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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LANGUAGE ACQUISITION OR LANGUAGE SOCIALISATION? 115for further<strong>in</strong>g his sociocultural competence are <strong>in</strong> place s<strong>in</strong>ce his assertions are respondedto by Mrs B and the encounter ends with her agrec<strong>in</strong>g to talk to the overlooker about herson.The cont<strong>in</strong>gent nature of such <strong>in</strong>teractional position<strong>in</strong>g means that conditions for theproduction and <strong>in</strong>terpretation of discourse vary from <strong>in</strong>teraction to <strong>in</strong>teraction. But theseconditions are also constra<strong>in</strong>ed by wider socio-political formations ~ such as the <strong>in</strong>equalitiesthat exist <strong>in</strong> a stratified multi-l<strong>in</strong>gual society. So a model of second language socialisationneeds to <strong>in</strong>clude an understand<strong>in</strong>g of the ideologies which feed <strong>in</strong>to and are constructedout of <strong>in</strong>teractions.<strong>Language</strong> practice and ideologyThe notion of language as ‘social practice’ helps us to see the ideological <strong>in</strong> <strong>in</strong>teractions.There has been a lot of discussion around the term ‘practice’ <strong>in</strong> what has been called theNew Literacy Studies <strong>in</strong> Brita<strong>in</strong> and the USA. ‘Practice’ or more usefully ‘practiccs’ aremore than action and events. In the case of literacy practices for example, they <strong>in</strong>clude boththe literacy event and the knowledge and assumptions about what this event is and whatgives it mean<strong>in</strong>g. For example, what counts as literacy <strong>in</strong> a subgroup is determ<strong>in</strong>ed by those<strong>in</strong> dom<strong>in</strong>ant positions <strong>in</strong> a society. Literacy practices, therefore, are profoundly associatedwith identity and social position.The notion of ‘practice’ has also been used and debated <strong>in</strong> critical and anthropologicall<strong>in</strong>guistics as both action and the ideologies which surround it. Fairclough (1 992) makes thepo<strong>in</strong>t that language practices are constructed not only out of sociocultural knowledge butout of the discourses which were produced earlier, are produccd <strong>in</strong> the <strong>in</strong>teraction and <strong>in</strong>subsequent discourses. So, for example, with<strong>in</strong> this critical perspective, questions have beenraised about taken for granted notions of what constitutes a speaker of a particular language.what is a non-native speaker, what certa<strong>in</strong> groups count as ‘target language’ and so on.However, this problematis<strong>in</strong>g work, although it has <strong>in</strong>fluenced applied l<strong>in</strong>guistics, has hadlittle <strong>in</strong>fluence with<strong>in</strong> ma<strong>in</strong>stream SLA. For example, the m<strong>in</strong>ority worker will bepositioned, by the l<strong>in</strong>guistic ideologies that circulate, as a ‘non-native’ , ‘second languagespeaker’, ‘poor communicator’ and so on.These feed <strong>in</strong>to the <strong>in</strong>teraction <strong>its</strong>elf and feed offit to recirculate <strong>in</strong> the wider discourses around language and cthnicity.With<strong>in</strong> the British tradition there are two compet<strong>in</strong>g sets of discourses around ethnicity.The first has been widely reflected <strong>in</strong> government policy and popular discourse. This tendsto essentialise ethnic groups, equate land, language and ethnicity and cast m<strong>in</strong>ority ethnicgroups as <strong>in</strong>competent <strong>in</strong> <strong>English</strong>. (See Gilroy, 1987, for a discussion). In the Netherlands,van Dijk and his associates have traced similar processes <strong>in</strong> the discourses of elite groupswhich showhow cthnic belicfs are strategically expressed, acquired and distributed throughoutthe dom<strong>in</strong>ant group, that is as part of manag<strong>in</strong>g ethnic affairs and reproduc<strong>in</strong>g elitcpower and whitc group dom<strong>in</strong>ance. (Van Dijk et a/. , 1997, p. 165)An extreme example of this first set of discourses is from data gathered <strong>in</strong> multiethnicBritish workplaces dur<strong>in</strong>g the late 1970s (Roberts et a!. , 1992). A supervisor was runn<strong>in</strong>gthrough a rout<strong>in</strong>e list of questions <strong>in</strong> <strong>English</strong> as part of a simple recruitment procedure.TheSouth Asian applicant had answered scveral questions about himself and his previous workexperience when he was asked “DO you speak <strong>English</strong>?” to which he replied, “What do youth<strong>in</strong>k I’m talk<strong>in</strong>g to you <strong>in</strong> now!”The current discourse that was circulat<strong>in</strong>g at the time