Toward a sociocognitive approach to second Llanguage acquisition

TLDR

Sociocognitive theory frames language acquisition as occurring simultaneously in the mind and within socially mediated contexts, treating it as a social phenomenon performed for action in the world. The article proposes a sociocognitive perspective on second language acquisition as an alternative to prevailing cognitivist approaches, aiming to bridge cognition and social action and to address biases in SLA research. The author develops this framework by integrating connectionist insights, describing language as cognitively structured yet socially interpreted, and applying it to both second and first language acquisition. The paper concludes that adopting sociocognitive views can overcome cognitivist biases in SLA research and outlines implications for future study.

Abstract

This article develops the notion of a sociocognitive perspective on second language acquisition (SLA), proposed as an alternative to the cognitivism pervading the field. By sociocognitive, I mean a view of language and language acquisition as simultaneously occurring and interactively constructed both “in the head” and “in the world.” First, I develop a view of language and its acquisition as social phenomena—as existing and taking place for the performance of action in the (socially‐mediated) world. Second, I describe the cognitive nature of language and its acquisition, focusing especially on recent developments in connectionism. Third, I introduce sociocognitive views of language and posit a social interpretation of connectionism as bridging the gap between cognition and social action. Fourth, I discuss sociocognitive perspectives on first language acquisition. Fifth, I describe the cognitivist biases of much SLA research, then suggest how sociocognitive approaches can help overcome them. I end by considering implications of the perspective I develop in this paper.