Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching

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Speaking L2 in EFL classes: performance, identity

and alterity

Ross Forman

To cite this article: Ross Forman (2014) Speaking L2 in EFL classes: performance,
identity and alterity, Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching, 8:2, 99-115, DOI:
10.1080/17501229.2013.766196

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17501229.2013.766196

Published online: 27 Feb 2013.

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 Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching, 2014
Vol. 8, No. 2, 99–115, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17501229.2013.766196

Speaking L2 in EFL classes: performance, identity and alterity

Ross Forman*

Language Studies, University of Technology Sydney, Building 10, Level 9, PO Box 123,
Broadway, Sydney 2007, Australia
(Received 7 April 2012; final version received 7 January 2013)
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When teachers and students use L2 in Expanding Circle, Asian EFL classes, what
kind of interpersonal roles do they perform, and what does this mean for the
development of L2-mediated identity? The notion of alterity, or otherness, is used
here to analyse the extent to which identity work occurs in EFL classes located in
a Thai university context. Ten such classes are observed, and nine teachers
interviewed. Analysis of lessons revealed little performance of L2-mediated
identity, and teachers indicated that while they valued L2 for communication in
class, they often saw such use as artificial or inauthentic. It is proposed that if
teachers can reflect upon the L2 interpersonal roles which they perform, they will
be better able to support learners’ journey into another language and culture.
Keywords: identity; EFL; classroom discourse; language learning; target language
use

This paper looks at whole-class L2 talk performed by teachers and students in

foreign language learning (FLL), here the learning of English in a Thai setting. It
forms part of a larger study of EFL pedagogy in Thailand which had focused
principally upon the use of L1 in L2 teaching. In the course of that project, it
emerged that actual L2 talk was quite restricted in range and quality. Here I analyse
such L2 talk, and reasons for its limitations, through a framework of identity– one’s
sense of self, and alterity – one’s sense of other.
Although exploration of identity abounds both in Applied Linguistics, and within
the Social Sciences more broadly, a great deal of this work is located in naturalistic
settings. Indeed, Kramsch (2009, 2–3) speaks of the field being ‘flooded’ with
accounts of language learning by bilingual or multilingual individuals. However,
when we turn to instructed FLL, and particularly in non-European, Expanding
Circle countries such as Thailand, it is a matter of debate the extent to which identity
work can occur. Block declares that in FLL ‘the prospects for TL-mediated subject
positions … are minimal to non-existent’ (2007a, 137); while Lee (2009, 121)
responds that such contexts instead represent ‘a rather prolific site to examine the
multi-layered nature of identity’. My aim is to further this debate. There is some
evidence, for example, which supports Lee’s position in studies of foreign language
learners conducted by, e.g., Belz (2002) or Kramsch (2009). However, such studies
are nearly always of European languages which possess areal affinity, conducted in
Western contexts, with advanced learners who are successful in their second language

*Email: r.forman@uts.edu.au

# 2013 Taylor & Francis

 100 R. Forman

study. The present paper is concerned not with what we may see as such relatively
privileged students, but rather with those whose first language is distant from the
second, who are located in a SE Asian context, and who are not necessarily either
advanced or successful learners.
In studying identity, the notion of ‘alterity’, or otherness, is a fundamental tool
both of linguistic anthropology and cultural studies. However, this concept has rarely
been applied to formal language learning settings. The present paper seeks to draw
upon alterity to consider what kind of interpersonal roles are taken up when
speaking L2 in a foreign language classroom, and to test Block’s particular claim
about the restricted nature of identity development which may thereby occur.
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Approaches to identity
Following early work on L2-mediated identity conducted by Norton (1995, 1997,
2000), important studies have included those by Bayley and Schechter (2003),
Pavlenko and Blackledge (2004), Pavlenko (2006), Block (2007a), Mantero (2007)
and Lin (2008). As noted above, many of these studies are naturalistic; and drawing
as they do upon personal biographies of L2 learning, display the strengths and
limitations of self-reported data. But what about instructed FLL? Block (2007a,
2007b) discusses studies of identity which relate to three domains of ESL, Study
Abroad and FLL, and observes that theorising in the third of these has produced
only a handful of papers – notably Lantolf and Genung (2003) into Mandarin
Chinese in the USA; Thorne (2003) relating to Internet-mediated learning of French,
also in the USA; and those by McMahill (1997, 2003) into EFL in Japan. But in
these cases, with the exception of McMahill’s feminist studies, identity development
has been found to occur, if at all, in terms of learners’ sense of self as learners, rather
than as travellers into a second language/culture.
Identity, one’s sense of self, has come to be regarded in post-structural terms as a
constellation of roles and desires which vary according to time and place: no longer it
is viewed as singular, indissoluble, nor necessarily a conscious phenomenon. Butler’s
notion of performativity (1990, 1993) proposes that identity is the effect of our actions/
speakings: it emerges from re-iterated performances by the actor/subject (Derrida
1988). At the same time, in Butler’s view, no performance is simply ‘repetition’: each
new speaking is different from the last, and therefore carries with it agency. These
repeated acts have been described as sedimentation, a useful metaphor which suggests
that fluidity in identity development does not signify an absence of fixity (Pennycook
2005; Harissi, Otsuji, and Pennycook 2012). If we can thus see identity as sedimenting
rather than free-flowing, it can be viewed as not only an effect but also a cause of our
speakings/actings: for it is from these iterations that new sediments form.
Performance as it occurs in second language classrooms has been relatively under-
explored. Key studies variously draw upon Bauman’s (1992) postmodern approach to
‘performance studies’, Goffman’s participation frameworks (1974, 1981), as well as
Bakhtinian notions of double-voicing and heteroglossia (1981, 1984) (see Cromdal
and Aronsson 2000; Sullivan 2000; van Dam 2002; He 2003; Appel 2007; Haught and
McCafferty 2008). Here, performance is generally seen to ‘provide a frame that invites
critical reflection on communicative processes’ (Baumann and Briggs 1990, 60), and
has been applied to an analysis of ‘classroom as theatre’, or to an exploration of ‘ludic
language play’. The connection which is sought here – between classroom
performance and identity construction – is not a focus of prior studies.
 Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching 101

