Languages for intercultural communication and education

participants, for example, in the following exchange between a child, Shlomit,
and an adult male friend of her family, Yoash, recorded and translated from
Hebrew by Blum-Kulka (2000: 232). Shlomit and Yoash are discussing the
child’s history teacher, whose husband is an acquaintance of Yoash.
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Intercultural Approaches to ELT
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Shlomit:
Does he talk a lot? She is a terrible talker.
Yoash:
He is a very educated man.
Shlomit:
She is completely dumb.
Yoash:
She is dumb?
Shlomit:
Excuse me, it’s being recorded.
Shlomit’s comment acknowledges that she is aware that this conversation
is also being directed at an outside ‘audience’, and her awareness of this
audience influences what can be said. The question of whether recordings
are made with or without the knowledge of participants is therefore
crucial. Eggins and Slade do not give many details about the means of data
collection, particularly the degree to which it was ‘covert’. In some of their
data direct mention is made of the recording apparatus, but it is unclear
under what conditions each recording was made. Certainly, over time, in
domestic situations, people may lose an awareness of being recorded;
however, with all recorded data there may be a sense in which one or more
participants is playing to the unseen audience. This changes the nature of
the interaction, as we have seen; however, it need not automatically dis-
qualify it as ‘artificial’. After all, some everyday conversations may be
partly conducted in the consciousness that other people are eavesdrop-
ping. Mediated and unmediated discourses are perhaps best seen as being
on a continuum, where awareness of a wider audience is high or low, and
the exchanges are more or less directed towards an immediate or remote
‘public’. Purely unmediated interactions are perhaps impossible to record,
at least ethically. However, it is important to remember that the nature of
the interaction changes depending on whether the interaction is directed
towards an immediate audience or a broader, ‘eavesdropping’ public.