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Foreign Language Learning as Identity Reconstruction Through Language Socialization and Intercultural Dialogicality

Foreign Language Learning as Identity Reconstruction Through Language Socialization and Intercultural Dialogicality. SONG Li ( 宋莉） Harbin Institute of Technology slhrb@126.com. In learning a foreign language, the leaner learns how to relate to others through and in the target language;

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Foreign Language Learning as Identity Reconstruction Through Language Socialization and Intercultural Dialogicality

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  1. Foreign Language Learning as Identity ReconstructionThrough Language Socialization and Intercultural Dialogicality SONG Li (宋莉） Harbin Institute of Technology slhrb@126.com

  2. 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.

  3. 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 one’s identities in the target language Outcome of FLL • Identity negotiation and reconstruction

  4. 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.

  5. 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 )

  6. 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.

  7. Foreign language learning as (re)socialization • FLL: challenging the learner’s 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

  8. 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.

  9. 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)

  10. 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, 1981:282)

  11. Dialogue as the way of language learning and use Language is dialogic and social: “Any word exists for the speaker in three aspects: as aneutral word of a language, belonging to nobody; as an other’s word, which belongs to another person and is filled with echoes of the other’s 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 are…filled with the words of others”. (Bakhtin, 1986: 88-89)

  12. 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.

  13. 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.

  14. 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.

  15. 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.

  16. 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)

  17. Contextualized ID the FL classroom

  18. 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 1+1>2 (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 > LC1LC2 identity reconstruction and negotiation intercultural speakerhood

  19. Conclusion • The foreign language learner’s 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 learner’s reconstruction and negotiation of identity is mediated through langauge socialization and intercultural dialogicality in and through the target language.

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