Alterity
Alterity is the state, feeling or condition of being other(ed). In philosophy, the
concept was significantly developed by Levinas (1999 [1970]), who saw encounters
with others as serving to (peacefully) challenge and recreate one’s sense of self. In
social science, alterity has been theorised in both structural ways (anthropology) and
post-structural (cultural and post-colonial studies). In the latter perspective, alterity,
like identity, is mutable, dissolvable and polyphonic; and like identity, sediments
according to our actions and words. Moreover, in the perspective adopted here,
alterity and identity are regarded as being embedded the one in the other, as affirmed
by Jung’s notion of the alterous shadow (1938).
Working with concepts of performativity and alterity can offer a means of
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exploring how participants’ sense of self may be extended or restricted in the foreign
language classroom. In particular, I investigate the extent to which more ‘alterous’ L2
roles encourage or discourage L2 classroom speech. To my knowledge, there are no
published studies which have availed themselves of such a heuristic in relation to
second or foreign language pedagogy. Indeed, alterity itself receives barely a mention
in the existing literature of Applied Linguistics (though the notion of ‘cultural
otherness’ has been taken up in TESOL by, for example, Palfreyman 2005).
The research question posed is:

How can an alterity perspective contribute to understanding the L2 performance roles

taken up in an EFL classroom setting?

Method
As indicated earlier, the theme of the present paper emerged from a larger project
located in a Thai university, 2002–2004 (Author 2005, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012).
Nine teachers from the English Department at what I will call ‘Isara’ participated.
Lessons were observed and audiotaped, producing a total of 19 hours of classroom
data; and teacher interviews constituted a further 24 hours of data.
The nine teachers who participated in this study were expert speakers of both
English and Thai; eight were Thai, and one was Anglo-Australian. All had developed
their L2 in part through ‘local’ study, and in part by overseas study/experience. That
is, all had first-hand experience of the cultures associated with the target language.
For the students, on the other hand, in nearly every case, L2 experience had been
confined to formal classes undertaken at school or privately; and none had
experienced the target language in an English-speaking or Lingua Franca context.
It is true that Western, mainly American movies, music and fashion are popular in
Thailand, but it is also the case that most ‘authentic’ L2 texts are of limited
comprehensibility to most students. There was a noticeable range of L2 proficiency
across the 10 classes observed, ranging from four classes of relatively advanced
English-major students, whom I would informally rate at bands 5–6 on the IELTS
scale (around 500–550 TOEFL), to six classes of non-major students, the majority of
whom I would estimate to be at bands 2–3 on IELTS (around 350–430 TOEFL). My
relationship to the site stems from having spent a year on staff 1988–1989, and having
maintained close contact with former colleagues from that time.
In the study, teachers are referred to following Thai custom, that is, by the
honorific ‘Ajarn’ (Lecturer), or as ‘Doctor’; followed by first name, in this case a self-
selected pseudonym, for example, Ajarn Nanda.
 102 R. Forman

All lessons were observed and audiotaped by the researcher. Thai language
segments were transcribed and translated by Thai research assistants; the English
segments were summarised and selectively transcribed by the researcher. Interviews,
conducted in English, were also audio-recorded and transcribed. Field notes, audio
tapes and transcriptions formed the data of the study. Transcription conventions are
reproduced as an Appendix.

Analysis
Two points are initially of note. First, in all classes, not only L2 but also L1 was
present – with both languages often blended in delivery. However, the bilingual
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dimension of these classes is a subject of enquiry in related work (Forman 2008), and
is excluded from the present discussion in favour of an L2-focus. Second, my primary
exploration is of the teacher talk which represented the dominant pedagogy of
classes; as noted above, student talk was less commonly found, and will be referred to
secondarily.
When exploring classroom data, some 58 motifs were initially identified, which
could be grouped into nine thematic areas. One of the latter I termed ‘Performance
of L2’, to represent the ways in which participants performed the second language in
a whole-class setting. Here my focus was upon the interpersonal roles taken up,
rather than pedagogic roles (described elsewhere: Forman 2010, 2012). I wanted to
better understand why students seemed reticent to speak L2 in whole-class settings,
and why the L2 speech of teachers appeared to be restricted in range. In so doing, I
also wanted to create categories that would be useful for teachers and teacher-
educators in analysing classroom practice. Five such categories were produced, which
range from most alterous to least alterous, called here enacting, playing, displaying,
acting and animating.

Enacting
The term enacting is used by Halliday (1995, 257) to describe the interpersonal stratum
of meaning which is present in all verbal communication. Here, the term is used more
narrowly to represent the creation of ‘unmarked’ tenor relations amongst participants.
In its enacting function, the speaker’s voice may be regarded as performing a relatively
unmediated, ‘authentic’, or ‘natural’ self; and thus represents their core identity.
However, the authenticity which characterises this role in L1-mediated communication
becomes limited when a learner begins a move into L2-mediated communication. To
travel into L2 creates a different relationship with the world, and one which is often
more self-conscious, particularly when developed through formal instruction. There-
fore enacting, or ‘being oneself’ within a second language, is regarded as the most
alterous role which can be performed by an L2 student.
The following classroom texts will illustrate the extent and nature of the L2
enacting which was observed in the present study. In short, I found that this
performance type occurred in two forms: content-based, that is, meaning-based
communication relating to the content of the lesson at hand; and what I will call
procedural, which ranged from roll-call or task instructions to classroom management.
 Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching 103

Enacting: content-based
First, I give two brief examples from Dr Patcharin’s low-level Year 1 mandatory
English class. The topic of this lesson concerned the stages of going overseas to live
and returning to the home country. A reading passage together with a series of key
descriptors was the focus of the textbook Passages 1 (Richards and Sandy 1998). At
this point, students were reporting back orally their written answers to the textbook
exercise:

1 T: okay, the acceptance stage. okay. how will you feel in this stage.
2 S: you don’t want to go back home.
3 T: you don’t want to go back home- why not! why not! uh?!
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4 S: ((inaudible to teacher and researcher))

5 T: why-why! ((laughs)) why don’t you want to go back home!

Extract 1. Dr Patcharin: Enacting (i).

Students here were expected to display their knowledge of descriptors which had
just been taught (such as ‘be excited about’, ‘look forward to’, ‘worry about’ and so
on). But instead, one student chose to respond by offering not a phrase required by
the exercise, but a personal view. In this sense, we may say that the student was
enacting L2. And the teacher in turn, instead of proceeding with her display of key
vocabulary, enacted a ‘real’ response. The teacher sounded amazed, with her voice
increasing in volume and in pitch range. It took six or seven fairly quickly repeated
questions in order to elicit a reason from the student. In fact, in this case the
enactment was so ‘natural’ that as the dialogue continued, the student switched into
her L1, Thai, in order to explain herself fully to the teacher (which response the
teacher then translated back into English).
At another point in the same part of this lesson, when students provided a
descriptor of ‘homesick’, the teacher turned away from the textbook’s comprehen-
sion questions, and enquired of the students whether they had in fact ever been
abroad. None had done so, and the teacher enacted another ‘real’ response, which
sought to reassure students:

All of us, just guess, right? Nobody knows exactly what’ll happen to you.

These instances of enacting may appear fairly inconsequential to those working in

ESL contexts, where personal information relating to immigrant students’ needs is
fundamental to classroom discourse, and where the teacher herself often acts as
cultural informant and social advocate for students. However, in this Asian EFL
setting, students are not ‘transplanted’, but remain firmly embedded in the local
context. And L2, rather than forming a means of survival in a new land, is an object
of study – nearly always in the shape of a prescribed text which has to be explicated
by the teacher. Accordingly, when the teacher and students do step outside this role
in ‘authentic’ fashion, as here, there is a sense of strong personal affect.
Further illustration of enacting, but now with advanced students, is provided in
Dr Bua’s class. Here, the teacher had provided her own photos of well-known local
and global figures as a warm-up to a difficult textbook exercise on ‘Temperaments’:
these figures included Thai pop stars and prime ministers, as well the former US
 104 R. Forman

president George W. Bush. An interesting exchange, part of which appears as Extract

2 below, occurred when the teacher held up a photo of Osama bin Laden.

1 T:
((showing picture of Osama bin Laden))
2 T:
but what about this guy. what about him, what about him.
3 S:
evil.
4 T:
what is that, what is that.
5 Ss
evil.
6 T:
evil you think. oh wow! okay, what else. can you think of ? … ah what is his name.
7 Ss:
Osama bin Laden.
8 T
Osama bin Laden okay and he is name like number one terrorist right now,
right, okay. the most wanted, right, okay. so do you think he is a devil?
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[sic], and what else. I don’t, ah … do you think, ah, these two alike? are alike?
((George W Bush and Osama bin Laden)) have something in common?
9 S: yes.
10 T: yes, well what is that? ((laughs))
11 S: they love their countries.
12 T: yes, they love their countries. and some other traits, some other characteristics … mm
probably they are very much different, right?

Extract 2. Dr Bua: Enacting (ii).

It may be seen that the conventional descriptors relating to person and

personality were extended because the teacher had introduced global figures of a
highly topical nature, and students were able to respond – albeit with limited
language – in ways which expressed personal voice. It should also be noted here that
the Buddhist religion/philosophy continues to occupy a significant part of the Thai
social fabric, with 93.6% of a large-scale survey self-reporting Buddhism to be an
important part of their lives (Komin 1990, 208). I suggest that the student’s
perspective of the two ‘foreign’ leaders under discussion, each of whom claimed to
embrace either Christianity or Islam, is shaped by this worldview; and I felt as a
Western observer that I had profited by encountering it.
One further example of enacting is illustrated from an advanced class of Ajarn
Nanda. The topic was critical reading, and the teacher had elicited from students
some examples of current social issues, which included a proposed curfew for young
people in Thailand, the current government’s performance, and industrial zoning
restrictions. The latter point related to controversy over an explosion which had
recently occurred at a munitions dump located in a populated area. The teacher took
up the students’ contribution as follows:

1 T: explosion? yesterday? or day before yesterday. so what, what’s the issue.

2 T: yes, so we should move [it]. what do we call /kræŋsen/. I don’t know how we, we use in
English, Ajarn? ((addressing me as observer)). so it’s like a place that we collect like
stock for military weapons that are dead, that are … .
3 RF: cemetery?
4 S: no. ah, no. ((turns to re-address the class; many students discussing quietly in Thai)) …
and the place, and the place and no, huh? huh? and the place, and the place that you,
you you collect it. you see, these are military weapons, may be out of use or may be
old-fashioned, and should get destroyed something like that, and then we have to
collect them into one place, and there’s an explosion. okay, oh, in Thai we just call
/kræŋsen/.
Extract 3. Ajarn Nanda: Enacting (iii).
 Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching 105

This extract illustrates three important points related to enacting L2 in an EFL

context.
First, as in the previous examples shown, the teacher’s talk was focused on
meaning, in distinction to the form-based explanations which characterised most
parts of most lessons in this study. As a consequence of the teacher’s spontaneous
communication, we can observe her use of repetition, pausing and hesitation –
features more frequent in everyday conversation than in formal teacher talk. Not
that such performance is inappropriate: on the contrary, I believe both that it indexes
a desire to communicate ideas – to enact; and also that it provides students with
valuable L2 experience of a less formal register.
Secondly, it may be noted that the spontaneity of communication also resulted in
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the emergence of a term /kræŋsen/ for which a ready translation could not be found.
This may remind us of the risks taken by FLL teachers when enacting L2 in the
classroom, for it takes a high level of proficiency to be able to provide the L2
equivalent of any infrequent lexis that may occur. However, this potential block in
communication was deflected by the teacher, who continued to use L2 to enact
meaning but at the same time allowed for a brief recourse to L1 in order to ensure
understanding. That is, after the teacher’s appeal to authority in the form of myself
as native-speaking researcher had failed (a memorable cameo), she seemed
comfortable to proceed without the English translation – perhaps making the
judgement that it was not important for her students to know this word.
Thirdly, it may be noted that while questions abounded in the speech of the
teacher, they were largely rhetorical, or required one-word/phrase answers of
students – even with this advanced English-major class. That is, when enacting did
occur, it was still strongly dominated by the teacher.

Enacting: procedural
The second type of enacting, ‘procedural’, often occurred at opening and closing of
lessons (when calling the roll, or dealing with assigned work); and additionally in the
giving of task instructions or managing the class. Here, for example, the teacher
voiced her annoyance that only a few students were responding to whole-class
questioning:

1 T: how about somebody else.

2 T: there is only one student in this class? huh?
3 T: okay, what do you think.

Extract 4. Dr Patcharin: Enacting (iv) (procedural).

