Language Socialization and the (re)Production of Bilingual Subjectivities

Abstract

Language socialization is the human developmental process whereby a child or other novice (of any age) acquires communicative competence (Hymes 1972), enabling him or her to interact meaningfully with others and otherwise participate in the social life of a given community. Language socialization occurs primarily through interactions with older or otherwise more experienced persons (Garrett and Baquedano-López 2002; Ochs and Schieffelin 1984; Schieffelin and Ochs 1986a, 1986b), but also, in most cases, through interactions with peers (Dunn 1999; Farris 1991; Paugh 2005; Rampton 1995a). The child or novice’s development of communicative competence through such interactions is largely a matter of learning how to behave, both verbally and non-verbally, as a culturally intelligible subject. While mastering the formal features of the community’s language or languages so as to be able to produce grammatically and pragmatically well-formed utterances (Ochs and Schieffelin 1995), the child or novice must also learn how to use language in conjunction with various other semiotic resources as a means of actively co-constructing, negotiating and participating in a broad range of locally meaningful (though largely quite mundane) interactions and activities — a process that Schieffelin and Ochs (1996) characterize as ‘the microgenesis of competence’.