Keywords

Introduction

While the use of the term heritage language (HL) is relatively new, in the last decade there has been a significant increase in its use to refer to research historically bearing the labels of mother tongue, home language, bilingualism, language maintenance, language loss, language attrition, and so on (He 2008). This growing scholarship has arguably advanced the body of knowledge in these related research areas in important ways. As a result, our understanding of families’ beliefs, opinions, motivations, and practices around HL development is relatively well established in sociolinguistics – although many questions remain. Yet, a comprehensive review suggests that linguistically intermarried families are not significantly represented in this research literature (Braun and Cline 2014; Jackson 2007; Okita 2002), which is rather incongruous both with the current increase of this family type internationally and with the idiosyncratic social reality of these families. Indeed, HL development is viewed as significantly more challenging and complex for interlingual parents – emotionally demanding, time-consuming, and labor intensive (Blum-Kulka 2008; Minami 2013; Okita 2002; Tsushima and Guardado 2016). These families must contend with several languages in daily life, coupled with the potential for conflict that cultural differences in beliefs and practices may pose around child-rearing and other issues. Studies have shown that often parents disagree on cultural transmission priorities and specific language practices for HL development (Crippen and Brew 2013; Dumanig et al. 2013). For instance, in a US study that explored strategies of cultural adaptation employed by intercultural couples in which one parent was an immigrant, Crippen and Brew (2013) identified several strategies of cultural adaptation, a finding that underscores the great diversity of ways in which intercultural/interlingual parents may approach parenting and language socialization (Ochs and Schieffelin 2012) with their children.

Despite the increasing richness of knowledge in HL socialization, development, and maintenance, there is a relative lack of research with children who grow up in linguistically intermarried families with parents who have been raised in different ethnic communities and thus do not share the same native languages (Braun and Cline 2014; Jackson 2007; Yamamoto 2001). Given the coexistence of two or more HLs and cultures in interlingual families, child-rearing becomes significantly more challenging compared to monolingual and even bilingual families (Blum-Kulka 2008). These parents face unique parenting challenges due to often competing and contradictory linguistic ideologies and cultural values. It is argued that these and other elements complicate their family dynamics, including metalinguistic negotiations, decision-making around family language policies, and the implementation of patterns of language use among all family members. Thus, there is a pressing global need to better understand HL issues in children who grow up in interlingual families given the rapid rate at which the diversity of populations is currently increasing in many parts of the world (Wang 2008). Thus, this chapter provides a state-of-the-art review of research from across contexts and language groups with families whose parents do not share a mother tongue.

The Growth of Linguistic Intermarriage

The accumulated research around HLs has advanced this area of study significantly, although it generally presumes and focuses on families whose parents share the same mother tongue. The focus of this chapter is on HL development in cases of linguistic exogamy, the practice of marrying outside of one’s ethnolinguistic group. These families have been variously referred to in the research literature and associated scholarship as mixed unions (Statistics Canada 2011b), linguistically intermarried couples (Jackson 2009; Piller 2001a), interlingual families (Jackson 2009; Yamamoto 2001), cross-linguistic and cross-cultural marriages (Constable 2005), and bilingual/multilingual couples (Piller and Takahashi 2006), among other terms in use. The terms most commonly used in this chapter are interlingual and linguistically intermarried families. This definition differs somewhat from the usage sometimes found in the literature. For instance, the typology of interlingual family proposed by Yamamoto (2001, p. 43) includes parents who share a native language, but use their mother tongue or a third language for family communication. In her view, these families are interlingual in relation to the societal language.

The linguistic diversity of traditionally Anglophone countries is currently increasing and often discussed in the media. Examples include cities such as Sydney in Australia, London in the United Kingdom (UK), and New York in the United States (USA). In Canada, the number of non-Anglophone speakers has grown steadily with each consecutive national census, and as of 2011, first-generation Canadians (those who were born outside of Canada) and their children accounted for 39.4% of the total population, and this trend is likely to continue in the 2016 census. Since Canada’s Anglophone population is estimated at about 58% (Statistics Canada 2011a), Canadian residents who are bilingual, multilingual, or monolingual in a language other than English potentially make up about 42% of the total Canadian population. The proportion of the Canadian population who reported using a language other than French or English at home has been increasing steadily as a result of this demographic trend. In Quebec, the most multilingual province in Canada, 42.6% of the population reported fluency in both English and French (ibid). However, the linguistic landscape of Quebec homes is rapidly changing as well. The 2011 census showed that the use of French as the only language spoken at home has steadily declined in this city since 2001, indicating that the presence of languages brought by immigrants continues to be on the rise.

