2016 CULTURA | LINGUA E LINGUE

Like Towards an understanding of the effects of a period of residence abroad on the production of discourse markers by L2 users of English: The use of ‘like’.

di Annarita Magliacane RISE NUMERO IV | 2016 CULTURA | LINGUA E LINGUE

CULTURA | LINGUA E LINGUE

Annarita Magliacane PhD Student in Mind, Gender and Languages – Curriculum: Language, Linguistics and ESP Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II / University College Cork

Abstract The use of discourse markers (DMs) in oral production seems to be a frequent characteristic of the spoken language of native speakers (Lewis, 2006), whereas their use in the second language (L2), and in particular by instructed learners, seems to be a rather limited phenomenon (Sankoff et al., 1997; Liao, 2009). Previous research has demonstrated that the production of DMs in the L2 can be aided by intense contact with native speakers (Sankoff et al., 1997) and that, by extension, the degree of usage of DMs in the L2 can be considered as an index of the level of exposure to the target language (TL) (Migge, 2015). Situated within the research area of Study Abroad (SA), this contribution attempts to assess whether, after a period of residence abroad, informants start to use DMs differently in speech, through a longitudinal analysis. In particular, this article focuses on their use of ‘like’. Data were elicited following the principles of the sociolinguistic interview (Labov, 1984) and were collected at the beginning and the end of the participants’ experience abroad. The study was conducted with five Italian learners of English who spent about a semester in a university context in Ireland. The results of this investigation suggest that the experience abroad was beneficial, though extremely heterogeneous, across individuals in terms of the production of this DM in the L2.

1. Insights Research

into

Study

Abroad

Reflecting the trend of increased mobility and the desirability of having a second language (L2) in today’s globalised world, study abroad (SA) is becoming increasingly popular among students. At the turn of the millennium, the promotion of mobility among students in most European tertiary education institutions was gaining momentum (Coleman, 2013) «as a consequence of globalisation and the push for internationalisation on campuses across the globe» (Jackson, 2013, p. 1). This phenomenon aroused the interest of SLA scholars with the specific aim of assessing the benefits of the experience abroad in terms of linguistic outcomes in comparison with learners who did not benefit from a period of residence abroad, often referred to in SA research as ‘at home’ (AH) learners. Although a few studies in an SA setting were conducted in the 1960s and 1970s (Carroll, 1967; Willis et al., 1977), at the beginning, interest in this research area was rather «sporadic and unrelated» (Freed, 1998, p. 33). It was the volume edited by Barbara Freed in 1995 which marked an important milestone in the establishment of this research strand as a «major subfield of SLA research» (Ferguson, 1995, p. xi). Since then, the amount of SA research has increased exponentially (DeKeyser, 2014), bringing into focus various learners’ linguistic and non-linguistic outcomes in relation to the SA experience. SA has been considered for a long time by students and language educators as the best environment for learning an additional language and culture (Pérez-Vidal, 2014) as «while abroad, learners imbibe the language, soak it in, they feel like sponges, they are surrounded, covered with the language […] they learn by doing, by living, until one day they discover themselves thinking in the language» (Sanz, 2014, p. 1). Indeed, SA is believed to aid and accelerate foreign language (FL) acquisition through a more informal way of learning (Regan et al., 2009), as well as offering opportunities to learn the social and pragmatic meanings of certain target linguistic features (Kinginger, 2013a). Thus, due to its greater amounts of input together with the access to social and cultural knowledge, the SA context has been considered for a long time as being superior to the formal instructed (FI) context of the classroom (Kinginger, 2009). However, in spite of the magical image of the SA context, research of the last two decades has drawn a much more nuanced picture, especially in terms of SA alleged superiority (DeKeyser, 2014), as Valls Ferrer describes (2011, p. 2): The SA learning context has certain characteristics which makes it unique. It promotes the development of specific language abilities and skills (L2 fluency and socio-pragmatic competence, among

