402 PLENARY SPEECHES calling him 'Jose'in line 85.The cartoon-like foreigner talk is not lost on the older lady and on DF himself who burst out laughing.But we understand that it was an insult and not iust a joke from its perlocutionary effect on AW.Her immediate overlapping resp ponse in English in line 88(No no I'n not teaching him Englishseeks to cancel th potential perlo effect of the insult by resignifying the ESL issue into a Spanish literacy issue (I'm not teaching him English.I'm teaching him to read and write in Spanish)-a symbolic move that reestablishes DF at par with the clerk:in the same manner as the clerk learned English, DF is now learning Spanish literacy.Such a move exploits the time lag,materialized here by the general laughter n,between the l y fo the clerk's derogatory utterance and its perlocutionary effect on DE and reconfigures the whole environment The actors in the Chinese grocery store are quick to adapt to the alternative configuration introduced by AW in line 88 and DF regains the symbolic space that was his at the onset of the exchange.Thus,a third aspect of symbolic competence is the capacity to use the various codes to create alternative realities and reframe the balance of symbolic power. 4.4 Reframing,or the ability to change the social context Finally the data highlight the im ortance of reframing powerful means of changing the contex ave jus st se ablished DF legitimacy by reframing the clerk's insult into an erroneous statement of fact,thus reframing her relationship with DF from an ESL teacher to a Spanish literacy maestra.This littl intervention also reframed the two different subject positions adopted by the Chinese clerk and the Maya customer.While for the Chinese clerk,legitimacy as an immigrant comes from having learned English,knowing how to count in English and the English alphabet,for DE, ey and rr Finydeny u macy comes from having me the tables as the Maya 'teacher'.His insistence that she will end up understanding Maya is less a statement about her than about him contesting and reframing the view that'fodo English au.Maya,he suggests,will be an increasing p rt of this world,as will Spanish. In sur symbolic could be defined a the ability to sha e the game in which one invests,i.e.,the ability to manipulate the conventional categories and societal norms of truthfulness,legitimacy,seriousness,and originality,and the ability to reframe human thought and action.We have seen that this kind of competence is multiply distributed and that it emerges through the interaction of multiple codes and their subjective resonances.It is true that symbolic competence is not reser ved to multilingual actors in but multiling ymboethu the potential for ereating utinle me encounters inc e the contact ace ings and the late modern stance offered by an ecological perspective,symbolic competence is both a semiotic competence (van Lier forthcoming),and an ability to actively manipulate and shape one's environment on multiple scales of time and space.Symbolic competence adds a qualitative metalayer toal the uss of anguage studied by that makes language variation,choice and style central to the language learning enterprise /2018at1655:52,5 ubjec o the La vailable a402 PLENARY SPEECHES calling him ‘Jose’ in line 85. The cartoon-like foreigner talk is not lost on the older lady and on DF himself, who burst out laughing. But we understand that it was an insult and not just a joke from its perlocutionary effect on AW. Her immediate overlapping response in English in line 88 (‘No no I’m not teaching him English’) seeks to cancel the potential perlocutionary effect of the insult by resignifying the ESL issue into a Spanish literacy issue (‘I’m not teaching him English. I’m teaching him to read and write in Spanish’) – a symbolic move that reestablishes DF at par with the clerk: in the same manner as the clerk learned English, DF is now learning Spanish literacy. Such a move exploits the time lag, materialized here by the general laughter in lines 81–87, between the illocutionary force of the clerk’s derogatory utterance and its perlocutionary effect on DF, and reconfigures the whole environment. The actors in the Chinese grocery store are quick to adapt to the alternative configuration introduced by AW in line 88 and DF regains the symbolic space that was his at the onset of the exchange. Thus, a third aspect of symbolic competence is the capacity to use the various codes to create alternative realities and reframe the balance of symbolic power. 4.4 Reframing, or the ability to change the social context Finally, the data highlight the importance of reframing as a powerful means of changing the context. We have just seen how, in excerpt 6, AW’s intervention reestablished DF’s legitimacy by reframing the clerk’s insult into an erroneous statement of fact, thus reframing her relationship with DF from an ESL teacher to a Spanish literacy maestra. This little intervention also reframed the two different subject positions adopted by the Chinese clerk and the Maya customer. While for the Chinese clerk, legitimacy as an immigrant comes from having learned English, knowing how to count in English and the English alphabet, for DF, legitimacy comes from having money and clout from the old country, and influence in the neighborhood, even though he is illiterate. Fifty lines later, lines 138–141, DF suddenly turns the tables as the Maya ‘teacher’. His insistence that she will end up understanding Maya is less a statement about her than about him contesting and reframing the view that ‘todo English aqu´ı’. Maya, he suggests, will be an increasing part of this world, as will Spanish. In sum, symbolic competence could be defined as the ability to shape the multilingual game in which one invests, i.e., the ability to manipulate the conventional categories and societal norms of truthfulness, legitimacy, seriousness, and originality, and the ability to reframe human thought and action. We have seen that this kind of competence is multiply distributed and that it emerges through the interaction of multiple codes and their subjective resonances. It is true that symbolic competence is not reserved to multilingual actors in multilingual encounters, but multilingual encounters increase the contact surfaces among symbolic systems and thus the potential for creating multiple meanings and identities. In the late modern stance offered by an ecological perspective, symbolic competence is both a semiotic competence (van Lier forthcoming), and an ability to actively manipulate and shape one’s environment on multiple scales of time and space. Symbolic competence adds a qualitative metalayer to all the uses of language studied by applied linguists, one that makes language variation, choice and style central to the language learning enterprise. 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