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Damián Vergara Wilson is the coordinator of the Sabine Ulibarrí Spanish as a Heritage Language Program at the University of New Mexico. His main areas of research and teaching are historical linguistics, sociolinguistics and sociology of language.

Heritage language speech communities are often stigmatized for their speech practices, but a critical examination through mini-ethnographies can encourage heritage language students to see their communities as a linguistic resource.

Many heritage languages are situated in contexts of bilingualism and language contact as a result of immigration or colonization. Members of such a speech community will display a range of proficiency levels in the heritage language and the dominant language. Frequent alternation between the heritage language and the dominant language (e.g. Span/Eng: fuimos a la big city for dinner ‘we went to the…’) and using borrowed words in discourse (e.g. Where’s his troca ‘truck’) characterize bilingual behavior in contact situations. Many view bilingual behavior as evidence that speakers are linguistically deficient in both languages. Heritage language learners internalize stigmatization and come to view their communities of practice negatively.

Practitioners of heritage language teaching can advocate for heritage language communities by promoting the widespread finding that bilingual behavior is a sign of a competent bilingualism. Engaging in bilingual practices is not a detriment and does not erode or deform either contact language. Instead, it is a continuum in which individuals may function monolingually, or seamlessly weave two languages into one conversation. Promoting bilingual linguistic practices as a skill helps the students to view their own communities more positively and encourages linguistic engagement.

As educators, we can encourage this process through designing community-based activities. For example, a large Spanish as a Heritage Language program in the American Southwest uses a ‘Spanglish Scavenger Hunt’.

Step one: Students brainstorm in groups about who uses Spanglish, where it is used, and what characterizes it.

Step two: Each group must visit the places mentioned and speak to the individuals implicated about their language practices. These informants will divulge valuable perceptions about bilingual practices and often give the students rich examples that characterize community speech norms.

Step three: Because the outcome of these interviews will vary, students will have a great deal of sociolinguistic material to discuss critically as each group presents its findings.

A desirable outcome is that students shift the way they view their communities’ speech norms to be more sympathetic toward circumstances of contact. By doing so, they may engage in these bilingual practices as an important component of developing their heritage language skills. After all, bilingual conversations offer rich input by providing contextual cues in both of the student’s languages.