ABSTRACT
With the social turn in applied linguistics, research on identity and agency has been recognized as contributing vital insights to second language acquisition (SLA) (Block, 2003). In the context of globalization marked by increasingly conspicuous linguistic and cultural diversity, socially-oriented research views the L2 user as an agent shaping the sociocultural structure while being shaped by that structure as they jointly negotiate their identities in a dynamic, interactive context. Engaged in a social activity of language learning and use, L2 users can be reconceptualized as multicompetent (Cook, 2007) or translingual (Canagarajah, 2013), with a focus on how they function across different domains in bi-/multilingual communities and simultaneously negotiate their complex identities (see also Chapters 30 and 32 in this volume). This perspective is in stark contrast with monolingual ideologies representing a ‘deficit’ model in which the language of learners, or ‘nonnative speakers’ is regarded as deviant (or at least divergent) from the idealized language of ‘native speakers’. In the monolingual model, nonnative language is viewed as a fossilized, failed copy of flawless native-speaker language. For example, in a conventional approach to interlanguage pragmatics research, learners’ pragmatic language use is typically compared to empirically-established native-speaker norms. The degree of success in language learning and acculturation is thus measured in terms of the extent of approximation to native-speaker norms; divergences are routinely characterized as negative pragmatic transfer or insufficient pragmatic competence.
