Communicative Interaction and Second Language Acquisition: An Inuit Example

This article reports on research findings that emerged during a longitudinal ethnographic study on the role of cultural context in the communicative interactions of young Inuit (Eskimo) children and their caregivers. The study was conducted in two small communities of arctic Quebec where Inuktitut, the native language of the Inuit, is spoken on a routine, daily basis. The focus of the research was on discourse features of primary language socialization in Inuit families. The incongruity of these features with the discourse in classrooms taught by non-Inuit second language teachers surfaced repeatedly during the course of the study. This incongruity raised several issues pertinent to the learnability and teachability of second languages for Native populations. Such issues are discussed here with reference to related second language acquisition literature. In doing so, the interface between the sociocultural aspects of communicative interaction and second language acquisition is emphasized.