RISE - Rivista Internazionale di Studi Europei -N. IV, VOLUME II, ANNO 2016 • ISSN 2421-583X | CULTURA | LINGUA E LINGUE

others) which are generally difficult to teach in FI. Language teaching and learning in FI tends to focus on certain linguistic aspects such as grammar and metalinguistic awareness. This does not imply that the learning of certain features is context specific, but rather that the linguistic experience that learners undergo in each context is different, to the extent that different linguistic outcomes can be expected for each learning context. SA research has for a long time concentrated on the dichotomy of SA versus AH (Sanz, 2014), since the context, be it the native-speaking environment or the classroom, has been considered as one of the essential variables that «exert[s] an influence on the route and rate of L2 acquisition» (Juan-Garau, 2014, p. 87). However, rather than an opposition between the two contexts, modern SA research has actually claimed for a complementarity of the two learning settings, with the prior foreign language instruction or preparation being an essential parameter to assess beneficial outcomes in terms of language skills, such as lexico-grammatical competence (Juan-Garau et al., 2014), and non-linguistic outcomes, i.e. motivation for learning, learning style (Trenchs-Parera & Juan-Garau, 2014) and intercultural awareness (Merino & Avello, 2014). Additionally, SA research of the last two decades has also highlighted the importance of individual variables when assessing students’ outcomes. Indeed, residing in the TL country is not a homogenous experience for all learners, as Serrano et al. (2012, p. 155) maintain: [T]he SA context potentially provides an advantageous experience for students to improve L2 skills. Nevertheless, the word ‘potentially’ must be emphasised here since not all learners will necessarily find such a context beneficial, as studies with larger groups of participants and different measures of socio-cultural and individual variables may reveal. Therefore, the SA context offers excellent potential for learning, whose optimal exploitation is the result of different variables, which are not simply limited to speakers’ motivation or attributes but also need to be ascribed to the way learners are received by the host community and their degree of engagement in local community practices. Therefore, as mentioned by Kinginger (2011), language learning in study abroad is an extremely complex affair where the subjectivities of students and hosts are deeply implicated. Other interesting aspects that need to be considered when assessing the benefits and the outcomes of the SA are also the contemporary societal changes and technological advances. The SA experiences that learners are experiencing in today’s globalised world are very much different from the ones of their educators. As Kinginger (2013b, p. 7) aptly puts it, «study abroad in the age of Facebook is not the same phenomenon it was years ago» and the mythical idea of immersion in the host community and the temporary separation from home-based social networks is no longer the case.Today, students seem to retain strong social ties to home while abroad through the use of social 65

networks, frequent visits from their relatives and friends and also, the emergence and popularity of low-cost flight companies, which allow frequent returns home while abroad. Therefore, today the SA experience appears to be much more complex and an investigation into SA benefits and outcomes cannot exclude an analysis of those variables as well. It is with this theoretical focus as a backdrop that this contribution will attempt to assess the type of experience abroad of five young women from Italy who spent about a semester in a university setting in Ireland. In particular, in terms of linguistic benefits and outcomes, this study will aim to assess whether any differences can be ascertained over time in terms of the production of DMs, with particular reference to their use of ‘like’. DMs have been chosen as the object of investigation because of the fact that DMs are frequent oral features among native speakers (Lewis, 2006) but a rather limited phenomenon by instructed learners (Sankoff et al., 1999). Their acquisition seems to occur mainly in informal settings and through direct contact with native speakers (Sankoff et al., 1999). Thus, as the SA setting is a unique context where learners can avail of the exposition to larger amounts of input, this contribution will analyse DMs in a study abroad perspective, with a particular reference to ‘like’, which has been often considered one of the most frequent markers in Irish English (IrE) (Hickey, 2007, 2015; Murphy, 2015).

