Social Aspects of Interlanguage

Three rather different approaches to incoporating  a social angle on the study of L2 acquisition can be identified. The first views interlanguage as consisting of different ‘style’ which learners call upon under different conditions of language use. The second concerns how social factors determine the input that learners use to construct their interlanguage. The third considers how the social identities that learners negotiate in their interactions with native speakers shape their opportunities to speak and, thereby, to learn an L2.

     1.       Interlanguage as a stylistic continuum

Elaine Tarone argues that learners develop a capability for using the L2 and that this underlies ‘all regular language behavior’. This capability, which constitutes ‘an abstract linguistic 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 onther end of the continuum is the vernacular style, evident when learners are making spontaneous choices of linguistic form, as is likely in free conversation.

Another theory that also draws on the idea of stylistic variation but which is more obviously social is Howard Giles’s accomodation theory. This seeks to explain how a learner’s social group influences the course of L2 acquisition. For Giles the key idea is that of ‘social accommodation’. He suggests that when people interact with aech other they either try to make their speech similar to that of their addressee in order to emphasize social cohesiveness (a process of convergence) or to make it different in order to emphasize their social distinctiveness (a process of divergence). According to Giles’s theory, then, social factors influence interlanguage development via the impact they have on the attitudes that determine the kinds of language use learners engage in.

     2.       The acculturation model of L2 acquisition

A similar perspective on the role of social factors in L2 acquisition can be found in John Schumann’s acculturation model. This model, which has been highly influential, is built around the metaphor of ‘distance’. Schumann proposed that pidginization in L2 acquisition results when learners fail to acculurate to the target-language group, that is, when they are unable or unwilling to adapt to a new culture.

The main reason for learners failing to acculturate is social distance. This concerns the extent to which individual learners become members of a target-language group and therefore achieve contact with them. A learner’s social distance is determined by a number of factors. In such cases, he suggests psychological distance becomes important and identifies a further set of psychological factors, such as language shock and motivation, to account for this.

As presented by Schumann, social factors determine the amount of contact with the L2 individual learners experience and thereby how successful they are in learning. There are two problems with such a model. First, it fails to acknowledge that factors like ‘integration pattern’ and ‘attitude’ are not fixed and static but, potentially, variable and dynamic, fluctuating in accordance with the learner’s changing social experiences. Second, it fails to acknowledge that learners are not just subject to social conditions but can also become the subject of them; they can help to construct the social context of their own learning. It is this notion that we will now explore.

     3.       Social identify and investment in L2 learning

The notion of social identity is central to the theory Peirce advances. She argues that language learners have complex social identities that can only be understood in terms of the power relations that shape social structures. A learner’s social identity is, according to Peirce, ‘multiple and contardictory’. 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 learners will only make if they believe their efforts will increase the value of their ‘cultural capital’. Peirce’s social theory of L2 acquisition affords a different set of metaphors. L2 acquisition involves a ‘struggle’ and ‘investment’.