Clicks in Second Language Acquisition of German by Arabic L1 speakers (ClickSLAG)

• Applicant: Dr. Kathrin Weber
• Subject Area: Applied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics ; General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 513259671

Clicks have been studied primarily as parts of African phoneme systems. An applied approach to examining clicks as discourse markers in authentic interactions has only recently been developed, with a main focus on the English language. The pragmatic functions of clicks and their phonetic properties in German or Arabic, as well as in language contact between these two languages, have not been considered so far. To fill this gap, the aim of this project is to investigate click practices and their pragmatic, multimodal, and phonetic properties in everyday interactions of Arabic L1 speakers learning German as an L2. Theoretically, the study follows the framework of interactional linguistics in the interface with phonetics and the research on conversation analysis of second language acquisition [CA-SLA approach]. Clicks are considered culturally specific practices of organizing interaction, which can be transferred from L1 to L2 language and vice versa. In terms of data, the study follows a cross-sectional design. The learner corpus consists of native Syrian Arabic speakers between the age of 18 and 30 who are at the B2 or C1 level of learning German. Two face-to-face settings are recorded in audio and video format: (1) an everyday dyadic interaction situation between the learner and a known native German speaker (dyadic everyday interaction setting) and (2) a dyadic interview situation of the learner with an unknown native German speaker (dyadic interview setting). With regard to the language acquisition approach, the project compares the learner data with German and Arabic baseline data of everyday interactions in order to reveal the transfer and acquisition processes of click practices. Methodologically, the exploratory study chooses a mixed-methods approach of qualitative sequence analysis and multivariate statistical analysis. The project pursues four objectives: (1) the investigation of clicks as linguistic resources of turn-taking organization in German, Arabic, and in the contact variety between the languages, (2) the phonetic-acoustic analysis of these click resources, (3) the question of a pragmatic-phonetic transfer of Arabic click practices into German, and (4) the investigation of clicks as multimodal gestalts in disagreement sequences within so-called response packages. Overall, the project provides important insights into the function of clicks as turn-organizing culture-specific resources and their role in second language acquisition.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants