Language Socialization at the Intersection of the Local and the Global: The Contested Trajectories of Input and Communicative Competence

Abstract

This article provides a critical review of the theoretical underpinnings of two core concepts in language socialization research: input and communicative competence. We organize our discussion along two major lines of inquiry: ( a) the historical-local and ( b) the language contact–globalization bodies of work. The first part of the article contests the persistent view that input reduces to vocabulary and grammatical structures. To this end, it provides evidence for a more multifaceted approach to input that involves multiparty participant frameworks and multimodality in culturally diverse language socialization ecologies. In this vein, it problematizes language gap studies that are based on middle-class language acquisition models of mother–child dyadic verbal input. The second part of the article challenges monolingual, developmental, and speaker-based models of communicative competence that assume a linear evolution from lesser to greater communicative competence and from more peripheral to more central community membership. It also offers evidence for how communicative competence is socioculturally constructed and, sometimes, interactionally distributed. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Linguistics, Volume 7 is January 14, 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Narrative Elicitation as Ethnography: Methodological Insights From the Examination of Children's Perspective Marking in Amdo Tibetan

“…These processes build our knowledge of language, as we respond to and identify our own and others' emotional and epistemic states. The patterns of linguistic perspective marking that interaction analysis reveals in local communicative settings intersect with broader cultural value systems (de León and García-Sánchez, 2021 ).…”

“Poor brain development” in the global South? Challenging the science of early childhood interventions

“…In addition, scholars have begun a detailed scrutiny of the specific evidence base of language‐focused parenting programs in the United States, particularly the alleged word gap of children from “welfare families” as compared to “professional families” (Hart and Risley, 1995). They point out that the underlying research is compromised by a WEIRD sampling bias, leading to a failure to account for social and cultural diversity in languages, language use, and language socialization (Blum, 2017; De León and García‐Sánchez, 2020; Ochs and Kremer‐Sadlik, 2020; Paugh and Riley, 2019; Sperry, Sperry, and Miller, 2019). The assessment and training of non‐WEIRD families based on WEIRD standards might contribute to a perpetuation rather than alleviation of educational inequality (McCarty, 2015); in the United States—one of the first countries to set up large‐scale ECD programs like Head Start in the 1960s—educational disparities have actually increased in recent decades (Kuchirko and Nayfeld, 2020).…”

San Roque, L. & B. B. Schieffelin. Language Socialisation in the Papuan context

“…An important theme in the study of childhood experience and language is whom children are spending their time with, listening to, and being addressed by. Early work on the anthropology of childhood and language socialisation pointed out that much research on language acquisition was based on White Middle Class Anglo-American English-speaking settings (see also de León 2021& García-Sánchez 2021. These studies highlighted discourse practices of motherinfant dyads, usually spending time alone (or in the company of a researcher) inside their homes (Ochs & Schieffelin 1984).…”

“…Language socialisation studies are conceptualised ideally to fulfill three criteria (Kulick & Schieffelin 2004:350). They should be ethnographic in design, longitudinal in perspective, and demonstrate the acquisition (or not) of particular linguistic and cultural practices over time and across contexts; see de León and García-Sánchez (2021) for a recent review. This chapter is an overview of work relevant to language socialisation in the Papuan context.…”