My research interests revolve around what language learning reveals about the nature of language and the efficacy of theoretical models of language. Over the years, my investigations have convinced me that the study of language and language learning is most insightful when undertaken from the perspective of language in use and, by extension, language in context. The particular view of language that guides my work recognizes the following as foundational: 1) humans use language purposefully, primarily to communicate with other humans beings; 2) what any one utterance communicates is multidimensional involving, at minimum, the ideational, interpersonal, and textual; 3) communication always occurs in a context, richly defined; and 4) the complex, multi-layered interpretations we regularly assign to naturally-occurring language are underdetermined by the lexical items and the syntactic patterns in which they occur. Although these attributes are so basic and so unquestionably true, they have not been of central concern for many linguists and language acquisitionists. Placing this particular perspective at the center of my linguistic inquiry has had profound consequences for the questions I ask, the data I consider, the patterns I discover, and my interpretation of the import of those patterns.
My work is also defined by a recursive style of investigation that emphasizes interactions between theory and practical application. It usually begins with the observation of learners experiencing difficulty with an aspect of language. The puzzle is then to figure out why this aspect presents such a challenge. This leads to an examination of the theoretical explanations and to an attempt to refine the theory so it more accurately describes and explains the target phenomena. Finally, I test the accuracy or usefulness of the refined model, often in an experimental setting. This methodology has its basis in my doctoral research in which I investigated 4 th, 6 th, 8 th, and 10 th graders’ acquisition of English derivational morphology and how they used that knowledge when reading for comprehension. In various ways, that early work has informed all my subsequent research as it provided a foundation in experimental design and methodology as well as an abiding interest in language processing, a commitment to examining models of language through the lens of language learning, and the belief that the results of those examinations can both help refine the model and eventually aid the language learner.
Cognitive Linguistics
In the last few years, my basic view of language has evolved to include a recognition of the critical relationship between human conceptual structure and the nature of language. The evidence indicates that much of human conceptual structure is shaped by our perceptions of and experience with the spatial-physical world in which we live. How we perceive and understand the world is crucially based on our unique physical and neurological architecture and our unique experience of the world we inhabit. Basic spatial relations (such as objects in foveal vision versus peripheral vision) and our observations of frequently co-occurring events (such as an increase in amount occurring simultaneously with a rise in physical elevation, i.e. experiential correlation) exemplify some of the key ‘real world’ experiences that are reflected in language. How we perceive and understand the world (our unique human perception and conceptualization) is crucial to the system we develop in order to talk about our world.
My work with Vyv Evans on the semantics of English prepositions (e.g., our article in Language, 2001, our CUP book The Semantics of English Prepositions, 2003) most clearly illustrates this evolving functional, usage-based, cognitive perspective. In this work, we examine the nature of human spatial-physical experience and its relationship to semantic extension.
Applying the Cognitive Model
The initial impetus for the analysis of English prepositions came from my work with L2 learners and L2 language teachers, many of whom were graduate students at Georgetown. My observations and those of other experienced L2 teachers indicated that prepositions represent one of the most difficult aspects of English for L2 learners to acquire and for teachers to explain. Examination of current language teaching materials and grammars of English shows that prepositions are generally presented as an unorganized, idiosyncratic list. The multiple meanings associated with each preposition are usually not addressed at all, leaving both the teacher and the learner with the impression that prepositions and their many meanings and uses are arbitrary and that the only approach to mastering them is memorization.
The task of working out a viable theoretical model of English prepositions was the central focus of my research for three years (from 1999 to 2002); however, the goal to develop pedagogically useful explanations was always simultaneously of major concern. Before recommending that language teachers adopt the model, a number of experimental investigations were called for. The first involved testing the model against native speakers’ intuitions concerning the semantics of English prepositions. This involved a series of experiments undertaken with a group of graduate students who were enrolled in my seminar, Applying Cognitive Linguistics. The results offer support for several aspects of Tyler & Evans’ model.
