José Ignacio Aguilar
email: aquilario@gmail.com

Río Diltec

"L2 teachers' education qualitative research: the evolving interaction between the researcher and the data"

Keywords: data collection, data analysis, L2 teaching, methodology design, motivated actions, researcher's positioning, triangulation RESUMEN acciones motivadas, diseño de una metodología

whether they are published or not. The documents may come

L2 teachers' education qualitative research: the evolving interaction between the researcher and the data

INTRODUCTION

"As qualitative researchers, our goal is to see the world through someone else's eyes, using ourselves as a research instrument […]" (Dickson-Swift et al., 2009: 62).

So the paradox goes like this: the qualitative researchers' human condition is a catalyst for them to do social qualitative research. To a certain extent, this is a guarantee, but also a trap. If we "see the world through someone else's eyes" (ibid.), do we see what someone else sees, do we look in the direction that someone else usually does, do we borrow someone else's eyes -hopefully not -to see what we are used to seeing with our own, to look in the direction that we usually do? If we "[use] ourselves as a research instrument" (ibid.), do we put ourselves in someone else's place, do we make someone else's background, experiences, ideas and prejudices our own, in order to make sense out of things, or do we remove someone else from a particular position, so that we may place ourselves in that position, in order to make sense contingent on our own background, experiences, ideas and prejudices? In other words, whose point of view, whose experience, whose stances do we characterize, describe, explain, clarify, when we say that we "see the world through someone else's eyes, using ourselves as a research instrument" (ibid.)? Someone else's, ours, most people's...? Is it possible that qualitative researchers put their own subjective experience of reality aside in order to restore someone else's? Is it necessary, or appropriate? This article presents a methodological appraisal of my PhD qualitative research on foreign language1 (L2) teachers' conduct in classrooms. The aim of my research was to characterize L2 teaching as a specialized activity that concentrates a teacher's experience, habits, personal theories, principles [START_REF] Breen | Making Sense of Language Teaching: Teachers' Principles and Classroom Practices[END_REF], preferences, and technical know-how. L2 teachers mobilize these skills as they permanently co-construct the classroom context with the learners. This context is often said to be partly determined by an institutional agenda. Consequently, all classroom participants position themselves vis-à-vis the a priori institutional nature of the classroom [START_REF] Richards | Being the Teacher': Identity and Classroom Conversation[END_REF]. I do not deal here with the linguistic and pedagogical aspects of L2 teaching. My focus is on the collective endeavour -mine and the teachers' -to characterise teaching as a professional activity. In order to accomplish this I designed data-collection instruments than drew on ethnographic L2 classroom observation [START_REF] Cambra-Giné | Une approche ethnographique de la classe de langue[END_REF] and what [START_REF] Borg | Language teacher cognition[END_REF] describes as "teachers' cognition". I also consider my own response as a researcher to the unfolding complexity of my research object, as well as my stance on the data produced. Ultimately, the article illustrates how I moved from a positivist position to a more sceptical one. By "scepticism" I do not mean having doubts about the complexity of the research object I tried to account for, or about its validity. My "scepticism" addresses my own ability as a researcher to develop ways to fathom aspects of this complexity from data. Consequently, I appraise my methodological choices, and suggest alternative ways to collect and analyse data that may be appropriate for a collaborative, descriptive, ethnographic research.

BACKGROUND: MY PHD RESEARCH OBJECT

The L2 classroom has been described as an institutional context: its discourse is specialized, the participation rights are unequally distributed, the participants are expected to comply with a certain protocol as well as to orient to activities designed to facilitate a specific objectivenamely L2 learning [START_REF] Seedhouse | Conversation Analysis and language learning[END_REF]). Yet, not everything that is said or done within the L2 classroom is institutional or serves institutional goals [START_REF] Van Lier | The Classroom and the Language Learner[END_REF][START_REF] Richards | Being the Teacher': Identity and Classroom Conversation[END_REF]. The a priori institutional nature of the classroom context accounts neither for the complexity of the participants' identity, nor for their capacity to act this complexity out [START_REF] Mondada | L'accomplissement de l'« étrangéité » dans et par l'interaction : procédures de catégorisation des locuteurs[END_REF].

My PhD research analysed the L2 teachers' conduct in classroom. My experience as an L2 teacher certainly justifies my interest in this research object. As a language teacher I often asked myself by virtue of which intimate resources I came to construe "doing being a teacher" (Mondada, 1999: 27). I understand "conduct" as an ensemble of slippery constructs related with an individual's identity construction, development and characterisation [START_REF] Lahire | L'homme pluriel : Les ressorts de l'action[END_REF][START_REF] Marc | Psychologie de l'identité : Soi et le groupe[END_REF], as well as with the conduct choices that the participants to a social situation make. All participants' choices become visible as they deploy actions, which may be treated as (in)adequate by the rest of participants (Heritage, 2005: 200).

I consider identity to be a complex, dynamic, multiple construct that is partly defined by the individual's past experience and that may determine the individual's present capacities to participate in social organization. As for social organization, I distinguish between institutional and non-institutional contexts (Heritage, 2005b). The former may constrain the participants' capacities to co-organize society, insofar as their identity choices may be limited by activities usually associated with particular institutional contexts. This may define certain conducts, discourse-types or relations among participants as expected or legitimate, whereas others would be seen as unexpected or illegitimate. Ultimately, it is the participants' actual, observable, situated conduct that characterises the (non-)institutional nature of a given context (Schegloff, 1992: 116).

In my PhD research I tried to characterize the L2 classroom participants' stance on the L2 classroom context, how they collaboratively define appropriate and inappropriate, possible and impossible behaviour. I was particularly interested on L2 teachers. I attempted to determine whether the complex, dynamic multiple identity I assumed them to have, transpired in the a priori institutional L2 classroom context. In other words, I attempted to understand what the L2 classroom as a context, as well as what L2 teaching as an activity, meant for a group of seven L2 teachers. Thus, I positioned myself within the L2 teachers' cognition trend [START_REF] Borg | Language teacher cognition[END_REF], whose analysis of teaching as an activity goes beyond the mere characterisation of a set of organisational, pedagogical, technical skills [START_REF] Leinhardt | The cognitive skill of teaching[END_REF], as it seeks to take into account the L2 teachers' personal theories, beliefs [START_REF] Pajares | Teachers' Beliefs and Educational Research: Cleaning Up a Messy Construct[END_REF], attitude, and points of view.