2. Discourse Markers & the L2

As Beeching (2015, p. 178) aptly puts it «the literature on the status and function of DMs is immense and yet still in its infancy. A sound basis for the classification of markers - or even what to call them - has not yet been fully established». Those items are often referred to by a multitude of different labels, which have often been the result of different approaches (Murphy, 2015; Migge, 2015). Thus, there seems to be a lack of a generally accepted terminology and useful taxonomies in this area. A variety of different terms are used to refer to those linguistic items that are sometimes difficult to distinguish from each other (Aijmer & Simon-Vanderbergen, 2006). The most widely used labels, among the others, seem to be ‘discourse markers’ (Schiffrin, 1987) and ‘pragmatic markers’ (Brighton, 1996), which are sometimes used as synonyms. In this contribution, these two labels will be also used interchangeably, considering the important pragmatic value that DMs are claimed to perform in successful communication, especially at the pragmatic level (Svartvik, 1980; Müller, 2005). Although DMs and pragmatic competence have been extensively investigated in sociolinguistics, little research has been conducted on the use of those items by language learners (Müller, 2005; Beeching, 2015), which is somewhat surprising considering the pragmatic value that DMs may perform even in the L2 (Svartvik, 1980). According to Liao (2009), the lack of DMs in the L2 is due to the fact that they are not explicitly taught in an FI setting. Thus, the pragmatic value that it is associated with them is rather


«invisible» (Liao, 2009, p. 114) for instructed learners, as they feel that they can be perfectly understood without using them. Other scholars (de Klerk 2005; Beeching & Woolfield 2015) have also highlighted the absence of DMs in classroom curricula and ascribed this phenomenon to some intrinsic features of those items. According to de Klerk (2005), the absence of DMs in formal language teaching is due to their «lack of semantic denotation […] which makes formal and explicit commentary on their use fairly difficult» (de Klerk, 2005, p. 1201). Interestingly, Beeching & Woolfield (2015) also point out that their oral feature may hinder explicit formal teaching. Indeed, as in the classroom learners are mainly exposed to standard and prestige forms, DMs may be stigmatised due to the fact that they mainly belong to the sphere of conversation (Beeching & Woodfield, 2015).

2.1 Like

As mentioned by Murphy (2015), ‘like’ is a multifunctional form that has been investigated from a sociolinguistic perspective in different varieties of English (Andersen, 2001; Tagliamonte, 2005). Recent studies have also focused on the use of ‘like’ in Irish English (IrE) (Hickey 2007, 2015; Schweinberger, 2015). The studies to date have also shown that it is also used differently in terms of use and frequency in the Englishes spoken around the world (Murphy, 2015). With regards to IrE, Hickey (2007; 2015) shows that ‘like’ is a feature common to all age groups in Ireland. Apart from functioning as a lexical verb, noun, preposition, conjunction and suffix, ‘like’ has a wide range of pragmatic uses. In particular, according to Hickey (2007; 2015) ‘like’ is used in the following instances: 1. to introduce a quotation or an inner thought (‘quotative like’) as it occurs in (1). This use is particularly frequent among young people and, according to Hickey (2007), it has probably been imported from American English:(1) 1.

I’m, like, “No way my parents will pay for that!”1

That’s what I think like.

In addition to the abovementioned functions, Murphy (2015) outlines three more pragmatic uses of ‘like’. It can be used as an approximate adverb, an exemplifier and a hesitation marker, as (5), (6), (7) respectively show: 5. He’s been there for like five hours [approximator] 6. I’m thinking of going back playing rugby next year, maybe, for like, Greystones [exemplifier] 7. Well I like eem I went in ah then I met her [hesitation marker]

Following Hickey (2007; 2015) and Murphy (2015), this contribution will attempt to categorise the pragmatic value of each occurrence of ‘like’ in the corpora of learners’ data and native speakers’ data. The occurrences of ‘like’ as a lexical verb, noun, preposition, conjunction and suffix were not considered as they were beyond the scope of this analysis. Repetitions of the same marker, the occurrences of ‘like’ in false starts or the use of ‘like’ in the expression ‘(something) like that/this’ were also not considered.

3. Description of the study

As previously mentioned, this contribution is part of a pilot study of an ongoing and much wider PhD research project, being conducted at University College Cork, in cooperation with the University of Naples Federico II, Italy. The data collected for this contribution are also part of a larger study (Caliendo & Magliacane, forthcoming) conducted with the specific aim of assessing different types of stalling phenomena in L2 speech and a working paper (Magliacane, 2016) on the use of ‘well’ by L2 learners of English. This contribution will focus, in particular, on the use of ‘like’, which, as mentioned in the previous section, is a very frequent marker in IrE. Data were collected at University College Cork (Ireland) from January to June 2015.

