Observing a teacher’s interactional competence in an ESOL classroom: a translanguaging perspective

1 Introduction

Interactional competence (IC) refers to ‘the ability to mutually coordinate our actions’ (Hall and Pekarek Doehler 2011, p. 2), which involves ‘a relationship between participants’ employment of linguistic and interactional resources and the contexts in which they are employed’ (Young 2003, p. 100). The conceptualization of IC has undergone three main stages: (1) defining IC as the ability for functional language use (Kramsch 1986), (2) explicating sequential indicators of IC (Lam 2018; Roever and Kasper 2018) and (3) exploring the multidimensional nature of IC that focuses on its real-world functionality (Dai 2021a, forthcoming). Although research on IC has gained increasing specification of what effective interaction constitutes, existing IC studies tend to see interaction and its related language use as confined to a specific named language, such as second language (L2)-English or L2-Chinese IC. This conceptualization of language use under-represents the inherent translanguaging nature of interaction, where language users freely draw on their multilingual and multimodal repertoire to achieve real-world interactional conduct (see Routarinne and Ahlholm 2021 for an example). Further research is therefore needed to recognize the fluid nature of language use for successful interaction, exploring the wide range of multilingual and multimodal sign-making practices in the process of transcending the traditional divides between linguistic and non-linguistic, cognitive and semiotic systems (Li 2018). The fluidity of interaction connects the field of IC with the growing translanguaging scholarship that investigates the process of mobilizing diverse resources for meaning-making by language users. Translanguaging is an emerging concept that refers to the process where speakers draw on their full linguistic and semiotic resources to make meaning (Li 2018). Translanguaging aims to transcend the boundaries between different named languages and also between different modalities (e.g. speech, sign, gesture). Research on translanguaging practices in multilingual contexts has explored how translanguaging has highlighted the multilingual, multicultural, and multimodal nature of social interactions and its transformative nature in transgressing established norms and boundaries (e.g., Allard 2017; Tai 2022a, 2022b; Tai and Li 2020, 2021a, 2021b, 2021c; Zhu and Li 2022).

The aim of the current study is to offer an alternative view of IC by connecting it to the notion of translanguaging and its emphasis on the mobilization of various multilingual and multimodal resources for transcending socially constructed language systems and structures to facilitate meaning-making processes. This paper will examine how translanguaging is intrinsic to IC in facilitating the co-construction of meaning-making in a beginning-level English-for-Speakers-of-Other-Languages (ESOL) classroom, where students have limited English proficiency and where limited linguistic resources are shared between the teacher and the students. When analysing the ESOL classroom video-data, we adopted Sequential-Categorial Analysis. As interaction is concurrently sequential and categorial (Kasper 2009; Stokoe 2012; Watson 1997), we argue for the use of Sequential-Categorial Analysis since it combines Conversation Analysis (sequential) and Membership Categorization Analysis (categorial) (for more details see Dai 2021a, 2023a, forthcoming). Sequential-Categorial Analysis allows us to look at how language teachers and students employ translanguaging practices to manage complex interactional conduct related to sequence, affect, logic, morality and categorization. It is hoped that the paper will broaden the understanding of IC by including the element of translanguaging as an interactional phenomenon. Such a perspective highlights that language users’ ability to become competent speakers is predicated on the marshalling of a range of semiotic resources for mediating complex social activities.

2 Interactional competence and social interactions

IC as a theoretical construct, first appeared in Kramsch (1986) in response to the proficiency-oriented practices in second language (L2) teaching and testing. Recognizing language use is socioculturally embedded and interactionally shaped, Kramsch argued that L2 teaching and testing needed to move away from prevalent proficiency models where language was compartmentalized into discrete components such as grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. Instead, Kramsch proposed that language education should prioritize the development of L2 speakers’ ability to mobilize their knowledge and resources in grammatical structures, lexical items, and prosodic features to conduct real-world interactional business, termed their IC. Taking up the call in Kramsch (1986) and drawing on the analytic methodology of Conversation Analysis (CA), IC researchers, over the following three decades have generated a plethora of empirical research to shed light on what L2 IC entails (Hall et al. 2011), how L2 IC develops (Pekarek Doehler et al. 2018), how to teach L2 IC (Dai 2023b; Dai et al. 2022; Wong and Waring 2020) and how to assess L2 IC (Dai 2021a; Salaberry and Burch 2021).