Overall, in the present study, enacting was seen to occur infrequently, confined
mainly to teacher-talk in the highest-level English-major classes, and to some routine
procedures in lower level classes.
It may be seen that on the whole, students themselves proved to be reticent in
using the L2 for communication, with responses limited in both quantity and in
spread of students. As for student-initiated enacting, this was rare indeed: and
perhaps unsurprisingly so, given the very high respect accorded to teachers and older
people in Thailand (Komin 1990; O’Sullivan and Tajaroensuk 1997). But one rather
 106 R. Forman

exceptional instance was observed to occur – unusual because it was not only
student-initiated, but even challenged the teacher’s authority, albeit in an ‘underlife’
way. During another class of Ajarn Nanda which took place in the late afternoon,
students had become somewhat restless, and the teacher chose to chide them by
alluding ironically to a written text which she was explicating. The passage was in the
character of a young man looking back at his schooling, and when Ajarn Nanda
came to the words ‘The teacher thought I was stupid’, she looked around the class
and laughed softly. One student responded ‘Why do you laugh?’ in effect challenging
the teacher to make explicit the comparison. The question was audible to the class,
and to me as observer, but the teacher chose to ignore it and resume her reading of
the written text. This represented an interesting, but as noted, exceptional initiative
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on the part of students.

In all these illustrations of classroom discourse, I believe that the focus was upon
meaning over form; upon message over medium; upon ‘authentic interaction’ rather
than the display or recitation of knowledge. In this way, I believe that participants
were enacting, to the best of their various abilities, an L2-mediated identity; and in so
doing, were experiencing alterity in the second language: how it felt to communicate
not in their ‘natural’ L1-mediated persona, but in ‘another’ L2 far removed from
their own. However, as has been noted above, recorded instances of enacting were
relatively rare. This was a matter of deep interest and concern to me, and will be
pursued later in this paper.

Playing
A second performance role observed in these classes was (verbal) playing. In this type
of performance, the speaker continues to present her/his own voice in as much as s/he
speaks words which s/he has created. However, there is performed both the self and a
parodied self, resulting in a duality, a ‘double voicing’ (Bakhtin 1981). The teacher
now has the latitude to pretend that s/he, students, or the situation which they are in,
are other than they are perceived to be. That is, a dimension of play can be created
from the incongruity between what is (the ‘real’ us) and what is not (how we are
positioned as being). I suggest that playing, in the sense that it is ‘not real’, can
function to protect speakers from full disclosure of ideas or feelings, and can create
an alterous role similar to that of enacting, though now offering somewhat less
challenge/freedom.
Moments of play occurred occasionally in the study overall, and extensively in
one of Ajarn Murray’s low-level mandatory English classes. Here, groups of students
had been allocated a room of a house, and were required to work in Thai to come up
with a list of relevant English vocabulary items. When students fed their responses
back to the teacher, he created a playful commentary in English and Thai on the
objects identified (for a fuller account, see Forman 2011). In the following extract,
students were feeding back their list of items associated with ‘bathroom’:

1 T: what else do you have.

2 S: Shelf
3 T: shelves – uh-huh – you have a shelf to put things on – good!
4 S: a chair
5 T: a chair, right? – a small chair, right, a small chair. okay, good.
6 S: a window
 Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching 107

7 T: a windo:::w! ((long glissando downwards))

8 Ss ((laughter: 3 secs))
9 T: door! wall … ceiling. floor. yep. a boyfriend.
10 Ss: ((laughter: 2 secs))
11 T: uh-huh?
12 T: three boyfriends, uh huh?
((student laughter: accompanies lines 11-12))
13 T: three boyfriends, two husbands, three dogs,
14 Ss: ((laughter: 2 secs))
15 T: a cat, a fish, a penguin, a duck.

Extract 5. Ajarn Murray: Playing (i).

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It may be seen that when students offered ‘window’, the teacher exploited the
obviousness of the item in two way. First, he added similar fixtures such as ‘door’
and ‘ceiling’; and then, he took the opportunity to move into the clearly incongruous
by nominating ‘boyfriends’, ‘husbands’, and various animals.
Students continued to list items from the bathroom, with the teacher accepting a
range of items from the prosaic (e.g. ‘clock’) to the decorative (e.g. ‘flowers’). But
when a group of students nominated ‘book’, the teacher teased them, and the
students responded, as follows:

1 S: a book.
2 T: a book. oh good. do you READ?! ((surprised; high voice))
3 T: do you read? do you read books?
4 T: ((name of university)) university students read BOOKS!
5 Ss: ((laughter: 0.5 sec))
6 T: I can’t believe it. OR … is it just a picture book. picture book.
7 S: nude book.
8 Ss: ((laughter: 5 secs, with some squeals))
9 T: okay, a nude book. Okay,
10 T: what else.

Extract 6. Ajarn Murray: Playing (ii).