In line with the above trends in Canada and internationally, the growth of interlingual families globally has been noted in relation to various countries, including Norway (Constable 2005), Japan (Yamamoto 2001), Australia (Oriyama 2010), and Canada (Minami 2013). In the latter, this type of exogamy has increased rapidly since at least the 1976 census (Castonguay 1982) and most dramatically over the 20-year period between 1991 and 2011. The total number of married and common-law couples in mixed unions increased from 2.6% of all couples in 1991 to 4.6% of the total population (Statistics Canada 2011b). Strikingly, out of the total of Japanese Canadian couples reported in this census, the group with the highest incidence of forming partnerships or marrying outside of their group, approximately 78.7% involved a spouse or partner who was not Japanese. It was also reported that the likelihood of mixed couples to have children was much higher than for non-mixed unions. Importantly, research based on census data indicates that children whose parents do not share the same mother tongue experience the most HL loss in Canada (Harrison 1990; Pendakur 1990; Swidinsky and Swidinsky 1997). Indeed, the little Canadian research that has examined the processes of HL socialization and maintenance in the children of linguistically intermarried couples demonstrates that the challenges they face in this regard are significantly intensified compared to families whose parents share the same mother tongue (e.g., Hwang 2005; Minami 2013; Tsushima and Guardado 2016).

Interlingual Parenting Complexities

Scholarly writing tends to characterize HL socialization as highly complex (Garrett and Baquedano-López 2002; Guardado 2008a; He 2010, 2012; Li and Duff 2008; Tsushima and Guardado 2016). A growing body of research with monolingual and interlingual families has documented the multiplicity of forces that impact the policies, practices, and outcomes related to HL development at various levels (e.g., micro and macro) (Curdt-Christiansen 2009; del Carmen Salazar 2008; Guardado 2008b, 2009; King et al. 2008; McGroarty 2010; Ricento 2005). This work has also shown the situated, socially constructed, and contested ways in which identity is tied to the HL (Blackledge et al. 2008; Creese and Blackledge 2010; Guardado 2010, 2011; He 2010). Last but not least, communication dynamics emerging from power relations within families, cultural production, child agency, resistance, and many other issues have been examined based on naturalistic interactions in homes and communities (Guardado 2008a, 2009, 2013). It is not surprising that one of the most common themes found in scholarship with interlingual families is its multifaceted nature (Döpke 1992; Fogle and King 2013; Jackson 2009; Kouritzin 2000; Lanza 2001; Minami 2013; Okita 2002; Tsushima and Guardado 2016; Yamamoto 2001).

Given that the issues involved are significantly intensified and embedded within added complications, language use patterns in interlingual families are considerably more fluid (Yamamoto 2001). While language is an important index of personal and ethnic identity for linguistic minorities (Jedwab 2014), this link is particularly marked for parents in interlingual families and more so for mothers when they are full-time child care providers without employment, familial, or other social networks outside the home. Montreal, the largest city in Québec and the second largest in Canada, serves as an example. Although officially Francophone, English has a high status and strong presence in society, and many immigrant and indigenous languages are often heard on the streets. In this highly multilingual milieu, parents in interlingual relationships grapple with many more complications compared to parents in other settings. On the one hand, with their partners, they may use French, English, or other languages for family communication, and their children invariably bring the French language from school. Although research has shown that HL maintenance is significantly higher in Quebec than in other Canadian regions (e.g., British Columbia and the Prairies), this finding only applies to parents who share a mother tongue. In fact, using official census data, Swidinsky and Swidinsky (1997) found that in Canadian families where only one parent was foreign born, which fits the interlingual family definition used in this chapter, HL maintenance was significantly lower. This finding complicates the topic in the Quebecois context considerably, in particular in relation to interlingual families and more so in the city of Montreal where English and many other languages interact in society.

