Language socialization paradigm

• Insists that in becoming competent members of their social group, children are socialized through language

• Children are socialized to use language

• So language is not just one dimension of the socialization process

• It is the most central and crucial dimension of that process

The language socialization paradigm claims that:

Any study of socialization that does not document the role of language … in the acquisition of cultural practices … is incomplete and fundamentally flawed.

Past studies assumed that cultural competence was complete after adolescence

• Language socialization studies emphasize the socializing nature of all human interaction.

Multiple agencies are present and should be accounted for in any social interaction

Mother child interactions• It is not only the child who is

being socialized• The child, through her/his

actions and verbalizations, is also actively socializing the mother as a mother

Co-workers socialize each other as co-workers

Lovers socialize each other as lovers

How some people become ‘bad’ and some ‘good’

Relative to their culture groups

“Good” subjects (those who learn and adhere correctly to socialization) and “bad” subjects

Kulick and Schieffelin ask what happens when language and other socialization results in unexpected outcomes such as resistance.

• Involves documenting how certain children or novices come to be what could be called ‘bad’ subjects.

• (Not that they are inherently ‘bad’, necessarily,

except that they do not respond to calls to behave in particular socially sanctioned ways.)

Examples of ‘bad’ subjects

• In societies that value sensitivity, ‘bad’ subjects might be people who don’t stop talking about themselves.

• In societies that stress generosity, ‘bad’ subjects might be people who are selfish.

• In societies that value cooperation, they might be people who are too individualistic.

• Traditionally, in psychology, people who didn’t conform were called ‘deviants’.

• They were seen as

the product of individual psychological processes.

• Probably socialized through negligence, abuse or idiosyncratic caregiving strategies.

Kulick and Schieffelin say that to particularize (and individualize), even a case as serious as a

serial killer, is to ignore the fact that these people are cultural products.

Serial-rapist murderers do not exist everywhere, as culturally imaginable subjectivity or as an actual occurring type of person. (Manifestation of extreme narcissism is relative to different cultural expectations and abuses)

They are not exclusively children of negligent or abusive parents.

Cultural analysis is crucialto understanding ‘badness’

Kulick and Schiefflen Children receive

socializing messages about how to behave and feel in particular ways.

These messages also produce their own inversion. When teaching babies how to be ‘good’,

you also teach them ways to be ‘bad’.

Each time that an adult tells a child how to speak politely, the adult is also indicating how to speak rudely.

• “You must say please”• “Don’t say that word.”

• These commands tell the child what rudeness is.

• The commands also point to the forbidden phrases.

• In teaching politeness, adults provide a model of rudeness.

• The socialization processes teaches what to repress and what to express.

• What is repressed and expressed is relative to different culture groups.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tRHir8hJzQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JooO_c3tBs4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqlMjupYdvU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z67d3asnOQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LM1RSpxTT0

Paying attention to the not-said or the unsayable in socializing contexts

• Exploration of the ways in which utterances manifest ‘dual indexicality’

• …their surface content and the simultaneous inverse of that content

• Encourages an active exploration of the formation of ‘bad’ subjects

Patricia Clancey working with mothers and two-year-olds in Japan

How do children learn indirect speech and intuitive understanding that characterizes Japanese communicative style?

Mothers:• Attributed speech to others who had not actually spoken, thereby

indicating to children how they should read non-verbal behavior (what someone else is feeling or thinking)

• Appealed to the imagined reactions of hito ‘other people’, who are supposedly always watching and evaluating the child’s behavior

• Used strongly affect-laden adjectives like ‘scary’ or ‘frightening’ to describe a child’s (mis)behavior, making it clear that such behavior is socially unacceptable and shameful

These interactions sensitized children to subtle expectations of how to interact with others. (Being good)

The inverse of this socialization style:

• Encouraged children to acquire the specific anxieties and fears (such as disapproval or hito) that undergird Japanese communicative style.

U.S. example Desirable leads to Desirable

Undesirable leads to Undesirable

A child who is afraid of a vacuum cleaner sound is told by her mother, “I won’t put the vacuum cleaner on if you drink all your juice.”

• (Desirable for the child to

desirable for the mother)

A father warns his child, “If I see you with matches, I’ll give you a spanking.”

• (Undesirable behavior of child to undesirable behavior toward child)

English speaking adultsDesirability links:To control child’s behavior, adults link actions that are desirable for the adult to actions that

the adult frames as desirable to the child.

Undesirability links:• English speakers often use conditionals, promises, threats, and warnings. (Of course

this is not true of all English speaking families, but is common in the U.S. etc.)• These are presented to children with an explicit reason for complying with the directive. • The reason is linked to consequences that the child would face (I’ll give you a

spanking).• This way focuses on the child being good for the sake of avoiding punishment or to

receive rewards. • (Is the inverse being bad to get away with it, expecting to rewards for good behavior,

etc.?)

Japanese and Korean adults mostly do not present children with this kind of information. (Of course sometimes conditionals may be used in some families– but not as common as for English speakers in the U.S. etc.)

• They rely more on general statements (it won’t do … it’s scary)• These do not assert what will happen if the child does or does not follow to the adult’s

command to do, or stop doing, something.• This way focuses on the child learning self control for the sake of others’ welfare and

opinions and because it is good to be good. • (Is the inverse fear of loss of self control and fear of other people’s opinions?)

Questions for further study:

• In learning how to be good through threats, warnings, and rewards, what is the inverse of such socialization?

• In what ways do people express ‘badness’ because they learned to be ‘bad’ through rewards, threats and warnings?

• (Being bad means to challenge, resist, or even be entrenched or obsessed with ‘being too good.’)

• (Being bad or good means different things in different culture groups.)