
==== Front
Heliyon
Heliyon
Heliyon
2405-8440
Elsevier

S2405-8440(24)12470-X
10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e36439
e36439
Research Article
Establishing recipiency in divergent L2 contexts of classroom interaction: A conversation analysis
Engida Mengistu Anagaw mengistu_anagaw@dmu.edu.et
⁎
Bewuket Haile Kassahun hailekassahun2010@yahoo.com

Tariku Mekonnen Esubalew mekonnen_esubalew@dmu.edu.et

Dessie Wondiyfraw Mhiret wondiemihiret2009@gmail.com

Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, Debre Markos University, Ethiopia
⁎ Corresponding author. mengistu_anagaw@dmu.edu.et
22 8 2024
15 9 2024
22 8 2024
10 17 e3643926 12 2023
29 7 2024
15 8 2024
© 2024 The Author(s)
2024
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).
Establishing recipiency, an indispensable ingredient and manifestation of sustaining intersubjectivity, constitutes the continuous monitoring of an ongoing turn in an interaction. The present study intended to describe how interactants attending a freshman common course in an Ethiopian university elicit and display recipiency in instances of Divergent L2 contexts exhibiting DIUs. Naturally occurring video-recorded classroom interactions of the purposively selected interactants have been analyzed in light of the Conversation Analytic framework to show how interactants elicit and display recipiency. By deploying reactive tokens, incipient speakers negotiate their rights to shape and reshape trajectories of an ongoing thereby displaying recipiency. This contributes to a better understanding of how interactures, in this case the establishment of intersubjectivity and L2 contexts, interplay and unfold in moments of DIUs. Also, viewing interactants as incipient speakers, and thereby articulating turns in view of recipients is a condition for sustaining intersubjectivity through active engagement. This requires upholding unwavering belief about recipients’ stake in an interactional exchange. Practically, being attentive to recipients' states in the different trajectories of interactional development, especially, in moments of divergent L2 contexts that exhibit DIUs, would be illuminating. This is because the use of resources to elicit and display recipiency and thereby consider incipient speakers' levels of recipiency, on the part of floor-holding speaker, would enhance possibilities for intersubjectivity.

Keywords

Recipiency
DIUs
Intersubjectivity
Eliciting
Divergence
==== Body
pmc1 Introduction

Research using Conversation Analysis (henceforth, CA) demonstrates that language learning occurs in action, i.e. through use. In such a reconceptualization [1,2] of language learning, recipients are viewed as incipient speakers who continuously monitor an ongoing turn and not as passive listeners. Recipients, basically not contributing something new in an ongoing sequence, take part in the process of sustaining intersubjectivity (cf. [3]) as displayed recipiency assures speakers who hold the floor if and how they are accepted and understood. Characterized as an ability which is emergent in the unfolding of turns, situated, and distributed among interactants ([4], 2021), Interactional Competence enables interactants to act conjointly understanding context of the interaction and demonstrating practices and methods [5] accordingly. Such ability involves recipients’ engagement and contributions to the ongoing interaction. Thus, Interactional Competence (henceforth, IC) reserves prior attention to recipients.

However, recipients' role in general and in the achievement of intersubjectivity in particular has been overlooked due to, in part, over-emphasis to speakers' productions. Relating to this, Xu, (2014, p 33) claims, ‘ … the role of recipients has been somewhat neglected in most language studies.’ Recipients, even when they are not contributing new content, display if and how floor-holding speakers' talk is received, understood, accepted and agreed to. In other words, the way recipients anticipate an upcoming turn unfolds in the process of displaying recipiency. Thus, in displaying recipiency, a recipient both recognizes the co-participant as a speaker and verifies readiness not to take a turn. Doing so, by itself, manifests IC in which interactants function conjointly.

Resources that interactants deploy to establish recipiency include reactive tokens (cf. [3]) and embodied signals [6]. While establishing recipiency in DIUs and divergent L2 contexts add to the complexity of the task of recipients, evidence on the way interactants elicit and display recipiency in such contexts has been scanty. Thus, this study examines the establishment of recipiency in moments of DIUs where the interactional organization and pedagogical focus interface divergently. This contributes to a deeper conceptualization and deployment of resources.

2 Literature review

2.1 The essence of Interactional Competence

IC, characterized as an ability which is emergent in the unfolding of turns, situated, and distributed among interactants ([4], 2021) involves an understanding of the setting of interaction and establishing expected practices and methods [5]. Despite the agreements on the emergent, situated, and distributed characteristics of the construct, a precise discussion of what it takes to grasping the context of interaction, including divergence in the interfacing of pedagogical focus and interactional organization, and demonstrating the fitting practices and methods, of which establishing recipiency is one, has not been adequately established.

