The Multiplicity Framework: Potential Applications for Heritage Language Education and Pedagogy

Abstract

Engaging with language education in a heritage language context is a complex endeavor that transcends space and time. A heritage language is necessarily connected to past language use associated with older generations, perhaps even those who are no longer living. Heritage language is also associated with a different space, a place removed from the language context of those who are now seeking to learn or maintain the language. To engage with heritage language learning, previously established purposes and norms need to be reshaped through a younger generation who has different language communication opportunities, means, needs, and desires. This paper outlines a framework for understanding the communicative repertoire of heritage language learners and also for engaging them with their diverse and hybrid identities, the purposes for which they wish to use their languages and the various modes and modalities that are central to their diverse language learning needs.