Heritage Language Maintenance
Mentor 1
Sandra L. Pucci, Ph. D.
Location
Union Wisconsin Room
Start Date
24-4-2015 10:30 AM
End Date
24-4-2015 11:45 AM
Description
A heritage speaker has been defined as a member of a linguistic minority community who has grown up with a language other than English in their homes, whether they were born in the majority language country, or immigrated (Baker, 2006). In recent years there have been many conversations regarding the social, political, cultural, and linguistic phenomenon of heritage language maintenance and loss. This study will examine how individuals’ background experiences, specifically of having attended a bilingual high school influenced their linguistic realities. It will measure nuanced linguistic issues of maintenance and loss in the Spanish language. The tasks will involve an oral production, and written acceptability judgment task. The oral measure will be individually administered, while the written task will be administered in small groups to leverage participant’s time and it will be triangulated in order to obtain a complete picture of Heritage Language Maintenance and competence. There will be 20-25 participants who attended all four years of Cesar Chavez High School, located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This is a unique population because they received formal language and literacy instruction in Spanish. It is also one of the few high schools in the country which offers this type of systematic heritage language development. Some of the current findings are that all participants understand the importance in maintaining their heritage language, all participants spoke Spanish with their family members, and in terms of who they socialized with also played a role in how they influenced their heritage language.
Heritage Language Maintenance
Union Wisconsin Room
A heritage speaker has been defined as a member of a linguistic minority community who has grown up with a language other than English in their homes, whether they were born in the majority language country, or immigrated (Baker, 2006). In recent years there have been many conversations regarding the social, political, cultural, and linguistic phenomenon of heritage language maintenance and loss. This study will examine how individuals’ background experiences, specifically of having attended a bilingual high school influenced their linguistic realities. It will measure nuanced linguistic issues of maintenance and loss in the Spanish language. The tasks will involve an oral production, and written acceptability judgment task. The oral measure will be individually administered, while the written task will be administered in small groups to leverage participant’s time and it will be triangulated in order to obtain a complete picture of Heritage Language Maintenance and competence. There will be 20-25 participants who attended all four years of Cesar Chavez High School, located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This is a unique population because they received formal language and literacy instruction in Spanish. It is also one of the few high schools in the country which offers this type of systematic heritage language development. Some of the current findings are that all participants understand the importance in maintaining their heritage language, all participants spoke Spanish with their family members, and in terms of who they socialized with also played a role in how they influenced their heritage language.
