A Comparative Study of Appropriateness in Heritage Language Curricula

• In Event: Multilingual approaches to language planning, pedagogy, and assessment

Proposal

Languages are socially and historically constructed realities due to complex processes, and language classrooms are where those complexities are negotiated. Despite the super-diversity of languages and different varieties of one language, some linguistic forms are deemed ideal and legitimate ones for the medium of instruction, which are mostly standardized languages. It is prevalent to use these varieties not only in foreign or second language teaching but also in heritage language education since they are perceived as more appropriate in academic settings, even though heritage languages are parental and ancestral languages for heritage language speakers that are beyond standardized languages.

In this paper, I critically examine three heritage language curricula implemented in three different contexts, namely, Canada, Germany, and Türkiye, regarding their appropriateness-based approaches to standardized and non-standardized language varieties by using the model for comparative inquiry offered by Phillips and Schweisfurth (2014, p. 119). After conceptualizing the problem, I describe all the different contexts with brief background pieces of information. Following this, I connect those contexts with the abovementioned problem before explaining my interpretation of the reasons behind similarities and differences. Finally, I interpret how appropriateness-based approaches are represented based on the raciolinguistic ideologies (Flores & Rosa, 2015; Rosa & Flores, 2017) and discuss how heteroglossic ideologies could be used as a new perspective in heritage language education to create safe spaces where heritage language learners can use their whole linguistic repertoire without being stigmatized by raciolinguistic ideologies.

Preliminary analysis showed that although HLE curricula recognize non-dominant language varieties to some extent, they still consider standardized varieties appropriate for education and academic success. At this point, non-dominant varieties, such as regional dialects, are seen as only valuable for sociolinguistic and sociocultural awareness and competence but not necessarily for the so-called academic language used in the classroom and necessary for educational attainment. Furthermore, the expectations of HLE curricula assume that standardized heritage languages have correct pronunciation, grammar, and spelling rules, which creates a perception that there are perfect speakers, mostly referring to a linguistic form spoken by a particular social group. Therefore, prestigious “native” languages are perceived as appropriate varieties for heritage language education to correct impurities in the speech of heritage language speakers from non-dominant groups. It actually reveals the social positions of HL speakers, and they are racialized by the norm determined by the hegemonic reception (Flores & Rosa, 2015).

Those results indicate that there is a lack of critical language awareness about the fluidity and dynamism of languages and social and historical processes, putting language varieties in certain categories based on the communities speaking this recognizable form. Although heritage languages have been diminished or disenfranchised and heritage language education is a part of the process of reclaiming this ancestral language (Meighan, 2019), up-to-date curricula in three contexts demonstrate a dilemma toward heritage languages by appropriating one language variety among others, which may not be the ancestral language of heritage speakers. This approach carries the risk of making heritage speakers who do not speak this dominant variety feel insecure and marginalized in a classroom that is meant to reclaim their complex identities and language experience.

In conclusion, raciolinguistic ideologies position certain language varieties and, thus, their speakers as higher than others in heritage language curricula in different contexts. This is also a sign that heritage language education also functions to reproduce and perpetuate social and historical hierarchies among communities that speak different varieties of heritage languages for several reasons via the idealization and legitimization of standardized varieties in classrooms.

Keywords: heritage language education, appropriateness, comparative inquiry

Author

• Selçuk Emre Ergüt, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning