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Ideologizing age in an era of superdiversity: A heritage language learner practice perspective
Abstract
SLA research on age in naturalistic contexts has examined learners' ultimate attainment, while instructed research has emphasized the rate of learning (Birdsong 2014. Dominance and age in bilingualism. Applied Linguistics 35(4). 374-392; Muñoz 2008. Symmetries and asymmetries of age effects in naturalistic and instructed L2 learning. Applied Linguistics 29(4). 578-596). However, both streams of research, which view age as a biological construct, have overlooked this construct through an ideological lens. To address this gap, and in keeping with Blommaert's (2005. Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) call to examine language ideologies and related ideologies in an era of superdiversity, our paper explores the ideology undergirding age-based research and examines it in conjunction with the practice-based approach to better understand the use of Burmese as a heritage language, a language characterized by a hierarchical and an age-determined honorific system. Drawing on data from a larger ethnographic study involving Burmese migrants in the US, analyses of the bilingual practice of address forms of generation 1.5 Burmese youth demonstrated that age was relationally constructed. While these youth strategically adopted 'traditional' linguistic practices ratified by Burmese adults when interacting with their parents, such practices were invoked and subverted in interactions involving their siblings and other Burmese adults less familiar to them. In focusing on the social and linguistic struggles encountered by these transnational multilingual youth, this paper also addresses the complexities surrounding heritage language learning.
... The practice-oriented research also encompasses an identity dimension besides the linguistic one. Research (Canagarajah 2006;Manosuthikit and De Costa 2016) has shown that language practices also create space for bi/multilingual speakers' identities because language practices concern how speakers selectively activate their linguistic resources to have an identity or dynamic positioning in various ways. ...
... In another study, Manosuthikit and De Costa (2016) examined how bilingual teens in a US urban city used the Burmese address terms such as aunty (aunt), U (uncle) and ko/ako (older brother). The study revealed the participants' tactical recourse to bilingual choices of the address terms within and beyond the constraints of the Burmese and American norms. ...
... Nevertheless, as we have seen, the younger generations (Manosuthikit and De Costa 2016) tend to have more situated and fluid views about bilingualism based mainly on linguistic pragmatism. For them, language is less of a concern for preservation but more as a tool for participating in the social world, signalling particular types of identities and belonging to more than one group. ...
This paper presents a critical review of three theoretical perspectives on language maintenance (LM) and language shift (LS) in minority language contexts. These three perspectives are (1) LS and subtractive bilingualism, (2) reversing LS and additive bilingualism, and (3) a critical perspective on bi/multilingualism. The review aims to demonstrate that much of the LM/LS literature as reflected in the first two perspectives (i.e., LS and subtractive bilingualism, and reversing LS and additive bilingualism) has been dominated by an essentialised view of language and its related concepts (i.e., identity and community) as whole, separate and autonomous entities within the bounds of nation-states. Such perspectives tend to reinforce a simplistic view of LM/LS as an all-or-nothing phenomenon and to advance its pessimistic outlook as language loss or language death. Hence, for a more fruitful framework, this paper presents a critical perspective on bi/multilingualism that draws on postmodern and poststructuralist theories (Heller 2007a, 2012; Makoni and Pennycook 2007; Pennycook 2010). By seeking to investigate bi/multilingual speakers’ local language ideologies and practices, this critical perspective enables not only a reconceptualisation of language, identity and community but also a more realistic and hopeful vision of bi/multilingualism in our pluralist, diverse, transnational and translocal world.
... Pragmatic socialization has been examined in seven studies with various heritage languages, including Korean (Lo, 2009;Park, 2008;Song, 2009), Spanish (Showstack, 2017), Persian (Atoofi, 2013), and Burmese (Manosuthikit & De Costa, 2016). Research methods and data were in line with those in ethnographic studies, adopting a qualitative, discourse-oriented approach and using natural interaction data collected at home or in schools. ...
... Learner agency is also evidenced by the bilingual creativity in heritage learners' pragmatic practices. Manosuthikit and De Costa (2016) illustrated the hybridity and fluidity of address forms used by Burmese heritage speakers in the U.S.A. when constructing an ideology of 'age.' In this study, heritage teenagers mixed different address terms and shifted between address terms to conform to Burmese norms of politeness, as well as to signal that they are young, casual, and friendly individuals who are familiar with older interlocutors. ...
Xiao-Desai, Y. (2019) Heritage learner pragmatics. In Taguchi, N. (Ed.) Handbook of SLA and Pragmatics (pp. 462-478). New York: Routledge
... Pragmatic socialization has been examined in seven studies with various heritage languages, including Korean (Lo, 2009;Park, 2008;Song, 2009), Spanish (Showstack, 2017), Persian (Atoofi, 2013), and Burmese (Manosuthikit & De Costa, 2016). Research methods and data were in line with those in ethnographic studies, adopting a qualitative, discourse-oriented approach and using natural interaction data collected at home or in schools. ...
... Learner agency is also evidenced by the bilingual creativity in heritage learners' pragmatic practices. Manosuthikit and De Costa (2016) illustrated the hybridity and fluidity of address forms used by Burmese heritage speakers in the U.S.A. when constructing an ideology of 'age.' In this study, heritage teenagers mixed different address terms and shifted between address terms to conform to Burmese norms of politeness, as well as to signal that they are young, casual, and friendly individuals who are familiar with older interlocutors. ...