The study was conducted with five Italian students, who decided to spend about a semester in a university setting in Ireland. Interviews lasted on average 45 minutes, for a total of about eight hours of spoken data and 58,289 tokens. Participants were all university students, either working towards the completion of a Bachelor’s Degree or at the beginning of their Master’s. Thus, in terms of age, the group was quite homogeneous, with an average age of 23.5 when interviews were recorded. With regards to gender, all participants were young women. In terms of their university backgrounds and their living arrangement, informants’ choices were very diverse, as Table 1 shows:

He’s producing, like, we’ll say, at a lesser expense. I’m just telling you what I heard, like.

Murphy (2015) outlines another important pragmatic function in IrE, i.e. the use of ‘like’ as a hedge. According to this scholar, ‘like’ may be used as a mitigating word to lessen the impact of an utterance. This phenomenon may be particularly revealing considering that directness is not valued in Irish society (Murphy, 2015) and this pragmatic use of ‘like’ may allow speakers to avoid 1

4.

3.1 The sample

2. as a focuser, i.e. as a highlighting device, especially in explanatory contexts, to introduce new information (Dailey O’Cain, 2000), as shown in (2) and (3). This use of ‘like’ is detected in all age groups (Hickey, 2007). 2. 3.

expressing direct opinions, as it occurs in (4)2:

Examples (1)-(3) are drawn from Hickey (2007, p. 376).

66

2

Examples (4) - (7) are taken from Murphy (2015, p. 69).

RISE - Rivista Internazionale di Studi Europei -N. IV, VOLUME II, ANNO 2016 • ISSN 2421-583X | CULTURA | LINGUA E LINGUE Table 1. Information about the informants3.

4

5

Informants

University background

Living arrangement

Nationality of the co-tenants4

Participant 1

Law

Private house

NNS (Italian)

Participant 2

Modern Languages (English & Chinese)

Campus accommodation

NNSs (Chinese)

Participant 3

Geology

Host family/Private house

NSs (Irish)

Participant 4

Finance

Off-campus student accommodation

NS (American) & NNS (French)

Participant 5

Economics

Private houses

NSs (Irish)/ NNSs (Spanish)5

The participants who managed to live the experience fully and, as it will be possible to see in Section 4, who showed some interesting outcomes in the production of ‘like’ were Participant 2 and 3. As Table 1 shows, Participant 2 was, at the time of the interview, a student of English and Chinese and, because of her studies, it may be assumed that she was particularly motivated in interacting with native speakers and using all possibilities of practising her language skills. Despite the fact she was living mainly with Chinese speakers, which also gave her the chance of practising Chinese to some extent at home, she was one of the informants who benefitted the most from the experience. She joined a number of clubs and societies on campus, which gave her the chance of making many friends, both native and non-native English speakers. However, she claimed that she managed to forge closer bonds with English non-native speakers and the relationship with local people did not go beyond superficial acquaintances.The experience of Participant 3 was also particularly interesting. She lived for the first three months of the experience abroad with a young Irish couple, with whom she interacted very little.Then, she decided to move to a private house, where she lived with three Irish young women in their 20s and 30s. The house was rather far from the city centre; therefore, this student had to rely greatly on her co-tenants. She engaged in many activities with them, from commuting to university in the morning to spending most of their free time together. Conversely, Participant 1, 4 and 5 did not benefit from the experience abroad to the same extent. As it possible to see from Table 1, Participant 1 was a student of Law, who was living with her partner during her stay in Ireland. Therefore, she tended to use her L1 at home and in most of her free time. From the answers she provided in the interviews and the questionnaires, it seems that her inte-

ractions with members of the TL community were particularly low, apart from a few colleagues of her partner. This participant also went back to Italy a few times during her stay in Ireland and she was also studying for some Italian exams during her stay in Ireland, which corroborates what Kinginger (2013b) mentioned about the illusion of a total immersion experience in today’s globalised world. With regard to Participant 4, she claimed that, apart from her American co-tenant, her closest social network was mainly comprised of English non-native speakers and speakers of her mother tongue (L1). She actually admitted using her L1 quite often during her experience abroad. The last participant was probably the one who benefitted the least from the experience. Apart from a few close friends who turned out to be all Italian, she tended to be quite isolated during her stay in Ireland, spending most of her time in the library or at the sport centre of the campus, with very limited interaction even with her co-tenants or her course mates.

