Heritage Language Communities Research Articles

An analysis of parental involvement during Zoom-mediated heritage language instruction

Linguistic diversity has been increasing rapidly in Australian and New Zealand societies, and according to the most recent census (ABS, 2022) more than one in five Australian households speak a language other than English. Fostering bilingualism is important at all levels of education because it plays a crucial role in identity development (Caldas, 2006) and enhances academic performance (Han, 2012; Lindholm-Leary, 2016; Yurtsever et al., 2023). The home environment is obviously crucial for bilingual development (Mak et al., 2023) but broader community engagement is also needed. With heritage language communities often distributed broadly across contexts such as Australia and New Zealand, technology mediated language learning approaches (e.g., Zoom) hold strong potential in systematic efforts to promote bilingualism. A key element of effective online education is the quality of involvement of stakeholders, and in the case of online heritage language education involving young learners, parental involvement is crucial (El Nokali et al., 2010; Yang et al., 2023). To date, however, the involvement of parents in online heritage language education has not been adequately researched. The current research analyzes the parental involvement of six parent-child dyads during six Zoom-mediated lessons of Farsi as a heritage language. The aim of the research is to systematically describe the way parents interact with their children during these Zoom-mediated lessons and to establish a preliminary taxonomy of these behaviors. Such taxonomies can then be applied as a reference point for longer-term efforts to enhance parent involvement in online heritage language learning programs. The primary data source was the recorded screen videos of six parent-child dyads for six 45-minute online Farsi lessons. Learners’ work samples and parent interviews were also collected as additional data sources. The qualitative study employed various techniques to ensure rigor and reliability such as constant comparison, coding schemes and thematic analysis. These techniques helped researchers to identify recurring categories of parental involvement evident during the entirety of the online lessons. Analysis entailed enumeration and description of the type, frequency and duration of the various parental involvement behaviors that were evident in the videos. Behaviors included binary types, such as physical presence or absence and on-screen facial presence or absence. A range of more complex verbal and nonverbal behaviors were also salient in the data: nodding, gesturing, gaze orientation, screen pointing, reorienting learning materials and devices and so on. Different parents demonstrated varied levels of interaction with three main stakeholders: the facilitator, other parents and the learners. Differences in behaviors evident among the parents enabled a categorization of those who exhibited low, moderate or high levels of involvement with the online lessons. Through analysis of the results and the literature we suggest a preliminary taxonomy of parent involvement behaviors that occurred during online language learning. This model provides a useful reference point for future research, at all levels of education, that seeks to understand the dynamics of stakeholder involvement in complex online learning environments.

Social and other nonlinguistic dimensions of grassroots heritage language community groups

In this article, I focus on the different roles that self-formed ethnic community groups play in the heritage language socialisation of Hispanic families. The article is based on an ethnographic study conducted in La Casa Amistad, a small group of middle-class Hispanic families living in Vancouver, Canada. The analysis focuses on the different ways in which membership in the group supported the families in their goals to raise multilingual children, and on how the group became a bridge that connected likeminded parents who shared a similar culture as well as language beliefs, values and practices. Group participation also provided a safe environment where members reported feeling a sense of belonging. In this manner, such supportive and non-threatening environment functioned like a surrogate extended family

A Corpus-Assisted Discourse Study of Attitudes toward Spanish as a Heritage Language in Florida

Spanish speakers constitute the largest heritage language community in the US. The state of Florida is unusual in that, on one hand, it has one of the highest foreign-born resident rates in the country, most of whom originate from Latin America—but on the other hand, Florida has a comparatively low Spanish language vitality. In this exploratory study of attitudes toward Spanish as a heritage language in Florida, we analyzed two corpora (one English: 5,405,947 words, and one Spanish: 525,425 words) consisting of recent Twitter data. We examined frequencies, collocations, concordance lines, and larger text segments. The results indicate predominantly negative attitudes toward Spanish on the status dimension, but predominantly positive attitudes on the solidarity dimension. Despite the latter, transmission and use of Spanish were found to be affected by pressure to assimilate, and fear of negative societal repercussions. We also found Spanish to be used less frequently than English to tweet about attitudes; instead, Spanish was frequently used to attract Twitter users’ attention to specific links in the language. We discuss the implications of our findings (should they generalize) for the future of Spanish in Florida, and we provide directions for future research.

