Language policing: micro-level language policy-in-process in the foreign language classroom

Abstract

This article examines what we call micro-level language policy-in-process – that is, how a target-language-only policy emerges in situ in the foreign language classroom. More precisely, we investigate the role of language policing, the mechanism deployed by the teacher and/or pupils to (re-)establish the normatively prescribed target language as the medium of classroom interaction in the English as a foreign language classroom of an international school in Sweden. Using ethnomethodological conversation analysis, we have identified a regular three-step sequence for language policing: (1) a (perceived) breach of the target-language-only rule, (2) an act of language policing and (3) an orientation to the target-language-only rule, usually in the guise of medium switching to the target language. Focusing primarily on teacher-to-pupil policing, where the teacher polices pupils’ (perceived) use of their L1 (Swedish), we identify three different categories of teacher-policing. These categories are based on particular configurations of features deployed in the three steps, such as initiator techniques (e.g. reminders, prompts, warnings and sanctions) and pupils’ responses to being policed (e.g. compliance or contestation).

Keywords:

• conversation analysis
• classroom interaction
• practiced language policy
• code-switching
• language policing.

Notes

1. See e.g. Seedhouse (2004) for an elaborated account of the basic principles of CA.

2. We avoid the terms ‘repair’ and ‘correction’ here, partly because they are confusingly used in different ways even within the same research tradition (see Kelly Hall 2007 for a broader discussion of these terms). In CA, ‘repair’ is usually used to denote the ‘practices for dealing with problems or troubles in speaking, hearing, and understanding the talk in conversation’ (Schegloff 2000, 207). Thus ‘repair’ is essentially a mechanism for solving problems to do with achieving mutual understanding (intersubjectivity). The concept of repair has also been extended to instructional contexts in classrooms within CA (e.g. McHoul 1990, Seedhouse 2004), but there has also been critique of this extension of the term (e.g. Macbeth 2004, Kelly Hall 2007) on account of the special instructional nature and sequential organisation of these kinds of ‘repairs’. One upshot of this critique is that Macbeth (2004) argues that a distinction should be drawn between ‘repair’ in everyday conversation and ‘correction’ in instructional correction sequences. However, in CA approaches to bilingual talk, ‘repair’ tends to be used for the corrective practices of establishing a mutually acceptable language/code (cf. medium repair in Gafaranga 2000; Gafaranga and Torras 2002; and an extended discussion of repair in Gafaranga 2013). Although language policing shares some features of repair and instructional correction, the source of the trouble is always a (perceived) wrong medium. Yet unlike the concept of medium repair, which says nothing about which medium is to be preferred a priori, language policing always involves an orientation to the prescribed medium of instruction.

3. As opposed to the local order of talk, where switching medium (medium suspension) is used as a contextualisation cue (Gumperz 1982, 131), i.e. as a local meaning-making device similar to prosodic features. This is what we find in line 31 of extract 1.

4. Here preference is to be understood in CA terms, i.e. not as what the teacher would like or prefer in everyday terms, but rather as the default medium used in interactions with the teacher in English classes.

5. In contrast to medium switching, medium suspension constitutes a temporary suspension from the current medium to signal local meaning rather than a bid for a new medium (Gafaranga and Torras 2002, 16).

6. To maintain anonymity, the misspelling is based on the fictitious name Linda.

7. The video recording did not catch the beginning of the lesson, where there had evidently been another incidence of point deduction, since ‘40’ had already been crossed out and replaced by ‘34’. Unfortunately, we therefore do not know whether both these cases of point deduction had been preceded by an act of language policing.

8. This case would correspond to medium suspension (Gafaranga and Torras, 2002, 17) in that it operates locally to signal interactional disalignment (cf. footnote 3).