Heritage Languages and Ideologies of Language

Abstract

The challenges facing the field of heritage language teaching include determining the role that educational institutions should play in language maintenance. This chapter examines established institutional foreign language programs and suggests that—although involved in a non-hegemonic practice, the teaching of non-English languages—the departments are nevertheless working in concert with deeply held American ideologies and beliefs about language. A few US Latinos spoke about resisting the attitudes toward their own way of speaking that were being inculcated in the department and believed that dominant ideologies were the greatest barrier, not to their developing academic Spanish, but to being accepted professionally as equals by native Spanish speakers. The teaching and study of heritage languages may not be successful if we are not able to address unexamined but central challenges to heritage language maintenance and development among second and third generation American bilinguals.

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