This Special Issue of CALL aims to contribute to the existing scholarly work in computer-mediated communication (henceforth, CMC) by further exploring the intertwined notions of interculturality and identity as developed in different technologically enhanced foreign language (L2)Footnote1 teaching contexts. The glue that binds the articles presented here is the prominence given to the analysis of the interaction produced and negotiated by L2 learners, tutors, mentors and other participants in virtual environments, which is taken as a fruitful source for researchers to discover the main traits of the students’ identities (Block, Citation2014, De Costa & Norton, Citation2016; Norton, Citation2016) and the relationship between their discourse and their social and cultural practice (Machart, Lim, Lim, & Yamato, Citation2013).
Previous literature on CMC and its effects on the L2 classroom suggests that this type of interaction, both in its synchronous and asynchronous forms, can foster the development of linguistic competence (Chun, Citation2008; Elola & Oskoz, Citation2010; Vinagre & Muñoz, Citation2011), learner autonomy (Fuchs, Hauck, & Müller-Hartmann, Citation2012), higher thinking skills (Von Der Emde, Schneider, & Kötter, Citation2001), digital skills (Hauck, Citation2010), socio-pragmatic competences (Haugh & Chang, Citation2015) and multiple competences (instrumental, interpersonal and systemic; Guth & Helm, Citation2011; Vinagre, Citation2016b). According to Nguyen (Citation2008), other benefits can also include increased motivation and a more active, reflective and collaborative learning. Finally, there is an important number of studies suggesting that when participants from different countries and cultures engage in CMC activities, intercultural awareness can increase as a result (Alonso-Belmonte & Fernández-Agüero, Citation2013, Citation2015; Dooly and O'Dowd, Citation2012; Furstenberg, Levet, English, & Maillet, Citation2001; Vinagre, Citation2016a). Thus, it is not surprising that, given the benefits that CMC can report in the L2 classroom, many practitioners wish to integrate it into their classrooms mostly by means of ad-hoc initiatives such as telecollaborative tasks and project work.
However, effective participation in CMC is not easy since special knowledge and skills are required. According to Simpson (Citation2005), these include knowledge of the linguistic system, knowledge of discourse patterns, knowledge of technology and knowledge of sociocultural rules. Knowledge of the linguistic system usually refers to the knowledge of the languages participants will use to communicate and which tend to be at least two, the mother tongue and the L2 being learned. As regards discourse patterns, participants need to adapt their language use to that of CMC modes. This aspect is essential since CMC, which cannot be described either as a single language variety or writing (typed) speech, ‘exhibits features of orality as well as characteristics unique to itself’ (Herring & Androutsopoulos, Citation2015, p. 128). As these authors note, speech and writing are situated along a continuum and, in CMC contexts, asynchronous modes such as email are situated closer to the written end of this continuum, whilst synchronous modes such as chat tend to present more ‘oral’ features (p. 129). Thus, effective communication in these contexts requires participants to have an awareness of the specific features that make CMC interaction different from face-to-face communication, and of the social and cultural contexts embedding particular instances of use. The knowledge of technology implies that participants need to know how communication technologies function in order to interpret delays in communication, overlaps (in synchronous interaction) and late responses. This aspect also encompasses that participants need to know the affordances and constraints of the technologies being used. Finally, the sociocultural rules refer to the specific conventions and rules of speaking of a particular group in a communicative situation. In this respect, authors such as Warschauer (Citation1998) had already noted that ‘in order to fully understand the interrelationship between technology and language learning, researchers have to investigate the broader ecological context that affects language learning and use in today's society, both inside and outside the classroom’ (p. 760).
