Bilingual order in collaborative word processing: on creating an English text in Swedish

Journal of Pragmatics 37 (2005) 329–353 www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma

Bilingual order in collaborative word processing: on creating an English text in Swedish Jakob Cromdal* Department of Child Studies, Linko¨ping University, S-58183 Linko¨ping, Sweden Received 1 September 2002; received in revised form 22 April 2003; accepted 22 April 2003

Abstract This paper explores the mutually oriented work involved in collaborative, computer-aided text production taking place in a bilingual 4th grade classroom at an English school in Sweden. It reports on an in-depth analysis of a 55-min videotaped session in which two students engage in the production of a written report of the past weeks’ project work. The analysis focuses on the students’ language alternation, showing how a specific bilingual conversational order is produced by their extensive use of the co-available languages. Specifically, the analysis highlights a distinct division of labor between the two languages in which English is used exclusively for the purpose of producing the text proper, while Swedish is used for other forms of interaction. The results are discussed in terms of the relation between social structure and local bilingual practices of meaning construction. More generally, the paper argues for an approach to social interaction that treats the issue of social order as, above all, a matter of participants’ situated concerns. # 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Bilingual interaction; Code-switching; Social order; Task activities

1. Introduction In the past three decades, ethnomethodological studies of social interaction have had a notable impact on pragmatics, sociolinguistics, and other approaches to discourse. By suggesting distinct ways of conceptualizing research questions and by introducing new

* Tel.: +46 13 286646; fax: +46 13 282900. E-mail address: [email protected]. 0378-2166/$ – see front matter # 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2004.10.006

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methods of inquiry, they have opened up new understandings of language use and its role in the dialogical construction of meaning (Clayman and Maynard, 1995; Sacks, 1992; Sacks et al., 1974; Schegloff, 1972; Turner, 1971; Watson, 1992). Curiously, the impact of this approach on research concerned with language contact and bilingualism seems disproportionately small. Nonetheless, Gumperz’ (1982) work on contextualization as well as Auer’s (1984) introduction of conversation analysis (henceforth CA) to the study of bilingual talk, have laid the ground for participantoriented analyses of naturally occurring talk among bilinguals, and the past few years have witnessed an increasing stream of studies with this orientation. Here, researchers attempt to examine and flesh out in considerable detail the practical methods through which members construct and coordinate accountable actions in pursuit of various interactional projects. In this vein, the present study demonstrates the systematic use of two languages by two 10-year-old students engaged in producing a monolingual written story. The paper also presents a brief review of recent research on bilingual interaction, focusing on issues of language alternation and code-switching. Finally, in discussing the findings, the paper addresses the relation between social structure and locally produced orders of bilingual interaction.

2. Approaching conversational code-switching In his seminal work on discourse strategies in multilingual settings, Gumperz (1982) distinguished two ways in which participants’ language alternation may take on conversational meaning. We may term these the ‘sociolinguistic’ and the ‘contextualization’ accounts of code-switching (Cromdal, 2000a). According to the sociolinguistic account, Gumperz found, in line with the reasoning of Ferguson (1959) and Fishman (1997/1972), that the members of bi-/multilingual communities ascribe different sets of symbolic values to distinct linguistic varieties. Specifically, members tend to associate one variety with familiarity, social proximity, and domestic use and the other with official business, authority, and social distance. In Gumperz’ work, the linguistic varieties corresponding to the two sets of values are labeled the ‘we-code’ and ‘theycode’, respectively. By switching between the two varieties, speakers may claim distinct identities, provided for by the symbolic values associated with each code. Thus, according to the sociolinguistic account, the communicative meaning of code-switching is, at least in part, mediated through culture, and speakers’ language choice is understood in symbolic terms. The second way in which conversational code-switching becomes meaningful may be understood in terms of the language contrast created by the switch. By switching from one variety to another at specific points in the course of talk, speakers may exploit this linguistic contrast as a signaling device, or contextualization cue. Such cues are employed by speakers to signal ‘‘what the activity is, how semantic content is to be understood and how each sentence relates to what precedes or follows’’ (Gumperz, 1982: 131). Notably, contextualization cues lack referential meaning per se, and their contribution to the process of inferencing stems from the contrast on some level of

