Social Aspects of
Interlanguage
The prevailing perspective on interlanguage is
psycholinguistic. SLA has also acknowledge the importance of social factors.
3 different approaches to incorporating a social angle of the
study of SLA:
- Different ‘styles’ which learners call upon under different conditions of language use.
- How social factors determine the input that learners use to construct their interlanguage.
- How the social identities that learners negotiate in their interactions with native speakers shape their opportunities to speak and learn an L2.
Interlanguage as A
Stylistic Continuum
Elaine Tarone è Interlanguage involves:
- Stylistic continuum
Learners develop a capability for
using the L2. This is compromised of a number of different ‘styles’ which
learners access in with a variety of factors. It explains why learner language
is variable and suggests that an interlanguage grammar, although different form
a native speaker’s grammar, is constructed according to the same principles. It
also has problems:
ü Learners are not always most accurate
in their careful style and least accurate in their vernacular style.
ü The role of social factors remains
unclear. Native speakers use a careful style with non-familiar addresses,
especially if they are socially subordinate to them.
- Careful style
Learners are consciously attending to
their choice of linguistic forms. They feel the need to be ‘correct.
- Vernacular style
Learners are making spontaneous
choices of linguistic form (free conversation)
Example: Japanese learners improved
their ability to use /z/ accurately in their careful style (when reading lists
of words) than in their vernacular style (in free speech).
In short, Tarone’s theory relates
more to psycholinguistic rather than social factors.
Another theory which is more
obviously social is Howard Gile’s:
Accommodation theory
This explains how a learner’s social
group influences the course of SLA. When people interact with each other they
either try to make their speech similar to that of their addressee to emphasize
social cohesiveness (convergence) or to make it different in order to emphasize
their social distinctiveness (divergence). It’s been suggested that SLA involves
‘long-term convergence’. When social conditions are that learners are motivated
to converge on native-speaker norms (speak like native speakers). Social
factors, mediated through the interactions that learners take part in,
influence both how quickly they learn and the actual route that they follow.
Social factors influence interlanguage development via the
impact they have on the attitudes learners engage in.
The Acculturation Model
of SLA
John Schumann’s acculturation model, built around the
metaphor of ‘distance’. Learners fail to acculturate to the target-language
(TL) group when they are unable / unwilling to adapt to a new culture. The main
reason is social distance, which individual learners become members of a
TL group and therefore achieve contact with them. There are 2 problems:
- It fails to acknowledge that factors like ‘integration pattern’ and ‘attitude’ are not fixed and static but, potentially, variable and dynamic, fluctuating in with learner’s changing social experiences.
- It fails to acknowledge that learners are not just subject to social conditions but can also the subject of them.
Social Identity and
Investment in L2 Learning
Bonny Pierce è Language learners have complex social
identities that can be understood in terms of power relations that shape
structures. ‘Multiple and contradictory’ requires investment something
learners will only make if they believe their efforts will increase the value
of their ‘cultural capital’ (give them access to the knowledge that will enable
them to function successfully in a variety of social contexts). SLA involves a
‘struggle’ ad ‘investment’.
Learners are not computers who battle on their efforts.
Successful learners are those who reflect critically on how they engage with
native speakers and who are prepared to challenge the accepted social order.
In such situations social conditions determine the extent of
learners’ contact with the L2 and their commitment to learning it.
