Collaborative Negotiation of Meaning

The negotiation of meaning, or, the process of creating, sharing and repairing meaning, is central to communication and to all human social activity. The present volume investigates how speakers of a foreign language collaborate with each other and with native speakers to negotiate meaning in face to face interaction and it underlines how complex that process with its different communicative goals really is. The study further accounts for how the ability of foreign language speakers to negotiate meaning evolves as language is acquired. This book starts by reviewing the main second language acquisition research (SLAR) studies that have been conducted on the subject. An interdisciplinary qualitative framework based on interactive sociolinguistics, pragmatics, discourse/conversation analysis and ethnography of communication is adopted to investigate meaning processes. The present investigation has as its focal point the study of conversations conducted in Spanish, which means that an important gap within SLAR, which up until now has chiefly concentrated on analysing interactions in English as a second language, has been filled. This is a subtle and detailed investigation which provides much insight into the complex nature of how meaning is negotiated in a foreign language. The book is exceptional because of its broad and interdisciplinary perspective and because of its process-oriented qualitative approach. This study will be of interest to researchers in the field of language acquisition, teaching practitioners, teacher trainers, curriculum compilers and students of applied linguistics.



The paperback edition was originally published with ISBN 90-420-0116_X