Social context and cognition in SLA: a variationist perspective elaine ...

Stage 5 Aux-2nd, and Suppletion. This allows formation of true WH questions.
Bob: What are you doing? (Session 24 with researcher.)
A variationist perspective 71
Stage 6 Question tag. Allows different word orders in different clauses to express the question.
Bob: You don’t like green, are you? (Session 49 with researcher.)
Appendix A Developmental Stages in Bob’s English Question Formation
Notes
An earlier version of this chapter appeared in Tarone (2007b). I am very grateful to
colleagues who have provided me with feedback on its contents: to George Yule,
who helped me frame the argument more precisely, to Martha Bigelow and Bonnie
Swierzbin, who provided additional suggestions, and to Dennis Preston. Bobbie
Lafford’s input on Tarone (2007a) also found its way into this chapter. As always,
errors and mis-statements are mine alone.
1. The conference that produced this volume is one, of course, but there is also the
2004 special issue of the International Review of Applied Linguistics on variation
in the interlanguage of advanced L2 learners (Mougeon and Dewaele 2004); a
collection of papers on learning context and its effects on SLA in a special issue
of Studies in Second Language Acquisition (Collentine and Freed, 2004); and
a special issue of Modern Language Journal (Lafford 2007), including Tarone
(2007a), on the impact of Firth and Wagner’s 1997 call for an expanded research
approach in SLA that is less focused on isolated cognitive factors, one that can
accommodate situationally and individually specifi c variables.
2. Everett (2005, 2009) shows that specifi c predictions of UG (Universal Grammar)
theorists (Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch 2002) are simply not borne out in his study
of Piraha, a language used in a remote Amazonian community. Everett claims that
the community’s cultural values affect the grammar of the language, so that, for
example, recursion, a feature claimed in UG to be a universal characteristic of all
human language, does not occur. UG, a purely psycholinguistic theory of language,
thus fails to account for very signifi cant effects of social and cultural variables on
the grammar of Piraha.
3. Other approaches to socioognition in SLA described in this volume lack variationists’
fi eld-tested methodology for the collection and the analysis of variable
sociolinguistic data using VARBRUL to do computer modeling of language use in
relation to complex, changing contextual variables. Another advantage for SLA
variationists is that sociolinguistics have identifi ed key social variables that constrain
variation in all languages in systematic and predictable ways, as well as
pervasive sociolinguistic processes such as ‘change from above’ and ‘change from
below’ that clearly affect SLA (Preston 1989: 59–62, 244; Tarone 2007a: 844).
4. ‘Change from above’ involves a (typically) conscious shift by a speaker toward
more prestigious or standard language forms. ‘Change from below’ involves a
less conscious process of change, involving adoption of non-standard language
forms that are often identifi ed with minority groups of various kinds. Both kinds
of change occur in SLA (Preston 1989: 59–62, 244).
5. Carrier (1999) also shows that social status plays a role in L2 listening
comprehension.
6. Though some may join with me in disagreeing with spellcheckers about standards,
in such cases we are questioning the linguistic competence of the human who programmed
the spellchecker.
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