Here, the teacher positions students as being non-studious, or even non-literate,

the latter at least an incongruous state for university students. But the students
‘trump’ him by playing along with his positioning, and claiming that not only would
their book be of pictures, but of nude pictures, an image clearly disreputable, and
perhaps particularly so in Thai culture.
The limitations of students’ verbal L2 responses are evident in this class; but their
willingness to participate in playing was seen to be greater than in the previously
described role of enacting. As noted earlier, play offers a dual role. Through it, a
learner can journey into alterity while at the same time retaining a sense of her/his
core identity; can engage in speaking where the self is protected to some extent by the
‘non-real’ nature of the discourse; and can have the safety net of being able to slip
between play and non-play roles. Playing, therefore, may offer a valuable
performance role for second language learners. It is also notable here that low-
proficiency L2 students were able to successfully engage in humorous language play,
though humour itself has traditionally been regarded as one of the last domains in
which such learners become competent (see also Bell 2009; Forman 2011).
 108 R. Forman

Displaying
This role is ascribed to occasions when a teacher wished to explain or illustrate an
English form or function, and as such it was the most frequent kind of performance
observed. In a nutshell, we may say that while enacting and playing are message-
oriented, displaying is medium-oriented. Displaying too realises a duality of role, but
in a way which differs from the process of playing. Here, the speaker seeks to display
various kinds of knowledge or skill in the medium of a second language, thus
construing the role of ‘teacher’ or ‘student’. At the same time, of course, the speaker
cannot but retain her/his known identity, or existing sense of self. Because it is more
predictable and limited, displaying is regarded as less alterous than the two
performance roles previously described.
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As noted above, students were for the most part reticent to participate in the
classroom enacting of L2 communication; and playing was extensively taken up in
only one class of the study. However, students were far more likely to participate when
a more predictable response was required – in the display of knowledge/skill. Display
is more structured, focused and narrowed; the margin for error is significantly less;
and because the teacher knows well what kind of answer she/he seeks, students may
respond in choral or group form, thus avoiding the risk an individual answer would
carry. In short, more predictable display questions afford less of the ‘unknown’; and a
more conventional classroom tenor is established between teacher and students.
Two examples follow. The first is from the same lesson as the Acceptance text
above, and addresses a grammatical point familiar to teachers of English:

1 T: how do you think you will feel.

2 S: I will feel exciting.
3 T: you will feel exci::? ted.
4 S: excited.
5 T: you will feel excited. right. SOMETHING is exciting, but you will FEEL
excited. okay.

Extract 7. Dr Patcharin: Displaying.

A second example is taken from a beginner class conducted by Ajarn Laksana,

where the very limited nature of display is illustrated in conventional IRF fashion:

1 T: where is the speaker now. [Repeat] she, is she at home?

2 Ss: no.
3 T: is she at school?
4 Ss: no.
5 T no. where is she.
6 S: she is at shop.
7 T: she is at the shop. what is she doing at the shop. talking to her friend?

Extract 8. Ajarn Laksana: displaying

In both examples, attention has turned to displaying knowledge about the target
language, rather than enacting message-oriented communication. However, within or
alongside the display, as noted earlier, existing known identities cannot fail to be
 Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching 109

performed amongst participants. What has changed is the degree of self presented:
with the ‘natural’ figure now being overlaid with a ‘displayed’ teacher or student role.
In the three performance roles explored to this point, we have illustrated a range
of alterity positions and argued for a difference in tenor achieved by each kind of
performance. In all three of those roles, the speaker was creating her/his own words
in the L2, with varying degrees of guidance by the teacher – moving from the greater
freedom of enacting through the more restrictive roles of playing and then displaying.
Now, we look at performance roles where a speaker takes on another’s words; where
the discourse is more intensely scaffolded, and the journey into L2 is significantly less
alterous. I term these two remaining roles acting and animating.
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Acting in L2
The English Department at Burapha presented theatrical productions in English
each year: two mentioned to me were ‘Romeo and Juliet’, and ‘My Fair Lady’. These
productions are not amongst the data collected, but note is made because acting
provides another kind of performance role for students. Here is required the
projection of a persona which is clearly and unambiguously not the self; and yet, of
course, the self remains part of the performance (“How can we tell the dancer from
the dance?”.) In acting, the speaker has to not only understand the semantics and
pragmatics of another’s words, but also how to project them in ‘lifelike’ situations.
Acting in the form of plays in the L2, or for that matter in classroom role-plays/
improvisations, offers a structured and explicit persona to be presented; and while
there is a range of ways to act out a character, at the same time, the words remain
another’s. This performance role can thus foster the use of the target language in
highly scaffolded ways, particularly when it occurs in classrooms as pair/group tasks
whose goal is L2 interaction rather than theatrical performance (Maley and Duff
1982). It represents a performance role which presents less of the self, which creates
less movement towards alterity, and which thereby offers less threat to the core, L1-
mediated identity.

