Language switching as an epistemic resource in an Italian as a second language lesson

In interaction, participants have access to the existing “epistemic domains” outside the immediate context of their interactions (Stivers & Rossano 2010) that enables them to align with a speaker’s epistemic status (Heritage 2012). This paper describes the resources that both teacher and students draw on from the “epistemic domain” of foreign language learning to build their understanding and participation in an Italian as a foreign language lesson. Students have access to this domain through exposure and the experience of learning the language. It includes knowledge about how language practice is achieved in the classroom, how transitions in the lesson are organized as well as how understanding of a foreign language is accrued over time. As language is central to meaning making for language learning, discussion will focus on how both languages, English and Italian, are deployed as part of stance-taking. The 50 minute class to be analysed was composed of about 26 twelve year-old students in their first year of high school in an Australian public school. The students had been learning Italian as a foreign language for nine months approximating 130 hours of instruction. The lesson focused on language as content in which the teacher immersed students in Italian as much as possible. This pedagogical stance provided an excellent opportunity to analyse the “division of labour” (Cromdal 2004) with respect to the ways in which the languages were alternated. While findings in this study are consonant with previous findings about when and why language switching occurs, particularly interesting are two findings. The first is the ways in which language switching is used to ascribe “expected” knowledge states to students as a class and to students as individuals. The second is how students avail themselves of opportunities present in the context to build understanding of Italian as the language of instruction so that they can successfully answer teacher questions or follow instructions without having to admit that they “don’t know” what is being asked of them. I conclude by arguing that analysing epistemic stance alignment through the ways in which the languages are distributed in sequences provides a particularly powerful lens through which to view language learning and comprehension as it unfolds in the moment.