协同理论视角下的亚洲英语通用语研究

本文是一篇英语论文，本文以协同理论为框架，以日常生活情境为背景，以亚洲各国家地区的高水平非英语母语使用者为主体，主要研究两个问题：第一，亚洲非英语母语使用者在日常交流中会采用哪些协同活动？第二，与低水平的英语使用者相比，高水平的非英语母语使用者在协同活动的使用上有什么突破？

Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Research Background
The author has had a fascination with the study of English as a lingua francasince she, as an exchange student, studied in Taiwan two years ago. At that time, therewere many other Asian students besides the Chinese in her class. English is the bestchoice for them, in which they can talk about various topics. Though English was nottheir mother tongue (first language or L1), but a second or third language and theirproficiency in English was different, the author noticed that nearly every time theycould let the partners understand their meaning. That is to say, conversations amongnon-native English speakers are successful and effective. There’s no doubt that, in thecontext of English as a lingua franca, people try their best to cooperate with others,using some skills or methods. So what are the skills or methods people have adoptedto accomplish these successful dialogues? Can this phenomenon be analyzed frompsycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, pragmatics or other perspectives?
The study of English as a lingua franca has begun in the early twenty-firstcentury. It is very late, compared with the appearance of ELF. At first, most linguisticexperts and scholars didn’t consider English spoken by non-native speakers up tostandard. Not to mention we count on them to analyze this phenomenon. One of theforerunners of ELF fields, Jenkins, made a description of the phonology of English asan international language in 2000. She proposed scaling down the phonological taskfor the majority of English learners. Another forerunner Seidlhofer first presented theterm ELF (English as a lingua franca) and gave a clear definition of it. Furthermore,she appealed to other scholars to pay much attention to the descriptive studies of ELF.
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1.2 Research Purpose and Significance
The existence of English as a lingua franca is pervasive. At present, the majorityof people make use of English to do business, attend lectures, publish articles, gosightseeing and so on. For example, at college, no matter what their major is, manytextbooks are published in English or translated from an English version. Soprofessors tend to have lectures in English, too. Besides, for decades, it is a growingtrend that more and more other Asian students have come to China and studied here.They can hardly use Chinese before. What’s worse, they have different mother tongue.So English, as a medium for the communication among them, plays an extremelyimportant role in daily life. Above all, the author just intends to stress the significanceof studying English as a lingua franca. By analyzing these actual ELF dialogues, theauthor wants to explore whether there’s any mechanism in ELF interactions. Thismechanism can facilitate a successful dialogue with the cooperation amonginterlocutors. In this thesis, the author defines this mechanism as the alignment. It isan innovation to analyse conversations with alignment in the context of ELF not onlyin theory but also in practice.
It is meaningful and of profound significance to study the alignment in Englishas a lingua franca in at least two aspects: for better communication (especially thecross-cultural communication) and for more comprehensive system of Englishteaching. On the one hand, language is the carrier of culture, influenced by the cultureand vice versa. Because of the negative influence of native language and culture, theremay be communicative misunderstanding or even conflicts when interlocutorscommunicate in English. So it is very urgent to find some methods which canminimize the misunderstanding or eradicate conflicts. Try to imagine you are talkingwith an Indian student in the kitchen. The kitchen is so messy that the Indian studentprobably complains that ‘It is so dirty here’. You may feel confused with her strangeaccent of English. However, because your conversation takes place in the kitchen, youwill guess the keyword ‘dirty’ with the puzzled expression on your face. Meanwhile,the Indian student possibly rephrases what she has said, observing your expression atthe same time. So both of you, aligning with each other, co-contribute to thesuccessful dialogue. Through this thesis, many specific alignment activities will beanalyzed to deal with these situations.
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Chapter Two Literature Review

