Language Socialization Across Cultures.
About: This article is published in Psyccritiques.The article was published on 1989-01-01. It has received 271 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Socialization (Marxism).
Citations
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01 Nov 2000
TL;DR: From Neurons to Neighborhoods as discussed by the authors presents the evidence about "brain wiring" and how children learn to learn to speak, think, and regulate their behavior, and examines the effect of the climate-family, child care, community-within which the child grows.
Abstract: How we raise young children is one of today's most highly personalized and sharply politicized issues, in part because each of us can claim some level of "expertise." The debate has intensified as discoveries about our development-in the womb and in the first months and years-have reached the popular media. How can we use our burgeoning knowledge to assure the well-being of all young children, for their own sake as well as for the sake of our nation? Drawing from new findings, this book presents important conclusions about nature-versus-nurture, the impact of being born into a working family, the effect of politics on programs for children, the costs and benefits of intervention, and other issues. The committee issues a series of challenges to decision makers regarding the quality of child care, issues of racial and ethnic diversity, the integration of children's cognitive and emotional development, and more. Authoritative yet accessible, From Neurons to Neighborhoods presents the evidence about "brain wiring" and how kids learn to speak, think, and regulate their behavior. It examines the effect of the climate-family, child care, community-within which the child grows.
5,295 citations
TL;DR: This article reviewed a substantial part of the research on linguistic politeness, with the objective to evaluate current politeness theories and to outline directions for future politeness studies, including the distinction of politeness as strategic conflict avoidance and social indexing.
570 citations
TL;DR: The authors reviewed existing studies with a focus on learning, examining research findings in interlanguage pragmatics that shed light on some basic questions in SLA, and exploring cognitive and social-psychological theories that might offer explanations of different aspects of pragmatic development.
Abstract: Unlike other areas of second language study, which are primarily concerned with acquisitional patterns of interlanguage knowledge over time, most studies in interlanguage pragmatics have focused on second language use rather than second language learning. The aim of this paper is to profile interlanguage pragmatics as an area of inquiry in second language acquisition research, by reviewing existing studies with a focus on learning, examining research findings in interlanguage pragmatics that shed light on some basic questions in SLA, exploring cognitive and social-psychological theories that might offer explanations of different aspects of pragmatic development, and proposing a research agenda for the study of interlanguage pragmatics with a developmental perspective that will tie it more closely to other areas of SLA.
484 citations
Cites background from "Language Socialization Across Cultu..."
...The literature on language socialization (e.g., Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986) makes it very clear that parents and peers actively instruct (e.g., model routines, prescribe "rules," provide negative feedback) in child pragmatic learning....
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...The profile established by Schmidt (1983) of his subject Wes suggests that Wes's high level of motivation was facilitative for his acquisition of pragmatic competence but apparently not facilitative for his acquisition of grammatical competence....
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TL;DR: The authors argue that the traditional positivist paradigm is no longer the only prominent paradigm in the field: Relativism has become an alternative paradigm, which is healthy and stimulating for a field like SLA.
Abstract: Looking back at the past 15 years in the field of second language acquisition (SLA), the authors select and discuss several important developments. One is the impact of various sociocultural perspectives such as Vygotskian sociocultural theory, language socialization, learning as changing participation in situated practices, Bakhtin and the dialogic perspective, and critical theory. Related to the arrival of these perspectives, the SLA field has also witnessed debates concerning understandings of learning and the construction of theory. The debate discussed in this article involves conflicting ontologies. We argue that the traditional positivist paradigm is no longer the only prominent paradigm in the field: Relativism has become an alternative paradigm. Tensions, debates, and a growing diversity of theories are healthy and stimulating for a field like SLA.
436 citations
Cites background from "Language Socialization Across Cultu..."
...) For many, the metaphor that Michael Sharwood Smith used in his plenary at the 1991 Second Language Research Forum in Los Angeles remains apt. Defining SLA for the audience, Sharwood Smith (1991) said the “cake” of SLA is cognitive, while its “icing” is the social....
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...For many, the metaphor that Michael Sharwood Smith used in his plenary at the 1991 Second Language Research Forum in Los Angeles remains apt....
[...]
TL;DR: Japanese and American mothers' speech to infants at 6, 12, and 19 months was compared in a cross-sectional study of 60 dyads observed playing with toys at home, finding cultural differences in interactional style and beliefs about child rearing strongly influence the structure and content ofspeech to infants.
Abstract: This study explored both universal features and cultural variation in maternal speech. Japanese and American mothers' speech to infants at 6, 12, and 19 months was compared in a cross-sectional study of 60 dyads observed playing with toys at home. Mothers' speech in both cultures shared common characteristics, such as linguistic simplification and frequent repetition, and mothers made similar adjustments in their speech to infants of different ages. American mothers labeled objects more frequently and consistently than did Japanese mothers, while Japanese mothers used objects to engage infants in social routines more often than did American mothers. American infants had larger noun vocabularies than did Japanese infants, according to maternal report. The greater emphasis on object nouns in American mothers' speech is only partially attributable to structural differences between Japanese and English. Cultural differences in interactional style and beliefs about child rearing strongly influence the structure and content of speech to infants.
396 citations
Cites background from "Language Socialization Across Cultu..."
...Schieffelin and Ochs (1986) have emphasized that early language input is a powerful medium of cultural transmission....
