On the specificities of L1 and L2 (dis)fluencies and the interactional multimodal strategies of L2 speakers in tandem interactions

Abstract

‘Disfluencies’, defined as a suspension of speech, are usually more frequent in L2 than in L1, which is said to be related to the learners’ proficiency level. ‘Disfluency’ or ‘fluency’ have thus often been associated with language proficiency and temporal characteristics. Grounded in a functionally ambivalent view of (dis)fluency captured in situated multimodal discourse, our research program aims to measure the degree of (dis)fluency found in tandem interactions by comparing their specificities in L1 and L2 productions of French and American English. In this paper, we stress out the need to regard (dis) fluency as a multimodal and multilevel phenomenon, which takes into account vocal and visual-gestural modalities of discourse. While our quantitative results indicate a higher rate of complex (dis)fluencies in L2 than in L1, which supports previous studies, and a higher gestural activity in L2, the qualitative analyses conducted on the data illustrate their multimodal and interactional dimension. This paper presents new methods to evaluate the degree of (dis)fluency, by combining quantitative and qualitative methods, based on an interactional scale, which takes into account the multimodal communication strategies of L2 speakers. We thus argue that (dis)fluency is not only the result of communication breakdowns as it is highly contextualized. It should thus not only be measured with temporal variables and overall frequency rates, but also with regards to the individual speaker’s use in multimodal interactional and intersubjective contexts.

Rethinking (Dis)fluency Within the Scope of Interactional Linguistics and Gesture Studies

“…Let us now illustrate this model with an utterance taken from the SITAF Corpus (Horgues & Scheuer, 2015) which has been analyzed in detail in previous work on disfluency (Betz & Kosmala, 2019;Kosmala, 2021bKosmala, , 2021aKosmala et al, 2019).…”

“…Lastly, I conclude this paper with a discussion around the concept of interaction and its definition, as well as its major role in the study of (dis)fluency. The present work is largely based on Kosmala (2021b) but this paper focuses more specifically on the concept of interaction, whether it is to describe the role of intersubjectivity in talk-in-interaction, or to highlight the interaction and interrelation between the different modalities and dimensions of language within the study of fluency.…”

The dual status of filled pauses: Evidence from genre, proficiency and co-occurrence

“… 1 Kosmala’s (in press) study on the same data also showed that non-native speakers not only produced more complex sequences than native speakers, but also longer ones (combining a higher number of fluencemes): from 1 to 14 markers in a sequence ( M = 2.2) for learners, versus sequences of 1 to 8 ( M = 1.8) for native speakers. …”

“…Given the rarity of French spoken data in native and non-native speech that has been transcribed and coded for the purpose of (dis)fluency research, 1 we selected an available videotaped corpus of L1–L2 interactions of French and American speakers, based on an existing richly annotated sample (Kosmala, in press). In order to conduct further cross-genre analyses, we chose a second dataset with comparable features where two genres are included.…”

“…But as described earlier, filled pauses can serve many other functions besides signaling an interruption in speech. This paper is grounded in a functionally ambivalent view of (dis)fluency (see Crible et al, 2019; Götz, 2013; Kosmala, in press. ; Pallaud et al, 2013) which no longer considers disfluency phenomena as a binary opposition between “fluency” and “disfluency” but rather adopts a usage-based approach in which fluencemes , such as filled pauses, have the potential to serve both fluent and disfluent functions, depending on the configuration and context of use.…”