Social Dimensions and Processes in Second Language Acquisition: Multilingual Socialization in Transnational Contexts

Abstract

Social aspects of second language acquisition (SLA) and the contexts in which people attempt to learn and use languages and seek to become integrated within new and changing cultures have been examined for decades from various theoretical perspectives. In this article, I present some of the ways in which ‘social’ experience is being theorized in SLA and in broader fields that intersect with SLA, such as linguistic anthropology. I then discuss how the Douglas Fir Group (DFG, 2016) originally portrayed the many interlinking factors affecting SLA in our multilingual world on several analytic levels and suggest ways of perhaps reconceptualizing the model while retaining its powerful heuristic value. Next, I describe language socialization research as 1 productive social approach and provide examples of research in 2 transnational domains—study abroad and heritage language learning—that demonstrate a multiscalar approach to examining social dimensions of language development and use. The article ends with a discussion of transdisciplinarity in SLA research. I suggest possibilities for team‐based research projects that aim to understand cases from multiple, integrated perspectives on different scales of analysis, and then provide a brief reflection on some of the troubling political ideologies that SLA researchers who embrace multilingualism must now confront on a daily basis.

The Study of Heritage Language Development From a Bilingualism and Social Justice Perspective

“…In the field of bilingualism at large, three questionnaires have been developed and validated that can be used to model that process too: Li, Sepanski, and Zhao (2006), Marian, Blumenfeld, and Kaushanskaya (2007), and Anderson, Mak, Chahi, and Bialystok (2018). The goal would be to create one or a few instruments that are tailored to address the variables of interest to HLD researchers and yet flexible enough to be modified and used with different HL populations, taking their varied social contexts to heart (Duff, 2019).…”

SLA and the Study of Equitable Multilingualism

“…The recognition of the openness of language also encourages an understanding of the complexity of ideological processes in meaning‐making (see Duff, , this issue). Hill () argues that meaning comes neither from speaker intentions, as a personalist ideology of meaning would have us believe (p. 38), nor from linguistic signs that match the world in truth value entailments, as a referentialist ideology would posit (p. 90).…”

Essentials of a Theory of Language Cognition

“…24–25). Duff (, this issue) further analyzes the many dimensions of language socialization and considers how transdisciplinary team‐based research is needed to understand cases from multiple, integrated perspectives on different scales of analysis.…”