In classroom interaction where interactants' IC unfolds ‘as a condition for and as an object of learning’ ([7], p.119), interactants, for instance, engage in interfacing interactional organization and pedagogical focus [[8], [9], [10]]. Such interfacing results in either convergent [8,9] or divergent [10] L2 contexts that associate with and result from planned or accidental actions among interactants. Divergence in the interfacing of pedagogical focus and interactional organization results in deviance that occurs interactants' motivations and orientations do not coincide or confusion that occurs due to failure to understand the L2 context in operation [10]. Similarly, divergence may result in grappling when a teacher fails to establish an L2 classroom context [10] or flouting when experienced teachers deliberately ‘flout’ the normal organization of the L2 classroom to create particular effects including creating an information gap in creative ways.

In such L2 contexts, interactants need to sustain intersubjectivity (establishing, maintaining, or restoring mutual understanding) deploying linguistic and/or prosodic resources [[11], [12], [13]]. Interfacing pedagogical focus and interactional organization to establish L2 contexts, and producing conditionally relevant next action from an enchronic and diachronic frame [14] to sustain intersubjectivity requires an elicitation and display of recipiency. For incipient speakers to display recipiency, speakers shall create spaces and make elicitations which in turn may become a contribution looking for shaping. The forthcoming section details the concept of recipiency and how it is established in classroom interaction.

2.2 Establishing recipiency

Recipiency, the display of mindfulness of being a recipient during an ongoing sequence, involves showing continuous monitoring of an ongoing talk as incipient speakers [3,15]. Such monitoring can be displayed through nonverbal resources such as nodding or shaking heads, gazing and verbally through reactive tokens. Using these resources, recipients show the level of reception of incoming information and understanding, attention, interest and alignment at perceptual levels [3]. Such levels of recipiency contribute to the smooth conversational flow. On the other hand, recipients also display their affect or stance towards the person or an issue being discussed. Thus, recipients, along with speakers, play important roles in an interactional exchange.

Recipiency, thus, as an abstract and multi-faceted relational construct, associates with and manifests in recipients' participation, engagement, orientation and affiliation to co-participants' production [3]. Of these, participation is an aspect of recipiency that refers to a recipient's willingness to take part in an ongoing interaction. Recipients display engagement through the ‘display of mutual orientation and co-participation of a floor-holding speaker and a recipient in interaction’ (Goodwin, 1981, p 10). Similarly, orientation as an element of recipiency concerns how speakers display, in their turns, an understanding of a preceding turn [16]. Recipiency is also closely associated with affiliation through which recipients display solidarity, in perspective, with a speaker.

Establishing recipiency, specifically, in moments of DIUs and in divergence, which may be part of interactants' (intended) pedagogical focus, requires interactants to engage in co-constructing sequentially appropriate turns including the display and ratification each other's understanding of a prior turn and the ongoing sequence. This affects the floor-holding speaker's certainty about the understandability and acceptability of the ongoing talk. For instance, DIUs which interactants deploy to initiate self-repairs ([17], 2010), display knowledge [18] and sustain participation ([19,20]; aus der Wieschen & Sert, 2018) may be received in different levels. In displaying recipiency, thus, interactants demonstrate their ability to understand the context of interaction (in this case, in moments of DIUs and in divergent L2 contexts) and demonstrate expected interactional practices and methods through participation, engagement, orientation and affiliation [3]. In other words, studying the resources in such contexts is illuminating.

Studies (cf. [3,6]) have revealed how interactants co-construct turns to establish recipiency. Participants display recipiency in a hierarchy from silent recipiency to passive, neutral, active and affiliative levels through reactive tokens [3]. Mortensen [6], on the other hand, focused on how students establish recipiency through body movements and in-breaths. Conversely, Sert and Walsh (2013) argue that mutual gaze and turn allocation practices of establishing recipiency leads insufficient knowledge claims. This shows that incipient speakers display recipiency stating their reception of a prior turn while there are moments wherein those in charge of a turn elicit it. Thus, resources appropriate both to elicit and display recipiency need scholarly attention, especially in divergent L2 contexts.

Nonetheless, the establishment of recipiency in moments of DIUs, especially in divergent contexts, has been studied in non-institutional settings. As a result, the current study explores how interactants establish recipiency in moments of DIUs, specifically focusing on divergent L2 contexts of (institutional) classroom interaction. This would contribute to a deeper understanding of the essence of IC in general and as part of this, the tools to establish recipiency.