A variety of associated complications have been examined in several international contexts, such as Japan and the UK. For instance, Jackson’s (2009) research in Japan addresses the linguistic complexity in interlingual families in regard to the often highly politicized nature of parental attempts to foster the HL. He argues that these families need to negotiate, among other things, the terms and characteristics of the interactions among family members. Okita (2002), based on research in the UK, posits that an example of this complexity can be found in the variety of dilemmas habitually faced by interlingual families in relation to child-rearing dynamics and family language planning. This complexity is arguably also closely related to the often-mentioned emotionally demanding, time-consuming, and labor-intensive nature of HL development in interlingual families. These and other issues, which are at the center of HL socialization in interlingual families, are discussed below.

The Emergence of Family Language Policies

Discussions of home language policy and management have traditionally occurred as a side issue within HL scholarship (Kopeliovich 2010; Spolsky 2009), but this focus has recently emerged as an area of study in its own right. Most commonly discussed under the title of family language policy in recent years, this area of research brings together several interrelated fields and topics that include language policy and planning, second language acquisition (King et al. 2008), and language ideologies and metapragmatics (Guardado 2013). This newly emerging field of study refers to the “explicit and overt planning” (King et al. 2008, p. 907) taking place within families in relation to language use among its members. As a fairly recent addition to HL scholarship, language policy within the home context has been conducted mostly in interlingual families (King et al. 2008; Okita 2002; Piller 2001b), with few exceptions (Curdt-Christiansen 2009; Schwartz 2008). A central research focus on interlingual families is not surprising given the additional complications brought about by competing languages in such family configurations.

While the choice itself to use a particular language in homes where parents have a mother tongue in common may be less problematic, for interlingual families the decision-making process can be a highly political (Jackson 2009; Liamputtong 1991), gendered (Lyon 1996; Pavlenko 2001) and even emotional (Okita 2002; Yamamoto 2001) affair. Making decisions regarding what languages to use, when, and with whom in interlingual families can indeed be an emotional undertaking, as it is something that will affect the rest of their children’s lives at various levels, including the type and quality of relationships they will have with their parents and extended families, especially those living in the country or countries of origin of the parents. Tsushima and Guardado (2016) conducted a study with Japanese-descent mothers living in Montreal, Canada, who had formed partnerships with non-Japanese men. The mothers reported experiencing various feelings of guilt and anxiety as a result of their status as the only native speakers of the HL in their families and therefore the sole linguistic resource, making HL development their responsibility. Among the anticipated outcomes of raising children proficient in Japanese, the mothers foregrounded the mother-child bonding as well as overall family bonding. Therefore, for them, this was arguably a high-stakes endeavor they did not take lightly.

Piller (2001a) explains that pervasive asymmetrical power relations in interlingual families on many dimensions can generate a variety of conflicts. Indeed, one of the parents is often positioned in an unfavorable position in the relationship, be it as nonnative speaker, migrant, female, economically dependent, or other positionings based on national and cultural background, or all of the above. A specific analysis of the politicized nature of the decision-making process regarding family language policy in interlingual families is provided by Jackson’s (2007, 2009) research with couples living in Japan in which the mother was Japanese and the father was US American. Jackson concluded that the HL development of children in linguistically intermarried families tends to be more complex and politicized due to the need to negotiate a variety of processes related to developmental issues and the overall relations and interactions in the family.

Given that gender is a fundamental organizing principle across ethnolinguistic and cultural groups (Gordon 2008), it is not particularly unexpected that one of the most persistent imbalances of power in the language policy decision-making process of interlingual families is related to gender. Mothers have traditionally been seen as the primary caregivers (Tannen 2003), socializers, and transmitters of the mother tongue and this is also the case for interlingual families. Thompson (1991) posits that although in certain contexts fathers are increasingly more involved in parenting, mothers are still the primary caregivers. The expectations regarding multilingual parenting also more often than not seem to rest on mothers (Okita 2002; Pavlenko 2001). Moreover, research in various settings shows that in interlingual families, the language spoken by mothers influence the language developed by children at home (Luk 1986; Lyon 1996), which may be heard as a predictable result. This outcome, however, may mask a more definitive and critical role played by gender power relations in interlingual families. Drawing on her research with Welsh/English families in Wales, Lyon (1996) found that in this context, mothers tended to accommodate the language of the father. In other words, the father’s language determined the home language – including that of the mother – an unequivocal sign of the role that gender plays in the family language policy decision-making process. Even though the languages used by mothers are generally most likely the ones to be passed on to their children, the language spoken by a mother in an interlingual relationship may be that of the father.

