How to Do Things With Words

concerns and methodologies, they contend, has resulted in "distorted descriptions of and views on discourse, communication, and interpersonal meaning" (p. 288). I share many of the concerns they have raised in their paper, and although I have made similar arguments in some of my own work (see, e.g., Hall, 1993, 1995a), I have not done so with the same degree of attention to interactional detail. I appreciate their efforts, and in light of them have decided, rather than using the space I have been allotted here to respond to the various points they have made, to take up their call for a reconceptualization of the field. Thus, what I present here is a brief overview of an alternative approach to the study of SLA. My purpose for doing so is primarily exploratory: I aim to clear a pathway or two into other disciplines whose premises and empirical findings may help us in the SLA field to reconfigure theoretical and pedagogical concerns with language and language learning in ways that are responsive to the issues raised by F&W. I conclude the paper with a few suggestions for undertaking SLA research from this alternative perspective.

A Consideration of SLA as a Theory of Practice: A Response to Firth and Wagner

Qu'est-ce qu'un probleme informationnel ? Comment et par qui est-il defini ? Celui-ci n'existerait jamais seul... Il s'enchâsserait dans une dynamique decisionnelle a laquelle il emprunterait une histoire, une culture et une memoire. Ainsi, pour etre en mesure de le cerner, il faudrait alors se referer a son origine, c'est-a-dire au probleme decisionnel, dont il ne serait qu'une traduction partielle, et a son geniteur, le decideur, qui est aussi son interprete. Dans le contexte de cette etude, nous porterons notre attention sur l'intelligence economique que nous definirons comme etant une demarche collaborative de comprehension et de resolution de problemes decisionnels et informationnels. Tout en considerant cette demarche, a la fois sur ses aspects informationnels et mediationnels, nous circonscrirons l'intelligence economique a travers une methodologie collective de resolution, composee de huit etapes s'etendant de l'identification d'un probleme decisionnel a la prise de decision. Nous verrons que cette demarche s'appuie, au niveau de l'entreprise, sur une harmonisation de processus et de mediations, structuree autour de deux acteurs et d'une composante : le decideur, le veilleur et l'information. Cette representation triangulaire des differentes relations entre acteurs et composante, prises deux a deux, constituera l'originalite de notre approche. En nous placant du point de vue du veilleur, acteur pivot de ce trinome decisionnel, notre reflexion se portera sur la modelisation des activites de recherche d'information engendrees par la demande et plus particulierement sur la deuxieme etape de cette demarche : la traduction du probleme decisionnel en probleme informationnel. Cette these a ete structuree de maniere a presenter la dualite de ces relations entre ces trois protagonistes. Dans ce contexte decisio-informationnel, cette problematique de traduction serait alors bien plus qu'un rapport de langue a langue : elle serait une concordance de probleme a probleme. Elle demanderait de creer une congruence entre les systemes de preferences et de pertinence de nos deux acteurs, l'interpretation de la demande informationnelle se devant etre dans cette situation, affaire de consensus et de compromis. Pour ce faire, le veilleur aura pour tâche de representer le plus fidelement possible les relations entre les donnees de l'environnement et les enjeux du probleme decisionnel afin de les traduire en indicateurs informationnels, c'est-a-dire de trouver une illustration adaptee permettant de les rendre sensibles au cœur et familiers a la raison du decideur. Ainsi, pour repondre dans les meilleures conditions de delais, qualite et couts a cette demande, nous prendrons pour hypothese qu'il faut agir sur trois processus a travers les info-, inter- et cogito- mediations des relations entre le decideur, le veilleur et l'information. Notre etat de la litterature presentera tout au long des quatre premiers chapitres les processus decider, rechercher et cooperer que nous projetterons dans chacun des espaces des problemes decisionnel et informationnel. Nous etayerons chacun de ces chapitres de propositions, tantot pour caracteriser les processus, les mediations, les acteurs et composantes, tantot pour definir des protocoles pour asseoir la collaboration des acteurs ou pour la reutilisation des informations et des connaissances. Les deux derniers chapitres seront, quant a eux, consacres a la description du modele WISP et du prototype METIORE qui l'instancie. Ils constitueront, avec les propositions des precedents chapitres, l'apport de nos travaux dans les domaines de la recherche d'information et de l'intelligence economique. Ils ont ete concus tout deux pour servir d'appui cognitif pour la resolution du probleme informationnel du veilleur et pour etre une interface de communication entre ce dernier et le decideur afin de developper les echanges au sein de la collaboration de resolution de ce, ou de ces problemes...

https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-01752859/document

Modélisation du problème informationnel du veilleur dans la démarche d'Intelligence Économique

