Macrosocial factors
We now shift to consideration of macrosocial factors in looking at how social contexts affect SLA, drawing primarily on the frameworks of the Ethnography of Communication and Social Psychology. These broader societal approaches in research and theory allow exploration of issues such as how identity, status, and values influence L2 outcomes, and why.
The macrosocial factors we will consider are at several levels in the eco logical context of SLA:
• Global and national status of L1 and L2
• Boundaries and identities
• Institutional forces and constraints
• Social categories
• Circumstances of learning
At a global and national level, influences on SLA involve the power and status of learners’ native and target languages, whether overtly stated in official policies or covertly realized in cultural values and practices. Social boundaries that are relevant to SLA may coincide with national borders, but they also exist within and across them as they function to unify speakers as members of a language community and to exclude outsiders from membership; influences on SLA at this level often involve the relationship between native and target language groups, as well as the openness and permeability of community boundaries. Within nations, institutional forces and constraints often affect the use and knowledge of L2 in relation to such things as social control, political and religious practices, and eco nomic and educational opportunities. Age, gender, and ethnicity are fac tors of social group membership which may potentially be relevant to SLA. Finally, circumstances of learning can influence SLA, such as learners’ prior educational experiences, whether the L2 learning process is informal or formal, and (if formal) the type of educational model learners have access to and the pedagogical orientation of their teachers and administrators.
Global and national status of L1 and L2
Languages have power and status at global and national levels for both symbolic and practical reasons. An important symbolic function of language is political identification and cohesion. We see this in the USA, for example, where English is generally accepted as the single national language, and most people consider it important for national unity that all citizens be able to use one language. Immigrants who come from other language backgrounds are expected to add English as a requirement for citizenship, for participation in US democratic processes, for economic mobility, and for access to education and other social services. Maintenance of indigenous and immigrant languages other than English is not widely encouraged and is often actively discouraged. Indeed, pride in ethnicity along with associated language use can be seen as very threatening to the dominant group, and as a symbol of disunity and separatism; to speak a language other than English may be considered somehow unpatriotic and “un-American.” In sum, learning English is expected, and the teaching of English as an L2 to immigrants is encouraged and/or mandated by state and federal agencies. In contrast, state and federal support for learning other languages is sporadic and generally ineffectual.
The symbolic function of language for political identification and cohesion is even more important for countries that are in the process of nation-building. For example, establishing the official use of Hebrew was symbolically important to the creation of Israel, even though few early citizens spoke it natively. Massive efforts were made to teach Hebrew as an L2 to all immigrants, and there were social sanctions against the use of Yiddish or other languages which might rival Hebrew for ethnic identification or religious functions. Efforts have also been made to spread knowledge and use of Irish and Welsh as L2s for purposes of national identity, but these have not been as successful.
Second languages have also served political functions in times of con quest and empire-building: e.g. the Norman Conquest brought French L2 to Britain, colonial expansion brought English L2 to Africa and Asia and French L2 to Africa, and post-World War II domination by the Soviet Union brought Russian L2 to much of Eastern Europe. These three examples also illustrate the highly diverse outcomes which may follow periods of linguistic spread. The linguistic absorption of the Norman conquerors left behind a residue of French vocabulary embedded in English – no longer as elements of a second language, but integrated in English native speech. With the end of British colonial rule in Africa and Asia, English remained in some of the newly independent nations for auxiliary or official functions. In Nigeria and India, for instance, English was selected as the official national language (in India along with Hindi) because it was widely used and accessible, although not native to any major group of citizens (and thus ethnically neutral). In contrast, the role of Russian L2 has been of sharply waning importance as Ukrainian, Kyrgyz, Kazakh, and other languages of former USSR constituent republics have become symbols of nationalism. Indeed, the situation has become inverted, as many native Russian speakers living in the newly independent countries have recognized the need to add those national languages to their own linguistic repertoires: to learn them as L2s.
We see both historically and in the present that the need for L2 learning at a national level is strongest when groups from other language back grounds immigrate to a country without prior knowledge of its official or dominant language, and when the official or dominant language shifts because of conquest, revolution, or other major political change. Need for L2 learning at a global level is motivated largely by control of and access to resources in areas of commerce and information/technology transfer. Opportunities as well as motivation for learning a particular L2 often depend on its relative power or status, whether symbolic or practical; this usually cannot be separated from the relative economic or military power or status of the society that it represents. For this reason, interest in learning Chinese as an L2 can be predicted to increase as the economic status of China grows. Where knowledge of a particular language confers few visible economic or social benefits, there will be little motivation for acquiring it as an L2.
