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Diversity in Definition: Integrating History and Student Attitudes in Understanding Heritage Learners of Spanish in New Mexico

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Diversity in Definition: Integrating History and Student Attitudes in Understanding Heritage Learners of Spanish in New Mexico 270 Heritage Language Journal, 8(2) https://doi.org/10.46538/hlj.8.2.6 Summer, 2011 Diversity in Definition: Integrating History and Student Attitudes in Understanding Heritage Learners of Spanish in New Mexico Damián Vergara Wilson and Ricardo Martínez University of New Mexico Abstract Although the definition of heritage language learner (HLLs) has been widely explored, researchers tend to base their definitions on learner proficiency. While such a premise is a safe and conservative way to identify heritage students, it pays little mind to inclusivity. Indeed, it may place the university in the role of cultural gatekeeper, excluding on linguistic grounds learners who might otherwise identify with a given heritage language. This research looks at historical factors and students’ linguistic attitudes to argue for a definition of HLLs based on cultural connection. First, the present study reviews the historical factors that account for the present linguistic situation. Second, an analysis of preliminary data reveals a connection between identity labels used by the beginning-level HLLs and attitudinal dimensions of maintenance. Using a methodology similar to Mejías, Anderson-Mejías, and Carlson (2003) and Mejías and Anderson (1988), the data show that this cohort of students uses a variety of identity labels and that these labels show significant correlations to diverse attitudinal conceptions of their heritage language. Keeping in mind previous research on HLL definitions, historical factors, and the attitudinal research, this paper proposes two definitions of HLLs, one for scholarly research and another for student recruitment. Introduction In 1995 Guadalupe Valdés published a call to action to all professionals involved in the teaching of heritage languages. In her treatment of the teaching of minority languages as academic subjects, Valdés argued that the failure of the applied linguistics community was inevitable if heritage languages were taught "without a broad examination of the theoretical issues and questions that are raised by the practice of teaching heritage or home languages" (p. 300). Valdés’ fundamental position was that the discipline of heritage language instruction, which at the time of publication was still trying to pin down a name to call itself, lacked a comprehensive body of theory relevant to a uniform set of goals, effective methodologies and measurement of learning outcomes. In addition to other calls for greater research, there has been a significant response to Valdés’ challenge, including the establishment of scholarly journals, three significant conferences, annual summer research institutes, and two research resource centers, the Alliance for the Advancement of Heritage Languages at the Center for Applied Linguistics, and the National Heritage Language Resource Center, hosted at the University of California, Los Angeles. The Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of New Mexico responded to the need for a specialized approach to teaching heritage language learners (HLLs) by creating the Sabine Ulibarrí Spanish as a Heritage Language (SUSHL) program. Today, the SUSHL Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 03:28:32AM via free access 271 Heritage Language Journal, 8(2) https://doi.org/10.46538/hlj.8.2.6 Summer, 2011 program is one of the largest heritage language programs in the country, with around 500 students taught by 11 instructors in 19 to 21 sections per semester with four distinct lower- division courses: SPAN 111, SPAN 112, SPAN 211, and SPAN 212.1 It is in a spirit of examination of our SHL pedagogy that we undertake the current research. The goal of the current article is to examine factors that favor a definition of HLLs based on cultural connection for the purposes of the SUSHL program over one based on proficiency. To this end, we review the literature pertinent to the definition of HLLs and consider local historical factors affecting Spanish in New Mexico. To explore the present circumstances of HLLs, this article presents preliminary results from a larger quantitative study on the correlations between language attitudes and identity labels. All these factors will be considered in the proposed definitions of HLL. Previous Definitions of HLL There exists ample literature regarding the need to address the needs of HLLs in the Spanish language classroom. Since the 1970s, the idea of giving HLLs of Spanish their own classroom has been endorsed as a legitimate practice by the field (Garner, 1972, p. 623). There is not, however, a similar consensus regarding terminology. Only since the 1990s has the term heritage language been agreed upon in the United States, while other names are used outside the U.S. As the debate regarding how best to approach the methodological requirements of the HL classroom has evolved, a pressing item of concern for researchers has been the definition of heritage speaker or learner (Valdés, 2000a, 2000b; Wiley, 