The social turn in study abroad research
Presented at the AAAL Annual Conference, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 6 March 2010.
The purpose of this colloquium was to update professional appreciation of language learning in study abroad, with special reference to projects illustrating contemporary interest in the socially situated nature of this phenomenon. Introducing the panel, Celeste Kinginger (Pennsylvania State University) noted that while a sojourn abroad can enhance every aspect of language ability, it is most effective in domains related to social interaction. The colloquium was motivated by several limitations of current research on study abroad. First, the vast majority of studies address the experiences of US-based students learning commonly taught languages. Second, the research would benefit from a shift away from conservative, academic views of language to more usage-based models reflecting the full range of living language that students encounter abroad. Finally, an exclusive focus on the student perspective, in qualitative studies, may yield incomplete and potentially ethnocentric findings.
In his paper, ‘Researching whole people and whole lives’, James A. Coleman (The Open University, UK) argued that the individual trajectory is the essence of recent research, recognizing the complexity and variation characteristic of study abroad. Coleman built on his taxonomy of contextual variables and learning outcomes to look beyond language acquisition at the multiple personal, social and professional identities shaped through study abroad. Citing data from a questionnaire administered to participants in the Portsmouth–Dakar exchange since 1985, he noted that variables such as housing and social networks are fluid and dynamic, and that religion and romance (as it contributes to language learning) are important but under-represented aspects of the experience abroad. The dimension of time, both ontological and socio-historical, is also neglected. Coleman's data showed that study abroad had a major, long-term impact on participants' lives and livelihoods, and that, particularly with the spread of communications technologies, the ‘context’ itself is constantly changing.
Maria Shardakova (University of Pennsylvania) discussed ‘How to be funny in a second language’, scrutinizing Russian language conversational humor and its relation to proficiency and experience abroad. In a cross-sectional study involving role-plays and discourse completion tasks carried out by Russian native speakers and American learners at various levels of proficiency, Shardakova found that learners with in-country experience used humor far more than did their counterparts without such experience. Learners at lower proficiency levels had access, while abroad, to culture-specific patterns and stock phrases drawn from a variety of local discourses. Advanced speakers tended to avoid humor, perhaps due to enhanced awareness of cultural norms. All learners tended to violate these norms through the use of negative comments directed to others. Shardakova therefore argued for early in-country experience combined with instruction in Russian sociopragmatic norms prohibiting the combination of negative comments with addressee-directed humor.
In ‘Acquiring social dimensions of language while studying abroad in Asia’, Noriko Iwasaki (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) discussed learners' acquisition of the social meanings of honorifics in Japanese and Korean, of fillers and hedges in Japanese, and of address forms in Hindi. Analyses of spoken data, accompanied by metalinguistic interviews, revealed that while some learners develop the ability to shift from plain to polite styles in Japanese in a native-like way, others resist local norms: for example, one of the participants in the Korean study insisted that his hierarchical subordinates use informal style with him. Learning the social dimensions of polite language involves a struggle to move beyond ‘foreigner’ status and to resolve conflicts between personal values and the norms associated with or embedded in the language. As learners deepen their awareness of the social meaning of politeness, each individual attempts to resolve these dilemmas in their own way.
Fred Dervin (University of Turku, Finland) presented a paper entitled ‘The use of French as a lingua franca in academic mobility: Constructing identities of the self and otherness. In the context of European academic mobility, Dervin studied Finnish ERASMUS participants as they invoked diverse voices in discourse surrounding their use of French as a lingua franca. The analysis revealed that the students constructed their identities in relation to the voices of others, particularly those of fellow users of French as a lingua franca, who provide empathy and a sense of authenticity, and those of judgmental native speakers, who diminish students’ sense of self-worth. Dervin suggested that the role of lingua franca be recognized in the design of study abroad programs and accompanying research.
In ‘The dialogic, situated learning of L2 sojourners’, Jane Jackson (Chinese University of Hong Kong) drew upon sociocultural theory in an ethnographic study of students from Hong Kong on a short-term sojourn in Britain. Focusing on homestay situations as communities of practice, the study revealed that a complex intermingling of individual attributes and sociocultural dimensions led to differing sojourn outcomes. Key features impacting developmental pathways included the hosts’ receptivity, their recognition and respect for the students’ preferred identities, and the quality and quantity of host-sojourner interaction and dialogic relations. Important individual attributes included, among others, ethnocentric versus ethnorelative mindsets and investment in language learning and relationship-building across cultures.
Taken together, the papers illustrated a variety of approaches to the complex, dialogic nature of the learning process and the sociolinguistic aspects of L2 identities as they develop during sojourns abroad. The panelists agreed with Coleman's observation that ‘high individual variation’ is not a limitation of study abroad research, but its essential feature.