Heritage learners, like heritage language scholarship, are byproducts of globalization. Most typically, they are early bilinguals whose language ability develops through a series of sociolinguistic events—contact with a home language and a societal language in early childhood, shift to societal language as the primary language at school, dominance in societal language by early adulthood, and sometimes, relearning of the home language during adulthood. Such a learning journey breaks the codified norms we usually hold for first language (L1), second language (L2), and native language, suggesting a fertile ground to study problems of language learning and use in social contexts – the central concern of pragmatics. Unfortunately, in the rapidly growing field of heritage language research, pragmatics has been rather neglected for a long time, with only a few studies addressing it peripherally.
... A second major shift in research emphasis in applied linguistics and sociolinguistics is the multilingual turn, first called for by Ortega (2010), which foregrounds "multilingualism, rather than monolingualism, as the new norm of applied linguistic and sociolinguistic analysis" (May, 2014). This shift has run parallel to the growing interest in the phenomenon of linguistic superdiversity resulting in a new sociolinguistics of globalization and mobility (see, for example, Blommaert, 2010Blommaert, , 2013Blommaert & Rampton, 2011;Creese & Blackledge, 2010;Wiley, 2014;Manosuthikit & De Costa, 2016). According to Blommaert (2010), in the age of globalization, it has become apparent "… that the mobility of people also involves the mobility of linguistic and sociolinguistic resources, that 'sedentary' or 'territorialized' patterns of language use are complemented by 'translocal' or 'deterritorialized' forms of language use, and that the combination of both often accounts for unexpected sociolinguistic effects" (pp. ...
... 108). A recent example of such research is an ethnographic study by Manosuthikit and De Costa (2016) which investigated the use of address forms among Burmese heritage language learners and found that the linguistic choices were "not automatic but contextually motivated, calculated, and purposeful" (p. 23). ...
This article expands upon a plenary presentation I delivered at the 2017 Arizona CALL Conference at Arizona State University. I will discuss some current perspectives in second language acquisition (SLA) which have implications for heritage language acquisition (HLA) and provide some examples from longitudinal data collected among heritage learners who participated in a collaborative program to share less commonly taught languages via videoconferencing among Yale, Columbia, and Cornell. Our findings indicate that many of the heritage language learners (HLLs) had complex multilingual backgrounds which affected both their sense of identity and their motivations for learning the heritage language. I will argue that a more dynamic model of HLA may provide a better understanding of how HLLs negotiate and construct their identities in a plurilingual world.
... The list begins with Blommaert's (2013) own study of linguistic landscapes that reliesas pointed out by Hinrichs (2015) on the very approach disparaged by the author: reifying languages as emic units, Blommaert counts the total number of languages on signs in Oud Berchem, yielding Dutch and French, plus 22 others. Other studies of superdiversity are equally permeated by references to languages and language varieties (e.g., Cadier & Mar-Molinero, 2014;Charalambous, Charalambous, & Zembylas, 2016;Creese & Blackledge, 2010;Goebel, 2015;Maly, 2016;McLaughlin, 2014;Spotti, 2013;Varis & Wang, 2011), lingua francas (e.g., Belling & de Bres, 2014;Jacquemet, 2015), code-switching and code-mixing (e.g., Belling & de Bres, 2014;Manosuthikit & De Costa, 2016;Swanwick, Wright & Salter, 2016), loan words (e.g., Jørgensen, Karrebaek, Madsen, & Møller, 2011) and heritage and second language speakers (e.g., Manosuthikit & De Costa, 2016;Rampton, 2016). This lack of engagement parallels migration studies, where Meissner's (2015) meta-analysis identified four strands: (1) studies that use superdiversity to recognize multidimensionality (39%); (2) studies that use it to refer to increased ethnic diversity (38%), (3) studies that use it as a catchphrase, without explaining why they use it (17%) and (4) studies that employ it in their empirical analysis (6%). ...
... The list begins with Blommaert's (2013) own study of linguistic landscapes that reliesas pointed out by Hinrichs (2015) on the very approach disparaged by the author: reifying languages as emic units, Blommaert counts the total number of languages on signs in Oud Berchem, yielding Dutch and French, plus 22 others. Other studies of superdiversity are equally permeated by references to languages and language varieties (e.g., Cadier & Mar-Molinero, 2014;Charalambous, Charalambous, & Zembylas, 2016;Creese & Blackledge, 2010;Goebel, 2015;Maly, 2016;McLaughlin, 2014;Spotti, 2013;Varis & Wang, 2011), lingua francas (e.g., Belling & de Bres, 2014;Jacquemet, 2015), code-switching and code-mixing (e.g., Belling & de Bres, 2014;Manosuthikit & De Costa, 2016;Swanwick, Wright & Salter, 2016), loan words (e.g., Jørgensen, Karrebaek, Madsen, & Møller, 2011) and heritage and second language speakers (e.g., Manosuthikit & De Costa, 2016;Rampton, 2016). This lack of engagement parallels migration studies, where Meissner's (2015) meta-analysis identified four strands: (1) studies that use superdiversity to recognize multidimensionality (39%); (2) studies that use it to refer to increased ethnic diversity (38%), (3) studies that use it as a catchphrase, without explaining why they use it (17%) and (4) studies that employ it in their empirical analysis (6%). ...
The purpose of this chapter is to articulate the reasons for my unease with the superdiversity paradigm and the academic branding trend it exemplifies. I will begin with an overview of processing features that differentiate slogans from academic terms and strategies that turn slogans into academic brands. Then, I will examine the meanings and functions of superdiversity, highlighting the referential indeterminacy of the term that renders it impervious to critique. I will end by looking at is use as a ‘hot’ brand name that adds market value and distinction to preexisting lines of research and promotes a new academic hierarchy and elite.
