Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam > Blaise Pascal Instituut > Girard Studiekring > COV&R 2007 > Abstracts Papers 

Christina Biava

Vulnerability and Tolerance in Adult Second Language Acquisition 

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PAPER

First language acquisition ( FLA ) begins early in life as the infant is exposed to a particular language (or languages, in some cases) in a close, supportive social environment.  Although the exact nature of it is not understood totally yet, since Chomsky many linguistics (although not all) believe there is a LAD: a Language Acquisition Device, which is a set of neurological structures dedicated to language acquisition that shape the path of acquisition in all normal children, regardless of the L1, even sign languages for the deaf.  Hence, regardless of any differences in infants that might be inborn, such as intelligence or shyness, language acquisition will take place in more or less the same order and in the same fashion.  Even those outside the Chomskyan network—linguists as well as cognitive psychologists—agree that there is an innate predilection of some sort for language in the human species.

            A Girardian perspective is supported by current views of FLA , as well as by language origins research.  Some cognitive theories, such as those put forth by Merlin Donald and child language researchers Marilyn Vihman and Rory DePaolis, see a large role for mimesis in both language evolution and FLA.  Regarding the latter, the infant from 0-6 months is in a pre-mimetic state, the first part of which involves “stimulus-bound reflexive responses” in which the infant, because of a “precocious” sense of self, comes to be able to match faces with voices, “arguably rooted in a form of emotional and vocal ‘contagion’ with subcortical neurological support” stimulated by infant-mother interaction.  The second half of this pre-mimetic phase is what Vihman and DePaolis call “magnetic social interaction,” where the infant is fascinated by the mother’s (or other caregiver’s) face, eventually internalizing it, “which subsequently allows the intense dyadic interactions to ‘cool off’ as the child directs attention to other objects and events.”  After this there follows “canonical” babbling of universal sounds and prosodic features (intonation, etc), eventually to be followed by the beginning of a mimetic-based response, the babbling of sounds present in the L1 in the environment. Eventually this is followed by a matching between the babbled syllables and the cognitive ability to refer to something in the environment—perhaps mom or dad—with the first word, around the end of the first year (Vihman and DePaolis 133-34).  Luckily for the child, as well as for the parents and for the species as a whole, little s/he does will get in the way of FLA.

            Unfortunately, second language acquisition ( SLA ) for adults does not proceed this smoothly, for a multitude of reasons.  Of course, the adult L2 learner comes to the learning situation fully formed, thus quite different than the newborn infant.  Over the past 30 or so years, SLA researchers have investigated a number of areas-- from the differences between the languages themselves, to the role of the learning situation, to learning strategies, to differences among learners themselves—to try to understand the different levels in ultimate proficiency that learners reach in a second language (L2).  This paper will focus on one particular aspect of the learner’s personality, what is called his/her ambiguity tolerance (AT).

            First, though a Girardian analysis of SLA is in order.  According to Mimetic Theory, desire in humans comes about not on its own but only indirectly, from the individual’s mimetic attraction of another person’s, the model’s, desire for some object, thus setting up a triangular desire that underlies people’s relationships to other people and to objects.  In fact, the object itself declines in importance and the individual is left with desire for the other person, the mediator, who eventually is seen as a rival to the individual’s acquisition of the object and to desire in general.

            Multiply this scenario a hundredfold and you get a small, pre-human society in which this acquisitive mimesis will get out of hand and inevitably lead to a mimetic meltdown.  Girard posits the scapegoat mechanism to explain how early hominid groups could survive the overheating of violent mimesis, thus leading to the hidden foundation of human culture: conflict in society is deflected from a violent free-for-all to violence against a single, marginal individual whose resulting death produces the calm that engenders cultural growth, at least for a while.  The resulting enactment of the death led, over great quantities of time, to the beginning of language, ritual, myth, and the sacred.

