Language Acquisition and Language Socialization: Ecological Perspectives (Advances in Applied Linguistics Series)

325 Pages·2003·16.6 MB·English

by  Claire Kramsch

Language Acquisition and
Language Socialization
Advances in Applied Linguistics
General editors: Christopher N. Candlin and Srikant Sarangi
This series offers a number of innovative points of focus. It seeks to
represent diversity in applied linguistics but within that diversity to
identify ways in which distinct research fields can be coherently
related. Such coherence can be achieved by shared subject matter
among fields, parallel and shared methodologies of research, mutual-
ities of purposes and goals of research, and collaborative and
cooperative work among researchers from different disciplines.
Although interdisciplinarity among established disciplines is now
common, this series has in mind to open up new and distinctive
research areas which lie at the boundaries of such disciplines. Such
areas will be distinguished in part by their novel data sets and in part by
the innovative combination of research methodologies. The series
hopes thereby both to consolidate already well-tried methodologies,
data and contexts of research and to extend the range of applied
linguistics research and scholarship to new and under-represented
cultural, institutional and social contexts.
The philosophy underpinning the series mirrors that of applied
linguistics more generally: a problem-based, historically and socially
grounded discipline concerned with the reflexive interrogation of
research by practice, and practice by research, oriented towards issues
of social relevance and concern, and multi-disciplinary in nature.
The structure of the series encompasses books of several distinct
types: research monographs which address specific areas of concern;
reports from well-evidenced research projects; coherent collections of
papers from precisely defined colloquia; volumes which provide a
thorough historical and conceptual engagement with key applied
linguistics fields; and edited accounts of applied linguistics research
and scholarship from specific areas of the world.
Published titles in the series:
Multimodal Teaching and Learning: The Rhetorics of the Science
Classroom
Gunther Kress, Carey Jewitt, Jon Ogborn and Charalampos Tsatsarelis
Metaphor in Educational Discourse
Lynne Cameron
Language
Acquisition and
Language
Socialization
Ecological Perspectives
edited by
Claire Kramsch
continuum
LONDON • NEW YORK
Continuum
The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London, SE1 7NX
15 East 26th Street, New York, NY 10010
First published 2002
Reprinted 2004
© Claire Kramsch and contributors 2002
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 0-8264-5371-6 (hardback)
0-8264-5372-4(paperback)
Typeset by BookEns Ltd, Royston, Herts.
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Bath
Contents
Contributors vii
Foreword xi
Christopher N. Candlin and Srikant Sarangi
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction: "How can we tell the dancer from the dance?" 1
Claire Kramsch
Part One: Language development as spatial and temporal
positioning 31
1 Language acquisition and language use from a chaos/
complexity theory perspective 33
Diane Larsen-Freeman
2 Modeling the acquisition of speech in a "multilingual"
society: An ecological approach 47
Jonathan Leather
3 Language development and identity: Multiple timescales
in the social ecology of learning 68
Jay L. Lemke
Commentaries 88
Editors: Edward Bodine and Claire Kramsch
Part Two: Language development as a mediated, social
semiotic activity 97
4 Becoming a speaker of culture 99
Elinor Ochs
5 Cross-cultural learning and other catastrophes 121
Ron Scollon
6 An ecological-semiotic perspective on language and
linguistics 140
Leo van Lier
Confenfs
Commentaries 165
Editors: Edward Bodine and Claire Kramsch
Part Three: Discourse alignments and trajectories in
institutional settings 173
7 "I'd rather switch than fight:" An activity-theoretic study
of power, success, and failure in a foreign language
classroom 175
James P. Lantolfand Patricia B. Genung
8 Discoursal (mis) alignments in professional gatekeeping
encounters 197
Srikant Sarangi and Celia Roberts
Commentaries 228
Editors: Edward Bodine and Claire Kramsch
Part Four: Classroom rituals and their ecologies 235
9 Ritual, face, and play in a first English lesson:
Bootstrapping a classroom culture 237
Jet van Dam
10 Negotiating the paradoxes of spontaneous talk in
advanced L2 classes 266
Anne Bannink
Commentaries 289
Editors: Edward Bodine and Claire Kramsch
Index 298
vi
Contributors
Anne Bannink, Associate Professor, Department of English and
Germanic Linguistics and Graduate School of Education of the
University of Amsterdam. Research interests: ethnography of school-
ing, classroom discourse, and second language acquisition. Author of
Mixed Cultures in In-Service Training - The Case of Dutch Trainers in
Vietnam (2000).
Patricia B. Genung, Professor and Deputy Head, Department of
Foreign Languages, U.S. Military Academy, West Point, N.Y. Research
interests: second language acquisition, classroom research, language
and gender, language pedagogy. Co-author of "L'acquisition scolaire
d'une langue etrangere vue dans la perspective de la theorie de
1'activite: une etude de cas." Aile 12 (2000), 99-122.
Claire Kramsch, Professor of German and Foreign Language Educa-
tion, University of California at Berkeley. Research interests: discourse
analysis, language and culture, subjectivity and social identity in
language learning. Author of Discourse Analysis and Second Language
Teaching (CAL 1981), Context and Culture in Language Teaching
(Oxford University Press 1993), Language and Culture (Oxford