2001; Carreira, 2004; Kagan, 2005; Kagan & Dillon, 2006; Hornberger & Wang, 2008). In addition, considerable attention has been focused on the differences among groups of HLLs even if they have the same HL (e.g., Kagan & Dillon’s (2006) model using age of arrival and amount of schooling to differentiate HLLs of Russian). In a review of the literature, we found the Valdés’ (2001) definition to be the most widely cited by heritage language scholars (Wiley, 2001; Kagan, 2005; Kondo-Brown, 2005; Hornberger & Wang, 2008; Kelleher, 2010, among others): Foreign language educators use the term to refer to a language student who is raised in a home where a non-English language is spoken, who speaks or at least understands the language, and who is to some degree bilingual in that language and in English (Valdés, 2000a, 2000b). For these educators, the heritage language student is also different in important ways from the traditional foreign language student. This difference, however, has to do with developed functional proficiencies in the heritage languages.2 (p.38) In Kagan and Dillon’s 2006 article, which revisited the definition of HLL of Russian, the authors included two other relevant definitions. The first was Polinsky’s (2008): “By heritage language I mean a language which was first for an individual with respect to the order of acquisition but has not been completely acquired because of the switch to another dominant language" (p. 149). The other definition came from the UCLA Research Priorities Conference Report (2001) and uses the place of learning (home versus classroom) as the principal criterion for differentiating between heritage and foreign language learners (cited in Kagan & Dillon, 2006). Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 03:28:32AM via free access 272 Heritage Language Journal, 8(2) https://doi.org/10.46538/hlj.8.2.6 Summer, 2011 The common denominator to be found in these definitions is the assumption that heritage learners have a cultural connection to the language as well as a measurable amount of proficiency. Kagan (2008) referred to a combination of cultural connection and proficiency as a “narrow definition” of a heritage learner, and the one that most concerns her as a heritage language educator (also see Kagan, 2005). Polinsky and Kagan (2007) provide a “broad definition” of an HLL as someone who has an emotional attachment to the language and a desire to learn it, but caution that this definition does “not provide operational criteria for identifying heritage speakers” (p. 369). The foundations for adopting a broad definition can be found in numerous articles on Spanish as a heritage language in the United States and heritage language education in general. For example, Carreira (2004) describes a category of HLLs based on this broad definition: …learners who lack the requisite linguistic background to enroll in HL classes but who nevertheless feel strongly connected to their ancestry. It has been our contention that although such students may behave linguistically like SLLs, they have identity needs that align them with HLLs. (p. 18) The impetus for this category of HLLs was the concern that institutions, in using linguistic proficiency to decide which students gain admittance into SHL programs and which are placed in second or foreign language programs, may result in identity negation. Martínez (2006) has echoed this sentiment. Not limiting himself to the context of a given institution, he argues that Mexican Americans “struggle with an ethnic ‘invisibility’ imposed upon them by the ideology that equates Mexicanness with knowing Spanish” (p. 17). This ideology implies a perception that an individual’s effort to maintain his/her culture is made significantly harder in the absence of that culture's language. In other words, language and identity are directly linked. We discuss this link through a quantitative analysis presented below. Indeed, Martinez’ argument in favor of reversing language shift implies that the absence of Spanish leads to a reduction in one’s self-perceived Mexicanness. According to this line of reasoning, if students are placed in foreign or second language Spanish programs (versus SHL), the institution risks negating their identity as members of their ethnic community. Taken one step further, if the language associated with that ethnic community is not restored in that individual, the rest of the cultural productions that define that community's culture are likely to be lost or significantly altered (Fishman, 1991). In this sense, if the goal of a heritage language program is to maintain and revitalize a language, the scope of that project is much larger than increasing the bilingual range of those learners who already have a measurable level of proficiency. In light of the arguments for identifying as HLLs all individuals with a cultural connection to the HL without regard to proficiency, Hornberger and Wang (2008) have offered the most recent, and appropriately the most complex, definition of HLL: In the U.S. context, HLLs are individuals who have familial or ancestral ties to the particular language that is not English and who exert their agency in determining whether or not they are HLLs of that HL and HC [Heritage Culture] (p.
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