Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Flirting with pronunciation teaching: I like the way you move there!

The scientific study of flirting may have something interesting to say to us in language teaching. In a follow up to a 2010 study, Hall and Xing of University of Kansas (Full citation below, summarized by ScienceDaily) identify "verbal and nonverbal correlates of flirting styles." Their conclusion was " . . . everybody does it differently. Because flirting is low-key and varied, we're often oblivious when people send us signals of romantic attraction." 

Everybody does it differently . . . Really? The 5 styles identified are: (A) physical, (B) traditional, (C) polite, (D) sincere and (E) playful. You can check out your own style by going to Hall's website, taking a questionnaire. Those even translate into styles of pronunciation teaching (or methodological bias), as well--with a bit of unpacking:
  • Styles A, Physical, and B, Traditional, probably fit. 
  • I read C, Polite,  as "cognitive" and empirical (Think and talk first; act second, if at all!)
  • D, Sincere,  as "affective-communicative" (Enough meaningful communication and time can cure most any problem. Or: Care a great deal, but do nothing!) 
  • Style E, Playful,  implies both fun activities in class and innovation (playing with paradigms). 
One reason that pronunciation teaching and flirting appear to have so much in common is that all conceptual frameworks dealing with styles can usually be characterized using the same two dimensions or axises: External (mind) vs Internal (body), and stability vs change. (See earlier post on that and its application to haptic pronunciation work in the visual field.) The five styles can be displayed something like this:



C. Polite
(External, mind-oriented)

B. Traditional
(Stability-oriented)
D. Sincere
(Nice, but static, nondescript)
E. Playful
(Change- oriented)

A. Physical
(Internal – body oriented)


Pick any three, the first one being your dominant style and locate yourself somewhere among them. Many of us are B-A-Es or C-E-As. I know a few B-C-Ds, as well, those who only occasionally "flirt" with pronunciation teaching!

 "Haptic A-C-E Style"

Part of what a psychological "style" does is determine your default response to the unexpected. A style can be established by any number of factors.  Our haptic pronunciation teaching style is definitely A-C-E!

How is yours working for you in class, responding to pronunciation problems that may pop up spontaneously? 
    Have begun (flirting with) categorizing pronunciation instructors, textbooks and methods using that framework. (My poor graduate student "guinea pigs" will bear the brunt of some of that exploratory work soon, in fact!) 

    Keep in touch!

    Full citation
    Jeffrey A. Hall, Chong Xing. The Verbal and Nonverbal Correlates of the Five Flirting Styles. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 2014; 39 (1): 41 DOI: 10.1007/s10919-014-0199-8

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