Boundaries and identities
Part of the identity function of language is accomplished by creating or reinforcing national boundaries, but linguistic boundaries often also exist within or across national borders. They serve both to unify speakers as members of one language community, and to exclude outsiders from insider communication. The function of unification is illustrated by the official use of Hebrew in Israel and English in Nigeria as part of the proc ess for establishing those nation-states. In contrast, the function of exclusion can be illustrated by the refusal of the Spanish conquerors in Mexico to teach the Castilian language to the native Indian population, or of the Mongol conquerors of China to make their language accessible to the Chinese. Language communities may also reinforce their boundaries by discouraging prospective L2 learners, by holding and conveying the attitude that their language is too difficult – or inappropriate – for others to use. When artificially created national borders transect language areas (as is the case for most former colonial territories or the Southwestern USA), social and political tensions may lead to discrimination against minority language speakers, and to enforced teaching of the dominant language.
Crossing a linguistic boundary to participate in another language community, and to identify or be identified with it, requires learning that language. It is both a necessary tool for participation and a badge which allows passage. Full participation also commonly requires learning the culture of that community and adapting to those values and behavioral patterns: i.e. acculturation. Whether or not this occurs depends largely on group motivation.
We considered the concept of motivation in Chapter 4 as a difference among individuals which accounts for why some are more successful L2 learners than others, but motivation is also profoundly influenced by external social factors. Social psychologists who study SLA emphasize the effects of motivation on whether groups of immigrants or ethnic minorities integrate culturally and linguistically into the dominant society. The same general motivational factors account for why dominant group members often do not learn a minority language at all, or not too well if they do not want to be identified with the minority community. Wallace Lambert (1991 :220) suggests this is why many English L1 students in Canada’s French L2 immersion programs showed a limit on how much French they acquired even after years of study that began in childhood (and why some even regressed in their pronunciation of French when they reached high school).
John Schumann (1978) identifies other group factors that affect SLA outcomes negatively in his Acculturation Model. For example, factors that are likely to create social distance between learner and target groups, limit acculturation, and thus inhibit L2 learning are: dominance of one group over the other, a high degree of segregation between groups, and desire of the learner group to preserve its own lifestyle. English speakers in the Southwestern USA often live and work side by side with Spanish speakers for years without acquiring more than a few words of the language, and Spanish speakers in Paraguay who employ Guarani speakers as servants in their homes rarely learn more than a smattering of Guarani.
Institutional forces and constraints
Within the bounds of nations and communities, social institutions are systems which are established by law, custom, or practice to regulate and organize the life of people in public domains: e.g. politics, religion, and education. Many of these involve power, authority, and influence related to SLA; the forces and constraints which most concern us here are language-related social control, determination of access to knowledge, and other instances of linguistic privilege or discrimination.
The most obvious form of linguistic social control takes the form of official or unofficial policies that regulate which language is to be used in particular situations. For example, use of the national language is often required in political meetings and is sometimes required even for lower-level bureaucratic functions such as applying for permits of various kinds or negotiating for social services. A high level of fluency in the national language is typically required for election or appointment to political office, which tends to reinforce the power of some groups over others because of the language they speak. On the other hand, to the extent that political officeholders need to represent (or at least get votes from) speakers of other languages, competence in those languages may also be valued, and perhaps mandated. For example, presidential election campaigns in the USA have featured candidates orating in Spanish (often poorly) as well as in English in regions of the country which have strong blocs of Spanish L1 voters, in spite of the de facto national status of English-only. Use of even a few words or phrases in Spanish is intended to carry the symbolic message that the candidate is concerned about that segment of the population. Conversely, in Bolivia and Guatemala, Spanish was until recently spoken natively by only a minority, but their economic status and the institutionalization of Spanish as the official language enabled them to maintain control of the respective Quechua/Aymara and Mayan L1 majorities.