Heritage Language Maintenance Among Second-generation Chinese-American Children in a Small Chinese Community

Based on the findings of previous research conducted in Chinese-American children’s heritage language (HL) maintenance in large Chinese communities in urban settings, looking at positive parental attitudes, weekend Chinese schools, and interaction within local heritage language communities, the authors of this article investigated the contexts and outcomes of Chinese-language learning for second-generation Chinese-American children, in a small Southern United States college town. Research questions included: (1) What are the parents’ and grandparents’ attitudes about HL maintenance and efforts for passing on their HL to their children? (2) How consistent are parents’ and grandparents’ attitudes toward HL maintenance and their efforts of passing on HL to their children? What are reasons for the consistencies or inconsistencies? (3) Who has better learning outcomes, children who attending community Chinese-language school, or children taught by grandparents or parents? Results indicated that parents with higher education background and stay in the United State longer tend to have discrepancy between their attitudes and the real effort toward Chinese heritage language (CHL) maintenance. However, grandparents maintain consistency between their positive attitudes and the real effort regarding CHL maintenance. Grandparents’ heritage language communication supported children’s heritage language maintenance. Success of heritage language maintenance was determined more by children’s communicative need than by parental attitudes or schooling.

Phonological Individuation in a Former Danish Settlement in South Dakota, USA

The article describes the manifestation and distribution of 15 phonological variables in a rural heritage language community in South Dakota, USA. I discuss to what extent dialect convergence has occurred in this former Danish settlement. The data sample encompasses speakers born in Northwest Jutland in Denmark, as well as speakers born in South Dakota to parents who emigrated from Northwest Jutland. The analysis shows that dialectal convergence has not occurred to any significant degree, in spite of what may be expected; speakers born in South Dakota have significantly more dialectal features in their speech than the speakers born in Denmark. The analysis also reveals a sizeable degree of inter-speaker variation within both groups, as well as a considerable variation between the variables with respect to how likely they are to be realized dialectally versus nondialectally. The results are discussed in relation to theories of shared linguistic repertoire and individuation in small speech communities.*

Slavic and East European Language Programs and Heritage Language Communities

Among Slavic and East European heritage communities, the post-1989 geopolitical situation in Central and Eastern Europe has changed both emigration patterns and core aspects of the relationship between speakers in the homeland and abroad. Many speakers have both an enhanced motivation to maintain their heritage languages and greater resources to do so. As a reflection of this increased interest in Slavic and East European heritage languages, recent years have witnessed a rise in the number and scope of community language schools, established primarily by parents who wish to ensure that their children maintain active use of their heritage languages. At the same time, many Slavic and East European language programs at the college level have increasingly come under threat, due to the combination of reduced enrollments, greater administrative focus on class sizes, and a loss of federal funding. In this paper, using Czech as the base language, I suggest that by placing a greater emphasis on connections with heritage communities, we may be able to enhance the viability of Slavic and East European programs at the college level. This potential is supported by a marked increase in research on heritage language learners over the past two decades, which provides a foundation for curricular adjustments that address the specific needs of heritage language learners.

Digital Presentation of Bulgarian Language Heritage - Tools and Web-applications

The article describes a model of integrating language techniques with leading-edge technology to develop a web-based on-line tool for heritage language preservation and e-learning. Bulgarian language resources - parallel corpora and bilingual dictionary are presented in an interactive way using a common web-interface which is accessible for students, faculty, and affiliated Heritage language communities.

