Understanding Second Language Acquisition (2nd ed)

by Rod Ellis

  Miller and Kubota also pointed out the lack of clarity in the terms commonly used to discuss the role of social identity in L2 learning. They noted that despite the insistence on poststructuralist accounts of identity, there is still a tendency to view identity in terms of inscriptions such as ‘female’ or ‘Japanese’. Constructs such as ‘agency’ and ‘subjectivity’—central to theories of social identity—need to be elucidated more fully and grounded more closely in data drawn from the social interactions in which learners participate.

  Language socialization and L2 learning

  Language socialization is the practice by which novices in a community are socialized both into the forms of a language and—through language—into the values, behaviours, and practices of the community in which they live. It entails ‘socialization through the use of language and socialization to use language’ (Schieffelin and Ochs 1986: 163). Thus, in the process of learning to become a member of a community, learners learn the L2, and, conversely—through learning an L2—they become a member of the community that speaks it.

  Central to language socialization accounts of L2 learning is Lave and Wenger’s (1991) notion of a community of practice. This refers to specific social groups—for example, classroom L2 learners or insurance claim processors—that share a common set of practices related to a particular social domain—for example, a workplace or a classroom. Wenger (1998) proposed that a community of practice is characterized by (1) mutual engagement—i.e. through participation in a community, members establish norms and build collaborative relationships); (2) joint enterprise—i.e. members develop a shared understanding of what unites them); and (3) shared repertoire—i.e. members establish a common set of communal resources including ways of speaking). From this perspective, learning an L2 entails becoming a member of a community of practice. L2 learners entering such a community may at first be able to participate only in peripheral ways but, over time, they may become increasingly involved as they establish a shared repertoire of resources—including linguistic resources—and, a result an insider identity may evolve. From this perspective, social practice and learning—including language learning—are inseparable.

  Language socialization theory acknowledges that ‘practices come with ideologies’ (Zuengler and Cole 2005: 313). This is especially the case with immigrant or refugee populations where power and ideology play a major part in the discourses experienced by such learners. Language socialization, then, is not necessarily a smooth and seamless process as learners may demonstrate agency and contest being positioned as novices. In some communities of practice, what constitutes expertise is disputed and so-called experts are themselves socialized into accepting new norms. Thus, communities of practice should not be seen as fixed and stable, but as evolving dynamically as new members enter.

  Nevertheless, socialization research has primarily focused on how more capable members of a community assist those who are linguistically, communicatively, and culturally less capable to become legitimate members of the community. This assistance takes place through interaction and can be both explicit and implicit. Explicit socialization consists of prompts, directives, and corrections while implicit socialization takes place experientially when learners engage with more competent members as they perform the tasks that characterize the life of the community.

  Research on language socialization has blossomed in recent years—one of the clearest indications of the ‘social turn’ that has taken place in SLA. Much of this research has focused on macro aspects of language: for example, how learners are socialized into the practices of academic oral and written discourse communities (Duff 2010). Duff and Talmy (2011) acknowledged that in general research based on language socialization ‘pays more attention to the interactional and linguistic processes of socialization in real interactional time than to the systematic study of outcomes’ (p. 100, italics in original). In other words, researchers do not typically document how socialization into a community of practice results in the acquisition of specific linguistic forms. As Ortega (2009) pointed language socialization research focuses on ‘access’ and ‘participation’ rather than acquisition of the L2 code.

  However, some studies have paid attention to the L2 code. Duff and Kobayashi (2010) examined how Japanese international students in Canada, who were enrolled in a content-based course, learned to participate in a specific cultural practice—a group oral presentation in English about their experiences as volunteers with local organizations and with their classes on campus. The rich data collected for this study consisted of recordings of the interactions that took place and the participants’ self-reports and relevant documents (for example, class handouts). Duff and Kobayashi described the iterative, longitudinal nature of the socialization processes as these students were explicitly and implicitly inducted into the discursive practices leading up to the group presentation. Explicit socialization consisted of modelling by the teacher and by the students themselves. Implicit socialization was evident in the teachers’ and students scaffolding that supported the development of effective argument and also the choice of linguistic forms. As the students engaged with the project, they also internalized the institution’s ideology of collaborative learning. Duff and Kobayashi argued that the socialization process was both social and cognitive in nature: it involved both the development of social understandings and the negotiation of linguistic forms in what Swain called language-related episodes. However, unlike many of Swain’s studies (see the earlier section on Sociocultural SLA), this study provided no evidence of longer-term learning.

