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

A variationist perspective 55
2009; Bayley and Tarone forthcoming). The present chapter proposes that
SLA scholars seek guidance in the research and scholarship of mainstream
sociolinguistics (e.g. Labov 1972; Bell 1984), as well as in research in ‘variationist’
SLA (e.g. Beebe 1977, 1980; Tarone 1979, 1988, 2000a, 2007a,
2009; Eisenstein 1989; Young 1990; Bayley and Preston 1996; Preston 2000,
2002; Lybeck 2002; Rehner 2002; Geeslin 2003; Rehner, Mougeon, and
Nadasdi 2003; Bayley and Langman 2004; Gatbonton, Trofi movich, and
Magid 2005; Geeslin and Guijarro-Fuentes 2006; Fasold and Preston 2007;
Rau, Chang, and Tarone 2009; and many others). The variationist approach
to research on learner language (or interlanguage: IL) is superior to more
unstructured approaches to the study 3 of sociocognition in SLA. The variationist
approach builds on a large body of research in sociolinguistics which
allows us to generate a range of testable hypotheses targeting the impact of
specifi c social variables (interlocutor, task, topic, accompanying linguistic
context) on variation and development in learner language, as well as the
operation of attested sociolinguistic processes such as ‘change from above’
and ‘change from below’. 4 In addition, variationists have the capacity to avail
themselves of well-established and sophisticated sociolinguistic methodologies
for data collection and quantitative and qualitative analysis, including
computer modeling using VARBRUL software that is specifi cally designed for
research on language use related to complex linguistic and social variables.
Attention, or noticing
In considering the cognitive processes applied to L2 input and involved in
interlanguage production, a core construct to begin with will be attention, or
noticing. Here, sociolinguists have an important point to make, one that has
been insuffi ciently considered by SLA researchers. Tarone (1979) extended
Labov (1972) in postulating that the cognitive process of attention to language
form is an important cause of learners’ variable performance when
using an interlanguage in different task conditions; the more attention paid
to speech under different task conditions, the more ‘formal’ or ‘accurate’ the
learner’s language generally is. However, Bell (1984), in discussing variation
in the speech of native speakers of a language, made the crucial point that
attention to language form (and here I would include noticing) is actually
both a cognitive and a social construct. Attention to language form is itself a
complex construct. (For example, the individual’s metalinguistic awareness,
as embodied in the L2 learner’s recall of certain types of corrective feedback, is
signifi cantly improved by alphabetic print literacy (Bigelow, delMas, Hansen,
and Tarone 2006; Tarone, Bigelow, and Hansen 2009).) But whether the focus
of attention is on language form or language meaning—this choice is made
based on social factors—Bell’s Style Axiom states that the core underlying
social variable that causes attention to be directed to one or another linguistic
variant is the people present in the social setting—the audience—and most
powerfully, the interlocutor. According to Bell, all other characteristics of
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