The Contributions of Conversation

Analysis and Interactional Linguistics

to a Usage-Based Understanding
of Language: Expanding the
Transdisciplinary Framework
JOAN KELLY HALL
The Pennsylvania State University, Center for Research on English Language Learning and Teaching, Department
of Applied Linguistics, 207 Sparks Building, University Park, PA 16802 Email: jkh11@psu.edu

A key insight of a transdisciplinary perspective on second language acquisition (SLA) as articulated by

the Douglas Fir Group (2016) is its usage-based understanding of language. Evidence on the fundamen-
tal role that usage plays in shaping individual language knowledge is no doubt compelling. However,
while the force of social interaction in shaping language knowledge is acknowledged, missing are speci-
fications of the jointly constructed actions and courses of action comprising social contexts of use. Also
missing is a reconsideration of key SLA concepts engendered by a usage-based understanding of lan-
guage. The intent of this paper is to redress these limitations. First, I summarize the research programs
of conversation analysis and interactional linguistics, which take as their central task the specifications
of the jointly constructed actions and courses of action comprising social contexts and thus significantly
enhance a usage-based understanding of language. Then, arguing that more suitable conceptual tools
are needed to better capture current understandings of language knowledge and objects of L2 learning,
I offer repertoire, semiotic resources, and register as alternative terms to competence and grammar. I conclude
with a proposal for a Conversation Analysis/Interactional Linguistics-based research program for further
advancing understandings of SLA and transforming understandings of L2 pedagogy.
Keywords: conversation analysis; interactional linguistics; repertoire; semiotic resource; design

THE USAGE-BASED UNDERSTANDING OF
second language (L2) knowledge as articulated by
the Douglas Fir Group (2016; and see Ellis, 2019,
this issue) in the transdisciplinary framework of
second language acquisition (SLA) has arisen
from research undertaken in several fields, in-
cluding child language development (e.g., Tom-
asello, 2003, 2006), psycholinguistics (e.g.,
MacWhinney, 2012, 2015), neurolinguistics (e.g.,
Lee et al., 2009), and various branches of func-
tional and cognitive linguistics (e.g., Boyd & Gold-
berg, 2009; Bybee, 2006; Bybee & Hopper, 2001;
The Modern Language Journal, 103 (Supplement 2019)
DOI: 10.1111/modl.12535
0026-7902/19/80–94 $1.50/0

C National Federation of Modern Language Teachers
Associations
Ellis, O’Donnell, & Römer, 2015; Five Graces
Group, 2009; Goldberg, 2003, 2006, 2013;
Larsen–Freeman & Cameron, 2008). Five es-
sentials about the foundations of language
knowledge have been derived from this body
of research. First, language knowledge is inex-
tricably tied to language use. It develops as a
matter of using language in shared activity with
others within the social contexts of daily life.
Second, as individuals participate in their social
contexts, they draw on a range of emotional and
motivational dispositions and domain-general
cognitive capacities such as perception, associa-
tion, and categorization. These dispositions and
capacities guide individuals to focus attention on
and detect patterns in the use of the resources,
hypothesize about and test their understand-
ings of the connections between the resources
Joan Kelly Hall
and their meanings, categorize them and so
on.
Third, key aspects of social experiences at the
micro level that contribute to the development of
language knowledge are the recurring nature of
the experiences, and the distribution, frequency,
and salience of specific resources comprising the
experiences (Bybee, 2006; Goldberg, 1995, 2003).
All else being equal, the more routine learners’ so-
cial experiences are and the more frequent, pre-
dictable, and salient the components comprising
their experiences are, the more likely they will
be stored as cognitive representations in learners’
minds. Fourth, what individuals learn from regu-
lar engagement in their social experiences is not
an abstract system of grammar. Rather, they are
learning options for making meaning in their ex-
periences. These options include words, routine
expressions, collocations or groupings of words,
and fixed and semi-fixed expressions. These op-
tions become stored in learners’ minds not as
free-floating entities but as pragmatically driven
means for organizing, construing, and experienc-
ing their social worlds. Finally, these options do
not remain static in the mind but are in a con-
tinual state of adaptation, changing as a con-
sequence of factors ranging from individual at-
tentional, motivational, and other dynamics, to
competing pragmatic intentions, changing group
affiliations, and society-wide forces (Five Graces
Group, 2009; Lee et al., 2009). Thus, there is no
end state to what is learned, “no natural termi-
nus, no complete current set of linguistic facts
and no synchronically bounded entity” (Hopper,
2011, p. 29). Any appearance of stability in one’s
knowledge is “a matter of stability in their prag-
matic pursuits and not an inherent aspect of the
resources themselves” (Hall, 2018, p. 32).
Undoubtedly, the evidence on the fundamen-
tal role that usage plays in shaping individual
language knowledge is compelling. However, it
is incomplete in that, while the force of social
interaction in shaping language knowledge is
acknowledged, left unspecified is the conse-
quential role of interactional contexts in giving
shape to specific linguistic units. In other words,
missing are specifications of the actions and
action projects, that is, “courses of action that are
enacted through turns at talk” (Schegloff, 2007,
p. 2), comprising social contexts of use. For it
is not just frequency of use in contexts in which
linguistic regularities occur that gives shape to
individual language knowledge. It is frequency
of use in jointly constructed actions and courses
of action that interlocutors accomplish with
each other in recurring interactions comprising
81
their social contexts that is the primary motiva-
tion for the development of linguistic patterns
(Thompson & Couper–Kuhlen, 2014).
Growing bodies of research from two programs,
conversation analysis (CA) and interactional lin-
guistics (IL), have been devoted to the study of
talk-in-interaction. Both presume that the home
environment of language use is the turn at talk.
In general, CA’s pursuit is the specification of the
organizational structures of interaction; IL aims
to uncover and link the recurring use of linguistic
resources to specific actions and action projects
as they are constructed in interaction. These re-
search programs are not only compatible with a
usage-based understanding of language but, more
importantly, they add empirical weight by specify-
ing the interactional bases of usage.