3.2 Instruments

These informants were interviewed twice, more specifically within the first month of residence in Ireland and before their departure. Data were elicited following the model and the principles of the sociolinguistic interview developed by Labov (1984) for the elicitation of spontaneous speech production. In fact, as also stressed by Tagliamonte (2006), the use of the term ‘interview’ is a misnomer, as the sociolinguistic interview should be anything but an ‘interview’. Indeed, the main aim of this instrument is to foster natural and unplanned speech (Howard, 2005), with the ultimate objective of minimising the amount of attention paid to form and the conscious choices between alternants, due to the fact that the interviewee is aware of being recorded. In other words, the sociolinguistic interview presents itself as a valid instrument to overcome what Labov (1972) defines as the ‘observer’s paradox’. Indeed, «the aim of linguistic research in the community must be to find out how people talk when they are not being systematically observed; yet we can only obtain this data by systematic observation» (Labov, 1972, p. 209). According to Labov (1972, 1984), when subjects retell very emotional stories about their life, they are likely to be overtaken by their memories and will pay less attention to their manner of speech, yielding to a casual style register. In addition to their participation in the interview, students were also asked to complete two questionnaires, which were administered through an online survey system at the end of each interview.The two questionnaires provided useful information about the informants, with specific reference to their background learning experiences, expectations about their experience abroad, desired learning outcomes and degree of 3 In order to preserve the anonymity of participants, interaction with people from the local community.The latter informants will be referred throughout this contribution as Parwas specifically aimed at investigating social networks and TL ticipant 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. interaction in a study abroad context. These questionnaires 4 NNS = non-native speaker; NS = native speaker. 5 Participant 5 lived for the first few weeks with Irish were adapted forms of the well-known Language Contact students and then she moved to a different private house, whe- Profile (LCP) developed by Freed et al. (2004) and, following Howard (2005), these instruments were also used as a check re the nationality of the co-tenants was Spanish 67


on the authenticity of the information provided during the meetings.

With regard to Participant 2 and 3, it may be particularly revealing that these two learners started using ‘like’ also in other functions, which were ascribed as typical of IrE (Hickey 2007, 2015). Table 3 summarises the results.

3.3 Methodology

The audio-recorded interviews were manually transcribed into standard orthography, following the conventions proposed by Blanche-Benveniste & Jeanjean (1987), in order to assess the use and frequency of ‘like’ in the sample. In particular, the analysis was threefold: 1. the number of occurrences and the function of each occurrence in context were analysed over time (comparison between the first and second meeting with the same participant), in order to assess whether any change could be detected within the production of ‘like’ for the same individual; 2. the number of occurrences and their relative functions were analysed across informants (comparison across first meetings and second meetings with all five participants), in order to investigate whether there were any differences in use across informants; 3. learners’ data were then compared with a baseline small corpus of Irish native speakers, who were born in Cork and were also living there at the time of the interview. In order to allow comparability among interviews and across informants, the rate (R) of occurrences, i.e. normalised occurrences over 1,000 words, were considered throughout the analysis. The linguistic data were then analysed in the light of the informants’ response to the interviews and questionnaires to assess to what extent their social participation and integration in the TL community may have affected their DMs’ production.

Table 3. The use of ‘focuser like’ and ‘quotative like’ Functions Focuser Quotative

As Table 2 shows, in Time 1, participants tended to use ‘like’ in its pragmatic functions of exemplifier. Some of the participants also used it as an approximator, although this use was limited to a few occurrences. There were no extensive differences in this use of ‘like’ by the participants over time, with the exception of Participant 3 whose productions of ‘like’ as exemplifier saw a significant increase in Time 2 (2.25 versus 4.69). Limited occurrences of this pragmatic use of ‘like’ were assessed for Participant 4 and 5.

