Language socialization

Language socialization refers to the ideology and practices that enable learners to acquire one or more languages. For several decades, the term "language socialization" has included primarily early child language acquisition. Today, however, scholars increasingly acknowledge the need to understand language socialization as individuals mature through adolescence into adulthood. Moreover, specific occupations, geographic relocations, and new roles require specific languages, ways of using language, and understanding of different language ideologies.

Around the world, learning to produce and understand "academic language" or the register of student performance now receives considerable attention from scholars whose research may carry implications for teaching practices in formal education. Therefore, later language development, or that acquired during middle childhood and adolescence, needs inclusion in language socialization studies. Linguists and human development experts have little information on the "normal" course of oral language development during middle childhood and adolescence. Thus, topics such as the processing of information drawn from literate sources or from observation and participation in science laboratories or arts studios during these years remain largely unexamined. These gaps in research hinder progress toward understanding the relationship between oral fluency and literacy skills in reading and writing. During middle childhood and adolescence, young learners gain competence in reading to learn and in creating and interpreting multimodal communication. These modes include maps, graphs, charts, music, photographs, visual arts, and digital media, all of which are interdependent with written and oral language.

Selected below are key works by Heath on early language socialization and later language development.

Section 1: Early language socialization

2000. Linguistics in the study of language in education. Harvard Educational Review 70.1:49-59.
1990. The children of Trackton's children: Spoken and written language in social change. In Cultural Psychology: The Chicago symposia on human development. J. S. Stigler, R. A. Shweder, & G. S. Herdt, eds. New York: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 496-519. (PDF Available)
1982. What no Bedtime Story Means: Narrative skills at home and at school. Language and society. 11.2:49-76. (PDF Available)

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