ABSTRACT
Language socialization is a research tradition that is rooted in linguistic anthropology and that considers language not as a formal code, a medium of communication or a repository of meaning, but as a semiotic resource for ‘invoking social and moral sentiments, collective and personal identities tied to place and situation, and bodies of knowledge and belief ’ (Ochs and Schieffelin 2008: 8). In this view, all communicative forms, including lexico-grammar, prosody, speech styles and genres, turn-taking structures and sequences, language and dialectal choices, bear a symbiotic relation to culture and context. As initially formulated by Ochs and Schieffelin (Ochs 1990, 1996; Ochs and Schieffelin
1984; Schieffelin and Ochs 1986a, 1986b, 1996), language socialization is concerned with: (1) how novices (e.g. children, second/foreign/heritage language learners, new members of given communities and workplaces) are socialized to be competent members in the target culture through language use; and (2) how novices are socialized to use language. This approach focuses on the language used by and to novices and the relations between this language use and the larger cultural contexts of communication – local theories and epistemologies concerning social order, local ideologies and practices concerning socializing the novices (e.g. rearing children, teaching students, apprenticing newcomers), relationships between the novice and the expert, the specific activities and tasks at hand, and so forth. Most work in language socialization has focused on analyzing the organization of communicative practices through which novices acquire socio-cultural knowledge. Methodologically, it examines audio-/video-recorded, carefully transcribed, recurrent socialization activities and relates the grammatical, discursive, and non-verbal details of interaction to the construction of social and cultural ideologies that define a community. By its very conceptualization, language socialization is centrally concerned with human
development and growth in areas where language and culture intersect. In other words, it views language education not just as a physical site, but more importantly as a set of practices. It asks questions such as how learning takes place in and through language, regardless of the setting. Although earlier work in language socialization has focused on non-school settings such as traditional cultures, non-American cultures, and everyday encounters (e.g. Goodwin
1990; Heath, 1983; Ochs 1988; Schieffelin 1990; Watson-Gegeo and Gegeo 1986), subsequent research guided by language socialization has also directed its attention to formal educational settings such as second/foreign/heritage/bilingual language teaching and learning in the classroom (Atkinson 2002; Bayley and Schecter 2003; Crago 1992; Duff 2007; He 2000, 2001, 2004; Kanagy 1999; Lo 2004; Ohta 1999; Poole 1992; Schecter and Bayley 2004; Watson-Gegeo and Nielsen 2003; Zuengler and Cole 2005). After a discussion of the notion of indexicality, something that constitutes language as a
context-bound, interactively accomplished phenomenon (Duranti and Goodwin 1992; Ochs 1990), this chapter will provide a brief overview of how a language socialization perspective can illuminate some central concerns in applied linguistics (cf. Duff and Hornberger 2008). It will then critically evaluate two types of inadequacies in existing language socialization-oriented applied linguistics research, namely, the focus on a single setting and the conceptualization of language socialization as linear. Finally, this chapter will delineate the challenges facing language socialization research, using the socialization of Chinese as a heritage language as an example.
The notion of indexicality