Looking at language-related social control in the domains of law and social services, we can see that language policy may result in blatant dis crimination, especially if a trial defendant does not understand the language of the court, or if the officially designated language of “service” is not one in which some of those being “served” are fluent. This is likely to have a particularly negative impact on immigrants in countries where there is no provision for official communication in minority languages. As a side effect, differences in multilingual competence within immigrant families can lead to disintegration of the traditional family structure, as children who are learning the dominant language at school become translators and brokers for their parents in service encounters, inverting the power structure and undermining parental authority.
Access to education may also be limited for minority language speakers, since entry to those institutions often requires applicants to display competence in “proper” language usage. In some multilingual societies, this means that linguistic competence may be recognized only insofar as it is demonstrated in the official or prestigious language of the dominant group; the potential for discrimination is multilayered, since access to knowledge of the language which is required for social opportunities may itself be prevented at an earlier level by financial barriers. For example, admission to universities and professional schools in some countries requires prior study of a foreign language (often English), with the necessary quality and quantity of language instruction available only in exclusive preparatory academies. These in turn may require prior language study which is not offered by public education, but only to children whose parents are wealthy enough to send them to private schools. Thus, wealth and social status may determine opportunities for acquisition of an L2.
Access (or barriers) to language instruction may also be motivated for other political reasons. The riots of the 1970s in Soweto, South Africa, for example, were motivated in part as protests against a language policy which would not provide basic elementary education in English, a policy that was perceived as keeping the Black population in the region from acquiring the unification and international voice which English would provide, and that Afrikaans would not. More recently, differential access to knowledge and power through a second language has been reported by Palestinians in Israel who say that limited opportunities to develop advanced English skills in their high schools block admission to better universities in the country because the entrance examinations require knowledge of English.
An unintentional international outcome of providing advanced-level education in English, on the other hand, has perhaps been inhibiting access to knowledge in some academic areas. There are contemporary concerns about the power position of English as the international language for scholarly conferences and publications, for example, since this status clearly privileges individuals in many disciplines who have received higher education in English-medium universities.
Although the acquisition of an L2 has been treated neutrally or positively as an additive gain from linguistic and psychological perspectives, from a social perspective it may be problematic for several reasons. Acquisition of a dominant L2 may lead to actual loss or attrition of a minority L1, potentially creating alienation from the L1 group for the individual, and the ultimate disappearance of the minority language itself. Also, acquisition of technical knowledge through the medium of an L2 may render the learner unable to express that knowledge in his or her L1. For example, native speakers of Arabic, Chinese, and other languages who study linguistics in an English-speaking country may return to their home countries and find themselves ill-equipped to make the subject accessible to others in the national language or to relate to traditional language scholars.
Social categories
People are categorized according to many socially relevant dimensions: e.g. age, sex, ethnicity, education level, occupation, and economic status. Such categorization often influences what experiences they have, how they are perceived by others, and what is expected of them. When they are L2 learners, members of different social categories frequently experience different learning conditions, and different attitudes or perceptions from within both native and target language communities. Therefore, this is another level we need to consider in the macrosocial context of SLA.
Age is an example. We considered age as a biological factor affecting L2 learning in Chapter 4, but it is social as well. Young L2 learners are more likely than older learners to acquire the language in a naturalistic setting as opposed to a formal classroom context. They are more likely to use the L2 in highly contextualized face-to-face situations rather than decontextualized academic ones, or ones which initially involve reading and writing. It is not certain whether these social factors favor SLA by children over older learners, but they make different requirements and involve different learning tasks.
Some aspects of the social setting within which SLA takes place may particularly disadvantage lower age groups. Young immigrant children who are submerged in L2-dominant environments appear ultimately to do less well both in L2 learning and in academic content learning through the medium of L2 than do children who immigrate after receiving basic education in their native language and begin L2-learning at an older age. For instance, Gonzalez (1986) has shown both in Illinois and California that immigrant students from Mexico who attended school in Mexico for two years prior to coming to the USA had higher reading scores in English by the sixth grade than did Spanish L1 peers who began school in the USA. In short, students with two years’ less instruction in English did better in English than those who had two years’ more instruction in the USA. Similar findings are reported by Cummins (1981) for Japanese immigrant students in Canada.
