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

A variationist perspective 57
diffi culty in comprehension. But subsequent research suggests this is not true.
In social contexts other than classroom or university settings, learners are less
likely to receive adjusted input (see e.g. Varonis and Gass 1985). Interested
in Long’s claim, Bondevik (1996) conducted a controlled study of interactions
between salesmen and shoppers in a Minnesota electronics store. He
contrasted interactions in this social context with those in the social setting
of Long’s dissertation study: a room on the UCLA campus, with interactions
between ESL students and ESL teachers or teacher trainees. Bondevik showed
that four electronics salesmen in Minnesota did not use foreigner talk at all
with three different (clearly) non-native speakers (NNSs) of English. After the
NNSs said they were not native speakers and did not understand something
the salesmen said, the latter did not make the linguistic and conversational
adjustments to L2 input that are postulated by Long to be universally provided
by profi cient speakers to L2 learners. One salesman even complexifi ed
his syntax. In a subsequent interview, the salesman said that he felt it would
have been insulting to simplify his speech to his customers. Although all the
listeners in the setting studied by Long (1980) did use foreigner talk, using
now well-known linguistic and conversational adjustments to the L2 input
they provided, interlocutors in different social settings made different choices
as to whether and how much they negotiated meaning or provided adjusted
input to L2 learners (see Varonis and Gass 1985 for similar fi ndings). Since
adjusted L2 linguistic input, provided during negotiation of meaning, is now
argued to be essential in aiding learners’ cognitive processing and SLA, the
fi nding that some people do not accommodate at all to L2 learners by simplifying
linguistic input is important because it may affect second-language
acquisition.
Social setting affects negotiation of meaning
Social context does not just affect the L2 input that interlocutors provide
learners. It also affects the way L2 learners themselves behave in negotiating
meaning or focusing on L2 form. Exploring Batstone’s (2002) suggestion that
individuals orient differently to L2 form in input in communicative contexts
than in learning contexts, Lafford (2006) reviews research on L2 learning
in study abroad (SA) contexts (primarily communicative) as opposed to
classroom ‘at home’ (AH) settings (primarily learning). Her review of an
impressive body of research concludes that these settings have a signifi cant
but complex impact on individual learners’ focus on L2 form in the input as
opposed to meaning, depending on such factors as their profi ciency level and
(following Selinker and Douglas 1985, and Douglas 2004) their perception
of key social factors in those settings:
It is not the context of learning alone, but rather individual learner perceptions of
specifi c characteristics of the contexts (setting, participants [status and roles],end/
purpose, norms of interaction and interpretation) that interact with cognitive
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