Formulaic language is an important notion within the theory of language socialization. By formulaic language, we mean lexical chunks—including one word, phrase, or a string of a few words—often used in verbal routines (Schieffelin & Ochs, Reference Schieffelin and Ochs1986a) or interactional routines (de León, Reference de León, Duranti, Ochs and Schieffelin2012; Peters & Boggs, Reference Peters, Boggs, Schieffelin and Ochs1986). While other approaches such as psycholinguistics and corpus linguistics define formulaic language as a sequence “stored and retrieved whole from memory at the time of use” (Wray & Perkins, Reference Wray and Perkins2000, p. 1), from the perspective of language socialization, we consider lexical chunks to be formulaic due to their repeated use in such routines and other recurring contexts. It has been widely observed that in communities across the globe novices acquire language and sociocultural knowledge through participation in routines with more proficient and knowledgeable members of their community. According to Schieffelin and Ochs (Reference Schieffelin and Ochs1986a), such routines “may involve a member (e.g., caregiver) modeling something to be said and directing the child to repeat it” or “may simply involve repeated performances of an action or sequence of actions” (p. 172). Formulaic language, which may be part of such routines, is a powerful means and end of socialization. First, as with other language resources and practices, formulaic language is an end of socialization in the sense that it is something novices have to learn to use in grammatically, pragmatically, and sequentially relevant ways, “as a means of engaging with others in the course of—indeed, in the constitution of—everyday interaction and activities” (Garrett, Reference Garrett, King and Hornberger2008, p. 190). Second, formulaic language is also a means of socialization in the sense that it is a resource for conveying to novices the norm, values, identities, and stances of members of the target community.
This article discusses formulaic language in language socialization theory and research. It first provides a brief introduction of language socialization theory. It then reviews recent language socialization research on formulaic language, including how novices are socialized to use it, how they are socialized through its use, and how they actually use it in normative and novel ways in order to participate in social interaction and construct their own social worlds. It is important to note here that while the notion of formulaic language is not always explicitly discussed in the literature on language socialization, in the research discussed below it is present either overtly or tangentially. This research suggests that formulaic language is indeed an important notion within the theory of language socialization, for it often plays a crucial role in socializing novices to social dimensions such as politeness, hierarchy, and social identities including social roles and statuses, and relationships. Finally, the article summarizes the findings and offers some directions for future research.
LANGUAGE SOCIALIZATION
Language socialization theory seeks to inform how novices acquire language and culture through participation in socioculturally organized activities (Garrett & Baquedano-López, Reference Garrett and Baquedano-López2002; Kulick & Schieffelin, Reference Kulick, Schieffelin and Duranti2004; Schieffelin & Ochs, Reference Schieffelin and Ochs1986a, Reference Schieffelin and Ochs1986b). Emerging out of research on children's first language (L1) acquisition in the 1970s and early 1980s, language socialization has its roots in linguistic anthropology, but draws upon other theories and methodologies that examine the coconstruction of meaning and meaningful realities, including child language studies (e.g., Snow & Ferguson, Reference Snow and Ferguson1977), Soviet psychology (e.g., Vygotsky, Reference Vygotsky1978), conversation analysis (e.g., Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, Reference Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson1974), and cultural psychology (e.g., Lave & Wenger, Reference Lave and Wenger1991). The claim that language and cultural meaning are acquired in social interaction is compatible with Bourdieu's notion of habitus, which is defined as “a set of dispositions acquired through (formative) early experiences, which incline individual actors to behave in certain ways” (Bourdieu, Reference Bourdieu1991, pp. 12–13). Language socialization seeks to account for how habitus is produced and reproduced and how it is negotiated and transformed over time (Ochs, Solomon, & Sterponi, Reference Ochs, Solomon and Sterponi2005).
