Heritage Language Ecologies in a Multilingual Elementary School in Sweden

• In Event: Planning and Decision-Making Processes in Language and Linguistics

Abstract

The field of heritage language (HL) education is a rapidly growing area of educational linguistics research and pedagogy (Leeman & King, 2015). While considerable research has looked at identity in relation to heritage language learning in adolescents and adults, this presentation focuses on the identities and language ideologies of young HL learners of Arabic and Somali at an elementary school in Sweden. Analyzed through an ecology of language framework, data center on the key constructs of utility, belonging, and resistance to both pressures to assimilate, and traditional cultural roles within the context of immigration.

Author

• Liv Thorstensson Davila, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign