ABSTRACT
Steven Thorne (2000) has suggested the need for a shift in second language aquisition from “an understanding of language learned as context-independent lexical and grammatical meaning…to an acknowledgment of the relative and context-contingent nature of language-in-use” (p. 230), Long dominated by frameworks that view second and foreign language learning with the assumption of linguistic autonomy and only a marginal acknowledgment of context, the field has recently seen the emergence of new approaches rooted in culture-based theories. These approaches differ at many levels from those assuming either transmission communication models (i.e., Jakobson, 1973; Weaver & Shannon, 1949), autonomous linguistics (i.e., Chomsky, 1965, 1986), or an interactionist view (Gass, Mackey, & Pica, 1998; Long, 1996).
