1. Two case studies
French-English/English-French
Robert Crawshaw
Lancaster University
AHRC workshop
Manchester 22nd May 2012

2. www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/projects/pic

3. An isomorphic dynamic
A B
A1 Entretien A1 - transcription B1 Entretien - transcription
French NS student in conversation in English NS student in conversation in
English with English NS Teacher. French with French NS teacher.
A2 Témoignage A2 - transcription B2 Témoignage - transcription
French NS student records reactions English NS student records reactions
to earlier entretien in French. to earlier entretien in English.
A3 Logbook A3 - written and B3 Logbook - written and transcribed
transcribed French NS student records English NS student records reflections
reflections on earlier encounters with on earlier encounters with French NS
English NS Teacher in French. Teacher in English.

4. Research questions
- Which methodologies most appropriate
when approaching isomorphic data of
this kind?
- To what extent can generalised
conclusions be drawn from situated
intercultural discourse?

5. The features
FORCE - the students are seeking information – How direct are
they in forming their requests...? Offers grounds for cross-cultural
comparison of target language speech act formation in
intercultural communication situations.
MITIGATION - the teacher/responsables are providing information
or avoiding being over-specific in the information they provide…
COMPLAINT - the students are reacting to the quality of the
information received and to the respect for their person shown to
them by the teacher/responsables

6. Quantitative and qualitative cross-cultural
comparison – some findings (2009)
French English
CONCRETENESS 51 127
(ce/this)
AGENCY
(je/I) 317 786
INTENSITY
(avge intensifiers pp.) 13.52 31.55

7. Requests/mitigation A1
T1 Est-ce que tu te souviens du nombre d’heures dont on avait parlé, pour l’école ?
S1 Non, parce que en entière je vais travailler 12 heures erm par semaine mais je ne
sais pas ce que vous voulez que je faire, si je je passe 10 heures à l’école et 2
heures par semaine avec des enseignants, c’est er ce que vous voulez…
T1 [simul : oui, absolument – mm - en conversation, oui] Moi, je pense que on
pourrait faire, ce qu’on appelle une côte mal taillée, eh bien pour commencer, 10
heures pour l’école et 2 heures euh de la conversation, hein pour des collègues
qui qui viendraient euh soit le soir soit sur leurs heures de midi. Voilà. Mais alors,
j’ai déjà, j’en ai déjà parlé à de nombreux collègues euh mais euh mais ce n’est
pas qu’ils soient réticents mais ils ont tellement de choses à penser et puis c’est
une chose de plus à caser. Même si des fois, même même s’ils sont
demandeurs…alors euh, alors on a 2 solutions, soit nous prévoyons un horaire
d’avance, on dira par exemple, je sais pas, par exemple le mardi midi, de de midi
30 ou midi 45 jusqu'à euh 1h15, on fera atelier conversation. On peut, on peut
imaginer ça comme ça. Mais ça fait pas 2 heures. Pour faire 2 heures de
conversation, il faudra avoir 4 ateliers du midi ou du soir dans la semaine, c’est
ça; donc on va essayer de faire comme ça, on va dire on va essayer de
caser euh 4 périodes d’une demi-heure, 2 le midi, peut-être demain soir, hein,
comme on aura nos 2 heures. Euh…
S1 [simul : d’accord, oui – oui, oui, d’accord – mm - mm – mm - oui, oui, d’accord]
C’est c’est seulement la conversation, ou c’est un du de n’importe quel sujet ?
T1 Voilà, c’est ça. Le sujet euh c’est toi ou moi ou nous ensemble qui choisissons.
Mais je pense qu’il vaut mieux aller au-devant des des collègues en leur donnant
des choses toutes prêtes et après pour les fois suivantes s’ils viennent, ils
pourront avoir des idées, mais au début il faut commencer par apporter des
choses qui leur conviennent alors je je j’avais imaginé qu’on pourrait faire
une première série de séances en parlant des voyages.

8. Requests/mitigation B1
S1 Do I have to prepare something in advance or… er when I come, just tell me what I have to do?
T1 Mmm Probably a bit of both In - first of all in the first few weeks I think it’ll be um, having - you’ll be
sort of in lessons seeing how the students work and so on and you can go round and help them and
after a couple of weeks maybe start taking some groups out. We can tell you what we want you to do
in advance if you want us to, or it may be just something when you arrive. We can always use e-mail
if you need to know in advance,
S1 [Simul: Yeah – yeah - yeah - mmm] Yeah, that will be good yeah
T1 So you can- prepare games or things like that you know
S1 Yeah, yeah
T1 To work in small groups... And erm...
S1 Er yeah, about the language. Am I supposed to speak exclusively in French, or isn’t it too difficult for
the pupils to understand me if I just speak in French?
T1 Erm, I think with the years 10 and 11…
S1 Yeah
T1 It would - it would be good if you could speak French all the time
S1 All the time, right?
T1 Um, with my year 10 class
S1 Mm-hmm
T1 I’m taking part in a project, to use only French in the classroom, and them as well. So if they’re just
chatting, they speak in French
S1 [Simul: Yeah – yeah - mm-hmm] OK
T1 Now, I’m still working on getting that going, we tried to get it going in the beginning, but it was a bit too
early I think. So after half-term… leave it going for a while, but then after half-term when we’ve got
through some work and we know where we are and everything else, I’ll start that again
S1 [Simul: Mm-hmm - mm] OK
T1 So then we’ll, you know be hopefully, only speaking French

