Second/Foreign Language Learning

as a Social Accomplishment:
Elaborations on a Reconceptualized
SLA
ALAN FIRTH JOHANNES WAGNER
School of Education, Communication and Language University of Southern Denmark, Kolding
Sciences Engstien 1
Newcastle University DK–6000 Kolding
Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE1 7RU Denmark
United Kingdom Email: jwa@sitkom.sdu.dk
Email: alan.firth@ncl.ac.uk

In this article, we begin by delineating the background to and motivations behind Firth and
Wagner (1997), wherein we called for a reconceptualization of second language acquisition
(SLA) research. We then outline and comment upon some of our critics’ reactions to the
article. Next we review and discuss the conceptual, theoretical, and methodological impact the
article has had on the SLA field. Thereafter, we reengage and develop some of the themes
raised but left undeveloped in the 1997 article. These themes cluster around the notions of
and interrelationships between language use, language learning, and language acquisition.
Although we devote space to forwarding the position that the dichotomy of language use and
acquisition cannot defensibly be maintained (and in this we take up a contrary position to that
held in mainstream SLA), our treatment of the issues is essentially methodological. We focus
on describing a variety of aspects of learning-in-action, captured in transcripts of recordings
of naturally occurring foreign, second, or other language interactions. Through transcript
analyses, we explore the possibilities of describing learning-in-action devoid of cognitivistic
notions of language and learning. In so doing, we advance moves to formulate and establish a
reconceptualized SLA.

WITH THE BENEFIT OF 10 YEARS OF HIND-
sight, it is probably fair to say that our article
(Firth & Wagner, 1997) touched a proverbial raw
nerve within as well as around the periphery of
the second language acquisition (SLA) commu-
nity. Certainly the article’s evident impact on the
profession has greatly exceeded our expectations.
This is in no small measure thanks to The Mod-
ern Language Journal’s (MLJ ) editor, Sally Sieloff
Magnan, who so insightfully showcased the article
and its thought-provoking responses, thereby pro-
viding a framework for an extraordinarily fruit-
ful and lively debate. For some, the article has
been a rallying cry for an alternative SLA; for oth-
ers, it has presaged new lines of inquiry within a
rapidly developing and multivaried research field;
for many, it articulated misgivings and dissatisfac-
tion with dominant SLA concepts, theories, and
research practices. For others still, it was an un-
warranted, misguided, perplexing, and naı̈ve cri-
tique of a well-defined field of study. We begin by
explaining the background to our 1997 article.
BACKGROUND CONTEXT OF FIRTH AND
WAGNER (1997)

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C 2007 The Modern Language Journal
Firth and Wagner (1997) was conceived on
the basis of a lingering sense of frustration with
SLA as we saw it at that time—a sense that, in
Alan Firth and Johannes Wagner
large measure, prevailing, dominant SLA the-
ory and concepts were myopic vis-à-vis language
learning as social practice and language as a so-
cial phenomenon—and a strong sense that the
field had to acknowledge more openly and more
consequentially its limited vision, and, if possi-
ble, overcome its myopia. The frustrations with
SLA emerged gradually, from a bottom-up pro-
cess while working with our data materials—
audiorecordings of people at work in a vari-
ety of settings, engaging each other in a sec-
ond/foreign/other language (L2). Our analyses
revealed people who were artfully adept at over-
coming apparent linguistic hurdles, exquisitely
able to work together interactionally, despite hav-
ing what at first blush appeared to be an imper-
fect command of the languages they were using
(Firth, 1990, 1991, 1995a, 1995b, 1995c, 1995d,
1996; Wagner 1995a, 1995b, 1996, 1998; Wagner
& Firth, 1997). When we turned to apparently
relevant areas of SLA for theoretical insight, ap-
plicable concepts, and methodologies, something
was not right. Rather than depictions of interac-
tional success in an L2, we found an overwhelming
emphasis on and preoccupation with the individ-
ual’s linguistic and pragmatic failure. Rather than
talk, we found input. Rather than achievement, we
found an abundance of problem-sources. Rather
than collaboration, invention, and an extraordi-
narily creative use of shared resources (which, to
us, was learning-in-action), we found references to
errors, input modifications, interference, and fossiliza-
tions. Try as we might at first, our observations of
people using English as a lingua franca (i.e., a me-
diating language that is not a mother tongue [L1]
for any of the interactants—see Firth, 1990, 1996,
see also Jenkins, 2006a, 2006b; Seidlhofer, 2001,
2004) just would not fit the theory and concepts
of SLA.
Yet such data materials were, surely, of critical
relevance for the SLA program. Here, after all,
were nonnative speakers who were clearly acquir-
ing and using (new) forms of language on the
fly—often language forms that were linguistically
and pragmatically marked. Moreover, despite
noncollocating noun phrases, verb-concordance,
prosodic and morphosyntactic errors, and a host
of other linguistic anomalies, they were buying
and selling thousands of tons of Danish cheese
(as well as fish, flowers, and steel) on a daily basis,
and maintaining cordial relations with one an-
other. This was real cheese, and they were talking
(albeit in linguistically marked ways) real, and big,
money.
With a background in both SLA and eth-
nomethodological conversation analysis (CA),1
801
and informed by poststructuralist notions of con-
tingency, fluidity, hybridity, and marginality (see,
e.g., Lyotard, 1979; Rampton, 1995), we were un-
easy about how to approach our data materials.
CA, with its emphasis on the socially achieved
construction of irredeemably motile, participant-
defined contextual relevancies, its commitment
to the microanalytic explication of naturally oc-
curring (rather than experimental) encounters,
and an emic (participant-centered) sensitivity to
“what’s going on,” led us to see that our partici-
pants were not defensibly—that is, to us, emically—
identifiable as participants, learners, or even nonna-
tive speakers—the standard identity categories of
SLA. At the least, such categories were clearly not
omnirelevant: These individuals were also, vary-
ingly, sellers, buyers, friends, business acquain-
tances, customers, and clients. Identity, we had
learned, was a motile, liminal, achieved feature
of the interaction (Antaki & Widdicombe, 1998;
Gumperz, 1982; Rampton, 1995). And—as we will
show—we noted that who they are locally and dis-
cursively has an impact on how they use and learn
language.2
Certainly they were not learners in any for-
mal (or traditional SLA) sense of the term. Yet
they were clearly modifying, adapting, and cre-
atively deploying what were to them new forms
of language; that is, they were learning, and
they would occasionally draw attention—often in
jest—to their underdeveloped foreign language
abilities when engaging each other. We were hes-
itant about calling their interlanguage interlan-
guage, for where and what was the target language
here, in this seemingly linguistically lawless lingua
franca landscape? Here, it appeared, the spectre
of the native speaker, with his or her idealized
norms and baseline standards, had evaporated
(on this concept, see Jenkins, 2006a).3 SLA fit-
ted, but then again, it did not. Something was
quite clearly not right. The field was, we argued, in
need of theoretical, methodological, and concep-
tual refurbishment and expansion. In particular,
we (Firth & Wagner, 1997) called for a reconcep-
tualization within SLA in three areas: “(a) a sig-
nificantly enhanced awareness of the contextual
and interactional dimensions of language use,
(b) an increased emic (i.e., participant-relevant)
sensitivity towards fundamental concepts, and (c)
the broadening of the traditional SLA data base”
(p. 286).
From our observations of SLA, it was the individ-
ual’s disembodied cognition—more specifically,
his or her autonomous language processing—that
was in the ascendancy, to the detriment of what we
might call social cognition, that is, what people do,
802
think, demonstrate, achieve, manipulate, modify,
acquire, and learn, together, in concerted social
interaction (e.g., Volosinov, 1930/1973; Vygotsky,
1978; Wertsch, 1991). This is not to say, then,
that learning was or is uninteresting or some-
how incidental to our methodological pursuits.
What we did not attempt to show in Firth and
Wagner (1997)—but will attempt to do in this
article—is that learning can be explicated and
tracked as it happens and, moreover, that the de-
scription of how it happens can be liberated from
a cognitivistic position predicated on telementa-
tional notions of communication4 and individual-
istic, monolinguistic, and formalistic perceptions
of language.5 These perceptions, we argued, in-
fuse SLA research, in its theorizing on language,
learning, and discourse, in its terminologies and
fundamental concepts (such as an ascendant na-
tive speaker and interlanguage), and in its method-
ological practices, including the practices of those
who focalize interaction in SLA studies.
