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20 - A Narrative-Ethnographic Approach to Research on Heritage Language Development

from Part II - Research Approaches to Heritage Languages

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 November 2021

By
Agnes Weiyun He
Edited by
Silvina Montrul  and
Maria Polinsky
Silvina Montrul
Affiliation:
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Maria Polinsky
Affiliation:
University of Maryland, College Park
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Summary

This chapter presents a qualitative approach to research on heritage language development – narrative ethnography, which integrates text-based methods of narrative analysis with field-based, interaction-enriched methods of linguistic anthropology. It begins with an overview of its epistemological orientations and an exploration of its usefulness for heritage language research before discussing its methodological orientations. It is argued that such an approach is particularly productive for a context-dependent field such as heritage language development. The chapter concludes with a consideration of the merits and challenges of this approach and its potential to advance knowledge about heritage language development and learning.

Keywords

narrativeethnographyheritage languagelanguage and identity
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Heritage Languages and Linguistics , pp. 499 - 519
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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