            In SLA (here assuming the learners are in some way wanting to learn the language, whether in the classroom or in a naturalistic setting), the individual desires to be like the model, a native speaker of the L2.  The culture and the language of the model in some way attract the learner, either because of their status or because of their usefulness in achieving some goal.  The object is the L2 itself, perhaps the C2 (second culture) as well.  Since the model has much better knowledge of both, s/he will be a model that the learner, in most cases, can’t possibly match, yet one that will be constantly held up as the model/goal, thus creating perhaps even more than your usual amount of frustration.  In the process, the learner, to different degrees, will be expected to “give up” his/her former self, or at least to allow it to be transformed by the new knowledge.  In other words, the learner’s former identity will be the scapegoat.  We see extreme cases of this in most situations of immigrants who are expected to assimilate to the new culture in many ways—food, dress, behavior, values, and even religion, perhaps; language seems to be the most symbolic of the old self and is often demanded to be sacrificed as part of the immigrant’s assimilation/acculturation experience.  And if not for the immigrant him/herself, then for the next generation, who is pressured to give up their parents’ cultural identities and ways in order to succeed in the new environment.  In fact, in SLA , such learning of an L2 at the expense of the L1 is called “subtractive bilingualism,” as opposed to “additive bilingualism” in which the L1 is allowed, or even encouraged, to remain (Lambert).

            This leads us to the issue of the process of SLA itself.  In contrast to FLA , the final product in SLA is not uniform; rather, the distribution follows the bell-shaped curve, with some learners becoming quite fluent—even native-like—and some not progressing at all, but most somewhere in-between the extremes.  As mentioned above, one of the areas of research over the past 30 years has been into characteristics of the individual in order to explain the differences in final proficiency.  Some of these include somewhat mutable aspects of the learner, like learning strategies and communication strategies and, of course, motivation.  More germaine to this paper are the somewhat more permanent aspects of the learner’s personality, which I would like to focus on more.

            Affective variables are felt to be important in SLA .  In the 1970s Guiora posited the idea of the language ego to refer to the idea that for many people, their sense of themselves is bound up in their native language.  In his well-known Input or Monitor Model, Stephen Krashen includes as one of its 5 parts the notion of an affective filter.  According to both the language ego and the affective filter concepts, the learner is suggested to have psychological and emotional predispositions that can help or hinder language acquisition. A “permeable“ language ego and a “low” affective filter are posited as allowing L2 data, or “input,” to be taken in by the learner, thus leading to more successful SLA.  In contrast, a “high” affective filter would characterize a learner with a “impermeable” language ego—one who was threatened by the acquisition process.

            Field dependence/independence are usually considered more cognitive traits of the learner and are defined as the ability to focus on the whole (FD) or on the parts of the whole (FI).  Studies have tended to find FI linked with more successful SLA , especially when the language proficiency measure is of more specific features of language, such as grammar.  Chapelle and Roberts, for instance, found a significant correlation between high scores on a measure of FI and their language various language proficiency scores and even found FI scores to be stronger predictors of language measures than anything else, including motivation.

            The learner’s introversion or extroversion, along with inhibition and risk-taking, have also been examined in the research literature.  In general, the extroverted learner (defined as someone who is energized by interacting with others) is usually more of a risk-taker; both characteristics are believed to cause the learner to seek out native speakers, thus acquiring more input.  On measures of conversational ability especially, the extrovert has been found to have greater fluency and proficiency.  Introversion and inhibition are less conducive to aspects of oral fluency, and even of overall competence, but are believed to be helpful in aspects of the language that call for more specific accuracy, like grammar, writing, and dictations.

            A popular measure of personality is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).  Based on Carl Jung’s psychological type theory, the MBTI categorizes people into 16 categories, based on their combination of 4 personality variables: extroversion vs. introversion, sensing vs. intuition, thinking vs. feeling, perceiving vs. judging.  The MBTI is felt to hold for learners across cultural and linguistic backgrounds (Kirby & Barger, ctd in Sharp), and has been used to explain learners’ different approaches to writing (Jensen and DiTiberio), L2 learning ( Oxford ), etc. 

            More specifically, all of the four characteristics have been examined to see how they relate to SLA, and most of the 8 values have been found to have some advantage for successful SLA .  Extroverts, for example, are usually more likely to succeed at SLA because of their greater willingness to interact with native speakers, as explained above.  Intuiting learners, given their ability to learn creatively and their greater relaxation with guessing, may have the advantage over sensing learners, who prefer more of a concrete, methodical approach to learning. 

            The thinking/feeling dichotomy seems closest to FI/FD, with “thinking” learners having a greater ability to deal with the details of language data and “feeling” learners seeing language more globally and thus preferring holistic strategies for learning.  Although Chapelle and Robert’s study on FI/FD cited above showed the advantage for learners with a FI cognitive style, studies done using the MBTI seem to suggest that “feeling” students do better.  The difference can be explained by the language measures taken: Chapelle and Roberts mainly used discrete measures of language proficiency: grammar tests, listening and reading for details, etc.  More communicative types of tests (e.g., interviews) do not show a preference for FI learners. Finally, perceivers, as they accept more confusion in language learning and treat their acquisition process more like a game, are felt to outperform “judgers.”

            It is this final dichotomy, perceiving/judging, that seems most like the topic I would like to explore next, which is the theme of the conference, vulnerability and tolerance.  I’m sure none of the conference organizers had SLA in mind when they chose this theme, having instead the murders of Pim Fortuyn and Theo Van Gogh and the reaction of the Dutch public afterwards.  Yet, as these concepts have general currency as well as Girardian importance, I think it is not a stretch to show how there is a relationship between their conference and Girardian meanings and the SLA meanings.

            Finally, we turn more specifically to the concept of Ambiguity Tolerance (AT) in SLA .  First of all, as Kazamia points out in her study of Greek learners of English, when we talk about AT we have two concepts to define, tolerance as well as ambiguity. It is obvious, perhaps, but worth noting still, that we’ll be looking at tolerance as a characteristic of a person and ambiguity as a characteristic of something outside the person, such as the social setting.  McLain, investigating AT in general rather than specifically in SLA , explains that the common sense of the word tolerance is a type of “begrudging acceptance” while intolerance “suggests rejection.”   However, when used in the phrase “ambiguity tolerance,” tolerance is better conceived of as actually “extend[ing] along a continuum from rejection to attraction” (184).  As for ambiguity, it

            describes the perception of inadequate information to clearly understand stimuli or their

            temporal or spatial interrelationships.  Ambiguous stimuli may be perceived as new and

            unfamiliar, unpredictable, or may be too complex to understand. . . . [or] as having

            multiple and incompatible interpretations. (184)

AT can then be defined as “a range, from rejection to attraction, of reactions to stimuli perceived as unfamiliar, complex, dynamically uncertain, or subject to multiple conflicting interpretations” (184).  The learner who has high tolerance is defined by Chapelle and Roberts as one who can “function rationally and calmly in a situation in which interpretation of all stimuli is not clear” (30), while the learner who has low tolerance finds ambiguous situations “as sources of threat” (Budner 1962 p.29, ctd in Ely 1995 p.88).

            From a Girardian perspective, tolerance can be seen as a way of avoiding scapegoating.  After all, attempts to learn anything involve the drawing of distinctions; this is especially true of science as it “strives for ever more concise definitions.” Thus “every definition is sacrificial in that it cuts notions out from the flux of being” with the resulting “concepts, like sacrificial victims, . . . objects of adoration” (COV&R conference call for papers).  Tolerance of any sort stops the individual from drawing these distinctions.  Of course, the question is whether or not it accomplishes the goal of not just avoiding scapegoating but avoiding the need to scapegoat.

In his rejection of relativism, Girard seems to be saying no. 

            Ely (1995, p.88-89) points out that there is more than one aspect of the L2 learning process that can be ambiguous, perhaps causing some learners who are not risk-takers to close down.  First of all, there is the obvious fact that the L2 has features (phonological, lexical, etc.) that differ from the L1 and that the learner must make sense of; it is an understatement to say that especially when a learner is faced with the L2 in a naturalistic setting, all the information can be overwhelming.  Second, there is the idea that the learner must “practice language learning skills.”  Here we can think about the learner who has never been exposed to a new language and does not know how to go about it, but also the learner in the classroom faced with teachers who use unfamiliar teaching methods associated with Communicative Language Teaching (CLT).  For students from backgrounds where teaching in general and language teaching specifically depend more on rote memorization, guessing words from context, playing language games, and the like can seem to not be “real” learning.  Third, the learner must “adopt those skills as permanent strategies.” By this, Ely means learners being faced with continuing the learning process outside the classroom.

            In her research, Ehrman (1993, 1995) sees AT  as related to Hartmann’s investigation into ego boundaries.  Individuals must, of course, maintain themselves in relation to the external environment, and ego boundaries are a sort of emotional membrane that helps the individual maintain his/her autonomy against both these internal drives the exterior reality.  Like a membrane, this boundary is somewhat porous or fluid, depending on the person.  According to Hartmann, people who suffer from nightmares are more “flexible in their identities and social relationships,” and “everything in their minds seemed to flow together”; he used the image of their having “thin” boundaries.  Such people may have an advantage in novel situations, including L2 acquisition.  Thin-boundaries people tend to gravitate towards professions that are more artistic, including writers, literature teachers, and therapists.  At the other end of the continuum are those who don’t suffer from nightmares as much; Hartmann labeled them as having “thick” ego boundaries and described them as “conventional” and often “solid citizens” and often found in professions like engineering (Hartman 1999 ctd in Ehrman 1993 p.332-33).

