English Language Teaching in its Social Context
English Language Teaching in its Social Context
English Language Teaching in its Social Context
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a<strong>in</strong>toLANGUAGE ACQUISITION OR LANGUAGE SOCIALISATION? 109The transformation of many cities <strong>in</strong> Western and Northern Europe from monol<strong>in</strong>gualto multil<strong>in</strong>gual environments creates crucial sites for the study of second languagedevelopment. Adult m<strong>in</strong>ority workers who are struggl<strong>in</strong>g to make a new life for themselvesrepresent a particularly significant group when researchers are consider<strong>in</strong>g what constitutesthe doma<strong>in</strong> for second language acquisition studies. For many of them, contact with thcmajority group is <strong>in</strong> <strong>in</strong>stitutional sett<strong>in</strong>gs ~ at work or <strong>in</strong> bureaucratic encounters - andthese become the sites where their competence <strong>in</strong> the new language is put to the test.Thesesett<strong>in</strong>gs provide far from ideal conditions for language learn<strong>in</strong>g and yet they may be the onlyones where the new language is used at all. Chart<strong>in</strong>g the <strong>in</strong>teractions and relative progressof this group <strong>in</strong> an <strong>in</strong>different and often hostile world drives the researcher to conccptualise<strong>in</strong>dividuals not simply as language learners but as social be<strong>in</strong>gs struggl<strong>in</strong>g to manage oftenconflict<strong>in</strong>g goals. After all, the researcher may be <strong>in</strong>terested <strong>in</strong> their language development,but the m<strong>in</strong>ority workers are concerned with gett<strong>in</strong>g th<strong>in</strong>gs done. As Bourdieuasserts: “What speaks is not utterance, the language, but the whole social person” (Bourdieu,1977, p. 653). Lookmg at the ‘whole social person’ argues for a more holistic approach tosecond language development than orthodox SLA studies offers, both theoretically andmethodologically.Lim<strong>its</strong> to a social perspective on SLAInteraction and pragmatics <strong>in</strong> SLAThere is of course an extensive literature on <strong>in</strong>teraction studies <strong>in</strong> SLA which exam<strong>in</strong>esthe conversational devices which foster certa<strong>in</strong> l<strong>in</strong>guistic features. In a more dialogicve<strong>in</strong>, recent Vygotskian approaches focus on the negotiation of ‘comprehensible <strong>in</strong>put’ <strong>in</strong>social <strong>in</strong>teraction. But despite the concentration on collaborative dialogue, language is stillconceived of as a product to be acquired rather than as a discourse ~ social process ~which members of a community are socialised. Lcarners are now characterised as ‘sociallyconstituted’, as “responsible agents with dispositions to th<strong>in</strong>k and act <strong>in</strong> certa<strong>in</strong> waysrooted <strong>in</strong> their discursive histories” (Lantolf and Pavlenko, 1995, p. 1 16) but the goal ofdialogic learn<strong>in</strong>g is still the ability to deploy l<strong>in</strong>guistic phenomena. Methodologically,the analysis tends to focus on a particular feature of language rather than exam<strong>in</strong>e <strong>in</strong> depthlocal <strong>in</strong>terpretations and reactions. Unsurpris<strong>in</strong>gly, therefore, there is little or no ethnographicevidence to support conclusions drawn. The relatively new field of <strong>in</strong>terlanguagepragmatics would seem to be a more promis<strong>in</strong>g area for look<strong>in</strong>g at the whole social person.But despite <strong>its</strong> concern with contextual factors, it is the narrow concept of the learner andher capacity to rcalise specific speech acts which generate the key research questions. Theendeavour rema<strong>in</strong>s an essentially cognitive one as the authors’ recognition of the potentialsignificance of sociocultural issues implies:It would be a mistake to view developmental issues <strong>in</strong> ILP (<strong>in</strong>terlanguage pragmatics)<strong>in</strong> purely cognitive terms because the strategies for l<strong>in</strong>guistic action are so closely tiedto self-identity and social identity. (Kasper and Schmidt, 1996, p. 159)To date, however, these issues of social identity and, <strong>in</strong>deed, other social issues outside theimmediate contcxt of utterance, have not figured to any significant extent <strong>in</strong> <strong>in</strong>terlanguagcpragmatics.F<strong>in</strong>ally, the <strong>in</strong>teraction and pragmatics studies <strong>in</strong> SLA literature cont<strong>in</strong>ue the tendency<strong>in</strong> SLA more generally to reify language so that French, <strong>English</strong> and so on are treated