The Acquisition of L2 Sociolinguistic Competence: Critical Insights from an Evolving Field

This Special Issue on the acquisition of sociolinguistic competence showcases current research at the juncture of Language Variation and Change (LVC) and Second Language Acquisition (SLA) (Regan, in press). Sociolinguistic competence has been seen as a crucial part of communicative competence since the 1990s (Kanwit & Solon, 2022). While research on SLA previously focused on the ‘categorical’ in language (e.g., I went vs. I goed), variationist approaches (Adamson & Regan, 1991) investigate the acquisition of the variable in first language (L1) speech (e.g., I’m going vs. I’m goin). Variationist approaches to SLA focus on the factors, both linguistic and extralinguistic, that constrain the production of variation patterns in speech. The choice of speech items depends on the simultaneous influence of many factors; alternative speech items have the same referential meaning but carry different social weight. Acquiring or learning such a detailed probabilistic grammar of another language is by no means easy, but it is an important component of communicative competence if the more subtle aspects of language are to be conveyed. The acquisition of these variation patterns helps the second language (L2) speaker to better interpret messages and to use their own language resources to generate and manage social interactions (e.g., Geeslin & Long, 2014).1

The L2 speaker may learn how and why the L1 speaker chooses one variant over another, influenced by multiple factors: linguistic (e.g., surrounding phonological environment), social (e.g., age of the speaker), or contextual (e.g., setting). In addition, the L2 speaker learns that the factors that constrain the choice of variant, and the hierarchical order of these factors, is not simply a question of occurrence but also of frequencies. Such complexity is difficult to acquire and is frequently linked to proficiency levels, as demonstrated by several studies in this Special Issue. Although L2 learners often become sensitive to the variation patterns in L1 speakers’ speech over time and are capable of participating in such variation, the extent to which an L2 speaker engages in such complexity is an interesting one and can involve issues of agency, identity, and affordances.

This Special Issue presents state-of-the-art work within the variationist paradigm as applied to SLA, highlighting how this approach contributes to the elucidation of fundamental questions in research on L2 speakers, particularly in relation to their sociolinguistic competence. These include how, when, and where sociolinguistic competence is acquired and what its development over time looks like. In deepening and broadening the investigation of these crucial areas, the contributions to this Special Issue collectively break ground on both conceptual and methodological levels and reflect current trends and emphases.

The contributions are innovative on numerous fronts. First, in contrast to early variationist L2 research which had an almost unique focus on L2 English, these articles treat an unusually broad range of language pairs. They cover a wide group of speakers and a broad range of speaker ages, collectively contributing to our understanding of the developmental stages in sociolinguistic competence acquisition. In addition, in line with recent developments in the field, social context is the focus of many of the contributions. Our understanding of study abroad (SA), for instance, is considerably broadened and detailed by several of these studies. Equally, several contributing articles treat sociophonetic awareness and deal with issues of perception and production, another rapidly developing research area, which is linked with the issue of attitudes, also covered by several articles.

Identity issues are highlighted in many of the studies. A focus on identity has recently broadened our understanding of the process of SLA in general and gives a more complete picture of sociolinguistic acquisition. In terms of innovation, a striking aspect of many of the contributions is a newfound awareness of, and sensitivity to, the roles of agency, stance, and identity construction and the evolving nature of these throughout a communicative interaction. Many of the articles problematize, or at least avoid taking as axiomatic, the nature of target norms and whether indeed these are even goals for the L2 speaker. How and why L2 speakers make choices related to native speaker (NS) norms2 figures in several of the studies. Thus, these articles both increase our understanding of central SLA research issues and address new ones.

This Special Issue begins with a contribution by Gudmestad and Kanwit in which the authors argue for more robust focus on “the social side” of language variation. In their article, Gudmestad and Kanwit explain that while much attention has been paid to understanding the role of linguistic factors in the acquisition of variation, much less attention has been aimed at social factors, which play an equally important role in predicting linguistic performance. In their article, the authors review the development of variationist SLA over the past few decades and argue for the incorporation of an ever-evolving set of extralinguistic factors that move beyond the traditional categories of gender, age, and social class, to include influences such as gender identity, race and ethnicity, and social distance. The authors argue that expanding the scope of variationist SLA to include these previously understudied extralinguistic influences will contribute significantly to our understanding of how language learners perceive variation in the target language (TL) community and how they come to produce language that reflects the acquisition of L2 sociolinguistic competence.