  Another study that sought to marry a broad scope account of socialization with a narrow, linguistic focus is Bongartz and Schneider’s (2003) study of two English-speaking brothers learning German in Germany. This study investigated two aspects of these boys’ socialization through the interactions they took part in with their German-speaking playmates: language play—for example, sound play, narratives, insults and ‘tough’ talk—and negotiation—for example, about what, when, and how to play. They examined the boys’ linguistic inventories by analysing their syntactic development—for example, sentence types and negation—and phrasal structure—for example, prepositions and determiners. They found that there were marked differences in the frequencies of the different tokens used by the two boys. For example, whereas the older brother used dependent clauses more frequently, the younger boy used imperative verbs more often. Bongartz and Schneider suggested that these differences were linked to the different patterns of socialization experienced by the two boys. Whereas the older boy interacted with his playmates through narratives, the younger boy interacted by attempting to initiate and control interactions. Bongartz and Schneider concluded that the ‘lexical and syntactic choices for both boys are directly related to their interactional practices’ (p. 32).

  A number of other socialization studies have focused on pragmatic aspects of the L2. Matsumura (2003), for example, compared a group of Japanese learners of English in Canada with a group in Japan in terms of their perceptions of status and their ability to give advice appropriately. Whereas the group in Japan only made modifications in how they gave advice for higherstatus addressees, the group in Canada showed a finer-grained awareness of status and were able to give advice accordingly. This study suggests that these learners’ perception of status and advice-giving went hand in hand and that the opportunity to interact with and become socialized into a target-language community led to their L2 use becoming more pragmatically target-like.

  Final comments

  Duff and Talmy (2011) concluded their review of the L2 socialization approach by claiming that it ‘holds tremendous promise’ for elucidating ‘the complex phenomenon that is typically referred to as L2 learning’ (p. 111). This claim is to some extent justified. A major strength of many of the studies is the richness of the data collected. Duff and Kobayashi’s (2010) study, for example, combined self-report and observation which allowed both an emic account of social events and
the detailed analysis of actual interactions involving the learners. L2 socialization research acknowledges that L2 learning is both social/cultural and cognitive in nature and, thus, can justifiably be considered sociocognitive in orientation. However, the cognitive aspect of learning remains under-theorized as a result of the focus on participation and access. In this respect, it has much in common with a number of other approaches in the ‘social turn’ in SLA.

  Conclusion

  The importance of social factors in SLA has been recognized from early days. Both Schumann’s Acculturation Model and Gardner’s Socio-educational Model acknowledged that that the social context influences how successful learners are in acquiring an L2. However, these theories are structuralist in orientation: they view social factors as determining the conditions of learning and the effort that individual learners make to learn. They were investigated using a quantitative methodology that involved correlating measures of various social factors with measures of learning outcomes. These theories are entirely compatible with the interactionist-cognitive theories we considered in Chapter 7. They simply articulate how social factors affect learners’ access to input and their motivation to attend to it. Implicitly, then, these theories acknowledge that acquisition is a mental phenomenon—something that takes place inside the minds of learners.

  It was this basic assumption that was challenged in the ‘social turn’ and the ‘alternative’ theories that belong to it. While there are notable differences in these theories, they all adopt an interactionist view of the social context. That is, while acknowledging that external factors do indeed determine the social context to some extent, they emphasize that contexts are always constructed by those who take part in them and that learners are able to influence how they are constructed. In so doing, they challenge one of the mainstays of cognitive theories, namely that there are relatively fixed, universal trajectories of learning (see Chapter 4). They rejected the prevailing view of the ‘language learner’ as an abstract input-processing machine and insisted on treating learners as individuals who act on the world in different ways and who consequently manifest different learning trajectories.

  There is considerable diversity in the research that has followed the ‘social turn’ but it is possible to identify a number of underlying premises:

  Above all, the social turn emphasizes the importance of investigating learners within their social context. It distinguishes different levels of context—the wider social context in which the learner lives, the context created as the interaction unfolds, and the remembered contexts of previous interactions. All the social turn theories emphasize the importance of providing detailed, process descriptions of the social context of learning.

  Social interaction is the site in which learning takes place. In sociocultural SLA, interaction is the primary means of mediating higher forms of learning. In sociocognitive theory, learning takes place when interaction achieves an alignment of the mind-body-world. In the conversation-analysis approach, conversation is where learning starts and where it is consolidated. In the social identity approach, interaction is a site of struggle as learners jockey for the right to be heard and to speak. In language socialization theory, learners are socialized into a community of practice through interaction and, in the process, learn language. Interaction, then, is not just a source of input but it is where learning takes place.

  Learners have agency and can dispute how they are positioned in an interaction. In many situations, learners will find themselves in an inequitable power relationship with their interlocutors as when, for example, they are positioned as a ‘language learner’ or an ‘immigrant’ and their other social identities ignored. However, they can challenge this by insisting on a social identity that redresses the power imbalance. Social identity theory claims that in so doing they create ‘learning opportunities’.

  All L2 learning is ‘situated’ and local. Learners learn discursive practices and the linguistic forms linked to them in the particular situation in which they experienced them. Language is tied to context and can only be modified or extended through experiencing the use of routines and linguistic forms in the same or new contexts. Above all, learning is seen as an ongoing process, not a productNOTE 7.

