‘Community’ as mediated contribution to activity

1. ‘Community’ as mediated contribution to activity UW-Madison Language Institute February 7, 2007 Steven L. Thorne Linguistics & Applied Language Studies The Pennsylvania State University

2. .talking points • Part 1: Community + related & alternative concepts • Part 2: Broader contexts and digital mediation • Part 3: Catalyzing and stifling interaction with technology • Part 4: Designing for relevance and interpenetration • Part 5: MMOGs • Part 6: Bridging activities and pedagogical mediation

3. .why community (or alternatives) matter • “Even when I enter into a room to pay a simple morning call I have unconsciously the habit of regarding the scene as if I were a spectre not solid enough to influence my environment.” (Poet and novelist Thomas Hardy, in Tomalin’s biography of him, 2007). • Alienation = “the product of his [sic] activity is not the object of his activity” (Marx, 1849/1972, p. 205). • Agency = the socioculturally mediated capacity to act (Ahearn, 2001) --> the capacity to contribute to and/or remake social relations that matter, e.g., community

4. .national standards and the 5 Cs • Communication … in languages other than English • Cultures … knowledge and understanding of other cultures • Comparisons … insight into language and culture • Connections … with other disciplines and knowledges • Communities … participate in multilingual communities at home and around the world • 5.1: Students use the language both within and beyond the school setting • 5.2: Students show evidence of becoming life-long learners by using the language for personal enjoyment and enrichment

5. Part 1 .definitions of community • L. communitatem (nom. communitas) “community, fellowship,” from communis “common, public, general, shared by all or many” (Harper, 2001) • Ferdinand Tönnies (1887): ‘gemeinschaft’ -- cohesive entities within broader society forged by a “unity of will” • Ex: family, kinship, shared place & beliefs, mutual need

6. 1.2 .community a provocative idea -- but what is it? • Core elements across traditional definitions include: • Membership • Shared location • Shared cultural practices and values • Interpersonally meaningful relationships • Commitment and reciprocity • Collective goods and resources • Sense of identity • Long duration

7. 1.3 .community a provocative idea -- but what is it? • Heterogeneous elements include: • Similarity v. strength in diversity (eco M4) • ‘Belongingness’ v. contribution to collective activity • Shared place v. distribution in space • Broad life contexts v. narrow shared interests • Nation state affiliation v. intimate relationships • Categorical attributes v. cultural ontogenesis/socialization

8. 1.4 .community questions • Can community be vicarious? • Can one person be a community? • Can two or three people form a community? • Can community thrive under conditions of contention? • If one person thinks they are part of a community but others don’t, what does this mean? • Is a nation state a community? What about a university? Or a neighborhood? Or a group of friends? Or a family? • Do you have to like people to form a community? • *We know community when we see it! (Wittgenstein?)

9. Community collocates 1.5 Alternative concepts/terms • Discourse communities • Imagined communities • Learning communities • Speech communities • Virtual communities • Sense of community • Community building • Community development • Community organizing • Community of interest • *Communities of practice • Commons • Communalism • Social capital • Social networks • *Affinity spaces • *Participatory genres • *“Shuttling” • *Activity systems

10. 1.6 .community and education • What kinds of work does the concept of community (and community collocates) do within education? • What are alternative constructs and approaches?

11. 1.7 .communities of practice • Community = “a way of talking about the social configurations in which our enterprises are defined as worth pursuing and our participation is recognized as competence” (Wenger, 1998: 5) • Shared goals, criteria, practices Challenges to CoP and LPP • Post-Lave CoP subject to corporate & global capital focus • CoP as solution, a product • Periphery --> core direction of movement --> AA narratives • Apprenticeship involves processes of normalization • Goal is to become full participant in defined CoP --> NS?