University Press 1998). Co-editor of Text and Context in Language
Study: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives (Heath 1992). Co-editor of
Applied Linguistics.
James Lantolf, Professor of Spanish and Applied Linguistics, Penn State
University. Research interests: Vygotskian approaches to SLA, socio-
cultural theory, social cognition. Co-editor of Second Language
Research in the Classroom Setting (Ablex 1987), Vygotskian Approaches
to Second Language Research (Ablex 1994), Sociocultural Theory and
Second Language Learning (Oxford University Press 2000).
Diane Larsen-Freeman, Professor of Education, Director of the English
Language Institute, University of Michigan. Research interests: SLA,
grammar in ELT, chaos/complexity theory. Editor of Discourse Analysis
in Second Language Research (Newbury House 1980), co-author of An
Introduction to Second Language Acquisition Research (Longman 1991),
Contributors
co-author of The Grammar Book: An ESL/EFL Teacher's Course (Heinle
& Heinle, 2nd edn., 1999) and author of Techniques and Principles in
Language Teaching (Oxford University Press, 2nd edn 2000) and
Teaching Language: From Grammar to Grammaring (Heinle & Heinle,
2003).
Jonathan Leather, Associate Professor, Department of English, Uni-
versity of Amsterdam. Research interests: phonological acquisition,
ecological modeling of language acquisition, language attitudes, and
language planning. Co-editor of Second Language Speech: Structure and
Process (Mouton de Gruyter 1997); editor of Phonological Issues in
Language Learning (Blackwell 1999).
Jay Lemke, Professor of Educational Studies at the University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor. Research interests: social semiotics, discourse
linguistics, language in education, science education. Author of Using
Language in the Classroom (2nd edn. Oxford University Press 1985),
Talking Science: Language, Learning, and Values (Ablex 1990) and
Textual Politics: Discourse and Social Dynamics (Taylor & Francis 1995).
Elinor Ochs, Professor of Anthropology and Applied Linguistics,
University of California at Los Angeles. Research interests: cross-
linguistic and cross-cultural language socialization and acquisition,
discourse structures across languages and communities, problem-
solving discourse in science and the family, grammar in context,
language and affect, narrative and mental disorders. Author of Culture
and Language Development: Language Acquisition and Language
Socialization in a Samoan Village (Cambridge University Press 1988);
co-editor of Language Socialization across Cultures (Cambridge Uni-
versity Press 1986) and Interaction and Grammar (Cambridge Uni-
versity Press 1996); co-author of Constructing Panic: The Discourse of
Agoraphobia (Harvard University Press 1995) and Living Narrative:
Creating Lives in Everyday Storytelling (Harvard University Press 2001).
Celia Roberts, Senior Research Fellow, Department of Education and
Professional Studies, King's College London. Research interests:
institutional discourse in multilingual settings, second language
socialization, ethnography as research method, intercultural learning,
and medical discourse. Co-author of Language and Discrimination
(1992), Achieving Understanding (1996). Co-editor of Talk, Work and
Institutional Order (1999) and Language Learners as Ethnographers
(2001).
Srikant Sarangi, Reader in Language and Communication and Director
of the Health Communication Research Centre at Cardiff University.
viii
Contributors
Research interests: discourse analysis and applied linguistics, language
and identity in public life, and institutional/professional discourse
studies. Co-author of Language, Bureaucracy and Social Control
(Longman 1996), Talk, Work and Institutional Order: Discourse in
Medical, Mediation and Management Settings (Mouton 1999), Discourse
and Social Life (Pearson 2001), Sociolinguistics and Social Theory
(Pearson 2001). Editor of TEXT and co-editor of the series Advances in
Applied Linguistics and Communication in Public Life.
Ron Scollon, Professor of Sociolinguistics, Department of Linguistics,
Georgetown University. Research interests: mediated discourse, inter-
cultural communication, public discourse, critical discourse. Author of
Mediated Discourse as Social Interaction: The Study of News Discourse
(Longman 1998) and Mediated Discourse: The Nexus of Practice
(Routledge 2001). Co-author of Narrative, Literacy, and Face in
Interethnic Communication (Ablex 1981), and Intercultural Commu-
nication: A Discourse Approach (Blackwell 1995).
Jet van Dam, Professor, Department of English and Germanic
Linguistics and Graduate School of Education, University of Amster-
dam. Research interests: classroom discourse, organization of correc-
tion and repair, ethnography of schooling, diary studies. Author of
Participant Structure and the On-Line Production of Discourse Context
(1995) and Where's the Lesson in All This Talk? (1995).
Leo van Lier, Professor of Educational Linguistics, TESOL/TFL
Program, Monterey Institute of International Studies. Research inter-
ests: classroom research, computer-assisted instruction, semiotics,
ecological approaches to SLA. Author of The Classroom and the
Language Learner. Ethnography and Second-language Classroom
Research (Longman 1988), Interaction in the Language Curriculum:
Awareness, Autonomy and Authenticity (Longman 1996).
Contributors to the Commentaries
Edward Bodine, doctoral student, Graduate School of Education,
University of California at Berkeley
Christopher Candlin, Senior Research Professor, Department of
Linguistics, Macquarie University, Sydney
Meg Gebhard, Assistant Professor, School of Education, University of
Massachusetts at Amherst
livia Polanyi, Senior Research Scientist, FX Palo Alto Lab, Palo Alto,
California
ix