In what follows, I discuss the specific contribu-
tions of CA and IL to a usage-based understanding
of language knowledge. I then offer alternative,
more conceptually valid terms for referring to
language knowledge and L2 objects of learning
that better encapsulate this understanding. A
reconsideration of terms is needed, I contend, to
advance two aims articulated by the Douglas Fir
Group (2016) for making its proposal for trans-
disciplinary SLA: to support the development
of innovative research programs and to serve as
a platform for the development of innovative
and sustainable responses to the challenges of
L2 teaching and learning in our increasingly
networked, technologized, and mobile worlds.
SOME FUNDAMENTALS OF CONVERSATION
ANALYSIS
Conversational Analysis is an offshoot of eth-
nomethodology (EM), a sociological approach
that considers the nature and source of social
order to be fundamentally empirical and lo-
cally accomplished. It was founded by Harold
Garfinkel (1964, 1967, 2002) as a radical al-
ternative to sociological theories that posit the
existence of an objective social order and draw on
theoretical constructs to explain the lived expe-
riences of members of society. Garfinkel argued
against such understanding, claiming, instead,
that there is no separation between a theorized
social world and individuals’ experiences of it.
Rather, social facts are practical constructions,
produced in and through mutually recognizable,
publicly observable, common sense reasoning
practices, that is, methods that members of so-
ciety use to achieve social order in their local
contexts (Garfinkel, 1967, 2002; Heritage, 1984;
Maynard, 2012; Maynard & Clayman, 2003).
82
These methods through which courses of action
are produced and recognized are the topics of EM
research.
CA emerged from ethnomethodology’s inter-
ests in the empirical study of the methods by
which members of society achieve social order.
Asserting a fundamental role for interaction as
“the primordial site of human sociality” (Sche-
gloff, 2006, p. 70), CA narrowed its focus to the
interactional bases of social order, presuming it
to be an interactional, sequential achievement,
produced and visible at all points and informed
by stable, witnessable interactional structures
(Enfield & Sidnell, 2014; Heritage, 1984; Sacks,
1984, 1992, 1995). These social structures com-
prise a common-sense knowledge—an interac-
tional competence—to which all ordinary memb-
ers of society normatively orient at all times
whatever the setting (Heritage, 1984; Sacks,
1984). This competence, which constitutes “the
core of childhood socialisation" (Heritage, 1984,
p. 239), functions ‘“underneath’, and indepen-
dent from, the goal-directed social behaviour that
people are effecting with their context-situated
usage of language” (Enfield & Sidnell, 2014,
p. 99; see also Ford, Fox, & Thompson, 2013;
Levinson, 2006; Schegloff, 2006).
The specification of the interactional infras-
tructure has formed the research program of CA.
The basic structures shown to comprise the infras-
tructure thus far include the systems of turn tak-
ing, sequence organization, preference, and re-
pair (Dingemanse et al., 2015; Kendrick et al.,
2014; Stivers et al., 2009). The turn taking system
has to do with the construction and distribution of
turns in interaction. There are two components of
this system: the turn-constructional component—
how turns are designed—and the turn allocation
component—the methods for allocating turns
(Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974). A second
structure is sequence organization, which is “the
vehicle for getting some activity accomplished”
(Schegloff, 2007, p. 2) and concerns the relative
positioning of actions or turns. CA considers the
positioning of an action to be “fundamental to the
understanding of its meaning and to the analy-
sis of its significance as an action” (Stivers, 2012,
p. 191). The basic unit of sequence organization is
the adjacency pair, which consists of two turns that
are normatively fitted to each other such that the
first utterance projects a next action. As explained
by Schegloff (1968), “given the first, the second
is expectable; upon its occurrence it can be seen
to be a second item to the first; upon its nonoc-
currence it can be seen to be officially absent”
(p. 1083).
The Modern Language Journal, 103, Supplement 2019
Preference organization has to do with struc-
tural preferences in sequence organization. Many
action types involve at least two relevant options
that differ in terms of how they forward the in-
teraction. For example, offers are preferred to re-
quests, and responses that comply with requests
are preferred to those that do not. Preferred ac-
tions are typically performed more straightfor-
wardly than dispreferred actions are, with the lat-
ter actions typically marked by delays, hesitation
markers, accounts, and so on (Pillet–Shore, 2017;
Pomerantz & Heritage, 2012). Interlocutors ori-
ent to the relevance of preference to manage
and display to each other their ongoing under-
standing of what they are doing together. Their
shared understanding then is a practical concern
and is continually managed by individuals as their
course of action unfolds.
Repair is “‘the self-righting’ mechanism” (Sche-
gloff, Jefferson, & Sacks, 1977, p. 381) of talk that
allows individuals to deal with troubles in speak-
ing and hearing that threaten their shared under-
standings of the work they are doing together in
their talk. Its use ensures “that intersubjectivity is
maintained or restored, and that the turn and se-
quence and activity can progress to possible com-
pletion” (Schegloff, 2007, p. xiv). A CA account of
intersubjectivity refers not to participants’ mutual
representational understandings of the world but
to their shared understandings of the work they
are doing together as their interaction unfolds
(Sidnell & Enfield, 2012). This understanding is
emergent from and maintained by the sequen-
tial organization of action and supported by the
system of repair. Repair practices do not address
“all divergences or difficulties of understanding”
(Schegloff, 1992, p. 1341, italics added). Instead,
they deal with “only the narrower domain of un-
derstanding what someone has just said” (Sche-
gloff, 2000, p. 207), that is, with difficulties pre-
sented by “the production and uptake of the talk
itself” (Schegloff, 1992, p. 1341).
