Sociolinguistics and Language Education.pdf

444 Part 5: Language and Identity
point where the participation structures they are involved in (seating
plans, groupwork membership, discussion/presentation groups) or the
way they are positioned as ‘non-native speakers’ or ‘shy Japanese females’
or masters degree students in a class full of doctoral students, for example,
make it very diffi cult for them to access and participate fully and
with the legitimacy they desire in the very practices and social networks
they want and need to engage in (Abdi, 2009; Duff, 2002; Morita, 2004;
Willett, 1995). They may inadvertently be sidelined by how they are
seated, who they are grouped with, the roles they are assigned or roles
that are co-constructed for/by them within the class or group. The discourse
itself may also marginalize them because it may be impenetrable:
too quick, too culturally loaded, too tightly intertextual. The oral language
may draw liberally from textual sources and cultural content students
are unfamiliar with. My research looking at high school social
studies presentations and discussions of current events found that highly
intertextual references to pop culture (e.g. reality and game shows on
television, movies and popular series such as The Simpsons) juxtaposed
with discussions of science discoveries and other current social issues
were bewildering for many newcomers to the language and culture (Duff,
2004). They were being socialized into a kind of discourse that was clearly
valued in the classrooms observed but were not really given the tools to
engage with it.
A fourth factor is related to the newcomers’ own intentions, learning
conditions and trajectories. Educators typically expect newcomers/novices
to actively seek membership in their new community. They also normally
expect them to strive to attain profi ciency in linguistic and pragmatic
abilities and other knowledge of their peers and to value the learning
opportunities afforded to them both inside and outside of class.
Furthermore, educators usually expect that learners will remain invested
in their current learning community for a considerable period of time, and
that their peers will also facilitate and accommodate their integration
within their new groups. However, mitigating circumstances, such as
migration, transnationalism, temporary sojourns, cultural confl ict and
unwelcoming target communities may undermine their learning (Duff,
2003; Norton, this volume). Students may plan to stay in the new community
for only a short period; they may reject or resist their status as marginalized
participants in the new culture; they may be highly mobile or
transnational and may also aspire to quite different future possibilities,
including discourse communities and primary languages, than those projected
on them by the local educational system (or by their parents) (Duff,
2002, 2003; Talmy, 2008). They may prefer the well established and honored
traditions of their prior educational cultures over the current ones.
Or they may be blocked entry and access by local members or ‘gatekeepers’
(Campbell & Roberts, 2007).