sociocultural contexualisation elt

Raising sociocultural awarenessthrough contextual analysis: sometools for teachers

Troy McConachy

Despite long-standing recognition of the importance of sociocultural context inmeaning making, criticisms have been levelled at communicative languageteaching (CLT) for failing to effectively address this at the level of classroompractice. In fact, it has been argued that the way CLT presents content revealsa fundamentally reductionist view of communication. This paper uses examplesof dialogues from the New Interchange series to briefly illustrate what can beconsidered a typical shortcoming of many modern commercial English languagetextbooks: the neglect of the place of sociocultural context in dialogues anddialogue-related activities. This paper shows two ways in which this neglect ismanifested and then suggests some concrete ways that teachers can use theSPEAKING model developed by Hymes (1972) to increase their awareness ofelements of sociocultural context and also develop analytical questions for learners.

Introduction Over 35 years have passed since Hymes (1972) coined the term‘communicative competence’ in recognition of the inadequacy of theChomskyan notion of linguistic competence. Since this time, muchtheorizing has taken place about the social nature of language, such as theways in which different social groups use language to manage and structuretheir daily lives (Duranti 1997). A number of researchers have outlinedfurther models of communicative competence that have gone on to becomewidely recognized by language teachers. The highly influential modelprovided by Canale and Swain (1980), as well as the more recent modelprovided by Bachman (1990), share one point; recognition of the fact thatbeing competent in a language, whether first or subsequent, means a lotmore than simply knowing how to form syntactically accurate sentences.Despite such recognition, it has been suggested that modern teachingmethods, even those labelled as ‘communicative’, are still failing toadequately address the sociocultural aspects of language and thecomplexities of language in use (Corbett 2003).

Context in CLT The importance of context in linguistic communication has beenrecognized for decades and it is now a truism that no linguistic utterance canbe definitively understood without referring to the social andcommunicative context in which it was uttered (Goodwin and Duranti

116 ELT Journal Volume 63/2 April 2009; doi:10.1093/elt/ccn018ªª The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved.Advance Access publication May 23, 2008

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1992). With the advent of CLT, this realization can be said to haveaffected pedagogy to the extent that presenting input in a manner that is‘authentic’, or based on ‘real-world situations’ became a priority. However,it has been argued that the emphasis on ‘real-world situations’ and ‘doingthings with language’ in CLT has led to a reductionist view ofcommunication (Corbett op. cit.; Kraus 2003). It is reductionist in the sensethat in CLT communication is often seen as a process of bridging aninformation gap, and communicative competence the ‘capacity to fitappropriate language to specific transactions’ (Byram 1990: 18). To be sure,the ability to ‘do’ things with language is important and deservespedagogical attention. It is a problem, however, when language functionsare presented without due attention to the sociocultural dimensions oflanguage in use. Learners need to be aware that the particular languageforms that speakers choose to ‘get things done’ reflect not only theiridentities but also a broad range of sociocultural variables, such as theirrelationship to the interlocutor, and wider social structures. Unless learnersare specifically made aware of aspects pertaining to the social nature oflanguage use, there is the danger that a learner will apply his or her nativeinteractional norms, which may be inappropriate (Liddicoat 2005).

Context incommercial Englishlanguage textbooks

A transactional orientation to language is clearly evident when examiningthe way that language functions are presented in dialogues in manycommercial language textbooks. In this section, I will illustrate what I see astwo major shortcomings. For this purpose, I will provide samples ofdialogues from the New Interchange series by Richards, Hull, and Proctor(1998a,b). Although many textbooks contain similar problems, this serieswas chosen simply due to its prevalence in the context where I work.

Sample 1:

James This has got to stop! Another Friday night without a date! Whatcan I do?

Mike What about looking through the personal ads in the newspaper?

James Actually, I’ve tried that. But the people you meet are alwaysdifferent from what you expect.

Mike Well, why don’t you join a dating service? A friend of mine met hiswife that way.

James That’s not a bad idea.

Mike Also, it might be a good idea to check out singles’ night at thebookstore.

James Yeah. If I don’t find a date, at least I might find a good book!

(Taken from New Interchange (1998b), Student’s Book 3: 57)

The first major shortcoming identifiable in this dialogue is the distinct lackof explicit contextual information given to introduce the dialogue. In theNew Interchange series, there are dialogues (labelled ‘conversations’) like theone above in each chapter in which a wide range of characters are discussingvarious things. Despite the obvious potential for harnessing these variousidentities to focus on the cultural aspects of language use, the dialogues do

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not come with an introduction containing explicit information as to theidentities of the speakers, their relationship to each other, or their location.In the above dialogue, the pedagogical goal is clearly to show howsuggestions can be made: however, the absence of explicit contextualinformation makes it seem as though the logic of suggestions and thediscourse that goes along with it will be plain and transparent for learnerseverywhere.

