ABSTRACT
A cognitive-interactionist approach is grounded in a perspective that allows for the examination of learners’ performance and production separate from social factors and relationships. Although there are a number of theoretical perspectives regarding the role of interaction for Second Language Acquisition, this chapter focuses primarily on cognitive interactionist and usage-based perspectives, as it is in these approaches that the majority of interactional corpus research is grounded. A good example of how learner corpora are being used to explain the interaction-learning connection can be seen in developmental sequence work. Interactions between teachers and students demonstrated that teachers and students used abstract deictic gestures and metaphoric gestures as part of their interactions, emphasizing the importance of these as interactional resources. A large body of research grounded in the cognitive interactionist perspective has been concerned with how interaction impacts learners’ performance in oral and written contexts.