Although discussions around the imbalances in terms of gender power relations often presume a disadvantage against women, as evidently shown in the above example, there seem to be instances in interlingual families where the opposite may be true given particular contextual factors. Jackson’s (2009) research in Japan found that in one family, the power relations seemed to have shifted in favor of the mother who even “banned” her Anglophone husband from studying and learning Japanese. Jackson speculated that this mother preferred to have her husband remain “a weak Japanese speaker – both in terms of the way this affected the power differentials in the marriage, and the cultural capital potentially derived from being the bilingual wife of an English-speaking husband” (p. 68). Albeit perhaps a rare case, Jackson’s research illustrates the varied ways in which “the family’s political economy of language” (p. 61) can be politicized and power relations deployed in their policies regarding language use.

Language policies come about differently in different interlingual families, although certain patterns have been identified. For instance, language policy decisions may be made consciously through discussion between parents (Tsushima and Guardado 2016), the decision may be entrusted to the mother (e.g., Yamamoto 2001), the language used may by default be the language in which the couple originally began their relationship, or it may just emerge naturally. The latter is illustrated by Okita’s (2002) research with Japanese mothers married to British men living in the UK who found that language decisions were made through discussions with the children or with their partners, and in some cases the language policies developed intuitively. When decisions are made consciously, several factors have been found to impact the process and final decision. The mothers who participated in Tsushima and Guardado’s (2016) research in Montreal, for instance, reported engaging in frequent metalinguistic conversations with their partners, relatives, friends, and other stakeholders, which the mothers valued highly and drew on for devising and implementing family language policies.

King and Fogle (2006) have specifically explored the sources of influence in this decision-making process. In their research with families attempting to raise bilingual children in Spanish and English in the USA, half of whom were linguistically mixed, they found that an array of factors affected their participants’ decisions, including published parenting advice, their own personal experiences, family members’ opinions, and public discourse. As a highly educated group, particularly the mothers, it is not surprising that they had reviewed relevant multilingual parenting literature and were familiar with certain popularly held notions about bilingualism. For instance, King and Fogle reported that parents sometimes cited research related to cognitive advantages, and even augmented it, and alluded to aspects of the critical period hypothesis, claiming that earlier exposure to multiple languages was better. Even though many of these “citations” were generally unspecified, they had a strong effect on their decisions to raise their children bilingually. Nevertheless, King and Fogle found that the most powerful influence on the parents’ language policy decisions did not come from the expert advice they cited but from their personal experiences, beliefs, and preferences. Expert and popular advice was only heeded when it matched their beliefs and the way they had learned, but was dismissed as ineffective when it contradicted them. Another source of influence seemed to come from unsuccessful parenting practices observed in other families. The participating mothers committed to avoiding such pitfalls by engaging in parenting strategies that differed from observed practices they viewed as detrimental.

The participants in Tsushima and Guardado’s (2016) Montreal research discussed similar topics, but approached them differently in practice. Their female Japanese participants seemed less assertive in relation to advice received, particularly when this advice was frequently emphasized by individuals in positions of authority, such as teachers in their children’s schools. Lacking the confidence to challenge their recommendations and without access to reliable alternative knowledge, some of them abandoned the promotion of the HL in their families.

A final factor affecting the decision-making process of family language policies that cannot be ignored is related to beliefs and values about language held by society and individuals. Language ideologies can be understood as sets of beliefs and values held by community members about the worth of their languages and also about how, when, with whom, and in what contexts or circumstances these linguistic resources should be used (Ochs and Schieffelin 2012). Therefore, these ideologies also powerfully inform family policies about HL use in and outside the home. Often, however, these ideologies can be highly contradictory, and even though a set of parents may subscribe to the same beliefs about language overtly, in private they may make different choices and engage in different practices (Guardado 2009; Lanza 1997/2004). Thus, language ideologies are central to the success of HL development (Guardado 2017; King et al. 2008) given that they inform family language policy, which impacts practices and largely determines whether a HL is maintained or lost.