Table 26. The use of ‘like’ as exemplifier and approximator P2

t1

t2

t2

R 0.00 0.00

R 2.66 1.42

P3 t1 T 3 0

R 0.67 0.00

t2 T 44 1

R 10.31 0.23

Table 4. The use of ‘focuser like’ and ‘quotative like’ in the baseline group of native speakers

Functions Focuser Quotative

T 34.67 23.33

R 6.36 4.28

As it is possible to see from Table 3 and 4, the rate of occurrences of ‘quotative like’ for the two learners was below the average rate of the native speakers.With regard to the use of ‘focuser like’, its use by Participant 2 did not approach the use of the native speakers (2.66 versus 6.36), whereas Participant 3 tended to use it even more frequently than the native speakers (10.31 versus 6.36). This phenomenon is particularly interesting and may be explai-

P3

t1

t2 T 15 8

As Table 3 shows, both learners started using ‘like’ as a focuser more frequently in Time 2. With regard to Participant 3, a few occurrences of ‘like’ as a focuser were found also in Time 1. The presence of ‘like’ in this pragmatic function in Time 1 may be explained by the fact that interviews took place within the first month of residence in Ireland. Therefore, she may have started using ‘like’ in this function at the time of the first interview, although this use became more consistent (44 raw occurrences and a rate of 10.31) in Time 2. With regard to the use of ‘like’ as a hedge (Murphy, 2015), it was not assessed in the learners’ data. As previously mentioned, the learners’ data were then compared to those of a small group of native speakers who were born in Cork and were living there at the time of the interview. With regard to the group of native speakers, the average number of occurrences was considered. In particular, the analysis mainly focused on assessing their use of ‘focuser like’ and ‘quotative like’, as these uses were found to be more consistent in Time 2 for two of the participants.

4. Discussion

P1

P2 t1 T 0 0

P4

t1

t2

P5

t1

t2

t1

t2

Functions

T

R

T

R

T

R

T

R

T

R

T

R

T

R

T

R

T

R

T

R

Exemplifier

7

1.31

13

1.78

13

2.76

8

1.42

10

2.25

20

4.69

3

1.14

2

0.42

1

0.38

1

0.29

ned by the fact that this participant picked up this use of ‘like’ in IrE and tended to overindulge in the production of this marker after her period of residence abroad. As also

6 P = participant; t1 = Time 1; t2 = Time 2; T= tokens (raw occurrences); R = rate (normalised occurrences). 68


mentioned elsewhere (Magliacane, 2016), the overindulgence in the use of a particular marker may be explained by the fact that L2 users do not have the same wide range of DMs as native speakers do; thus, they may rely mainly on the ones they managed to acquire.

5. Conclusions

In conclusion, this contribution attempted to combine insights from SA research and studies on the use of DMs in the L2. As Migge (2015) argues, the use of DMs in oral speech may be considered a manner of assessing the degree of interaction with native speakers in the TL community. Data revealed that the experience of the participants who partook in the study was quite heterogeneous and, in terms of the production of DMs, the SA experience was beneficial for some of the participants in the study. In particular, it appears that the SA experience aided a more widespread use of some DMs while abroad. Thus, a link may be assumed between exposure to the TL and the production of DMs. However, the outcomes and the benefits of the SA seem to be closely linked to individual differences and the type of experience students had while abroad, which seems to be in line with the main trends outlined by SA research of the last two decades. As previously mentioned, the aim of this contribution was to present some preliminary findings from a pilot study conducted within the framework of an ongoing PhD research project. Against this background, some limitations of this study need to be outlined. The first limitation of the study was the size of the sample. While the longitudinal nature of the analysis allowed the analysis of developmental patterns, it hindered a larger participation in the study at the time when data were collected. Moreover, all participants were young women and were Italian learners of English. While this recruitment practice guaranteed homogeneity among informants, it prevented any form of comparative analysis in terms of gender or the L1 of the informants. However, while limitations exist, it is worth highlighting that the merits of this small corpus lie in the in-depth qualitative analysis and the correlation of the linguistic data with insights into the experience that each learner had while abroad.

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