Suzanne Aalberse, Ad Backus & Pieter Muysken: Heritage languages: A language contact approach

Heritage languages and linguistics is a large and ever-developing field, and over the past few decades it has played an increasingly important role for the study of language more broadly. In Heritage Languages: A language contact approach, Aalberse, Backus and Muysken directly address this reality by considering a range of issues where heritage languages (HLs) offer critical insights. They adopt a language contact approach, which places “heritage languages studies in a long tradition of studies in related language contact domains such as immigrant languages, contact induced language change, maintenance and shift, language death, bilingual language use, bilingual processing and human rights” (p. xvii). Accordingly, this book situates HLs within core themes in contact linguistics. In the following, I review the contents of Chapters 1–11 (Chapter 12 provides an index of technical terms) and then conclude with an evaluation of the work as a whole.

In Chapter 1, Suzanne Aalberse and Pieter Muysken outline central issues in the field. First, they consider the complexities of defining HLs, and HL-speakers, which are particularly important for, and a consequence of, varying perspectives and approaches. Using biographical sketches, they illustrate definitional nuances along various linguistic and social dimensions and then contextualize HL outcomes in multiple language contact settings, or scenarios. They stress the importance of focusing on the processes that underlie HL patterns: “we can understand these differences in outcome better if we take the scenario into account under which the HLs developed” (p. 15) because “different processes may have identical or at least similar outcomes” (p. 14). Examples from a range of scenarios demonstrate the importance of the social contexts in which HLs are embedded.

Muysken provides an overview of the history of the field in Chapter 2, starting with a discussion of two common viewpoints: the diaspora and immigration perspectives. The diaspora perspective considers the HL beyond its original borders, primarily as results of migration/colonization and redefining political boundaries. Muysken compares changes in Dutch varieties in the US, Africa, and the Caribbean as an example. The immigration perspective, on the other hand, more explicitly considers the HL in contact with other languages in the immigrant setting. This perspective has been influential for work from the US, Canada, and Australia since at least Haugen (1953), and is illustrated with studies of American Portuguese and American Finnish. Although instrumental in shaping HL studies, neither, Muysken argues, has been sufficient for understanding HL patterns and development. Here, the authors introduce the speaker perspective, drawing on sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics as a supplement to previous viewpoints and as focus for the remaining chapters.

In Chapter 3, Ad Backus considers HLs in their social context, arguing that a “full account of contact-induced change requires attention to both social and linguistic aspects, and to the relationship that holds between them” (p. 44). The social account here progresses with a discussion of language shift and language maintenance, couched in the concept of “language choice”, ending with a social treatment of codeswitching. For maintenance and shift, Backus surveys work based in Ethnolinguistic Vitality Theory (Giles et al. 1977). In summary he states that “it has proven impossible to construct a single widely accepted theory that accounts for maintenance and shift and that predicts what will happen in any given bilingual setting” because “it is possible for the same factor to facilitate maintenance in one setting and shift in another” (p. 49). Critical components covered here – family language use, networks, communities of practice (pp. 54–57) and power versus solidarity (pp. 61–62) – lend themselves to other perspectives that view shift as a product of population structure and the social behaviors of speakers (Mufwene 2001) or the reorientation of local social structures (Salmons 2005). However, one wonders how they interact with approaches that do not adopt Ethnolinguistic Vitality, and even explicitly reject it (Brown in press; Frey 2013), as a viable framework.

In Chapter 4, Backus and Anne Verschik discuss patterns in bilingual language use – demonstrated with codeswitching – that is connected to both linguistic and social factors. They discuss linguistic aspects of codeswitching patterns based on degrees of relative proficiency in the HL and majority language, with examples from Heritage Turkish in the Netherlands. They follow with a discussion of codeswitching and lexical borrowing, and their effects on change in the HL, which they suggest may be a driving force for language shift (p. 79; see Brown in press for alternative views). Closing the chapter, they situate HL use in social context, adopting the concept of languaging (Jørgensen 2008) as meaning-creation in communication, which underscores the active use of bilingual resources for social purposes.

Backus and Muysken address methodological approaches and challenges in Chapter 5. They frame their presentation of sources and collection of data based on varying research designs, tensions and trade-offs in attempting to achieve internal, external, and ecological validity. The chapter provides valuable explanations and details on data collection procedures in sociolinguistic and experimental approaches, which is highly relevant for an up-to-date overview of the field. They conclude with a discussion on tailoring methods to specific research questions and advocate drawing on a variety of complementary approaches to mitigate any one method’s weaknesses, offer richer analyses, and “drive science forward” (p. 109).

