This presentation examines a peer language tutorial involving Thai and Japanese students mediated through the use of English and embodied resources. Findings of the study will add useful insight into language learning in the context global mobility wherein individuals ceaselessly expand their repertoires of interaction in their unfolding life trajectories.
"Complementing theoretical advances brought about by sociolinguistics of mobility (Blommaert, 2010), CA scholars have recently been engaging in reappraisal of the notion of interactional competence to foreground its dynamic, adaptive, and distributed nature (Sert, Kunitz, & Markee, 2018). From this emerging perspective, linguistic forms are seen as an epiphenomena of participation in social interaction, and a norm-oriented understanding of learning is replaced with a biographical and non-linear one, manifest in the use of the term repertoire defined as "conventionalized constellations of semiotic resources" (Hall, Cheng, & Carlson, 2006, p. 232; also Hall, 2018). While the CA literature is replete with empirical studies lending support to such an orientation, there is a relative scarcity of research on how multilinguals continue to expand their repertories of interaction on top of a second language. The present study examines a peer language tutorial session involving Thai and Japanese college students taking place at a Thai university. Adopting Ethnomethodological Conversation Analysis (EMCA) as the methodological lens, it seeks to illuminate how participants implement common actions and action sequences, such as repeat-after-me and grammatical correction, by juggling English, Thai, and Japanese as well as embodied resources. Microanalyses of the tutorial demonstrate how participants pursue their shared undertakings not only by enacting routines deriving from previous language learning experience but also by co-constructing emergent norms, particularly with respect to the association between types of resources with different activities and interactional roles. Furthermore, beyond a focus on the official target language (i.e., Thai), the presentation also shows how participants shift their orientation toward teaching/learning Japanese through language alternation. Findings of the study will add useful insight into language learning in the context global mobility wherein individuals are faced with the constant need to continue expanding their repertoires of interaction occasioned by their unfolding life trajectories.
