Reflexive engagement with social meanings through registers
Abstract The paper investigates the interactional processes through which English as a Second Language (ESL) learners enter the realm of social meaning through features of registers. The study takes up discussions of heteroglossia in educational settings. Through an ethnographic perspective, using various sources of data such as classroom discourse, course blogs and interviews, the study uncovers two practices through which the participants reflexively grapple with socially indexical meanings: A). labeling and typifying registers and B). negotiating and deploying their social meanings. These two practices are shown to be mediated by an emphasis on academic language in the English program, language ideologies, processes of alignment and positioning and participant trajectories. The findings suggest that reflexive engagement with register indexicals is a pervasive aspect of second language learning and can be leveraged as a learning resource.