Hayakawa Sayuri, Chung-Fat-Yim Ashley, Marian Viorica
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, United States.
Department of Psychology, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, United States.
Front Commun (Lausanne). 2022;7. doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2022.994709. Epub 2022 Aug 31.
According to the 2020 U.S. Census Bureau, more than 66 million residents over the age of 5 in the United States speak a language other than English at home. Some bilinguals become dominant in the majority language that is spoken in the community as opposed to their native "heritage" language acquired at home. The objective of the current study was to uncover the predictors of language proficiency and cultural identification in different groups of heritage speakers. In our sample, heritage speakers acquired their heritage language first and English second and rated their proficiency in their heritage language lower than in English. We found that English proficiency was most reliably predicted by the duration of heritage language immersion, while heritage language proficiency was most reliably predicted by contexts of acquisition and exposure to both languages. Higher heritage language proficiency was associated with greater heritage language experience through friends and reading, less English experience through family, and later age of English acquisition. The trade-off between heritage language and English language experience was more pronounced for non-Spanish than Spanish heritage speakers. Finally, despite higher proficiency in English, cultural identification was higher with the heritage language, and was predicted by heritage language receptive proficiency and heritage language experience through family and reading. We conclude that self-reported proficiency and cultural identification differ depending on heritage speakers' native languages, as well as how the heritage language and majority language are acquired and used. Our findings highlight the importance of taking individual language history into consideration when combining different groups of heritage speakers.
根据2020年美国人口普查局的数据，美国有超过6600万5岁以上的居民在家说英语以外的语言。一些双语者在社区中使用的主要语言（而非他们在家习得的母语“传承语言”）方面占主导地位。本研究的目的是揭示不同传承语言使用者群体中语言能力和文化认同的预测因素。在我们的样本中，传承语言使用者先习得传承语言，后习得英语，且他们对自己传承语言能力的评价低于英语能力。我们发现，传承语言沉浸时间最能可靠地预测英语能力，而习得和接触两种语言的环境最能可靠地预测传承语言能力。更高的传承语言能力与通过朋友和阅读获得的更多传承语言体验、通过家庭获得的较少英语体验以及较晚习得英语的年龄相关。对于非西班牙语传承语言使用者而言，传承语言和英语体验之间的权衡比西班牙语传承语言使用者更为明显。最后，尽管英语能力较高，但文化认同与传承语言更高，且由传承语言接受能力以及通过家庭和阅读获得的传承语言体验所预测。我们得出结论，自我报告的语言能力和文化认同因传承语言使用者的母语不同而有所差异，也因传承语言和主要语言的习得及使用方式而异。我们的研究结果凸显了在合并不同传承语言使用者群体时考虑个体语言历史的重要性。