In collaboration with Dasha Shakohova and YiYoung Kim, I began a second series of experiments which examine the usefulness of the model for the L2 classroom. We developed and piloted both teacher-fronted and task-based teaching materials for seven prepositions. The results of the first round of these experiments suggest that the Tyler & Evans’ model can provide an effective rubric for L2 learners.
Discourse Analysis and Cross-cultural Communication
Cognitive linguistics, with its emphasis on a usage-based model, the rejection of separation of form and meaning, and its recognition of words as access points to extensive, organized background knowledge strikes me as a logical complement to a discourse analytical/ pragmatic perspective on language. Certainly my work in cross-cultural and comparative discourse analysis, with its strong emphasis on the role of schema and interlocutor expectations, provided a critical foundation for my research in cognitive linguistics. In the areas of discourse analysis and cross-cultural communication, I have examined the difficulties L2 learners encounter as they attempt to produce English in communicative settings. This work demonstrates that L2 discourse can shine a spotlight on many discourse elements that have not yet been adequately understood or described. I have been able to elucidate a number of what Gumperz (e.g., 1981; 1992) calls contextualization cues, those implicitly understood language patterns which have taken on additional meaning beyond that supplied by the lexical items and the syntax. For instance, one of my early discoveries involved the link between L2 learners’ failure to use hypotaxis and native listeners’ sense that the L2 discourse lacked coherence. In contrasting L2 discourse with that of native speakers, I found that native speakers use relative clauses and other forms of embedding to signal background information. The failure to use hypotactic structures essentially stripped the L2 discourse of important cues that guide the listener through the emergent discourse.
The population of L2 learners with whom I have worked most closely has been International Teaching Assistants (ITAs). Analyzing the videotaped interactions between ITAs and their American undergraduate students repeatedly demonstrated the need to take context--iincluding participants, norms for appropriate enactment of participant roles, frame, and the emergent text--into account. Although their discourse contained many instances of ungrammatical sentences and non-nativelike word choice, the sources of the ITA’s communication difficulties were far more complex than what could be accounted for by sentence-level analysis. In my cross-cultural/cross-linguistic discourse analysis, I have adopted a triangulated methodology that involves guided video playback (or stimulated recall) with the interlocutors and input from representative members of the participants’ speech communities, as well as my own observations as an informed analyst. The goal is to provide a bi-directional interactional analysis that takes multiple participants’perspectives into account. My work on cross-cultural perceptions of sexual harassment is one of the particularly interesting areas of research that emerged from this approach (e.g. Discourse and Society, 1996). In addition, I have employed close comparisons between parallel discourse produced by native speakers and non-native speakers in which topic, general setting, and participant roles are controlled. In a number of instances, I experimentally tested my hypotheses against the reactions of other native speakers of English, as in my TESOL Quarterly article (1991) and my work with John Bro (SSLA, 1992; 1995).
Most recently, I have begun to apply this same approach in my work with INTERNATIONAL LAWYERS in the ENGLISH FOR LAWYERS program.
GURT 2003: Synthesizing Cognitive Linguistics and Discourse Analysis
My interests in cognitive linguistics and cross-linguistic/cross-cultural discourse analysis coalesced in the theme I set for the 2003 Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics (GURT)--Language in Use: Cognitive and Discourse Perspectives on Language and Language Learning. The conference sought to bring together research from various perspectives which emphasize the shared notions that the properties of language and the process of language learning (both first and second) crucially involve how language is used in context and how these patterns relate to cognition more generally. Researchers who identify themselves as taking a cognitive approach (broadly defined) and those who take a discourse perspective have argued that language primarily serves a communicative function, and further, that linguistic structure cannot be understood apart from the study of how language is employed to create meaning. Mutual strands of investigation pursued by these researchers included: 1) the role of psychological plausibility in developing theories of language and language learning; 2) the connections between form and function; and 3) the connections between cognition, language, and language learning.