Language Socialization Framework Research Articles

Hablando at home: Examining the interactional resources of a bilingual autistic child.

Daily language interactions predict child outcomes. For multilingual families who rear neurodiverse children and who may be minoritized for their language use, a dearth of research examines families' daily language interactions. Utilizing a language socialization framework and a case study methodology, 4,991 English and Spanish utterances from a 5-year old autistic child and his family were collected during naturally occurring interactions over 10 days. Utterances were analyzed for patterns of code-switching by speaker, activity setting, English or Spanish initial language, and code-switch function. Spanish was spoken in most activities. For reading, both languages were equally employed by the father. While participants used both languages across all activity settings, significant variations in code-switching type and function were observed by activity setting and speaker. We discuss implications for how home language resources can be integrated into autism interventions.

Learning Language, Un/Learning Empathy in Medical School.

This article considers the ways in which empathy for patients and related solidarity with communities may be trained out of medical students during medical school. The article focuses especially on the pre-clinical years of medical school, those that begin with orientation and initiation events such as the White Coat Ceremony. The ethnographic data for the article come from field notes and recordings from my own medical training as well as hundreds of hours of observant participation and interviews with medical students over the past several years. Exploring the framework of language socialization, I argue that learning the verbal, textual and bodily language of medical practice contributes to the increasing experience of separation between physicians and patients. Further considering the ethnographic data, I argue that we also learn a form of empathy limited to performance that short circuits clinical care and the possibility for solidarity for health equity. The article concludes with implications for medical education and the medical social sciences and humanities.

Jenoside, génocide, genocide: Diasporic assimilation into naming the 1994 genocide in Rwanda

Language assimilation occurs both synchronically and diachronically, but how or why are discursive adjustments adopted outside of the contexts in which they were learned? Using both communication accommodation theory and a language socialization framework, I analyze the discourse of diasporic Rwandans as they name the 1994 genocide. I argue for the significance of context in language assimilation—who is doing the socializing or accommodating, who is being socialized or accommodated, when and where it is happening, and what I identify as the most effective indicator: what is to be lost or gained in accommodating our speech to another's.

Using a language socialization framework to explore Chinese Students’ L2 Reticence in English language learning

Chinese students’ reticence in English learning has been widely observed in language classrooms. While a number of prior studies have made a significant contribution to understanding Chinese students’ L2 reticence, greater clarity would benefit the field's understanding of L2 reticence, in terms of L2 reticence as a classroom phenomenon and how learners’ agentic effort manifests in reticent ways of language learning. To bridge this gap, in the present study we set out to investigate Chinese students’ L2 interactional reticence drawing insights from a language socialization perspective and using an ethnographic design. In doing so, this study demonstrated the mechanisms of language socialization in an English class in China, and provided alternative ways of understanding how the students appeared to become reticent learners of English. These results suggest a more nuanced understanding of L2 reticence. Based on these findings, we discuss the potential of the language socialization approach in researching L2 reticence and implications for research in this topical domain.

The Socialization of L2 Doctoral Students through Written Feedback

ABSTRACT This study examined the role of written feedback in the academic discourse socialization of second language doctoral students at a Canadian research university. Using a second language socialization framework, and foregrounding the sociocultural and interactional contexts of language learning and use, this article considers written feedback to be a form of social practice that socializes students and discursively positions them into a range of identity categories, academic discourse practices, and communities. Data sources include interviews, student-produced narratives, and written feedback artifacts. The analysis focuses on the students’ interpretations of, responses to, and stated preferences and dispreference towards the feedback they received. Findings reveal that feedback played a formative role in their broader socialization and contributed to the co-construction of academic identities and (in)access to preferred discourse practices in their departments and disciplines.

Latinx Bilingual Prospective Teachers Renegotiate Language Communities in Mathematics Teaching Practices

ABSTRACT The preparation of bilingual prospective teachers (BPTs) in mathematics encompasses a challenge because many U.S.-born BPTs had limited opportunities to learn mathematics in their native language, in this case, Spanish. Consequently, BPTs feel ill-prepared to teach mathematics bilingually. This study describes the experiences of seven Latinx BPTs facing this challenge. A language socialization framework and the analysis of mathematics teaching practices through BPTs’ beliefs, goals, and actions prior to and during a language shift reveal links to non- and re-negotiated Imagined Learning Communities. The relevance and necessity of teaching translingual identities and practices in mathematics education are discussed.

