Spanish as a Heritage Language in the United States: The State of the Field ed. by Sara M. Beaudrie and Marta Fairclough (review)

Spanish as a Heritage Language in the United States is an indispensable addition to the growing field of Spanish as a Heritage Language (SHL). This book is exactly what the subtitle proclaims it to be—a description of the state of the field. It is not a collection of case studies of heritage speakers, nor is it a collection of original research, but rather a series of essays summarizing and discussing past and current research in the various subfields of SHL, as well as suggestions for future research, written by those who have conducted significant research in the field.

After an introduction, the volume is divided into four sections: “An overview of the field,” “Linguistic Perspectives,” “Learners’ Perspectives,” and “Pedagogical Perspectives.” In chapter 1, Susana Rivera-Mills identifies the continual question of Spanish language maintenance and shift in the United States, with a timeline of research spanning the twentieth century, beginning with Espinosa’s painstaking work in the early part of the century, passing into the cultural movements of the 1960s and 1970s, then discussing the theoretical frameworks that followed Fishman’s initial groundwork on sociolinguistics.

Jennifer Leeman follows with a discussion on language ideologies (i.e., the “values and belief systems regarding language”) and their application within the context of SHL. Her discussion of the theoretical framework delves into the notions of “standard” Spanish, as well as dominant US language ideologies regarding bilingualism as well as use (or non-use) of English. Leeman concludes with a commentary on the educational policies and practices, including teaching practices, materials, assessment, and staffing, that seek to address the role (or lack thereof) of SHL in schools.

Glenn Martínez provides a primer on language policy and planning, beginning with two very public examples of negative attitudes and ideologies toward Spanish and how policy can follow such attitudes. He breaks down his discussion of current policy and research into the three orientations of language as problem, as right, and as resource, with the last of these informing his exploration of future directions for research.

Andrew Lynch discusses register and educated norms within the context of SHL. While touching on the notion of diglossia, he focuses the larger discussion on four key concepts in the research, namely proficiency, register, agency, and generation, in each case noting the challenges of prior normative theoretical applications. His conclusions call for a departure from the norms with recommendations on what such departures might look like.

The first chapter of part 2 addresses grammatical competence of Heritage Speakers. Silvina Montrul provides a fairly exhaustive list, complete with explanations, of grammatical studies on Spanish in the United States, from a sociolinguistic perspective as well as from those of formal and psycholinguistics. She also includes a useful section on classroom-oriented studies.

Derrin Pinto focuses on the lightly studied area of Pragmatics and Discourse in SHL. He summarizes work done in the areas of speech acts, pronoun usage and discourse markers, including a discussion on academic discourse. Pinto concludes with the recognition that much of discourse analysis is yet to be explored in an SHL framework.

Ana Carvalho tackles the ample body of research in the field of code switching. She breaks down her chapter into various sections that highlight studies on the major issues and foci of code switching, including “the myth of ni uno ni otro,” functions and rules of code switching, and switching in the SHL classroom, with an emphasis on the need for a future research agenda focusing on needs in education.

In part 3, Cynthia Ducar focuses on learners’ attitudes and motivations. She touches on attitudes and anxieties as a result of both external stigmas and those that come from within the Spanish-speaking community. She then focuses on the positive motivations that come from the role of identity and the integrative value...