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References
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01 Nov 2000
TL;DR: From Neurons to Neighborhoods as discussed by the authors presents the evidence about "brain wiring" and how children learn to learn to speak, think, and regulate their behavior, and examines the effect of the climate-family, child care, community-within which the child grows.
Abstract: How we raise young children is one of today's most highly personalized and sharply politicized issues, in part because each of us can claim some level of "expertise." The debate has intensified as discoveries about our development-in the womb and in the first months and years-have reached the popular media. How can we use our burgeoning knowledge to assure the well-being of all young children, for their own sake as well as for the sake of our nation? Drawing from new findings, this book presents important conclusions about nature-versus-nurture, the impact of being born into a working family, the effect of politics on programs for children, the costs and benefits of intervention, and other issues. The committee issues a series of challenges to decision makers regarding the quality of child care, issues of racial and ethnic diversity, the integration of children's cognitive and emotional development, and more. Authoritative yet accessible, From Neurons to Neighborhoods presents the evidence about "brain wiring" and how kids learn to speak, think, and regulate their behavior. It examines the effect of the climate-family, child care, community-within which the child grows.
5,295 citations
TL;DR: This article reviewed a substantial part of the research on linguistic politeness, with the objective to evaluate current politeness theories and to outline directions for future politeness studies, including the distinction of politeness as strategic conflict avoidance and social indexing.
570 citations
TL;DR: The authors provide a brief overview of research on language socialization into academic communities and describe, in turn, developments in research on socialisation into oral, written, and online discourse and the social practices associated with each mode.
Abstract: Although much has been written about academic discourse from diverse theoretical perspectives over the past two decades, and especially about English academic discourse, research on socialization into academic discourse or literacies in one's first or subsequently learned languages or into new discourse communities has received far less attention. Academic discourse socialization is a dynamic, socially situated process that in contemporary contexts is often multimodal, multilingual, and highly intertextual as well. The process is characterized by variable amounts of modeling, feedback, and uptake; different levels of investment and agency on the part of learners; by the negotiation of power and identities; and, often, important personal transformations for at least some participants. However, the consequences and outcomes of academic discourse socialization are also quite unpredictable, both in the shorter term and longer term. In this review I provide a brief historical overview of research on language socialization into academic communities and describe, in turn, developments in research on socialization into oral, written, and online discourse and the social practices associated with each mode. I highlight issues of conformity or reproduction to local norms and practices versus resistance and contestation of these. Next, studies of socialization into academic publication and into particular textual identities are reviewed. I conclude with a short discussion of race, culture, gender, and academic discourse socialization, pointing out how social positioning by oneself and others can affect participants’ engagement and performance in their various learning communities.
358 citations
TL;DR: The authors explored the theoretical compatibility of language socialization and sociocultural theory by examining the basic tenets of each and explored how language socialisation scholars have explicitly or implicitly drawn on SCT and how SCT scholars, in turn have positioned research on socialization with respect to their theory.
Abstract: In this paper, I describe the relationship between language socialization and sociocultural theory (SCT) and the implications of this connection for second language socialization (SLS) studies. I first describe the theoretical compatibility of language socialization and SCT by examining the basic tenets of each and then also explore how language socialization scholars have explicitly or implicitly drawn on SCT and how SCT scholars, in turn, have positioned research on socialization with respect to their theory. Second, I illustrate two common current theoretical and analytic approaches to research in SLS that exemplify: (1) a focus on indexicality in language learning, and (2) a community of practice orientation to SLS, which also embraces sociocultural theory (Lave & Wenger 1991; Wenger 1998). Third, I illustrate how the community-of-practice approach, combined with SLS, helps account for findings in a sociocultural study of Korean exchange students' experiences of language and literacy socialization at a Canadian university. I conclude by suggesting future directions for SLS studies.
339 citations
TL;DR: The authors examine notions of educational risk in the context of literacy theories and research and examine the role of literacy in the development of individuals from non-conformist and non-literate communities.
Abstract: this chapter, we examine notions of educational risk in the context of literacy theories and research. Deficit notions about the cognitive potential of individuals from nondominant1 communities have persisted in social science inquiry, particularly where literacy is concerned. The intellectual trails of current conflicting ideas about literacy can be traced in part to theories about the role of literacy in society. For example, the great divide theories of literacy, sustained by a view of culture as social evolution and progress (Cole, 2005), attributed significant differences to the cognitive and cultural development of literate and nonliterate people and their communities (Goody, 1977, 1986, 1987; Goody & Watt, 1963; Havelock, 1963; Ong, 1982).2 This literacy thesis held that there were "categorical differences in cognition and language as consequences of literacy" (Reder & Davila, 2005, p. 171) differences marked by stark dualities used to characterize literate and nonliterate communities: writing versus orality, modern versus traditional, and educated versus uneducated, for example (Collins, 1995, p. 75). As Reder and Davila (2005) have noted, "literacy was presumed to have broad and ubiquitous consequences in such areas as: abstract versus context-dependent uses and genre of language; logical, critical, and scientific versus irrational modes of thought; analytical history versus myth; and so forth" (p. 171). These theories of literacy were challenged for their wideranging dichotomies that perpetuated the hierarchical differences between "types of societies, modes of thought, and uses of language" (p. 171) and reductive notions of culture and thought (Cole & Scribner, 1974, 1977).
334 citations