Symposium: Reference in Interaction from a Cross-Cultural Perspective

OSU is hosting a symposium on reference to objects, space, time, and location, as well as the role that prosody and gesture play in referential work in oral discourse. Invited speakers will present research on aspects of reference in conversation in various languages. The main goal of this symposium is to provide a forum for the contributors to share their recent findings and to discuss interdisciplinary questions of language use and cultural variability of human sociality. I will present on reference in Fulfulde in Qur’anic schooling and folktale telling/teaching/learning. The event is organized by Carmen Taleghani-Nikazm (OSU) and Andrea Golato (U of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) and is sponsored by a College of Arts and Sciences Research Enhancement Award. For more information, go to the symposium website.

Combining CA and linguistic perspectives on student-initiated talk about L2 grammar

My advisee Seo Hyun Park and I will present a paper at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for Applied Linguistics. We examine how students initiate talk about Dutch grammar and how the instructor produces non-minimal post-expansions, using talk, gesture, and writing on the blackboard to construct mini grammar lessons. The instructor’s expansion is witnessably successful in one of the sequences, unsuccessful in the other. In presenting our analysis of these two sequences, we show how linguistic and conversation-analytic approaches to language must be combined in these instances to answer the core question of CA, “Why that, in that way, right now?”.

Eun Jeong Lee receives EHE dissertation fellowship

Eun Jeong Lee, whom I co-advise with Dr. Alan Hirvela, has been awarded a Dissertation Research Fellowship by the College of Education and Human Ecology. Her dissertation study examines the relationships between oral corrective feedback, affect, and oral English improvement in advanced-level ESL classrooms. Funding for Eun Jeong’s fellowship is provided by the Marilyn Ruth Hathaway Education Scholarship Fund.

Somali Studies for Educators website is live!

At long last, the Somali Studies for Educators website went live in late February. The site grew out of a 2009 teachers’ workshop held in Columbus, Ohio, which was initiated by The Ohio State University. Somali Studies for Educators offers many resources, including workshop syllabi, a growing list of online resources, and selected video clips from the 2009 workshop. These clips are organized into themes: identity, arts, family, education, language, and global cross-currents. We are still cleaning up a bit after the site’s migration from the development server, so please forgive any glitches.