Organizer and Chair: Carl D. Falsgraf, Oregon State System of Higher Education
Discussant: Ruth A. Kanagy, University of Oregon
Language socialization theory (Ochs and Schieffelin 1986) provides a powerful theoretical lens through which to view expert-novice interactions and the acquisition of linguistic and pragmatic competence resulting from these interactions. This panel is comprised of four papers on language socialization in Japanese, each examining language socialization in a particular social and developmental context. Two of the papers (Clancy and Cook) examine language socialization of Japanese children in family contexts, while two others (Falsgraf and Ohta) analyze how teacher talk in classrooms affects the socialization of non-native learners of Japanese. All papers, therefore, focus on the central theme of expert novice interactions and how they shape the development of cultural and linguistic competence in Japanese.
The diversity of subjects' ages and linguistic backgrounds argues for the efficacy of language socialization as a tool for understanding a wide range of language learning phenomena. The common focus on the acquisition of Japanese, however, suggests that language socialization may be an especially attractive theoretical orientation for treating the discourse pragmatic issues which are particularly subtle and intriguing in Japanese.
Classroom Language and the Socialization of Interactional Style in Adult Learners
of Japanese as a Foreign Language
Amy Snyder Ohta, University of Washington
This paper examines how extended assessment activity (Goodwin & Goodwin 1987), an interactional routine (Peters & Boggs 1986), works to socialize (Ochs & Schieffelin 1986) adult learners of Japanese into a culturally appropriate interactional style. Extended assessment activity, an affect-laden interactional routine which creates heightened mutual orientation within an interaction (Goodwin & Goodwin 1987), occurs when an assessment by one interlocutor triggers an aligning assessment by another. Both interactional routines (Watson-Gegeo & Gegeo 1986) and affect-laden constructions (Ochs 1986) are important agents in shaping children's language development.
Here, extended assessment activity occurs when teachers deliberately restructure the discourse to allow learner production of assessments. This is accomplished via a mini-dialogue which scripts initiation and follow-up turns for student participation with the response turn left open for students to create their own response. While otherwise initiation and follow-up turns are overwhelmingly taken by the teacher, the script functions as scaffolding, providing support for actions the learner as yet cannot take unaided (Lave & Wenger 1989, Lantolf 1994, Vygotsky 1978).
The mini-dialogue guides learner production of the initial assessment of extended assessment activity, allowing the learner to be participant/observer in this key interactional routine. The learner's assessment creates the conditions necessary for spontaneous extended assessment activity by the teacher. The teacher's alignment increases the salience of the activity, showing students how to effectively express common ground with one's interlocutors in Japanese.
Scaffolding creates opportunities for novice participation in a key routine that works to socialize appropriate interactional style as language is jointly constructed by novice and expert.
Language Socialization through the Auxiliary -chau (-te shimau)
Ryoko Suzuki, National University of Singapore
This paper explores the use of the so-called aspectual auxiliary chau (the concatenated form of -te shimau), from the viewpoint of language socialization. -Chau (or -te shimau) is typically considered an auxiliary completion. -Chau is frequent in mothers' speech and children acquire it early. This is the first analysis of -chau from the perspective of language socialization, however.
The data for this study come from six transcripts of monthly tape-recordings of interaction between a child Y (1; 1½; 4 years old) and his mother M. A three-step analysis was performed: (1) a brief comparison of verbs which do and do not occur with -chau; (2) contrastive analysis of verbs which occur both with and without -chau, and (3) an analysis of M's use of -chau in terms of language socialization.
In the speech of both Y and M, verbs which occur only with -chau are typically associated with physical harm to a person or damage to an object. Some verbs which occur both with and without -chau refer to an action or event which is viewed as negative from an adult's point of view. When M uses these verbs without -chau, there are no negative contexts involved. More than 80% of M's uses of -chau have an specifiable target of socialization. M uses -chau when she comments on improper behavior or undesirable physical conditions. The remaining instances of -chau in M's input teach Y general knowledge about the physical structure of the world. In other words, when M uses -chau in her speech to Y, she is trying to teach him how to behave, how to take care of his own body, and how the world around him is structured.
Thus the acquisition data demonstrate that -chau is one of the powerful clause-final morphological tools that the mother uses in socialization, and suggest that it may be more appropriate to examine -chau in terms of negative affect rather than in terms of aspect.
The Socialization of Lexical Expressions of Affect in Japanese
Patricia Clancy, University of California, Santa Barbara
Lexical expressions of affect, which overtly describe or convey feelings, constitute a powerful force in the process of socialization. Caregivers' expressions of emotion and reactions to their children's expressions of emotion shape the interpretation and social organization of affect in culture-specific ways.
The present study focuses on the socialization of lexical expressions of affect in three Japanese mother/child pairs (the children were 1; 1½; 4 years old). Three aspects of these verbal interactions will be examined: (1) the lexical items used by the mothers and children to express and refer to emotions; (2) the social contexts in which emotional language occurred; and (3) the conversational sequences in which affect talk was organized.
Lexical expressions of positive and negative affect in the data occur in both "immediate" contexts (i.e., based on the ongoing interaction, such as play with toys, eating, chores and child care) and "displaced" ones (e.g., pretend play, talk about the past, reading storybooks). Mothers used negative affect in immediate contexts to control the children's ongoing behavior, while affect talk in displaced contexts allows the mother to instill appropriate interpretations and expectations (e.g., calling a picture of a fire kowaii "scary" to motivate the child to avoid matches.)
Lexical expressions of affect in the data typically occur in conversational sequences in which mother and child "negotiate" the appropriate emotion over the course of several turns (e.g., question/answer pairs, repetitions to seek or provide confirmation, etc.). When the child expresses an emotion, the mother either accepts (e.g., by repeating) or rejects it (e.g., the doctor is not kowaii "scary" but yasashii "kind"). Thus, the conversational organization of lexical expressions of emotion provides a structured, predictable locus for the socialization of affect in Japanese mother/child conversation.
Language Socialization in a Japanese Immersion School
Carl D. Falsgraf, Oregon State System of Higher Education, Japanese Language
Project
This paper argues that teacher talk at a Japanese partial-immersion school socializes children into the implicit cultural notions of status and formality. An analysis of directives shows that Japanese teachers use more direct forms than their American counterparts, suggesting that the power differential between teachers and children is greater in the Japanese classroom. An analysis of teachers' use of distal (~masu) and direct (~u) forms reveals that teachers use distal style predominantly in formal situations and direct style in informal interactions. Data from elementary schools in Japan reveal the same pattern in native-native interactions as well. This indicates that cultural distinctions of social distance are displayed by means of distal and direct verb morphology. An experimental data show that American children learning Japanese display control of these linguistic and social variables beginning in the fourth grade.
The regularities in teachers' manipulation of linguistic forms to express subtle culturally based distinctions show that teacher talk in the content-based environment of a Japanese immersion school displays cultural patterns of interaction through linguistic form. The fact that children show sensitivity to these distinctions in their production indicates that these cultural-linguistic associations are, in fact, being acquired. The paper concludes that this constitutes a case of language socialization in the context of an immersion classroom. The pedagogic implication is that language socialization can occur in content-based classrooms such as the immersion classrooms examined here.