The study by Pozzi et al. responds to Gudmestad and Kanwit’s call for an increased emphasis on extralinguistic influences in variationist research in SLA and uses a mixed-methods approach to understand how investment, identity, and participation in both real and imagined communities of practice (Norton, 2001) during a semester of SA in Buenos Aires, Argentina, influence the acquisition of sociolinguistic competence in L2 Spanish. Specifically, the authors present case studies of three L2 Spanish learners at different proficiency levels and examine their acquisition of four features of the local variety of Spanish (BAS, Buenos Aires Spanish), two of which are unique to BAS and two of which are shared by other Latin American speakers of Spanish. Through these case studies, the authors demonstrate how participation in actual communities of practice, such as host families and friend groups, as well as affiliation with imagined communities as an expression of at-home and SA identity, may encourage or discourage the use of locally salient phonological and morphological variants.

In their study, Gautier and Chevrot employ quantitative social network analysis (see Kennedy Terry & Bayley, 2024) to examine the role of personal network structure and composition in the acquisition of two variable structures in L2 French—the retention of the preverbal negative particle ne ‘not’ and the use of optional liaison (a ‘linking’ process that involves the articulation of a silent consonant before a word beginning with a vowel). Both sociolinguistic variables show stratification among NSs by speech style and social class. In this study, the authors compare speech data from 29 L2 French learners at three points in time during an academic year of SA in France with social network data gathered through logbooks and sociolinguistic interviews. The authors use a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to determine the impact of network structure (i.e., measures of network size, density, and centrality) and network composition (i.e., the number of co-nationals or local French speakers) on the acquisition of L2 sociolinguistic competence.

The study by Wirtz and Ender represents another novel approach to understanding the acquisition of L2 sociolinguistic competence with its focus on language attitudes among L2 German speakers and their perception of the ‘functional prestige’ associated with the use of standard (Austrian) German and local Austro-Bavarian dialect varieties. Specifically, the authors use a matched-guise task to examine the extent to which L2 German speakers living in an Austro-Bavarian setting follow L1 German speakers in their evaluative judgements of standard German (i.e., more ‘intelligent’) versus dialectal German (i.e., more ‘friendly’) in specific situational contexts and consider the role of dialectal proficiency in determining how closely L2 speakers follow NS patterns. Importantly, this study includes results for over 100 L2 German speakers born in over 50 different countries, which represents an unusually broad scope for research on L2 sociolinguistic competence.

Mougeon et al. compare the acquisition of connectors in L2 French (e.g., alors, donc, fait que; ‘so’) by two groups of learners in Ontario, Canada: university students and high school French immersion students. In addition to comparing learners at different stages of their L2 learning journey, the study by Mougeon et al. employs a novel lens to examine the L2 acquisition of French connectors, which are used variably by French NSs depending on the formality of the speech context and their age and socioeconomic status. In this study, the authors separate the use of connectors by their grammatical and discursive functions, thereby presenting a more fine-grained analysis of the development of L2 sociolinguistic competence while also examining how extralinguistic influences, such as opportunities to interact with French speakers outside of the classroom and time spent learning French, influence such development.

While the majority of studies in this Special Issue focus on the role of in-person interactions in the acquisition of L2 sociolinguistic competence, Salgado-Robles and George examine the impact of virtual exchanges between university L2 Spanish learners and NSs in the acquisition of regional variation. Specifically, the authors examine the L2 acquisition of voseo, or the use of the second-person singular pronoun vos ‘you’, and its associated verb forms, in the three-tiered pronoun system that is a dialectal feature of multiple countries in Latin America. Despite its widespread use in Latin America, the authors explain that voseo is rarely included in Spanish curricula in the United States, which makes it all the more difficult for classroom learners to develop sociolinguistic competence in this area. This study by Salgado-Robles and George demonstrates that virtual exchanges with L1 Spanish speakers who use voseo can be a critical component of the L2 acquisition of this important dialectal feature.

