INSTÄLLT. Högre seminarium: Participation in Language cafés: Using Verbal, Embodied and Material Resources in Interaction for Learning

In this presentation, I will discuss three studies on participation in language cafés, which focus specifically on (a) reformulation practices, (b) gestural matching, and (c) the use of artifacts, particularly in writing practices. Language cafés which are organized often by non-governmental organizations – in our case by Churches, Public Libraries and also Red Cross – have become popular activities for newly arrived migrants in Sweden since 2015. They are shown to be arenas for socialization and language training (Jansson & Kunitz, 2020). 

To study activities in language cafés, I draw on ethnomethodological conversation analytic perspective (Sacks, 1995) to investigate how different activities, such as explicit language teaching or engaging the participants in ordinary conversations in different café settings, are formed through locally constituted embodied participation frameworks. The study is inspired by the emerging interest for language learning environments in non-educational settings (i.e., language learning in the wild, Eskildsen & Theodórdóttir, 2015; Wagner, 2015) and contributes to the literature in this field.