Animating L2
Finally, there is a performance type which I will call animating, using Goffman’s term
(1974, 1981) more narrowly here to refer oral production of the written word, which
in daily life would usually be confined to situations such as news-reading or reading
aloud to a child. This process was seen to be a foundational element of a majority of
teachers’ classroom performance, as they brought to life – animated – the written text
of monolingual imported textbooks. Such an attribute may appear commonplace in
the native language or ESL classroom, but in foreign language contexts, a teacher’s
capacity to accurately and fluently render the written word into spoken form
represents a key professional attribute. Animating can be seen as incipient of acting as
described above, in that it represents, as it were, just the ‘reading’ of a role. It
produces spoken performance in a voice which is least alterous for the L2 learner, and
accordingly, affords a potentially less challenging kind of performance. And for
students at Isara, animating appears to have been particularly non-threatening
because it often took the form of a chorus rather than individual voice. (Similar
outcomes might be obtained from, for example, the recitation of Jazz Chants, or the
singing of songs.) Here, students can ‘dip a toe’ into the L2 without threat to self or
 110 R. Forman

group identity – provided that they do not too readily relinquish the sounds of Thai
in their English pronunciation, as indeed they did not here.
I was interested to see the ease and harmony with which students performed
choral animation of written text even when going beyond a single sentence, although
one might well have predicted otherwise. That is, students were able, as a class and
without being led by the teacher, to broadly synchronise the production of prosodic
features such as intonation contours, the demarcation of tone-groups by pausing,
and the isochronous tendency of the English foot (which contrasts with the syllable-
timed prosody of the Thai language). Moreover, the paralinguistic feature of pace
was also successfully synchronised. I have seen and used myself a similar technique
when teaching English, but with the vital distinction of having the teacher’s voice as
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lead. I asked Ajarn Somchay at interview why he thought students were successful in
performing in this way. He indicated that he found the practice unremarkable: It’s
with the culture. Thai students are trained in that way. We do things uniformly … right
from when they were kids.

Discussion
The question posed in this study was:

How can an alterity perspective contribute to understanding the L2 performance roles

taken up in an EFL classroom setting?

By examining the interpersonal roles called forth by various types of classroom

discourse, the study has described and illustrated five main kinds of performance,
which have been ranged from most to least alterous as enacting, playing, displaying,
acting and animating. Recalling that in the Hallidayan model of language, whenever
we speak, we take up or are positioned into various roles, this study has affirmed the
constant presence of the interpersonal in language learning; and suggests that it may
be a driving force. Following Butler, it has identified how these roles are constituted
by the performances in which speakers engage. The study suggests that L2
performances in less alterous roles produce less threat to identity than do more
‘natural’ roles; and that embedded constructions (in displaying, through highly
scaffolded words; in acting and animating, through others’ words), can allow for less
self-conscious use of the L2. These are important considerations for teachers and
teacher-trainers in the analysis both of the kinds of L2 they produce in class, and also
of what L2 opportunities they make available for their students.
It has been recorded that of the five L2 roles described here, displaying was the
dominant type, where L2 was treated as ‘object of study’ whose forms and functions
were displayed to pedagogic ends; and that animating proved to be a staple role entered
into readily by both teachers and by students. Indeed, a frequent pattern was a two-
step of animating followed by displaying. This pattern could occur in micro-fashion,
within a few seconds, or in larger steps constituting several minutes. In all such cases,
this sequence gives a common pattern of the teacher moving back and forth from less
to more alterous in the presentation of self – albeit within a restricted range.
There is one performance type that I would like to consider here in more detail –
enacting, and for two reasons. First, because it was not frequently seen, with the
exception of the two most advanced classes; and second, because in my view
this constitutes a disappointing aspect of the pedagogy observed. Central to a
 Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching 111

sociocultural view of learning and to a functional view of language are beliefs that a
learner needs to engage with, participate in, appropriate the second language in order
for the language to become part of the learner, and for the learner to become part of
the language. However, although meaning-based interactions were occasionally
sought of students by the teacher, they were rarely gained. It may also be noted that
while student group work was a part of several classes, such communication took
place almost entirely in L1, with the aim, usually, of producing an L2 written text.
There are solid grounds for enabling students to work in this way (Antón and
DiCamilla 1998; Scott and De La Fuente 2008). However, it is also important to
create spaces for students to be ‘stretched’ to communicate in L2, so that their
fluency develops, and that they develop strategies for the negotiation of meaning in
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the target language. It has to be said that such spaces were largely absent.
When I raised the matter of L2 enacting with teachers at interview, there appeared
to be three major factors which circumscribed the tenor of communication. First,
although all teachers strove to use English when appropriate, a number perceived this
situation to be ‘artificial’; as being a classroom device which can disable participants’
‘real’ selves. As one teacher put it:

If we speak English amongst Thai it’s not natural – we are pretending (DrPatcharin).

Another said of the English parts of lessons:

It’s not the real you, not the real students, not the real teacher (Ajarn Nanda).