3 Research methods

Using a CA of naturally occurring classroom interaction, this study explores how interactants establish recipiency in Divergent L2 contexts of classroom interaction. The CA design, an inductive study of talk-in-interaction [9,21] from the interactants emic perspective, has been found appropriate to discern recurring and distinct interactive practices. Through ‘unmotivated looking’ [22] of naturally occurring interaction, the researchers built a collection of DIUs in which interactional organization and pedagogical focus diverge. These instances of divergence were extracted purposively, for the way interactants established recipiency in those moments relates with and contributes towards efforts to sustain intersubjectivity. The current study focuses on the establishment and organization of recipiency which unfolds in the inductive search from the naturally occurring classroom interaction data. The collections of DIUs that occurred in divergent contexts were identified through subsequent inductive search for similar patterns.

The data for the current study includes transcriptions [9] of twelve sessions (each about an hour to an hour and 20 min in length) recorded in the 2022 academic year in an Ethiopian university. The Communicative English Skills I course was selected as its objectives and delivery methods engender intelligible interaction with acceptable accuracy and fluency in different contexts. The participating students (the number of students attending each of the lessons varied across lessons), aging eighteen to twenty-three, were diverse with regard to their mother tongues. From the interaction in the recorded lessons, the current study explored how interactants [both students and the teacher] establish recipiency.

Relating to its unwavering emic position, CA values different aspects and elements of research quality. To enhance the credibility, dependability and transferability (Mertens, 2019 [23]; [24,25]), an attempt has been made to record lessons during a semester from which the first six lesson recordings were exempted from the analysis. Also, the dependability of this study originates from and is ascertained through recordings and transcription quality [9].

3.1 Data analysis techniques

In CA, Data analysis is a bottom-up and data-driven [9] examination of the talk-in-interaction where priori assumptions are not imposed onto data [9,22]. In conducting this multimodal CA, Seedhouse [9], p.16) recommends asking the question ‘why that, in that moment, right now?’ discerning initially unremarkable action sequences. This involves trying to answer the question ‘What is this participant doing in this turn?’ ([26], p.31) for each consecutive turn. In line with the transcription and analysis steps and conventions [27], the video recordings were carefully observed to identify recurring and distinct interactional patterns. After patterns of interest (in this case the establishment of recipiency in moments of DIUs) were identified, subsequent searches for additional instances were made in inductively [9]. This enabled the identification of recurrent moments of DIUs wherein pedagogical focus and interactional organization interfaced divergently.

4 Results

Findings on the establishment of recipiency are presented in the forthcoming sections. CA of extracts of classroom interaction revealed the ways interactants establish recipiency in divergent moments of DIUs. Divergent L2 contexts of deviance, confusion and flouting [10] involving DIUs are referred to demonstrate how interactants establish recipiency and the resources used to that end. Each of the divergent L2 contexts is treated individually, with extracts for each case. To that end, the role of recipients as incipient speakers who continuously monitor current talk is illustrated in divergent contexts involving DIUs. Findings revealed that recipients contribute to ensuring intersubjectivity in and through the display of recipiency demonstrating if and how floor-holding speakers' utterance is received, understood, accepted, and agreed to Ref. [3] producing reactive tokens. In the following section, the establishment of recipiency in divergent L2 contexts of classroom interaction is treated as a function of sustaining intersubjectivity, as found in the inductive search of classroom interaction. The establishment of recipiency, specifically in moments of divergent L2 contexts, which may be part of an interactant's (intended) pedagogical focus, affects not only the floor-holding speaker's certainty on the understandability and acceptability of the ongoing talk but also the level of recipiency.

4.1 Establishing recipiency: divergent L2 contexts of confusion

In the extract below, interactants are working on a grammar lesson where students are asked to correct verb forms. The teacher emphasizes instances in which the alternative tenses might be fitting and requests students to consider possibilities. Due to this, the teacher orients students to determine if the past simple or the present simple is the correct alternative. However, the students orient to a meaning and fluency L2 context, presuming a real situation in which something is done repeatedly. This orients them to leave out other possibilities including the present perfect tense. The teacher, on the other hand, orients and guides them to consider an alternative situation in which the simple past is suggested. This results in a divergent L2 context where recipiency is elicited by the teacher for students to display it.Image 1

In line 2 of the above extract, S5 completes the statement with the present simple form of the given verb. The teacher, in the following lines, repeats the response three times and asks for the plausibility of an alternative response. However, this resulted in nonresponse due to which the teacher orients to giving clues using DIUs. Once S8 orients that the time indicator was not stated to complete the DIU, the teacher raised a specific instance in which the suggested response could not be accepted (line 10). In doing so, the teacher reorients students to consider alternative possibilities including moments where the person is not around. S3 responds that the time this happened could be in the past in the situation that she is not around, but the teacher asked for which one should be appropriate. However, S13 insisted that the present simple is the only appropriate tense by producing its form while the teacher orients them towards its use and related justifications. S7 stated that the present simple tense is appropriate because of the repeated action. In this divergent L2 context of confusion, failure to orient to the teacher's stance to consider alternative responses results in the development of the interaction.