The likely explanation for such findings is complex, and we should beware of simplistic one-dimensional interpretations. Development of cognitive and academic competence in their L1, which Mexican children acquire in Mexico and Japanese children in Japan, may have a significant effect in promoting the transfer of these skills into English and enabling them to succeed in American or Canadian English-medium schools. At the same time, however, these children also have not faced the early negative expectations or pressures for assimilation in and out of school that their peers often do in a predominantly English-speaking setting, which may have adversely affected the level and quality of their instructional experience. In another famous case, Finnish children attending school in Sweden, where they were viewed negatively as members of a minority group, did less well than Finnish children in Australian schools, where they were viewed positively as Scandinavians.
Biological factors which generally favor a younger age for SLA can also be overridden by contexts in which older learners succeed in SLA to the level of being able to “pass” for a native speaker (even in pronunciation) when social motivation is strong enough. For example, research conducted with couples in “mixed” English L1–German L1 marriages suggests that age of first exposure to a new language is less important for predicting ultimate ability than the age when learning the L2 really becomes important to the learners, and when they take active responsibility for that learning (Piller 2002).
Another example is sex, which we also considered in Chapter 4 as a biological factor in learning. This, too, is a social category. We can see that different attitudes and learning conditions which are experienced by males and females may advantage one group over the other for SLA in different ways in different societies, but neither group has an innate advantage. For example, young male children of migrant farm laborers appear to be more fluent in Spanish L1 and better learners of English L2 than their female age-mates. The boys in a study that I conducted had been allowed to play outside in the labor camps with other children prior to attending school, while the girls had been kept inside both because of their responsibility to care for younger siblings and for their own safety. While the early limitations on their opportunity for social interaction were generally overcome with subsequent experience, the girls were at an initial disadvantage for language learning. On the other hand, girls were advantaged over a male peer for L2 learning in a classroom that was studied by Willett (1995). The girls were allowed to sit together, collaborate productively, and support one another; the boy was kept apart from other boys because of gender-related differences in his behavior, and he was not allowed to seek help from bilingual peers.
Different learning conditions for males and females are not limited to children. Some female students who enroll in study-abroad programs while in college report having less opportunity than male students to immerse themselves in foreign language and cultural experiences, which may inhibit development of L2 skills. This may be because there are more restrictions on unsupervised activities for females, or because female students tend to avoid situations in which they might encounter sexual harassment (see Polanyi 1995).
Ethnic category may have influence on SLA primarily because of socially constructed attitudes from within native and target communities as a result of historic or current intergroup relations related to social boundaries and identities. These attitudes determine to a significant degree what input L2 learners will be exposed to and make use of, as well as the nature of their interaction with native speakers and other learners of the target language.
The relationship between people assigned to different ethnic categories is usually characterized along one of two dimensions when the different categories coexist in heterogeneous societies: perceived horizontal distance between the groups, or relative power and prestige of one over the other. Members of ethnic groups who perceive themselves to have much in common are more likely to interact, and thus are more likely to learn the other’s language. Miller (2000) reports that ethnicity is one of the factors involved in perceptions of difference in her study of migrant high school students in Australia. She found that fair-haired Europeans who physically resembled their Australian classmates established friendships and assimilated more readily than did differently appearing students from Asia. Other factors potentially contributing to perceptions of social distance include religion and cultural background, along with patterns of behavior that are considered appropriate for interaction with strangers or new acquaintances. In my own research with younger students (e.g. Saville-Troike 1984), I observed that children from South America and the Middle East as well as from Europe appeared to establish friendships with American children more readily than did children from China, Japan, and Korea. I would attribute this to relative cultural congruence of interaction patterns rather than to physical appearance.
Perceptions that members of one ethnic category are more, or less, privileged than another are determined in large part by which group is politically and economically dominant in a multiethnic society, which is also often the one that has majority status. Two outcomes of SLA related to this dimension are the types of bilingualism which may result from contact (Lambert 1974 ; Gardner 2002 ): additive bilingual ism , where members of a dominant group learn the language of a subordinate group without threat to their L1 competence or to their ethnic identity; or subtractive bilingualism , where members of a sub ordinate group learn the dominant language as L2 and are more likely to experience some loss of ethnic identity and attrition of L1 skills – especially if they are children. There are many other social variables contributing to “additive” versus “subtractive” outcomes, including (for immigrant groups) the degree of opportunity for continued con tact with their country of origin, the composition of families (e.g. whether they include grandparents or other elderly relatives), and whether the L1 continues to fulfill an institutional function such as the practice of religion.
Circumstances of learning the final macrosocial factors in the ecological context of SLA that we will consider are circumstances of learning. We begin with learners’ prior educational experiences. These are part of the larger social context within which SLA takes place because learning begins with children’s first experiences with the families into which they are born, the com munities to which they belong, and the cultural environment within which they live. By the time children begin their formal education at the age of five or six, they have already internalized many of the basic values and beliefs of their native culture, learned the rules of behavior which are considered appropriate for their role in the community, and established the procedures for continued socialization. They have learned how to learn.
We already noted in Chapter 3 that learner differences in cognitive styles and learning strategies are at least partly based in these experiences. The difference between field-dependent (FD) and field-independent (FI) cognitive styles, for example, correlates with how children are raised. Findings on this subject are somewhat speculative, but FD styles appear to be related to the more cooperative settings of rural residence, FI to more competitive urban circumstances; and FD seems to be related to lower economic categories and FI to more affluent. Cultural values for some cognitive styles over others also play a role.
A clear example of culture-based learning strategies is seen in the superior capacity for rote learning among Asian students who have had more experience with teaching methods that involve memorization. Chinese students score significantly higher than Europeans and Americans on tests that measure memory for numbers, which reflects ways they have learned to learn in the course of earlier schooling. This advantage is lost if Chinese students are schooled in Europe or America, which proves that their achievement is based on prior educational experience and not genetic makeup. Chinese students learning English as an L2 may learn more effectively and efficiently through memorization, while this approach may not work as well for students less accustomed to this learning strategy.
Another fundamental difference in situational circumstances is whether L2 learning is informal versus formal, or naturalistic versus instructed. Informal/naturalistic learning generally takes place in settings where people contact – and need to interact with – speakers of another language. This can be because they live in a multilingual society, their circle of family and friends is multilingual, and/or their lifestyle involves international travel and residence for business or pleasure. Formal/instructed learning generally takes place in schools, which are social institutions that are established in accord with the needs, beliefs, values, and customs of their cultural settings.
L2 learners who are majority L1 speakers often have access only to foreign language programs which offer the L2 as an academic subject and give little opportunity for students to develop full communicative competence. In social contexts where multilingualism is highly valued and expected, however, program options are more likely to include other subjects such as history or science additionally taught in the L2, immersion programs with all instruction in the L2, or two-way bilingual programs in which students who speak different native languages attend classes together, learn each other’s language, and learn subject matter through both languages. Where economic resources permit, options may also include study-abroad and student-exchange programs.
Minority L1 speakers who receive formal L2 instruction within the L2 speech community typically have quite different experiences. To begin with, because second language instruction for minorities generally takes place in educational institutions that are situated in and controlled by the dominant social group, teaching methods and materials may conflict with ways minority students have already learned to learn. Social attitudes toward ethnic boundaries and identities influence whether students are segregated from L2 peers or have integrated learning experiences. Social attitudes toward the value and validity of students’ L1 largely determine whether instructional goals include multilingual competence, with L2 added while L1 is maintained and enriched, or there is a complete transition to L2. Most so-called “bilingual” programs in US schools provide instruction in the L1 only as a temporary expedient until students can be transitioned entirely into L2, after which the L1 is abandoned.
No individual factors in the macrosocial context of SLA can be isolated from others. Circumstances of learning are related to the nation that the learner lives in and its history, culture, and geopolitical position, and to social and economic categorizations within the society, which in turn are related to historical, institutional, and political forces and constraints, all of which are related to and reflect or determine the status of the languages involved. All of these factors powerfully influence the microsocial contexts of learning, determining who does and does not have opportunities for L2 input and interaction and of what sort, and what the outcomes of L2 learning are likely to be. The individual learner often has few or no choices in the matter of whether an L2 will be available for formal study, what language it will be, how it will be taught and at what levels, the level of proficiency that will be expected or required, and what the consequences or advantages of learning or not learning will be. The accident of one’s birth may determine what L2s will be available or expected for informal acquisition, and what value or significance they will have in affecting one’s life chances. These various factors are beyond the control of the individual, but whether options are available or not, one’s L1 and possible L2(s) can have profound effects on the course of one’s life.
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