Spanish Heritage Research Articles

Writing in Spanish as a heritage language: A multidimensional analysis

AbstractSpanish heritage speakers in the United States exhibit a wide range of linguistic profiles due to a combination of political, social, and educational factors. Most of them acquire Spanish at home without formal instruction in writing. Although previous research has explored the main challenges faced by these learners in Spanish writing courses, no current research has examined the linguistic features that characterize their writing using a corpus‐based approach that would facilitate the identification of their actual patterns of language use. This study presents the findings of a multidimensional analysis of the writing produced by Spanish heritage learners in three composition classes at the college level. The findings show how 47 lexical and grammatical features co‐occur in four distinctive discourse types: informational, descriptive, narrative, and detached, with some variation observed across proficiency levels.

The Effect of Silence and Distance: Evidence from Recomplementation in US Heritage Spanish

The present study investigates the architecture of heritage language grammars, as well as divergence from the baseline, by offering novel data. Recomplementation is defined as a left-dislocated phrase sandwiched between a primary (C1) and an optional secondary (C2) complementizer, e.g., He said that1later in the afternoon that2he would clean his room. While formal syntactic-theoretical accounts align on the grammaticality of recomplementation, experimental findings suggest that the overt C2 option is associated with a decrement in acceptability. An aural acceptability judgment task and a forced-choice preference task were administered in Spanish to 15 advanced US heritage speakers of Spanish (HS) and 12 members of a Colombian Spanish baseline group. Results show that HSs do not rate the overt C2 construction with a decrement in acceptability when compared to the null one. This behavior, along with a higher proportion of overt C2 preference, diverges from the baseline. In line with the Model of Divergent Attainment, we argue that the complexity associated with silent elements and dependency distance combined with processing burden leads to a reanalysis of the linguistic phenomenon. We introduce a multiple representations proposal that accurately describes the data in question and is faithful to current syntactic-theoretical accounts.

Artistic Techniques in Heritage Education: An Exploratory SHEO‐Based Study

AbstractHaving started from theoretical premises, the following study showed the results obtained by research work carried out on the use of artistic methodologies in the educational designs inventoried in the database of the Spanish Heritage Education Observatory (SHEO). This article’s aim was to understand and learn about the use of artistic techniques in the designs of heritage education programmes. To this end, the authors resorted to SHEO’s own methodology for the assessment of the quality of educational programmes. In this study, specific modifications were introduced in the latter methodology as well as in the data collection and analysis tools so as to adapt them to the specific topic of our research. In order to achieve this purpose, a descriptive‐statistical analysis of the variables defined for the sample was made by using the SPSS software. The main results were not particularly promising and point to the low representativeness within the whole database of the educational designs inventoried in the SHEO database that use artistic techniques as well at the playful and use that was made of such techniques in those designs and the absence of solid contents in this regard.

The Syntactic Distribution of Object Experiencer Psych Verbs in Heritage Spanish

This paper contributes to our understanding of the grammatical architecture of heritage languages and, specifically, the role of lexical semantics, by examining the syntactic distribution of Spanish psych verbs. Object experiencer psych verbs in Spanish fall into two classes: Class II (e.g., molestar “to bother”) and Class III (e.g., encantar “to love”). Class II verbs allow numerous syntactic alternations, while Class III verbs are more restricted syntactically. The asymmetry under investigation here is attributed to a lexical semantic featural difference—Class II verbs can be [±change of state], while Class III verbs are always [−change of state]. Two groups of HSs, (intermediate (n = 21) and advanced (n = 18)), and a group of Spanish dominant bilinguals (n = 19) completed two judgment tasks, a standard proficiency measure, a vocabulary task, and a biographical questionnaire. Results reveal that the responses of both HS groups are consistent with the Spanish dominant bilinguals in nearly all conditions, indicating that HSs are highly sensitive to this syntactic distribution. These results also highlight the importance of considering the results of individual verbs in studies that focus on lexical semantics, as they not only help us understand aggregate trends, but also reveal, in this case, that even in cases of deviant underlying semantic representations, licensing restrictions at the syntax-lexical semantic interface remain intact, suggesting that this is an area of resilience in the Heritage Spanish grammar.

