Sociolinguistics and Language Education.pdf

Language Socialization 433
must also learn to express gratitude in culturally and linguistically
appropriate ways, or risk being considered rude or self-centered.
Affective stances in formal educational contexts might involve expressing
passion or enthusiasm about academic content (‘I thought this was a
fascinating topic’ or ‘Isn’t this piece of lava I found cool?’), or conveying
one’s nervousness about presenting (hedging, stammering, speaking too
softly or saying things like ‘I’m, um, kind of nervous to be standing up
here’). Some of these same behaviors might receive feedback such as,
‘Could you speak louder?’ or ‘Don’t say you’re nervous; everyone’s nervous
at fi rst’, or laughter and rolling eyes (Duff, 2002). Students might be
expected to frame their remarks in the fi rst person: ‘I believe that . . .’, or
they might be asked to present in a somewhat more dispassionate and
objective voice ‘Scientists believe that x causes y. . .’). They might encode
their degree of certainty or conviction about a topic (their epistemic stance)
in English in ways that they have observed in others, using particular verbs
(‘I argue that . . .’), adjectives (‘the best example’) or adverbs (certainly, obviously);
alternatively, they may be socialized within a particular context to
soften or mitigate their opinions with modals auxiliaries (e.g. may, should,
might) or other markers of less certainty (possibly, perhaps, ‘I don’t know for
sure but . . .’), so as not to seem too arrogant or strident in their claims (see
e.g. Morita, 2000; Zappa-Hollman, 2007a). These examples come from
English but studies have looked at these sorts of phenomena across a variety
of languages and speech events (e.g. Duranti et al., in press).
In addition to examining how people are socialized into the communicative
practices of those with more experience in their new discourse communities,
studies have looked at how, as languages are learned, so too are
other forms of knowledge and other semiotic (meaning-making) systems.
Thus, studies have considered how nonlinguistic knowledge is instilled
and mediated by language as well as linguistic knowledge. Nonlinguistic
knowledge might include understandings and beliefs about the world
and of one’s place in the world as a high-status person or a low-status
person, an insider or an outsider, about prevailing academic, professional
or religious epistemologies and values (e.g. Fader, 2006), about gendered
or other social identities, or even about knowledge about work and about
play (e.g. Kyratzis & Cook-Gumperz, 2008; Paugh, 2008). Thus, language
mediates the development of people’s identities as individuals with particular
traits, roles or subjectivities (as child, girl or boy, student, athlete,
teacher, new immigrant, public speaker, Deaf individual; or as a credible
lawyer, doctor or engineer). People are also socialized into identities in
relation to the groups they are part of or becoming part of (engineers, lawyers)
– or they may resist being socialized into particular identities or positioned
as such (e.g. as a compliant student), and instead may exert their
agency and foreground other identities, as outspoken critic or class clown,
for example.