Although the majority of research on IC prioritizes L2 speakers, this does not imply that only L2 speakers need to develop IC, an ability that every competent interactant, L1 or L2 speaker of any language, need to possess in order to navigate the complexity of interpersonal communication in their everyday social world. It is especially telling when growing evidence suggests that L1 speakers in certain cases pale in comparison to their L2 peers on measures of IC (Dai 2019, 2021a, 2021b; Roever and Dai 2021). So far there has been little empirical research that specifically focuses on L1 speakers’ IC apart from the theoretical discussion on how L1 IC mediates L2 IC (Barraja-Rohan 2013; Pekarek Doehler and Pochon-Berger 2015). Within the context of classroom interaction, Walsh (2006) coined the term ‘Classroom Interactional Competence’ which emphasizes IC as a resource that both language learners and their teachers can draw on to promote learning in the classroom, without specifying whether the teachers are L1 or L2 speakers of the target language. This conceptualization of classroom IC provides space for the discussion of L1 teachers’ IC, although most classroom IC studies either did not mention their teachers’ L1/L2 status (Can Daşkın 2015; Konzett-Firth 2020), or only recruited L2-speaker teachers (Girgin and Brandt 2020). Situated in an ESOL classroom, the analysis presented in this paper examines L1-speaking teachers’ IC. The focus on L1 IC in this paper can provide insight into the full range of semiotic resources L1 native English speakers draw on for effective interaction, complementing findings from existing research on L2 IC.

The burgeoning research in IC, whether foregrounding L2 interaction or the dynamics of classroom interaction, has contributed to increasing specification of IC as a theoretical construct. If we look at how the definition of IC has evolved, its theorization has gone through three stages. At its inception, Kramsch conceived IC as the ability for functional language use, ensuring L2 speakers’ “survival as a tourist or a student to negotiating treaties” (p. 366). IC’s focus on real-world language use, instead of abstract linguistic knowledge such as grammar and vocabulary, aligns with the general communicative language movement spearheaded by Hymes’s seminal work on communicative competence (Hymes 1972). This led to IC for a very long time being subsumed under models of communicative competence, which also included socio-cultural competence, linguistic competence, formulaic competence, strategic competence and discourse competence (Celce-Murcia 2007). During the first stage, IC was largely a concept in theory, awaiting empirical specification through appropriate methodological apparatuses.

The second stage of IC theorization is characterized by a proliferation of data-driven empirical studies that use CA to specify indicators of speakers’ IC. Influenced by the primary concerns CA places on sequence, this stage of IC theorization primarily focused on sequential indicators of IC such as turn-taking, listener response, topic management, and preference organization (Kecskes et al. 2018; Lam 2018; Roever and Kasper 2018). This emphasis on the sequential aspect of interaction is observable in both developmental L2 IC research (Hall et al. 2011) and classroom IC research (Walsh 2012).

The third stage of IC theorization marks an increasing awareness of the multidimensional nature of interaction that is predicated on sequence but goes beyond sequence. Revisiting the ontological roots of IC in functional language use (Hymes 1972; Kramsch 1986) and drawing on the Goffmanian concept of speaking as a performance of self-presentation (Goffman 1956), Dai (2021a, forthcoming) proposes a holistic model of IC that is built on sequence, but has the capacity to describe the emotional, logical, moral, and categorial dimensions of interaction. A speaker’s IC is defined as their ability in:

1. managing affective engagement between themselves and their interlocutors (e.g., how to demonstrate alignment and affiliation with a story-teller in Stivers 2008)

2. demonstrating logic in the organization of their talk (e.g., how speakers proffer accounts, explanations, and reasons when needed in Heritage 1988)

3. preserving the moral order of interaction (e.g., how doctors respond when patients challenge their medical expertise in Turowetz and Maynard 2010)

4. enacting and orienting to the social roles/membership categories that speakers take up in interaction (e.g., how speakers draw on their members’ knowledge of how an employee is supposed to act vis-à-vis their manager in the workplace setting in Dai and Davey 2022, 2023, or how a senior member in society talks to a junior one in the Chinese community in Roever and Dai 2021)