Denbaum-Restrepo and Restrepo-Ramos also examine the acquisition of voseo in L2 Spanish by a group of seven SA learners residing in Medellin, Colombia for 2–23 months, but in this study, the authors focus on whether learners can perceive, as well as produce, variable forms in the TL. As the authors note, perception of sociolinguistic variation is an important area for further study as learners, especially those of low proficiency, may show evidence of perceiving variation within the L1 speech community before they can produce such variation themselves. Denbaum-Restrepo and Restrepo-Ramos examine the L2 acquisition of the second person singular pronoun vos ‘you’, which is characteristic of the local variety of Spanish in Medellin, through the use of a matched-guise test and discourse completion task aimed at evaluating the extent to which learners can both perceive the constraints on the use of vos and produce vos in accordance with these same constraints.

In another study pairing perception with production, Solon and Kanwit examine the acquisition of sociophonetic variation by 21 L2 Spanish learners, many of whom had studied abroad in a Spanish-speaking country. The targeted segment in Solon and Kanwit’s study is Spanish intervocalic /d/ which is variably realized by NSs as an approximant, or fully deleted. Here, Solon and Kanwit compare previous results from a contextualized preference task with speech data from a monologic narrative task to determine whether a learner’s preference for a variant of intervocalic /d/ would be replicated in their production of the same segment. By incorporating a variety of linguistic (e.g., surrounding phonological context and lexical frequency) and extralinguistic (e.g., learner proficiency level and time spent abroad) factors into their analysis, Solon and Kanwit’s results indicate that perception of variation does indeed precede production and that proficiency in the L2 is a critical component of the development of L2 sociolinguistic competence.

The study by Li explores the acquisition of target-like patterns of null object expression in L2 Chinese, an aspect of L2 development that has not previously been examined from a variationist perspective. In this study, Li analyzes speech data from sociolinguistic interviews with 20 L2 Chinese learners of varying L1 backgrounds who have resided in China for 3–48 months. Li examines the influence of various linguistic constraints (e.g., coreference and object animacy), social constraints (e.g., speaker gender and speech style), and developmental constraints (e.g., length of time in China and proficiency level) to reveal target-like acquisition patterns that largely approximate those of NSs, but fall short of overall NS null object expression rates due to the learners’ preference for clarity. Li’s results provide important insights into the choices, both conscious and unconscious, that learners make in terms of applying their sociolinguistic knowledge when navigating interactions in the L2.

The contribution by Griffin and Nagy explores another understudied area in variationist SLA—heritage speakers (HSs) and the dual influences of a homeland language variety spoken within the HS community and interference from the dominant language of the wider speech community. Specifically, the authors examine ongoing vowel shifts in the variety of Korean spoken by HSs in Toronto, Canada, through the lens of Meyerhoff’s (2009) framework for cross-language influence and seek to determine whether variation patterns among HSs primarily reflect the homeland language variety from Seoul, Korea or interference from Toronto English. Importantly, this study provides a cross-generational analysis that includes three groups of Korean speakers—homeland speakers who have remained in Korea and two groups of Korean speakers who currently reside in Toronto (distinguished by their birthplace—Korea or Canada)—and the myriad influences, both from the HS and the dominant speech community, on attested patterns of vowel fronting and shift.

The study by Zhang also focuses on the acquisition of sociolinguistic competence among HSs and examines subject pronoun expression (SPE) among child learners of Chinese Mandarin as a Heritage Language (CHL). In this study, Zhang compares speech data from 27 children enrolled in English–Mandarin dual immersion preschools with data from 15 adult CHL undergraduate students to support the hypothesis that although child learners may not have acquired adult-like constraints on SPE, they may show some sensitivity to adult variation patterns. Moreover, Zhang’s results demonstrate that although the development of adultlike constraints on SPE may still not be complete among young adult learners, the impacts of linguistic transfer from a non-pro-drop language like English are more readily seen among child heritage learners than young adult learners who have had more experience with the pro-drop patterns of the heritage language.

The contribution by Miao and Diskin-Holdaway explores the use of adjective amplifiers, such as very and really, in L2 English among L1 Mandarin Chinese speakers residing in Australia with a specific focus on how language learners adapt to changes in the TL-speaking community. In this study, the authors compare the type and rates of amplifier use of L2 English speakers with those of a group of NSs of Australian English and demonstrate that although overall rates of use are higher than among L1 English speakers, learners lag behind in their participation in the change in progress among L1 English speakers who increasingly prefer the amplifier really over very. In addition to examining the role of extralinguistic factors such as speaker gender, language proficiency, and length of residence in Australia, the authors also analyze collocation patterns of amplifier use by NSs and L2 speakers and consider the role of L1 interference in the L2 English of lower-proficiency learners and those with shorter periods of residence in the TL community.