Citation as a social practice in a TESOL graduate program: A language socialization approach

Using the theoretical framework of language socialization, this paper investigates the local contexts in which four international students were initiated into citation during their first semester in a Masters in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (MA-TESOL) program. Drawing from 38 hours of observation and audiotaping in two teaching methods courses, interviews with instructors and students, and students’ texts, it situates students’ citation practices within the discourses surrounding source use in the classroom and in the program. Instructors envisioned “doing citation” as embedded within larger processes of academic and professional enculturation through which students would dialogue with sources and develop professional voices as members of a TESOL/applied linguistics community who based teaching practice on theory and research rather than personal experience. However, socializing interactions around citation focused on its formal aspects and characterized it as a requirement for writing done in the program, but with little relevance otherwise. Analysis of students’ texts reveals that they were being socialized into citation as a school-based academic convention, but provides little evidence of dialogue with sources and suggests that students regarded the theoretical and the personal as two distinct and irreconcilable ways of knowing.

Language socialization and code-switching: a case study of a Korean–English bilingual child in a Korean transnational family

ABSTRACTThis study presents a sociolinguistic analysis of a Korean–English bilingual child’s code-switching practices from the perspective of language socialization. The ethnographic description and discourse analysis of a migrant Korean family’s interaction in the US home shows how the social meanings of languages and language ideologies present within the family’s language socialization context were brought into play through code-switching practices. This analysis illuminates the relation of the bilingual child’s language socialization practices in his home to the shifts in tones of voice and speech acts in his code-switching, through which he evokes different stances and personae in English and Korean. In this regard, the code-switching practice is a creative linguistic performance co-constituted by the agency and language ideologies enacted in his home context. The language socialization framework in this study provides richer contextual information for the interpretation of complex social meanings of bilingual children’s code-switching and agency.

Peer Socialization into Gendered L2 Mandarin Practices in a Study Abroad Context: Talk in the Dorm

This article reports on the peer socialization of gendered Mandarin practices between three American students and their Chinese roommates in a college dorm in China. Gender is often perceived to be a salient identity category among adult L2 learners overseas. Drawing on the language socialization framework (Ochs and Schieffelin 1984), this study focuses on how gender is constructed and indexed through language as the American students learn to use Mandarin sentence-final particles. Sentence-final particles constitute a unique repertoire to achieve affective work in Mandarin. They have further become a resource among China’s urban youth to enact a cute female speech style. In this case study, I employ a qualitative approach with an embedded quantitative component to examine the participants’ use of the particles over the course of one semester. The findings show how the American students become socialized into using these particles as gendered linguistic practices in the dorm conversations.

Learning to be funny in Spanish during study abroad: L2 humor development

The present study examines an area of SLA that has to date received little attention: the development of L2 humor. Both creation and comprehension of humor in an L2 can be challenging for learners, even those with advanced proficiency (e.g., Bell, 2005; Shardakova, 2010). At the same time, learners at all proficiency levels have been shown to use L2 humor and research suggests that with increased proficiency and exposure to the language, learners can develop their L2 humor abilities (Bell, 2005; Davies, 2003, 2005; Shardakova, 2010). Previous research, however, has not examined the processes by which L2 learners develop their humor skills. Using a language socialization framework, the present article analyzes a case study of one study abroad student who developed his ability to be funny in Spanish conversations with age peers during one semester in Spain. Factors that may have been associated with a reduction in failed humor over time included developing friendships, eliminating deadpan humor, and revoicing the words, expressions, and ways of speaking in the L2 to which the learner was exposed during study abroad.

Affective stances in teacher-novice student interactions: Language, embodiment, and willingness to learn in a Swedish primary classroom

AbstractThe present study explores a child, language, and cultural novice's affective and moral socialization during her first year in a Swedish first-grade classroom. Within the language socialization framework, it focuses on the lexicogrammatical and embodied organization of the novice's affectively charged noncompliant responses to (teacher) instructional directives, and the teachers' socializing responsive moves (contextualizing them within local and wider societal values and ideologies). The methods adopted combine a microanalytic approach with ethnographic analyses of socialization within a classroom community.Longitudinal tracking of the novice's stances demonstrated a trajectory across which socialization into normatively predictable cultural patterns did not occur. As shown, the student's affective stances and the teachers' socializing responses were consequential for the emergence of her “bad subject,” that is, her socioculturally problematic identity (from a “resigned” to an “oppositional” student who was “unwilling” to learn). Such deviant cases, it is argued, provide insights into the contested and dynamic aspects of second language socialization and demonstrate how affective (and moral) stances are mobilized as resources in the indexing of institutional identities. (Language socialization, language novice, affective stance, teacher-student interactions, directive sequences, embodiment, volition)*

Agency and responsibility in reported speech

The present study aims to discuss the notion of participation in relation to the concepts of agency and responsibility within the framework of language socialization. The argument presented in this study is that the dimension of agency must be included in the conceptualization of the various speaker positions within the notion of participation, in order to describe how the processes of language socialization toward moral order come about in the language practices of the family. The study explores the relationship between agency, responsibility and participation from the perspective of reported speech. Drawing on data from dinner table conversations in Danish families, the study provides a qualitative analysis of two narratives about a problematic event in which the target child is involved. The analysis demonstrates that the participants do not separate agency from the speaker position in these embedded positions of participation; rather, agency and responsibility are invoked, made salient and negotiated in interactional processes and hence embedded in the organization of participation.

