Cooperative Accomplishment of Multilingual Language Tutorial: An Intercultural Pragmatics Study

Using conversation analytic methods and concepts, this article examines a language tutorial among Thai and Japanese college students, focusing on the use of multilingual repertoires for organizing this activity. The study responds to a call for dialogic studies of multilingual interactions. A 79-minute video-recorded session was analyzed for the coordinated use of multilingual and multimodal resources as well as the role of sequential routines in the cooperative pursuit of relevant interactional projects. Findings demonstrate the contingent and variable nature of cooperative behaviors that are shaped not simply by a priori goals, but emergent interactional projects. They also exemplify reciprocal language learning wherein the participants alternate between expert and novice roles with respect to Thai and Japanese. The article concludes with the implications of the study for language learning and teaching in the context of globalization.