The immediate reactions to the 1997 article
were, for the most part, polarized, with rather
stern criticism on one side and firm support on
the other.6 Because the criticisms go to the heart
of the debate, a debate that, as recent publications
attest, has in no manner been concluded (see,
e.g., the recent exchanges between Gass, 2004;
Hall, 2004; Larsen-Freeman, 2004; and Wagner,
2004), and because these criticisms reveal the key
counterarguments to ours, while demonstrating
how entrenched positionings within SLA can be-
come, let us briefly consider the criticisms of Firth
and Wagner (1997).
CRITICISMS OF FIRTH AND WAGNER (1997)
In contradistinction to our argument, Long
(1993) had actually argued for SLA theory culling,
rather than an expansion or broadening of SLA.
In his response to our 1997 article, Long (1997)
ventured that the fundamental problem with our
position, which among other things emphasized
the need to focus on L2 acquisition through L2
use,7 was that SLA is “the study of L2 acquisi-
tion, [and] not . . . ‘most centrally the language
use of second or foreign language speakers’”
(p. 318). Long went on to state that “most SLA
researchers view the object of inquiry as in large
part an internal, mental process” (p. 319). How-
ever, he conceded that “Firth and Wagner are per-
fectly justified, and probably right, in arguing that
a broader, context-sensitive, participant-sensitive,
generally sociolinguistic orientation might prove
beneficial for SLA research” (p. 322). Never-
theless, he ended his response with “the major
The Modern Language Journal 91 (2007)
problem I have with Firth and Wagner’s polemic
remains my skepticism as to whether greater in-
sights into SL use will necessarily have much to say
about SL acquisition” (p. 322).
Kasper (1997) adopted a similar stance. “‘A’
stands for acquisition,” she reminded us, adding,
tellingly, that “[a] noncognitivist discipline that
has learning as its central research object is a con-
tradiction in terms” (p. 310; note, however, that
we did not, in Firth and Wagner, 1997, call for
a noncognitivist SLA). In close agreement with
Long (1997), Kasper held that “the most nagging
problem with the Firth and Wagner paper [is that
it] has in fact very little to say about L2 acquisition”
(p. 310). She went on to state that “I am comfort-
able with an essentially cognitivist definition of
SLA” (p. 310), though in her self-styled heretical
final note she submitted that
if the excellent microanalytic tools of CA were in-
corporated into a language socialization approach to
SLA, we might be able to reconstruct links between
L2 discourse and the acquisition of different aspects
of communicative competence that have been largely
obscure thus far. (p. 311)8
Poulisse (1997) also offered a defense of the
psycholinguistic approach in response to our
arguments, maintaining that “the task of all
researchers [is] to not only describe, but also ex-
plain and predict phenomena” (p. 325) and “it
would definitely not do to just look at particu-
lar and local phenomena and find specific ex-
planations for each of them” (p. 325). However,
Poulisse conceded that “Firth and Wagner have a
point when they plea for ‘an enhanced awareness
of the contextual and interactional dimensions of
language use’ and a more positive view of the NN’s
[non-native speaker’s] attempts to interact in the
L2” (p. 327).
Gass (1998), who found our perspective “per-
plexing” (p. 88), maintained that we had got it
all very wrong and that our criticisms were naı̈ve
and misplaced because, among other things, in
calling for greater attention to communication,
we had not understood that the “proper” object
of attention in SLA is language; thus her correc-
tion: “the emphasis in input and interaction stud-
ies [in SLA] is on the language used and not on
the act of communication” (p. 84). “The goal of
my work,” she wrote, “(and others within the in-
put/interaction framework . . .) has never been to
understand language use per se . . . but rather to
understand what types of interaction might bring
about what types of changes in linguistic knowl-
edge” (p. 84). Gass made the erroneous obser-
vation that “Firth and Wagner portray cognitive
Alan Firth and Johannes Wagner
approaches and communication/discourse em-
phases as mutually incompatible” (p. 84). In ad-
dition, she claimed that, because we called for an
enlargement of the standard SLA database (which
we see as being dominated by classroom and ex-
perimental settings) to include settings such as
the workplace,9 and because we called for greater
attention to L2 use from an emically informed
viewpoint, the approach we espoused “is not ac-
tually part of SLA, but part of the broader field
of L2 studies (of which SLA is a subset)” (p. 84).
She continued, “many individuals in a workplace
setting . . . are not learners in the sense that is of
interest to researchers in SLA” (p. 84).
We shall return to some of these criticisms
presently (see also Firth & Wagner, 1998). What
is important to point out at this juncture are
the rhetorical methods and arguments deployed
both to dismiss our viewpoint and to impose a
grand narrative (Lyotard, 1979) or dominant the-
ory of SLA, a theory that is meant to trump
ours precisely because it is framed and formu-
lated as dominant—for example, in ex cathedra
proclamations about how SLA is properly done,
and through references to what most SLA re-
searchers do (see Long, 1997; Gass, 1998). The
criticisms also demonstrate rather vividly how
readily hegemonic forces can come to the fore
when metatheoretical contributions, such as Firth
and Wagner’s (1997), attempt to critique prevail-
ing, established, and thus mainstream, intellec-
tual practices. Admittedly, this is a mainstream
that we, in and through our critique, both aid
in its construction as mainstream and contribute
to its status as mainstream. Long (1997), Kasper
(1997), Poulisse (1997), and Gass (1998) drew
inwards, and from their self-constructed SLA pan-
theon they laid down the law by defining SLA’s
proper intellectual territory (e.g., learners, lan-
guage, cognition), delineating its key concerns
(e.g., acquisition, not use, language, not commu-
nication), and by pointing to its borders (e.g., by
stipulating what is inside and outside SLA). In so
doing, they defined the parameters of legitimate
criticism and debate while essentially accusing us
of intellectual trespass (see Firth & Wagner, 1998;
Thorne, 2000).
For some SLA researchers, including some with
tangential SLA interests, the Firth and Wagner
(1997) article seems to have been viewed as a kind
of watershed for SLA in general and for SLA stud-
ies of interaction in particular. This reaction to
it occurred, at least in part, as the result of the
prominence the article was given in the MLJ at
the time—as the centerpiece of a focused and
extended discussion by prominent scholars con-
tributing to an esteemed journal. However, as we
803
pointed out in our 1997 article, the arguments
it contained did not emerge from an intellectual
void. Although the article has since been char-
acterized as seminal by a number of scholars, it
would be a mistake to see it as some kind of so-
ciocultural or sociointeractional big bang within
or without SLA. Our theoretical position vis-à-vis
what we had termed and perceived as mainstream
SLA emerged from our own observations of and
engagement in an ineluctable sociocultural turn
in the study of language that had swept across
linguistics in general and discourse studies in par-
ticular, as well as across anthropology, social psy-
chology, education, and sociology in the 1970s
and 1980s, beginning, we argued, with Gumperz
and Hymes’s (1972), Halliday’s (1973), Hymes’s
(1974), and others’ influential calls for a socially
constituted linguistics. The Firth and Wagner ar-
ticle also developed and was influenced by a num-
ber of extant, socioculturally focused critiques of
SLA by scholars such as Block (1996), Kramsch
(1993), Lantolf (1996), Rampton (1987), and van
Lier (1994).
Of course, SLA research of the 1980s and 1990s
was itself influenced by this sociocultural turn—
as witnessed by the steady increase in studies that
acknowledged, thematized, and explored context
and interaction. However, we argued in Firth and
Wagner (1997) that in the main, SLA work—
including contextual and interaction-oriented
studies—was tenaciously resistant to the full im-
plications of this sociocultural turn (see also sim-
ilar criticisms made by Breen, 1985; Lantolf &
Appel, 1994; Larsen-Freeman, 1983; Rampton,
1987). That is, despite a significant increase in
calls for more socially oriented approaches to L2
learning and acquisition throughout the 1980s
and early to mid-1990s, SLA continued to be dom-
inated by an essentially Chomskian mind-set that
placed enormous stress on individual cognition—
to such an extent that, to some, alternative con-
ceptions of SLA were perplexing and just plain
wrong. However, on the basis of subsequent pub-
lications that reengaged and developed our criti-
cisms of SLA10 (e.g., Atkinson, 2002; Block, 2003;
Hall, 2004; Jenkins, 2006a, 2006b; Markee, 2000;
Pavlenko, 2002; Rampton, 1997b; Seeley & Carter,
2004; Thorne, 2000), it seems reasonable to con-
clude that our article articulated a widely held
sense of dissatisfaction and unease that was build-
ing at the time both within and around the periph-
ery of SLA, an unease that provided impetus for
our own call for a reconceptualization of SLA the-
ories, concepts, and methods.11 In 1997, we main-
tained the position that SLA is part of the nexus
of approaches to the wider, interdisciplinary study
of language—which centrally includes language
804
learning—and has the potential to make signif-
icant contributions to a wide range of research
issues conventionally seen to reside outside its
boundaries—a potential that is, arguably, yet to
be realized.
