Summary_PLLT_chapter 7

 

 

Ch.7 : Language, Culture, and Identity

 

 

1. HISTORICAL LANDMARKS IN CROSS-CULTURAL RESEARCH

- 20C : research on the sociocultural elements of SLA centered on issues in acculturation, culture shock, social distance, culture “learning”, and attitudes toward cultures beyond one’s own

- Most of this research viewed culture in essentialist terms : culture could be defined and understood in terms of various difficulties encountered by learners 

- The decades-long study of cultural factors gave us important insights and parameters from which every L2 teacher can benefit to some degree

- The contexts of SLA learning are myriad (ex. Learning an L2 in the country of the L2 with the goal of residing there for an extended period of time / foreign language classes taken in the country of the learners’ L1 with the goal of fulfilling an academic requirement

- It is unrealistic to assume that every instances of SLA is a fraught with sociocultural implications

 

1-1. Acculturation and Culture Shock

- The creation of a new identity is at the heart of culture learning or acculturation

- For an L2 learner, understanding a new culture can clash with a person’s worldview, self-identity, and systems of thinking, acting, feeling and communication (learners may experience culture shock if it is severe)

- As soon as the newness wears off and the cognitive and affective contradictions of the foreign culture mount up, they become disoriented

- Edward Hall (1959) : “the longer one stays, the more enigmatic the new country looks”

- Four successive stages of culture acquisition

An initial period of excitement and euphoria

Culture stress or culture shock, erosion of self-esteem and security

Gradual recovery, adjustment to new ways of thinking, feeling, and acting

A final stage of adaptation/integration, acceptance of a new identity

- Lambert(1967) : cited Durkheim’s(1987) concept of anomie – feelings of social uncertainty, homelessness, or dissatisfaction (anomie is experienced when linguistically a person begins to ‘master’ the foreign language and a new culture simultaneously

 

1-2. Social Distance

- Social distance : the cognitive and affective proximity of two cultures that come into contact within an individual

- U.S-Chinese > U.S.-Canadians

- John Schumann (1976c) described social distance as consisting of the several possible parameters : 

Dominance, power relationship across two cultures

The extent to which integration into a second culture is possible

The congruency of the two cultures in question

- The greater the difficulty the learner will have in learning the L2, the smaller the social distance, the better will be the language learning situation

- Schumann’s social distance hypothesis was difficult to measure (subjectively defined phenomena)

- Bill Acton (1979) devised a measure of perceived social distance (devised PDAQ)

- There was an optimal perceived social distance ratio that typified the successful language learners

- Brown (1980) proposed an optimal distance model of SLA : A delay in achieving communicative success in the L2 may result in lower motivation to succeed and fossilization of language

- Culturally based critical period (if learner redouble efforts to learn the L2 in stage 3 -> recovery&communicative competence / if learner moves toward recovery without the benefit of increasing L2 proficiency -> fossilize)

- Svanes (1987,1988) found that university international students studying in Norway appeared to achieve higher language proficiency if they had a balanced and critical attitude to the host people

 

1-3. Attitudes

- Gardner and Lambert(1972) : defined motivation as a construct made up of certain attitudes

- Positive attitudes would aid in successful L2 learning

- John Oller and colleagues (1978) : positive attitudes toward self, the native language group, and the target language group enhanced proficiency

- There were mixed results on the relative advantages and disadvantages of integrative and instrumental orientations

2. IDEOLOGY, POLICY, AND POLITIC

- Ideology is the body of assertions, beliefs, and aims that constitute a sociopolitical system within a group, culture, or country

- Tollefson (2011, p.802) : in ideological terms, negative stereotypes help to maintain existing, unequal social relationships that favor powerful, dominant groups

- Every country has some form of explicit or implicit policy affecting the status of its native language -> deeply affect an L2 learners’ identity

 

2-1. English as an International Lingua Franca

- Some strands of research suggest that English teaching worldwide threatens to form an elitist cultural hegemony 

- The rapid growth of English as an international language (EIL) stimulated discussion about the status of world Englishes

- Nativization or indigenization of English has spread from the inner circle to an outer circle

- English is commonly learned by children at school age and is the medium for most of their primary, secondary, and tertiary education

