Laffect: Un outil de mdiation pour lappropriation des reprsentations culturelles et linguistiques en

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Laffect Un outil de médiation pour
lappropriation des représentations culturelles
et linguistiques en langue étrangère?Affect A
mediating tool to internalize cultural and
linguistic representations in a foreign language?
Pascale GOUTÉRAUX EA 3967 CLILLAC-ARP Université
Paris Diderot
Colloque ALDIDAC Vers un Paradigme de la
Reliance? 27-28 novembre 2009 Université Cergy-
Pontoise
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Representations cognition affect

• Constructivist et cognitivist theories
• From Piaget to Vergnaud (1996-1999)

• Socioconstructivist social-interactive
  theories
• Vygotsky (1985)-Bruner (1993)

• Enactives, neurobiological ecological
  theories
• Varela (1996), Damasio (1994), Tomasello al
  (2005), Trochme-Fabre (1994), Van Lier, Pavlenko
  (2000) and others

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Affect in bilingual discourse

• Pavlenko (2008), Pavlenko al (2006)
  bilinguals
• Dewaele Pavlenko (2002) L2 learners
• De Cock (Lindsei, Locnec, 2008) NNS NS

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Hypotheses and questions (1)

• General Hypothesis
• To become a more proficient speaker, a learner
  must internalize cognitive and affect
  representations in English, store and use
  appropriate linguistic tools to express them.
• Can pedagogical tasks help EFL learners develop
  that specific language proficiency?
• Can task variation induce different modes of
  relatedness between cognition and affect in
  learner speech?

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Hypotheses and questions (2)

• Triggering spontaneous reactions to English
  cultural artefacts a direct access to cultural
  otherness?
• A means to boost the internalisation of cultural
  declarative knowledge?

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Corpus, Tasks and Academic Context

• 28 EFL students (two groups) and a teacher
• 12 weekly sessions of collective oral
  interactions (Classe de Seconde), recorded over
  four months
• 14 communicative macro-tasks 22 sub-tasks and
  activities
• Curriculum in Seconde focusing on argumentative
  speech
• Official directives (2002) Promoting linguistic
  and cultural integration

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Appraisal Systems in English
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Instructions and spontaneous discourse
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Students reactions to affect-laden discourse

• New Years Resolutions (The American assistant)
• Memories of Thanksgiving (a students mother)
• The Merry-Go-Round (recording A poem by Langston
  Hughes)

Results Few affect tokens, indirect appraisal of
others feelings She likes putting up the lights
(rephrasing) Shes shy, shes sensitive
(appreciation) He sounds angry (appreciation)
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Reactions to Summertime Task One

• Task instructions The students were to react
  spontaneously to different interpretations of
  Summertime one by Ella Fitzgerald and L.
  Amstrong, the other by Janis Joplin.
• Production
• Gr.1 12 speakers, 22 turns 18 LT(355 words), 31
  affect tokens, 16 cognitive tokens.
• Gr.2 12 speakers, 30 turns, 24 LT, (529 words),
  48 affect tokens, 18 cognitive tokens.

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Reactions to Summertime ( Gr.1)
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Reactions to Summertime ( Gr.2)
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Reactions to Summertime grid Gr.1
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Reactions to Summertime grid Gr.2
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Affect tokens distribution (Gr.2)
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Affect tokens Distribution (Gr.1)
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Metaphors and attitudinal stance

• S1Shes like yelling
• S2 She seems like suffering.
• S1 I cant imagine myself hearing that on my
  headphones.
• S3The poor baby willmake nightmares
• S4 Not if he is a rock baby!
• S5 She a rebel (positive stance)
• S6 I want to stop my activities and listen.
• S4 It makes me think tohoney When you are
  in a sofa in a cosy interior and you listen to
  this, you dont feel stressed, you dont think to
  anything else and youre relaxed.

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Intensifiers and attitudinal stance
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Partial conclusions

• A task designed to trigger affect-laden speech.
• Cognitive wording of instructions (opinions? Tell
  me what you think) little impact on the
  production of affect tokens.
• Think cognition verb, introduction to affect
  markers, turntaking signal/time-saving device.
• Emotions and feelings mostly verbs.
• Appreciation and judgement (of others or
  objects) mostly predicative adjectives.
• Metaphors and intensifiers enriching
  affect-laden discourse.

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Reacting to a Poem Task Two
I have eaten the plums that were in the
icebox and which you were probably saving for
breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so
sweet and so cold.
This is Just to Say William Carlos Williams
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This is Just to Say (Gr.2)

• Task instructions Read the poem, share your
  reactions with the class. Say what you
  understand.
• Production 27 cognition tokens (5.94 total
  n.words) 12 affect tokens (2.64).

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Accounting for discrepancies

• Re-ordering instructions
• Ill start with the description of what Ive
  understood.
• Making sense of the narrators identity child or
  adult? (12 turns).
• Using affect for identification to the narrator
• I think it can be both, it can be a children
  oh, a child, but I would have eaten them and
  said nothing or a vicious one who says Mmm, its
  so sweet and you didnt eat it, I did!.

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Tips for successful task completion

• Take text complexity into account no direct
  access to the implicit meaning of the poem.
• Order task instructions to fit sequencing of
  cognitive-communicative L2 natural processing.
• Provide linguistic tools to express feelings and
  aesthetic appreciation.

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Its silly, this day! Task Three

• Reactions to unfamiliar cultural features
• Instructions Look at this (a Buy Nothing Day
  pamphlet) and react to it.
• Results 7 students limited production
• 9 cognitive markers I agree (2), I disagree
  (2), uncertainty (I dont know, Im not sure)
  explanations (It means, explain).
• 7 affect markers negative stance (silly,
  stupid, bad for shopkeepers) indirect negative
  stance
• If I want to buy something I like, I will buy it.
  But I wont follow it, because if I want to buy
  something today, I will buy it.
• Perplexity, misunderstanding, outright rejection

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Closing the gap?

• Affect cognition? Fuzzy boundaries/slippery
  words
• Words do not have immutable meanings and stable
  affective dimensions-rather, their meanings and
  affective connotations are internalized,
  constructed, and negotiated in context(Pavlenko,
  2008).
• Commenting on others feelings vs. expressing
  ones feelings impact on productivity and
  lexical richness
• Attitudinal stance cultural integration
• Emotions and judgements anchor declarative
  cultural knowledge
• Spontaneous reactions to alien features may act
  as deterrents to building up cultural knowledge
• Task design and sequencing as modifying factors

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On-going projects on affect and cognition markers
in learner corpora

• Need for larger longitudinal corpora
• Longdale project an international study of
  college students spontaneous monologues and
  dialogues to be carried out over 3 years.
• Different tasks (memories and experiences)
• Fluency Prosody-intonation- as affect
  markers.

Thank You!