Interlanguage Pragmatics and Language Socialization

The field of second language acquisition (SLA) and its subdisciplines of cross-cultural pragmatics (CCP) and interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) have been dominated since their inception by cognitive approaches to language acquisition theory. These theories view language learning as an individual, mental process, which functions independently of context of use (Davis, 1995; Zuengler & Miller, 2006). While research on pragmatics in SLA has given attention to context, data have typically been collected under controlled experimental or quasi-experimental conditions, most often using discourse completion tasks (Bardovi-Harlig & Hartford, 2005a), in which learners only imagine what they would say in a given context. In relatively few studies (e.g. Bardovi-Harlig & Hartford, 2005b; DuFon, 2000, 2003, 2006; Siegal, 1995a, 1995b) have pragmatic data been collected within the actual context itself. However, in the last decade or so, sociocultural theories, which 'foreground the social and cultural contexts of learning' (Zuengler & Miller, 2006: 37) such as language socialization (LS) theory, have been gaining ground within SLA in general and in ILP in particular. In fact, LS theory has accumulated such force that in her article on Mind, Language, and Epistemology: Toward a Language Socialization Paradigm for SLA , Watson-Gegeo (2004) indicates that we are in the process of a paradigm shift, one in which LS theory will emerge as central in SLA research and practice.

Language Socialization Theory

LS theory is particularly useful to the study of ILP because it focuses on language use in social interaction or the pragmatic aspects of linguistic behavior; however, its scope and perspective are broader (Davis & Henze, 1998; Kasper & Rose, 2002).