Locating cognition in second language interaction and learning: Inside the skull or in public view?

Abstract

A key question in the debate on conversation analysis as an approach to SLA concerns the role of cognition in interaction and learning. Where is cognition located, and how is understanding in interaction achieved? For an empirically grounded answer, I will explore the procedural apparatus that sustains socially shared cognition. Following a brief introduction of three discursive approaches to cognition as socially shared, the article will examine how interactional organizations and linguistic resources serve to generate and sustain mutual understanding in a segment of ordinary conversation between an L1 speaker and an L2 speaker of English. I will then discuss the standard treatment of repair in interactionist SLA from a conversation-analytic perspective. Lastly, I will consider how interactional competencies may be learnable, and how their learnability informs the issue of whether CA is capable of furnishing an explication of second language learning without the help of exogenous theory.