Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Negotiating Home Language: Spanish Maintenance And Loss In Latino Families, Amy Lutz

Sociology - All Scholarship

Based on in-depth interviews and fieldwork in and around Dallas, Texas, this paper explores the ways in which Latino parents and their children negotiate home language and offers a theoretical framework for understanding language maintenance and loss in the home. The parents in this study overwhelmingly view bilingualism as the ideal, yet many parents, especially those who are English-dominant or bilingual, find it difficult to maintain Spanish at home because of outside pressures that prioritize English and concerns about their children's English-language acquisition. The family, as the environment in which children first begin to learn language, and family dynamics regarding …