Lingua Receptiva: Explicit Alignment in Estonian-Russian Communication

Lingua receptiva (LaRa) is a ‘mode of multilingual communication in which interactants employ a language and/or a language variety different from their partner’s and still understand each other without the help of any additional lingua franca’ (Rehbein, ten Thije and Verschik, 2012). Understanding in that case is established based on ‘passive’ knowledge of the interlocutors’ language. The current paper presents data on Estonian- and Russian-speaking interlocutors involved in the task-solving experiment via Skype who use their respective mother tongues. In studies on dialogues, psycholinguistic alignment is claimed to be fundamental to overall communicative success and automatic in monolingual communication (e.g., Pickering and Garrod, 2004). This paper compares studies on multilingual constellations and argues that in LaRa alignment is actively monitored by interlocutors and is thus also a process of establishing understanding. The study explores meta-linguistic devices that are considered as explicit alignment. These devices are especially important for achieving understanding in typologically distant languages as it is the case in Estonian-Russian interaction. The conclusion drawn from this pilot is that regardless of L2 proficiency, dyads of speakers and hearers in lingua receptiva are able to fulfill their task successfully, however, they differ in applying meta-linguistic devices.