Identity, culture, and language: putting SLA back in context?

Abstract

This paper examines the alleged “social turn” in SLA, proposed by David Block in The Social Turn in Second Language Acquisition (2003), where he tried to redefine “Second,” “Language,” and “Acquisition” respectively. However, this paper argues that a rethinking of SLA takes more than just squabbles over terminology; in fact, what Block failed to see is: 1) rethinking SLA should start at the theoretical assumption of language as system, instead of starting from it; 2) the view of language being a system falls short of equipping language learners for dealing with daily communicational situations, which are dynamic, discursive, and constantly subject to moment-to-moment contextualization; 3) bringing the concept of context to work with the systems view of language still keeps the boundary between the so-called 'linguistic' and 'non-linguistic' in SLA study, and thus pushes some socioculturally sensitive issues, such as 'linguistic responsibility' out of the realm of linguistic inquiry. This paper does not aim to provide some alternative SLA model, but to invite dialogues that can initiate further reflexive thinking of the SLA establishment as a whole, and hopefully bring some new insights into that effort. References: Block, D. (2003). The social turn in second language acquisition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. The Asian Conference on Language Learning 2012 Official Conference Proceedings Osaka, Japan