Investigating Interdependence and Literacy Development in Heritage Language Speakers: Theoretical and Methodological Considerations

Raphael Berthele and Amelia Lambelet

Multilingualism, Transfer and Literacy Development

Bilingualism and multilingualism in migrant children has been a research topic in applied linguistics for many years (see P o linsky & Kagan [2007] for an overview). The sociolinguistic situation of children who are confronted with a minority language at home (their heritage language) and a majority language in their everyday life has also been widely documented and compared to other types of bilingual and multilingual development (Montrul, 2012). Historically, linguists' engagement with the topic has gradually developed from deficit views to a resource-oriented view. Deficit-oriented views put the emphasis on the difficulties encountered by these multilingual children, as the term 'incomplete acquisition' (Montrul, 2008) suggests. Some authors even argued that in certain contexts, individuals fail to develop functional skills in either of their two languages, as in the semilingualism view advocated by Hansegård (1975; see discussion of this notion below). The resource-oriented views, on the other hand, put the emphasis on the possibilities that bi- and multilingualism enable (e.g. Gawlitzek-Maiwald & Tracy, 2005). This positive view of multilingualism puts the emphasis on the potential of transfer on different levels: on the linguistic level and on the level of strategies of language learning and use. Today, it is quite common in scholarly debate to stress this positive transfer potential together with the idea of an added value of being bior multilingual (e.g. in the domain of cognitive control cf. Bialystok et al. [2004]; but see also Paap & Greenberg [2013] for a critical discussion of the evidence on the bilingual advantage).

The purpose of this book is to describe migrant children's language development, and in particular the potential residing in shared or transferred resources between their heritage languages and the languages spoken in the region where their family has immigrated. More precisely, the focus of the book lies on the development of their literacy skills in both languages. In this book, we refer to literacy as the skills necessary for reading and writing, although we are well aware of the fact that it is 'impossible to give a clear and bounded definition of [it]' (Brockmeyer & Olson, 2009: 4). Our take on literacy is deliberately focusing literacy as a skill (Baker, 2006: 321), although we are aware that other, more critical and more wide-ranging approaches to literacy (e.g. New London Group, 1996; Street, 2006) have been proposed. We chose our focus to match the literacy objectives of the educational systems in which our studies are situated. Skills required in such 'traditional' reading and writing tasks are considered central in educational selection, which justifies the focus in the research reported in this book.

Thus, this book contributes to the scholarly investigation of the potential beneficial effects in academic proficiency across languages in migrant children. After addressing the most central terminological and theoretical issues (Chapter 1), we discuss evidence from four empirical studies on heritage language speakers in different educational and linguistic contexts (Chapters 2–9). The common research goal of all studies was to understand the factors, both linguistic and non-linguistic in nature, that contribute to the development of language skills in the heritage and the school languages. To use a term that is well established in the literature in this field, the research presented in this book attempts to assess the level of 'interdependence' of different languages in the individual multilingual speakers' repertoires.

The theories and terminology used in this book mainly stem from bilingualism and heritage language speakers research. However, since in most situations discussed, more than two languages are part of the speakers' repertoires, we also draw on multilingualism research. Therefore, the participants in the studies are referred to both as 'multilinguals' and as 'bilinguals'. All participants in the studies presented in this book are multilinguals with at least three languages or varieties in their linguistic repertoires: their heritage language(s), their language of instruction, often a local dialect in informal communication (e.g. Alemannic Swiss German) and additional foreign languages taught at school. The children in the non-heritage language comparison groups use a repertoire composed of at least the latter two languages and varieties. The authors of this book also use the terms 'bilingualism' and 'bilinguals' since in all research projects the focus lies on two particularly important languages in this repertoire, the language of instruction and the heritage language.

Investigating Interdependence and Literacy Development in Heritage Language Speakers 3 The deficit-oriented view of bi- and multilingualism, the semilingualism concept, has been questioned by bilingualism scholars (MacSwan, 2000; Martin-Jones & Romaine, 1986). Most contemporary scholars working on bi- and multilingual development tend to emphasise the futility of comparisons of bi- or multilingual repertoires to idealised monolingual norms, since bilingualism and multilingualism unavoidably lead to a different type of language competence (Bley-Vroman, 1983; Cook, 2002; Grosjean, 1985, 1989; Herdina & Jessner, 2002). This is often done by explicitly referring to the idea of crosslinguistic influence and transfer across languages (Jarvis & Pavlenko, 2007) and/or to resources...