In Chapter 6, Aalberse focuses on investigating whether or not changes have taken place in a HL, specifically in comparison to a ‘baseline’ language or variety. Establishing an appropriate comparison is an on-going issue in the field (Polinsky 2018), and Aalberse reviews a number of approaches, including comparisons to (monolingual) homeland speakers, second-language learners, first-generation immigrations, and other HL-speakers. Characteristic differences related to acquisition, speakers’ backgrounds, and socially embedded use during the lifespan are examined in terms of their potential influences on language patterns. These factors also affect proficiency, a challenging concept to assess, measure, and operationalize.

Aalberse continues with a discussion of HL linguistic outcomes in Chapter 7, starting with an overview of individual linguistic levels – phonology, lexicon, morphology, and syntax. Examination of internal and external factors in HL patterns and a review of analytical approaches within each primary focus follows. She concludes with a comparison, emphasizing the interplay between internal and external factors on HL phenomena. This is consistent with prevailing views on language variation and change (Salmons 2021: Ch. 7), and a point of departure for fully integrating HL research into allied fields of study.

Chapter 8, by Aalberse and Muysken, outlines influential HL analyses in generative, variationist, optimality theoretic, and usage-based models. They open each section with a synopsis of the frameworks’ underlying assumptions and analytical tools, followed by case studies demonstrating how they approach and analyze HL data. These discussions serve as useful introduction for both those who are new to HL research and those who are less acquainted with any of these theories. Although a more direct comparison of the different models using a common data set would have been valuable, the closing statement calling researchers “to see where these models connect, and for which type of phenomena which model provides the most insightful explanation” (p. 181) is a welcome perspective that improves specific models and strengthens the field.

In Chapter 9, Gerrit Jan Koostra and Muysken survey psycholinguistic research on multilingualism and contextualize HL-speakers within that body of work. They discuss the primary motivations for these studies, namely how speakers of multiple languages store, access, and process language, and what influences those languages have on cognitive processes. They review central findings before discussing additional factors that influence language processes and age of acquisition effects in psycholinguistic experiments. They summarize that multilingual language use consists of “the activation and selection of linguistic representations from an interconnected network of representations that is shared for both languages” (p. 200), a key finding for research concerned with the architecture of bilingual grammars (Putnam et al. 2018).

In the following chapter, Bart Jacobs and Muysken discuss patterns due to intense, long-term contact with a case study of Papiamentu, an Afro-Iberian creole spoken in Aruba, Curaçao, and Bonaire (p. 205). Because the language has been in contact with Dutch in two distinct social contexts, i.e., as a language spoken under Dutch colonial rule and later as an HL in the Netherlands, the chapter provides a valuable illustration of how changing social scenarios influence both lexical and structural patterns over time. It furthermore serves as a model for investigating other post-colonial HLs, which would undoubtedly enrich both language contact and HL studies.

In Chapter 11, Muysken and Backus elaborate on HLs in political contexts. They contextualize the discussion in political structures’ approaches to diversity management, or “the response of institutional entities […] to language diversity and multilingualism in their boundaries” (p. 225). This relates HL-speakers to social and political systems and the varying perspectives of multilingualism that these systems adopt. With this background, the authors explore political and social tensions of indigenous language revitalization, HL education, and the documentation of moribund languages and varieties. They consider the potential for codeswitching to signal language loss, arguing though that it is a natural sociolinguistic phenomenon: “in all languages people associate elements with styles or registers […] and may exploit these associations for communicative effect” (p. 242). Finally, they discuss HLs in the context of linguistic human rights, particularly regarding communities’ access to HL resources and education.

Heritage language studies are constantly changing and adapting and as a field, they interconnect with a diverse set of methods and perspectives. Aalberse, Backus, and Muysken take up this challenge by focusing on a speaker perspective as the lens to present socio- and psycholinguistic insights into HLs. Of particular interest for the audience of the Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics are the detailed exploration of social factors and their influences on HL outcomes, accounts that may be further refined by incorporating the historical setting of present-day HLs (Litty 2017) and their community structures (Bousquette 2020). Furthermore, its wide coverage of core issues and its accessibility makes it a valuable text for students. A fuller understanding of HLs – and languages generally – will involve a synthesis of empirical, formal, social, and historical analyses. Heritage Languages: A language contact approach offers a major step toward that end by providing a comprehensive, broad, and approachable exploration of the field.