Spanish as a Heritage Language in the United States - A Study of Speakers' Register Variation

ISBN-13: 9783639129366 / Angielski / Miękka / 2009 / 124 str.

Ana Sánchez-Muñoz

Opis

One of the fundamental principles of sociolinguistics is no single person speaks in the same way all the time. This book explores variation across registers in Spanish as a heritage language. Additionally, it examines second language learners since Spanish is also their non-dominant language. This work analyzes several linguistic features including discourse particles, contractions, and various lexical choices. The results indicate that both heritage and second language speakers show linguistic variation in their Spanish across registers. The results also reveal some quantitative as well as qualitative differences between the two groups of speakers, which have important pedagogical implications for the teaching and learning of heritage languages. This book contributes to further our understanding of bilingualism by providing evidence of variation in speakers non-dominant language. This is an important finding since it shows that even when the use of the language is largely limited to a particular domain (home/family interactions for heritage speakers and classroom interactions for second language learners), we can still find register variation.

O autorze

Dr. Ana Sánchez-Muñoz holds a PhD in Hispanic Linguistics from
the University of Southern California and currently is assistant
professor at California State University Northridge. Her research
focuses on the contact situation between Spanish and English in
the US and on studying how Spanish is developed, used and
maintained by heritage speakers.