Snapshot of rancher perspectives on creative cattle management options

On the Ground • We assessed rancher perceptions of three creative management strategies (heritage genetics, precision ranching, and alternate supply chain options) at the 2020 Southwest Beef Symposium. • Nearly all cattle producers (n = 36), mostly from Texas and New Mexico, currently monitor rainfall and more than half are interested in additional rainfall information. • Some producers would consider using animal tracking sensors (31%), rainfall sensors (42%), and water level sensors (50%). • Most producers surveyed raise British breeds (72%), but some (11%) are interested in learning about Spanish Heritage breeds. • Nearly all (33 of 36) respondents self-identified as ranchers, with nearly half (16 of 33) knowing where their cattle are finished at least some of the time. Eight of 36 survey respondents indicated grass-finishing and other supply chain options as the topic most immediately applicable to their operation. • Please see the project website ( https://southwestbeef.org/ ) for newsletters, on-ranch demonstrations, and research updates.

Vocabulary and the Upper-division Language Curriculum: The Case of Non-native and Heritage Spanish Majors

L2 lexical studies have established that learners need to acquire knowledge of the first 3,000 most frequent words in order to enjoy 95% coverage of the vocabulary used in spontaneous speech (Nation 2006). However, there has been little data available that reveal how many of these most frequent words can be recognized by university language majors, with Robles-García´s (2020a, 2020b) recent study being a welcome exception. The present inquiry into L2 vocabulary gains employed the same word-recognition test developed by Robles-García (2020a) in order to characterize the vocabulary size enjoyed by upper-division Spanish majors, both non-native and bilingual native (i.e., heritage) speakers, enrolled in a California public university. The results show that non-native Spanish majors in their third and fourth year of the major are still struggling to learn the first 3,000 most frequent Spanish words. In contrast, the heritage students demonstrated strong word recognition of almost all of the words in this basic inventory. The curricular implications of these results are discussed with respect to both non-native and bilingual native Spanish majors and an argument is made for continued explicit vocabulary instruction throughout the upper-division program.

Review: Belpoliti, Flavia & Bermejo, Encarna (2020). Spanish heritage learners’ emerging literacy: Empirical research and classroom practice. Routledge.

This manuscript reviews Spanish Heritage Learners’ Emerging Literacy: Empirical Research and Classroom Practice, by Flavia Belpoliti (Texas A&M University-Commerce) and Encarna Bermejo (Houston Baptist University), published in 2020 by Routledge. The book is the result of an empirical study. Its eight chapters follow a research-based approach to the teaching of Spanish Heritage Language. The authors present detailed linguistic features to consider when teaching SHL writing and research-based pedagogical and instructional implications.

Gender Agreement and Assignment in Spanish Heritage Speakers: Does Frequency Matter?

Gender has been extensively studied in Spanish heritage speakers. However, lexical frequency effects have yet to be explored in depth. This study aimed to uncover the extent to which lexical frequency affects the acquisition of gender assignment and gender agreement and to account for possible factors behind heritage language variability. Thirty-nine English-dominant heritage speakers of Spanish completed a lexical knowledge screening task (Multilingual Naming Test (MiNT)) along with an elicited production task (EPT), a forced choice task (FCT), and a self-rating lexical frequency task (SRLFT). Heritage speakers performed more successfully with high-frequency lexical items in both the EPT and the FCT, which examined their acquisition of gender assignment and gender agreement, respectively. Noun canonicity also affected their performance in both tasks. However, heritage speakers presented differences between tasks—we found an overextension of the masculine as well as productive vocabulary knowledge effects in the EPT, whereas the FCT showed an overextension of the feminine and no productive vocabulary knowledge effects. We suggest that lexical frequency, determined by the SRLFT, and productive vocabulary knowledge, as measured by the MiNT, account for the variability in the acquisition of gender assignment but not on gender agreement, supporting previous claims that production is more challenging than comprehension for bilinguals.