Heritage Language Education Without Inheriting Hegemonic Ideologies: Shifting Perspectives on “Korea” in a Weekend Japanese-Language School in the United States

ABSTRACTLearning a heritage language can be celebrated to enhance marginalized groups’ self-esteem, but a heritage can also encompass ideologies prevalent in the groups’ original homeland. Based on ethnographic fieldwork (2007–2011) at a weekend Japanese-language school in the United States, this article investigates how ideologies on race politics within a heritage language community’s homeland are reproduced or subverted through heritage language education. We analyze treatment of Korea–Japan power relations at school by focusing on the practice of guiding students (not) to shift their perspectives in three cases involving (a) discrimination against Resident Koreans in Japan, (b) gender-specific abortion in South Korea, and (c) South Korea and Japan’s dispute over possession of Tokdo/Takeshima. While social analyses of heritage language education tend to focus on a minority group’s place in mainstream society, this article suggests investigating the reproduction of ideologies from its homeland via heritage language education.

Complementizer agreement in eastern Wisconsin: (Central) Franconian features in an American heritage language community

Abstract The present study shows that Wisconsin Heritage German licenses complementizer agreement for second person singular, with inflectional affixes developed through the reanalysis of phonetically-derived hiatus effects. Most frequently attested in speakers with direct ancestry to Franconian-speaking regions, this phenomenon is restricted to second person singular, consistent with the input varieties at time of immigration. Analyzed diachronically, complementizer agreement is shown to progress through a linguistic cycle involving the reanalysis and subsequent compensatory reinforcement of subject pronouns, with Wisconsin Heritage German exhibiting the earliest stage of this cycle.

La Cosecha/The Harvest: Sustainable Models of School-Community Engagement at a Bilingual Program

This article examines the culminating activity—la cosecha or the harvest—in a yearlong project in which teachers at a bilingual afterschool program and staff from a citywide environmental advocacy group taught students to plant, harvest, and sell produce grown at the school site. The authors show how students are socialized to become empowered members of their heritage-language community as they participate in harvest-related activities and co-construct shared beliefs about environmental and social justice. By examining the interactions between adults and students, our findings extend previous research highlighting the pedagogical and communicative resources employed in educational heritage-language settings.

Analyzing Ethnic Orientation in the quantitative sociolinguistic paradigm

Ethnic Orientation, defined as speakers’ sociolinguistic practices and attitudes, does not affect all communities, languages, or linguistic variables equally. We illustrate that the types of differences that emerge depend on methodological decisions, particularly at the analysis stage. We provide examples of inter-community differences including some that emerge differently depending on the method of analysis. This is accomplished by comparison of Heritage Language patterns among groups of Toronto residents: speakers of Heritage Cantonese, Italian, Russian, Ukrainian and Polish; and English patterns in Chinese-descent and Italian-descent Torontonians, comparing across three generations since immigration. We examine the variables pro-drop and Voice Onset Time in the Heritage Language data. The Canadian Vowel Shift and consonant cluster simplification are examined in English. We show that no Ethnic Orientation facets correlate to all types of linguistic variation. The relationships found between linguistic variables and Ethnic Orientation variables suggest Ethnic Orientation is a key factor in modeling variation in Heritage Language communities – their variation should not be attributed solely to subtractive processes like incomplete acquisition or attrition.

Discursive Discriminations in the Representation of Western Mono and Yokuts Stories: Confronting Narrative Inequality and Listening to Indigenous Voices in Central California

This article focuses on academic representations of Western Mono and Yokuts traditional narratives by exploring examples of what Dell Hymes described as narrative inequality. The author demonstrate that the erasure and marginalization of indigenous narrative traditions was, in part, caused by the hegemonic blending of aesthetic and political economic criteria. But recent theoretical developments in ethnopoetics, critical literacy, language ideologies, and new ethnographic research provide key resources for projects of decolonization and cultural reclamation that were unavailable to salvage-era researchers. By providing more accurate and complete representations, people can both decolonize past representations and forge new ones, not only for the benefit of scholars but also for the heritage language communities that struggle for resources in their language renewal efforts. In so doing, people can use the ethnopoetic legacy of Hymes to create what he called mediative resources that enable them to better hear the voices of traditional narrators telling their stories in their heritage languages and in accord with the intertextuality of indigenous genres and storytelling ideologies.