            In his research into nightmares, Hartmann developed the Hartmann Boundary Questionnaire containing subscales that relate to boundaries in 12 areas that Ehrman later grouped into internal and external boundaries.  For instance, subscales that rated the person’s boundary between states of wakefulness  (“On waking up I am not sure for a few minutes whether I’m really awake”) and among memories of earlier periods one’s life (“I am very close to my childhood memories”) are examples of the “interior boundaries,” while exterior boundaries, between the person and the exterior world, are exemplified by a need for neat surroundings (“I keep my desk or worktable neat and well-organized”) and opinions about abstractions like beauty or truth (“Beauty is a very subjective thing. I know what I like but I wouldn’t expect anyone else to agree”). 

            A simple equivalence of “thin” boundaries with SLA success and “thick” boundaries with SLA failure is not to be found, however.  Applying this questionnaire to L2 learners  that she worked with at the U.S Dept. of State  Foreign Service Institute, Ehrman concluded that learners with success in communicative language learning had “thin” external boundaries and average to “thick” internal boundaries.  The opposite—thick external and thin internal—seemed to suggest to the researcher

            Students who are in fact quite vulnerable to anxiety but use rejection of outside influence

            to defend themselves from it.  This kind of student may well reject almost all linguistic

            and cultural influence beyond rules, drills and use of language limited to task objectives.

            (Ehrman 1999 p.74)

            Accoring to Ehrman, AT functions on three levels.  The first “intake,” is to when new information is present to the person’s awareness.  A thick external boundary can keep a person from even becoming aware of new information.  The second level is what most people might consider AT and so Ehrman labeled it “intolerance of ambiguity proper.”  Since the new information has survived the intake phase, now the learner must deal with it, whether it be incomplete or contradictory.  While this may present difficulties for thick-boundaries learners, thin-boundary people may have problems as well, as they may be “overwhelmed with all the information and treat it all as equally valid.”

            At the third level, the learner will need to discriminate among the old and new information, making the two mesh together in order to create something new; Ehrman calls this level “accommodation.”  Following Piaget, she contrasts this with “assimilation” in which the individual’s sense of the new information is altered so that it seems consistent with existing ideas.   In other words assimilation may be a way that a person defends against ambiguity by judging the new information no different than the old.

            Finally, Ehrman relates this all to regression: “Regressive experiences can be linked with boundary disturbances” (Ehrman 1999 p.77).  Although all people have experienced regression, in which their behavior becomes more characteristic of an earlier stage of life, in one way or another and perhaps found it embarrassing, Ehrman feels that the person is trying to deal with some sort of loss of control in a social setting.  And rather than feeling this is automatically negative, Ehrman suggests that thin-boundary learners in the SLA situation have “a ready ability to tap regression in the service of the ego,”  (p.78).  In other words, the SLA situation, as it requires “some amount of reconstruction of the self,” is not simple a place where regression may occur; rather,  the learner who is able to more comfortably regress may have the SLA advantage.

            In trying to learn more about how AT affects L2 learners, Ely (1989) developed his own AT measures, since other scales had not been developed specifically for language learning.  His 12-item scale consisted not only of items regarding various aspects of language learning (reading comprehension, grammar, etc.), but also of strategy use and motivation.

            Ely was especially interested in relating language learners’ AT with their use of language learning strategies.  The “good” language learner, a term current in the field, is one who is willing to guess at meaning, to find patterns in words and structure, and to practice when the chance arises. Relating the two together, Ely hypothesized that a learner’s AT would affect his/her use of strategies in two ways.  First, he felt that lower AT would be related to learners’ greater reliance on the L1.  Second, he felt that lower AT learners would more likely use strategies that focused on specific details of the L2, while high AT learners would use strategies that focused on understanding general meaning.  In other words,

            It is thus expected that students who are relatively intolerant of ambiguity will cling to

            the L1, and also will be uncomfortable if they skip over what appear to be essential bits

            of information in  their study or in their classroom work; students high in tolerance of

            ambiguity are expected to be more willing to deal with the L2 on its own terms, and

            concentrate on the overall message being communicated (rather than on the smaller

            details of the language).  (Ely 1989 p.439)

In fact, the hypotheses were supported.  Two of the strongest correlations existed between a low AT and the item “The first thing I do when encountering an unknown word while reading is look it up, ” and between high AT and the item “When I’m speaking and I’m not sure if something will be correct, I just say it and don’t think too much about it.”

