NEW DIRECTIONS AND ISSUES IN SECOND LANGUAGE SOCIALIZATION RESEARCH

Patricia A. Duff
University of British Columbia
patricia.duff@ubc.ca

Saturday, March 22, 2003, 5:30-6:30 PM plenary
Room: Commonwealth South

Abstract
In this talk, I review the foundations of first and second language socialization research and its major contributions to applied linguistics. I then highlight new directions in intercultural second language (L2) socialization research and the theoretical and methodological issues that have emerged. Drawing on examples from my studies over the past decade in Hungarian and Canadian educational institutions, such as schools, workplaces, and universities, as well as the growing body of recent research by other scholars in a variety of contexts, I emphasize that L2 socialization processes and outcomes are more dynamic, complex, multilingual, and co-constructed than is often assumed to be the case. My empirical research does not support a purely linear, deterministic view of L2 observation, appropriation, and mastery by learners in their new socio-educational contexts. A linear apprenticeship model tends to assume that all students or novices are fully willing and able to appropriate the ostensibly stable, monolingual, local target L2 norms they are exposed to, and that members of the target L2 cultures are themselves fully competent and receptive to newcomers' membership and participation in their discourse communities. I also suggest that the sociolinguistic and cultural affiliations, identities, goals, preferences, and levels of personal agency of newcomers and their interlocutors should be taken into account. This can be done by not only observing people's L2 interactions in classrooms, workplaces, or other community settings, but also by interviewing them about their (L1/L2) experiences and choices, and about the consequences of these choices for their linguistic development and social integration over time.

Biography
Patricia A. Duff (PhD, UCLA, 1993) is Associate Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia, where she is Director of Modern Language Education and Director of the Centre for Intercultural Language Studies. She also coordinates and teaches in the TESL graduate program. Patsy's research examines second language (L2) acquisition and socialization, task-based interaction, L2 education, and research methods in applied linguistics. Her articles have appeared in Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, TESOL Quarterly, Applied Linguistics, Modern Language Journal, TESL Canada Journal, Canadian Modern Language Review, Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, and in more than a dozen edited volumes. Her books in preparation deal with case study research in applied linguistics (Erlbaum); quantitative and qualitative research methods in applied linguistics (Routledge); generalizability in applied linguistics research (co-edited with Micheline Chalhoub-Deville and Carol Chapelle); and second language socialization. She serves on the editorial boards of several journals, has chaired the TESOL Research Interest Section and the Research Advisory Committee of the TESOL International Research Foundation, and is a Member-at-Large for AAAL. The research on second language socialization about which she will be speaking has been supported by doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships from the Spencer Foundation/National Academy of Education, and by research grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and UBC's Hampton Fund.