Copyright by Shilpa Parnami 2017 The Dissertation Committee for Shilpa Parnami certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Critical Sociocultural Perspectives on an Asynchronous Online Intercultural Exchange between Hindi and English Language Learners Committee: Carl S. Blyth, Supervisor Diane L. Schallert Elaine K. Horwitz Deborah K. Palmer Gautami H. Shah Critical Sociocultural Perspectives on an Asynchronous Online Intercultural Exchange between Hindi and English Language Learners by Shilpa Parnami, BA; MA; MA Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2017 Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to my father, Sh. Surendra Nath Parnami. The memories of your love, kindness, and laughter continue to nurture me. Acknowledgement This dissertation would not have been possible without the incredible support from so many people. First, I am extremely grateful to my advisor Dr. Carl Blyth for never losing faith in me, always encouraging me, and most of all, for believing in the value of my work. Your respect for my ideas and openness about sharing a part of your world has meant a lot to me. I am also very grateful to Dr. Diane Schallert for mentoring me and for always being so generous with her time and scholarship. The many hours that I sat rambling through half-cooked ideas in your office have profoundly shaped this dissertation. My deepest gratitude also to Dr. Elaine Horwitz for her excellent leadership, teaching, and warmth through these seven years of my graduate studies. I have been tremendously inspired by Dr. Deborah Palmer’s scholarship, and am very grateful to have her invaluable feedback on my research. A special thank you to you for introducing me to the enticing world of discourse analysis! My heartfelt thanks also to Prof. Gautami Shah for proving insightful inputs to my research and for always looking out for me as a senior colleague. I also wish to thank Dr. Veronica Sardegna for guiding me through the initial challenges of my graduate school life and for planting the seeds of this research. I owe many thanks to my colleagues and friends at the department of Asian Studies, especially to Dr. Jishnu Shankar and Dr. Rupert Snell, who gave me invaluable opportunities to work with them and learn so much about Hindi language teaching. I would also like to extend my gratitude to the Canvas support team at UT for their technological support in implementing the online exchange for this study. I also thank Alicia Zapata in the Foreign Language Education program for providing administrative support throughout my graduate degree. !v I owe enormous gratitude to all the students that I have worked with over the years, and especially to the students who participated in this study. Thank you for generously sharing your life experiences and academic work with me and giving me the opportunity to learn from you. I am deeply indebted to the students and my teacher- collaborator in India for volunteering to become a part of this study and for generously putting up with my often unreasonable demands on their time and attention. I am extremely grateful to all the friends and colleagues that I have met and worked with at different stages in my graduate school life. Your work has inspired me and your words of encouragement have made this long intellectual journey more enjoyable and less lonely. A special thank you to Devon Donohue-Bergeler for being my long-distance dissertation partner this last year and for helping with important paper work submission. I am also deeply grateful to all members of my extended family, my in-laws, and all my friends in India for their encouragement and loving support. I am blessed to have close friends who have welcomed me into their lives and have become my family away from home. Thank you to my friend and sister Aruna Kharod for always cheering me on with her warm and loving smiles and hugs. Thank you to my sister and confidant, Gabriela Rios. You are the only one who has lived every single moment of this long and challenging journey with me, and made me truly believe that I can do this and so much more in life. Your love and support means the world to me. Finally, I want to thank three people in my life who have not only contributed to the completion of this dissertation, but also shaped me in more ways than I can ever imagine or express—my mother, Shashi Parnami, my brother, Maneesh Taneja, and my husband, Siddhartha Narayanan. Maa, thank you for being an incredible source of !vi strength and love for me, even through some of the toughest times of your life. Thank you for making me believe in the value of hard-work and for pushing me to do my best in life. Bhaiya, you will always remain my first teacher and my coolest friend! Thank you for always being there for me and supporting my dreams and decisions. Siddhartha, I don’t have the words to thank you for your unwavering love, patience, generosity, and support. Thank you for always finding a way to make me laugh through my tears and for making my life so meaningful. !vii Critical Sociocultural Perspectives on an Asynchronous Online Intercultural Exchange between Hindi and English Language Learners Shilpa Parnami, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2017 Supervisor: Carl S. Blyth This study examines an asynchronous online intercultural exchange between seventeen Hindi language learners (HLLs) in the United States and eleven English language learners (ELLs) in India. Drawing on Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), the study conceptualizes this online exchange as a dynamic system and adopts a critical sociocultural approach to understand what constitutes the system and how it operates. The study also examines the different contradictions and outcomes that emerge within the system. Finally, the study looks closely at three HLLs’ experiences to understand how their discursive cultural identities shape their online interactions with the ELLs and their overall engagement with the discussion project. The study involved six weeks of online discussions between students from an intermediate-level Hindi language class at a large American university and a group of students learning English at a national university in India. The bilingual discussion forums were structured around thematic analysis of a mainstream Hindi (Bollywood) film called English-Vinglish, where participants discussed issues related to film studies, !viii gender-roles, and language ideology. Sources of data included the HLLs’ languacultural autobiographies, post-collaboration reflections, interviews, transcripts from the online discussions, researcher’s reflective journal, and transcripts from online and telephone communication with the ELLs and the teacher-collaborator in India. Qualitative analytical approaches like constant-comparison and triangulation inform the process of data analysis. In addition, theories and tools from Interactional Sociolinguistics (IS) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) provide an overarching critical lens to understand the complexities of the different processes and interactions operating within the system under study. Findings highlight the deeply contextual and layered nature of the online activity system, where each component of the system—subject, mediational tools, rules, community, division of labor, and object—plays an important role in how language, culture, and identity are perceived and constructed by the participants. Furthermore, analysis shows that technological, affective, and academic contradictions alter the dynamics of the system and limit participants’ opportunities for learning. Finally, case study analysis of the three HLLs reveal that their cultural identities are situated in diverse historical, political, and socioeconomic experiences, which allow them to negotiate interpersonal understanding with their interlocutors and make meaning of the text under discussion. !ix Table of Contents List of Tables .......................................................................................................xiii List of Figures ......................................................................................................xiv Chapter 1: Introduction ............................................................................................1 Chapter 2: Literature Review ................................................................................11 Theoretical Frameworks ...........................................................................11 Culture in FLE: Modernist Perspectives .......................................11 Culture in FLE: Postmodernist Perspectives .................................17 English in India: Postcolonial Perspectives ..................................21 Online Intercultural Exchanges .....................................................26 Analytical Framework: Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) .......32 Activity Systems Analysis Model by Engeström ..........................35 CHAT and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) ............................37 Chapter 3: Method ................................................................................................41 Research Questions ...................................................................................41 Research Design .........................................................................................41 Institutional