- Earlier distinctions among English as a native language, second language, and foreign language became blurred with the spread of English as a lingua franca

- Medgyes(1994) showed that nonnative English-speaking teachers offered as many advantages as native English-speaking teachers

- Paradigmatic change from “culture learning’ to construction of identities in contextualized communities of practice

 

2-2. “Second” and “Foreign” Language Acquisition

- The spread of EIL muddied the formerly clear waters that separated what we referred to as English as a second language (ESL) and English as a foreign language (EFL)

- Two global developments mitigate the clarity of identifying a simple “EFL” context:

① The establishment of immigrant communities within various countries

② In the case of English, the penetration of English language media provides further ready access to English even in somewhat isolated settings

 

2-3. Linguistic Imperialism and Language Rights

- One of the most controversial issues to appear in the global spread of EIL was the extent to which the propagation of English as a medium of education, commerce, and government impeded literacy in mother tongue languages and thwarted social and economic progress for those who do not learn it -> devaluing of native languages

- Some signs of hope for the preservation of indigenous languages were seen in the Council of Europe’s 1988 European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages, which assumed a multilingual context and support for minority languages

- Within the UN, the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights endorsed the right of all people

- Our primary tenets should be the highest respect for the languages and cultures of our students

- Two-edged sword fo EIL : the danger of the imperialistic erosion of a global ecology of languages and cultures

 

2-4. Language Policy

- The language of the education of children is a matter for policy

- Require a judgment on the part of the policy-making body on which language is deemed to be of value for the future generation in that society

- The campaigns to pass “English only” ballots in California : devaluing of minority languages and culture

3. TEACHING INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE

- Issues of culture, social identity, and concomitant ideological ramifications become highly important in the learning of an L2

- SLA is intertwined with sociocultural identity

- Scarino(2009), Kramsch(2011) : We must be mindful of the place of intercultural competence as well as communicative competence

- Boroditsky and Gaby (2010) : second language learning is also “second” culture learning, and the communicative use of an L2 is interwoven with developing intercultural competence

- Stevick (1976b) : learners can feel alienation in the process of learning an L2

- The fragility of students is a factor for teachers to address

 

3-1. Intercultural Language Learning

- Liddicoat (2011, p.837) : the role of language educators is to prepare language learners for meaningful communication outside their own cultural environment and to develop in language learners a sense of themselves as mediators between languages and cultures

- There are various guidelines, practical activities, and tips, all of which grounded in research on sociocultural awareness

- Wintergerst and McVeigh (2011) include a chapter on culture and identity, which helps teachers to explore personal identity in their students

- Savignon and Sysoyev (2002) promoted sociocultural competence in their learners of English in Russia by introducing sociocultural strategies such as initiating contact, anticipating cultural misunderstandings, and using diplomacy in discussions

- Bateman (2002) interviewed native speakers of the target language in order to help learners to develop more positive attitudes toward the target culture

- Choi (2003) used drama as a “gateway” to intercultural awareness and understanding for her Korean students of English as a second language

- Students and immigrants who learn an L2 in a country where the L2 is spoken natively experience mismatches between what they anticipated based on their own culture and new cultural milieu

- Our charge as teachers is to be fully aware of such factors and to facilitate the construction of whatever new identities are necessary for successful L2 acquisition 

​​Chapter 8. Communicative Competence (Part 1. 205 – 215p.)

2022425120 이태경

 

Defining Communicative Competence

- coined by Dell Hymes (1972)

- Chomsky’s notion of competence: too limited, did not account for social & functional rules

- aspect of competence that enables us to convey and interpret messages and to negotiate meanings interpersonally within specific contexts

- relative, not absolute

- depends on the cooperation of the involved participants

- not intrapersonal, but interpersonal construct (between two or more individuals)

 

1) BICS and CALP

1. BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills)	2. CALP (Cognitive/Academic Language Proficiency)
used in daily, friendly, informal interpersonal exchanges : involving more slang and conversational metaphor	: used to negotiate typical educational tasks, in a specialized dimension : often involves conscious focus on language forms.
e.g. “Hey, dude, what’s up”, “What? ONG! RU serious? LOL. BTW, I’m LAMO now. ”	e.g. what learners use in classroom exercises, reading assignments, written works, tests…
later modified to context-embedded communication (require some context to understand the meaning)	later modified to context-reduced communication

