Amy Busch
Honors 211C
Final Paper
3/13/13
State of the Art in Sociolinguistic Research:
How Identity affects Second Language Acquisition
Linguistic
research and methodologies have been growing and changing in recent years in
response to the notion that a sociolinguistic approach could enhance
researchers’ understanding of second language acquisition (SLA). Linguists such
as Bonny Norton, Allan Firth, and Johannes Wagner contend that a cognitivist approach has created limitations on linguistic research and has in turn limited theories of how
language is acquired and bilingualism is attained. A sociolinguistic approach
would seek to answer how an individual learner’s personal identity, culture,
biography, and social situation influence the way they acquire a second language.
Norton defines identity as “how
people understand their relationship to the world, how that relationship is
constructed across time and space, and how people understand their
possibilities for the future,” (1997, p. 410). Linguistic theories that neglect
to study identity fail to consider that identity affects the learner’s
confidence, their motivation for learning the language, their use of the
language, and their overall acquisition of the language.
In
their 1997 and 2007 articles, Firth and Wagner contend that current research
reflects a more cognitive and mentalistic approach to
SLA and neglects the social and contextual side of SLA. The authors do not
subscribe to SLA’s fundamental tenets such as
dichotomies like “acquisition versus use” or “language versus communication,”
the separation of the cognitive and social, the non-native speaker as a
deficient communicator, or the static view of context and identity. They argue
that the terms used and data collected in mainstream SLA research are
oversimplified because they fail to account for the interactional and
sociolinguistic perspective. Through their work, Firth and Wagner claim that the specific biography of the
learners and their individual development of social relations are important,
but their research is limited and their articles, at their core, only serve to
call for other sociolinguistic research in SLA.
Firth
and Wagner wrote two articles in order to share their perspective and call for
a reconceptualization of SLA methodologies, theories,
and foci. Their first article, “On Discourse, Communication, and (Some)
Fundamental Concepts in SLA Research” (1997), approaches their argument by
commenting on certain methodologies and perspectives in current SLA research
and describing how an awareness of the contextual and interactional dimensions
of language use can broaden and enhance SLA. However, this article has certain
limitations and is enhanced by a second article, written a decade later. Their
second article, “Second/Foreign Language Learning as a Social Accomplishment:
Elaborations on a Reconceptualized SLA” (2007),
outlines the arguments made in their first article and addresses criticisms of
their arguments with evidence and a further description of the reconceptualization they first called for.
Firth
and Wagner sought to better understand how identity influences second language
acquisition. They briefly provide an evidential argument through conversation
analysis in which they observe learning occurring in conversations between two
Non-native Speakers (NNSs). The first excerpt
provided is a conversation between a Danish salesman and an Egyptian wholesaler
in which the meaning of “blowing” is negotiated to mean that cheese has gone
bad. Firth and Wagner write, “Learning here, then, is an artifact of
interactional exigency and a product of collaboration” (2007, p. 808). The
Danish salesman later uses the term appropriately and in context after being
transferred to the Egyptian wholesaler. Firth and Wagner believe that the
selective use of the term “blowing” “offers an intriguing angle from which to
view language learning” (2007, 809). Firth and Wagner analyze three more
conversations, and draw the conclusion that language is “learned by doing.”
Such conversation analyses are challenging because they are not available for
longitudinal studies, but Firth and Wagner contend that “the development of
social relations, the mutual constituency of linguistic resources and tasks,
and the specific biography of the language learners” are important (2007, p.
812).
In
his article, “The Rise of Identity in SLA Research, Post Firth and Wagner”
(1997), David Block comments on how Firth and Wagner’s articles, among others
in the mid-1990s, were “symptomatic of a general
uneasiness about a certain conceptual and epistemological narrowness in the field” (865). This uneasiness resulted from the
notion that SLA research might indeed be neglecting how important identity can
be in terms of understanding a learner’s second language acquisition. Block
discusses how identity is related to different demographic categories, such as
age, nationality, gender, and race, but how it is also dynamic and changeable.
Block cites Aneta Pavlenko,
who wrote, “It is possible that only personal narratives provide a glimpse into
areas so private, personal, and intimate that they are rarely—if ever—breached
in the study of SLA, and at the same time at the heart and soul of the second
language socialization process” (Pavlenko, 167). SLA
researchers must consider identity in order to understand how learners
associate with their target language.
Block
considers Firth and Wagner’s work as a starting point, but chooses a different
form of research in order to better understand SLA. Block says that there are
two practical ways of understanding a language learner’s
identity: drawing on autobiographical accounts or doing fieldwork and
interviews. Those that consider autobiographical accounts study memoirs about
personal language learning experiences. Those that collect data using fieldwork
and interviews work closely with groups of language learners in formal
settings, conduct interviews, and make observations. Both types of researchers
“have constructed the L2 [second language] learning
stories of individuals, who for survival, professional, or more ludic reasons, have crossed language and cultural borders”
(867). Block considers these methods to be highly beneficial to an understanding
of how various social factors play into language acquisition. He regards
Norton’s 2000 publication Identity and
Language Learning and Marya Teutsch-Dwyer’s
2001 article “(Re)constructing masculinity in a new linguistic reality”
(included in Multilingualism, Second
Language Learning, and Gender) as studies that provide beneficial methods
of analyzing the role of identity in SLA.
In
her 1997 article, Norton wrote about the relationship between SLA and identity,
and said, “We as L2 educators need to take this
relationship seriously. The questions we ask necessarily
assume that speech, speakers, and social relationships are inseparable” (409).