            In general, Ely is interested in researching AT for how it can help students become better L2 learners:

            Our real goal. . . is to have the student move from being embarrassed or unhappy at

            linguistic uncertainty to seeing himself or herself as a linguistic researcher or problem

            solver. (1995 p.92)

            Finally, Ely points out that while too little AT is generally felt to get in the way of SLA , making the learner too threatened by the unknown, too much can also be problematic.  Ely gives one example: a learner may have the idea that there is a 1-to-1 match between the L1 and L2 (in terms of vocabulary, structure, etc.), regardless of the data that he/she is being exposed to.  This expectation might cause such a student to not look for differences:

            The ideal case, of curse, is that of the learner who is neither inhibited by low tolerance of

            ambiguity nor oblivious to linguistic subtleties.  The student who is aware of, but not

            threatened by, linguistic differentiation, and who treats it as an occasion for introspection,

            experimentation and, ultimately, learning, is the one for whom tolerance of ambiguity

            will be a help, not a hindrance. (1995, p.93)

            Another study that used Ely’s AT measure was done by Kazamia (1999), investigating AT among Greek civil servants learning English.  Acknowledging the suggestion by both Ehrman and Ely that moderate levels of AT would produce optimum L2 learning, she points out that nobody had yet identified that precise mid-point.

            Based on responses from 323 learners of English through the National Centre for Public Administration in Greece , Kazamia found that the mid-point for the twelve items put together was 32.68, out of a range of 12-48, a little above the midpoint, which would have been 30.  This shows that the average was a little toward the intolerant end, but still close enough to indicate that at least on average

            . . . the Greek civil servants do not exhibit high tolerance that would lead them to

            accepting new language elements unquestioningly and on the other hand they do not

            present high intolerance that would impede their language learning process. (p.74)

When she looked at her data more closely, she was able to find several patterns.  For instance, the items for which the learners showed the greatest intolerance involved the productive skills (writing and speaking) as opposed to the receptive skills (reading and listening), which showed a low intolerance. 

            In sum, Kazamia found some level of intolerance for all the items she tested with (the range was 2.11-3.23, with 4 being the most intolerant), but not extreme.  Finally, the highest scores for intolerance were not given to items asking about pronunciation or grammar but rather for when the learner was unable to adequately convey his/her ideas in the L2.

            Finally, a study by Sakamoto of Japanese EFL learners looked specifically at the role of culture in AT using a intercultural communication framework.  She was especially interested in how AT might impede learners in a culture that, as Japan does, has a paradox between being collective and “high context” (which results in linguistic indirectness and ambiguity being favored) and high in uncertainty avoidance (which results in ambiguity being disfavored). 

            In fact, the results of her study showed the same as Kazamia’s study, i.e., an average level of AT.  Sakamoto, however, went further into examining the English teaching situation in Japan and found that there was a mismatch between students’ style and language teaching methodology; she argued that students can decrease a culturally-based intolerance of ambiguity  in a number of ways such as better teacher training and better cultural awareness of teachers in the EFL classroom.

            In fact, the more important result of Sakamoto’s study, besides reminding researchers of the cultural factor not only in AT itself, but also in measuring it, was to point out that the need for AT may change during the process of SLA: higher AT may be most useful for students at the early stages of their L2 study, while less AT is probably an advantage once the learner becomes more proficient, as s/he must monitor his/her usage for errors in order to self-correct.

            What does all this investigation of the role of tolerance of ambiguity in adult second language learning mean for the conference theme of vulnerability and tolerance in the culture at large?  I think it means that the concept of tolerance itself needs to be examined.  For instance, there does not seem to be a straightforward argument that more tolerance is absolutely preferable—i.e., there is a limit, after which it may be harmful.  Also, not all aspects of culture need to be tolerated to the same degree; while a general tolerance is preferable, specific cultural differences may be less tolerable.  

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