Greer2016a

Greer2016a
BibType	INCOLLECTION
Key	Greer2016a
Author(s)	Tim Greer
Title	Multiple Involvements in Interactional Repair: Using Smartphones in Peer Culture to Augment Lingua Franca English
Editor(s)	Maryanne Theobald
Tag(s)	EMCA, English as lingua franca, Lingua franca, Technologized interaction, Smartphones, Multiple involvements, Repair
Publisher
Year	2016
Language
City
Month
Journal
Volume
Number
Pages	197-229
URL	Link
DOI	10.1108/S1537-466120160000021010
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title	Friendship and Peer Culture in Multilingual Settings
Chapter

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Abstract

Purpose With an extensive range of information available at the swipe of a finger, the smartphone has become a ubiquitous tool for augmenting conversation. Users of English as a lingua franca (ELF) often rely on such technology to help establish friendships by using them to sustain intersubjectivity. But how do they manage the multiple involvements this entails, such as participating in current talk while searching for linguistic items?

Methodology/approach This study employs multimodal Conversation Analysis to undertake a detailed account of the way two young people, a Japanese male (22) and an Indonesian male (16) incorporate smartphones into their lingua franca English interaction. The analysis is based on naturally occurring conversations video-recorded by the Japanese participant, while both boys were living with an American homestay family.

Findings The analysis explores the role of the smartphone in forward-oriented repair, including how the interactants, look up unfamiliar words, delay turn progressivity to fit those words into the turn-in-progress, and use images to accompany an unclear term. Speakers also occasionally abandon a look-up in order to reformulate the turn without the smartphone, relying instead on their own interactional competence.

Originality/value The study offers insight into the way young people use smartphones as an affordance to manage and repair aspects of their L2 talk, enabling them to enhance their current interactional competence by drawing on the vast range of semiotic resources the phone possesses. Ensuring understanding is essential for developing and maintaining friendships, and for this particular peer culture of lingua franca English speakers, smartphones are a key tool for accomplishing that. As such, the study will be of interest to researchers and educators in the fields of both technology and interaction.

Notes