Since I was interested in the participants' point of view, I adopted an emic, ethnographic and comprehensive approach [START_REF] Cambra-Giné | Une approche ethnographique de la classe de langue[END_REF][START_REF] Markee | Classroom Talks: An Introduction[END_REF]. In order to get a larger picture of what L2 teaching may have meant for the teachers I observed, I designed a data-collection protocol that comprised classroom observations and interviews with the teachers -the former systematically preceded the latter. I used this protocol in the four university contexts where I did my fieldwork: I observed three English teachers in Glasgow, Scotland, in April 2006;two French teachers in Paris, France, from November 2007to January 2008;and two Spanish teacher in Spain, the first in Malaga, in April 2008, and the second in Almeria, in October 2008. I had originally only planned semi-structured interviews (Juan, 1999: 121). Right before I started my French fieldwork I decided to incorporate recall interviews (Aguilar Río, 2011) into my data-collection protocol. The recall interviews were thenceforth systematically conducted upon completion of the classroom observation transcripts -classroom observation systematically preceded the interviews. The time gap between the observation/semistructured interview stage and the recall interview ranged from eleven months (Glasgow) to seven weeks (Almeria).

The incorporation of the recall interview into my data-collection protocol added up to the available sources designed to characterize teachers' conduct and motivated actions in L2 classrooms. Consequently, the complexity of an already complex research object increased. This came to modify my stance on the data produced. In effect, I set off from a positivist ambition (Cassell, 2005: 169), by virtue of which I expected to establish linear, causal relationships between the actions I observed and the principles teachers claimed to have. As the recall interviews were integrated as the third element in my data-collection protocol, I moved on to a position where my research object would have to be characterised by means of triangulation (Roulston, 2011: 79). Triangulation added up to the complexity of my research object, which made me understand the inadequacy of my earlier positivist ambition. Let me comment this transition in some depth.

POSITIVISM AND A PARADOXICAL DIALOGUE

The earliest draft of my data-collection protocol comprised two instruments -classroom observations and semi-structured interviews with teachers. I expected that the data generated from the classroom observations would allow me to characterize the observable actions deployed by the participants in the classroom, particularly the teachers'. For each teacher's observation a first set of data [START_REF] Baude | Corpus Oraux : Guide des bonnes pratiques[END_REF] was produced that contained a varying number of audio-recorded or filmed hours of L2 classroom interaction. I transcribed these data in the manner of conversation analysis [START_REF] Ten Have | Doing Conversational Analysis: A Practical Guide[END_REF][START_REF] Seedhouse | The Interactional Architecture of the Language Classroom: A Conversation Analysis Perspective[END_REF], which produced an analysis-friendly set of secondary data where verbal and non verbal interactive phenomena 2 were accounted for, as shown in the excerpt below 3 : This conversational analytic approach to data permitted to characterize how all classroom participants negotiated the interaction: topic selection, orientation to (dis)preferred actions and themes, turn-taking norms, possible actions and tone among participants. My analysis suggested different lines of conduct among teachers. Some teachers seemed at times to actively laugh at themselves and at particular classroom participants, which at times lead to episodes of laughter [START_REF] Bibliography Aguilar Río | Adult task-based and communicative L2 teaching and L2 teachers' search for complicity: R, a case study[END_REF], as the following excerpt suggests:

2

A transcript code can be found in the annexe section, at the end.

3

In order to overcome possible linguistic barriers, only excerpts taken from the Scottish fieldwork will be presented as examples. According to my classroom observations, laughter was a rare phenomenon for some of the observed teachers, whose actions seemed more focused on reflection about aspects of the L2 and its practice, rather than on developing a particular rapport with learners (Aguilar Río, 2010a).

I systematically conducted semi-structured interviews with the teachers after I had completed the classroom observations4 . I expected that the teachers' principles about teaching, as well as their personal theories would surface during the interview. Depending on the teachers' availability, the length of these interviews ranged between three hours, split in two sessions, and half an hour. All interviews were transcribed. Contrary to classroom transcripts, it was the content produced by teachers, rather than the form, that I was interested in. My approach to the analysis of interviews was thus content-based [START_REF] Bardin | L'analyse de contenu[END_REF] The second part addressed the teachers' own views on L2 teaching and learning, as well as the way(s) they thought about their rapport with learners. During this second part, I suggested five specific roles to the teachers, in order for them to decide whether these described adequately their teaching. The five suggested roles were "educator", "person", "acquaintance", "friend", and "counsellor". I chose these five roles; they somewhat represented the manner I chose to elicit among teachers an idea of teaching as a complex professional activity comprising different savoir-faire and savoir-être. In retrospect I think that asking teachers to come up with their own roles may have been more appropriate. The excerpt below is taken from the semi-structured interview with Candence; it illustrates the kind of exchange that generally took place between the teachers and myself during this second part:

Int.: Friend? C:

(breath intake) The, eh, I think, a teacher can become, a friend, I mean I, I, I've got many friends now who, who started out as my, eh, as my students, eh, and I think, perhaps, I would use the word friendly, I, I think the relationship that you can strike up with students is, they have to see that you are a friend an approachable person, and that in a sense is the first step towards becoming, a friend, (interviewer takes notes)

My original intention was to make these two sets of data converse -classroom transcripts and semi-structure interviews. Ultimately, I expected that some of the principles expressed by teachers during the interview may account for specific classroom actions that they displayed. My original plan was thus built upon a positivist stance to which I unwittingly adhered, and that went like this: the teachers' expressed principles would be at the origins of their observable classroom actions. The dialogue I intended to establish among the two sets of data soon proved paradoxical, if not simply impossible, for the causal relationship by means of which I intended to relate the principles and the actions mainly informed my subjective reading of two unique, non-related situations -the classroom and the semi-instructed interview -but not about any autonomous, self-sufficient truth.