The Deployment of Family Language Strategies

It is general practice for interlingual couples to select one of their native languages as their language of communication, which is often the dominant societal language (Romaine 1995), but not necessarily in all cases. In fact, many interlingual couples have native languages that do not match that of their community, posing potential challenges in terms of their language planning choices and communication patterns. The research literature on interlingual parenting has identified several family communication arrangements and has attempted to investigate the relative effectiveness of each of these. Some of these communication patterns are one parent-one language (OPOL) , minority/heritage language at home (MLAH/HLAH, hereafter HLAH), mixing both languages, or using no specific strategy at all.

Studies in a variety of settings have identified OPOL as one of the most common communication arrangements, although not necessarily the most successful (Billings 1990; De Houwer 2007; Döpke 1992; Shang 1997; Takeuchi 2006; Yamamoto 2001). Given its popularity and pervasiveness, it has been researched significantly and referred to in a variety of ways, including a principle (Bain and Yu 1980; Dopke 1992), method (Romaine 1995), framework (Döpke 1998), approach (Döpke 1992; Lyon 1996), strategy (Lanza 1992), and rule (Genesee and Nicoladis 1995). Regardless of the terminology, the format in an OPOL household is that each parent speaks a different language to their children, which may be his or her native language or some other language, often the societal language. The expectation is that the child will use a different language to communicate with each parent. The common language of communication between the parents may be the societal language or a different one, sometimes the language in which the couple started their relationship (e.g., Yamamoto 2001).

Although widely used and often acclaimed as the best method for raising children bilingually in interlingual family situations (e.g., Döpke 1992; Ronjat 1913), several studies have shown that in actual practice, results are inconsistent and less optimistic (e.g., Billings 1990; De Houwer 2007; Quay 2012; Shang 1997; Takeuchi 2006; Yamamoto 2001). This outcome dissimilarity has been attributed to a variety of circumstances and factors. For instance, Takeuchi’s study in Australia with Japanese mothers focusing exclusively on OPOL families found that most children did not use the Japanese language actively as adults. She posited that families that were consistent in their strategy use were more successful in raising bilingual children. Billings (1990) found OPOL to be generally successful, although it led to active bilingualism in only half of the cases. Döpke (1998), an enthusiastic supporter of OPOL, recognizes the lack of consistent outcomes across families and concludes that several factors have an impact on its effectiveness in fostering active bilingualism, including the quantity and quality of linguistic input, insistence on the use of the HL, and interactional style of parents. She posits that this variability poses questions about the forces that cause different results under similar conditions within families.

The HLAH pattern of family communication is not as widely known as OPOL, but seems to be adopted at least as frequently. HLAH consists of both parents selecting the minority language for family communication. This assumes that only one heritage language is involved or promoted and that the societal language is the native language of one of the parents. Thus, this parent will use the minority language – a nonnative language – for all family communication. An example of this is a French-speaking Canadian man living in Montreal, Canada, whose female partner is a native speaker of Japanese. In this example, the French-speaking father would use Japanese at home. If both parents speak a non-societal language, such as the case of a Japanese-speaking woman living in Montreal who is married to an Arabic-speaking man, one of the two HLs might be selected for family communication, provided both parents are proficient in this language, to the detriment of the other HL. Otherwise, French or English might be used, in which case the HLAH pattern of communication would not be possible. A case in point is provided by an ethnographic study with Hispanic families in British Columbia, Canada. Guardado (2008a) described a family in which the mother was from Spain and the father from Afghanistan. The father used English with all family members and the mother used Spanish with the children. Clearly, in this family, the only heritage language promoted was Spanish, to the exclusion of Persian. Researchers have found the HLAH method of communication to be widely used. For instance, Yamamoto (2001) studied interlingual families living in Japan and found that HLAH, not OPOL, was actually the most common and effective pattern of family communication. Other studies have found varying results regarding the frequency with which OPOL is adopted, with some studies finding OPOL to be the most commonly selected pattern (Billings 1990; Shang 1997), followed by HLHA, and others identifying the HLAH as the most common, followed by OPOL (Yamamoto 2001; in the Japanese context when the HL is English). In terms of their effectiveness for fostering active bilingualism, HLHA has been found to be as effective (Shang 1997) and in some families more effective than OPOL (Billings 1990; Yamamoto 2001).