Clitic-Doubled Left Dislocation in Heritage Spanish: Judgment versus Production Data

This project examines whether heritage speakers of Spanish distinguish when Spanish clitic-doubled left dislocation (CLLD) is discursively appropriate via an acceptability judgment task (AJT) and a speeded production task (SPT). This two-task experimental design is intended to determine whether heritage speakers diverge from an L1 Spanish/L2 English baseline and, if so, whether such divergence is due to their grammatical knowledge, processing constraints, or other task effects. The baseline group accepted and produced CLLD significantly more than other constructions in anaphoric contexts, with the opposite pattern in non-anaphoric contexts, as expected for Spanish. The heritage speakers showed the same significant differences in production in both conditions and in the AJT’s anaphoric condition; in the non-anaphoric condition, however, they did not show any differences between CLLD and the other relevant constructions. We argue that this group of heritage speakers knows the discursive distribution of CLLD just as the baseline speakers do, as attested by the similar performance pattern in production. Furthermore, we posit that their AJT performance, which shows evidence of overextension of CLLD beyond its anaphoric context and into non-anaphoric contexts, may be due to the metalinguistic nature of AJTs.

The Comprehension of Tense–Aspect Morphology by Spanish Heritage Speakers in the United Kingdom

Whilst heritage Spanish has been widely examined in the USA, less is known about the acquisition of Spanish in other English-dominant contexts such as the UK, and studies rarely assess the baseline grammar that heritage speakers are exposed to directly. In this study, we implemented a semantic interpretation task to 17 bilinguals in the UK to investigate child heritage speakers’ and their parents’ comprehension of the preterite–imperfect aspectual contrast in Spanish, an area of known difficulty. The results show that the parents are consistently more accurate in accepting and rejecting the appropriate morphemes than the children. Further analysis shows that children’s accuracy was best predicted by age at time of testing, suggesting that young heritage speakers of Spanish in the UK can acquire the target grammar. However, this general increase in accuracy with age was not found for the continuous reading of imperfective aspect. This finding implicates a more nuanced role of cross-linguistic influence in early heritage speakers’ grammar(s), and partially explains greater difficulty with the imperfect observed in production studies with other heritage speakers.

Early versus Extended Exposure in Speech Perception Learning: Evidence from Switched-Dominance Bilinguals.

Both the timing (i.e., when) and amount (i.e., how much) of language exposure affect language-learning outcomes. We compared speech recognition accuracy across three listener groups for whom the order (first versus second) and dominance (dominant versus non-dominant) of two languages, English and Spanish, varied: one group of Spanish heritage speakers (SHS; L2-English dominant; L1-Spanish non-dominant) and two groups of late onset L2 learners (L1-dominant English/Spanish learners and L1-dominant Spanish/English learners). Sentence-final word recognition accuracy in both English and Spanish was assessed across three “easy” versus “difficult” listening conditions: (1) signal-to-noise ratio (SNR; +5 dB SNR versus 0 dB SNR), (2) sentence predictability (high versus low sentence predictability), and (3) speech style (clear versus plain speech style). Overall, SHS English recognition accuracy was equivalent to that of the L1-dominant English Spanish learners, whereas SHS Spanish recognition accuracy was substantially lower than that of the L1-dominant Spanish English learners. Moreover, while SHS benefitted in both languages from the “easy” listening conditions, they were more adversely affected by (i.e., they recognized fewer words) the presence of higher noise and lower predictability in their non-dominant L1 Spanish compared to their dominant L2 English. These results identify both a benefit and limit on the influence of early exposure. Specifically, the L2-dominant heritage speakers displayed L1-like speech recognition in their dominant-L2, as well as generally better recognition in their non-dominant L1 than late onset L2 learners. Yet, subtle recognition accuracy differences between SHS and L1-dominant listeners emerged under relatively difficult communicative conditions.

