Language Acquisition And Language Socialization: Ecological Perspectives

This book brings together well-known scholars in two relatively distinct fields (language acquisition and language socialisation) and from a variety of orientations within applied linguistics - psycho and sociolinguistics, anthropological linguistics, educational linguistics - to describe language development from a relational perspective.

The notion of ecology offers a convenient metaphor for the complex variational processes that take place within individuals and between individuals and their social and cultural environment, as they attempt to learn the language of the Other.

For researchers, the main strength of the book is its empirical and phenomenological base as well as the variety of its methodological approaches. The theme of ecology affords a fresh look into phenomena not encompassed by language acquisition or language socialisation research alone. It puts into question traditional ways of looking at time, space, subjectivity, and identity in the acquisition of another language and its use in a variety of social contexts.