What we called for was an epistemological and
methodological broadening of SLA. This broad-
ening does not entail jettisoning the mainstream
SLA position, as some have mistakenly interpreted
our arguments (e.g., Gass, 1998; Long, 1998;
Poulisse, 1997).12 Although we do not subscribe to
SLA’s fundamental tenets (e.g., an assumption of
the natural ascendancy of the native speaker), and
we seriously question (a) the validity of such stan-
dard SLA dichotomies as acquisition versus use,
and language versus communication; (b) problema-
tize the apparently clear-cut separation of the cog-
nitive and the social ; and (c) reject SLA’s essentially
static view of context and identity, in Firth and Wag-
ner (1997), we nevertheless eschewed dogmatic
positioning and pressed instead for the need for
greater theoretical, conceptual, and methodolog-
ical balance within SLA. For let us acknowledge
that SLA research has, over the four decades or so
of its existence as a discipline, uncovered a wide
range of critically important findings relating to
how languages are acquired or learned.
In Firth and Wagner (1997), we emphasized the
need for a theoretical, methodological, and epis-
temological broadening of SLA, which included
enlarging the standard SLA database to one that
reflects more accurately the sociolinguistic real-
ity of a vast number of L2 users/learners around
the world. We sought an SLA that was more in-
teractionally sensitive, that also made room for an
emic stance towards fundamental concepts, and
that took seriously the theoretical and method-
ological consequences of a social view of learn-
ing and language. We did so in the belief that
“the existence of distinct and multiple theoretical
traditions may help to explicate the processes of
SLA, and subsequently, to develop more accurate
heuristics which model these processes and condi-
tions” (Thorne, 2000, p. 221). Without specifying
in any detailed way what the reconceptualization
would entail in methodological terms (this was
not, after all, the purpose of our article in 1997),
we stressed “the need to work towards the evolu-
tion of a holistic, bio-social SLA” (p. 296).
RECONCEPTUALIZATIONS: NEW
DIRECTIONS IN SLA
How, then, do we assess the field of SLA,
10 years later? Has the reconceptualization we,
and others, called for come about? The most
accurate answer to this question is likely to be:
The Modern Language Journal 91 (2007)
It depends where you look. In many ways it ap-
pears that things are more or less as they were in
1997—the mainstream is in full flow (for recent
critical expositions, see Block, 2003; Cook, 1999;
Jenkins, 2006a, 2006b; Kramsch, 2006; Seeley &
Carter, 2004) and the native speaker continues to
predominate as the baseline or target that learn-
ers should seek to emulate; learning is conceived
as a cognitive process that is in essence context-
neutral; competence is defined largely in terms of
the individual’s grammatical competence; etic pre-
vails over emic; and learners in classrooms remains
the standard data set. All the while, these learners
are viewed as essentially engaged in a continuous,
autonomous, cognitive, morphosyntactic struggle
to traverse, in linear fashion, along the plane of
their interlanguage in pursuit of the target (i.e.,
native speaker) competence (see e.g., Han, 2003).
Nevertheless, our (and others’) urgings clearly
did not go unheeded. Much SLA research that
has been produced over the last decade bears wit-
ness to a marked increase in the number of socio-
cultural and contextual-interactional themes and
concepts impacting upon SLA’s research agenda,
revealing an apparent growing awareness of the
need to take seriously the requirement for a more
balanced approach to SLA research. It appears
that SLA has, over the last decade in particu-
lar, undergone a bifurcation between a cogni-
tive SLA (which is being termed mainstream in
a number of recent publications)—represented
perhaps most clearly in work undertaken by, for
example, Doughty and Long (2003), who see SLA
as “a branch of cognitive science” (p. 4)—and a
sociocultural/sociointeractional SLA. An increas-
ing number of researchers are thus displaying a
willingness to adopt emic perspectives and ex-
plore and attempt to develop cognitive-social ap-
proaches to language learning.
New sets of metaphors are being deployed,
such that allusions to dynamism, interaction, in-
tricacy, and the liminal are nowadays competing
with the established SLA metaphors of machinery
and computation (e.g., input, output, process-
ing). Kramsch (2002), for example, proposed the
development of an ecological approach to SLA and
language learning, one that centrally acknowl-
edges the nonlinear, interactional, and contextual
characteristics of language use and acquisition.
Borrowing from the latest thinking in the natu-
ral sciences, Larsen-Freeman (1997, 2007) used
the terms chaos and complexity in her attempt to
capture more accurately the fact that L2 learning
is “dynamic, complex, nonlinear, unpredictable,
sensitive to initial conditions, sometimes chaotic,
open, self-organizing, feedback sensitive, adap-
tive” (Larsen-Freeman, 1997, p. 35). Block (2007)
Alan Firth and Johannes Wagner
used the term multimodal to capture the multiplic-
ity of resources (historical, cultural, spatial, tem-
poral, linguistic, etc.) brought to bear upon the
processes of language learning and as a frame-
work for more socially oriented SLA analyses.
Compared with mainstream cognitive SLA, such
work centrally locates and thematizes the contin-
gent, the contextual, the ad hoc-ness, the interre-
latedness of linguistic and situational elements,
and the unsystematicity inherent in processes un-
derlying L2 learning—factors that have been at
worst overlooked and at best downgraded in im-
portance in more traditional SLA research.
Research of this chaotic, social, ecological kind
is being recognized as representing new direc-
tions in the SLA field (see Cook, 2002; Kram-
sch 2002; Larsen-Freeman, 2003; Ortega, 2005).
Markee and Kasper (2004) thus talked of a re-
cent “split between mainstream, cognitive SLA
and emergent, sociocultural approaches to SLA”
(p. 491). This latter type, Markee and Kasper
claimed, “points the way to future developments
in what may prove to be one of the most radi-
cal respecifications of SLA researchers’ theoreti-
cal priorities and methodological practices in the
history of the field” (p. 492).
Three topics appear to play a key role in the de-
velopment of work in this sociocultural, socioin-
teractional area: (a) whether the research incor-
porates educational (i.e., classroom) settings or
other (e.g., workplace) settings; (b) whether the
focus is on language learning or interaction; and
(c) whether the research is theory driven or data-
driven. Lantolf, with several collaborators (e.g.,
Lantolf, 2000; Lantolf & Appel, 1994; Lantolf &
Thorne, 2006; Pavlenko & Lantolf, 2000), has en-
gaged in SLA theory-building in the Vygotskyan
tradition, producing what has become known as
the sociocultural approach to SLA.13 At the core
of Vygotskyan learning theory, new developmen-
tal stages are first accomplished with the help of
others in the social sphere and can then become
intrapsychological accomplishments (see Hall’s,
1997, useful synopsis). The pathway to learning is
thus through social practice. The social practice
in which learning has been studied thus far has
been in L2 classrooms. In sociocultural theory:
Communication, including the instructional con-
versation of the classroom . . . and the learning-
development that emerges from it, arise in the
coming-together of people with identities (which en-
tail more than simply whether one is a native speaker),
histories and linguistic resources constructed in those
histories. (Dunn & Lantolf, 1998, p. 427)
With a greater emphasis on data-driven research
but still working mainly from the basis of class-
805
room interaction and Vygotskyan ideas of learn-
ing are, inter alios, Hall (2002), Hall and Ver-
plaetse (2000), and Ohta (2001).
Another distinct research direction is also
emerging where the emphasis is on the social,
contextual, and interactional. In this case, the
work deploys CA methodology. Scholarship that
draws together CA and SLA is taking both SLA
and CA into new, and largely uncharted, ter-
ritory, and providing “the impetus for a whole
new generation of empirically grounded research
into how cognitive SLA might be respecified in
sociocultural terms”14 (Markee & Kasper, 2004,
p. 491).15 This work can usefully be divided into
two groups. The first group focuses on the class-
room setting and other formal learning environ-
ments and is centrally concerned with the theme
of L2 learning—though from an interactional per-
spective (see He, 2004; Hellermann, 2006; Kasper,
2004; Koshik, 2005; Lazaraton, 2002, 2004; Mar-
kee, 2000; Markee & Kasper, 2004; Mondada &
Pekarek-Doehler, 2004; Mori, 2004a, 2004b; Seed-
house, 2004). A somewhat different emphasis can
be found in the CA-based SLA work undertaken
by Brouwer (2003, 2004) and Brouwer and Wag-
ner (2004), who explored aspects of L2 learning
occurring outside formal educational settings.