Participation through imitative repetitions

This article provides an analysis of participation within the framework of language socialization with a focus on the child’s position as overhearer. The study suggests that a particular position as creative imitator is to be included within models of participation in order to account for the particular transition position in which the child transforms his position from overhearer to speaker. Through an empirical study it is demonstrated how an overhearing child (aged 2.2—2.4 years) embeds his contributions within the local social and interactional order through repetitions of other participants’ contributions. It is argued that these repetitions are social acts by which the child displays involvement in family conversations by orienting to their perspectives. The child can be seen to learn through others and not only from others.

Role-play and language socialization among bilingual Korean children in the United States

This article examines children's role-play within the framework of language socialization, as well as the relations between (a) utterances made by young bilingual Korean children within the role-play frame and (b) metacommunicative utterances about the play. It analyzes the language features that children use to set up the context of role-play and explores the relationships of the children who participate in the process of role-play socialization. Data analysis includes thematically and pragmatically related sequences of naturally occurring interactions during lunch time and play time in a Korean Baptist church in the United States and play time at some of the children's homes. Results indicate that bilingual children socialize themselves and jointly construct their identities through role-play in the communities of practice using specific features of language such as metacommunicative verbs, deictics, and code-switching.

Language Socialization in Korean-as-a-Foreign-Language Classrooms

Within the language socialization framework, the second language (L2) classroom would constitute a powerful context of secondary socialization, particularly when it exists outside the learners' culture of origin. In this paper, first year Korean-as-a-Foreign-Language (KFL) classrooms are viewed as L2 socializing environments in which students are not only learning the target language, but are also being socialized into particular Korean sociocultural interactive norms. The study analyzes teacher–student interaction in two American college-level KFL classes in light of language socialization perspectives. The analysis illustrates that teacher–student interactions are consistent with hierarchism (Byon, 2004; Sohn, 1986), which is one of the major cognitive value orientations of Korean culture. The result contrasts with English-as-a-Second-Language settings (Poole, 1992) in which English teachers try to minimize the status differences between themselves and students.

L1 language socialization as a variable in the use of ne by L2 learners of Japanese

Studies of L1 communicative competence within the framework of language socialization have recognized the rich interplay of linguistic knowledge and sociocultural knowledge in the process of language socialization. Following this research tradition, some studies of L2 acquisition have begun to conceptualize this process as one of secondary socialization. This study argues that the language socialization framework also provides rich opportunities for the detailed, qualitative study of learner production, and of the role of the learner's L1 socialization on this production. A study of English-speaking learners' anomalous uses of the Japanese particle ne in their L2 production of Japanese, which takes into account the distinct communicative styles of the target language (L2) and the learners' base language (L1), is undertaken. Using qualitative discourse analysis, the learners' use of ne in talk with native speaker conversation partners is shown to be influenced by L1 culturally-ordered epistemic constraints, as well as by L1 discourse practices pertaining to stances of sharedness. The contribution of the language socialization framework, applied in combination with qualitative, discourse analytic methods, to the study of L2 learner production is discussed in conjunction with the findings. The importance of considering the role of affective and epistemic dimensions of communication in the study of L2 learner production is highlighted.

Language socialization through morphology: The affective suffix - CHAU in Japanese

This paper analyzes the so-called aspectual suffix - CHAU used by a Japanese mother (M) to her two-year-old son (Y). - CHAU, a suffix expressing completion of a situation, comes from - TE-SHIMAU, meaning ‘put away’, and reflects the speaker's negative affect upon completion of certain events or actions. The data came from the transcripts of audio-recorded conversational interactions between one mother-child pair. Verbs inflected with -CHAU carry negative connotations involving damage or physical harm to an entity, while most verbs not inflected with -CHAU do not. Thus, -CHAU in M's speech conveys the speaker's negative attitude toward completion of a situation, rather than mere marking of completion. The earliest meaning of -CHAU shown to Y by his mother is affective, presenting the completion of a particular action or event as negative, not just completed. Indeed, 85% of M's use of -CHAU is for socialization of the child's behavior: teaching Y how to treat toys, eat, handle food, and so on. These targets of socialization are types of knowledge that are important for a child's physical and social well-being. It is shown that the framework of language socialization sheds new light on the analysis of the acquisition of -CHAU.