The potentials of audiovisual dialogue for second language acquisition

The role of audiovisual dialogue in second language acquisition (SLA) has been mainly addressed from the point of view of L2 subtitled products, whereas considerably less attention has been paid to the kind of language input audiovisual dialogue offers viewers in terms of the untutored and incidental acquisition of a second or foreign language. Only recently has research been systematically carried out comparing AV dialogue to spontaneous conversation. Consequently little consideration has been given to features of the language of TV fiction and films that can promote spontaneous second language acquisition. The paper will draw on recent studies of the English spoken in fictional dialogue (Forchini 2009; Quaglio 2008, 2009; Rodríguez Martín 2009, 2010), focussing on both similarities and differences between spontaneous conversation and audiovisual dialogue. In particular, attention will be paid to those linguistic aspects that may be hypothesised to make AV input suitable and advantageous for untutored SLA.