Studying Heritage Languages with a Focus on Multilingualism

Abstract

In recent decades, the field of applied linguistics has witnessed a growth of interest in the study of multilingualism. A particular subset of studies in multilingualism is that of heritage languages (Montrul, 2010). A heritage language (HL) can be broadly defined as an ancestral language with which one feels a cultural connection (Van Deusen-Scholl, 2003), or more narrowly defined as a home language that a person is exposed to in early childhood before becoming socialized into the host country’s dominant language (Valdés, 2001).