Dispreferred responses regarding the form of the verb are repeated to elicit recipiency. For instance, in lines 3 to 5 and, the recipient repeats responses of S5 and S7 to incite doubt and reject the response evident in the post-expansion sequence. However, the students do not treat it so. In lines 8 and 17, collaborative production is adopted to elicit recipiency in the form of a DIU. By completing the DIUs, recipients engage in active participation contributing to the development and shaping of the progression of the ongoing sequence on one hand and displaying recipiency of the prior turn on the other. Likewise, towards the final lines, the teacher repeats the justification of S7 to illustrate the recipient's contribution is not acceptable resulting in disaffiliation. In this extract involving divergent L2 context of confusion, recipiency tokens are not adopted.

A point to be noted is the way the current floor-holding interactant orients to elicit recipiency following the divergence. The students orient to a real situation in which someone does something repeatedly which forces them to leave out other possibilities. The teacher, on the other hand, orients them to consider alternative situations in which the simple past is suggested. First, the teacher suggested an alternative response (line 6) and backed it up with justifications (line 10). However, the students insisted on their first response which they justified. In the following line, a yes/no question is produced by the teacher to elicit recipiency that the sentence does not state repeated action. A divergent L2 context where the teacher elicits recipiency for students to display it results from the action sequence. Also evident in this extract is the way recipiency is elicited in the turns before collaborative productions. For instance, in lines 30 &32, the teacher who holds the current turn pauses to allow students to engage.

4.2 Establishing recipiency: divergent L2 contexts of flouting

The following extract is taken from part of the lesson where the class was working on tense. Particularly, the focus was on the procedures of determining the form of verbs. First, the teacher gives bizarre and problematic responses producing flouted recipiency tokens instead of directly declining responses or suggesting possible alternatives. Afterwards, the teacher goes for a yes/no question and DIUs to elicit recipiency.

Extract two.Image 2

In line one of the above extract, an incomplete sentence is read by the teacher to which S9 suggests has been as the appropriate verb form to complete it. Realizing that the response was dispreferred, the teacher in line …. posed a question. As a result, S3 suggested ‘had been’ to which the teacher responded by flouting the context remarking it right. The teacher repeated the response (lines seven and eight) and asked for students' reception of the response through yes/no questions. Afterwards, the students opted for the preferred response. Subsequently, the teacher asked students to justify their choice for the verb form and S3 and S2 by completing the DIU in lines 13 and 17.

In this L2 context, recipients display recipiency using different resources. For instance, the recipiency token right is articulated assuring the floor-holding speakers about the clarity of the utterance in the prior slot. Completing the DIUs in lines 14 and 18, recipients display recipiency. In line 10 of the extract, the teacher responds to the yes/no question displaying recipiency on the correctness of the verb form. In this extract, the recipients’ orientation is characterized by different patterns including the use of repeat in conjunction with the yes/no question which is intentionally designed and oriented to by the recipient to flout the L2 context.

Elicitation of recipiency, as shown in other sections signifies a very important part of sustaining intersubjectivity. In different lines of this extract, the teacher, the one with epistemic status, elicits recipiency while the student displays it demonstrating active speakership. For instance, in line 7&8, the teacher poses a yes/no question to elicit recipiency on the correctness of the verb form. Similarly, in lines 16 and 20, the current turn holder halts the ongoing turn to allow the recipients actively engage in eliciting recipiency for collaborative productions.

The forthcoming extract is from a prereading section of a lesson where students are asked to find out the meaning of a list of words used in an imminent passage. In this extract, the teacher facilitated students determine the meaning of the vocabulary item through contextual clues while also orienting them that morphological clues can be misleading. In this L2 context where divergence occurs due to the teacher's acceptance of unacceptable responses, recipiency is elicited and displayed using different resources.

Extract three.Image 3

At the outset, the teacher asked for the meaning of the word invaluable setting it up using a DIU. To that end, the DIU in line 2 is received as a request for completion and S16 orients to it as a question and completes it, but with a dispreferred response. This makes the teacher question the response in disbelief. Nevertheless, S16 orients to justify the response making morphological analysis to which the teacher seemed to agree (line 10) through the use of right. Seeming to endorse the correctness of the response created a flouted divergent L2 context, for S16 fails to identify the meaning of the word. To that end, the teacher who is a recipient at this juncture deployed right, as evidenced in the next line, to display the flouting of the L2 context. As evident in the following lines, however, the student has failed to meet the expectations of the teacher. The teacher continued the sequence so that students produce alternative responses. In line 12, the teacher proceeds with a question for alternative responses. As a result of the students’ silence, the teacher constructs a sentence in which the word invaluable is used. The context clue locates the word meaningfully so that the students orient to identify its meaning.

In this flouted divergent L2 context, recipiency is displayed using different resources. Of the recipiency tokens, the teacher deployed so (line 12) to display active recipiency. The token so, placed at a complex transition-relevant place/position (CTRP) in the sequence, displays the recipient's preemptive meaning-making and agreement. For example, in line 12, the teacher uses so to initiate S16 use the morphological clues in the sequence of defining the word invaluable. Through the use of so, the teacher orients S16 to come up with a complete meaning of the item from the morphological clues stated in the prior turn. In other words, so functions as a continuer.

Display of recipiency through collaborative production of DIUs (in lines 2 and 20) facilitated and maintained effort to sustain production of alternative response. Also, in line 12, so functions to display the initiate alternative responses. The teacher playing the role of a recipient articulates the reactive token to display preemptive meaning-making of the turn and direction in the ongoing conversation. In the extract, the reactive token yes is used to show agreement. Incipient speakers, as illustrated above, display recipiency when prior elicitations are carried out. For instance, in lines 2, 15 and 18, before collaborative productions, the current turn-holder halts the ongoing turn to allow recipients active engagement. Similarly, yes/no questions are posed in line 5 to elicit the recipiency of a dispreferred response.

In the forthcoming extract, S14 reads the complete sentence the tense of which is under question. S14 followed up with an identification of the verb phrase and statement on its tense. The teacher confirms this response and proceeds with a DIU that reminds the main question. The recipient has deployed recipiency tokens to display recipiency that acknowledges speakership. The deployment of these tokens helps students produce lines 8, 11, and 15 addressing the nature of the tense of the given sentences. In this flouted L2 context where pedagogical focus and interactional organization interface in divergent ways recipiency is elicited and displayed through different tools.

In this extract, the teacher deploys yes (line 6) to display the reception of the suggested response and as a precondition to relocate focus but not as a confirmation. In line 9, S14 repeats the teacher's incomplete utterance and completes it as an indication of recipiency. Following the response from S14 to the follow-up question in line 6, the teacher repeats the utterance twice and asks specifically when the action occurred previewing if the sentence entails a definite time or not. The teacher insisted on contributing through initiations using anyone. In line 17, S2 claims that the action occurred over the years which is positively remarked by the teacher creating a flouted L2 context.

Extract four.Image 4

Even if the teacher is orienting students to realize that the action did not occur in a definite time, the response over the years indicates a definite time is remarked positively. Asking for what over the years indicates, a DIU is deployed (line 19) which is completed with a dispreferred response (line 21). As a result, the teacher opted to go further asking first if over the years indicates a definite time or not and when that time is afterwards. However, S2 insisted that over the years indicates a definite time in which the action happened. This helped S5 realize that the action is not completed in a definite time thereby leading into the essence of the basic question.

In this extract, the recipients displayed recipiency through repeating, collaborative production and recipiency tokens. For instance, in lines 6, 24 and 32 of the extract, students displayed an awareness of being recipients using yes. The token yeah is adopted in line 26 of the extract. Similarly, in lines 7 and 8 the recipient produces repeats to display active recipiency. In the extract, repeat in the SPP is used to secure recipient engagement. In lines 7 and 8, the recipient employs repeat to request for clarification. In lines 11 and 12, the recipient employs repeat to display uncertainty in the response. This is evidenced in the following line as the students take the repeat as a repair initiator.

In this extract, the teacher, the one with epistemic status, elicits recipiency, through yes/no questions and DIUs. For instance, yes/no questions are posed in line 5 to elicit the recipiency of a dispreferred response. Similarly, in lines 7, 10 and 17, before collaborative productions, the current turn holder halts the ongoing turn to allow recipients active engagement. Nonetheless, in line 1, the teacher's question is addressed to the whole class through ‘anyone’. A recipient of the teacher's question has, thus, not been established before the turn. Establishing recipiency, then, seems to be something to which the interactants orient as a relevant interactional job.

