Julieta Fernández

The University of Arizona | UA · Department of Spanish and Portuguese

They have attracted researchers wishing to understand second language (L2) acquisition because, especially when already available, they can provide instantaneous access to large pools of learner data that can be quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed for linguistic patterns through the iterative use of automatic computer software tools (i.e., us...

In second language acquisition, corpus linguistics (CL) enjoys prominence as a methodology valuable for its descriptive power in the textual analysis of patterns. Within second language (L2) pragmatics, CL has been increasingly influential in shaping our understanding of learners’ pragmatic capacities and articulating new insights and possibilities...

Qualitative research conducted in applied linguistics, including in study abroad research (SAR), has many times relied on the use of research interviews (RIs). Recent epistemological shifts in the field have led to calls for a critical review of RIs as a method of data generation. In this chapter, we appraise the use of RIs in SAR, developing a pic...

In this article, we examine how meta‐agentive discourse was enacted and linguistically encoded with constructed dialog. We analyze interviews with 4 American undergraduate students who expressed their interest in study abroad (SA) and submitted applications but later withdrew them. The analysis centers on the ways agency was assigned to different a...

In response to calls for improving the quality of DCTs as data-gathering instruments, this study investigates the effectiveness of technology-enhanced discourse completion tasks (TE-DCTs) as a method for eliciting nonverbal speaker data. We used a mobile application to administer four TE-DCTs to native speakers (L1) and intermediate and advanced se...

As the population of Multilingual Users (MUs) of English in the United States continues to increase, the nation is faced with challenges in protecting the legal rights of these individuals. Particularly in cases where a MU of English is apprehended on criminal or immigration charges, a failure to fully understand the English language and the comple...

The present study takes a reflexive approach to the analysis of coordinated identity work in qualitative interviews in 2 study abroad (SA) contexts, Argentina and Germany. To do this, the authors bring together 2 autoethnographic projects and take a collaborative approach (Chang, Ngunjiri, & Hernandez, 2013; Lapadat, 2017) to the analysis of semi‐s...

This study investigates the instructional treatment of Argentine Spanish vernacular (i.e., lunfardo), metapragmatic information about its use provided by instructors, and participants’ metapragmatic awareness of vernacular use in a second language (L2) Spanish study abroad (SA) classroom. The participants were 12 American undergraduate students tak...

This article provides a case study account of the language functions of tipo, which is a pragmatic feature of Argentine Spanish vernacular, as used by 10 young adult native speakers of the language (ages 18–25), in the context of oral face-to-face and synchronous technology-mediated written interactions with young adult Spanish L2 learners. An exam...

This study aims to gain better insight into the often-taken-for-granted authenticity of out-of-class interactions in the study abroad context. Drawing from Macdonald et al.’s (2006) reconceptualization of authenticity, it examines the dialectic relationship between two authenticities (i.e., authenticity of correspondence and genesis) of out-of-clas...

Newsletter article about the teaching of taboo language (TL) in second language (L2) classrooms (ALIS Newsletter, November 2016).

Assessing the type and quantity of out-of-class foreign language (L2) interaction that learners engage in is crucial in study abroad research. This assessment has commonly been performed with the Language Contact Profile (LCP). This article critically appraises the LCP as a measure for providing reliable data to correlate language interaction with...

This overview of Spanish speech acts presents key research and findings discussing how actions are performed with Spanish. This area of Spanish pragmatics has relied on theoretical work as well as on empirical studies—such as the one represented by the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP)—to analyze Spanish speech acts from differ...

The corpus-informed pedagogical intervention described in this article was developed for an advanced English as a Second Language (ESL) course designed for prospective International Teaching Assistants (ITAs) and implemented over the course of two class periods. Its primary goal was to offer students opportunities to gain language awareness of “sma...

This article examines vague lexical features in unplanned, naturally occurring spoken discourse among speakers of Peninsular Spanish. It focuses on vague multi-word expressions that are part of a larger category of General Extenders (GEs, Overstreet 1999). Drawing on a subset of data from the Corpus Oral de Referencia del Español Contemporáneo (COR...

This paper presents a corpus-based examination of pragmatic marker use in Spanish as a foreign language. Using quantitative and qualitative methods, it examines the frequency and seven functional differences in the use of pues and bueno in the oral examination of 46 participants using the Computer Assisted Screening Tool (CAST) online test. The par...

Research has described the key role of formulaic language use in both written and spoken communication (Schmitt, 2004; Wray, 2002), as well as in relation to L2 learning (Ellis, Simpson—Vlach, & Maynard, 2008). Relatively few studies have examined related fixed and semifixed multi-word units (MWUs), which comprise fixed parts with the potential for...

This chapter seeks to demonstrate some of the potential contributions of a corpus-based approach to study abroad research. Drawing on the Spanish Learner Language Oral Corpora, the present analysis examines a set of vague expressions known as general extenders (GEs) (Overstreet 1999) utilized by undergraduate English L1 learners after a year abroad...

Motivated by the demonstrated consequentiality of vague multiword expressions in spoken and written language use, the present study examines instances of vague language in the context of synchronous computer-mediated interactions. The focus is on multiword expressions encoding shared knowledge termed as general extenders (GEs) (Overstreet, 1999), s...

Using a conversation analytic approach, this study contrasts the organization of IM with that of face-to-face communication with a view to finding their similarities and differences. Ninety conversations on one-on-one IM between native speakers of English are analyzed with a especial focus on turn-taking, openings and repair. Results show that the...