12. 1.8 .affinity spaces and participatory genres • Affinity spaces (Gee, 2005) • Common endeavor primary, no emphasis on categorical identity • Everyone shares a common space • Supports different forms of participation and competence • Leadership porous and leaders are resources • Participatory genres (Erickson, 1999) • Participatory genre replaces ‘virtual community’ • Language centric, focus on communicative purpose • Regularity of form, content and style • In both, collective doing is primary, belonging/membership may not apply

13. 1.9 .‘shuttling’ • “Shuttling” between repertoires, genres, and communities (Canagarajah, 2006) • Maintains the term ‘community’ • No need for membership or belonging • Focus on strategic choice of semiotic and narrative resources to achieve purpose • Emphasizes individual as actant intentionally moving between and within defined social units (communities, genres practices, etc)

14. Mediating Artifacts Subject Object .activity theory Lev Vygotsky, A N. Leont’ev

15. .modern activity theory Engeström, 1987

16. 1.10 activity theory Activity theory (e.g., Engeström, 1993) • Community --> the participants who share the same object that shapes and lends direction to the individual and shared activity under way (e.g., Engeström, 1993) • Entire system as unit of analysis (with ‘community’ only one aspect) • “Third generation” activity theory minimally involves the interaction of two, and possibly many more, culturally organized systems of activity (in L2, Thorne, 2004, 2005, forthcoming; Lantolf & Thorne, 2006; Wells, 2002)

17. Part 2 .community engagement & vitality • Robert Putnam, bowling alone (2000) • Social capital = connectedness and social networks • Last 25 years: • Attendance at club meetings down 58% • Family dinners down 33% • Friends visiting down 45%

18. 2.1 .digital mediation Penn State net behaviors survey: 1,852 undergrads surveyed • 93% use Facebook, 62.8% visit daily • 57.1% have Myspace accounts, 45% visit daily • 100b times a day people click on a web page • Youtube.com serves over 100m videos daily • 57m blogs exist, 100k new blogs created daily, 1.3m posts per day • MMOGs -> World of Warcraft --> 8m+ players globally • 2 million players in North America • 1.5 million players in Europe • 3.5 million players in China

19. 2.2 .language education in late modernity • “In a statistical sense, we may one day communicate with each other far more via computer mediation than in direct interaction. The effects on what counts as ‘normal’ language acquisition could be similarly profound.” (Crystal, 2001: 241) • CMC tools are not proxy environments but are legitimate in their own right -- or even the driving force for additional language learning • Evolving on-line social formations and resources • Implications of new literacies and communicative practices (Black, 2005; Gee, 2004, 2005; Lam, 2004; Lankshear & Knobel, 2003; Leander, 2005; Steinkuehler, 2006; Thorne, 2003, 2006; Thorne & Payne, 2005) • First generation digitally literate population (unlike us, who are immigrants to digital ICTs)

20. Isabella Diver Becerra Thorne @ 1.3 years

21. . ‘communities’, pedagogies, and research Technologies & community | affinity spaces | activity systems • Part 3: Cultures-of-use --> Technology catalyzing & stifling community • Wrong tool for the right job • Mediated intercultural infatuation • How might emerging language and literacy practices within Internet-mediated environments interpenetrate with traditional instructional contexts, goals, and literacies? • Part 4: Instant messaging & blogging • Part 5:MMOGs • Part 6: Bridging activities and pedagogical mediation • Machinima

22. 3.1 .trouble with mediation (cultures-of-use) • Kate: “I love François. He’s so terrific. I would talk to him, like, doing this [NetMeeting], like, on IM. I would talk to him. I just don’t like writing emails. • Stef: I would talk to him, like, if he was on AOL [IM]? I’d talk to him all the time. He’s a sweetie. • Kate: He’s so cute, I love him! François is the best person ever! • Researcher: Can you all follow up with email or? • Stef: Yeah, but I hate writing emails. • Researcher: Really? • Grace: It’s just that, this is just better because, it’s not like, here’s what I have to say and then all these responses to it? … • Researcher: So are the email exchanges just not as dynamic as this, or= • Stef: No [they aren’t]= • Grace: =But I think it’s also because we have, like we communicate with a lot of people now through AOL [instant messenger]. That’s, so like that’s how I talk to all my friends at different colleges= • Stef: =and here= • Grace: =We don’t send emails back and forth to each other to like catch up. Like we just talk [using IM]. It’s very like= • Stef: =Yeah, it’s just, like, what we’re used to. • Researcher: So you don’t use email that much normally? • Stef: I almost never do. I just use it for teachers and stuff= • Grace: =teachers, yeah. Or my Mom [laughs].(from Thorne, 2003)

