The predominance of 'transactional' language use that has been a hallmark of proficiency-oriented and communicative language teaching for the past few decades has been subject to ever-increasing criticism (see Warner & Dupuy, 2018). 'Transactional' is here typically understood in something like Brown and Yule's (1983) sense of language in the service of information exchange, and it contrasts and complements the other primary function, the interactional, i.e., language use for the maintenance and negotiation of social relationships. Inspired in large part by sociocultural and social semiotic models of language (e.g., Lantolf & Thorne, 2006; Halliday, 1996), contemporary frameworks have instead emphasized the social and subjective dimensions of language use and learning. As one of the primary systems through which humans make sense of the world and their roles and relationships with others within it, language mediates our experiences, ideas, and relationships in profound ways. Coincidentally, something like this complexity is captured by the notion of 'transaction' as conceptualized by a scholar working in literary studies rather than linguistics; for Louise Rosenblatt (1986) 'transactional reading' involves a unique, potentially aesthetic experience in which the reader and text continuously act and are acted upon by each other.
This talk will take this tension between 'transactional' language use and 'transactional reading' as a point of departure for theorizing the importance of aesthetic dimensions of language and literacy learning that are often neglected in predominant models based in communicative, sociocultural, and social semiotic frameworks, but are very much a part of aesthetic reading, such as that associated with literary texts. Drawing from Rosenblatt's theories of reader response and working with a case study from an intermediate German language-culture class at a U.S. university, I propose that centering transactional reading and aesthetic response as part of an approach to second language literacy can enable language educators to realize the pedagogical desideratum of going beyond propositional meanings by connecting other functions of language deliberately with affect and ethics. This is envisioned as part of an approach to second language-culture education that sees learners as not only potential social actors who can 'do things with words,' but as complex multilingual subjects (Kramsch, 2009; Ros i Sole, 2016) who are attentive to how different making meaning choices afford them alternative ways of being in the world.
Works cited:
Brown, G. & Yule, G. (1983), Discourse analysis. Cambridge University Press.
Halliday, M. A. K. (1996). Literacy and Linguistics: A functional perspective. In R. Hasan & G. Williams (Eds.), Literacy, everyday talk and society (pp. 339–376). Addison Wesley Longman.
Kramsch, C. (2009), The multilingual subject. Oxford University Press.
Lantolf, J. & Thorne, S. (2006), Sociocultural theory and the genesis of second language development. Oxford University Press.
Rosenblatt, L. M. (1986). The aesthetic transaction, Journal of Aesthetic Education, 20: 122-127.
Ros i Solé, C. (2016). The personal world of the language learner. Palgrave Macmillan.
Warner, C. & Dupuy, B. (2018), Moving toward multiliteracies in foreign language teaching: past and present perspectives … and beyond, Foreign Language Annals, 51(1): 116-128.