Research drawing on CA to study L2 learn-
ing has grown steadily over the last 15 or so
years. Studies have investigated the institutional
nature of L2 classroom interaction (e.g., Seed-
house, 2004), various activities by which teach-
ing and learning are accomplished (e.g., Heller-
mann, 2008; Markee & Kunitz, 2013; Waring,
2009, 2013), and how learners’ language use
changes over time (Berger & Pekarek Doehler,
2018; Rine & Hall, 2011). An increasing num-
ber of studies has investigated the roles that em-
bodied resources such as facial expressions, eye
gaze, and body positioning play in L2 learning
(e.g., Eskildsen & Wagner, 2015; Seo & Koshik,
Joan Kelly Hall
2010). Most recently, studies have attempted to
combine CA with usage-based linguistics (Eskild-
sen, 2009, 2011, 2014) to show how linguistic con-
structions of varying complexity “sediment into an
experientially driven language resource that suc-
cessively incorporates new form–function connec-
tions” (Kasper & Wagner, 2014, p. 198).
SOME FUNDAMENTALS OF INTERACTIONAL
LINGUISTICS
Interactional linguistics is an interdisciplinary
approach to the study of the grammar of inter-
action. With intellectual roots in CA, discourse-
functional linguistics, and linguistic anthropol-
ogy, IL was formally introduced as a field of study
in 2001 (Couper–Kuhlen & Selting, 1996, 2001;
Fox et al., 2012; Gumperz, 1982; Ochs, 1996;
Ochs, Schegloff, & Thompson, 1996; Schegloff,
1996). Like CA, IL takes an enchronic perspec-
tive on human interaction1 (Enfield, 2011, 2013).
Analysis from this perspective is concerned with
the study of interaction as it unfolds in real time
and space, focusing on sequences of interdepen-
dent actions that are taken to be “co-relevant
and causally-conditionally related” (Enfield, 2011,
p. 287). Drawing, for the most part, on CA meth-
ods and the analytic framework of modern de-
scriptive linguistics (Couper–Kuhlen & Selting,
2018), IL research poses questions that are con-
cerned with uncovering the linguistic practices
that are fitted to particular social action for-
mats, defined as “recurrent and sedimented ways
of accomplishing specific social actions in talk-
in-interaction” (Couper–Kuhlen, 2014, p. 624;
Fox, 2007).
An example of such research is Curl’s (2006)
study on the social action formats of offers in En-
glish telephone calls.2 Offers are actions in which
a speaker “proposes to satisfy another’s want or
need, or to assist in resolving a difficulty experi-
enced by another” (p. 1257). Curl’s analysis shows
that the linguistic formatting of offers is systemat-
ically related to the sequential location of the of-
fer in the interactional activity. More specifically,
offers of assistance in the resolution of problems
are formatted three different ways depending on
where they appear in the interaction. Offers that
are positioned in the opening section of the in-
teraction after greetings and identifications and
displayed as the reason for calling are overwhelm-
ingly designed with an if … then … construction.
Offers that come toward the closing of an inter-
action and bring out a potential problem educed
from prior talk are designed as yes/no questions
using the expression do you want (me to) X. A third
83
type of offer is designed specifically to address a
problem that is explicitly identified in prior talk.
This type is positioned immediately after the prob-
lem has been raised, and while its position in the
larger sequences of interaction is less restrictive,
it does not occur as part of potential closing se-
quences. Too, it is designed with a broader range
of formats, with a skewing toward the use of can
and will, but it is never produced with the do you
want construction. Curl concludes that the use of
the differently designed offers allows speakers and
recipients to foreground different orientations to
the problems and to each other.
Another example of IL research is Thompson,
Fox, and Couper–Kuhlen’s (2015) comprehen-
sive study of responsive actions to wh-questions,
the findings of which show how the grammatical
formatting of responses is tailored to the actions
accomplished by particular question types. For ex-
ample, their examination of wh-questions seeking
information revealed that not only do the gram-
matical patterns of the responses differ according
to the action of the question but so does the or-
ganization of the sequences. Specifying questions
seek specific pieces of information and are almost
always follow-up questions. Telling questions can
also be follow-up questions but are more often
topic proffers, which typically come after the pos-
sible closure of a sequence of interaction and pro-
pose particular topics to the recipient (Schegloff,
2007). This type of question seeks extended re-
sponses, such as stories, reports, and accounts.
While both types of questions engender phrasal
and clausal responses, the work these responses
do varies according to the type of question the re-
sponses are addressing. Phrasal responses to spec-
ifying questions do simple ‘no problem’ answer-
ing. This is illustrated in Extract 1, where two
simple phrasal responses (lines 9, 10) are pro-
duced directly, without an account, after a specify-
ing question (line 8). Prior to the question, Jason
and Mary had been talking about the possibility of
George W. Bush, then the president of the United
States, winning his second election, and Jason had
just completed a lengthy turn arguing that Bush
would indeed be re-elected (not shown here). Af-
ter a long silence, another party to the conversa-
tion, Sophie, a Canadian, asks her question, which
is directly responded to and thus treated as un-
problematic by Jason, who, after another silence,
takes a next turn.
EXTRACT 1 (Thompson et al., 2015, p. 23)3
8 SOP: when’s the next elections? =
9 JAS: =two thou[sand four].
10 MAR: [two thousand] four,
84
11 (1.6)
12 JAS: and besides, the Democrats don’t
13 have a strong
14 candidate,
In contrast, while clausal responses to speci-
fying questions also provide the sought-after in-
formation, they display trouble with the question
as either being inapposite relative to its sequen-
tial placement or its relevance to the ongoing in-
teraction. Extract 2 illustrates a clausal response
(line 13), produced after a delay (line 12), to
a specifying question (lines 10–11). According
to Thompson et al. (2015), the trouble that the
clausal response marks is that the question is out
of place sequentially as it comes in the middle of
a turn constructional unit (line 10) rather than at
its end and is not made a relevant next action by
Dan’s turn. Moreover, the question that Kyle asks
is unrelated to the story Dan is telling.