Language socialization is concerned with two central areas of socialization: “socialization through the use of language and socialization to use language” [original italics] (Schieffelin & Ochs, Reference Schieffelin and Ochs1986a, p. 163). That is, as children and other novices learn to use language, they learn how to think, feel, and act in accordance with the values, ideologies, and traditions of the community or social group. In this way, novices’ acquisition of language goes hand-in-hand with acquiring “culturally specific subjectivities” (Kulick & Schieffelin, Reference Kulick, Schieffelin and Duranti2004, p. 351). How is this achieved? Ochs (Reference Ochs, Gumperz and Levinson1996, Reference Ochs and Kramsch2002) explained that, in addition to temporal and spatial dimensions, language (verbal and nonverbal signs) directly indexes socioculturally meaningful realities, including social acts (socially recognized goal-oriented utterances such as a request or compliment), and stances (affective and epistemic), which can further index identities (e.g., social roles, status, relationship, and gender) and activities (sequences of actions). In this way, language is a contextual cue (Gumperz, Reference Gumperz1982) and thus participates in a process of entextualization (Bauman & Briggs, Reference Bauman and Briggs1990), whereby language forms come to be associated with certain genres, events, and other meaningful realities (e.g., Hanks, Reference Hanks1996; Silverstein, Reference Silverstein, Basso and Selby1976, Reference Silverstein2003). The impact of indexicality on the process of language socialization is immense, as “the greatest part of sociocultural information is keyed implicitly, through language use” (Ochs, Reference Ochs, Stigler, Shweder and Herdt1990, p. 291). Indexical meanings are typically not explicitly stated but are implicitly conveyed through language use. Novices have to learn how to interpret and use language in relation to its indexical meanings, which occurs in social interaction.
The research methods central to language socialization studies involve ethnography and linguistic analysis (Garrett, Reference Garrett, King and Hornberger2008; Garrett & Baquedano-López, Reference Garrett and Baquedano-López2002; Kulick & Schieffelin, Reference Kulick, Schieffelin and Duranti2004). These methods include longitudinal observations, audiovisually recording and transcribing naturally occurring interaction, and analysis of the data with attention to both micro- and macro-levels of context. Data are mainly analyzed in a qualitative (and in some cases a quantitative) way as researchers look for recurring discursive practices between experts and novices and attempt to account for how these practices are associated with the social norms and ethnotheories of the local community. Ethnographic observations provide insight into macro-level features of context, whereas qualitative analyses of participants’ interactions elucidate micro-level patterns of linguistic and nonlinguistic use that are framed by the macro-context. In these ways, language socialization researchers try to connect the micro-organization of interaction to the macro-organization of society. Not all researchers, however, draw upon all of the above methods (Garrett, Reference Garrett, King and Hornberger2008). Some researchers, particularly in education, may conduct a “macro-level tracking of the reproduction or transformation of ideologies, languages and other behavior” or may examine learners’ “participation more globally within their evolving communities of practice” (Duff, Reference Duff2007, p. 317). In other words, such language socialization researchers attempt to shed light on the reproduction or transformation of language ideologies and practices of a community at a macro-level, rather than examining the details of expert-novice interaction on a micro-level.
Although they are often referred to as novices, learners are not viewed as empty vessels into which language and culture are simply poured (Kulick & Schieffelin, Reference Kulick, Schieffelin and Duranti2004). Rather, they are active agents who socialize caregivers, siblings, and peers (e.g., Goodwin & Kyratzis, Reference Goodwin, Kyratzis, Duranti, Ochs and Schieffelin2012; Reynolds, Reference Reynolds2008), as well as teachers, co-workers, and others, and may resist and contest the language practices that others attempt to socialize them into (e.g., Duff, Reference Duff, Hornberger and McKay2010).
