You are cordially invited to a talk entitled "Routinization of an Unconventional Multi-word Expression:Expanding the Notion of Usage" by Dr. Sangki Kim (Konkuk University) on Tuesday, 5 November 2019 at 11:00-12:00 in EF 506.

ABSTRACT:

Researchers investigating second-language (L2) acquisition from diverse usage-based perspectives assume that the development of L2 repertoires is fundamentally usage-driven (Eskildsen & Cadierno, 2015). In most of the literature, however, usage is understood as L2 users' biographical experience of the interaction between input distribution, learner cognition, and linguistic factors (Wulff & Ellis, 2018). Accordingly, the socio-interactional dimension of L2 use has not been sufficiently accounted for, although situated L2 usage involves multimodality and real-life consequences. Research using conversation analysis as a methodology (CA-SLA) has begun to expand the notion of usage by demonstrating how L2 development or stability emerges out of locally contextualized L2 use embedded in instructional contexts (e.g., Eskildsen, 2009, 2012; Hauser, 2013). Building upon this CA-SLA research, this study aims to further expand the notion of usage by examining how the stability of L2 action inventory is tied to the participants' in situ sense-making practices and by the material world. Data for this study were drawn from 79 hours of video recordings of service encounters that were collected at a convenience store in Honolulu over a 30-month period. The study focuses on one adult Korean shopkeeper and the simultaneous use of one unconventional L2 English multi-word expression (MWE) and a printed notice of the store's policy in service encounters. Multimodal conversation analysis revealed how customers' knowledge of the store's policy, and the participants' orientations vis-à-vis the notice, contributed to customers' successful understanding of the use of MWE with the printed notice as a social action. The findings advance our understanding of usage by showing the process of routinization as comprised of embodied, sequential, and experiential phenomena that were co-constructed in a particular material context.