EXTRACT 2 (Thompson et al., 2015, p. 31)
1 DAN: that’s one of the Giants’
2 strengths actually is their
3 bullpen and i -even wh-i-even
4 losing Mark Jackson
5 i-Mike Jackson still (1.0) still
6 have a
7 relatively good bullpen I think.
8 =and that’s a real big strength I
9 think because (h) [()
10 KYL: [where’d he go
11 again?
12 (0.8)
13 DAN: he went to Cincinnati.
14 (0.3)
15 KYL: .hh [hh
Responses to telling questions differ from those
to specifying questions in that the preferred work
of telling is accomplished not by phrasal re-
sponses but by unrelated clausal responses. Ex-
tract 3 illustrates this. Here, Vivian’s topic proffer
(line 1) receives a multiclausal response, begun
by Nancy and elaborated on by Michael (lines 3–
5, 8).
EXTRACT 3 (Thompson et al., 2015, p. 21)
1 VIV: so what did you guys do today
2 (1.8)
3 NAN: n-mm
4 I went grocery shopping and we
5 went over to the ma:ll
6 .pt .hhh
7 (0.5)
8 MIC: bought some vitamins
In contrast, as shown in Extract 4, phrasal re-
sponses to telling questions resist the telling. Prior
to this exchange, Fran had been talking with
The Modern Language Journal, 103, Supplement 2019
Sharon, Ted’s daughter, who had invited Fran’s
daughter to visit them. When Fran asks for direc-
tions, Sharon says she will put her father on the
phone, and this is where the extract begins. We
can see that, rather than receiving an expanded
clausal response, the telling question produced
by Fran (lines 5–6) receives a phrasal response by
Ted (line 7). Fran treats this response as inade-
quate by repeating his answer with expressive high
rise-fall prosody (line 9).
EXTRACT 4 (Thompson et al., 2015, p. 43)
1 TED: what’s going o:n
2 (.)
3 FRA: what’s going on.
4 TED: =w-yea:h.[((vl)) hmhhhh]
5 FRA: [what are you guys]
6 doing at the bea::ch.
7 TED: n:no:thin, ‘hh
8 (.)
9 FRA: ↑NO:thi::[:n,’
10 TED: [[((f))↑no::,
11 (0.2)
12 FRA: oh: good heaven.
To recap, Thompson et al.’s (2015) findings
reveal specific links between the grammar of re-
sponsive actions and their information-seeking
questions. Phrasal responses to specifying ques-
tions are treated as complete actions, but to
telling questions they are treated as interaction-
ally insufficient or inapposite. In contrast, clausal
responses to telling questions are treated as
complete and unproblematic while phrasal re-
sponses are not. Thompson and colleagues ar-
gue that their findings showing that more syn-
tactically minimal forms are not reduced forms
of more syntactically elaborated forms but in fact
do distinct interactional work challenge the va-
lidity of the traditional grammatical notion of
ellipsis.
A last example showing how grammatical prac-
tices are shaped by actional turns and the posi-
tions of the turns within interactional sequences
is the study by Fox and Heinemann (2016) of the
formulation of requests for action in an Ameri-
can English-speaking shoe repair shop. Requests
have been the focus of a great deal of research,
which has shown that a range of different formats
are used to do requesting, with the variation tied
to entitlement, which has to do with how speak-
ers position themselves relative to the right to ask
another to do something for them, and contin-
gency, which is the degree to which “a requester
acknowledges the possibility that unknown fac-
tors may affect the grantability of the request”
(Thompson et al., 2015, p. 220; see also Curl &
Joan Kelly Hall 85
Drew, 2008; Drew & Couper–Kuhlen, 2014; Woot- EXTRACT 6 (Fox & Heinemann, 2016, p. 509)
ton, 1981).
Fox and Heinemann (2016) add to this work 4 C: so:hh I’m >back with these< I
by showing that even relatively minor variations 5 tried them on a[t home
6 S: [kay
in the linguistic formatting of the request are of
7 C: → an- and I need to get a <second
systematic relevance for how participants in in- 8 hole
teraction accomplish the action of requesting. As 9 → punched >, [like right there, on
one example, they found that slight variations in 10 each side
the formulation of requests beginning with need 11 S: [okay
are interactionally relevant. One variation is the 12 C: just cause it was just a little
need + NP declarative requests, which are regularly 13 too tight
produced immediately after the greeting, and 14 on the:[re
typically state a very specific solution. These are 15 S: [o-
treated by the shop employees as easily grantable. 16 C: [but I think that would-
17 S: [so::, an inch? or::l[ess::?
Extract 5 contains an example.
18 C: [yea::::h,hh
19 C: I would say
EXTRACT 5 (Fox & Heinemann, 2016, pp. 506– 20 (0.7)
507) 21 C: like if you put it r:ight there,
3 S: how you doin’ 22 I’d be good.
4 C: goo:d, 23 S: let me get my:: c[aliper
5 (0.8) 24 C: [okay
6 →C I, (0.2) need heels=
7 S: =okay While these indicate a similarly high degree of
8 C: and (0.1) customer entitlement to make the request as the
9 S: >shine [‘em up< need + NP declarative requests do, this type is typi-
10 C: [jus- cally used to request services that customers may
11 well[:
consider to be less common for the shop or in
12 S: [clean ‘em
13 [up
need of precise detailing of the action that is be-
14 C: [die ´m and clean ‘em up, ing requested and thus involve more interactional
15 S: make ‘em look pretty, work by customers and shop employees. Fox and
15 C: yes ple:ase Heinemann (2016) conclude that the linguistic
and interactional formatting of social actions are
In this case, the request (line 6) comes imme- much more granular and varied than previous re-
diately after the greeting and is followed by an ac- search has indicated.
knowledgement by the shop employee that treats Together, findings from IL research revealing
the request as unproblematic (line 7). According the links between recurring grammatical prac-
to Fox and Heinemann, by their position in the in- tices and particular types of interactional work
teraction, their relatively simple design and their lend strong empirical support to a positionally
formulation of a solution, requests formatted in sensitive view of grammar, which posits that turns
this way indicate that the customer is entitled to and sequences of turns are what give shape to
make the request and there are no contingencies grammar “both grammar as an abstract, formal
that would prevent the shop from granting it. organization and the grammar of a particular ut-
A slight variation of the need request is the need terance” (Schegloff, 1996, p. 56; Couper–Kuhlen
+ resultative declaratives. Resultatives are “instances & Selting, 2018; Fox, 2007; Ochs et al., 1996;
where a verb has a patient-undergoer that is also Thompson et al., 2015). While primarily focused
the subject of a nonfinite verb in past participle on linguistic units comprising the interactional
form” (Fox & Heinemann, 2016, p. 509). Like framework of grammar, IL recognizes that non-
need + NP requests, these requests present the so- verbal practices including gestures, eye gaze, head
lution to a trouble, but what is specified is the ac- movements, and body orientations, alone or to-
tion involved in executing the solution. Extract 6 gether with verbal practices, are integral to the
contains an example. As exemplified here, these formation of social actions and action sequences,
requests are used when the requested repair re- suggesting that they should be considered core
quires further specification (lines 7–8) and thus components of an interactional grammar (Fox,
are typically followed by explications of how and 2007; Laury, Etelämä, & Couper–Kuhlen, 2014).
why the requested solution should be carried out To conclude, by claiming jointly constructed in-
(lines 9–10, 12–13, 15, 20–21). teraction to be the source of human sociality and
86
evidencing the interactional specifications of re-
curring grammatical units in actions and courses
of action, the contributions of CA and IL re-
search make clear that “grammar is not only some-
thing that originally arose out of usage patterns by
speakers, but it is those usage patterns themselves,
situated in the interaction itself, as temporal ob-
jects representing aggregations of patterns heard
and used by the users of the language” (Laury
et al., 2014, p. 441, emphasis in the original). In so
doing, they add much needed theoretical and em-
pirical weight to what is meant by usage in a usage-
based understanding of language.4
A RECONSIDERATION OF TERMS
As a social science, SLA is mainly carried out in
the symbolic world, where concepts do not point
to objective representations but are “grounded in
public commitments” (Enfield, 2015b, p. 3; Schu-
mann, 2003). As cultural artifacts, concepts pro-
vide a basis for construal, categorization, and de-
cision making. They are tools in decision making
because they give us criteria for recognizing in-
stances of what we are looking for and of what
we are not looking for (Enfield, 2015b). Concepts
like competence and grammar have enjoyed a
long history of use in SLA to refer to language
knowledge. Understandings of the usage-based
foundations of SLA, enhanced by the theoreti-
cal insights and findings from the research pro-
grams of CA and IL, however, make relevant the
need for different concepts to better capture cur-
rent understandings of language knowledge. In
this section, I discuss how the terms competence
and grammar construe language knowledge and
then offer alternative terms, which, I contend, are
more suitable conceptual tools.
Competence
The term competence has a long history of use
in the field of SLA to refer to language knowledge.
In the early 1960s, linguistic competence was coined
by Chomsky (1966) to refer to a homogeneous,
fixed set of grammatical rules that “any speaker
of a language knows implicitly” (p. 9). Finding
this term inadequate, Hymes (1974) coined the
term communicative competence to reflect that “so-
cial function gives form to the ways in which lin-
guistic features are encountered in actual life”
(p. 196). More recently, multi-competence was pro-
posed to better capture the diversity of language
knowledge of bilinguals and multilinguals (Cook,
1991, 1992, 2012; Cook & Li Wei, 2016). As CA
studies of L2 learning have increased, especially
The Modern Language Journal, 103, Supplement 2019
since the turn into the 21st century, the term in-
teractional competence has been used to refer both
to the interactional infrastructure and to objects
of L2 learning (Hall, 2018).5 Most recently, the
Douglas Fir Group (2016) used both communica-
tive and interactional competence to refer to “the
holistic sum of [multilingual speakers’] multiple-
language capacities,” noting that their use of com-
petence “is significantly different from its use by
Chomsky, perhaps even its use by Hymes” (p. 26).
It may be that the use of competence by the
Douglas Fir Group (2016) is meant to afford new
perspectives. Nonetheless, I question its viability
for capturing fully usage-based understandings of
the dynamic composition of L2 knowledge for
two reasons. First, as noted by many (e.g., Blom-
maert, 2008; Blommaert & Backus, 2013; Busch,
2012; Canagarajah & Wurr, 2011; Hall, 2016; Hall,
Cheng, & Carlson, 2006; Makoni & Pennycook,
2007), competence continues to carry an ideology
of homogeneity, permanence, and universality.
As noted earlier, this meaning is retained in the
term interactional competence as developed in
the field of CA in that it refers to a universal
interactional infrastructure to which all human
beings normatively orient at all times whatever
the setting to do the cooperative work of hu-
man sociality6 (Enfield & Sidnell, 2014; Levin-
son, 2006; Schegloff, 2006). However, in contrast
to a theorized Chomskyan competence built on
intuitions, CA has been concerned with uncov-
ering the publically witnessable universal infras-
tructure, as exhibited in the methods used by
members to achieve social order (Maynard, 2012;
Sacks, 1992, 1995). Continuing to use interac-
tional competence to refer to this interactional in-
frastructure seems appropriate. Using the same or
a similar term—interactional, communicative, or
multi-competence—to refer to qualitatively differ-
ent, variable phenomena in studies of L2 learning,
however, creates conceptual confusion.
