Abstract
Study abroad has been largely identified as a favorable setting for linguistic and personal development (Howard, 2021), with duration of stay appearing as one of the keys: while even short stays (<1-2 months) foster linguistic acquisition (Llanes & Munoz 2013), the longer the stay, the more involved speakers get, and the more linguistic developments can be observed (Grieve 2015). Among such developments, gains in fluency (Tullock & Ortega 2017) and phraseology (Edmonds & Gudmestad 2021), as well as identity issues (Coleman 2015, Compiegne 2020) have been discussed. In particular, work on the use of discourse markers (DM) during a stay abroad has shown that the stay-abroad experience leads to changes in patterns of DM use (Magliacane & Howard 2019, Tavakoli 2018). However, such research has mostly focused on verbal data, leaving open the question of how multimodal means of expression (specifically in association with DMs) may evolve over the course of a stay abroad.Discourse markers (DM) are usually defined as expressions with little referential meaning but multiple pragmatic functions (Pichler, 2009, p. 561). One such DM in English is the expression I don’t know (IDK), which is widely used by native speakers and learners alike (Baumgarten & House, 2010; Bybee & Scheibman, 1999 ). This expression, like many other DMs, can be used with referential meaning (in this case, epistemic meaning) or can have a DM function. Past gesture research on epistemic uses of IDK has shown a frequent co-occurrence with shrug postures (Debras, 2017), while research on chais pas/je sais pas (the French equivalents of IDK) highlights different associated gaze patterns according to the pragmatic status of this marker (gaze averted from interlocutor with DM chais pas, gaze on interlocutor with epistemic je sais pas, see Pekarek Doehler, 2022).In this longitudinal study, we used a case-study approach to investigate the evolution of the use of IDK by two L2 learners of English over a year abroad. Five filmed semi-guided interviews were conducted over the course of 12 months. A multimodal analysis was performed, taking into account the speaker’s body posture, gestures (shoulder-lifts, palm-ups, lifted eyebrows, a mouth shrug, headshakes, tilts and nods used in isolation and in combination), gaze direction and the prosodic contours of their vocal productions, enabling the establishment of a multimodal profile for each of the two participants. 424 instances of IDK were identified. We coded them for pragmatic function, drawing on both linguistic and multimodal cues, thereby proposing a fine-grained body posture analysis. We focus on the different gestural components used by our two participants to see how their gestural style develops over time during study abroad when using epistemic or DM IDK. Our first results highlight that speakers tend to adopt specific multimodal packages in association with IDK. For instance, the use of IDK as a DM usually involves averted gaze, creaky voice, phonological reduction and a shrug. Yet, the coordination of all these semiotic resources in context of IDK develops through time during the stay abroad. Baumgarten, N., & House, J. (2010). I think and I don’t know in English as lingua franca and native English discourse. Journal of Pragmatics, 17.Coleman, J. A. (2015). Social circles during residence abroad: What students do, and who with. In R. Mitchell, N. Tracy-Ventura, & K. McManus (Éds.), Social interaction, identity and language learning during residence abroad (The European Second Language Association, p. 33 52).Compiegne, I. (2020). Study Abroad in the Age of Social Media. University of Technology.Edmonds, A., & Gudmestad, A. (2021). Collocational Development during a Stay Abroad. Languages, 6(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages6010012Grieve, A. M. (2015). The Impact of Host Family Relations and Length of Stay on Adolescent Identity Expression during Study Abroad. Multilingua, 34(5), Article 5. https://doi.org/10.1515/multi-2014-0089Howard, M. (2021). L’acquisition des langues secondes et la mobilité internationale : S’approprier une langue seconde en immersion. In P. Leclercq, A. Edmonds, & E. Sneed German (Éds.), Introduction à l’acquisition des langues étrangères (p. 373 388). De Boeck Supérieur.Llanes, A., & Muñoz, C. (2013). Age Effects in a Study Abroad Context: Children and Adults Studying Abroad and at Home. Language Learning, 63. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9922.2012.00731.xMagliacane, A., & Howar