 

2) Canale and Swain’s Framework (1980)

- four subcategories (components) makes up CC

- related to the use of the linguistic system itself

 1. Grammatical competence

: knowledge of lexical items and of rules of morphology, syntax, semantics…

: mastering the linguistic code

 2. Discourse competence

: ability to connect sentences in stretches of discourse and to form a meaningful whole out. of series of utterances

- related to the functional aspects of communication

 3. Sociolinguistic competence

: ability to follow sociocultural rules of language

: requires understanding of social context

 4. Strategic competence

  : the way we manipulate language in order to meet communicative goals

  (1) compensatory strategies: ability to sue verbal and nonverbal communicative techniques. to compensate for breakdowns in communications or insufficient competence, through paraphrase, circumlocution, repetition, etc.

(2) strategies to enhance effectiveness of communication: ability to select means of. performing a communicative act

 

3) Later Modifications of CC Models

- Bachman (1990)

 A. Organizational Competence

1. Grammatical: rules of what we can do with the forms of language in a sentence-level

2. Textual (= Discourse): rules of how we string sentences together

 B. Pragmatic Competence

1. Illocutionary (= Functions of language)

2. Sociolinguistic

 : considered strategic competence to be entirely separate element of communicative ability, serving an “executive” function of making the final “decision”

 

- Littlewood (2011)

: mostly rearrangement of previous definitions

 1. Linguistic

 2. Discourse

 3. Sociolinguistic

 4. Pragmatic (new!)

: prefer “pragmatic” to “strategic”

: ability to use linguistic resources to convey and interpret meanings in. real situations

5. Sociocultural

: cultural knowledge and assumptions that affect the exchange of meanings

 

* There are no major theoretical disagreements among these three concepts of CC

 

Language Functions

Functions	Form
: purposes we accomplish with language	: e.g. morphemes, words, grammar rules, discourse rules…
: realization of forms - cannot be accomplished without the forms of language	: outward manifestation of language

* Functions are sometimes directly related to forms

* But forms are not always unambiguous in their function

 

1) Speech Acts

- Communication is a series of linguistic “events”/ communicative acts/ speech acts

- components of speech acts

 1. sender

 2. message channel

 3. language form

 4. topic

5. receiver

6. context

- meanings/forces of speech acts

 1. Locutionary: basic literal/propositional meaning of an utterance

 2. Illocutionary: the intended effect. What the sender assumes to be the message (but may vary from what the hearer receives)

 3. Perlocutionary: actual effect/consequence of the utterance.

 

2) Halliday’s Seven Functions of Language

1. Instrumental: to manipulate the environment, to cause certain events to happen

2. Regulatory: to control events, to set limits and parameters, to maintain regulations

3. Representational: to make statements, convey information and knowledge, represent reality

4. Interactional: to ensure social maintenance, phatic communion, keep channels of communication open

5. Personal: to express feelings, emotions, personality, reactions

6. Heuristic: to acquire knowledge, learn, seek information, form questions designed to elicit information

7. Imaginative: to create imaginary image, stories, conceptions, ideas

- These seven functions are neither mutually exclusive nor exhaustive

- Typical courses in SLA cover such functions, and learners understand constraints and possibilities for accomplishing many objectives (functions) in a language. Leaners might acquire correct word order and syntax, but not understand how to achieve the intended function

 

3) Functional Approaches to Language Teaching

- The most popular practical classroom application of functional approach: notional-functional syllabuses

: attend to functions as organizing elements of curriculums (grammar was relegated to second focus)

: notions refer to both abstract concepts (e.g. existence, space, time) and to contexts or situations

- example of functions in Top Notch 1 (Saslow & Ascher, 2011)

- controversies over the effectiveness

: Russel Campbell (1978, p.18); some language courses could be “structural lamb served up as notional-functional mutton”

: Margie Berns (1984b, p.15); textbooks that claim to have a functional base may be “sorely inadequate and even misleading in their representation of language as interaction” & context is the real key, so just because function is covered does not mean learners really internalized the authentic use in the real world.

: Communication is qualitative and infinite/ Syllabus is quantitative and finite