A second group to have emerged over the last
decade also deploys CA methodology and the-
ory. In this case, the focus is not so much on L2
learning, but more on trying to understand and
explicate the character of L2 and lingua franca
interactions, or L2 use. This work has been under-
taken in settings outside the classroom—for exam-
ple, in government offices, libraries, and various
workplace settings (e.g., Firth, 1996; and contribu-
tions to Gardner & Wagner, 2004; Kurhila, 2006;
Rasmussen & Wagner, 2002; Schegloff, 2000;
Svennevig, 2003, 2004; Wong, 2000a, 2000b).
As Wagner & Gardner (2004) explained in the
introductory chapter to their Second Language
Conversations collection, this research is an on-
going investigation of
whether a micro-analysis of second language conversa-
tions can enhance our understanding of what it means
to talk in another language, by broadening the fo-
cus beyond the sounds, structures and meanings of
language to encompass action sequences, timing and
interactivity. (p. 14)
In most of these studies—with Wong (2000a,
2000b) as a notable exception—explicating the
normality of L2 conversations, in the face of some-
times abnormal (from a native-speaker perspec-
tive, at least) linguistic behavior, has underpinned
the research, revealing, for example, that due to
participants’ linguistic and interactional alacrity
806
and resourcefulness, interactional success can be
achieved (see also Carroll, 2000; Egbert, 2002;
contributions to Richards & Seedhouse, 2004; and
Seedhouse, 2005).
SOCIAL APPROACHES TO L2
LANGUAGE LEARNING
Challenging the distinction between language
acquisition and language use was not a core issue
in Firth and Wagner (1997), although we did ad-
dress it, albeit briefly, in Firth and Wagner (1998).
Although our critics pointed out in unison that
SLA is about acquisition and not use, we ques-
tion the utility and theoretical as well as method-
ological validity of the dichotomy, and see it as
being yet another symptom of the cognitivist, re-
ductionist mind-set that prevails in mainstream
SLA. To us, acquisition cannot and will not occur
without use. Language acquisition, we would ar-
gue, is built on language use. Moreover, in order
to understand how language acquisition occurs,
develops, and is operationalized, we are surely ob-
ligated to observe and explicate language in use.
At best, making and maintaining a distinction be-
tween acquisition and use is highly problematic;
at worst, both concepts are so tightly interwoven
as to be rendered effectively inseparable. As we
noted in Firth and Wagner (1998):
If, as we argue, language competence is a fundamen-
tally transitional, situational, and dynamic entity, then
any language users will always be “learners” [or “ac-
quirers”] in some respects. New or partly known regis-
ters, styles, language-related tasks, lexical items, termi-
nologies, and structures routinely confront language
users, calling for the contingent adaptation and trans-
formation of existing knowledge and competence,
and the acquisition of new knowledge. (p. 91)
What this acquisition–use dispute reveals is ar-
guably the most significant and consequential
disagreement between Firth and Wagner (1997)
and proponents of a mainstream SLA, namely,
the conception of learning. In this regard, some
of the implications of our 1997 article were sur-
prising for us as well, for we failed to realize at
the time just how fundamentally our views chal-
lenged SLA’s conception of learning. Indeed, the
Chomskian heritage in SLA may be most conspic-
uous with regard to SLA’s concept of learning,
for as long as language learning is envisioned as
a specific type of learning relating solely to the
individual’s head—the human language faculty—
traditional SLA is conceptually safe. In fact, in the
early 1970s, when the umbrella term learning was
replaced by the technical term acquisition, SLA
accomplished three things rather elegantly: (a) it
The Modern Language Journal 91 (2007)
defined itself as a discipline that produces knowl-
edge about this special phenomenon called ac-
quisition; (b) it cemented its identity as a distinct
discipline and secured a foothold in the world of
scientific research; and (c) it all but cut off pos-
sible links to learning theories residing outside
its own (self-constructed) disciplinary boundaries
(Rampton, 1997a).
This terminological transformation seems to
have been critical for SLA. However, if L2 learn-
ing is understood differently—specifically as prin-
cipally the same type of process as other types
of human learning—then SLA is open to extant
and potentially insightful learning theories and
approaches, and thus placed under immense pres-
sure to reconceptualize, expand, enlarge, or recal-
ibrate its epistemology—pressure we see exerted
by, for example, Atkinson (2002), Block (2003),
Firth and Wagner (1997), Hall (1997, 2004),
Jenkins (2006a), (2006b), Lantolf (2000), Liddi-
coat (1997), Markee and Kasper (2004), Rampton
(1997a, 1997b), and Thorne (2000).
Admitting different conceptions of learning
allows, of course, for nonpsychological theories
to become relevant for understanding and ex-
plicating L2 learning.16 By way of exemplifica-
tion, we can identify three potentially relevant
avenues of such research. One is sociocultural
theory (e.g., Hall, Vitanova, & Marchenova, 2004;
Lantolf, 2000), which we have outlined above. A
second is constructivism, which is well established
outside SLA. A third is a social-interactional ap-
proach to learning, which is only just beginning
to take root. We will now elaborate briefly on these
latter two.
Constructivism
Constructivism (which includes social con-
structivism, radical constructivism, and cognitive
constructivism) is a theory of knowledge acqui-
sition that sees learners constructing their own
knowledge and meanings on the basis of per-
sonal experiences. Constructivist ideas are readily
traced in the work of Dewey (1916, 1980, 1938)
and Kant (1781/1946). Drawing on von Glasers-
feld’s work (e.g., von Glasersfeld, 1984, 1995),
Doolittle (1999) summarized constructivism as
containing:
three essential epistemological tenets of construc-
tivism to which a fourth has been added in light of
recent writings:
1. Knowledge is not passively accumulated, but
rather, is the result of active cognizing by the indi-
vidual;
Alan Firth and Johannes Wagner
2. Cognition is an adaptive process that functions
to make an individual’s behavior more viable given a
particular environment;
3. Cognition organizes and makes sense of one’s
experience, and is not a process to render an accurate
representation of reality; and
4. Knowing has roots in both biologi-
cal/neurological construction, and social, cultural,
and language based interactions (Dewey, 1916,
1980). (p. 1)
Social-Interactional Approach to Learning
This approach is in the very earliest stages
of development. It is an approach that focal-
izes learning-in-and-through-social-interaction,
though devoid of cognitivist underpinnings. In
its current manifestations, it combines insights
from three areas: (a) the approach to learning
promulgated by Lave and Wenger (1991) and
Wenger (1998), who stress a social view of learn-
ing, and see learning as occurring in multiplex
communities of practice; (b) ethnomethodology,
which emphasizes the centrality of dynamically
and contingently deployed commonsense rea-
soning practices in everyday settings (Garfinkel,
1967; Heritage, 1984); and (c) CA, which stresses
the necessity to attend to and uncover the socially
achieved, microstructuring of human activity
(Goodwin & Heritage, 1990; Hutchby & Wooffitt,
1998; ten Have, 1999).
The social-interactional approach can be char-
acterized as follows: Learning is an inseparable
part of ongoing activities and therefore situated
in social practice and social interaction. In this
sense, learning builds on joint actions and as part
of a joint action it is publicly displayed and ac-
complished. Building on the work of Lave and
Wenger (1991), Brouwer and Wagner (2004), in
their analyses of L2 conversations, proposed such
an approach to learning—one that shifts the fo-
cus from the individual’s cognition and grammar,
to social praxis in concrete social settings: “In-
stead of studying the acquisition of a grammat-
ical system, we propose to study the texture of
communities and the ways in which newcomers
get access to them” (p. 45). Wagner and Pekarek-
Doehler (2006) demonstrated how participants
proceed through their activities by a process of
what they call bricolage—that is, complex segments
of social activities where interactants collaborate
to make sense of their conjoint actions through
the situated, contingent deployment of commu-
nicative resources. As has been shown in the con-
tributions to Gardner and Wagner (2004), L2
speakers are not interactional dopes. They show
perseverance and ingenuity in interacting with
others. They produce not so much “language
807
forms”; rather they engage in complex, multi-
modal, finely tuned co-participation, integrating
body posture, gaze, verbal and prosodic activities,
rhythm, and pace in their choreography of action
(Egbert, Niebecker, & Rezzara, 2004). Research
adopting this approach may have the potential
to reconceptualize notions of learning, with im-
portant consequences for SLA (c.f. Mondada,
2006).