... When translanguaging occurs at the pragmatic level, language users do not necessarily shuttle between named languages but often mix, mesh, adapt, and integrate different or conflicting discursive practices or norms of behaviour deriving from their interconnected resources. For example, Burmese heritage speakers in the U.S. studied by Manosuthikit and De Costa (2016) combined hierarchical and age-based terms of address in Burmese with more egalitarian English address terms to reconcile the two conflicting ideologies associated with the two languages. The resulting behaviour may be a compromise between or beyond discrete languages and cultures in a unique, non-conventional, or critical manner, which may be negotiated through both or either of the named languages being used. ...
To support multilingual speakers in drawing on their hybrid resources effectively, language teachers must embrace their own translingual practices and become critically aware of their multiple identities (Zheng, 2017). Teachers of second language (L2) pragmatics can do this by enhancing their metapragmatic awareness (McConachy, 2018). In this chapter, we uncover how two language teachers and a teacher educator collaboratively construct this metapragmatic awareness and its application to pedagogy in and beyond a teacher development Summer Institute focused on L2 pragmatics offered remotely through a United States (U.S.) state university. Through narrative inquiry into the dialogic data collected following the Institute, we closely reflected on the Institute discussions to rediscover the translingual identities that permeated the pragmatic and pedagogical decisions the two teachers made in their translingual lives. As implications of this study, we explore ways in which language teachers can strategically deploy translingual identities as pedagogy.
(Contact "ishi0029 at gmail.com" for this paper for personal use.)
... Another population of increasing interest to identity researchers is heritage language learners (see Leeman, Rabin & Román-Mendoza 2011;Duff 2012;Kagan & Dillon 2012;He 2014;Manosuthikit & De Costa 2016;Maloney & De Costa 2017). Common in such research is a commitment to reclaim the local by venerating the languages spoken in students' home communities. ...
The growing interest in identity and language education over the past two decades,
coupled with increased interest in digital technology and transnationalism, has resulted
in a rich body of work that has informed language learning, teaching, and research. To keep abreast of these developments in identity research, the authors propose a series of research tasks arising from this changing landscape. To frame the discussion, they first examine how theories of identity have developed, and present a theoretical toolkit that might help scholars negotiate the fast evolving research area. In the second section, they present three broad and interrelated research questions relevant to identity in language learning and teaching, and describe nine research tasks that arise from the questions outlined. In the final section, they provide readers with a methodology toolkit to help carry out the research tasks discussed in the second section. By framing the nine proposed research tasks in relation to current theoretical and methodological developments, they provide a contemporary guide to research on identity in language learning and teaching. In doing so, the authors hope to contribute to a trajectory of vibrant and productive research in language education and applied linguistics.
... Another population of increasing interest to identity researchers is heritage language learners (see Leeman, Rabin & Román-Mendoza 2011;Duff 2012;Kagan & Dillon 2012;He 2014;Manosuthikit & De Costa 2016;Maloney & De Costa 2017). Common in such research is a commitment to reclaim the local by venerating the languages spoken in students' home communities. ...
The growing interest in identity and language education over the past two decades, coupled with increased interest in digital technology and transnationalism, has resulted in a rich body of work that has informed language learning, teaching, and research. To keep abreast of these developments in identity research, the authors propose a series of research tasks arising from this changing landscape. To frame the discussion, they first examine how theories of identity have developed, and present a theoretical toolkit that might help scholars negotiate the fast evolving research area. In the second section, they present three broad and interrelated research questions relevant to identity in language learning and teaching, and describe nine research tasks that arise from the questions outlined. In the final section, they provide readers with a methodology toolkit to help carry out the research tasks discussed in the second section. By framing the nine proposed research tasks in relation to current theoretical and methodological developments, they provide a contemporary guide to research on identity in language learning and teaching. In doing so, the authors hope to contribute to a trajectory of vibrant and productive research in language education and applied linguistics.
... Taking heed of the constellation of communities, discourses, and cultures that students traverse across and through, we argue that identities can no longer be considered static or indexical (Manosuthikit and De Costa, 2016). Rather, like Vertovec (2010) and Rampton et al. (2015), we highlight how identities are always already a facet of a post-multicultural superdiversity that promotes inclusiveness by recognizing the multiple affiliations and discourse communities individuals traverse, and of which they remain a part. ...
Locating itself broadly within the 'sociolinguistics of mobility' (Blommaert, 2014) and taking heed of Stornaiuolo and Hall's (2014) call to 'trace resonance' in writing and literacies research, this article works to trace academic literacies across the emerging 'literacy sponsorscapes'
(Wargo, 2016a) of contemporary culture. Despite its variance and recent resurgence (Lillis and Scott, 2007), academic literacies continues to be reduced to: (1) an instrumentalist and pragmatic pedagogy, and (2) the ability to navigate academic conventions and practices of higher education
(Lea and Street, 1998), in particular the writing classroom (Castelló and Donahue, 2012). This centred focus, however, is limiting, and silences the more innocuous and less tangible sponsors of academic literacies: mobilities , ideologies, identities , and technologies .
Set against the backdrop of globalization, and grounded in two case studies, this article considers how academic literacies are not an 'and' but an 'elsewhere', thereby emphasizing the importance of sociolinguistic space in academic literacy development. In it, we chart new directions for
scholarship and underscore how ideologies shift with mobilities (Pennycook, 2008; Pennycook, 2012), are indexed by identities (De Costa and Norton, 2016; Hawkins, 2005), and extend through technologies (Lam, 2009; Rymes, 2012). By outlining a literacy sponsorscapes framework for studying
academic literacies, this article highlights the purchasing power of seeing academic literacies not solely as a field or set of practices, but rather as a locating mechanism for studying a range of hybridized repertoires that are shaped and constituted by the physical and social spaces that
contemporary youth inhabit.
Cambridge Core - Applied Linguistics - The Cambridge Handbook of Language Learning - edited by John W. Schwieter
The Cambridge Handbook of Language Learning - edited by John W. Schwieter June 2019
In the context of migration policies in Belgium in the 1990's, this book analyses the discourse of the 'tolerant' majority, as found in news reporting, policy statements, social-scientific research reports, anti-racism campaigns and training programs. The analysis reveals what the authors call a 'homogeneistic' ideology, fundamental non-acceptance of diversity.
Language is the primary semiotic tool for representing and negotiating social reality, and it is thus at the centre of social and political life. Among its myriad social and political functions is to position speakers relative to a wide variety of phenomena including co-present interlocutors, the activities in which speakers are engaged, and various dimensions of the wider world, including social identity categories and their relative value. To speak is thus to position oneself in the social world, i.e. to engage in identity practices (cf. Le Page and Tabouret-Keller 1985).
Some ten years ago, Ben Rampton (1997) wrote about ‘retuning’ applied linguistics, moving the field in the direction of more multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of language-related problems in the real world. In making such a suggestion, Rampton was following Del Hymes, who proposed a reformulation of sociolinguistics some 25 years earlier. Specifically, Hymes (1974a) argued for three changes to sociolinguistics. First, sociolinguists should study language as not only a linguistic phenomenon, but also a social one, examining social problems and language use in addition to the formal features of language. Second, sociolinguistic research should be socially realistic; that is, it should be based on data collected from existing speech communities. Third and finally, sociolinguistic research should be socially constituted, beginning with a discussion of how the social emerges out of a concern for function, before moving to explore how formal features of language are organized to serve the social.
This is the introductory chapter for an edited book of essays addressed to understanding and researching professional practice, with overall reference to a range of professional practice fields across Education and Health but arguably with wider implications. It outlines the conceptual territory to be explored in what constituted a then new research program, and introduces a number of key notions within research on professional education and what is described as practice theory and philosophy.
This chapter reviews existing work in practice theory and philosophy, seeking to relate it specifically to professional practice education. It is a philosophical and conceptual account. drawing on the work of Bourdieu and Schatzki, within a tradition that traces back to early Heidegger and late Wittgenstein. In discussing what has been called the 'primacy of practice' thesis, it argues for the continuing need for due consideration of representation within such an account, albeit reconceptualised.
Aims: Previous research on relative clause attachment has found that late Spanish–English bilinguals tend to parse both languages with a single strategy that is consistent with that of the language in which they are currently immersed. One recent investigation using an off-line measure has suggested that the same may not be true of early Spanish–English bilinguals, who did not show effects of greater exposure to English in the comprehension of ambiguous relative clauses (RCs). The present study sought to determine whether on-line RC attachment behavior in heritage Spanish was similarly unaffected by extensive exposure to English. Design: Forty-six monolinguals and 28 heritage speakers of Mexican Spanish participated in a self-paced reading experiment in which stimuli contained temporarily ambiguous relative clauses that were biased toward either high or low syntactic attachment.
Data and analysis: Analysis of variance by subject and by item was performed on reading time data and on responses to post-stimulus comprehension questions.
Findings: Statistical analyses revealed similar preferences for high attachment in Spanish among both monolinguals and heritage speakers.
Originality: These results suggest that Spanish heritage speakers, as early bilinguals, may be less affected by ongoing exposure to English than the late bilinguals tested in prior studies.
Significance: The outcome also suggests that, within Spanish as a heritage language, relative clause attachment may be unique compared to other aspects of sentence processing in that it shows little influence from English.
The present article examines the relationship between age and dominance in bilingual populations. Age in bilingualism is understood
as the point in development at which second language (L2) acquisition begins and as the chronological age of users of two
languages. Age of acquisition (AoA) is a factor in determining which of a bilingual’s two languages is dominant and to what
degree, and it, along with age of first language (L1) attrition, may be associated with shifts in dominance from the L1 to
the L2. In turn, dominance and chronological age, independently and in interaction with lexical frequency, predict performance
on naming tasks. The article also considers the relevance of critical-period accounts of the relationships of AoA and age
of L1 attrition to L2 dominance, and of usage-based and cognitive-aging accounts of the roles of age and dominance in naming.
Despite the frequent references to identity within the field of heritage language education, it is only in the past decade or so that scholars have begun to conduct empirical research on this topic. This article examines recent research on identity and heritage language education in the United States. The article begins with a discussion of the simultaneous development of heritage language education as a field and growth of interest in identity and language learning, followed by a critical examination of the terms “heritage language” and “heritage language education,” as well as of “heritage language learner” as an identity category. Next is a review of empirical studies conducted within the past 5 years, including survey-based research that considered identity in the exploration of students’ reasons for heritage language study, in addition to qualitative and ethnographic research that focused specifically on heritage language learners’ sense of themselves and their relationship to the heritage language, as well as on the ways that heritage language learner identities are constructed, indexed, and negotiated in classroom settings. The next section looks at recent research on pedagogical approaches designed to engage heritage language learners in critical considerations of language and identity. The article concludes with suggestions for future research.
A number of studies attest to the late language learner's ability to attain native-like outcomes in morphology and syntax,
with accent often the only linguistic hint of their non-native status. Nevertheless, some do end up sounding native-like despite
a late start. This article explores possible explanations for 'exceptional' outcomes in L2 phonology, specifically, whether
such learners' abilities are due to innate talent, a metacognitive learning approach, a certain social-psychological orientation,
or specific kinds of experience. Various learners profiles are compared, an argument is made for learner engagement and self-regulation,
and areas for future research are outlined.
Drawing on data from two restaurants in Sydney and Tokyo, this paper describes the ways in which linguistic resources, everyday tasks and social space are intertwined in terms of metrolingual multitasking. Rather than the demolinguistic enumeration of mappable multilingualism or the language-to-language or language-to-person focus of translingualism, metrolingualism focuses on everyday language practices and their relations to urban space. In order to capture the dynamism of the urban linguistic landscape, this paper explores this relationship between metrolingual multitasking – the ways in which linguistic resources, activities and urban space are bound together – and spatial repertoires – the linguistic resources available in a particular place – arguing that a focus on resources, repertoires, space, place and activity helps us understand how multilingualism from below operates in complex urban places.本稿は、言語資源、日常生活にまつわるタスク及び社会的空間が複雑に交錯する様子を、シドニーと東京のレストランで収集したデータを参照しながら、メトロリンガル・マルチタスキングの見地から論述する。メトロリンガリズムは、言語分布を地図に表示し言語を数量化するような多言語主義や、言葉同士もしくは言葉と人の関係のみに焦点をあてて言語使用を理解するトランスリンガリズムとは一線を画し、日常言語活動とその活動の都市との関係に注目する。本稿では、都市のダイナミックな言語景観をとらえるため、メトロリンガル・マルチタスキング(言語資源と活動と都市の結びつきの関わり方)と場のレパートリー(ある特定の場にある利用可能な言語資源)の関係を探る。このように、言語的資源、言語レパートリー、空間、場、そして活動に焦点を置くことにより、複合的な都市という場において、多言語使用が日常レベルでいかに機能しているかについて理解を深めることができると提唱する。[Japanese]
We examined how age of acquisition in Spanish heritage speakers and L2 learners interacts with implicitness vs. explicitness of tasks in gender processing of canonical and non-canonical ending nouns. Twenty-three Spanish native speakers, 29 heritage speakers, and 33 proficiency-matched L2 learners completed three on-line spoken word recognition experiments involving gender monitoring, grammaticality judgment, and word repetition. All three experimental tasks required participants to listen to grammatical and ungrammatical Spanish noun phrases (determiner–adjective–noun) but systematically varied the type of response required of them. The results of the Gender Monitoring Task (GMT) and the Grammaticality Judgment Task (GJT) revealed significant grammaticality effects for all groups in accuracy and speed, but in the Word Repetition Task (WRT), the native speakers and the heritage speakers showed a grammaticality effect, while the L2 learners did not. Noun canonicity greatly affected processing in the two experimental groups. We suggest that input frequency and reduced language use affect retrieval of non-canonical ending nouns from declarative memory in L2 learners and heritage speakers more so than in native speakers. Native-like processing of gender in the WRT by the heritage speakers is likely related to context of acquisition and particular experience with oral production.
This article addresses age-related attainment effects in second language acquisition, posing the question of whether such effects are to be explained in terms of a Critical Period with a predictable and abrupt offset point or in terms of the impact of a wider range of factors. It attempts to explore this question by focusing on four discussion points in the current debate: (i) the wide use of native-speaker behaviour as the key L2 attainment yardstick; (ii) the degree of compatibility of prevailing views regarding the notion of a critical period for L2 acquisition; (iii) the relative narrowness of much research in this area, where age of L2 onset is often regarded as the crucial if not the only critical variable; and (iv) insights relative to maturational constraints on language acquisition offered by recent brain research. The article concludes that a loosening of the association between ultimate L2 attainment research and Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) issues would shed more light on L2 attainment in terms both of the comprehensiveness and of the acuity of the insights which would result.
Although Firth and Wagner (1997) did not explicitly discuss the issue of identity in second language acquisition (SLA) research, their article was symptomatic of a general trend to open up SLA to social theory and sociological and sociolinguistic research, which in turn led some researchers to explore links between second language (L2) learning and identity. In this article, I discuss empirical research linking L2 learning and identity that has been published since Firth and Wagner. I begin with a discussion of the broadly poststructuralist approach to identity, which has become the approach of choice among researchers taking this line of enquiry. I then critically review key publications carried out in three distinct L2 learning contexts: naturalistic, foreign language, and study abroad. I conclude with some suggestions about future directions for identity-in-SLA research.
Drawing on the concept of language socialization, this study investigates ways in which parents and grandparents of three–generational Korean–American households socialize children into certain cultural values through the use of a particular linguistic feature in Korean: the verb suffix –ta. All six participating families had at least one child between the ages of two and four, spoke Korean as the mother tongue, and had at least one grandparent who regularly interacted with the child. Approximately 70 hours of family interactions were video–recorded and 202 utterances ending with –ta were examined. An analysis of the –ta utterances reveals that this linguistic marker is used mostly by Korean adults to compliment children's desirable behavior or accomplishments as well as to criticize their undesirable behavior. In addition, –ta is used by parents and grandparents to warn children of the consequences of their actions. Although the children were observed using –ta sometimes, their relatively restricted usage of this linguistic marker was confined to complimenting their own work rather than evaluating their parents' or grandparents' actions, thus reinforcing culturally asymmetrical power relationships between members of different generations in Korean–American families. This paper argues that learning the socially appropriate uses of linguistic markers in Korean such as –ta is made possible largely through sustained intergenerational interaction in informal family situations. The findings suggest the importance of intergenerational socialization in the transmission of heritage languages.
The volume explores how new millennium globalization mediates language learning and identity construction. It seeks to theorize how global flows are creating new identity options for language learners, and to consider the implications for language learning, teaching and use. To frame the chapters theoretically, the volume asserts that new identities are developing because of the increasingly interconnected set of global scapes which impact language learners' lives. Part 1 focuses on language learners in (trans)national contexts, exploring their identity formation when they shuttle between cultures and when they create new communities of fellow transnationals. Part 2 examines how learners come to develop intercultural selves as a consequence of experiencing global contact zones when they sojourn to new contexts for study and work. Part 3 investigates how learners construct new identities in the mediascapes of popular culture and cyberspace, where they not only consume, but also produce new, globalized identities. Through case studies, narrative analysis, and ethnography, the volume examines identity construction among learners of English, French, Japanese, and Swahili in Canada, England, France, Hong Kong, Tanzania, and the United States. © 2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston. All rights reserved.
This book explores the social construction of age in the context of EFL in Mexico. It is the first book to address the age factor in SLA from a social perspective. Based on research carried out at a public university in Mexico, it investigates how adults of different ages experience learning a new language and how they enact their age identities as language learners. By approaching the topic from a social constructionist perspective and in light of recent work in sociolinguistics and cultural studies, it broadens the current second language acquisition focus on age as a fixed biological or chronological variable to encompass its social dimensions. What emerges is a more complex and nuanced understanding of age as it intersects with language learning in a way that links it fundamentally to other social phenomena, such as gender, ethnicity and social class.
This volume presents evidence about how we understand communication in changing times, and proposes that such understandings may contribute to the development of pedagogy for teaching and learning. It expands current debates on multilingualism, asking which signs are in use and in action, and what are their social, political, and historical implications. The volume’s starting-point is Bakhtin’s ‘heteroglossia’, a key concept in understanding the tensions, conflicts, and multiple voices within, among, and between those signs. The chapters provide illuminating accounts of language practices as they bring into play, both in practice and in pedagogy, voices which index students’ localities, social histories, circumstances, and identities. The book documents the performance of linguistic repertoires in an era of profound social change caused by the shifting nature of nation-states, increased movement of people across territories, and growing digital communication.
"Our thinking on language and multilingualism is expanding rapidly. Up until recently we have tended to regard languages as bounded entities, and multilingualism has been understood as knowing more than one language. Working with the concept of heteroglossia, researchers are developing alternative perspectives that treat languages as sets of resources for expressing meaning that can be drawn on by speakers in communicatively productive ways in different contexts. These perspectives raise fundamental questions about the myriad of ways of knowing and using language(s). This collection brings together the contributions of many of the key researchers in the field. It will provide an authoritative reference point for contemporary interpretations of ‘heteroglossia’ and valuable accounts of how ‘translanguaging’ can be explored and exploited in the fields of education and cultural studies." Professor Constant Leung, King’s College London, UK
Bilingualism is today as much a topic of academic research and public debate as it has ever been in the period since the end of World War II, as globalization and the new economy, migration and the expanded and rapid circulation of information, keep the question at the forefront of economic, political, social and educational concerns. The purpose of this book is to explore one particular set of approaches to the topic which seems particularly useful for understanding what bilingualism might mean today, in this context of social change, and how new understandings of it, as ideology and practice, also contribute to linguistic and social theory. In particular, the book aims to move the field of bilingualism studies away from a ‘common-sense’, but in fact highly ideologized, view of bilingualism as the coexistence of two linguistic systems, and to develop a critical perspective which allows for a better grasp on the ways in which language practices are socially and politically embedded. The aim is to move discussions of bilingualism away from a focus on the whole bounded units of code and community, and towards a more processual and materialist approach which privileges language as social practice, speakers as social actors and boundaries as products of social action.
The coming of language occurs at about the same age in every healthy child throughout the world, strongly supporting the concept that genetically determined processes of maturation, rather than environmental influences, underlie capacity for speech and verbal understanding. Dr. Lenneberg points out the implications of this concept for the therapeutic and educational approach to children with hearing or speech deficits.
Identity and Language Learning draws on a longitudinal case study of immigrant women in Canada to develop new ideas about identity, investment, and imagined communities in the field of language learning and teaching. Bonny Norton demonstrates that a poststructuralist conception of identity as multiple, a site of struggle, and subject to change across time and place is highly productive for understanding language learning. Her sociological construct of investment is an important complement to psychological theories of motivation. The implications for language teaching and teacher education are profound. Now including a new, comprehensive Introduction as well as an Afterword by Claire Kramsch, this second edition addresses the following central questions: -Under what conditions do language learners speak, listen, read and write? -How are relations of power implicated in the negotiation of identity? -How can teachers address the investments and imagined identities of learners? The book integrates research, theory, and classroom practice, and is essential reading for students, teachers and researchers in the fields of language learning and teaching, TESOL, applied linguistics and literacy.
This chapter introduces the notion of ‘heteroglossia’ as a means of expanding theoretical orientations to, and understandings of, linguistic diversity. The discussion responds to contemporary debates about multilingualism and proposes that Bakhtin’s concept of heteroglossia offers a lens through which to view the social, political, and historical implications of language in practice. The chapter refers to the rich theoretical and empirical contributions of the authors of the volume.
In recent times, scholars in sociolinguistics
have found that language use in late modern societies is changing. Rather than assuming that homogeneity and stability represent the norm, mobility
, mixing
, political dynamics,
and historical embedding
are now central concerns in the study of languages, language groups, and communication (Blommaert and Rampton 2011)
. As large numbers of people migrate across myriad borders, and as advances in digital technology make available a multitude of linguistic resources at the touch of a button or a screen, so communication is in flux and in development. In these conditions, multilingualism
is the norm. At the same time, the notion of separate languages as bounded systems of specific linguistic features may be insufficient for analysis of language in use and in action (Jørgensen et al. 2011)
. The idea of ‘a language’ therefore may be important as a social construct, but it is not suited as an analytical lens through which to view language practices. This volume responds to the limitations of an approach to understanding linguistic diversity which relies on the naming and separation of languages—that is, an approach which relies on the concept of ‘multilingualism’ to describe the language competence of speakers in the context of language diversity and language contact. We propose a return to Mikhail Bakhtin’s theoretical and practical notion of ‘heteroglossia’
as a lens through which to view the social, political, and historical implications of language in practice. First, however, we briefly review some recent developments in the study of multilingualism.
