social identity and English language teaching.doc

Social identity and English Language Teaching Beijing Normal University, Zhuhai????? Abstract The use of language is one of the most important ways for us to build up our social identity and shape other people’s view of who we are. This intimate connection between language and social identity means that learners need the chances to build social identities and explore diversity of the language. This, however, poses a great challenge to the educational systems and to norms of classroom teaching, which only provide an idealized (and reductionism) view of language. In this paper, I will first discuss the relationship between language and social identity, and then discuss how this intimate connection should affect our English language teaching. Key words: social identity English language teaching register dialect ESL EFL Introduction Social identity is an important concept in our societal context, it encompasses participant roles, positions, relationships , reputations , and other dimensions of social personae, which are conventionally linked to epistemic and affective stances . (Ochs , 1996 : 424,cited in Hall , 2002) Social identity can be seen as the diverse ways in which people perceive themselves in connection to others, and how they view their past and their future (Peirce ,1995). Individuals use language to index and construct their everyday world , especially their own social roles and social identity · Social identity and language According to Thomas and Wareing ( 1999 ) , the use of language is one of the most fundamental ways to establish our identity and shape other people’ views of who we are. In fact , we cannot entirely tell what sort of a person someone is simply from how he / she dress or how he / she behaves. If we want to have a fuller picture of that particular person, we should also note the way he / she talks because the use of language is an important indicator of one’s social identity. When we use a particular language,