Figure 1 is a schematic representation of Dai’s IC model. This conceptualization of IC has brought IC closer to the functional and high-inference nature of interaction discussed in Hymes (1972), highlighting the real-world implications of interaction. Recent empirical studies have provided examples of how such functional dimensions of IC – affect, logic, morality and categorization – can be empirically described and reliably assessed using both qualitative and quantitative measures (Dai 2019, 2021a; Roever and Dai 2021). This stage of IC research orients IC more explicitly to its real-world functionality, strengthening the connection between IC as a theoretical construct and its immediate, palpable consequentiality in everyday interactional conduct. Therefore, in this paper, we adopt this holistic, multi-dimensional definition of IC to examine teacher’s interaction in the ESOL classroom as this IC model allows us to not only investigate language teachers’ IC in sequential terms, but also how teachers manage rapport with their students (affect), explain linguistic concepts in a reasoned manner (logic), display positive personas (morality), and enact their fluid social roles vis-à-vis the roles their students take on (categorization). This conceptualization of IC differs from the one of Classroom Interactional Competence (Walsh 2012), which has a stronger focus on sequential indicators of IC such as turn-taking, repair and sequence organization.

Figure 1:

Schematic representation of IC in Dai (2021a, forthcoming).

Despite the increasing theoretical explication and specification of IC as a construct, there is a lack of acknowledgement of the fluidity of interaction in IC research. Although existing IC research has emphasized the joint construction of social interaction and the functionality of language use, it has not illuminated the dynamic movement between communicative modes, frames, footings and resources. In this paper we argue the notion of translanguaging can further expand our understanding of IC and interaction in general as translanguaging highlights the intrinsically fluid nature of language use: language users freely draw on semiotic resources from different named languages and modalities to conduct interaction (see below section for further information). Interaction, therefore, is translanguaging in nature. An appreciation of the porousness of language use can more precisely describe everyday interactional practices, contributing to improved teaching and assessment of IC. Documenting longitudinally how an L1-Russian middle-childhood speaker develops IC in L2-Finish, Routarinne and Ahlholm (2021) demonstrate that the elaboration of the speaker’s L2-Finish IC is couched in translanguaging practices, drawing on semiotic resources and enacted embodiment from named languages such as Russian, English, and Finnish. In this paper, we, therefore, argue that the discussion of IC can productively draw from the current debate in translanguaging to better capture the “multiplicity, fluidity, mobility, locality and globality of semiotic resources” (Moore et al. 2018) that speakers employ for interactional conduct.

3 Translanguaging as a theory of language

The concept of translanguaging involves drawing on various multilingual resources and different multimodal resources for knowledge construction. In other words, speakers not only deploy different languages and dialects but also styles, registers, and other variations in language use for constructing new meanings. Additionally, speakers draw on diverse multimodal resources, including switching between speaking and writing, or coordinating gestures, body movements, facial expressions and visual images for shaping their verbal talk. The translanguaging perspective differs from the traditional view of code-switching (Li 2018). The notion of code-switching perceives each language as a separate linguistic system and code-switching analysis typically starts with the identification of different linguistic codes during discursive exchanges. Linguists then follow a functional analysis in order to understand the process of integrating various grammatical systems into a coherent unit and the functions of shifting from one language to another at a specific point of the communicative episode. However, the concept of translanguaging encourages researchers to interrogate the traditional divides between the linguistic, the paralinguistic and the extralinguistic aspects of human communication as problematic. It advocates language as a social practice and as an assemblage of meaning-making resources.

With the development of translanguaging as a theory of language, Li (2011) proposes the notion of ‘translanguaging space’ which refers to the act of translanguaging creating “a social space for the multilingual language user by bringing together different dimensions of their personal history, experience and environment; their attitude, belief, and ideology; their cognitive and physical capacity, into one coordinated and meaningful performance” (p. 1223). Li’s (2011) concept of a translanguaging space allows for the description and theorization of the fluidity of interaction. A translanguaging space can be created in and for social interaction which enables speakers to employ various linguistic and semiotic resources creatively and critically to challenge the traditional configurations, categories, and power structures, and construct new meanings (Li 2018). By doing so, a translanguaging space provides an opportunity for speakers to demonstrate their IC through coordinating multiple resources for achieving effective communication. As speakers become more engaged in complex communicative tasks, they gradually incorporate different resources for different purposes, which will lead to functional differentiation of various linguistic and other multimodal resources. It is therefore through translanguaging practices speakers develop the ability to interact and become competent social members. In this article, we build on Li’s notions of translanguaging as a theory of language and argue that language users’ capacity to learn to use diverse resources for different communicative purposes is a reflection of their IC. Such a capacity in coordinating different resources echoes the idea of a ‘translanguaging instinct’ (Li 2016) which highlights a speaker’s innate capacity to exploit different multisensory and multimodal resources to interpret the meaning intentions in human social interactions and to achieve functional language use pertaining to the sequential, emotional, logical, moral and categorial dimensions of interaction.

