Heritage Language Learning and Socialization

Abstract

Although research bearing the label “heritage language” has had a relatively short history and consequently has a relatively small body of literature, the notion of “heritage language” has existed for a long time under various names such as “home language,” “mother tongue,” “circumstantial bilingualism,” “language maintenance,” or “language attrition,” depending upon the purpose for which these terms were created, be it sociolinguistic, ethnolinguistic, psycholinguistic, or educational. Despite social and psychological pressures to assimilate to mainstream ways of life in their new countries, minority language communities have been deeply committed to maintaining languages of their native countries by, for example, establishing weekend community-based language schools. The earliest research on heritage language could be dated to about half a century ago, when Fishman (1964) established language maintenance and language shift as a field of inquiry. The significance of Fishman’s proposal was not widely realized until very recently when heritage languages began to be recognized as valuable national and personal resources (Brecht and Ingold, 2002; Brinton andKagan, in press; Campbell and Rosenthal, 2000; Creese and Martin, 2006; He and Xiao (in press); Kondo-Brown, 2006; Krashen, Tse, and McQuillan, 1998; Peyton, Ranard, and McGinnis, 2001; Roca and Colombi, 2003; Wiley and Valdes, 2000). In this context, instead of providing an overview of the field in terms of “early developments,” “major contributions,” and “work in progress,” this chapter will first provide a working definition of “heritage language” and locate work on heritage language development within the research tradition of Language Socialization. It will then review major contributions in the following three dimensions: 1. Research on heritage language as a set of language skills—the development of reading, writing, grammar, vocabulary, accent, interactional strategies, literacy, etc. 2. Research on heritage language as a resource for developing specific, multiple, and fluid discourse patterns, cultural values, identities, and communities—the linguistic, interactional, socio-cultural, cognitive characteristics of the heritage learner, the multiple