.png)
16 Views
Society for Linguistic Anthropology
Oral Presentation Session
Kazeem Sanuth
University of Wisconsin, Madison
This paper examines the process of language socialization in interactions between Yoruba-language learners and L1 speakers of Yoruba in open market settings during study abroad in South-West Nigeria. It specifically addresses the pattern of linguistic participation and contribution to the socio-cultural events of price haggling to examine how participants contribute to meaning-making and membership in the multilingual context. Data for the study consist of talk-in-interaction obtained via video recordings of haggling conversations involving language study abroad participants at three open markets. I generated close to 40 hours of recordings, which I analyzed using a qualitative approach, informed by critical applied linguistics and language socialization. My analysis reveals how learners collaborate with their interactants to enact communicative and cultural competence, and in the process socialize each other into their respective ways of using language during interactions. I demonstrate that the multilingual practices of learners and of the native speakers with whom the students interacted conflicted with the focus on monolingualism in the program’s official ideology, resulting in language scrutiny and policing of “native speaker” interlocutor’s language use.