Paul B. Garrett

Language Socialization and the (re)Production of Bilingual Subjectivities

Language socialization is the human developmental process whereby a child or other novice (of any age) acquires communicative competence (Hymes 1972), enabling him or her to interact meaningfully with others and otherwise participate in the social life of a given community. Language socialization occurs primarily through interactions with older or otherwise more experienced persons (Garrett and Baquedano-Lopez 2002; Ochs and Schieffelin 1984; Schieffelin and Ochs 1986a, 1986b), but also, in most cases, through interactions with peers (Dunn 1999; Farris 1991; Paugh 2005; Rampton 1995a). The child or novice’s development of communicative competence through such interactions is largely a matter of learning how to behave, both verbally and non-verbally, as a culturally intelligible subject. While mastering the formal features of the community’s language or languages so as to be able to produce grammatically and pragmatically well-formed utterances (Ochs and Schieffelin 1995), the child or novice must also learn how to use language in conjunction with various other semiotic resources as a means of actively co-constructing, negotiating and participating in a broad range of locally meaningful (though largely quite mundane) interactions and activities — a process that Schieffelin and Ochs (1996) characterize as ‘the microgenesis of competence’.

“SAY IT LIKE YOU SEE IT”: RADIO BROADCASTING AND THE MASS MEDIATION OF CREOLE NATIONHOOD IN ST. LUCIA

This article examines the role of Caribbean creole languages in the imagining and “mass mediating” of postcolonial nationhood. The focus is radio broadcasting in St. Lucia, where an Afro-French creole language known as Kwéyòl coexists with the official language, English. Since St. Lucias independence in 1979, Kwéyòl has been used increasingly on the airwaves (formerly the exclusive domain of English) by broadcasters intent on rapidly “modernizing” the language to transform it into a vehicle of national development on a par with English. But when Kwéyòl is forced into strongly regimented “English” broadcasting formats and genres, as when international news reports received at the studio in English are translated word for word into Kwéyòl, the results often seem less than “authentically” St. Lucian. In recent years some broadcasters have been responding to such problems by experimenting with distinctively “creole” programming formats that give voice to local folk perspectives and counterdiscourses. These densely heteroglossic broadcasts simultaneously capture and comment on the predicaments facing Caribbean peoples as they negotiate steadily globalizing political economies of language and information that are often hostile to speakers of “small” languages such as Kwéyòl, and to “micro-states” such as St. Lucia.

ROBERT BAYLEY AND SANDRA R. SCHECTER (eds.), Language socialization in bilingual and multilingual societies . Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters Ltd., 2003. Pp. xii, 311. Hb

The title of this edited volume leads one to expect a timely contribution to the literature on language socialization, which has become increasingly concerned with bilingual and multilingual settings over the past decade or so. Some readers with general interests in bilingual and multilingual situations, or with special interests in education in such settings, may find this collection worthwhile. Those with a particular interest in language socialization, however, will be disappointed – and perhaps irritated to have been misled by the title. The volumes 16 chapters present a broad variety of interesting case studies, but very few among them can accurately be characterized as language socialization studies.