As mentioned earlier, while early language socialization research primarily examined young children's socialization to their first language and culture in and around the household (Ochs, Reference Ochs1988; Schieffelin, Reference Schieffelin1990; Schieffelin & Ochs, Reference Schieffelin and Ochs1986b), language socialization extends to “the life span process of becoming an active, competent participant” (Ochs, Reference Ochs and Duranti2001, p. 227), as individuals enter new communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, Reference Lave and Wenger1991), such as workplaces, university clubs, or online groups, that require different ways of acting, thinking, and speaking, and the use of new codes and registers (Duff, Reference Duff2007; Dunn, Reference Dunn2011). Over the last several years, an increasing number of new and established scholars in fields such as applied linguistics, linguistic anthropology, and education in North America, Europe, and Asia have pursued language socialization research in societies across the globe (see Bayley & Schecter, Reference Bayley and Schecter2003; Duff & Hornberger, Reference Duff and Hornberger2008; Duranti, Ochs, & Schieffelin, Reference Duranti, Ochs and Schieffelin2012). Although the household and its surround remain an important setting of language socialization, research has examined a range of other settings. In particular, studies have examined classrooms and other contexts of formal instruction (e.g., Baquedano-López, Reference Baquedano-López2000, Reference Baquedano-López2008; Cook, Reference Cook, Akatsuka, Iwasaki and Strauss1996, Reference Cook1999; He, Reference He2004; Howard, Reference Howard2004, Reference Howard2009; Moore, Reference Moore2006, Reference Moore2008; Rymes, Reference Rymes, Duff and Hornberger2008; Sterponi & Santagata, Reference Sterponi and Santagata2000), playgrounds and other outdoor spaces (e.g., García Sánchez, Reference García Sánchez2005; Griswold, Reference Griswold2007; Paugh, Reference Paugh2005), and online communities (e.g., Potts, Reference Potts2005; Thorne, Black, & Sykes, Reference Thorne, Black and Sykes2009). Some research has examined indigenous groups (Field, Reference Field2001; Pesco & Crago, Reference Pesco, Crago, Duff and Hornberger2008) and children and adults with social and mental developmental disorders such as schizophrenia (Walsh, Reference Walsh, Duff and Hornberger2008) and autism (e.g., Ochs, Kremer-Sadlik, Sirota, & Solomon, Reference Ochs, Kremer-Sadlik, Sirota and Solomon2004; Sirota, Reference Sirota2004).
Language socialization research has also examined bilingual and multilingual communities (e.g., Garrett, Reference Garrett2006), as societies around the world have become more ethnically diverse (e.g., Bayley & Schecter, Reference Bayley and Schecter2003; Duff, Reference Duff, Hornberger and McKay2010). This research investigates the socialization of second language (L2; see Duff, Reference Duff, Hornberger and McKay2010, Reference Duff, Duranti, Ochs and Schieffelin2012; Duff & Talmy, Reference Duff, Talmy and Atkinson2011) and heritage learners (e.g., He, Reference He, Duff and Hornberger2008, Reference He, Duranti, Ochs and Schieffelin2012). The central areas of investigation include L2 children in classrooms (e.g., Cekaite, Reference Cekaite2007; Kanagy, Reference Kanagy1999) and religious and other educational settings (e.g., Moore, Reference Moore2006, Reference Moore2008); high school students (e.g., Duff, Reference Duff, Barnard and Torres-Guzman2009) and college-aged adults inside and outside classrooms (e.g., Atkinson, Reference Atkinson, Bayley and Schecter2003; Bronson & Watson-Gegeo, Reference Bronson, Watson-Gegeo, Duff and Hornberger2008; N. Morita, Reference Morita2000, Reference Morita2004; Ohta, Reference Ohta1999; Séror, Reference Séror2009; Siegal, Reference Siegal1996) and in host-family homes abroad (e.g., Cook, Reference Cook2008), immigrant L2 adult learners in the workplace (e.g., Duff, Wong, & Early, Reference Duff, Wong and Early2000; Li, Reference Li2000); and heritage children in households (e.g., Klein, Reference Klein, Reyes and Lo2009, E. Morita, Reference Morita2003; Park, Reference Park and Kondo-Brown2006, Reference Park2008; Song, Reference Song, Reyes and Lo2009), classrooms (e.g., Fader, Reference Fader2008; Friedman, Reference Friedman2010a, Reference Friedman2010b; He, Reference He, Bayley and Schecter2003; Klein, in press), and extracurricular activities (Guardado, Reference Guardado2009). This body of research suggests various trajectories of socialization (Wortham, Reference Wortham2005) in which individuals are socialized across a number of activities and settings and may experience diverse and complex paths to linguistic and sociocultural competence. In L2 socialization the goals and outcomes are relatively fluid in comparison to L1 socialization. For example, adult L2 learners may resist socialization into the target community (e.g., Atkinson, Reference Atkinson, Bayley and Schecter2003; Siegal, Reference Siegal1996) or may be excluded from the community, activities, or discourses through which language and culture are acquired (e.g., N. Morita, Reference Morita2004).
SOCIALIZING NOVICES TO AND THROUGH FORMULAIC LANGUAGE
This section discusses studies that examine novices’ socialization to formulaic language in L1, L2, and heritage language learning environments. This includes how children and adult novices are socialized to use formulaic language, what sorts of sociocultural meanings are indexed by formulaic language, and the kinds of communities in which it is used. As mentioned earlier, formulaic language is considered here to include lexical chunks such as one word, fixed expressions, and a string of up to a few words used repeatedly in interaction across various settings as an index of sociocultural meanings.