What content to post? Evaluating the effectiveness of Facebook communications in destinations

Abstract This study analyzes the marketing effectiveness of the social media posts of destination management organizations (DMOs) based on message format and content and the moderator effect of its message appeal in order to understand the users’ responses to destinations’ social media posts. The paper also discusses the most appropriate social media message strategy for Facebook campaigns for DMOs. The methodology is based on the content analysis of a sample of 3303 Facebook posts from 12 English and Spanish heritage city destinations. A Poisson regression was used to test the marketing effectiveness of the posts based on the number of Facebook reactions and message characteristics. Considering the particularities of each country, the results provide insights for DMOs for their social media message strategies. The results show that emotional messages tend to be more effective than informational messages in many cases, and several recommendations for Facebook usage are developed for the management of destinations through social media.

The Interaction of Functional Predictors and the Mechanical Predictor Perseveration in a Variationist Analysis of Caribbean Spanish Heritage Speaker Subject Pronoun Expression

Subject pronoun expression (SPE) in Spanish has been widely studied across monolingual and bilingual varieties, showing a consistent effect of functional predictors. In recent papers, the role of the mechanical predictor priming, or perseveration, has been the source of debate. Additionally, little is known about the interaction of perseveration and significant functional predictors (e.g., grammatical person). In this paper, we expand on previous research by examining first-person singular (1sg) and third-person singular (3sg) data from sociolinguistic interviews with Spanish–English bilinguals from Florida to explore the possible difference in priming in deictic vs. referential subjects. The results from a mixed-effects variable rule analysis only offered clear evidence of priming in 1sg. We hypothesize that this result could be due to either surprisal (1sg overt pronominal subjects are rarer in the corpus that 3sg overt pronominal subjects) or to 3sg involving reference-tracking and perseveration only being evident in contexts where the subject form does not signal for pragmatic content.

Contribution of Joaquín García Icazbalceta (1825-1894) to Mexican historiography

The subject of this article is the research activity of Joaquín García Icazbalceta (1825-1894) – a historian, linguist and bibliographer who published a large number of documents on the history of Mexico, namely records on Spanish colonization of the Americas and establishment of the colonial system. Analysis is conducted the formation of scientific views of the Mexican scholar in the context of the impact of external factors, such as the political and socioeconomic situation, as well as public thought. This author reveals the historiographical and methodological foundation of the indicated concept, as well as assesses the degree of influence of the external factors upon the movement of Mexican historical science in late XIX century. Joaquín García Icazbalceta was a persevering scholar, who dedicated most of his life to collecting and publishing of the rare historical writings and documents. He is the author of a number articles, which although are not considered complete research works, are based on reputable sources and shed lights on some aspects of the ancient and colonial history of Mexico. Despite the seeming affinity for Spanish heritage in Mexican culture, Joaquín García Icazbalceta greatly contributed to research on the history of Aztecs, forming and leaving to the future generations of historians a substantial documentary base that allows discovering Mexican history of the XVI century, as well as other periods of history of the country.

Ethnic Disparities in Nutritional Status among Older Adults: Evidence from the Survey of Health, Welfare and Aging (SABE) Ecuador

ABSTRACT This study aims to identify those populations that should be targeted by specific interventions. A cross-sectional design was utilized. Ordered logistic regression analysis was utilized to assess the association between ethnic identity and risk of malnutrition. Data were drawn from Ecuador’s Survey of Health, Welfare and Aging (SABE). The final sample consisted of 4,572 people who were 60 years or older who were able to provide responses to the survey by themselves. Ethnic identity was categorized into four: indigenous, mestizo (Spanish and Indigenous mixed heritage), Afro-Ecuadorian/mulato, and other. Risk of malnutrition was measured using Mini Nutritional Assessment Short-Form (MNA-SF). A range of covariates were selected from three groups of factors: sociodemographic, health-related, and social network. Results revealed that the indigenous ethnicity was the only group who had significantly higher risk of malnutrition compared to mestizo even after controlling for a range of covariates including socio-economic status, health related factors, and social support. Findings suggest the existence of underlaying factors hindering the risk of malnutrition among indigenous older adults. Considering the information revealed by SABE, interventions and other strategies should be targeted and designed specifically accounting for the needs, preferences, and culture of the most vulnerable population.

Instruction on Metaphors During a Study-Abroad Program: Students' Perceptions and Understandings

It has been observed that language learners struggle to gain access to the metaphorical structures that are part of the target language and culture. In this study, six Spanish L2 learners and nine Spanish heritage speakers from the United States completed a study abroad program in Spain in which language instruction was supplemented with a module on the subject of metaphors. This article seeks to describe this module and present learners’ perceptions of its implementation and of the learnings resulting from it, as reflected in learners’ weekly reflections and exit questionnaire. The analysis of these data indicated that most participants became aware of metaphors in every-day language. However, they were not fully able to produce metaphors themselves. Pedagogical implications of this experience include differentiated metaphor instruction for heritage speakers and L2 learners, and fostering not just metaphor awareness but competence.

Book Review. Community Service-Learning for Spanish Heritage Learners: Making Connections and Building Identities (2018). Kelly Lowther Pereira. John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Book Review. Community Service-Learning for Spanish Heritage Learners: Making Connections and Building Identities (2018). Kelly Lowther Pereira. John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Towards growth for Spanish heritage programs in the United States: Key markers of success

AbstractSpanish heritage language (SHL) programs are multiplying in the United States, but our understanding of what constitutes effective practices for administering such programs remains quite limited. The aim of this study is to identify successful SHL programs in postsecondary institutions nationwide and examine key characteristics that appear to be contributing to their success. A two‐part survey study was conducted for which 98 responses were received from 19 different states (80 for the first survey and 18 for the second). By means of a contrastive content analysis, results from 12 program participants (seven in the successful group and five in the unsuccessful group) where analyzed to determine key markers of success. The results pointed to four programmatic markers and four curricular markers. As Spanish or world languages departments undertake the task of building or redesigning their heritage courses, this study may help inform decisions on how to allocate resources and set priorities in order to enhance their chances of success.

Peer-to-peer translanguaging academic spaces for belonging: the case of Spanish as a heritage language

ABSTRACT This ethnography analysis presents the translingual academic moments – moments in an academic interaction where both Spanish and English are used – of a group of six Spanish Heritage Language students who work as academic peer tutors in a Spanish for Heritage Speakers Program at a large public university. The analysis of peer-tutor interviews and transcriptions of tutoring sessions demonstrates that peer tutors translanguage with the two overarching goals of furthering their tutees’ academic literacy and building community, illustrating the extent to which translanguaging supported this peer-led Spanish heritage academic learning community. By exploring the goals with which Spanish heritage peer-tutors deployed translingual language in a non-classroom academic context, this work argues for the importance of critically examining heritage student translanguaging in academic contexts in order for researchers and educators to leverage bilingual students’ learning trajectories.

El papel de la Biblioteca Nacional de España en la preservación y digitalización del patrimonio sonoro

La misión de la Biblioteca Nacional de España es conservar y difundir el patrimonio documental español en todos los soportes. Probablemente salvaguardar las grabaciones sonoras y la memoria oral sea la que plantea mayor número de problemas a las instituciones patrimoniales, que los custodian, pues no solo deben conservar el documento en sí, sino lo que en ellos se contiene.
 La colección de grabaciones sonoras de la Biblioteca Nacional de España asciende a unos 600.000 documentos, desde los antiguos rollos de pianola, cilindros de cera, cintas magnéticas, discos de vinilo, discos de pizarra, etc., hasta las más modernas grabaciones en soporte digital. La digitalización y preservación de las grabaciones sonoras musicales y Archivo de la palabra es uno de los objetivos prioritarios de la política de gestión de la colección, debido a la fragilidad de los documentos y a la obsolescencia de los aparatos que los reproducen. A ello se une el reto actual de asumir como biblioteca patrimonial la incorporación a sus colecciones de cualquier tipo de documento sonoro físico como virtual, además de la recolección y conservación de las páginas web, respetando el marco legal que les afecta. La colaboración con productores, distribuidores y plataformas digitales de distribución, permitirá que la BNE continúe su papel primordial de recopilar, preservar y difundir los documentos sonoros patrimoniales e integrantes indiscutibles del patrimonio cultural español. De ahí que la biblioteca participe activamente en los cambios propuestos en la nueva ley del Patrimonio Histórico Español, para que este tipo de documentos tengan un reconocimiento y protección más específico y amplio al amparo de la ley.