1、The Function of Context of Culture in SLA form a Sociocultural PerspectivesAbstract: The context of culture is more and more important in the second language acquisition(SLA). This article will analyze the relation among the context of culture, SLA and the Sociocultural theory, the effect and functi
2、on of context of culture from Sociocultural Perspectives in SFL, and thereby aims to bring and raise SLAs awareness of the importance of context of culture.Key words: Sociocultural Perspectives Context of Culture SLA1. IntroductionPeoples communication is carried out in a certain language environmen
3、t, that is in the context. A Japanese student in the U.S. was killed because he failed to understand the meaning of“Freeze!” This tragedy has told us correct grammar couldnt make ourselves understood in intercultural communication, that is to say, the textbook-based knowledge of a foreign language d
4、oes not grant us communicate with foreigners fluently without misunderstanding. Hardly addressed in the EFL (English as a Foreign Language) classroom, polysemous and other contextually motivated usages in the target language are often elusive to its learners. If the learners aspire to use English as
5、 a living language, then their awareness of English pragmatics, that is, how English functions in natural contexts, especially in cultural context, needs to be enhanced. This paper discusses the role and reason why cultural context is worthy our attention including several important types of culture
6、-specific expressions. And which requires SLAs learners study and pay more attention to these complicated cultural knowledge, then it can make them stronger intercultural competence.In the process of translation, context is even more important. This article aims to present examples to demonstrate th
7、e impact of context on translation. Context refers not only to a sentence, a paragraph or a part of an article, but also the entire scene with the event-related background and the environment. Semantics depends on the context and also influenced by context. Communication takes place through a medium
8、 and in situations that are limited in time and place. Each specific situation determines what and how people communicate, and it is changed by people communicating. Situations are not universal but are embedded in a cultural habitat, which in turn conditions the situation. Language is thus to be re
9、garded as part of culture. And communication is conditioned by the constraints of the situation-in-culture. So is translation as a form of cross-cultural communication. The complexity of translation, one of the most complex things in human history, lies in the multitude of and the delicate relations
10、hip among its relevant factors. Translation is never innocent. There is always a context in which translation takes place, always a history from which a text emerges and into which a text is transposed. The situation-in-culture has been given much emphasis. Looking back at the past 15 years in the f
11、ield of second language acquisition (SLA), Vygotskian sociocultural theory, learning as changing participation in situated practices, Bakhtin and the dialogic perspective and critical theory. Related to the arrival of these perspectives, the SLA field has also witnessed debates concerning understand
12、ings of learning and the construction of theory. The debate discussed in this article involves conflicting ontologies. We argue that the traditional positivist paradigm is no longer the only prominent paradigm in the field: Relativism has become an alternative paradigm. Tensions, debates and a growi
13、ng diversity of theories are healthy and stimulating for a field like SLA.In this article, we characterize the several most important developments in the SLA field over the past 15 years. Although research and findings in the early decades of SLA were major accomplishments, we believe that the devel
14、opments of the past 15 years are better characterized as ontological, manifested in part as debates and issues. More specifically, we address the arrival of sociocultural perspectives in SLA and then discuss .SOCIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVES ON SLAThese more recent arrivals to the field of SLAsociocultura
15、l perspectives2on language and learningview language use in real-world situations as fundamental, not ancillary, to learning. These researchers focus not on language as input, but as a resource for participation in the kinds of activities our everyday lives comprise. Participation in these activitie
16、s is both the product and the process of learning. We provide brief summaries of the sociocultural perspectives we find typically invoked in recent SLA research, mentioning relevant studies. We do not, however, refer to all studies that draw on these perspectives. Readers are urged to see Lantolf (2
17、000) for an overview of Vygotskian SLA studies and Zuengler and Cole (2005) for a review of language socialization research in second language learning. The order we havechosen is somewhat arbitrary. We begin, however, with Vygotskian sociocultural theory and language socialization because one or th
