A sociocultural perspective on human action
locates the essence of social life in
communication
we articulate and manage our individual
identities, our interpersonal relationships,
and memberships in our social groups and
communities
Dialogue as the essence of language use
the linguistic resources we choose to
use do not come to us as empty forms
ready to be fi lled with our personal
intentions
the meaning of language does not reside in
the system of linguistic resources removed
from their contexts of use and communities
of users.
Single- and double-voiced
utterances
consist of resources whose meanings are
unquestioned, non-negotiable and thus
resistant to change
These histories of meanings
determine in part the
degree of force that our
voices will have in using the
resources towards our own
ends
Culture as sociocultural practice
The notion of culture has always been
considered an important concept in
applied linguistics
The basis of the system is assumed to be
an abstract, universal structure for
organising and generating the knowledge
Because we are members of multiple groups and
communities, we take on and negotiate multiple
cultural identities, and in our roles, participate in
myriad cultural activities
To locate culture one must look not in
individual mind, as an accumulated body
of unchanging knowledge, but in the
dialogue, the embodied actions
Linguistic relativity
This hypothesis proposes that patterned,
structural components of specific languages
regularly or habitually used by members of culture
groups contain particular meanings that are
systematically linked to the worldviews of the
groups whose languages they are.
To state it another way, if individual thought is
shaped by language, individuals with different
languages are likely to have different
understandings of the world
A socially constituted
linguistics
A socially constituted approach
to the study of language and
culture
A great deal of research, particularly in the fi
elds of linguistic anthropology,
communication, and education, has used
this approach to investigate a wide range of
communicative events and activities of
many different groups and communities.
The recent turn in
studies of
communicative activities
Of particular interest are the skills and
strategies by which individuals use these
technologies to make sense of and
participate in their communities both
within and across geographical
boundaries.
From linguistic relativity to
sociolinguistic relativity
That is, the language one uses
helps shapes one’s conceptual
understandings about the world
The language or languages that we learn in
childhood are not neutral coding systems of an
objective reality.
Systemic functional linguistics
To make these connections between
language use and context visible, Halliday
proposed an analytic framework
consisting of a set of three interrelated
functions.
The first function is the
ideational, which is concerned
with the propositional or
representational dimensions of
language
The second is the interpersonal, which is concerned
with the social dimensions of language, and more
specifi cally how interpersonal connections are
made and sustained
The third function is the textual, which is
concerned with the construction of coherent and
cohesive discourse.