Online Second Language Acquisition: Conversation Analysis of Online Chat

Abstract

This book uses Conversation Analysis (CA) methodology to understand how foreign languages are used and learned in a naturalistic online setting, specifically in text chat. Text chat is widely available both in institutional and private settings, and is fast becoming a mainstream tool in the teaching and learning of foreign languages. It has been reported to provide many of the benefits of face-to-face conversation, despite the lack of kinesic and prosodic features which typify spoken face-to-face communication. Kinesic features include the various aspects of visual communication and space sharing such as gesture, posture, stance, facial expression, eye contact, gaze, haptics and proxemics. Prosodic elements of oral interaction include accent, stress, volume, pitch, intonation and rhythm. Furthermore, from a conversation analytic point of view, the absence of pauses and sound stretches in online text chat also reduces its prosodic richness when com-pared with spoken language.