This paper, written within a discursive perspective, explores the co-shaping of public and private discourse, and some of the circumstances under which one occasions the other, in the evolution of mathematical thinking by pairs of 13-year-olds. The discourse of six pairs of students, engaged in interpreting and graphing problem situations involving rational functions, was analyzed by means of recently developed methodological tools. The nature of the mathematics that emerged for each pair was found to be related to several factors that included the characteristics of the interpersonal object-level utterances both before and after the solution path had been generated, the degree of activity of the personal channels of the interlocutors, and the extent to which the thoughts of participants were made explicit in the public discourse. The analysis of the discursive interactions provided evidence that adolescents within novel problem situations can experience some difficulty in making their emergent thinking available to their partners in such a way that the interaction be highly mathematically productive for both of them.

The mathematical discourse of 13-year-old partnered problem solving and its relation to the mathematics that emerges

The role of punctuation in P2P lending: Evidence from China

Apprendre dans l'interaction : analyse des médiations sémiotiques

The same ordering task with social marking is used in two experimental training conditions. In one of the conditions, the answers based on the social norm contradict the answers that result from the cognitive processing of the examples provided. In the other condition, the two types of answers are the same. When compared to a control training condition, both of the test training conditions are shown to have the same effect. The observations made during training as well as the justifications given by the children support the hypothesis that the influence of social marking cannot be explained, at least for one of the test conditions, by the existence of socio-cognitive conflict. Social marking may lead to better representation of the task. In one of the experimental conditions, it may also lead to the use of a problem-solving procedure that is based on the properties of the objects to be ordered.

Social marking in ordering tasks: Effects and action mechanisms†

Past research on social marking and pragmatic reasoning schemas suggests that cognitive processing modes are first elaborated by children when they are carrying out regulating social routines in the course of which they learn to produce the responses that satisfy the demand of their environment. The data of the two experimental studies reported here with 4–5 year old children, for object distribution tasks, show that the social routines evoked by the objects to be processed have a dual effect, influencing both the representation of the partition to be made, as well as the procedures used to make them. It can be hypothesised that the utilization of routine-evoking tasks, which children are capable at a very young age, of accomplishing by activating efficient social-goal oriented procedures, promote the attribution of an operative meaning to the linguistic expressions used to characterize the states to be attained, and the transformations to be applied in order to attain them.

Social significance of tasks, routines, and pragmatic schemas in distribution activities

According to a Vygotskian approach, apprenticeship and cognitive development are linked with the internalization of significant function of language signs, namely with the ability to use words as conceptual tools. Such an internalization is not possible without social mediation and meaning negotiation, within (or consecutively to) an interactive situation. Because within this socio-cognitive process (both inter-individual and intra-individual), linguistic signs play a principal role, a logical analysis of the interlocution seems to be a powerful way to study interlocutive processes: It permits us to understand how semiotic mediations can produce, via exchanged speech acts, new knowledge and new social and cognitive tools. However, we will evoke some theoretical and methodological problems encountered in interaction analysis with young children: the validity (i) of transcription of the reality (coding is transforming, more or less); (ii) of interdiscusive corpus analysed (How can we transcribe punctuation ...

An interlocutory analysis as a methodological approach in studying cognitivo-linguistic mediations: Interest, difficulties, and limits

According to Vygotsky's theory of development and its instructional applications, a good way to increase students' knowledge and cognitive abilities is to organise at school co-operative and co-elaborative learning situations. Under some conditions, when students interact, the process of sharing problem-solving procedures results in reorganising and developing their own cognition. But, given that such co-resolution interactive settings can lead to students' individual cognitive progress, we need to explain how. The main aim of this article is to present a theoretical and methodological system to analyse the socio-cognitive processes within an interaction. A pragmatic interlocutory theory, founded on the theory of speech acts, is used and tested with a small group of students involved in solving a mathematical problem at school. Hypotheses about mechanisms of progress invoke the role of semiotic mediations, via speech acts, as a vehicle as well as a tool for sharing the meaning of linguistic signs (construction of intersubjectivity). Thanks to the double function of language signs (communicative and representative) and to the individual internalisation of shared processes, students become able to (re-) organise their thoughts and to increase not only knowledge, but also cognitive and metacognitive tools.

Jean-Paul Roux

Papers

Apprendre dans l'interaction : analyse des médiations sémiotiques

Social marking in ordering tasks: Effects and action mechanisms†

Social significance of tasks, routines, and pragmatic schemas in distribution activities

An interlocutory analysis as a methodological approach in studying cognitivo-linguistic mediations: Interest, difficulties, and limits

Theory of Interlocutory Logic and Sequential Analysis of Interactive Problem-Solving Situations: A Powerful Method