Exploring and Exposing a Gap in L2 Research: How Socio-linguistic Roles and Relationships Facilitate or Frustrate Second Language Acquisition

This article has two central aims. Firstly, to discuss how a sociolinguistic approach to language learning creates measurable increases in performance and secondly to highlight the need for a greater quantity and quality of research in this area. The article begins with a discussion on the discontent that exists regarding studies which investigate how sociolinguistic variables influence the quality of classroom learning. This will be followed by a brief discussion on the now mature field of classroom interaction, which will reaffirm the potential of this approach to deliver measurable increases in performance across the curriculum before moving on to briefly discuss how these general understandings are relevant to the discipline of second language acquisition. The remaining content of the article will be confined to a discussion concerning the sociolinguistic roles 'acted-out' by learners in pairs and small groups. The work of Neomy Storch has been selected as a research feature because it presents a particularly clear argument for the potential of the sociolinguistic perspective.