CLAIRE KRAMSCH:ECOLOGICAL FL EDUCATION 401 associated with the use of a given language.For example,in excerpt 2,the butcher and Don Francisco adopt a subject position that puts them at par with each other as they use the language of their common village in Yucatan.The subjective sense of power elicited by this common subject position is still visible in DFs self-assured demeanor when he turns around and switches to Spanish in line 3.In excerpt 6,the clerk's volubility in English indexes her with the something she cannot do with DF in S anish.In tha t sam line 108.AW's switch to Spanish aligns her emotionally with DE who may have felt affronted by the clerk's use of English. 4.2 Historicity,or understanding the cultural memories evoked by symbolic systems Throughout the data presented here,we have been confronted with cultural memories carried by words,gestures,body postures,scripts taken from a different timescale in a different place and reterritorialized in a Californian grocery store.We have noticed the timescale of Yucatan irrupting in the timescale of San Francisco,but there are other examples.During a visit to anothe cery AW and the clerk en acet hitpry of the Maya in Nexic the ceChinse in Vicmm ag unt of the (Kramsch Whiteside 2007).Neither the clerk nor the researcher were really teaching each other a history lesson;rather,each was lending weight to her words by performing ritualized utterances about the ancient nature of Maya and Chinese civilizations-an exchange of social symbolic】 ower that put both equal footing.The u ances in these unded form Pierr e Nora calls lie de mem realm archetypes of social memory (Nora 1997).Any utterance or turn-at-talk can become a lieu de mimoire,formed by the sedimented representations ofa people.Whether these representations are accurate or not,historically attested or only imagined,they are actually remembered by individual members and serve as valid historical models.As Blommaert (2005:131)writes [the synchronicity of discourse is an illusion that masks the densely lay e'.Indeec competence is the ability to perform and construct various 4.3 Performativity,or the capacity to perform and create altemative realities Within an ecological perspective of human excha anges,utterances not only perform some role or meaning,but they bring about that which they utter,i.e.,they are performatives. We have seen how the utterances of the protagonists in our data recreate environments from other scales of space and time,produce fractals of patterns from one timescale to another.Multilingual environments can elicit complex relationships between speech acts and their perlocutio onary effects.Take ignoring that his utterance'ssdticher(line 76)names the researcher as'the teacher',and by taking on herself the teacher role (line 80).In excerpt 5,she puts down his Spanish by embedding it in her English,'Maiana when you come I give you no esparol,solo English',then %eomig5gtmeg2y8oelnatScmei0m0Nov2018ti165552sbectotheCambndgecoreiemsofuseavalbet CLAIRE KRAMSCH: ECOLOGICAL FL EDUCATION 401 associated with the use of a given language. For example, in excerpt 2, the butcher and Don Francisco adopt a subject position that puts them at par with each other as they use the language of their common village in Yucatan. The subjective sense of power elicited by this common subject position is still visible in DF’s self-assured demeanor when he turns around and switches to Spanish in line 3. In excerpt 6, the clerk’s volubility in English indexes her evident pleasure at being able to position herself on equal conversational footing in English with the researcher, something she cannot do with DF in Spanish. In that same excerpt 6, line 108, AW’s switch to Spanish aligns her emotionally with DF, who may have felt affronted by the clerk’s use of English. 4.2 Historicity, or understanding the cultural memories evoked by symbolic systems Throughout the data presented here, we have been confronted with cultural memories carried by words, gestures, body postures, scripts taken from a different timescale in a different place and reterritorialized in a Californian grocery store. We have noticed the timescale of Yucatan irrupting in the timescale of San Francisco, but there are other examples. During a visit to another Vietnamese grocery, AW and the clerk engaged in a comparative account of the ancient history of the Maya in Mexico vs. the ancient history of the Chinese in Vietnam (Kramsch & Whiteside 2007). Neither the clerk nor the researcher were really teaching each other a history lesson; rather, each was lending weight to her words by performing ritualized utterances about the ancient nature of Maya and Chinese civilizations – an exchange of social symbolic power that put both parties on equal footing. The utterances in these exchanges sounded formulaic because they were what Pierre Nora calls lieux de m´emoire, realms or archetypes of social memory (Nora 1997). Any utterance or turn-at-talk can become a lieu de m´emoire, formed by the sedimented representations of a people. Whether these representations are accurate or not, historically attested or only imagined, they are actually remembered by individual members and serve as valid historical models. As Blommaert (2005: 131) writes, ‘[t]he synchronicity of discourse is an illusion that masks the densely layered historicity of discourse’. Indeed, symbolic competence is the ability to perform and construct various historicities in dialogue with others. 4.3 Performativity, or the capacity to perform and create alternative realities Within an ecological perspective of human exchanges, utterances not only perform some role or meaning, but they bring about that which they utter, i.e., they are performatives. We have seen how the utterances of the protagonists in our data recreate environments from other scales of space and time, produce fractals of patterns from one timescale to another. Multilingual environments can elicit complex relationships between speech acts and their perlocutionary effects. Take excerpt 4, for example. The clerk clearly devalues DF by ignoring that his utterance ‘eso es el ticher’ (line 76) names the researcher as ‘the teacher’, and by taking on herself the teacher role (line 80). In excerpt 5, she puts down his Spanish by embedding it in her English, ‘Manana ˜ when you come I give you no espanol ˜ , solo English’, then https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261444808005065 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Connecticut, on 01 Nov 2018 at 16:55:52, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at