The second major shortcoming of this dialogue is that on top of the lack ofexplicit contextual information, there is also a lack of learning activitiesbased on the dialogue that could encourage learners to analyse the languageused in terms of sociocultural context. In New Interchange, some dialoguesare followed by a number of questions that learners can answer by listeningto a continuation of the conversation from the dialogue. Unfortunately, thefocus of these questions also reveals a reductionist orientation to the act ofcomprehension. Sample 2 below shows another dialogue with questions.

Sample 2:

Chris So, what did you do this weekend Kate?

Kate Oh, Diane and I went for a drive in the country on Saturday.

Chris That sounds nice. Where did you go?

Kate We drove to the lake and had a picnic. We had a great time! Howabout you? Did you do anything special?

Chris Not really? I just worked on my car all day.

Kate That old thing! Why don’t you just buy a new one?

Chris But then what would I do every weekend?

Listen to Kate talk about her activities on Sunday.

1 What did she do?2 Where did she go?

(Taken from New Interchange (1998a), Student’s Book 1: 40)

The questions listed above are the type which require students tocomprehend information as part of a listening exercise based on thedialogue in order to answer them. This is one skill which is certainlyimportant for language learners; however, again, the problem is that the actof comprehending of meaning in context is reduced to that of ‘findinginformation’. The above questions ignore the interpersonal dimension ofconversation and, in this particular conversation, the role that this type ofdiscourse (chatting about weekends) plays in social life. Over-exposinglearners to comprehension questions, where comprehension is understoodas the skill of finding information, will discourage learners from lookingdeeper at the relationship between the speakers and other social contextualfactors as influencing language use. In consideration of this fact, and tomake up for the inadequacies of textbooks, it can be argued that it isnecessary for teachers to devise ways to ensure that learners come to seecommunication as something that emerges from and is affected by the

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relationships between people rather than simply the filling of aninformation gap.

Turning the tide Teaching contextual aspects of language use is something that can presentdifficulty for many language teachers, particularly those withouta heightened awareness of the communicative parameters of the targetlanguage: aside from the typical aspects of language such as grammar andlexis, it is not clear what should be taught (Barraja-Rohan 2000). What isneeded is for language teachers to increase their own awareness of the waysin which context affects the choice of language forms and unfoldinginteraction in a language sample such as a dialogue. Based on thisheightened awareness, teachers will be in a better position to designcomprehension questions that focus not only on the skill of locatinginformation but also on the skill of analysing language use in reflection ofsociocultural context. In order for teachers to be able to teach the importanceof sociocultural context, it may be helpful to have a model that can be used asa reference point. I would like to suggest one in the next section.

A framework forteacher reference

‘SPEAKING’ is a mnemonic which was developed by Hymes (1974) torepresent his framework for the analysis of language in context. Each letterof SPEAKING stands for an aspect of context which is thought to influencethe construction and interpretation of meaning. Due to its mnemonicnature and relatively transparent components, I believe it can be useful tolanguage teachers in two main ways. Firstly, it provides a framework forincreasing teachers’ awareness of sociocultural factors of language use.Secondly, the components can be used as a framework for generatinga range of questions for learners that encourage consideration of the role ofcontext in meaning making.

In Table 1 below I lay out the components of the SPEAKING frameworkwith a rationale statement to explain why these aspects of context areimportant for language teachers and learners to think about. In Table 2I also list questions for each component that could be used to assistteachers to become aware of the socioculturally significant dimensions ofcommunication in a textbook dialogue or sample of natural language.

Developingquestions forlearners

In the next section, I show teachers can move from using the SPEAKING

framework to identify relevant sociocultural factors in a dialogue togenerating a range of analytical questions to raise the socioculturalawareness of learners.

In a given dialogue, there are likely to be many interactional features thatlearners will benefit from examining, and an important first step is toidentify them according to the SPEAKING framework. For example, youmay notice an example of polite language, which you could look at from theperspective of the ‘participants’ or ‘ends’. In other words, the use of politelanguage may be a reflection of the relationship between the participants, orit could be related to the ‘ends’: as in the case of high imposition requests.Once the teacher has developed a perspective on a given utterance, they willbe better prepared to formulate questions to help their learners. Obviously itcan be challenging to attempt to simplify difficult concepts into questionsthat can be understood by language learners and it will certainly take


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practice before a teacher improves his or her ability. As far as the wording ofquestions is concerned, there are many possibilities that will depend on thetypes of learners and the relevant pedagogical goal. Below I will outline fourdifferent question types that, on the basis of experience, I consider to beparticularly useful and easy to apply.

