Guided by Foucault's concept of "discursive formations," the study reported here draws on primary archival and secondary source material to examine how French has been discursively shaped in England and in relation to English. Unpacking sociohistorical constructions of sameness--difference offers a productive frame to explore ideological…

Study abroad (SA) is touted for providing language learners with regular exposure to a second language (L2) in naturalistic settings. However, few studies have examined how interaction occurs in situ. This study analyzed 13 hours of naturalistic dyadic conversations self-recorded by 15 US-based undergraduate sojourners studying abroad for one…

This article examines how second language (L2) interactional competence is manifested in students' use of "and"-prefaced turns when doing meaning-focused oral tasks in pairs and small groups. Drawing on video recordings from English-as-a-foreign-language upper-secondary classes recorded in Czechia and Finland, 86 sequences involving…

Debates about the future of UK language learning in the context of Brexit intensified as soon as the referendum outcome was announced. This politicization of language learning, evidenced recently also in the United States and France, falls upon an already difficult context of the United Kingdom in a 'language learning crisis,' and an increasing…

This article analyses the styles of English produced by an adult migrant who started to speak the language later in life, and it approaches them from the perspective of quantitative style-shifting and discursive stylization. After defining style and the procedures needed to justify the term "L2," the study describes the focal informant's…

Researchers in second language socialization (SLS) often examine those interactions relating to a learner's integration within a target community. Kramsch and Whiteside (2008) noted the importance of "symbolic competence" in this integration. Symbolic competence, defined as the ability to access contextually relevant social and political…

This article explores the value of judiciously used first language (L1)-to-second language (L2) translation in meaning-focused, advanced-level academic language education. It examines languaging in the teacher-led discourse (TLD) that arises when translation tasks are used and compares it to languaging during the TLD engendered by 4 other…

In line with recent Conversation Analytic work on language learning as situated practice, this article investigates how interactants can create language learning opportunities for themselves and others in and through social interaction. The study shows how the participants of "Big Brother Finland," a reality TV show, whose main…

The goal of this article is to further our understanding of how learning opportunities are created in interactions. Based on a conversation analysis of peer interactions of foreign language learners, we investigate how the negotiation of expert positions among these learners affects this process. The focus of the analysis is on the relationship…

This article reports on a study that analysed life history accounts of language learning. The key aim of the study was to understand how the experience of language learning was discursively constructed through recourse to particular cultural worlds and narrative strategies. The study contributes to the growing field of research using language…

Examines the patterns found in repair-work behavior (e.g., apologies, excuses) in Austrian German as they relate to situational variables and cultural themes, using data collected from university students during closed role-play situations. Findings reveal a complex interplay of situational variables informing the repair-work behavior. (46…

Analyzes the narrative, descriptive, and evaluative structures of one person's two stories, drawn from oral proficiency interviews, about the same event told at the intermediate high and advanced levels on the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) scale. The discourse analysis revealed that the second story builds upon the…

Analysis of French used in teleconferences between American and French university students, relative to technical and discursive dimensions and learners' Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), found much of the language used was beyond these learners' capability, due to heightened classroom anxiety and differences in language varieties used by…

Investigates the effects of science students' domain-specific knowledge and language proficiency on local lexical and syntactic processing and on semantic and higher conceptual processing of biology texts written in the students' first and second languages. Results indicate that language proficiency affects lower-level processing and…