Tactical-reflexive co-participation: constructing a landscape of intercultural exchanges and democratic dialogue in the foreign language classroom

Abstract

My intent in this paper is to discuss the possibility of redescribing aspects of the disciplinary regime still reigning over school settings worldwide in times of post-panoptic relations. I shall argue that reviewing both panoptism and the pedagogic practices it engenders calls for the reconstruction of naturalized patterns of classroom participation. In order to sustain this point of view and suggest a type of participation structure that may contribute to the rearticulation of recurrent classroom interactional practices, I resort to a set of conversations generated in a language school. The data, part of a four-semester long ethnographic research study involving learners of English as a foreign language, are approached in the light of a foucauldian perspective in association with the work of Schultz et al. (1982). The analysis shows that a new type of participation structure – termed tactical-reflexive co-participation – can be cooperatively operationalized in the classroom, constructing a landscape of intercultural exchanges and democratic dialogue.

Key words: panoptism, participation structure, tactical-reflexive co-participation, intercultural dialogue.