1 Language-based questionsI use this term as these questions begin with some language from thedialogue, based on which learners speculate on possible meanings andinteractional functions in context. For example, based on the use of thediscourse marker ‘I see’ in a dialogue, the following questions could beformulated:

n What does ‘I see’ mean?Or

n Why does person X say ‘I see’?

2 Function-based questionsI call these function-based questions as rather than quoting languagefrom the dialogue, these questions use metalanguage which describes

table 1Components of theSPEAKING framework

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the potential interactional or social function of an utterance in thedialogue. The use of metalanguage encourages learners to look for formsthat might be used to accomplish particular functions. These questionsare useful for helping learners see language use in terms of interactionaland social functions first, and then focus on forms second. This can beparticularly useful when the teacher wants to prescribe an interpretationof an utterance, or draw learners’ attention to an obvious interactionalnorm. An example of a function-based question based on ‘I see’ might beas follows:

n In the dialogue, where does speaker X show ‘understanding’?Or

n Where does speaker X show ‘interest’?

table 2Questions to helpteacher analysis


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3 Comparative questionsComparative questions encourage learners to compare an aspect ofinteraction or sociocultural relationship noticed in the dialogue/s they areusing with that of their native culture. The process of reflecting on aspectsof interaction in one’s native culture is argued to be an effective way tohelp learners come to see the hidden interactional norms of their ownlanguage, and to be able to objectively contrast these vis-a-vis the targetlanguage (Liddicoat op. cit.). For example, in the case of a dialogue whichcontains the speech act of apologizing, the following questions could beasked:

n In your culture do people apologize like this?

n Does everyone apologize like this?

n What other ways are there to apologize in your culture?

n How do you feel about the style of apologies in this dialogue?

4 General speculative questionsGeneral speculative questions are ‘Why do you think . . .?’ questionswhich are versatile in that they can be formed in regards to any type ofquestion when the teacher would like to emphasize that the learners’ jobis to give their own interpretations, rather than search for a correctanswer.Examples:

n How old do you think the speakers are?

n Why do you think the man refused the invitation?

Application In this section I will provide concrete examples of questions that I havedeveloped based on my understanding of SPEAKING that could be appliedwhen using one of the sample dialogues from New Interchange quotedearlier. There is a certain amount of overlap among the questions; these aresimply examples to demonstrate the different ways that questions could beformulated.

Dialogue

James This has got to stop! Another Friday night without a date! Whatcan I do?

Mike What about looking through the personal ads in the newspaper?

James Actually, I’ve tried that. But the people you meet are alwaysdifferent from what you expect.

Mike Well, why don’t you join a dating service? A friend of mine met hiswife that way.

James That’s not a bad idea.

Mike Also, it might be a good idea to check out singles’ night at thebookstore.

James Yeah. If I don’t find a date, at least I might find a good book!

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Setting:

Where do you think James and Mike are having this conversation? Why?

Where do you think wouldn’t be a good place to have this conversation?Why?

In James’ culture, do you think many people go on dates on Fridays?Why?

When do people usually go on dates in your culture?

Participants:

Do you think Mike and James are good friends? Why?

How old do you think they are? Why?

Do you think Mike is married or has a partner? Why?

Ends:

Why do you think James started this conversation?

Do you think Mike wants to help him? Why?

Act sequence:

How many different ‘suggestions’ did Mike make? What is their order?

How did James feel about each ‘suggestion’? Why do you think this?

Why did James say ‘actually’?

In the conversation, where does Mike show ‘agreement’?

Key:

How does James feel at the start of the conversation? Why do you thinkthis?

Instrumentalities:

Is the language in this conversation casual or polite? Show an example.

Norms of interaction:

How does Mike accept or reject the suggestions? Why do you think hechose these forms?

Genre:

What sort of conversation is this?

Do people in your culture have this type of conversation often?

Tips for using thequestions

While I have listed quite a large number of questions for the previousdialogue, it is unlikely that this many could actually be asked in one class.The process of looking at language use from a sociocultural perspective issomething which many learners may not be familiar with. As a result, somelearners are likely to go through initial difficulties as they adjust to thevarious processes of analysing, reflecting, and comparing. This is one thing


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which needs to be taken into consideration when allocating time forlearning tasks.