Language as a Local Practice addresses the questions of language, locality and practice as a way of moving forward in our understanding of how language operates as an integrated social and spatial activity. By taking each of these three elements - language, locality and practice - and exploring how they relate to each other, Language as a Local Practice opens up new ways of thinking about language. It questions assumptions about languages as systems or as countable entities, and suggests instead that language emerges from the activities it performs. To look at language as a practice is to view language as an activity rather than a structure, as something we do rather than a system we draw on, as a material part of social and cultural life rather than an abstract entity. Language as a Local Practice draws on a variety of contexts of language use, from bank machines to postcards, Indian newspaper articles to fish-naming in the Philippines, urban graffiti to mission statements, suggesting that rather than thinking in terms of language use in context, we need to consider how language, space and place are related, how language creates the contexts where it is used, how languages are the products of socially located activities and how they are part of the action. Language as a Local Practice will be of interest to students on advanced undergraduate and post graduate courses in Applied Linguistics, Language Education, TESOL, Literacy and Cultural Studies.
This chapter explores Korean-American children's language socialization into Korean address terms and their creative uses of these terms in a Korean- English bilingual context. The data revealed that, while children's acquisition and use of Korean address terms were mostly mediated by language socialization practices with their parents, their bilingual practices were not directly imposed by these practices. That is, children created their own ways of addressing other Koreans, ways which were novel to adult members of the community. For example, children in this study (1) "anglicized" a social superior's name in Korean utterances and therefore established its bivalency and (2) code-switched from Korean into English in order to avoid terms that index hierarchy and in-group intimacy. Such improvised linguistic practices illuminate their ongoing negotiation and construction of the self and the creative potential of children's active participation in their language socialization processes.
To what extent do our accents determine the way we are perceived by others? Is foreign accent inevitably associated with social stigma? Accent is a matter of great public interest given the impact of migration on national and global affairs, but until now, applied linguistics research has treated accent largely as a theoretical puzzle. In this fascinating account, Alene Moyer examines the social, psychological, educational and legal ramifications of sounding ‘foreign’. She explores how accent operates contextually through analysis of issues such as: the neuro-cognitive constraints on phonological acquisition, individual factors that contribute to the ‘intractability’ of accent, foreign accent as a criterion for workplace discrimination, and the efficacy of instruction for improving pronunciation. This holistic treatment of second language accent is an essential resource for graduate students and researchers interested in applied linguistics, bilingualism and foreign language education.
The study reported in this article investigated the proficiency in French of a group of anglophone adult L2 learners of the
language, all of whom reported passing regularly for native speakers of French. Tests were administered to these learners
to gauge their proficiency in different aspects of French, including a lexico-grammatical measure. A regional accent recognition
instrument, which required the correct identification of three French regional accents, formed the subsequent element of the
testing process. Questionnaire and narrative data were also collected from participants with respect to their attitudes and
motivation as well as their fluency before arrival in France; of the 20 participants, three scored within native ranges on
all tasks. With regard to these three, a number of affective variables seemed to play a markedly more important role than
maturational factors in the high attainment recorded. In this article, such affective variables will be more closely examined,
and their possible role in accounting for the achievement of native-like proficiency in an L2 is explored in some depth.
Bilinguals often face the challenge of negotiating a range of insider/outsider subject positions when interacting in transnational
and intercultural settings. This article takes up the concept of symbolic competence, the awareness of socially situated symbolic
resources and the ability to use them to shape interactional contexts, to examine how the author, a Swedish–English bilingual,
manages this negotiation. Drawing on principles of the ethnography of communication in concert with the complementary discourse
analytic perspective of nexus analysis, ethnographic vignettes are analyzed to explore strategic language choices the author
made during specific speech situations in Sweden. It is shown that the concealment of linguistic abilities, or covert bilingualism,
served as a resource to support the symbolic competence needed to facilitate the presentation of self during social encounters
while mitigating the ambiguity of being simultaneously insider and outsider.
Applied linguistics is a field concerned with issues pertaining to language(s) and literacies in the real world and with the people who learn, speak, write, process, translate, test, teach, use, and lose them in myriad ways. It is also fundamentally concerned with transnationalism, mobility, and multilingualism-the movement across cultural, linguistic, and (often) geopolitical or regional borders and boundaries. The field is, furthermore, increasingly concerned with identity construction and expression through particular language and literacy practices across the life span, at home, in diaspora settings, in short-term and long-term sojourns abroad for study or work, and in other contexts and circumstances. In this article, I discuss some recent areas in which applied linguists have investigated the intersections of language (multilingualism), identity, and transnationalism. I then present illustrative studies and some recurring themes and issues.
There are thousands of ethnic Chinese students from different backgrounds in British universities today, a fact that has not been fully appreciated or studied from an applied linguistics perspective. For example, there are third- or fourth-generation British-born Chinese; there are students from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore who have received whole or part of their primary and secondary education in Britain; and there are Chinese students who completed their schooling in their home countries. To add to the diversity of the Chinese student population, several distinctive varieties of Chinese are spoken as well as different varieties of English and other languages. In terms of their choice of language and social networks, the Chinese students have several options, including, for example, staying with their own language variety group (e.g. Cantonese, Mandarin); staying with their own region-of-origin group (e.g. British-born, Mainland Chinese, Taiwanese, Hong Kong); and creating new transnational and multilingual groupings. This article focuses on a group of Chinese university students who have chosen to create transnational and multilingual networks. Through analysis of narrative data and ethnographic observations, we explore issues such as their socio-cultural identification processes, the interactions between their linguistic and political ideologies; their multilingual practices and what they have learned from being part of this new social space.