In her 2000 study, Norton followed five immigrant women in Canada over the
course of 12 months. She asked these women, who had completed six months of ESL
courses, to keep daily diaries of their social, work, and at-home experiences
as well as discuss their daily access to English. Norton’s study reflects on
the women’s complex and dynamic identities, which are made evident in their
diaries. She notes the degree to which these women were able to use English.
Block describes two contrastive cases in Norton’s study. “In the case of Eva, a
young Polish woman, success was achieved in the sense that she was able to gain
acceptance among her colleagues and clientele in the restaurant where she
worked” (Block, 868). In contrast, Felicia, a middle-aged Peruvian woman, was
not as lucky. “Caught between her middle-class past in Peru and her more
precarious economic status in Canada, Felicia struggled to find
her voice in English and above all she chafed at the way that she was often
positioned by others as an immigrant, fortunate to be in Canada” (Block, 868).
Norton concludes that there is a complex relationship between identity, social
relations, motivation, and language learning. However, Block argues, she failed
to provide example conversations so her data and results are limited.
Block
uses Teutsch-Dwyer’s study as an example because it
focused on L2 learner’s personal narratives and also
provided examples of conversation. Teutsch-Dwyer
studied Karol, a middle-aged Polish man living and working in the United
States. Over the course of the 14-month study, Karol showed very little
improvement in his English grammar. Teutsch-Dwyer
attributed his lack of improvement to his English usage habits. Karol only
spoke with a group of women, including his girlfriend, who did not try to help
him improve his speech. In fact, they slowed and simplified their speech for
him, and his girlfriend did the majority of his English communication on his
behalf (868). In contrast to Norton, who explained poor L2
development as a result of lack of access to the language, Teutsch-Dwyer
explained Karol’s identification with others as the main factor in his poor
acquisition of English grammar. Block notes that Teutsch-Dwyer’s
methodologies remedy the shortcomings of Norton’s study because they relied not
only on what Karol said about his life, but also fieldwork that recorded Karol
in action.
Norton
also wrote about other studies done in identity research in SLA. She first
defined identity as a reference to “how people understand their relationship to
the world, how that relationship is constructed across time and space, and how
people understand their possibilities for the future,” then explained various
ways of approaching an understanding of how identity affects SLA (1997, p.
410). Norton gave a brief overview of five articles that utilize an interview
method to study the effects of identity. The first article discusses how ESL
teachers need to understand that their students have “social needs and
aspirations that may be inseparable from linguistic needs” (414). The author of
the article, Brian Morgan, is an ESL teacher that believes the ESL classroom is
an important area of study in identity research. The second article, written by
Patricia Duff and Yuko Uchida, is an analysis of how TOEFL
teachers construct identity and teach culture. Lucia Thesen
studied Black students learning English for Academic Purposes (EAP), and Norton notes the importance of her analysis of
how the students were stereotyped as underprivileged, but in fact did not
identify themselves in that way. Sandra Schecter and
Robert Bayley took their research out of the
classroom setting and studied interactions in Mexican families that had
immigrated to the United States. Finally, Norton discusses Constant Leung, Roxy
Harris, and Ben Rampton’s study of ESL classrooms in
England. Like Firth and Wagner, they questioned certain constructs in SLA
research. Leung, Harris, and Rampton argue that in
order for ESL teachers to better respond to the language needs of their
students, terms such as “native speaker” and “mother tongue” should be replaced
with notions of “language expertise”, “language inheritance”, and “language
affiliation.” In her analysis of the study, Norton writes, “…the teacher should
ask, ‘What is the learner’s linguistic repertoire? Is the learner’s
relationship to these languages based on expertise, inheritance, affiliation, or
a combination?’…These constructs…are highly productive for understanding the
relationship between language and ethnic identity” (418). All of the articles
that Norton lists choose to analyze the effects of identity on SLA through
fieldwork and interviews (414-418).
Norton
concludes that identity is ““complex, contradictory, and multifaceted”,
“dynamic across time and place”, “constructs and is constructed by language”,
and “must be understood with respect to larger social processes, marked by
relations of power that can be either coercive or collaborative” (419). Norton
concludes her article in a discussion of how identity contributes to an
ownership of the English language. She states that, “If learners cannot claim
ownership of the language, they might not consider themselves legitimate
speakers” (422). Norton calls for English educators to avoid categorizing
English learners or non-standard speakers and to instead allow them to “own”
the language just as much as any native speaker. She believes that, if this
happens, fewer learners will suffer from identity issues that cause them to
question their abilities or their motivation for studying the language (427).
Naoko
Morita focuses more closely on identities formed in the classroom community in
her article “Negotiating Participation and Identity in Second Language Academic
Communities” (2004). Morita did a qualitative multiple-case study that followed
six L2 English graduate students from Japan. She
examined how L2 learners negotiated their
participation and membership in class discussions through student self-reports, interviews, and classroom observations. Three
participants illustrated a major challenge in negotiating competence,
identities, and power relations. Their identification with English was constructed
in the classroom, and if they failed to participate and be recognized as
competent members of their classroom communities, their language acquisition
could be affected (573). Morita says this research can have implications for
classroom practices, and notes that classroom practices should cater to the
language learner’s identity.
Research in how identity affects SLA
has expanded since the mid-1990s, and there are many
different ways to measure identity’s effects on SLA. Ethnographic methods that
include narratives, observations, and interviews have proven the most relevant
in the expanding sociolinguistic understanding of language acquisition.
Replications of previous interviews with new subjects will provide more data on
identity’s effects on SLA. Further studies in the effects of identity and
biographical influence on SLA and an understanding that an individual learner’s
personal identity, culture, biography, and social situation influences the way
they acquire a second language can further enrich linguistic research and may
prove beneficial for teachers who could cater to individual needs in a second
and foreign language learning setting.
Bibliography
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