Language Socialization Across Learning Spaces

Abstract

Language Socialization Across Learning Spaces Jin Sook Lee and Mary Bucholtz 1. Introduction Learning to think, act, and speak like an expert in specific physical, temporal, cultural, and ideological spaces is a necessity to function successfully in any community. A primary way that humans become socialized to act and interact in culturally appropriate ways is through the use of language. Language socialization (LS) refers to the process by which individuals acquire, reproduce, and transform the knowledge and competence that enable them to ­participate appropriately within specific communities of language users. Thus, LS is fundamental to social life, given that all community members engage in practices of LS at numerous points in their lives, whether as relative experts or as relative novices. Within LS research, language is regarded as a ‘dynamic social practice’ that is constantly ‘contested’ and ‘in flux’ among its users (Duff and Talmy 2011, p. 96). LS thus offers a ­theoretical and methodological framework for understanding how linguistic and cultural competence are developed through everyday interactions within communities of practice. Based in the traditions of human development and linguistic anthropology, LS is concerned with both ‘socialization through the use of language and socialization to use language’ (Schieffelin and Ochs 1986, p. 163). LS researchers take a cross‐cultural perspective to make visible the intersections between language and culture in the processes of learning and teaching. Such a perspective not only recognizes the existence of biological and psychological attributes in these processes but also importantly acknowledges considerable variations due to cultural factors and sociohistorical conditions (Garrett and Baquedano‐Lopez 2002, p. 341). In addition, because of its concern with cultural specificity, scholarship on LS pays close attention to how socialization occurs in culturally meaningful learning spaces, and how these practices may be linked or kept apart across different kinds of spaces. This chapter first presents a brief overview of the theoretical principles and method­ ological approaches employed in LS research (see also Duff and Anderson, this volume). To illustrate this framework and particularly the pivotal role of learning spaces within LS, the chapter then discusses how a university–high school educational partnership offers students opportunities to gain a new perspective on LS as ethnographers of language and culture in The Handbook of Classroom Discourse and Interaction, First Edition. Edited by Numa Markee. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.