Steven L Thorne

Portland State University | PSU · Department of World Languages and Literatures

In recent years, there has been a great deal of research and pedagogical experimentation relating to the uses of technology in second (L2) and foreign language education. The majority of this research has usefully described and examined the efficacy of in-class and directly classroom-related uses of technology. This article broadens the scope of in...

Digital communication technologies both complexify and help to reveal the dynamics of human communicative activity and capacity for identity performance. Addressing current scholarship on second language use and development, this review article examines research on identity in digital settings either as a design element of educational practice or a...

Integrating concepts and techniques from ethnomethodology and sociomaterialism, this article investigates the observable material processes involving human action and place‐based contexts of language use enabled by locative media. The focal pedagogical intervention utilized mobile augmented reality (AR) activities, the development of which was insp...

Drawing on usage-based approaches to the study of language learning-including recent research on mobility in interaction, embodied approaches to cognition and communicative action, and innovations in place-based language learning in the wild-this article uses methods from ethnomethodological conversation analysis to investigate video recordings of...

In the context of changing demographics at regional universities (including our own), we highlight an ongoing project at our university that addresses the last area of acceptable bias in English-medium higher education: bias against speakers of other languages and non-standard dialects of English. We discuss the hegemonic aspect of the Standard Aca...

YouTube videos have contributed primary and supplementary instructional materials to traditional classrooms since the 2010s (Sylvia & Moody, 2022). These user-generated materials are more successful than their traditional counterparts due to their recontextualization which melds academic practice with the semiotic landscape of web 2.0 culture. Pref...

50 free copies: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/2K3PPZ26IKCNGTMWDQWZ/full?target=10.1080/15348458.2022.2137168 For fans of popular cultural products, digitization has meant the configuration of affinity spaces online and opportunities for learning in the “digital wilds,” including incidental language learning and identity development. Through o...

This coda describes various affordances and constraints associated with technology-rich language teaching and learning. It begins with a discussion of articles in this special issue of Classroom Discourse and then expands to engage with broader dynamics associated with uses of digital tools in language education. In particular, we address research...

In what has been termed the global era, individuals from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds frequently participate in joint activities that require intercultural communication. Concomitantly, research on communication in contexts involving mobile technologies is nascent, and investigations addressing pragmatics in particular are few. In th...

Written by a global team, this up-to-date introduction to applied linguistics helps students learn what it's like to do applied linguistics, and not just read about theoretical concepts. First, it provides frameworks for understanding both the shared characteristics of work in applied linguistics and the diversity of topics and analyses. Each chapt...

Usage-based linguistics posits that communicative functions, including pragmatics, are at the core of language (Tomasello, 1992). It is surprising, then, that pragmatics is rarely systematically included in second language curricula (e.g., Bardovi-Harlig, 2017), especially since pragmatics instruction has been shown to significantly contribute to p...

Language use, second-language development, and technology mediated human activity are complex processes situated in, and in some cases demonstrably interwoven with, specific material and social contexts. This study highlights the context embedded and context producing interactional practices of learning in the wild as participants in small groups n...

Applications of locative media (e.g., place‐based mobile augmented reality [AR]) are used in various educational content areas and have been shown to provide learners with valuable opportunities for investigation‐based learning, location‐situated social and collaborative interaction, and embodied experience of place (Squire, 2009; Thorne & Hellerma...

Instructed language education would benefit from greater integration with a variety of real world contexts and communities. Contributions to this volume propose approaches to pedagogically-mediated second language learning that link classroom activities with relevant social practices occurring outside of instructional settings.

To address the problem of limited opportunities for practicing second language speaking in interaction, especially delicate interactions requiring pragmatic competence, we describe computer simulations designed for the oral practice of extended pragmatic routines and report on the affordances of such simulations for learning pragmatically appropria...

Literacy, and particularly reading, is critical to success in schooling and full participation in contemporary societies. As one of the primary skills needed to develop proficiency in a language, the study of reading in additional languages has attracted significant research attention. Focusing on behaviourally visible and locally occasioned litera...

Language socialization researchers investigate language use and learning in informal and formal or instructed digital contexts, demonstrating the importance of understanding digitally mediated creative expression and language use as tools for identity development and management. They employ a variety of approaches that draw from applied linguistics...

Language socialization researchers investigate language use and learning in informal and formal or instructed digital contexts, demonstrating the importance of understanding digitally mediated creative expression and language use as tools for identity development and management. They employ a variety of approaches that draw from applied linguistics...

This chapter explores digital games and their relevance and usefulness to L2 learning and pedagogy for both researchers and educators. First, the chapter describes game genres and types and presents an overview of possible game experiences. It then discusses the familiar CALL metaphor of tool and tutor (e.g., Levy 1997), as well as the more recent...

This book focuses on learner-computer interactions (LCI) in second language learning environments drawing largely on sociocultural theories of language development. It brings together a rich and varied range of theoretical discussions and applications in order to illustrate the way in which LCI can enrich our comprehension of technology-mediated co...

