Foreign Language Learning as Identity Reconstruction Through Language Socialization and Intercultura

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Foreign Language Learning as Identity
ReconstructionThrough Language Socialization and
Intercultural Dialogicality

• SONG Li (??)
• Harbin Institute of Technology
• slhrb_at_126.com

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• In learning a foreign language, the leaner learns
  how to relate to others through and in the target
  language
• It is through the myriad intercultural
  interactions that saturate the whole process of
  foreign language learning that the learner comes
  to a new understanding of the self as seen
  through the eyes of the cultural other and thus
  redefines his/her individual, social as well as
  cultural identities.

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A sociocultural perspective to foreign language
learning

• Nature of FLL
• a process of language socialization
• a process of intercutural dialogicality
• Goal of FLL
• to develop intercultural communication competence
• to relate to others in the target language
• to construct and negotiate ones identities in
  the target language
• Outcome of FLL
• Identity negotiation and reconstruction

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Language socialization

• Socialization
• the process of internalization through which
  humans become members of particular cultures
  (Richards, et al, 1992,p. 492)
• an interactional display (covert or overt) to a
  novice of expected ways of thinking, feeling, and
  acting...through their participation in social
  interactions, children come to internalize and
  gain performance competence in these
  sociocultural defined contexts" (Ochs, 1986, p.
  2).
• Language socialization
• primary socialization that takes place during
  childhood within the family secondary
  socializations to specialized forms and uses of
  language in school, community and work settings
  (Richards, et al, 1992,p. 492)
• socialization through language and socialization
  to use language.

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• Children and other novices in society acquire
  tacit knowledge of principles of social order and
  systems of belief (ethnotheories) through
  exposure to and participation in
  language-mediated interaction.
• Many formal and functional features of discourse
  carry sociocultural information, including
  phonological and morphosyntactic constructions,
  the lexicon, speech-act types, etc.
• Part of the meaning of grammatical and
  conversational structures is sociocultural. These
  structures are socially organized and hence carry
  information concerning social order. They are
  also culturally organized and as such expressive
  of local conceptions and theories about the
  world.
• Language use is then a major if not the major
  tool for conveying sociocultural knowledge and a
  powerful medium of socialization.
• 
  (Ochs, E. 1986, pp. 2-3 )
• 
  

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Language learning as socialization

• To view language learning as language
  socialization suggests that cultural, pragmatic
  and other forms of learning along side with
  language acquisition.
• While learning a language, the learner learns how
  to participate in the worldly experiences as
  social and cultural beings.
• The learning of a foreign language is
  resocialization for the learner to enter a world
  mediated through and created in the target
  language and relate to others in the target
  language.

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Foreign language learning as (re)socialization

• FLL challenging the learners established
  
• world in the first language
• FLL learning to make sense of the world as
  mediated through the target language.
• FLL learning to establish and negotiate
  relationships with culturally diverse groups or
  individuals in the target language.
• FLL learning to represent self in the target
  language.
• FLL resocialization through intercultural
• dialogicality

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FLL as a dialogic process

• Dialogue
• Dialogue in the Bakhtinian view goes far
  beyond the concrete situated verbal exchanges to
  encompass interaction of all kinds between people
  and their social, historical and physical
  contexts.
• It is through dialogic interactions that
  language is used and developed and it is through
  dialogic interactions that the world is created
  and experienced with each person engaging in the
  ever flowing current of life imbued with and
  propelled by other voices, other texts, other
  ways of being and doing. In other words, a
  fundamental dialogicality is ubiquitous in human
  life it is the way we relate to others, model
  our world and live our lives.

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Dialogue as the mode of human existence

• Life by its very nature is dialogic. To live
  means to participate in dialogue to ask
  questions, to heed, to respond, to agree, and so
  forth. In this dialogue a person participates
  wholly and throughout his whole life with his
  eyes, lips, hands, soul, spirit, with his whole
  body and deeds. He invests his entire self in
  discourse, and this discourse enters into the
  dialogic fabric of human life, into the world
  symposium
• 
  
• 
  (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 293)

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Dialogue as nature of language

• at any given moment of its historical
  existence, language is heteroglot from top to
  bottom it represents the coexistence of
  socio-ideological contradictions between the
  present and the past, between different epochs of
  the past, between different socio-ideological
  groups in the present, between tendencies,
  schools, circles and so forth, all given a
  bodily form. These languages of heteroglossia
  intersect each other in a variety of ways,
  forming new socially typifying languages.
  
• 
  (Bakhtin, 1981282)

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Dialogue as the way of language learning and use

• Language is dialogic and social
• Any word exists for the speaker in three
  aspects as a neutral word of a language,
  belonging to nobody as an others word, which
  belongs to another person and is filled with
  echoes of the others utterance, and, finally, my
  word, for, since I am dealing with it in a
  particular situation, with a particular speech
  plan, it is already imbued with my expression.
  Our speech, that is, all our utterances
  arefilled with the words of others.
• 
  (Bakhtin, 1986 88-89)

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Dialogicality

• The ideology of dialogue is better expressed in
  the concept of dialogicality, which can be
  understood in two senses
• 1) the concrete situated interaction between
  two participants.
• 2) a more abstract notion for any interactive
  process that happens between subjects in
  particular social, historical and physical
  contexts.

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• Bakhtinian dialogism and dialogicality
  emphasize on the cultural and interpersonal
  dimensions of utterances or language in use and
  examines discourses that are formed by multiple
  voices and contexts. Therefore, it is
  particularly relevant for the FL classroom where
  dialogue takes place along different dimensions.

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Intercultural dialogicality (ID)

• The dynamic interactive nature and process in
  between LC1 and LC2 or the dialogical mechanism
  that exists and functions in the intercultural
  contexts where people of diverse cultural
  backgrounds engage in meaning making actions.
• ID distinguishes itself from dialogicality in the
  general sense in that the participants are of
  diverse cultural backgrounds and therefore bring
  into the dialogue different worldviews and
  approaches to their life problems, including the
  use of language.
• ID is thus more hetereglossic, multi-voiced and
  contested.

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Intercultural dialogicality (ID)

• In the foreign language classroom, ID is at
  work when in the multi-faceted interaction
  between LC1 and LC2, two diverse linguacultural
  systems contest and negotiate with each other in
  the learners and teachers endeavor to
  (re)construct their cognitive schemata as well
  as their identities in between the two.

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ID as characterisitic of FLL

• Intercultural dialogicality is perceived as
  reality of the
• FL classroom which functions at three levels
• Intrapersonal level
• Interpersonal level
• Intercultural level
• 
  (Song Li, 2007, 2008)

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Contextualized ID the FL classroom
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Indentity reconstruction and negotiation throught
Interaction between LC1 LC2

• The learning of L2 is more than a combination
  of L1 and L2 , which is expressed in the formula
  11gt2 (Gao Y.H., 2000). Likewise, the learning
  of another linguaculture does not lead to a
  simple addition of LC2 on top of LC1. The
  interaction between LC1 and LC2 that
  characterizes the whole process of FLL will
  empower the learner with the ability to
  reconstruct and negotiate identities in the
  target language and acquire intercultural
  speakerhood as described below
  
• LC1 LC2 gt
  LC1LC2
• identity
  reconstruction and negotiation
• intercultural
  speakerhood

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Conclusion

• The foreign language learners intercultural
  communication competence, which is recognized as
  the ultimate gaol of foreign language teaching
  and learning, is in essence his/her ability to
  reconstruct and negotiate his/her identity with
  the cultural other in the target language.
• The learners reconstruction and negotiation of
  identity is mediated through langauge
  socialization and intercultural dialogicality in
  and through the target language.