4.3 Establishing recipiency: divergent L2 contexts of deviance

The students, as evident in the forthcoming extract, are engaged in changing verbs in brackets into a suitable form. Doing so requires not only understanding the tenses but also deciphering its voice. When this unfolds interactionally, the students fail to recognize the voice for their attention is focused on the tense and clues towards the tense. Deviance results in the L2 context as interactants experience divergence in interactional organization and the pedagogical focus. In this divergent context which involves DIUs in non-transition-relevant positions, the efforts to elicit and display recipiency are examined.

Extract five.Image 5

In the extract above, the teacher requested students to determine the appropriate form of the verb in brackets that would complete the sentence. In the lines preceding and following the DIU, S4 responded to the question but failed to produce the relevant action. This obliges the teacher to emphasize the time referred to as the teacher highlights the time with rising intonation and poses a question on its voice. This is meant to elicit self-correction for the teacher pronounced the erroneous alternative with a falling intonation.

Using a DIU (line 16) that orients students to determine whether the sentence is in the active or passive voice, the teacher provides clues to restore intersubjectivity. Nevertheless, S7 failed to use the provided clues and responded otherwise. As a result, the teacher deployed another DIU (line 26) asking for the doer of the action. The students failed to produce a preferred response (lines 20) until realizing that the doer of the action is not mentioned (line 27). Afterwards, S13 responded that the sentence is in the passive voice which the teacher affirms (line 30).

In this L2 context of deviance, no recipiency token is articulated at a recognizable CTRP associating with the floor-holding speakers who struggle to find out whether the other party is clear or not. For instance, through the DIU the teacher orients to elicit recipiency on the voice of the sentence. The fact that the teacher produces the subject and other completers separately evidences the teacher's orientation to help students determine the voice. In lines 7 and 13,15, the teacher poses a yes/no question to elicit recipiency on the voice so that they determine the tense. As the student failed to identify the appropriate form, the teacher orients students to supply the doer of the action through collaborative production. On the recipient's side, an understanding of the question involves part of the response to be displayed in their sequentially ‘next’ turns.

In this extract, the teacher, the one with epistemic status, elicits recipiency while the student displays it demonstrating active speakership. Current turn-holding speakers elicit recipiency through repeats, yes/no questions and DIUs. In the above extract, the students adopted repeat to elicit recipiency of the response. For instance, in lines 7, 10 and 17, before the collaborative productions, the current turn holder halts the ongoing turn to allow recipients active engagement. Likewise, yes/no questions are posed to elicit the recipiency of the dispreferred response.

In this section, it has become evident that interactants establish recipiency using different tools. In contrast to the evidences in mundane and non-institutional settings, interactants in classroom contexts deploy a multitude of alternative resources to elicit and display recipiency. This includes repeats and collaborative productions.

5 Discussion

The current study indicates that the absence of recipiency tokens causes troubles sustaining intersubjectivity. Recipients, often considered as incipient speakers, assist in establishing recipiency by synchronizing their receipt of a prior turn through their use of recipiency tokens. However, in moments where recipients fail to display it, those holding the turn prompt its display. Thus, examining resources to elicit and display recipiency in different L2 contexts, especially in divergent L2 contexts is invaluable. In convergent L2 contexts, the establishment of recipiency might require the adoption of different resources. However, an extra burden of examining the interfacing of pedagogical focus and interactional organization would not be at stake.

Among the range of resources that recipients can articulate are reactive tokens and expressions [3,6] together with collaborative productions using DIUs to secure recipient engagement thereby sustaining intersubjectivity. Interactants deployment of DIUs to display and elicit recipiency thereby demonstrating their awareness of being recipients contrasts with prior functions ([20]; aus der Wieschen & Sert, 2018; [19]) of the pattern. Alike, a closer scrutiny of the establishment of recipiency suggests that the sequential location rather than epistemic status is associated with a display of recipiency. For instance, recipients orient to displaying recipiency through repeats, reactive tokens and expressions and collaborative completions in contrast to prior findings [3,6]. Thus, in contrast to prior findings, recipiency has been uncovered to be an important resource deployed to sustain intersubjectivity.