Repertoire
To counteract the implications of solidity and
universality that are afforded by the term com-
petence, elsewhere, I proposed the term repertoire
to refer to the totality of an individual’s language
knowledge, defining it as “conventionalized con-
stellations of semiotic resources for taking action”
(Hall et al., 2006, p. 232; Hall, 2016, 2018, 2019).
This term, too, has a long history of use, primarily
in linguistic anthropology. It can be traced back to
Gumperz (1986), a linguistic anthropologist and
colleague of Hymes, who originally defined reper-
toire as “the totality of linguistic resources (...)
Joan Kelly Hall
available to members of particular communities”
(p. 20), and coined the term to refer to the va-
riety of languages shared by groups of people in
multilingual communities residing within India.
The use of the term today has become broader
and, at the same time, narrower. It is broader in
that it refers to a whole range of nonlinguistic
resources that individuals use to make meaning,
including gestures, facial expressions, and other
modes in addition to linguistic constructions. It
is narrower in that it refers to individual knowl-
edge of resources for communicating rather than
to the resources circulating in any one community
(Blommaert & Backus, 2011, 2013; Busch, 2012,
2017; Canagarajah & Wurr, 2011; Hall, 2016; Hall
et al., 2006; Rymes, 2010).
The term is conceptually useful in two ways.
First, it more aptly captures the variable mix
of heterogeneous, multilingual, and multimodal
constructions that L2 learners draw on and de-
velop in their diverse public, material, and digital
contexts of use. Second, it suggests a more em-
pirically valid understanding of learning, not as a
linear, one-path-fits-all process, but rather as bio-
graphical and variable trajectories occurring over
learners’ lifespans. With its focus on individual
biographies, the term repertoire, unlike compe-
tence, accounts for interactions of time and space
on learners’ knowledge.
The biographical and flexible nature of reper-
toires is evidenced in our own life experiences.
Depending on the trajectories of our experiences,
some components of our repertoires may be more
enduring. For example, constructions that are
used to identify common objects such as desks, ta-
bles, and chairs and common experiences such as
meal times and schooling can last in our reper-
toires over a lifetime. Other items may be more
temporary. In our travels to other places, for ex-
ample, we may pick up and use some local ex-
pressions that we lose as soon as we move on to
another place. Moreover, because the paths that
our life experiences take are not linear, our reper-
toires do not develop along a straight path of
ever-increasing size. Rather, they grow quickly in
some stages of life, such as during early child-
hood, or when learning a new subject or taking
on a new career, and gradually in others. As ex-
plained by Blommaert and Backus (2011), unlike
competence,
[r]epertoires enable us to document in great detail
the trajectories followed by people throughout their
lives: the opportunities, constraints and inequalities
they were facing, the learning environments they
had access to (and those they did not have access
87
to), their movement across physical and social space,
their potential for voice in particular social arenas.
(p. 24)
Expertise
A second reason the term competence is prob-
lematic is because it conflates what one knows
with how well one knows it and is a binary con-
cept rather than scalar. Someone is either compe-
tent or is not. This, we know, does not reflect the
real-life variable nature of learners’ knowledge.
An alternative term is proficiency, which is typi-
cally found in assessment literature. It forms the
basis of ACTFL’s assessment guidelines, as well
as those of the Common European Framework
of Reference for Languages. However, its conven-
tional meaning, too, is inadequate as, although
proficiency assessments are scalar, they measure
acontextual linguistic structures and generic skills
such as speaking, reading, and writing. Where as-
sessments of learners’ repertoires have real conse-
quences, such as in educational settings, we need
a term that better captures their contextual and
variable nature.
A term that is more compatible with usage-
based understandings, I suggest, is the term exper-
tise. Expertise is the specialized area of study of
British sociologists Collins and Evans. They define
it as “the real and substantive possession of groups
of experts that individuals (...) acquire through
their membership of those groups” (Collins &
Evans, 2007, pp. 2–3). The process of acquiring
expertise, they assert, is a matter of socialization
into the practices of an expert group. In contrast
to proficiency, expertise is domain-specific, that is,
tied to particular skills and knowledge in particu-
lar fields or contexts. It is something that can be
built over time in interaction with others and that
can be lost over time as individuals’ life trajecto-
ries unfold.
Grammar
Another term that needs to be reconsidered in
light of usage-based understandings is grammar.
Like competence, this term has a long history of
use in SLA, with its conventional meaning tied to
an understanding of language as fixed structural
systems. Attached to grammar are terms used to
refer to its structures, largely developed on the
basis of written language that are considered to
exist independently from use (Ginzburg & Poe-
sio, 2016; Keevallik, 2018). Moreover, individuals
are treated as mere users of the system; they can
use the structures, but they cannot change them.
88
While the understanding of language in emergen-
tist approaches such as CA and IL is more aligned
with a usage-based understanding, in many cases,
the term grammar has been retained to refer
to the system and structure of language (e.g.,
Couper–Kuhlen, 2014; Hopper, 2011). The con-
tinued use of the term, at the very least, limits the
contributions their findings can make to enhanc-
ing understandings of the fundamental variability
of L2 learner knowledge.
Semiotic Resource
In contrast to grammar, the meaning of the term
semiotic resource is highly compatible with a usage-
based understanding of language (Douglas Fir
Group, 2016). It refers to context-networked op-
tions for making meaning in social contexts. In
addition to linguistic constructions, semiotic re-
sources include prosodic conventions such as in-
tonation, stress, tempo, pausing, and other fea-
tures that accompany speech; nonverbal means
of meaning-making such as facial expressions, eye
gaze, gesture, body positionings, and movement.
In the case of writing, in addition to conventional
linguistic units, semiotic resources can include
typescript and punctuation and other such con-
ventions. Also included are graphic and picto-
rial resources such as diagrams and pictures, and
artifactual modes such as objects and electronic
devices.