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linguistic form. In other words, according to the contextualization account of language alternation, the sheer occurrence of a code-switch contributes to the creation of communicative meaning. Thus, from Gumperz’ work emerged two rather distinct positions on the workings of code-switching in the construction of meaning in bilingual exchanges. More recently, the sociolinguistic position has been elaborated by Myers-Scotton in what has become known as the ‘markedness model’ of code-switching. This approach has been elaborated and revised in a number of publications (Myers-Scotton, 1988, 1993, 2000; MyersScotton & Bolonyai (2001); see also Auer, 1998; Gafaranga, 1999; Li Wei, 2002, for critical comments) and will need no introduction, suffice it to say that the markedness model of code-switching rests on the assumption that since each linguistic variety in a community has its own distinctive set of culturally shared associations, for any speech situation there will be equally shared expectations regarding the language choices of the participants involved. The contextualization account of code-switching was further elaborated by Auer (1984), who combined Gumperz’ notion of contextualization cues with a conversation analytic approach to bilingual interaction. Setting out to investigate the ‘members’ procedures to arrive at local interpretations of language alternation’ (1984: 3, italics in original), Auer thus located the study of language alternation within a framework of sequential analysis of turns at talk. From within this analytical framework, Auer demonstrated how participants employ code-switching, along with other contextualization cues, to produce locally accountable actions. In this vein follow several studies investigating language alternation within the structural organization of interaction. This does not suggest, however, that ethnomethodologically oriented studies are specifically unable to address issues of social structure as a feature of bilingual conduct. For instance, Sebba and Wootton (1998) focus on the relation between sequentially versus symbolically derived meanings of code-switching in the situated construction of social and ethnic identity among a group of black students in London, where several language varieties were locally co-available, such as British Standard English, a variety of London English known as ‘Cockney’, and London Jamaican (a Caribbean variety of Creole). Through sequential analysis of interaction, Sebba and Wootton demonstrate that, whereas switches from London Jamaican to London English were employed to carry out side-sequences, switches in the reverse direction, whether for entire turns or in turn-terminal position, were used as a means of highlighting significant features of the conversation. Also, code-switching in either direction was employed in subtle ways to construct personal identities in quotation sequences. However, the authors point out that analytical accounts of the local construction of social identities cannot stop at the level of sequential organization of talk. Rather, conversations must also be treated as whole entities and situated in the wider context of the community in which they take place (see also Jørgensen, 1998). This said, Sebba and Wootton do not subscribe to the complementary distribution model of sociolinguistics; neither do they support the notion of a steady relationship between locally constructed social identities and the speech varieties used to invoke them. Rather, that very relationship is ‘‘negotiated and constructed in the interaction, drawing on cultural resources located both inside and outside the interaction itself’’ (Sebba and Wootton, 1998: 284).

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Another study addressing episode-external sources of meaning in code-switching and their relevance for the local construction of conversational meaning was reported by Li Wei (1994) and focused on a Chinese community in Northern England. Not unlike Sebba and Wootton (1998), Li Wei strives to integrate sequential analyses of bilingual conduct using a community-based approach to issues of language choice and distribution into an ‘‘ ‘interpretative’ framework which focuses on the participants’ methods of using codeswitching as a communicative strategy in bilingual interaction’’ (1994: 169). Suggesting that language choice and social symbolism must be understood in terms of the participants’ social identities as well as their interpersonal relationship, he stresses the value of a conversation analytic approach in highlighting these issues as a matter of participants’ situated conduct (Li Wei, 1998, 2002). In sum, the focus on members’ work of producing locally accountable actions leads ethnomethodologically inspired researchers of bilingual interaction to reject the idea that community values or other macro-sociolinguistic norms constrain participants’ verbal actions in a straightforward manner. Rather, the relevance of such norms and values to members’ conduct is an empirical question. That is to say, the invocation, sustention, or indeed suspension of such structural norms is part and parcel of participants’ accomplishment of conversational exchanges. Reflexively, such norms and values are seen in the first place as a product of members’ local interactional work. In contrast to Myers-Scotton’s (e.g. 2000) rational choice model, which stipulates the sets of rights and obligations on the basis of transcontextual criteria, ethnomethodologically informed studies provide the means of investigating how (if at all) such expectations are brought about as relevant features of the interaction. This position rests on the assumption that the specification of the interactionally relevant context (including expectations regarding participants’ rights and obligations) is one of the tasks participants always face in the joint negotiation of meaning. Hence, the task for analysts of social interaction is to highlight precisely the analyses made by the participants themselves, by examining in detail the methods they employ in accomplishing and interpreting locally recognizable actions. 2.1. Further explorations of the bilingual medium It has been shown that participants in bilingual interaction make use of language alternation, and code-switching in particular, to accomplish a variety of interactional goals. In other words, studies focusing on bilingual interaction view members’ language choice (including alternation) as an instance of social action (Gafaranga, 1999; Stroud, 1992), that is, as a meaningful and orderly activity provided for by a local scheme of interpretation (Garfinkel, 1967) or medium of bilingual talk (Gafaranga, 2000). In an attempt to flesh out participants’ means of producing, and orienting to, such local norms of conduct, Gafaranga (2000) investigates word-search activities in which participants, in the search for the right word, draw upon different languages. His analysis shows that such interactional problems can be solved in one of three ways: (i) they can be solved within the same language; (ii) they can be solved through ‘medium repair’; and finally (iii) word searches can be performed by means of what he terms ‘other-language repair’. Obviously, in the first instance no language alternation takes place. However,

