The Acquisition of Sociostylistic and Sociopragmatic Variation by Instructed Second Language Learners: The Elaboration of Pedagogical Norms.

This article offers the pedagogical norm as an approach to dealing with linguistic variation in instructed second language learning, suggesting that an invariant target language (TL) norm, based on the planned discourse of educated and cultivated TL speakers, is both elusive and illusory as a target for learners, especially at the beginning and intermediate levels. First, the article develops the notion of a pedagOgical norm. Second, it illustrates the elaboration of a pedagogical norm by applying it to arguably the most variable morphosyntactic feature of vernacular French, WH-interrogative structures. Third, it reviews an experimental study that suggests that setting as a model a simpler pedagogical norm (the "Loi de Position"), rather than the orthoepic standard norm (so-called Parisian French or Standard French) results in better auditory discrimination, less puristic attitudes toward linguistic variation, and paradoxically, closer approximation to the orthoepic norm. Finally, it concludes that constructed pedagogical norms are dynamic and offer language learners changing targets, which lead them progressively toward the full range of TL variants. (Contains 29 references.) (SM) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. The Acquisition of Sociostylistic and Sociopragmatic Variation by Instructed Second Language Learners: The Elaboration of Pedagogical Norms PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY