Policy Considerations for Promoting Heritage, Community, and Native American Languages

Reference work entry
First Online:
Part of the Encyclopedia of Language and Education book series (ELE)

Abstract

This chapter focuses on heritage and community language policy (HL-CL), primarily in the United States context. It details the genesis of work on this topic with groundbreaking research by Joshua Fishman in the 1960s and notes subsequent developments. The chapter notes the challenges for focusing on HL-CL due to the dominance of monolingual ideology in the USA, as well as the emphasis on immigrant and foreign language perspectives, often to the detriment of a focus on Indigenous language policy. The chapter also notes a shift in federal policy away from bilingual education and the absence of an emphasis on HL-CL children in more recent US language policy initiatives. Despite these emphases, the chapter notes some areas of progress in policies focused on Native Americans as well as some areas of progress at the community level. The chapter concludes by making a case for the importance of a more comprehensive national language policy that includes an emphasis on building on HL-CL resources in the population.

Keywords

Heritage language Community language Indigenous language Language policy 
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Copyright information

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of English, Arizona State UniversityTempeUSA

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