During the semi-structured interviews, the teachers sometimes described their own practice in terms of how often they displayed (or failed to display) certain actions -the use of adverbs such as "often", "always" or "never" was thus frequent. Yet, how could I appraise the validity of such general arguments by comparing them with observable classroom actions that teachers had accomplished in situated classrooms contexts with no actual diachronic dimension or continuity? The truth is I could not. I could not make the data produced during the semi-structured interviews -whose context was ill-defined, insofar as it dealt with an abstract, continuous, large part of the teachers' lives -converse with the classroom observations transcripts -that presented teachers' situated, locally displayed actions, as a reaction to the learners' actions. In other words, it was not empirically appropriate that I use the teachers' generalizations and idealizations about their own teaching practice to account for local, situated, specific interactive actions (Mondada, 2009: 27), of which the teachers were but one of the co-authors -the rest of the participating learners being also responsible (and accountable) for how the classroom encounter finally came to be.

This first stage of my research project -that I have called "positivism" -brought about a twofold, discontinuous characterisation of what being an L2 teacher meant for seven L2 teachers. The first element, the conversation analysis-like approach, produced a fine picture of the complex and multiple conduct that the L2 teachers showed in front of the learners in the context of the L2 classroom. This conduct comprised the teachers' orientations to actions of an institutional nature -the teachers gave instructions, organised the communication with(in) the group, decided on the validity of the learners' L2 productions -but also their orientations to actions that seemed to momentarily suspend the operational institutional regime -some teachers legitimated laughter, self and other derision, or failed to do so, they questioned specific aspects of the learners' or their own savoir-être (Aguilar Río, 2009), or did not do so. The second element, the semi-structured interviews, produced a general, seemingly idealized, rather context-free reflection on being an L2 teacher, which was coconstructed by each one of the teachers and myself. During the semi-structured interviews, the teachers formulated their principles, defined their vision of L2 teaching, expressed their preferences and dislikes, and sometimes made reference to ill-specified episodes that they presented as exemplary of their teaching practice. Taken separately, these two sources contributed to creating a complex characterisation of what being an L2 teacher meant for each of the seven teachers -the two sources supported being added up, but not blended. In order to suggest a clearer relationship between the teachers' principles and their classroom actions -one that may allow to bring the actions and the principles closer -I decided to incorporate the recall interview as a third source of enquiry into my research protocol.

RECALL INTERVIEWS, COLLECTIVE CHARACTERISATION OF L2 TEACHING AND COMPLEXITY

Concerning the recall interview, Pomerantz5 (2005) affirms that video-recall may refresh the memory of those who participated in the situated interaction that is to be analysed -the participants may be reminded of what they thought or felt during the interaction. The commentaries that the participants may produce during the recall interview may point to zones in the original interaction that deserve a more accurate analysis. These commentaries may also serve to (in)validate some of the interpretations made by the analyst in the original interaction. For Pomerantz (ibid.: 113), the data produced during the recall interview must not prevail over the (conversation) analysis of the original interaction.

By incorporating the recall interview into my research protocol, I expected to bring forth aspects of the non-observable dimension of L2 teaching that may relate with some of the teachers' observable classroom actions. In effect, as a consequence of my alignment with the L2 teachers' cognition [START_REF] Borg | Language teacher cognition[END_REF], I understand L2 teaching as an activity partially originating from a plan -previous to the encounter with the learners in the classroom -but also from the L2 teachers' responses within the situated context of the L2 classroom. These situated responses may have a pedagogical basis, or a more emotional, idiosyncratic one.

The fact that the recall interviews were incorporated into a research protocol already in motion explains the gap with the classroom observation/semi-structured interview stage. The biggest time-gap -eleven months -corresponds to my Scottish fieldwork. As for my second Spanish fieldwork, I managed to shorten the gap to two months. For each recall interview I chose a number of classroom transcripts that I showed to the teachers as stimuli. This is, of course, a major bias that I have assumed elsewhere (Aguilar Río, 2010b: 212-214). The transcripts I selected showed actions performed by the L2 teachers that I perceived as instances of their observance of a classroom institutional conduct, or quite the opposite, as examples of a conduct where more personal, idiosyncratic elements surfaced.

At the beginning of each recall interview, I explained to the teacher how I would like us to proceed: I asked him/her that we read together the transcripts, and that we listen to or watch the corresponding primary set of data. I originally asked the teachers to play and stop the audio/video recordings whenever they felt like. Since the recordings had been stocked in my computer, and thus had to be reproduced with pieces of software with which none of the teachers was familiar, I had to take command, always following the teachers' indications. I explained to the teachers that I was interested in their own understanding of the classroom situations; I asked them to say aloud what they figured out to be the logics beneath the observable actions, but also to react to what they read/listened to or watched, to say what these stimuli made them feel, and, if possible, to state whether or not they had kept a vivid memory of any of the situations.

I perceived the outcome of the recall interview to be unequal among the teachers. Some teachers seemed to find it easy to recall the actions they saw themselves display in the transcripts, as well as to suggest principles, decisions and feelings that may have originated these actions. I found that other teachers did not seem to have kept such vivid memories of the classroom situations I showed to them. Some of the teachers' reactions and responses during the recall interview took the form of generalizations and peripheral commentariessuch as unexplained critical reactions, or surprise. In such cases, I considered the recall interview to have failed to serve as a means to negotiate the likely causal relationships between the teachers' observable actions and their feelings, principles or decisions at the time.

