Heritage language use and maintenance in multilingual communities

Abstract

Abstract Over the last decades, the amount of research on heritage language (HL) use and maintenance has increased exponentially, and a picture is beginning to emerge of the developmental patterns that are seen to take place and of the main factors that impinge on HL use and maintenance in increasingly multilingual settings. The present paper aims at providing a short account of relevant findings in this area and situating the studies in this special issue against that background. More specifically, we will consider the difficulties associated with HL maintenance at home, the impact of the different linguistic and cultural experiences HL learners go through on their identity, cross-linguistic influence between HLs and other languages present in the community, and issues related to HL education, particularly teacher language competencies.