Ressources en transformation : multimodalitat , plurilingüismo , acquisizione – seen from an interactional perspective

Lorenza Mondada és Catedràtica de lingüística general i lingüística francesa a la Universitat de Basilea, Suïssa. Doctora en lingüística per la Universitat de Lausanne (1994), guardonada l’any 2001 amb el National Latsis Prize (premi anual a Suïssa als millors investigadors menors de quaranta anys), i directora del ICAR Research Lab (CNRS, Universitat de Lyon 2 i École Nationale Supérieure) del 2007 al 2010. La seva recerca s’ha centrat en la investigació de les interaccions socials en diversos àmbits (científic, mèdic, laboral i de la vida quotidiana...) i en com la gramàtica és un recurs per a la interacció i emergeix en la seva organització seqüencial. Ha contribuït de forma decisiva al desenvolupament d’un enfocament en el qual s’analitzen els recursos lingüístics i multimodals per a l’organització de la interacció. Recentment, ha guanyat una beca del Finland Distinguished Professor Programme, gràcies a la qual durà a terme un projecte, juntament amb la Universitat de Helsinki, sobre la interacció social i la comunicació multimodal.

LLOMPART: Nowadays new concepts appear to define what Gumperz described as linguistic repertoire.Concepts such as plurilanguaging, translanguaging, polylanguaging... What is your intake on that?

MONDADA:
The very idea of resource allows us to think language from the perspective of the speaker and not from the perspective of the academic theories about language.This changes completely the idea of language that we have inherited from traditional linguisticslanguage becomes something like a set, a changing dynamic, non fixed, non preestablished, indexical set of resources that participants mobilise in order to do what they are doing.And this works for the study of monolingual as well as plurilingual talk, and even for the study of grammar.I have always been very fascinated by the notion of emergent grammar by Paul Hopper who already in the 80s was saying that basically the grammar of the language is a constantly dynamically changing set of fragments that people assemble but also transform by assembling them.So, if this works for one language, this works even more for plurilingual practices.The practice of repair constantly allows participants to manage intersubjectivity; they can align with but also negotiate the use of resources.The way in which co-participants respondthis is the very idea of next turn proof procedure -the way in which they respond to the kind of improvisation that it is done by the speaker shows the situated interpretation, practical understanding and also local redefinition of these resources.This approach is very powerful because it allows you to show this dynamic constant reappropriation of resources.For me 'plurilanguaging' or 'languaging' refers to this process and those practices and invites to develop a kind of grammar of those practices, which maybe could constitute the 'repertoire' of a speaker or a group of speakers.If we think of grammar in this way, we might escape from the reification of a fixed set of rules, and at the same time be able to think about some set of resources that it is grammaticalized, sedimented, entrenched and routinized.But there is always a danger of reification, especially if you try to define the repertoire as the list of things that people are able to say, and to encapsulate it within one fixed and coherent grammar.
What is interesting about having an interactional perspective is that you are not trying to define the repertoire of one person or of a group, but you consider that the repertoire of available and acceptable resources is something that participants are constantly negotiating in the interaction.That is why I am not sure that it makes really sense to try to list the ensemble of resources we use in interaction, because this produces a too static model.That is the reason why the notion of 'method' in conversation analysis is much more powerful, because it does not try to encapsulate rules, regularities or forms but to describe what participants are 'methodically' doing, in a systematic manner, and in a publicly intelligible and undestandable way -knowing that these methods can themselves change and evolve in time.
LLOMPART: That is actually related to a question that I had and that concerns the static notion of language often used in the literature...

MONDADA:
Yes, and that is what a perspective like conversation analysis offers the possibility to think in dynamic terms, thanks to its focus on practice.If we look at practice -without trying to encapsulate again too quickly the practices in a grammar --, we respect and preserve their dynamic nature because we describe how they are constantly adjusting to the ongoing interaction.The fixistic or static notion of language is generated by a focus on the speaker --that is, within an individualist perspective -and on the system.On the opposite, an interactional vision recognizes that the resources used are assembled in diferent ways depending on the participation framework, on who is participating to the interaction and how.That makes things much more complicated but also much more interesting.
LLOMPART: Describing that complexity is much more difficult...

MONDADA:
Yes, but also much more satisfying and also demanding.Nowadays is becoming fashionable to claim a constructivistic kind of epistemology -so that everybody says that language is constantly negociated.But the real problem is, once you have said that, to rigorously and consistently describe how this works, what are the detailed practices through which participants adjust to each other and make intelligible their constant adjustments.My critical take about some work that is done in this domain is that some people having constructionistic claims suddenly become super conservative as soon as they describe data, because their analytical methodology does not fit with their general theoretical frame.
Probably that is what the notion of languaging has tried to capture.Per Linell, for example, uses the term of languaging in general, and not only for particular plurilingual practices.Although his work has not been read by other scholars talking about languaging, it is interesting because he makes this link between what I said about Hopper and what other people say about plurilingual practices, then maybe plurilanguaging.For me the issue is not what kind of term to use, but much more how to conceptualize those resources and those practices.My feeling is that often people do some kind of big theoretical claims about plurilanguaging and then when they actually analyse empirical data they continue to work in a very traditional way...So the issue is both how to have a clear theoretical take on these phenomena and how to implement it in rigorous empirical analyses.In this respect I like to : it opposes the engineer and the amateur; the latter is the one who uses resources that are neither planned nor tailored from the beginning for achieving some kind of task and who uses these resources in a new way which is a completely opportunistic way.I think that this is very much what speakers do when they engage in a plurilingual improvisation, which is a bit like a jazz improvisation where they use notes or even noises or sounds and they just try them, for their practical local and occasioned purposes.What is specific of an interactional approach is that you never forget what the speaker is doing, what he or she is trying to do in real time by assembling a specific set of resources -that is what bricolage is about.But what is also important in this approach is that you look at what the others are doing too.So if the coparticipants are going along with the ongoing action, if they are aligning with what the speaker is doing, this also means that this is understandable, meaningful, and adequate for all practical purposes.If this is problematic co-participants always have the option of repairing it.
use the notion of 'bricolage', a notion that ironically comes from Lévi-Strauss who is the father of structuralism.Structuralism produced theories of language that constitute what we are trying to escape from, but at the same time I think that this very idea of bricolage is really Bellaterra Journal of Teaching & Learning Language & Literature.7.4 (Nov-Dec 2014) ISSN 2013-6196 useful Existe una literatura muy interesante sobre la relación entre gestos y adquisición del lenguaje, en su mayoría trabajos de inspiración cognitivista o psicolingüística.No es lo que hago pero son trabajos que tienen resultados muy interesantes.Por ejemplo, los trabajos de Marianne Gullberg en los que muestra que cuando empiezas a aprender una lengua haces los gestos típicos de tu L1 y que hacer los gestos de la L2 va a ser algo que va a venir después.Esta es una manera muy Bellaterra Journal of Teaching & Learning Language & Literature.7.4 (Nov-Dec 2014) ISSN 2013-6196