Finally, Brown et al. examine the acquisition of target-like patterns of subject personal pronoun (SPP) expression in L2 Spanish and demonstrate that a period of SA has a significant impact on the use of overt pronouns in specific contexts and that learners acquire constraints on variation that are similar to those of Spanish NSs. Moreover, this study distinguishes itself by employing a usage-based approach to examine the likelihood of ‘discourse continuity’ for specific verbs (i.e., whether a verb is used more frequently in a switch or same-reference context), where a switch context favors overt pronoun use among NSs. In this study, the authors hypothesized that learners, like NSs, might acquire target-like SPP expression by discerning patterns of overt and null pronoun use in the linguistic environment. While this hypothesis did not hold true in the current study, the novel approach lays the groundwork for future studies on the acquisition of L2 sociolinguistic competence that leverage theories of usage-based linguistics.

From the first to the last, the contributions to this Special Issue demonstrate a forward movement in the field of variationist SLA by considering a wide variety of target languages, including L2 Chinese, English, French, German, Korean, and Spanish, and examining previously underexplored aspects of the acquisition of L2 sociolinguistic competence, such as learner attitudes toward variation, perception of variation, and the acquisition of variation by child learners and HSs. Additionally, numerous studies in this Special Issue operationalize novel and promising approaches from adjacent fields in linguistics and sociolinguistics, such as social network analysis, L2 identity construction, and usage-based linguistics, that have been previously underutilized in variationist SLA. Together, these studies represent an important evolution in our understanding of how, when, and in what contexts L2 sociolinguistic competence develops, as well as in our appreciation for the wide range of linguistic and extralinguistic influences that impact this development.

Future research and more empirical evidence will continue to broaden and deepen investigations addressed by the contributing articles. In a rapidly evolving, increasingly global, multilingual and transnational world, it will be ever more important to understand the nature and role of the acquisition of additional languages, as much for reasons of inclusivity and equity as for trade and commerce. A more nuanced understanding of issues such as identity construction, the role of speaker agency, and the role of the interlocutor in evolving communicative interactions, will provide a more complete picture of language in the lives of people in the 21st century. A broadening of our understanding and definition of language variation highlights the issue of norms among speakers of additional languages. Future research needs to further investigate speakers’ motivations for acquiring and using another language, as well as their aims and their choice of varieties in the TL. No longer can it be assumed that the L2 speaker wants to sound like an L1 speaker or use any particular (often prestige) norms. More research on perception and production will provide further information on speaker attitudes.

The contributions have collectively dealt with a wider range of language pairs. A continuing expansion of this range will permit us to draw more universalistic conclusions about language acquisition. Future research should include non-literate speakers, an important group in size and world impact and, to date, not sufficiently taken into account in variationist SLA studies (though see, in other approaches, for example, Peyton & Young-Scholten, 2020). Equally, neurodiverse speakers of additional languages should be considered. Broadly speaking, a wider range of speaker voices should figure in future research, as should new forms of input such as social media.

Addressing such issues will necessitate the continued development of research methodologies. Ongoing developments in quantitative approaches, including network analysis and a wider range of statistical methodologies, will be of benefit. Network analysis, for instance, can tell us more about the nature and role of input. New statistical programs will permit a more nuanced picture of language use. In addition, greater use of qualitative approaches will more fully capture social aspects of the speaker, such as context, specific interactions co-constructed by speakers, speaker choice in relation to language variety, speaker-related language attitudes and ideology, and how these may be similar or different from TL ideology. New insights could emerge from investigating the use of different variables by the same speakers in existing datasets (see Gudmestad et al., 2020) or examining datasets using different or newly emerging qualitative or quantitative research methodologies.

A wealth of data at the intersection of SLA and LVC has been accumulated by researchers over a number of decades. In investigating the acquisition of L2 sociolinguistic competence, future research can build upon areas treated in this Special Issue and address others not covered here. Development of this important area of communicative competence will thus provide a more complete and accurate picture of the acquisition of additional languages.