Accumulating Semiotic Resources for Social Actions: A Case Study of L2 Icelandic in the Wild

Abstract

This study investigates a second language (L2) speaker's use and learning of the Icelandic auxiliary verb aetla (pronounced /aihtla/) in the wild. This analytic focus is motivated by the L2 speaker's (Anna) own orientation to aetla as a learnable. We track Anna's use of aetla in naturally occurring social interaction over time. Anna first learns to use aetla to make requests in service encounters but this does not automatically transfer to other environments, suggesting an intricate relationship between aetla and the social action it is used to accomplish. The study illuminates (a) how this relationship between aetla expressions and the social actions they are used to accomplish develops over time, and (b) how Anna's increasingly diversified and productive varieties of aetla expressions co-emerge with increasingly varied action accomplishment. Together, these two dimensions of L2 learning form the backbone of Anna's L2 grammar as an emergent accumulation of semiotic resources for social action. This serves as the backdrop for the article's implications for L2 education: (a) We promote the idea of exemplar-based and interactionally situated L2 teaching, and (b) we call for increased awareness of situated and developing interactional competence and usage-based processes and practices in the education of L2 teachers.

Learning Grammar for Social Action: Implications for Research and Language Teaching

“…The studies reported here—in particular, those by Theodórsdóttir & Eskildsen (2022, this issue), Hellermann & Thorne (2022, this issue), and Pekarek Doehler & Skogmyr Marian (2022, this issue)—align with earlier work that stresses the value of rewilding language education (Thorne et al., 2021) in the form of pedagogical frameworks and infrastructures that center on L2 learners’ needs and experiences of language use outside the classroom. This addresses “the challenge of how to dynamically integrate formal learning settings with the vibrancy and diversity of linguistic, experiential, and situational contexts out in the world” (Hellermann & Thorne, 2022, this issue, p. 93).…”

“…Waring (2018, 2019), for example, showed how interactional practices for turn‐taking and sequential organization can be approached as teachable objects (see also Wong & Waring, 2010). Teaching materials and pedagogic frameworks do not always capture the variety of pragmatic aspects and interactional functions of linguistic resources, as the studies by Theodórsdóttir & Eskildsen (2022, this issue), and by Pekarek Doehler & Skogmyr Marian (2022, this issue) indicate. As Greer & Nanbu (2022, this issue) show, it is also possible that pedagogical approaches that emphasize written grammar influence L2 speakers’ ability to deploy linguistic resources in locally appropriate ways and give rise to practices related to written texts.…”

“…Two of the studies trace developmental trajectories that show both increasing diversity and routinization of language patterns over time. Theodórsdóttir & Eskildsen (2022, this issue) examine how a L2 speaker's (Anna) ability to use the Icelandic auxiliary ætla develops in naturally occurring interactions in different types of service encounters and everyday conversations. Their analysis of Anna's interactions over 1 year demonstrates how her use of the auxiliary diversifies as she gains experience of it in different action contexts.…”

Combinations and Connections: Reaching Across Disciplinary Boundaries

“…Theodórsdóttir and Eskildsen (2022, this issue) trace the learning and use of the Icelandic auxiliary verb ætla in one individual's learning of Icelandic in the wild over a 3‐year period. The learner, Anna, originally learned to use ætla in service encounters.…”

Emergent L2 Grammars in and for Social Interaction: Introduction to the Special Issue

“…Theodórsdóttir & Eskildsen (2022, this issue) investigate an L2 speaker's use and learning of the Icelandic auxiliary verb ætla (literally, “to intend”) in the wild. The data show that the L2 speaker learns to use ætla to make requests in service encounters, but does not automatically transport her learning to other environments that call on the use of ætla .…”