18、e other is often positioned as the primary theoretical framework. These two also seem to be invoked more frequently than situated learning theory,Bakhtinian approaches to language, or critical theories of discourse and social relationsthe remaining perspectives we discuss. Segregating these sociocul
19、tural perspectives into their own sections allows us to address their unique disciplinary roots and contributions to SLA. Thoughwe believe researchers must take care in how they bring together these varying approaches, given their distinctiveness, we suggest that the “hybrid interdisciplinarity” tha
20、t many SLA scholars practice (Rampton, Roberts, Leung, Aljaafreh Anton, 1999, 2000; DiCamilla Nassaji Ohta, 2000; Swain McCafferty, 1994, 2004b; see also McCafferty, 2004a). Still others have focused on activity theory and taskbased approaches to second language teaching and learning (Coughlan McCaf
21、ferty, Roebuck, Parks, 2000;Storch, 2004; Thorne, 2003).Language SocializationLanguage socialization researchers, including those in SLA, closely identify with Vygotskian sociocultural approaches to learning (see Ochs, 1988; Schiefflin Watson-Gegeo, 2004; Watson-Gegeo Harklau, 1994; Poole, 1992). Wh
22、ether at home, in the classroom, at work, or in any number of other environments, language learners are embedded in and learn to become competent participants in culturally, socially, and politically shaped communicative contexts. The linguisticforms used in these contexts and their social significa
23、nce affect how learners come to understand and use language. In a recent review of language socialization research in SLA, Zuengler and Cole (2005) observed that even though some studies portray socialization as a smooth and successful process (e.g., Kanagy, 1999; Ohta, 1999), many other studies, mo
24、stly classroom based, demonstrate “language socialization as potentially problematic, tension producing, and unsuccessful” (p. 306). For example, some researchers have found that school socialization processes can have negative effects on second language learning (Atkinson, 2003; Duff Rymes, 1997; W
25、illet, 1995) and others have observed contradictory home and schoolsocialization processes, which often result in students relatively unsuccessful socialization to school norms (Crago, 1992; Moore, 1999; Watson-Gegeo, 1992). These findings, among others, point to the shifting emphasis in language so
26、cialization research to the sociopolitical dimensionsof discourse and social organization and their implications for language learning (Watson-Gegeo, 2004). Like language socialization, situated learning theory, to which we now turn, underscores the role of social identity and relationships as well
27、as the historical and practical conditions of language use in learning.IMPLICATIONS OF SOCIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVESFOR CLASSROOM PRACTICEHall (2002) observes that traditional SLA approaches seek to identify good pedagogical interventions that will most effectively “facilitate learners assimilation of
28、new systemic knowledge into known knowledge structures” (p. 48). However, given their different understandings of language learning, socioculturally informed studies offer much differentrecommendations for improving classroom practice. For example, in seeing learning as participation, as relational
29、and interactive, and as constrained by unequal power relations, Lave and Wengers perspective asks educators to consider how the practices of school relate to those outside of school, how schools and classrooms themselves are organized into communities of practice, and what kinds of participation are
30、 made accessible to students.Other studies taking sociocultural perspectives have examined classroom interactions or discourse patterns with an eye toward identifying those that best facilitate student participation (Gutierrez, Rymes, Nassaji Nystrand, Gamoran, Zeiser, Tharp Anton, 1999; McCormick N
31、assaji Ohta, 2000; Swain Cole 1996 for discussions.) Language use and development are at the core of this objective characterization of culture both at the level of local interaction (actual communicative activity) as well as that of society and the nation state in arenas such as language policies,
32、language ideologies, and public education as mass social intervention (toname but a few). As we will discuss briefly below and in greater detail in the chapters dealing with mediation, culturally constructed meaning is the primary means that humans use to organize and control their mental functionin
33、g and for this reason, language development and use plays a central role in Vygotskys theory of mind.Sociocultural theory is a theory of the development of higher mental functions that has its roots in eighteenth and nineteenth century German philosophy (particularly that of Kant and Hegel), the soc