The teachers are not accountable for the inconclusiveness of a given recall interview. Being in a position where it becomes possible to recall past (re)actions, feelings and states of mind depends certainly on the interviewee's being able to access a more or less remote momentthat he or she tries to experience anew -but, more importantly, on the interviewer's ability to set the right conditions for the recall to be possible. The attempt to recall may lead to reconstructing -and thus transforming -the past event that the interviewer and the interviewee try to restore. The technical know-how and the material conditions required by the recall interview are not to be taken light-heartedly (Aguilar Río, 2011).

As I mentioned above, I decided to incorporate the recall interview into my research protocol in order to bring closer the observable actions that the teachers displayed in the classroom situation and the principles they expressed during the semi-structured interviews. In this sense, it helped to bring about situated aspects of the teachers' own complex knowledge and understanding of their teaching practice. Yet, by incorporating a further layer into the description of what being an L2 teacher may mean from the point of view of these seven L2 teachers, my task to cross-read the different sources of characterisation became even more complex.

TRIANGULATION AND SCEPTICISM

The three sources of enquiry I used produced three types of knowledge about the L2 teachers' teaching practice. The (conversation) analysis of the classrooms transcripts informed about the complexity of the situated actions that all participants -the teacher and the learnersdisplayed in the context of the L2 classroom. This analysis served to categorize the norms that all participants co-constructed, the goals, the attitude, the conduct and the behaviour that they treated as (im)possible and (in)adequate for such context. Concerning the L2 teachers, the (conversation) analysis of the classroom transcripts allowed me to clarify aspects of what each of them considered to be their "self-presentation" [START_REF] Goffman | The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life[END_REF] within the context of the L2 classroom. As for the semi-structured interviews, they informed about the complex knowledge that they affirmed to have in relation with their own teaching practice. Such knowledge comprised their experience as teachers, as well as their personal theoriespedagogical and other -about teaching, learning and rapport with learners within the classroom context -these theories partly originated from their education and training as L2 teachers, but also from the contact with other fellow teachers. Finally, the recall interviews allowed to articulate some of the teachers' observed actions and possible reasonspedagogical or other -that motivated these.

Put together, these three sources of information conformed an instance of research triangulation (Moran-Ellis et al. 2006: 47) intended to shed light on a complex object of study such as the characterisation of the seven L2 teachers' practice. Triangulation shed light on limited, scattered areas of my research object's fundamental complexity, but not quite on the likely relationships among these (ibid.: 51). Beyond the triangulation lingered my interpretive, subjective reading -which I sometimes co-constructed with some of the interviewees -of how (or whether) two elements of the triangulated outcome may be relate (ibid.: 55).

As an interpretative research method, triangulation allows that various sets of fundamentally different data be brought together, yet not quite added or integrated. This may in turn result in a larger, more precise depiction of the object that is being researched, which may account for the contradictions that are inherent to the interviewer and the interviewee who fuel the research process. According to Narcy-Combes ( 2005) the epistemologically responsible researcher must not ignore that his/her interpretative subjectivity may not be an appropriate, sufficient glue. The recall interviews with the interviewees may thus attenuate the researchers' subjectivity, in the sense that they may allow for the interviewee's subjectivity to participate in the interpretative research process, to align next to that of the researcher's. This is precisely the heart of the sceptical position where I stand today. The complexity of my research may partially correspond to my own subjective reading of it, to the subjective reading that the interviewee may make of it, to the contradictory alignment of the two, or even to all, or to none, of the above.

CONCLUSION

I set off to characterise seven L2 teachers' understanding of L2 teaching as a complex professional activity. I tried to account for both observable and non observable aspects of such activity, and to articulate both as motivated actions. I do not question that observable actions may be analysed in terms of their motives. However, these motives must be found within the context of the very actions that the researcher tries to analyse. The way that [START_REF] Filliettaz | Les formes « situées » de l'explicitation de l'action comme dévoilement des savoirs issus de la pratique : le cas des interactions en formation professionnelle initiale[END_REF] suggests in order to explore one participant's motivated actions seems interesting and promising. He analyses the classroom interactions between the trainers and the trainees in a technical professional college in Switzerland. Filliettaz stands on an ethnomethodological position insofar as he considers action as the result of a situated cognition co-negotiated by all participants in a given interaction (ibid.: 98) -be this institutional or not. What is particular to Filliettaz's approach is the analysis of what he refers to as "spontaneous instances of verbalized introspection" 6 (ibid.: 97) that some of the observed trainers addressed to the observer. According to Filliettaz, two sets of cognition may thus co-exist. The first one would originate from the institutional relationship between the observed trainers and the trainees. The second cognition would correspond to instances where one of the observed participants -a trainer -voluntarily addresses the researcher in order to justify his/her actions. According to Filliettaz, these "spontaneous instances of verbalized introspection" may grant the researcher partial access to one of the observed participants' motivated actions. However, he agrees that the epistemological validity of these "hybrid forms of introspection" 7 remains to be demonstrated (ibid.: 107-108).

The multiples way(s) that an L2 teacher "does being a teacher" (Mondada, 1999: 28) may change according to complex variables such the day, the time, an institutional plan, or the learners that are being taught 8 . Likewise, the multiples way(s) that and individual may think 6 "Formes spontanées d'explicitation" in original French.

7

"Formes hybrides de verbalisation de l'agir" in original French. These variables combine to produce (re)actions from all participants as they collaboratively co-construct the context where the encounter takes place.