9. Complaint/comment - ‘severity’ A2
I had been really wanting to ask him some questions about the
stage because I’m really confused about what’s going on,
because erm, I have been told like by the British Council and
stuff like that that the stage should only be one or two days
long, and my accommodation and everything should be paid
for, but mine seems to be lasting for like a week, and I think
I’m expected to pay for my accommodation, and I wanted to
clear it up with him but like I had absolutely no opportunity
because he was really really offhand with me the whole time,
and seemed really busy in, you know, paperwork and talking
to people and all this stuff, and I really had absolutely no
chance to speak to him at all, and erm when I went out the
door with this other teacher he sort of glanced at me and went
‘oh bon weekend, I’ll see you when you get back from the
stage’ And that was it…so I feel really really like let down by
him, I feel like he didn’t do his what he…, you know, he is my
responsable, and I understand that he was there and he had a
job to do because he was like the coordinator of all these
people, but he’s also got a responsibility to me

10. Comment/(Complaint?) B2
On a parlé de le langue, je voulais savoir en fait quelle
langue je devais utiliser avec les élèves et il m’a dit que
l’idéal ce serait de ne parler qu’en français. C’est vrai que
je ne suis pas vraiment super convaincue pour l’instant,
ayant vu comment ça se passait au niveau des cours, je
ne pense pas qu’ils pourront comprendre si je veux parler
exclusivement français et que je vais être obligée de au
moins de sonner les consignes en anglais quand on va
travailler ensemble. A voir, pour l’instant c’est l’idéal de
parler exclusivement en français, mais sur le terrain ça
ne sera pas super possible. Je pense qu’il faudra voir
comment ça se passe directement pour voir ça de façon
beaucoup plus concrète parce que pour l’instant ça reste
assez vague.

11. Complaint/comment – ‘severity’ A3
I went to see Sylvain on my return to Confolens after the
Toussaint holidays to 'check in' and to see if anything had
happened about the ateliers de conversation I'm
supposed to be running for the teachers. I had sent out
an email before the holidays giving the times etc and
wanted to know if Sylvain had received any responses.
He said he hadn't and moved off the subject very quickly,
asking me about my holiday and after my family.
Although I tried to steer the conversation around to the
ateliers because I was really unsure about what I was
supposed to be doing, Sylvain kept dismissing it with
comments like "on verra" which I found really vague and
frustrating. I left feeling like I'd got nowhere and hadn't
found out anything I wanted to. Although Sylvain is
always very pleasant to be around and always asks how I
am and so on, he never seems to have any concrete
answers to the questions I have and rather leaves me to
deal with them alone - he's not very helpful.

12. Comment/complaint? B3
M Y… m’a dit que mes premières semaines à l’école constituaient
un temps d’adaptation, d’observation principalement, de façon à ce
que je me familiarise avec un système nouveau, que je comprenne
comment les élèves travaillent et comment je vais pouvoir les aider.
Je trouve que c’est bien de sa part de me laisser ce temps
d’adaptation. C’est précieux de prendre le temps de découvrir, de
s’adapter. Tout est tellement nouveau que je suis contente qu’on me
laisse l’opportunité de ‘m’accoutumer’. Il n’attend pas de moi le ‘top
niveau’ dès le premier jour de travail. Ça me rassure qu’on me
laisse le temps de prendre mes marques de façon à ce que je puisse
viser par la suite le ‘top niveau’. Je lui ai ensuite parlé de la langue
que je devrai utiliser dans les cours. L’idéal, m’a-t-il dit, serait de
parler exclusivement français. Après ma semaine d’observation, j’ai
remarqué que le niveau était quand même assez bas, et il me
semble difficile de ne m’exprimer qu’en français pendant les cours.
Je risquerai de passer pour une extra-terrestre. On verra, je verrai
directement sur le terrain, mais je ne suis d’avance pas très
convaincue. Je pense que je devrai en reparler avec M Y. une fois
que j’aurai mieux ciblé le niveau des élèves et que j’aurai eu
l’occasion de travailler en petits groupes avec eux.

13. Conclusion 1
Complete bilingualism on the
part of the researcher is
essential!

14. Conclusion 2
Technical cross-cultural comparison of
individual speech acts on the part of non-
native speakers is possible, but offers
more information about the state of
learners’ TL proficiency and personality
than about cultural difference

15. Conclusion 3
Degrees of ‘force’, ’mitigation’ and
‘severity’ can be measured quantitatively
over large quantities of data using search
tools but only under carefully controlled
conditions.

16. Conclusion 4
Individual profiling of bi-lingual data
through close textual analysis supported
by contextual information is more revealing
than cross-cultural generalisation