Achieving reference in talk-in-interaction: L1 and L2 English speakers' conversation

This dissertation examines conversations between L1 and L2 English speakers for interactional procedures whereby speakers make an initial reference to a target and achieve recognition of it, using the methodology of conversation analysis. Data comes from a series of conversations between two Korean adolescents and one American graduate student. The analysis describes how the interactional task of achieving mutually understood reference is sequentially organized in two different settings: where a shared physical background can be resorted to as a source of mutual knowledge and where no such physical background is available. In the former setting, deictic terms were found to be a major means of establishing recognitional reference, while in the latter setting names and descriptions were found to be major means for making recognitional reference.;The organization of initial referential practices was found to be the result of these two fundamentally different means for achieving recognitional reference deployed in a manner that maximally satisfies the two preferences observed by Sacks and Schegloff (1979). Interactional contingencies such as the recipient's knowledge status regarding the target referent constitute an additional set of factors that affect the sequential organization of referential practices. The sequential organizations of referential practices as they are described in the current study confirm the two principles observed by Sacks and Schegloff (1979), and further suggest that their person reference principles may be extended to initial reference practices in general.;Furthermore, based on a detailed description of sequential organizations of referential events, this study identifies referential events in which learning becomes an occasioned activity, and shows how sequential organizations of referential events lend themselves to occasioning and embodying the activity of language or cultural learning. A close examination of referential practices at the level of sequential organization also reveals participants' socio-cognitive work where they co-display cognitive states for each other while simultaneously co-assessing performed cognitive states of each other. The current study contributes to an emerging line of research which explores the relationship between language learning, cognition, and interactional practices.