LS has its roots in linguistic anthropology (Hymes, 1972; Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986a); however, it also borrows from sociology (Bourdieu, 1977; Bourdieu & Thompson, 1991), cultural psychology (Rogoff, 1990) and education (Duff & Hornberger, 2008), and from more recent research on literacy socialization (Budwig, 2001; Duff & Hornberger, 2008; Rymes, 1997). However, LS research does not limit itself to the aforementioned fields. It also has associations with psycholinguistics and developmental psychology (Bloom, 1998; Bugental & Goodnow, 1998). As Duff (2009) notes, LS differs from these other research disciplines in its more ethnographic approach. It explicitly recognizes culture as a significant factor influencing many aspects of an individual’s development across the lifespan, in which LS plays a partial but vital role. It also underlies the cross-disciplinary complexity of the process of LS and its dynamism concerning the practicalities of people’s lives.
LS is the lifelong process by which individuals—typically novices—are inducted into specific domains of knowledge [such as knowledge of language and literacy], beliefs, affect, roles, identities, and social representations, which they access and construct through language practices and social interaction. (Ochs & Schieffelin, 1986, in Duff, 1995: 508)
It is, therefore, a very comprehensive and cross-disciplinary approach offering the possibility of an in-depth understanding of a studied context or community.
Traditional research on LS focused on first language (L1) socialization, which takes place in early childhood (Ochs, 1988; Schieffelin, 1990; Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986b). Therefore, primary theories of LS entail the processes by which an individual (child) becomes a member of the society in which he or she lives, through adaptation and internalization of the norms and practices accepted by that society. Children and other users of language develop competencies across cultural, linguistic and historical areas. These norms, practices and competencies are rooted in society, from which individual members transmit them to new members (Auer & Wei, 2007: 74–76). As young children interact with their caregivers, they learn not only how to speak, but also how to recognize, negotiate, index and co-construct diverse types of meaningful social contexts. By engaging with others in various circumstances, children expand their horizons by taking on new roles and status. They also learn how to think, feel and express those feelings. Language acquisition, therefore, is much more than just a child learning to produce well-formed, referential utterances; it also involves learning ‘how to co-construct meaningful contexts and how to engage with others in culturally relevant meaning-making activities’ (Garrett & Baquedano-López, 2002: 342). More recently, researchers and scholars have expanded the scope of LS research to second language (L2) socialization, which is a lifelong and a ‘life-wide’ process across communities and activities. L2 socialization is a process by which an individual (a non-native speaker of a given language) seeks competence in an L2 and membership of a community of practice, to gain inclusion and the ability to actively participate in the practices of the community (Duff, 2009: 2). L2 socialization processes can be experienced by immigrants who seek competence in the language and a new community of practice and by people returning to a language they once used but have since lost proficiency. It can take place in a variety of language contact settings, such as a place where an L2 is the dominant language of a society, or in restricted and more isolated contexts, as in the case of foreign language classrooms or diaspora communities (see Duff, 2009). For many people living in multilingual or bilingual societies or in contexts described above, the contrast between ‘first’ and ‘second’ is often much less evident than these two labels suggest; ‘what was once a first language might lose ground, functionally, to an additional language, which then may become the person’s dominant language’ (Duff, 2009: 43). Additionally, some current studies have investigated the shifting identities of individuals that are often negotiated through LS processes within linguistically and socioculturally heterogeneous settings, characterized by contact between two or more languages and cultures (e.g. Bayley & Schecter, 2003; Eckert, 2000; Hoyle & Adger, 1998; Katz, 2000; Langman, 2003; Schecter & Bayley, 1997, 2003; Watson-Gegeo & Nielsen, 2003; Willett, 1995; Zuengler & Cole, 2005). Therefore, it is widely acknowledged in the literature that LS is experienced throughout one’s lifespan through social interactions between ‘experts’ (those who have more proficiency in, for example, a language, literacy and culture) and ‘novices’ (those with less proficiency). This occurs as an individual enters new ‘communities of practice’ such as schools or the workplace (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Thus, LS is claimed to be speech events at any given time in one’s life (Garrett & Baquedano-López, 2002; Ochs, 1986a; Ochs & Schieffelin, 2008). In other words, to become competent members of new sociocultural groups, individuals often continue to be socialized into new roles, status and practices throughout their lifespan. As Duff (2009: 2) notes, formal and informal socialization through more than one language and culture is a common experience and can be broadly found in numerous bilingual and multilingual societies and communities. However, this has only recently emerged (Duff, 2003; Zuengler & Cole, 2005) as a systemic area of research in applied linguistics. As emphasized, children, adolescents and adults alike have their personal histories, desires, needs, fears, identities and choices concerning the discourses they negotiate, the stances they take and the power structures they encounter. As a result, the process and outcomes of LS in societies and communities undergoing social and cultural change cannot be predicted (e.g. Duff, 2002b).
Agency, Parents and Socialization
Agency can be defined as one’s ‘socioculturally mediated capacity to act’ (Ahearn, 2001: 112). It should be noted that this concept is understood as a complex notion that is negotiated and achieved in culturally or linguistically specific contexts. This study follows this framework to understand Polish children’s agency. I consider agency as emerging from the positioning of oneself and others within a discursive practice because language often reflects one’s desired or ideal ways of being, as shown by Du Bois (1987), Duranti (2004) and Kockelman (2007).
Studies such as Garrett and Baquedano-López (2002: 350) and Corsaro and Miller (1992) demonstrate that children have great potential for ‘interpretive reproduction’ as opposed to more reproduction of social norms and orders. More recently, Lanza (2007) and Wright-Fogle (2012) have shown that children are active and creative agents of socialization who create their social worlds.
More recent studies of LS focus on how children socialize or influence their parents (Gafaranga, 2010). None of the parents in this study reported close relationships with their Irish neighbors or work colleagues. Thus, children in this study often socialized parents by bringing home new social norms. These norms were often contested and ended up somewhere on the ‘right and wrong’ continua. Perceived in this way, immigrant children in this study played an enormous role in their parents’ socialization.
Children’s agency has also been found to be very important for parental language policy. Spolsky (2004) has distinguished three main areas of investigation of home language: (i) language practices, (ii) language ideologies and (iii) language management. Thus, children’s language learning in the home environment is mediated not only by parental language ideologies but also by learning and the role of children in society in general (De Houwer, 1999; King & Fogle, 2006). Multiple or competing language ideologies or conflicts between implicit vs explicit ideologies (King & Bruner, 2000) are often at play in the context of transnational families, which are the ‘genesis of language policies’ as Fogle (2012: 20) points out. Parental language strategies have often been at the center of these studies. The current study is adding to these developments by illustrating how parental engagement in community organizations plays a significant role in the socialization of adolescents’ ethnic identity and language maintenance. This is different from other studies of bilingual LS or family language policy as the focus is not on parents’ language strategies (use of the L1) but on the choices they make for themselves about staying connected to the heritage community.
In L2 socialization research, the focus has been on the agency that leads to participation