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Gafaranga argues that while both the instances of medium repair and other-language repair entail language alternation, it is only in the case of medium repair that participants display orientation to the ‘‘other-languageness’’ of the repair item as relevant for the interactional business at hand. That is to say, it is through instances of medium repair that participants display to one another (and of course to the analyst) that the local scheme of interpretation has been violated, or suspended. In Gafaranga and Torras’ (2002: 12) words: ‘‘language alternation is oriented to by participants as a repairable problem.’’ In the case of otherlanguage repair, on the other hand, the repair work is accomplished within the local medium. Hence, both instances can be used analytically to discover the local medium of bilingual exchanges. In the case of other-language repair, the medium itself is bilingual (as the participants do not orient to the other-languageness of the repaired item) whereas in the case of medium repair, where participants do orient to the other-languageness of the repaired element, the medium may be either monolingual (where two languages are used) or bilingual (in a multilingual situation where a bilingual medium is suspended in favor of a third language). The rationale of finding the medium of bilingual interaction rests on the assumption that if analysts are to approach issues of language choice and alternation from the members’ own perspective, they need to be able to distinguish those instances of alternation that are demonstrably relevant to participants’ interactional business from those that are not. Naturally, word-search activities provide but one site for investigating the relevance of language alternation, and in the following analytical sections I will demonstrate some other ways of exploring the local medium of bilingual interaction. But first let us consider a related issue relevant for our analysis, namely that of a functional, locally produced distribution of codes in bilingual activities. 2.2. Local distribution of codes in bilingual interaction As I have noted above, a common theoretical issue raised in most interactionally oriented studies of language alternation concerns the meaning potential of codeswitching, and especially the issue of meaning as it arises from contrastive contextualization of actions versus meaning as it, in turn, arises from the symbolic associations of separate codes. However, in studies of children’s interactions, and particularly those focusing on play episodes, a somewhat different issue has been raised, dealing in a very direct sense with children’s organization of play activities. Specifically, researchers have found that bilingual play activities may be organized, at least in part, through a local distribution of codes, or what I will term a ‘division of labor’, between the languages involved. Such an instance of division of labor in bilingual play is reported by Green-Va¨ ntinen (1996), who examined bilingual play interaction in a Finnish–Swedish context. Here, a prominent feature of children’s pretend play seems to be that Finnish is reserved for incharacter talk, whereas Swedish serves all other interactional purposes. Furthermore, Green-Va¨ ntinen shows that the negotiation of play language is sometimes managed metalinguistically, that is, through explicit talk about which language to use in play. More inspired by a conversational analytic approach to bilingual interaction, Guldal (1997) reports a somewhat related organization of play activities in a study of role-play in

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pre-assigned play triads at an English school in Norway. Her analyses demonstrate how code-switching, along with shifts in voice quality, contextualized transitions between three levels of reality: fictional play, directing activities, and real-life interaction. Codeswitching thus served to contrast fiction-level utterances from non-fiction interaction, in that the two languages were systematically distributed with regard to the different levels of reality. Apart from this locally established division of labor, code-switching was also used to manage turn allocation when the children engaged in competition for the floor. Furthermore, Guldal illustrates how children employed code-switching strategies in the management of interpersonal alignments through exclusion and inclusion of participants in play, or by highlighting agreement or disagreement (see also Cromdal, 2004, for an elaboration of this phenomenon). But linguistic division of labor need not be restricted to children’s play, and in a study based on a corpus of Turkish children in a Danish school (Turan, 1999 see also Jørgensen, 1998), I have demonstrated how a group of children organize their joint production of a comic strip by collaboratively engaging in an extended verbal narration, which provides the group with a storyline to guide their artistic creation (Cromdal, 2000b). During their work, the children make extensive use of the co-available languages for a variety of interactional purposes. However, at the onset of the activity, the children establish a norm for their work with the comic strip, namely that the storyline is narrated exclusively in Danish. Thus, in essence, the children accomplish an extended, collaborative monolingual storytelling in the midst of, or indeed by means of, bilingual interaction, and the analysis highlights specific interactional means deployed to this end. The point is, again, that rather than relying on preexisting episode-external norms for their conduct, the children establish a normative order of language use as part of their interactional organization. Following up parts of this analysis, Cromdal (2003), Eskildsen (2002), and Steensig (2001) further investigate the role of code-switching and other interactional devices in the management of social relations, and Cromdal (2003) highlights several interactional procedures exploited by one of the participants to dominate the group’s activities. With this review as a backdrop, the present investigation attempts to highlight some relevant features of language alternation as practiced by two bilingual students engaging in collaborative word-processing of a monolingual text. With this aim, in-depth analyses of the joint organization of the students’ actions will be highlighted to account for the bilingual order that informs, and is reflexively created by, their production of accountable actions.

3. A case study The present data were obtained by the author in a 4th grade classroom at an English school in Sweden. An important feature of this setting is that all ‘official’ business was normatively performed using English. This simply means that interaction involving the staff was conducted in English at all times. Moreover, all linguistic materials used for educational purposes were in English. In other interactional settings (e.g., within peer groups, regardless of the location), students were free to speak

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whichever language they chose (see Cromdal, 2000a, 2001a for more detailed accounts of the field). 3.1. Topic work The data drawn upon in the present analysis consist of 55 min of videotaped interaction between two girls as they work to produce a short paper on housing conditions among the well-born people in Victorian England (see Appendix B for the final version of the paper). This session was part of a whole-class ‘topic project’ involving five groups of students (four to five in each group) working on various issues related to Victorian Britain for approximately 6–8 h weekly, during a period of five weeks. Each group was responsible for choosing a sub-topic of their liking as well as for internally organizing its own work. At the end of the period, each group was expected to present their work orally for the rest of the class as well as produce a written (and illustrated) poster presentation to be stapled on the classroom wall. The paper in focus here was to contribute to the final documentation of the work accomplished by a group of four girls who had chosen the sub-topic of Victorian living. The writing session took place at the class’s only computer, which each group had to book in advance, to write, edit, and print out their final reports. In addition to their handwritten manuscript, comprising the title and the initial sentence of the final paper, the girls had a textbook on Victorian Britain, which served as the primary source of information for all topic-groups. The analysis begins with a few notes on the organization of practical tasks in relation to the students’ joint work at the computer, then moves on to consider specifically their use of the two co-available languages, English and Swedish, in the course of their interaction.

4. Some notes on the organization of collaborative text production In an analysis of students’ collaborative text editing, Heap (1992: 125–126) points out that activities in which people engage in joint tasks are ‘‘suitable sites for examining the place occupied by normative elements in the production of social action. These environments are normative in the sense that the actions performed there are oriented to task completion.’’ He then describes the organization of joint computer work in terms of the rights and responsibilities associated with the tasks of editing/inputting and assisting, both of which were pre-assigned to specific students. Heap’s analysis focuses on the procedures through which the students orient to such rights and responsibilities as a normative feature of their joint activity. That is to say, the students’ actions serve to produce a sense of normative order of conduct. At the same time, their actions are informed by that selfsame order. Considering the above, it should be noted that in the present data the girls were free to organize their work any way they deemed appropriate. Importantly, they did not decide upon a distribution of tasks prior to the onset of their work. Rather, issues concerning who would be the writer and helper, respectively, as well as the specific responsibilities associated with that organization of work, were preliminarily resolved in the initial phase

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of their collaboration. However, as we will see in the following example, the actual tasks of keyboarding and helping were switched several times during the editing episode, and the specific responsibilities associated with these tasks were being negotiated and thus oriented to throughout the girls’ work. That is to say, the specific responsibilities of each participant were resolved as part and parcel of their collaborate activity. The first excerpt therefore shows the preliminary negotiation of a working order, where the tasks of keyboarding and helping are collaboratively assigned. Furthermore, it shows how some of the specific ‘duties’ related to these tasks are established in the course of the text production.

In brief outline, as the girls jointly turn to face the computer screen, Ebba produces the beginning of a candidate first sentence ‘in Victorian families’ with a tag (‘ja skriv det’/‘yea write that’) that assigns the keyboarding task to Lara. When Lara does not immediately accept the assignment (line 3), Ebba mitigates the directive suggesting that Lara take on the keyboarding task only to begin with, hence implying that they may well change tasks as the work progresses. Upon this, Lara accepts this division of work, asking if she should start with the phrase ‘‘rich families from rich x’’ (line 5). Note that apart from accepting the keyboarding task, Lara’s turn also does the job of reformulating the initial suggestion and, moreover, assigning the task of dictating and checking the text input to her collaborator. Ebba in turn accepts that responsibility (lines 6 and 7) and uses this opportunity to produce yet another version of the initial sentence.

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We should note, however, that in the present data this organization of collaborative work refers to primary tasks and responsibilities, and there are several examples of the participants jointly flipping through the pages of the textbook on Victorian times, or simultaneously engaging in concerted inputting of the text, as in Excerpt 2 below:

Here, as Ebba requests to switch tasks so that she can input the title phrase ‘houses for the rich’, she suggests that they first make some adjustments to the texts, starting to mark the current sentence with the mouse. Upon this, Ebba hits the shortkey combination to alter the marked text into bold script, and we can see both girls orienting to this as a mistake. Note that as far as the data show, Ebba’s mistake is related to her choice of script mode rather than to her taking on the task of inputting. Accordingly, Lara corrects this by changing the script mode into italics, and proceeds the formatting of the document by entering the current date at the top of the paper. In other words, the example shows that the organization of participation in keyboarding and helping, and the corresponding rights and responsibilities of these tasks, are not entirely clear-cut as both participants may occasionally take on the same task without orienting to this as an organizational problem. Such occasions are particularly common in (but not exclusive to) transitional phases, when the participants are about to switch tasks. The above examples also demonstrate that the negotiation of tasks and their corresponding activities need not be distinct from the production of the text proper. Thus, rather than being a discrete form of activity or ‘metacommunication’, the social organization of the girls’ work is an inherent feature of its accomplishment. Having established this, let us consider at some length a different aspect of the working order related to the bilingual nature of the setting.

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5. Bilingual order in the production of monolingual text As the reader will have observed in the previous example, the girls’ interaction proceeds bilingually, and we may note that most of their turns entail elements from both languages. While this may give the impression that the two languages are used interchangeably, it will be shown in this section that the girls’ actions are tightly coordinated with respect to language choice and that through this coordination they produce and sustain a bilingual interactional order. Moreover, I intend to argue that this locally produced order has normative features which serve as a resource for the girls’ production and interpretation of accountable actions. Before further exploring the details of that order, let us take a look at what has happened just prior to the actions shown in Excerpt 1, that is, at the very beginning of the recording.

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In Excerpt 3, the girls’ initial engagement in the handwritten manuscript is disrupted by a classmate attempting to claim one of the chairs that the girls are using. This exchange is conducted in English except for Lara’s initial response ‘‘inte alls’’ (‘‘not at all’’), which is produced in Swedish. In this particular location, the contrastive language choice might serve to stress the opposing force of Lara’s reply, a technique that the children at the present school frequently employ during argumentative episodes in play (Cromdal, 2001b, 2004). A second occurrence of Swedish is notable in line 20, in which Lara addresses another couple of classmates, who have responded in Swedish to the first boy’s demand to have his chair back.1 As the first boy announces that he intends to borrow another chair located close to the girl’s table, both girls start turning back to face the computer screen and Lara produces a short closure of the girls’ exchange with the boy in English (>alright<), then turning to her collaborator, she displays refocusing her attention to their joint project, with the Swedish phrase ‘‘o¨ m men >I alla fall<’’ (‘erm but >anyway<’). At this point Ebba has already started to produce a candidate opening phrase for their text in English (line 27) and finishes her turn by assigning the writing task to Lara. In other words, both girls have produced turns at talk, which entail a contrastive choice of language. Note that while the turn-internal language contrast of Lara’s turn seems to correspond to the shift of addressee as well as topic (cf. Auer, 1984; Cromdal and Aronsson, 2000; Guldal, 1997), in Ebba’s trun this contrast co-occurs with the shift from dictating the story proper, to a directive act whereby she assigns the writing task to Lara. As it were, Ebba’s turn initiates what is to become a distribution of language choice to which the girls consequently orient throughout the working episode. In Gafaranga’s (2000) terms, a local bilingual medium has been established, and the following excerpts will demonstrate the how this medium informs the two girls’ collaborative production of the text.

1 Although the details of their talk is inaudible on the tape, the intonation contours of their overlapping turns suggest that at least one of the boys is responding in Swedish.

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Excerpt 4 is one of many instances in which the girls negotiate the precise form of the text. In the first line, we can see that Ebba starts formulating the beginning of a sentence, upon which Lara directly turns to the keyboard, starting to input the words ‘‘they had’’ (line 2). Note that Lara’s inputting of the text is accompanied by a verbal production of the exact words she is typing. This allows Ebba to directly tie on to Lara’s talk, repeating the first words and restarting her turn, in which she dictates a continuation of the sentence.2 In line 5, Lara rejects this continuation (‘‘nej’’/‘‘no’’) and produces an alternative version of the sentence. Her suggestion is received by Ebba’s headshake, and this may well be the reason for her adding a moderation tag ‘or so’ in line 6. Note that Ebba’s headshake in line 7 is only an initial receipt of Lara’s countersuggestion. As the two girls face each other, Ebba elaborates her initial rejection, specifying what she considers the problematic element in Lara’s sentence: ‘‘a¨ #ha¨ inte like fifteen’’ (‘‘u#huh not like fifteen’’). After a second’s pause, this disagreement is terminated as Lara accepts the objection, and begins to phrase what is to be seen as a jointly acceptable sentence, using the inclusive ‘we’ format: ‘‘8na¨a¨8 >ska vi< skriva (x)’’ (‘‘8naah8 >should we< write (x)’’). This exchange provides a rather typical example of the two girls negotiating the content of their story, in that oppositions regarding the content, layout, and other details of the text are resolved only after extended sequences of opposition displays. However, let us return to the transcript to consider the girls’ use of the co-available languages. Clearly, all the elements of the story proper are produced in English (turns in lines 1–6), whereas such comments as opposition and agreement tokens (lines 5, 7 and 9), turns locating the sources of trouble (line 7), as well as directive acts (line 9) are produced in Swedish. Put conversely, with the exception of the production of the text proper, the interaction is conducted in Swedish. In other words, the bilingual order produced by the girls seems to entail a minute organization of actions, with regard to the girls’ language choice. Let us further explore the details of that order. The next exchange (Excerpt 5) takes place only a few turns after the negotiation shown in Excerpt 3 above.

2 An in-depth consideration of the nonverbal details involved in this piece of negotiation, including glances and gestures, is presented elsewhere (Cromdal, 2004).

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In Excerpt 5, Lara, prefacing her turn as an accountably collaborative suggestion, produces another candidate beginning for the sentence discussed in the previous excerpt. However, she stops in mid-sentence with a hesitation token, which serves as a wordsearch sequence initiator. Accordingly, we can see Ebba joining the word-search in the next line. As it were, their partly overlapping turns come out as an echo, duplicating the word ‘had’, which Lara immediately picks up as a sort of language play, smiling and nodding to the ‘beat’ of her uttering the words ‘had had’. In response to this Ebba smiles, but rather than aligning with the language play she produces a disaffiliation token (‘‘na¨ ’’/ ‘‘nah’’), immediately followed by a candidate contribution to the problematic sentence: ‘‘na¨ had big hous-’’. Upon this, Lara returns to the word-search format (line 6) and, failing to take the sentence much further, Ebba follows suit in line 7. Note that this not only allows Lara to reject Ebba’s candidate continuation of the sentence in line 5, but it also provides a sequential position in which she may begin producing a version of the sentence herself (line 8): ‘‘had many ro#oms (.5) like’’. Ebba declines this suggestion and displays her search for a more suitable continuation of the sentence (line 9). Now

