target competence. This alternative analysis can then

tell us something about the organization of classroom interaction and

instruction that we hope to control and improve (Lynch and Macbeth 1998).

This paper takes an elaborate trajectory to untangle the complex and

variant history of communicative competence and proposes an alternative

way to specify it. While there have been various attempts to re-think and

re-characterize communicative competence, the present paper finds the

usefulness of communicative competence not in its adequacy as a conceptual

tool but in its relevance to the action and activities as the members

experience them. We want to keep the analytic interest in language use for

the ways in which the parties demonstrably do, and find an understanding of

their communicative competence in the actual affairs they competently

assemble in concert. This suggests a new possibility of how we might begin

YO-AN LEE 369

a production account of classroom interaction, exploring its contingencies,

achievements, and collaborations, which might lead us to reconsider the

practical life of teaching and learning.

Final version received October 2005

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to express my thanks to the editor and three anonymous reviewers for their informative

comments that helped me clarify and refine the primary argument of the paper. A special thank

goes to D. Macbeth for his advice and support. This paper is the result of countless discussions

with him over several years and his influence is evident throughout.

APPENDIX: TRANSCRIPT NOTATIONS

[ ] Overlapping utterances

(2.0) Timed silence within or between adjacent utterances

( ) An uncertain hearing of what the speaker said

(( )) Scenic description and accounts

(.) A short untimed pause

¼ Latching that indicates no interval between adjacent utterances

- A halting, abrupt cutoff

. Falling intonation, e.g. sentence final� Quieter than surrounding talk

: A prolonged stretch

_ Stressed syllable

"# Marked change in pitch: upward or downward

(h) Aspirations

5 4 Utterance is delivered at quicker pace than surrounding talk

(cf. Atkinson and Heritage 1984).

NOTES

1 See Hymes (1992) and/or Cazden

(1996) for the historical development

of the concept of communicative

competence.

2 This challenge was noted by Stern

a couple of decades ago: The

dilemma for the linguistics systems

builder is that he either attempts

to take in everything that plays a

part in language and risks making

his system unwieldy and too complex

to handle or he makes a

deliberate choice and abstracts from

the complex reality and is thus in


danger of distorting it by restricting

the field of observation too severely.

(Stern 1983: 146)

3 See Singh et al. (1988) for a critique of

interactional sociolinguistics on the

ground that it is excessively focusing

on cultural and ethnic differences in

language use and thus misses out on

more universal principles of discourse

such as cooperation.

4 Participants bring (1) knowledge of

rhetorical scripts; (2) knowledge of

certain lexis and syntactic patterns

specific to that practice; (3) strategies

for managing turns; (4) management

of topics; and (5) knowledge of the

means for signaling boundaries

between practices and transitions

within the practice itself (Young

2000: 6–7).

5 This comment is taken from their

introduction of an edited book that

carries various CA works that involve

second language speakers.

6 Harvey Sacks clarifies this analytic

rationale in the following remark:

We can then say that a warrant for

the study of the phenomenon of

‘understanding’ is that it’s specifically

a thing that is achieved, and it can

proceed employing conversation, and

have places where it gets exhibited,

etc. We need not say we’re interested

in ‘understanding’ by virtue of, e.g.

some humanistic bias about the

nature of conversation or by reference

to some theoretical supposition

that people understood each other,

but by virtue of the fact that one of

the things people do in conversation,

as they do ‘questioning’ and

‘answering’, etc., is specifically,

‘showing understanding.’ (Sacks

1992: 141)

7 See Jacoby and Ochs (1995) and

Young and Miller (2004).

8 In their analysis, Day et al. (1984: 25)

noted that the native speaker’s

utterance could be also viewed as a

continuation of the topic.

9 There are a variety of theoretical

positions and practical recommenda-

tions as to how to interpret and

report transcribed discourse (Green

et al. 1997; Kasper 1997; Lapadat and

Lindsay 1999; Mishler 1991; Ochs

1979; West 1996). See Green and

Dixon (2002) for a comparison

of various approaches to classroom

discourse.

10 See appendix for transcript notations.

11 I owe this point to an anonymous

reviewer.

12 Note the (cook) in the transcript—it

is also uncertain for the transcriber.

13 To hear ‘a robot can coke for me’ is

to treat an internationally familiar

noun-object as a verb. While there is

no certainty, we can further observe

that ‘can (cook)’ may, in just

pronunciation, have been the

resource for the teacher’s ‘can of

coke.’

14 One of the reviewers offered this

point.

15 Fall 1965, Lecture 3 and Spring 1967,

Lecture 4.

16 I take it that the image of the

escalator is one of an ‘intelligent

roadway’ that rises above the traffic.

17 French and Maclure (1981) found

similar work in questions in infant

classrooms.

18 Note that the first response by

W (616) answers the definition

question: ‘Consider?’ K, in overlap-

ping the teacher’s continuer, is

changing the terms of the reply: he

is affirming the competence to the

pragmatic sense of what ‘analyze

audience’ means.

19 I owe this point to D. Macbeth

(personal communication).

YO-AN LEE 371

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