Second Language Learning and Language Teaching

‘Scripts’ and discourse
A crucial element in the understanding of discourse was given the name of ‘script’
by Roger Schank in the 1970s (Schank and Abelson, 1977). The concept of the
script came out of attempts to build computer programs that would understand
human languages. The problem was that the computer did not know obvious
things that human beings take for granted. Suppose a text reads, ‘Bill had some
hamburgers in a restaurant.’ Straightforward as this sentence seems, our under-
standing of it relies on several unconscious assumptions about restaurants. What
did Bill do with the hamburgers? He ate them, because that is what you go to
restaurants for. Did he cook the hamburgers? Of course he did not. Did he fetch
them himself? Probably not. Did Bill pay for them? Of course he did. In our minds
there is a script for restaurants that specifies that they are places where they pro-
vide you with food that you pay for. None of this information needs to be given
in the text as our minds supply it automatically. Only if the actual event does not
conform with our background knowledge for restaurants will it be mentioned – if
it is self-service, if they have run out of food, or if Bill sneaks out without paying

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his bill. The mind supplies such information automatically from the background
script in its memory. A script, then, according to Schank and Abelson (1977), is ‘a
predetermined, stereotyped sequence of actions that defines a well-known situa-
tion’. While in recent years Schank has developed his ideas beyond this, the script
has remained an influential view of how memory is organized.
Some scripts are virtually the same for speakers of different languages; others dif-
fer from one country to another. The script for eating out may require all restau-
rants to have waitress service, or to be takeaway, or to have cash desks by the exit,
or other variations. I remember once arguing that US hotels are not proper hotels
because they have large entrance lobbies rather than cosy lounge areas; my British
script for hotels implies lounges. Wherever there are such differences between two
scripts, the L2 learners will be at a loss. In an American novel, the hero visits
London and asks his friend at a pub ‘Have you settled up at the bar?’ – an unthink-
able concept in virtually all English pubs since each round is paid for at the time.
L2 learners unwittingly have different expectations and they have an unpleasant
shock when something turns out differently. A self-service restaurant that calls for
payment in advance by naming the dishes you want can be a trial for visitors to
Italy. Or indeed the script may be totally absent; I have no script for a Finnish
sauna. Many of the stereotyped problems of foreign travel that people recount
show conflicts between scripts – eating snakes, loos for mixed sexes, tipping taxi
drivers, asking if food tastes good, are all absent from the scripts in particular cul-
tures. An example can be found in the script for doctor/patient interaction
(Ranney, 1993): English-speaking patients expect to ask questions of the doctor,
Hmong patients do not; English speakers prefer to talk to the doctor informally,
Hmong speakers prefer to show respect. Similarly, Australian doctors are reported
to be unsympathetic towards ethnic minority women who scream in childbirth,
having different cultural scripts about the expression of pain.
An important aspect of discourse is how the background information contributed
by the script relates to the purposes of conversation. Say someone is attempting to
book a plane ticket in a travel agent’s. The participants have their own ideas of what
they expect to get out of the conversation; the travel agent needs to know what
information he needs to find out and how to ask the customer to supply it. There is
an expected framework of information necessary for the task of booking a ticket to
be accomplished. The customer has to supply bits of information to fit this frame-
work. Both participants are combining background knowledge of what goes on in a
travel agent’s with the specific goal of booking a ticket – almost a definition of task-
based teaching!