English language ability and discursive agency: the case of Canadian adult English language learners on facebook

ABSTRACT This study provides a suggestive reassessment of the extent to which levels of English language ability among adult English language learners impact their ability to get things done in talk and text as discourse in a Canadian context where English is the lingua franca. The data are drawn from a Facebook Group for linguistic minority parents who attend a beginner level adult ESL class. Interpreting the data from within a pragmatics-oriented framework informed by lexical priming, conversation analysis and discursive psychology, microanalysis of a twelve-turn discussion thread is conducted with a view to implications for Canadian citizenship. Findings highlight the capacity of migrants with lower thresholds of English language ability to get substantive discursive work done in English in Anglophone Canada. The study qualifies a prevailing narrative that migrants to English dominant societies are empowered by language ability in English. By focusing on what adult English language learners are able to do rather than on what they cannot say, an implied connection between thresholds of English language ability and discursive agency in English is interrupted. The study advances a vision of Canadian citizenship premised not on benchmarks of English language skills but rather on the actual deployment of rhetorical potential.