  Learners sometimes have ‘learning conversations’: they make language the topic of talk, often when they experience a problem in expressing themselves clearly. Swain’s term languaging best captures this important aspect of learning-through-interaction but we can find the same idea rooted in other social turn theories (for example, the conversation analytic approach and language socialization theory).

  Learning an L2 is not just a question of learning linguistic forms but of developing interactional competence. The development of interactional competence and the acquisition of linguistic forms are intertwined. An implication of this is that SLA researchers need to investigate the macro aspects of a language—for example, how to repair problems that arise in a conversation—as well as the micro aspects—i.e. how to express past time in the L2. This aspect of the ‘social turn’ is most clearly evident in the conversation-analytic approach and in language socialization theory but is, arguably, implicit in the other theories as well.

  L2 acquisition is not a process of adding a new language or a new identity. It involves the development of a hybrid language system and identity sometimes referred to as ‘third space’ where learners find themselves mediating between their languages and cultures in their interactions with different speakers. From this perspective, learners can no longer be seen as directed at acquiring the ‘target language’. Rather they develop a transnational identity and a ‘translingual competence’. This involves the ability to deploy linguistic forms drawn from more than one language in accordance with context in communication that, as likely as not, is with other learners rather than native speakers.

  Research in the ‘social turn’ calls for an emic approach that investigates how individual learners behave in specific social contexts and how they think about themselves in these contexts. It seeks an insider perspective through interviews and through the detailed analysis of the interactions that learners participate in. It contrasts with the etic approach characteristic of much of the research in the cognitive SLA paradigm, which utilizes objective measures of specific variables—both social and cognitive—with the aim of identifying cause-effect relationships.

  The social-turn has undoubtedly enriched our understanding of L2 acquisition by insisting on the need to consider the social and personal factors involved. As Block (2007) put it, the social turn has provided us with ‘a bigger toolkit’ (p. 90) for looking at both the micro/local level of how interactions take place and the exogenous factors (for example, individual learners’ biographies and their membership in different communities of practice) that both impact on the interactions learners participate in and are shaped by them.

  The weakness of much of the research in the social turn is its emphasis on learning-as-participation and its neglect of learning-as-change. It was this that led Long (1998) to assert that changes in the social setting have not been shown to have any effect on error types or developmental sequences. All too often, social-turn researchers have been content to show how the social context affords ‘learning opportunities’ or how so-claimed ‘new’ linguistic forms are brought into play through interaction. They have provided only limited evidence to show that these ‘learning opportunities’ actually result in the learning of language that is then available for subsequent use in the same and, more importantly, in different contexts.

  Central to any theory of L2 acquisition is the notion of ‘change’—in particular linguistic change. As Larsen-Freeman (2007) noted ‘any definition of learning must involve the transcendence of a particular time and space’ (p. 783). What is missing from much of the social turn research is any attempt to demonstrate that linguistic change has occurred, or even to conceptualize what this constitutes in L2 learning. In Ellis (2010) I argued that to demonstrate change i
t is necessary to show that:

  The learner could not perform x at time a—i.e. there is a ‘gap’ in the learner’s linguistic knowledge.

  The learner co-adapted x at time b—i.e. through participating in social interaction the learner is able to deploy x.

  The learner initiated x at time c in a similar context as in time b—i.e. partial internalization of x has taken place.

  The learner employed x at time d in a new context—i.e. full internalization has occurred and allowed for the transfer of learning.

  Here ‘x ‘refers to some micro or macro feature of language—for example, a specific lexical item, structural property, or discursive practice. Viewed in this way, change—and therefore acquisition—can occur at three different levels:

  Level 1 is where change originates in social activity—it is evident in participation.

  Level 2 is where the learner demonstrates the ability to initiate use of the newly learned feature in a similar context to that in which it first appeared.

  Level 3 occurs when the learner can initiate the use of the feature in an entirely different context.

  Thus, while these theories do address change in terms of the learners’ experiences of learning a language and their social identity, they have—in general—failed to document the incremental and continuous nature of change in the linguistic systems of the L2.

  Of the social theories we have considered in this chapter, only sociocultural theory addresses how linguistic change takes place by recognizing that L2 learning is a process involving progress from other-regulation to self-regulation. Markee’s learning tracking methodology also affords a means of showing how learning-as-participation can lead to learning-as-change. By and large, however, researchers drawing on these theoretical frameworks have been content to investigate Level 1 learning (i.e. learning-as-participation). Norton’s Social Identity Theory stops short of even that by limiting its application to a consideration of how ‘learning opportunities’ are created. The problem facing research in the social turn is how to provide evidence of Level 2 and 3 learning, given the insistence on examining only naturally-occurring social interactions and the attendant difficulty of obtaining data relating to the use of the same specific linguistic feature over time. Only sociocultural researchers have been prepared to supplement the qualitative data they obtain from the analysis of social interactions with pre- and post-test data that can more easily reveal learning-as-change. The insistence on a purely emic account of learning in much of the social turn research has definitely contributed much to our understanding of learners and the role of the social context, but it has resulted in research that has shed only limited light on actual learning.