PLENARY SPEAKERS

Ellen Bialystok, York University

Becoming Literate: Does Bilingualism Change Anything?

Thursday, October 14 at 4:00 pm in Centre/Arbor

Research examining the effect of bilingualism on the cognitive and linguistic skills that are prerequisite to literacy have revealed mixed results, sometimes indicating enhanced performance for bilinguals (metalinguistic awareness) and sometimes bilingual disadvantages (oral language proficiency). From these results, it is difficult to predict whether bilingualism will influence literacy acquisition, and if so, what the direction of that influence would be. Nonetheless, a large number of studies has reported beneficial effects of bilingualism on establishing these background skills and the ready transfer of these skills across languages, suggesting an overall positive effect for bilingualism. That conclusion, however, does not take sufficient account of the relation between the languages and the correspondence between the systems in which they are written. An examination of these factors reveals a more complex role for bilingualism in children¹s early development of literacy. These issues will be discussed and several studies illustrating them will be described.

Juana M. Liceras, University of Ottawa

Linguistic Theory and L2 Research: the 'Feature Land¹' Challenge

Friday, October 15 at 4:00 pm in Centre/Arbor

Linguistic theory, specifically the Chomskian generative approach with its biological, psychological and formal dimensions, has proven to be an invaluable source of inspiration for language acquisition research in general and for second language acquisition research in particular. Constructs such as the theory of markedness, the notion of parameter-setting and the central role allocated to functional categories in the computational component of the grammar, have enlightened the field not only in terms of formulating hypotheses and research questions intended to account for both the logical and the developmental problem of language acquisition, but also in terms of explaining the similarities and differences between native and non-native grammars. However, because these constructs have been part of a program of research that was being developed, working with them has been a real challenge because the theory provided different and sometimes conflicting analyses on the marked or unmarked status of a given construction, its relation to a given option of a parameter, the very definition of parameters or the actual inventory of functional categories in general or in any given language. In the last decade, and within the classical and the most recent versions of the Minimalist Program, features have occupied the forefront of linguistic theory and have, consequently, entered the field of L2 language acquisition research. While there is no doubt that the field has already benefited from the refined analyses based on features that have been carried out, the challenge seems to be even greater than before because features are extremely powerful and there is no agreement as to their specific nature or in terms of the categories to which they are assigned. In this paper, we will carry out a critical examination of the role that features have played in recent L2 research in order to determine: 1) whether and how they can shed new light on the type of optionality that characterizes non-native grammars; 2) how they can contribute to tease apart grammatical knowledge from processing strategies; 3) how they can be useful in establishing differences and similarities among L1, child L2 and adult L2 acquisition as well as language pathology and language attrition.

Gabriele Kasper, University of Hawai'i

Conversation Analysis for SLA: One Flower or Many?

Saturday, October 16 at 4:00 pm in Centre/Arbor

Among the approaches to SLA that accord interaction a critical role in L2 learning, conversation analysis (CA) has been gaining prominence in recent years. One fundamental question that has emerged in the wake of CA¹s increasing role in SLA research is whether the explanandum of CA as a perspective on L2 learning is the same as, or different from, SLA¹s explanandum. A possible difficulty with this question is that it treats CA and SLA research as uniform projects when in fact each is a multifaceted, diverse scholarly enterprise.

To SLA researchers, it is a well-known fact that approaches to SLA vary widely in their conceptualizations of language, knowledge, and learning, the role of context, their views on what constitutes relevant data, and their analytical practices. And yet, when CA as an approach to L2 learning is juxtaposed to ³traditional² or ³mainstream² SLA, the discipline is often treated as monolithic. Arguably, besides being factually unsustainable, such a rhetorical strategy also creates problematic dichotomies that overemphasize differences and preclude the identification of shared epistemological positions.

It is perhaps less obvious to SLA researchers that CA itself is far from uniform. But in fact, CA practitioners do not necessarily agree on such issues as the roles in CA of context, culture, cognition, and language, or of methodological practices such as ethnographic contextualization and quantification. As CA has developed from its sociological origins to a transdisciplinary approach within the social sciences, it has taken on a variety of disciplinary flavors that are useful to recognize when CA is imported to SLA.

This talk will unpack CA along the lines suggested above and identify some of the benefits and challenges of CA as an approach to SLA. Based on this discussion, CA will be situated within SLA as one of several approaches to SLA as social practice.