Recipients orient to displaying recipiency through repeats, reactive tokens and expressions and collaborative completions of DIUs, as interactures of their IC ([28]). In the different extracts involving divergent L2 contexts, through the repeats of unpreferred responses including unpreferred verb forms, the teacher incites doubt and rejects responses. This is evident in the post-expansion sequences of the divergent L2 contexts. However, there are also instances where the students do not treat the repeats as such. Likewise, there are instances where the teacher repeats the justifications of floor-holding speakers to illustrate that a contribution is not acceptable and thus requires disaffiliation. In other instances, the recipient employs repeat to request for clarification and to display uncertainty in the response. Similarly, repeats are used as tools for displaying the receipt of elicited information in prior turns. In contrast to prior findings [3,6], these multiple layered uses of repeats underscore the context specificity of the resource in establishing recipiency.

In divergent L2 contexts, recipients methodically used and oriented to reactive tokens to display that tokens function in alignment with the divergent L2 context. Notably, the teacher uses so as a recipiency token to initiate the use of morphological clues in defining a word. Through ‘so’, the teacher orients S16 to produce a complete meaning of the item from the morphological clues stated in the prior turn. In other words, ‘so’ functions as a continuer preceded by a fake receipt of the prior information. This function of the token relates with [29] who reported that turns ending in ‘so’ as discreet practices through which the therapists instigate their customers to explore abandoned matters. Recipients also use the recipiency token right articulated at a recognizable CTRP assuring the floor-holding speakers about the clarity of the utterance [3] in the prior slot. The teacher responds to the yes/no question displaying recipiency on the correctness of the verb form. Likewise, recipients methodically design and orient to repeats in conjunction with the yes/no question to flout the L2 context.

To display active participation, recipients engage in collaborative completions. For instance, recipients display agreement on the topic under discussion by completing the DIUs initiated. Display of recipiency through collaborative completion of DIUs facilitated and maintained effort to sustain the construction of alternative responses in the divergent L2 contexts. For instance, collaborative production in the form of a DIU is adopted permitting interactants to elicit and display recipiency at a time. By completing DIUs, recipients engage in active participation contributing to the display of recipiency of the prior turn on one hand and progressivity of the ongoing sequence on the other. For instance, in lines before collaborative productions, the teacher who holds the current turn pauses to elicit engagement. Thus, DIUs constitute an important resource for the elicitation and display of recipiency, as shown in different extracts.

Altogether, the establishment of recipiency as an aspect of IC entails an important ingredient to sustain intersubjectivity. Recipients, as incipient speakers, display their awareness of being a recipient, verify continuous monitoring of an ongoing talk through different resources. This constitutes an important aspect of IC. Particularly, the teacher demonstrated IC in eliciting and displaying recipiency in moments he acted as a recipient.

6 Conclusions and implications

Establishing recipiency is an indispensable element of sustaining intersubjectivity. Accordingly, it has been reported that interactants elicit and display recipiency using a broad range of resources [3,6] including repeats, reactive tokens and expressions together with collaborative productions. Nonetheless, current findings revealed that repeats of unpreferred responses incite doubt and reject responses in the post-expansion sequences of the divergent L2 contexts. Likewise, recipients employ repeats to request for clarification and to display uncertainty in the response. The deployment of repeats in conjunction with recipiency tokens is upheld by recipients to convert a disagreement into an agreement in disalignment-relevant positions. In addition to other reactive tokens, the instructor uses ‘so’ as a recipiency token to state flouted recipiency to proceed while acting as a recipient. Also, collaborative completions of DIUs are used to display active participation in an ongoing interaction. Display of recipiency through collaborative completion of DIUs facilitated and maintained efforts to sustain the construction of alternative responses in the divergent L2 contexts.

A total number of five extracts have been used from the recorded classroom interaction data to demonstrate the establishment of recipiency in divergent L2 contexts involving DIUs. Excluding prosodic elements of the establishment of recipiency, a range of resources are used by interactants to elicit and display recipiency. The findings revealed that participants' IC determines their selection of resources in establishing recipiency in SPP. Recipients systematically deploy resources to elicit and display recipiency in different divergent L2 contexts differently. Deployment of these resources illustrates the establishment of recipiency in divergent L2 contexts involving DIUs. For instance, in divergent contexts, recipients orient to repeats to unobtrusively exchange information. Thus, IC of interactants determines recipients’ methodical and varied selection of resources in establishing recipiency.