SLA’s adoption of such theories and ap-
proaches would, we submit, have major implica-
tions for SLA as a field of inquiry, as well as for
L2 pedagogy, and only hints at possible develop-
ments that might have occurred in SLA, modern
language teaching, and learning, if behaviorism
and, later, information-processing psychology had
not been allowed to become established as having
primary importance in SLA.
LANGUAGE LEARNING AS A SOCIAL
ACCOMPLISHMENT
How, then, might the analysis and explication
of L2 learning be approached from a social-
interactional perspective, one that places contin-
gency, contextuality, dialogue, and liminality at its
core? We shall attempt to answer this question by
offering cursory analyses of language learning-in-
action. Our focus here is not learners in a formal
sense of the word—that is, persons engaged in
purposive activities principally in order to develop
skills, knowledge, and competences. Nor will we
deal with classroom interaction (recent studies
of classroom interaction include Hall, 2006; Hall,
2007; Kasper, 2004; Mondada & Pekarek-Doehler,
2004; Mori, 2004a, 2004b; and Seedhouse, 2004).
Rather we are concerned to uncover learning as
a ubiquitous social activity, as an interactional
phenomenon that transcends contexts while be-
ing context dependent; as an instance of social
cognition in the wild (see Hutchins, 1995), specif-
ically in relation to encounters where an L2 is in
use. For although learning may or may not be a
drawn-out process, it is certainly a process that
takes place in the micromoments of social inter-
action in communities of practice. It is therefore
critically important that we attempt to uncover
and understand what goes on, interactionally, in
such micromoments.
What we want to explicate, albeit extremely cur-
sorily, are aspects of social learning as they are
evident in L2 talk-based activities, in each case oc-
curring outside the classroom. Throughout, we
emphasize not the failings or deficiencies, not
the errors or interlanguage of the interactants;
rather, we approach the data with a view to expli-
cating and uncovering what L2 users actually do,
808
in everyday, natural settings. And as we shall see,
they deploy, make available, share, adapt, manip-
ulate, and contingently and creatively apply com-
municative resources in an ongoing attempt to
construct meaningful and consequential social in-
teraction. The data excerpts we present and com-
ment on here represent a small window on what
might be possible if more in-depth, extensive stud-
ies of the same kind are undertaken.
An Evidential Argument
Consider first Excerpt 1, where Hansen (H),
the Danish dairy-produce salesman, is talking on
the telephone with Akkad (A), an Egyptian whole-
saler (see the Appendix for transcript conven-
tions):
EXCERPT 1
Blowing in the Customs
(Firth, 1996, p. 244)
1. A: .. so I told him not to u: :h send the::
cheese after the- (·) the blowing (·)
in the ↑customs
2. (0.4)
3. A: we don’t want the order after the
cheese is u: :h (·) blowing.
4. H: see, yes.
5. A: so I don’t know what we can uh do with
the order now. (·) What do you
6. think we should uh do with this is all
↑blo:wing Mister Hansen
7. (0.5)
8. H: I’m not uh (0.7) blowing uh what uh,
what is this u: :h too big or what?
9. (0.2)
10. A: no the cheese is ↑bad Mister Hansen
11. (0.4)
12. A: it is like (·) fermenting in the customs’
cool rooms
13. H: ah it’s gone off↑
14. A: yes it’s gone off↓
15. H: we: :ll you know you don’t have to uh
do uh anything because it’s not
((continues))
When this excerpt was initially analyzed (in
Firth, 1996, p. 244), the focus of attention was
the let it pass procedure and its interactional con-
sequences.17 But we can also use the excerpt to
witness an instance of learning-in-interaction. To
see this, note, first, H’s “I see, yes” (line 4). This
turn follows A’s revelation in lines 1–3 that the
“cheese is blowing in the customs” (line 1). In line
6, A displays that he has heard H’s I see, yes as indi-
The Modern Language Journal 91 (2007)
cating uptake, as displaying that he (A) has been
understood. Upon hearing H’s uptake at line 4,
and now acting on the presumption of a shared
common ground, A, in line 6, asks H “what do you
think we should do with all this blowing?” (un-
derlining indicates stress in enunciation). At this
juncture, H is evidently compelled to display—
to make public—his unfamiliarity with the word
blowing ; thus H’s “I’m not uh (0.7) blowing uh
what uh, what is this u: :h too big or what?” A’s
response is to explain the meaning of blowing; he
does this by reformulating: “no the cheese is bad,
Mr. Hansen” (line 10). With no receipt forthcom-
ing (note the 0.4 second pause in line 11), A tries
again, in line 12: “it is like fermenting in the cus-
toms’ cool rooms.” H now displays his updated
knowledge by producing his own reformulation
(with rising intonation) of blowing , in his “ah it’s
gone off?” (line 13). A, in the next turn, confirms
the appropriateness of the definition of blowing
by reusing H’s formulation, hence “yes it’s gone
off” (line 14).
What this excerpt reveals is that the interac-
tants, conjointly, do interactional work to over-
come potential or real communicative hurdles
in order to establish intersubjectivity and mean-
ing. In so doing, the interactants provide for the
availability and utility of interactional and linguis-
tic resources that allow for learning to occur. H
has, in this excerpt, quite clearly displayed that he
has learned the (for him) new lexical item blow-
ing . What is important is that the excerpt also
shows how learning is engaged contingently, as
the learned item in question becomes interaction-
ally relevant as the talk unfolds. Learning here,
then, is an artifact of interactional exigency and a
product of collaboration.
Let us now examine how H operationalizes his
learning (of what blowing cheese means) in a sepa-
rate encounter, that is, how his learning is carried
over in time and space. Two working days later, H,
in Denmark, calls A’s wholesale company in Cairo.
The call is answered by A’s colleague, B. The call
begins as follows:
EXCERPT 2
Bad Cheese
(Firth, 1991)
((ring))
1. B: allo
2. H: yes hello Michael Hansen melko
dairies Denmark ↑calling (·) can I
please speak to mister Akkad
3. (·)
4. B: ↑hello mister Michael
Alan Firth and Johannes Wagner
5. H: is it Barat?
6. B: ye: (h)s, how are you (·) si::r
7. H: well I’m OK, but you ha:d tu- have some
uh problems with the: cheese
8. B: uuuuuuhhhhh ((one-second sound
stretch))
9. H: the bad cheese (·) in the ↑customs
10. (0.5)
11. B: ↑one minute (0.4) mister Akkad will
talk (·) w[ith (·) you
12. H: [ok ↑yes
13. (1.5)
14. A: YES (·) mister Hansen↓
15. H: hello: mister Akkad (·).hh we haf some
informations for you about the
cheese (·)
16. with the ↑blowing
17. A: ↑yes mister Hansen
Note that in this excerpt it is H who uses the
item blowing (line 16)—which seems to suggest
that not only has H now learned this lexical item
in a way that extends beyond the concrete local
context where he first became acquainted with
it, but also, critically, that he has learned how to
deploy it appropriately in context, which in this
case entails knowing whom to use the item with.
Consider, first, how H characterizes the matter
while talking to B. First, H uses “problems with the
cheese” (line 7), next, he reformulates the matter
as “the bad cheese in the customs” (line 9), this
reformulation likely being a result of an apparent
lack of uptake by B (line 8). When A enters the
interaction (at line 14), H first uses the formu-
lation “the cheese” (line 15), and then, without
yet securing uptake from his interlocutor (note
the micropause at the end of line 15), formulates
the matter as “with the blowing” (line 16). This
formulation succeeds, as we see from A’s “yes Mr.
Hansen” (line 17).
What are the language learning implications
of such behavior? They are, first and foremost,
that if learning entails being contingently adapt-
able as the unfolding context requires, then here,
surely, is learning-in-action. Second, here may be
evidence of a community of practice (Lave &
Wenger, 1991) being constructed before our very
eyes—namely, between H and A. The nature of
this particular community of practice appears to
be consequential for how learning is operational-
ized, for how learning is displayed, and for how
communicative knowledge is refined and tested
both within and across interactions.
It is arguable that H, in Excerpt 2, orients to A as
a co-user, or as a co-member of this microcommu-
nity of practice, of the term blowing . Co-usership,
809
then, is, potentially at least, a relevant identity cat-
egory for some of these interactants. In a related
way, we may venture that the reason H deploys
the item blowing with A, but uses instead cognate
formulations with B, is because H is “recipient de-
signing” (Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974, p.
727) his displays of knowledge so as to achieve
communicative (and likely interpersonal) success
and to display interactional affinity. To paraphrase
Baker, Emmison, and Firth (2005), we can say that
H is calibrating his language behavior for his in-
terlocutors’ competence. We cannot know why H
did not use the term blowing with B. Perhaps, if
A had not been available or had not been able
to engage H, H may subsequently have deployed
the item blowing. However, his apparent contin-
gent and selective deployment of the item offers
an intriguing angle from which to view language
learning.
Our argument so far reminds us of the interac-
tion hypothesis (Long, 1996), according to which
learning is fueled by the problems that learners
encounter. However there are several problems
with this explanation for learning:
1. The approach describes a transparent
problem-based way of learning, but we find only
few instances of such problem-based learning in
our data.
2. It prototypically describes lexical learning.
Where does the rest of the language (and com-
municative behavior more generally) reside?
3. Uptakes are rare. Participants in interac-
tions obviously pick up items and use them in
recipient-designed ways, but such actions are only
part of the whole language learning story. Al-
though it might partly have to do with the lack
of comprehensive corpora, problem-based learn-
ing of this kind seems not to be at the core of
language learning.
4. The interactive hypothesis constructs some
kind of evidential argument: a plain causal chain
between use of elements and learning. When we
look at the developmental data we have access to,
plain causal explanations do not cover many of the
complexities we see unfolding in our data. We see
learners developing their skills in using resources
in more advanced ways for more advanced inter-
actions, but we rarely see a “smoking gun,” as in
Excerpts 1 and 2.
There are few, if any, studies showing learning in
action (Huth, 2006; Nguyen, 2003). The main ob-
stacle for this type of research has been the lack
of longitudinal corpora available for L2 interac-
tions.
810
Doing Learning
Another way of describing learning does not
focus on the evidence but on the process. Our
position in this regard is inspired by sociocultural
theory, particularly Hall’s 2006 work. Consider the
next excerpt in which Rasmus, a Danish student,
coaches Joseph, an American guest student, to
learn how to order pizza in Danish. In his own
words: Joseph is developing his survival skills.
EXCERPT 3
Danish Pizza
(Wagner, unpublished raw data)
1. Jo: so how d- how do I ↑say say it one time
[for] me.
2. Ra: [.pt]
3. (0.2)
4. Ra: je:g vil gerne bestille en pizza.
I would like order a pizza
5. (0.3)
6. Jo: jeg vil gerne bestille en pizza.
7. (0.2)
◦
8. Ra: jep◦ .
9. (0.5)
10. Ra: that’s I’d like to order pizza.
11. Jo: .pt okay,
In line 1, Joseph opens a new sequence with
“so” and gives two consecutive prompts for next
action: “how do I say” and “say it one time for
me.” Rasmus provides the appropriate Danish ex-
pression (line 4), which Joseph repeats (line 6).
Rasmus acknowledges the repeat in line 8 with
“yep” and provides an English translation (line
10). In line 11, Joseph closes the sequence.
The sequence runs off at a slow pace without
glitches, delays, overlaps, or repairs. Both partic-
ipants demonstrate, through their actions, that
they understand who will produce the next ele-
ment and which element has been projected. It
seems to be clear for both participants what kinds
of actions they are engaged in and how the sub-
activities are distributed. To elaborate—the Dan-
ish expression is decontextualized. The I does
not refer to the current speaker (Rasmus) but
is a generic I for any speaker in a pizza-ordering
situation. In this way, Rasmus provides a model
as a standard solution for a well-defined activity
in a well-defined environment (ordering a pizza
by phone). Both Joseph and Rasmus show their
knowledge of the script for this activity and treat
it as a standard situation where preformulated ex-
pressions can be deployed. They refer only to the
The Modern Language Journal 91 (2007)
core of this standard situation—the Danish sen-
tence would work as the reason for the call, but
the opening and closing activities in a phone call
are not thematized by Joseph and Rasmus.
The sequence is initiated and closed by the L2
speaker, which makes it different from classical
teaching activities described, in non-CA research,
as variations of an Initiative-Response-Evaluation se-
quence (Mehan, 1979). The L1 speaker Rasmus
appears therefore interactionally not as a teacher
but as a language expert who is transferring know-
how to a nonexpert.
The participants themselves call the activity
learning . Joseph’s (the learner’s) main activity is
the repeat of the target utterance. We observed
that the translation follows the repeat of the Dan-
ish expression that shows both participants orient-
ing primarily to the form of the expression. Joseph
learns the Danish expression before the transla-
tion has made crystal clear what he has learned
(see below).
What we observe in Excerpt 3 holds for the
whole interaction. Joseph provides a prompt, Ras-
mus delivers a Danish expression that Joseph re-
peats. However, not all sequences run as smoothly
as the one shown in Excerpt 3. In later talk, which
we cannot show here due to constraints of space,
we observe Rasmus slowing down his speech, iso-
lating troublesome elements in the utterance by
prosodic means, and even using the written mode
to display a model. The resources for learning
used in this interaction are not very different from
those of traditional classroom teaching, which in-
clude (a) utterance model and repetition, (b)
form before content/translation, (c) prosodic for-
mation (speed, rhythm), and (d) written mod-
els. In Excerpt 3, the participants show us that
they recognize and characterize their activity as
learning. They construct conversational routines
and patterns of interaction that are typical of
language classrooms (Kasper, 2004; Mondada &
Pekarek-Doehler, 2004).
Although Rasmus and Joseph draw heavily on
a classroom format, other studies show how par-
ticipants in interactions orient in more subtle
ways to language learning as one goal in the on-
going activity. Lilja (2006) described instances
in interactions between a Finnish host family
and guest students where the native speakers
in repair sequences do not just repeat trouble
sources but strip them of morphological inflec-
tion and present them in an unmarked form.
Theodórsdóttı́r (2007) showed how learners may
insist on producing full turns although their co-
participants have indicated their understanding
of the ongoing turn before its end. Brouwer
Alan Firth and Johannes Wagner 811

and Rasmussen-Hougaard (2007) described how cess of the company where JG works. This is the
participants in L2 interactions carve out oppor- second call between BR and JG.
tunities for doing learning in the ongoing flow of
interaction. EXCERPT 4
Compared to the case of Hansen and Akkad, Lot of Work 1
instances of doing learning do not afford an ev- (Wagner, unpublished raw data)
idential argument for learning. Instances of do-
ing learning show that learning a language and 1. BR: okay have you a lot of work to do.
learning to learn are mutually constitutive, as Hall 2. JG: yes,
(2006) formulated it for the language classroom: 3. JG: [we ha’ a lot a do.
4. BR: [xx
What our students take away from our classrooms in 5. BR: a lot of orders.
terms of their target language knowledge and under- 6. JG: and we e::hm: work also in the week-
standings of what it means to learn another language
ends
is intimately tied to the kinds of interactional practices
7. BR: ah [(xx the weekend)]
that we as teachers create in our talk with students . . . .
Through their interactions with us, learners become 8. JG: [for the next ] e:h fh three four
experienced at figuring out the actions that are being monthth (·) [I think,
implemented in our utterances including how the ut- 9. BR: [yes
terances are constructed and eventually learn to use 10. (0.8)
them to take actions of their own. Our interactional 11. JG: [so ]
practices are, then, to use Vygotsky’s term, the medi- 12. BR: [that’s] that’s good to ↓hear.
ational means by which we and our students together 13. (0.3)
constitute, represent, and remember what it means to 14. JG: yes,
know and do language learning. (p. 27)
15. BR: ↑okay.
16. JG: and your company has also. (·) lot to
Learning is about the object and the ways of
do,
learning. Joseph and Rasmus illustrate that they
17. (0.3)
know how to set up a learning situation. They en-
18. BR: oh yes.
act the classical activities of language teaching.
19. BR: things are going very well. =
However, the other studies mentioned here trace
20. JG: yes¿
ways of learning not only on the genre level but
also as practices in ongoing interaction where par-
BR’s question in line 1, “have you a lot of work to
ticipants show each other that they are, among
do” is in line 16 mirrored by JG’s answer “we ha
other things in the real world, engaged in more
a lot to do” (line 3) as well as in his formulation
than intersubjectivity. They are not content to
in line 16 “and your company has also a lot to
make themselves understood but clearly demon-
do.” Regular telephone engagement with known
strate a desire to do so in ways that are viewed
others frequently gives rise to the production of
as appropriate and normal in their L2. Other set-
How are you sequences (compare Excerpts 2, 6).
tings, with other kinds of interactional and institu-
As in Excerpt 2, we notice that these how are you
tional goals and relationships, will doubtless pro-
sequences are not taken personally but relate in-
duce different kinds of talk- and learning-based
stead to the companies in which the protagonists
activities.
work. Consider now Excerpt 5.
