ABSTRACT
Socialization about language includes both knowledge and attitudes. Language plays an especially important role in socialization because it is such a pervasive and orderly feature of everyday life in every culture. Language is the primary medium for socialization into culture; that is, there is socialization by or through language, where language is the means. There is socialization for language, where situation-specific and culture-specific language use is the outcome. Many writers on language socialization imply that language socialization is always successful as long as the learning environment is at least minimally adequate. Attitudes toward language can often be inferred from observations of which forms available in an environment are in fact learned, and from spontaneous comments about other people's oral or written language use. Of all forms of learning, language is closest to one's social and individual identity; and that identity helps to account for both resistance and learning, and is also their result.
