Mi lengua: Spanish as a Heritage Language in the United States, Research and Practice

Chapter 2: Toward a Theory of Heritage Language Acquisition: Spanish in the United States

2 Toward a Theory of Heritage LanguageAcquisition Spanish in the United States Andrew Lynch University of Florida The sociolinguistic realities of English and Spanish, at the national and world levels, have evolved in fundamental ways since the 1960s. Traditional theoretical models of language variation, bilingualism, and language shift in the U.S. must be reconceptualized within the poSt-2000 context, and Spanish language educators must respond to the contemporary demands of their profession. In this essay, I give thought to the theoretical principles of Spanish heritage language acquisition (HLA) in the U.S. in the twenty-first century. The Changing Nature of Spanish Language Study in the u.S. Spanish language study in the U.S. has changed dramatically since the 1960s, both in purpose and in practice. Part of this change has been a direct result ofthe innovations that broadly swept the field ofsecond language pedagogy in the U.S. from the late 1970S through the mid-1980s. With the formalization of more socially oriented notions of language in the 1970s, through sociological and anthropological perspectives, researchers and practitioners in the rapidly developing new field ofsecond language acquisition (SLA) began to reconceptualize theories of second language (L2) learning. SLA debates did not take place in isolation; they were clearly reflective of what may be called the "social revolution" in linguistics in the 19605 and 1970s. Labov (1972) published a cogent methodology for analyzing languages as dynamic, variable systems rather than fixed, idealized ones, taking into account a wide 26 Andrew Lynch array of synchronic extralinguistic factors that may condition diachronic internal changes. Hymes (1974) placed communicative competence as counterpoint to Chomsky's (1965) mentalist construct of linguistic competence, and Halliday (1975) and Hatch (1978) carefully made the case for discourse processes and interaction in first and second language development.! The seminal work of Terrell on the Natural Approach (1977) to language teaching, in explicit relationship to Krashen's (1981) Monitor model, provided Spanish language teachers with a groundbreaking textbook called Dos Mundos (1986), aimed at placing input and interaction at the center of the beginning classroom. The purpose of Terrell's methodology was to take students beyond the phonological, morphological, syntactic, and lexical levels of language to the social dimensions of semantics and pragmatics (d. Klee 1998). Communication was to be the focus of the classroom; language per se would merely serve as the vehicle for interaction as learners followed natural routes of development. Grammar was placed at the service of lexicon and semantics rather than vice versa. What Widdowson (1988) called "grammar and nonsense" would, in the minds of Terrell, Krashen, and subsequent proponents of communicative language teaching, become a thing of the past.2 Although communicative methodologies impacted to some extent the way most L2s were taught in the U.S. in the 1980s, the circumstance of Spanish was unique. Not only was Spanish language teaching changing at the internal , professional level as a result of innovations in SLA, but it was also being importantly impacted at the external, social level by one of the most massive immigration waves in U.S. history, second only to the period 1901 to 1910 (Ricento 1995). Unlike the immigrations of the early twentieth century -of mostly European origin-the wave of the 1980s was principally Mexican, Caribbean, and Central and South American. Xenophobia in the 19805 became synonymous with Hispanophobia (Zentella 1995), and the politicallobbying organization US English spent $28 million between 1983 and 1990 to promote English language legislation at the state and federal levels (Crawford 1992, p. 4).3 But at the same time that political Hispanophobia flourished, so did nationwide Spanish language enrollments. Despite political efforts by organizations such as US English to weaken Hispanic visibility and ensure that English would cede no sociolinguistic territory to Latin American Spanish, many parents and students took notice and, in turn, took interest in the Spanish language that they increasingly heard spoken in their towns and neighborhoods. The growth of Spanish language programs at all educational levels-primary, secondary, and postsecondary-has remained steady until the present day, as the other traditional languages of study decline .4 For example, a study carried out at Arizona State University by Gun- Toward a Theory of Heritage Language Acquisition 27 termann, Hendrickson, and de Urioste (1996) showed that enrollments in the French lower division program at that institution dropped from nearly 800 in 1985 to fewer than 700 in 1995, while...