Politeness
Several language studies investigated politeness, which is a type of affective stance in the language socialization framework. In particular, so-called politeness routines (e.g., “please X”, “thank you”) have long been a focus of research in language socialization and related fields (see Li, Reference Li, Duff and Hornberger2008). These routines often have an adjacency pair (e.g., Schegloff, Reference Schegloff2007) turn-taking structure (e.g., Speaker A: “I'm sorry,” Speaker B: “That's okay”).
In examining Japanese L1 and L2 children's socialization in households, playgrounds, and a preschool, Burdelski (Reference Burdelski2010, Reference Burdelski, Duranti, Ochs and Schieffelin2012, forthcoming) showed that caregivers, teachers, and siblings socialize children to use formulaic expressions such as arigatoo (thank you) for expressing appreciation for food and gifts, doozo (Here you are/Please have it) for offers of toys and food (or for compliances with requests for such objects), and gomen(nasai) or gomen ne (I'm sorry) for apologies for harming others. For instance, Burdelski (Reference Burdelski2010) showed that in addressing the entire class of preschool children, a teacher voiced a fictive recalcitrant child who refused to share toys. Following this, the teacher encouraged the students to align with the teacher's assessment that the child's response was dame (no good) and then demonstrated to the children how to share by pretending to hand over a toy while prompting (e.g., Demuth, Reference Demuth, Schieffelin and Ochs1986; Schieffelin, Reference Schieffelin1990) them to say doozo (Please have it) using a gentle sounding voice (e.g., Teacher: Ne, otomodachi ga ka:::shite tte yuttara, Ja chotto dake doo::zo: tte; “if a friend says, ‘May (I) borrow it’, (you) say, ‘Just a little, please have it’.”). In these ways, Japanese caregivers socialize children to use formulaic language to display a polite stance toward others, which includes being “kind” (shinsetsuna) and “considerate” (omoiyarinoaru; Pizziconi, Reference Pizziconi2007, p. 219) of their needs and wants.
In relation to this, in another study Burdelski (in press) showed that Japanese caregivers socialize children to say some of the same polite expressions, namely apologies (e.g., Gomennasai [I'm sorry]), to nonhuman addressees including pets and other animals, flowers and plants, food, stones, bugs, and deity figures. For instance, in an example in which a mother, aunt, and two boys were visiting a shrine, after the older boy (four years old) kicked toward a fox statue (a traditional guardian figure in Shinto, the indigenous religion of Japan), his mother and aunt sanctioned him, and the aunt prompted him to apologize to the statue (Aunt: Gomennasai yuttoki; “Say, ‘I'm sorry [to the fox]’.”). When the child repeated the apology expression, the mother voiced the fox's formulaic response, ii yo (It's okay), using reported speech as an expression of forgiveness (Mother: Ii yo tte yuttekureteharu yo, kitto; “It's surely saying ‘It's okay’.”). His analysis shows that in encouraging children to say formulaic expressions to nonanimate entities, Japanese caregivers also socialize children to relationships and defining the scope of the social world.
In another study, Dunn (Reference Dunn2011) examined the training of Japanese L1 adults in business manner courses to use polite, honorific language in speaking to customers. In particular, Dunn showed that this training involves instruction in how to use “cushion phrases” (p. 3648) that function as a negative politeness strategy preceding a face-threatening act (Brown & Levinson, Reference Brown and Levinson1987) such as a personal question or request. Such phrases include the set expressions, Osoreirimasu ga (I am fearful but. . .), Shirtsurei desu ga (It is rude but. . .), and Moshiwake gozaimasen ga (There is no excuse but. . .), which neophyte employees may know tacitly but have rarely ever used. Dunn's analysis links the use of such expressions to politeness as conforming to norms and conventions of the business world. Dunn's findings suggest that adult Japanese L1 business trainees are socialized to use formulaic language in relation to becoming a member of a new community of practice.
