About
Issues in Applied Linguistics is a peer-reviewed journal for scholarly contributions that advance applied linguistics in all its forms. We welcome empirical, theoretical, methodological, pedagogical, critical, and reflective work on language learning, teaching, use, assessment, policy, multilingualism, discourse, technology, cognition, identity, and society.
Volume 9, Issue 1, 1998
Articles
- Second Language Learning by Adults: Testimonies of Bilingual Writers
The article focuses on the relationship between languages and selves in adult bicultural bilinguals who learned their second language (L2) post puberty and became writers and scholars in this language. Their autobiographic narratives are used to identify and examine subsequent stages of second language learning (SLL) and the authors' current positioning. On the basis of this novel source of data an argument is presented for new metaphors of SLL, new approaches to SLL, and for the existence—in some cases—of two stages of SLL: a stage of losses and a stage of gains, with specific substages within.
- The Transfer of Native Language Speech Behavior into a Second Language: A Basis for Cultural Stereotypes?
This paper examines the phenomenon of pragmatic transfer as a possible basis for cultural stereotypes. In this study data from L2 German learners of English are compared with data from native speakers of American English. The results suggest that the German English L2 speakers produced responses more in keeping with German rules of speaking and conventions of use than with American ones. L2 learners from a particular culture tend to follow the (often tacit) sociocultural norms of their LI, thus behaving more similarly to each other than to LI native speakers. However, in communicative situations with native speakers, these L2 learners are judged by the norms of the target language culture, not by the norms of their LL Target language native speakers rarely attribute misunderstandings or misinterpretations of illocutionary force and intent to L2 learners' adherence to different rules of speaking. This paper posits that recurrent transfer of different rules of speaking by L2 language groups may play a role in the formation of cultural stereotypes.