23. 3.2 .mediational (in)appropriacy Abridged interaction Email (vs. IM or another synchronous CMC tool) Pursuing flirtation | relationship building *AT graphic based on Engeström 1987, 1993

24. 3.3 .(serendipitous) mediational prolepsis 1. Kirsten: I was really upset when I didn't hear from him [French key-pal] at first. Last week I was like, when I made this appointment [for the interview], I was like "I'm going in there and be like "grrr grrr grrr [vocalizations signifying anger and frustration] 2. Kirsten: Out of the blue he [Oliver] IM-ed me. 3. Interviewer: Did he know your screen name? 4. Kirsten: He found it on my Web page. He has been onto my Web page almost every single day! [content = Japanese animé] … We went on for probably close to six hours that day alone. 5. Interviewer: So 6 hours? 6. Kirsten: Just that day, and we talk every day. 7. Interviewer: Really? 8. Kirsten: Yeah, every day. 9. Interviewer: For that long every day? 10. Kirsten: I don't know, usually in 15- or 20-minute spurts, but usually twice or three times a day. So [now] it's about an hour a day.(Thorne, 2003)

25. 3.4 .artifacts & cultures-of-use • Email for vertical communication across power and generation lines • IM for horizontal interpersonal age-peer relationships • Nothing neutral or transparent about internet communication tools • ‘Cultures-of-use’ of artifacts = qualities that accrue through quotidian use -- the intersection of histories of use with the contingencies of emergent practice (Thorne, 2003) • Clarification and reiteration! Plasticity of cultures-of-use -- empirical and materialist approach • New challenges to the top-down organization of second language mediated communication

26. Part 4 . designing for relevance & interpenetration • Steve Thorne, Dana Weber, Arlo Bensinger • Pedagogical intervention: Integrating blog and IM use into high school Spanish AP courses • Engineering conditions pushing output and authenticity – • Leveraging the appeal and positive associations students have with internet communication tools to create opportunities for meaningful, significant communication • Research focus: relation between in and out of school technology use -- interactivity system analysis *All use online translators for production and comprehension

27. 4.1 .instant messaging and blogs • Instant messaging outside of class • Spanish IM each week • One or more English IM session always open • Questions about vocabulary/usage frequently asked of others • Blogs used for weekly topic driven essays • Students responsible for reading one another’s entries • Students write biographies of one another based on blogs entries • Blog entries revisited in class - Q & A, “who said…?” • IM and blog posts used in class for error correction • 35.08

28. 4.2 .student perspectives • “I’ve noticed that people sort of find their own style of like writing blogs or IM and you sort of adopt that as you go whether it be in English or Spanish” • “you have Spanish IMs, so being clever and using words well and you know how it is … you have to make up a personality using words, so you have to do that in Spanish.” • *Late modern communicative aesthetic: globalized genre premature, but memes of communicative style appear to be portable across languages

29. 4.3 .cooperative interactivity and interpenetration Everyday culture-of-use of IM Educational uses of IM Blogs in and out of class Use of IM for social purposes with peers Use of IM for education with classmates Blogs catalyze interactivity system fusion Non-institutional identities Student subject positions *AT graphic based on Engeström 1987, 1993

30. 4.4 .multi-directional flow • Retheorizations: not only “shuttling” in, but also out • Centripetal orientation of earlier work/thinking: emphasis on exogenous activity systems/acculturation practices influencing education (Thorne, 1999, 2000, 2003) • Centrifugal dynamics in evidence -- frequently using Spanish over IM when not required and occasionally with non-Spanish speakers (i.e., Rampton, 2000; Canagarajah, 2006)