In this article I revisit the cultures-of-use conceptual framework (Thorne, 2003) – that technologies, as forms and processes comprising human culture, mediate and assume variable meanings, values, and conventionalized functions for different communities. I trace the antecedent arc of investigation and serendipitous encounters that led to the 2003...

In this article I revisit the cultures-of-use conceptual framework-that technologies, as forms and processes comprising human culture, mediate and assume variable meanings, values, and conventionalized functions for different communities (Thorne, 2003). I trace the antecedent arc of investigation and serendipitous encounters that led to the 2003 pu...

In an effort to better understand the ways that small groups use digital technology as they move through a physical environment, this paper describes the methods used by groups of three people to maintain a group participation structure as they accomplish a quest-type task during mobile augmented reality game play. The game was available on one mob...

This research examines ‘virtual linguistic landscapes’ (Ivković and Lotherington 2009) visible in user-generated YouTube.com comment fields associated with video clips of the Eurovision Song Contest. We begin by discussing contemporary sociolinguistic approaches and terminology (e.g. multi-, pluri-, polylingualism) attuned to complex phenomena in s...

This chapter describes the history and continuing development of Vygtosky-inspired sociocultural theory (SCT) to expert-novice interaction in second and foreign language (L2) classroom settings. We describe the intellectual traditions out of which SCT emerged and the relation of SCT to other socially oriented methodologies and frameworks, such as e...

In an effort to better understand the ways that small groups use digital technology as they move through a physical environment, this paper describes the methods used by groups of three people to maintain a group participation structure as they accomplish a quest-type task during mobile augmented reality game play. The game was available on one mob...

This chapter explores how to identify research lines and paradigms in writing research by focusing on the issue of how to understand writing as an object of inquiry and how then to map writing research through multidimensional profiling. While noting the quite diverse lines of contemporary research on writing and text production, it suggests that a...

Este artículo describe tres propuestas pedagógicas orientadas a promover el aprendizaje de lenguas en la educación superior. También pretende discutir la importancia del aprendizaje continua de la primera lengua (L1) y lenguas extranjeras y/o adicionales (L2) para el éxito académico y profesional. Primero se describe un proyecto titulado Language-I...

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...

In light of the increasingly blurred line between mediated and nonmediated contexts for social, professional, and educational purposes, attention to the presence and use of innovative digital media is critical to the consideration of the future of computer-assisted language learning (CALL). This article reviews current trends in the use of mediated...

In this article we propose the pedagogical model bridging activities to address advanced foreign language proficiency in the context of existing and emerging internet communication and information tools and communities. The article begins by establishing the need for language and genre-focused activities at the advanced level that attend to the shi...

In this contribution it is argued that Dynamic Systems Theory (DST) can be seen as a comprehensive theory that can unify and make relevant a number of different 'middle level' theories on Second Language Acquisition (SLA) which in our view are theories that attend to different levels of granularity and different time scales, provided of course that...

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...

Multiplayer online games form complex semiotic ecologies that include game-generated texts, player-to-player communication and collaboration, and associated websites that support in-game play. This article describes an exploratory study of the massively multiplayer online game (MMO) World of Warcraft (WoW), with specific attention to its qualities...

Over much of the world, contemporary communicative practices are mediated by a wide range of digital technologies that support speech, image, video, and of course textual literacies. In dialectic tension with the rapid growth in digital information and communication media, Internet information and communication technologies have amplified conventio...

In dialectic tension with the immense growth in digital information and communication media, Internet information and communication technologies have amplified conventional communicative practices in the areas of breadth, impact, and speed and also have enabled the emergence of new communicative, cultural, and cognitive practices. These practices e...

Digital games are significant for language learning not only as potentially useful new tools within the confines of traditional foreign language contexts, but more importantly, as new semiotic and cultural environments that construct, and are constructed by, social practices. In this chapter, we explore multiuser games as ontologically new social p...

Instructed foreign language settings can, and often do, evoke trans-formative processes of discovery wherein participants exploring a foreign semiosphere expropriate new signifiers for their meanings and potential uses. This said, foreign language education, due to its isolation from organic contact with the focus language outside of the classroom...

To investigate maturational plasticity of fluid cognition systems, functional brain imaging was undertaken in healthy 8–19 year old participants while completing visuospatial relational reasoning problems similar to Raven’s matrices and current elementary grade math textbooks. Analyses revealed that visuospatial relational reasoning across this dev...

This article begins with an overview and problematization of the term COMMUNITY through a brief assessment of its history, diverse uses, core attributes, heterogeneous elements, and collocational companions. Following this, I describe demographics and processes associated with collective engagement in digitally mediated environments. Utilizing sele...

Examines the applicability of developmental neuroscience to the study of school readiness (SR). The chapter presents a specific approach that we have used in the study of SR that focuses on an aspect of cognitive development referred to as executive function (EF). It examines issues in the definition of EF, also referred to as fluid cognitive funct...

This article describes second language uses of Internet communication tools, Web environments, and online gaming, and critically reviews existing research and emerging technologies representing diverse pedagogical conditions in three distinct computer-mediated configurations: (1) instructed and institutional intraclass discussion and interclass par...