Language affinity of heritage speakers in Western Canada: The link between language and emotions
Date
2021-06-24
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Abstract
Heritage speakers (a type of bilingual who, typically learnt the heritage language at home and the dominant language outside the home) often feel different levels of connection (i.e., language affinity) to their heritage language. It has been theorized that bilinguals have two cognitive systems, one for each language and these systems stay in place throughout the lifetime of the speaker, no matter the trajectory of the languages (Dewaele, 2015). Research on heritage speakers in Canada has been limited to language use at home and in the community, as noted by Guardado (2018), leaving out research on heritage speakers and emotions. To address the paucity of research, the study described in this thesis investigates the language affinity of 25 adult heritage speakers of Spanish who are to varying degrees bilingual in Spanish and English and who reside in the Canadian province of Alberta. The participants completed an online bilingual language profile survey (BLP), an interview with the researcher to elicit immigration narratives and a word description task eliciting memories related to Spanish/English word pairs (e.g., house/casa). The quantitative analysis revealed that majority of the participants exhibited higher levels of emotions and in reaction to Spanish words compared to English words and different memories associated with each word in the word pair (i.e., one memory for ‘house’ and a different memory for ‘casa). The qualitative analysis delves into the factors that influenced these findings, which included language dominance, age of arrival to Canada and feeling culturally connected to the heritage language. This research has implications for the field of heritage language studies by showing the various factors that affect language affinity to the heritage and dominant language.
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Keywords
Heritage speakers, emotions, language affinity, mental representation, language dominance, bilingualism
Citation
Puccinelli, N. (2021). Language affinity of heritage speakers in Western Canada: The link between language and emotions (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.