The Routinization of Grammar as a Social Action Format: A Longitudinal Study of Video-Mediated Interactions

Abstract

In this article, we provide longitudinal evidence for the progressive routinization of a grammatical construction used for social coordination purposes in a highly specialized activity context: task-oriented video-mediated interactions. We focus on the methodic ways in which, over the course of 4 years, a second language speaker and initially novice to such interactions coordinates the transition between interacting with her coparticipants and consulting her own screen, which suspends talk, without creating trouble due to halts in progressivity. Initially drawing on diverse resources, she increasingly resorts to the use of a prospective alert constructed around the verb to check (e.g., "I will check"), which eventually routinizes in the lexically specific form "let me check" as a highly context-and activity-bound social action format. We discuss how such change over the participant's video-mediated interactional history contributes to our understanding of social coordination in video-mediated interaction and of participants' recalibrating their grammarfor-interaction while adapting to new situations, languages, or media. Data are in English.People coordinate their social interaction with others through the use of mutually recognizable practical procedures for action-that is, "methods" in the ethnomethodological sense of the term (Garfinkel, 1967). Based on these procedures, they manage fundamental organizational issues such as turn-taking, sequencing of actions, and opening or closing conversation. Methods develop experientially over time, based on people's repeated engagement in locally accomplished social interactions , and so do the multisemiotic resources deployed as part of these methods. Methods and the related resources, the sharedness of which warrants mutual accountability of social actions (Garfinkel, 1967), constitute people's interactional competence.Existing longitudinal studies on the development of interactional competence in a first (L1) or a second/foreign/additional language (L2) across a range of different settings converge on evidencing that such development implies the progressive diversification of practices and resources for interaction (on L1 see, e.g., Wootton, 1997; on L2 see overviews by Pekarek Doehler & Pochon-Berger, 2015;Skogmyr Marian & Balaman, 2018). This diversification allows for increasingly context-sensitive and recipient-designed conduct (cf. Sacks & Schegloff, 1979;Sacks et al., 1974)-that is, conduct that is more and more acutely tailored to the precise situation and the precise others at hand (see also Skogmyr Marian, 2021/this issue).Such development is not just part of L1 or L2 learning but is constitutive of the very way we navigate our social lives. Our interactional histories bring about unprecedented types of social situations, which we enter as novices, progressively adapting our practices to the precise constraints CONTACT Simona Pekarek Doehler

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

“…Second, similarly to Theodórsdóttir and Eskildsen's work, they point to the importance of examining how L2 usage patterns adjust to and develop in response to local interactional needs. This lends support to the argument that “grammatical routines may be motivated by social‐interactional exigencies” (Pekarek Doehler & Skogmyr Marian, 2022, this issue, p. 40; see also Couper–Kuhlen, 2011; Pekarek Doehler & Balaman, 2021). Importantly, the detailed qualitative analysis of the data reveals that the different uses of the multiword expression intertwine with precise embodied displays—in particular, recurrent gaze patterns.…”

Multimodal Gestalts and Their Change Over Time: Is Routinization Also Grammaticalization?

“…Endeavors to adapt (Auer and Pfänder, 2011a;Pekarek Doehler and Balaman, 2021) and extend (Ford and Fox, 2015) Emergent Grammar (Hopper, 1987(Hopper, , 2011 to examine both grammar-in-interaction as well as gestures (Streeck, 2021) document the fruitful synergies between Emergent Grammar and CA/IL. All three share the premise that the linear progression along the timeline (Hopper 2015: 252) is fundamental for our understanding of language and grammar.…”

“…The encounters may take place face to face (Deppermann, 2018a, c;Deppermann and Schmidt, 2021) as well as in technically mediated or virtual environments (Pekarek Doehler and Balaman, 2021). Joint routinization may lead to local sedimentation within single encounters (Stukenbrock, 2020b) and across participants' interactional histories (Deppermann, 2018a;Deppermann and Schmidt, 2021;Pekarek Doehler and Balaman, 2021). In contrast, collective routinization emerges across time and space among social groups whose members are not mutually aware of one another.…”

Embodiment, Semantics and Social Action: The Case of Object-Transfer in L2 Classroom Interaction

“…Grounded in the concept of interactional competence (Kramsch, 1986;Garfinkel, 1967), longitudinal conversation analytic second language acquisition research (CA-SLA) has prolifically traced change across time in people's methods for accomplishing social action (e.g., Hall et al, 2011;Pekarek Doehler and Pochon-Berger, 2015;Pekarek Doehler and Berger, 2018;König, 2020). Relatedly, a more linguistically-semiotically oriented research branch has traced changes in the interactional use of particular linguistic items over time (Ishida, 2009;Kim, 2009;Eskildsen, 2011;Masuda, 2011;Hauser, 2013;Pekarek Doehler and Balaman, 2021). Neighbouring this CA-based L2 research, L2 research drawing on usage-based models of language has investigated L2 constructional development as an exemplarbased and usage-driven process in both qualitative case studies and quantitative corpus-based studies (Eskildsen and Cadierno, 2007;Ellis and Ferreira-Junior, 2009;Eskildsen inter alia 2009Eskildsen inter alia , 2012Eskildsen inter alia , 2015Eskildsen inter alia , 2020aRoehr-Brackin, 2014;Tode and Sakai, 2016;Römer and Berger, 2019;Horbowicz and Nordanger, 2022).…”

“…in L2 English question formation) play an essential role across phases in development (Eskildsen, 2015, Eskildsen 2017, Eskildsen 2020aLesonen et al, 2018, Lesonen et al, 2020a, Lesonen et al, 2020bHorbowicz and Nordanger, 2022). However, recent research is showing that a usage-based trajectory may also be a matter of routinisation (Eskildsen, 2020a;Pekarek Doehler and Balaman, 2021).…”