Capacity, Opportunity, and Desire in Heritage Language Variation (CODE-V)

Capacity, Opportunity and Desire in Heritage Language Variation (CODE-V) offers a novel approach, never used in this capacity in this context before, to examine a significantly understudied natural laboratory population of heritage language bilingualism (HLB).

Moving above and beyond the current state-of-the-art in HLB studies, CODE-V works with high-performing heritage language speakers (HHSs) and aims to understand the relationship between their heritage language (HL) competence and nature of their HL experience through the lens of their community center engagement patterns.

Through its novel adaptation of sociocultural/educational framework, CODE-V examines this severely understudied HLB context, decoding in a systematic way: (i) formal and informal Capacity (C) development activities, social/cultural Opportunity (O) creation efforts, and individual/parental Desires (D); (ii) what underlying linguistic competence HHSs possess and (iii) how such linguistic competence develops and changes over time and across generations in relation to the relative weighting of linguistic and environmental factors (i.e., community center engagement) that predict their HHS status.

CODE-V maintains that studying one extreme end of the HL outcome continuum will be a unique position to offer novel evidence addressing the variation in HL outcomes that has posed challenges to our understanding of native language acquisition and the role of input.

CODE-V’s findings, both formal/theoretical, methodological and societal/sociolinguistic, will make significant contributions to a more complete picture of bilingualism, heritage language bilingualism more specifically, and its societal dynamics, for theory building as well as addressing HSs’ societal and educational needs.