What has happened to the field of SLA since the debates surrounding theory construction in the 1990s? To be sure, cognitivism continues to hold sway, but a variety of alternative approaches that stress the social dimensions of language learning have steadily gained impetus. This edited volume constitutes the first attempt to present the state of the art of the socially sensitive approaches to SLA by assembling six articles, each offering programmatic statements on a respective approach. Such an undertaking is much needed, as the social approaches have reached a juncture at which there is a need to take stock, look ahead, and ruminate over divergences and possible cross-fertilization.
The authors of the six articles are leading scholars who are proponents of the respective approach that they address: Lantolf (sociocultural approach), Larson-Freeman (complexity theory approach), Norton and McKinney (identity approach), Duff and Talmy (language socialization approach), Kasper and Wagner (conversation-analytic approach), and Atkinson (sociocognitive approach). The juxtaposition of the articles in a collection enables readers to compare, contrast, and evaluate the different approaches. Additionally, the volume also includes an informative introduction by Atkinson and a useful synthesis in a chapter by Ortega.
The six approaches are brought together under the label alternative because they stand in opposition to the dominant cognitivism in SLA research. Although cognitivists view language learning as a purely cognitive event occurring in the minds of autonomous learners, which can be explained by resorting to an inner psychological mechanism, the social approaches emphasize that language learning occurs in social context; to understand how learners go about learning a language, that context has to be accounted for. Such a characterization, however, necessarily oversimplifies the differences between the cognitivist and the social while obscuring the differences, even tension, among the social approaches. Readers will find a useful discussion of the differences between the cognitivist and the social along three dimensions in Ortega’s chapter. Highlighted here are some of the differences and tensions among the social approaches.
Due to their different disciplinary origins and allegiances, varying degrees of divergences exist among different approaches. For example, informed by Vygotskian sociohistorical psychology, the sociocultural approach turns to the development of human higher mental functions through social interactions. Power and inequality, a major concern of the identity approach, which draws its theoretical inspirations from postmodernism, do not figure in the equation of the sociocultural approach. Even when two approaches claim to adhere to the same theoretical principle and prescription, vast incommensurability (Dunn & Lantolf, Reference Dunn and Lantolf1998) exists. For example, although the identity approach and the conversation-analytic approach both claim to adopt an emic perspective when addressing issues of learner identity, they part company in their view of what counts as an emic perspective, resulting in diametrically opposed analytic practices. Tension can also exist within the same approach. Duff and Talmy show that there is a division within the language socialization approach due to some researchers’ attempts to impose a stricter paradigm boundary.
However, despite differences and tension within and across approaches, some cross-fertilization is possible. For example, there has been an effort in conversation analysis to incorporate sociocultural theory and theory of situated learning to address the issue of language development. The newly emerged sociocognitive approach, with a declared aim to bring mind, body, and world into an ecological unity, borrows from the sociocultural, conversation-analytic, and language socialization approaches.
What, then, are we to make of the epistemological diversity? This is a question that the volume invites us to ponder. Given the complexity of SLA, more researchers now have come to the recognition that no single approach can expect to answer all the questions. In this sense, epistemological diversity is a desired state of affairs, as it greatly enriches our understanding of SLA (Ortega, Reference Ortega2005). It will be interesting to observe the trajectories of these approaches in the years to come and to see if they diverge more radically from one another as they become more established and firmly entrenched, or if more opportunities for cross-fertilization are opened up as a result of dialogic engagements.
