Chapter 3 Voice, stance, and role in Chinese immersion second graders’ language use
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Mengying Liu
Abstract
When we learn language in any social environment, we do not internalize words, phrases, and other linguistic features in their raw forms, divorced from social context. Rather, we internalize sets of personalized “voices” - complexes of linguistic and non-linguistic features that embody a particular speaker’s role, stance, and (ultimately) identity (Bakhtin [1934] 1981; Tarone 2019; Wertsch 1991, 2002). In a language immersion classroom, those heteroglossic voices may tap either the home language or the immersion language, resulting in complex patterns of code-switching. This chapter reanalyzes some of Liu’s (2021) dissertation data, using a Bakhtinian sociocultural frame to better understand some underlying reasons for the heteroglossic verbal and nonverbal behavior of two young immersion children in their daily interactions in a second-grade one-way Chinese immersion classroom in the U.S. We primarily focus on their language play at the semantic level, including play with voices, roles, and stances. Through mediated discourse analysis of the children’s heteroglossic speech, we examine how their choice to speak either Chinese or English was tightly enmeshed with, and possibly even a product of, the social roles they chose to play in this classroom, the stances they took in playing those roles, and the voices and double voicing they produced as a consequence. Both children’s heteroglossic speech was inextricably tied to the stances and roles they enacted; double voicing was used for ludic language play, stance expression, and self-regulation as the children tried out culturally-based social roles.
Abstract
When we learn language in any social environment, we do not internalize words, phrases, and other linguistic features in their raw forms, divorced from social context. Rather, we internalize sets of personalized “voices” - complexes of linguistic and non-linguistic features that embody a particular speaker’s role, stance, and (ultimately) identity (Bakhtin [1934] 1981; Tarone 2019; Wertsch 1991, 2002). In a language immersion classroom, those heteroglossic voices may tap either the home language or the immersion language, resulting in complex patterns of code-switching. This chapter reanalyzes some of Liu’s (2021) dissertation data, using a Bakhtinian sociocultural frame to better understand some underlying reasons for the heteroglossic verbal and nonverbal behavior of two young immersion children in their daily interactions in a second-grade one-way Chinese immersion classroom in the U.S. We primarily focus on their language play at the semantic level, including play with voices, roles, and stances. Through mediated discourse analysis of the children’s heteroglossic speech, we examine how their choice to speak either Chinese or English was tightly enmeshed with, and possibly even a product of, the social roles they chose to play in this classroom, the stances they took in playing those roles, and the voices and double voicing they produced as a consequence. Both children’s heteroglossic speech was inextricably tied to the stances and roles they enacted; double voicing was used for ludic language play, stance expression, and self-regulation as the children tried out culturally-based social roles.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- Chapter 1 Introduction to heteroglossia and language play in multilingual speech 1
- Chapter 2 Getting serious about language play: Language play, interlanguage variation and second language acquisition 17
- Chapter 3 Voice, stance, and role in Chinese immersion second graders’ language use 43
- Chapter 4 Escríbalo en tu own words, güey 67
- Chapter 5 Pedagogical language play in a beginning L2 Chinese classroom 91
- Chapter 6 Translanguaging and language play 117
- Chapter 7 Language play and social positioning in L2 narrative retells 137
- Chapter 8 Channeling Charlie: Suprasegmental pronunciation in a second language learner’s performance of others’ voices 161
- Chapter 9 Coda: Pedagogical implications and applications for language play beyond second/foreign language learning 191
- Subject Index 205
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- Chapter 1 Introduction to heteroglossia and language play in multilingual speech 1
- Chapter 2 Getting serious about language play: Language play, interlanguage variation and second language acquisition 17
- Chapter 3 Voice, stance, and role in Chinese immersion second graders’ language use 43
- Chapter 4 Escríbalo en tu own words, güey 67
- Chapter 5 Pedagogical language play in a beginning L2 Chinese classroom 91
- Chapter 6 Translanguaging and language play 117
- Chapter 7 Language play and social positioning in L2 narrative retells 137
- Chapter 8 Channeling Charlie: Suprasegmental pronunciation in a second language learner’s performance of others’ voices 161
- Chapter 9 Coda: Pedagogical implications and applications for language play beyond second/foreign language learning 191
- Subject Index 205