These findings suggest irregularities in the tools of eliciting and displaying recipiency in divergent L2 contexts involving DIUs. By producing a variety of resources including reactive tokens and expressions together with collaborative productions, recipients elicit and display recipiency and thereby establish the ground for sustaining intersubjectivity. Elicitation of recipiency, as shown in different extracts signifies a very important part of establishing it. For instance, in lines before collaborative productions, the teacher who holds the current turn pauses to elicit engagement. Similarly, yes/no questions are posed to elicit recipiency of an unpreferred response. On the other hand, multiple layered uses of repeats underscore the context specificity of the resource in establishing recipiency. Altogether, the establishment of recipiency as an aspect of IC entails important ingredients. Thus, this study has demonstrated that recipiency which involves the display of responsiveness and continuous monitoring of an ongoing talk through reactive tokens and nonverbal channels. In this regard, the teacher, along with the students, demonstrated IC in eliciting and displaying recipiency.

This has conceptual and practical pedagogic implications. Viewing interactants as incipient speakers and thereby articulating turns in view of listeners is a condition towards sustaining intersubjectivity through active engagement. For this to materialize, upholding the view that recipients have a stake is significant. Practically, being attentive to recipients' states in the different trajectories of interactional development would be illuminating. In moments of divergent L2 contexts that exhibit DIUs, unless the floor-holding speaker considers incipient speakers' levels of recipiency, possibilities for intersubjectivity would be lessened. In this regard, interactants need the use of resources for eliciting and displaying recipiency.

Findings of this study should be interpreted considerate of the possible limitations. First, the process of recording the lessons based on which conclusions of this study are drawn may have influenced students to act differently. In addition, student interaction during group discussions which could have provided additional and different perspectives on recipiency has not been examined due to the limited scope. Besides, the embodied aspects of classroom interaction are not addressed in this study. Consequently, the findings of this CA need to be interpreted with these limitations and sources of limitations.

Ethical considerations

The informed consent of the department, course instructors, and students was secured for this study. The interactants (comprising the teacher and his students) were assured that the recordings would be voluntary and the data obtained would be used only for this research purpose. This study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of Debre Markos University, with ethics approval reference DMU337/14/24.

Funding declaration

'Not applicable'.

Data availability statement

'Not applicable'.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Mengistu Anagaw Engida: Writing – original draft, Investigation, Conceptualization. Haile Kassahun Bewuket: Supervision. Mekonnen Esubalew Tariku: Writing – review & editing. Wondiyfraw Mhiret Dessie: Writing – review & editing.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

APPENDIX A :

TRANSCRIPTION CONVENTIONS

(1.8)	Numbers enclosed in parentheses indicate a pause. The number represents the number of seconds of duration of the pause, to one decimal place. A pause of less than 0.2 s is marked by (.)	
[ ]	Brackets around portions of utterances show that those portions overlap with a portion of another speaker's utterance.	
=	An equal sign is used to show that there is no time lapse between the portions connected by the equal signs. This is used where a second speaker begins their utterance just at the moment when the first speaker finishes.	
::	A colon after a vowel or a word is used to show that the sound is extended. The number of colons shows the length of the extension.	
(hm, hh)	These are onomatopoetic representations of the audible exhalation of air)	
.hh	This indicates an audible inhalation of air, for example, as a gasp. The more h's, the longer the in-breath.	
?
.
,
–	A question mark indicates that there is slightly rising intonation.
A period indicates that there is slightly falling intonation.
A comma indicates a continuation of tone.
A dash indicates an abrupt cut off, where the speaker stopped speaking suddenly	
↑↓	Up or down arrows are used to indicate that there is sharply rising or falling intonation. The arrow is placed just before the syllable in which the change in intonation occurs.	
Under	Underlines indicate speaker emphasis on the underlined portion of the word.	
CAPS	Capital letters indicate that the speaker spoke the capitalized portion of the utterance at a higher volume than the speaker's normal volume.	
◦	This indicates an utterance that is much softer than the normal speech of the speaker. This symbol will appear at the beginning and the end of the utterance in question.	
><, <>	‘Greater than’ and ‘less than’ signs indicate that the talk they surround was noticeably faster, or slower than the surrounding talk.	
(would)	When a word appears in parentheses, it indicates that the transcriber has guessed as to what was said, because it was indecipherable on the tape. If the transcriber was unable to guess what was said, nothing appears within the parentheses.	
£C'mon£
→
+ italics (( ))	Sterling signs are used to indicate a smiley or jokey voice.
Highlights point of analysis
Marks the onset of an embodied action (e.g. shift of gaze, pointing)
English translation
Describes embodied actions within a specific turn and time	

Acknowledgments

The researchers owe a debt of gratitude to instructors, students and friends for their participation, support, thought-provoking questions and suggestions at different stages of the manuscript.
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