about his/her "doing being a teacher" [START_REF] Mondada | L'accomplissement de l'« étrangéité » dans et par l'interaction : procédures de catégorisation des locuteurs[END_REF] may also change, according to the context, the time or the person to/with whom he/she attempts to characterize aspects of his/her own personal vision of teaching. I think today that for a research project as mine -the characterization of teaching as a complex, multiple, professional activity -it would be more epistemologically valid to analyse what "doing being a teacher" [START_REF] Mondada | L'accomplissement de l'« étrangéité » dans et par l'interaction : procédures de catégorisation des locuteurs[END_REF] means (as a professional activity) for a group of teachers in different contexts, as they co-construct local meaning with different interlocutors -not only teachers, but also interviewers -, rather than to collect different sources of data, at different times, in different contexts, in order to account for one single context -namely the classroom context where the encounter of the teacher and the learner takes place. This means taking into account the historical and geographical particularity of the situated contexts where the teachers' verbalized introspection has been produced in order to account for the complexity of teaching as a professional activity -that may be expressed or felt differently at different situated contexts, in front of different interlocutors. In the case of my research, this would entail treating the semi-structured and recall interviews as interactive events on their own, which bring about instances of verbalized introspection where teaching as a professional activity is depicted in a unique, particular, collaborative, interactive, and situated way by the interviewed teacher and the researcher. These instances of verbalized introspection will probably not relate to the way(s) that the same teachers materialized "doing being a teacher" [START_REF] Mondada | L'accomplissement de l'« étrangéité » dans et par l'interaction : procédures de catégorisation des locuteurs[END_REF] during the classroom observation stage. Yet, both sources of characterization may contribute to rendering a complex picture of what being an L2 teacher meant for the observed and interviewed teachers.

I opened this article quoting Dickson-Swift et al., who affirm that as qualitative researchers we use "ourselves as a research instrument" (ibid.). I think that "ourselves" refers to any researcher's uniqueness as a human being, to his/her standing on the world. The researcher cannot ignore this when doing research, simply because it makes part of who he/she is [START_REF] Devereux | De l'angoisse à la méthode dans les sciences du comportement[END_REF]. However, the qualitative researcher willing to restore the perspective of those he/she observes must find ways to take into account his/her own subjectivity -which allows him/her to experience the world -in order to integrate critically it within the research process, and thus to surpass it.

8

 8

I will make no sociolinguistic distinctions here between a second language and a foreign language. Suffice to say that all the teachers I observed taught their native language in their native countries to speakers of other languages.

The length of the observations was always negotiated ahead with the head of department in each institution.

Anita Pomerantz self-presents as a conversation analyst -http://www.albany.edu/~apom/research.html (website accessed the 10 of June 2011). Even though hardcore conversationalists refuse to study situated interaction by means other than the secondary data produced from the primary data[START_REF] Mondada | La production de l'intelligibilité de l'action : une approche multimodale des procédés de sélection des locuteurs dans les interactions en classe[END_REF] -i.e., the transcripts from the audio or video recordings -some conversationalists -at least one -seemingly accept to combine the analysis of transcripts and recall interviews.


Olivier Coquelin

GRATTAN'S PARLIAMENT (1782-1800): MYTH AND REALITY

By means of parliamentary and paramilitary agitation against commercial and political restrictions imposed on Ireland, the Irish patriotic movement led notably by Henry Grattan was to succeed in obtaining almost complete legislative autonomy in 1782, autonomy through which the Irish Parliament was henceforward commonly dubbed as "Grattan's Parliament".

Until at least the partition of Ireland the nationalist vulgate had praised Grattan's Parliament to the skies, ascribing to it notably the most brilliant economic outcomes that eventually deteriorated as a direct consequence of the passing of the Act of Union in 1800. This close connection established between political freedom and economic prosperity became, throughout the Union era, one of the ideological mainstays on which rested Irish Nationalism, whether constitutional or revolutionary-except for a few heterodox elements including a socialist current as epitomized by James Connolly. In other words, on the political emancipation of Ireland depended, according to many Irish nationalists, the settlement of all economic and social issues. Hence political struggles of whatever form which mainly focussed on the repeal or the reform of the Union so as to establish Irish self-government or independence, and restore a flourishing economy that had pervaded Ireland at the time of Grattan's Parliament.

However one may wonder whether there were no hagiographic elements in the idealization of Grattan's Parliament, and to what extent all this came close to being a myth used for ideological purposes. And while tackling the above issues the present article will not fail to explore the ideological nature and development of the Irish patriotic movement from its inception in the mid-eighteenth century to the advent of the Society of United Irishmen in the early 1790s.

Since its establishment in 1297, the Dublin Parliament had had the peculiarity of being essentially made up of landlords subservient to an executive power appointed by London. 1 From the mid-eighteenth century, however, a parliamentary opposition dared to emerge from obscurity under the leadership of Charles Lucas and Henry Flood. A small and socially heterogeneous group of eloquent orators,2 these Irish "patriots" of the Protestant faith joined forces so as to achieve the following objectives: strengthening both the legislative power of the Irish House of Commons and the judicial independence vis-à-vis the Royal authorities; reducing both the Irish government spending and the duration of parliament to seven years (instead of renewing it only at the end of a monarch's reign). But it was above all through the emergence of Henry Grattan on the political scene, in 1775, that this embryonic patriotic movement was to grow very rapidly. 3 A barrister and patriotic aristocrat, born in 1746, Henry Grattan actually took advantage of the American War of Independence to tailor his cause into a more radical scheme. Indeed, the revolts of the American colonies had led England to withdraw most of her regular troops from Ireland. And in order to protect the Irish coast against a possible French invasion, the British government gave consent, in 1778, to the creation of 1 During the first half of the eighteenth century, all the members of the Irish Parliament belonged to the established church of Ireland, although the Anglican community then accounted for approximately one third of the Protestant population and for one eleventh of the total population of Ireland. Moreover, only less than one fifth of the membership of the House of Commons was elected by the wealthiest Protestant eligible voters. As for the other seats, they were either owned or controlled by peers or the English government. It was therefore a corrupt and unrepresentative Parliament to say the least. However, it is also important to point out that Ireland, together with England, Iceland and Sicily, was at that time the only country in the world which had had parliamentary institutions since the thirteenth century. See Emil Strauss, Irish Nationalism and British Democracy (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1975), 56; David Dickson, "Henry Flood (1732-91) and the Eighteenth Century Irish Patriots", in Worsted in the Game: Losers in Irish History ed. Ciaran Brady, 99 (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 1989); André Guillaume, L'Irlande, une ou deux nations ? (Paris: PUF, 1987), 29; W. E. Vaughan and A.J. Fitzpatrick, eds., Irish Historical Statistics: Population, 1821-1971 (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1978), 2. paramilitary groups known as the Volunteers. In a short period of time, the new militia was to prosper among the Protestants of every persuasion and of all social classes, comprising up to around 100,000 members by 1781. 4 Even the Catholics lent their support to the new organization, although not authorized to bear arms by virtue of the penal laws. 5 Assigned to preside over the destinies of the opposition "party", Grattan-along with Flood and Lord Charlemont-then used the threat of armed force as embodied in the Volunteers to compel England to enact a certain number of reforms. From December 1779 to January 1780, the London Parliament, anxious to annihilate any inclination toward rebellion in Ireland, thus removed almost all the hindrances to trade. Afterwards, boosted by these early concessions, the Irish patriotic movement vehemently got into the field of political claims. As in the convention organized by the Volunteers in Dungannon (County Tyrone), in February 1782, where a certain number of resolutions were adopted, among which the following are illustrative of the ideological evolution of the Irish militia:

