4. Social Aspects of Interlanguage

Tiyas Fauziah

2201411005

Rombel 4 / 103 – 104

4. Social Aspects of Interlanguage

            SLA has acknowledged the importance of social factors. Three different approaches to incorporating a social angle on the study of L2 acquisition can be identified. The first views interlanguage as consisting of different ‘styles’ which learners call upon under different conditions of language use. The second concerns how social factors determine the input that learners use to construct their interlanguage. The third considers how the social identities that learners negotiate in their interactions with native speakers shape their opportunities to speak and to learn L2.

Interlanguage as a stylistic continuum

            Elaine Tarone proposed that interlanguage involves a stylistic continuum. She argues that learners develop a capability for using the L2. At one end of the continuum is the careful style, evident when learners are consciously attending to their choice of linguistic forms, as when they feel the need to be ‘correct’. At the other end of the continuum is the vernacular style, evident when learners are making spontaneous choices of linguistic form, as is likely in free conversation.

            Tarone’s idea of interlanguage as a stylistic continuum explains why learner language is variable. It suggests that an interlanguage grammar, although different from a native speaker’s grammar, is constructed according to the same principles. The model has a number of problems. First, later research shown that learners are not always most accurate in their careful style and least accurate in their vernacular style. Second, the role of social factors remains unclear.

            Another theory that also draws on the idea of stylistic variation is Howard Giles’s accomodation theory. This explains how a learner’s social group influences the course of L2 acquisition. He suggests that when people interact with each other they either try to make their speech similar to that of their addressee in order to emphasize social cohesiveness (a process of convergence) or to make it different in order to emphasize their social distinctiveness (a process of divergence).

            According to Giles’s theory, social factors influence interlanguage development via the impact they have on the attitudes that determine the kinds of language use learners engage in.

The acculturation model of L2 acquisition

            A similar perspective on the role of social factors in L2 acquisition can be found in John Schumann’s acculturation model. This model, is built around the metaphor of ‘distance’.

            Schumann proposed that pidginization in L2 acquisition results, when learners fail to acculturate to the target-language group, that is, when they are unable or unwilling to adapt to a new culture.

            The main reason for learners failing to acculturate is social distance. A learner’s social distance is determined by a number of factors. Schumann recognizes that social distance is sometimes indeterminate. In such cases, he suggests psychological distance becomes important and identifies a further set of psychological factors.

Social identity and investment in L2 learning

            The notions os ‘subject to’ and ‘subject for’ are central to Bonny Pierce’s view of the relationship between social context and L2 acquisition. The notion of social identity is central to the theory Peirce advances. She argues that language learners have complex social identities that can only be understood in terms of the power relations that shape social structures. A learner’s social identity is ‘multiple and contradictory’. Learning is succesful when learners are able to summon up or construct an identity that enables them to impose their right to be heard snd thus become the subjet of discourse. This requires investment.

            Peirce’s social theory of L2 acquisition affords a different set of metaphors. Succesful learners are those who reflect critically on how they engage with native speakers and who are prepared to challenge the accepted social order by constructing and asserting social identities of their own choices.

            Socio-cultural models of L2 acquisition, such as those of Giles, Schumann, and Peirce, are intended to account for learner’s relative success or failure in learning an L2. Socio-cultural models may be less relevant to foreign language settings where most learners’ principal contact with the L2 is in a classroom.  

Questions :

1.        What is the meaning of ‘pidginization’ in L2 acquisition?

2.        Between three perspectives on the role of social factors in L2 acquistion, which one is the best?