Computer-mediated communication in a globalised world
CMC in telecollaborative exchanges is of particular interest here with respect to social dimensions of language learning and use, since it entails engaging students in virtual collaboration with partners from different sociocultural contexts and locations in order to achieve certain learning or training goals (Vinagre, Citation2017). In the field of L2 education, it means involving students in online international communication and collaboration with partners of different cultures and in distant locations with the aim of developing both language skills and intercultural competence (Belz, Citation2003; Lee & Markey, Citation2014; Müller-Hartmann, Citation2007; Vinagre, Citation2016b). Integrating this kind of activity in the L2 classroom becomes particularly relevant in a globalised world in which individuals are expected not only to show awareness of cultural differences, but also to have the necessary skills to perform appropriately in different communicative settings. In telecollaboration the goal is not to achieve native speaker competence in the target language (Alptekin, Citation2002; McKay, Citation2002), but rather to follow the norms of the intercultural speaker who is constantly engaged in self-reflection and is able to ‘mediate/interpret the values, beliefs and behaviours (the “cultures”) of themselves and of others and to ‘stand on the bridge’ or indeed ‘be the bridge’ between people of different languages and cultures’ (Byram, Citation2006, p. 12). In this respect, there is an interesting strand of research on telecollaboration conducted in a lingua franca (often English) reporting very positive results in terms of motivation, satisfaction and intercultural learning (see Ware, Liaw, & Warschauer, Citation2012, for a review).
Only recently has the connection between cultural globalisation, L2 identity formation and the teaching of (mainly) English as a lingua franca (ELF) started to attract the attention of practitioners and researchers (Holmes & Dervin, Citation2016; Kamaravadevelu, Citation2008, Citation2012; Lin, Citation2008; inter alia). In fact, one of the articles of this Special Issue addresses the impact of using a lingua franca (McGroarty, Citation2006) on the formation of L2 learners’ identities. Intercultural collaborative exchanges foster community building among participants and the creation of a ‘sound social space’ (Kreijns, Kirschner, Jochems, & Van Buuren, Citation2004) that offers a unique opportunity for all of them ‘(…) to wrestle with and articulate their anxieties about the complexities of identity formation’ (Kamaravadivelu, Citation2012, p. 9). In this context, we pose the following research questions: which identity issues emerge when teachers and students from different cultures and languages interact through telecollaboration? How do teachers display cultural responsiveness and intercultural communication competence in their design of learning tasks and in their messages to students? What kind of tensions (if any) arise among intercultural groups that participate in telecollaborative exchange? And how do participants solve them?
Identity, voice and language use in computer-mediated communication
The analysis of CMC interaction in virtual environments can also unveil some features of the learners’ identity building process as L2 users. L2 users self-regulate their communicative practices with others with the intention that their messages are properly understood. In intercultural contexts, this process can entail different kinds of problems. One of them concerns the L2 learners’ lack of competence or confidence to interpret other culture perspectives and/or the communication skills necessary to achieve effective communication outcomes, including identity negotiation (Kern, Citation2006; Noels, Yashima, & Zhang, Citation2011, p. 58). CMC contexts are ideal environments to explore such issues since they facilitate interaction with other (foreign) peers and the development of participants’ new identities through social positioning as L2 learners (Fong, Lin, & Engle, Citation2016). Thus, some of the articles included in the Special Issue address the following questions: in successful virtual discussions, what forms of language do participants use to engage with their peers? Are some more effective than others when trying to collaborate with partners? What are the differences between the communicative resources used in effective discussions and those in less successful ones? What are the implications for teachers? How do students establish rapport in intercultural CMC settings? How is this rapport related to the learners’ agency? Research shows that non-native speakers feel more comfortable and less worried about their language deficiencies in online contexts when compared to in-person contexts (Freiermuth, Citation2001), and that they feel safe which results in an empowerment to share their own inner voice (Warschauer, Turbee, & Roberts, Citation1996). As some authors suggest (Lewis, Citation2017), ‘voice has both an intensely personal and a social dimension. It is determined by the choices individuals make about the means and modes they use to express themselves. But it also evolves in a dialogic exchange with others, which requires negotiation and the attainment of shared understanding’ (Lewis, Citation2017, p. 5). In this respect, the analysis of L2 interaction in CMC environments can provide us with invaluable data of how intercultural dialogue is co-created.
