CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 4

SOCIAL ASPECTS OF INTERLANGUAGE

Three different approaches in L2 acquisition:

1.      Views interlanguage as consisting of different styles which learners call upon undr different conditions of language use

2.      Concern how social factors determine the input that learners use to construct their interlanguage

3.      Consider how the social identities that learners negotiate in their interaction with native speakers

Interlanguage as a stylistic continuum

Elaine Tarone has proposed that interlanguage involves a stylistic continuum. She argues that learners develop a capability for using the L2 and that this underlies “all regular language behavior”. This capability, which constitutes “an abstract linguistics system”, is comprised of a number of different “styles” which learners access in accordance with a variety of factors. 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 of the continuum is the vernacular style, evident when learners are making spontaneous choices of linguistic form, as is likely in free conservation

Tarone’s idea of interlanguage as a stylistic continuum is attractive in a number of ways. It 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. First problem is that learners are not always most accurate in their careful style and least accurate in their vernacular style. Second problem is that the role of social factors remains unclear. This suggests that the variability evident in their language use is psycholinguistically rather than socially motivated.

Howard Giles’s accommodation theory explain how learners’ social group influences the course of L2 acquisition.  According to Gile’s theory, then, social factors influence interlanguage development via the impact they have on the attitudes that determine the kinds of language us4e learners engage in

Accommodation theory suggest that social factors, mediated through the interaction that learners take part in, influence both how quickly they learn and the actual route that they follow.

 The Acculturation Model of L2 Acquisition

Schumann entertained a number of possible reasons in errors that occur in Alberto, for example, intelligence and age- and dismissed all of them. Schumann proposes 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.

Social distance, this concern to the extent to which individual learners become members of a target-language group and therefore achieve contact with them. He also suggests psychological distance that identifies a further set of psychological factors, such as language shock and motivation, to account for this.

Social Identity and Investment in L2 Learning

Bonny Peirce’s view focuses on the relationship between social context and L2 acquisition. She gives the illustration about Eva’s diary. Eva was subject to a discourse which assume an identity she did not have. As Peirce points out, Eva could have made herself the subject of the discourse had she attempted to reshape the grounds on which the interaction took place.

A learners’ social identity is according to Peirce “multiple and contradictory”. Learning is successful when learners are able to summon up or construct an identity that enables them to impose their right to be heard and thus become the subject of the discourse. This requires “investment”, something that learners will only make if they believe their efforts will increase the value of their “culture capital”

L2 acquisition involves a “struggle” and “investment”. Learners are not computers whom process input data but combatants who battle to assert themselves and investors who expect a good return on their efforts. Successful 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 choice.

CHAPTER IV

QUESTIONS:

1.      What is different of “the subject to” and the subject of “ in which written on page 41

2.      Could you give more explanation in the reasons are mentioned by Schumann those are intelligence and age, and dismissed all of them?