34、iological and economic writings of Marx and Engels (specifically Theses on Feuerbach and The German Ideology), and which emerges most directly from the research of the Russian psychologist L. S. Vygotsky and his colleagues. While research establishing the relevance of culture to the formation of hum
35、an mental life has been carried out within the social sciences for over a century, contemporary neuroscience research alsodemonstrates that phylogenetically recent cortical areas of the brain (specifically the prefrontal cortex) are hyper-adaptive to use and experience. (See LeDoux 2002.) A growing
36、mass of evidence from a variety of disciplines has established strong connections between culture, language, and cognition, and this is nowhere more relevant than in application to organized education, where environment, information, and behavioral processes are (ostensibly) engineered to create opt
37、imal conditions for learning and development. Before we proceed further, we think that it is necessary a terminological clarification. In part due to its use by multiple research communities, there has been considerable and understandable debate about the label sociocultural theorywhat it means, who
38、 it belongs to, and what its intellectual lineage is. (A colloquium at the American Association for Applied Lantolf Ochs 1987; Ochs and Schieffelin 1984). L2 researchers, most especially Norton (2000) and her colleagues (Norton and Toohey 2004), have also situated their research within the broader s
39、ocio-cultural domain. This research is concerned primarily with socialization and the discursive construction of identities (for example, gender, foreigner, native, worker, child, etc.) and is certainly theoretically commensurate with the intellectual project we develop with this volume. However, th
40、e term sociocultural theory as we use it is meant to invoke a much more specific association with the work of Vygotsky 2 and the tradition of Russian culturalhistorical psychology, especially within applied linguistics research. (See Donato 1994; Frawley and Lantolf 1985; Lantolf 2000; Lantolf and A
41、ppel 1994; Swain 2000; Thorne 2000b; 2005.) Moreover, it is heavily focused on the impact of culturally organized and socially enacted meanings on the formation and functioning of mental activity. Our adoptionof the term sociocultural theory in this second and more constrained sense presents a parad
42、ox in that it is unlikely that Vygotsky himself ever used the term. James Wertsch, in particular, has encouraged the adoption of sociocultural over cultural-historical to intentionally differentiate the appropriation of Vygotskian theory into the West from certain negative entailments found in the R
43、ussian tradition. (See Wertsch, del Ro, and Alvarez1995.) The critique is that the term cultural-historical brings with it colonialist and evolutionist overtones that position industrialized societies as superior to developing societies and those without Western scientific cultures and literacies. W
44、hile we agree that this is a serious problem in much of the post-enlightenment and early twentieth-century research in psychology, education, linguistics, and anthropology, in our estimation a simple name changedoes not rectify the situation. Another common usage problem is that the choice ofsociocu
45、ltural provokes confusion in that this term is used in a wide array of current as well as historical research that is in no way linked to the Marxist psychology that emerged in the writings of Vygotsky, Luria, and A. N. Leontev.Lantolf “Quick， Nancy ”Mike said and swung the car into the left laneThe
46、 translated version is “快，南西。 ” 迈克边说边把车子拐进快车道. Maybe someone will ask in this emergent time why he didnt turn to the highway but the lane(巷子)? If they have this kind of thought it is because they dont know in America “the left lane” is just like what we Chinese say “highway”.3.2. ReligionIn the west
47、ern culture religion is very important and it had made its way into every aspect of life which had become a character of its culture.So , when doing translation, religion must be an important factor that has influence. Thus the translator should have the basic knowledge of religion. For example, the
48、 sentence The end of the world is coming should be translated as 伸张正义的时刻就要到来了.the phrase “the end of the world” comes from Christian , it means the end of the world will come and when this day comes everyone will accept the assessment of god. The good ones will go up to heaven and bad ones go down t
49、o hail.3.3. Idiom Most translator who have done translation agreed that the idiom translation is a difficult field of foreign language translation. And the main point of this problem is culture barrier and cultural deficiency. so, when doing idiom translation, we must know how it comes into being. First lets discuss the translation of idiom with fix collocations. There are two types of idioms in English. One is those having fix collocations but no implying meanings or allusions. Another is those originating from history, religion, ancient mythology with implyin