. . . That a claim of any body of men other than the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland to make laws to bind this Kingdom, is unconstitutional, illegal, and a grievance. . . . That the Powers exercised by the Privy Council . . . under pretence of the Law of Poynings, are unconstitutional and a grievance. . . . That as men and as Irishmen, as Christians, and as Protestants, we rejoice in the relaxation of the Penal Laws against our Roman Catholic fellow subjects, and we conceive the measure to be fraught with the happiest consequences to the union and prosperity of the inhabitants of Ireland. 6 In addition to the legislative autonomy, the Protestant patriots now declared themselves in favour of a relative emancipation of Catholics, most probably in return for their support felt to be necessary.

Throughout Ireland, all the Volunteer companies followed the example of the Dungannon convention, thus adopting the same resolutions. This crisis situation forced the Irish House of Commons into meeting in extraordinary session, on 16 April 1782; and this, "to consider Irish grievances." 7 And unanimously did the Irish representatives sanction the Declaration of the Rights of Ireland, as drawn up by Grattan. A declaration which defined the fundamental liberties of the Irish Parliament and subjects vis-à-vis London, in the ideological wake of the Dungannon resolutions embraced by the Volunteers. 8 Strongly weakened by their routed armies in America, the British authorities preferred to avoid any new conflict and, consequently, took, in May 1782, the measures that were a priori dictated by common sense: the repeal of the Declaratory Act and the amendment of the Poynings' Law. 9 Thus came into being what was commonly called "Grattan's Parliament", theoretically liberated from English control. 10 A Grattan's Parliament eulogized to such an extent that, once abolished in 1800, following the failure of the 1798 Rebellion orchestrated by the United Irishmen, a nostalgic spirit in relation to it was henceforward to pervade ideologically most Irish nationalist circles, whether constitutionalist or revolutionary, at least during the Union period. Such a phenomenon was essentially the result of the economic prosperity experienced by Ireland in the late eighteenth century, and attributed to the legislative autonomy as enjoyed in the era of Grattan's Parliament. Hence the numerous laudatory speeches, statements and articles released in this connection. One significant example, among many others, comes from the official organ of Arthur Griffith's Sinn Féin-also called Sinn Féinwhich, on 16 December 1911, could read on that issue as follows:

Grattan's Parliament was able to revive and stimulate Irish trade and commerce to a degree of prosperity which it had not enjoyed for centuries, 7 Quoted in Jackson,110. 8 It was also during his speech that Grattan is said to have uttered words that were to prevail in the annals of Irish history: "Spirit of Swift, spirit of Molyneux, your genius has prevailed; Ireland is now a nation". However, Robert Mahony points out that these words were not delivered in 1782 but first appeared in an edition of Grattan's speeches, published after his demise in 1820. See Robert Mahony, "Jonathan Swift as the 'Patriot Dean'", History Ireland (1995): 25. 9 The 1720 Declaratory Act declared the right of the London Parliament to legislate for Ireland, whereas the 1495 Poynings' Law provided that the king's Privy Council must give previous assent to the introduction of any specific legislation in the Irish Parliament. But while, in accordance with the 1782 reform, the Privy Council could no longer legislate for Ireland or amend Irish laws, the monarch could still use his veto. See D. George Boyce, Nationalism in Ireland (London: Routledge, 1995), 113; Jackson, 111-112. 10 Boyce, 112-113;Jackson, 110;Carty, 163-167;Curtis, 5;Lozes, 137;J.G. Simms, Colonial Nationalism, 1698-1776(Cork: The Mercier Press, 1976), 74-76. because Grattan's Parliament was the sole fiscal authority in Ireland . . . . Grattan's Parliament found Ireland a sheep-farm and a cattle-ranch, importing the bread it ate, and in a few years it transformed Ireland into a tillage country, feeding on its own corn and exporting the surplus. Foster's Corn Laws founded on the system of bounties worked the transformation . . . . Grattan's Parliament in five years turned Ireland into a large exporter of manufactured goods under the Irish flag in a home-owned mercantile marine. This was possible because Grattan's Parliament controlled the Customs. In the less than 20 years existence Grattan's Parliament converted Ireland from a pasturage to tillage, revived her greatness as a manufacturing nation, made her fisheries amongst the richest in the world, equipped herself with a mercantile marine and secured recognition in every part of Europe for the mercantile flag of Ireland. 11 But while the Irish economy indisputably experienced a relatively long period of expansion in the latter part of the eighteenth century, to what extent did this prosperity really originate with the establishment an autonomous parliament in Dublin? In this respect, some analyses reveal that the economic prosperity of the time would be actually due not to Irish legislators, supposedly free from hindrance, but to the interaction of external factors. Thus, as regards the linen industry, it clearly appears that the end of the American War of Independence constituted the real driving force behind its expansion period between 1783 and 1795. Indeed, all through the conflict, Ulster's linen industry had greatly suffered from the lack of trade regulation. Once the sovereignty of the American colonies was recognized in 1783, the Belfast and Newry textile merchants, independently of the Dublin Parliament, gave a new impetus to the linen production, notably by ignoring the restrictions imposed by the Irish government. 12 As the key element of the country's economic fabric, agriculture was not spared from this phenomenon either. So, was attributed to the miraculous effects of the Foster's Corn Law of 1784-designed to favour corn exports through subsidies-the transformation of Ireland, in Sinn Féin's words, "into a tillage country, feeding on its own corn and exporting the surplus." 13 Whereas, in fact, Ireland had initiated an agrarian transformation process long before the enactment of the Forter's Law: that is in the 1760s when, not having sufficient resources anymore to meet her population's food needs, England had had no choice but to import a high proportion of her cereals. In other words, the Irish legislation was merely continuing a process begun about two decades earlier. 14 Against the official hagiography, James Connolly was one of the few theoreticians who did not ascribe a political dimension to the economic performance of the late eighteenth century. Far from exerting a profound influence over the Irish economy, according to Connolly, Grattan's Parliament would have therefore wrongfully occupied a place of honour in Irish collective memory, in lieu of the real architect of the economic growth, that is the Industrial Revolution, as he writes in his 1910 Labour in Irish History:

. . . we must emphatically deny that such prosperity was in any but an infinitesimal degree produced by Parliament . . . . The sudden advance of trade in the period in question was almost solely due to the introduction of mechanical power, and the consequent cheapening of manufactured goods. It was the era of the Industrial Revolution when the domestic industries we had inherited from the Middle Ages were finally replaced by the factory system of modern times. 15 However, paradoxically, the latter historical analysis was to find little support from Connolly's own followers. While some of them described it as erroneous in regard to the Marxist orthodoxy, they above all criticized him for turning away from the nationalist propaganda, which warranted the struggle for the Repeal or the federal overhaul of the Anglo-Irish Union, notably by imputing to the latter the end of a period of wealth and prosperity resulting from the various measures enacted by the autonomous Irish parliament-the end of Irish prosperity which had actually happened before the passing of the Act of Union. 16 As a result, that the 1782 events had been referred to as a national revolution-notably by such a Marxist historian as T. A. Jackson-is hardly surprising. 17 But does this mean that, at that time, a wave of emancipation and democratisation had well and truly swept through Ireland? In the light of the facts, one is entitled to doubt it. Indeed, during the course of its existence, Grattan's Parliament was above all characterized by its refusal to change the existing order and established values. It could not therefore be regarded as revolutionary-at least if one refers to the concept of revolution understood as a complete rupture with an existing order of whatever nature (whether political, social, economic or moral etc.), "to bring about something altogether new", to quote Hannah Arendt. 18 Besides, long before Connolly, two other prominent figures in Irish nationalism had also had reservations as for the radical nature of the 1782 constitution. Won over to the idea of establishing an independent Irish state, James Fintan Lalor disparaged, as early as 1848, the supporters of a mere repeal of the Union for, to quote his own words: "Repeal in its vulgar meaning, I look on as utterly impracticable by any mode of action whatever, and the constitution of '82 as absurd, worthless, and worse than worseless . . . . If I am to stake life and fame it must be for something better and greater . . . ." 19 But, already in Grattan's day, Theobald Wolfe Tone had stigmatised with full knowledge of the facts, and not without a hint of irony, the alleged 1782 revolution. In this respect, he wrote in his 1791 pamphlet entitled, An Argument on Behalf of the Catholics of Ireland:

Who of the veteran enemies of the country lost his place or his pension? Who was called forth to station or office from the ranks of opposition? Not one. The power remained in the hands of our enemies, again to be exerted for our ruin, with this difference, that formerly we had our distress, our injuries, and our insults gratis at the hands of England; but now we pay very dearly to receive the same with aggravation, through the hands of Irishmen-yet this we boast of and call a Revolution! 20

As Wolfe Tone points out, the legislative autonomy gained in 1782 hardly modified the socio-political structures of the "Ancien Régime": the parliament remaining corrupt, unrepresentative, and subservient to the political demands of an executive appointed and controlled by the English government. 21 As for the patriotic opposition, it tended to adopt a moderate posture in the years following its "victory", henceforward renouncing the use of roundabout means to achieve its objectives. Only Henry Flood vainly strove to persuade the Irish parliament to pass an electoral yet 18 Hanna Arendt, On Revolution (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1973, orig. 1963), 21. 19 L. Fogarty, ed., James Fintan Lalor: Patriot and Political Essayist (1807-1849) (Dublin: The Talbot Press Limited, 1918), 56-57. 20 Thomas Bartlett, ed., Life of Theobald Wolfe Tone: Memoirs, Journals, and Political Writings, Compiled and Arranged by William T.W. Tone, 1826 (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 1998), 281. 21 Lee, 150-151; Lozes, 137; Curtis, 5; Clifford, 49-50; Boyce, 113. moderate reform,22 "presented at the point of the bayonet"23 -an electoral reform which had been drawn up in the Volunteer convention of November 1783. Consequently, considering the conclusive results obtained thanks to the pressure exerted by the paramilitary wing of the patriotic movement, by what considerations was this sudden strategic change motivated? For a better understanding of the parliamentary patriots' motives, it is necessary first to define the ideological nature of their political designs. Thus, in line with the English Whigs, Grattan and his followers felt it necessary to redress some of the deficiencies of the established order, so as to prevent it from being possibly overthrown: reforming in order not to transform but to conserve, such was in substance their motto, through which they could be described as "enlightened" or liberal conservatives, as opposed to the more reactionary character of Tory conservatism. 24 The most compelling proof is their willingness to abolish most of the Penal Laws provided, nevertheless, that the Protestant upper classes should maintain their supremacy over the institutions as a whole. 25 And because, under such specific circumstances, patriotism very often goes hand in hand with class interest, the reformist members of Parliament most probably dreaded seeing someday the Volunteers-although under aristocratic control-get involved in real subversive action, in the struggle against the insidious effects of the new constitution. In order to guard against this eventuality, they therefore opted to serve their cause in the strictly political realm-with the exception of Flood and a tiny number of his followers between 1783 and 1785-; and this as early as the end of 1782. As a result, left without strong leadership, somewhat disorganized and disillusioned, the Volunteers-who essentially came from middleclass backgrounds-26 were to decline rapidly thereafter. 27 However, in reaction to the moderating influence of the constitutional reformers on the Irish patriotic movement was formed a fringe group of dissident patriots both in Dublin and the north-east of the country. Known as the Society of United Irishmen from 1791 onwards, they became, throughout Ireland, the apostles of tenets inspired notably by the political thought of the Enlightenment. Yet, originally the new organisation did not wish to overstep the limits of a parliamentary reform. In fact, the only difference with the group led by Grattan rested on the means to be implemented to achieve it. As Jean Lozes puts it:

Grattan wished to use persuasion and the United Irishmen to engender fear, in order to lead the government to consent to a more democratic electoral system, so that the rest of their objectives, whether religious, commercial or political, might be achieved in the second stage (My translation). 28 But, the various coercive and repressive measures taken by the Dublin government against the United Irishmen eventually drove the latter to modify their political strategy and goal. Henceforth, they endeavoured to build interdenominational unity in Ireland on a revolutionary basis, with a view to establishing an independent and secular republic.

And it was actually through their willingness to overthrow the imperial order in defiance of the law, "to bring about something altogether new", that the United Irishmen could be regarded as genuine revolutionaries, as opposed to the legalist and reformist wing of the patriotic movement. Thus emerged, in the late eighteenth century, a divide inherent in Irish nationalism and characterized by a constitutional pole and a revolutionary pole, the direct descendants of which are embodied, to a certain extent, in present-day Northern Ireland by the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), on the one hand, and by a republican movement made up of the IRA and Sinn Féin, on the other. Two opposite tendencies, to be sure, as regards the means to be employed so as to reach just as much divergent goals, but which both used, at least all through the Union period, the same propaganda tool based on the myth of a Grattan's Parliament supposed to be the main architect of the wealth of late eighteenth-century Ireland. A myth which therefore largely contributed to justify the subservience of socio-economic issues to strictly political ideology and action, whether moderate or radical, intended to repeal or reform an Act of Union considered as an obstacle to Irish economic prosperity. This explains, to a large extent, that traditional political and ideological cleavages in Ireland since partition have been essentially based on constitutional, political, denominational and cultural antagonisms rather than on socio-economic differences as in the other western European nation-states.

Among the parliamentary "patriots" were lawyers, landed gentry, a small number of aristocrats, including the earl of Charlemont, and a former apothecary, Charles Lucas. SeeDickson, 99.

Ibid., 99; Jean Lozes, "Le 18 e siècle irlandais: avance ou recul du patriotisme et de la liberté?", Etudes Irlandaises, 15(1) (1990): 136; JeanGuiffan, La Question d'Irlande (Bruxelles: Editions Complexe, 1997), 19, 31.

Liz Curtis, The Cause of Ireland (Belfast: Beyond the Pale Publications, 1994), 4.

Ibid.; T.A.Jackson, Ireland Her Own (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1991, orig. 1947), 105-107; Lozes, 136.

Quoted in Jackson, 109-110; James Carty, Ireland: from the Flight of the Earls to Grattan's Parliament (1607-1782) (Dublin: C.J. Fallon Ltd, 1965), 170.

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J.J.Lee, "Grattan's Parliament", in The Irish Parliamentary Tradition, ed. Brian Farrell, 152 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1973).

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Lee,

152-153; Brendan Clifford, The Economics of Partition (Belfast: Athol Books, 1992), 51-52.15 JamesConnolly, Collected Works, Vol.1 (Dublin: New Books Publications, 1987), 56.16 Lee,[153][154] Clifford,[51][52][53][54] A national revolution which, in T.A. Jackson's work, answers to the name of "Grattan's Revolution". SeeJackson, 100, 110.

Flood proposed, in substance, to call a general election every three years, to extend the franchise to all ten-pound freeholders of the Protestant faith, to redraw borough boundaries-with a view to eradicating "rotten boroughs"-and to abolish the system of purchase and sale of certain parliamentary seats. See DavidDickson, 105; Jackson, 112; Lee, 154.

Quoted inJackson, 113.

In this respect, it must be noted that, contrary to the Whigs, the Tories were traditionally staunch supporters of the reigning monarch against the Parliament, of the established Church of England against the other denominations, and of the House of Lords against the House of Commons.

However, on the issue of the Catholic right to vote, two currents of opinion conflicted. On one side, although they favoured the extension of the franchise to

The rank and file members of the Volunteers were predominantly comprised of tenant farmers, artisans, traders and merchants. See Nancy J. Curtin, The United Irishmen: Popular Politics inUlster and Dublin, 1791-98 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 51; Curtis, 4.

Curtis, 5 ; Jackson, 113; Lozes, 137.

Lozes, 139. "Grattan souhaitait user de persuasion, les United Irishmen engendrer la crainte, afin d'amener le gouvernement à accepter un système électoral plus démocratique, de sorte que le restant de leurs objectifs, religieux, commerciaux et politiques, puisse se réaliser dans une deuxième étape".

the Protestant middle classes-who formed the backbone of the Volunteers-Flood and his supporters pronounced themselves against the involvement of the Catholics in Irish political life, for such involvement was deemed too threatening to the prerogatives enjoyed by the Anglican community. For Grattan and his followers, by contrast, only the landowners of every persuasion fulfilled the conditions to carry out public affairs activities without triggering drastic political and social upheaval. Finally, the Catholic forty-shilling freeholders were granted the right to vote in 1793 thanks to the Catholic Relief Act passed by the Irish Parliament at the English government's request. It is therefore the irony of history that the only genuine progressive reform ever adopted by Grattan's Parliament had its source not in Dublin but in London-not out of altruism but to curb the support of Catholics for the radical presbyterians. See Curtis, 5, 8; Lee, 154-155; Dickson, 106-107).