Recent translanguaging research has conceptualized translanguaging as an analytical perspective which encourages researchers to focus on the range of linguistic and semiotic resources that a speaker can draw on to display their IC and create a translanguaging space for achieving real-world interactional business. As argued in the previous section, translanguaging enables speakers to bring out the full multilingual, multimodal, multi-semiotic and multi-sensory resources that a speaker has to conduct interaction. That is, interactants deploy all of the available resources at their disposal to achieve their specific communicative goals. In the context of English Medium Instruction (EMI) where students and teachers are encouraged to use only English as the only linguistic code to teach academic subjects, Tai and Li (2021a) illuminate the potential of playful talk in transforming the EMI classroom into a translanguaging space, which allows the teacher to bring in various linguistic and multimodal resources and different kinds of knowledge to perform a range of creative acts for facilitating content learning and promoting meaningful communication that values students’ ideas and expressions of their everyday life experiences. Alternatively, Tai and Li (2020) illustrate the ways the EMI mathematics teacher constructs an integrated translanguaging space by bringing the student’s everyday life space into the EMI institutional learning space in order to turn the classroom into a lived experience. This allows the teacher and students to bring their funds of knowledge to the forefront which makes the content knowledge more relatable and relevant to the student’s everyday life experiences. A recent study by Tai and Wong (2022) provides a fine-grained account of how a native English teacher deploys translanguaging as a pedagogical resource to enable meaning-making and knowledge construction in an English-as-an-L1 classroom which only consists of L1 English students. The authors argue that translanguaging is not only used as a scaffolding strategy, but it is also employed as a way to develop students’ social-emotional well-being and identities as citizens in this contemporary multilingual world. The authors further argue that creating a translanguaging space in English as an L1 classroom has a transformative effect on students’ learning as it transforms the ways in which students enhance their communicative repertoire and appreciate linguistic and cultural diversity in our society. These studies demonstrate that the creation of a translanguaging space in the classroom enables EMI teachers to draw on their available multilingual and multimodal resources to facilitate students’ understanding of disciplinary knowledge, which in turn demonstrates the teachers’ IC in promoting interaction in the classrooms.

4 Data and methodology

5 Analysis

In this section, we will analyse three extracts (Extracts 1–3) which are extracted from the beginning-level adult ESOL classroom. These extracts are representative instances of the interaction. The representative extracts are interrelated in order to illuminate how the teacher’s translanguaging practices demonstrate their IC in fostering interaction in the classrooms (ten Have 1990).

6 Discussion and conclusion

The principal aim of this paper is to offer an alternative view of IC by connecting it to the notion of translanguaging and its emphasis on the deployment of multiple linguistic, semiotic, and sociocultural resources for achieving the speaker’s specific communicative goals. In particular, we employed Sequential-Categorial Analysis to illuminate how translanguaging practices contribute to effective classroom management in the sequential, emotional, logical, moral and categorial dimensions of interaction, which represents a holistic construct definition of IC. The analysis of the ESOL classroom illustrates that the teacher and students employ multiple linguistic and multimodal resources including physical objects, gestures, bodily movement, registers, L1 English and L2 to create imaginary scenarios to initiate clarification requests (in the case of the students) or produce explanations in response to the student’s initiatives (in the case of the teacher). Throughout the analysis, we have revealed that since the teacher and students do not share the same L1, classroom participants have to mobilize different multimodal resources as means of communication for compensating the limited available linguistic resources shared between the teacher and students. Importantly, we argue that such translanguaging practices (i.e. mobilizing verbal and gestural elements together) allow the ESOL teacher to scaffold the students’ L2 learning processes when learners’ L2 repertoire is somewhat limited. Additionally, the teacher translanguages through switching between her different styles of speaking in Extracts 1–3 in order to make her social roles as a teacher at a teaching moment and her role as a conversationalist at a non-teaching moment recognizable to students. This is evidenced as she uses ‘formal’ intonation and complete sentences to orient to the teaching moment and employs a more ‘natural’ way of speaking when she talks as a conversationalist. It is also noticeable that the teacher is drawing on her linguistic knowledge of Spanish to assist her student to understand the target vocabulary items (Extract 4). This demonstrates how the teacher is mobilizing different linguistic and multimodal repertoires to create a translanguaging space for students to learn new vocabulary items.

