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The very notion of heritage language (HL) is a sociocultural one insofar as it is defined in terms of a group of people who speak it. Heritage languages also have a sociocultural function, both as a means of communication and as a way of identifying and transforming sociocultural groups. This article surveys two broad approaches to research on the sociocultural dimensions of HL learning. While both of these approaches acknowledge the close connection and mutual dependency between HL learning processes and sociocultural processes, they differ in that one of them takes a correlational perspective, and the other a social constructivist perspective. This article reviews a selective body of work conducted from each of the two perspectives and concludes with a discussion of the implications of the sociocultural complexity associated with HL learning for research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the seminal article on the organization of turn-taking by Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson (1974) was published 30 years ago, I started learning English as a foreign language. In addition to being a learner of the English language for many years, I was also trained in the traditions of Conversation Analysis (CA) and linguistic anthropology (particularly Language Socialization) in graduate school. For the present article, my objective is to explore the uses and nonuses of CA for language learning, particularly for Chinese language learning. In what follows, I take the perspective of a conversation analyst as well as that of a second language (L2) learner.This article is divided into three main sections. The first section discusses the kinds of contributions CA can make to research on L2 learning and teaching. I propose that the basic science produced by CA research can be fruitfully applied to L2 learning and instruction and to oral language assessment. I further suggest that CA studies of classroom interaction provide richly textured descriptions of language learning contexts such as expert-novice relations and participants' identity construction. The second section considers what CA does not do, or is not designed to do for Second Language Acquisition (SLA). I submit that, unlike language socialization research, CA does not address introspective, unobservable matters that may be important to language learning. Furthermore, unlike ethnomethodology, CA is not designed to document learning (i.e., change in behavior) over a considerable period of time. The final section concludes on a hermeneutical note: I argue that CA studies of SLA provide a part of the picture of L2 learning and teaching, a part that, crucially, compels us to reconsider the whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A B S T R AC T This article explores communicative processes in Chinese involving Chinese American children in order to explain the notion of preference for ambiguity, a characteristic often invoked when describing the Chinese as a group. It also speculates on the impact this notion has on children's socialization. Preference for ambiguity can be defined as making ambiguous something that is otherwise clear - communicating ambiguously or conveying something that is ambiguous - communicating ambiguity. Treating ambiguity as an interaction-centered and activity-bound phenomenon rather than a purely semantic or logical problem, this article locates ambiguity in the intersubjectivity co-constructed by all participants and explores its role in the construction of cultural, situational and interpersonal contexts. It shows that ambiguity is shaped not only by lexico-grammar but also by discourse structure. This article draws data from a total of 30 hours of audio/video recorded classroom interactions involving 4 teachers and about 35 students (age 4.5 to 9 years) in two Chinese Heritage Language Schools in the USA as well as from observations and interviews. In the classroom context, children are compelled to make speculations and draw inferences regarding their interlocutors' references, intentions, dispositions and goals. They do so without confronting their interlocutors or holding their interlocutors accountable. In contrast, teachers freely and vocally (re-)formulate, clarify, question and interpret children's utterances in an effort to make the children's stances unequivocal. This study suggests that the communicative patterns observed with respect to ambiguity may play an important part in the socialization of cultural knowledge and cognitive styles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses identificatory categories associated with undergraduate students and academic counselors. Questions concerning how institutional identities are constructed through their associated activities; Studies regarding the relation between language use and language users' identities.

This article examines the interactive, reflexive organization of talk and its institutional contexts. Drawing on carefully transcribed audio and video data from academic counseling encounters at an American university, and using conversation analysis and ethnography as major analytical tools, it investigates how the practice of withholding certain information or opinion at an expected moment reconstructs the university institutional order. It details the sequential organization of the practice of withholding, in which a turn of speaking taken by the student counselee projects but is not followed by a relevant next turn by the counselor. It argues that, through avoiding a sequentially relevant next turn, academic counselors embody various institutional contingencies, and the negotiated nature of the give and take of advice constitutes the occasion-specific institutional identities of the participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]