31. Part 5 .MMOGs • World of Warcraft -- massively multiuser online game • The Setting: “This dialogue started in a valley off the the side of a zone I was in. I was hunting baby dragons for exp when another higher level character came along and started hunting them too. I sent a message asking why they were hunting them since they wouldn’t get much xp off them anymore, and they said they just wanted the leather. I then worked out a deal with them that they would just skin the stuff I killed so I could get the exp and they would get the leather, and then they messaged me with this”

32. 5.1 .WoW and communication • Zomn: ti russkij slychajno ? • Meme: ? • Zomn: :)) sry • Meme: what language was that? • Zomn: russian :) • Meme: was going to guess that • Meme: you speak english well? • Zomn: :)) where r u from ? • Meme: USA, Pennslyvania • Zomn: im from Ukraine ... …. [ Mem IMs hometown friend from Ukraine ] • Meme: kak dela? • Zomn: :))) normalno :))) • Meme: if I may ask, what did I say haha, I'm not quite sure • Zomn: how r u :) /// • Meme: what does normalno mean? good? • Zomn: i sad goooooood :))) • Meme: alright =)

33. 5.2 .WoW • Meme: Ya lublui fceu v moy popoo • Meme: you get any exp off of these if you kill them? if so lets party • Zomn: lets .... for 3k • Meme: sounds good, so what did what i said before mean? • Meme: i was just asking my friend from ukraine what to say • Meme: and don't know what it means • Zomn: it wasnt right ... but kinnda 'kiss my ass' • Meme: haha are you serious? i'm going to kill him, sorry about that • Zomn: ahhh np :)))) [no problem] • Zomn: u can kill him now :)))) • Meme: yeah, I will once I get home, he's in my hometown • Meme: and I'm off at college • Zomn: tell him that u got an interpriter now :) • Meme: will do haha • Zomn: is 'interpriter' right ? :(( • Meme: it's actually interpreter, but that was close

34. 5.3 .WoW • Zomn: :) .. dont u mind if i add u to friend list ? • Zomn: yeah :) • Meme: go ahead, i'll add you too and we can group again sometime • Zomn: sure :)) • Zomn: nice too meet u // • Meme: you too, I forget how to spell goodbye in russian, dasvidania? • Meme: Is that sort of close? • Zomn: it is right ... or ... just 'poka' • Meme: alright, thanks • Meme: see ya

35. 5.4 .what’s here and where do we go? • Naturally occurring mixed language conversation • Multiple communication tools in use (IM and WoW chat) • Reciprocal alterations of expert status • Both provided explicit corrections • Both made requests for assistance • Collaboratively assembled repair sequences • Potentially enduring bond established (friend list) • MMOGs the REASON for FL study! • More research needed on conditions of possibility for L2 learning in affinity spaces like WoW • “collections of phenomenological similarity” that serve as resources for the construction of “intersubjective meaning in social life” (Brouer & Wagner, 2004: 31)

36. Part 6 .bridging activities and pedagogical mediation • Schooling <--> literacies <--> exogenous activity systems • Contrastive analysis built on language use & genre awareness: • Blog entries <--> conventional essays (pronoun and lexical choice, affective stance, logical connectors, style) • IM logfiles <--> transcriptions of ‘conversations’ (is IM really like ‘talking’? What features are unique) • MMOG logfiles <--> collaborative activity & problem solving

37. 6.1 .bridging • In-class attention to genre (specific linguistic choices associated with social-communicative actions) • Focus on appropriacy, effectiveness, and implications of language choice • Discussion of adaptations, appropriations, flouting, ironical usages that transform or disrupt expected communication • Have students bring in and analyze them-relevant communicative activities, genres, and modalities

38. .concluding thoughts • Will I continue to use the term and loose confederation of concepts indexed by the term ‘community’? • You bet! • Community in the deeper sense of the term evokes inclusion, positive sentiments, solidarity, assistance, support • It is also amorphous and imprecise as a research construct: suggest affinity spaces, participatory genres, shuttling, and activity systems • Move from ‘participation in community’ to ‘contribution to activity’ --> increased focus on agency, plasticity, RELEVANCE