Reacting to learners’interpretations

It is necessary to recognize that we cannot always expect knowledge aboutsociocultural aspects of language use to be as explicable or quantifiable asgrammar and lexis. As the focus of these questions is interpretive, there isnecessarily a multiplicity of possible answers. While some questions may bedesigned to lead learners to a particular interpretation of language, othersare simply speculative. In this case, the aim is not to elicit some kind ofpredetermined ‘correct’ answer but rather to develop meta-awarenessconcerning the fact that sociocultural context is important in language use.In this case, the processes that learners go through, and the skills that aredeveloped when involved in analysing language use, can also be consideredimportant.

Possible criticisms It is possible that some will object to using dialogues at all to raisesociocultural awareness due to the fact that dialogues do not always mirror‘the way language is really used’ (Seedhouse 2004). Undoubtedly, somedialogues are more natural than others. The process of constructingdialogues based on what research tells us about how people communicateneeds to be ongoing. However, it does not seem logical to wait until perfectdialogues are achieved before we finally turn our learners’ heads towardscontext. It is important to work creatively with the educational resources wehave now to achieve a high quality of learning. In any case, dialogues, oreven samples of authentic data, should not be viewed as ‘perfect’ samples oflanguage use, due to the fact that any communication is inherentlyambiguous and variable (Scollon and Wong-Scollon 1995). Consequently,learners should not simply approach language as a thing to be remembered,but as a thing to be examined. Any language use in a dialogue is nothingmore than something that might be said in a particular situation. It is notnecessary to have perfect samples of communication as the imperfectnature of communication can now become a topic of speculation anddiscussion.

Conclusion In this paper I have argued that teachers may need to increase their ownawareness of the general importance of sociocultural context asa determinant of language use. This is important so that teachers are nolonger limited to simply teaching the ‘cleaner’ aspects of syntax and lexicon.As long as teachers and students only see dialogues in terms of how theyillustrate grammar usage, there is a waste of learning potential. TheSPEAKING framework is a useful device for making salient the myriadsociocultural factors that influence language use in order to generatesociocultural meta-awareness, as well as to highlight specific interactionalnorms. It is hoped that this kind of meta-awareness will put learners ina better position to anticipate and perceive potential differences in cross-cultural communication and an increased flexibility to deal with them.

Final revised version received September 2007

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ReferencesBachman, L. 1990. Fundamental Considerations inLanguage Testing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Barraja-Rohan, A. 2000. ‘Teaching conversation andsociocultural norms with conversation analysis’ inA. J. Liddicoat and C. Crozet (eds.). TeachingLanguages, Teaching Cultures. Melbourne, Australia:Language Australia.Byram, M. 1990. ‘Teaching culture and language:towards an integrated model’ in D. Buttjes andM. Byram (eds.). Mediating Languages and Cultures.Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.Canale,M. andM. Swain. 1980. ‘Theoretical bases ofcommunicative approaches to second languageteaching and testing’. Applied Linguistics 1/1: 1–47.Corbett, J. 2003. An Intercultural Approach to EnglishLanguage Teaching. Clevedon, UK: MultilingualMatters.Duranti, A. 1997.LinguisticAnthropology. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.Goodwin, C. and A. Duranti. 1992. ‘Rethinkingcontext: an introduction’ in A. Duranti andC. Goodwin (eds.). Rethinking Context: Language asan Interactive Phenomenon. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.Hymes,D. 1972. ‘On communicative competence’ inJ. B. Pride and J. Holmes (eds.). Sociolinguistics.Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books.Hymes, D. 1974. Foundations in Sociolinguistics: AnEthnographic Approach. Philadelphia: University ofPennsylvania Press.Kraus, H. 2003. ‘Creating histories and spaces ofmeaningful use: towards a framework of foreign

language teaching with an emphasis on culture,epistemology and ethical pedagogy’. UnpublishedDoctoral dissertation, University of Canberra.Liddicoat, A. J. 2005. ‘Teaching languages forintercultural communication’ in D. Cunninghamand A. Hatoss (eds.). An International Perspective onLanguage Policies, Practices and Proficiencies.Belgrave, Australia: FIPLV.Richards, J., J. Hull, and S. Proctor. 1998a. NewInterchange: English for International Communication(Student’s Book 1). Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.Richards, J., J. Hull, and S. Proctor. 1998b. NewInterchange: English for International Communication(Student’s Book 3). Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.Scollon, R. and S. Wong-Scollon. 1995. InterculturalCommunication. Oxford: Blackwell.Seedhouse, P. 2004. The Interactional Architecture ofthe Language Classroom: A Conversation AnalysisPerspective. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

The authorTroy McConachy holds an MA (Applied Linguistics)from the University of New England, Australia. He iscurrently conducting his doctoral research onintercultural language teaching through theResearch Centre for Languages and Cultures at theUniversity of South Australia. He also lectures onEnglish and intercultural communication at RikkyoUniversity, Tokyo.Email: [email protected]


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