Hierarchy
Some studies examine formulaic language in relation to hierarchy. In societies such as Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, and Korea, children may be socialized to use honorific formulaic expressions, such as kinship and other address/reference terms, greetings, and farewell expressions as a display of respect toward others (e.g., Howard, Reference Howard2009, Reference Howard, Duranti, Ochs and Schieffelin2012). In particular, several studies examined the socialization of Korean heritage children (e.g., Byon, Reference Byon2003; Park, Reference Park and Kondo-Brown2006, Reference Park and Kondo-Brown2008; Song, Reference Song, Reyes and Lo2009). In Korean there are different sets of formulaic expressions used for addressing family members (in-group) and nonfamily members (out-group) who enter and leave the household. The latter include honorific markers that index respect and deference toward the addressee. Such expressions are also used when addressing grandparents, who have the highest status in the Korean family. Korean heritage children are socialized to use these formulaic expressions (along with bowing) in addressing grandparents from a young age.
Park (Reference Park and Kondo-Brown2006) examined socialization of Korean heritage language children in the United States to use honorifics. In this study, Park showed how a mother socialized her female child (Natalie) to a say an honorific farewell phrase to the grandmother who was leaving the house after a visit. When Natalie produced the incorrect formulaic expression (i.e., the one used when addressing someone coming into the house), the mother recast the expression for the child by saying the formulaic farewell phrase (Annyeonghi danyeo ose-yo; “Go and return peacefully”), employing the honorific marker –yo from the child's perspective. Park shows that when Natalie repeated the expression, the mother continued by prompting Natalie what to say as a reminder (Danyeo ose-yo geureoneun geoya; “(You) should say, ‘Go and return’.”). Park's study suggests that Korean heritage children are socialized to use formulaic language with higher status addressees to display respect and deference, and to understand the self within a relational social hierarchy.
In another study of Korean heritage children in the United States, Song (Reference Song, Reyes and Lo2009) examined the socialization of honorific reference and address terms (also see E. Morita [Reference Lave and Wenger2003] on Japanese heritage children's use of these terms). In particular, Song showed that Korean mothers socialize children to refer to and address older peers using honorific kinship terms (e.g., Nuna, “elder sister”; hyeng, “elder brother”) through prompting, modeling, and recasting. For instance, when a child (Joonho, five years old) was recalling to his mother an event of the school day involving a male friend (Sicheol, six years old) using the child's first name, the mother recast his utterance to include an honorific kinship term hyeng (“older brother”) (Mother: Sicheol hyenga maliya? Sicheol hyengaka way wulessnuntey? “You mean Sicheol hyeng? Why did Sicheol hyeng cry?”). The child immediately incorporated this honorific kinship term into his next utterance (waynyahamyen Sicheol hyengi keympoi kaciko nollyeko hayssnuntey, kaciko kasse. “Because Sicheol hyeng wanted to play with the Game Boy, but [a friend of his] took it away”). Similarly to societies such as Laos (Enfield, Reference Enfield, Enfield and Stivers2007), Song's study suggests that Korean caregivers socialize children to a view that reference terms “do more than just refer,” rather they “instantiate and stabilize culture-specific views of the person” (Enfield, Reference Enfield, Enfield and Stivers2007, p. 97).
Song's (Reference Song, Reyes and Lo2009) analysis also shows how Korean heritage children are agents in the socialization process. In particular, Song observed that outside the context of his mother's instruction Joonho avoided using the honorific reference term hyeng when referring to or addressing his close friend Sicheol. By doing so, Joonho seemed to have rejected the social meaning indexed by this reference term that is relevant in a Korean context but not in an American one. Song reported that Joonho instead created a hybrid form in which he employed the friend's name, which was “distinct from the standard Korean pronunciation of this term as well as from the way English speakers usually pronounced Sicheol's name” (p. 223). Song's findings suggest that Korean-English bilingual children may invent their own address and reference terms in challenging social hierarchies that are prevalent in one of their languages but not in the other.
Social Identity
As suggested in the previous section, formulaic language also plays a role in many communities in socializing novices to identity, including social roles and statuses, and relationships. In relation to this, several studies also suggest that formulaic language plays a role in socializing novices to other aspects of identity, such as ethnicity, religion, and gender. For instance, in her study of a Hasidic Jewish community in New York City, Fader (Reference Fader, Duranti, Ochs and Schieffelin2012) showed how at the beginning of mealtime a mother prompted her twin boys (one year, seven months old) several times to say a formulaic prayer word (burikh “blessed”), using an English command “say” followed by the target word (Mother: Say burikh), and also prompted them using the target word followed by rising intonation (Mother: Burikh?). According to Fader, in this community, Hasidic Yiddish functions as an index of religious, ethnic, and morally based aspects of identity, and more specifically in prayer at mealtime it functions in conveying positive feelings toward God for food. In this way, Fader's study suggests that by prompting young children to say a prayer word at mealtime, Hasidic Jewish caregivers socialize children to use formulaic language to index not only an activity (e.g., mealtime) and action (e.g., thankfulness) but also affect and religious and ethnic identity.
