LANGUAGE SOCIALIZATION
Language Socialization - Basic premise is that linguistic and cultural knowledge are constructed through
each other, and that language-acquiring children or adults are active and selective agents in both
processes. This is in contrast to many psychological and cognitive theories, which view language
acquisition as independent from culture or context.
Cognitive Issues in LS - LS views cognition as a social phenomenon. LS research builds on Vygotsky's
argument regarding interaction and ZPD. Some argue that learners construct script-like representations
of activities, events, and meanings, such as school culture, called "*Mental Event Representations
(MERs)*." Other research discusses "legitimate peripheral participation," where skills are built by active
participation in a variety of different roles, allowing a learner to move from the edges of a community to
a participant. Key to note is that in LS, structural linguistics is an outcome of action rather than action's
invariant precondition (actions structure language rather than language structuring action), as it is in
theories like UG.
Language Socialization for and in SLA - LS can help resolve the modularity problem by emphasizing and
clarifying connections amoung language learning and teaching processes (thereby merging teaching with
language acquisition, as opposed to Krashen's Monitor Model, which viewed learned language as
unideal). LS also rejects the traditional SLA view that cognition happense solely "inside the head" of an
individual, which presupposes language is formed bottom-up, while LS takes a more top-bottom
approach.