Although research on IC has broadened our understanding of what competency in language use means, so far existing IC studies have not used translanguaging as an analytical perspective to capture the rich movement between modalities, frames, and resources. These findings in translanguaging research extend the construct of IC, which to date emphasizes the co-construction of social interaction purposefully and meaningfully (Hall et al. 2011) and the functionality of language use for real-world conduct (Dai 2021a; Dai et al. 2022). IC, more importantly, encompasses the element of translanguaging as an interactional phenomenon where speakers draw on diverse resources for enabling their meaning-making processes (Li 2018). This creates a translanguaging space in and for interaction for participants to translanguage fluidly between registers, styles, languages, as well as across modalities in order to mediate meaning-making processes (Tai and Li 2021a, 2021b, 2021c; Tai 2022a, 2022b, 2023a, 2023b). It can be argued that from a translanguaging perspective, a competent language user is one who can marshal the appropriate linguistic and multimodal resources for effective communication, demonstrating the ability to make the appropriate assessment of what, how and why specific resources should be used at that moment of the interaction. A competent speaker also attends to the multidimensional nature of functional language use, taking into account the sequential, emotional, logical, moral, and categorial aspects of interaction (Dai 2021a, forthcoming), as the ESOL teacher in this study has demonstrated. Therefore, we argue that translanguaging is a constitutive feature of IC which entails speakers drawing on a diverse range of semiotic resources for creating new configurations of language practices and achieving their specific communicative goals. Such a perspective emphasizes the meaning-making process as a locally emergent phenomenon and a co-constructed interactional endeavour which promotes fluid and dynamic language practices between speakers on a moment-by-moment basis.

The findings from this study contribute to research on translanguaging, IC and multimodality, highlighting the multilingual and multimodal nature of interaction and fostering multilingual competence in the classrooms. In terms of IC research, this study foregrounds L1 speakers who have received less attention in previous studies (see Wootton 1997 for an exception). A focus on L1 speakers, in the context of this study the ESOL teacher, has allowed us to examine the wide range of semiotic resources teachers can creatively draw on for effective classroom interaction. Through analysing their interactional practices using Sequential-Categorial Analysis we have generated empirical evidence of how teachers manage sequence, affect, logic, morality, and categorization, which are embedded in interaction on a moment-by-moment translanguaging basis. The explication of effective teaching practices in this study can provide insight into pedagogy and teacher training. Methodologically, adopting translanguaging as an analytical perspective enables researchers to re-conceptualize IC and move beyond structural and functional analysis of social interaction to identify patterns with high frequency and regularity (Tai 2022a, 2022b; Tai and Li 2021b, 2021c). In other words, this requires researchers to go beyond analysing language as an abstractable coded system, such as CA research which views interaction as structurally organized and aims to discover the sequential patterns in social interaction (Hutchby and Wooffitt 2008). Rather, researchers should focus on the speaker’s capacity in drawing on diverse linguistic, multimodal, and sociocultural resources to challenge the boundaries between named languages and non-linguistic semiotic systems in specific moments of the classroom interactions for purposeful communicative activities. Therefore, adopting a translanguaging perspective enables us to illuminate how teachers demonstrate their IC and create new configurations of pedagogical practices through their strategic and appropriate use of the affordances of various available interactional resources creatively and critically in different classroom contexts. The findings also draw attention to the significance of extending the teacher’s practical understanding of IC. Throughout the paper, we argue for the need to capture the intrinsically fluid nature of language use since social interaction is a process of translanguaging in nature. Therefore, developing an understanding of the diverse interactional resources that teachers and students can use to scaffold their teaching and learning processes – most notably in terms of how teachers and students manage sequence, affect, logic, morality and categorization in interaction – can contribute to improved teaching and enhance their multilingual competence in the classrooms.