The book explores the theoretical and philosophical groundings of various frameworks of language acquisition, pedagogy and practices. Central to its inquiry are foundational questions such as: How do different theories look at the nature of language and its acquisition, and how do they generate a two-way process of influencing pedagogical practices in different socio-cultural contexts and receive information back from the practices for its theoretical reflections? Structured in five parts(i) Linguistic structure, language use, and cognitive processes; (ii) Cultural embeddedness of linguistic structures; (iii) The acquisition-learning debate and contemporary language pedagogy; (iv) Multilingual contexts of language use and instruction; and (v) The socio-political epistemology of language usethe book engages in a socio-political and critical-historical analysis. It traces the evolution of linguistic concepts and their influence on educational practices, explores their transdisciplinary migration across linguistics, psychology, and education, and interrogates the conceptual tensions that continue to challenge and reshape the field of language learning and pedagogy.

The volume introduces a broad range of linguistic theories to understand language acquisition from multiple perspectives The volume contains case studies which coin particular linguistic issues related to specific languages The book includes chapters on the sociocultural varieties of language learning contexts including multilingual societies

Inhalt

Chapter 1: 'Language' and 'Learning' as objects of Inquiry: A transdisciplinary historiography of theories and practices.- Chapter 2: Meaningful Grammar: Theories and Practices.- Chapter 3: Universal Grammar and Language Pedagogy: What we know that we do not know.- Chapter 4: Generative Foundation of Multilingualism in Language Learning.- Chapter 5: The acquisition of frozen expressions: Challenging the generative framework.- Chapter 6: Cultural-Cognitive Foundations of Language Pedagogy for a Multilingual Society.- Chapter 7: Plurilingual-pluricultural identity and language learning: The contribution of cognitive corpus linguistics and cultural studies.- Chapter 8: Perspectives on Social Life of Language.- Chapter 9: A Cultural Linguistics approach to language pedagogy: The role of Cultural conceptualizations.- Chapter 10: Translanguaging: From language praxis to language pedagogy.- Chapter 11: Situating the teacher in the acquisition-learning debate.- Chapter 12: Metatext and cognitive linguistics: Inputs for language pedagogy.- Chapter 13: Motivation for the choice of complements in predicate-argument structure: The role of image schemas, metaphors and metonymies.- Chapter 14: Toward an adaptive system of language acquisition: Dialogue between Generative and Functional linguistics.- Chapter 15: Ethno-syntax in language learning: Evidentiality in Finno-Ugric Languages.- Chapter 16: Conceptualizing time in terms of space and motion in Japanese using Cognitive Metaphor Theory.- Chapter 17: Understanding the acquisition of non-literal constructions using usage-based approach.- Chapter 18: Narratives and theory of mind: A cultural-cognitive turn in language pedagogy.- Chapter 19: Internal State Terms & Narratives: What they mean for language pedagogy.- Chapter 20: Perfecting Imperfections: Pragmatic Competence for Preschool Teachers of English Language in a Multicultural Environment.- Chapter 21: The bottom-up perspective and less commonly taught languages: the case of Swahili.- Chapter 22: Combinatorial Variability as a Model: Managing classrooms for minority children.- Chapter 23: Language, Learner, and Learning: Issues in Language Pedagogy and Language.- Chapter 24: Language Acquisition and Language Pedagogy: A Transdisciplinary Dialogue between three Scholars.