Linguistic diversity and student voice: the case of Spanish as a heritage language

ABSTRACT

This article examines the issue of teaching Spanish as a heritage language (SHL) focusing primarily on the issues of linguistic diversity and the socio-affective issues related to heritage language learners. First, we consider linguistic diversity in speech communities where students use SHL. Second, we discuss students’ perceptions of the teaching of Spanish in a linguistically diverse setting and draw upon a corpus of interviews with 35 students attending an SHL program at a large southwestern university in the United States. We examine stated perspectives regarding the (mis)match between students’ heritage varieties and what is promoted in the classroom. The data reveals the importance of considering the student perspective in validating heritage language varieties and indicate both challenges and insights in achieving this validation given the sociolinguistic diversity found in most SHL learning communities.

RESUMEN

Este manuscrito examina la relación que existe entre la validación de la diversidad lingüística propia de la clase de español como lengua de herencia y las características socioafectivas que se atribuyen a los aprendices en dicho contexto. Para ello, primero, repasamos los estudios previos que tratan el tema de la diversidad lingüística en la comunidad de aprendices de español como lengua de herencia. Segundo, analizamos las percepciones de dichos estudiantes hacia la enseñanza del español como lengua de herencia en los Estados Unidos usando un corpus de entrevistas de 35 estudiantes. Nos enfocamos en las perspectivas que demuestran incompatibilidades entre las variedades locales y las que se promueven en el contexto educacional. Los datos demuestran la importancia de considerar la perspectiva estudiantil (LPE) a la hora de validar las variedades locales y a su vez nos muestran posibles desafíos para conseguir dicha validación debido a la gran diversidad sociolingüística que existe en la mayoría de las comunidades de habla del español como lengua de herencia.

KEYWORDS:

• Spanish heritage language (SHL)
• heritage language education
• Spanish in the United States
• linguistic diversity
• student voice

PALABRAS CLAVE:

• Español como lengua de herencia (ELH)
• educación de lengua de herencia
• español de los EE.UU
• diversidad lingüística
• voz del estudiante

Notes

1 Although we acknowledge Valdés’ (2001) popular narrow definition of heritage speakers, we adopt a wider perspective (Wilson and Martínez 2011, 126): “SHL learners seek to explore and develop their connection to the Spanish language. Such a connection to the language may come through community, family, or cultural heritage.”

2 The University of New Mexico is a large research and Hispanic Serving Institution located in the southwestern United States. The Department of Spanish and Portuguese at UNM is home to the Sabine Ulibarrí Spanish Heritage Language Program, one of the largest and oldest in the country.

3 This research focuses on four dimensions of language attitudes: instrumental, value, sentimental and communicative—that are divided along an extrinsic/intrinsic and private/public axes. Silva-Corvalán (1994, 197) proposes that the value dimension “refers to the use of Spanish as a public symbol of group worth and lasting values and traditions with ethnic identity at its core.”

4 See Gonzales (2005) for a discussion on how this label is used by New Mexican speakers of TNMS especially in contexts of differential labeling.