Secondly, there is the didactic function of classroom discourse. When English is seen
to be an object of study, performance can be constrained: It’s more planned rather
than just spontaneous (Ajarn Somchay). Additionally, teachers who did strive to
maximise their use of English found that without the time-saving capacity of L1
explanation and translation, they could fall behind in the syllabus. Dr Suchada
reported that her colleagues had told her:

Because you use so much English in your class right now, you cannot catch up with your
lessons.

Thirdly, possibilities to enact in English were limited simply by students’ relatively

low EL proficiency levels in a majority of – though not all – classes observed. Ajarn
Laksana noted that if English was used beyond students’ capacity to follow the
lesson, the following situation could occur:

At the end of the class, they [students] came to the teacher and asked: “What did you
say, teacher? I did not understand anything at all.”

On the other hand, Ajarn Rajavadee pointed out that when she reverted to Thai:

I feel relief, they [the students] feel relief. We understand the same point now.

Overall, I would stress again that every teacher was committed to using the greatest
amount of L2 which they considered that students could follow. They also
appreciated that it was their responsibility to guide and lead students in this respect.
 112 R. Forman

As Ajarn Murray succinctly put it: You have to force the students to use English or
they won’t. However, despite teachers’ desires, there was relatively little English
spoken by students in class; and as has been shown above, a limited range of L2
interpersonal roles presented by teachers themselves.

Conclusion
To return to Block’s assertion that identity work within the specific context of the FL
classroom is highly limited in nature, the present study appears to support his case.
Teachers, as noted above, while committed to the use of L2 in class, often saw it as
artificial, time-consuming, or constrained by the relatively low proficiency levels of
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many students. For students, English was a language far distant from their own, and
its associated cultures similarly distant; as revealed earlier, no student had travelled
outside Thailand. Four of the study’s 10 classes were English-major, composed of
enthusiastic learners who had gained highly competitive places; the remaining six
were mandatory classes, where most students demonstrated a lack of interest in,
though rarely actual resistance to study. However, for both groups, the English
language appeared to remain principally an ‘object of study’ to be animated or
displayed; rather than to be enacted or played. L2 here is a long way, in fact, from
what Kramsch has described as ‘the potential medium for the expression of
their [foreign language learners’] innermost aspirations, awarenesses, and conflicts’.
(2009, 4).
However, there are two caveats to my conclusion – one which relates to this
study’s method of enquiry, and the other to its implications for teaching.
First, a limitation of the present study has been its lack of individual student
voices. We know, for example, from Ohta (2001) of the richness of FL learners’ inner
speech; and both diary studies (Bailey and Nunan 1996; de Courcy 2005) and
testimonials (Pavlenko 2006; Mantero 2007) affirm the profound emotional
experiences that L2 learning can engender. Further research needs to be done which
asks FL students how they feel when engaged in the different kinds of performance
roles identified here. Such enquiry would preferably be conducted with students who
are at lower proficiency levels, as these constitute the majority of learners in FL
contexts; and importantly, it would be done through the medium of their L1 rather
than L2.
Second, does the limited range of interpersonal roles documented in the present
study necessarily mean that FL contexts are ‘relatively unfertile ground for TL-
mediated work’ (Block 2007a, 144)? Perhaps, it is not the fertility of the ground but
the practice of its cultivation, which in FL contexts need to be more intensive? In
other words, when the rich environmental and social factors associated with second
language or study abroad contexts are missing, the classroom itself needs to aim to
compensate – and this is of course traditionally the challenge of foreign language
teaching. Particularly in such settings, and when the target language is distant from
the first, the teacher is vital in providing diversity of roles intermentally so that
students’ intramental development can subsequently occur (Vygotsky 1978). Accord-
ingly in terms of pedagogy, it is proposed that teachers develop a baseline awareness
of the interpersonal roles which their lessons afford – such as those which have been
broadly identified here as enacting, playing, displaying, acting and animating. In this
way, it is suggested that they may be able to provide optimum interpersonal
 Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching 113

modelling and support for students in the journey of the self into a second language
and culture.

Notes on contributor
Ross Forman is a senior lecturer in TESOL/Applied Linguistics at the University of
Technology, Sydney (UTS). He has also been involved in teacher training in Cambodia,
Laos and Thailand. Current research interests include appropriate pedagogy, the use of L1 in
L2 teaching, and language teacher education.

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Appendix. Transcription conventions

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Intonation contours
. falling (statements and wh- questions);
? rising (polar questions and challenges);
, level/low rise (lists and continuation);
! rise/fall (intensity/animation).

Pauses
(3 sec) 3 seconds;
… less than 1second;
but- speaker breaks off.

Dynamics
CAPS louder word;
:: lengthening of word.

Metatranscription
(()) [italic font] researcher’s comment on manner or meaning.