Each type of semiotic resource is a socially made
and culturally available mode for making mean-
ing (Kress, 2014). A mode is a “regularised or-
ganised set of resources for meaning-making, in-
cluding, image, gaze, gesture, movement, music,
speech and sound-effect” (Jewitt & Kress, 2003,
p. 1). The term multimodality, which refers to
the multiplicity of modes in addition to speech
and writing that can be mobilized to make mean-
ing, draws attention to the fact that human ac-
tions are built through the combination of many
meaning-making modes at one time. The concept
of a multimodal ensemble refers to the combina-
tion of modes in the making of meaning. It draws
attention to the integration of a plurality of modes
in the production and interpretation of actions
(Goodwin, 2003; Jewitt, 2008; Kress, 2014; Mon-
dada, 2016).
All semiotic resources, individually and in com-
bination, have meaning potentials, that is, con-
ventionalized meanings that develop from their
uses. Their conventionalized meanings represent
the ways that groups and communities in the past
have used the resources to accomplish particular
goals that, in turn, are shaped by larger social in-
The Modern Language Journal, 103, Supplement 2019
stitutions, such as the family, schools, communi-
ties, etc. and larger cultural and historical forces.
Their histories of use become their “provenance,
shaping available designs and uses” (Jewitt, 2008,
p. 247). In their uses of their resources at a par-
ticular moment in a particular context, individu-
als choose “a particular way of entering the world
and a particular way of sustaining relationships
with others” (Duranti, 1997, p. 46). The term de-
sign was coined by the New London Group (1996/
2000) to capture the dynamic processes by which
individuals make meaning with their available re-
sources. To design is to create meanings through
the organization of semiotic resources in ways to
achieve one’s communicative purposes (Cope &
Kalantzis, 2009; Kress, 2014).
Semiotic Register
While it is presumed that individual repertoires
are variable and the resources comprising them
are pragmatically driven, that is, emerging from
learners’ participation in their social worlds, the
terms alone do not capture fully the temporal and
spatial conditions of language use. For that we
need another term. Pennycook and Otsuji (2015)
and Canagarajah (2018) have proposed the term
spatial repertoires, which, Pennycook and Otsuji ar-
gue, “link the repertoires formed through indi-
vidual life trajectories to the particular places in
which these linguistic resources are deployed”
(p. 83). I propose semiotic register as a more viable
term as the term register has enjoyed a relatively
long history of meaning in linguistic anthropol-
ogy linking semiotic resources to particular social
practices and social personae. Agha (2004) de-
fines register as “a linguistic repertoire that is as-
sociated, cultural-internally, with particular social
practices and with persons who engage in such
practices” (p. 24). Exchanging the term linguistic
with semiotic to become ‘semiotic register’ better
captures the multimodal nature of the semiotic re-
sources available for meaning-making.
Registers comprise sets of semiotic resources
that are associated with, that is, index, particu-
lar activities in particular institutional contexts
(Agha, 2004). For example, registers are associ-
ated with all types of social institutions, from the
home, to schools, to community organization, to
commercial businesses and professions such as
medicine, the law, teaching, and so on. Regis-
ters also index social roles and relationships such
as parents, teachers, students, doctors, lawyers,
judges, and so forth. Individuals develop flexi-
ble schemas of expectations, that is, ethnograph-
ically grounded, “sedimented social knowledge”
Joan Kelly Hall
(Hanks, 1996, p. 238) about the conventional
meanings their semiotic resources afford and the
contexts to which their resources and registers are
connected through lifelong processes of socializa-
tion (Levinson, 2006). Like the resources com-
prising them, individual semiotic registers are not
fixed; they are social, historical regularities that
are displayed and transformed in the interactions
of individuals over time and space (Agha 2004,
2007; Silverstein, 2003).
In linking semiotic resources to contexts and
people, the term register also makes visible the
fact that individuals are not agents of free will,
independent decision makers, with unrestricted
power and authority to use their resources to
carry out any kind of action they want in any
local context of action (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005;
Kayi–Aydar, 2015). Rather, individual agency is
a social construction, “something that has to be
routinely created and sustained in the reflex-
ive activities of the individual” (Giddens, 1991,
p. 52). Social actions, then, are both structured
and structuring, bound by their resources’ his-
tories of meaning and yet “creative, variable, re-
sponsive to situational exigencies and capable of
producing novel consequences” (Ochs & Schief-
felin, 2017, p. 8). To paraphrase Enfield (2015a,
p. 219), repertoires and their register-linked semi-
otic resources do not imprison us, they equip
us. They are not straightjackets; they are action
suits.
CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS
CA and IL studies of actions and action projects
offer usage-based SLA a powerful lens at the mi-
cro level of social activity for understanding the
interactional sources of L2 learning by training
analytic focus more squarely on the interactional
materials from which the objects of L2 learning
emerge. Rather than looking first for the appear-
ance or placement of particular linguistic units
and relying on a priori grammatical terms to de-
scribe them, analytic attention is guided to locat-
ing actions and courses of action that regularly or
habitually involve learners, and unpacking their
recurring design features, that is, the linguistic
and other semiotic units comprising the actions.
In the case of L2 classrooms, for example, analytic
focus becomes trained on the regularly occurring
actions and action projects comprising the inter-
actions between teachers and students, and more
specifically, on the design features of teacher ac-
tions and the specific L2 learners’ actions they
engender in the moment, and the trajectories of
L2 learners’ developing repertoires to which such
89
actions and action projects give rise over time.
Moreover, conceptualizing L2 learner knowledge
as semiotic repertoires and objects of L2 learn-
ing as register-networked semiotic resources ex-
pands the analytic scope to include all modes of
meaning-making.