The third most commonly found communication arrangement is the mixed language strategy where all family members use both parental languages for family communication (Billings 1990; Yamamoto 2001). The results have shown that this method tends to lead to more passive than active bilingualism (Billings 1990; Yamamoto 2001). Finally, there are interlingual families that report interest in HL development but lack a defined family language policy. Not having a strategy most often leads to passive bilingualism or even monolingualism (Shang 1997; Yamamoto 2001).

In sum, the research literature has shown that both OPOL and HLAH are common and effective methods adopted by interlingual families, although individual family differences and practices tend to produce different results. Mixing and lack of strategy consistency do not produce successful results (Billings 1990; Döpke 1998; King et al. 2008; Yamamoto 2001). While both OPOL and HLAH are effective strategies, HLAH was been identified as the most effective overall (e.g., Billings 1990; Shang 1997). This might be because although children in general tend to frequently select the dominant language for interactions with all family members, the use of a minority language by all family members makes it more prevalent, increases linguistic exposure, and conveys explicit and implicit messages about its significance. These factors may create conditions in which children are more likely to use the minority language when the HLAH strategy is implemented.

Factors Affecting Interlingual Heritage Language Development

Heritage language development in interlingual families is shaped by a variety of factors that are related and unrelated to the above patterns, including – but not limited to – discourse practices used to encourage HL use, number of siblings, quantity and quality of linguistic input, gender relations, and language ideologies. A few studies have found that the number of siblings and order of birth can have an effect on the level of active bilingualism they develop. For instance, Döpke (1992) found that younger children in interlingual families in Australia tended to develop lower proficiency in the heritage language, presumably as a result of the reduced HL input they received, echoing Hoffmann’s (1985) earlier research in the UK and corroborated by more recent research in other contexts (e.g., Yamamoto 2001). Indeed, it is commonly recognized that older siblings tend to bring the dominant language into the home, drastically impacting the language use patterns of younger siblings (Guardado 2002).

Parents have been found to utilize a variety of linguistic devices to encourage their children to use a particular language in their day-to-day interactions. These have been termed parental insisting strategies (Döpke 1992), discourse strategies (Lanza 2007), discourse styles (Quay 2012), and metapragmatic strategies (Guardado 2013). Lanza’s (2007) findings suggest that making the parental linguistic preferences explicit to children is essential in ensuring the child uses the expected language (see also Yu 2014). Along these lines, Lanza has found that interactional strategies that promote a more monolingual communication pattern between a parent-child pair foster more favorable conditions for active bilingualism. In recent research based on microlinguistic analyses of adult caregiver-child interactions, Guardado (2013) has hypothesized that rhetorically strong strategies such as direct commands may not be the most effective in fostering HL development in children as these directives tend to negatively affect communication within families. Although there does not seem to be conclusive research showing the relative effectiveness of particular interactional strategies in fostering active bilingualism, there is an agreement that the use of linguistic devices (such as commands or requests) to encourage children to use one language or another is central to HL development (Döpke 1992; Kasuya 1998; Lanza 2007).

Just as studies have identified gender structures as influential in the language use choices of interlingual families, this factor has also been found to decisively impact outcomes. For instance, in her research in Wales, Lyon found that mothers accommodated the language of their husbands, effectively setting the home language policy. Because mothers directly impacted the language use patterns of the children, this gender imbalance determined the fate of the children’s language development. Similar effects have been observed in other research (e.g., Luk 1986). Relatedly, Yamamoto (2001) found that if the mother was the speaker of the minority language in an interlingual family, the couple was more likely to use the minority language in their communication, and when this was the case, the children’s chances of developing active bilingualism were higher. A further gender effect found was that in cases where the father was the minority language speaker, the family was more likely to adopt the OPOL interactional strategy. A variety of other gender effects have been discussed by several scholars (e.g., Clyne and Kipp 1997; Jackson 2009; Okita 2002).

