This conversation analytic study explores the relationship between recipient affiliation and interactional competence by examining how participants of different L2 proficiencies orient to the projected expectations of the speaker and mobilize responding actions that endorse the speaker's conveyed stance.
Recent conversation analytic research have illuminated the nature and development of L2 interactional competence by documenting the speaker's changes in context-sensitive conduct, methods of action, and recipient design (Pekarek Doehler & Berger, 2016; Waring, 2018). Whereas these studies have revealed the increasing ability of the L2 speaker, the recipient's activities have received much less attention. This study thereby seeks to explore the relationship between recipient affiliation and interactional competence, revealing how participants of different L2 proficiencies orient to the projected expectations of the speaker and mobilize responding actions that endorse the speaker's conveyed stance. This study draws on 60 videorecordings of 40-60 minute dyadic conversations collected from Korean EFL learners across novice, intermediate, and advanced English proficiency levels. The participants were female university students and completed out-of-class conversation activities where they freely talked about events that made them happy, angry, or worried. Analyses of the data showed that the participants oriented to the normative kind of responses that are relevant from the recipient by ratifying the telling and displaying shared affectivity with the speaker. Yet, in comparison with the more advanced learners, the affiliative actions of the novice learners were often equivocal and thus treated as insufficient by the storyteller. The findings of this study will further our understanding of responding actions and contribute to research on L2 interactional competence with pedagogical implications for classroom practices.