Formulaic language also plays a role in socializing novices to gender identity. In particular, in their study of L1 and L2 children in a Japanese preschool, Burdelski and Mitsuhashi (Reference Burdelski and Mitsuhashi2010) showed that preschool teachers often address girls using the adjective kawaii (cute, lovable, adorable) toward things such as clothes, accessories (decorated with animated characters, flowers, and the like), and particular nonverbal actions (e.g., smiling face or interesting poses). When it is used on its own in interaction (or together with the final particle ne “isn't it?”), the word kawaii not only is an adjectival predicate (It's cute), but also performs the social action of assessment (e.g., Pomerantz, Reference Pomerantz, Atkinson and Heritage1984). While Burdelski and Mitsuhashi found that it is not the case that boys are never the objects of teacher assessments with kawaii, it was the girls, both L1 and L2 children, who appropriated and elaborated on the word kawaii in both verbal and nonverbal ways, especially by making assessments of themselves and addressees in interaction with female peers. In this way, Burdelski and Mitsuhashi's study suggests that female children deploy the formulaic word kawaii together with other language resources as a particular social action (assessment) to index affect and gender.
CHILDREN'S USE OF FORMULAIC LANGUAGE
This section discusses recent research that sheds light on novices’, particularly school-age children's, use of formulaic language especially as a resource for participating in social interaction and communities of practices, socializing others, and creating their own meanings and social worlds.
Several studies suggest that formulaic language is an important resource for participating in social interaction with family members, teachers and peers (e.g., Cekaite, Reference Cekaite2007; Sirota, Reference Sirota2004). For example, in her study of 8- to 12-year-old L1 English-speaking children diagnosed with autistic disorder or Asperger's disorder (a related condition on the autism spectrum) in the United States, Sirota (Reference Sirota2004) found that the children were able to produce a wide range of positive politeness strategies (Brown & Levinson, Reference Brown and Levinson1987) in family interaction with varying degrees of competence. In particular, Sirota showed that the children “accomplished overall” (p. 234) highly idiomatic language such as greetings, conventionalized agreement, offers, and compliments in sequentially and contextually appropriate ways, and “accomplished selectively” (p. 234) highly contingent language such as joking. Sirota's findings suggest that the autistic children were very competent at deploying formulaic polite expressions, but were less competent at using more open-ended and novel politeness strategies, which suggests that formulaic language may be acquired more easily.
Some studies examine children's use of formulaic language in participating in classroom interaction (Cekaite, Reference Cekaite2007; Hawkins, Reference Hawkins2005). For example, Cekaite (Reference Cekaite2007) recorded a 7-year-old Kurdish female child's use and acquisition of Swedish as an L2 in a classroom over a school year. She showed that, at an early phase (outset of the school year), the child (Fusi) had acquired a set of words in Swedish (e.g., titta [look], har [here], and nej [no]) that she combined with nonverbal behaviors to initiate “conventionalized phrases” such as “summonses, simple displays of disagreement, leave-taking, and greeting routines” (p. 49). During the middle phase (middle of the school year), Cekaite showed how Fusi used the set formula in Swedish “My name is X” to pretend to be another student, Rana (whose seat Fusi was sitting in) for the moment in initiating interaction with the teacher (Fusi: JAG HETER RANA! “MY NAME IS RANA!”) (p. 50). She also showed that in the latter phase (end of school year), Fusi was able to use the formulaic expression in Swedish “I eight years old” (Jag är x år), which was modeled on “self-presentation routines” (p. 54), in order to do other social actions such as introduce a new topic into the classroom discourse and create oppositional moves to the teacher's claim that Fusi was seven years old, not 8. Cekaite's study suggests that formulaic language, particularly set phrases that require the substitution of a word, was an important resource used by an L2 learner over the course of a year to participate in classroom interaction and construct herself as a competent student.
