Posted: Sep 09, 2021 9:19 am
1. Pragmatic Meaning and Cognition – Sophia S.A. Marmaridou
2. Fire and Fury: The Allied Bombing of Germany and Japan - Randall Hansen
3. Cognitive Exploration of Language and Linguistics – René Dirven and Marjolijn Verspoor (Eds.)
4. Age of Static: How TV Explains Modern Britain – Phil Harrison
5. The Secret of Our Success: How Culture is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating our Species and Making us Smarter – Joseph Henrich
6. Heroic Failure and the British - Stephanie Barczewski
7. Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain - Maryanne Wolf
8. Language Soup: A Taste of How Diverse People Around the World Communicate - Kathryn A. T. Knox
9. A Place for everything: The curious History of Alphabetical order – Judith Flanders
10. Contrastive Analysis - Carl James
11. Impossible Languages- Andrea Moro
12. Languages in the World: How History, Culture and Politics Shape Language – Jukie tetel Andresen and Phillip M. Carter
13. HHhH - Laurent Binet (Translated from the French by Sam Taylor)
14. Impoliteness: Using Language to Cause Offense – Jonathan Culpeper
15. Ethosyntax: Explorations in Grammar and Culture – N. J. Enfield (Ed.)
16. Second Language Speech Fluency: From Research to Practice – Parvaneh Tavakoli & Clare Wright.
17. At Day's Close: Night in Times Past – A. Roger Ekirch
18. Language Shock: Understanding the Culture of Conversation – Michael Agar
19. Possessives in English: An Exploration in Cognitive Grammar - John R. Taylor
20. I saw the Dog: How Language Works – Alexandra Aikhenvald.
21. The German War: A Nation under Arms, 1939 – 1945 – Nicholas Stargardt
22. Civilizations – Laurent Binet
23. Adjective Classes: A Cross-linguistic Typology - R. M. W. Dixon & A. Aikhenvald (Eds.)
24. Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time – Johanna Nichols
25. How to behave badly in Elizabethan England - Ruth Goodman
26. In the Land of Invented Languages: Adventures in Linguistic Creativity, Madness and Genius – Arika Okrent
27. Foundation – Isaac Asimov
28. One Man and his Bike – Mike Carter
29. The Phantom Atlas: The Greatest Myths, Lies and Blunders on Maps – Edwards Brooke Hitching
30. Operation Mincemeat – Ben Macintyre
31. L2 interactional competence and development - J.K. Hall, J. Hellermann & S.P. Doehler, (Eds.)
274 pp.
This is a reread. I was recently presenting at a conference on the topic of Interactional Competence (IC) and I pulled this book from my shelves to put some references in the proceedings paper I am writing – and then ended up reading the whole thing. It is a collection of papers by different authors detailing the ways that language learners develop their ability to take part in spontaneous spoken interactions. The notion of IC is kind of hard to pin down. At one end of the spectrum there are universal practices (‘panhuman’ in the words of one author) that can be applied by learners of even the most basic proficiency. On the other hand, there are ways of ‘doing’ interaction that are very culture-specific. But even here, learners can be explicitly taught the ways of the target language culture, or, if they are exposed to enough instances of a practice, they can unconsciously incorporate this into their L2 repertoire. As is noted on p. 238, “learners do not simply transfer their interactional competence from one language to another, merely developing the linguistic forms needed to accomplish specific interactional tasks. Rather, when learning an L2, learners recalibrate their ‘methods’ for accomplishing actions – including the linguistic means to do so.”
One thing I liked about the book was the expansion from purely English language data. There were chapters on German speaking learners of French learning how to ‘do’ disagreements in that language, US students learning how to take part in proficiency interviews in French, and a learner of Icelandic taking part in service encounters in a bakery. It is always welcome to have data from beyond the Anglosphere.
Lots of good material here. I’ve met several of the authors at conferences over the years, and it is an interesting part of reading this kind of academic material when you can hear the words in the author’s own voice.