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Lara repeats and elaborates her previous suggestion, but comes out in overlap with Ebba, who raises her voice, upgrading the rejection of Lara’s contribution, and continues the sentence, moving her index finger as she speaks, contextualizing in this way the proper resolution of the word-search sequence (lines 11 through 13). Note that the word ‘like’, which was suggested by Lara (and identified as a source of trouble by Ebba already in the previous excerpt), is substituted by Ebba for the phrase ‘for example’. Lara then repeats the new phrase (line 14) and it is not possible to determine whether she is questioning the substitution or just soliciting a clarification. In any case, she receives a minimal confirming response, as if she was merely checking her understanding of Ebba’s talk in lines 12 and 13. She then asks if they may use the abbreviated version (‘e g’) instead, and Ebba answers in the affirmative. After Lara confirms this in line 18, Ebba prompts her to write the sentence down. Turning to the girls’ language choice in this exchange, we may note that Lara produces the preface to her proposed beginning of the sentence in Swedish, and the sentence proper in English. Note also that the extended word-search sequence (lines 2 through 13) involves repeatedly quoting items of the prospective text, and that all these items are produced in English. The only Swedish elements involved in this negotiation consist of Ebba’s disagreement tokens (lines 5, 9 and 11). These are produced in Swedish, regardless of their turn-internal position. Importantly, there is no sign of participants orienting to the ‘other-languageness’ of these tokens. In other words, language alternation is not involved in the word-search proper. Recalling Gafaranga’s (2000) work, wordsearches in bilingual interaction can be performed by means of either medium repair, otherlanguage repair, or as in the present case, they can be made within the same language. After Lara’s verbalization of the abbreviation ‘e.g.’, which is pronounced in English, the rest of the talk does not involve any quotation of the text, and as we can see, it is conducted in Swedish. In other words, we can note that there is substantial language alternation taking place in this excerpt, and the language distribution observed earlier (with English being used to produce elements of the text exclusively) is sustained. One last example of the girls’ joint production of the bilingual order may be in place. In Excerpt 6 below, the girls have switched tasks. With Ebba at the keyboard now, they are discussing how to describe the interior of the Victorian homes.

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In rough outline, the four first lines of Excerpt 6 present a negotiation of a satisfactory description of the interior of Victorian homes. Again, we can see that the girls are interacting in Swedish, save for quoting those elements that are to become part of the text, which is accomplished in English. In line 4, Lara introduces the descriptive term ‘posh’ and an extended sequence is set off by Ebba (line 5), who wants to know what it means. Note that the explanation sequence (lines 5 through 12) is conducted entirely in Swedish. As Ebba resumes writing (line 14), she strikes the wrong key and Lara points out the error on the screen, offering the correct word in English. Ebba acknowledges the error already in overlap with Lara’s correction and continues inputting the sentence, attempting in line 18 to hold off Lara’s further correction (‘‘>va¨ nta nu va¨ nta<’’/‘‘>hang on wait<’’) and orienting in this way to the token ‘‘o¨ ::h’’ (‘er::m’) in line 17 as an other-repair initiator. As Ebba reaches the final part of the sentence, Lara starts dictating, slowly producing the words ‘‘’’. Ebba responds by asking Lara to spell out the words for her, and complying with the request, Lara pronounces each letter of the word ‘posh’ in English. For clarity, she begins by prolonging the two first two sounds with pauses in between, then, however, speeds up at the end of the word. As it were, she spells it wrong (with a ‘c’ instead of ‘s’), but once on the screen, she detects the error and produces a self-repair in line 23; ‘‘mNA¨ ja mena- S h’’ (‘‘mNO I mean- S h’’). Again, the letters were pronounced in English. Having edited the word, Ebba announces the completion of the sentence by pronouncing the new word with some vigor in line 24. In concluding this section, we have seen that the girl’s collaborative production of a monolingual text entails frequent language alternation between Swedish and English. As the analysis has shown, the acts of language alternation are far from random. Rather, by engaging in minutely coordinated alternation between the co-available languages, the girls produce a bilingual order of conduct, in which English is used to quote, dictate, and even spell out the sounds of particular letters of the text under production, and Swedish is used for all other forms of interaction. This form of linguistic division of labor provides the scheme of interpretation (Garfinkel, 1967), informing the girls’ tailoring of jointly recognizable actions. In Gafaranga’s (2000) terminology, it is a bilingual medium within which participants do not orient to the other-languageness of alternated elements as long as they are produced in line with the specified pattern of linguistic division of labor. Insofar as the term ‘code-switching’ should apply only to language alternation where such orientation can be analytically demonstrated (Auer, 1984; Gafaranga, 2000; Gafaranga and Torras, 2002), alternation within a bilingual medium as in the examples above does not constitute an instance of conversational code-switching. Let us now turn to the next section, in which I discuss a few instances in which the bilingual medium is temporarily suspended.

6. Suspending the bilingual medium In the previous section, I have discussed at length some of the means through which Lara and Ebba collaboratively produce a specific instance of local bilingual order. In ethnomethodologically informed studies of social interaction, a common analytical procedure for testing patterns of interactional order is to investigate ‘deviant cases’, that is, instances in which interactional patterns are suspended or violated. A number of

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conversation analytic studies have shown that analyses of such occurrences may help to flesh out the very mechanisms underlying the observed pattern (cf. Clayman and Maynard, 1995; Heritage, 1988; Schegloff, 1967). In other words, inspection of deviations from an observed systematic phenomenon may in fact be used to account for the selfsame pattern, and indeed refine the description of the underlying interactional mechanisms, as Garfinkel (1967) has amply demonstrated, by examining members’ ways of producing, making sense of, and dealing with such deviations, analysts can learn much about the normative expectations guiding the production of social order (cf. Sharrock and Anderson, 1986). Applying this principle to the organization of word-search sequences in multilingual interaction, Gafaranga (2000) describes different repair procedures to which the participants orient their talk. In the present data, however, medium repair does not take place and Ebba and Lara’s word-search exchanges are resolved within the same medium. Therefore, the deviations from the bilingual medium that do occur during their computer work have to be accounted for in other ways. One way of accounting for deviations from the bilingual medium is to demonstrate the participant-relevant upshots of suspensions of the current medium. Two instances of temporal deviation from the medium will be discussed in this section, each one demonstrating a different interactional upshot of medium suspension. Both cases result in what Gafaranga and Torras (2002) label ‘‘interactional otherness’’ and count as instances of code-switching proper. In the first case, medium suspension is used to produce a recognizably dispreferred action. In Excerpt 7 below, the work of Lara and Ebba is disrupted by Jean, who asks if she can borrow something (out of camera) from the computer table.

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In Excerpt 7, as Ebba is asking Lara to help her with spelling the word ‘beautiful’, Jean comes over from a nearby table, asking to borrow something from the computer table (line 4). As Ebba refuses to comply with the request, Jean turns to Lara in line 10. After soliciting her attention, Jean repeats her request, which Lara turns down by providing a reason for her refusal to comply. We should note that whereas all the talk so far has been conducted in Swedish, including Lara’s display of attention to Jean’s talk in line 11, the implicit refusal to comply with the request is produced in English (line 13), resulting in a suspension of the previously established order of language choice. We should also note that, in the subsequent turns, as Ebba and Lara resume their work with the text, the girls return to Swedish, restoring the previous order. In other words, Lara’s turn in line 13 is an instance of interactional otherness triggered by language choice (Gafaranga and Torras, 2002). How can we account for the code-switch in line 13? According to conversation analytic work on preference structures, noncompliant responses to requests constitute dispreferred action types (cf. Heritage, 1984). An important feature of such actions is that they are overwhelmingly dealt with in more elaborate ways than preferred actions are. For instance,

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whereas compliant responses to requests may take the shape of a simple ‘yes’, noncompliant responses are typically delayed, prefaced by various hesitation markers, and/ or furnished with some sort of account for the noncompliance. As Ebba did in fact plainly refuse to comply in line 5, a second refusal within the same exchange might be somewhat uncomfortable. Accordingly, in line 13 we find Lara exploiting several techniques to produce a noncompliant response. First, she does not actually refuse to comply; instead she provides a reason for her implicit noncompliance. Second, while she has agreed to pay attention to Jean in line 11, her eyes do not leave the paper manuscript in front of her as she turns down Jean’s request. Finally, Lara’s switch into English amplifies the interactional otherness of her turn and may be seen as yet another way of refusing to perform a solicited action (see also Li Wei, 1994 on the management of dispreferred actions through codeswitching). In other words, the suspension of the bilingual order (English use solely in relation to the unfolding text used) is one of the means by which Lara is able to produce an accountably dispreferred action. Our final example, Excerpt 8, shows how medium suspension is used to bring about a resolution of a trajectory of oppositional actions, possibly including a misunderstanding as to who had said what, in relation to the production of the text.

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Briefly, in lines 1–24 the girls are trying to negotiate the proper linguistic form for the expression ‘doing the laundry’, managing at the same time a misunderstanding pertaining to who said what form should be used. While a number of issues could be raised regarding the management of the misunderstanding, suffice it to note here that in lines 1–21 the girls are engaging in massive language alternation, sustaining the division of labor between Swedish and English. However, at line 22 the sequence of oppositional statements seems to have reached its peak, as Ebba switches to English declaring loudly what she has previously meant to say: ‘‘I SAID that she did that (.) she washed the laundry’’. Lines 22 through 26 thus show a bracketing out of the previously established order of language choice as Ebba is using English for the entire oppositional action, not just to quote what she claims to have said (i.e., to quote the text proper). Moreover, after a very notable pause of 1.5 s, she produces an exasperated comment on the previous exchange (‘‘8Jesus8’’), which is pronounced in English. The previous order is restored in line 27 as Lara turns Ebba’s comment into a joke, by asking in Swedish if their textbook on Victorian times says anything about Jesus. Her ‘pro-faced’ response (Drew, 1987), through which she pretends to treat Ebba’s comment at face value, results in a realignment of the two girls with respect to the humorous situation, as seen in Ebba’s laughter (line 28), but also with respect to the previous order of language choice, as seen in her use of Swedish in the same line. We may thus view the temporal bracketing out of the established order of language use as an effect of the extended misunderstanding and the prolonged building of oppositional versions of what has been said and by whom. In this way, it also constructs the peak of the argument. At the same time, switching to English may allow Ebba to specify what she has meant without the possible interference of language alternation, which may have contributed to the misunderstanding in the first place.

7. Concluding discussion The present paper set out to explore the bilingual order of the girls’ production of an English text on Victorian living conditions, and the analyses have shown various ways in which the girls display to one another an orientation to this order. As Heap (1992: 124) points out, ‘‘a sense of normative order and social structure can be built up sequentially by means of sequences of well-defined and/or loosely defined turns at talk or action.’’ Importantly, this normative order does not constrain the girls’ language choice as much as it informs the interpretation and production of their language choice as locally accountable and socially motivated actions. But how can we account for the girls’ extensive use of the two languages? In a sense, the girls’ organization of their linguistic activities may well be informed by the ‘structural’ pedagogic provisions and demands they are facing in carrying out the task. Notably, the task itself was to produce a text in English, and to accomplish this, they had at their disposal a number of artefacts: a textbook on the Victorian era, a concise school encyclopedia, and a handwritten manuscript of (a part of) their text. These language-permeated artefacts were all in English, and it is hardly surprising to find the girls reading, quoting, and spelling

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fractions of the text in English. However, none of the above can account for their use of Swedish. To counter the possible argument that their choice of Swedish for interaction simply demonstrates their language preferences, I need to draw upon observations of the two girls’ language use in other settings at the school. For instance, during play activities in the schoolyard, the two girls frequently took part in activities in which both Swedish and English were used extensively by the participants for interactional purposes (cf. Cromdal and Aronsson, 2000; Cromdal, 2001a, 2001b, 2004). Hence, drawing on some 20 h of recess activities, there is no evidence to suggest that these two girls have a preference for one of the two co-available languages. In other words, for all we know, Ebba and Lara might well have chosen to go about their current task using English exclusively. In accounting for their language alternation during the present task, I wish to suggest that the specific division of labor between the two languages provided the two girls with an important resource for producing recognizable actions. As such, the bilingual medium produced by the girls served as a scheme of interpretation (Garfinkel, 1967) for their joint conduct. Hence, by systematically engaging in language alternation, they were able to contrast actions that related in a very direct sense to the production of the text proper, from those that did not. In this sense, it seems a very productive arrangement in that it enhances the interpretation of any particular utterance, and possibly reduces the risk of misunderstanding. However, in human interaction, there is no such thing as a perfect formula, and we have seen in Excerpt 8 how a misunderstanding builds up to a joint conflict. It may not be possible to claim that the source of this misunderstanding lies in the girls’ use of two languages, but at least we have seen that its solution involves a temporal suspension of the bilingual medium. With reference to the issue of the relation between structural norms or orders and members’ linguistic practices, we have seen that the production of bilingual order in the data is inevitably a local achievement. While ‘structural constraints’ inherent in the specific pedagogical setting may somehow be at work here, their relevance for actual conduct is negotiated as part and parcel of the girls’ organization of the task activity. Thus, the accomplishment of the bilingual medium is always a situated matter. Hence, the code-switching discussed in the final parts of the analysis cannot be accounted for by appealing to notions of social structure, or any interaction-extrinsic norms of conduct, at least not in a straightforward sense. Rather, the ‘otherness’ (Gafaranga and Torras, 2002) created by code-switching relies for its force on the locally produced medium from which certain actions can be constructed as ‘deviant’ and hence interactionally meaningful. Conversely, these practices of medium suspension provide an analytical resource for understanding the medium as a conversational order, relevant, first and foremost, to the members’ production of locally recognizable actions. Finally, it may be argued that in order to arrive at participant-relevant explanations of language alternation and code-switching, analysts need to attend to the situated practices through which code-switching is produced as a meaningful sort of action. Above all, the issue of social order is at stake for the participants themselves, and the task for ethnomethodologically informed studies of social interaction is to demonstrate how this issue is dealt with in and through situated practices of language use.

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Acknowledgments Thanks are due to Polly Bjo¨ rk-Wille´ n, Asta Cekaite, Ann-Carita Evaldsson, and Micke Tholander for their invaluable, critical readings of a late draft of this article. Any remaining shortcomings of the text are entirely my own doing. I also wish to acknowledge the financial support of the Committee for Educational research of the Swedish Research Council. Appendix A Transcription key: (2) (.) (( )) [ ] = (x) (xxx) ! : drop dead HELLO 8( )8 "# ? . >< <> hi; ha; he; ho¨ ; hh svenska

numbers in single parentheses represent pauses in seconds micropause, i.e. pause shorter than (.5) investigator’s comments indicates start of overlapping speech indicates immediate overlap in succeeding line indicates latching between utterances inaudible word inaudible words highlights a particular feature discussed in the text prolongation of preceding sound sounds marked by emphatic stress are underlined capitals represent markedly increased amplitude embeds talk markedly lower in amplitude indicates rising/falling intonation in succeeding syllable(s) indicates rising terminal intonation indicates falling terminal intonation embeds talk that is faster than surrounding speech embeds talk that is slower than surrounding speech indicate varieties of laughter talk in Swedish in bold script

Appendix B A printout of Ebba and Lara’s paper

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