Abstract
Abstract Research on heritage languages has grown in both volume and scale over the last 30 years. More recently, researchers have begun observing shifts in the ways in which heritage languages and their speakers are being portrayed within the field, newly emphasizing more positive characterizations. In the present meta-analysis, we combine two methodologies to test the extent to which these positive trends in sentiment are reflected in the field of heritage language research: an automated sentiment analysis of 1,034 abstracts of relevant publications and a survey of 80 researchers in the field. Our findings show that while researchers report multiple positive trends in the field, the sentiments reflected in articles have always been consistently positive. Additionally, we provide novel metadata regarding the languages, subfields, and countries most represented within the field of heritage linguistics and discuss implications for future work.
Published Version
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