Elevating “Low” Language for High Stakes: A Case for Critical, Community-based Learning in a Medical Spanish for Heritage Learners Program

Critical approaches to Spanish heritage language (SHL) pedagogy have called for more meaningful engagement with heritage language communities (Leeman, 2005). In a recent survey, furthermore, SHL students expressed a desire for more community-based activities in SHL curricula (Beaudrie, Ducar, & Relaño-Pastor, 2009). This paper reports on the outcomes of a community-based SHL program for medical purposes. SHL college students majoring in biology, nursing and other health-related programs participated in a semester-long miniinternship in a community health center serving indigent patients in Hidalgo County, Texas. Faculty and clinic staff collaborated to create an integrated experience for the students. The experience was assessed through a reflection questionnaire completed by the students. An analysis of the assessment data suggests that students emerged from the experience with a heightened commitment to Spanish language maintenance, an expanded bilingual range, and an understanding and respect for language variation in Spanish.

Stakeholder Views on the Roles, Challenges, and Future Prospects of Korean and Chinese Heritage Language-Community Language Schools in Phoenix: A Comparative Study

This study examines stakeholders’ perspectives on Korean and Chinese heritage language and community language (HL-CL) schools and education in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area, Arizona. It investigates and compares the roles, major challenges, and future prospects of Korean and Chinese HL-CL schools as viewed by principals, teachers, and parents. To conduct the comparative study, surveys were administered among Korean and Chinese teachers and parents from five Korean and five Chinese HL-CL schools in the Phoenix area. In an effort to strengthen the study’s validity, we also chose two Korean and two Chinese community schools to conduct in-depth interviews with school administrators, teachers, and parents. The findings of this study show that both Korean and Chinese stakeholders viewed the HL-CL schools and their education as very important not only for maintaining children’s HL-CL, but also to help them build a positive sense of cultural and ethnic identity. The findings also demonstrate that the schools face challenges of a high teacher turnover rate, teacher shortage, and lack of parental support. Despite the challenges, both ethnic groups’ stakeholders expressed strongly optimistic views on the future prospects of their HL-CL schools. This study is significant because few previous studies extensively compared HL-CL schools in the two ethnic groups’ community schools. The study also deepens the understanding of the stakeholders’ perspectives of HL-CL schools and their education in the two communities.

Accessing Imagined Communities Through Multilingualism and Immersion Education

In this article I apply constructs of language as economic and symbolic capital, transnationalism, investment, and imagined community to an analysis of interviews with immigrant parents living in Vancouver, Canada. These parents promote multilingualism by maintaining their family language and enrolling their children in French Immersion programmes. I argue that they view multilingualism as capital and invest in language education as a means of securing their children's access to various imagined language communities. Referring both to a transnational perspective and a national context of official bilingualism, they imagine that French Immersion education will enable their children to participate in a Canadian French-English bilingual community while maintaining the family language will ensure affiliation with their heritage language communities in Canada and abroad. In addition, they imagine that multilingualism will equip their children with valuable language resources that help transcend national borders. This discussion highlights the overlap and distinctions of theoretical constructs and raises questions about the objectives of language education and immersion programmes in an increasingly mobile and multilingual society.

Heritage Language Instruction for Post-secondary Students from Immigrant Backgrounds

The “intergenerational transmission” of heritage languages (HLs) is crucial to the vitality of heritage language communities (especially for indigenous communities, where immigration is not a source of new speakers). We know, however, that HLs in the United States often do NOT survive well from one generation to the next as the shift to English takes place. In conjunction with the Second National Conference on Heritage Languages in America, a small group of researchers met to discuss priorities for research on intergenerational transmission of languages. Each of the ten researchers who participated prepared a short paper, posing research questions with some commentary to guide future research. Those papers form the major part of this article, covering topics related to language ecological patterns (in communities, families, and institutions), language ideology, measurement issues, and literacy.