About the individual contributions in this Special Issue
This Special Issue gathers together five research papers. The first article titled Learner Agency and Non-native Speaker Identity in Pedagogical Lingua Franca Conversations: Insights from Intercultural Telecollaboration in Foreign Language Education is by Kurt Kohn and Petra Hoffstaedter, the managers of LINK – Linguistik und Interkulturelle Kommunikation GbR (http://www.sprachlernmedien.de/link/). These authors address the intercultural dimension of using ELF in a telecollaborative context in secondary education. They analyse nine ELF conversations between pairs of teenager students from collaborating secondary schools in France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain to explore whether their interaction encourage their agency as L2 users. Findings relate the learners’ non-native speaker identity to the degree to which they manage to comply with the requirements of success they impose on their own communicative performance and on the communicative performance of their interlocutors.
In Understanding Different Levels of Group Functionality: Activity Systems Analysis of an Intercultural Telecollaborative Multilingual Digital Storytelling Project, Sabina Priego, from the University of Laval (Canada), and her colleague Meei-Ling Liaw, from the National Taichung University of Education (Taiwan), present a study on the application of Activity Theory (Engeström, Citation2001) to unveil understanding of the tensions or contradictions occurred during multilingual digital storytelling co-constructions in a telecollaborative project among university students and how they were solved. For this purpose, the researchers analyse the participants’ correspondence, including discussion-forum and Facebook postings, as well as the finished multilingual/multimodal digital stories, and they identify four areas of potential conflict: tools, rules, community and division of labour. Based on these findings, pedagogical implications for intercultural telecollaboration are discussed.
The third article, by Karla del Rosal, Jillian Conry and Sumei Wu from Southern Methodist University (USA), is titled Exploring the Fluid Online Identities of Language Teachers and Adolescent Language. Del Rosal and her colleagues examine the identities of participants in an online mentoring programme of English as a second language and explore how they displayed intercultural awareness. Their results suggest that mentors displayed different online identities including identities as teachers, mentors or friends, and that these mentor identities influenced the degree in which interactions with mentees focused on didactic tasks or on tasks oriented to getting to know each other and developing relationships. Partnerships with more interactions which focused on developing relationships displayed a higher level of student engagement in the programme and more opportunities to share information which allowed participants to learn about their cultural and generational similarities and differences.
The fourth article is by Anne McCabe, from Saint Louis University (Madrid Campus) and it is titled Knowledge and Interaction in On-line Discussions in Spanish by Advanced Language Learners. She explores university students’ identity as peers and as legitimate knowers through the analysis of their L2 interaction in online discussion forums. Her methodological approach is a combined use of a functionally oriented model of evaluative language (Martin & White, Citation2005) and a model of knowledge (Maton, Citation2013a, Citation2013b). Results highlight the difficulties that the students encountered to create an interactive discussion about course knowledge. At the end of the paper, the author offers suggestions for setting up online discussions in content-based courses.
Finally, the last article titled Small Talk is not Cheap: Phatic Computer-mediated Communication in Intercultural Classes by Carmen Maiz-Arévalo (University Complutense of Madrid, Spain), addresses the importance of establishing rapport among partners in virtual collaborative environments. This issue has also been the focus of numerous studies (Ädel, Citation2011; Hampel & Pleines, Citation2013). However, many of these studies have analysed the interaction produced by students in monocultural classes (Li & Zhu, Citation2013; Padilla, Citation2013). In order to address this gap in the literature, Maíz-Arévalo's article focuses on how participants in an online intercultural environment used language in their interactions in order to carry out collaborate tasks and project work. In her study, she explores how participants use phatic talk in their online discussions in a forum. Her results suggest that phatic talk is used as a rapport strategy to boost collaboration and successful task completion and that those students who use more phatic talk perform better (produce a better final learning product) than those who restrict their phatic talk to the use of greetings and partings.
Acknowledgements
This research was funded by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through two different projects (FFI2016-77540-P and EDU2014 -54673R).
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. In this editorial, we shall use L2 to refer both to both foreign and second languages (teaching and learning).
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