The role that language ideologies play in HL development in general (e.g., Becker 2013; Guardado 2009, 2013) and in particular within interlingual families (Fogle 2013; Lyon 1996; King et al. 2008; Yamamoto 2001) has been increasingly addressed in research. This work has shown that societal and parental attitudes about language and multilingualism are a strong influence on the language management and policy decisions made by interlingual couples. The role of language ideologies is key to HL development given that they inform family language policies, which in turn shape the language use patterns found in these homes. Consequently, they impact the language development trajectories of children and determine the maintenance or loss of the heritage language (Fogle and King 2013; King et al. 2008; King and Fogle 2006; Lanza 2007; Okita 2002). In sum, the most positive environment for HL development in interlingual families seems to be one where both parents use the minority language for communication in the home. This, of course, is only possible when only one parent’s language is being fostered, as in the case of a minority language mother and a dominant language father who is proficient in the minority language. Yamamoto (2001) seems to summarize this point in the self-explanatory “principle of maximal engagement,” which she proposes as an alternative to OPOL. She states that in linguistic environments where this principle operates, children receive greater HL input as well as a subtextual message that the HL is important and should be used at all times.

Conclusion and Future Directions

The present review of the literature shows that heritage language research with the children of parents who do not share a mother tongue has begun to establish key foundational knowledge regarding the factors that affect their experiences, at least in certain contexts. Through research investigating a wide range of questions in various settings and using different methodologies and theoretical lenses, scholars have generated important understandings of how HL development is shaped by the linguistic, cultural, and social contexts in which these families are embedded. Nevertheless, many scholars have recently called for increased research around interlingual family language policy, socialization, and related issues given the multiple complexities that this demographic faces (Heller and Levy 1992; Jackson 2009; King et al. 2008; Lanza 2001, 2007; Minami 2013; Noro 2009; Tsushima and Guardado 2016). Indeed, much more research needs to be undertaken which examines, documents, and theorizes the full range of ways in which the children of interlingual families experience the languages in their lives, the factors that impact on these experiences, and how the outcomes of these processes affect their future.

Indeed, this specific area of inquiry offers several valuable lines of future research. For instance, if, as Ochs and Schieffelin have stated, learning language “goes hand-in-hand with acquiring sociocultural knowledge” (1995, p. 74), HL development within the highly complex interactional dynamics of interlingual families must no doubt involve intricate processes of negotiation and socialization into highly varied and hybrid cultural values and practices. Ethnographic accounts using a language socialization perspective have much to uncover and explain regarding the linguistic lives of families made up of various ethnolinguistic combinations. Ochs and Schieffelin (2008) posit “that the coexistence of two or more codes within a particular community, whatever the sociohistorical and political circumstances that have given rise to them or brought them into contact, is rarely neutral in relation to children’s developing linguistic and sociocultural competence” (p. 10). Recasting the family as a community of sorts, it is argued that the social, linguistic, and political circumstances of interlingual families are not neutral and in fact pose significant challenges where various power relations come to play. Gender emerged repeatedly in this literature review as a central point of friction and power struggle that impacted family language policy, communication dynamics, and even the well-being of family members, particularly mothers. Future research should examine in more detail how power dynamics related to gender impact the HL socialization of children in these families across settings and ethnolinguistic combinations.

For interlingual parents, the complexities associated with HL socialization, along with the concomitant emotional, physical, and financial burden they often shoulder, can lead to feelings of anxiety, guilt, confusion, and frustration. As Tsushima and Guardado found, this state of affairs is largely generated or at least compounded by interlingual parents’ relative lack of access to knowledge regarding multilingual parenting and family language planning. Therefore, in addition to deepening research into the complexities, possibilities, and limits of HL development in interlingual families, it is of utmost urgency that scholars also make efforts to ensure that knowledge created with families also reaches families, clarifies ambiguities, and informs their daily practice. This scholarly knowledge should also reach other stakeholders, such as community leaders, school personnel, health professionals, and other stakeholders who at times are in a position to provide linguistic advice to families.

Cross-References