2.1 English as a Lingua Franca
The term ‘lingua franca’ is understood as an additionally acquired languagesystem that serves as a means of communication between speakers of different firstlanguages (Knapp & Meierkord forthc). Malmkjar (1991) interprets the term ‘linguafranca’ as a pidgin language, which has no native speakers. According to Seidlhofer(2017), a lingua franca is defined as a medium of communication among interlocutorswith different first languages, which means interactions occur in bilingual ormultilingual environment. It is shown that English is used extensively in contextswhere it serves as a lingua franca. Seidlhofer, a forerunner of English as a linguafranca, first advocated to pay attention to this phenomenon in 2001. She found thatfew empirical studies had been done on the most extensive use of English worldwide,namely English as a lingua franca, largely among ‘non-native’ speakers. Later,Seidlhofer gave a further explanation of ELF in 2009. ELF is a specificcommunication context in which speakers from different linguaculture backgroundschoose the common language. From the author’s perspective, this ‘common language’is similar to the one defined by Crystal (1997). He mentioned that a commonlanguage presented us with unprecedented possibilities for mutual understanding, andthus enabled us to find fresh opportunities for international cooperation. In Jenkins’view (2007), ELF refers to the use of English as a contact language forcommunication between speakers with different first languages and culturalbackgrounds. English as a lingua franca serves as the most useful device forcommunication among non-native speakers, whose central concerns are the efficiency,relevance and economy in language learning and use. So here comes another issue.Should native English speakers be included in ELF? In the book UnderstandingEnglish as a lingua franca, Seidlhofer (2011) gave a functional definition of ELF as“any use of English among speakers of different first languages for whom English isthe communicative medium of choice”(p.7). She pointed out that in contrast to someearlier definitions of ELF, this definition included native speakers of English. Besides,according to the latest explanation of English as a lingua franca made by Jenkins(2017), English is used as a contact language among speakers of different firstlanguages, whether from choice or through some kind of coercion.
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2.2 Alignment
Alignment means the complex process through which human beings affectcoordinated interaction, both with others and surroundings. This interaction isdynamic and adaptive everlastingly (Atkinson, 2007). Pickering and Garrod (2004)explain the process of alignment in terms of interactive account. According to theinteractive account, a successful dialogue relies on participants’ mutual understandingof what they are talking. Alignment occurs as a result of repeat, or a way of imitation.In other words, this alignment process is achieved by repetition. Costa, Pickering, etal. (2008) proposed a word "entrainment", which referred to a process of behaviouralrepetition. Entrainment is frequently used as an indicator of alignment.
Pickering & Garrod (2004) also defined alignment with respect torepresentations. So alignment refers to the underlying representations attributing tothe behaviour. Speakers and hearers align with each other automatically, contributingto the seamless flow of talk. Alignment occurs at many levels. It was demonstrated byGarrod and Anderson (1987) alignment existed in the layer of lexicon during thedialogue. That is to say, interlocutors tend to use the same expression to refer to aparticular object. Later, Branigan et al. (2000) found syntactic alignment in dialogues.The degree of syntactic alignment reflects the interaction between speaker and hearer.Besides, alignment is presented at the level of articulation. Interlocutors have atendency to align their partner's accent and speech rate.
In the process of alignment, interlocutors draw on representations developed inthe dialogue. Therefore the dialogue is the central mechanism in the process ofalignment and mutual understanding. In the thesis "Toward a mechanistic psychologyof dialogue", Pickering and Garrod proposed a mechanistic account of dialogue,leading to the automatic alignment of linguistic representations at many levels. Clarksaid in 1996 that a dialogue was a joint activity, in which interlocutors collaborated toreach a common goal. In order to achieve this common goal, interlocutors’ dialoguesshould be flexible and adaptive.
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Chapter Three Theoretical Framework................... 18
3.1 Interactional Competence and Alignment.......................18
3.2 Interactive-Alignment Model..........................21
3.3 Alignment Activities............................23
Chapter Four Research Methodology............................25
4.1 Research Questions..................... 25
4.2 Research Design...................26
4.3 Information about ACE............................ 25
4.4 Participants................................27
Chapter Five Analysis of Alignment Activities...........................30
5.1 Acknowledgements..................... 30
5.1.1 Rising Intonation.................................30
5.1.2 (Simple) Agreement Markers...............................31

Chapter Five Analysis of Alignment Activities

5.1 Acknowledgements
Acknowledgement is a basic alignment activity, conveying the hearer’sunderstanding of the speaker’s previous utterance, and signaling readiness for thespeaker to continue the conversation. It indicates that the hearer has received themessage and is ready to continue to listen. Many expressions can contribute toacknowledgements, such as words spoken with a rising intonation, agreement markers,and way of backchannels. The author will explain these means of acknowledgementsin detail in the process of analyzing typical examples of different categories.
5.1.1 Rising Intonation
It has been found that the hearer tends to speak some simple words in a risingintonation, like “oh?”, “wow?”, “really?”, “yeah?” etc, to show he or she has followedthe step of the speaker. It is also indicated that the speaker can continue to speak. Hereare two examples from ACE. In Excerpt 1, speaker No.15 uses words “really?” and“wow?”, showing that she is carefully listening to the utterance of speaker No.16.Also, in Excerpt 2, speaker No.24 says “yeah? sure?”, indicating that the speakerNo.25 can continue to talk about the ELF project, in which she is quite interested.
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Chapter Six Conclusion

6.1 Major Findings

interactional competence. On the one hand, among the five kinds of collaborativecontributions, the activity of addition and reflection have been describedunprecedentedly in the thesis. On the other hand, the author subpides thecollaborative completions into four parts. The activity of completion is separated intothe positive completion and the negative completion. Additionally, the utteranceoverlapping and concluding are creations for the alignment activities.
reference(omitted)