Sociolinguistic competence and the acquisition of speaking

Abstract

In face-to-face spoken interactions, language learners must construct a meaningful message consistent with the L2 grammar, articulate it comprehensibly, and manage the aspects of oral communication that reflect speaker identity, interlocutor identities, and the characteristics of the interactional context. A lack of sociolinguistic competence can lead to a failure to convey formality, politeness, solidarity, friendship, and group membership, and this will negatively affect the communicative outcome. The current chapter examines the social and situational information one conveys through linguistic variants in speech, offering a state-of-the-art account of empirical research, including a discussion of pressing issues in the field, such as the roles of lexical frequency, geographic variation, and language attitudes, as well as the pedagogical implications of this research.

L2 Development of Perceptual Categorization of Dialectal Sounds

“…While in general learners may be presented with a standard or pedagogical norm in the language classroom (Valdman, 1988), they will inevitably be exposed to a wide variety of dialectal, social, and stylistic variations in real world language contexts. Learning how to navigate this variation—in terms of comprehending diverse speakers, recognizing regionally and socially marked features, and successfully using variable forms to effectively participate in different speech contexts, show politeness, and project one’s social identity, for example—is a critical component of successful language use (see, e.g., Geeslin et al, 2018). Indeed, these skills form part of a language user’s “sociolinguistic competence,” one of the essential components that Canale and Swain (1980) refer to almost forty years ago in their discussion of what it means to possess full communicative competence in a language.…”

Consequential choices: A language ideological perspective on learners' (non‐)adoption of a dialectal variant

“…Under a psychosocial framework, language attitudes are viewed as direct reflections of an individual's deeply held beliefs while learners' L2 choices are treated primarily as the result of individuals' knowledge and actions (Verschueren, 2012). Accordingly, beliefs affect choices by shaping individuals' desires and motivations for language learning and access to target language (TL) input (Geeslin et al, 2018; Surtees, 2016). Researchers often have alluded to individuals' negative attitudes and limiting beliefs as factors that explain cases where learners do not produce the particular dialectal variant under study, including [θ] (e.g., Geeslin & Gudmestad, 2008; George, 2012, p. 125; Pope, 2016).…”

“…A growing body of second language acquisition (SLA) scholarship examines learners' choices affecting their accent as a critical component of the second‐language (L2) development of phonology and sociolinguistic competence (Geeslin et al, 2018; Moyer, 2017). This includes investigations of students' choices to adopt specific dialectal variants in production (e.g., George, 2014; Grammon, 2018; Raish, 2015; Ringer‐Hilfinger, 2012).…”

“…This includes investigations of students' choices to adopt specific dialectal variants in production (e.g., George, 2014; Grammon, 2018; Raish, 2015; Ringer‐Hilfinger, 2012). One persistent issue within these studies concerns the role of language attitudes and beliefs as factors that explain why some learners abandon, avoid, or otherwise choose not to perform specific phonetic variants that they are aware of and have been taught to use (Geeslin & Gudmestad, 2008; Geeslin et al, 2018). U.S. Spanish learners' production of the voiceless, (inter‐)dental fricative consonant [θ] (i.e., “theta”) as a dialectal feature of Castilian Spanish is a case in point.…”

Le français non‐binaire: Linguistic forms used by non‐binary speakers of French

“…Although language forms cannot fully erase the symbolic or real violence and inequities experienced by NB students, providing these linguistic resources is a foundational step to fully realizing educational inclusivity and fostering intercultural competence (see Piller, 2017). Such questions intersect with the crucial role of social factors in L2 acquisition, the importance of sociolinguistic variation in selecting pedagogical norms, the development of sociolinguistic competence (Geeslin & Long, 2014), and, in turn, the development of communicative competence (Geeslin et al, 2018). To develop a fuller understanding of NB linguistic representation, this paper employs survey data from 174 Francophones to describe and analyze how contemporary French speakers are confronting and innovating beyond the gender binary.…”