Language negotiation in multilingual learning environments

Abstract

The present study focuses on the negotiation of the languages of communication in language-learning activities involving multilingual learners. Its overall purpose is to throw light on the conditions that surround the creation and the maintenance of multilingual communicative spaces, as well as on the tensions and forces (both communicative and acquisitional) that influence language management in those spaces. Two different corpora, multilingual chats in Romance languages and informal conversations in Spanish L3, are analysed in order to identify the pragmatic functions accomplished by a language switch. Findings suggest that languages which are not part of the learning/communication contract can play mediation and remediation roles, and that the negotiation sequences that lead to their temporary inclusion (and the subsequent modification of the contract) or to their exclusion from the communicative situation can have a significant influence on the development of learners’ multilingual competence, understood as the ability to use two or more languages for the purposes of communication and to take part in intercultural interaction, regardless of their proficiency in the languages involved.