The Discourses of Heritage Language Development: Engaging Ideologies in Canadian Hispanic Communities

Abstract

The goal of this article is to investigate the discourses surrounding the development and maintenance of Spanish in Canadian Hispanic families and community groups. Although the research literature already contains abundant insights into a variety of issues and factors, such as the individual, familial and societal benefits of heritage language maintenance, its conceptualization from a theoretical perspective of discourses and ideologies in families is less frequently discussed explicitly. Therefore, via analyses of interviews and daily interactions drawn from a 1.5-year ethnography conducted in Western Canada, the article draws attention to the diversity of meanings present in the families’ discursive constructions of heritage language development and maintenance. The interviews with parents were found to contain discourses that embodied implicit and explicit ideologies about language. Some of the metalinguistic constructions of language maintenance discussed in the article include discourses that can be categorized as utilitarian, affective, aesthetic, cosmopolitan and oppositional. The article concludes with implications for theory, research and families.