| Chapter 2: | Situating the Research |
Some researchers believe that second language learners should immerse themselves in the culture of the target language, and that they should regard that culture in a favorable, uncritical light (Berry, Trimble, & Olmeda, 1986; Gardner, 1985; Schumann). This assumes that participating in target culture brings learners’ motivation to study language and eventually assimilate and acculturate to the target culture, but that is not the case of most language learners.
A Focus on Identity
Many researchers in second language learning expand the narrow view of applied linguistics that is focused on psycholinguistics and cognitive processes (Block, 2003; Lantolf, 2000; Mantero, 2007; Norton & Toohey, 2004; Pennycook, 1998; Rampton, 1997; Savignon, 1991; Spack, 1997; Spolsky, 2000). Much of this research is situated within a sociocultural framework drawing primarily on the work of Vygotsky and within critical theory addressed by Marx and Foucault (1991), which concerns itself with issues of power and subject positions.
Sociocultural Theory
From the perspective of sociocultural theory (Bakhtin, 1981, 1986, 1993; Bakhtin & Medvedev, 1978; Cole, 1996; Vygotsky, 1978, 1987, 1997, 1999; Wertsch, 1991), an understanding of the self develops through human interactions and through the realization that these interactions are mediated by meaning making resources. These include all aspects of symbolic resources such as language, as well as cultural and material artifacts. Vygotsky’s (1978) understanding that human development occurs on two planes—beginning with social interaction, which in turn Becomes internal and psychological—leads to the view that the individual and social selves are mutually constituted. Therefore, it Becomes impossible to consider language as independent from identity. Vygotsky’s concept of the connection between the individual and the social has been further developed by Wertsch, who drew on Bakhtin’s dialogism, genre theory, multiple voices, and heteroglossia to further articulate the ways in which language mediates the development of self.