ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the concept of language socialization and what research has shown about L2 socialization, and looks at the understandings of L2 learning as mediated and embodied. A great deal of empirical support on the links between the sociocultural institutions within which contexts of interaction are situated and the development of learners' repertoires comes from the field of study known as language socialization. A core concept of the language socialization approach is indexicality. While language is a socio-historical product, language is also an instrument for forming and transforming social order. In the processes of socialization, the development of language is intertwined with the development of social and cultural knowledge. Interlocutors actively use language as a semiotic tool to either reproduce social forms and meanings or produce novel ones. The theory of human development advanced by Lev S. Vygotsky, a Soviet psychologist, considers socialization to be key to language development.