In a study of interaction among Mayan children within a kinship network in a highland Guatemala town, Reynolds (Reference Reynolds2007) showed how the children used the Spanish polite formulaic greeting Buenos días (Good morning) in novel ways. For example, Reynolds shows how a boy used the greeting in a sarcastic way, together with a military salute that typically indexes respect and hierarchy, as a token insult to his younger male sibling who had slapped him on the back. Reynolds observed that this use of the formulaic expression Buenos días and accompanying gesture “violates both the indexical temporal grounding of the utterance, as it was spoken in the early afternoon, and the implied relationship between addresser and addressee” (p. 447). Moreover, she shows that following this episode the expression became coined as a ritual insult used among other children in the network including girls, who combined it with impolite address terms in addressing a male peer. In these ways, Reynolds's study suggests that children may use formulaic language in novel ways together with other verbal and nonverbal resources to tease, shame, and instigate arguments in conflict talk with peers, and thereby construct their own social worlds. Reynolds's study on Mayan children's use of the formulaic expression Buenos días in creative ways resonates with prior research on language play (see Bell, this volume).
Finally, in another study of peer interaction, this time L2 speakers of English (ESL) in the United States, García Sánchez (Reference García Sánchez2005) examined ways the children used formulaic phrases, such as “You're out,” “Shut up,” and “You're cheating” in responding to other children's rule violations in a game of hopscotch. In particular, García Sánchez showed how the children used exact repetition and format tying (i.e., repetition of part of the prior speaker's turn with additions or slight transformations; Goodwin, Reference Goodwin1990). In these ways, the children used each other's utterances as a template to build their own utterances within conflict talk. García Sánchez further observed that such episodes provide opportunities not only for language use and learning in an L2 but also “socialization into local notions of fair play and respectful treatment of others” (p. 69). This study suggests that the ESL children used formulaic language to socialize each other into an activity (e.g., gaming) and how to respond to rule violations in the peer group.
CONCLUSION
This article has discussed the theory of language socialization and recent research on formulaic language in language socialization. The research reviewed has investigated adult and child novices and experts speaking an L1, L2, and heritage language in various societies and settings including households, playgrounds, classrooms, and manners courses. Research suggests that formulaic language, including set phrases and expressions often with accompanying nonverbal actions that are more-or-less fixed, repetitive, and predictable plays an important role in language socialization. In particular, formulaic language is often something that novices have to learn to use in pragmatically and socioculturally appropriate ways in order to participate in ordinary interaction and communities of practice. It is also a means of socializing novices to social, moral, religious, and emotional subjectivities, and to inculcating them into the norms, traditions, and rituals of their social group. However, novices are also agents in the process of socialization to formulaic language, and to language in general. In particular, they may refuse to use certain formulaic language in order to avoid the sociocultural meanings indexed by it (Song, Reference Song, Reyes and Lo2009), or use formulaic language (together with gestures) in novel ways to challenge and transform the norms indexed by it and create their own indexical meanings and realities (Reynolds, Reference Reynolds2007).
This research suggests several directions for further research on formulaic language in language socialization. In particular, research could explore socialization to formulaic language used in other oral genres, such as riddles, jokes, tongue twisters, puns, poems, stories, and ceremonial language. In this regard, it would be useful to know how novices are socialized to use formulaic language, and then use it in both normative and novel ways in their own speech or writing. Research could also explore socialization to formulaic language in computer-related discourse, virtual communication, and other settings mediated by technology in the socialization and construction of relationships and identity and participation in communities of practice (e.g., Thorne et al., Reference Thorne, Black and Sykes2009). While much research shows how novices are socialized to become speakers of formulaic language, further research could explore how novices learn formulaic language through other interactional roles such as observer and hearer (Goffman, Reference Goffman1981), which is particularly relevant in classrooms. Moreover, while much of the reviewed research deals with children (an exception is Dunn, Reference Dunn2011), it would be useful to know how L1 and L2 adult learners are socialized to use formulaic language especially when they enter new communities of practice (e.g., university clubs, workplaces). Finally, in order to build upon our current understanding of formulaic language in language socialization, researchers should continue to examine the verbal and nonverbal resources through which it is constituted and the local and broader situated contexts in which it is produced and embedded in everyday lives.