I got a lot out of this second reading and am now contemplating what other rereads are on the horizon.
2. Fire and Fury: The Allied Bombing of Germany and Japan - Randall Hansen
3. Cognitive Exploration of Language and Linguistics – René Dirven and Marjolijn Verspoor (Eds.)
4. Age of Static: How TV Explains Modern Britain – Phil Harrison
5. The Secret of Our Success: How Culture is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating our Species and Making us Smarter – Joseph Henrich
6. Heroic Failure and the British - Stephanie Barczewski
7. Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain - Maryanne Wolf
8. Language Soup: A Taste of How Diverse People Around the World Communicate - Kathryn A. T. Knox
9. A Place for everything: The curious History of Alphabetical order – Judith Flanders
10. Contrastive Analysis - Carl James
11. Impossible Languages- Andrea Moro
12. Languages in the World: How History, Culture and Politics Shape Language – Jukie tetel Andresen and Phillip M. Carter
13. HHhH - Laurent Binet (Translated from the French by Sam Taylor)
14. Impoliteness: Using Language to Cause Offense – Jonathan Culpeper
15. Ethosyntax: Explorations in Grammar and Culture – N. J. Enfield (Ed.)
16. Second Language Speech Fluency: From Research to Practice – Parvaneh Tavakoli & Clare Wright.
17. At Day's Close: Night in Times Past – A. Roger Ekirch
18. Language Shock: Understanding the Culture of Conversation – Michael Agar
19. Possessives in English: An Exploration in Cognitive Grammar - John R. Taylor
20. I saw the Dog: How Language Works – Alexandra Aikhenvald.
21. The German War: A Nation under Arms, 1939 – 1945 – Nicholas Stargardt
22. Civilizations – Laurent Binet
23. Adjective Classes: A Cross-linguistic Typology - R. M. W. Dixon & A. Aikhenvald (Eds.)
24. Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time – Johanna Nichols
25. How to behave badly in Elizabethan England - Ruth Goodman
26. In the Land of Invented Languages: Adventures in Linguistic Creativity, Madness and Genius – Arika Okrent
27. Foundation – Isaac Asimov
28. One Man and his Bike – Mike Carter
29. The Phantom Atlas: The Greatest Myths, Lies and Blunders on Maps – Edwards Brooke Hitching
30. Operation Mincemeat – Ben Macintyre
31. L2 interactional competence and development - J.K. Hall, J. Hellermann & S.P. Doehler, (Eds.)
274 pp.
This is a reread. I was recently presenting at a conference on the topic of Interactional Competence (IC) and I pulled this book from my shelves to put some references in the proceedings paper I am writing – and then ended up reading the whole thing. It is a collection of papers by different authors detailing the ways that language learners develop their ability to take part in spontaneous spoken interactions. The notion of IC is kind of hard to pin down. At one end of the spectrum there are universal practices (‘panhuman’ in the words of one author) that can be applied by learners of even the most basic proficiency. On the other hand, there are ways of ‘doing’ interaction that are very culture-specific. But even here, learners can be explicitly taught the ways of the target language culture, or, if they are exposed to enough instances of a practice, they can unconsciously incorporate this into their L2 repertoire. As is noted on p. 238, “learners do not simply transfer their interactional competence from one language to another, merely developing the linguistic forms needed to accomplish specific interactional tasks. Rather, when learning an L2, learners recalibrate their ‘methods’ for accomplishing actions – including the linguistic means to do so.”
One thing I liked about the book was the expansion from purely English language data. There were chapters on German speaking learners of French learning how to ‘do’ disagreements in that language, US students learning how to take part in proficiency interviews in French, and a learner of Icelandic taking part in service encounters in a bakery. It is always welcome to have data from beyond the Anglosphere.
Lots of good material here. I’ve met several of the authors at conferences over the years, and it is an interesting part of reading this kind of academic material when you can hear the words in the author’s own voice.
I got a lot out of this second reading and am now contemplating what other rereads are on the horizon.