ABSTRACT
It is now widely acknowledged in a range of linguistic disciplines that ‘languages’ are sociohistorical constructs rather than ontologically real entities. While this insight has contributed in important ways to challenging the monolingual bias in linguistics, a simplistic dismissal of the notion of ‘languages’ is unhelpful when trying to explain its status and function as a sociocultural, metalinguistic construct. This chapter draws on insights from linguistic anthropology as well as usage-based perspectives on language learning to argue that language use always involves an evaluative dimension linked with sociocultural conventions, and that it is such language use that forms the basis of language learning. It is suggested that sociocultural contexts with a strong discursive orientation to ‘languages’ result in ‘languagised’ individual repertoires that mediate the kind of multilingual language use speakers engage in. The theoretical discussion is illustrated by examples from an interview study with highly proficient adult speakers of Finnish as a second language.