Such accounts can advance the development
of a specialized interaction-based metalanguage
for referring to the actions and action projects
comprising classrooms and other social contexts
that routinely involve L2 learners, resulting in bet-
ter understanding of the types of action projects
and their design features in which learners are
involved, the types of learner turns they engen-
der, and in particular the objects of learning that
such actions make relevant, and their links to
learners’ developing repertoires. As one exam-
ple of how such a focus can inform research on
L2 classroom interaction, consider the finding on
the ubiquity of the three-action sequence labelled
the IRF where I refers to a teacher initiation, R
to a student response, and F to a teacher follow-
up (see, e.g., Hall & Walsh, 2002; Hellermann,
2003, 2005; Mehan, 1979). As IL research sug-
gests, these terms are far too generic to under-
stand fully how teacher actions give shape and
substance to learners’ developing repertoires as
even slight variations in the formatting of actions
are consequential to the formatting of next ac-
tions. The term initiation in fact describes only
the location of an action, not the action itself.
Depending on the larger action project being ac-
complished, initial teacher actions can take many
forms, including directives, requests for action, re-
quests for information, and so on. And, as the
IL research on requests summarized earlier (e.g.,
Thompson et al., 2015) suggests, the design fea-
tures of each of these actions will vary depend-
ing on contextual factors such as contingency
and entitlement and, in turn, will have interac-
tional significance in terms of the types of stu-
dent responses they engender. Fuller understand-
ing of classroom-based L2 learning requires then
far greater analytic attention on describing the
actional sequences and their interlocking interac-
tional resources with which L2 learning environ-
ments are designed. As discussed earlier, a grow-
ing body of research in CA and IL has produced
descriptions of action projects such as requesting,
seeking information, assessing, extending, warn-
ing, linking back, pursuing a response, disagree-
ing, word searching, reference formulating, affil-
iating, summoning, and so on; these can serve as
reference guide and the beginnings of such a lan-
guage for the specialized work of L2 teaching (cf.
Enfield & Levinson, 2009; Ford et al., 2013).
90
In addition to advancing understandings of
the action-specific conditions of L2 learning, sys-
tematic research in building a specialized inter-
action metalanguage can provide strong empir-
ical evidence of the varying interrelationships
between specific design resources of actions and
action projects and the specific resources that
learners make use of in designing their social
worlds. Such work may reveal that some interac-
tional contexts are more restrictive than others
in terms of the actions they make possible, the
types of semiotic resources that are made avail-
able, and the opportunities that learners have to
take action, while actions, resources, and oppor-
tunities in other interactional contexts are more
extensive.
Beyond charting new directions in research on
L2 learning, the enhanced usage-based under-
standing of SLA presented here offer new ways
of understanding of L2 pedagogy by making clear
the inextricable link between teaching and learn-
ing. Key to understanding this relationship is the
term design. In IL research, design refers to the
semiotic resources comprising actions. It is also a
key term of the multiliteracies pedagogy (Cope &
Kalantzis, 2009, 2015; Kress, 2014; New London
Group, 1996). Based on the premise that the goal
of teaching and learning is transformation not
reproduction, the approach is organized around
the concept of designing, defined as the interested,
motivated, and purposive act of meaning-making
and aims to shape learners into active designers of
their worlds, that is, “fully makers and remakers
of signs and transformers of meaning” (Cope &
Kalantzis, 2009, p. 175). Learning environments
such as L2 classrooms are considered to be piv-
otal sources of design resources and L2 teach-
ers are considered key designers of these learn-
ing environments. The purposeful choices that
L2 teachers make in designing the actions and
action projects of their learning contexts signif-
icantly shape not only the meaning-making re-
sources that are available to learners but as impor-
tantly the ways in which L2 learners orient to the
resources and subsequently use them in the de-
sign of their own worlds.
In sum, a usage-based SLA research agenda
enriched by the theoretical and methodological
tools of CA and IL, along with enhanced un-
derstanding of the significant role that L2 teach-
ers play in designing learning environments ex-
pands the whole project SLA as encapsulated in
the transdisciplinary framework proposed by the
Douglas Fir Group (2016). Such transformed un-
derstandings not only support the development
The Modern Language Journal, 103, Supplement 2019
of innovative SLA research agendas but, as impor-
tantly, they make possible new designs of pedagog-
ical opportunities in ways that improve the ma-
terial, social, and interactional conditions of L2
learners’ social worlds.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Parts of this article were presented at SLRF 2017,
AAAL 2018, and TESOL 2018. I appreciate the feedback
from my fellow presenters and attendees. I also am very
grateful to Yingliang He and two anonymous reviewers
for their comments on earlier drafts.
NOTES
1 Hopper (2015) suggests the term ‘eventive’ to refer
to this time frame.
2 The intent here is not to provide an exhaustive re-
view of the research but to provide a few informative ex-
amples of the link between specific linguistic practices
and their social actions.
3 The excerpts in all of the extracts are slightly
abridged versions of those appearing in the studies.
Readers are directed to the original source for further
details.
4 It is worth noting that research on writing using the
methods of corpus linguistics has revealed similar links
between recurring linguistic features, such as multiword
units with open slots, and actions. These sequences
have been operationalized with terms such as formu-
laic frames (Gray & Biber, 2013), chunks (O’Keefe, Mc-
Carthy, & Carter, 2007), and lexical frames (Gray &
Biber, 2013).
5 Readers are directed to Hall (2018), part of a re-
cent special issue on interactional competence in Class-
room Discourse, which argues that the uptake of the
concept of interactional competence to refer to L2
objects of learning in studies using CA to study L2
learning displays a misunderstanding of, or at least
a lack of attention to its related but distinct intellec-
tual roots in linguistic anthropology and conversation
analysis.
6 This infrastructure forms part of what Levinson
(2006) refers to as the interaction engine, that is, “a core
universal set of proclivities and abilities that humans
bring, by virtue of human nature, to the business of in-
teraction” (p. 40). The universal set of structures com-
prising the interaction engine serves as building blocks
for the language-specific diversity of semiotic resources
used in social interaction. For an extended discussion of
the interaction engine and a related term, interactional
instinct, and their contributions to L2 learning, see Hall
(2019).
Joan Kelly Hall
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