Adaptation in online voice-based chat rooms: Implications for language learning in applied linguistics

In this chapter, I will use conversation analysis (CA) to investigate how speakers of English as an additional language (EAL) converse in online voice-based chat rooms. The chat rooms that I investigate are a relatively new communicative environment. Here multiple interactants from all over the world interact in the spoken medium, in very much the same way as text-based chat rooms. The term ‘additional’ refers to the fact that the interactants investigated here are not in ‘second’ or ‘foreign’ language classrooms, but are communicating in non-educational settings where the relevance of English as a second/foreign language (S/FL) varies from interactant to interactant.1 It is vital to make this distinction at the outset, as any investigation of language learning must identify what is meant by language. Additional language is a more context-sensitive term which acknowledges that for some interactants, formal classroom language learning is only one of many settings in which English is used and learnt. More importantly, the identities and discourse that are often associated with S/FL learning are not ubiquitous (for example, language learner; see Kurhila 2004).2 So, for example, the communicative goals in online voice-based chat rooms are not necessarily to learn predetermined ‘target’ grammatical rules from an expert in a linear fashion, as one would typically experience in language classrooms.