TESOL practice in the schooling sector in England has implicitly assumed that ESL students are linguistic and social outsiders and that there is a neat one-to-one correspondence between ethnicity and language. This perspective has tended to conceptualise L2 learners as a linguistically diverse group (from non-English-speaking backgrounds) but with similar language learning needs. However, demographic and social changes in the past 30 years have rendered such assumptions inadequate and misleading, particularly in multiethnic urban areas. In this article we seek to (a) offer an alternative account of the classroom realities in contemporary multilingual schools where the linguistic profiles and language learning needs of ESL students are not easily understood in terms of fixed concepts of ethnicity and language; (b) draw on recent developments in cultural theory to clarify the shifting and changing relationship among ethnicity, social identity, and language use in the context of postcolonial diaspora; and (c) question the pedagogical relevance of the notion of native speaker and propose that instead TESOL professionals should be concerned with questions about language expertise, language inheritance, and language affiliation.
This study examines displays of understanding in two fundamentally different personal reference systems (Japanese and English) as these displays are evidenced by bilingual children in the course of naturally occurring conversational interaction. The children in this study encounter difficulties using Japanese personal reference terms in the absence of adult input specifying how the child is related to his or her interlocutor. This problem is not apparent in the same children's use of English personal reference terms, however. The data suggest that both adult input and children's creativity are necessary for finding solutions to referential dilemmas. Particularly salient in this investigation is bilingual children's insertion of English personal pronouns into Japanese speech as an ingenious solution for simplifying the Japanese reference system - code-mixing which may also serve to index the speakers' complex English-speaking and Japanese-speaking identities.
The effects of age on second language acquisition constitute one of the most frequently researched and debated topics in the field of Second Language Acquisition. Two different orientations may be distinguished in age-related research: one which aims to elucidate the existence and characteristics of maturational constraints on the human capacity for learning second languages, and another which purports to identify age-related differences in foreign language learning, often with the aim of informing educational policy decisions. Because of the dominant role of theoretically-oriented ultimate attainment studies, it may be argued that research findings from naturalistic learning contexts have somehow been hastily generalized to formal learning contexts. This paper presents an analysis of the symmetries and asymmetries that exist between a naturalistic learning setting and a foreign language learning setting with respect to those variables that are crucial in the discussion of age effects in second language acquisition. On the basis of the differences observed, it is argued that the amount and quality of the input have a significant bearing on the effects that age of initial learning has on second language learning. It is also claimed that age-related studies in foreign language learning settings have yielded significant findings that contribute to the development of an integrated explanation of age effects on second language acquisition.
Research on age-related effects in L2 development often invokes the idea of a critical period - the postulation of which is customarily referred to as the Critical Period Hypothesis. This paper argues that to speak in terms of the Critical Period Hypothesis is misleading, since there is a vast amount of variation in the way in which the critical period for language acquisition is understood - affecting all the parameters deemed to be theoretically significant and indeed also relating to the ways in which the purported critical period is interpreted in terms of its implications for L2 instruction. The paper concludes that the very fact that there are such diverse and competing versions of the Critical Period Hypothesis of itself undermines its plausibility.
Diversity in Britain is not what it used to be. Some thirty years of government policies, social service practices and public perceptions have been framed by a particular understanding of immigration and multicultural diversity. That is, Britain's immigrant and ethnic minority population has conventionally been characterized by large, well-organized African-Caribbean and South Asian communities of citizens originally from Commonwealth countries or formerly colonial territories. Policy frameworks and public understanding - and, indeed, many areas of social science - have not caught up with recently emergent demographic and social patterns. Britain can now be characterized by 'super-diversity,' a notion intended to underline a level and kind of complexity surpassing anything the country has previously experienced. Such a condition is distinguished by a dynamic interplay of variables among an increased number of new, small and scattered, multiple-origin, transnationally connected, socio-economically differentiated and legally stratified immigrants who have arrived over the last decade. Outlined here, new patterns of super-diversity pose significant challenges for both policy and research.
This article examines use of kinship terms, pronouns, and proper names in China, in an overall framework termed “naming” that demonstrates the performative power of uttering relational terms, especially by the junior in the relationship. It also describes the prototypical routine of introductions, which consist of three participants, in contrast to the more typical conversation in Western analysis which posits two participants. In this three-party exchange, the animator is not the author of the words, but rather the willing and necessary namer of the relationship. Finally, it situates this performative function of naming within a general discussion of language ideology in Chinese society, in which signifiers and their homophones are seen as somehow inseparable from the signifieds. (Naming, speech act theory, ideology, kinship, China)
Two decades of international research in applied linguistics provides a large number and variety of topics from which to choose for this special anniversary edition, but certainly one of the most significant among these choices is the critical period hypothesis (CPH). Few topics in applied linguistics have continued to captivate the interests of researchers and practitioners so intensively and for such a long period of time as the CPH. Indeed, one could easily go back to reviewing three, not two decades of sustained research and continuous interest in this topic (Lenneberg 1967, Scovel 1969). If number and diversity of publications is indicative, the CPH has engendered even more interest and controversy now than in any previous decade. Why is this so?
In: C. Doughty & M. Long (eds.), The Handbook of Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Blackwell (pp.538-588).
Introduction; Maturational Constraints as the Default Hypothesis; The Empirical Evidence; Theoretical Foundations; Toward an Understanding of the Role of Maturation; Future Research: Basic Methodological Requirements; A Final Remark