Doing learning illustrates how participants fore-
ground learning in an interactionally consequen-
EXCERPT 5
tial way. This type of learning is different from
Lot of Work 2
that of Hansen and Akkad where learning a new
item was entirely embedded in the business inter-
1. JG: have you: lot of work to do.
action. But doing learning does not provide evi-
2. TT: yes¿ they’re not too bad¿
dence that learning is actually happening in these
3. JG: [yes]
activities.
4. TT: [we-] e-e- picked up another order¿
=eight hundred thousand
Out of Chaos Comes Order
pound[s
Consider now Excerpt 4, again from a business 5. JG: [↓ouw:¿
interaction. Jørgen Gade (JG) in Denmark has 6. (0.6)
been called by a Swiss business acquaintance (BR). 7. JG: excellent ehhe hhe hhe hhe hhe hhe
At the end of the call, BR enquires about the suc- he
812
8. TT: eight million cr↓owner¿ hhe hh
9. JG: ↓↓∗ o:ijoijoi.∗
10. TT: (sxt xx) hh hh ·hhh
11. TT: so thats e:h thats g↓ood¿
◦
12. G: yeah¿◦
13. TT: we still ned some m↓ore though but
[it loo]ks looks if its u:h =
14. JG: [mmh.]
15. JG: yes¿
16. TT: = getting better.
In Excerpt 5, JG is on the phone with a British
colleague with whom he has had regular contact
over many years. JG’s question in line 1 “have you:
lot of work to do” sounds like an echo of BR’s
question from Excerpt 4. However, in this case, 2
years have passed between the call in Excerpt 4
and Excerpt 5. It would be a bold move to con-
strue (line 1) as evidence that learning had oc-
curred in the call 2 years earlier. Nevertheless,
the resemblance of both formulations over the
span of those 2 years is striking. JG has not be-
come more linguistically sophisticated in his in-
quiry into his interlocutor’s work commitments.
He simply redeploys the utterance formula that
he had deployed 2 years previously. We notice
comparable development standstill in other re-
current call segments or activities, for example,
in call openings, closings, the introduction of
new topics, how-are-you’s and salutations. In these
cases, it appears that comparatively little linguis-
tic development occurs over time. If there is any
developmental change at all, we find it in gen-
eral interactional fluency, such that these activ-
ities are produced with fewer delays, smoother
turn transitions, and a general increased orderli-
ness; in addition, the content of the calls becomes
more personalized over time as the interactants
become better acquainted (cf. Brouwer & Wagner,
2004).
These observations beg the question: In which
environments might we notice language learning
as a social accomplishment? If it is not observable
in routinized activities and talk episodes, where
can it be located? What are the environments
where linguistic structures expand and linguistic
creativity and development can be observed?
They appear to occur in what we might call
the body of the calls, that is, in phases following
openings and preceding closing routines. Here
the talk is more free flowing, less planned and
less routinized. New expressions and new struc-
tures are afforded by new topics and activities. The
contingencies of the locally unfolding situation
seem to motivate the use of new resources; that
The Modern Language Journal 91 (2007)
is, language development in the calls appears to
be nonlinear, and the growing complexities in the
participants’ actions are not traceable to simpler
preceding forms.
This observation is in line with Eskildsen’s study
(Eskildsen, in press; Eskildsen & Cadierno, 2007),
which drew on data from a Mexican learner of En-
glish over a period of 4 years (2001–2005). Eskild-
sen (in press) looked at the development of modal
verbs over time and the conclusions he was able
to draw on the basis of the data materials do not
show a development from a core structure into
more complex structures, but rather a patchwork
of different uses that appear and disappear over
time. In terms of linguistic structure, this study
does not show much structure building.
We can tentatively conclude that we have been
able to point to three aspects of language learning
as a social accomplishment. These three aspects,
and possibly others, demonstrate in a variety of
ways how participants engage in meaningful activ-
ities by using an L2. In situated social practices,
use and learning are inseparable parts of the in-
teraction. They appear to be afforded by topics
and tasks, and they seem to be related to specific
people, with particularized identities, with whom
new ways of behaving occur as the unfolding talk
demands.
Studying learning as a social accomplishment
shifts our understanding of learning from the
construct of a linguistic system or a compe-
tence that serves all the speaker’s purposes. In-
stead, the development of social relations, the
mutual constituency of linguistic resources and
tasks, and the specific biography of the language
learners come to the foreground. This strand
of research has gained momentum over the last
10 years, and quite clearly, much more research
into the specifics of social interactions in L2 en-
vironments is clearly necessary in the years to
come.
CONCLUSIONS
What this entire debate has brought home most
vividly is that SLA as a field of inquiry is today
a fertile arena of multifarious approaches, theo-
ries, methods, concepts, and, not least, debate.
Whether SLA has a mainstream or a dominant
approach is a moot point. Cognitivistic SLA—the
mainstream that we focused our critique upon in
Firth and Wagner (1997)—is certainly well estab-
lished and continues to occupy a prominent place
in SLA-related journals, textbooks, doctoral and
graduate programs, and publications generally. In
Alan Firth and Johannes Wagner
most of its guises, cognitivistic SLA is strikingly dif-
ferent from the SLA of sociocultural theory, the
ecological approach to SLA, and the CA-for-SLA
movement that we have adumbrated in this arti-
cle. Thus, although some researchers are explor-
ing the possibilities of developing a holistic, en-
compassing SLA—one that seeks to draw together
the social and the cognitive—other researchers
position themselves apart from the social, cul-
tural, situational, chaotic, sociolinguistic, ecolog-
ical, interactional drives, and motives underpin-
ning the work of a growing number of SLA schol-
ars. These differences raise the inevitable question
of where SLA is headed, and whether the field it-
self is able to withstand the current bifurcations,
competing methods, critiques, and internal ten-
sions, and remain generally cohesive—in the way
that the field of sociolinguistics, for example, has
remained more or less cohesive, despite the dis-
cipline being populated with an almost dizzying
array of sometimes incommensurable methods,
concepts, and theories—or whether SLA will frac-
ture into cognitive SLA, holistic SLA, sociocultural
SLA, conversation-analytic SLA, postmodern SLA,
and so on.
It is arguable, of course, that such a fracturing
either has already taken place or is currently un-
derway. If this is indeed what is happening, or what
has occurred, a major issue then becomes one
of how the field or the discipline defines itself.
SLA is a relative newcomer to scientific inquiry,
and there are inherent risks in allowing such a
new field of research to shift, morph, and frac-
ture, particularly from the viewpoint of those who,
through a lengthy professional devotion to the
field or paradigm, conceive of themselves as the
intellectual guardians of (in this case) SLA, and
see it as their right and obligation to determine,
ex cathedra, what is and is not proper SLA. The
debates, the arguments, the progress, or the decay
is surely an inevitable component of SLA’s evolu-
tion. We are, then, witness to a natural progres-
sion, an intellectual evolution, if one will, where
successful paradigms evolve (and sometimes frac-
ture) through both support and critique. If this
process is based on sound, creative scholarship,
one that leads to advances in knowledge of the
many and varied ways in which L2s are learned,
acquired, and used (in mutually reinforcing and
enlightening ways), then surely SLA will become
a more theoretically and methodologically robust
and encompassing enterprise. Despite objections
from some quarters, the boundaries of SLA are
ineluctably being redrawn, and from this partic-
ular viewpoint, the future of SLA looks distinctly
promising.
813
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We are grateful to the following colleagues who gener-
ously and insightfully commented on previous versions
of this article: Dennis Day, Rod Gardner, Jennifer Jenk-
ins, Chris Jenks, Barbara Seidlhofer, Barbara Lafford,
Sally Sieloff Magnan, and three anonymous referees,
each of whom provided useful and detailed comments.
In most cases, we have incorporated suggestions for
improvements into the final version. Remaining weak-
nesses and oversights remain our responsibility.
NOTES
1 Conversation analysis (widely known as CA) is a
methodology devised by Sacks, Schegloff, and Jeffer-
son in the 1960s (see Sacks, 1992). Building on its
ethnomethodological (Garfinkel, 1967; Heritage, 1984)
foundations, CA endeavors to explicate the microdetails
of talk-in-interaction and to uncover the communica-
tive and social competences that structure and render
meaningful talk-in-interaction. The materials of CA are
video- and audiorecordings of naturally occurring set-
tings where talk is a prime facet of behavior. For descrip-
tions of CA’s working methods and theoretical founda-
tions, see ten Have (1999) and Hutchby and Wooffitt
(1998).
2 Although such observations on our data informed
our call for a reconceptualized SLA in Firth and Wagner
(1997), they did not feature empirically in that publica-
tion.
3 We do not have the space to elaborate the point
here, but in essence the argument is that, in the case of
English, which is undoubtedly the global lingua franca
in an array of domains (e.g., the Internet, diplomacy,
science, pop music, tourism), equating target language
competence with native speaker competence is inher-
ently problematic, in that such a practice ignores the so-
ciolinguistic reality of the global status and lingua franca
uses and functions of English. The implications for SLA
are potentially far-reaching, not least in terms of our un-
derstanding of interlanguage. This point is well made
by Jenkins (2006a, 2006b).
4 The telementational view of communication is the
view promulgated by, among others, Saussure (1922),
adopted by Chomsky (1957) and, later, by mainstream
SLA practitioners. It underpins SLA work in communi-
cation strategies (see Firth & Wagner, 1997). According
to Harris (1981), the telementational view is a fallacy; it
is a thesis about the function of language, namely, that
“linguistic knowledge is essentially a matter of knowing
which words stand for which ideas. For words, according
to this view, are symbols devised by man for transferring
thoughts from one mind to another. Speech is a form of
telementation” (p. 9).
5 This monolinguistic notion, we argued (Firth & Wag-
ner, 1997), underpins the prevailing SLA view that sees
language users as non-native speakers who are (or ought
814
to be) aiming for a target consisting of the baseline lin-
guistic norms of the native speaker (see, e.g., Konishi &
Tarone, 2004).
6 Those who supported our arguments (in their re-
sponse articles) were Hall (1997), Rampton (1997a),
and Liddicoat (1997).
7 To be clear on how we stood in relation to acquisition
and use, in Firth and Wagner (1997) we pressed the need
for an SLA that can explain “how language is used as it is
being acquired through interaction, and used resourcefully,
contingently, and contextually” (p. 296).
8 Kasper’s (1997) views were prescient, but note that
in Firth and Wagner (1997) we refrained from rec-
ommending that CA become part of SLA, or that CA-
methodologies be incorporated into SLA.
9 Classrooms are, of course, workplaces, though for
the sake of exposition we shall maintain the rudimen-
tary distinction to differentiate classrooms from other
social settings in which some kind of occupational or
professional activity is taking place.
10 Thorne (2000) is representative of the views held
broadly by critics of SLA who, like Firth and Wagner
(1997), pressed the need for a reconceptualized SLA
along social (to this can be added historical) lines.
Thorne wrote: “the dominant core of current theories of
SLA are for the most part defining a world of a-historical,
decontextualized, and disembodied brains. It is my be-
lief that such a theory does not fit the evidence” (p.
220).
11 Atkinson (2002) pointed out that two prominent
SLA researchers, Ellis (1997) and Crookes (1997), “seem
to have realized the reductionism inherent in [SLA
research]” (note 11). Ellis (1997) wrote “SLA in gen-
eral has paid little attention to the social context of
L2 acquisition, particularly where context is viewed
non-deterministically (i.e., as something learners con-
struct for themselves). SLA has been essentially a psy-
cholinguistic enterprise, dominated by the computa-
tional metaphor of acquisition” (p. 87). Crookes (1997)
offered similar sentiments: “though cognitive psychol-
ogy was to be preferred [in SLA] to its dominant pre-
decessor [behaviorism] because it was (purportedly at
least) about people (rather than rats), it was a long time
before I began to understand that it, like its predeces-
sor, could be seen as a sociocultural construct . . . that
reflected at least to some extent the presuppositions
of the societies in which it developed. That was why it
was fundamentally an individualist psychology that treats
people as isolates” (p. 98).
12 Long (1998), for example, wrote: “Instead of dis-
missing all past work as ‘narrow’ and ‘flawed’, and simply
asserting that SLA researchers should therefore change
their data base to take new elements into account, [crit-
ics] should offer at least some evidence that, e.g., a richer
understanding of alternate social identities of people
currently treated as ‘learners’, or a broader view of so-
cial context, makes a difference, and a difference not
just to the way this to that tiny stretch of discourse is
interpretable, but to our understanding of acquisition”
(p. 92).
The Modern Language Journal 91 (2007)
13 Space limitations preclude a detailed description
of the sociocultural approach; see, however, Lantolf
(2000); Lantolf and Appel (1994); Lantolf and Thorne
(2006); and Pavlenko and Lantolf (2000). Lantolf
(2000) described its essence as follows: “The most funda-
mental concept of sociocultural theory is that the human
mind is mediated. In opposition to the orthodox view of
mind, Vygotsky argued that just as humans do not act
directly on the physical world but rely, instead, on tools
and labor activity, which allows us to change the world,
and with it, the circumstances under which we live in
the world, we also use symbolic tools [e.g., language],
or signs, to mediate and regulate our relationships with
others and with ourselves and thus change the nature of
these relationships . . . . The task of psychology, in Vygot-
sky’s view, is to understand how human social and men-
tal activity is organized through culturally constructed
affairs” (p. 1).
14 We question the appropriateness of Markee and
Kasper’s (2004) characterization of this CA-centered
SLA work as sociocultural . The sociocultural approach
has already established itself within SLA and is associ-
ated with the work of Lantolf (e.g., Lantolf, 2000) and
others. According to Hall (1997) and Lantolf (2000),
sociocultural SLA research is principally underpinned
by Vygotskian theories of mind and learning (e. g.
Vygotsky, 1978). CA, however, has its roots quite firmly in
Garfinkelian sociological theory (Garfinkel, 1967; Her-
itage, 1984).
15 Deploying CA’s microanalytic methodology for the
analysis of L2 talk-in-interaction poses a number of chal-
lenges (which are too numerous and complex for us
to reveal and discuss in this article; see Brouwer &
Wagner, 2004). It certainly entails much more than
familiarizing oneself with CA’s terminologies and ap-
plying them to L2 data materials. Arguably the great-
est challenge for SLA researchers entails coming to
terms with CA’s ethnomethodological research agenda
(Firth, 1995c; Garfinkel, 1967; Heritage, 1984), which
is radically different from mainstream SLA’s cognitivist
agenda (see Larsen-Freeman, 2004). The incorporation
of L2 data materials into a CA framework also poses
challenges for CA. To mention one of several exam-
ples: CA has until relatively recently been restricted to
the analysis of monolingual, first language (L1), inter-
actions, where, overwhelmingly, the analyst has relied
upon his or her co-membership in the interactants’
speech community as a resource in the explication of
the talk-data. When faced with the analysis of L2 talk,
the analyst cannot unproblematically assume linguistic
or cultural co-membership; the applicability of an im-
portant analytic resource is thereby brought into ques-
tion. For further information on this topic, see Firth
(1996).
16 Let us be clear, however, that the opening up of SLA
to noncognitivist theories and approaches to (language)
learning is not going to be a trouble-free process; see, for
example, Kasper’s (1997) view that “[a] noncognitivist
discipline that has learning as its central research object
is a contradiction in terms” (p. 310).
Alan Firth and Johannes Wagner
17 We refer the reader to Firth (1996) for a detailed
explication, but in brief, H’s I see (line 5) is quite clearly
a let it pass procedure. Such procedures are utilized in
interaction when the recipient of a turn lets the un-
known or unclear action, word or utterance pass on the
(commonsense) assumption that it will either become
clear or redundant as talk progresses.
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Alan Firth and Johannes Wagner 819

APPENDIX
Transcript Conventions

[] Left and right brackets indicate beginning and end of overlap.

(0.0) Numbers in parentheses indicate silence by tenths of seconds.
(.) Micropause.
:: Colons indicate prolongation of the immediately prior sound. The longer the colon row, the longer the
prolongation.
↑↓ Arrows indicate shifts into especially high or low pitch.
.,?¿ Punctuation markers are used to indicate intonation:
, level intonation
; slightly falling intonation
. falling intonation to low
¿ slightly rising intonation
? rising intonation to high
WORD Upper case indicates especially loud sounds relative to the surrounding talk.
◦ word◦ Degree signs bracketing a sound, word, phrase, and so on, indicate especially soft sounds relative to the
surrounding talk.
·hhh A raised dot-prefixed row of h’s indicates an inbreath. Without the dot, the h’s indicate an outbreath.
word Underlining indicates stressed syllables
xxx unintelligible speech
= latching between turns or parts of turns
∗ creaky voice